The Double Doo-Doo Saga

by Anna-mathe

Zorak takes on Sonic the Hedgehog, the Chaotix, and the Guardians!

3. Guardians Fighting Mantisses and Plants ...

The Double Doo-Doo Saga

Part Three:

Guardians Fighting Mantisses and Plants Conquering the World

Written by Anna-mathe.

Knuckles the Echidna and related characters are property of Sega and Archie Comics.

Zorak and related characters are property of Cartoon Network.

Colonel Pepsi is property of Gloria.

Changeling is my mother's.

Other characters are property of myself.

Please do not use any of the original characters without contacting me.

Geoffery St. John pulled himself out of the garbage dumpster.

That's it. I am outta this funky Island!

He brushed some garbage of his arm.

First I get attacked by one sentient plant after another. Then that dolt Remington throws me out a window!

Trying to retain some portion of his dignity, he exited Echidnaopolis.

Remington wandered aimiably through EST HQ, heading for his office.

"Oh, there you are!" Terri-lu exclaimed, spotting him. "Where's the skunk?"

"Geoffery? Didn't I say I was going to throw him out a window?"

Zorak downed another bottle of Pepto Bizmol and groaned.

"Oh, crud! I have to put up with a month of this?!?!?!"

Aggrivated, he reached for some gum. He liked gum. Then the mantis blinked in surprise and horror.

Where's my gum?!

A quick search of the area showed that all his gum had disappeared. Suddenly wary, he reached for his ray gun.

Who ever made off with my gun is going to regret it, big time! he thought, angerly.

When he turned his head again, he found that his Pepto Bizmol was also gone.

What the heck! There's no one here but me . . . Then he thought of something. Oh, peachy. It's those gol danged chameleons again!

"Hey, Bug!" came a voice out of nowhere. "You threw a bomb at us!"

"Are you nuts? That was my evil staff plumber!" he snarled. "Go away! I'm sick!"

"Is that what that smell is?"

"Hey, what's with all the warts?" asked another voice.

"Shut up! Shut up!" he shouted, waving his ray gun around, trying to figure out where the voices were coming from. First it's Space Ghost with his inviso power, then now it's these dumb chameleons . . .

Before he could complete the thought, his ray gun was whisked from his hand.

Changeling appeared, running around with a pile of gum and Pepto Bizmol.

"Hi!" he called, cheerfully.

"Why you!" Zorak yelled, taking off after him.

"Wow!" Sabre exclaimed, watching the scene on a viewer from Haven. "He's in hot pursuit!"

"Really?" Locke asked, coming over to take a look.

Knuckles began to dig holes.

Espio appeared from nowhere on Zorak's shoulders.

"What are you doing up there?!?!" Zorak screamed.

As way of a reply, Espio began to whack Zorak over the head repeatedly with the ray gun.

"Dang you!" the poor mantis bellowed, trying to dislodge him and chase after Changeling at the same time. "Vigasso beano laga, vigasso beano cous-cous!"

"What?" Changeling asked, stopping suddenly, causing Zorak to trip over him and fly through the air, smacking into a tree, and splattering on the ground.

"Ow," said Espio, who was still clinging to Zorak's head.

"Sorry," Changeling said sheepishly.

Taking advantage of the moment, Zorak grabbed back his ray gun and turned them both into fuzzy pink giraffes with no heads.

"Hoohoohoohaha!" he laughed, picking up his gum.

"Uh oh. That's bad," Sabre observed, watching as the two former chameleons began to dig holes.

"Digging holes! Oh no! Where's Knuckles?!" Locke suddenly exclaimed, looking around for his son.

"Um, he's down there," Archimedes said, pointing down a deep hole on the floor.

"Oh crud. Why didn't you stop him, Archimedes?" Locke asked, reaching down and scooping up what was left of Knuckles.

The fireant shrugged.

"I thought he might find something interesting down there."

"Woah!" Sabre called out. "The chameleons are halfway to China-opolis!"

Locke gave Archimedes a sour glare.

"Thought he might find something interesting, huh?" He stood up and handed Sabre Knuckles' somewhat altered form. "Put him on a leash until I get back."

Sabre blinked at him.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got a mantis to put on ice."

Fish and Colonel Pepsi were nearing Echidnaopolis.

