Setting aside the rogues for a moment, Sonic and Eggman battle it out. Despite appearances, the chapter is still relevant to the story (somewhat), and I think you'll catch on to what I mean by the chapter's end. :) Also make a lot of little references to other Sonic games, and one game that has nothing to do with Sonic (yes, I did make that reference. It was a spur of a moment kind of thing). Anyway, enjoy. :)
14.
Scrambled Eggs
"Sonic The Hedgehog! I hope for the city's sake that you sit down and watch the news here soon, because if you don't…well, really, who's going to miss Empire City? That's right, hedgehog. I just gave you a threat! If you don't heed to my demands within the next three hours, I will level this city! And once I've done that, I fully intend on moving onto the next city and level it too in another three hours if I still haven't gotten what I want, so I highly recommend that you obey! My demands are this; you have something that I want, the Babylon Rogues! I want all three turned over and surrendered peacefully into my custody, with absolutely no tricks from anyone! Do this, and I will spare the United Federation of any unfounded grief today. I also want you to keep your meddlesome self out of my affairs, or the deal is off. Again, I want all of the Babylon Rogues turned over to me in three hours or Empire City gets it! Don't be late, hedgehog."
Eggman listened as the message automatically played through his airship's megaphone and down at the city below, and nodded in approval. He had recorded the message and rigged it to play at regular intervals prior to coming here at Empire City, and intended to keep playing it until either the three hour ultimatum he was giving ran out, or Sonic turned up and ready to hand over the Babylon Rogues. However, Eggman highly doubted the latter option from the hedgehog right now. He was no doubt already plotting to find some way to weasel his way out of giving in to his terms, as he always did, but this time Eggman wasn't going to take no for an answer.
For once in his life, he was going to get his way.
No matter what.
He glanced at the digital clock that was counting down the milliseconds until his ultimatum ran out. Sonic still had an hour to make the deal. Eggman expected at the very least, something was going to happen before then at the very least. He was fully expecting the hedgehog, but he was open to other possibilities. He was in fact a bit surprised that the government hadn't tried to interfere with Eggman's plans yet themselves, especially from GUN, seeing that their relations with the United Federation were the strongest of all the other world nations, but thus far Eggman had been left alone. The only real major thing that had happened was the usual panic within the populace as the inhabitants of Empire City hurried to evacuate. The city was already mostly empty now. Eggman didn't really care. Even leveling an empty city would be enough to prove that he was serious with his intentions.
In fact, he was actually a little excited, to be honest. He had attacked many cities over the years in his constant struggle with that blasted hedgehog and his meddlesome friends, but hadn't really ever gotten the chance to level much of anything, at least anything bigger than say a vehicle of some sort. In fact, usually it was his own property that was getting leveled, and not whatever territory he was threatening for a change.
And, as Eggman noted, scrolling through a pad of electronic information that lay in his lap, he's lost a lot of property on this caper already, much more than he had anticipated. This plan of his was proving to be a costly one. The things he'd do to get his way…
But the point of the matter, however, that unless something changed soon, he might actually get his big chance to carry out one of his threats for a change. Should prove to be an interesting experience. He was looking forward to it, and was secretly hoping Sonic, even though it wouldn't be in his character to do so, wouldn't show for whatever reason, just so it would give Eggman an excuse to attack.
It was then that Eggman heard the phone ring.
Blinking in surprise, and setting aside the pad, he looked around for the source, just to make sure it was really what he thought it was, then slowly pulled out a cellphone from his pants pocket, glancing at it, before flipping it open and answering the call.
"Hello?" he asked hesitantly into it.
"Eggman!" exclaimed an all-too familiar voice on the other end, "I didn't know you had a cell phone! When did you get it?"
"Sonic!" Eggman shouted, annoyed. "How did you get this number?"
"I looked up the phone number for your base of operations on the Internet and called there, and the robots there were more than happy to redirect my call straight back to you."
Eggman made a mental note to reformat the hard drives of the robots responsible for that.
