6.
You got this.
Sonic panted. Each breath he took scraped his throat; it seemed like all he could do to keep the nausea at bay. The heat pressed down so hard it felt like sandpaper chafing his skin.
He raised one ear for the sound of the wind breezing through. Couldn't trust his sight in either eye, not the good one or the swollen damaged one. He couldn't anticipate when the smoke would coalesce into the Phantom, only to shoot out a thousand pounds of steel into him seconds later. Peppered with bruises and throbbing heat from every one, his body begged him to stop, but he couldn't rest. He had to keep going.
Come on, Sonic.
You got this.
He balled his fists and pushed himself once more into fighting stance. Scrubbed the ooze from his shiner with the back of his wrist. Squinted at the haze.
Dust wafted along the remains of a ruined street. Melted wires snapped from damaged transformers. The sparks rippled toward him as if the threat they posed was dreamlike.
His bad eye welled with liquid—and he dashed from a satchel charge that blew a hole where he stood. Smoking concrete chunks rained on his absence.
"Sooooniiiic," sang a voice whose lilt made his skin crawl. Its echoes quivered down to his bones as the Phantom crushed the ground it tread. Weak fires rimmed the crater, and the mech's shadow enveloped the ash rising from them. "Come on, aren't we friends? You don't want your dear old pal getting bored, do you?"
Stalking a corner, it thrust its foot down on a fire hydrant, smashing it into halves like a toy destroyed in a childish tantrum. Water spurted out in jagged leaps, gushing through cracks in the sidewalk.
Sonic flattened himself against the wall of a nearby alleyway, breathing hard. He pressed a hand to his stomach where his guts squirmed in a viper's nest of dread and loathing. Theatrics, he reasoned. He's trying to psyche me out.
"After all," Eggman said, "all hide and no play makes you a dull boy."
Building after building, street after street: each violent bout forced him to assume more of a defensive position than the last. He had to take cover anywhere he could find it.
He gave the street a backwards glance; Eggman was facing north. He headed south, hopped a fence and slipped through an open window. That led him down the hall of another derelict. Maybe even a lab. He didn't see fit to dwell on its pitiful state at the moment.
As he dashed across the carpet, he ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling dirt stuck in his gums. His playful approach to the fight turned sour the minute Eggman made his intentions known—then downright serious when it became evident the doc meant to uphold his oath of "First, do harm" by any means possible.
Eggman showed no sign of tiring, if his mocking tone was any indication. And why would he? He'd hound him to the ends of the city if it meant he'd gain even the slightest edge over Sonic.
Sonic ached. In the past fifteen minutes he'd been hit with more rebar, stones, and metal than he could recall during their lifelong feud. Then, as the doc gleefully put it, the real fun began when the Phantom rolled out its toy collection.
Not just the bullets and the lasers, either. Magnets nearly crushed him. Electricity thrashed inches shy of his skin. Shockwaves punted and battered and flung him around. Broken windows showered him in glass bits that stung as much as they glittered. Couldn't duck behind a fence without it growing teeth and lashing claws. Everything in this nightmare brandished a potential weapon, a trap waiting to ambush him.
That sort of chaos gave him no time to think, let alone rest. Every time he sought reprieve, if for a moment to catch his breath, Eggman would eject him out of hiding, and the sound and fury resumed as though it had never reached fever pitch.
This was nothing like the thrill of his feet soaring across planks crushing inside an orca's mouth, or the high that buzzed through his system as the road he left behind screeched under truck tires. This wasn't the weightless effort of skill, no. This was salt and dust on his tongue and a pounding heart, the dread he'd perfected a lifetime outrunning squeezing his intestines. A rat in a maze with no clear goal but to make an exit any way he could.
Still, he had to grin a bit through all that bleakness. A more sensible person would have thrown in the towel by now, but his ego didn't bother with concepts like "reason" and "sensibility." The way he saw it, Eggman would have to beat the "sensible" back into him. Under no circumstances was that happening.
(You're getting tired,) whispered a voice in the back of his head.
Sonic flashed his doubts a smirk.
(Who, me? I never get tired. …I only change my mind.)
He yanked open a maintenance door and had but a split second to react, far less than what conscious reason would allow him. Instinct rebounded him off the adjacent wall a heartbeat before the Phantom's fist blasted through, effectively crumpling doorway, landing and railing in one fell swoop.