"Haha! I'll show Fred the Plumber who's the most Evil Plumber in the universe!" Fish cackled.

"Who is?" Colonel Pepsi asked, confused.

Before Fish could threaten him with her plunger, both of them got hit in the heads with rocks.

"Ow!" the both shouted, rubbing their noggins.

"Hey!" Shadow shouted, materializing in front of them. "Stop trying to blow up the world!"

"Listen, punk!" Fish shouted. "I'm GOING to be the universe's most evil plumber, and if I have to take YOU out to do it, then FINE!!!" Then, with an enraged screech, she ran at Shadow with her plunger aimed at his throat.

"Woah!" Shadow stated, taking off.

"Yes!" Sabre hooted. "Another hot pursuit!"

Archimedes wondered what had been in the coffee.

"Gee, uh, Fish, are you sure you should do that?" Colonel Pepsi asked squeamishly as Fish caught up with the chameleon and made an ugly attempt to suck out his brains with her toilet plunger.

"Y-y-y-yyyyooooOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!" Shadow screamed as his head was being plunged.

"Oh, I'll save you!" Shift said, appearing in a tree branch just above Fish and Shadow. He jumped down and grabbed hold of the plunger. "Hand it over!" he demanded, pulling at it.

"No! It's mine!" Fish argued, pulling it back.

The two of them engaged in the tug-of-war of the century, while Shadow grumbled and Colonel Pepsi looked for a good place to throw up. He happened to know that the plunger was, in fact, a USED plunger, thus tripling the disgust factor of this struggle.

Over in the Mushroom Zone, the mushrooms were debating over what to do with their prisoners.

"Let's not eat them," one of them reasoned. "That would be too much like cannibalism."

"Eww, yuck! Eating plants? DisGUSting!" agreed another.

"Let's just forget about the plants, find a nice plump hedgehog, have a barbeque . . . "

"Can you all just put a sock in it? I'm TRYING to SLEEP!"

Meanwhile, Ivy and his plantfriends were debating about what to do about the mushrooms.

"We've gotta find a way outta here!" whined a grapevine. "I'm getting claustrophobic!"

"Anyone still have any ammo?" Ivy asked.

A willow tree stepped up.

"I've still got four grenades and a flamethrower!"

"All right!" Ivy exclaimed. "Now, let's blow this popsicle stand!"

"But where're we gonna go?" asked complained a bean. "If we leave, we're gonna have to deal with more stealth copters and stuff."

"True," Ivy conceded. "Let's get reinforcements."

"From where?" piped up a pea.

"Oh, come on!" Ivy admonished. "It's a big planet down there! Surely our kinsmen on the mainland would give us a helping hand here on the Floating Island . . . "

Just in case you're wondering, Remington, Mighty, Vector, and Charmy were playing Go Fish in Remington's office all this time.

Geoffery looked around in surprise at Mobotropolis.

There were no people. The city was populated by . . . daisies. Eight-foot-tall daisies. They were everywhere!

"Hey! Food!" shouted one of them, noticing him.

"Food!" shouted every daisy in the vicinity.

"Uh oh," he mumbled to himself, as a few hundred daisies advanced on him.

Okay. Options: get eaten by daisies, or run for my life. Hmmmmmmm . . .

It was a tough choice. However, common sense prevailed, and he bolted for the one place where plant life couldn't survive: the Southern Tundra.

The daisies considered going after him, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

"Hey, you!"

Zorak turned.

"What? Who's that phantom stranger?" he asked, looking in surprise at the cloaked figure standing a few yards away.

"I am your worst nightmare!"

"Oh, please!" Zorak laughed. "Do you know how many times I've heard that one?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the figure flew at him through the air and pummelled him so hard in the head that he was knocked back about ten feet on the ground. Completing an aerial loop, the figure landed exactly where he'd taken off from.

"All right! That's it! Vigasso beano laga, vigasso beano - "

The figure struck again before Zorak could even finish the threat.

Now Zorak was getting torked off. He had diarreah for a month, warts, and now a smashing headache!

"Stop it!" he shouted.

"No," the figure calmly replied.

"Grr!" Zorak growled, whipping out his ray gun. "Just exactly who do you think you are?!"

"I," the figure said, as a strange tingle raced through Zorak's fingers, "am," he continued as a green glow engulfed the ray gun, "the Guardian of the Floating Island!"

