Chapter 10: A Four-Way Affair
"Tails, I hate to ask you this, but could you try and knock Cream unconscious? I'm going to have my hands full dealing with Amy." Sonic says in a quickly spoken tone of voice before he charges forth at the pinky hedgehog for a fight he would rather just avoid.
"Sonic, I-" The yellow fox tries to make a point towards his friend, but as he watches the blue hedgehog jumping into a ball at Amy he lets out a sigh and smacks his forehead while saying "Why do I even bother sometimes…"
Tails turns to face the young rabbit, who brandishes her pointer finger at him and says in an aggressive tone of voice "Take him Cheese!" The command was given to the little Chao beside her, who angrily pumps his fists towards the air and lets out repeated exclamations of his species' name.
The Chao quickly rushes forward and rams his head into Tails' gut before the fox could raise his arm cannon to fight back. The blow to the yellow fox's stomach makes him stumble back a couple inches in pain as his breath is forced out of his mouth. The Chao then flies back to his master, who has flown forward with a rapid flapping of her ears so she could kick Tails right in his forehead.
Though Cream was young, as a rabbit her kicks were certainly strong, and Tails was swiftly knocked onto his backside a few feet away from where he was once standing. But thankfully the blow to his head knocked him out of his momentary state of windedness. Quickly planting his arm cannon against the metal floor, Tails fires a blast of air to push himself back onto his feet, looking at Cream as the once flying rabbit lands on the ground and points her finger twice at him again to send her Chao his way.
Cheese divebombs Tails from the sky with his foot extended outward, but this time the yellow fox was more than ready to counter the attack. The yellow fox holds his multifunctional arm cannon in front of his chest and taps a button on the left side of it. A pocket opens up in the top, and from a ray gun hidden underneath a barrier of hard light energy forms around him in a spherical green shape. The Chao's kick impacts with the barrier and causes him to rebound off of it.
Tails cracks a grin as he taps the button again to shut the barrier off, aiming his arm cannon up at the flying off Chao as he thinks to himself "Two-uses of my experimental Bounce Barrier left…" Pegging Cheese perfectly without a scope, the yellow fox fires an electrical sphere from the arm cannon.
However, Cream leaps into the air and swings her left ear at the sphere, breaking it apart with ease much to Tails' surprise. The airborne rabbit then flaps her ears up and down and whistles with the help of her fingers to grab the flying Chao's attention. Cheese quickly recovers and flies right by Cream's side, but in the time it took for the duo to get back together Tails had already launched a mine from his arm cannon underneath the two.
The mine opens up, sending a boxing glove upward that slams right into the young rabbit's gut. The strength put into the blow makes both ends of Cream's body lurch downward against their will, and though it was a necessary action Tails nonetheless grimaces at how painful it appeared to be. As the boxing glove retracts back into the mine, Cheese flaps his arms around in anger and quickly rushes straight at the yellow fox to get payback for his master.
With Tails lowering his arm cannon temporarily because of what he had done to the young rabbit, he was defenseless as the Chao got in front of his body and furiously swung his tiny arms at the yellow fox's body. A flurry of blows battered against Tails' fur, but they weren't really strong enough to make him do anything more than hold his left arm up to block a majority of the attacks. With the Chao sticking to him without end, the yellow fox thinks to himself "Wish I could see how Sonic is faring…"
Not long after rushing off to face Amy, the blue hedgehog finds himself standing right in front of her, using his all-too quick reflexes to swing his body around and dodge the blows of Amy's Piko Piko Hammer. Sonic takes a few steps back as he dodges these attacks, waiting for an opportunity to strike back even though the reluctance to do so wasn't doing him any favors in that regard.
"Come on Amy, what has Eggman got you thinking? Can't you at least say SOMETHING?" Sonic tries to break through to the pink hedgehog to no avail, as Amy looks at him with a vengeful scowl as she swings her hammer high above her body and brings it crashing down hard in front of her.
The blue hedgehog jumps back to the dodge the hammer as it slams against the metal floor and busts a hole right through it with ease. The lip of the hammer keeps it stuck in place in the hole for a good few seconds as Amy grunts to pull it out. Sonic folds his arms and gestures his right fingers at the pink hedgehog, saying to her in yet another failed attempt to grab her attention "Amy, there has to be SOMETHING on your mind, so hurry up and tell me!"
