"Sweet," Marine said, admiring the Sol Emerald, "you weren't lyin'."
"What do you mean?" Sonic asked.
"You went on and on about how you could track these things, I thought you were talkin' nonsense but here it is, like you said," Marine answered, throwing and catching the Sol Emerald, "you wanna hold it?"
Sonic held up his hands.
"No no, you hang onto it, I mean…you're the captain after all." Sonic said.
Marine shrugged and placed the Emerald inside her jumpsuit.
Sonic and Marine jumped at a noise at the back of the room. However they were relieved to see it was just a light switching off, and then another, and another.
"Let's get goin' I'm not wanderin' through this place blind."
"Shouldn't be a problem, I can just..."
Sonic was cut off by the sound of rumbling, it gradually got heavy, until the ground started to shake.
"Woah, what the 'ell's happenin'?" Marine asked, the shaking almost causing her to fall over.
Sonic looked around the ever darkening room, before gesturing Marine to follow him, he charged up a spin dash and launched himself into the wall as hard as he could manage. After smashing most of the interior walls he found he had to saw his way to the outside.
"Come on, hurry!" Marine shouted nervously, "sommat's coming!"
Sonic felt himself suddenly lurch forward as he broke through the exterior wall, he uncurled and looked up. What he saw silenced him.
"oh bloody 'ell!" Marine said, as she spotted what Sonic had seen.
The Tails Team had been nervously traipsing through the Plant Kingdom for some time. Tails had quickly decided the team should remain close as the mist was getting thicker, the light beam emitted from Tails' mech was all that was keeping them together in this dense fog.
"Wait, do you hear something?" Rouge asked suddenly.
"Erm…oh that's just my mech emitting the…" Tails began.
"No not that…" Rouge said, her ears flicking.
"Yeah I hear it too." Knuckles said, "I've definitely heard that sound before… oh I know what it is!"
"What?" Amy asked.
"It's bu…" before Knuckles could finish his answer a buzzing noise drowned him out.
"BUZZ BOMBERS!" Tails yelled, before leaning back his mech to aim at the sky, "It's too foggy down here!"
Tails pressed a few buttons, before the sound of a clunks and whirrs confirmed his mech had released the extreme gears.
"You guys take to the skies, follow the bombers if you can!" Tails shouted from his mech.
"What about you?" Amy asked as she jumped onto her board.
"I have thermal imaging software, I'll be able to follow you from the ground," Tails said, lowering the mech's visor over his eyes, "these bots will probably try to protect the base, they might lead us to it."
"Got it!" Amy smiled, as she placed the goggles over her eyes.
Shadow was the first to launch into the sky, followed quickly by Knuckles and Rouge, with Amy at the back.
For the first time in a while, Tails was alone. He would normally be nervous but he wasn't feeling that way. Sure the forest looked scary, but he was in a Master Emerald powered mech, and thanks to his visor it wouldn't be difficult to track the others.
'Okay, from what I can see the others are flying east, deeper in, so if I keep heading that way I'll probably find the base.' Tails planned internally.
Tails had his mech stomp its way through the dead trees, with the sound of snapped twigs the only thing breaking the silence, he quickly found himself a little bored.
'Better than scared I guess,' Tails thought optimistically.
His casted legs were held in place just in front of him. His original mech had pedals which he used when he needed the mech to transform into a road-legal vehicle, those had been replaced by an extra couple feet of seating, grooved to fit his now sensationless legs into. He curiously hit one of his casts, but his leg couldn't feel it. It was an odd sensation but Tails supposed it was better than pain. Amy told him that she'd once broken her arm and it wouldn't stop aching until it had healed. Tails supposed the medi-bot must have something to do with the minimised pain but he couldn't recall…
'Where the heck am I?' Tails thought.
He'd been daydreaming about his legs for so long he'd stopped concentrating on where he was going. He'd simply been following the heat signals from his team. As he looked around he spotted an odd looking plateau that didn't seem to fit in with the whole 'dead forest' aesthetic. It was clearly carved from stone however so it couldn't have been an Eggman creation.
