"Robotnik, what is the meaning of this?!"
King Acorn had found himself stuck in the middle of Dingo's person after he'd transformed himself into an organic car and strapped him into the back seat, which lasted until the two arrived at a rather small room in a wing entitled 'The Extra-Experimental Complex' in large bold letters. Dingo transformed himself back to normal and chucked the King into the room as though chucking a piece of luggage. "This is an outrage!", yelled the king. "I'll say again, what is the meaning of this?!"
"The meaning, your highness, will soon be all too clear," said Eggman, standing right in the center of the room. "Do you see two posts right there in the middle of the room?
Sitting in the middle of an otherwise seemingly blank room were two red, yellow, and blue posts with blue spheres at the top that were each engraved with the image of a star, which by themselves didn't seem to be anything special.
"Yes?", asked the King. "What about them?"
"Tell me something. "Do you remember Ixus Naugus? Powerful sorcerer of incredible magnitude and royally appointed Warlock to the Royal Family?"
"Yes. Yes I do."
"And do you also remember how he simply took off one day without a trace?"
"Yes. Naugus was a tad rough around the edges and was one you always had to keep an eye on, but at the very least, he never made any brazen power plays for the throne. Unlike some people."
Eggman smiled like a man taking a small satisfaction in keeping the truth to himself. "Well, either way, and it IS Eggman by the way, the truth is a tad more complicated. For one reason or another, I saw Ixus as a genuine threat to my bid for power. And as it just so happened, I had the perfect device for the job."
He switched on a small console. Suddenly, the two goalposts sprang to life, whirring and humming like an amusement park, and above them, a swirling blue and purple portal surrounded by whirling bright white lights sprang up right over them as if from the ether, straight in the middle of the room.
"GOOD GAEA!", shouted the King. "What in the name of the Sword of Acorns is that?!"
"That is what is referred to in your kingdom's ancient texts and legends as the Void, where the vilest and most despicable spirits are said to reside. However, I have another name for it: The Special Zone. I discovered it early in my career purely by chance, but I supposed keeping a convenient portal to it around just might be useful. And it has been. In any event, the Void or at least part of it is in truth only a small section of the Zone, which is infinite in its' capacity and wonder. And it's also the perfect method to deal with unwanted waste."
As though someone had flicked on a lightswitch, the gears in the King's noggin quickly started turning until before long, they put two and two together. "You can't mean…"
"Oh, I believe I do. That's where you're going."
"But why?!", the King shouted. "Weren't you going to going to give me a chance?! Not that I would have taken it, but still?! And why go to such lengths just to get rid of me?!"
"Well, to answer your last question, because it's frankly more interesting and fun than just killing you, and also because I might always still have a use for you. And to answer your first, as it turns out, your daughter has somehow managed to sneak into this facility, probably due to some secret passage or another that I thought must have been covered up."
The King was so astonished, one could swear that a sack of bricks had just clobbered him over the head. "Sally? Here?"
"Yes, with her own small menagerie to boot. And at the rate they're going, they might just be able to save you. So I'm not going to give them that chance."
"Eggman, you shall answer to Gaea for this!"
"Better to rule in the Abyss than serve in Heaven, eh?", said Eggman. "Now, this portal will still take a few minutes to be fully charged, but in the meantime, let's see how things are going, shall we?" He flipped a switch on the machine and a holographic monitor appeared in the middle of the room, as Chirps and Rotor valiantly fought on in the far east corridor.
'Oh, what fun!", said Eggman. "I should have brought popcorn. Anyhoo, let's see just how Sleet holds his own, eh Dingo?"
"Chirps, I could use a little help over here! Just a FYI!"
Rotor was in the process of holding off an ever-growing throng of Swatbots and Troopers at bay, ripping them apart and tearing their heads off as soon as he saw the reds of their visors and eyepieces the minute they turned the corner. But no man is an island, and as sweat started to trickle down Rotor's brow like a river, he began to wonder if his island was going to sink.
"I"m working on it!", said Chirps. "This isn't exactly a spring picnic! And I'm not a spring chicken! And why do I keep using the word spring?!"
