(I do not own Sonic X, etc.)

Flip card 2;

Name: The Machine Federation

Description: Metal Sonic's own empire, the drones the army itself are the ones called the Metal X. The Machine Federation is divided into four clans, the Ground forces, the navy, the air force and Space force. Each of his general's commanders one clan. The surviving members, Lancelot and Dark Oak are leaders of the Air force and Space force.

-

The entrance to the interior of the Machine Federation base turned out to be a small entrance hatch leading down from the base of one of the energy collection towers. It was used by technician robots to do maintenance on the towers, but was large enough for them to fit through.

Tails had paused outside long enough to send a message back to the Blue Typhoon, reporting on what they found and to let them know they were going in for a closer look.

The climb down was long and would have tried them both, had they both not been used to extreme heights. The inside of the hatch was a pipe barley a meter of so wide, with a metal ladder. Thick cables ran downwards as well, disappearing into the darkness below.

"Not a sound." Tails told Knuckles as they reached a certain height, as Tails noticed some security measures had been placed around. The echidna nodded and they continued downwards. The only light came from the occasional electronic bulb here and there along the wall, enough to leave disturbing black shadow everywhere they looked.

Finally reaching the bottom of the laser, Tails emerged out onto a completely concrete corridor; a metal grating ran along with it on both the ceiling and the floor. Pipes emitting a soft hum criss-cross along the walls. One of them had a crack in it and a strange thick, white mist was pouring out, filling the air.

If the fox had read the layout of the construction right, then all the energy those towers were collecting was being channelled to the centre. That had to be where the Chaos Emerald cloning experiments were taking place. Of course, they still had to find out in which direction that was. Knuckles followed the fox down and the paused the corridor for a while, whispering to each other to try and create a plan. Their voices were kept as low as possible. Metal Sonic could have rigged this entire place with sound monitors.

"The centre was off in this direction." Tails told the Echidna, gesturing off down the corridor to their left. "But the security features are probably going to get worse the further we go in. And remember…" He added, seeing the look on Knuckles' face. "No hitting anything until we get there…got it?"

"Right." The Echidna sighed reluctantly and the two of them got underway.

Surprisingly, there where very few robots patrolling the corridors. Only a few large mechanical insects crossed their path, but these seemed to be in the nature of technicians. When one passed by, a large millipede like machine with a pair of long metal arms at the front; they watched it stop to repair a damaged pipe before carrying on. It seemed to be totally oblivious to them, as if they didn't even exit. It just ignored them and carried on its way.

They doubted the security cameras would do the same. Whenever they sighted one ahead in the corridor, they had to circle around in its blind underside slowly and silently before carrying on. Large shutter doors would often bar their way, forcing them to find alternative routes through the underground metal maze. They could not afford to start breaking down doors now.

Finally they came to what Tails expected was the high security section. A reinforced metal door bared their way, and out only open for machines that went in and out and from the momentary glimpse they got of the corridor beyond, traversing it unseen would not be easy.

"How close to the centre do you think we are?" Knuckles asked under his breath. Tails paused, looking hesitant.

"Probably not too far, this new section must surround it completely." The fox replied, watching as a humanoid robot, most likely a guard of some kind came marching out from around a corner and made for the door. Once there it stopped dead still and waited for several seconds, before the doors opened and it stepped inside. Almost snapping at the machines heals the doors slammed shut. "I think I can hack my way in." Tails announced, noticing an interface panel on the side of the towering door frame. "Only problem is, once I do it'll so up on their system and the next time they do a security check they'll notice it."

"How long would that be?"

"No more than ten minutes at the most." The Echidna was silent for a moment.

"Fine, go ahead. Ten minutes should be more than enough." The fox nodded and edged his way towards the door while Knuckles stood watch at the corridor's entrance, getting an eye on all the routes that came in this direction so he could see anything that tried to approach.

The code locking the door turned out to be a lot more complex than it first appeared and it took Tails a full minute to finally get around it. Finally there was a soft click and the doors slid to one side.

"Alright, we're on the clock now, let's go!" Knuckles nodded and quickly the door of them proceeded through the door.

They didn't have to go far beyond it to find the centre. Most of that section second was hollow, a giant caesium that they couldn't even see the bottom of. Curving platforms and corridors ran around the outside edges and a multitude of robots were busy doing various tasks on them. Directly in the centre of the empty space were ten glass pillars, all full of a glowing blue liquid that illuminated the entire giant chamber. The cables that lead down from the towers above curved down the inside of the caesium to the bottom of those pillars were a very loud hum was coming from. Looking upwards, they could see the large hole they had spotted when they came in. This was clearly the centre of the base. A large selection of infra-red lasers crossed in a grid above, leaving no room for either of them to get through.