As Tails walked his mech closer to it he noticed there was a perfectly round hole, just big enough to have his mech jump though without too much difficulty.
'I really shouldn't…I mean we are on a mission here…but on the other hand..' Tails made a snap decision and had his mech use its booster to slowly descend into this place.
The Cyclone landed as gently as a heavy mech could land all things considered. The inside of this place was clearly ancient. However some peculiar lights were preventing the place from complete darkness. The illumination emanated from the peaks of intricately designed columns, whilst the main body of the columns were comprised of a trio of cylinders, the oddly green light source was a diamond-like shape. Tails couldn't see any electrical component, this light appeared similar to the bioluminescence found in some fish, absurd as that seemed to Tails, after all this place wasn't alive, was it?
He followed the corridor, the peculiar lights guiding a singular pathway, at the end of which he found a large circular room with a mural on the wall. It appeared to be some form of hieroglyphics, not the sort of thing Tails had any knowledge of.
'Well, who knows? Maybe I'll need this info at some point,' Tails thought, as he used his visor to capture the image onto his on-board computer, he could look at it again at some relaxed moment, assuming he'd actually get one of course.
At the centre of the room stood a small platform with an obvious shaped crevice in the centre, clearly a Sol Emerald was meant to be placed there.
Tails looked for any clues as to this place's purpose, but he couldn't find anything, obviously it was related to the Sol Emeralds in some way, but he'd never been anywhere like this. The closest he'd seen to this was the Angel Island's alter to the Master Emerald.
Deciding he'd wasted enough time down here already, Tails had his mech leap back through the hole to carry on his solitary trek through the dead forest.
Sonic stared up at the massive airship in the sky.
"That's an Egg Carrier," Sonic said, "and there's more than one of them."
"How do you know?" Marine asked.
"That huge pointed bit at the end, it's an…"
"An airstrip, so smaller stuff can land on it…" Marine interrupted.
They just stared at it in silence for a few seconds.
"So… how do we get up there?" Marine asked.
Sonic just gaped at her.
"Ah reckon Egghead will have some stuff in there right? Maybe it could point us to Blaze!" Marine implored.
'Why am I hesitating?' Sonic asked himself, 'I've done this loads of times without even thinking about it.'
'Because you weren't a coward before' the voice chided.
'I'm not a…' he thought, before he was confronted with a barrage of images, the thoughts that rushed through him when he awoke in that tube back in White Space, the way he attacked Knuckles, the joy he felt when his anger overwhelmed him enough to take down the Egg Cobra and then the emptiness that descended upon him as he murdered Nega.
"Come on Sulphur, you could use your wind magic to get us up there right?" Marine suggested.
Sonic shook his head dismissively, he was still worrying.
'Am…I a coward?' Sonic wondered, as he found himself paralysed by the sight of Eggman's airship, and the thought of all the things that could go wrong.
'What if we get captured? What if Marine gets hurt? What if I fail again?' Sonic panicked.
"Hello?" Marine said, waving her hands in front of him, "Come on Sulphy snap out of it. That thing could disappear any second."
'Just let Tails handle it, he and Shadow will do much better than you and Marine could,' the voice suggested.
'That's true… they've got the Master Emerald too.' Sonic began to imagine Shadow leading the charge, bullets being fired everywhere, Tails flying around with that gun arm thing he'd made, Knuckles punching robots away like they were nothing, Rouge drill kicking through rows of killbots, all happening as Amy cheers in the background as she helps the animals escape.
'That could totally happen!' Sonic thought comfortingly.
'Or?' the voice questioned.
'…or what?' Sonic asked, but he didn't need an answer, his mind immediately threw up an image of Tails lying in a pool of blood, crawling towards him,
"Why? Why didn't you…" Tails then collapsed in a mangled heap in front of him.
"Are…are you alright mate?" Marine asked.
Sonic closed his eyes, took a deep breath and looked Marine in the eyes.
"You see those cannons on the roof?" Sonic asked.
Suddenly Marine was the one looking worried.