Chirps was alternating between calling up stone spikes and making them retreat back into the Earth with forming one stone wall after another to protect himself from Sleet's otherwise deadly assaults. Even though Chirps was calling up the spikes where he was pretty sure Sleet was going to be, the maniac still managed to dance around each and every one, which gave him enough time to try and go in for the kill. It was a song and dance the two were familiar with, long before they started working for Eggman, and while Chirps couldn't care less, Sleet was chipper as a chipmunk.
"Oh," said Sleet, "how I have missed this! Still, there is only so much you can do, isn't there? We're not exactly in your element, are we?"
"Thanks for the reminder. Rote! I got a better idea! How about we switch dance partners?"
"If you say so!", said Rotor. Chirps then blocked off Sleet with one more wall of Earth before rushing over to the bots while Rotor leaped over to Sleet. Just in time too. As Chirps began smashing apart the bots to smithereens with one spear of stone shooting up after another, Sleet cracked open the latest wall, only to find himself face to face with one husky walrus. "Hi there."
Before Sleet could have so much as a chance to adjust his strategy, he found himself dealing with one painful sock in the face like a sledgehammer. Like a golf ball, he was sent flying up and over to the wall on the other end of the corridor, slamming through it and creating a Mobian-sized hole straight through to the outdoors.
Sleet slowly got up and rubbed his jaw as though it smarted to high heaven. "Very well. If you wish to play hardball, then we shall play hardball!" He leaped back into the building and lunged at Rotor like a rabid dog. As if to prove that being brazen and vengeful did not win the race, Rotor dodged Sleet's lunge like a smooth criminal and socked him in the gut. He seized hold of Sleet's cybernetic arm, managing to bend it like a straw just enough to put it out of commission. "Why you…!"
"'Why you' what? Seriously, I'd like to know just what you thought you were going to do to me. Just out of curiosity, you understand."
Sleet quietly chuckled, like a master of poker who still had an ace up his sleeve. "Oh, not much at all. Just this." He lifted up his leg to reveal the sole of his cybernetic foot, which was shaped somewhat like a shoe. Underneath was what looked like a hole of some kind. "Big enough to shoot you with, my dear." A blast of energy then shot out of the hole like a cannonball.
"Whoah!" Rotor managed to dodge the thing, but it still grazed the side of his arm. He grunted in pain. It wasn't anything too severe, just a flesh wound, but darn if it didn't hurt like the dickens.
"Ready for more?", said Sleet. "Bon voyage!" He then began to fire out blast after blast, almost like a turret, and it was all Rotor could do just to dodge each of them as they came. More and more shots came out, and more and more holes continued to be blown into the walls, and more and more did Rotor have to leap and duck and do every manner of things that an overmuscled Walrus just should not have to have done.
Just then, he noticed an out. Right beneath his feet was a piece of metal, one torn straight from Sleet's arm. It must have had broken off when Sleet's arm was broken. Without an ounce of hesitation, he picked it up and held it at just the right angle. Another blast of energy came from Sleet's foot, but this time, Rotor was ready. Aiming the metal precisely, he managed to position it in such a way that when the blast came his direction, it rebounded off of the metal and, with one absurdly mortified look from Sleet, blasted him into the nearest wall, knocking him out like a light.
Rotor slowly crept up to Sleet just to make sure he was indeed down for the count. After not noticing so much as a single twitch, he then ripped out a strip of metal from one of the walls and wrapped it around Sleet in case he came to. If he did, then with any luck, that would hold him for a while. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he leaped back to Chirps, starting to get ever so slightly winded as the SWATbots and Troopers just kept coming.
"I managed to take care of Sleet," he said as he started to tear back into the bots. "Somehow."
Chirps, smashed three bots between two solid walls of earth while briefly summoning up another productive wall. "Yeah, he's funny that way. Funny like a comedian who's best joke is puking on the audience. Which isn't funny at all."
"Did anyone ever tell you you need to work on your sense of humor?" Rotor grabbed one SWATbot by the legs and smashed it into two other bots like a mace.
"Yeah." Chirps impaled a trooper on a spike and protected himself from another round of fire with another wall. "They also tell me that the sky's green and that Eggman is God. What else is new?"
Rotor suddenly got serious, or at least more serious than he already had been. "We can' keep this up forever. Something's got to give."
"I know Either we give them the time they need to get out of dodge, or we've just made a noble but futile gesture that ends with us and everyone else getting killed. I can't see any other way out of this."