Amy rips her hammer out of the ground, tearing away a good chunk of the metal flooring in the process before she roars angrily and leaps at Sonic, pulling her weapon behind her as she descends towards the blue hedgehog. Using his speed to zip backwards out of the way, Sonic dodges a blow to the noggin that would have proven to be very fatal had it connected. The impact of the hammer creates a shockwave this time, as Amy holds back a bit of her strength seconds before it connects with the ground.
"Ok, anger…Anger is on your mind." Sonic jokingly comments on the matter as he stands a good distance away from the pink hedgehog. Letting out a hesitant sigh, the blue blur removes his arms from his chest and says to Amy "Can't believe I'm doing this, but I'll try and go easy on ya Amy."
The pink hedgehog's eyelids twitch in anger as Sonic says this, and after roaring once more she leaps into the air and swings her hammer outward in a near 360 degree spin. In a mere couple of seconds, a barely visible tornado flies straight at the blue hedgehog, causing him to freak momentarily as he thinks to himself "Shoot! I forgot Amy could do that!'
As the suction of the tornado prepares to drag him inward, Sonic turns around and tries to zip off, kicking his feet rapidly against the ground to work against the pull of the hedgehog-made force of nature. But the blue blur fails, and is dragged inside of the tornado a moment later. Spinning around at the speed of sound, Sonic is kept trapped inside of the tornado until Amy lands on the ground, slams her hammer against the ground to vault herself upward, and uses that very hammer again to hit the blue hedgehog straight against his gut.
The tornado's wind breaks apart and Sonic crashes hard against the floor back first, his body leaving a perfect indent inside. Amy starts coming down ready to deliver another powerful blow with her hammer, but the blue hedgehog quickly opens his eyelids after they had been forced shut by the impact and springs out of the indent of his body. Once landing on the ground Sonic curls up until a ball and revs himself to gain speed rapidly, launching into the air underneath the range of Amy's hammer before he collides straight on into her body.
The blow to the front of Amy's body dislodges the Piko Piko Hammer from her grip, and as it spins around and lands on its side atop the ground Sonic pushes the pink hedgehog through the air until gravity drags them both back down. By that point, the blue hedgehog bounces off of Amy's body and lets her fall on her back with minimal damage done due to the impact. Sonic lands on the ground and unfurls from the ball-like state, skidding backwards a couple feet as he slams one hand against the metal floor.
"Alright, that should take care of the hard part…" Sonic comments on the removal of Amy's hammer from her grasp as he positions himself upright, and then he goes on to whisper to himself as the pink hedgehog starts to lift herself up off the ground "Hopefully Tails isn't having any trouble with that Chao…"
Back with the yellow fox's ordeal against the young rabbit and her persistent Chao, Tails managed to finally push Cheese away from him with a brush of his arm cannon forward. From there the yellow fox holds his weapon out and blasts the Chao with an up-close electric sphere. Though Cheese was rather strong for a Chao, a surging of electricity through his tiny body was more than enough to knock the little guy unconscious against the floor.
The purple fog faded from around his head as he laid face first upon the cold metal, but Tails scoffed embarrassingly as he realizes that he hit Cheese too hard with his attack and had accidentally left him in a period of unconsciousness longer than what he wanted. "I really got to learn how to better adjust the output…" Tails comments to himself as he lifts his arm cannon in front of his face and looked it over, forgetting about Cream's presence for quite a few moments before the young rabbit exclaims in a shocked tone of voice the name of her Chao friend.
The yellow fox looks up and sees as Cream lands on the ground and rushes over to Cheese's side, where the rabbit picks him up and holds his somewhat smoking body in her arms to carefully examine him to see if he was ok. The Chao barely moved, making Tails once again feel a bit of regret for his actions as he said to the young rabbit "C-Cream…I didn't ki-"
Cream cuddles her Chao against her chest for a couple seconds, a single teardrop appearing from her right eye that lands atop Cheese's head. Tails goes quiet before his sentence was done as he felt something grim in the air around him. Cream lifts her head up after placing Cheese against the ground, her eyes dripping with tears as she looks at the yellow fox angrily.
Nervously scratching the back of his head while a melancholy expression is placed on his face, Tails says to himself "…Well, this is about to go downhill…"
Sure enough, Cream leaps at the yellow fox in a burst of anger, yelling as high as she could as he kicks down upon the fox's arm cannon as he attempts to hold it up and defend himself. The kick strikes the weapon enough to break off the metal plating on top, which makes the arm cannon start to malfunction at a rapid pace now that the vulnerable wiring has been exposed. With this malfunction, Tails is pushed off to the right against his will as the cannon fires a burst of air.
