Four days later, the Freedom Fighters received word that Eggman had begun attacking Station Square. "I hope you guys can find a way to help us again." Tails whispered to the two latex animals still attached to his arms as they were getting ready to go. "Are you ready, Mr. Tails?" Cream asked in the doorway to the room that the fox was staying in. "Yeah, let's go." Tails responded.
When he got outside where everyone else was, he saw Shadow with a chaos emerald in his hand, waiting for the fox so he could use Chaos Control to teleport the group to Station Square so they could stop Eggman. "About time you came." the hedgehog said as soon as Tails came into view.
"Sorry, just had to grab a few things." Tails responded as he walked over to the group. Upon seeing Amy there, the blue latex on Tails's arm slid off and attached itself to her broken arm before Shadow did Chaos Control and teleported everyone to Station Square, where a giant robot was wreaking havoc on some buildings while Eggman was cackling in the background.
Only a couple of minutes into the battle, the heroes were halfway to their breaking point, "I thought you could do better than this!" Eggman taunted, looking at the barely-conscious Tails and Amy. 'Eggman's really upped his game this time.' the blue blob thought to itself as it slowly detached itself from Amy's arm, ditched the voice chip that it took, and slipped away with the orange blob that detached itself from Tails.
Once they were a safe distance away from view, they reformed in their animal forms. "What do we do, Sonic?" Iris asked, standing up after her legs had formed. "We combine again." he responded. Iris looked hesitant, but after years of being attached to him, she knew that the blue hero had his reasons. They were about to slowly and properly combine when a missile hit a nearby wall, scattering debris everywhere.
"Forget going into the right place, we need to combine now!" Sonic shouted over the explosion. Iris nodded and stuck to some random spots on the blue latex hedgehog's body, forming his mussel and Sonic sped out of the way before they were smashed by falling debris into the ground, where getting back to the surface entirely would take an extremely long time.
Back with the Freedom Fighters, Shadow was busy defending Amy and Tails from various badniks while Knuckles was trying to locate a weak-point on the giant robot. Just then, the robot shook the echidna off of it and stomped, widely cracking the earth beneath him. Defying the laws of gravity, Knuckles hung in the air for a few seconds, just long enough for a blue and orange blur to swipe him out of the air before he fell into the earth.
"What?" Knuckles groaned in Sonic's grip and managed to open his eyes and get a glimpse of the azure hero before closing them due to the light from the sun burning overhead. After landing, Sonic stumbled forward before regaining his balance and looking at the giant robot. Upon the sight of it, he smirked. "Shouldn't be too hard." he said to himself and was about to take off before Knuckles stopped him. "That robot is harder to defeat than it looks." The echidna said, "I'll be careful.", Sonic replied, zipping off to the robot with the task of defeating it and protecting his friends.
After over a minute, Sonic located the weak spot and began to spin-dash into it repeatedly until the robot couldn't handle anymore and broke down. Over the cheers of the nearby crowd, Iris could make out the static of a communication chip installed into her body and the near-silent shouts of her and Sonic's latex friends who were watching from a nearby rooftop, warning them of an incoming danger behind them, and quickly warned Sonic before a laser could hit them.
Sonic quickly turned around to lay eyes on his evil mechanical copy, "Long time, no see, Metal." the hedgehog greeted as he got into a battle stance and began to battle the evil robot.
With Knuckles, the echidna had recovered and had been baffled over how Sonic could still be alive. After all, he was crushed by a huge slab of concrete! After that, there was no way he could've survived that! But… should he really be surprised? This was the same person who could get out of any life or death situation alive. Knuckles groaned from the thoughts and went over to help Shadow, who was busy battling wave after wave of badniks.
After Metal Sonic was defeated, Eggman left, cursing the heroes and the fact that Sonic was still alive as Sonic took the Chaos emeralds that were powering the giant robot and walked over to his friends who had just finished off the last of the badniks. "Hey, guys." the blue hedgehog said as he stopped at the sight of Tails and Amy. Knuckles and Shadow simply stared at the blue hedgehog, possibly taking in his now pure-orange ears and cicada wings.
"How-?" Knuckles asked just as Tails groaned and woke up. "Ugh… Did we win? Is Eggman gone?" he groaned as he rubbed his aching head. "Hey, buddy. Yeah, Egghead is gone." Sonic responded as he helped the two-tailed fox up onto his feet. "Looks like we need to get them to Gold, and soon." Iris mentally told Sonic and the hedgehog responded with a mental nod.