"NOT ANYMORE!!!!!" Zorak contradicted, firing the ray gun, expecting the figure to turn into another fuzzy pink giraffe with no head. Instead, nothing happened. "What?!" he muttered, aghast. "Why won't - "

Locke dumped the cloak bit and socked Zorak upside the head. Zorak, thoroughly torked, socked him back.

"Woo-hoo! Grituitous violence!!" Sabre yelled, jumping up and standing in his chair.

"Hey!" Archimedes shouted. "From now on, you lay off the caffienne!"

Sabre ignored Archimedes, paying attention to the fight. Locke and Zorak were putting up a slug-fest that would make any WWFer cry.

"Go for the juggular, m'boy! The juggular!"

Archy, annoyed, looked up at the screen. His eyes widened, and then he winced.

"Oooo, that one had to hurt."

"Look, look, he got 'im back!"

"That's it, Locke, go for it!"

"Don't let him get away with that one!"

"Ow! That's the way!"

"Give it to 'im!"

"That wasn't fair!"

"C'mon, get him!"

"Use your knuckles!"

"Blood! Blood! Woo-hoo!!"

"Yuck! That's nasty! Keep it up, Locke, keep it up!"

"The juggular! I'm tellin' ya! The juggular!!!!!"

Locke grabbed a large rock and slammed it on Zorak's head.

Zorak bit him in the leg.

"OW!" Locke yelled, jabbing the mantis in the back with his knuckles.

"OW!" Zorak yelled back, kicking him in the face and getting back to his feet.

Locke grabbed one of Zorak's antennaes and yanked it. Out.

Zorak, howling, grabbed the echidna, who was somewhat smaller than him, by the dreadlockes and rammed him into a tree.

The tree broke and landed on Zorak.

"Whoops," Locke said, rubbing his head.

"Oooooooooo," came Zorak's voice from under the tree.

"Well," Locke said to himself, "that was fulfilling."

"Whaddya go and do that for?" Zorak whined.

"Duh!" Locke snapped at the tree. "You turned my son into a one-foot-tall fuzzy pink echidna with no head! Not to mention, of course, you trashed Rainbow Valley, tried to conquer the world, and had your henchmantisses bump off convenience stores!"

"Oh. Yeah. Well, vigasso beano laga, vigasso beano cous-cous!"

"Will you stop it with that cous-cous stuff! What's it supposed to mean, anyway?"

"That means: I don't get mad; I get even."

The tree stood up, looked at the two of them, and ran off.

Zorak stood up and scratched his head.

"Whatever," he said. Then he noticed his missing antannae. "You!" he accused Locke, who was still holding onto the antennae.

And so the slug-fest continued.

Shadow was getting bored waiting for either Shift or Fish to obtain the plunger. Finally, he just got completely fed up with it all.

"Hey, can you two knock it off?!" he complained.

"What?!?!?!" Fish shouted between spitting insults at Shift.

Shadow sighed and disappeared.

That startled Fish enough that Shift could win the plunger war. Once free, Shadow ran off and searched for something to wash the plunger residue off his face.

"RRRRRR!!!!!!" Fish seethed, chasing after him once again.

Colonel Pepsi and Shift looked at each other.

"Oh, I think we're supposed to battle it out among ourselves until one of them comes back victorious," Shift observed.

"P-shaw," Colonel Pepsi replied. "I'm not stupid! I'm not going to do anything to you while you have that plunger!"

"Really?"

Shift looked at his prize with some consideration.

"Well then, HEY!!!!" he shouted, scaring Colonel Pepsi into taking off. He ran after him, waving around Fish's plumber madly for dramatic effect.

Geoffery finally got to the Southern Tundra, and instantly wished he'd planned for the weather.

So much for the Secret Service being prepared for everything, he thought wryly, shivering. Of course, I hadn't planned on making a run for it from a population of daisies . . .

A blue blur went past him, stopped, and came back, halting just beside him.

"Hey! Where've you been?" demanded one angry Sonic the Hedgehog.

Geoffery blinked.

"Sonic? What're you doing here?!"

"Ha! Are you kidding?! Those plants took everyone by surprise! We had to pull back to regroup."

Geoffery crossed his arms.

"Really? The ever-courageous Sonic had to pull back?"

