View Count: 4727
Cytisus, Cyan Quartz, Noonui and catthyyours, have I mentioned how awesome y'all are?
(The answer is yes, but it bears repeating for this level of awesomeness.)
I've been told I should make it more obvious to readers that I've somehow developed the habit of illustrating this story. So...with the caveat that I really don't know what I'm doing, here's the chronologically-ordered gallery of those:
[deviantart dot com]/whatisthisdefiance/gallery/79374991/gremlin-island-illustrations
But what you should really see? The favorites gallery where I've aggregated the drawings the wonderful catthyyours and Cytisus (a.k.a. micazee) have done for me. Seriously, please go look:
[deviantart dot com]/whatisthisdefiance/favourites/84139792/gremlin-island-fanarts
Who, what, me? Get distracted from story-writing? Never.
Sky Sanctuary
There were several things the heroes were expecting to see when they finally teleported back to Angel Island's surface. The surrounding forest of palm trees and the sunny sky met those expectations reasonably well.
The industrial-sized flatscreen TV floating above them with their enemy's face on it was rather less in the prediction. He and his robots appeared to be sitting by some controls, but the only other gleanable information was that he was rather smug.
"Hello," said Eggman.
"You said that already," Sonic noted.
"Well, you'll have to forgive me for thinking perhaps you'd gone deaf as well as dumb. It took you long enough to reply."
"It felt like exactly four months," Orbot said.
Tails frowned. "That was oddly specific."
"We've been looking for you," Knuckles growled at the pixels unfortunate enough to be making up the doctor's image.
"Correction: you were looking for brunch. I'm the last person you wanted to see right now."
"Well, we were hungry for a whopper," said Sonic, "so you're a welcome bonus."
"Not when the three of you are so badly worn out."
"Are we, now?" the hedgehog replied, arms folded smugly.
"Sure. Here, let me summarize."
Eggman pressed a button on his console, and a recording of Sonic's voice played:
"Now my sides hurt."
"Oh yeah, definitely time to use my accrued sick leave," the present-time Sonic chuckled, then read an imaginary note off his palm. "Patient has a stitch from laughing like an idiot. Please excuse him from hero duties."
Eggman smirked and pointed. "Actually, I was more thinking of that massive contusion forming on your right side. From when Knuckles punched you."
"Wh-"
Sonic threw out a hand to silence the echidna, then cast a glance at the injury in question. "Oh, does this one have a literal Knuckleprint™ too?" he asked nonchalantly. "...and spike outlines. Cool. Well, nice cold reading, Doc. Really, bravo. Right up there with the best quacks I know."
"Oh, if you'd like an even better quack..."
Eggman pressed another button, and the heroes heard the unmistakable sound of a brutal punch, followed immediately by a scream of pain.
Recognizing his own voice again, Sonic subconsciously moved his hand to touch his side.
"...and quite possibly a crack, judging by how melodiously unpleasant that sounded. Does it hurt to breathe? Because you honestly might want to check for a rib fracture. Or several."
Sonic had already recovered his cool exterior. "Hah, I coulda hooted like that any time."
Eggman smiled wickedly. "And I could do this all day."
"Don't touch Tails!" roared Sonic's voice, its every word punctuated with a loud strike and Knuckles grunting.
All six eyes widened, the purple ones by far the most.
"Tails too?"
"I wasn't hurt!" Tails blurted.
"But he would have been, if Sonic hadn't violently removed you."
"Aw, put a sock in it," Sonic groaned. "Knuckles, don't let him get to you. Focus on something else."
The echidna frowned and nodded, then slowly ran his fingers along his jawline. "You did hit me, then?"
"Yeah," the hedgehog sighed. "I didn't have a choice. Sorry..."
Knuckles quickly shook his head. "N-no, you did the right thing. I was just…"
His teammates glanced at him when he opted to put a premature end to his sentence, but didn't push the issue further.
Orbot, however, decided to complete the mission post-mortem.
"He was just wondering why it felt like he'd bitten his tongue at some point."
Sonic turned to stare at Knuckles, who coughed uncomfortably whilst rubbing a grass stain on his mitten with intense focus. The hedgehog's eyes twitched in visible annoyance before he directed his attention back to his actual enemy.
"Fine, I'll bite that you've been tracking us that closely. So with that in mind, do you really wanna tangle with us while we're tired and hangry?"
"Poor petulant children. I'll expedite your permanent naptime, if you wish."
"Hard to do when you're already dreaming yourself..."
Eggman laughed. "Pardon my levity, but it's adorable how far ahead I am and how clueless you are."
"So enlighten us already!" Tails snapped.
"Alright. But first, answer me this, fox boy: what time is it right now?"
Tails blinked. "It's...evening? Late afternoon? I honestly expected the sun to have set by now, I…"
He trailed off, his eyes growing very wide.
"I see the understanding dawning on you," Eggman quipped. "Good morning."
"How...how long were we in the Special Zone…?"
"Oh, a few weeks, give or take. The peace was fantastic."
"A whole lunar phase…" Tails breathed.
"Odd metric, but yes, perhaps it was something like that."
"Th-then why are you still here? You haven't used your lead to build a massive weapon?"
"Well, machinery takes time. It's prone to design flaws and it's expensive. But experience has also taught me that biological entities have a mind of their own. What, therefore, if I could find a happy medium? An organic creation, pre-made, with thousands of years backing it. Yet, one with scant will to rebel."
Tails gasped.
Sonic glanced at him. "What?"
"The...the island. That's his end goal. He's trying to weaponize Angel Island itself using the Master Emerald."
Knuckles choked on his own reaction.
"Yes, I've been using my amplifiers on the Master Emerald. I have it on a feedback loop, and its power has just been growing and growing."
"You can't do that!" Knuckles finally yelled. "You have no idea how to control either of them!"
"Yes, it seems I inadvertently grew a tree in a volcano," Eggman chuckled.
Sonic's snout crinkled. "And you caused a tsunami in the desert…"
"Oh, that was intentional. I heard you finally emerging from the Special Zone and thought I'd test my system's precision by giving you a homecoming gift. It wasn't perfect...but your reaction certainly was."
"And you intentionally made the forest mushrooms erupt three seasons early...?" Tails asked.
Eggman finally frowned. "No, I discovered that I overpowered and apparently mutated that defense mechanism the hard way. Believe me, I would have conquered the world by now if I hadn't been completely bedridden the majority of this extra time."
"He is not pleasant when he's sick," said Orbot, earning himself a dirty look.
"I would have traded sick-Sonic for him any day," Knuckles growled through his clenched teeth.
"You'd have just gotten us both dumped on you," Sonic snickered. "So robots, would you say you had to walk on eggshells around him?"
Cubot looked down at his base. "I can walk?"
