Before Amy could do more than register the fact that Tails had spoken, the fox had pummelled an unobtrusive blue button and the Tornado flashed forwards at a speed to rival Sonic's. Amy would have screamed, but she was pinned to her seat by G force, her cheeks ballooning with air as the sky and clouds ran together to form a pastel blue – white streak. A seagull appeared to be flying backwards as they rocketed beneath it, and it was then that the two black streaks shot past them, both turned on their sides, neon blue flames spewing out of their exhaust tank.

And then, Tails pulled the Tornado into a steep vertical climb, so that they were parallel with the clouds, lost in a world of opaque white-

Without so much as a word to Amy, he pulled out of their incline, slowing down slightly and allowing them to skim the top of the clouds, the green expanse of rolling hills invisible beneath the white canopy. Amy let out a startled cry and fell face-first onto the cold metal floor of the plane, her whole body heaving as she gasped for breath.

"Get up, get up!" Tails shouted in panic, turning the steering wheel with such ferocity that the Tornado preformed a full circle before rocketing towards the east. Muttering angrily to herself, Amy peeled her face off the ground and slammed herself her chair, irritably clasping her seatbelt across her chest, and not a moment too soon. The two black fighter jets shot past them once more, slower this time, and Amy caught sight of the crude yellow profile spray painted onto either of the unknown aircrafts' wings.

Eggman had known they were coming. Sonic had been right to tell them to stay away.

Suddenly, Tails made the Tornado roll over in mid air, and Amy was clinging to the leather seat she was strapped to for dear life as the vehicle spun end over end, the floor was the ceiling and the sky was the ground, the Tornado was a mass of shrill electronic beeping and dull sonic booms-

"TRANSFORM!" Tails yelled suddenly, jamming his finger onto an unlabelled green button.

Amy, feeling as if she were on the verge of throwing up, asked bewilderedly, "Tails, I really don't think-"

But she cut herself off with a scream as the cockpit was filled with a mechanical whirring. She had the confused impression of rocketing upwards, flashing red lights and moving backwards, and suddenly, she was above Tails, her seat raised like a pedestal, surrounded by a counter of multicoloured buttons and blaring monitors screaming numbers and readouts at her.

Tails, who had clearly not been talking to her at all, had obviously found time to make some changes to the Tornado, changes he must have made during their week back from Maginaryworld, an impressive feat considering that Sonic had been spending most of every day with him, trying without success to cheer him up.

"Amy, you see that joystick in front of you?"Tails shouted up at her, while pulling out what looked like half 3-D glasses, half a headset and clamping it on his face. Amy looked wildly at the mass of technology before her, and spotted a thin black device topped with a red button.

"Yeah?" she called down at him, reaching towards the device.

"Press the red button when I saw 'now'!" Tails yelled, swerving to avoid one of the black jets, which had risen out of nowhere in attempt to block their path, its tinted black cockpit glinting in the sunlight.

Amy wrapped one hand around the joystick, her thumb hovering inches from the button, ready to pummel it at a second's notice. The black jets were circling them now, rocketing around so fast that Tails could not hope to escape, but the thing about being best friends with Sonic the Hedgehog meant that you learned to escape from places where it should have been impossible.

Once more they were rocketing in a vertical ascent, speeding towards the sun, and Amy was deafened by the roar of the engine, of the sonic booms that blasted off of Eggman's jets, she couldn't see, she couldn't think, and then Tails bellowed, "NOW!"

She slammed her thumb against the tiny red button at the same moment they burst out of the cover of the clouds; she heard sinister whizzing noises occur behind her, followed by a flash of brightest blue light, a high pitched, keening electronic scream and then, with the force of an atomic bomb exploding, seven somethings slammed into the back of the Tornado, bringing with them bone rattling jolts and flashes of fire.

Tails' shout of denial was lost as his plane shuddered to a violent, mid-air halt, and then they were plummeting through the clouds once more, the propeller spinning feebly as they rocketed in a nose dive towards their deaths. Over her terrified screams, Amy heard a computerized voice blaring, "Fatal error! Fatal error!" saw the intense, burning flames that had erupted at the Tornado's tail flickering in the glass of the cockpit, and, as she clutched at the arm rests of her leather seat, she knew that she was about to die.

