Chapter 4: In a Kerfuffle

"So basically, I have terrible neighbours," Amy finished. "Are you going to tell me now if we should be going after Sonic? I'm really worried about him now."

"Knuckles thinks they have it under control, and I trust him," Espio replied. "If the situation changes, I trust Knuckles to tell us. Or we won't hear from him when we expect to, and we will know that is the time to mobilise."

"Right," Amy agreed. "And you'll tell me when that time is, right?"

"That depends."

Amy pouted as she pulled up outside the Chaotix headquarters, yanking on the handbrake of Big's car.

"On what?" she asked, rounding on Espio.

From his position in the passenger seat at her side he remained still and calm.

"Doctor Crick is rumoured to have developed a machine capable of rewriting the very DNA of any organic creature," he said. "If Eggman gets his hands on that and turns it against the team already there, we would be walking straight into a trap if we went after him there. It would more prudent to draw him out, take him away from it."

"You said you thought he might just stay there though, use it as his new base," Amy countered. "And I don't especially want to wait until something bad has happened to Sonic, Tails and Knuckles before we step in!"

"We'll be of no help if we walk right in and meet the same fate," Espio plainly replied. "Hold tight. I'll contact you if Knuckles tells us he needs back-up or if he fails to report in when expected."

"Okay, fine," Amy said with a sigh.

She waited for Espio to exit the car and start walking away before saying out loud to herself what she really thought.

"Like I'm gonna just sit and wait for things to go bad," she grumbled. "I'll assemble my own team and go after them whether they need the help right now or not. Besides... Sonic promised he'd be back in time for Cream's party."

Amy put the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking space, setting back out onto the road. She took herself out of the city to where Big lived, expecting to find him there with Froggy: but he was nowhere to be seen. She took his car back into the city and, after stopping off at a fresh produce store and buying two bags full of reduced price past-best fruit and vegetables, she took herself home, relieved to see Big was sitting on the ground by the front door of her building, cradling Froggy in his hands.

"You found him!" Amy said as she exited the car and moved over to Big's side. "I did try to find you to help you look. I'm glad you've got him back though."

Amy adjusted the weight of the bags she was carrying and Big nodded his head.

"Froggy just wanted to go exploring," he said.

"Yeah, I guess he did, huh?" Amy responded. "Do you wanna come in? I can make you some tea and put out a bowl of water for Froggy?"

"Nah, I have to take Froggy home," Big replied, standing up.

Amy started to thank him for his help earlier, to offer to buy fuel for his car after she had used it to run errands, but her voice was drowned out by the growing sounds of a rasping motorbike engine and blaring, angry music. Wincing against the noise, Amy turned her head, not entirely surprised to see the two skunk brothers were the source of it. Rough was riding a motorcycle into the car park, wearing a pair of sunglasses Amy thought looked vaguely familiar, and Tumble was sitting behind him, holding a boombox on one shoulder – and both the boombox and the music it was playing likewise seemed vaguely familiar. They pulled up next to Big's car and finally switched off the motorcycle, cutting out part of the noise. They hopped off and started towards Amy and Big, and, only after several seconds, Amy noticed that Rough was talking: though over the racket of the boombox, she couldn't hear a word he was saying.

"What?" she shouted back at him.

He started to talk again before turning to his brother and shouting something inaudible at him, brandishing a fist to emphasise his point. Tumble's face softened into a look of idiotic understanding, and he took the boombox off his shoulder and switched it off. Rough turned to Amy and opened his mouth to talk, but stopped short as a shrill voice shouted down to them.

"You boys are a menace!"

Amy turned her head, looking up to see Missus Lupin leaning out of her bedroom window at the side of the building, looking about as frazzled as Amy had ever seen her look.

"Ah, shut your trap, you nosey old bag!" Rough shouted back up at her.

"Well, I never!" Missus Lupin huffily shouted back, before retreating back inside her apartment and slamming her window shut.

Rough turned back to Amy with a grin.

