Chapter Three
Miles Prower loved his Tornado. He had had it for almost twenty years now, and Sonic had owned it before that. Yet it was still in perfect condition, no matter how many times Miles had crashed it doing some crazy stunt.
It was a good thing he was Knotholes' best at plane repair, or he'd be buying a new one every month.
Miles executed a simple roll, then followed it up with a loop. Ahead of him was his favorite grassy meadow. Often he came here with Fiona. But for flying, this meadow had a special purpose.
Miles pulled the throttle back, gaining altitude. Just before he reached the field, he reversed the throttle, heading directly downwards. He watched as his speedometer began to climb… two seventy…two eighty… three hundred miles per hour!
To any observer, it would have looked like a kamikaze attempt. But they wouldn't have known who was behind the controls.
Then, a hundred feet from the ground, Miles yanked the throttle back up. The Tornado started to level out, breezed ten feet above the grass, and started to gain altitude again.
Scared? Miles didn't get scared. He had done that trick three hundred times, and hadn't crashed doing it in five years. The adrenaline boost was amazing, but Miles was a natural behind the controls. If Sonic tried one of his stunts, it was ten to one that Knothole would need a new king.
The air was Miles's home. Whether in his plane, or rotor-flying with his tails, he probably spent more of his waking hours off the ground then he did on it. Acrophobia was alien to him. He sometimes felt sorry for the others, for the most part, they were permanently grounded.
Miles thought about doubling back and repeating the trick; then remembered his true purpose out in his plane. He wasn't tutoring any of the kids now, which meant that he was on his other job: Royal Surveyor. The job was his to, each day, fly over the vicinity of Knothole and search for any disturbances. Usually there were none, which left him plenty of time to mess around.
However, with everything that had been going on lately, Miles thought he should look slightly more closely today. Especially in the region of Robotropolis, where a number of strange things had been cropping up lately. Yeah, he would go there. Miles kept on his southwestern course, and let his mind wander slightly.
What were all his friends doing now? Sonic and Sally were cooped up in some meeting about agriculture. Antoine and Rotor would be with them. Bunnie would be home playing with her feisty teenage children, Adeline and Randall. The former had Antoine's coyote genetics; the latter resembled Bunnie.
Fiona… what would Fiona be doing? Probably telling little Tails not to fly so high, to come back where she could see him. Of their family of three, only she could not take to the air. It was eternally frustrating to her; a single tail could not provide sufficient lift to get her off of the ground.
While they had been waiting for their child, Miles and Fiona had often wondered whether the cub would have one or two tails. Only once, purely in jest, did Miles suggest that perhaps the cub would have three tails, by some strange genetic code. When Tails was born, it turned out Miles's quip had been fully correct.
Miles "Tails" Prower Jr. could outfly his father at the age of seven. His three tails provided so much power that he could soar for three quarters of an hour and not get tired. Unfortunately, on the ground, the nine-year old fox was pitifully slow. So, for the most part, he kept to the air whenever he had to go someplace.
Young Miles inherited his father's childhood nickname. To avoid confusion, everyone tried to remember to call the older Prower Miles, and his son Tails. It wasn't easy, as Miles had done all of his greatest deeds under his original epithet. Whenever young Miles wasn't around, Sonic always called the older fox by the pet name of his youth.
The tall spires of Robotropilis below him jerked Miles back to the present. The city was no long ruled under the reign of terror imposed by Robotnik's robots, but the citizens still chose to keep the name he had so long forced upon them. Miles spun off to the right, thinking that he would check the perimeter first, and work his way in.
However, Miles was soon bored. There were no Badniks, no strange occurrences, not even anyone being mugged. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, so he turned around the plane and started to fly home.
Suddenly, Miles stopped. On his right, he saw something he had never saw before. It was almost invisible… but it was there: a small pass in one of the mountains surrounding the city.
Probably nothing of importance, Miles thought, but he still had an hour and a half before he had to be back at Knothole. He pushed the throttle forwards and started to turn the Tornado on its side, as to fit through the passage. He was probably the only pilot on Mobius who could execute this; the sides of the mountain were six inches from his wings.
Miles blew out into the open and did a complete double take.
Badniks.
Crap, Miles thought, there must be five hundred. Five hundred Crabmeat, Coconuts, and Caterkillers. Five hundred Grounder, Spikers, Slicers, and countless other types of helpless animals turned into death machines. And that wasn't counting the hundred or so SWAT-bots and Combots that held no trapped animal, but were still as deadly as most any Badnik.
Miles pulled out his binoculars and scanned the ground. What he saw made his heart stop. He threw the binoculars down and raced for the exit.
At the same time, an intercom rang out: "SHOOT IT DOWN!
The voice! It belonged to that same figure on the ground. Even with the metallic twinge, there was no mistaking the high pitch that the Freedom Fighters had heard so many times.
Miles shot out the entrance as fast as he could, clipping one of his wings accidentally. Chancing a look behind him, he saw eight Balkiry soar out after him: flying death machines with one red plane as a target.
So they wanted a chase? Miles could give them a chase.
Miles hit the throttle and started speeding back towards Knothole, dodging blasts of energy coming from the Balkiry behind him. He dove and looped with a single purpose: get back to Knothole alive.
Suddenly, his right wing was gone.
Simply gone. He saw it falling to earth, and at the same time, he felt the plane go into a whirling dive. Miles struggled to control the Tornado, but there wasn't a chance. Miles struggled to find the ejection button… where was it? He hadn't used it in forever, and the ground was rushing up at him…
Pressing the button a second before his plane hit the ground, the blast threw Miles back up into the air, where he had already begun to whirl his tails. He was bruised, beaten, and bleeding from the head. However, the Balkiry had flown away, satisfied that they had destroyed their target – the plane. Miles thanked Robotnik for having made his Badniks so stupid.