"So… do we take them out or what?" Knuckles asked.
They had been following the buzz bots on their extreme gears for some time now, as fun as dodging the dead trees had been, Knuckles had become a little bored of just following them.
"Not yet, Eggman has clearly given them a task, we should wait and see what that task is." Rouge explained.
"What if that task is to distract us while they get Tails?" Amy asked.
"What!?" Shadow yelled, "Damn it!"
Shadow did a vertical U-turn, before blasting off in the opposite direction.
"Oh great work Amy," Rouge said, rolling her eyes, "Now Shadow's gone into dad mode again."
"What if she's right?" Knuckles defended.
"Firstly, Eggman doesn't even know we're here yet…" Rouge began.
"How do you know?" Amy interrupted.
"The robots would have been ordered to attack us, not just travel somewhere harmlessly, they certainly wouldn't let us follow them." Rouge reasoned.
Amy thought about that for a moment.
"Secondly, even if Eggman did know we were in this dimension you know he'd go after Sonic first right? To Eggman we barely even register."
"Tails does, Eggman has always had it in for Tails." Amy countered, "we should go back and find Shadow, he might get lost in the forest."
"You want to protect Shadow, from the forest." Rouge stated blankly.
"Well…"
"Shadow the Hedgehog. Seriously? We should be protecting the forest from him." Rouge laughed.
"He's not as brave and powerful as you think he is," Amy said, "He gets scared too."
"Duh, but when he is scared, that's when he's at his most dangerous… "YES!"" She exclaimed suddenly, "The base is just over…huh?"
"What's up?" Knuckles asked.
"Get down and speed up, now!" Rouge commanded.
Following orders, Amy and Knuckled followed Rouge into a nosedive. They sped past the swarm and travelled for about five minutes at high speed; just before hitting the ground Rouge levelled out, picked up her board and flew down the last few feet, landing in a gentle jog before leaning against a tree. Amy followed suit, jumping from her board and landing with a forward roll, before catching the board. Knuckles leaned back too far, causing him to fall to the floor on his back; as he sat up the board, having done a small loop-de-loop, hit him on the back of the head.
"Ow" Knuckles said in annoyance, "why is it always me?"
Amy smiled at that and helped Knuckles to his feet.
"Okay, quietly take a look." Rouge said.
Knuckles and Amy looked around the dead tree and saw a very tall cylindrical building, with frankly wasteful spikes encircling it in numerous places, as though the building was the arm of a gothic teenager trying to prove he's a rebel. There were a few small openings throughout the building, it reminded Amy of the sort of medieval tower a princess might be locked in. Nearby was a much smaller cubic structure which presumably was some kind of security office.
More interesting however were the guards walking around the area. They weren't robots. A variety of tigers, bears and a bull were carrying heavy duty weaponry; the bull actually had a minigun.
"Why would they work for Eggman?" Knuckles asked.
"Maybe they're the army guys who didn't want to be robotisized," Amy suggested, "the mayor of the factory said that could happen."
"Let's find out, you two stay behind me and don't say anything," Rouge commanded.
"Wait, what are you going to do?" Amy asked.
"I'm going to sing them a lullaby," Rouge rolled her eyes at their blank stares, "I'm going to get in there and grab the Chaos Emerald."
"How?" Knuckles asked, "I can't fight those guys, one punch and I could kill them."
"By shutting up and letting me do my work, you just stand there and look intimidating," Rouge said.
"What about me, want me to look scary?" Amy asked.
"No, you are as terrifying as a kitten on a playdate," Rouge said bluntly, "we need to be quick about this, those buzz bombers will be on us soon, you two can fight them right?"
"Buzz Bombers are nothing," Knuckles said proudly.
"Great, let's go," Rouge said before striding straight towards the tower, Knuckles and Amy gave each other a panicked glance before scurrying after her.
"Woah Woah!" one of the guards yelled, a large tiger, "Who the hell are you?"
"Someone more important than you," Rouge countered, "Eggman wants an update report, now."
"We weren't told about this," the tiger replied.
