Chapter 20
Metal Sonic stood by the inter-dimensional portal, waiting for Ganondorf to walk back through any moment. He had stood guard just as asked for ten full minutes and no one had come by. He looked away for a moment to take a peek at the intruder monitor. Any intruders spotted by the robots aboard the base would be tracked on the monitor. A group of three had broken in from the surface of the ocean. They had not been spotted, but their entry had alerted the cameras to know where to look.
Suddenly, a bubbling noise came from the portal and Metal Sonic turned back to face it. From it, a large black horse wearing purple armour exited the portal. The equine looked around the room she appeared in and took a few steps forward.
"Well, this certainly is different to any castle I've ever seen." She said. Metal looked up at the horse and instantly recognised her as a threat. His jets whirred to life and blasted upward, firing off a blast from his chest cannon. The blast caught the horse off guard as it smashed into her head. She looked down at Metal and snarled. Her horn began to glow deep purple and suddenly, metal couldn't move at all.
"METAL! What are you DOING?!" Ganondorf stepped out of the portal too and the portal itself turned off. "How very dare you attack our guest!"
"Is this one of your lackey's, Ganondorf?" Asked the horse, looking over Metal Sonic with disgust. Ganondorf gave a nod.
"Yes. He may be rather... uncouth. But frankly, we need him. Would you mind letting him go, Your highness?" The dark coloured horse's horn stopped glowing and Metal dropped to the ground with a loud clang. Metal pulled himself to his feet and glared at Ganondorf.
"Nightmare Moon. Would you mind watching the intruder monitor for a moment while I talk with my minion?" Ganondorf pointed to the monitor. "The green square is where we are. The seven red dots are intruders... Wait... seven? Ugh, no matter" Nightmare moon nodded and kept her eyes on screen. Ganondorf began to exit the room. "With me, Metal. We need to talk."
Ganondorf led Metal Sonic to a large cylindrical room that spanned from the very top of the base all the way down the bottom floor of the base. In the centre of the room, stretching the entire length of the room from top to bottom stood a wide pillar that had wires and pipes coming off of it into each floor. It seemed to be the main power system of the entire base. It must have been filled to the brim with energy considering the base stretched from the surface of the ocean all the way down to the sea floor.
"Who is that?" Metal asked. "And more importantly, Minion?! Dr Robotnik and our Master paired us as partners. Not master and pet!" Metal clearly wasn't too happy about how this was all happening.
"SHUT UP, METAL!" Ganondorf shouted. "SHE is Nightmare Moon. She is royalty and we must treat her as such. She has powerful magic and is probably even more powerful than me. Do YOU want to get on her bad side?" Ganondorf walked closer to the edge of the platform and Metal followed. Looking down, brawn bots and E-series robots could be seen working maintenance on the power systems.
"...Ganondorf. We are working on this together. We will take control of this world together with bowser, DR Robotnik AND our master. DON'T forget that." Metal said.
Ganondorf stepped away from the edge little. "Don't worry... I won't forget that..." Ganondorf muttered. His foot then began to charge with dark magic. "...because if I forget, then i'll forget to eliminate you all..." he continued.
Metal heard that and quickly turned but it was too late. Ganondorf slammed his Wizard's Foot attack right into metal's face and he went hurtling backwards. Metal Sonic slammed into the central pillar and the sudden electrical shock instantly overloaded his systems. Metal Sonic shut down and fell... right the way down to the bottom of the base...
"The world is mine alone to rule. Bowser, Eggman, the "Master" and even Nightmare Moon are nothing more than pawns to take control of it. And you, Metal Sonic, have been taken." With a flick of his cape, Ganondorf returned to the main control room.
XXX
ROB hurried down the hallway with Snake and Twilight following behind. Spike was sat on Twilight's back. Robots would constantly try to ambush them but the combined forces of the four of them were able to tear the attackers apart.
"How much further, ROB?" Snake asked. ROB let out a beep and continued on. Snake grumbled a little at not getting a real answer. Twilight galloped up along side ROB to ask for herself when the group noticed a large doorway. The four of them approached and entered the doorway.