Twice Miles stopped to rest, but he didn't stay for long. Any second, another fleet of Badniks could come after him after their master discovered that the target was not one hundred percent destroyed. Whirling at top speed, Miles flew on towards Knothole.
From above the lush forest canopy, it would have been impossible to find Knothole for anyone who didn't know their way precisely. Miles, fortunately, did. He had lived here since he was two, when his parents had disappeared. Landing and using the secret tree-stump entrance, Miles descended into Knothole and raced for the castle.
Knothole Castle was diminutive, as the village was not large. It was still sufficient to the needs of the royal family, guard, and advisors. The castle lacked moat, drawbridge, or any other means of defense; Knothole had never been attacked, because it had almost never been found.
Miles raced into the castle now, on his feet. Antoine tried to ask him what he was doing, but the orange blur was out of sight before he could get out the first word. Pulling to a screeching, panting halt, Miles opened the door.
All eyes turned towards him. It was terrible misconduct to interrupt a royal meeting without huge news. Miles had some.
"My God, Tails… what happened?" The King, of course – everyone else had gotten used to his real name.
"Badniks… near Robotropolis… hundreds…" It was getting hard to think.
There was a long silence, interrupted by Sonic.
"Badniks?! But… but how?"
"The question is not how," Sally said, looking around at the pale advisors, not one of whom was under forty-five years of age, "the question is… who?"
Miles managed to get it out. "Snively…"
Then everything went black.
Chapter Four
Hope leapt in Snively's circuits as he watched his video monitor from inside the dugout. The red plane spiraled towards the ground, crashing in a huge explosion. Could he finally be rid of that pesky vulpine once and for all?
No, not yet. Flying away from the wreckage was a little orange dot. Snively zeroed in on the wounded fox. He wanted to see the two-tailed pest's elimination from the best vantage point possible.
Yet… what was wrong? The Balkiry weren't shooting anymore. In fact, they were flying back, and the fox was going free! What had happened?
"Damn!" Snively's monitor had just reached maximum range.
It didn't take long for Snively to figure it out. He had dispatched the Balkiry to shoot down the plane, and they had done so. The fox was indifferent to them. Snively's uncle would have had the Balkiry dismantled for that, but Snively was wiser than him. The Badniks were only following instructions, and Snively needed every robot he had on hand.
Snively had always hated the Freedom Fighters, but sometimes he had hated his uncle more. So, occasionally he had helped the animals, eventually even rescuing their village in favor of eliminating his uncle. It had not worked, however, as a more powerful version from another cosmic universe, RoboRobotnik, had transferred dimensions and, calling himself Dr. Eggman, resumed Robotnik's original vendetta against his enemies, especially Sonic the Hedgehog.
Eggman's main power had been a robotization Midas touch. In an attempt to trick the Freedom Fighters, Snively had allowed himself to be robotized. The trick failed, but Snively was left with a robot body and some three digit multiple of the physical power that he had previously possessed.
Now that no Robotnik remained in this dimension, the robotic Snively had taken over the job of trying to control Mobius. However, though quite intelligent, he knew that he could never match his uncle's fantastic mechanical ability. Luckily, Robotnik had left many of his old machines and machine plans in secret locations. Sonic and the others had destroyed most of them, but a few remained intact, and using these Snively had been able to create a crude robotizer of his own.
He had recreated Robotnik's original Badniks for lack of imagination to create his own. However, his robotizer was very slow, and it had taken all of a decade to create the army of six hundred and seventy eight various Badniks that were swarming through his secret hideout today.
The fact that Miles had discovered his hideout was of no significance. Badniks were already at work sealing the entrance he had discovered, and nearly a dozen remained, the farthest being fifteen kilometers from the first one. All were far better concealed than the primary.
He thought about sending a search team to follow the fox, and perhaps discover Knothole, but he knew it was too late. He could not launch his mass attack until two things happened, and the first was that he had to find Knothole. Wherever the place was, it was far out of his video range.
Snively knew that the Freedom Fighters were far from invincible, but somehow Robotnik had never quite been able to capitalize on their flaws. That situation had changed now. There was one great way to discover Knothole's location, and it lay in the greatest flaw a superhero can have – those who are close to him.
Thus Snively had hit on his plan. It was wild and crazy, but if everything went right, it would work. He had spend six months developing a single bot that, when he finished, didn't look like a bot at all. The bot held no animal; it was fully computerized. At the same time, diggers in deep mines who had been working for five years finally unearthed their treasure – a Chaos Emerald.
The Emerald would give the robot the intelligence it would require to complete its assignment. Robots were usually perfectly idiotic unless equipped with some type of artificial intelligence. This particular mission would require that the robot to a perfect impersonation, something a normal Badnik would not even be able to comprehend.
The second part of the plan was that a power source was needed. Snively's current Badniks were far weaker than the originals, and there was more than one case of the animal inside totally throwing off the mind control and revolting. When that Badnik was smashed, the animal could slip out and go free. Luckily, all rebels so far had been stopped before the could bring news of Snively's hideout to the outside world.
The power source that Snively had in mind would make every one of his Badniks just as powerful as Sonic himself. When the pesky vulpine had interrupted, Snively had just been assembling forces for his first attack to obtain the source. It was a kamikaze mission at best, as only twenty Badniks were being sent. The guardians should shut them down in no time. The freed animals would not be able to tell anyone anything that Miles didn't already know. However, there was a good chance that the attack would discover the location of the massive power that Snively required.
"Commence Operation Master Search," Snively said into his intercom. He could hear the effect of his words on the chosen Badniks. A buzz of activity could be heard outside his private hollow.
The power source was the Master Emerald on the Floating Island.
The robot looked exactly like Princess Sabrina Acorn.