Chapter 26: Metal

Metal slowed his pace continually, allowing the pitiful little low-ranking robot drones to gather all around him. None of them dared get too close, but, even without checking how many were behind him, he already knew the old man had sent out his entire arsenal of the worthless, mindless cannon fodder. Eventually, some of his less pathetic robots rolled out, and Metal was surprised to find them alone, as he had expected their wave to include the old man's cyborgs: but there were none to be seen.

And, finally, just as he slowed to a complete halt, standing in the centre of a circular sea of metal, the old man himself appeared, zipping down in that stupid ball he liked to fly around in.

"Well, well, if it isn't my old friend, Metal Sonic!" the old man greeted him.

"You and I are not friends, old man," Metal calmly replied. "We never were and we never will be."

He chortled out a false laugh that made Metal's lip curl.

"So, how's life as Sonic's inferior copy working out for you?" he asked, grinning coldly.

"I'm not that idiot's copy," Metal plainly replied. "Not any more. I'm my own hedgehog now."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then what brings you back here? If you really are your "own hedgehog", why did you come back here, to me? Why not stay there, with all the other little biological rats you think are your friends now?"

"You know why I'm here."

"Yes, I think I do. I think it's just for one reason. This reason right here."

The old man pushed a button on the console in front of him and a hologrammatic image flickered into life in the air in front of his face. Metal, who had had no difficulty in containing his emotions until that point, lost control in an instant, his heart thumping painfully inside his chest, his face twisting despite his wishes, a sweat breaking out across his brow as his eyes fixed, unblinkingly, onto the translucent image of Amy, still curled up on her bed where he had left her, clutching her little hedgehog doll, her face scrunched up in her restless sleeping state.

"You're spying on Amy?" Metal asked when he recovered enough of his senses to speak again.

"No, I was spying on you," the old man replied. "I have been all along."

"Liar!" Metal hissed, clenching his fists at his sides.

"You don't believe me?" the old man asked, looking far too pleased himself. "I saw it all. I saw you weaving little flower wreaths, I saw you getting dressed up and getting a crown at the gala, I saw you fraternising with all those disgusting rats Sonic calls his friends, and, most pathetic of all, I saw you fall in love with this pink wretch right here."

"If you lay one finger on her, I will kill you," Metal warned, pointing an accusing finger at the old man.

"Oh, Metal!" he said, in a sarcastic, theatrical tone. "Look at you! Look at how pathetic and weak you've become! Look at how far you've fallen! You can't be happy."

"As long as you are around, hurting Amy, no, I'm not "happy"."

"So you've come back here to join me again?"

"Like hell I have. I've come back here to tell you to stop. Either you stop by choice, or you stop because you no longer can."

"Because I no longer can?"

"You can't hurt anyone when you're dead."

The old man laughed. He was either a better actor than Metal had assumed, or he was genuinely unaffected by his threats.

"You're not as fast as you once were," he recovered. "That body, the changes I made, they were a mistake. You've become weaker physically, and now you're letting your emotions rule your common sense. You never felt this miserable when you were a simple killing machine with one simple objective."

"I'm still faster than you, old man," Metal replied. "I can get up there and cut your throat before you can issue even one more empty threat."

"That's true, but do you think you could get up here before I press this button?"

Metal hesitated, his eyes lowering to the old man's finger, poised over a button on his console.

"What does that button do?" he asked.

"This button controls the drone that's comfortably within firing range of your little girlfriend," the old man calmly replied. "One little touch, and she's never waking up."

Metal felt a stab of something cold and insidious inside of him.

"So what's it to be, Metal," the old man continued. "Which of your two choices are you going to pick? Are you going to willingly come back to me, to let me fix you, let me put you back to what you once were, back to your former, glorious, cold, cruel and perfect robotic self, or are am I going to have to kill Amy Rose?"

Metal twitched, his fingers fidgeting in the air. He hated the old man, and agreeing to go back to him was demeaning, and, based on what he had just said, Metal knew that the moment he gave the word, he would be incapacitated, just like before, and when he next woke, he would be a robot all over again. But he had little other choice: the old man was crazy enough to push that button, and, according to the calculations the lenses in his eyes were performing, the old man was a little too high up to be reached in one jump, and he didn't have enough time to miss with his first jump.

"I'll come back to you," he conceded. "But only on two conditions."