"EJECT! EJECT!" Tails was shouting, but Amy could not make sense of his command, not knowing whether he was expecting her to know what to do or yelling at the plane. The next thing she knew, however, was the howling, chaotic roaring of speed-induced winds, and then she, chair and all, had been flung through the open cockpit as if from a spring, speeding through the air, screaming in bewilderment as she slowly came to a halt. But before she plummeted earthwards, she heard the whoosh of an opening parachute, saw a flash of yellow fabric, and then she was floating down to the ground at an almost serene pace, a pace that did not do justice to all that had just happened.

Through terrified eyes, she watched as the Tornado, trailing thick black smoke, blazing with fire, spiralled down to the ground, and suddenly, she remembered him, the friend with whom she had been flying in the doomed plane-

"TAILS!" she screamed, her huge eyes widening in horror as she realized that, in order to save her, the fox had sacrificed his own life.

"Relax!"

With a scream Amy turned in her seat, and to her immense relief, she saw Tails hovering beside her, his two tails spinning out behind him as he descended carefully towards the ground. Breathing a sigh of relief, she whispered, "I thought...I thought you were-"

"I thought we were gonners," Tails nodded in a agreement, a bittersweet smile playing about his mouth "But those missiles we launched at those jets...they were heat seekers, and what with the close proximity we had to them," Tails shook his head in disbelieving awe. "They must have had some pretty powerful reflectors to make them turn back on us."

A dull boom sounded from somewhere far below them, and Amy knew that the Tornado had just hit the ground. Tails winced, pain etched upon his face, and she muttered, "Sorry, Tails."

The fox shook his head meticulously, only his eyes betraying his pain. "It's not your fault!" he said hurriedly. "Those missiles we launched at them – well, put it this way, they weren't your everyday fireworks, and the energy it would have cost them to deflect them..." Tails trailed off, looking both disturbed and awed at what he was envisioning.

Amy cleared her throat in attempt to remind him that she did not share his interest in technology, and asked, "Why do you think those planes came after us?"

Tails did not wave the question away, though she knew it was a stupid one. "Eggman must have known we were coming and sent them to greet us," he said darkly, a shadow passing over his face. "Dammit, if only I coulda tracked where they came from, we'd know where his base is!"

Amy raised her eyebrows in confusion. "I thought you knew where his base was?"

To her surprise, Tails went bright red, his eyes averted, and then, in a falsely bright and cheery voice, he said, "Hey, great job on sending those missiles so quickly, if you didn't I'm sure-"

"Tails," Amy cut across his babbling in a warning voice, her suspicions aroused. "What aren't you telling me?"

As the fox raised his head to meet her gaze, something seemed to go out behind them as he realized that she was not about to let the subject drop. Taking a deep breath, he said, "I traced Sonic's call, and it came from inside Eggman's base," as Amy's eyes widened in incredulity, his became agonized as he continued.

"Amy, he's got him, and I think it must be bad, otherwise he wouldn't have told us to stay away."

Amy sat back against her seat, stiff and unmoving, her eyes wide with horror as Tails' words rang through her mind like the echo of the Tornado exploding, not noticing as they hit the ground, her parachute falling down around them.

Sonic, in all his years of antagonizing Eggman, had never, ever been held at gunpoint by him. Sure, his robots may have opened fire upon him, but that was what they were built to do. It was different when you were chained to a titanium wall with iron clamps around your wrists and ankles, trapped in a safe – like room with half a dozen red laser sights trained upon your forehead.

Eggman sat before him, his long fingers steepled in front of his face, sitting with one leg crossed over the other in a black padded swivel chair. Dozens of monitors sat perched on the wall behind the doctor, but Eggman was too intent upon Sonic to pay attention to what was happening on them.

"So," Eggman began a sneer in his voice. "Time's almost up. Where are your little friends?"

Sonic smiled at his nemesis, hate boiling up behind his mask. "They aren't going to come, Eggman. I kinda told them not to."

Eggman smirked, raising one long, white-gloved index finger. "Ahhh. But if there was any way to ensure their coming, it would be to tell them not to come. Am I right?"

