Chapter 28

"Okay. Fastest way there. Any ideas?" Nack,

"That ship we had earlier would be helpful." Diesel suggested.

"Do you wanna get it from the top of the tower?" Silver snapped. Diesel stayed quiet. "Thought not."

"Say, I thought I saw a hangar not so long ago. Back there." Wave added casually.

"Well? Are you going to stand here talking about it or go and check it out?" Jet immediately hopped on his board and took off. Wave followed.

Sitting there, eyes closed, enjoying the moment… it was perfect. Nothing could spoil this…

"Um… Sonic?" Amy opened her eyes, slightly concerned.

"Yeah?"

"What's that sound?"

"What sound?" He looked around. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Amy saw a large helicopter rise up from behind a barrier. Nack hung out of the side.

"Hey! Lovebirds! Asses in here now!" He yelled, barely audible over the engines.

"Come on!" Before Sonic had the chance to notice, Amy had gotten up and was about to jump to the chopper. She grabbed on to the edge just in time. It was beginning to take off. It had moved before Sonic had the chance to grab it. Diesel, piloting, didn't notice. The chopper began to lift off the ground. Sonic chased it a few hundred metres, as Amy hung outside it reaching for him. Just before he was about to give up, he leapt on to a box and launched himself into the air afterwards. He closed his eyes. He knew that below him was quite a fall. Do or die. Quite literally. He stretched his arm out in the vague hope of grabbing something. He sailed through the air for what seemed like an eternity. With no point of reference, it could have been any length of time.

He waited, eyes closed, arm outstretched. He thought that he must have begun to fall by now. It was stupid to attempt the jump – it must have been, what, 25? 30 metres? And over a chasm aswell. Great, he thought. I tried a last ditch effort to catch a ride and now I'm going to die. He thought he might aswell enjoy the fall, there's not much else to do. He opened his eyes. He saw the ground, instead of approaching, falling away from him. He looked up. Amy was holding his hand tightly. She looked surprised.

"What?" He said, in his usual manner. That's right, nothing out of the ordinary happened.

"Did you see that jump?" She said, as she pulled him up into the chopper.

"No, I was a little preoccupied."

"It was… like… huge!" She was genuinely stunned.

"What, how far up was it?"

"About two storeys? Maybe three? It was massive!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! How the fuck did you do it?"

"Eh… I don't know…" He looked over at Tails. "Tails, you seem to be the expert on anything and everything, what do you think happened?"

"Your guess is as good as mine…" He looked at Sonic's blank expression. "Okay, maybe not, but I still haven't got a clue." He thought a bit. "Hmm…"

"What?"

"First Shadow survived Formula T, then Silver conjures a disc out of thin air, and now this… d'you think there's something strange going on?"

"When you look at it that way…"

"So, what would be so special about S, S & S?" Amy asked.

"How's your mythology?"

"Probably not as good as yours."

"Indeed. In a lot of old hedgehog mythology, a lot of prophecies get thrown around… a couple of them are completely off the wall, but most of them seem to revolve around the same thing. They vary a bit on the details, but they all involve," He started counting with his fingers. "A malevolent being bringing about the end of the world, the master emerald, four warriors, usually hedgehogs, being the only ones that can stop him, and…" He paused.

"What?"

"The only thing that's exactly the same in every single one is the line 'and the bastard scion of two heavenly beings'. The context is sometimes inconsistent and the relevance varies, but it's in every single one that mentions all of the other things."

"Cool! I get to kick Iggy's butt!" Sonic blurted out enthusiastically.

"Well, then, who's the other one?" Amy asked.

"Hmm. A lot of time, something about a 'bloodied rose' comes up. I don't know if that might help."

Jet looked out the window.

"It's getting dark. We should hurry."

"It's going as fast as it can go!" Diesel snapped.

"Do we have radio contact yet?"

"We haven't tried for a while now… he reached for the receiver. "Calling all frequencies, please respond," He waited, listening to the static. "Please respond." He repeated, quite sternly. A voice began to crackle over the static.

"This is Freedom Fighters base, request ID," Amy rushed in and snatched the receiver off Diesel.

"Cream? Is that you? Are you there?"

"Amy?"

"Oh, God, Cream, thank God you're alive! I thought I'd lost you, you had me worried sick!" She continued poring over the receiver. Diesel rolled his eyes. When Amy and Cream had finished catching up, Cream asked to be handed back to Diesel.

"So what's your position?"

"We are… let's see… we are 15 miles west of Naugus' tower, we can just see the edge of the Roboticised landscape now,"

"ETA?"

"Hmm… 15 miles in 5 minutes… that's… 180 miles an hour… about 45 minutes." Amy took the receiver again.

"Naugus is coming for the emerald. You should hole yourself up in there pretty good. Who else have you found?"

"Uh… Big, Tikal and Chris,"

"Chri… of all the people in the base, the survivors had to include Chris? Fine. Just stay safe, okay honey?"

"Gotcha."