"Same here. Let's hope the others get here soon, because if I'm going to be honest, this is not looking good."
"I'm going to be honest Sonic, this is not looking good."
Sonic with Sally in tow in was racing through the corridor like a leaf on the wind. Even though he knew now he could blow through his enemies like a buzzsaw if he wanted to, that wasn't exactly easy with Sally tagging along. Instead, he had to duck his way past enemy fire and dive under Swatbots and run along the walls just to get the both of them through it alive.
"Well," said Sonic, "maybe it'd look better if I didn't have to drag you along. No offense, but running in pairs kind of cramps my style."
"That sounded pretty offensive to me. Anyway," said Sally, Nicole still in her other hand, "we can't keep this up forever. Nicole, just how far away is the experimental wing?"
"WE ARE IN IT, SALLY." Sonic and Sally both glanced at Nicole as though she had just told them they nearly missed the Halloween Party. Sonic stopped himself cold, doing his best not to let his quills scratch Sally as they briefly skid across the floor. They looked around them. As far as they could tell, this was a corridor like any other, with the only differences being that there were no enemies around and that there were several doors lined up alongside the East Wall, each probably leading to some hazardous experiment or another
"Oh. That was fast."
"Hey, fast is my middle name! Now, let's head into one of these things and see just where old Kingy's at, shall we?"
Sonic opened the first door on the right, which just so happened to be straight in front of him. He slammed it open as though he were committing a robbery, with self-restraint not being a word in his dictionary. But what he saw wasn't pretty. "Eggman!"
"Ah, the speedy little blue rodent!", said Eggman. "How good of you to join us! We're just about to send the good old King on the adventure of a lifetime! Dingo, if you'll do the honors?!"
"Bon voyage mate!" said Dingo. In a flash, he proceeded to turn himself into a miniature catapult, with the King safe inside the 'pult. Not that it lasted long.
At just that moment, Sally shoved her way past Sonic as she barged into the room as though her life depended on it. "Where's Daddy?! Daddy?!"
"SALLY!", the king shouted. And just as he did so, the catapult launched, sending the King hurtling towards the void.
"Oh crap!" Sonic raced towards the King, but as he jumped into the air to save him, he found himself swiftly crashing straight to the floor like a dead weight. Dingo had turned part of himself into a long wirey tentacle like a whip and launched it at Sonic in the time it would take someone to take a breath, bringing him down to Earth faster than one could say 'pawned'. "Not always so fast in the air, are ya mate?!", said Dingo.
"Get off of me!" Sonic desperately tried to wrench the tentacle off of him. Sally rushed in too, attempting to stomp or kick or pound the thing as much as she could, but it was too late. She looked up just fast enough to see her father yelling his daughters' name at the top of his lungs as he plunged straight into the portal before it blinked out of existence like a twinkle.
"SALLY!"
"DADDY!"
He was gone. Flung into some otherworldly realm just like that. She didn't know how it happened, she wasn't even sure just WHAT happened, all she knew was that it did. As Sonic finally managed to tear off Dingo's tentacle, all Sally could do was slump down to the ground like a lifeless ragdoll.
Sonic wasn't faring much better. He had said he'd save the king. That he'd free Sally's father, save the kingdom, and beat the crap out of Eggman all with a snap of his fingers. So how come he hadn't done just that? He looked up for a moment at where the portal had been, wondering why in the name of Gaea he wasn't fast enough. Which just wasn't possible. He was always fast enough. Wasn't he?
Meanwhile, all Eggman could do was laugh up a storm, his belly rolling like jelly. "This is rich! So close and yet so far. It almost makes everything worth it!"
"Shut the hell up!" Sonic raced towards Robotnik, his hand outstretched as though he were trying his darndest to grab Eggman's girth like a tub of lard, but another tentacle from Dingo shot up straight in front, set on blocking his path.
"Out of my way!" Sonic powered straight through Dingo's tentacle with a knife, the latter howling in pain as he tried to morph parts of himself over the wound like a band-aid. With Dingo temporarily out of the picture, that just left Doctor Eggman, standing there ripe for the picking. And as Sonic once again outstretched his hand, he had every intent on picking up…
…a force-field?