"Well never mind that!" the scientist exclaimed loudly, changing the subject. "We both have more pressing matters than this to discuss, so I'll get right to the point! Are you willing to agree to my terms?"
"Yeah, about those terms, Eggman…I don't suppose you'd be…"
"They're nonnegotiable, if that's what you're asking, hedgehog!" Eggman barked. "Now answer the question! You have something I want, will you hand it over?"
"Well, I would've, but y'see…the Babylon Rogues are a little indisposed right now, and couldn't make it. They send their best regards though, and hey, you've got me! I'm right here in the city right now."
"I don't want you!" Eggman argued. "I want the Babylon Rogues, and you will surrender them to me soon, or I will level this city to the ground!"
"Like I'd really let you do that, Eggman. I mean, seriously. C'mon, how long have we been doing this now? Five years?"
"Feels more like twenty, if you must know."
"Hah! I'm not that old, Eggman! You, on the other hand…"
"We're getting off subject! And the subject is that if you do not give me exactly what I want, I will destroy this city, and everything in it!"
"Guess that includes me too, seeing I'm in the city at the moment, huh?"
"So much the better in my opinion."
"Now that sounds like the Eggman I know! C'mon, you've practically got me on a silver platter, and you're more interested in the Babylon Rogues! They're not that interesting, are they?"
"What I find interesting is how very unserious you're taking all of this, hedgehog, because I am dead serious about what I plan to do if you don't agree to my terms! I will destroy this city in less than an hour, and not a minute more than that, if all three of those blasted birds are not safely in my custody before then! Maybe I should've picked a more important target to threaten to destroy, maybe then you wouldn't question my serenity!"
Sonic sounded like he had paused to consider this for a moment. "Well, I gotta admit, there are probably a lot better cities you could threaten to destroy," he confessed, "I mean, don't get me wrong, I like Empire City a lot, and would hate to see it destroyed, but…"
"Maybe for my next target, I'll pick a place like…uh…Spagonia! Or…maybe Soleanna, haven't ever threatened that place yet!"
"You sure? I could've sworn…"
"I'm sure! But if that still isn't enough for you, maybe I'll destroy Central City!"
"Oh c'mon, spare that poor city, at the very least! It's already gotten wiped off the face of the earth once, and they're still rebuilding…"
"Or maybe GUN Headquarters!"
"Like they'd really let you get that close, and anyway, I could care less about what happens to GUN, thank you very much!"
"Or maybe…" Eggman allowed himself a wicked grin, "…after I destroy Empire City here, I'll go and threaten to destroy someplace like South Island!"
This got Sonic's attention. Back in the day, South Island had been like a second home to him, and in many ways still was.
"You wouldn't!" Sonic challenged.
"Oh, but I would!" Eggman challenged back. "That's how serious I am about this!"
Sonic was silent for a moment, and it seemed like he was genuinely ready to stop joking around and be serious now, and perhaps was getting ready to give in. This idea pleased Eggman to no end, because now it meant his plans could now continue forward without any more interference.
But as he usually did, Sonic surprised him. "Guess I should be serious about where I really am, then," he commented idly.
Eggman then heard a loud tapping noise somewhere within the airship's bridge, and he turned around to look in the direction of its source. There, standing idly outside the room's corner window, was Sonic, in the flesh, with a satchel draped over one shoulder. Seeing Eggman looking, flabbergasted, in his direction now, the blue hedgehog cheerily waved.
"By the way, nice décor you've got in there, Eggman," Sonic commented, changing the subject again, "Finally been paying attention to our past comments about how ugly it all looked in the past, huh?"
Eggman merely let out a mad yell, and hurried over to the ship's master control panel and started typing in commands. Outside the ship, two nearby cannons turned themselves around to take aim at Sonic. Sonic idly watched the two cannons for a few moments, watching as the device positioned themselves properly and loaded their guns. He then turned his attention back to his phone conversation with Eggman.
