Compared to most macro-organisms, Mobians were tiny, dense, and extraordinarily sturdy. They could survive slamming into solid steel better than the steel itself could, they even could drop from orbit and walk it off - at least in a universe where concepts like "terminal velocity" existed. In short, blunt impacts were almost harmless to mobians.

Which was, Miles mused as he hurtled through the air, a hole torn from hip to shoulder by a fingertip as thick as his head, not very comforting.

He slammed into the dirt, leaving a streak of crimson in his wake as he rolled to a halt across thirty meters of grass. Mister Skin's giant head roared out from the catacombs, silhouetted against the torch he'd dropped as he (it?) extended up into the sky, skeletal arms trailing behind it seemingly unsupported by anything, the rest of its skeletal body absent.

Miles peeled himself off the dirt, heedless of the mud now smeared across his chest, the screaming pain and numbness travelling down his limp side. Had worse. Deserved worse. Didn't matter. He wasn't really living for anything anyway. Was he really much different from these monsters at this point? The harbinger, leading them from one place to the next, sacrificing endless worlds to keep his own intact.

… Should have stayed with the flower. Miles leapt the slap that should finish him to land on a wrist thicker than his torso, pouncing up to elbow, then shoulder, spinning tails first into a bony jaw hard enough to dislodge a tooth.

The skull opened its mouth, releasing a roar much like the enormous eyeball that had brought him to this place, a rumble that started in his stomach and left through his bones.

"Why do you resist, harbinger?"

Miles slapped a hand over his mouth as he spun his tails just before landing. A hand carved a shallow trench where he'd been about to drop. Mister Skin's voice wasn't coming from the giant bone monster, and it didn't sound angry so much as… confused, almost sympathetic.

Perhaps from the perspective of some vast, alien intelligence this really was an act of mercy? Stop the flailing about of the stupid fox and solve all his problems. His struggle to stay alive must seem like the stubbornness of a child refusing to go to bed on time, the reason behind his resistance unfathomable.

Not that he knew it himself. Miles flicked his wrist. The Black Shardy Spark Stick v4... the Blackshard appeared just long enough to hurl its solitary projectile at the grinning face, but a hand intercepted, batting aside the blazing ball. He leapt back. A palm slapped into the ground, leaving a dent in the grassy earth bigger than he was.

Why was he struggling? Miles launched his grapnel into the grass ahead, using the momentum to snatch him to safety even as he sliced his tails into a bony wrist. He'd had his "answers", he knew the consequences of his stubbornness better than ever, and if there was anyone capable of salvaging his thoroughly doomed, broken world then they'd do better with him out of the picture.

Was it survival instinct? Was he so greedy to live when he'd already lived an eternity? Some masochistic desire to see his failures up close? To see Sonic's face crumple in disappointment when he learned his sidekick had killed more people than there were people?

Miles leapt spinning up into the skull's jaw, only to find it spinning to meet him. Sheer pressure of impact sprayed blood from his open wound as he was hurled into the ceiling of the colonnade and bounced to the floor hard enough to leave faint cracks in the stone. He flipped to his feet, stumbling backwards as the still spinning skull barrelled into the corridor, so large as to nearly fill the space entirely.

Was it because Nigel had said to "save her"? Was he so desperate to try and become a hero he'd fight on the strength of that vague instruction?

Yes.

Miles leapt, mentally calculating as he drew his bone pickaxe. Both feet pressed against a column, spinning to impart force, and struck, point first before momentum carried his body into the skull as well, the impact driving the pick deep into the bony face and blasting him off with agonising force…

Straight through the open doorway at the far end of the colonnade, just as calculated. He dragged his feet along the floor, tails spinning to slow him down before slamming into the far wall comparatively gently. Not really a viable long term strategy. At least it wouldn't be able to fit through the door after him. He could think for a moment. Miles uncorked one of his last remaining potions and swallowed grimly, shuddering as flesh started to knit across his stomach and his stomach informed him how little it appreciated the gesture.

If it was possible to save "her", whoever she was, by definition that implied people could be saved, that things could be better. Even though he might hurt… Even though he might make everything worse. That was his selfishness, his hubris to bear until the end.

Miles jerked up in surprise, thoughts interrupted as the stone walls, thick as they were, peeled apart, warping to accommodate a bony hand without resistance. Or was it the universe itself bending?

So much for attacking from the doorway. Miles extended his arm, a bulky mechanism of wood and steel dropped into his hand, green torch flickering at the end as he dragged a lever down. A slime-coated bolt of wood and metal appeared from what he'd earmarked as his "quiverspace", already in place in the primed firing mechanism. He fired a moment later. With a twang of its string a burning bolt sliced into bone, splattering green fire across the hard surface.

Success. Shame he didn't have time to dictate some notes. The remains of the slime monsters had proved to be highly flammable and extremely sticky, letting him produce simple torches to contaminate en masse with greenfire. From there incendiary bolts and a simple delivery system had been an obvious next step. Science really was easier when something was on fire.