"Whaddya think of my sweet ride, Amy?" he asked. "A Kawasaki Vulcan."

"Who did you steal that from?" Amy flatly asked him.

"Nobody was using it, it was fair game!" Tumble argued.

"And possession is nine tenths of the law, right?" Rough added.

Amy groaned. Big stood up at her side and took a step forwards, and Rough, thrown under Big's enormous shadow, took a wary step back.

"I remember you two," Big said.

"Our reputation precedes us," Rough said, smiling and nodding at Tumble, who nodded back.

"Rash and Truffles, right?" Big said.

Rough's head snapped back around and the sunglasses he was wearing slid down his nose, red eyes peering over the top of them at Big.

"What did you just say?" he asked in a low voice.

"Is that wrong?" Big asked.

"It was close enough," Amy assured him.

"Oh wait, I remember now," Big said, nodding his head. "It's Trash and Ruffles, right?"

Rough snatched off his sunglasses and shook them at Big.

"You're startin' to get on my nerves, big guy," he warned.

"Don't get lost in these kerfuffles," Amy said with a smirk. "It's just Trash and Ruffles!"

Rough's face dropped and Tumble scratched his head cluelessly.

"You better watch your mouth," Rough recovered, pointing his sunglasses at Amy. "You better be humble, don't be disrespecting Trough and Crumble."

Amy snorted.

"What did you just call yourselves?" she asked through a giggle.

"Tough and Rumble!" Rough replied. "I mean Rough and Tumble!"

Amy let out her laughter, the seething look of rage on Rough's face only making the situation even funnier to her.

"Tough and Rumble kinda sounds better, don't ya think?" Tumble mused.

"No it does not!" Rough snapped.

"I thought Trash and Ruffles sounded better myself," Amy said.

Rough glared at her before marching back over to the bike he had clearly stolen. He flipped open a storage compartment at the side of the back seat and hauled out an electric buffer, brandishing it as though he thought it was a weapon.

"What are you doing?" Big asked him, squinting at him.

"I know this is a gun of some sorts!" Rough replied. "Cause this bike's loaded with guns!"

"It's a buffer," Amy plainly told him. "See the power lead coming out of it?"

Rough looked down at the cable trailing from the buffer in his hands.

"What does it do if you're so clever?" Tumble spat at Amy.

"It polishes the bike," Amy explained.

"Polishes?" Rough said, as though the word was a dirty one. "Gross!"

He threw the buffer away and Amy awkwardly caught it with one foot, just before it hit the ground. She was hoping he would discard it, as she already had an idea of how she could use it herself: seeing how shiny the bike was, she intended to use the buffer to polish up Metal.

"These people don't appreciate us, bro," Rough said to Tumble.

"Ugh, whatever," Amy groaned, turning her attention to Big. "You should go, before this gets more unpleasant. Thank you for your help today, and I'm really glad you found Froggy again so quickly."

"Me too!" Big said cheerfully, before moving over to his car. "Goodbye, Amy!"

"Bye, Big!"

Amy waited until he had driven away before briefly watching Rough and Tumble argue about nothing. She then shrugged, gathering her shopping bags into one hand and, scooping up the buffer with her other hand, she headed inside. She considered – as she often had in the past – pushing her frog statue up against the door behind her, stopping Rough and Tumble from re-entering the building, but she stopped herself, remembering that she would be punishing anyone else who was out, and also really just inviting the brothers to break the door down, which they were both strong enough and stupid enough to do.

Back at her apartment, she struggled to open the door with her hands full, but eventually got inside, kicking the door closed behind herself. She moved straight into the living room, where she found Metal slouched in a corner of the room where she had left him.

"I hope this works," she muttered, placing the buffer down on the floor at one side of him and her bags of groceries on his other side.