"Listen little boy," Rouge intimated, looking straight in the eyes of the really rather tall guard, "I'm Eggman's second in command and you are worth less than the rock I'm about to shove down your throat!"
'Jeez, she's going in hard,' Amy thought worriedly.
"I need your names, if I don't have them I can't report your visit to Nega!" The guard yelled in a panic.
Rouge rolled her eyes.
'Okay good, these guys work for a dead guy, still worth hiding our names though,' Rouge thought.
"Fine, I'm Special Agent Nails, these are Agents Petal and Klutz." Rouge said, pointing a thumb behind her without looking.
Knuckles folded his arms.
"Now tell me, have there being any attacks on this base?" Rouge asked sternly.
"None, someone hacked the computer recently but…"
"Hacked the computer?" Rouge asked harshly, "Why did you let that happen?"
"Do I look like a computer nerd?" the guard said in a weak attempt at defiance.
"You look like you're depriving a village of an idiot," Rouge mocked, "What information was on those computers?"
"Just employee records…and that a Sol Emerald is here…and the energy trajectory," the guard confessed.
"Oh for…!" Rouge shouted furiously, "do you have any idea how much time it will take to fix your mess! I'm now going to have to mop up a hurricane of piss you useless bunch of idiots!
"H…hey we did our best," the guard said, shrinking under Rouge's glare.
"Shut your face you failed abortion!" Rouge yelled at the terrified guard, "you're lucky that you are so unimportant, so beneath Nega's notice, that he won't even bother to murder you!"
The guard whimpered a little.
"But if you don't unlock the door to the tower right now, I swear I'll rip your skin off and force your whore of a mother to use it as a colostomy bag!"
The guard whimpered and scurried over to the door, unlocking it.
"Good boy, now get your weapon ready!"
The tiger fumbled, trying to get the strap of the assault rifle off his shoulder.
"Come on! You guys should be trained for this!" Rouge shouted, "Look at you, you're like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra."
"W…why…?"
"Because of those guys," Rouge said, pointing to the now visible swarm of buzz bots accelerating forwards, "lucky for you, my colleagues will make up for your incompetence."
Rouge nodded at Knuckles and Amy, who broke free of the shock caused by Rouge's verbal violence and nodded back, getting into fighting stances.
"I'll be back in two shakes of a crying baby," Amy actually gasped at this "and I expect nothing but scrap when I return!" Rouge said as she slammed the door behind her.
A stunned silence overcame the guards, as they slowly turned towards Knuckles and Amy.
"Erm…" Amy began, "She'll grow on you."
"Like tumours do," The bull grunted, "luckily the tower's full of killbots."
"What!" Amy shouted, "Knuckles we should…"
"Get ready!" the bull bellowed.
The bull began firing his minigun into the swarm. Amy and Knuckles had no choice but to join the fight.
"I reckon this is a contender for 'Worst Idea Ever'" Marine complained.
"I've done this before, you'll be fine." Sonic assured.
Marine watched as Sonic shoved the cannon, rotating it into position.
"When did you last do this?" Marine asked incredulously.
"I think I was fifteen, and it was a much bigger cannon than this," Sonic answered.
"Fifteen? So it was like…half a century ago!" Marine said, a little shocked.
Sonic looked sadly at his grey fur and gave a heavy sigh.
"I'm not that…whatever, look this thing is powered by igniting the energy source, I don't know what it is, used to be gunpowder but I don't really get this tech," Sonic said forlornly, "I guess I'm just that old."
"Ah didn't mean to upset you, you know you're the fastest old guy I've ever met," Marine said apologetically.
"Right…thanks," Sonic replied. He didn't really appreciate it but he knew Marine never meant any harm. He was just overly sensitive at the moment.
"Though I reckon only a crazy old coot would think to fire himself out a cannon," Marine said.
Sonic actually laughed a little.
"That looks about right, okay…I'll go first, don't use the cannon if I miss but I'm fairly certain I won't," Sonic instructed, "Once I actually managed to launch myself from a cannon over the tip of a mountain and land on a snowboard."