He lands on his side, skidding along the ground for a few seconds before the air stops pushing outward from the end of the cannon itself. The yellow fox reaches for the back of his arm cannon to try and pull it right off, but the glitches present within cause the weapon to clamp to his arm and make it currently impossible to take off. Tails lets out a quiet remark of "Oh man…" in disbelief as he tries to push himself back onto his feet before Cream can strike him again.
The young rabbit was out of sight though once he did stand back upright, causing Tails to swerve his head around as a brief jolt of electricity emerges from his arm cannon and makes him pause in place. "I need to activate the emergency shutdown before this becomes too detrimental…" Tails thinks to himself as he lowers his head for a brief moment and reaches towards the red button hidden deep between the many wires with his left hand.
Before he can accomplish this task, Cream makes her appearance once again, dive bombing straight from high in the sky with her head first into Tails own head. The yellow fox's head is pushed downward slightly as his position is made sloppy and he starts to stumble backwards, mumbling to himself in a slurred tone of voice "No Shonic…The answer is not Egghead…"
But with his great intelligence, Tails quickly plants his feet against the ground and shakes the impact off, looking forward as Cream lands on the ground before then looking down upon his malfunctioning arm cannon and seeing how the front was glowing with blue electricity. Taking a chance on this light, the yellow fox cocks the arm cannon in front of him and supports the underside of it with his left hand, aiming it at the rabbit as she charges straight at him and saying in an apologetic tone of voice "I hope this doesn't knock you out for too long…"
The electric sphere fires from the arm cannon, its size being understandably larger than any of the other projectiles Tails had launched before due to the glitches within the weapon. The sphere consumes Cream and electrocutes her for a good few seconds, freezing her body in place above the metal…floor…The yellow fox's eyes widen as he realizes that he had just ushered in his own defeat alongside the young rabbit's, for as Cream's feet make contact with the ground the excess of electricity pushes through the metal floor and strikes Tails before he can leap into the air to dodge it all.
With both young beings struck with electricity, it doesn't take long for them to start falling towards the ground. Cream falls first, the purple fog vanishing from around her head as she lands face first against the floor. Tails however uses his arm cannon as a crutch to catch himself in the nick of time, recognizing that the lesser amount of electricity flowing through his body allowed him to retain just enough consciousness to save himself from falling down.
Thankfully, the electric jolt through his body also happened to shut down Tails' arm cannon, which made the yellow fox breathing a sigh of relief as he says to himself "Well…That's the best I could hope for…" Though he did feel a bit said that he couldn't back Sonic up in his fight with Amy, since the electric shock took quite a lot out of him.
However, the blue hedgehog currently had his situation under control. As Amy rose up off the ground and stood on her feet without a hammer in hand, Sonic said to her "You've been disarmed Amy. Now I know you aren't a total bonehead, so if you can hear me at ALL, try and hold back the urge to charge at me without the hammer."
Sonic's faith in Amy's listening skills goes in the completely opposite direction as the pink hedgehog charges right at him. The blue hedgehog shrugs his shoulders and zips briefly to the left, holding his foot out to trip Amy up and cause her to take damage as she falls against the floor and tumbles forward.
The blue hedgehog, with a somewhat serious expression on his face, goes back to folding his arms in front of his chest and tapping his foot against the ground as the pink hedgehog ends her roll near her hammer, and upon standing up she picks it up and turns at Sonic with hands grasping tightly around the handle of the weapon.
Sonic sighs for a moment and then folds his arms backwards, ready to put an end to this irritating ordeal with one last move. Picking up speed quickly, the blue blur zips himself around Amy's body in a circular fashion to slowly create a powerful whirlwind. The pink hedgehog tries to swing her hammer around to land a blow on the blue blur, but with enough momentum kicked up he has long since left the edge of the whirlwind as Amy is carried up through the center until she reaches the top of it.
The blue hedgehog, trusting in Amy's strength, leaps to the top of his whirlwind and performs a forward spinning kick straight into the pink hedgehog's gut as the force of the twirling cage prevents her from holding her hammer in protection. With the precise blow creating a shockwave that splits the whirlwind apart in all directions, Amy is sent plummeting against the metal floor below, where the impact is more than enough to finally push the purple fog off of her head.
Sonic lands on the ground softly in front of Amy's fallen body, saying after letting out a tiny sigh "Can't believe I had to do this…"
The blue blur then turns to the right and sees Tails supporting himself with his arm cannon while Cream and Cheese are left unconscious on the ground in front of him. "Tails!" Sonic says in a concerned tone before he runs forward to help his buddy out.