Sonic shrugged, not in the mood – was he ever? – to endure one of Eggman's rants.

The doctor did not seem to need a reply; he continued as if Sonic had said 'yes'.

"So if young Tails and Amy are on their way – which they undoubtedly are – you are clearly hoping that they will spring you free, and then aid you in your defeat of me?"

Ah, so that's where this is going. Sonic sighed mentally; the doctor was intending to rub in his face just how impossible escape was

Eggman did not wait for a reply. He stood up and gestured to his monitors. "As soon as your pathetic sidekicks enter my base, a silent alarm will go off, alerting me of their presence, as well as their showing up on my monitors.

"Hearing no alarm, your little fox friend will undoubtedly go to the moon with joy at his sneaking them in without detection. Little do they know my guards will have been dispatched and sent to 'greet' them."

Eggman's eyes flashed behind his glasses, and he began pacing back and forth, evidentially ecstatic at his brilliance.

"If, for conversations' sake, your friends manage to escape my guards without suffering gunshot wounds-" Sonic raised his eyebrows, and Eggman smiled hugely, revealing caffeine-stained teeth. "They will find themselves faced with several technological obstructions that your friend Tails may find impossible to overcome.

"But say they overcome those, too. They will find themselves up against my spies, and good luck to them to overcome those particular people.

"Say they evade capture from my spies. Amy and Tails will be outside this very room, which is protected by a six foot-thick titanium vault-like door. Your friends will need to enter a password to get the door to open, and will only have one shot at it, because, one, my spies and guards will have caught up to them by then, two, my computers will have recognized a false password and laser cannons will have blasted them to smithereens, and three, I will have seen them outside via my monitors and will have captured them myself.

"But pretend," Sonic was barely even listening anymore, "that the fools get the password correct on the first try, are faster than my spies and guards and I happen to be looking away from the monitors and they get in the room. They will find themselves with guns trained upon them and up against me, of course."

Sonic realized that Eggman was done speaking and snorted, "Well, we wouldn't want that to happen. How can Tails and Amy hope to overcome you?"

Eggman turned an ugly purple colour, and a vein pulsed in his temple. "How indeed?" he hissed, eyes narrowed, hands folded behind his back.

"So now that we're done with all that, what do you want from us?" Sonic demanded, fixing Eggman with a hard look.

To his surprise, Eggman laughed. "Now that is a question I've been waiting for you to ask me all day.

"My spies have told me that you and your rosy friend have certain...magical abilities? That helped you defeat an immensely powerful goddess and nearly as powerful consorts?"

Sonic heart pounded fear through his veins, consuming him like a virus. Who could have told him that? Void and Lumina are dead...or are they? No, they've gotta be...Knuckles? But he said ' spies', there's gotta be one more at least...

He felt as though the answer was dangling just out of reach, lurking in the shadows of his mind. Eggman, apparently content with the effect he had produced, taunted, "It's not who you think it is, Sonic! You'll never guess who they are!"

"Where are Cream and Cheese?" the question was out before Sonic could stop himself.

Eggman stumbled in his pacing, and he began mouthing silently to himself. Then, coming to himself, "Why would I tell you? You cannot help them, trapped as you are..."

Sonic sank into silence, pondering the reaction his question had caused. It obviously means something. But what?

As Sonic stared up at the wicked man above him, who had returned to his swivel chair and was drumming his fingers on his knees, and knew he would be hard pressed to find out.

Amy made no reply, or perhaps her response was muffled by the parachute that was descending upon them like a fog. Tails groped out and found Amy's arm, which he squeezed gently. "C'mon, Amy," he said in a muffled voice. "We won't be able to save him under here!"

At long last, Amy moved; Tails heard her seatbelt click and then she stood up, allowing Tails to grasp her loosely by the hand as they fought to get out from beneath the parachute. Finally, they emerged, and Tails released Amy's hands at once, scouring their surrounds.

They were about a hundred feet away from the flaming mass of smoke and twisted metal that was the remains of the Tornado. A painful lump rose into his throat as he stared at the plane, but he promptly turned away, knowing from experience that dwelling on things that happened in the past would not bring what he had lost back to life.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Tails saw that they were at the edge of a massive green forest, so dense that he could not see past the first few feet of it. He felt absolutely certain that Eggman's base lay in its shadowy depths, and he made to stride towards it when the loud roar of two engines made him spin around in alarm.