"You really think you're in any position to negotiate with me?" the old man sneered.

"Yes, I do," Metal smoothly replied. "Because since we're talking about failures, let's talk about how it is that you peaked when you made me. You've never managed to make anything close to me since, and you never will again. And you know, if you push that button, you will lose me forever, regardless of what else happens."

The old man hardened his face, but said nothing, which Metal knew was a sign that he was winning the argument.

"I'll come back to you, but you will give me the hands I want," he continued. "And you will never harm Amy Rose. I don't care if she's beating you to death with her hammer, you will lie there and let it happen."

The old man grinned and retracted his hand from the button. Metal couldn't stop himself from sighing in relief.

"Answer me this honestly, Metal," the old man said, his voice losing some of its edge as it came about as close as it ever did to sounding compassionate. "Do you like being this way? Being tortured by emotions? Crippled by feelings you can't act out? Made weak by your feelings for a pathetic pink rat who sees you as nothing more than a poor copy of Sonic, the one she's actually in love with?"

Metal shook his head once.

"You're wrong, old man," he said. "I'm not weaker now for feeling this way. I'm stronger. I have something now that no-one can ever take from me, not even you."

"The girl was never yours, you do realise that?" the old man asked sceptically.

"But what she made me feel is mine," Metal argued back. "What she taught me is mine. And it always will be. And I don't care what you do to me now. You can't take that from me, and that's all that matters. And, as long as I have that, I will always be better, I will always be stronger. You don't know how much it motivates me, how important it is to me, how it sustains me."

The old man snorted and waved a dismissive hand at him.

"That's pathetic, Metal!" he said. "You sound even more pathetic than that little pink rodent!"

"Amy is not pathetic, you are," Metal snarled back.

The old man sat back and sighed. He then reached out a hand and pressed a button – a button Metal had been expecting him to press – and the sea of robots around him began to close in, the old man rising up a little higher to allow the bigger ones passage.

"Let me just remind you why you're weaker now," he said.

Metal punched away one motobug and leapt over another, swinging a kick at it to send it crashing into two of its clones. He continued that way for several minutes, bashing back the smaller, more pathetic robots, only breaking form when one of the largest ones closed a clamp around his left arm and hoisted him up into the air. He curled around its hand and fought against it fervently – but he knew his efforts were in vain. This was one particular robot that, even in his fully robotic form, he could not free himself from once it had a hold of him. It swung him around in the air, ultimately suspending him in front of the old man, at a dizzying height from the ground.

"Still think you're stronger like this?" the old man asked him.

"Yes I do!" Metal growled back.

The old man shifted his eyes to the flat, lifeless face of the giant robot holding Metal up.

"Do it," he said.

The robot clamped its other three-fingered, clamp-like hand around Metal's torso, positioning its thumb up the length of his back and its two fingers around his left arm, one curling under his armpit, the other curling over his shoulder by his neck. Metal looked down at his arm, only realising what the old man had planned when the robot started to pull its other hand away. He let out an involuntary groan of pain as it stretched his arm out painfully from his body. A sweat broke out over his brow and he ground his teeth, determining not to give in to the pain.

"I could rip your arm off when you were robot, and you kept going without missing a beat," the old man casually told him. "In fact, I can think of several times you lost limbs in battle and you didn't feel a thing. It didn't slow you down, it didn't weaken you. What do you think will happen if I rip your arm off now?"

Metal moved his eyes to the old man, the lenses illuminating as his true intent activated them, a series options appearing before him on how he could reach and harm the old man: though most of them involved suffering grievous wounds himself first.

"I don't care what you do to me, old man," he growled. "Just keep your word and stay away from Amy Rose!"

"Alright then," the old man said, before nodding at his giant robot.

Metal couldn't contain the scream of pain that erupted from him as the robot tugged harder, the strain reaching the point of intolerance before a shot of agony tore through him and the pressure vanished. He panted as he turned his head, looking down at the open and freely bleeding wound where his arm had once been. He lifted his eyes and watched as the robot tossed aside his amputated arm like it was nothing.

"Still think you're stronger this way?" the old man asked.

Metal turned to sneer at him, but said nothing, already knowing that his voice would betray the physical pain he was struggling with.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" the old man asked. "Aw, my boy, I can make it stop. I can make you return to your former glory."

Metal shook his head.

