At night they settled down around a small bonfire together, just as they always did each night. Maria would forage for fruits and nuts to have for dinner. Metal Sonic would just recharge his batteries in preparation for the next day. Maria would go to sleep while her robotic partner simply shut down for the night. She was a very light sleeper by nature and his extremely sensitive auditory receptors were linked to an internal alarm system that would cause him to awaken ready to fight almost immediately if there were any form of noise or disturbance of that nature. All was silent in the forest as they prepared for yet another night spent alone together in the wild. There was a soft clattering sound as Metal Sonic slowly reclined against a large root and relaxed after finally finishing a full-spectrum scan of the surrounding area for as far as his sensors could possibly reach and determining that it was safe for them to relax. Maria sat down right across from him, staring through the fire's flickering flames at his impassive face. He stared right back at her equally impassive face. Not a word passed between them, and not a word had to. Metal Sonic's neon eyes dimmed as he shut down for the duration of the night. Maria followed his lead and prepared to go to sleep for the night. She had an urge to say good night to him, which was actually rather ridiculous since he wasn't actually sleeping at all. Settling for just plain keeping quiet, she simply relaxed and quietly let herself slide into peaceful slumber.
Maria's eyes opened and she looked around. It was still the middle of the night, and the fire had long since burned out. Starlight shone through the trees just enough for her to see the silent, still form of Metal Sonic lying right where he'd been before. He looked so peaceful that she had to smile. Picking up the Chaos Diamond, she quietly stood up and used its bright, pervasive glow to get a better look around. She abruptly stashed it back where she'd gotten it when she saw thick beams of cold white light cut through the still night air several hundred meters away from their current position. Kneeling down again, she whispered into the inert robot's ear. "Hey, wake up." There was no response. More beams of light became visible off to the side where she had just seen the first few. Straightening up, abruptly angry, she gave Metal Sonic a swift kick in the side and snarled, "Get up, titanium pants!" The robot's eyes abruptly brightened as he looked up at her and said, "I resent that, brainless female. What is it?" Maria merely pointed and replied, "Take a look over there." Metal Sonic took one look and then lowered his voice to quarter volume as he said, "It is one of Eggman's robotic patrols, and it is very close. By my estimation, there are at least a dozen aerial gunboats. We are in great danger. If we hurry, we may be able to escape unnoticed." Maria simply nodded without a word, and then got ready to run. The robot, however, was uncertain as to how to proceed from there. His turbine caused a lot of noise, as did his heel jets. If he used them, he would allow the patrol to home in on their exact location and thereby blow their chances of escaping without a fight. If he didn't use them, the odds of his escaping in time to pass undetected would be very much decreased, almost to the point of impossibility. The gunboats possessed advanced artificial intelligence and were extraordinarily adept at strategizing for battle. This was going to be very hard no matter what he did. He could see only one way out of the situation. Turning to the golden hedgehog, he said, "Maria, I have a plan. You run. I will provide a distraction to allow you to avoid detection." The way his neon eyes blazed as he spoke made her aware of the fact that he wouldn't tolerate any opposition to his plan. She bit back an argument, then silently nodded and turned to run. He stood stone still and silently watched her as she turned, jumped straight up into the air and abruptly disappeared into the darkness with a smallish flash of Chaos energy from the gem she was carrying. Once she was gone from sight and sensor range he quietly nodded to himself, satisfied. Then, wasting no more time on anything, he revved up his turbine at full power, jumped right into the beam of one of the nearest searchlights, paused there just long enough for all of them to get a good look at him, then took off running at top speed. Not about to pass up a chance to hunt down and destroy a traitor to the cause they had been created for and were so fanatical about, the entire patrol quickly gave up on scouting and began to pursue him at top speed.
