Infinite raises his hands, and an army of replicas appears on the battlefield. Amy squares off against them, and grips her hammer. Behind her, the Resistance is ready to fight.
Cut to Tails' plane, which is being pursued by a swarm of robots. Sonic and Emm nod to each other, as Tails takes evasive action, dodging a barrage of blaster fire. Sonic gives a casual 'see you later' wave to the others, and throws himself into the swarm. Emm follows close behind. She aims a grappling wire at one of the bots, and unleashes a second wire from the tip of her wispon. She swings through the swarm, lashing her electrified wire from side to side, while Sonic homing attacks his own path of destruction. With the swarm defeated, they fall to the ground with robot parts raining all around them. Without a word, they turn to face the distant Imperial Tower.
Cut to Tails, Classic, and Omega, descending a ladder into the sewer under Metropolis. Tails, checks her tablet, then points to an innocuous wall. Omega blasts it down with a missile. Behind it is a small room with a security door marked with Eggman's face-logo. Tails stands before it, visibly nervous. But she looks to Classic and Omega behind her, shakes it off, and starts hacking the door.
Cut to the battle scene. Below on the ground, soldiers and replicas attack back and forth. Shadow mows down waves of enemies with a gatling gun. Is it the same gatling gun Tails was using to fake-flirt with him earlier? It's impossible to say. Silver fights Infinite in the air. The two clash and separate, but neither shows signs of damage. Infinite unleashes a wave of distorted red energy, but silver blocks by raising a shield of rubble. He then hurls the rubble back at his attacker. Infinite easily disintegrates the projectiles with a wave of his hand, but when his field of view is clear, he sees five individual Silvers rushing at him.
ToP: Chaos Technique - Time Travel Silver is the only known user of this technique. By travelling backwards in time by a few seconds, Silver can create multiple instances of themself in the same time frame. With access to chaos emeralds, the range of their time travel greatly extends, to a maximum of a few centuries.
Infinite glares, dodging the barrage of Silvers, then raises both of his hands and summons dozens of replicas of himself. The Silvers circle back to back, preparing to face the tide of foes.
Sonic and Emm boost to the base of the tower, crashing through a crowd of robots. Emm grapples up to a higher level, pulling Sonic after her.
Team Tails rushes past a series of deadly obstacles, with Classic in the lead. Flying robots circle around them and attack with sweeping laser beams, but the team switches to flying formation, and Tails thunder shoots Classic and Omega in twin arcs, wiping out the wave. While in midair, Classic and Tails circle around Omega, and he fire-dunks them at a crowd of armored robots gathering below.
Overhead, multiple Silvers sweep through the crowd of Infinites. Each Silver appears for only a few seconds, before disappearing to the past or future again, but new ones are traveling in to replace the ones that go away. Amy plants both feet on the ground, and unpockets the giant boulder from earlier. She holds it over her head with both hands, straining at the weight, then tosses it towards a group of enemies with all her might. Knuckles jumps up after the boulder, and punches it so hard that it shatters and catches fire. The rock fragments rain down like meteors, wiping out dozens of replicas. Meanwhile, two new Silvers appear behind the real Infinite, and attempt to catch him off-guard, but their attacks bounce off his barrier, and without turning around, Infinite knocks them back with an energy wave.
Robots close in on Team Tails from all sides. The team fights valiantly, destroying bots one-by one, but they close in, overwhelming the heroes with sheer numbers. Tails gives Omega a hand-signal, then dives to the ground for cover, shielding Classic with her body. Omega points his fists straight up, then fires a salvo of missiles from his hands which veer off in all directions, and explode all around, wiping out almost the entire crowd.
Sonic and Emm hop from platform to platform, making their way up the tower. Emm takes out a few bots with her whip, and proceeds to wall-jump up a narrow corridor, while Sonic opts to run straight up the wall. They land on the next level, and prepare to charge forward, when a pillar of laser fire descends from the sky, cutting them off. They turn and bolt in the other direction as the laser creeps towards them.
Amy holds a ring in one hand, with her gaze trained on Infinite, who is clashing with Silver again. Knuckles sees what she's about to do, and yells out the only line of dialogue in this chapter.
KNUCKLES: LIGHTSPEED HAMMER INCOMING! BRACE YOURSELVES!
The Resistance members all start running away from Infinite, and taking cover behind whatever rocks and rubble they can find. All the Silvers retreat as well. Amy narrows her eyes, completely focused on her target.
ToP: Chaos Technique - Lightspeed Dash A moderately advanced use of Chaos Control. By compressing space between oneself and the target ring, the user can move at physics-breaking technique is typically used to instantly traverse a long line of rings with little space in between then.
Amy throws the ring as hard as she can. It travels towards Infinite in a clean arc, until it is right in front of his face.
ToP: However, the greater one's skill at compression…
Amy appears before Infinite in a blur, with her hammer in mid-swing. She bludgeons Infinite right in the midsection at relativistic speed.
ToP: … The greater the distance one can travel.
The hit actually shatters Infinite's barrier, and sends him flying back. The shockwave from the impact ripples out, blowing up dust, and knocking a few soldiers off their feet. Infinite is stunned, and actually hurt for the first time in months. He clutches his ribs and doubles over. Amy's hammer is completely destroyed, and she is left holding a shattered stump of the haft. She tosses it aside, and unpockets a pair of brass knuckles, making them appear directly on her hands. She then unpockets two big handfuls of rings, and chucks them both Infinite's way. The rings scatter all around, as Infinite looks on in panic. Amy dashes to the first ring, one right beside Infinite, and sends him flying towards the next ring with a punch. She dashes again, appearing beside Infinite a second time, and repeats. She knocks the jackal all around the diminishing cloud of rings, sending out shockwaves with each blow. It's some very DBZ shit. For the final blow, Amy is lined up for another head-on attack, with the ring right in front of infinite. Amy unpockets the spiked baseball bat, and raises it overhead to deliver the finishing blow. Infinite reaches out, and in a desperate, reflexive move, grabs the ring in front of him. With no ring to dash to, Amy quickly realizes that gravity exists, and starts to fall. Shadow teleports in and catches her with one arm. With the other, he holds up three grenades, with the pins pulled. He teleports right in front of Infinite, and overturns his hand, dropping the explosives. He teleports away again, taking Amy with him, just as the bombs explode.
The grenades erupt in a cloud of smoke and fire. Infinite falls out of the sky, trailing smoke behind him. His mask is cracked, and his body is battered from Amy's assault. He regains his senses before falling too far, and rights himself in midair. But Silver is before him, and they raise two giant boulders up from the ground. They slam the rocks together, catching Infinite between them. Silver grins victoriously for a moment, but the expression vanishes when he sees that Infinite has conjured a pair of clawed, glowing red arms, and is holding the boulders apart. His eye burns with red, distorted light. The sun above burns intensely red, casting the scene in bright, saturated crimson.