"Yeah, look, I gotta go whip some eggs now, if you catch my drift," he remarked perfectly calmly, "We'll chat later, K? Buh-bye!"
He hung up, looked at the cannons just a spilt second longer then jumped up into the air. He did so just in time, because it was at that same moment the cannons fired, their shots naturally missing Sonic and instead impacting the side of the bridge, blowing open a hole in the enclosing wall. Landing on the roof of the bridge, Sonic skidded backwards a few paces, before running and jumping back off the roof and down at the two offending cannons, spin attacking them into oblivion before turning around to see the damage that the cannons had done to the bridge. It wasn't that bad, actually, and had only left a hole big enough that something…like a certain blue hedgehog…could fit through.
Grinning, Sonic sped through this hole and into the bridge itself. There, he saw Eggman just finishing to strap himself into his Eggmobile sitting in a docking station in the floor of the room. Acting quickly, Sonic sped towards the seemingly parked Eggmobile to attack, but it was quickly proved that Eggman was a step ahead of the hedgehog, because the Eggmobile proved to actually be docked in the top of a small, robotic, "attachment" that gave the little craft arms and legs. Sonic realized this the moment the rest of this completed armor rose suddenly out of the floor, ready to fight back, but by then, it was already too late. With one swing of the boss robot's (for lack of a better term) arms, Eggman had slapped Sonic off the ground, and across the room, smashing out one of the other bridge windows and back outside the ship.
Crashing down onto the sloping hull of the craft, Sonic skidded down the incline, struggling to stop his haphazard fall before it was finally stopped for him when he landed on the side of one of the airship's other, inactive, cannons, a surface level enough that it broke Sonic's fall. Groaning, Sonic wobbly picked himself up, still stinging from the blow he had just received.
"Okay!" he remarked a little dizzily, struggling to keep his balance and to shake it off, "Credit where credit's due, I did not see that one coming."
With a loud noise of metal grinding on metal, Eggman arrived in the boss robot and joined Sonic on the side of the inactive cannon.
"Obviously!" Eggman remarked in response to Sonic's comment. "And just as obviously, I came better prepared for a fight this time, hedgehog! I hope you're ready to loose!"
"Bring it, Egghead!" Sonic barked back, gearing up for a fight.
Eggman made the first move by firing off a series of small cannons the boss robot housed at Sonic's position. It was a futile move, because Sonic quickly moved out of the way, jumping up and backflipping over to a small platform that ran along the side of the craft. Sonic then looked to face Eggman still back on the side of the cannon, but his attention was quickly diverted elsewhere when a hatch opened up behind him, and a small regiment of combat robots stormed out, turning their weapons to point at Sonic.
Sonic quickly spun back around and attacked the robots while dodging their attacks at the same time. Soon, the robots were all reduced to scrap metal, and Sonic landed on the other side of the platform victorious. Then Eggman in his boss robot smashed down in front of Sonic, gearing up to fire a missile into the hedgehog's face at near pointblank range. Acting quickly, Sonic jumped up and curled up into a ball, bounced off the side of the boss robot just as it fired the missile (and missed, blowing a hole into the platform instead) and back onto the sloping hull of the airship with as much momentum Sonic could muster. The moment he landed, he instantly uncurled and started running back up the curved metal.
Eggman wasn't about to let Sonic get away, however, and promptly started firing volleys of weapons fire up at Sonic as he ran, the blasts blowing fiery holes into the hull all around the hedgehog as he ran. Sonic dodged accordingly, but since Eggman wasn't in front of him where he could see where the doctor was shooting, there was a fair amount of guesswork involved. Finally, just as Sonic was about to reach the portion of the hull where it started to level off, one of Eggman's shots struck the hull directly before him. Sonic could only gasp and brace himself as he raced into the plume of smoke that followed the blast before feeling the sloping surface of the hull give way to air, throwing off Sonic's course completely as he plummeted sideways into the hole at high speeds, unable to stop now until he slammed into the ceiling of the room beyond and came crashing back down to the floor.