"We don't have time to walk." Tails remarked, seeing a very, very long set of metal ramps and ladders leading down towards the ground floor. They'd never be able to get down those in ten minutes. "Come on, let's go this way." He added, gently climbing over the edge of the railing, his twin-tails already tensed for flight. Knuckles nodded and followed suite.

Knuckles managed to float down, using his spread arms and dreadlocks to slow his fall while Tails followed him down. They had to angle their decent to keep themselves out of range of detection by any of the robots working around them. Once past them however they simply let themselves drop for a couple of hundred feet or so before they finally saw the bottom of the pit.

It was a curved floor, were all the cables merged together into one in a giant tangle. Above this mess as a flat, Hexagon shaped platform where the ten glass pillars began. Landing on the edge of the platform, they both got a first hand glimpse of the Machine Federation's grand project. In nine of the pillars, floating there above them were first sized jewels, all grass green They were glowing, but not with white light like most Chaos Emeralds. Their light was an ugly raven black.

The only true Chaos Emerald lay in the tenth pillar, directly in the centre, wires lancing away from it to all the others.

Two humanoid robots were there doing technician jobs, but as soon as Knuckles and Tails set foot on the platform they turned towards them. One of them fell, with the Echidna's fist embedded in its face. The other tried to raise the alarm, but Tails tripped it up and once it was on the floor, Knuckles moved in for the kill.

"Something's wrong here." Tails remarked, looking up at the collection of cloned Emeralds. They looked like the real McCoy in the middle, yet it wasn't just their different glow that set them apart. The others seemed…uglier than the rest. There was now other word to describe it. They seemed more black than green.

Knuckles, who was used to the tingle of Chaos Energy could tell something was amiss as well. Their energy pulse, it was all wrong. It took a moment, but then he knew was it was.

"Negative." He stated, earning him a quizzical look from Tails. "Those fakes contain nothing but Negative Chaos Energy, I can feel it."

Chaos Energy had two sides, a Positive and a Negative. One side was triggered by emotions such as anger and rage, while the other could be used by other means. Knuckles was right, according to the reports already on the screen of the terminal embedded in the machinery, all Metal X had succeeded in doing was creating Emerald's filled with nothing but negative Chaos energy.

Even so, they were still extremely dangerous, and nine of them made their existence a serious problem.

"Look at this." Tails remarked in awe as he worked on the terminal. Knuckles walked over and looked over his shoulder.

"What is it?"

"Details of some of the other experiments Metal X was performing on this planet." The fox replied, his fingers busy typing away as fast as he could on the small console. A holographic display appeared above them, a projection of what lay on the screen "Just look at it!" Tails exclaimed. Metal X had kept themselves busy with the advanced technology they stole from Doctor Eggman, who in turn had dug it out of the frozen Canadian tundra. According to what lay here, Metal Sonic himself had been engaging in the experimentations, which branched from the obvious Chaos Emerald cloning all the way to results in weapons testing. Copied Chaos control was also on their agenda, as well as many attempts at genetic engineering.

"Genetics?" Knuckles repeated, looking at him with wide eyes. "That'll explain the Mammoths we saw back on the Tundra."

"And the other animals on this planet that should be extinct." Tails added. "But that doesn't make sense. What would machines do with Genetics' technology? They don't have any D.N.A to fool around with."

Knuckles put a hand to his chin thoughtfully.

"Perhaps they were trying to become more than machines." Tails sighed and shook his head.

"But Metal Sonic hates organic life." He stated frankly.

"It doesn't have to be Metal Sonic who had the idea." The Echidna ventured. "Maybe one of his General's had ambitions." Tails was silent. He stood there collecting his thoughts, trying to piece the puzzle together. If Metal Sonic wasn't the one behind the genetics' grand purpose, then which General was it? Equinox or Leviathan, the two they had already destroyed. Or perhaps Lancelot, or maybe even Dark Oak himself?

"All this won't be good news in the long run." The fox said eventually, glancing up at the fake emeralds above. "We have to shut this place down." The Echidna grinned sadistically, cracking his knuckles suggestively.

"I was hoping you'd say that."

Knuckles drew a fist back and smashed the centre pillar open. All the liquid contained within came coursing down in a water wall and catching the green Chaos Emerald that flowed with it, the Echidna backed off as the rest of the pillar shattered and the platform nearly got drenched.

