Another chapter already? Well, I'm certainly good at this. Here's the next level! Disclaimer: Why bother?

Day 1, 5:00 PM

Scales walked out of the bathroom, fully dried off. She had just showered to rinse off the chlorine from her long swim in the hotel pool. Big was still at work on the scanner, grumbling and pushing buttons now and then. "Dr. Rose, have you found anything helpful yet?" Big looked up from the scanner and shook his head. "Sort of. I tried to get a closer look at the nanites to see if I could see a logo or something on it. I found what looked like Snively's usual emblem, but it was crossed out." Scales sighed. "Well, all that tells us is what we already know, it's not Snively's work. But it must be someone who is able to control his machines and stuff. If only we had a better idea of what we're looking for!" Robotnik came in, ending the conversation. "Scales, it took a while but I've found the next Emerald." "Where is it?" Scales asked, ready for action. "It is located inside Station Square's biggest casino, Casinopolis. They are probably holding it as a prize or something, like they did the last time it was there." Robotnik informed her. "So how do I get the Emerald? Steal it?" Scales asked. Robotnik shook his head. "No, no! You're not Rouge! You'll have to win it." "Win it? But I heard the machines in Casinopolis were rigged to give out cash one time in a thousand!" Big said. Robotnik blinked. "Really? Well I know Shadow got it last time. He didn't say how, though. Oh well, Scales, you can handle this can't you?" Scales shrugged. "I'll try my best. And if the odds don't work in my favor, I'll just interface with the computers controlling the machines and make them give me all the money." "The machines aren't controlled by a computer, just lots of complicated gizmos." Said Big. "I'll just go then. See you guys later. Chaos Control!" She warped off of Angel Island.

After reappearing in Station Square, Scales asked around for the location of Casinopolis. After having to fend off a couple of pimps and drunks, she found the place. It was a hotel as well, like in Vegas. The whole entrance was lined with big flashing lights and neon letters. Walking past the money-greedy valets outside the casino, Scales entered.

Stage 3: Casinopolis. Mission: Find the Chaos Emerald.