"No?" the old man responded. "You don't want to just come back with me now, and be put to sleep, and wake up a glorious robot once more?"

Metal shook his head again.

"Well then," the old man said with a sigh. "If you don't want that, then you'll just have to be reborn to glory. Unfortunately for you, in order to be reborn, first you have to die."

Metal cried out as he felt another pain in his right leg, as intense as the one he had felt in his shoulder. He didn't see how it had happened, but, when he looked down, he could see half of his leg on the ground far below him, blood dripping from what remained of his leg beneath him. He looked up at the old man, scowling at him, refusing to give in to him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of victory.

However, the next blow was one to his head, one that flooded his eyes with blood, left his ears ringing and his head throbbing; and, seconds later, everything went dark and silent.

"Do you see anything?" Amy asked into the mouthpiece of her headset.

"No," Cream's voice spoke into her headphones. "I'm going around again."

Amy leaned into the turn as the Tornado angled sharply to turn around. The sun was up, but the skies were thick with grey clouds, making the conditions almost as dark as when they had left home. A storm was not far away, and although Amy trusted Tails to fly the Tornado in a storm, she didn't want to test Cream's skills navigating her way around cracks of lightning.

"Let's just go down!" Amy suggested.

She was getting impatient, regardless of the weather. Sitting still felt useless when she still had no idea what had happened to Metal.

"Call Tails or Mister Sonic," Cream answered. "Ask them if they've found Mister Metal!"

"Right, yeah!"

Amy hadn't taken her communicator with her in her rush, but there was one built into the back of the pilot's seat in front of her. She tried Tails first, knowing that he would be most likely to answer, and he duly did after just a short wait.

"Amy, where are you guys?" he asked as his face appeared before her. "Still in the Tornado?"

"Yeah, we're circling," Amy answered. "I don't see anything. Anywhere. Did you find Metal?"

Tails shook his head. He stretched his arm out and raised it up, showing her that he was standing by the front entrance of Eggman's lair, with Rouge and Knuckles not far behind him.

"There's no-one here," he said. "It's really weird. It's so quiet – too quiet. No sign of Metal or Eggman anywhere."

"Have you spoken to Sonic?" Amy asked.

Tails nodded.

"He and Shadow said the same thing," he said. "They've looked all around the inside, they can't find either of them, just a bunch of security robots, nothing major. There's no signs of any battles, we don't know where they could be."

"Is there any way you could track Eggman?" Amy asked.

"I'm trying," Tails replied with a nod. "It's not easy, I don't have much to go on, but I'm doing my best to try to find a signal we can follow. If I find anything, I'll let you know. You should probably land now though, you'll just burn up fuel up there."

"Okay, will do!"

Amy ended the call and lifted her eyes to the back of Cream's head ahead of her.

"Cream, did you hear that?" she asked.

"I'll take us down by the old lighthouse," Cream answered.

"The old lighthouse?" Amy echoed.

She looked about herself, looking back over her left shoulder, she saw Eggman's lair shrinking into the distance behind them.

"Cream, you're going the wrong way!" she said.

"I thought I saw something over here," Cream replied. "There's something on the scanner, I'm not sure what it is, but I'm taking us down beside it so we can check it out!"

Amy leaned out to her right, noticing then that they were flying towards the rising sun, and, as they started to descend, she could just about make out a greying tower alone by the sea, that looked like a battered old disused lighthouse.

"Amy?" Cream said in a suddenly sharp voice. "Do you know where the eject button is for your seat?"

Amy answered yes and started to ask Cream why she was asking, but stopped short when the seat ahead of her rocketed into the sky. As the plane teetered a little, Amy quickly pressed the eject button, scrambling about for the button that activated a parachute. She rocketed up past Cream, who was already floating down, carried by her own parachute. Amy looked down at the exact moment a missile collided with the Tornado and it burst into flames, crashing into the ground and smashing into a smouldering wreck of black cloud. She heard Cream scream her name, and looked out to see a gust of wind whip her parachute off-course, throwing her out over the cliff edge and taking her far away from Amy.

