Chapter 6

Mega Man Oblivion

It was now dark as they flew through the sky, and many stars were visible. They all had a bored expression on their faces, considering they have been flying through the sky for longer than any of them could tell. Pikachu didn't boredem though, as it was trying to hold on tight to Ash's shirt.

Finally, they could see the Sand Wilderness below them. The desert was once a fertile land that people lived on, but ongoing war had turned it into a wasteland.

They were getting closer to the ground. Though the ground was sand, it would still be a rough landing, so to smooth it out, Ash thought quickly.

"Golduck!" With the Pokeball, Golduck appeared on the ground ahead safely, and used its psychic powers to grab hold of them and gently set them down.

"Thanks, good thinking Ash." Link said as his feet were safely on the ground. "I should probably apologize to you, Ash. I thought that you would just get in the way if you came with us, but you've been quite helpful."

"No problem." Ash said with a smile. "Wow, it feels pretty cool here considering we're in a desert."

"That's because it cools down at night. We're lucky we came at this time, instead of high noon." As they looked at their surroundings, they saw a large, yellow bird run across the desert in the distance.

"What is that thing?"

"I think it's called a Chocobo, but what would it be doing here?"

"It could be that its homeland has been attacked by the Zox, and now it's just running away." Link began to wonder just how many places have been attacked. If the Zox appeared just about every place they went, then there must be even places they haven't been to that have been attacked, and even destroyed. "We should hurry before another land is attacked."

"Well, what do we do here then? I mean, it's my guess that Zero knows where the key is, but there's no one around here." Mario asked.

"Don't bother." Link said with his eyes closed. It was apparent that Zelda was communicating with him, and he was struggling to hear. It was probably very difficult for her to reach him from so far away.

"Zero, doesn't know where the key is. He...lost that memory from his...hibernation. The key is...right in front of us? Uh, that's all I got."

"What? There's nothing in front of us but sand!" D.K. said.

"Wait, how does she know where the key is?" Sonic asked. Link didn't hear Zelda mention anything about it, but there was more important business.

"I don't know, but now's not the time to think about that."

"Right in front of us? Perhaps she means under the sand? This didn't used to be desert, perhaps it got buried over time." Mario said.

"That's a good point, but how do we dig up so much sand?" Link asked. Sonic then spoke up with confidence.

"Leave that to me!" Sonic then walked forward, but a snake-type reploid popped out of the sand right in front of him. It shot a laser from its mouth, but Sonic dodged it and smashed it pieces.

"Looks like there's some old reploids laying around here that attack anything that comes near it." Sonic said cautiously. Just then, several human-shaped reploids and a few snake-types rose out of the sand. They had a few rust patches and eroded armor, but they were still a threat.

"Ah, there's a ton of them!" Ash said.

"Ha, I'm an expert robot smasher! Eggman's robots aren't too tough, how much trouble could they be?" Sonic jumped and rolled into a ball, then smashed the reploid.

"Well, they're not too sturdy." Ten more were then coming towards him. Sonic then rolled into a ball on the ground and spun around to gain speed, making sand fly everywhere. He then rolled off and took down the reploids around him.

Ash held out his Pokeball and shouted out the name of the Pokemon he wanted.

"Aggron, I choose you!" Aggron looked around at its surroundings and saw that this was no Pokemon battle, and Ash was in danger. Aggron then lifted Ash and set him on its shoulders to keep him safe, while Pikachu held on to Ash's head.

"Aggron, what are you doing? Oh, I get it! All right, let's go." Pokemon trainers and Pokemon their selves had become co-dependent over generations of taming. The trainer and the Pokemon were two halves. The Pokemon grew strong in speed and strength, while the trainer grew in intelligence. This way, the Pokemon became remarkably strong to carry out tasks, while the trainer became the brains of the Pokemon, instructing it what to do.

Three reploids came up to them and fired several lasers at them. With Aggron's tough, steel body, the lasers hardly made it flinch. Aggron then charged towards the machines and smashed them to the ground with its powerful fists.

"Aggron, behind you!" Ash shouted. A reploid had come up from behind, but just before it fired, Aggron swung its powerful tail at it, breaking the enemy in two. Another one came from the side, but with Ash's instructions, Pikachu zapped it, frying its circuits.