She then – with a great amount of effort again – opened up his head and dumped the contents of one bag into his body cavity, almost filling it entirely. She clicked his head back into place, and again she heard his body processing what she had put into it. Metal buzzed to life, but his battery was still showing as amber, and only just over halfway charged. Despite his whines of complaint and his hands waving around in the vague direction of her own, Amy forced his head open again and dumped her second back of groceries into him. She clicked his head back into place, but this time, the usual whirring sound didn't follow. Instead, Metal waved his arms about and pointed frantically at his throat.

"What?" Amy asked. "Too much?"

He thrashed around a little longer before finally standing up and moving across the room to the kitchen sink. Amy watched him curiously as he filled her kettle with water from the tap before opening up his head and pouring the water into himself.

"Should you be doing that?" she called over to him.

He clicked his head back into place, and Amy finally heard the whirring sound she had been expecting, followed by the soft ding, and the battery light on the side of his head finally turning green.

"I got this," Amy said, picking up the buffer.

She looked over at Metal expectantly, assuming he would know what the tool was used for and be pleased to see it, given his current, lacklustre appearance: but instead, he mechanically marched out of the room. Amy followed him curiously, but stopped short when he entered her bathroom and lifted the lid and seat of her toilet.

"What are you...?" she muttered.

Amy dropped the buffer, ignoring the sound of Missus Lupin banging on her wall in response to the thud the tool made when it hit the floor.

"How-how is that...?" she asked, unable to tear her eyes away from what she was witnessing, despite being both horrified and embarrassed by it.

For all intents and purposes, Metal appeared to be urinating into her toilet.

"Why did Eggman give you a...?" she asked, before gulping awkwardly. "And where do you store it when...?"

Once the initial shock had passed, and Amy had dismissed the mad idea in her mind that Eggman had made Metal a little too literally a clone of Sonic, she took two steps closer, realising then that what he was holding was in fact a retractable hose that just so happened to come out from a small flap at the base of his torso. What was draining out of it was similar in colour to urine, but it was hardly the same consistency: peering down the toilet, Amy could see that it appeared to be waste from the fuel Metal used up. When he finished draining it and stored away his hose, he flushed the toilet, and it was only then that Amy realised the full implications of his actions.

She held her breath as the water in the toilet bowl rose up and up, reaching the very rim of the toilet bowl and teetering there for several seconds before finally, gradually, sinking back down to a normal level.

"I don't know if you should be using the toilet for that," she concluded. "I don't want to have to explain to my landlady that my toilet is blocked because my robot filled it with burnt out potato skins and fruit pulp."

She reached forward and pulled the flush again, and, although the water level did rise a little, it quickly drained away again.

"Well, maybe it's okay," she said with a shrug. "Just... Close the door next time you do that, okay?"

Metal looked at her with about as much expression as he was capable of portraying – which was basically none.

"I suppose it's good Eggman taught you to do that in the toilet," she conceded. "If you're going to stay here, it's good that you're at least house-trained."

Amy gulped as she considered how odd her last statement had just been.

"How about I polish you up?" she offered, picking up the buffer.

Metal gave a single nod of his head, and did actually appear to understand what she meant, as he moved to the spare socket in the living room and positioned himself there in a T-pose as she plugged in the buffer.

"Okay, here goes," she said.

She switched on the buffer, surprised by how quiet it was, but also how much it vibrated in her hands. She shook off her concerns and began her task, pressing the spinning polishing cloth to the metal plates of Metal's body, gradually bringing a shine back to them as she went. She felt that she ought to talk to him as she worked – much like how her hairdresser spoke to her while she cut her hair – but between the fact that he had no way of responding and she would need to raise her voice a little over the buffer, she forced herself to remain quiet. As she worked, she noticed something she had never really given much thought to before then: Metal had grown. Obviously he hadn't literally grown, but rather his body had changed over the years. When she had first met him, on Little Planet, he had been exactly the same size as Sonic. Over the years, Sonic had obviously grown taller with maturity, and apparently Eggman had amended Metal to match that. It was not something that seemed really necessary, and perhaps Eggman had thought the same after a certain point, as Metal was slightly taller than Sonic. Amy theorised that Eggman had changed Metal a few times to match Sonic before getting bored of doing so, and then estimating what Sonic's final height might be, and making that Metal's last upgrade. He stood about the same height as Silver, who was the tallest of Amy's hedgehog friends, and Silver's adult body was probably the template Eggman had used: after his first few visits to their time, Silver had started appearing randomly looking different, and explained that he was no longer always travelling back to them from the same point in time. He had visited them at the age of 14 one year, 32 the next, and then 16 later that year. It had been a little jarring, but the group had eventually become accustomed to it, the difference seeming less shocking as they had all aged themselves since his first appearance.

