Chapter 21: Unexpected Help

September 5th, 2316 – 5:20 AM – Robotropolis, Robotnik Empire

Tails watched, as the robotic hedgehogs lay on the floor, lifeless. There was the tick of cooling metal, and acrid smoke rising from their bodies, but otherwise the room felt completely still. However, the fox didn't really feel like this was the end. Even though they won the fight, he had no idea what Robotnik had in store for them next. It could be anything... Regardless, he felt compelled to speak up.

"D...Did that do it?" Tails hesitantly asked. "Did we win?"

"No you haven't, you morons," Robotnik said. "This battle is far from finished. I don't know where you got that electric collar thing from, but all you managed to do was knock Metal and Sonic offline for a little while. They should be rebooting again any second now."

He was right. A humming sound filled the room, as Sonic got up on one knee. His green eyes winked a few times, before they started glowing intensely. Metal managed to start sitting up as well. Nail, Tails, Redrum, and Knuckles all started to slowly back away. By this time, both of the robot hedgehogs had gotten onto their feet again. Their engines whirred as they fired up again.

Meanwhile, Metal crushed the electric collar with one hard squeeze, and ripped it off of his neck. After he tossed the device aside, he began to slowly advance on the foursome, with Sonic coming up behind him.

What does it take to bring them down? It's like we've never fought them at all! I can hardly tell we've done any damage to them!

"No..." Tails cried. "It's not fair... I don't want it to end, not like this..."

"Metal! Sonic!" Robotnik shouted. "Crush them! Hold nothing back!"

Inside Metal's head…

Mecha Sonic personally did not care who he used to be up until about an hour ago. Nor did he care about the fact that two of the people he'd been ordered to slaughter were his best friends. He was to follow Robotnik's orders, and he was to follow them at any cost. To even think of going against his new master's wishes would be to violate his programming.

Dammit! That's not true! I'm Sonic! Sonic the Hedgehog! I'm supposed to be destroying Robotnik, not working for him!

Even though Sonic had been roboticized, and his body was no longer under his control, his true thoughts rang out inside Mecha Sonic's head. The hedgehog's personality continued to struggle strongly to be heard. Too bad for Sonic though that Mecha was completely devoid of emotion or free will, and thus he could not get annoyed at all at Sonic's constant cries. Sonic may as well have been trying to reason with a brick wall.

Mecha quickly analyzed all four of the potential targets in the arena once again, to determine which one would be the best one to attack. His "brother" Metal Sonic was already occupied with Tails and Knuckles, leaving Nail and Redrum open. As Nail raised up his sniper rifle to fire, his threat level increased exponentially. Mecha determined that it would be best to eliminate him first due to this.

In less than a split second, Mecha selected his next attack and executed it. In this case, it was a spindash. He roared across the floor at tremendous speed, tearing up the floor behind him. Nail apparently had seen the attack coming, and was easily able to dodge. That did not concern Mecah though. He would simply turn around and try again.

Unfortunately, he had no room to slow down, and coming up ahead was the entrance doors leading into the room. The hedgehog smashed cleanly through one of the steel doors, blasting it right off of its frame. The collision finally brought him to a halt. He turned around to examine the damage, and saw that there was a perimeter breach in the fighting arena.

"Guys!" Knuckles shouted. "Sonic opened us up a way out of here! Let's go!"

Yes! I accidentally destroyed the entrance door! That means those guys can escape! I just hope they can get out before I can kill them...

Mecha jumped back into the room, preparing to target another enemy, when he received new orders:

PREVENT PRISONERS FROM ESCAPING THE COMPLEX.

Mecha took up a position in front of the blasted open door, and held his arms out to bar the passageway. Knuckles, Tails, Redrum, and Nail all approached, but stood back a little when they realized Mecha blocked the way.

However, with a little smirk, Redrum pulled out a hand grenade, ripped off the pin, and tossed it towards Mecha Sonic. The grenade bounced across the floor a little, before it stopped at Mecha's feet. While the explosion did hardly any damage to his body, it did send him flying away from the door, which gave the four enemies enough time to sneak out into the hall.