As Amy felt her momentum die and the chair start to plummet she located the button she sought, the sight of the ground racing towards her suddenly looking unrealistic. She yelped as her parachute finally expanded and caught her, jolting her midair and slowing her descent. With her own fate secured, she looked about for Cream, but could see no trace of her anywhere. She hoped that her friend had detached her parachute and flown herself to safety, but she couldn't be sure. Before she could worry too much about it however, the wind caught her own parachute, swinging her around violently in the air. As she saw the old lighthouse getting dangerously close, along with the cliff-edge it overlooked, she decided to take her chances with gravity, and detached her harness, jumping from her seat and rolling herself into a ball.

She grunted as she hit the ground, rolling a little before sloppily uncurling out, ending up flat on her back, her limbs splayed at her sides. She heaved in air as the angry growl of distant thunder reverberated in the tumultuous skies above her.

"Look who it is, my new least favourite hedgehog, little Miss Amelia Rose!"

Amy froze, her eyes darting about. A shadow fell over her and she quickly scrambled to her feet, stumbling back a few steps as the Eggmobile lowered before her. She raised her hands and the reassuring weight of her hammer appeared in her grasp.

"I didn't think it was possible for me to hate anyone or anything more than your little boyfriend, Sonic," Eggman continued. "But you've proven yourself to be an even bigger thorn in my side – get it, thorn in my side, because your name's Rose!"

"That's not funny," Amy breathed out, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "Where's Metal?"

"I'll get Metal Sonic out here, but first, I want to talk to you, Miss Rose," Eggman replied.

"I'm not talking to you until you tell me where Metal is!" Amy shouted.

"Well that's too bad, because I'm not bringing it out until we clear a couple of things up."

"Release him right now, or you'll be the one becoming a pun when I smash you into that old tower and turn you into scrambled Eggman!"

"If you do that, you'll never find out where Metal is."

Amy tightened her grip on her hammer and made to swing it, and, when Eggman did not so much as flinch, she knew he had seen through her bluff. Slowly, reluctantly, she lowered her weapon.

"Put it away," Eggman told her.

"No," she coldly replied.

"Put it away, or you don't get to see Metal ever again."

Amy, the memory of Metal signing to Tails that Eggman would happily kill him for his rebellion playing in her mind, banished her hammer.

"Now then, let's start with the obvious," Eggman said. "Exactly what did you hope to achieve by luring my robot in, by playing on emotions it was new to and didn't understand and by turning it against me? Did you honestly think you could make it join your ranks? That you could bat your eyelids at it and it'd become just another Sonic?"

"It wasn't like that," Amy stiffly replied. "Metal left you, nobody lured him away from you. He chose to leave you, and he didn't choose to go back to you, you forced him into that. You're right that he's new to feeling emotions, but you're the one playing with them by forcing him back to you the way you did!"

"Metal Sonic doesn't have emotions, it came back to me because it knew that was the logical thing to do," Eggman smoothly answered her.

"You just said he does have emotions!" Amy pointed out. "You just accused me of toying with them!"

"Oh, my mistake," Eggman said, smiling in a way that didn't reassure Amy in the slightest. "I meant to say it had emotions that you toyed with. It doesn't have that problem any more."

Amy gulped, a shiver running over her that she knew had nothing to do with the gust of wind that whipped by her.

"Wh-what do you mean?" she asked in a small voice.

It was something she both needed to know the answer to and dreaded hearing the answer to.

"Metal Sonic came to me because it knew as well as I did that making it a cyborg was a mistake," Eggman replied. "It had grown weary of dealing with emotions, of dealing with little teases like you, and it wanted to go back to the simple, basic, unfeeling world of a flawless robot, that feels nothing, physically or emotionally. And, being the benevolent and forgiving man that I am, I fixed all of that for Metal Sonic. I ended the emotional, pathetic cyborg hedgehog and restored the perfect, glorious, metallic, robot warrior."

Amy swallowed carefully. She wanted to look about herself, look for signs of any of her friends, for a way to run away, a clue as to where Metal was: but she knew all of it was her own denial kicking in, her own refusal to believe what she was being told.

"I don't believe you," she said instead. "Metal didn't want to be a robot, he wanted to be a real hedgehog. He wanted to have friends, he wanted to live with us, he wanted to feel things. You maybe made him initially, but he out-grew you a long time ago, before you even started changing him. The only difference it made when you did start changing him, was that he stopped needing you so much. And as soon as you realised that he'd realised that, you turned on him. You set your robots against him. I saw what they did to him. Why would he want to go back to that – back to you – when he was happy living freely?"