Soon Metal Sonic was fleeing for his very life, weaving around the massive redwood trees at top speed and desperately trying to either lose his pursuers or get far enough ahead to let him have a moment to plan something. There was no room for error, since he was just barely dodging the hail of laser blasts as it was. As he tore around an especially huge tree trunk, he almost ran face first straight into the cannon barrel of a single hovering gunboat. His momentary disorientation at that occurrence made him pause just long enough for his pursuit to catch up. Anger crossed Metal Sonic's mind, followed by a new respect for his opponents. He'd thought that they were merely chasing him when in reality they were encircling him to trap him. He'd played right into it. "Very clever," he said. He extended the laser cannons set in his forearms in preparation for a fierce fight, but it was already way too late for that. The gunboat he'd almost run into opened fire, just once, the blast catching him in the chest above his turbine at point blank range. The force of the impact sent him flying backward head over heels, a cloud of thick, black, greasy smoke trailing behind him where he passed through the air. As he fell he let out a loud burst of static in place of a scream. Moments later he ended up sprawled on the ground lying on his back, staring up at the treetops with rapidly dimming vision. His neon eyes were so dim as to barely be visible. A thick sheet of sparks rained from the site of impact like the rush of lifeblood from a mortal wound. A thick plume of greasy black smoke rose from his turbine high into the air, silently disappearing into the thick foliage so far above. The gunboats hovered over him for a moment, preparing to finish the job and take him down permanently. He couldn't move now, much less fight back. They could do whatever they wanted to do to him and he was helpless to stop them. It actually didn't really matter if they decided to finish him off or not. He couldn't survive much longer anyway, not with the damage he had taken. Then, high overhead, beyond where the pack of lurking gunboats could see, something unseen stirred amid the twining branches of the great tree he now lay beneath. He watched with dimming vision as a hedgehog jumped out of the tree and fell toward the gunboats. As it fell it raised its hands over its head, revealing the white gem it held cupped in its palms. Maria gave a wild war whoop as a huge crackling sphere of pure Chaos energy formed around her. The wordless battle cry resolved into a shout of, "Chaos Spear!" A sudden flurry of lightning bolts rained down on the gunboats, lashing out with a fury unmatched in a living being, each bolt taking out one gunboat until all of them were nothing but smoking piles of partially melted scrap metal on the ground.
Breaking her fall with a momentary flash of Chaos Rising, she landed beside him and knelt, a look of concern on her face. Looking up at her, he dutifully gave her a damage report, his words barely audible past the static that filled his weak voice. Only a few words were intelligible, his voice was so full of static. "…Energy reserves… depleted… Batteries… nonfunctional… Power core… damaged… Total systems failure imminent…" There was a short pause, during which the rush of sparks coming from the damaged area decreased considerably. "…Tails… tell him…" Maria replied, "You'll be able to tell him yourself." Then she gave Metal Sonic the Chaos Diamond. Understanding her unspoken plan, he immediately placed it next to his power core and gave a momentary twitch as its ambient energy flowed through him. It didn't give him much energy, but it would hold off terminal shutdown. He was barely functional, so weak that it took all his remaining strength just to hold the gem in place. Maria picked him up and began to carry him back to Knothole. He just rested in her arms, his head lying against her shoulder. At any other time he would have been downright furious to find himself cradled against the female hedgehog's chest just like a baby, but right now he was barely even aware of it. It was right then that she noticed that he was still quietly slipping away. "Oh, no you don't," she said, focusing her awareness on, into and through the Chaos Diamond. "Chaos Bond." Suddenly she could feel him in her mind, and he could feel her in his. Their thoughts were united, and each of them was experiencing things they had never even dreamed of. Knowledge flooded into Maria's mind; design schematics, attack strategies, detailed maps, new techniques… Metal Sonic was feeling. That in itself was a major shock to him. He'd never felt anything besides the preprogrammed facsimiles of emotions his creator had endowed him with, and now he learned that they weren't even shadows of what real emotions were. They swept through him and filled him in a way he had never known before, these new emotions, and he loved each and every one of them, even the negative ones. He felt as if his mind was flying free of his body and absentmindedly wondered if this was what it was like to die. It was much slower now, the fading, but it was still happening. Instead of falling away into a deep void of darkness and silence, he merely felt the way he did after a hard patrol… something akin to tiredness. There was nothing he would have liked more than to shut down and recharge, but he knew that if he shut down this time it would be for good. Stasis lock wouldn't work. He was too badly damaged for that. Step by step, minute by minute, it was pretty much a race against time even though Maria couldn't run now. Neither of them was sure if the words that followed were spoken or existed solely in their collective consciousness. "I can feel you fading. Hang on. You have to hang on. Stay awake. Talk to me, man." They could still recognize each other's voices, which was a good thing. "I can feel your emotions, Maria. They are just like you described them, but they are also so much more." She thought on that for a moment, and then replied, "What is it like, feeling for the first time?" There was a pause. "Wonderful," he whispered in her mind, "It is… wonderful…" He was still slipping away, slowly but inexorably, and she wouldn't make it back to Knothole in time. It took a dreadful amount of concentration to maintain her link to Metal Sonic. Could she still use Chaos Control in this state? "I'll have to try," she said out loud. She stopped walking, standing still and holding the damaged robot's body tight. Closing her eyes, she said, "Chaos Control." Then she screamed as the stress of using two Chaos powers at once practically tore her mind in half. She felt like she was going to die as the light came from within her to sweep them away. She had time for one agonized shriek, which Metal Sonic echoed through their bond, before the energy warp seized both of them. One word filled her mind; (SHADOWWWW!) Then something great and terrible rose up within her and swept her heart and soul away into endless darkness.