Chapter 10: A Sonic Adventure (Last Part)

Pia felt the last of her stamina drain away. Just how many rounds of bullets could one machine hold? The next time she had to refocus her energies again to toast an incoming melee attacker, she knew she'd be too drained to prevent the stationary gun-bots from finishing her off.

Great...now she was starting to halucinate as well...

But the fox with the helicopter rear was no halucination, and neither was the aggressive pink hedgehog he was carrying. While Silver dashed past Pia and froze the shower of bullets with his psycho-kinesis, Amy dropped down on the robot thugs with a comically oversized hammer, smashing them into the floor. With the aid of Tails's tail-based combat skills and Silver's psychic abilities, the gang finished off Eggman's robot guards with ease.

Silver was sorry to see the last robot fall apart, because that meant it was time to face the music.

Perhaps fortunately, Amy couldn't recognise an awkward silence at first glance, and tended to make certain assumptions right off. Before Pia could catch her breath and start yelling, Amy blurted the following:

"Hi, you must be Silver's new girlfriend! I'm Amy Rose. Nice to meet you."

Pia cycled through an array of expressions, ranging from unbridled rage to lukewarm embarrasment. It took her a minute to finally get a sentence out.

"Nice to meet you, too, Amy. Silver is definitely not my type, in every way possible."

"Aw..." went Amy, giving Silver a sympathetic look.

"It's okay. I don't like her either," said Silver without thinking. "I mean, we're relatives," he added in a failed attempt to patch over that last slip.

"Distant relatives," said Pia sourly.

Even Amy got the hint that she'd wandered into touchy territory. Tails came to the rescue with "Have you seen Sonic, miss...?"

"Pia," said Pia. "Yeah, I saw Sonic head through the metal doors at the end of the big room back there. He'll be fine, though. You and Amy should go back outside where it's safe and wait for him. Silver can stay with you. You obviously already know each other better than you should."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Amy asked with an indignant expression.

"Forget it. Just go and let me do my job."

Silver had had about enough.

"Like you were doing just now?" he said sharply. "If you want to pretend that we didn't just save your life, then fine, but the fact of the matter is that you need my help."

Amy cleared her throat loudly.

"I mean, our help," Silver corrected himself.

Pia wasn't convinced. "There's a nut-case and a piece of Chaos running loose here, and you want to increase the number of liabilities? How did someone as reckless as you ever become the leader of an organisation designed to PREVENT the abuse of history?"

"Did you say Chaos?" Tails asked, only to be ignored.

"Reckless? If you hadn't been so afraid to take a chance, we could've captured Pretorious back on Angel Island."

"You really think so? If you'd thrown that rock, the whole island would've ended up at the bottom of the ocean. You don't even care how much work it is to track and repair every miniscule change to history, do you?"

"Stop treating me like I'm some kind of incompetent beginner. I've been capturing time-travelling criminals since before you were born! Heck, I still am!"

Tails and Amy shared a worried look as the argument continued to heat up.

"Just because you stopped Eggman Nega a few times and defeated Metal Sonic doesn't make you qualified to do my job!" Pia shouted. "If you'd hadn't been so overconfident you could've called for backup and trapped Metal Sonic before it left the studio at Central City University. Then my mother wouldn't have lost her leg, and billions wouldn't have been killed by the Ultimate Overlord!"

"T-that wasn't my fault!" Silver shouted back with a slight stutter. Having his personal doubts thrown back at him as accussations cut deeper than he cared to admit. He was too wound-up to notice what Pia had just referred to Blaze as.

-

Sonic was having trouble. How could that little posessed robot react so fast? With those nasty sparks of energy it let off, Sonic couldn't get close enough to do anything. He might try running around it fast enough to catch it with a whirlwind, but the Devil Omochao seemed to have thought of that as well, and wouldn't stay in one spot for even a second. Best Sonic could do right now was dodge the blasts and keep away.

Who was shouting so much? Sonic had never needed any concentration at all to do something as natural to him as run at extreme speed, so he had plenty to spare for picking out the muffled sounds over Eggman's malevolent laughter and the Devil Omochao's crackling energy. One of the voices sounded familiar, but Sonic couldn't place it.

What the heck? Sonic the Hedgehog liked to handle things on his own, but in all honesty he could use a hand with this bizarre fiend. Sonic sped out the side-door that seemed to be in the right direction of the noise. If it was good guys, he could use their help, and if it was bad guys, then they might draw some of the robot's attention away from him.

-

In Silver and Pia's little world, sparks were flying and flames roared. Neither one was stopping to think for even a second now, and were throwing out insults and accusations that only barely made sense.

Silver was yelling at Pia for things he could only assume were true, and Pia was yelling at her father for things he hadn't even done yet.

Amy and Tails had given up trying to break up the two, and were now just standing there awkwardly while they waited for them to run out of things to shout.