"How many of your stories are true?" Marine said with an eye roll.
"Too many," Sonic replied with a smirk as he climbed into the cannon, "cover your ears."
Marine did so, as Sonic rolled his way into the bore of the cannon. He landed at the bottom, the energy source was just behind the metal plate separating the bore from the chamber.
'Okay, come on, you've done this a million times before, just get onto the ship, smash some robots, find info on Blaze, and get out. Easy.' Sonic psyched himself up.
He began to charge a super spin, sending sparks flying everywhere and heating up the inside of the cannon.
'Nearly there, just a bit…'
His thoughts were drowned out by a huge explosion. He felt the rush of air against his face and a genuine smile force its way onto his mouth.
"HAHAHA, WOOHOO!" He joyously yelled as he flew through the air, when he began to descend he saw a large number of egg pawns amassed along the bow of the ship.
"Sorry guys, but the seating on this flight has been overbooked!" Sonic shouted mockingly, "I'm afraid you'll have to deplane!"
Before he even landed Sonic used a homing attack, knocking rows and rows of the pawns over the side of the ship. He ricocheted from an Egg Pawn, corkscrewed in the air and landed hand first on the ground before using a stabbing windmill spin from his breakdancing repertoire to clear his landing area of Egg Pawns.
"Haha! Is this all you've got?" Sonic gloated cheerfully, before sprinting along the entire ship's exterior, throwing enemies off the ship with his classic mix of spin dashes, homing attacks and various forms of gymnastics and breakdances, all whilst mocking the failing robots.
"Woo!" Sonic cheered, "That was cool!"
Then something hit him hard in the back of the head, causing him to fall onto his front.
"Ow...that... sucked!" Marine said groggily, "Aah, what have I landed on?"
"A squashed porcupine," Sonic wheezed, "how much do you weigh?"
"You don't ask a lady that." Marine replied, as she lifted herself to her feet.
"I wasn't asking a lady, I was asking you" Sonic said before using a handspring to bounce back on to his feet.
"Where are the baddies then?" Marine asked, quickly glancing around the airship.
"Falling through the air I imagine," Sonic answered, "I sent them skydiving."
"Did you remember the parachutes?" Marine asked.
"…well that's the end of my career as a skydiving instructor," Sonic said, "I guess we'd better get back to searching for Blaze."
"Were there loads of robots up here?"
"A couple dozen or so," Sonic said.
"Good onya mate, but ah reckon they'll be a fair few of the bastards hanging around in the ship," Marine said, "Maybe the animals inside could point us in the right direction."
"I hadn't thought of that," Sonic admitted, "I thought you'd look for maps or something."
"Ha, what sort of drongo would leave an important map on some airship?"
As Rouge entered the large cylindrical base, she quickly realised that she wasn't alone, her incredibly sensitive ears immediately detected the whirring of machinery and vibrations on the numerous ceilings above her.
'Okay, so I need both speed and stealth for this one, no problem,' Rouge planned internally.
She immediately flew up to the ceiling and used her claws to attach herself and scurry across the first floor, encountering little resistance, though the vibrations above were a clear sign that the next floor wouldn't be so simple. She flew up the spiral staircase, though it only took her to the next floor.
'I guess Nega wanted any intruder to have lots of obstacles to deal with, typical Eggman strategy' Rouge surmised.
She landed, placed her back gently against the wall, just enough that her wings could pick up any vibrations, before suddenly performing a side somersault across the doorway, and caught a glance of a robot before it's software could register her presence.
'Looked similar to the robots guarding Nega's base,' Rouge thought, 'too strong to take out alone, maintain observation.'
Rouge remained silent, hearing the automaton's gentle whirring fluctuating in volume, it was pacing back and forth in a perfectly consistent, pre-programmed pattern. Rouge was no fan of robots but they knew how to follow orders better than any sentient creature. This meant that Rouge was able to monitor the robot each time it's back was turned, though once was enough to formulate a plan.
She had spotted a change in temperature, imperceptible to most people, but enough to inform Rouge that this robot automatically vented something every twenty seconds.