He built upon the momentary reorientation it afforded him and took off in a beeline for the upstairs emergency exit. Hopefully if the doc kept smashing into things willy-nilly, one of his punches was bound to get him stuck.
"Got you now!" squealed Eggman. The fist opened instead and began breaking up the stairs with aimless punches.
Sonic pumped his legs, ducked each blow as best he could, given the blows tore through concrete and metal with frightening ease.
Boom. The last toppled his rhythm. His left foot plunged on a treacherous step and his gut slammed against a precipice, exposing his dangling body to hunter's jowls.
Panic thudding inside his chest, Sonic pawed for safety. His hands stiffened as he slapped them for a good hold; every begrudged inch his fingers could grab dragged ruts in the stone. He couldn't get up. Couldn't progress. And Eggman was gaining fast.
Crackling feedback.
His flesh crawled.
Like eyes on his back.
Like breath on his neck.
"Give up, you blue pest! What do you think you can do hiding in there?"
His progress was cruelly ripped from him: Sonic let out a dry scream, one that plunged into silence as the mech plucked him free and shoved him underwater.
Liquid pummeled his body, too cold, too hard. Sound muted into nothing inside that crystalline chamber. What he could feel was his heart pumping blood through him, every minute artery working overtime to warm him.
He cracked his eyes open. Eggman's base wavered its outline; colors whirled around him like fish, darting upwards out of sight. He extended a hand to them in slow-motion, the immense rush turning his muscles to the consistency of jelly. He struggled against the pressure as well as the sheer ice crushing down on his back.
Through the flood he managed to turn himself so that he faced the sky, the Phantom observing him closely as water knifed through its fingers.
It felt surreal being pinned down like this, like a painting watching him drown. Uselessly he swam his arms out, again, again, their sluggish motions negligible against the tide, until his lungs tightened to their brim.
No air.
As he bucked, his mouth loosed an inaudible cry that sent precious bubbles soaring over his head.
Eggman smiled.
And deep within, something primal burned.
(can't
give
in
won't
give
up
I don't
want to)
The next thing he knew, Sonic sputtered on the ground, freezing and burning all at once. His throat snatched painful gasps for air as he stumbled away, his ears full and his eyes blurring. Eggman had forced him into the geyser, yes, but he'd failed to account for how the pressure would eventually sidle him out of grasp. This time, though, he wouldn't just curse his foul luck.
"No!"
The Phantom slapped the ground beside Sonic, fracturing weak concrete. Thunder trembled out; a crack shivered down the street's spine before shattering apart into rocky floes. Gravity sucked him under, grabbed him by the knees and pitched him into wet darkness.
He didn't feel impact. Instead he floated suspended as stones curled about him and bloomed into liquid puffs.
A sloshing, sucking noise snapped him out of his reverie. One glance told him where all this debris was headed: into a turbine that sliced it into chunks and forced them under.
He wheeled his legs against the current to propel him to the surface, but useless as they were, they only pitched him deeper down. Even though he couldn't swim, he had to find an escape. If he let go now, he'd sink. Things couldn't end like this.
I won't go now.
Sonic closed his eyes as his body drifted further down into the water. That fire inside him flared, surging even hotter in his quieted mind.
Soon an immense calm emanated from somewhere within his chest and made him abandon the pain and the cold. It was the quiet peace one found on the brink of darkness, and the living desire that accompanied it, dancing at the edge of the flame. It was the desire to act, to do and see and live, which had always flourished inside him no matter how rough the circumstances.
He reached out.
And grabbed something.
An iron wheel. He pulled himself toward it, hauling in a painful gasp of air as he bobbed above the surface.
He looked up to a rumble above him. Sludge washed around him, and he hugged his body over the wheel to endure the shockwaves that rattled through the canal.
Boulders rained down. Unnatural light oozed through widening cracks in the ceiling.
He yanked on the wheel. His hands fumbled on the slick material and he lurched backwards, nearly falling off altogether. "Come on," he yelled, as the stupid door refused to budge even an inch, "open up!"
His wish must have been heard, for then an outside bolt clicked: a deluge burst from the slammed-open door and flushed him out.