The two black fighter jets were descending out of the air some two hundred feet away, blue flames flickering from their exhausts, looking as pristine as ever. The Eggman insignia spray painted onto both of the jets' wings glinted ominously in the sunlight, and Tails knew that whoever was inside them was more than capable of pursuing them on foot.

"RUN!" he shouted, grabbing Amy's arm and sprinting towards the cover of the forest, while the roar of the engines died behind them. They did not turn to see who was emerging but ducking under vines and around fallen trunks, dodging around trees and tearing through bushes.

A stabbing pain in his side, Tails staggered to a halt, releasing Amy's arm, but she continued to sprint forwards, her hammer swinging furiously through the air as she fought her way through the a clump of thorns, mad desperation upon her face.

"Amy," Tails gasped out, his hands on his knees. "Stop – running. We've gotta...make a....plan!"

"NO!" Amy shouted, whirling around, her chest heaving, her dark eyes sparkling with furious tears. "I CAN'T! WE NEED TO RESCUE SONIC! BECAUSE – BECAUSE –"

But she collapsed into tears, sagging forwards as hopelessness crashed over her. Tails rushed over and caught her before she could fall, patting her very gingerly on the back. "It's ok," he said in a low voice. "We're still gonna go after him, we just-"

His reassurances died in his throat as a figure landed heavily before them, plummeting out of the trees to stand before them. Amy screamed and whirled around, her hammer held horizontally across her body, but the figure's hand lashed out, clamping itself over her mouth to stifle the noise.

"Relax," Knuckles said, slowly lowering his hand, his deep purple eyes sparkling with amusement. "It's just me."

But Tails was not comforted by Knuckles' words, for a startling possibility had just occurred to him. Could Knuckles have been flying one of those fighter jets?

Tails took an automatic step back, his hands curling into fists, and in a low, accusing voice, he snarled, "Were you flying one of those planes?"

Knuckles' dark eyes roved over Tails' tense defensive position, and they flashed as he listened to his accusation.

"Never again," the echidna vowed, his low voice ringing with truthfulness. "Eggman will never trick me to work for him again."

Convinced by the sincerity in his friends' tone, the defiant flames flickering in his eyes, Tails relaxed out of his tense position just as Amy asked, "Then how did you find us?"

Knuckles flashed a grin at her. "I saw you guys take off in the Tornado. And you couldn't expect the noise those fighter jets were making to go unnoticed, could you? I followed you guys. Where are you headed?"

At his words, Tails remembered that they had not yet located Eggman's base, having eluded the police for such a long time. He pulled out three comlinks from his tool belt and tossed one to both Amy and Knuckles while tapping fervently on his own. "And the location of Eggman's mysterious base is," he announced, eyes flashing with expectancy as he awaited the results of his scan. "NOWHERE?"

"But that's impossible!" Amy cried, while Tails goggled his comlink in incredulous disbelief; none of his machines had ever failed him before.

"Obviously, it's not," Tails growled, snapping his comlink shut. "I traced Sonic's call to roughly this area, but I guess old Eggy's got his hands on some cloaking device, that's how he's evaded capture this long."

He sighed, already beginning to formulate a plan in his mind, when a laugh rent the silence that had fallen upon them, a high, female voice that sounded strangely familiar, albeit with a distinct robotic counterpart.

"Are you surprised, Tails?" cried the voice, and Knuckles and Amy whirled around, their eyes wide with shock. "That you can't find Robotnik's base?"

There was the sound of heavy, stomping footsteps crushing twigs beneath them, and out of the foliage emerged two robots, one five feet tall, the other the size of a bird. The taller of the pair was comprised of amethyst purple metal, and it seemed to Tails that the metal casing served as body armour for the animal beneath it, which he would hazard a guess at the be a dog, what with its floppy ears, short tails and the shape of its body. It wore a race car-like helmet with a tinted black visor that had a tiny Eggman insignia branded on its side, and Tails knew that if they could only smash it, he could figure out who was beneath it.

