The story so far: Robotnik has become Dr Kintobor again. Meanwhile Bean has turned into Pin.
"I'm very sorry Knuckles, but it's important that Sonic has the control emerald," Kintobor said, his moustache wriggling as he spoke.
"How do we know you're not going to turn on us Robotnik?" Knuckles asked uneasy.
"Makes a change for Knuckles to be in doubt about something," Tails whispered to Sonic.
Sonic ignored Tails' comment, "Listen to him Knuckles, that is Kintobor, we've been over this already. Robotnik is gone; all we have to do is undo this mess, and then finish what Kintobor started a long time ago."
"And what about Bean?" Tails asked.
Sonic nodded, "yeah we'll have to reverse that too.
"I can do that; just bring him back here with those fake chaos emeralds." Kintobor said, still adjusting to having a physical form, "I suggest you search this ship for Bean and Bark, their may not be much energy in them, but Bean is still capable of tapping into it if he tries hard enough. If he does Bark will need your help."
Knuckles left eagerly, and Tails followed behind, insisting that he helped, Knuckles wasn't too pleased with this, but Tails had noticed something else he didn't want to mention with Sonic in earshot. Sonic looked to Kintobor, as he tinkered with components. Nothing changes, thought Sonic, as Kintobor went back into routine as if he'd never left his body. Kintobor found a toolkit and began to reassemble the Compressor. Working with surprising speed for a man of his figure, Kintobor managed to get the intricacies assembled quickly. However this wasn't quick enough for Sonic who stood there tapping his foot. Sonic asked Kintobor what exactly he was doing, and Kintobor explained what had happened and how to fix it. Sonic asked for the simple version, and still got lost in the explanation.
"Stupid question," Sonic said, "but what was it actually like to be in those emeralds?"
Kintobor put down his wrench for a moment and turned to Sonic, "I can't quite explain it Sonic. It took all my willpower to keep everyone in just the nothingness. Without the nothingness it's like looking at a surrealist painting," Kintobor paused, seeing the confusion on Sonic's face, "like those paintings with the melting clocks. If you can imagine being surrounded by that sort of thing for a prolonged period of time you have life inside the emeralds in a nutshell. I'm just thankful Chaos is in the master emerald." Kintobor said nervously.
Sonic nodded, before asking, "Where are the Chaos Emeralds anyway?"
"As I tried to tell Knuckles when all this began, they are safe inside minor alternate realities. Unfortunately everything said inside the emeralds is Babylonian due to the nature of there makers. You see the Echidna's stole the Chaos Emeralds from the Babylonians to keep the energy of the Master Emerald in balance. It's all quite interesting really if you…"
"Kintobor, you're babbling again" Sonic said, sighing slightly.
Kintobor blushed"Oops, sorry. Anyway as I was saying; you can access the emeralds dimension if you can find how they've made there entrance. Unfortunately it's up to the grey emerald to make the entrance method, and since that is currently in your possession it'll be tricky to get to them. You'll have to surrender the grey emerald to that dimension to get the other six. We could always just lock that one inside a warp of confusion though." Kintobor suggested, remembering his original plans for the emeralds.
"That'd annoy Knuckles" Sonic smirked.
"Ah yes, the Floating Island; that had slipped my mind." Kintobor said, dismissing his old idea.
Sonic sat down for a bit, keeping an eye on all the entrances to the room, watching for Tails' return, or if the evil version of Bean would show up. He also watched as Kintobor worked meticulously on trying to fix the machine. For the most part the machine hadn't sustained any major damage, but various components had fallen off, and the tools Kintobor had in this lab weren't intricate enough to do the job. Kintobor has quickly sussed that Robotnik must have got his robots to build this machine for him while he designed other things. It would explain how he'd built it so quick, it had taken Kintobor initially three years to design and build the ROCC, and this one had not only been knocked up in a few hours, but was also much more efficient than the old model Kintobor had worked on.
A few parts of this machine didn't make sense to Kintobor though. Some of the functions appeared to be concerned with amplification, and as far as Kintobor could tell this machine was integrated to at least three other devices on the airship, and countless many in the lab. Kintobor could understand the second part, as he remembered the machine to still be in the experimental phase. Kintobor still had several of Robotnik's memories, though lots of them didn't seem to be complete. Much of Robotnik's more recent activities where hazy and a blur to Kintobor, something which had frustrated Sonic when he'd asked Kintobor to tell them exactly what was going on.
Kintobor wiped the sweat from his brow, the body he'd inherited from Robotnik was not in the best of shape, and all this physical activity was really tiring Kintobor out. "I don't suppose there's any food anywhere?" he asked Sonic sheepishly.
Sonic took that as a hint and got up. "What do you fancy?" he asked Kintobor.
"Anything bar egg," Kintobor said, as the pair of them laughed uneasily at the familiarity of this situation. It was an incident like this before that had turned Kintobor into Robotnik, and neither of them wanted a repeat performance of that accident.
Sonic couldn't find anything in the lab edible, and had suggested searching the whole airship, which Kintobor had declined; it would be better if Sonic stayed with Kintobor just in case something happened. Kintobor wouldn't say too much on it, but he was confident that for as long as Sonic was here with the grey emerald things would be fine.
The squadron of gun totting Egg-Robo's that marched into the lab was one of many reasons why Kintobor was glad Sonic stayed. Kintobor wasn't looking quite so hopeful by the time the thirtieth robot had marched in, all guns pointing at Sonic.
How will Sonic get out of this one? Can Kintobor fix the NOCC? There's only one way to find out, keep reading.