Dazed yet again by the unexpected blow, Sonic rubbed at his sore forehead for a moment, double checked to make sure he wasn't seriously injured in some way (and thankfully wasn't), before picking himself up and looking around. It seemed he was in some kind of storage room, as there were shelves upon shelves filled with various tools and equipment Eggman might need at any given moment. Sonic got no further in his investigation when Eggman in his boss robot reappeared outside the hole that had been blown in the storage room's wall, and the boss robot started shooting into the room itself.
Quickly, Sonic ran away, heading deeper into the room, dodging as quickly as he could as the shots tore up the room, scattering debris everywhere. Finally, he spied a sealed door that had to lead out of the room, and curling up into a ball, spin-dashed the door open and raced out into the hallway beyond. The hallway ran along the length of the airship, sitting just behind the outer hull of the ship, as evidenced by the fact that the walls occasionally gave way to windows looking outside the ship. Sonic was able to run down this hallway for a good while, before the hand of the boss robot suddenly smashed through one windowed wall and attempted to grab Sonic.
Sonic was just barely able to slip through its metallic grasp and hurry onward down the hallway, but he knew Eggman would just try again until he ran out of hallway. Sonic hoped the hallway would run out first, but unfortunately it didn't, and again the boss robot's hand smashed through the walls of the hallway. This time, Eggman's aim was better and the hand smashed through just ahead of Sonic, and was quickly able to snatch up the hedgehog.
Arms and legs pinned and trapped by the hand's grasp, Sonic couldn't do much as the hand pulled Sonic out of the hallway and where its operator in its cockpit could see him. Pushing off from the side of the airship, the boss robot then activated a jetpack Sonic had failed to notice it had before now, and flew away from the airship for several feet. Just as Sonic was wondering what Eggman was planning, the boss robot halted its flight and spun itself around to face the airship. Then, gearing up like a baseball pitcher about to throw a fastball, threw Sonic hard back at the airship.
Sonic rushed back towards the back portion of the airship, and saw he was going to come dangerously close to slamming into the spinning intake fans for the craft's engines, but even though his arms and legs were now free, there wasn't much he could do to stop or to change his course. Instead, his best defense was to curl up into a ball as if about to spin-dash and hope this would protect him from the turbine he was speeding towards.
Fortunately, he never hit the turbine, and instead impacted the hull just adjacent to the intake port and plowed through it and into the room beyond, slamming into a bank of computer circuitry that Sonic used to break his fall and bring him to a stop. Pulling himself free of the debris, Sonic stopped to look around. The room wasn't very big, and was filled mostly with computer processing equipment of all sorts. Only a small portion of the room was clearly meant for a person to actually be in the room. The rest was just filled to the brim with data servers. Sonic wouldn't have thought much of it…
…was it not for the fact that Jet's Extreme Gear board also happened to be in the room.
Surprised to see it, Sonic approached the board where it leaned against a control panel, hooked up to the computer via several wires, to make sure it was the same board. It had clearly seen better days, but it was unmistakably Jet's board. This puzzled Sonic. The last he had heard from Jet himself, the hawk's board was supposed to be somewhere at the bottom of a canyon in Apotos. But obviously, Eggman had recovered it and was now keeping it here.
But…why? What interest could Eggman have in Jet's board?
Then Sonic's attention was drawn to a pair of monitors that were positioned nearby. One displayed the words "Emergency Databank Backup In Progress" in big bold letters. The other had swarms of both textual and pictorial information washing over it, presumably being copied for the alleged backup. Sonic examined the information as it scrolled across, but at first, the information didn't seem to be anything that interested him.
But then a picture of Jet appeared briefly on the screen. It was quickly followed with pictures of Wave and Storm. All three pictures were accompanied with a lot of information on each individual member of the Babylon Rogues. And there was more, course data for the flight path of their airship before Eggman shot it down, intercepted radio transmissions, topographical map scans of the area of Apotos they had ended up in, simulations of the battle that had taken place, and more. It all blurred by faster than Sonic could read it, and a lot of it was sciencey stuff he didn't really understand, but something told him that this information was nonetheless important.