'Chaos powered, overclocked hardware, small window at far end of corridor, concealed antenna present, will likely call for reinforcements silently when confronted, armour plating around joints given meagre stability for greater physical dexterity,' Rouge analysed, 'action commencing in 3…2…1…'
Rouge's strikes were sudden, silent and precise, her first flying kick was to the thick cord leading to the robots head; Rouge figured it would contain wiring necessary for his vision and targeting software. The robot suddenly lashed out blindly, but Rouge leant backwards, grabbed the robot's arm, and rolled on her back sideways across the robots shoulders and took to the sky just as the robot attempted a punch right where Rouge had been a millisecond ago. Rouge did a forward flip as she struck at the robot's elbow with a hard heel kick, causing the elbow plate to clang to the ground. She back-flipped away, giving her enemy time to equip its gun and begin firing at her, fortunately Rouge was back behind the doorway by then.
'Got to finish this quick, reinforcements will be here soon,' Rouge planned.
She quickly flew through the top of the doorway, before kicking off the ceiling and sliding between the legs of the elite Egg Pawn. She then grabbed the elbow plate she'd disconnected previously and jammed it straight into the robots ventilation shaft. Feeling the vibrations of robots heading towards them she made a snap decision and allowed the robot land a strike. She managed to remain silent as the gut wrenching punch launched her across the room towards the narrow opening. She tucked in her wings and went straight through the window.
She was quickly besieged by Buzz Bots but she easily outmanoeuvred them, flying loop-de-loops causing them to comically crash into one another and shoot each other down.
'No come on, don't get distracted,' she mentally berated herself, 'Amy and Knuckles have got this.'
She glanced down for confirmation, spotted Knuckles glide punching his way through rows of Buzz Bombers, whilst Amy ran up, launched herself into the air by slamming her hammer into the ground, before using a helicopter spin to destroy a half-dozen of the robotic wasps.
'Imprecise, loud, using a broken hammer yet somehow incredibly effective,' Rouge thought with a shake of her head, 'well that's the power of chaos I guess.'
She ascended quickly along the exterior wall of the tower before she latched onto it and listened to the vibrations. Her tactic had worked, all the killbots were travelling downstairs to investigate the damaged robot.
"Yes!" She whispered, before ascending to the top of the tower and sliding through the narrow vertical window.
'Now to get the Emerald before that damn killbot explodes,' Rouge thought as she searched the uppermost room for the gem.
The room was a very peculiar shape seeming to have been built to be as hard to navigate as possible, it appeared to have been built using odd, overlapping tear drop shaped metal bricks, the edges of which were extremely sharp. Rouge realised how lucky it was she could fly; crawling over this random pile of bizarre architecture would've been one hell of an ordeal.
Rouge almost cheered when she finally spotted it. She hopped onto the large tube next to her and gently jogged towards the gem. It was purple in colour, and was an emerald cut, rather than the chaos emeralds usual brilliant cut shape. Still, it was quite clear to Rouge that this was what she was after.
'I guess these Sol Emerald things are a little different, well never mind, a gal can't be that picky,' Rouge thought cheerfully.
Rouge tried to lift up the gem, but it wouldn't give, before she could react the gem shone suddenly and she felt herself slam into a wall, hard.
As she opened her eyes, she found herself looking into a huge, mechanical eye, staring angrily at her.
"Oh, it's going to be one of those days," she said wearily.
Five minutes after landing, Sonic and Marine found themselves looking at the huge screen in the cockpit, it contained an interactive map.
"I told you…" Sonic began.
"Shut up," Marine ended, "It's not like it says, 'Blaze is here' or nothin'."
That was true but it had at least it was a current map, it showed settlements in places that had previously been covered by the sea.
"No but look, there's the city, and the village, Eggman knows they exist but hasn't acted yet," Sonic pointed out, "What's he waiting for?"
"Not a clue," Marine answered succinctly.
'Tails would at least had some guesses, or hypotho…things as he calls them,' Sonic complained internally.