The doors opened to reveal the base of a massive pillar in a large cylindrical room. The ceiling was so high it couldn't be seen from where they stood. ROB's jets activated and he jumped up to a near by platform.
"WE MUST CLIMB" ROB stated and continued to jumped between the platforms. Snake began jumping up and hopping between the platforms and Twilight followed, using her wings and her teleporting spells a little too.
As they climbed up, the continued to run into robots performing maintenance but easily blasted them off of the platforms. "I hope we don't have to climb to far..." Spike whined.
"Why do you care? You're riding on my back!" said Twilight in response. Snake simply ignored the two of them. They continued climbing for about 10 minutes when they decided to stop for a moment so twilight could catch her breath.
"You okay, princess?" Snake asked. He still seemed a bit condescending any time he called her Princess and it was grating on Twilight a little. Nonetheless, Twilight gave a nod and returned to climbing when suddenly, a large explosion occurred, seemingly from nowhere. Twilight, Spike, Snake and ROB were totally engulfed by the smoke.
XXX
Captain Falcon, Shadow and Matt ran through the hallway of the base. They were spotted almost as soon as they exited the A/C vents. But, with Matt's elemental powered kickboxing, Shadow's chaos powers and, of course, the Falcon Punch, the robots didn't stand a chance against the three of them. They were constantly being ambushed by robots but managed but pull their way through with minimal effort.
"So, Captain. Do you have any idea where exactly we need to go to take this base down?" Asked Matt. Falcon shook his head.
"I'll admit. I've got no ideas. Hey, Shadow. You worked for 'em, right? You know anything?" Respond Captain Falcon. Matt and the Captain, without stopping, turned to look at shadow.
"Actually, I may know a thing or two. Every Hammurs base has a central pillar somewhere. That pillar is the reason these places even exist. I forget exactly what it was that made them so important, but I believe they are some sort of key. We have to destroy all of those pillars to stop them."
"And how many bases are there?" Matt asked.
"As far as know, Six. This base is Hammurs Base 3. The base I escaped from was Hammurs Base 4. I have no idea about the other four of them though. Let's just focus on destroy this one for now" Said Shadow.
Matt and Falcon nodded and the trio began to slow down as they spotted a large pit ahead. It was completely cylindrical, but absolutely empty with no lights in the slightest.
"Ugh... Guess we have to find another way to go." grumbled Captain Falcon. The trio turned back but were greeted by a hoard of Robots and Shadow hands rushing towards them.
All three prepared to fight but the foes didn't. They just kept charging. Falcon charged up a falcon punch, but before it could be released the attackers collided with the heroes and continued charging. Matt, Shadow and Captain Falcon tried to fight back but within seconds, they charged them off into the pit. The three heroes fell down into the deep darkness of the pit with a couple of the front lines of the robots and hands.
As they dropped, Matt activated the wind tag on his belt and used a gust of wind to slow their descent. Upon getting closer to the floor, Shadow used his chaos control to slow down their momentum even more so, allowing for a perfect landing.
Having slowed their decent, the robots and hands landed quite a deal earlier than the heroes and by the time they had reached the bottom, they had already been smashed into pieces. It was pitch black and barely anything could be seen aside from Captain Falcon's eyes glowing behind the visor of his helmet. Matt activated his fire tag and his leg was set alight, brightening the area.
They were in a large cylindrical room with no doors, windows, shafts or any kind of exit aside from an extremely large climb. Shadow stepped closer to one of the walls and placed his palms flat against it. He then gave it a small knock with the back of his hand.
"Solid metal." He said. "But only this part of the wall... Check the entire room. There could be a hollow wall anywhere". He finished. He then began walking around the room, knocking at the wall to check how dense it was.
Captain Falcon and Matt quickly did the same, each of them checking a section of the wall with a soft knock. Finally, one of Matt's knocks echoed a little more than a regular knock should have. With small smile he turned to call over Shadow and the Captain.
"Sweet! So how do we break through?" Captain Falcon asked. Matt gave a shrug, but Shadow stepped up, pushing the others aside, casually.