Only when Sonic burst into the scene and skidded to a halt between Silver and Pia did they regain touch with the present. Well, the past present, anyway.

"Hey guys," said Sonic. "Silver, long time no see. Who's your friend?"

"Pia. Just pia," said Silver and the cat herself at the same time.

"Hi, Pia. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog."

"Yeah...I know."

"Cool. Listen, there's an Omochao with a serious grudge on my tail. Think you guys could help out?"

-

Dr. Pretorious tip-toed after the Devil Omochao. It seemed to be heading back the way he'd come, which meant Sonic had probably run into Pia's corpse by now. Such a shame that the raccoon lacked the opportunity to witness the death of his nemesis. Hmmm... Oh, why get his hopes up? The girl's rude habit of freeing herself from traps that any decent person should accept as inescapable was probably still in effect.

Maybe he should procure one of these primitive weapons for himself? Though certainly impervious to most modern firearms, Jumpsuits were generally not proof against good old-fashioned bullets. Worth considering.

-

Silver tried to catch the Devil Omochao with his psycho-kinesis, but the thing moved too fast and erratically for him to focus on it. However, with Tails and Sonic distracting the robot from above and below it, Silver managed to get a grip, and forced it to the floor. Once both the Devil Omochao's feet touched the surface, Pia summoned a powerful flame towards it, trying and quickly succeeding in melting the robot's feet until it was fused to the ground. Desperately, the Devil Omochao fired frantically around at Pia, Silver, Sonic and Tails. If it had paid attention to Amy as well, it would've had a chance against the massive hammer slamming down on it.

A pathetic puff of smoke rose up from the crushed robot.

"Way to go, guys," said Sonic. "Awesome team effort!"

"Wow, look at that," said Tails, pointing.

The tail of Chaos reemerged from the scrap and tried to escape across the floor again. It made it halfway through the corridor before it was scooped up into an empty container. Dr. Pretorious slammed the lid down and screwed it tight, trapping the tail once again.

Both Silver and Pia started running the second they saw Pretorious. Once again they proved just too late, as with a happy smile, the raccoon pressed a button on the wall beside him, causing a reinforced blast door to cut the corridor in half, putting the villain and the heroes on opposite sides. A few seconds later, the two time-travellers heard the familiar sound of Pretorious's portable time portal in operation.

"Was that the person you're chasing?" Amy asked.

"Yes," said Silver.

Pia swore once again. Silver momentarily wondered about his parenting skills, since he'd apparently failed to prevent her from gaining that bad habit. Then he remembered how mad he was at her, and decided he didn't care right now.

"I've got to get through to where he was standing when he left, or I can't track him," Pia said, half to herself.

Suddenly a computerised voice announced that "The self-destruct system has been activated. This base will self-destruct in two minutes..."

"Looks like we'd better scram," said Sonic.

"Yeah, yeah," Pia responded without much interest. "You'll run outside, get in the Tornado 2, chase down the fleeing Egg Carrier, and retrieve the Chaos Emeralds from Eggman. Soleanna is saved, and everyone's happy. Get to it."

"You heard the lady," said Sonic, picking up Amy and running towards the exit with Tails flying close behind.

Pia was frantically trying to burn her way through the blast door. Silver could tell that there was no way that thick metal was going to melt away in time. "Isn't there some other way we can find out where Pretorious went?" he asked.

"Maybe...if I feed all the information I have into the main computer back at Temporal Protectorate HQ I can triangulate Pretorious's next destination in time-space."

"But first," she added, grabbing Silver's arm, "I'm going to do what I should've done in the first place. I'm taking you back to your own time where you belong."

Silver's protests were drowned out by the flashy effects as the Jumpsuit's time travel circuits activated.

-

The next thing Silver knew, he was falling from a great height towards an alien landscape painted in purple and black. He used his levitation power to catch Pia and carry them both down to the ground safely.

"Looks like you sent us to the wrong time," Silver said, looking around at the twisted scenery. The only thing that remotely resembled buildings were those gigantic black monoliths covered in rows of white lights.

Suddenly something shouted to the pair. The language was ancient, and poorly replicated, but Pia's Jumpsuit's audio input circuits nevertheless automatically translated it to English as:

"Alien intruders. You have violated the borders of the almighty Black Arms. Lay down your weapons and prepare to be destroyed!"

Stepping out of the shadows, dozens of Black Arms soldiers approached Silver and Pia with their laser weapons drawn and ready.

Before Pia could think of what to say, her Jumpsuit issued a warning into her ear.

"WARNING! Temporal distortion wave effects detected. Level: Critical."

The Black Arms attacked...

-

In the next chapter:
- Silver and Pia are faced with the daunting task of not only discovering what happened, but also managing to stay alive in this dangerous environment.
- Black Doom's paradise is revealed.
- Prelude to the next adventure, even further into the past than before.