Sonic gritted his teeth.

"Now I remember why I don't like you. As it happens, mister, we had a city to evacuate. Those danged plants popped up everywhere!"

"Oh, great," Geoffery muttered. "And all that time I was up on that stupid Floating Island - "

"You were on the Floating Island? Why?" Sonic asked.

Geoffery stepped on his own foot.

"Euh, Secret Service stuff," he replied.

"Are they having the same problem with these plant-thingies?"

"'Pears so."

"Well, what are they doing about it?"

"Still thinking, for the most part. Doused 'em with weed-killer, napalmed 'em, got the Giant Mushrooms upset with 'em, but still can't figure out how to get rid of 'em."

"Yuck."

"What?"

"Those Giant Mushrooms. Yuck."

"Oh. Anyway, you seen King Acorn around?"

"Yeah, he's out hangin' with everyone else."

"Where?"

Sonic waved a hand.

"Oh, that way."

"Ah."

"Well, let's go before you freeze off your Secretly Serviced behind . . . "

"Now!!" yelled Ivy.

Willow ran through the circle of Mushroom guards waving his flame-thrower, causing the Mushrooms to scatter like flies.

"RUN!!!" Ivy needlessly ordered, as the plants all bolted for the opening.

In three seconds, every sentient plant was out of Mushroom Zone and still running.

A mushroom peered after them.

"Whoops."

An alarm went off, and cards went flying everywhere.

"Good golly!" Mighty exclaimed, getting over the sudden shock. "What the heck is that?!"

"Our early warning system!" Remington replied. He fiddled with some knobs on his desk. "Okay, what's happening?"

"The plants just made a break for it!" replied his desk. Or at least, a speaker on his desk. "They're heading NorthWest for the edge of the Island!"

"After them!!" Remington shouted, jumping up to his feet. "C'mon, guys! If they got past the Mushrooms, they must still be armed.

"Oh, that's just exactly what we needed," Vector grumbled, looking sadly at the remains of their last Go Fish game. "I was winning, too."

Charmy grabbed his tail and yanked him out of the room with the others.

Locke and Zorak continued pummelling each other for quite some time, until Zorak finally snapped.

"AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!" he suddenly screamed.

"What's the matter with you?" Locke asked, surprised.

"I-I-I-I-I . . . I NEED MY PEPTO BIZMOL!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Oh, this is great," Locke sighed. Zorak, heavily upset, sat down and started crying.

Shaking his head, Locke walked over, plucked the ray gun from the mantis's hand, and began to walk away. Then he remembered something.

Espio and Changeling!!

"Well well. He should've gone for the juggular," Sabre remarked to Archimedes. Then he promptly passed out.

Archy shook his head in disbelief.

"No, seriously," he said to the Guardian's unconscious body. "You really need to lay off the caffiene! Next time, don't drink quite so much coffee."

After a bit of searching, Locke found the hole the two former chameleons had been digging. Peering down the hole, he found, much to his dismay, that it was too deep for him to see the bottom. He also found that he couldn't fit down the hole.

Sitting beside the hole and considering what to do, he finally decided on standing up and shouting, "HEY! ARCHY!!" at the top of his lungs.

Archimedes, watching the scene, figured that it was time for his exit.

"You called?" he asked, materializing on Locke's shoulder.

"Yeah. Do you think you could just go down that hole and see of you can find two fuzzy pink giraffes with no heads?"

Archy looked down the hole and shivered.

"Oh, come on," Locke urged. "How would you ever explain to Knuckles that his two pals were stuck somewhere underground, digging around for who-knows what, and would probably never be seen again?"

Archimedes sighed and relented. He crawled down the hole, mumbling something about caffiene-addicted echidnas. A few minutes later, he appeared in a small puff of smoke with the two former chameleons, who instantly began to dig another hole.

Before they could get too far, Locke zapped them both back into chameleons.

"What the!" Espio exclaimed, suddenly finding himself with his head underground.

He poked back up into the air along with Changeling. The two of them exchanged a questioning look.

No one else was there to be found.

"So, the echidnas are trying to find a way to kill them off?" King Acorn asked.

"Yes, sir!" Geoffery replied. "Their leading scientific minds are working on it as we speak."

The King thought for a few moments.