As Amy finished polishing Metal's body, her last stop being his feet, she moved onto his head, which she had left for last as it meant holding the buffer up above the height of her shoulders. After a few seconds she stopped and told him to sit on the couch, realising that it would take a while to bring the shine back to his head, and her arms would tire long before the task was complete. He sat down as instructed, and Amy found that polishing his head was much more difficult even with him seated. The metal was quite dull and scratched there, looking as though it was more in need of being sanded down and repainted. The wear seemed unusual compared to the rest of his body, but Amy then realised that, although Metal's body had changed over the years, his torso and limbs stretching out longer, his head was still exactly the same. In fact, she reasoned, he probably still had his original head – which would explain why it was more worn than the rest of his body. She polished as long as she could bear before stopping and dragging a wrist across her forehead.

"It's not perfect, but you certainly look a lot better," she concluded.

She unplugged the buffer and set it on the floor, only then noticing how dull and dirty the cloth looked. She turned back to Metal, who stood up from the couch, and he did appear to be gleaming, looking more like his usual self.

"I guess Eggman must have maintained you pretty well before he ran off," she commented. "I just wish I knew what he was doing right now. I wish I knew that Sonic will be okay. I know I shouldn't worry, Sonic's been battling Eggman for years, but I hate being on the sidelines and not knowing..."

Amy sighed and shook her head.

"I just have to trust him, right?" she asked Metal. "I mean, he has Tails with him, and I trust Tails to keep a watch over Sonic and not let him walk into anything too ridiculous. Tails is good like that. He's a bit more sensible. I know, as long as he's watching over Sonic, he won't let anything bad happen to him."


Tails and Shadow tugged at the vines growing over the old concrete bunker, tearing them loose to uncover the entirety of the messages written there. When they had arrived, it looked as though someone had already started uncovering the messages, but both Tails and Shadow wanted to see them all, to get a better indication of exactly what they were getting themselves into.

"Okay, let's see..." Tails said, stepping back as they finished their task. "We've got "away with you"; "they are not us, but we are not them"; "it doesn't matter how many or how far, perfection is an illusion"; "changes are more than skin deep"; "mutation is only the beginning"; and "transmogrification is the true path". Wow, Crick really did lose it."

""Transmogrification"?" Shadow asked.

"It's induced metamorphosis," Tails replied. "Like how a caterpillar goes into a cocoon and, through the process of metamorphosis, it transforms into a butterfly. That's a natural metamorphosis. I think Crick is talking about an artificial, induced metamorphosis. If that's true, then his technology goes beyond what the rumours suggested. See on there he wrote "mutation is only the beginning"? The mutation aspect of his research is the part I'm familiar with."

"Me too," Shadow agreed. "I had heard he had developed means of combining different creatures without surgical intervention."

"Right," Tails said with a nod of his head. "He started out down the surgical route – that was what got him kicked out of the Mobian Genome Project. He beheaded a terminally ill patient, and put the guy's head onto the body of a sheep. Rumours say he kept him alive for five days before it all fell apart – literally fell apart."

"But then allegedly he found a way to alter the structure of two organic objects, extracting the optimum qualities of both and combining them."

"He thought he was creating the "ultimate lifeform"."

"Hn, ironic. But now you think he's taken it one step further?"