Sitting on the dog's shoulder was what Tails thought looked like a baby monkey, clad in a metal suit of navy blue, a tinted black visor hiding its face from view. The monkey would have been entirely unremarkable if not for the fact that it had laser cannons for arms.

The dog saw Tails' sharp eyes flickering between it and its companion, and it cocked its head to the side. He was sure it was smiling at him.

"Put your hands in the air!" commanded the dog. "Do that and I may consider-"

"RUN!" Amy screamed, and in a whirl of her dress she was gone, sprinting as fast as she could away from the pair of robots. Tails and Knuckles followed her, their hearts pounding adrenaline through their veins as they sprinted through the vegetation, made a hundred times more difficult now that the monkey was shooting concentrated beams of white hot energy after them.

Tails' arms pumped back and forth, his two tails spinning like a propeller as they attempted to speed up his progress. The high-paced crunching of metal footsteps snapping twigs and trampling bushes, the chaotic sound of laser beams being fired, acted as the energy boost he needed to sprint past Knuckles and Amy to take the lead, the latter receiving hasty encouragement from Knuckles, for her breathing was coming the hardest, her face the most strained.

"You want to save Sonic, don't you?" grunted the echidna, dodging around a tree to avoid crashing into it. At his words, resolve solidified in Amy's dark green eyes, and with a pant of effort she flung herself into the lead, her bright pink form appearing blurred with speed.

Tails made no move to reclaim it from her, instead focusing on how they were going to lose the robots; air was out of the question, what with their jets, but they were no better off on land for machines did not tire out as animals did. The only thing he could think of was water, which would short circuit their suits, but the closest body of water was more than ten miles away.

But we've gotta loose them soon, Tails thought desperately, leaping over a low-lying vine. What if we come across Eggman's base and they follow us in? Our cover will be totally ruined!

But he was wrenched away from further planning by Amy's shrill cry of surprise; her foot had caught on a log that both he and Knuckles had leapt over and she sprawled heavily onto the ground.

"Amy!" Tails shouted, going too fast to slow down right away. He dug his heels into the soft ground and skidded to a halt beside Knuckles, who was in the act of running back towards their fallen friend. Just as Amy raised her head, shaking it experimentally, the circle of dirt she had landed in began to collapse inwards, seeping inside itself like a sinkhole.

"No!" roared Knuckles and he flung himself forwards, reaching desperately out towards Amy, but it was too late; with a scream she fell into the dark hole beneath her, but not before Knuckles had grabbed a hold of her hand and allowed himself to be pulled in after her. Tails threw himself after them, twisting himself into a corkscrew as he plunged into blackness.

He knew immediately that it was no ordinary hole; it felt air conditioned and as his arms skimmed the sides of it, he felt smooth metal, not soft dirt. He held himself rigid as he plunged through blackness, and then it brightened into unnatural whiteness.

A groan of pain escaped his lips as he landed hard on his stomach and a moan of, "Ow!" from beside him told him that Amy had not landed upright, either.

Before he relaxed, Tails stared around at their new surroundings, feeling certain that guards should be bearing down upon them. But the hallway was deserted; the metallic silver walls were lined with whisper-silent, key-card protected doors, but there were no alarms blaring, no angry robots rolling towards them.

Feeling that they were safe for the moment, Tails got to his feet, and he saw that Knuckles alone had managed not to fall down, and his superior smile was bordering on illegality.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Amy moaned, getting to her feet and looking distraught. "I've ruined everything!"

"Don't worry Amy," Tails said suddenly, a huge smile spreading across his face. "We're exactly where we want to be."

And he pointed behind Amy and Knuckles, who both whirled around and gasped in surprise; painted upon the stainless silver wall was the Eggman insignia, a crude, bright yellow spray painted version of the doctor's face.

Unless he was very much mistaken, Tails knew that they had accidentally infiltrated Eggman's base.

"Damn them!" Eggman hissed, slapping his hand upon the keyboard. Sonic who had been on the verge of falling asleep, lifted his head up, a cocky grin spreading across his face; anything that caused Eggman discomfort was good news for him.

"What's the matter, Eggy?" he asked in his infuriatingly superior voice. "World domination not going so great?"