"They have an advantage over us. We were driven out too quickly by the plants, but they still have access to the equipment necessary to get rid of them. Commander, I want you to go back to the Floating Island!"

"Oh no!" Geoffery slipped, quickly clamping his hands over his own mouth. "I mean, er, as you wish, your majesty."

King Acorn gave him a reprimanding look.

"I want you to take Sonic with you."

"The hedgehog? Why?"

"Because I think the Islanders like him better than you."

Fish caught Shadow again, but this time she didn't have her plunger with her. Therefore, it was easy for Shadow to turn the tables on her. That is, he kicked her in the head.

Shift chased Colonel Pepsi up alongside them. Colonel Pepsi was astonished to find the chameleon overpowering Fish, and in his astonished moment, Shift whacked him over the head with Fish's plunger.

The two mantisses at once realized that they'd ended up back in Rainbow Valley.

Looking at each other, they both exclaimed, "To the Phantom Cruiser, Robin!" and took off running again. This time, Shadow and Shift didn't follow. They just fell on the ground laughing.

"What in the name of the Ancient Walkers happened to him?!" Locke demanded upon his and Archimedes's return to Haven, pointing at Sabre, who was snoring all over the control panel.

"Um, nothing. Nothing at all," Archimedes replied, rolling his eyes.

Not believing that for a moment, Locke looked like he was going to push the subject, but then figured that he really didn't want to know.

"Anyway, where's Knuckles?"

"Oh, over here," Archy said.

Knuckles had, as ordered, been put on a leash. He had also dug as far as the leash would allow in a perfect circle. Now he was hanging limply in the air, trying to find something to dig in.

"Oh boy," Locke mumbled, taking the headless, one-foot-tall, pink, and fuzzy version of his son out of the leash. "Let's see what to do with him now. How can we turn him back without him seeing where he is?"

Ivy was running as fast as he could, when the ground suddenly dropped out from under him. Yelping, he slid down a long passage before erupting into a crystaline cavern beneath the surface.

Sitting up from the heap he'd landed in, he looked around in astonishment.

Oh my gracious goodness! he thought with awe. I'm in the Chaos Chamber!!

He heard shoting and explosions above him.

Uh oh! We've been caught up with!

"We have a possibility for an answer to this mess!" Remington told the Chaotix, holding a gas bomb of some sort. "I've been told that this stuff should eliminate the intelligent plants without harming anything/anyone else!"

"Go for it!" Charmy urged, throwing a grenade at a large, green . . . something.

Remington made ready to throw the sucker, pulling out the pin. Then everything changed.

"HOLD IT!!!!!" came the shout.

Everyone, plant and Mobian alike, turned to regard the new arrival. Remington put the pin back in the gas bomb.

Standing there, just behind the violence, was the formidable figure everyone dreaded meeting: a hippy!

"Just hold it!" he repeated earnestly.

They held it.

"Did you ever stop to think about what you're doing here? You plants," he said, gesturing to Willow and the others, "you want to rule the world, so you try to wipe out the Mobians. We Mobians," he said, directing attention to Remington and the Chaotix, "want to wipe out the plants because they're invading our cities. Didn't you ever just stop and consider?"

The hippy walked out between the animals and the plants.

"Sure, we animals may have red blood while the plants have no blood. Sure, inside, we may be nothing alike at all. But can't we all find a way to coexist?" He pointed to Remington's gas bomb. "You are attempting genocide!"

The word brought out a gasp from everyone, and the hippy concluded his speech.

"Can't we all just get along?"

Willow wiped a tear from his eye.

"That was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard!" he whimpered.

Remington looked at the gas bomb in his hand, thinking about what to do. After all, genocide was a pretty harsh accusation.

As it turned out, though, his thinking didn't amount to much, because the Floating Island itself suddenly gave a huge lurch.

"Hit the deck!!'" Vector yelled as the ground tilted under him, throwing him into a rock.

Everyone flew in all directions and grabbed onto whatever they could find.

Fish and Colonel Pepsi were searching through Rainbow Valley, frantically trying to find the Phantom Cruiser, when the Island began to go out of control. They grabbed onto a tree and waited it out.

Zorak was hiding under a rock, so it didn't bother him any.

The chameleons all ran into their houses and hoped for the best, except for poor Shadow who didn't have a house anymore. He also hung onto a tree.