"It was wretched," Eggman moaned. "I had a high fever, hurt all over, kept drifting in and out of consciousness, couldn't keep anything down, must have lost a lot of weight-"
"If it's any consolation," said Orbot, "I can't tell."
"Shut up. Anyway, before my condition utterly disintegrated, I had the foresight to put several things in motion, quite literally. Since I wasn't sure how long I'd be out, I set an algorithm to move the island randomly about the ocean. You can't create something out of nothing, so I siphoned much of the world's naturally-dispersed chaos energy into the Master Emerald. Not so much from any one spot as to destroy anything, mind you. I didn't want the military catching wind of my scheme before it was complete."
"Or while he was in his jammies," Cubot said.
"Or curled up on the lavatory floor," Orbot added.
"If you two don't shut up-"
"That's...that's not possible!" Knuckles interrupted, looking pained. "The Master Emerald is self-disciplined. There's no way it would accept and store that much power, and no way you could force it to do that!"
"I couldn't. But its Guardian could."
"What?"
"Luckily for me, the lot of you can't stop talking, like your lives depended on it. Granted, you yammer the least, Knuckles; but the little history lesson you and Tails held on my ship was highly beneficial."
Eggman deftly flicked a series of switches, and numerous clips of Knuckles' voice were strung together to form a mosaic of a sentence:
"Master Emerald-..as-...your-...Guardian-...I- ...beg-...you-..do-..what-..Eggman-..says..."
"That shouldn't work!" Tails and Knuckles hollered in unison.
"..and make-..him a-..banana-...split-...too..."
Eggman swatted Orbot's hand off the controls before resuming his monologue.
"Well, it only partially worked, and the Master Emerald heavily resisted the constant barrage of my amplifiers and your fractured pleas. It eventually started to break down into something akin to insanity, but what I truly needed was the key recitation, in your voice, with your deliberate intonation."
"The servers...are the seven Chaos…" Knuckles' voice chanted clearly.
The echidna went pale as the ground rumbled.
"So as you can see," Eggman continued, "this recording was the last thing I needed. I immediately played it back after obtaining it, and the difference in power and precise control was immense."
Knuckles couldn't find any words, and Sonic took over.
"Okay, so why are you giving us all this information now?"
Eggman smirked. "Because I've already won."
"And because the desire for adulation and validation is ubiquitous among all sentient lifeforms," Orbot continued, only to be whacked mercilessly.
"Well, Knuckles summarized it best," the doctor gloated, flipping his recording on again:
"...you proved that we're all failures."
"This...no, this doesn't make sense!" Tails cried. "I-I can understand that maybe you had some surveillance that survived inside the volcano proper, but you had no window of opportunity to install anything in the Palace itself either during or after your first visit…"
"That's correct."
"Then how?! If you didn't have an old surveillance system and you didn't build a new one, how could you possibly have followed us in the middle of the desert, a volcano, and the Palace, each time picking up Knuckles' voice with perfect clarity, almost like -"
Tails' train of thought visibly hit a brick wall at 600MPH. His hand shot out and seized Knuckles by the arm.
The echidna merely raised an eye ridge as the fox grabbed the cuff of his mitten and rolled it upwards.
There was a slender electronic device around his wrist.
Sonic blinked slowly. "Knuckles...how long has that been there?"
"The whole time," Tails answered, looking about ready to scream. "It's how he called us to the island in the first place, remember?"
"Pfft, no," Sonic scoffed. "That honestly feels like three years, two months, and twenty days ago at this point."
"...seriously, where is everyone getting these figures from?"
"I must applaud your invention, Tails," Eggman said. "That thing is practically indestructible."
"And you weren't joking when you insisted I'd forget I was even wearing it," Knuckles mumbled.
"But...but...but the communication and tracking channel is under heavy encryption," Tails continued to protest. "How could you possibly have hacked it that quickly?!"
Eggman smiled. "I didn't have to."
Tails' eyes widened. "Wait…"
Eggman lifted a familiar yellow gadget into view and smiled when the strangled squeak erupted from his smallest foe. "Finding this made my life much easier."
"Technically," Orbot said, "Cubot found it."
Eggman shoved his crimson contraption down. "Yes, and as his creator, the credit goes to me. The Miles Electric was of course password-protected, but I broke that down eventually."
The fox in question was hyperventilating.
"I must tell you, it's also quite the nifty contraption. In addition to all the lovely research on the ley lines of the Master Emerald's power, this thing even runs Bejouled. I hope you won't mind if I take some of your rare loot."
Sonic cringed. "Deep breaths, little bro."
Eggman swiped his finger across the screen. "From Pr0wL3r1121 to Ev1L5tache91...and, done! Your generosity knows no bounds, my friend."
"You...YOU STOLE MY HANDHELD!" Tails shrieked.
"I prefer to think of it as..." Eggman began.
"Borrowing. Indefinitely," played Tails' voice.
The fox glared at the doctor, his tails lashing like whips and his ears slicked all the way back as he bared his tiny fangs.
Sonic was tempted to remark on how cute his sidekick was when angered; his life was spared when the subject spoke first.
"Knuckles...give me the watch."
The addressee pulled the device off, then looked at it. "Shouldn't I destroy it?"
"Give it to me," the fox hissed.
"O-okay."
Tails swiped the watch, flipped a small switch off, then fastened it to his own wrist.
"So, how long have you had the Miles Electric?" Sonic asked.
"Since right after reaching the Master Emerald," Eggman replied. "You were in Marble Garden at the time."
"And you caused those tremors by taking it," Knuckles growled.
Sonic burst out laughing. "Wait-wait-wait, you've been listening to our banter this whole time since?"
"Yes, save for the few times I had to put Orbot on monitor duty to maintain my sanity. I knew you three constituted a wind orchestra, but, for the love of Viterbi, I didn't realize quite how bad it was. I did at least enjoy how hypocritically fond Knuckles is of calling you an idiot."
Knuckles raised an eye ridge. "I don't do it that much…"
"I counted at least ten times," Orbot supplied.
"You also couldn't stop bickering," Eggman added. "Sometimes I think you're your own worst enemies."
"Ha!" Sonic exclaimed. "You just admitted that as long as we work together, you can't stop us."
"Did you have to be cheesy about it?" Knuckles groaned.
"Yes, 'cause now I want pizza."
"Focus, idiot!"
"Eleven," said Orbot.
Knuckles let off an enraged growl.
"Oooh, feel free to wallop him again," Eggman taunted. "It was a tragedy that I only got audio last time."
The echidna refocused. "Eggman, enough of these games! What did you do to me!?"
"As in, why'd you lose your sanity? I assume that was the result of my overpowering the Master Emerald while you were touching a hotspot. I can't say I did it on purpose but it was certainly a welcome side effect."