"I think he thinks he's taken it one step further. These scribblings suggest he thinks he can effectively instantly evolve any organic being into something else."

"Or devolve?"

Tails looked over at Shadow.

"There could be technology – or at the very least, plans for a technology – that could devolve me and you into worms," Shadow continued.

"Um, maybe," Tails nervously replied. "I really, really hope not, but at this point, knowing how determined and ingenious Crick was, I can't rule anything out."

"Any idea where Sonic is?" Shadow asked.

"I can track him through his communicator," Tails replied, punching the instructions into his scanner. "In fact, I thought ahead when he said we should split up, and I should even be able to track which route he and Knuckles took inside this place."

Tails called up a grid onto the screen of his scanner, his eyes widening at what was displayed upon it. Shadow moved over and squinted down at the screen before grunting a noise of surly amusement.

"You don't know what this means," Tails told him.

"It's a criss-crossing, winding, glowing line," Shadow flatly replied. "Either this place has several floors underground, or those two idiots have been walking around in circles and crossing back over themselves over and over."

"I'm hoping for the latter," Tails admitted. "I... Would rather find whatever is hidden in here before they do."

"Because they're so stupid, they'll probably activate it and end up turning themselves into worms," Shadow grumbled. "Come on, they must have gone in this way."

Shadow leapt down through the open hatchway at the end of the bunker but Tails hesitated to follow him, his eyes scanning over the writing over the outside of the bunker. The bunker, if it really was Crick's legendary laboratory, would have been something the old man would have coveted: so then why had he been found dead in Central City? Why had he left his precious laboratory after decades of hiding in it? And, as yet, his cause of death was still to be confirmed. Tails suspected Crick had been assassinated, and initially he had assumed this had been done by – or on behalf of – the government, to prevent his morally complex work from coming to light: but the powers that be had known of Crick's capabilities long ago, so why had they waited so long to take him out, if that was ultimately their plan all along? And if it hadn't been the government or any sort of agency associated with the Mobian Genome Project, who else could it have been? The only other culprit Tails could think of was Eggman, but Eggman wasn't exactly the type to kill someone in secret – if at all.

"Hurry up, fox boy!"

Tails sighed at Shadow's gruff call, recovering two torches from his backpack and then leaping down the hatchway. The access chute was too narrow for him to fly himself down – his tails were so long, he didn't have the space to spin them – and so he was forced to hurriedly climb down the steps to the floor below, where Shadow was duly waiting for him. They took a torch each, shining them up and down the corridor. Both directions looked identical: concrete walls, concrete ceiling and a concrete floor with a slight camber, the lower side of the walkway acting as some sort of drain, a line of water filling it.

"It reeks of death down here," Shadow commented.

"Old and new," Tails agreed.

"Which way did those idiots go?" Shadow asked.

"First they went this way," Tails said, pointing to his right. "But then they doubled-back and went the other way."

"Where are they now?"

"Still the second way, still moving."

"Then that's the way we go."

"What if they went the right way the first time?"

"They must have hit a dead-end. Do you really want to risk going that way and them finding something before we do?"

Tails pointed his torch in the direction Sonic and Knuckles had first taken. Something – some deep-rooted instinct – told him that he should go that way despite what his scanner and Shadow were telling him. He wished Amy was with him, as she would have encouraged him to follow his instincts, but he suspected Shadow might also be someone he could sway in that direction.

"Wait a minute..." Shadow muttered, pointing his torch in the same direction as Tails. "What is that?"

"Huh?"

Shadow stomped past Tails, moving in the direction Tails wished to go. After his initial surprise had passed, Tails hurried after him, catching up to him when he stopped and crouched down.

"What is it?" Tails asked.

"You tell me, Professor Prower," Shadow replied, picking up the object and bringing it around into the light of Tails's torch.

Tails frowned, reaching out a hand to accept it from Shadow. It was a small skeleton, which in itself was not unusual, as small animals would surely have snuck into the bunker to find shelter in the winter, but the shape of the skeleton made little sense. The body appeared to be that of a picky, but it clearly had the head of a pecky.