Espio and Changeling, who were still trying to figure out what had happened, fell into their holes and got stuck.

Terri-lu almost choked on her gum.

"What's going on?!?!?!" Locke yelled at the top of his lungs as he tried to get an answer form the computers. "Dang it, father, wake up!" he snapped at Sabre, who still hadn't come around from his coffee O.D.

Haven lurched to the right and the remaining coffee spilled on Sabre's head, waking him up.

"What just happened?" he asked, groggily.

The Island lurched again.

"Oh."

"We're . . . falling!" Locke said with some astonishment. "The Floating Island is falling out of the sky!" He blinked. "The Chaos Emerald!!!!"

"That's it; I'm sending Knuckles back now!" Archimedes stated, disappearing with the ray gun the the fuzzy pink echidna with no head.

BANG!!!!!!!

SPLASH!!!!!!

sinksinksinksink . . .

When Knuckles woke up, he was lying flat on his back in the grass.

"Knux? What're you doin' here, man?" Vector asked, picking himself up somewhere near him.

"What happened?" he asked, sitting up.

The other Chaotix began to get up.

"Ow! What hit us?" Mighty asked, rubbing his head in a daze.

"The ocean!" replied Charmy.

"What?" Knuckles asked, startled.

"We just crashed down in the ocean!" Charmy informed them all. "The Floating Island is no longer floating! At least, not in the sky. Now it's floating in water."

Still startled, Knuckles just blinked.

The hippy was mysteriously gone.

The short silence was broken by a sudden flash of neon green light the erupted from a hole in the ground that Knuckles immediately identified as the Zoot Chute. Following the light came a figure flying through the air at amazing speeds.

"I am HYPER-IVY!!" screamed Hyper-Ivy.

"NO WAY!!!!" Knuckles screamed, clamping his hands to his head. "Y-y-you can't have hyper powers!! I-i-i-i-it just can't be!!!!!"

"How did you . . . " Mighty began to ask before he figured out that he was almost definately not going to like the answer.

Hyper-Ivy grinned.

"Well, did you ever notice the Master Chaos Emerald that was in the funky chamber down there?"

"Y-yeah, we noticed it," Knuckles stammered.

Hyper-Ivy grinned a little bit wider.

"I ate it," he said.

Vector passed out.

As you can imagine, Sonic and Geoffery were rather surprised to find the Floating Island drifting peacefully through the ocean.

"What's Knux up to?" Sonic wondered.

Geoffery snorted.

"Considering what's been going on up there, it's likely that a giant plant ate the Master Emerald."

"Hah! Now that one was pretty danged lame, St. John!"

"Anyway, let's just go and see what's been happening."

Locke shook his head in disbelief.

"A weed just ate the Emerald. This is just simply and devastatingly PEACHY!!!!!!!"

"Calm down, Locke," Archimedes urged. "So, we have a hyper vegetable on the loose. What harm could a plant do?"

On cue, the screen showed Hyper-Ivy eating up everyone in sight.

"Never mind. Just . . . never mind."

A loud beeping noise interrupted the conversation.

"That's the priority one alert!" Archy exclaimed with some dismay.

"No, really?" Locke quipped, suddenly feeling rather sarcastic. He pushed a button to get the news. "Uh oh," he softly said. For a long moment, he silently stared at the screen. Then he repeated: "Uh oh."

"What is it?" Sabre asked, naturally wanting to know.

"Locke?" Archimedes prompted when the Guardian didn't answer.

Locke gestured to the screen.

"Gentlemen, we're sinking. I estimate total submersion within two hours."

Colonel Pepsi and Fish fell out of their tree and got knocked clean out when the Island made impact. Now they began to stir a bit.

"What the hoo-ha's goin' on here?!?!?!?!?!" Colonel Pepsi demanded.

A chorus of chameleonic laughter replied.

The mantisses blinked nervously at the circle of chameleons that surrounded them.

"Wh-what're you gonna do to us?" Fish asked, hoping it wouldn't be too messy.

Shadow and Shift stepped forward out of the ring with evil grins on their faces.

"We're going to give you exactly what you're looking for!" answered Shadow.

Shift looked like he was about to say something, but ended up instead laughing his head off.

The evil mantisses exchanged a glance.

"Ahem," Fish said, clearing her throat. "And, uh, what do we want?"