The computer finished copying the data just seconds later, and briefly flashed a message that the copied data had been transferred to "data disk SA2" before continuing on to the next batch of data. Sonic scanned the rows of computer banks before he found the disk labeled "SA2" and removed it from its slot to put in his satchel, figuring that Tails might want to look at this information. It was then that Eggman and his boss robot finally caught up with Sonic, and blew open the hole in the wall wider so it could shove itself into the room. Sonic winced as he saw Jet's board be crushed into pieces under the robot's heavy metal foot.
"Give up, yet?" Eggman demanded. "Because I can keep going all day like this!"
"Well, everybody needs something to keep them busy," Sonic remarked, folding his arms as he braced himself against the swirling wind and debris the nearby engine turbine kicked up now that the wall dividing the room from it was shattered. "Although, I really wish you picked your hobbies better!"
"Ha!" Eggman mocked, "Our rivalry is much more than a mere hobby, hedgehog! It is an never-ending battle to see who is the victor! All of the legendary rivalries are like that! Like Holmes verses Molarity! Aristotle verses…"
"Mashy spike plate!" Sonic suddenly exclaimed, and ducked.
Eggman turned in time to see a broken and jagged ceiling plate come loose in all the turbulence that had been kicked up in and slam into the boss robot, overbalancing it. Stumbling off its feet, its flailing arms slamming into things and dealing the room more damage as it went, the robot tumbled back out the hole in the wall it had made. Acting quickly, Eggman thumbed a switch, and the boss robot's jetpack kicked in, and kept it from falling further.
"Ha!" Eggman exclaimed again in victory. "Defeat won't come so easily to me, I've planned for every eventuality!"
But Sonic was more interested in the plate that had slammed into the boss robot. Caught in the vortex of the engine intake, it was nearly sucked into the turbine, but was just barely able to escape it by bouncing off the spinning blade with a shower of sparks before falling down towards the ground far below. From that, Sonic suddenly got an idea. Curling into a ball, he spin-dashed at the boss robot suddenly. Eggman reacted by whacking the hedgehog back with one of the robots arms, only to have Sonic to bounce off the other wall and come spinning back at the boss robot. The process was then repeated.
"Now you're just wasting my time!" Eggman complained as he worked to constantly knock Sonic's spin-dashes back from him. "My robot's armor is made of the strongest metals I can create! You can't pierce it with your pathetic attacks, hedgehog!"
But then Sonic suddenly slipped through Eggman's attempts to block the spin-dashes, and smashed off the side of the robot's right arm, and then right through the unprotected glass dome of Eggman's Eggmobile cockpit, narrowly missing the doctor himself. Zooming straight through the shattering dome like a hot knife through butter, Sonic suddenly uncurled himself and latched his hands onto the back of the cockpit, just above the boss robot's jetpack.
"Wasn't aiming for the armor, duh!" Sonic exclaimed back, as he grabbed a certain exposed wire that connected the Eggmobile with the boss robot and yanked at it until it severed itself.
With a jolt, the jetpack on the boss robot failed and the robot dropped like a stone. Sonic quickly jumped off it and back into the ruined computer room as it fell, but Eggman, still strapped into the robot, quickly scrambled to regain control as the robot fell a few short feet before it was being sucked into the intake of the engine turbine. Eggman quickly had the boss robot to use its still functioning arms to grab something to slow its fall, but it was clear he was only prolonging the inevitable. The robot was going to be sucked into the larger turbine.
Seeing his goal accomplished, Sonic turned and spin-dashed the door leading in and out of the computer room and hurried on down the hallway beyond and deeper into the ship. Eggman, meanwhile, struggled to try and save the boss robot, but without its jetpack, it was a lost cause. With the robot's grip slipping, Eggman finally gave up, and quickly ejected the controlling Eggmobile from the boss robot and flew it to safety. Going limp, the boss robot was promptly sucked into the spinning blades of the turbine, and with a cacophonous shriek of grinding metal, the turbine chewed up the boss robot before the too-large object ground the turbine to a forced stop. The strain caused the rest of the engine to overload, and to blow.