The Phantom touched down moments too late.
Growling in supreme frustration, Eggman crushed a boulder inside his massive steel fist and chucked it, letting it plunk like a skipping stone across water. It hit metal and a loud clanging cried throughout the tunnel.
For heaven's sake. He wanted to wrangle Sonic until he resembled a worn-out chew-toy, not have him slip from his grasp just when things were getting good. "An impeccable time to play dead, you grubby little sewer rat! Where are you?"
Whirring filled the air as he deployed the Phantom's scanners to pick out vital signs from the dark pool. Aside from a smattering of bubbles that undulated on the liquid's surface, nothing showed on his radar. For all intents and purposes, the so-called "sewer rat" might as well have vanished into thin air.
"Bah! Be that way, then! Mark my words, you won't get a next time!" He gave the controls a good kick before slamming back into the pilot's chair, his temper roiling in the utter quiet. Once in seven years had he had fun, real fun, and it goes and flushes its fool self down the drain.
Eggman pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses toward scrunched brows. Sonic must have gotten knocked unconscious, probably dangling limp on a pipe somewhere. It would explain such quiet readings. A shout that tapered into sudden nothing didn't occur by magic or programming fluke, and he knew better than to hedge his bets on dead. If being shot to Earth's atmosphere in a rigged capsule didn't do him in, there wasn't much else that could stamp out that annoying blue flea.
Not for lack of trying. Oh, most certainly not for lack of trying.
The corners of his frown reversed when a heinous thought struck him.
Faint music drifted into his ears.
Piano. The notes pattered his mind like raindrops, their vague fragility soft to his ears.
An overlapping voice marred them. Someone hummed their own song over the keys, and that noise pulled him further into consciousness.
With it, the protective morphine of blackout faded. The aches he'd brought into sleep now returned with twice the urgency, reminding him all too harshly of the damage he'd sustained. He rotated a shoulder and it popped in its socket. His skin shivered, cool, but he was otherwise curiously dry.
Rolling onto his elbows, he pushed himself up. Immediately a light fragrance drifted into his nostrils, so unlike the ruin in the street that he allowed himself to savor it for the time being, now that Eggman had gone suspiciously quiet.
Darn, but it smelled so good, reminding him of the times when Amy clipped fresh laundry to the line.
He had to force her from his mind, at least for the time being—better to think of his friends as hiding somewhere safe than… Well… This. Odds were the rest of the city wasn't so accommodating.
An equally exhausted part of him resisted the urge to bury his face into the soft material and drowse. Swallowing instead, he looked down at an indentation his cheek had pressed into a wine-red carpet. His gaze followed a swirling leaf pattern toward the wall.
Sonic blinked back liquid from his damaged eye. No idea where he was now, but it was far cleaner and more homely than the city could hope to be. A robust fire crackled in an open hearth; its warmth tickled his cheek. Next to it stood a ticking grandfather clock whose heavy brass pendulum swung inside a thick glass case.
Another persistent tip-tap, tip-tap caught his attention; a Newton's cradle situated on a nightstand knocked its balls in metronome with the clock's ticking. From there the room's gilded veneer peeled back: bookshelves, those were normal, but those stained glass windows definitely weren't. Neither were the two life-sized marble statues standing at attention beside the windows. Nor the globes marked with red flags.
Then he saw him.
Eggman sat at an opulent desk, legs propped over its surface, as he observed a holographic screen that flashed before him.
Swiping a finger at the air, he changed screens. They fanned out before him like a control panel. Multiple screens recorded the city from almost every imaginable angle. For each hologram that vanished, another one unfolded to replace it.
He watched them with the bored detachment of a disinterested viewer, sniffing every so often at certain developments. One toe tapped in idle sync with the clock and cradle, his cheek mashed in his fist.
Once he sensed the hedgehog had roused, he paused the feed and sat up in his chair. "Who pushed you into the washing machine? You look terrible." A brief frown wrinkled his crow's feet. "Quit bleeding on the carpet. They just steamed that."
Dazed, Sonic glanced down at his body, caked in the stiff blood and filth that howled beside the room's quiet elegance. Ash had turned his gloves gray; there were tears in his socks, water stains on his shoes.
On the other hand, Eggman hadn't suffered a single scratch. Here he sat, healthy, bored, even, as he cozied beside the fire.