Nice going guys! Maybe if we're lucky, you damaged something on my new body so I can't chase you…

Mecha was having no trouble at all getting up though. After a quick systems check, he determined that he'd only suffered minor damage to his armor, and all the vital parts inside him were still intact. The robotic hedgehog quickly climbed to his feet and zoomed through the door, while Metal had already gone on ahead.

Alarms blared out in the hallway, so loud that it was difficult to hear any other sound over them. Red lights flashed everywhere, bathing every hall in a haze of crimson. Meanwhile, a monotone computer voice issuing orders to Robotnik's soldiers via the PA system.

"Warning! Prisoners have escaped their designated compound in Sector 47-C! Find and detain the escapees immediately! Warning! Prisoners have escaped..."

The message continued to loop again and again, endlessly. Soldiers began to flood into the corridors, as they too joined the pursuit. Mecha paid them no mind though, as he rocketed right past them to keep up with the escaping prisoners. A few dozen meters on up ahead, Metal flew in front of him. He then received an update from Robotnik on the location of the fugitives. They were attempting to use the cargo elevator in the main shaft to reach a surface entrance.

The two hedgehog robots quickly altered their course to intercept them, ducking down another hallway. Within several seconds, they were in the elevator shaft. Mecha looked up, to see that the elevator was about to reach the top of the track. He could not allow them to get any farther away.

Engaging their jet engines, both Mecha and Metal flew up after the elevator. They reached the elevator platform quickly, and landed on top of it, much to looks of shocks from the four escapees.

"Damn! They caught up again!" Knuckles shouted, as he clutched to a deep cut across his chest.

"What're we gonna do?" Tails asked, his voice sounding weak. "I'm getting too tired to fight anymore..."

C'mon guys! You can't give up now! You're my only hope to stop me from helping Robotnik take over the world! If you die here, there won't be anyone left to do it!

Suddenly, a purple blur flew down from the ceiling, and landed in the middle of everybody. It was Canma Neuyan, the warrior that Sonic remembered capturing earlier.

But what's she doing here? I thought she was our enemy!

"All of you...stand back," she said, drawing her sword. "I'll hold them back long enough for you to escape."

"Canma? You're helping us?" Nail asked, bewildered by her appearance. "Why are you doing this?"

"There's no time to explain right now. I'll tell you later. For now, there is a battle to be fought."

With a war cry, she charged at Mecha with her sword held back. Mecha was caught a bit off guard by her speed, and so wasn't ready to avoid her sword slash. The blade moved so quickly that it was nothing but a silver blur of steel.

Surprisingly, the cut actually left a small dent in Mecha's armor, and he was pushed to the side by the force of the blow. It seemed her blade was of a stronger alloy than Nail's knife had been. However, it was negligible damage at best due to the toughness of his armor, so Mecha was able to quickly go on the counter attack. He teleported over to her and took a swing with his claws.

She swiftly dodged the attack, and then countered by kicking him from behind. Mecha nearly fell off of the platform, but he recovered in time. It seemed that while this vixen couldn't do much harm, she clearly had a maneuverability advantage over the previous four opponents, especially at close range.

Mecha did a quick calculation, and determined that while there was a 5 chance he would be defeated in one to one combat, there was only a 0.5 probability he and Metal would lose together. Despite her speed, they still had her outnumbered two to one.

While Canma was focusing on Mecha, Metal teleported behind her and grabbed her by the arms so that she couldn't attack. The purple vixen struggled to break free, but she just didn't have the raw strength to do it. Mecha extended his claws, and walked in close. He drew his arm back, as he prepared to stab deep into her chest. With a mighty thrust, Mecha plunged the spikes towards her heart.