"That...that doesn't explain...why can't I sense anything properly? What is wrong with-"
"Oh, there's nothing wrong with you."
Knuckles blinked. "...what?"
"Granted, you're a helpless fool, a simpleton, and a meathead...but there's nothing wrong with your Emerald sense."
"How is that possible?!"
"It's working fine; it's just hopelessly overwhelmed. After all, you're trying to 'locate' an object that's everywhere."
"And the Chaos Emeralds?"
"There's nothing wrong with them either. You're just so well-attuned to the Master Emerald that everything else is getting drowned out for you, which isn't a problem Sonic has. But just in case you had any ideas of completing your collection…" Eggman began, then held a luminescent gray gem up to the screen. "...it's too late."
"How did you get that?" Tails asked.
"The same way you got the yellow one," Eggman answered as he shoved the Chaos Emerald back inside one of his coat pockets. "I simply picked it up off the ground after it left the Special Zone."
Knuckles held a hand to his head. "What...why...how…"
"So," Sonic said, "you wanna explain exactly what the Zone was doing besides trying desperately to beat me at the Hot Mess Pageant?"
"Ha! Frankly, I haven't the foggiest idea what happened to you three in there. I merely decided to escalate my assault on the Master Emerald's defenses once you entered, hoping to give you a good time in the process. Apparently it finally decided to eject you as well as the remaining Chaos Emeralds, but it sounds like you had fun before that happened."
Sonic snorted. "Oh yeah, it was a real blast."
"Then I consider myself successful."
"Even though it was an accident," Orbot supplied.
"That does it!" Eggman snapped. He pressed a button on Orbot's back, and the blue glow on the robot's 'mouth' disappeared. "I want you to spend the next few minutes thinking very hard about how to use your voice box when you are able to again."
He turned back to the heroes. "Now, where was I?"
"You were gloating," Sonic deadpanned.
"It's called exposition, hedgehog. You clearly needed a recap. Now, I hardly expect you to have absorbed all that, but suffice it to say-"
"Okay, we boarded the island and fell in a pit 'cause we got into a tussle, then you barged in and yoinked our stuff, caused the island to throw a hissy fit, went psycho-stalker on us with our own equipment, crashed the ol' Launch Base to pick up some parts and hack together a ship, fed the Master Emerald way too much power, which gave Knuckles sensory overload and made the island throw a whole bunch more tantrums, one of which I inhaled, then you accidentally opened a portal to the Special Zone, spent the next few weeks joyriding the island across the ocean and overclocking the Master Emerald with reckless abandon again while we were inside it, eventually got us and the last three Chaos Emeralds barfed out in random joints, then used Knuckles' chant just now to gain the last bit of control you needed. Did I miss anything?"
Eggman's head tilted. "...no actually, you were fairly comprehensive."
"Well, that explains a lot," Sonic said, shrugging.
"Wait! No, there's another mystery here," Tails interjected. "Eggman, did you really just say it took you weeks to recover from your poisoning?"
Eggman scowled. "I did. That was the first breakfast I was actually looking forward to, and you hooligans ruined it for me."
"Hooligan. Singular," Sonic laughed.
"You didn't seem that bad when we saw you on the airship…" Tails mused.
"One, I was heavily dosed on coffee and the prescription painkillers I keep for the migraines your lovely troupe regularly gifts me like cats bringing carcasses to a doorstep…"
Eggman paused for a moment to recover his composure.
"...and two, it got much worse before it got better."
"It did get worse...I knew it! But...that still doesn't make sense. You had a lower dosage, yet Sonic didn't even take a day to recover fully."
"Are those oversized ears merely for show, fox boy? I also just said you spent weeks in the Special Zone."
"Not from our perspective we didn't," Tails insisted. "The bruise on his face hasn't healed at all."
"Well, I…" Eggman said, trailing off. "...his metabolism?"
"That's what I was forced to conclude, but after your story, it's bothering me all over again. He went from literally collapsing in pain to being completely fine over the course of minutes."
Eggman stared at Sonic. "How in the world did you do that?"
The hedgehog shrugged. "Beats me."
Eggman frowned and turned to his robots. "Did Sonic truly take a second mushroom hit when I took my first?"
Orbot pointed to his own mouth.
Eggman shut the robot's timeout off.
"You both broke into coughing fits when the Eggmobile crashed. It was right before...actually, if you like, we can review the-"
"Nevermind," Eggman interrupted quickly, turning the snooze back on.
"You see why this is bothering me, right?" Tails piped up.
Eggman hesitated, then tossed his hands. "Well, how should I know why fate loathes me so much? You're conveniently neglecting that he's young and fit and superpowered, and I'm significantly less so on all counts, let alone being a different species altogether. Now can we-"
"You conveniently neglected one thing yourself," Sonic said. "Where's Cyan?"
"A friend of yours?" Eggman sneered.
Sonic smirked. "Yeah, he's the last Chaos Emerald. We have five. You have one."
"I have it," Eggman replied quickly.
"Twelve!" Cubot chirped.
"Prove it," Sonic challenged.
Eggman paused, and then scowled.
"Ha! You don't have it. You're here looking for it. It's nearby."
"None of that matters. You can't complete your set. Now stop stalling and say hello to your doom."
The TV shut off and began flying up and away, only to be smashed by an airborne rock.
The angry red baseball pitcher then leaned down to the teleporter they'd used, configuring its rings until it retracted itself underground.
He suddenly bolted upright with a gasp.
Tails turned in concern. "What's wrong?"
"The Master Emerald's power just surged again..." Knuckles breathed.
"Is it affecting you?" Sonic quickly asked.
"No...I'm...I don't think I'm the target this time. But now I understand what he meant. The Master's power is everywhere, and it's growing."
Sonic looked around. "That whole thing about our doom was kinda anticlimactic, though."
The entire forest erupted into flames.
"Ah."
"This way," Knuckles directed, leading the group in a brisk jog.
As they ran in silence, Tails grabbed some large unburned palm leaves and began tightly wrapping them around his Emerald detector.
Knuckles, meanwhile, wrapped a hand around Sonic's nearest arm.
"Wh-?" the hedgehog started, glancing carefully at Knuckles' face.
The echidna, however, seemed to maintain an acceptable level of inner rage as he spoke calmly.
"Don't panic."
"Why would I pan-…no no NO it's just a TEENY LITTLE FIRE-" Sonic shrieked as Knuckles lifted him off his feet.
"And don't struggle either," Knuckles instructed, moments before jumping off a ledge and into a rushing river with the yowling cargo in his arms.
The team was swept down the river, Tails holding up his wrapped detector and Knuckles holding up a clingy spikeball. After several moments of traveling through hollow tunnels, they were launched off the edge of a waterfall.
Tails burst into flight and looked around, locating his teammates just as Knuckles landed feet-first in the shallow pool below. Submerged up to his chest and wearing a hyperventilating blue shower cap, the echidna waded to the shore.
