Chapter 6: Quite the Awkward Moment

Even though Nikki and Nights left the mall at a quick pace, they still had to run around two miles of complicated city streets which was only made harder by heavy traffic.

"Man," Nikki complained. "This makes me miss how easy it was to run in the forest; there was way more open space. Hey Shadow, why don't we just chaos control over to where we heard the explosion?" Nikki asked, momentarily forgetting about their new female aliases.

"I've told you before Sonic," Nights sighed, also forgetting about using the "Nikki" alias. "You just can't use chaos control whenever you want to. Summoning the powers of the chaos emerald requires a lot of energy. Though the emerald is always producing more energy, we need to wait for it to 'recharge' at it's full capacity before we use anymore chaos powers."

Nikki listened to this explanation and paid attention as much as possible; she still didn't quite understand why a power source of practically infinite energy would need to recharge, but as Nights explained, the run over to their destination seemed much shorter. This was a very good thing too, because while Nights could simply glide across the ground at a quick speed, Nikki had to run at her usual speed which made her…. upper figure… feel rather uncomfortable. 'Man I miss being a guy,' she thought as Nights explained.

It wasn't until the smoke came closer into view that Nikki finally spoke up in her usual confident manner. "Alright, there it is! Let's go over there and kick some a…" As Nikki sped up to a higher speed, she felt Nights tug her back by the collar of her shirt. As they slowed down, the two stopped at a street corner practically a block away from where the incident had occurred and hid behind the wall of a building.

"You can't just run into an unknown danger like that without any sort of plan. You can't be THAT big of an idiot!" Nights whisper- screamed.

"Why not? It's worked for me tons of times before."

"Oh, you mean like that time you let Eggman trap you into a space capsule and sent you crashing towards Earth, or the time you ran into Eggman's energy absorbing machine and let him turn you into a werehog, or how about the time you destroyed Eggman's conch device allowing for some 'Deadly Six' to escape his mind control?" Nights retorted, remembering Sonic tell stories of his past adventures. Seeing Nights' point, Nikki simply huffed and rolled her eyes in defeat. Nights saw this as her cue to elaborate on her suggestion.

"During my stints working as an agent for G.U.N, I've learned that before charging into action, it's best to observe the situation before you and form a plan based on what circumstances you see." Taking her own advice, Nights peeked her head around the corner to see what events were currently transpiring; the next thing she saw made her stomach drop. "Ho...ly... shit."

Hearing Nights swear, Nikki instinctively knew that something serious was up. "Hey, what do you see over there?" She asked. As she peeked her head around the same corner that Nights was looking over, she instantly saw what was capturing her friend's attention.

Just a mere block away, Amy and Nebula were back-to-back while in front of them was Metal Sonic and Metal Shadow respectively. Sonic was shocked and intimidated that there was yet another metal version of him that was for some reason attacking Amy; Shadow was infuriated and surprised that a metal knockoff of him was staring down his own girlfriend. Of course, both hedgehogs couldn't help but notice the big, bald man who was hovering over the scene that lay before them.

"That bastard!" Nights cursed through gritted teeth. "I'll make him pay for sending that pile of trash to attack Nebula."

"Wait!" Nikki whispered in a slightly panicked tone. "What about that whole thing with coming up with a plan or something? I mean, we can't let our girlfriends see us fight when we look like this. They'll know it's us for sure!"

"Screw that!" Nights yelled, feeling a primal need to throw all caution to the wind. Fortunately, before Nights could run out and expose their cover, Metal Shadow threw his smoke grenade at Amy and Nebula, effectively covering them in a cloud of smoke. "There!" Nights proclaimed. "This is our perfect opportunity to strike…"

Before Nights could act upon this suggestion, Metal Sonic dashed into the smoke at a speed that even Nikki was impressed with. A mere second later, a small but distinguishable *thwack* was heard from the smoke cloud. A few moments later, by the time the smoke cleared, the two girls were on the ground, Metal Sonic towering over them.