… Which… it wasn't. The green flames just petered out harmlessly across the bony surface. Turns out he'd finally discovered the exception to the list of things the stubborn fire could burn, the projectile itself barely more than a splinter. The hand sliced through the air towards him, smashing a cluster of bone jars apart. As with the jars underground, two pre-lit explosives scattered across the floor around Miles, fuses already hissing. He grimaced as the skeletal head emerged from the ceiling, its eyes pools of hollow black despite the light shining across its face, pickaxe still embedded in its cheek.

Well, this was going to suck.

Miles swept forward, scooping up one of the bombs in his tails as he slipped between bony fingers and leapt, sending his grapnel to slam into the skull's forehead. He hurtled upwards towards that bony face, slam dunking the bomb into an eye socket just as the second hand slapped through the wall and into him, cracking him against the far wall. He felt limbs - his, unfortunately - crumple between solid stone and solid bone before he dropped to slam onto a bookshelf with a pained yelp. Tomes tumbled to the floor, broken pages arcing electricity through the air as the bombs exploded one by one until-

A plume of light erupted from the skull's eye, scattering shards of bone to bounce off every wall as almost the entire concussive force of the explosion was transmitted directly to it from within. The pickaxe, somehow intact, spun down to the floor. And the skull, a deep chunk missing to expose only bone and emptiness beneath, hovered before him, solitary eye glaring through him, mouth gaping open. Miles groaned. It didn't have any vital organs, no control centre, no weakness. It was just bone. Special bone. Even the skeletons underground burned. It was fine even after being broken.

A miniature - comparatively - skull erupted from the black portal of its mouth. Miles trembled as he dragged his useless legs across the shelf and off the edge, teeth clenched against a pained scream. The skull exploded against the bricks above.

He wasn't fine after being broken. Miles tugged the bandage from around his hand free to bind his shattered legs together as he flew between two grasping hands in the direction of the doorway and freedom beyond. His energy refilled and he fired off the blackshard in the same moment. A bone fist blocked the blast, shards of metacarpal bone raining from above as it cracked from the impact.

If only he'd thought to go grab that stupid bunny earlier. Miles hit the floor hands first, grunting from the pain as his legs hit a moment later, thankfully less hard. He pushed off, tails whirring back to life as he slipped through the doorway, using one hand as a rudder to keep his feet from bearing the strain. His stomach couldn't handle another potion for about an hour, it was all he could do to keep the first one down when all he wanted to do was throw up and cry, and there was no guarantee his last potion would be enough to fix his legs anyway even if he somehow choked it down.

Well, no time to dwell on things he couldn't solve. Thanks to his tails he wasn't a sitting duck right now, if a little slower to accelerate than usual. The moment he cleared the roof Miles launched, twisting mid-flight to face the monster as he hovered with all the grace of a hummingbird. His bowgun appeared back in his hands and he fired as a bony hand swept out of the stone like a fish from water. The bolt's green blaze served as little more than a tracer as it burned out on his skeletal target, but that was plenty. Each shot painted the target for the one after it, and his hands moved like a blur as he fired one after another, each shot a splinter, but an injury all the same. If it was protecting its head from his attacks then that meant the attacks were dangerous. And taking out its hands and arms - or at least one of them, the number of bolts in his hammerspace was minimal by his standard - was going to improve his chances of landing those attacks.

The skull warped up through the wall and roof. Odd how it stayed "together" like that with nothing in between. He'd flown in between- Don't think. Keep firing. Miles veered to the side as mini-skulls - as much as mini could apply, they were as big as he was - launched towards him, illuminated a sickly green by the flames of his bolts hurtling past them. One hand swung, then the other, here in open space he could easily evade, firing all the time, weaving between the skulls. Wooden shafts sprouted so thickly from the skeletal arms they looked like they were covered in fur.

Time was up. Miles dropped, grappling onto a column to speed his descent and launching a moment later, tails reset. Every movement hurt, he was dizzy from blood loss, but he'd had worse. He felt himself refill and swung the blackshard a moment later, the hand that blocked it shattered into a rain of bolts and bone. The giant roared. Pain? Anger? Made his legs ache even from this distance either way. Didn't matter, proof of concept. He broke one part, he could break another. Just had to keep dodging.

Something slammed into his tails from behind, chunks of blood and flesh spraying around him. Miles yelled in surprise, spinning to face the unexpected assailant and finding nothing. Whatever it was he'd hit had apparently blended itself on his tails. Darn it. Hitting things midflight didn't much matter to him, but the distraction was-

Teeth clamped down on the base of a tail, tearing deep into the thick fur to the flesh beneath before his second tail smashed the mini skull away. Miles grunted in pain, spiralling uncontrollably through the air as his wounded tail fell limp.