The team reunited as Tails unwrapped his detector, verifying with a relieved sigh that it hadn't gotten dangerously wet.
Similarly, Sonic was the driest of the critter trio, but he dismounted Knuckles' head with obvious displeasure and started to shake himself off anyway. Then he abruptly stopped, his grimace taking on an extra flavor of discomfort.
Knuckles looked up at the isolated forest fire, and his eyes narrowed. "Eggman's crossed the line."
"Yeah," Tails said. "We have to rise to the occasion. I'm going to do my best to pay more attention to the big picture from now on."
"And I'm going to focus my anger appropriately," Knuckles growled.
"And I'm, uh..." Sonic mumbled, "are we still doing that 'full and honest disclosure' thingy?"
The other two turned to stare at him.
"Yes..." Tails answered with growing apprehension.
Sonic pointed to the progressively darkening, swelling bruise on his torso. "I'm...starting to think Eggman mighta been right about this," he admitted.
Knuckles cringed. "Do you need to stop and rest somewhere?"
"We can't afford that luxury right now. I'll just try to avoid taking any hard hits. And...you can try to avoid throwing me at things."
"Understood."
"So what's our game plan?" Tails mused. "We can try to retreat and recuperate, attack him directly, find the Master Emerald, or find the cyan Emerald."
"Let's not run away," Sonic said, glancing at the burning forest and the likewise seething echidna. "We can't let this continue."
"Yeah, but you're injured and we're all worn," Tails replied. "Knuckles, you can't actually pinpoint any of the Emeralds still? And you can't heal Sonic with the Chaos Emeralds we have?"
"Rrgh. No."
"Then our best bet might be to search for the cyan Emerald before Eggman gets it. Sonic will heal himself if he has all of them."
"Would love to," Sonic said, "but Morty Maxwell over there kinda has the gray one."
Tails nodded. "We'd have to try and work around that."
"What, like, we get Cyan and just blitz Eggman close enough to unite with Gray?"
"Maybe…" Tails replied thoughtfully. "Or...hm. Yeah, let's try that."
"Alright," Knuckles said as they began jogging together along the nearest open path. "Are you picking up any Chaos Emeralds?"
"No…" Tails answered. "The Master Emerald is too noisy for my detector now too. But like before, I can hear the Emeralds we have, so if we get close enough to either of the other two, I should be able to notice. I hope. We're just trying to choose the least-terrible option at this point…"
"No worries, we've got this," Sonic assured him.
"If we're careful, alert, and take this seriously," Knuckles added with a grim determination.
Sonic grinned. "Sure, Eeyore."
The team made it to the top of a small hill and looked around. At the bottom of the hill was a thick forest filled with trees. The sky was sunny with some cloudiness, the naturally-occuring white hue mingling with a dark tint from the distant forest fire's smoke. Some distance above them resided a number of mystically-floating isles.
The ocean was visible on the horizon, and while the team was not on the outskirts of the island's overall footprint, its irregular shape provided for multiple concave cliff faces that were much nearer to its center. A tumble off any of these cliffs would ultimately provide a lengthy drop to the ocean anyway.
"So, where to?" Sonic asked.
"Ah, careful!" Tails said, pointing.
A piece of machinery was sticking from the nearby ground like a metal tulip, the box on its top covered with a speaker-like grille.
"Hi Eggman!" Sonic called into it. There was no response.
"Well, maybe he's not using it, but you know…" Tails said vaguely.
"Yes, I know," Knuckles replied. He led his friends into an aimless forward walk past it.
The trio whipped around at a sudden burst of music in the air. After a brief intro, the clip of Sonic's scream, now auto-tuned, provided the melody to the Green Hill Zone theme song.
The heroes stared silently for about five seconds. Then Sonic cracked up.
"Orbot!" Eggman's voice bellowed after the music was abruptly cut short. "How many times must I tell you, we're not here to entertain them!"
"Well, studies have shown that laughter can be a natural coping mechanism for extreme horror."
"Dude, that's amazing! Can we make it my ringtone?!"
"No!" Eggman barked.
"I was asking Orbot!"
"I own the copyright!"
"It's my voice!"
"Actually…" mused Tails, "it's still his intellectual property since he created the recording..."
"Whose side are you on?" Sonic protested.
"The winning side," Eggman gloated.
"But you recorded him without his consent," Orbot chimed in. "Besides, it's not unprecedented for samples in music to fall under fair use if-"
An abrupt click ended Orbot's exposition.
Eggman cleared his throat. "As I was saying-"
Knuckles dropped a six-hundred-pound boulder on the voice box.
"I was enjoying that," Sonic pouted.
"My point exactly," Knuckles fired back.
"Does it fall under maritime law...?" Tails muttered.
Knuckles frowned. "What?"
"It governs floating...oh! The floating isles," Tails said, pointing in the air. "Is it possible the cyan Emerald is up in one of them?"
"The Sky Sanctuary...? It's possible. Are you hearing it?"
"No, but it might be worth visiting and searching it anyway. Hopefully the distance from the island's surface will help reduce the Master Emerald's noise. Or maybe we can locate Eggman visually."
"No worse than running around aimlessly down here." Sonic agreed. "But how do we get up there? Looks too high to fly."
"Normally I'd take the teleporters but…" Knuckles began thoughtfully, then nodded. "I have an idea."
The other two followed him as he ran down to the nearest forest, weaving between ferns, vines, and palm trees as the foliage thickened.
He screeched to a halt at the beginning of a clearing and looked below.
At the center of the clearing was a moss-covered mound with a familiar circular apparatus poking out of it. And evidently, blue machinery well enough resembled a watering hole to attract an entire serengeti's worth of robotic animals.
Sonic started to adjust the cuffs on his gloves, but Knuckles threw a halting gesture at him.
"You're hurt. Sit this out."
"But-"
"If it turns out we truly can't handle this, then you can intervene," Tails bargained.
"Ugggh. Fine."
Knuckles and Tails nodded at each other, then charged into the clearing, leaving a moping Sonic behind.
Knuckles threw a midsize boulder at the largest cluster of robots, drawing their attention towards himself. Tails flew up and attacked several tree-hanging monkey robots, preventing them from lobbing coconut bombs at the echidna as he threw flurries of punches at the land robots.
Once there was a lull in the battle, Knuckles headed towards the mound in the center, digging and pulling roots off the spinning-top vehicle lodged in the ground.
"So they aren't only in Marble Garden, then?" Tails asked, keeping watch.
"A few of them are scattered around for emergencies like this," Knuckles explained.
"Oh yeah, come to think of - look out!"
The two heroes split apart to avoid a spikeball launched in their direction. Then they looked up to see another horde of robot animals charge down the hill.