Sonic scan-read the map as fast as he could, he wasn't really into details, point him in a direction and run, that was how he usually worked but something odd struck him.
"What happened to Southern Island?"
Marine just looked at him.
"Didn't you and Blaze have a home there?" Sonic asked curiously.
Marine gave a sigh.
"Why do you know that?" Marine asked sadly, "That place was meant to be a secret, there's only meant to be like…a dozen or so people that know about that place."
"Who knows about it?"
"Apparently you do," Marine said, annoyed, "I swear you've been stalkin' us."
Sonic didn't respond to that.
"It should just be me, Blaze, the Coconut Crew and the snobs," Marine explained.
"Snobs?"
"You know, Blaze's parents," Marine said, before looking stunned at Sonic's blank face, "the King and Queen."
"Oh right, yeah." Sonic said, just about remembering Blaze's royal status.
"They kept Blaze hidden away as a child, she said she just hung out in the library all day, ah'm surprised she didn't go mad from boredom," Marine said disapprovingly, "After that they gave her the Guardian title because it meant she was never in the palace."
"But the Sol Emeralds tend not to stay in one place for too long, how are you meant to guard them?" Sonic asked.
"Exactly!" Marine said, throwing her arms in the air in annoyance, "Me and Blaze met after these two fellas, Sonic and Tails, washed up on my beach in Southern Island, so I guess they know about it too, but they live in Eggman's dimension."
"Okay," Sonic nodded along, he knew this story already but couldn't really let on.
"Sonic was cool, always running around, super cheerful and confident, like he always knew what he was doing, and Tails was only a year older than me, but like, really clever, I learnt loads from him."
"Like what?"
"Mostly just building stuff, he taught me how to do stuff dead quick, it's thanks to him I was able to make my bladerang, he taught me how to mix metals together to make stronger ones."
Sonic noted how cheerful Marine had become when discussing their past adventure, to Sonic it had just been a couple of weeks but it probably changed Marine's entire life.
"What were you doing before that?" Sonic asked, "Before meeting Sonic and Tails, I mean."
"Nothing really, the island was a holiday resort for the royal family, I had been adopted by the koalas who ran the bar there, so that's where I was raised," Marine explained, before looking down sadly, "it doesn't matter now anyway, Nega took over and kidnapped Blaze, I don't know what happened to the others."
"Why weren't you kidnapped?" Sonic asked.
"…I wasn't there," Marine sadly admitted, "Me an' Blaze had been arguin' about sommat stupid, she was being over-protective, so I took one of my boats and left for a while. I just wanted to explore a bit y'know?"
Sonic nodded in understanding, he wasn't one to be cooped up either.
"I saw the attack from the sea, it looked dead harsh, Nega's airships were bombin' the Island, there was nowt I could do…so I just kept goin'," she looked a little ashamed of herself, "But then some of Nega's airships were blasted out of the sky from above, I'm guessing that's when Sonic's Eggman arrived."
"I guess that's how Eggman got the upper hand then, he caught Nega by surprise," Sonic inferred.
Marine shrugged and looked away, "Doesn't matter whether it was Nega or Eggman who actually kidnapped her, my family was destroyed either way."
Sonic walked up to her, turned her around and hugged her.
"Hey! Sulphur! I'm fine, honestly I'm alright," she protested.
"You know your family could be okay, I'm sure Blaze is our there somewhere and if the Coconut Crew were robotisized it's just a matter of beating the robots right?" Sonic assured.
"Yeah…I know," Marine said into Sonic's chest, "I just…hate that I couldn't do anything,"
She shook herself out of Sonic's hug, quickly wiping her eyes.
"But it's fine now," Marine said happily, "Because now we can do somethin'. Before I was just trying to help people survive. But with you here, now I can scramble that Eggman!"
"Yeah, you're right," Sonic said, looking back at the map. "And I think I might know where to head next."
"Ooh, where are we heading?" Marine looked excitedly at the map.
"You see that blinking red dot, the one in the middle of nowhere?"
"Yeah, what about it?" Marine asked.