"Why, the Phantom Cruiser, you silly mantis!" Shadow replied, glaring in an annoyed manner at Shift, then relenting and laughing his own head off.

"Er, uh, why would you give us the ship?" Colonel Pepsi asked.

Shift spread his hands.

"Hey! Who would want you dudes off this planet any more than we do?"

"Take it or leave it, pal!" Shadow added.

"We'll take it!" both mantisses immediately replied.

The chameleons reacted by bursting out in more hysterical laughter.

Then came the sight that brought a new level of horror to Fish and Colonel Pepsi.

"Oh my coolie-donkers," Colonel Pepsi mumbled under his breath.

"They disassembled the Phantom Cruiser," Fish breathed, "and turned the parts . . . . into toasters . . . .?!"

-----WARNING!----->>>>>>

This passage contains a serious moment!

"Knux!!!" Vector whispered in a brave attempt to control his sudden case of utter terror. "What are we gonna do???"

"I don't know!!" Knuckles whispered back, watching the hyper-energized plant fly about.

"Turn into Hyper-Knuckles!" Mighty urged. "Then you could take him with no trouble!"

"I can't!" the echdina snapped desperately. "I need to Emerald to transform, and I can hardly get the Emerald when it's in Ivy's stomach!"

"That's Hyper-Ivy to you, ruffian!!" yelled the weed as it flew through the air and, with lightning quick speed, came up behind Charmy and bashed him on the back of the head, sending him shooting down to the ground, where he landed with a crunch.

"HEY!!" Mighty yelled, forgetting caution in his outrage. "Pick on someone your own size, you creep!"

Hyper-Ivy shrugged. "Sorry. No one here's an ivy plant with vines up to twenty feet long. You'll do, though!"

"Noooooo!" Knuckles cried, watching helplessly as Hyper-Ivy zapped Mighty with a blast of pure Chaos Energy before the Guardian could cover half the area between them. The armadillo screeched something and then collapsed in a smoking heap.

"Stop!!" Vector hissed, grabbing him before he reached the plant. "C'mon, Knux! Don't lose your cool! That's one mean weed, and he's achin' to to some gardening of his own . . . to us!"

"We've gotta do something!" Knuckles persisted.

"Like what?"

"Look what he just did to Mighty and Charmy - "

"I see very well what he did to Mighty and Charmy, and if you lose your head, we're going be in the same state of mind. Namely: comatose!"

Knuckles bit his lip.

"You're right," he conceded. Then he looked around. "Where's Constable Remington?"

Vector shrugged.

"I think Hyper-Illness over there ate him. Haven't seen him since we hit water."

"Hit water is right!" came a new voice.

Archimedes appeared in another puff of smoke, his face bearing a very grim expression.

"Knuckles," he said, addressing his student, "you've got to do something, and fast."

"You think I don't know that?" Knuckles demanded sourly.

The fireant shook his head.

"You don't understand, my friend. In less then two hours, the Island will be under water. We have no support under the ocean as continents do, and we're far from buoyant."

Now Knuckles blinked in shock.

"The Island is sinking?" he asked in a quiet voice.

Grimly, Archimedes nodded.

"But . . . that would kill almost everyone here!"

"Like poison ivy with Chaos Powers wouldn't?!" Vector exclaimed. "You two can ramble on about technicalities some other time! Right now, unless we do something, we won't live another two hours anyway!"

"Knuckles," Archimedes stated in his low, calm voice. "You are a Guardian. Potentially the most powerful Guardian to ever live. Your link with the Chaos Emerald is not restricted to the Chaos Chamber, nor do you need Power Rings to use it's energy. Without them, you cannot transform, but you can still make contact with the Emerald no matter where it is."

"But I - " Knuckles began to cut in, feeling more helpless in these few moments than he had in a very, very long time.

"Stop." Archy wasn't having it. "Yes, you don't know what to do. You've got to believe me when I say that that doesn't matter. Not at all."

For a long moment, Knuckles stared at his teacher, weighing his trust balance. Archimedes returned the stare with his cool gaze, almost daring him to go through with . . . whatever it was he was supposed to go through with.

Almost without realizing it, he turned and directed his attention to Hyper-Ivy, who was ignoring them and playing around with his new powers.

watched -

looked -

felt -

heard -

sensed the powers-

sensed the presence-

And he sensed it suddenly slamming him up against a nonsentient tree.

