As Sonic sped toward Station Square with Rouge in his arms, the sky clouded over and a light drizzle began falling. Rouge was silent for the first minute or two, but she was unnaturally tense and her expression was very uneasy. When she spoke, it was not at all the thank you Sonic had been expecting.
"Hurry, can't you go any faster?"
"Hey, I'm already booking. It's a long run to Station Square. We'll be there in just a few more minutes. What's the big rush anyway?"
"We've got company, that's what. Look out!"
Sonic jumped out of the way of a hail of fire, hit the ground, rolled, and came up running without breaking stride or dropping Rouge. He increased his pace as a trio of flying bots came level with him, guns blazing. As fast as he was going, they managed to keep up. He could go faster, but it was dangerous with Rouge in his arms. It was, however, more dangerous to be a sitting duck. He sped up just in time to avoid another burst of fire, then started weaving side to side as he ran, dodging shots.
"Geez, these guys sure are persistent. What did you steal from Robotnik this time?"
"Just some data. I downloaded several files from the doctor's mainframe. I had to leave before I could get everything, but this outlines at least part of his latest plan."
"Which is?" asked Sonic. He hoped she would just get to the point already. Obviously something bad was going on, but he didn't have the patience to deal with this. Running full tilt to Station Square with robots hot on his tail was one thing. Doing it with Rouge in his arms was another. She wasn't all that heavy, but she threw his balance off.
"I don't know. I didn't get a chance to see all of it, but it involves an absolutely enormous armada of warships, with at least a dozen Egg Carrier sized flagships."
"So?" Sonic laughed. "We've dealt with those before. I crashed the first one he built, and I'll crash these too."
"It's more than just that. It wasn't so much the size of the ships that worried me; it was the resource reports, and the sheer number of new lines of robot production, and… other things. I don't know what exactly he's planning, but apparently he has an incredible reserve of resources that we had no prior knowledge of, and he's building some truly nasty war machines with it."
"So what were you doing out over the forest anyway?" Sonic asked. He didn't want to make light of Robotnik's threat when Rouge was obviously worried about it, but armies of robots and the Egg Carrier were nothing new, nothing he couldn't handle. If it took Robotnik two years just to come up with that, well, his respect for the would be world conqueror would be at an all time low.
"I was trying to lose Robotnik's thugs. They followed me out of his base and I couldn't shake them. I made it as far as the woods before they managed to shoot me down."
"How'd you survive the crash?"
"I didn't. I bailed before the plane reached the tree tops."
The robots pulled up and abandoned the chase as the gleaming skyscrapers of Station Square came into view. Sonic was always amazed at how quickly they rebuilt after suffering Chaos' rampage and then the invasion of the Black Arms scant months later, but he did not stop to admire the engineering feats. Instead he hurtled through the sprawling residential and commercial districts, scaring drivers and pedestrians and gathering an impressive trail of paper trash in his wake. Finally he arrived at the President's house. Though not as impressive as King Max's palace, (or was that King Elias' palace now?), it had a certain grandeur to it. Rouge went up to the large front doors and quickly tapped something in to a keypad set in the wall to the left of them.
"Yes?" came a distorted human voice. Definitely a live person at the controls rather than a recording, but the speaker wasn't particularly high quality and accompanied every syllable with a hiss of static. "Name and Business please."
"Rouge the Bat, and I need to see the president right now." Rouge said, now firmly in control of her voice and speaking with authority.
"The president is in a meeting with his cabinet. You'll have to schedule an appointment." Replied the voice. Sonic decided that it probably belonged to a woman.
"This is a matter of national security!" Rouge practically shouted into the speaker. "Dr. Robotnik is planning to invade Station Square!"
There was a slight pause, and then the voice replied "In that case the president will see you now."
"He'd better," Rouge muttered as she walked through the doors "If he wants to keep his job for any length of time."
The ensuing meeting took much longer than Sonic had expected and involved much less action. The G.U.N. commander and his top aides were called in to review the files Rouge had stolen, but rather than a quick response they spent hours mulling over individual statistics and brining in computer technicians to attempt to recover the data that had been corrupted when Rouge prematurely disconnected the hard drive. Tails arrived before long and offered what help he could, but the lost data was beyond even his superior computer knowledge. While Tails analyzed the data they did have and occasionally tried to restore the damaged portions, Sonic sat in his chair and politely tried to remain attentive.