The remaining engine not having sufficient power to maintain level flight, the whole ship began to list and veer off to one side, slowly pointing downward in a crash course. Alarmed, Eggman decided he better get back to the craft's bridge. Quickly flying the Eggmobile back along the length of the sinking craft, he flew the Eggmobile back through the hole in its side that had been blasted there earlier and into the room, moving the craft as fast as he dared for its landing port.
About then Sonic came bursting through the bridge door and spin-dashed into the side of the Eggmobile. He bounced off it, but still did enough damage that the already-damaged Eggmobile failed and crashed into the floor and skidded across the rest of the length of the bridge until it slammed into the master control panel and crushed it, destroying the controls.
"Gah!" Eggman exclaimed in a panic, trying to restart the Eggmobile, but it refused to respond. "What have you done you stupid pincushion?"
"Knowing you, at the very least slow you down," Sonic remarked idly as he hurried over, jumped over the crashed Eggmobile, and smashed through the cracked forward viewport and onto the front nose of the massive airship.
By this point in time, the airship was clearly about to crash. Brushing briefly against a skyscraper, the craft continued to veer downward to slam into the nearby bay of water next to Empire City. Nothing stood in its way save one suspension bridge, left vacant in the evacuation of the city. The bridge probably wasn't going to survive the crash, but for Sonic, it would survive just long enough. Running down the nose of the crashing airship, Sonic jumped from the nose to land on top of the bridge's support towers, then promptly started running down the large cable that connected the two pairs of support towers. He got about as far as halfway down the cable, right about where it arched down to its lowest point before the crashing airship impacted the support towers Sonic had just left, making them crumble.
The cables jerking violently, Sonic quickly jumped off the cables before he was jerked off and down to the pavement below and continued running, away from the crashing airship. Now it was a race to see if Sonic could get off the bridge before the airship smashed into it and crushed it. It came very close, the airship grinding down on to the pavement street that stretched across the bridge's length, snapping cables as the bridge already started to buckle. The ship nearly mowed Sonic, even though he was already increasing his speed to break the sound barrier, and it probably would've, had Sonic passed by the second set of support towers that held the bridge up. Acting like a barrier, the airship slammed into these and was brought to a halt, finally settling on top of the bridge.
The bridge didn't hold up the large airship for a second, though.
With an almighty crashing and crumbling sound, the bridge buckled, taking its support towers (or what remained of them) with it as it plunged into the watery bay below. The crashed airship dropped down with it and promptly started to sink. A few final explosions ripped through the hull of the mangled wreck before it slipped, sparking with energy, under water. Sonic, having safely reached solid ground again, stopped to watch, breathing heavily, forced to admit that was a very close call, even for him.
But before the surface of the water had even finished settling, Eggman in his damaged, but for the moment functional again, Eggmobile, burst out of the water and rose into the sky.
"This isn't over, hedgehog!" Eggman vowed as he flew off to escape. "Just you wait until I get another battleship! You know I have a lot of them! And I'm going to use it to carry out my original threat as promised, only now the target has changed to South Island! So unless you want to kiss that little hunk of rock goodbye, you'd best seriously consider stop trying to protect those criminal birds and turn the Babylon Rogues over to me!"
And with that, he flew off, and was gone. Sonic stared after him, realizing that the situation hadn't improved.
Then Sonic suddenly remembered data disk SA2 that he had grabbed off of Eggman's airship before it crashed, and pulled it out, still intact, from his satchel.
Well, the situation hadn't improved much, at least.
Sonic turned and started running, heading back to Tail's workshop. Something told him that the answers they needed was on this disk, so he had better get it to someone who can make use of it the best.