Chapter 2:
Outside, Sonic's fight was starting to take a toll. He panted as the bots surrounded. As the situation seemed hopeless he raised his arms into the air in surrender. He looks up towards the sky.
Tails sees the signal and starts his approach. They had everything planned. They were going to take the bots out quick and easy. The plain rushed down the runway unnoticed by the mob of bots focused on Sonic. And with a smirk and a jump flip, he rises just high enough to avoid the biplane now plowing through the mob of bots.
The biplane was stopped by the observation tower, punching a hole in the hull of the ship. A hand emerged from the wreckage, "I'm OK! I'm OK!…" The fox then crawled out unharmed. "I guess I forgot the breaks; and the landing gear."
"Let's move quick before the clean up crew shows up." Sonic's statement was followed by laser fire. "To late."
The two made their way through the open hole in the Carrier followed by robots.
Deep in the ship, Amy and Knuckles were getting closer to the master emerald.
"How do you know which way to go?" asked Amy, "I can hardly see where we are."
"Hey, I didn't ask you to follow."
"It was just a question."
"I'm a guardian; I can sense how close I am to the master emerald."
Knuckles suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and sniffed the air curiously. His curiosity quickly turned into anger as he realized they were being tailed.
"Oh, crud." Thought the bat as she flew from her perch, "It looks like I'll have to do this the hard way."
She attacked with a kick. But her cover was blown, and knuckles had plenty of time to anticipate it. He dove away as the bat's sharp toed boots struck the spot where he was once standing. Amy swung her hammer, only to have it be avoided as she tried to knock the bat out flight. Knuckles caught the bat by surprise and pinned her to the wall.
"Rouge, I should have known you'd have something to do with this. Where is it?"
"Me, really, why would I be tailing you two if I already knew where the emeralds were? What's wrong Knukie, don't you trust me?"
"…about as far as I can throw you."
Amy interrupts demandingly, "Where's Sonic?"
Rouge got a glint in her eyes, "Let me go and you'll find out."
Knuckles loosened his grip, allowing Rouge to push him back and make a break for it.
"Hey," Amy cried, "you were suppose to tell us where Sonic is!"
"As if I'd tell you…" called Rouge from down the hall.
Knuckles got back to his feet and started to go after the bat with Amy tailing behind.
"Maybe Rouge knew where Sonic is." she thought to herself.
Elsewhere, Sally had reached an unguarded terminal. The others played roll of lookouts as she prepared Nicole for the task of altering their flight path.
"Nicole, run command Egg-Hack."
"Commencing…" confirmed Nicole. The terminal started to come to life as the AI tried to gain access to Eggman's flight computer.
On the brig, Eggman called for his assistant to, "Power up the Chaos Engine!"
"But Sir, it's still in the experimental stages. Shouldn't we run a few more tests before trying anything rash?"
"No, Snively, the conditions are ripe! It's time to show them what this ship was meant to do."
"Yes, sir." Snively tapped on the control panel in front of him. The ship lurched as the engines forced their true power. The affects were felt throughout the whole ship.
Sally and the crew fell the floor. The two lookouts noticed something very strange outside the potholes.
"Oh my stars… Sally Girl, you might want to come see this!" the rabbit urged.
Sally moved to one of the windows, awestruck at what she was seeing.
Outside, the entire ship was engulfed in a strange, pinkish haze. Lightning surged through it like the blood through their vanes as their pulses quickened from fear. The Carrier had entered a realm of perpetual limbo known only as the Void!
Inside the belly of the ship, Rouge had stumbled upon just what she was looking for. Before her stud the master emerald, surrounded by the seven chaos emeralds. Each one glowing like wildfire and pulsing with energy. They were all sealed in air tight glass tubes with a network of wires and gadgets connecting them together. Rouge was only concerned with the emeralds.
"Finally, I found them!"
Knuckles and Amy skid to a stop behind her. "Don't you dare lay a finger on those emeralds!" shouted Knuckles.
"Or you'll what, shake your fists at me?"
"Gerrrrr… I'll show you fists!" The wild Echidna lunged forward towards the bat with his spike clad fists. The bat spread her wings and flew upward, avoiding any kind of contact to her person. Unfortunately, she had forgotten about the emeralds behind her.
Knuckles' fist struck the containment tubs, causing a chain reaction in the Chaos engine. He was then thrown back towards the others as a huge explosion ripped yet another hole into the hull of the ship. It shattered the master emerald into shards and scattered them, as well as the chaos emeralds, down into the Void.
As a result of the engine being completely destroyed, the power for the entire ship was cut off. But this was not the only affects.
Sally, Bunnie, and Antoine felt the ship shake as the explosion accrued cutting off all power. Strangely enough, this also drained Nickole.
"Tonight just keeps going from bad, and worse." Sally muttered to her comrades.
Sonic came rushing past them with Tails following, and stopping in time. Sonic back tracked to meet up with the others. "What a blast! What did you guys do to the ship?"
"We did no thing!" exclaimed Antoine, "It's a black-off!"
"You mean black-out, right?"
"That's what I say, black-off!"
With the power out and the engines off, the ship started to descend.
"Sonic," cried Tails, "I think we should get going. Hay, where's the Void going?"
Outside the ship, the pink haze of the void seemed to fade away returning to the raging storm that was once there. And it wasn't long before the ship started to do the same thing.
"Sally, got a plan?" Sonic asked.
"I don't know. Nicole's unresponsive and I have no clue as to what's going on anymore oh…" Sally started to sink into the floor of the ship!
Sonic quickly snatched her up, but only to find the others were now missing!
Sonic new he had to find safety, but where? He sped down the fazing halls and disappearing corridors, using every trick he knew to evade the loss of ground while keeping hold of his damsel in distress. He was to busy trying to find footing that he didn't notice the pipes that were materializing before his feet. He tripped, and the world seemed to fall into slow motion.
Sally flew out of his arms. Sonic's arms stretched out as he fall to the floor helpless. She Skidded off the ground before looking back falling through it into the darkness of the storm.
And just like that, she was gone. Sonic laid there dumbfounded as to what had just happened. He could feel the ground below him grow fainter, eventually giving way. He fell into dark clouds and lightning.
Back on the brig, The effects seen throughout the ship were not felt. This did not surprise the Eggmen. He had planned this whole situation. They made adjustments to the ship prier to the experiment, although the loss of the Chaos engine was not part of the plan. He and Snively strapped themselves into their chairs and prepared for the inevitable crash.