When he realized he was not going to be asked to head an immediate attack, in spite of his strong support of that plan, Sonic quickly lost interest in the proceedings. He watched through the window as the rain stopped and then started up again, harder, thudding against the panes and the day gradually turned to afternoon and then evening. Perhaps he should just grab Tails and go stop Robotnik himself. This sitting around was boring and stupid. Planning and analyzing were not going to stop Robotnik's latest scheme, a good, speedy charge was.
He looked out the window, and then at the clock on the wall. It couldn't be right. More time had passed than that. It was already night. Then Sonic realized that the storm clouds overhead made everything darker than normal, and it really only was evening even though it looked like night outside. He groaned and closed his eyes, resting his head on the chair.
His attempt at sleep was interrupted by a blaring alarm and the noise of several ringing phones. He jerked upright and saw that a woman's face and shoulders had replaced the schematics and status reports on the video screen as the president received a video call.
"Mr. President sir, Robotnik has attacked Station Square. He has invaded the commercial district and appears to be targeting G.U.N. headquarters. Approximately half of G.U.N.'s mechanized defense force has gone rogue. It is believed that Robotnik managed to break the anti virus firewall on the older models and has reprogrammed them. He also has a massive robotic force of his own. Between his assault and the rogue units, G.U.N. is incapable of stopping him. Flying units are confirmed approaching the Whitehouse."
Sonic didn't wait to hear the president's response. This was a situation he knew how to handle. As he ran out of the room, Tails joined him.
"Tails, buddy, what'dya learn back there?"
"You mean you weren't paying attention?"
"Sorry, I kinda spaced out. Meetings aren't my thing."
Tails looked ready to chastise him, but instead he merely sighed and began explaining. "Robotnik has several new lines of Robots in production, and he's reactivated some old ones. Including the e-series."
"That's the one Gamma and Omega are from, right?"
"Yeah. Only now he's calling it the e-series MK II. There are some pretty heavy modifications and improvements to the old line. But more importantly, he's also making E-3, 4, and 5 thousands. E-3000s are the things we fought earlier. 4000s are just bigger, meaner versions. 5000s are even bigger than that, but they also have some other improvements."
"Good to know. Save the details for later. We've got company." As they exited the building, Sonic saw several of what he now knew to be E-3000s, as well as a myriad of other flying robots converging on the president's mansion. They didn't notice Sonic and Tails immediately in the heavy rain, but Sonic knew it was a matter of seconds before they spotted him and opened fire.
"Tails, can you go grab the Tornado and take care of the air battle? I'm going to head over to G.U.N. headquarters and teach Egghead's bots a thing or two."
"Way ahead of you," Tails yelled as he sped off in the direction of where he had parked the Tornado. As he did so the E-3000s noticed them and opened fire, but Sonic was ahead of them too. He dodged the rain of lasers and sped off down the road toward G.U.N.
If Robotnik had control of the G.U.N. robots, Sonic didn't want to see what they looked like uncontrolled. They seemed to be going berserk, shooting at him and each other, and sometimes at nothing in particular. Several times he saw the newer models, recognizable by their cleaner, more organic lines as opposed to the angularity of the types that had chased him through this city at the start of the ARK incident fighting their precedents. Even though word had reached the president just minutes ago, the robots had already caused substantial damage.
Cars lay overturned in the street, or riddled with holes on the side. Several appeared to have been ignited and suffered an explosion of the gas tank, and Sonic passed two that were still on fire. Similarly, the robots had caused a few propane tanks to explode, starting fires in the buildings. Luckily, the heavy rain meant the fires had little chance to spread or do more than superficial damage. Sonic paused only long enough to permanently decommission any G.U.N. robots he found causing damage. The maze of streets slowed his progress and forced him to confront rather more robots than he wanted to deal with. He intended to stop them, but it was faster to get Robotnik than to duke it out with each individual bot, and involved a lot less being shot at.
He took to the roofs, running up the side of a tall apartment complex. Leaping from roof to roof, using flagpoles and other protrusions to launch himself was much more direct and gave him a better sense of where he was going. Judging by the spread of the lasers, the brunt of Robotnik's force was more or less directly ahead of him. The battle sprawled throughout a huge sector of the city, Robotnik must have had an army of thousands, and he was almost certainly winning. A jagged lightning bolt lit up the sky and revealed huge numbers of swarming figures in the streets Sonic could see from his vantage point. He swallowed, becoming just a tad nervous at the sight. That was a lot of robots.