"Right, now let's deal with these things." Tails remarked, preparing to go to work on the controls. The tips of his fingers were an inch above the keys when suddenly, alarms began blaring around them and the blue glow changed to red. Knuckles looked around in a confused daze, clutching the Chaos Emerald in one hand.

"Oh crap!" He cursed. The ten minutes were up, the Metal X security system had detected their presence. Before Tails could do anything, a metal panel came slamming down over the controls, sealing them away.

"Security breech, lab core compromised. All security drones converge on core." An emotionless, computer synthesised voice announced over a set of hidden loud speakers somewhere in the chamber.

Outside, the hologram protecting the base from detection flickered before dissipating completely.

-

Cosmo had spent a lot of time outside the Blue Typhoon since Tails left, staring up at the Martian sky above, trying piece everything together in her head. Regardless of the purpose that had drawn her here, she still felt confused.

Maginaryworld was so very different to this reality, the physics, the culture and the local flora and fauna. Still, she had a made a decision to come here and she couldn't go back now, not even if she wanted to. She hadn't the energy required to open a dimension rift a second time.

Her family was an influential and famous bloodlines of seers, which was why they sat at Queen Illumina's side. Her siblings were all skilled in divination, but she had not. She could not control when and where the visions came, nor had she any passion to learn. Ever since she was born she'd wanted to travel to other realities, like the scout parties she'd read about. Her people frequently travelled to different dimensions and she had wanted to follow suite.

In true family tradition, her elders had forbid it. Yet secretly, she had made plans to leave. Then the vision came. In her sleep, she saw the Speedster and the Shade, two halves of one whole. Combined, they fought together against a very powerful enemy, one completely wrapped in darkness, possessing unlimited amounts of hatred. It was dream…no…nightmare, which had driven her to come here.

No one believed her about her vision; she was considered a low rate seer and was dismissed. But Cosmo knew with every ouch of her soul that what she saw had been a warning of some kind. It had also given her instinctive knowledge, for as soon as she heard about this dimension and the war Void had waged in it, she knew it was there she had to go.

Travelling dimensions takes a great deal of energy. Ancients, such as Void or even Illumina herself can do it because over the eons they built up reserves of power. Cosmo was barely even a decade old and travelling here had taken every ounce of strength she could muster. She hadn't the energy needed to travel back now.

In a sense, she supposed she'd accomplished her ambition. Here she was, in a different reality just like she'd planned.

However she still mused at her own usefulness here. What could she do besides get in the way of the others? She had to figure out why she alone had been given the vision. She had to know exactly what she was here to do. Sighing, she picked herself back up and made her way over towards Big the cat. The purple feline was sitting on the edge of the ship still trying his luck.

A small pile of fish bones lay to one side, showing that he hadn't done too badly.

"Oh, I got a big one!" The cat suddenly declared as the fishing rod was nearly yanked out of his hand.

"Rippit!" The frog on his shoulder remarked, hopping up and down.

"It's gotta be a whopper!" Big added, digging his feet into the deck of the typhoon as much as he could, before engaging with a power struggle with the fish on the end of his line. "Yeow!" The rod was roughly pulled out of the cat's grip and would have soured overboard if Cosmo, acting on instinct rather than anything else, hadn't lunged forward and grabbed it.

Unfortunately the strength of the fish was so immense she was nearly pulled off herself, had Big not caught her foot in time.

"You weren't kidding, what did you catch, a whale?" She asked, holding onto the handle of the rod while Big pulled her back in.

Down in the waters before the Typhoon, their prize was splashing about trying to break free. As it tossed and turned on the water's surface they could see it had a long spinney fin down its back.

With her help, Big reeled his prize in inch by inch, before finally heroically pulling it over the side of the ship and placing his catch down before them to admire. And what a catch it was. The fish had to be at least a foot long, with a fin down its back and a sword like spike on the end of its snout.

"Thanks for the help." The cat told her, sitting down to gut his new meal. Usually cat's ate their meals whole, then spat out the bones. Big didn't have a large enough mouth however and so had to cut the thing into more manageable chunks. "Want some?" He asked. Cosmo looked more green than usual and turned away and scaled and fish guts starting flying.

"Er…no thank you." She replied. "I…just ate."

As Big proceed to tear his catch apart with his hands, Cosmo wandered back into the ship still lost in her thoughts. Not really thoughts of anything in particular, just a jumbled mess of emotion that needed to be sorted out.

Or, more important she admitted to herself, she had to figure out exactly what she felt for one of the crew. She never so much as had a crush before, so something like this was a little new to her.