No good. Miles relaxed his other tail to freefall past the remaining hand, firing a bolt into it before a bony fingertip tore through his ear. Ugh. At least when he'd fought one of Robotnik's giant boss machines he didn't need to watch out for random badniks coming out of nowhere.

"Why do you smile when it hurts?" Skin asked with Miles' mouth as he fell. "And why do you try when it is hopeless?"

Was he smiling?

Miles slammed to the earth before he could fully form the question, bouncing down a grassy slope to collapse in a heap a short distance from the entrance to the catacombs, the impact provoking a pained scream that banished the alien voice from his lips.

At least when he'd fought Robotnik, Sonic had been there with him. This was more like when he faced the Kukku army, trying to use everything he had to stay alive, doing anything to kill the invader.

At least those invaders had just come from another island. Miles rolled onto his back with a groan, watching the giant skull go into a spin as it accelerated down towards him. Slow, by his usual standards. Distressingly quick given his current state. Miles fired, thorns of metal and wood burrowing deep, splintered bone flaking off under the barrage, too slow to stop it.

His quiverspace emptied. He threw the bowgun.

It bounced off.

...Wasn't that supposed to be a thing? This is what he got for falling asleep during movies. Miles threw his arms up as the skull slammed down, reaching into his almost empty hammerspace...

The skull smashed into the floor, burrowing through dirt as easily as stone. Miles watched it from the roof of the colonnade, dangling from his grapnel, whipping blood out of his eyes with a furry thumb.

Well, that was it. He was out of ammo, and from the feeling of emptiness in his "soul" it was still a good while until his shard stick was ready again. Short of crashing himself from wall to wall with his grappling hooks to die slower, or doing the same thing far more slowly with the pile of rope that still cluttered his hammerspace, he was more or less out of tricks outside of brute force. And given how little momentum he could put behind blows with no legs and one tail, he wasn't likely to solve the problem before the problem solved him.

The skull burst back out of the ground, mouth opening to launch more hideous projectiles.

Wait. The skull. Miles hooked the floor, dragging him down to smash painfully into the bricks as a bony hand chopped through the columns above him without breaking them.

Where was it?

A mini skull exploded against a column, Miles grabbed the torch he'd dropped before, jamming it up into the bricks for light. Where was it? He crawled forward on his hands, scraping painfully across the blue stone as he searched.

There, still sat where he'd tripped over it earlier, a solitary skull jar. He scrambled towards it, another skull exploding stone somewhere above him. He could see a vast bony chin descending through the roof, broken tooth and cracked bones testament to his stubborn attempts so far.

Now. Miles lunged forward, fist smashing into the jar. He let out a mirthless snort as a pile of rope flopped out across the floor. So much for that.

Sonic would have found another bomb, just in the nick of time. Where was his deus ex machina? Miles slumped to the floor as the skull drew lower, staring up at the black void beneath its jaw that concealed the hollow depths within.

Miles tapped his lips, deep in thought.

Wait.

Turns out he was smiling after all. Huh.

Grabbing the rope from the ground Miles launched his grapnel at the roof, right in front of where the wide open mouth of the giant emerged, its skull projectile's snapping teeth barely passing between his bloodied ears.

"Funny thing about you." Miles grinned, tossing one end of the rope into the monster's jaws. It fell straight down through the bottom and he dropped, catching the other end even as he threw his second rope through its newly descended nasal cavity. Another skull hurtled overhead, shattering against the ceiling as it tried to double back. "You don't seem to care much about physics."

The rope snapped tight as the slack ran out. Miles swung his lower body with his tail, slipping between a column into open air for a moment before looping around and inside to catch the end of the rope slipping out the back of its sinuses like a double ended booger.
"But I bet I know a way to make physics care about you."

Movement flicked from the corner of his eye. Miles dragged his broken legs and tail up to his chest with a grunt of pain, tucking his head down as he wrapped ropes and tail around himself.

The giant hand slapped him dead on. Already broken limbs screamed from the impact as the incredible force blasted into him.

Compared to most macro-organisms, Mobians were tiny, dense, and extraordinarily sturdy. They could survive slamming into solid steel better than the steel itself could, and thanks to the ropes he'd tied onto the giant's skull, he'd let it apply that force directly into its own face too. A giant jawbone exploded sideways through the columns thanks to the pulley he'd made, while the top half of the skull, already cracked all over and now yanked in two different directions, shattered to pieces, one final roar punctuating the creature's demise as its arm collapsed into pieces, shattering at last as well.

Miles had half a moment to enjoy his victory before physics remembered he existed too, and he slammed into the column, spun around it once then hurtled out into the air, soaring after the still spinning jawbone. Greenery rushing below gave way to a faintly glowing crater before finally being replaced by sand. The rope caught a palm tree, sending both Miles and the jaw coiling around it to eventually collide with an agonising crash.

"Interesting." Mister Skin's voice crept from his lips.

Miles, suspended upside down from the tangle of fronds and rope as he was, had no time to retort before the world went black.