As he got closer to the main concentration, Sonic started running into groups of Robotnik's E-3000s patrolling the rooftops. They were much more of a pain to deal with than the G.U.N. robots, and after running into three squads he decided it was time to return to the street. He finished off the group that was attacking him and jumped off the building, destroying the last few that followed him down after he landed. Still, he knew this meant he was almost to G.U.N. and would soon be joining the main fray.
He hadn't gone but a few streets further before the road he was on dead ended in some sort of complex. Taller, partially completed buildings surrounded a cluster of shorter, squatter ones. In between those were a number of large storage trailers and piles of wooden and metal crates. Sonic was about to turn around and find another path when he noticed the red eyes some eight or nine feet off the ground. They belonged to a hulking robot. As lightning flashed again Sonic got a better look at the monstrosity. It was the same black, off white, and gray color pattern as the E-3000s and roughly the same build, but was at least two and a half times their size and had red trim on its chest plates. On one arm it bore a dark gray shield with a red R emblazoned on the center, and on the other it carried a massive double bladed weapon that resembled a pair of swords strapped to its arm.
"Bioform Identified. Surrender, SonictheHedgehog, or face termination."
"Thanks, big and ugly, but I'll pass. Now get outta the way, you bolt brain, or I'll scrap you same as your little brothers." Threatening the robot wasn't going to affect it in the least, but it made him feel better.
The robot sank to a crouch and sprang across the intervening distance with incredible swiftness. Sonic barely got out of the way of those nasty blades in time. They repeated this slash and doge maneuver twice more before Sonic saw his chance to counterattack. He aimed a spin attack at the robot's head. Instantly it brought up its shield. Sonic bounced off as though he had been a thrown rock, barely even scratching it. He hit the ground and rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding a stab of the giant blades. A second attempt yielded nearly the same results, except he came even closer to being skewered.
Sonic spent the next several seconds just trying to avoid being cut in two as he looked for an opportunity to counterattack. Finally he saw it. He jumped on a crate, and as the robot charged him he jumped over the slashing blade and homing attacked it in the faceplate. It reeled back, stunned, sparks emitting from the cracked visor. Sonic didn't think it was possible, but the robot sped up. He managed to hit it again, this time in the chest plate. Now the robot was swinging its blades in such a way that hitting it a third time became nearly impossible. Then it started shooting.
Besides being sharp enough to cut, the blades apparently routed energy from the contraption on the robot's back between them to form some sort of gun. Sonic noticed that it had to stop and charge after every salvo of shots, though. It seemed the pack only generated enough energy for six quick shots at a time, although it could fire slow ones indefinitely. When the robot paused to charge again, Sonic ran straight at the gun pointed in his face, jumped over the shot it fired at him ground along the length of the blade, feeling the heat of it through the soles of his shoes, and hit the robot full in the face. This time the head came completely off and the robot slumped to the ground, defeated.
"Woo, piece of cake!" Sonic shouted triumphantly.
"Bioform identified." Came a chorus of robotic voices. "SonictheHedgehog, surrender or face termination." Sonic looked around. While he had been fighting, at least half a dozen robots like the one he had just fought had surrounded him. For the first time in more than two years he felt just a bit nervous as they closed in on him. There were more than six. There had to be at least eight, maybe ten. Even his speed might not be enough against these things. It was going to be a tough fight in any event. Good, he liked a challenge.
Sonic flashed a grin that was lost in the pouring dark and charged the nearest one. As he did a hail of golden spears erupted from somewhere behind him and impacted two of the robots, blasting vital circutry to smithereens. So Shadow was here. That would make things easier. Sonic jumped on one robots head and backflipped into the air as two of the others charged him from opposite directions. They slashed the one he had jumped from in two. He homing attacked another in the faceplate even as he saw a black blur tear into the remaining robots. Sonic sliced the head off a final robot and landed on the ground, smirking at the sparking heaps of metal that littered the ground, and at the other hedgehog as he finished with his last opponent.
"Hey, Shadow, good to see you. Great timing too, I owe ya one."