"Living freely?" Eggman repeated. "You have a very strange idea of what "living freely" means, you little rat. The only time Metal Sonic ever lived freely was when it lived with me."

"You treated him like a tool, a weapon, a toy," Amy shot back. "You didn't respect who he was, what he thought or felt. How is that freedom?"

"Metal Sonic was a prince in my kingdom, Amy. I was the king and it was my protege. It had its own servants, and it never wanted for anything."

"Metal wanted for plenty that you never gave him!"

"Not true. When Metal was purely a robot, the only thing it "wanted" was to achieve its objectives, which were to attack and ruin Sonic the Hedgehog."

"Metal is more complex than that and he was happy living with me!"

"Happy? Because you honestly think a robot accustomed to having slaves that do everything for it would be happy living as your slave, doing everything for you?"

"What are you talking about, Eggman?"

"I'm talking about all those crappy little "art" projects you made Metal Sonic work on for you. Do you really think a robot that lived like royalty was "happy" weaving baskets and picking flowers?"

"He wasn't weaving baskets, he was weaving wreaths!"

"Whatever!"

"And he did like it! He was proud of the work he did! He liked making things, he liked how good he was at it, and how people complimented his work. He felt useful and that made him happy. And he liked being around everyone. He was genuinely happy working on that fairy garden – you know, the fairy garden that he spent days working on and then you obliterated in under three hours?"

Eggman laughed, slapping a hand against his console.

"I was rather proud of that, actually," he said with a grin. "And it had exactly the desired effect: it brought my robot back to me."

"He only came back to you because he thought it would stop you," Amy replied. "He's a bit naïve like that, but I know better, I know nothing will ever stop you. Let him go and I'll tell Sonic not to completely destroy your stupid little hideout."

"I don't need to let Metal Sonic go, Amy," Eggman said, far too casually for her liking. "Because now that I've restored it back to its former glory, it has no desire to be anywhere near you. In fact, when I was restoring it, I changed its primary objective: it no longer seeks to destroy Sonic, it now seeks to destroy you."

"You're full of crap!"

Amy summoned her hammer, but as she did so, Eggman pressed a button on the console in front of him. She knew she shouldn't have hesitated, she knew she ought to have just bashed him over the horizon, but something made her freeze just long enough that she heard a faint humming sound approaching, growing in volume as it got closer. She looked up, seeing a yellow light moving through the sky. Again, she ought not to have hesitated. She should have trusted her first instinct upon seeing it, should have believed that what she was looking at was what she thought it to be: but again, she froze up. The light zipped across the sky before coming to an abrupt halt and then sinking downwards. At first, with the sky still so dark, the brightness of the exhaust flare made it difficult to make out the source. But, as a louder, closer, roar of thunder resounded, Amy could no longer excuse what she was looking at.

As Metal Sonic, the same, fully robotic Metal Sonic she had met on Little Planet, slowed to a hover in the air at Eggman's side, a flash of thunder illuminated the sky behind him, momentarily throwing him and Eggman into shadow, making his glowing red eyes and the burn of his yellow exhaust seem brighter still in comparison. When the lightning passed and another eddy of wind circled around them, Eggman grinned.

"You remember Metal Sonic, right Amy?" he said.

Amy's hammer popped out of existence and she stumbled forwards a step, only realising then that she had been leaning on it for support.

"Metal Sonic, do you know who this is?" Eggman asked.

Metal Sonic hung in the air silently, unresponsive.

"Oh that's right," Eggman said with a smile. "When I was restoring you, I corrected all the mistakes I made with you, including removing your ability to talk!"

Amy growled and bared her teeth, but her response just made Eggman laugh again. Metal Sonic sank slowly to the ground, the glow of his exhaust fading once his feet were planted on the ground.

"M-Metal?" she said tentatively.

"Metal Sonic," Eggman said. "Kill Amy Rose."

Metal started towards her and Amy took a few clumsy steps back, stopping when he closed the gap between them.

"Metal?" she tried again. "You don't have to do what he says! You can just come home with me. I don't care what he says or what he does, just come home with me. I know you think you were putting us in danger staying with us, but the truth is, we're always in danger. Please. Please just come home with me. It's not too late."

"This is boring," Eggman called out.