Knuckles sighed and picked up a downed tree trunk. "Funnel them."
Tails grabbed several palm branches and flew over to the robots. He waved his cargo like a hummingbird traffic cop to get the robots' attention before zooming over Knuckles' head with the enemies in hot pursuit.
Knuckles swung the trunk several times like a toddler in a batting cage to dispatch the enemies en masse. Then he tossed it aside and got back to the spinning top.
Tails helped the echidna with unburying the top for a few more moments before suddenly gasping and yanking him behind a rock.
Shrapnel from a nearby explosion shot over their heads. Once the air cleared, they looked over the rock to see yet another stampede coming down the hill as though a Black Friday doorbuster sale had just begun.
Knuckles growled and picked up an even larger tree trunk.
There was a sudden rumbling in the ground.
"Another earthquake?" Tails cried.
The rumbling intensified and culminated in a large robotic rhinoceros crashing through a rock wall and surrounding brush before bowling over several robots.
"YEEEEE-HAW," hollered its rider.
"No," Knuckles sighed, "just Hurricane Sonic."
The echidna punched one group of robots, kicked another group into the path of the rampaging rhino, then finished yanking the top from the ground and rejoined Tails.
The charging robot gained two hitchhikers and a blue vehicle during its next pass.
The echidna gave the bus driver a dirty look. "What part of 'sit this out' did you not understand?"
"I am sitting," Sonic shot back, cheekily pointing to his own rump.
"You're bouncing," Knuckles argued, also pointing with his free hand.
While the grown heroes were bickering over the state of Sonic's hindquarters, a monkey robot landed on the rhinoceros. It reared its arm back, ready to throw a small bomb.
Tails simply yanked the bomb out of its hand and booted it off the ride.
Soon after, the robot rhino crashed its way out of the forest. The team leapt off its back moments before it careened off a cliff.
"Bye, Rataxes!" Sonic called.
Knuckles set the spinning top flat on the ground. "I'll lead."
The heroes jumped on the vehicle, nodded at each other, then began running at the same speed. The top took off flying, and soon its riders were in the foggy mixture of clouds and faint smoke from the forest fire below.
"Wow," Tails said, looking around. "This is actually rather idyllic when you're not actively running for your life."
"See," Knuckles said, eyeballing Sonic. "Slow and steady. You can actually control these things if you move them carefully."
Sonic snorted. "He's telling me how to run. Do I tell you how to punch things, Rocky?"
"You should if my punching got so aimless that I started wrecking others' vehic-"
"H-hey!" Tails yelped.
The fox and hedgehog jumped down to a nearby floor as the top suddenly approached a flat wall. Knuckles tried to steer the vehicle out of the way, but was unable to do so before impact.
He, and the battered cap, landed next to his friends. "What!?"
The fog began to clear, verifying that the heroes were now on one of the small floating isles above the large island's surface. In front of them stood a wall of an ancient structure made of off-white cement. Grass and moss had overtaken much of the pale brick ground, while curly vines grew up the structure itself, cascading off its sides as though it was observing No-Shave November on a year-round basis.
"Thanks for the aiming lesson," Sonic said. "Perhaps someday I too can hit the broad side of a barn."
"I don't...what..." Knuckles sputtered. "Why is it floating so low!?"
"Could Eggman have made it move with the Master Emerald?" Tails mused.
"...yes," Knuckles replied. "But why would he do that?"
"If he was-ah!" Tails started.
The fox pulled out his detector and fidgeted with his dials while pressing one ear against the tiny speaker.
"It's still noisy, but I think it's up here!"
The Sky Sanctuary was impressively large, if only for the way its numerous floating isles were scattered and spread among the clouds. The isle the team had landed on was roughly in its center, judging by the assortment of buildings they could see in all directions and the handful of narrow stone paths leaving in outward radials.
And like everything else they'd seen recently, it would have been gorgeous if there weren't bigger issues at hand. Such as the legions of Egg-Robos beginning to swarm the skies, jetpacks blazing and laser cannons drawn.
Knuckles growled.
"So," Sonic began, "is Eggman renting out laser tag for his next birthday?"
Tails watched the majority of the robots split apart and fly to the nearby structures.
"They're looking for the Chaos Emerald too!" he gasped.
"We have to find it first," Knuckles said as he headed towards the structure's entrance. "I'm taking this building. Tails, you take the next one."
"And-" Sonic began, before the echidna interrupted him.
"You're avoiding unnecessary fights."
"Dude, this is the endgame. We can't spare-"
"So be a lookout. Red Emerald," Knuckles said, holding a hand out towards Tails.
"Just, uh, keep tabs on the hordes for us, please," Tails attempted to bargain with Sonic while tossing the requested item to Knuckles. "If you see them swarming towards one spot or retreating with the cyan Emerald, holler and let us know."
"Right, because hollering is all I'm good at," Sonic replied sarcastically, stopping to watch his sidekick jump off a side ledge and take flight towards a nearby building.
Now inside the closest structure, Knuckles pulled a lever, dropping a rock door between himself and Sonic.
"Wh-…I'm not made of glass, Mom!" the latter hollered.
The door ignored him.
Groaning in irritation, Sonic looked down at a thick glass tile beneath his feet and raised an eye ridge.
XXX
Knuckles ran through the naturally-lit building, holding out the red and purple Emeralds. They were glowing from proximity to each other, but didn't seem to be strongly reacting to anything else nearby.
An Egg-Robo flew in to intercept him. He smashed it against the nearest wall without breaking stride.
He exited through the nearest arch, jumping over a fallen pillar, and nearly tripping on a grounded vine when one glance at the gems had lasted a little too long. Then, after recovering his balance and punching another robot into oblivion, he took off towards the next floating structure.
The buildings were on different floating isles with independent altitudes, but the narrow, mossy walkway under his feet adjusted itself accordingly. Its segments floated smoothly, rearranging in mid-air to maintain a straight path between structures.
The echidna sneaked a few quick glances at the Emeralds between hops up the segments, then noticed a commotion in the distance.
Tails ran out of a building nearby, pulling and releasing an elastic vine slingshot to launch a rock at an Egg-Robo that had been following him. Then he sprinted down a similar walkway, eventually converging upon the same building Knuckles had.
"Did you find anything?" Tails asked.
"Not that I could tell," Knuckles said.
They entered the structure and ran down the glass ramp spiraling along the inner wall. The center of the building was rather hollow, and its bottomless floor provided an open view to the clouds below.
Tails pressed his ear against his detector and shook his head. "How many more structures are there?"
"A lot," Knuckles answered.
"There are a lot of robots too," Tails said with a frown. "They're going to divide and search the structures before we can."
"Then we'll have to keep them together," the echidna said, placing the Emeralds back in his spatially-impossible inventory.