"How are you still alive? And what's up with your body?" Knuckles asked him as if he weren't interrupted, "It's...hard to explain." Sonic replied, rubbing the back of his non-existent neck and turning to Amy, still on the ground, unconscious. "Questions aside, We need to get Amy some medical care." Sonic said after a few seconds, picking her up and beginning to walk away. Knuckles and Shadow exchanged a look before following the hedgehog back to Vanilla's house.
However, when they dashed inside (It had started to rain on the way to the house.), they were met with a pure-yellow bunny talking to Vanilla. "Oh, hello!" she greeted them as they came inside. "Um, Vanilla? Who's this?" Knuckles asked, but it seemed like he didn't need to, as Sonic put Amy on the couch and smirked at the rabbit. "Long time, no see, Gold." he greeted her as he came in.
"Hello, Sonic." she responded as Knuckles gave him a "you-two-know-each-other?" look. "Faker, we should be getting Amy to the hospital, not here." Shadow said, but Gold shook her head. "That will not be necessary." she said as she walked over to the pink hedgehog and put her hand just above Amy's torso.
To everyone's (Except for Sonic's, of course.) surprise, the wounds on the pink hedgehog had closed and her arm pulled itself into the proper shape as the bone was mended. "Gold? Can we talk in private?" Iris silently spoke into her communication chip, triggering a response in the latex rabbit.
"Hey, Sonic. Mind if we go into another room and catch up?" Gold asked and Sonic nodded, "Sure!" he said as Shadow and Knuckles were tending to Tails and Amyn as the pink hedgehog woke up. With that, they went into one of the guest bedrooms and shut the door, locking it. Just after the door was shut and locked, the orange latex on Sonic detached and reformed into an orange cicada.
"What's up, Gold?" Sonic asked in their latex animal language. "Me and Celadon got worried after that huge piece of concrete fell on top of you. You need to be more careful if you wanna keep the fact that you in your disguise are two latex creatures combined. You know what happened with Snowflake!" the yellow latex rabbit ranted while keeping her voice quiet.
"We know, Gold. She refused to come out of her jar after that. But don't worry! If we can make it this long without being discovered, then we can go even longer. You and Celadon just worry too much!" Iris reassured, putting her hands on her hips.
"Heh, alright. Just be careful so people don't find out and get any ideas." Gold said.
"So, did anyone try to attack Dr. Kintobor again?" Sonic asked, already predicting the answer, "We had to move him back into the tower and into the base. The instincts of all the other latex animals are getting more rebellious and coming out more often." Gold sighed.
"Why don't we go back to the others?" Iris said as she reattached to Sonic with the right colors in their proper places. "Sure, let's go." Gold sighed, thinking about the kind scientist being alone with all those hostile latex animals who had succumbed to their instincts.
As they walked out, Amy tackled Sonic in a hug. "Oh, Sonic! You're okay!" she cried. But behind her, Shadow and Knuckles were giving Sonic a strange look, which Sonic did not seem to notice. Unbeknownst to him, Iris and Gold, Shadow decided to eavesdrop on the secretly-trio out of curiosity of why they wanted to be in a separate room, as Sonic always wanted to talk while others were around, and only talked to someone in private if they had a secret they wanted to keep between themselves and they wanted to talk about it.
"A-Amy! I c-can't breathe!" Sonic choked out and squeaked as he felt the communication chip break under the pressure of her grip with a loud and very audible crack. His eyes widened as he realized that either Iris or Gold would now have to do the talking for him, or he had to pretend that Amy made him lose his voice by breaking some non-existent bone. "What was that?" Tails asked and Sonic let out a squeak in response. Gold seemed to know what was up, because while everyone else heard a squeak from the blue hedgehog, she knew what it meant.
"What do you need to say?" she silently said to the hedgehog, "Just say 'I think you broke him.', they'll understand." he responded. Gold said what she was asked to say, and the gang seemed to buy it.
Keyword: seemed.
"Are you serious?" Knuckles asked, getting another squeak from Sonic in response, which the echidna assumed was a yes. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Sonic!" Amy said, loosening her grip on the blue hedgehog and going back to the couch. Sonic let out a sigh, as he did not know how he would fix this. He couldn't tell his friends anything because they didn't speak Latex, Gold needed to be going back to the Urban Jungle soon, and Iris's presence had to stay secret.