She counter-attacked by jumping up off of her feet in Metal's arms, and kicking Mecha back with both feet before his claw reached her. Mecha fell back a few steps, but he quickly recovered. Before he could get back over to finish Canma off though, Knuckles stepped up behind Metal and delivered a hard punch to the back of his head. This forced Metal to release her. At the same time, Nail fired a gunshot into Mecha's chest, pushing him back even further. It seemed the others still had a little fight in them.

By this time, the elevator had reached the top of the shaft. They were now standing in front of a large open hangar door, giving them a view over Egg City, which surrounded the Robotropolis complex. It was barely visible, but a little sunlight was beginning to creep in through the gaps between the clouds and the Land of the Sky overhead.

As the two hedgehog robots resumed their attacks on the group, Mecha heard Tails cry out.

"Guys! Lure them over here!" he shouted.

Mecha saw Tails out of the corner of his eye, standing on a platform outside the hangar door, waving for the others to come to him. However, he paid it no mind as tried to spin kick Canma. He missed.

"What?" Knuckles yelled. "Why?"

"Just get it to where they're standing in the middle of this doorway! Hurry!"

"Well...okay!" Nail cried out.

The other four enemies moved to stand in the doorway. Metal and Mecha teleported over to resume the attack. It was then that Tails shouted something else.

"All right guys! Now jump towards the outside!"

Mecha saw Tails standing next to a control panel, as he hammered down a red button. All of a sudden, there was the sound of metal grinding against metal overhead. Mecha looked up to see that the hangar door coming down at a frightening rate. Before the hedgehog robot could move out of the way, the door had already crashed down on top of him. While Mecha's body hadn't been crushed, he was now pinned to the floor and could hardly move.

The only thing that hadn't gotten caught under the door was his head and his arms, which was poking towards the outside of the door. He looked around to see all five of the enemies were safe and sound. Meanwhile, Metal was also caught underneath the door, only his legs were visible instead of the head and legs.

"We did it!" Tails cried out. "They're trapped under the door!"

Great work fellas! Now you can get out of here!

However, Mecha wasn't done yet. He pressed the palms of his hands against the ground, and pushed up. The door began to squeal, as he slowly pushed it up, inch by inch. He was beginning to get free... Metal was doing the same thing on the other side.

Hurry up and run, all of you! I'll be free again soon!

"We gotta get out of here!" Nail shouted. He took off running down a catwalk to the left of the door, and was quickly out of sight. The other four followed after him.

A couple minutes later, Mecha and Metal finally pushed up the door enough to squeeze out from under. The two of them crawled out from underneath the massive door, until finally they were free and it slammed closed behind them.

Not a second later, one of Robotnik's transport planes rocketed away from the base. Several jet fighters were chasing after it. New orders were transmitted to the two hedgehog robots:

PRISONERS ARE ESCAPING ON HIJACKED TRANSPORT PLANE. DESTROY THEIR ESCAPE VEHICLE.

Without a moment's hesitation, the two bots fired their engines and took to the air. They caught up with the transport within seconds, and blasted at full speed towards it. The two hedgehog robots resembled nothing so much as blue blurs. The transport plane did not try to dodge their attack as they both smashed straight through the engines on the wings of the plane.

The engines blew up in a spectacular fashion. Without power, the aircraft plunged down to the city below, and smashed into a derelict parking garage. A roaring fireball blasted up into the sky, visible for miles to see. The explosion totally destroyed the plane and much of the surrounding city block with it. Mecha did a quick scan of the area around the crash site. Not a trace of life was picked up from anywhere. He also didn't detect any signs of life in the surrounding airspace, so they couldn't have bailed out of the plane either. They must have died in the crash.

Oh no...oh God no! I killed them! All of them! They're all dead! It's all my fault! I wish I could just kill myself right now, or at least cry, but I can't even do that! I'm so powerless! I can't even control my own body!

Despite Sonic's overly emotional thoughts, Mecha did not react at all to them. New orders were given to Mecha and Metal.

MISSION COMPLETE. RETURN TO BASE.

Without so much as a pang of guilt (or any emotion at all, for that matter), Mecha turned around and flew straight back to Robotropolis, just as he was ordered.