Without swivelling around to face him, Eggman snarled, "It appears your dim-witted friends have stumbled across my secret entrance. This is, I must admit, a minor setback, because it will not have triggered my alarms, and my guards will not have been dispatched. Very well," the doctor stood up swiftly, sending his chair spinning towards the wall. "I will activate them manually," turning to face Sonic, Eggman forced an evil grin upon his face, though his beady black eyes flashed with fear behind his tinted sunglasses. "Don't even bother trying to escape, Sonic. I need my raw material."

He turned and, making sure to block what he was typing from Sonic's view with his immense bulk, he typed a code in on his keyboard, causing an echoing boom to occur from the other side of the immense, vault-like door. Without a word to Sonic, Eggman stormed out of the holding cell, somehow managed to force himself through the space between the door and the wall, then slammed it shut behind him.

Revelling in his now non-obscured view of the monitors, Sonic hungrily searched them for Tails and Amy, his eyes roving over the plasma screens so fast they appeared blurred. But after several sweep-throughs, it became clear that neither of them were there.

What does this mean? Sonic asked himself, gritting his teeth and giving the chains that bound him an angry shake. He was sure that they were somewhere in the base - perhaps somewhere where there were no monitors? – but he knew from experience that Eggman put normal paranoia to shame.

Invisible, maybe? I wouldn't put it past Tails to do something like that. Smiling slightly to himself, something almost as interesting as Tails and Amy's whereabouts caught his eye.

Rouge the Bat, notorious jewel thief, sometimes – spy and on – off girlfriend of Knuckles, was lounging in a dimly-lit room, relaxing in a velvet lounge chair. There was something to relaxed about the bat's face, at how she was sitting, and more importantly, what she was sitting on, to convince Sonic that she was here as the doctor's prisoner, (the day Eggman treated his captives to privacy and velvet lounge chairs, Sonic would give up running).

So what's she doing here?

The answer hit Sonic like a punch to the stomach; hadn't Eggman said 'spies'? Wasn't Rouge one of the most accomplished sleuths in the business? Knuckles would have told Rouge all about their visit to Maginaryworld, and Rouge was far from stupid; she would have known the value of the information she had come into possession to, and had evidentially blabbed to Eggman.

Well, that solves that, Sonic thought, fury boiling up inside him, fury that had not inhabited him since he was last faced with Illumina. He let out a feral snarl as he envisioned the petty bag of jewels Eggman had promised Rouge in return for her services.

When I get out of here, Sonic vowed, glaring through narrowed eyes up at Rouge's oblivious form. I'm gonna punch that bitch straight in the face.

"You're such a nerd, Tails!" Amy giggled, smiling in the direction of Tails' face, and she heard Knuckles' disembodied snort sound from somewhere on her right.

"I'll take that as a compliment, Amy," Tails responded sarcastically, though the smugness in his voice was almost sickening. For the fox had, incredibly, also added onto their comlinks during the week they had been back from Maginaryworld; at the press of a button, the wearer became invisible. Both Amy and Knuckles had marvelled at their invisibility for a full five minutes before speaking.

"The only way anyone's gonna see us is if they smash into us," Tails whispered smugly. "Or if they're wearing heat-seeking goggles," he added as a worried afterthought.

"Who would do that?" Knuckles asked impatiently, and Amy could practically see him rolling his eyes. "No one knows we're here, remember?"

"Yeah...yeah you're right," Tails said, shaking his head and coming to himself. "Let's get a move on; here, join arms so that we don't get separated."

After much groping around, Amy found herself in between Tails and Knuckles, their hands clenched around her wrists. Feeling ridiculous, the three of them set out at a brisk run, taking care not to make any sound as they sprinted across the metal tiles. For ten silent minutes, they twisted and turned through the maze-like hallways of Eggman's underground base, something even Amy was impressed at the genius of. The only noise was the faint tapping of buttons as Tails tapped frantically on his comlink, Knuckles' suppressed snorts of laughter and her own occasional giggles.

"Hold up," Tails hissed from her right, and they immediately hurtled to a stop. "Get against the wall!" the fox hissed, sounding panicked. Obediently, Amy threw herself against the nearest wall, pressing her back against it, working hard to keep her breathing silent. She felt someone press themselves against the space beside her but did not speak, her cheek pressed against the cool wall, staring intently at the corner before her, listening for sounds of the cause of their pause.