Tails looked at his device. "Maybe I can create some sort of beacon for them…"
Knuckles nodded and charged forward to destroy the small number of robots entering the building from one of its open archways.
Tails pulled out his multi-tool to unscrew his detector's front panel, but both he and Knuckles soon paused at the sound of a nearby ruckus in the sky.
They looked at each other, then ran to the nearest window to peer out.
Sonic had somehow lassoed two Egg-Robos together with a group of vines. One foot on each machine's back and his left arm holding the chariot's reins, he soared through the skies, attempting to aim his robots' misfiring cannons at the other flying enemies. A large pane of glass had been strapped to his left elbow, which he periodically swung to deflect laser shots aimed back at him.
"This indeterminate late-ish morning hour, we ride!" he bellowed, his voice echoing like thunder.
Tails frowned as the contraption zoomed past. "I'm not sure that counts as a low-impact activity either."
Knuckles leaned out the window, shaking his fist like an octogenarian rudely awoken from his 1PM nap.
"You're supposed to be the lookout!"
"I am looking out!"
The echidna moaned as he pinched the bridge of his snout.
"Knuckles...I know you feel bad about hurting him," Tails said, "but I don't think we can keep him completely out of this."
"Pew pew pew!" Sonic hooted to punctuate the aimless firing.
"You're right," Knuckles conceded. "Sonic, in here!"
The hedgehog turned his chariot around and flew it through the nearest archway, jumping off just before crashing it next to his friends. He shot Knuckles a sassy grin.
"So, I'm finally cool enough to rejoin the club?"
"Only if you follow club rules," Knuckles deadpanned.
"We need to group them so we can take them all out," Tails explained.
Sonic gestured to one of the downed robots. "Meaning I should press this giant red 'PANIC' button on its back?"
"You'd do it regardless, but...actu-"
Sonic pressed the button. A loud alarm sounded, and the building was swarmed by Egg-Robos just in time for Cyber Monday.
"Jackpot!" he cheered.
"Club rules: you're taking a backseat," Knuckles said.
"...ouch. Your selective memory is something else," Sonic chuckled. "And how am I gonna do that?"
Knuckles ripped the laser cannon off a defunct robot and handed it to him.
Sonic stared at it. "Me? I don't use-"
"It's just an energy beam cannon," Tails interrupted quickly as Knuckles grabbed the beacon robot and ran down the glass spiral to center the fight at a lower level.
"Bro. It's totally a-"
"Cannon," Tails interrupted again, bracing as a small subset of robots headed towards them.
"Riiight," Sonic said dryly as he gave it a once-over. "So how does one use this cannon?"
"Stop looking into the barrel, point it at the bad guys, shoot, and mind the-"
A robot fired a laser shot at them. Sonic jumped forward and deflected it with the glass pane on his left elbow, then fired the cannon with his right hand.
He managed to hit the offending robot. He also managed to hit his bruised side with his right elbow.
"...the recoil," Tails finished, wincing.
Sonic let off a strangled growl while passing the weapon to his other hand.
A larger group of robots began to descend on the two. Tails charged forward to attack directly.
Both his friends now deep in the fray, the lone cannonslinger stayed back, calling out support and picking off the odd robot that strayed from the brawl. When he could hit them.
"Watch it!" Knuckles barked from across the room after one shot soared over his head like a pop culture reference.
"Sorry!" Sonic called back.
Knuckles ducked under another stray laser shot. "And you insulted my aim?"
"I'm using my left hand, okay?!"
"Less excuses, more destruction!"
"Coming right up!" Sonic replied, whirling around to deflect more shots with his shield.
Tails flew down to join Knuckles, where the bulk of robots had congregated. After several moments of hubbub, mayhem, and wirelessly-submitted IT tickets, the building wall beside them started to crumble.
"Look out!" Sonic yelled.
Heeding the warning, Tails picked Knuckles up and flew him backwards away from the event. The collapsing wall destroyed the platform they'd been on, so the fox opted to bring his passenger outside through the new hole.
Now alone in the building with the downward slope broken, Sonic looked around until he saw a rope zipline above him, headed outside through an open window above the destruction zone.
"Bingo."
Sonic took a running start, then jumped up to the rope, hooking onto it with his left leg. Hanging upside-down while traveling along the line, he continued to fire the cannon left-handed as the scene outside came into view.
He hit several more robots and everything else in the area before dropping down, flipping to land primarily on his left foot next to his battling friends.
Still shooting and deflecting, Sonic threw a right-handed point at the innumerable laser marks on the surrounding architecture. "Boy, talk about demolition derby."
"Half of that was you," Tails replied after knocking a robot down.
"Yeesh, how does Shadow do this?"
Knuckles jumped backwards to avoid the collapse of a large stone column. "He aims!"
With the surrounding robots soon destroyed, another large group of Egg-Robos began to fly in from the distance.
"Funnel," Knuckles directed again, picking up the fallen column and charging ahead.
Tails grabbed the nearest undamaged cannon. "Alright, this way you don't have to hit them."
Using both arms, the fox quickly fired off a set of well-aimed shots around the perimeter of the approaching horde, forcing them to group more tightly as they headed towards Knuckles. Sonic followed his sidekick's lead.
Once the swarm was close enough, Knuckles swung the pillar in a circular motion, smashing the entire group within a few seconds.
Sonic and Tails jogged down to join him as he set the pillar down. There were no intact robots in sight.
"Nice job, team," Sonic said, baton-twirling his cannon around. "I could almost get used to-"
Knuckles swiped the weapon out of Sonic's hand, crushed it, and threw it off the cliff.
"Yeah okay. Tails, hear anything?"
"It's...I think we're closer than we were when we flew up," the fox responded, pointing to a pair of structures in the distance. "That way, maybe…"
The team jogged to the end of the platform they were on, then Knuckles grabbed his friends in one arm and selected the appropriate zipline with his free hand.
They landed in a small garden next to one of the buildings, a slender tower with a mossy walkway spiraling up its outer wall.
"Are we getting closer?" Sonic asked.
"Yeah!" Tails confirmed excitedly.
They jogged in silence up the walkway, Knuckles carrying a technology-distracted fox in the arm closest to the building.
"I don't think it's in this one," Tails said once they reached the top.
"Okay, try the next one," Sonic directed, pointing at the walkway's extension to the nearby isle/structure combo meal.
They ran forward on the long, narrow path, Tails' older friends keeping him boxed in to prevent him from falling.
"Y-yeah, I think it's…"
The team stopped at the sound of a boom in the distance.
Tails' ears twitched. "What's that hissing noi-"
Sonic abruptly grabbed his friends and started sprinting.
A missile struck the walkway behind the heroes, shattering it and launching them separately into the open sky.
Knuckles dove down to catch Sonic, then fanned his dreadlocks to slow their descent until Tails reached them and finished the job.