At this sight, Eggman gave off his maniacal laugh while Nikki and Nights stood there stunned, completely awestruck by the teamwork that the two robots displayed.

"HO HO HO! Excellent, simply excellent!" Eggman cheered excitedly. "The fight that those two put up was simply pitiful compared to these two masterpieces. Metal Sonic! Status report on this recent battle."

Metal Sonic replied to Eggman with his high pitched garbled voice. "Threat: minimal. Power efficiency: high. Overall damage between two units: minimal. Overall functionality between two units: 95%."

"HO HO HO!" Eggman laughed again. "Those girls tried to put in everything they had into this fight and they could barely scrape up a measly 5% of damage. Even Sonic and Shadow couldn't deny the sheer perfection of these two robots."

Things could only get better for Eggman. Though these recent opponents weren't quite the ultimate challenge that Eggman was expecting from his two hedgehog rivals, it was still a successful test- run that displayed that his new robots were equal to, if not better than, Sonic and Shadow's primary abilities. Not to mention that these two girls would be the perfect hostages for them. As if Sonic and Shadow needed any more reason to fight in this situation, they would simply walk right into his hands when they realize that their girlfriends were in his clutches. Besides, the two girls themselves were also a pretty big nuisance. Once he was finished with those pesky hedgehogs, he could get rid of those girls too. It's like killing two birds with one stone! In fact, once he was finished with this, he could practically eliminate all of Sonic's friends if it was necessary.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call those robot knockoffs 'perfection' egghead." Eggman turned his head to the right and noticed two other female hedgehogs approaching the scene.

"Grrr, go away and mind your own business! I'd rather not waste my time with anyone else at the moment." However, upon closer inspection, he noticed that they both looked very familiar. To him, just about all hedgehogs looked the same (not to sound racist) but there was an undeniable presence that the two had that he simply couldn't ignore.

The blue one finally decided to speak up again. "What's wrong Baldy McNosehair, you afraid that you're gonna get your butt kicked by some girls?"

That statement had tipped him off. 'That nickname… these hedgehogs...' He looked between the black and blue girl hedgehogs, trying to connect the dots, but only getting lost and confused in his own train of thought. After about 10 seconds of derailed thinking, Eggman finally convinced himself that the sight before him was indeed reality.

"You… Sonic… Shadow…. girls….." He then paused for about ten more seconds before finally exploding into hysterical laughter. And it wasn't just his typical evil laugh either. This was genuinely uncontrollable laughter. "HAHAHAH HOHOHOHOHO. What happened to you two? Are you having some sort of an identity crisis here? I hope you told your girlfriends before going through with this." Eggman continued to laugh for about 10 more seconds before Nights finally got fed up.

"You know, for some old, genius super scientist, you sure like to act like some ridiculous child!" She said, clearly pissed.

After a few more seconds, Eggman began to try to calm himself down. "I'm sor… sor… HA HA HA… sorry… he heh heh... but how did you honestly expect me to react?" Eggman now wore a wide grin with a smug look in his face that took satisfaction in having his suspicion confirmed.

Nights sighed, fearing that she'll get similar reactions from her friends. "If you so much as mention this to anyone, I swear I'll…"

"I couldn't care less about ruining your petty social life," Eggman interrupted. "All I want is you two gone, out of the picture, dead!" he stated rather bluntly. "Just consider this payback for leaving me stranded out in the ocean last month. You KNEW those dolphins had it out for me and do you have any idea what it's like being forced to eat poorly cooked fish for two whole days?"

He then turned his attention to the two robots below him. "It doesn't matter to me what gender you are. I won't let all of my work go to waste!" He then raised his right hand in the air. "Metal Sonic, Metal Shadow, destroy our now gender confused guests!" The two robots eyes lit up and dashed for their respective targets.

AN: I guess this is a pretty short chapter, but after that whole action scene from the last chapter, I think it was appropriate to have some short comedic relief. Next chapter will be a huge action sequence featuring our two main characters, so that's something to look forward to.