She heard it before she saw it; a faint electronic beeping, and she would hazard a guess at it coming from an approaching robot. She heard Tails' breath catch in surprise as the robot came around the corner; it was smaller than she, shaped like an unremarkable, stainless steel red box, with two wheels for legs and a thin, sensor-like screen for a head. A red dot was bouncing off the sides of the screen, and each time it came in contact with one of the sides, it emitted the faint beep and bounced off in the opposite direction. As it rolled around the corner, it came to an abrupt halt, its head turned in the direction of their frozen forms. For a split second, Amy, Tails and Knuckles gazed at the robot in horror, and it looked back at them, and then, it whirled around and shot off in the other direction, screaming in a high-pitched, robotic voice, "Intruders! Intruders!"

"I got this!" Knuckles growled from her left, and she felt a whoosh of displaced air breeze past her as the echidna took off after the robot. With a gasp of effort, she shoved herself off the wall and sprinted after him, tearing around the corner just in time to see it being pummelled from both sides, an act that only caused it to swerve in a chaotic zigzag pattern and it to emit a high pitched whine on top of the screaming.

Amy pulled out her hammer, and to her surprise she saw that it too was invisible. With a burst of effort, she sped up, and with a noise like "Hatcha!" she slammed it into its hovering screen like head, causing it to collide with the metal wall and shatter into several pieces. She turned to see that the robot's body had come to a halt, and for good measure, she slammed her hammerhead down upon it, crushing it like one might a pop can.

"Nice work!" Tails gasped, skidding to a halt beside her. Amy merely gasped for breath in response, while Knuckles said, "Can't we stop being invisible for a minute?"

"No!" Tails cried in panic, reaching out to grab Knuckles by the arm but missing by a long shot. "We can't let Eggman know where we are!"

"Yeah, like a flattened robot won't be as good as a trail of breadcrumbs," Amy said sarcastically, and both Tails and Knuckles laughed.

Suddenly, one of the doors several meters away slid open, and out came a man, an immensely fat, egg-shaped man in a red blazer, tight black pants, tinted blue sunglasses and a bushy brown moustache, stopping dead at the sight of the crushed, headless robot.

No one moved; Eggman's mouth moved silently, building mental bridges to connect what he saw to what he knew to be happening, and then-

"They're here!" he hissed, a smile spreading across his face, and he groped around like a blind man, feeling his way down the wall. "I know you're here, Tails!" he called out, triumph thundering in his voice. "Why don't you-"

"Shut up!" Amy screamed, rage suddenly exploding out of her. Eggman froze, his head turning in their direction, eyes flashing angrily from behind his sunglasses, but Amy didn't care. All she wanted to do was to hurt him, this man who had captured Sonic, who had kidnapped Cream and Cheese-

With a wordless shriek, she pulled out her hammer and threw it bodily from herself, but to her horror, the moment it left her grasp it became visible, and Eggman squealed as he ducked out of harm's way, and her hammer streaked over head before skidding to a halt near the end of the hallway. Amy made to run towards him, but someone caught her up in their arms, clamped a hand over her mouth, skirted Eggman and then sprinted towards the end of the hallway, where a heavy iron door stood, sprayed with the Eggman insignia.

"I know where you're headed, Amy!" called Eggman, and Amy looked back furiously to see the doctor glaring after them, his spaghetti arms folded across his immense chest. "It's no use trying to hide!"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up," Knuckles growled, and it was clearly he who was holding her. Amy struggled half-heartedly to be free, but Knuckles' grip was too strong to break. Just before they reached the iron door, it slid open, and Amy saw her hammer disappear from before it. As soon as they had penetrated the next room, Knuckles hurtled to a stop and hastily placed her on her feet.

The iron door slid shut behind them with a deafening clang, followed by a noise like a laser beam being fired. Both Amy and Knuckles spun around to see a beam of concentrated, cyan blue energy shooting out of nowhere, travelling in a slow, careful line up the crack of the door. When it reached the top, the beam vanished, leaving the crack in the door smoking and burning a bright red.

