Chapter 3: Hey Pluto!

Nite entered the huge room where he and the others first fought with Streak; he hadn't really fought though despite all his bravado he knew that the evil version of Sonic was far stronger than him. If he had attacked he would have only put his own team down a man, he shivered at the thought of what the monster was capable of.

"And it will never happen again…Sonic made sure of that…speaking of the blue boy I should really get my investigation started, who knows he might have survived…"

He started walking to the small door at the other side of the room, edging his way past the colossal Pluto and noting with a great deal of surprise that Metal Sonic MKII was no longer in its leg. He shrugged and picked up the pace into a brisk walk, which was until a huge metal arm smashed into his side sending him flying into the wall.

He looked up in shock as the huge machine known as G-009 Pluto pushed itself shakily to its feet.

"TARGET AQUIRED: ACTION TO TAKE: DESTROY" its great mechanical voice seemed to echo everywhere "DAMAGE INDEX: 99 PERCENT: CAUTION MUST BE TAKEN"

"Still at 99 huh?" Nite reached into his unknown space-time dimension and pulled out his all-purpose Bazooka as if from nowhere "In that case you're going down! I got a bone to pick with you!"

He charged forward to attack but had to leap to the side as it fired its huge cannon like arm at him leaving a rather large scorch mark on the ground. He aimed up with his Bazooka as he slowly came to rest on the ground.

"Nice try! Now it's my turn tall dark and gruesome!"

With that he fired the Bazooka upwards at the huge metal monster catching it where he guessed was right between the eyes. It seemed to have been weakened a great deal by its confrontation with Streak and the other Sonic Heroes as it actually staggered back from the attack.

"DAMAGE INDEX: 99.1 PERCENT"

"Now we're getting some where" Nite grinned as he rolled to the side to dodge another of its attacks but was struck by a rather powerful kick which sent him flying back through the air and into the wall again "Ugh…cant take too many more of those…what the!"

He had to dive to the side to dodge another of the robot's blasts, only just making it to safety as the colossal attack blew away a chunk of the wall.

"Too close…" he took aim and fired again, this time hitting the machine in the hole that was left behind by Streak.

"DANGER, DANGER: DAMAGE INDEX: 99.7 PERCENT"

Nite's grin widened, he was actually going to beat this thing. No sense in taking it out this way though.

"Let's end this with style!"

He jumped to the side and into a roll again as he dodged yet another blast, as he did so he inserted his lucky Red Chaos Emerald into the Bazooka's power slot and took aim with a giant goofy grin on his face.

"PYRO CANNON!" with that he fired a huge blast of concentrated flames just as hot as the sun itself, straight at his colossal enemy. The attack blasted a hole right through it, the heat searing and melting its circuitry as the blast died down and the monster started to slowly fall backwards.

"DaMaGe INDEx 600 PercenT…"

It trailed off as it hit the ground with an earth quaking thud nearly knocking Nite off his feet. He grinned as he removed the Chaos Emerald and put it back in his jacket pocket. He didn't want to overload his Bazooka with too much Chaos energy.

He turned and began to make his way to the door at the other side of the room when he heard something moving and spun around nearly jumping out of his skin as he instantly dropped into a rather stupid and fear filled looking martial arts stance, breathing very heavily.

Pluto had just fallen to pieces…

OOO

Spike paused for a moment and listened, he could have sworn that he had heard some kind of explosion up ahead.

"Nite!"

The realisation that his friend might be in trouble jolted him to action as he took off down the immensely hot corridor at break neck speeds. He leaped from the one platform to another dodging the jets of flame as he did so and making sure to be extra careful not to topple into the lava below.

He stopped half way through his journey to catch his breath and sighed.

"I'm really beginning to dislike platforms…I mean what is this, a computer game!"

With that he continued on his way, fuelled by the desire to help his close friend at any cost, but his mind wandered to his other friend.

I wonder how Nack is doing.

OOO

Nack the weasel couldn't hear a thing; the wind blasting from the fans was drowning out everything else and forcing him to duck low just to make his way over the bridge. He stopped and took a moment to look over the edge and cringed at the thought of falling off for about the sixth time since entering Miles' little obstacle course.

Below the bridge was a pit of razor sharp spikes that chances are would be able to turn him into a shish kebab rather easily.

"And I'd just be somethin' else on the barbe…"

He had decided against using his jet pack in case the air currents tossed him over the side and towards a rather untimely demise by pointy stabbity objects. He cringed once again and continued on.

After a while he came to a dead end, there was no sign of a door and for a moment he thought he was trapped, until he looked up and realised that this little part of his journey would be through the air. With that he hopped into the air and started to fly up with his jetpack to its maximum height, he stayed there hovering with his now rather low fuel level searching for a way up. There didn't seem to be anyway up, he was trapped…he then looked down and sighed in exasperation.

"I missed that damn button…"

He gently hovered to the ground where he sat down; he'd head for the button once his fuel cells had recharged back to full. Helping Nite was getting hard…

"What am I talkin' about…helping Nitey has always been bloody hard!"

He sighed again as he waited, it was going to be a long day.