He looked back up. "You… "
"Yes, me. Where did you think I went?" An indulgent smile lifted his cheeks, and the doc's real chuckle emerged for the first time in weeks (years, to hear it from his end), in a somewhat hoarser imitation of the booming gales he used to deliver. "Poor boy. You must have struck your head even harder than you thought."
Eggman leaned on his elbows, his head cocked to the side. Mockingly, he raised his index finger and slid it back and forth to test Sonic's vision. "I've told you before: there's not a single solid inch of this place you can hide from me. Not to mention," he gestured toward the screens, "the fun and games are just getting started. Why not stick around a while longer? Look, Tails is finally awake—and what's this? The little rabbit girl's gone running to Amy."
"Don't." Sonic's jaws cracked as he pried them open. "Eggman, if you hurt them—"
A brazenly flapped hand silenced him. "Now, now; don't be such a party pooper."
He lurched, but contacted nothing.
Because he was back in the street.
He turned to find the sun sinking behind Eggman's fortress. The shimmer in that flaming ball of gas had deepened into a boil, as if it was giving up the last of its light to the impending darkness.
An icy droplet stabbed his cheek. He blinked, and wiped off the first pelt of rain.
He bolted from the shuddering metal breath the Phantom's cannons made seconds before fire peppered the street. His confusion didn't matter anymore; only beating the ever-living snot out of his tormentor did.
He wants more? I'll give 'im more.
Grinding to a complete halt, Sonic shot toward the machine's dead center like an unrestrained pinball cracked from a plunger. Head to toe, he burned with the intent of sawing this thing's limbs off one by one.
Eggman, of course, tried to slam its hands together and entrap him like before, but this time he'd moved too quickly for that; this time he tunneled into another rivet and weakened one of its ribs, snapping it off altogether. Broken metal casing emitted an awful screech as it careened off the main structure and landed in the street. Black smoke belched from its flaming carcass.
In retaliation the Phantom smashed him into the ground. Or rather, the ground shot up to meet him, now in the form of the precious steamed carpet the old guy wanted spick-and-span.
The room again.
He wanted to scream.
An invisible force pushed him down, locking his muscles into place, while curved walls of shining green enclosed over him like a cocoon.
Heck was this? Some kind of twisted hamster ball?
The moment his rigidity abated, Sonic punted his shoulder against the energy: a vain attempt, given that the gravity inside lessened to such a degree that it swept him off his feet. He couldn't gain any traction and, faintly, through the clearing muddle, Eggman wheeled his wrist in a circle.
He realized.
(she and Cheese floated down unharmed)
This was the same energy shield that broke Cream's fall and teleported Knuckles…
(so he 'saved' them)
The next thing he knew—the desk flew up and rammed him into the wall. Agony wracked his body and he instinctively curled into himself to avoid getting hit by chunks of concrete.
Concrete?
He fell before his mind could make sense of the clues, his body going limp against the pain and shock.
The doc's steps padded the carpet, his gait relaxed as Sonic grasped a fistful of the stuff to crawl away from this nightmare.
"Sonic," he said in a tone so sweet it could have rot his guts, "we can do this all day, you know."
He felt himself being lifted by the arm, his weight as faint as a child's. Was—he helping him up?
No. Eggman drew back his hand, palm stiff, the orb in his wrist device trailing green smoke, and cracked it across his cheek.
Only it wasn't flesh that harmed him. Heartbeats before he registered the blow, the street replaced the office and it was the Phantom that whipped its damaged, open palm toward him.
Due to some random mercy—or likelier the doc's sick sense of humor—it stopped inches before connection. Instead the green glow walled up a barrier and deposited him unto his former location once more, where he dangled by his wrist, his head throbbing with unanswered questions.
Triumphant, the doc dropped him onto the ruined desk.
"And," Eggman said, "for the rest of your miserable life."
Sonic took great pains to sit up as slowly as he could amidst the desk's splintered halves.
A spasm in his abdominal muscles kept him grounded. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed his fist to his diaphragm where an intense, burning pain radiated out. There he saw the beginnings of a grotesque bruise leak over his rib, and swallowed; his stomach knotted like he was going to blow chunks at any moment.