Tails suddenly came into view, solidifying from transparently ghost like to solidly real. Knuckles raised his eyebrows as he demanded, "Can we-?"

"Yeah, go ahead," Tails responded, tapping on his comlink. Both Amy and Knuckles sighed in relief and tapped the buttons on their comlink to return them to visibility.

Amy turned and saw that they were standing in an empty room, about as long as the hallway they had just come out of and three times as wide. At the other end stood a whisper-silent door with a green light burning above it. She made to step forwards, but Tails shouted, "Stop! You'll activate the alarm!"

Amy froze with one foot in the air, terror spreading across her face. "Here," Tails hissed from behind her, and Amy turned just in time to catch what looked like half a headset, half 3-D goggles, much like the device Tails had been wearing back in the Tornado. She put it on carefully, and the moment she did so, the world turned entirely red. Awed, she turned and saw, to her shock, that the entire room was filled with laser beams, criss-crossing back and forth, intersecting, going in every direction imaginable; the closest was mere inches from her.

Hastily taking a step back, Amy turned and saw that Tails was surveying the laser beams with a slightly crestfallen expression on his face.

"You're disappointed, aren't you?" Knuckles asked incredulously from her right, and Amy had to laugh. Tails smiled slightly, pausing in his tapping on his comlink to look up at them.

"Well, he's supposed to be a genius, after all," the fox said, with a roguish wink.

"Ha!" Sonic hissed, a smile spreading across his face as he stared at one of the monitors, upon which a tiny red robot had just been pummelled, lost its head and flattened. He was willing to bet everything he owned on Tails and Amy being behind it.

Eggman had still not returned, and for that he was grateful; he needed to see what was going on in the outside world, and Eggman's immense bulk prevented that from happening. He knew that he could not sit here helplessly and wait for the others to come and rescue him, for he had been counting off the obstacles Eggman had listed in his head and realized that the others were about to face off with a bunch of 'technological obstructions', as the doctor had put it.

But he was torn from his thoughts as he spotted something on the monitors; Eggman himself had just walked out of one of the doors, feet from where the crushed robot was sitting. The doctor froze at the sight of it, and then began to feel his way slowly down the hall, arms waving wildly around him as he searched for something invisible.

Shit! Sonic thought, his heart pumping painfully in his chest as he watched Eggman. Then, out of nowhere, Amy's hammer materialized, spinning sinisterly towards Eggman, who ducked just in time. The doctor froze as something he could not see whizzed past him, and Sonic found himself, for the first time, infuriated at his friends' invisibility.

But he knew in his heart that Eggman not being able to see them was the only thing they had going for them, and so the frustration quickly evaporated. Suddenly, the iron grey door at the end of the hallway slid open, and Amy's hammer vanished just before they clashed shut.

Great, Sonic thought weak with relief. That'll have bought them some time, and hopefully some for me, too...

For he knew that Eggman would now be busy trying to capture Tails and Amy, and would hopefully have no intention of returning until they were caught which, Sonic knew from experience, would be a very long time. He now set his sights on attempting to escape, something he had not dared to try with Eggman here, and certainly not when he had half a dozen laser sights fixed unmovingly upon his chest.

Gritting his teeth at his predicament, very slowly, Sonic raised one of his chained arms, bracing his ears for the sound of a gunshot.

But nothing happened.

He bounced up and down from his perch on the floor, tried and failed to get into standing position, waved his arms wildly, but still there was no gunshot, no piecing, stabbing pain in his chest. Sonic let out a vehement hiss of satisfaction.

There's no way Eggman'd shoot his raw material, Sonic thought savagely. And since I'm the only one in the universe who had what he wants, he wouldn't want to kill me before he had to.

Taking comfort in this grim realization, Sonic took a deep breath, drawing all of his strength for what he was about to do, and then lurched forwards, moving his legs as fast as they could as he sprinted through mid air, the clamps around his wrists and ankles digging into his flesh, legs burning from exertion, and after a full minute Sonic collapsed against the cold wall, chest heaving, teeth grinding together. He cast a glance at the wall behind him, and saw, to his dismay, that he had only created the tiniest of cracks in the metal surface.

Sonic turned back around, fury boiling inside of him. This was going to take a long time.