"Leave that to me." He stated, adjusting his wrist limiter rings. Shadow's hands clenched shut tightly and he began to glow with faint red energy. "Chaos..." He began as the energy began to engulf him. Matt and Captain Falcon quickly dived for the floor. "BLAST!" He shouted, opening his fists and releasing the energy around him. The resulting explosion was massive and more than powerful enough to rip clean through the hollow wall and flood the place with smoke.
XXX
Twilight and Spike coughed out as smoke billowed around them, blocking their sight and filling their lungs. Snake blocked his mouth and fanned the smoke away from himself as best he could with his hand. Before the smoke got too bad, a whirring noise started up and the smoke began to blow away. Once cleared, Twilight, Spike and Snake were able to see that ROB had used his rotor arm attack to clear the smoke.
With the smoke now clear, the fur of them were surprised to see a large hole in the wall, right beside where Twilight and Spike were standing. Twilight took a cautious step backwards, away from the new hole and three figures emerged. Two more humans and an odd black and red creature that look somewhat like a human mixed with a hedgehog. This creature was on eye level with Twilight and looked pretty intimidating.
"Well, Well. Look who decided to join the party" Snake spoke up finally, looking unimpressed. The human in the helmet smirked in response.
"Good to see you too, David" He spoke back before giving his signature salute to ROB. Snake huffed and turned away, getting back to climbing with ROB. The masked man then looked at Twilight and Spike.
"Uhh... Hi!" Twilight spoke cautiously. She couldn't tell what was friend and foe in the place. It put her on edge. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Ahem! Hello! I'm Princess Twilight Sparkle and this is my assistant Spike. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Well it's nice to meet you, Princess" the masked man spoke. When he called her princess, it seemed a lot less condescending than when Snake said it. "The name's Captain Falcon! This here is Matt..." He said, gesturing to the shorter human without a mask. "And this is Shadow." He said, gesturing to the Black and Red creature on his other side.
Twilight and Spike gave waves to Matt and Shadow too. Matt waved back a little but Shadow seemed a little preoccupied. "Captain. Matt. Look!" Shadow pointed up at the giganting pillar in the center of the room. "I think we've found our target!" He said, walking a little closer to the edge.
"Hold up, Shadow. We can't just destroy it right here and now. We're deep underwater. We'd be crushed!" Matt spoke up quickly, pulling Shadow back a little.
ROB turned away from his climb to focus on Shadow. "WE MUST LOCATE ESCAPE METHOD BEFORE WE ATTEMPT TO DEACTIVATE THE BASE. CLIMB." Twilight nodded and flew up after ROB with Spike still riding on her back. Shadow, Matt, Captain Falcon looked amongst each other before nodding and deciding to joining the climb. They didn't get very far though. Barely a minute later, the room's central pillar began to spark and surge with electricity. A loud BZZAP noise form came near the top of the room and a large hunk of blue metal came falling down towards them, sparking and smoking. Twilight and Matt quickly dived out of the way as the hunk of metal crashed down where they were standing. It appeared to be another robot, this one was around the same size as Shadow, though was blue, rather than Red and Black
"Heh. Metal sonic..." Shadow said, giving the offline robot a hard kick. "He was one of the commanders working underneath me when they had me on their side. He must be here with one of the other commanders. Maybe Ganondorf..?"
"Yeah, we were just on our way to confront him." Snake said. "It seems he has one of this here Princess' friends captured." Paying no more attention to Metal Sonic, the group continued on their upward climb towards the top of the base. It wouldn't be long now until they would be face to face with both Ganondorf AND Nightmare Moon.
But none of them noticed Metal Sonic's eyes as they began to light up again...
OOC NOTES TIME:
FINALLY! Losing my USB REALLY put me out of the mood when I came to writing, but I finally forced myself back into it and I'm glad I did. Now for review replies!
Hey, RineTheHedgehog and PonyPilot. I couldn't directly reply to your reviews because you don't have accounts. But I don't accept character suggestions. The story is already planned out in full. None of the smash 4 newcomers are in this. (I wish I'd thought of Duck Hunt Duo and Shulk though.) And neither are Rainbow Dash, Quote or Blade the hedgehog (and yes, I know who that last one is surprisingly).
But yeah, we're getting closer to the end of the story, by the way. If my planning as right... there are only 6-7 chapters left!