Sonic bounced back against an orange dome of energy that had just sprung into existence as Eggman touched a button on his wrist communication device, surrounding Eggman from head to toe. He wasn't even sure what hit him until he got a good look. It was as though Eggman were being covered by a translucent orange, or at the very least by a brown egg.
"Now now. Manners."
"I'LL SHOW YOU MANNERS!", Sonic, much to his surprise, had become so much more incensed than he had ever been in his entire life, as though he could never forgive himself. He again tried to rush towards the dome, turning himself into a Mobian buzzsaw at the last minute. And the result was still the same.
"You know, one of the definitions of insanity is attempting to perform the same action and expecting different results. Guess what that makes you?"
"YOU SON OF A—"
"Ah-ah!" Eggman waved his finger as though he were a teacher chastising a preschooler. "Language. Now, if you'll kindly sit down and keep yourself from trying to murder me for a minute, maybe you'll learn something." Having gotten his second wind, Dingo promptly lashed out another tentacle, preferably NOT the one that still felt like hell, and managed to keep Sonic hogtied as he struggled all the while, as though he just couldn't bear to give up and give Eggman the satisfaction.
"Now, this here is what is a called a force-field, which keeps pesky little nuisances like you and your friends out. And it's about to get a whole lot bigger. Any minute, another forcefield much larger than this one will swallow up this entire city, covering all in its' wake and preventing anyone from going in or out. So if you'd prefer to leave here in one piece, I'd suggest the lot of you clear out. Immediately. Lest you want to end up like the poor old Kingy!"
Before Sonic could say another word, three words sprang from Sally's lips as she finally fought her way back to reality. "You clear out," she muttered.
"What was that? I don't quite think I heard you."
"YOU CLEAR OUT!", roared Sally, rising from the floor like a mighty geyser, finally letting out some steam after letting everything be pent up for so long. "You hear me! You took over my kingdom, desecrated my city, put my people in chains, and did… I don't even know what you did to MY DAD, and you think you can just tell us to 'clear out' like you own the place?! Well, know this buster! We'll 'clear out', but only because we have every intention of getting this place back! Of getting my Dad back! Do you hear me?! As of you now, you're public enemy #1! And I won't rest until you face justice! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!
Every single other person in that room was stunned speechless. Just a minute ago, she'd been slumped on the floor as though she might never be herself again, and now here she was giving the law of the land. Might make one almost think she was a Princess. "We're leaving!", shouted Sally. "But we WILL be back." No sooner than she had said that, Sonic snapped out of it and managed to wrench himself from Dingo's grasp, twisting himself around with just enough momentum to cause Dingo's tentacles to drop him like a hot potato as he screamed in agony. To which Sonic could care less.
"You can't tell me we're just gonna' up and leave?!", said Sonic.
"DON'T QUESTION ME!", shouted Sally. "Not now! Please. Just get us out here."
"Alright, alright. Just chill out, okay?"
Before either of them had the chance to say 'sorry', another tentacle came Sonic's way, but before it could, Sonic grabbed Sally by the hand and, in nearly the blink of an eye, away they went."
"YOU BLOODY BIKES!", said Dingo, still occasionally whimpering in pain as he did his best to cover up and heal his wounds like plugging a sieve. "YOU'LL GET YOURS WHEN I'M THROUGH WITH YOU, YOU—"
"Not so fast Dingo. Eggman held up a hand as if to say one shouldn't be so hasty.
"You saw what he did to me! I feel like sushi! Part of me's still smarting."
"Which I completely understand," said Eggman, "I do. But discretion is the better part of valor. I don't care what happens to them just now as long they don't pose a threat. And once no longer within Robotropolis, they won't be able to bypass the Dome that easily. Nevermind that it even reaches straight into the sewers."
"But don't you want to make them pay?! Hang them by their knackers and beat them till they're good an' tender?!"
"I wouldn't put it in quite such a fashion, but you more or less have the general principle down. And yes, I do. And they will. But if they made it in, they can make it out. Now's not the time."
"Then when is?!"
"When I say so! Comprende?! In the meanwhile, we need to bide our time; build our resources and make our next move. And once we're done, they may as well be completely and utterly helpless. But right now, let's just watch the fireworks, shall we?" He pressed a switch on the computer and it darkened for the briefest of moments before lighting back up, with Sonic and Sally shown racing straight past the bots as they made a beeline for the secret passage. "Oh, this is just too much!"