D.K. became surrounded, so he slammed the ground with his fists, making the ground shake. This made them unbalanced, so he plummeted the machines before they had a chance to get back up. A snake-type then sprung from the ground and wrapped around D.K. With him trapped, the reploid bit down on his shoulder, making him scream in pain. Resisting the pain, D.K. broke from the snake's grip, ripping it apart.

As D.K. held his shoulder, he saw even more enemies coming for him, and readied his coconut gun.

The metal on the reploids were too strong for Link's sword to cut through easily, so he attacked at parts that were rusted and damaged. No matter how many he destroyed, more kept coming, but Link never gave up before, and wasn't going to now.

A reploid ahead of him fired three lasers, and Link quickly raised his shield. Luckily, his hylian shield was enough to block the lasers. Link then fired his hookshot at it, and then brought the enemy to him. Link stuck his sword out, and as soon as the reploid came to him, his sword pierced right through the machine's head. He noticed another one coming from the right, so he used the reploid he held as a shield to protect him from the blasts. When the reploid stopped firing for a moment, Link swung the lifeless body he had around and threw it at the reploid. They both exploded when they collided.

Five more then came up from behind him, and he shot off five ice arrows, encasing them in ice, which Link then easily shattered. Before he knew it, twenty had surrounded him, all pointing their weapons at him.

When Mario tore apart one of the snakes, he then saw he had become surrounded also.

"There's too many of them! How are we supposed to do this? They just keep coming!" The enemy had surrounded them all, with laser guns pointed right at them. They were easy to take down by their selves, but there's safety in numbers.

Just as death seemed eminent, all the reploids froze in their place, and then looked to the east. After a few seconds, each and every one then ran towards the direction that they looked. Everyone stood there flabbergasted.

"Uh...what just happened? Why did they all leave?" Mario wondered. Link used his far-seeing vision to see where they went, but he couldn't see anything.

"I don't know. The only thing I can guess is that there was something more important than killing us. Normally, I would be worried, but the last key is within our reach, and it won't matter if we have the Nintendo 64. Sonic, you said you can dig up this place, right?" Link said.

"Yeah, no problem. Hey, you might want to back up." As the heroes backed up, Sonic began running in a large circle. Everyone began to question what he was doing, but then Sonic kept getting faster, and they could feel a breeze. As Sonic was becoming a blur, a small whirlwind was made from his running. As he went faster, the whirlwind got bigger. Sand was flying in all directions, and soon it was so big that they were covering their faces to block the sand. With their faces covered, they didn't see what was going on, just that they felt like thousands of tiny rocks were hitting them, and they heard nothing but the wind and sand.

As they stopped feeling the sand hit them, they opened their eyes, and saw a large hole with a small building in it. As they looked at it, it didn't appear to be the place. It was just a small, dilapidated, tin shack.

They walked down the hole, sliding down the sand, and opened the door to it, and inside they saw the familiar metal hallway that led downward.

"I guess this is it. Perhaps it's built this way to deceive. Good work Sonic." Mario said.

"No problem!" The group walked inside, but just as they took a step into the hallway, the ground began to shake immensely.

"What's going on?"

"This whole place is going to come down if we don't hurry!"

"Hey, let me take care of this! I'm the fastest here, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"All right then, good luck."

"Hey, if I'm not back in twenty seconds, then get outta here." Sonic then dashed down the hallway.

The square edges of the hallway became a round pathway as he went down. To make things harder for running, other than the shaking, parts of the walls jutted out, making the path harder. Sonic had to slow down a bit so that he wouldn't run right into one, because at that speed, running into a wall could be fatal. They came more and more, but thanks to the round hallway, he was able to run on the walls.

As he ran left and right avoiding the blocks, the passage up ahead began to close off. A circle wall came up in front of him, and left a small hole in the middle. The hole was just big enough for sonic to fir through, so he dived for it head first. When he landed back on the ground on the other side, he came to a room, and saw the key on its pedestal. As he came towards it, the pedestal began to lower into the floor. Sonic kicked up the pace, and grabbed the key before it had gone down into the floor.

The place was still shaking hard, and now he needed to get out of there before he was buried alive. Sonic went back the way he came, and though the blocks that jutted out were still there, no more came out.

Sonic stepped out of the building not a second too late, and the shack collapsed right behind him.

"Yeah! What a rush! Hey guys, I got the last key! Guys?" The group had their backs turned towards Sonic, and they were all looking to the sky.

"Hey, what's up?" As Sonic looked to where they were looking, he saw why they were stunned: A CD was floating right above them.