They landed on a grassy patch on the island's surface. One of the island's cliff edges was nearby with a vertical drop towards the ocean. More cliffs towered over the team from all other sides, the trees at their tops just visible from where they stood.
A shadow moved to cover the team from above.
"Hello, rodents. How did you like my fireworks display?"
Sonic looked up and smirked. "You with the missiles. Always you with the missiles."
"There are plenty more where that came from," Eggman announced bombastically, flying his vehicle out of the direct sunlight and into full view.
The machine appeared to have been crafted from the wrecked Eggmobile, but was about twice as large and infinitely less spherical. Pockmarks and pronged cables haphazardly lined its amorphous surface volume, waving slowly as it hovered above the heroes.
Sonic cocked his head. "Nice blob doohickey. Whatcha call it?"
"This, hedgehog...is the Egg Amoeba."
"The... Egg What-Now?"
"Amoeba," repeated the long-suffering villain.
"Tails, what in the gluten-free snickerdoodle is an amoeba?"
"Um, it's a single-cell organism."
"Like Eggman's brain?"
"Haa-" Orbot began, then thought better of it. "...ardly. The doctor has at least five brain cells."
Eggman smacked his robot for the umpteenth time. "It took orders of magnitude greater than that to come up with a name this clever!"
"Is it clever?" Sonic asked Tails.
"Uh, well, my microbiology is somewhat lacking and I know there are multiple types, but I most often hear of amoebae in the context of them acting as parasites and giving their hosts gastric distress..."
"So like...a really spoiled omelette?" Sonic inferred, then looked back up at the doctor. "Gross, dude; I really woulda thought you were sick of all the barfy stuff by now."
Eggman frowned. "That's not the point."
"And why you gotta pull big names out of a dictionary? I mean, it totally just looks like that time Vector lost a potato behind his sofa and it'd grown its own coral reef by the time he noticed it. Eating that would probably make you wicked barfy too."
"Not. The. Point."
"So what is? 'cause that thing looks way too squishy to have any points."
"Why don't I show you?"
"What, ya finally growing a spine and challenging us directly?"
"Sure. See you!"
So saying, the doctor turned and flew his craft above and over the nearest cliff.
Sonic barked out a laugh and gave chase, bounding up the cliffside ledges as Knuckles climbed and Tails flew.
The hedgehog made it to the top first and watched the craft disappear into a thick, rocky forest.
"Don't let him out of sight," Knuckles called from below.
"But be careful!" Tails added.
"Got it!"
Sonic started sprinting into the forest, when the ground beneath him began inexplicably moving sideways. He raised an eye ridge as he continued to run.
"Today's lesson: circular geometry," Eggman's voice projected. "I can rotate the island with the central static point at my precise location."
"Now you're just showing off," Sonic called back. He ducked under a tree branch, stumbling forwards as he injected sideways movement into his run to match the increasing whirling of the terrain.
A clearing in the center began to come into view. Eggman had docked his blobular hovercraft at the bottom of a larger, silo-like structure. The base of the structure was rotating to keep it in a constant orientation, while a hefty glass windshield near the top provided a view to a spacious control room in which the doctor and his lackeys resided.
Eggman watched the hedgehog slowly gain ground for a few moments until they were able to lock eyes with each other from a distance. Then he smiled and hit a button.
The ground under Sonic suddenly jerked upwards, throwing him a few meters in the air. Metallic tentacles emerged from the building and whipped towards the airborne hedgehog. He twisted to successfully avoid the attack, but a tree branch clipped him instead. He grunted in pain, stumbling backwards when he was unable to land steadily.
The centrifugal force picking up, Sonic continued to tumble back on the rough terrain until he grabbed a bough with his right arm. The whiplash stretched his injured side out and he let off another cry before losing his grip.
Now completely out of control, Sonic could only allow himself to fly backwards, bracing himself to minimize injury from the percussive nature encounters on the way. He soon found himself careening towards a cliff, but before he could fly off completely, a large mitten grabbed him.
Taking shelter from the rotating terrain and flying debris in a small rock crevice, Knuckles pulled Sonic down, next to himself and Tails.
"So, I don't actually got this," Sonic admitted, his voice thick with pain.
Tails peeked over the rock and stared forward. "I might..."
Sonic gave him a stern look. "The Injury King title is mine, you hear me?"
"Loud and clear."
"Then you've totally got this."
Carefully repositioning his limbs to hold both himself and Sonic in place, Knuckles wrapped one hand around Tails' torso.
"There's a clearing in the center over there," Sonic informed them. "He's got a control tower thingy with a big glass window. And metal whips."
"Ready?" asked Knuckles.
The fox nodded.
Knuckles popped himself up for a brief moment and threw the fluffy javelin hard.
The fox's tails erupted into motion, maintaining the low flight above the whirling earth. He spent several moments weaving between trees, dodging trunks, branches, and boulders.
Tails finally passed the terrain to reach the clearing that housed Eggman's machinery.
The doctor was unfazed. "You can't break my glass, fool!"
Tails' only response was to pull out a monkey bomb and throw it into the windshield in question, causing a small crack.
Eggman growled and leaned forward. The metallic tentacles emerged from the building.
"Is that all you've got!?"
Tails executed a 180 to avoid the new hazard. During his loop back, he pulled out his detector and flipped a switch. Then as he approached the tower again, he removed the green Emerald and threw the detector towards the same spot on the windshield. It exploded on impact, enlarging the crack.
"You pesky little-!"
Tails reached the glass and rammed into it feet-first. The crack widened but didn't yield. The fox kicked off the glass and flew straight up to avoid the lashes of the metallic tentacles.
He flew just out of reach, and turned to lock eyes with Eggman. He let out a small puff.
The doctor leered back. "Brilliant. You're out of options. So, now what are you going to do?"
"Maybe stop asking that question?" Orbot suggested.
His hands now on autopilot, Eggman hit Orbot's snooze button again.
Tails charged again, and the tentacles whipped towards him. Twisting to dodge them, he pulled back the cuff of his glove and pressed a rapid series of buttons on the watch he was wearing.
"And what was that supposed to accomplish?" Eggman sneered as the fox continued to approach.
"Oooh, pretty lights!" squealed Cubot, pointing to the beeping, flashing Miles Electric on the table besides his master.
Eggman picked it up, looked at the screen, and with a startled yelp, flung it forward.
As he soared towards the machine, Tails slapped one more button on his watch, and the Miles Electric exploded next to the windshield.
The fox again slammed his feet into the now-badly-cracked glass, this time creating a small hole he passed through.
He landed in the smoke-filled room to the sound of Eggman coughing. Then he turned to the control panel and began engaging the levers.
"Oh no you don't!" Eggman roared, shoving Tails out of the way.
Tails merely shoved back and continued messing with the controls.