"I'm guessing this is some of Crick's fine handiwork," Shadow said, rising to his feet. "The mutation he claimed wasn't perfect."

"This is one complete piece," Tails mused. "I know we expected this, but I still can't believe he had the technology to give one organic life-form the head of another without surgical intervention."

"I don't really care for the finer points of it," Shadow coldly replied. "But we should be on our guard. If Eggman is already here, this could be worse than we thought."

Tails nodded, crouching down and placing the skeleton by the edge of the path. He hesitated there, a small part of him thinking that perhaps he ought to take it: but when he reasoned that he didn't want it for the sake of studying it, but rather as a souvenir, as proof that he had found and walked the lengths of the infamous Doctor Crick's secret laboratory, he quickly stood up and jogged after Shadow, joining him as he turned a corner, and they moved into full darkness. They both muttered out various expressions of disgust as their torchlight revealed that they were walking on the bones of various creatures, including what was clearly some long-dead Mobians. After some time of picking their way through the darkness, a faint light appeared up ahead, and they moved into it, reaching a corridor that was lit by functioning lights by the roof.

"Damn," Shadow growled, turning off his torch.

Tails swallowed carefully and took the torch from Shadow, stowing it in his back-pack along with his own. He then dug out a pair of face-masks, handing one to Shadow before pulling on his own. By the time he had it in place however, his eyes were already watering from the stench of the corridor: which was almost something of a relief, as it blurred his vision, and blocked out some of the horror that lay there.

"Look at this monstrosity," Shadow said, pocking the toe of one of his rocket shoes at what looked like a recently deceased ricky, rolling it over to reveal it had the face of a pocky.

"It gets worse," Tails admitted, moving further down the hall before stopping at the first Mobian corpse.

"Disgusting," Shadow commented, sounding far less horrified than Tails felt.

The body they were looking at was in a sitting position, back against the wall, arms hanging down and legs sprawled out across the corridor. It was hard to judge how long the chipmunk woman had been dead, but it certainly looked as though she had been there longer than the ricky they had just passed. She looked almost perfectly normal but for one detail: she had two, identical, heads. After swallowing back the bile that threatened in his throat, Tails crouched down and pulled down the collar of her shirt, still amazed that there were no scars or signs of surgery: whatever Crick had done to her, he had not simply attached a second head to her body, rather it appeared to have sprouted there as naturally as the first.

"It gets even worse," Shadow grimly warned. "If you're struggling to keep your breakfast down looking at that, maybe you should wait here while I continue alone."

"I'm fine," Tails lied, standing up at Shadow's side.

He felt anything but fine, but, seeing Shadow peer up at him from such close proximity, being reminded just how much taller and generally bigger he was than the hedgehog, he felt obliged to put on a brave face.

"There's something up ahead, and it looks like this is as far as Sonic bothered coming," Shadow added.

"How do you know?" Tails asked.

Shadow gave him a harsh look, before pointedly looking down. The ground at their feet was carpeted with viscera and tacky old blood, and there were clear, fresh, footprints, ending less than two feet from where they were standing. Recognising one set as the soles of Sonic's shoes, Tails nodded.

"Come on," Shadow said softly, before stepping over the girl's legs.

Tails carefully followed him, wincing and whimpering at each corpse they passed. The ones they were passing were in increasing stages of decomposition, but their abnormalities were more severe and grotesque, and Tails couldn't stop himself from reacting out loud.

"Do-do you think it hurt?" he asked as Shadow stopped at the end of the corridor.

"Try not to think about it," Shadow gently replied. "Look at this instead."

Tails moved over to Shadow's side, watching as he wiped the side of one gloved hand over a partially obscured message written on the wall.

""A way out"," Tails read aloud. ""Alpha-numerical password". Hmm..."