Metal Sonic raised a hand, stopping when it was level with Amy's face. He turned his palm towards her and opened out his fingers as another angry roar of thunder sounded. He formed his fingers into claws, the pointed tips gleaming as a bolt of lightning shot across the sky.

"Metal…?" Amy said softly.

He did not respond to her, but he had never been particularly expressive, even when he had been in a mostly biological body; however this time, he was unresponsive for a reason. Amy yelped as his hand shot forwards and his fingers clamped around her throat, the flat metal plate of his palm pressing against the front of her throat, stilling the air in her body. She struggled and tried to speak to him, but her voice was as oppressed as her airways were. Her arms flailed about helplessly for several seconds before she finally grabbed his arm and tried to pull it back from her neck. Metal Sonic was, as he always had been, immoveable. Another roar of thunder and crash of lightning resounded, almost on top of each other as the storm grew closer, and Amy felt her knees buckle beneath her, her weight catching against the hard metal hand around her neck.

"Let her go," Eggman said.

Metal Sonic opened his hand and Amy dropped to her knees, leaning over onto all fours as she heaved in air desperately. Everything ached, and no amount of air she breathed in felt like it was enough, no mater how many times she inhaled, it never felt as though the air was getting to where she needed it to be.

"Kill her, but do it slower."

Amy's head snapped up and she yelped, scrambling to her feet and stumbling back as Metal swiped a hand at her, razor-sharp fingers narrowly missing the tip of her nose as she barely made it out of his reach.

"I'm not going to fight you, Metal!" she told him, holding up her hands in front of her face. "Because I know you don't want to do this. I know that, deep down, you understand what I'm saying to you, and you don't want to do this. This isn't you, this is Eggman. I know that! We're friends, remember?"

Amy fumbled in her pocket, removing, with shaking hands, the card he had left his message for her on. As she freed it from her dress, another crack of thunder sounded overhead, startling her and making her lose her grip of it. It frittered through the air and she tried to grab at it, but Metal swiped a hand through the air, expertly catching it between his index and middle finger. He held it up in front of his face, his eyes glowing as he scanned over it.

"What is that?" Eggman called over.

Metal's eyes shifted to Amy and he closed his fist around the card, crumpling into a tiny ball before tossing it over his shoulder. Amy gasped, reaching out a hand fruitlessly. Metal grabbed a hand around her outstretched wrist and she quickly shook her head.

"Please don't," she begged. "Please. I know this isn't you. Please, just remember! Please!"

There was a long, quiet pause, where even the wind silenced. Amy desperately searched Metal's eyes – finding it a little jarring then that they were once more nothing more than two hollow red ovals in a black glass screen – hoping that somehow she could get through to him. Whatever Eggman had done to him physically, she was confident that there was no way he could have broken Metal's spirit, his soul, his heart. Slowly, he raised his other hand until it was in front of his shoulder, his arm fully bent at the elbow, his palm facing Amy. Then, in a motion so fast even her cry of alarm came far too late, he yanked her arm forward with one hand and drove the other hand into her face. He released her and she stumbled, clamping her hands over her bleeding nose. She barely recovered from her initial shock before she saw him at her side, his body at a strange angle, the view only fleeting before his solid metal foot collided with the back of her neck, the force of the blow sending her flying forwards. She landed facedown in the dirt, lying on the cold, muddy ground for several seconds as she tried to think of how she could try to get through to him next. She heard his stomping walk grow close and she quickly rolled onto her back, looking up at him fearfully.

"Please," she said pitifully. "Please…"

He bent down and grabbed the front of her dress with one hand, hauling her partially up from the ground before drawing back his other hand, formed into a fist. She tried to plead with him one last time, but her voice failed her. In the same moment he started to move his hand forwards, a blue blur smashed into him side on, and he was thrown into the air, releasing Amy. She fell back to the ground with a yelp, looking over as the blue blur came to halt, standing upright and glaring up at Eggman.

"Where did you come from, you miserable rat?" Eggman yelled at him. "Get out of my way!"

"Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to you!"

Next Chapter: Amy is distraught to witness Metal Sonic being smashed apart, and she quickly becomes illogical. However the new robot Metal Sonic has a little surprise in store of them. When lightning strikes the old lighthouse, Amy notices something and believes she has discovered her fate, the result of her ominous tarot reading. The group discover an apparent tragedy that ends their efforts and they set out for home. Chapter 27: The Tower