Unfortunately however she was not sure for how long she would get to stay in this dimension. She was sure that her family would find out where she was eventually, and they would drag her back whether she wanted to go or not. She had contemplating asking him to go with her, but dismissed the notion. This was his home, it would be wrong of her to ask him to leave simply because she would miss him.

"Shadow's the one who does the melancholy look." A voice stated. Cosmo looked up to see Rouge the bat standing before her. "It doesn't look so good on you." She added with a short smile.

"Sorry. Just had a bit on my mind." She replied, walking along side the she-bat. "I guess I'm still a little new to all this."

"You get used to it after a while." Rouge told her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "It just seems like one thing after another when you end up going around with this group." Cosmo remained silent. Perhaps that was she needed, time to get used to everything before it felt like the norm.

Something occurred to her and she had to stop. Looking back at her life before she left Maginaryworld, she saw exactly how sheltered it had been. Most of everything she had ever needed had been given to her. This dimension was far harsher, yet somehow far more appealing than the one she was native to. "Something wrong?" Rouge asked, looking back.

"Er…no nothing." The green haired girl replied before quickly following her.

"We have a problem." Eggman announced, a sudden alarm blinking angrily on the console in front of him as Rouge and Cosmo walked onto the bridge. "I'm detecting a ship coming in on a jump drive." That second part gained everyone's attention. The jump drive was something unique to the Blue Typhoon. Sonic looked up as the air high above the water began rippling, shaking like mad before it finally tore down the centre. As soon as the rift was fully open, a ship with the Machine Federation Icon on the side came souring out of it, followed by half of another ship, but this fell into the ocean as soon as it was chucked out of the porthole. The intact ship hadn't been too well treated by the jump either; it was in a tail spin, coursing down towards the ocean before it pulled up at the last second and came in for a belly landing on the water.

Being not was big as the blue Typhoon, all it managed to stick above the surface was the bow, black smoke rising from the wreckage scattered everywhere.

"We're getting a signal." Chuck reported, before a holographic displayed flashed up before them, showing a familiar face.

"Blue Typhoon, are you there?" It was Topaz, trying to fix signal with the concealed ship.

"Hey Topaz, you look a little worse for wear." Rouge remarked with a thick smile. "You look like someone dragged you through a mud puddle." The human looked intensely relieved.

"Incoming!" Eggman declared before anyone could say anything else. Almost instantly after way, a thick black shadow began to pass over them. Sonic barred his teeth and looked upwards to see a colossal ship hovering over them and to make it worse, it had the Machine Federation Icon on the side. "Dark Oak! Dammit!" The Doctor cursed, recognising the ship belonging to the most powerful of Metal Sonic's generals. As always, standing on the tip of the bow, looking down towards the crashed ship with his arms crossed was the General himself, his double grey cape flapping out in the wind behind him. His single, Cyclops eye was glowing bright green. As if that wasn't enough, another shadow crossed over them as the mechanical dragon that served as the mount of Lancelot passed by. Followed by a colossal succession of ships, thousands of them. Dark Oak had obviously taken time to replenish his troops after their last encounter. It looked like the Egg Fleet all over again. Nearly every ship belonging to the Federation had to be here.

The dragon roared loudly and on the top of its head they could see the second general himself, before the beasts wings spread out to their maximum width before souring away off towards the island chain, followed by at least a dozens more ships.

"Shadow, you sure picked a great time to disappear." Sonic remarked under his breath.

"Those idiots must have tripped the alarms at the base!" The Doctor snarled, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"The engines still aren't back on-line doctor!" Becoe reported. "We can't get away." Their situation looked bleak. They couldn't run, and if they tried to fight, the overwhelming fire power of that fleet above them would rip them apart. All they could do was sit still and hope the holo-camouflage was enough to hide them.

"We're sitting ducks over here." Topaz commented. "Little help?"

"Play Possum!" Eggman told her.

Sonic watched Lancelot disappear off towards the island chain. Something must have gone wrong for Tails and Knuckles. They were in deadly danger now. Everything Cosmo had ever told him disappeared out of his head. His only concern how were getting his two friends out of that place alive.

-

(In Chris voice)

It's one big free for all as the climax of the Metal X saga begins. It's Lancelot V Sonic and Knuckles, but do the two mobians have what it takes one of Metal Sonic's best? And what happens when the energy inside the negative Chaos Emeralds is unleashed? Find out next time on Sonic X, Darkness of the Heart….part 1! Don't miss it!