Once in front of the yellow fox, Sonic extends his left hand to give him a stable way to stand up. Tails looks up at his friend and says to him "Thanks for the offer…" but after taking a couple more breaths he pushes himself onto his feet without any assistance before he goes on to mention "But I'm fine now."
Tails and Sonic look back and forth at the three unconscious bodies, with Sonic in particular having a semi-disgusted look on his face as he points out to his yellow buddy "We can't let this go on any longer. Eggman is getting WAY out of hand with this."
"No kidding. This probably isn't even the end of his mind-control victims." Tails says in a regretful tone of voice as he scratches the side of his head while putting his arm cannon away.
"We need to forget about Egghead for the moment and find out where he's making all this Nega Hyper-go-on energy, and bust the place up!" Sonic smacks his fist against his opposite palm as he ends this sentence off, showing a great deal of enthusiasm towards defeating Eggman's plans in the process.
Tails nods his head in agreement, mentioning to his true blue friend "But what about Amy and Cream?" Sonic gives the yellow fox and unworried thumbs-up as he responds with "Eh, those two can handle themselves just fine once they wake up. Besides, they aren't in any danger up here now are they?"
The yellow fox scratches the side of his head and admits to his friend "No…I suppose you're right. We can't just stick around here."
With this discussion said and done, Tails and Sonic quickly turn around and make their way for the opposite end of the building rooftop. They both leap up, but before the blue blur does so he glances back at Amy for a moment and cocks a smile.
Once the dynamic duo had vanished, Amy's eyelids began to crack open, her mind perfectly free from the control of Eggman as she lifts herself up slowly and says in a girly yet squeaky groan "Ugh…Was I hit by a truck or something?"
Once on her feet, it doesn't take long for the pink hedgehog to notice Cream's unconscious body and run over to it after putting her right hand in front of her mouth and gasping in shock. Cheese wakes up at this point and goes by his friend's side, letting out worried cries of "Chao…" as he pokes the side of the young rabbit's body.
"Oh Cream…Who did this to you?" Amy says as she kneels down beside the young rabbit and waits for her to wake up. It takes a minute or so, but Cream begins to open her eyelids softly.
Amy lets out a sigh of relief as the young rabbit recognizes the pink hedgehog quickly. Lifting her head up as Amy backs away a bit to give her some space, Cream asks in a puzzled manner "Miss Amy? What are you doing here?"
Cheese quickly flies and wraps his tiny arms around his friend's neck, catching the young rabbit off-guard for a moment as she recognizes his presence and kindly says "Cheese! You're ok!"
The two friends share a hug with each other for a good few seconds before Cream focuses back on Amy, who says to the young rabbit as they stand on their feet "I was going to ask you that Cream. I don't even know where we are."
Amy looks around to try and get a good idea of where they might be, and all it takes is a quick glance at the Final Fortress in the distance for the pink hedgehog to tightly clench her fist in anger and declare "Eggman! So he's the one responsible for this!"
As Cheese floats beside her, Cream walks up behind the angered Amy and says with her head tilted to the right "Miss Amy…Don't you remember anything about your kidnapping?"
The pink hedgehog, with a scowl on her face says to the young rabbit "No Cream, of course I don't. Do I really need to? That bald headed idiot kidnapped us and did who knows what to our minds!"
The young rabbit sighs and says in a nonchalant tone of voice as her Chao friend moves away from her ears "I think we were actually fighting Tails and Mr. Sonic while under Eggman's control…That's what Cheese is saying to me anyways."
Amy's mind snaps at that moment for two particular reasons, as she clenches so hard with her fists that her bones were on the verge of breaking. Fired up and angered beyond all belief, the pink hedgehog swings her Piko Piko Hammer in front of her in an instance and exclaims "EGGMAN YOU JERK! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU USED ME AND CREAM TO FIGHT MY BELOVED SONIC!"
The pink hedgehog then turns to face Cream and says to her with the rage of a thousand suns backing up her anger "COME ON CREAM, LETS GO FIND THAT EGG-SHAPED LOSER AND BEAT HIM UP FOR THIS INJUSTICE!"
The young rabbit is then grabbed by her right hand and dragged through a run by Amy, all the while Cream looks at Cheese and says quietly with a sigh "Oh well Cheese, guess we won't be going home anytime soon…" The female duo then leaps off the building ready, with the pink hedgehog ready to exact revenge on the egg headed scientist…
Next Time: Who you gonna Call?