Of course, that nausea wasn't alleviated in the least when Eggman entered his clearing field of vision.
"Oh, ho. I've seen that look before. Do it and we're going to have problems, hedgehog." More than the ones we already have? Eggman nudged him in his bad rib. "Move."
Sonic refused to—partly out of stubborn ire, partly out of fear that making a single rash move would make his fresh wound scream at him.
Whichever it was made the doc shake his head. He stepped over him, deliberating the bookshelf.
Inwardly the hedgehog balked. He almost killed me, and now he wants to read? Are you kidding me?
A weighty volume was plucked, its page edges shimmering gold. Eggman cradled it affectionately in his hands. "Here we are," he said a bit too cheerily, patting its leatherbound cover, "'The Fourth Great Civilization.' My grandfather wrote it. I doubt it's required material at the Hardknock School for Hedgehogs, so we'll have a little primer, mm?"
Sonic fumed as he paced.
Eggman looked down with a chuckle. "Too bad. You're going to sit and listen whether you want to or not." He thumbed through its worn pages. "Power was everything the Nocturnus lived, breathed and died by. Even their Gizoids snubbed you unless you flexed a little muscle. 'Show me your power. Or I shall not obey.'"
Emerl. His temples ached at the memory.
Papers shivered as the doctor examined more of its contents, until he flashed his teeth in a grim smirk. "Gerald, you old hypocrite. 'The Nocturnus say one cannot escape the justice of fate. Any man who glorifies power will inevitably fall by his own hand.'" He snapped the book shut. " …You don't say."
"You… " Sonic rasped. " …Reek at bedtime stories."
Eggman waved the tome at him. "Must I spoon-feed this to you? What do you think happened when you left?"
"Same that always goes on, doc: you gettin' tanked and wearing that lampshade on your head." Sonic blew out a sigh. "What's the big deal what I think, anyway? You got what you wanted."
"Not quite," Eggman said. Tucking the book under his arm, he secured the clasp on one of the quavering windows. Droplets were beginning to pelt the glass. "For years I've sought that last piece of the puzzle that will finally make my Empire the greatest to have ever stood. Luckily for you, I've created someplace where you'll fit nicely in. Given the alternative, you might even thank me down the line. But it's up to you, my little puzzle piece, whether you'll accept my proposition or face the consequences."
Only if those consequences included his foot barreling up his rear end at eighty miles an hour. Repeatedly.
Clutching the bookshelf for support, Sonic hobbled to a stand. Even though his muscles pulled bitterly enough to shred his breath to tatters, and the pain in his rib stabbed his entire left side, he felt compelled to try to face Eggman one more time. If he was going to get knocked down again, he wanted to take the blow head-on.
That was the whole point of this game, wasn't it, resisting his instincts for surrender? So even though it was possibly the most idiotic thing he could do, he continued to tempt fate. You can't break me. Just come and try.
(let's you and me get one thing straight)
"No one tells me what to do."
Eggman snorted. "Grow up."
He hurled the book into the fire. Flames leapt to devour it, crackling in satisfaction as they sank their teeth into the pages.
It was such a small gesture compared to what else he'd done that it shouldn't have come as a shock, but Sonic couldn't help but feel chills at the notion of his grandfather's research dissolving inside the hearth. Didn't Eggman once aspire to be like him? Years of work turned cinders, and he hardly batted an eye. Made him wonder what else he'd fed those flames. With that bleak thought, he forced himself to meet the doc's pitiless gaze.
"What could you gain by defeating me, Sonic, eh? In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the only thing keeping these boys from tearing everything apart. They came here angry and they won't leave without slashing everything to ribbons. And, might I add, exactly who had to get them in line in the first place? Oh, that's right, me. Seven years of keeping my hand on the leash—can you blame me for wanting more? I won't be remembered as anyone's babysitter."
He spread his arms to call the holograms before him, and magnified them so the hedgehog could see what it was he stood to lose. Tails. Amy. Cream. Shadow. Shade. Knuckles and Rouge, side by side.
Eggman smiled upon them like a puppetmaster. Then he ground his fists and crushed them into dust: green cinders he blew toward Sonic, to let flutter, unfelt, to the carpet.
"I want to rule. And I want to do it while it's still within my grasp. So either you join me, or I loose the wolves."