"Keep watching it."
Marine did as instructed, looking at it a full twenty seconds before…
"It moved!" Marine said.
"Yep I've been watching it, it travels through that ice place."
"The Blizzard Peaks?" Marine said, "Egghead loves buildin' crap out there, ah reckon he was hopin' Blaze would accidently melt the place an' end up drownin'.
Sonic laughed.
"What do you reckon's movin' about like that?
"No idea, but I 'reckon' we should find out."
Tails was observing an odd reading through his infra-red visor, it appeared to be heading straight for him at a fantastic speed.
In a slight panic he looked down and began tapping at his controls furiously, if he could time it right, he should have just enough time to…
Tails would've jumped in shock if it weren't for his broken legs. Something thudded onto the shoulder of the mech, he turned slowly.
"Oh for…why couldn't you have just said hello Shadow?"
Shadow was stood on the mechs shoulder, looking coldly ahead.
"You looked busy, I didn't want to interrupt," Shadow explained.
"I was busy programming a missile to blast you out of the sky!" Tails shouted in exasperation.
"Oh, well…you should type faster next time," Shadow replied, "These boards are pretty fast."
Tails just shook his head and had his mech get back to walking east.
"Did you discover what the buzz bots were doing?" Tails asked.
"They didn't attack, they were moving somewhere so I assume they were positioning themselves to protect the Emeralds." Shadow explained.
"Emeralds in the plural?"
"I saw one of Eggman's ridiculous monstrosities in the sky, I suspect that's where the bombers were released from."
Tails gaped at this.
"I briefly went above cloud cover, there's an entire fleet of them, and more than one of them was descending. I think Eggman is trying to protect all the Emeralds at once."
"An Egg Fleet?" Tails asked.
Shadow nodded.
"So he's built a fleet I suppose we should've expected it but why has he only now began to show himself?"
"I imagine something has threatened him, I doubt it's a coincidence, he must have some way of knowing the condition of Nega's Sol Emeralds."
"So he might have the power of all fourteen!?" Tails asked.
"Probably, but he won't have them for long." Shadow said confidently.
After about ten minutes of travelling in silence, Shadow suddenly spoke again.
"We're here, there's a huge amount of chaos energy over there." Shadow calmly stated.
"An Emerald?" Tails asked.
"Among other things, be cautious." Shadow instructed.
Tails had been a little annoyed at Shadow's babying recently but he could tell Shadow was really serious this time. Tails soon spotted the huge tower, previously blocked by tree's and fog, but barely had time to register it's size before his attention was taken up by something else.
An ear-splitting screech caused Tails to immediately slam his hands to his ears and close his eyes. Just as he opened them, he found himself slamming them shut again, a massive explosion of blue light and intolerable heat blasted from a low area of the tower, causing the entire structure to gradually lean over, thankfully away from Shadow and Tails. The creaking of steel was a noise Tails was becoming far too familiar with. Something tiny appeared to be falling from the tower.
Shadow sprinted towards it, with Tails lagging behind.
"Tails!" Amy shouted a short distance away, she ran up to greet him, "Shadow found you?"
"Yeah, what happened to you?" Tails said, looking at her scratches, bruises, and giant hammer.
"We've been…"
The screech silenced her, almost bringing Tails to his knees.
"What the hell keeps…"
Another massive blast erupted from the side of the falling tower, just before it fell completely a huge winged monstrosity smashed through the wall and flew upwards, before screeching again and spreading its wings, clearly a threatening gesture.
Shadow returned alongside Rouge. Rouge ran up to Tails.
"Good news, I found an Emerald, bad news…"
The Nega-Dragon screeched again.
That was a tricky chapter to write, I felt I had to give a little background regarding Marine; doing it without being too expositional was a bit of a drag. I had loads of fun writing the lines for bitch-Rouge though, I've been looking for a way to show how acting and infiltration skills so that was fun. So yes, next time the Tails Team will be fighting the Nega-Dragon and Sonic (Sulphur) and Marine will be heading for Blizzard peaks. Thanks for reading guys.