Hyper-Ivy had felt something tampering with the Emerald within him. He didn't know exactly what was happening, but he could somehow tell that it was the fault of this young echidna who called himself the Guardian. Panicing at the thought of losing his newfound powers, he shot through the airspace and slammed Knuckles against the tree.

"I don't know what you're doing," he hissed in a low voice, "but you'd better stop now, before I batter your skull in."

Knuckles opened his eyes and just then noticed that they had been closed. He looked past Hyper-Ivy to Vector, who was paralized with a horrified expression on his face. Archimedes, too, seemed rivited to the spot.

He froze them somehow . . .

Hyper-Ivy was now examining him with some curiosity.

"What were you doing, anyway?" he asked after a long moment of silence.

Knuckles didn't answer. He stared Hyper-Ivy straight in the eye.

But he wasn't seeing.

Again, he was in contact with the Master Emerald. As his options fell into place, the somehow drew upon its energy, summoning it from Hyper-Ivy's from into his own.

"Oh . . . " he said as everything suddenly began to make sense.

"What the - ?!?!" Hyper-Ivy screamed as a blast of green light shot out from within him and into the echidna. He tried to hurt Knuckles, but couldn't. So he tried to run. He couldn't. He couldn't move, caught in the power transfer -

- the transfer of of universe of energy from its resting place into the small, comparatively fail living body of the young Guardian -

Knuckles did not move. He didn't think. He barely saw, he barely heard, he barely cared.

But he felt the blast coming -

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?

Vector couldn't move for some unknown reason, and now he couldn't see what happened. What he had seen was Hyper-Ivy about to waste Knuckles while he stood there, unable to even move a finger for his friend. A strange green light crawled over the echidna and the plant, and then POOF, a globe of light sheltered them from his prying gaze.

"Gol dang it, Archy!" he seethed. "What's going on?!?!?!"

"I'm not sure!" he heard the ant reply.

"Oh yeah, like I haven't heard that one before." Disgruntled and worried, Vector continued to do the only thing he could: stare straight forward into the light globe.

After a few moments, the light vanished. In the blink of an eye (not that Vector could bink if he wanted to) it just disappeared. Hyper-Ivy was also gone, and so was the Master Emerald. Knuckles remained, but as Vector and Archimedes felt mobility return to them, he fell into an unconscious heap on the ground.

"Oh my gosh - " Vector exclaimed, running over to him, however wobbly. "Knux! Knuckles!" he called, trying to revive the echidna. "Well, Archy? Is he dead, or what?"

"He's alive," Archimedes answered. "However, the energy drove him into a system shock, I think. He couldn't handle it."

"And Hyper-Ivy?"

"Quite dead, I would think."

"The Emerald?"

"Back in the Chaos Chamber as we speak. The Island should begin to rise momentarily, although slowly - "

"Archy."

"Yes?"

"Is Knux gonna be all right?"

Archimedes waved an antenna at the croc.

"I don't know," was the only reply he could give.

Vector snorted.

"Well that just figures. Do you, uh, think you could do your little poof thing and get some help here?" he asked, sarcastically.

"Yes, I think I could very well do just that."

There was a loud popping noise heard in the Chaos Chamber.

POOF!

The Master Emerald appeared, along with Constable Remington, the hippy, the ESTers, and anyone else Hyper-Ivy had managed to chow down.

Remington shook the saliva out of his ears.

"Okay," he said to no one in particular. "What just happened?"

"Good question," replied a new voice.

Turning in surprise, the recently regurgitated Islanders regarded with some surprise the two new arrivals to the Island.

"Sonic?" Remington asked in a bit of disbelief. Then to Geoffery, "Hey, didn't I throw you out a window?"

Locke let out a sigh of relief when the Island slowly began to rise again into the clouds.

"Now what?" he asked Sabre.

"Now? Let's get some coffee."

"But what about Knuckles?"

Sabre thought for a moment, then said, "Okay, he can have some coffee too."

"He's unconscious, father."

"Oh? In that case, he doesn't need any coffee after all, does he?"

To be continued in Part Four . . .

Bombs, Toasters, Pepto Bizmol, and the Truth about Sabre's Coffee