But just then, he remembered that Tails partially knew about his secret and Iris, so why not have Iris ask him to make a new translator? It wouldn't be too hard to find some time to be alone with him so he could ask, right?
Soon, the gang departed, going to do whatever they had planned for the rest of the day. Shadow and Rouge had a GUN mission, Sonic and Tails went back to the fox's workshop to tune up the Tornado, Knuckles went to guard the Master Emerald, and Amy stayed to help Vanilla with a few things.
However, when Sonic and Tails got to the workshop, it seemed like Tails had something else to do in mind as he went over to his workbench. "You aren't really unable to talk, are you?" he asked, earning a head shake from Sonic. "What was that crack, then?" Tails asked as Iris detached from Sonic.
"It was his translator, but you can only understand me because my body structure has the correct vocal cords for speaking while his doesn't." she said and Sonic nodded, giving all that Tails needed for a confirmation.
"So… You said you were going to explain what was going on back at Eggman's base?" Tails said after a while. "Oh yeah," Iris said, "So, what do you wanna know?" she asked and Tails got into a thinking pose. "Um, how can you guys turn into random shapes and blobs like you did?" he finally asked. "Oh, um…" Iris squeaked as she tried to think of a way to tell the young fox.
"Well, Sonic is basically a failed experiment made of latex who was created in an attempt to create new clothing for cleaners to wear to protect their skin from the chemicals you would normally find in cleaner, and since he was practically a small puddle small enough to fill an entire eyedropper with not even a drop left when he came to life before he took form, he can take up that form at will, plus stick to any surface." Iris explained.
"Well, then what about you?" Tails asked the orange cicada. "Um, well, it's...hard to explain," she said.
Tails nodded in acknowledgement, but Iris reached behind Sonic's back and pulled out an orange traffic cone, "I guess my existence as a latex animal relies on this. Otherwise, I wouldn't be a latex animal at all." she said before Tails took the cone in his own hands.
"How does this traffic cone have anything to do with being a latex animal?" he asked, "Put it on and find out." Iris said with a mischievous tone and Tails raised the cone up to his head before Sonic snatched it away and threw it at Iris with a furious snarl.
"Oh, stop it. It wouldn't have affected him even if he put it on for a minute or longer. You of all people should know because you put the thing on my head as a joke when we first met*, remember?" she shot back with a scowl while rubbing her head where the cone hit, earning another growl from the latex hedgehog and a confused look from the fox.
"What was the cone about to do to me?" Tails asked, "Sonic thought it would turn you into a latex animal but he knows perfectly well that he used up the latex that does the infecting on me when he put the cone on my head as a joke." she said, seriously tempting Sonic to scratch her face as he hissed.
"Hey, you leave him out of this." she growled before Tails spoke up, "Um, should I make another translator for you, Sonic?" he asked, hoping that it would be enough of a distraction from his argument with Iris, and Sonic squeaked for yes.
While Tails got to work on the translator, he got a message from Amy telling that Dr. Eggman had returned. "Twice in the same day?" Tails responded. "Yes, we need you and Sonic ASAP." came the reply, along with some coordinates. "We'll be there, hang in there." Tails sent and sprinted into the living room, facepalming when he saw Sonic and Iris arguing again, only Iris had scratch marks over her cheek.
"Will you two stop?" Tails said, pulling a snarling Sonic off of Iris, "We have a job to do!" he continued before Sonic could pounce on Iris again. The latex hedgehog growled before he allowed the latex cicada to latch onto him for the third time that day. Then they left the workshop, but nearby, there was a figure spying on them. "They are coming." a robotic voice that came from it spoke. "Excellent! Return to the base and prepare for their arrival. We will be ready for them by the time they arrive." and with a cackle, the communication ceased and the figure flew off after the trio.
A/N: Hey, guys! Sorry that I've been working on this instead of Androids and Mobians. It will be my priority to post chapter 5 soon before even beginning to write chapter 4 of this. Below the star note is a list of names that I came up with for the story. Let me know if you have more suggestions or think I should put one of them as the official name for this fanfic in the reviews! As usual, please review! Kittygamer, out!
*It happened before the events of the prologue
Name ideas:
Venture Into the City of Latex
Urban Jungle Chaos
Latex of Chaos
Chaos Transfur (The u in Transfur is intentional)
Living Latex
Transfur Chaos!
Latex Transfur Chaos!
(Venture Into the City of Latex and Chaos Transfur are my personally favored names)