Scales had to squint for a moment when she entered. The casino was a huge circular room, full of slot machines, roulette tables, card tables, poker tables, pinball machines, and lots and lots of not-too-clever gamblers wasting all their money. Some elevators in the back went up to several levels of the room, each with more slot machines and soundproof hotel rooms. In the center of the room was a giant statue of a roaring lion. Between the lion's paws was a glass case holding the dark blue Emerald. Surprised that it was so easy to find, Scales walked over to the case and reached for the catch that would open the case. "And just what do you think you're doing?" growled a voice behind her. Scales turned around and saw a gorilla in a security guard outfit. "I'm sorry, I was just trying to get the Emerald." The guard snorted. "How many rings do you have?" Scales looked at the guard, confused. "Rings?" "Oh, this is your first time here? Let me explain. In this casino, the machines don't give you cash outright. Instead, you get a number of small gold rings for each win. The gold rings can be cashed in at the main desk for money, or it can be exchanged for prizes. This rock here is the most expensive prize in the casino, and as such is displayed here, where all can admire it." The guard told Scales. "Well, how many rings would I need to get this Emerald?" she asked. "400. So if you're planning on getting the Emerald, I suggest you start gambling." He said softly. "Of course, you have no chance in Hell of actually gaining enough rings to get the jewel!" he said quite clearly. Scales gasped. The guard blinked and cursed. "D'oh! I said the loud part quiet and the quiet part loud. Er, run along please!" Scales growled at the guard, but walked away. She was about to reluctantly head over to one of the slot machines and try to gamble when Tikal flew up to her. "Scales, stay away from the machines!" Scales smiled at the sight of her friend. "Tikal! You wouldn't happen to know how I can get 400 rings, would you?" Tikal bobbed, like a nod. "Yes, but you will never earn enough on the machines. They're rigged to pay out only one in ten thousand tries!" Scales blinked. "Whoa. Now that's harsh. So how can I get the required amount of rings?" Tikal started flying off. "Follow me!" Scales shrugged and followed Tikal to a door hidden by a paint job to make it match the wallpaper. Scales opened the door and stepped inside, finding a small elevator waiting for her. "This elevator goes down to the casino garbage dump. There are lots of rings down there!" Scales frowned. "Why would so many rings be in the garbage dump?" Tikal bobbed again, as if she was shrugging. "I dunno. Go on, you have to get the Chaos Emerald!" "I'm going, I'm going." As Tikal vanished, Scales stepped in the elevator and went down. As it went down, she screamed and clutched her head, suddenly feeling excruciating agony. Was it from an invisible enemy? Poison? No, it was the horrible elevator music! Blocking her eardrums, Scales smashed the elevator's speaker to pieces with a few kicks, restoring the silence. She relaxed and waited for the thing to stop moving. A minute or two later, the doors opened up, revealing the complex maze that was the garbage dump. She walked forward, going up a long, gentle slope and stopped, seeing a row of spikes in her way. Wondering what they were doing here, she jumped over the spikes and was attacked by six Bladed Spinners. Scales quickly eliminated them with a few Homing Kicks and noticed several glittering things on the ground ahead. She walked over to the first thing and picked it up. It was a small gold ring! She put it away and picked up the next one, putting that away as well. She continued, picking up every ring she saw. By the time she got to the top of the slope, she had found a total of twenty rings. She jumped over a pair of spiked balls and went through the exit. She dropped into a giant fan shaft. The fan at the bottom blew her upwards, sending her through a total of sixty rings before reaching the top of the shaft. She saw a tunnel on the left, and used her Jet Anklets to move across the upward current to get to the tunnel. She went inside and walked down the corridor, killing a Bladed Spinner that tried to slice her up. She found ten rings on the ground and turned right, following the passage. The corridor soon turned right and sloped down. Scales followed, picking up ten more rings as the passage corkscrewed and went ahead. She kept going, killing lots of Bladed Spinners and Rhino Tanks, until she came to a turn in the corridor and went right. By this point she had collected twenty more rings. As she kept going straight ahead, she grabbed twenty more and turned right, coming to another shaft. She jumped out and let the fan carry her up. She grabbed sixty rings as she went up, using her Jet Anklets to fly into a tunnel straight ahead. She killed a Unidus that rushed at her, and turned right, grabbing ten rings before turning right again. She killed a group of Rhino Tanks and found twenty more rings, then turned right after a little bit and found ten more. She continued down the corridor for a while, before stopping in front of a doorway blocked by laser beams. A pair of Golas charged her. Scales killed the Golas, lowering the laser field and letting her pass. She went forward and turned right, mowing down a dozen Rhino Tanks before finding another shaft. She jumped into it and was flung upwards, grabbing sixty rings before reaching the top. She maneuvered over to a tunnel on her left and entered it. She went forward and grabbed ten rings, then found an additional ten as the tunnel went left. It turned right up ahead, leading to a stretch of passage with a dozen Unidus. She killed the spiky robots carefully and found ten more rings. She turned right at the end and found twenty rings, then turned right again, going down a long corridor and grabbing ten rings before being attacked by a Bladed Spinner. She smashed the Spinner and turned left, eventually getting to the beginning of a long rectangular room. She turned left, going down the room. She went by several partial walls in the room, grabbing thirty rings and destroying a horde of Rhino Tanks that ambushed her before finally reaching a long, narrow shaft with a ladder. She could faintly see light at the top of the shaft. She got on the ladder and started climbing up. After a long climb, she came to the top. She could hear the noises of the casino through an opening ahead. Scales crawled through the opening and discovered she was in the mouth of a lion statue! So as not to cause any alarm, Scales used the time-freeze variation of Chaos Control to drop from the lion's mouth and move to a suitable position before her time was up. When everything restarted again, Scales walked over to the gorilla guard and the Emerald. "I'm back!" she said. The guard grunted. "Yeah, so?" Scales took out all the rings she had found in the garbage dump and dropped them at his feet. "I have four hundred rings. Can I please have that Emerald now?" The guard's jaw dropped. "Wha-buh-guh-nuh-how! How did you get these?!" "I won them. Now give me the Emerald! It's my prize, I've earned it." Scales demanded. Sadly, the guard put away the four hundred rings in his own dimension pocket and opened the case. "Thank you." Said Scales. She reached into the case and grabbed the Emerald.

(STAGE CLEAR.)

Just as Scales was about to contact Robotnik, the lion statue started to shake. The guard looked up and shouted, "It's gonna blow! Everyone, get out of the way!" Everyone close to the statue immediately ran and hid behind anything they could find, including potted plants. The statue shattered, raining chunks of metal all over the place, some of which hit gamblers too obsessed to notice what was going on and weren't hiding. The shaft leading to the garbage dump was revealed, but there was now a new, bigger hole in the center of the room. Standing near this hole was a horrendous insectoid monster, one of the party-crashers from the wedding. The bug chittered a little and said. "I am Lucifer, second of the Demonic Four. Where is the Chaos Emerald?" Scales stepped forward. "I have it, and a few others!" Lucifer seemed to grin. "Great! Just give them to me and I'll be on my way." Scales shook her head. "You can have them if you pry them from my cold dead fingers." Lucifer shrugged. "That can be arranged." He started forward. Scales turned to look at the guard. "Get all these people off the casino floor. This is going to be a bit of a fight." Too shocked to do anything else, the gorilla nodded and headed to round up the civilians. Scales switched to battle mode and ran at the bug.