"Why would Crick leave clues for how to access the secured areas of this place?" Shadow asked, pointing Tails's attention to a digital keypad on the wall.

"And why is the power still on?" Tails added, peering up at the nearest light by the ceiling. "I mean maybe he put this clue here in case he forgot. Maybe he really was losing his mind."

"Or he wanted this to be found, but only by those who knew what to do with it," Shadow replied.

"The writings outside could go either way," Tails said with a shrug.

"Any idea what the password is?" Shadow asked.

"Well, it says it's alpha-numerical, so it must contain letters and numbers," Tails replied, moving himself in front of the keypad. "And this brand of electronic lock usually only accepts a four or six digit password."

"And the clue is "a way out"," Shadow added.

Tails studied the keypad for a moment before brightening.

"I've got it!" he said. "E-11-T!"

He punched in the password, and a green light illuminated on the keypad. Shadow stepped back as a concealed doorway popped just enough for them to grab the edge of it and haul it fully open.

"E-11-T?" Shadow asked as he passed through the doorway.

"The clue was "a way out"," Tails explained as he followed Shadow through the doorway. "And the answer was "exit" – but to get the numerical part of the password, Crick replaced the XI in the number 11 – because XI is the Roman numeral for 11."

Shadow stopped walking abruptly and turned to Tails. Tails stopped at his side, blinking down at him curiously.

"This sort of crap really excites you, doesn't it?" Shadow asked.

"Heh, yeah, I guess so!" Tails replied, rubbing a hand at the back of his head as he tried to contain the blush growing on his face.

"It's pathetic," Shadow said, before continuing on his way. "But it's also the reason why I made the right choice to come here with you instead of one of those idiots."

"Um... Thank you?" Tails responded, before hurrying after Shadow and falling back into step with him.

"Now boy genius, explain this one."

Shadow and Tails slowed to a halt as they found themselves at a dead-end, in a small square opening. It was still just made up of concrete, but the walls were lined with hand-drawn diagrams, with one wall being a myriad of colours, as it looked as though Crick had simply coloured in a variety of shapes with coloured pencils.

"This is concept art for the transmogrifier," Tails concluded.

"Does it look realistic?" Shadow asked.

"I want to say no, but some of these circuit diagrams are sound," Tails replied. "At the very least, he's built something capable of disrupting an organic being on a molecular level."

"Which means?" Shadow pressed.

"At the very least, this machine could cause cancer, or cause a mutation to grow in the body," Tails replied.

"Like growing a second head?" Shadow asked.

Tails turned to him and, for a long, awkward moment, they stared at each other.

"I'll take your terrified glaring as a yes," Shadow eventually concluded, before turning his attention back to the diagrams on the wall. "Those idiots missed this entirely when they came this way: though this does appear to be a dead-end."

"Yeah, it is a dead-end," Tails said slowly. "But maybe that's the point. The instructions are here, but the hardware is at the other end of the facility. The instructions are here, behind a password protected door, to keep out anyone unfit or ill-qualified to be interfering with technology like this."

"Hn, and it worked, because it kept out Sonic, and you bested it," Shadow replied.

"But..."

Tails pulled out his scanner, looking down at it apprehensively.

"Uh oh," he said softly.

"Hn, let me guess," Shadow said. "They've stopped moving."

Tails nodded.

"They've found it," Shadow added.

"If it even exists," Tails quickly responded. "I mean, this is some crazy technology he's writing about here."

"Did you forget our two-headed friend back there?" Shadow asked dryly.

Tails gulped and Shadow groaned. Then, in an unspoken understanding, they both turned and started running back the way they had come.


Next Chapter: Rouge visits Amy as she is concerned about Shadow, and they start to make a plan to follow after the others. Rouge thinks that Metal will be able to help them, and enlists Amy's help to convince him to join them. Sonic and Knuckles find a strange machine in a room with multi-coloured decorations, and, when Knuckles accidentally activates it, Sonic shortly finds himself at the mercy of Eggman. Chapter 5: The Easy Way