Still coughing, Eggman pulled a taser from a coat pocket, flicked it on, and ran towards Tails.
The fox dodged towards the panel and kicked the oversized gut as it passed by, sending the doctor down the nearest stairs. He pulled one more lever, looked at the monitors, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Eggman ran up the stairs again.
"I'll teach you to mess with my-"
Tails whirled around and glared at the approaching doctor, who skidded to a halt, stared for a second, then shrieked and started running away.
Shortly thereafter, a tiny creature a fraction of his weight dived into him, knocking him to the floor. Chaos reigned for a few moments in the blindingly smoky region before the doctor located a switch on his jacket, electrifying it. Tails yelped in pain as he was thrown a few feet backwards.
The fox scrambled upright and glared at the doctor again, who was standing half-clouded, and fully-electrified.
"I want you to remember something, whelp. A true engineer is always prepared."
Tails straightened himself and smirked. "Correct, I am."
The doctor hesitated.
"Careful," the fox said. "He's electrified."
"No biggie…"
Eggman whirled around, his mustache now rather voluminous.
"…I'm sure we can work around it," Sonic finished.
"Now stand down before we make your life miserable," Knuckles growled.
"Er," squeaked the doctor, looking increasingly pale as the trio slowly closed in on him. "You'd all probably like to know about the ineffable haberdashery."
Sonic raised an eye ridge. "The what?"
There was a pause, after which Eggman opted to directly address the ceiling.
"I said, the ineffable haberdashery!"
"Self-destruct sequence activated," spoke a pleasant voice as the entire room lit red.
The heroes looked up for a brief moment, during which Eggman took off running towards a nearby door.
"5…"
Sonic darted in front of Eggman, causing him to skid to a stop.
"4…"
Knuckles caught up to the doctor and attempted to grab him, but was blown backwards by the shock from his jacket.
"3…"
Eggman shrieked and ran, narrowly avoiding the metal floor panel thrown at him in retaliation.
"2…"
Sonic sprinted to Knuckles, pulling him off the ground before beelining towards Tails.
"1…"
The hatch behind Eggman closed shut and he engaged the levers in his hoverpod.
"0…"
The Egg Amoeba shot away from the tower.
"Come back again soon!"
The tower exploded.
Eggman lurched forward against his dashboard before leveling a glare at the two robots cozily strapped in beside him.
"Thanks for the assistance back there," he snarled as he navigated the hoverpod through the now-calm forest.
"What's assistance? Is it edible?" Cubot asked.
Eggman growled as he brushed himself off. Then he patted the gem in his coat pocket, and breathed a sigh of relief.
Orbot turned to look at him, raised a finger, then shrugged.
Eggman flew ahead through the forest, reaching the cliffside plain the heroes had fallen to earlier. To his surprise, they had returned to that very spot as well. Sonic exchanged a word with Tails before initiating a boisterous left-handed fist bump.
"Well, nice job," the doctor announced, getting the team's attention. "You destroyed exactly one of my many control bases here. And accomplished nothing else besides wearing yourselves out further."
"And making you scramble like a spooked ostrich," Sonic added.
"I'm not the only one who had to scramble," Eggman fired back.
"You might be the only one who laid an egg, though."
"At least I'm fully intact. Despite your misplaced enthusiasm, I note your right hand is no longer leaving that hideously-discolored side of yours."
Tails smiled. "He's just giving himself a hug for a job well done."
"Hug yourself too," Sonic told his sidekick. "I'm not the one who totally outfoxed him just now."
"Okay!" Tails answered cheerfully, wrapping his namesakes around himself.
Eggman frowned. "What is this, group therapy? You realize you haven't won, right?"
"Even so," Knuckles answered, now also smiling. "The look on your face when we cornered you was priceless."
The doctor stiffened. "What, you too?"
"I can't help it. You're hilarious, you know," Knuckles said with a shrug.
"What's going…" Eggman began, then straightened himself. "Really, children. This must be the most pitiful stalling attempt I've ever seen. Are you just trying to delay your demise? Or distract me from-"
He trailed off and looked past the group. One of the Sanctuary's floating isles was slowly lowering itself not far from the cliffside.
"Oh, now I understand. You did more with my controls than just stop the island's rotation," Eggman said, then pointed to the large white building on the isle. "Do you expect to find something in there?"
This time, no one answered.
"Ah, the silent treatment. Another childish tactic."
Eggman pulled his mobile back, safely over a higher cliff while still facing them menacingly. He flipped a switch, opening numerous hatches on his machine. Missile heads poked out from each, hissing in anticipation of their imminent release.
"You'll have to forgive me if I opt out of your little exploration party. That building looks rather unstable," the doctor continued. "And their safety inspections are expired, you know? I highly doubt there'd be compensation for any unfortunate accidents."
The isle continued lowering past the cliffside. The top half of its structure was now the only thing visible.
"...but don't let me get in the way of your fun."
The heroes turned and ran towards the building.
"Cyan-ara!" Sonic hooted, turning to flash Eggman the loser sign as he dove backwards off the cliff.
Eggman waited until the trio entered the structure, then launched his barrage of missiles. It immediately began to crumble and fall as it was hit on multiple sides.
The doctor flew his hovercraft over the cliff edge, watching the isle and building plunge towards the distant ocean with no apparent escapees.
He frowned. "That was far too easy. Did they forget how to count?"
"To what?" asked Cubot.
"Seven, obviously."
Orbot's mouth re-lit, and he raised his hand. "Permission to speak?"
"If you must."
"They can count."
"...what?"
Orbot casually pointed to his master's bulging coat pocket.
Eggman opened the pocket and pulled out a lump of blue-violet crystal. His expression crashed harder and sooner than the building itself.
Author's Notes, 11/21/21:
Oh...cliffhangers don't need to be literal?
11/21 was the Japanese release date of Sonic 2 — Tails' debut. And who said his dodgeball skills were for naught?
More headcanon: Sonic and Knuckles are right-handed. Sonic got walloped in his right side because he'd grabbed Knuckles with his right hand. The Knuckleprint™ is also a right-handed mark. Meanwhile, Tails is left-handed because nerd stereotypes.
The Marble Garden spinning tops feature in the Generations version of Sky Sanctuary. I figured I'd have to throw that in, after referencing a Generations quote in Mushroom Hill (which features in the 3DS version), and also referencing the Mania features in Hydrocity (the boat) and Flying Battery (the ship being trashy).
(Oh phooey, I forgot to reference Mania!Lava Reef.)
Are references like jokes in that you're not supposed to explain them? At least I didn't try to explain the references in Chapter 11. That'd be longer than the chapter itself and I'm doing it again aren't I.
I carefully wrote this to be exactly 10k words but the counting system on here is different than Google Docs so...I give up. See you next time!