Lucifer

Lucifer came towards Scales, swinging his massive claws. She jumped over the monster's charge and hit him behind with her tail. Lucifer turned around and swiped at her, slashing into her skin. She winced and backflipped away as Lucifer tried to get in another hit. He attempted a 3- hit combo, but Scales was too fast for him to lay a blow on. She jumped in the air and tried to hit him with a Homing Kick, but Lucifer blocked her with his big claws. He punched her when she dropped from his claws and then managed to pull off a 3-hit combo, sending Scales through several rows of slot machines and slamming into the wall. She moaned and got up, shaking the cobwebs from her head. "Okay, NOW I'm mad." She growled. Lucifer burrowed into the ground and started for Scales. Unable to see where he was, Scales jumped on top of a slot machine she hadn't knocked over and waited for Lucifer to appear. He popped up where she had been standing near the wall. When he turned around to see where she had gone, Scales shot forward with a Homing Kick, hitting him in the face. Lucifer grunted and tried to slash her, but she was already out of range. The monster turned around and started climbing up the wall. Once he was almost high enough to climb over the balcony of the first floor of hotel rooms, near the frightened guests and gamblers who had been ushered away from the main floor, Lucifer let go with one hand and hung from the balcony, looking down at Scales. "You can't get me up here, lizard! Let's see if you can avoid this attack so easily. Inferno Blast!" A mammoth fireball appeared at the very top of the casino chamber, dropping down towards the center of the room. Scales ducked behind a slot machine as the ball struck the center of the room, exploding and burning a good portion of it. "Dammit, you weren't supposed to hide from the attack!" Lucifer yelled angrily. "That's kind of the point of evasion, isn't it?" Scales called up at the monster. "Well, yeah, but." He scowled. "Okay, enough of this! I'm getting your Emeralds, end of story!" Lucifer let go of the wall, surprising everyone. As he fell, he spread his arms and suddenly, insect wings sprouted from his back, fluttering and giving him flight. He started buzzing around the room like a fly, laughing and throwing fireballs at Scales. "You can't dodge me for long, lizard! I'll taste your flesh soon enough!" Scales responded by picking up a potted plant and throwing it at the flying monster. Lucifer easily dodge it, laughing. Scales frowned and grabbed a slot machine, throwing it at the bug. Once more, Lucifer flew out of the way. "Just give up, it'll be easier for the both of us!" That's when Scale picked up an entire roulette table and threw it at the insect. Lucifer's eyes widened. He tried to get out of the way in time, but the table smashed into him, knocking him from the sky. He lay there, groaning under the broken table. Scales walked over to Lucifer and grabbed him by the horns, pulling him out from under the table. She spun around and threw him at a wall. Unexpectedly, he flipped in midair and grabbed the wall instead of hitting it. He grinned at Scales, thinking he was winning. That's when Scales fired a Serpent Strike at him. The snake exploded, knocking Lucifer off the wall. He landed with a thump and struggled to get up, only to find he was too weak. He lifted his head in time to see Scales over him, holding another roulette table. She brought it smashing down on him, seeming to knock the insect out. She smirked. "That'll learn ya." A second later, the roulette table was broken in half as Lucifer recovered and smashed through the piece of furniture. Gasping for air, he managed to say, "You little bitch! If it weren't for the fact that you've crushed several of my internal organs, I'd rip your head off! I think I'll just run along to lick my wounds, but next time you won't be so lucky!" With that, the insectoid burrowed into the ground and disappeared. Scales looked up to see all the people who had watched her applauding and cheering. A smile came to her face. She couldn't resist taking a bow, which made the cheering even louder. She finally stopped and waved her hands. "Thank you, thank you all for your homage! But before the casino owner shows up and tries to stick me with the bill for all this destruction, I will perform one last trick for your amusement. Chaos Control!" She warped away in a flash of light, astounding the gamblers and tourists to no end.

Wow, another chapter done already? Man I'm fast. Oh well, here's another interview! Scales: Yo. Me: What did you think of this level? Scales: Aside from the boss fight, all too easy. Will the next one be better? Me: I give you my word the next one will be more interesting and you get not one, but two boss battles in a row as well as some minor plot advancement! Scales: Yay! Me: I'm so sorry to cut this interview short, but it's time for bed soon. And no bed and no sleep make pi2 go something something. Scales: Go crazy? Me: Don't mind if I do! Bykfiiljfilkglhiioioiomwpimfrriu! Scales: (Hits me over the head hard.) Stop that! Me: Whoops, sorry. See you next time!

Scales: You'd better review, or I'll make sure you get the same roulette treatment I gave to Lucifer!