Author's notes: Nothing new.

Chapter 44

Slothic looked at the machine he had found. It had been hidden in a cave that most would have missed, but he didn't. He could feel the thing's energy all the way from Knothole. His ears twitched and he turned to look at who was approaching him from the way he had entered the cave, keeping his half blind but still functional left eye facing whoever it was.

"Well, well, well. What have we here? Another Sonic? Who are you trying to fool with that disguise?" said Scourge as he twirled a bowie knife in one of his hands. Slothic smirks, revealing a small section of his red teeth.

"So you were the one watching my little battle." said Slothic as he folded his arms against his chest.

"You literally came down from the sky as a lightning bolt. Not hard to miss."

"Then you know how easily I can beat you."

"But you're not the hero, are you?"

"Oh that's for everything going on with that Infinite guy. You, you're part of a different problem. I'd have no problems taking you out Scourge."

"Oh, is that supposed to scare me? That you know my name? Please, you're just a freak pretending to be Sonic."

"Careful. This "freak" can bite off heads if he wants to."

"Oooooh, real scary."

"I'm glad there was never a YOU in my world. I don't think I could have handled that arrogance. Reminds me of someone I once knew but that's not important. So, I assume you're the one who made this mess of a contraption?" said Slothic as he pointed a thumb at the machine behind him.

"Yes. And what are you going to do about it?" said Scourge as he readied the bowie knife.

"I'm going to destroy it. I don't like the feeling I'm getting from this world's energies so I think it's time a Zone Admin stepped in."

"Over my dead body you cheap knockoff."

"Oh yeah? And how are you going to stop me?" said Slothic as he tapped a foot impatiently. His ears twitch and he ducks under a metallic fist aimed at his head before matrix-dodging a plasma bolt fired at him from another direction. He quickly jumped away from the one that had ambushed him and got all targets into view as best he could. Despite being half blind with his left eye normally, he looks quickly and counts as least ten...no...fifteen fully robotic Anti-Tails.

"With the army I brought with me." said Scourge as he chuckled.

"I'd be impressed, if this was your full army. You're holding some back. You've got another one of these, don't you?" asked Slothic as he summoned a black-purple Chaos Emerald-like gem from seemingly nowhere.

"So what if I do? Gotta have backup plans in place for shit like you since this world is falling apart."

"You're willing to die with this world if it fully collapses?"

"Of course. Once we're all dead, I can rub it in the heroes' faces at how they failed to stop me! Things have gone so much better than I expected and with the new surprise that's waiting for them, I can't wait to see them die horribly before the world ends!"

Slothic's half blind eye disappears and is replaced with his thirty demonic eyes and all glare at Scourge as he activates the gem he's holding. Two portals open behind him, the portals having a purple glow to them.

"I can't let that happen I'm afraid." said Slothic sternly.

Two figures exit the portals, one for each, and stand behind Slothic. One is a black furred fox with purple glowing eyes. On of his wrists is a wrist-mounted laser blaster with three barrels while the other wrist has a gauntlet that looks to be an energy device of some sort. Covering the fox's chest is some kevlar body armor which hides a hole in his chest, where his heart would be. The fox activates the gauntlet and a purple energy blade flares to life.

The other one is a red echidna that looks like Knuckles but with his eyes glowing purple like the fox's and his knuckles and a good portion of his arms, up to almost the elbows, are coated in solidified magma.

"I'm afraid I'm done playing around. You want to see this world burn, well, I don't. I've got an old friend to catch up with and I don't need his home world dying. So...Frenzy, Ravager...let's trash these tin cans." said Slothic as he teleported the purple-black Emerald away and got into a more aggressive combat stance. The echidna has his magma coated arms super heat before cooling off rapidly and then breaking off the cooled segments revealing a new combat focused design mirroring Knuckles' namesake knuckles but made from volcanic rock.

"Right. This should be quick." said the echidna as he cracked his volcanic knuckles before lunging at one of the Anti-Tails robots and driving his fist through its chest and ripping it in half with ease. The remaining robots quickly bring out their plasma cannons and open fire on the echidna who slams his fist into the ground, creating a curved earth wall from the impact to shield himself from the plasma bolts. The fox jumps over the curved earth wall and quickly activates a exo-suit hidden by his fur that deflect plasma bolts fired at him as he fires the tri-blaster and takes off a robot's head. He spins and quickly cuts another in half vertically. A stray bolt hits one of his exo-arms, disabling one of the deflectors and he quickly brings out nine robotic legs hidden within his two tails' fur and uses the additional tails to quickly scurry out of the firing line while returning fire with the tri-blaster (1). Once in cover, he quickly sets to work on fixing the disabled deflector while switching the energy blade out for a energy shield that surrounds him.

Slothic meanwhile is dodging every plasma bolt fired at him. His eyes all looking at every robot as he dodges every shot before he creates two blue fireballs in his hands and throws them at the robots. As the fireballs near their targets, they split into small fireballs that hit an additional target. The fireballs hit and burn through the metal armor and components within the robots, destroying them with little effort. He then looks at Scourge and the green hedgehog looks angry before he smirks.

"Think fast faker!" yelled Scourge as he threw a flashbang at Slothic and his eyes widen as the flashbang nears his face before he can react. Scourge uses the resulting flash to escape. The disorienting grenade goes off and Slothic is holding his left eye socket in agony while also leaving him vulnerable to the remaining robots as they take aim at him. Several laser bolts hit several of the robots as the fox jumps in front of Slothic protectively, using the deflectors and energy shield to deflect the plasma bolts flying at the two of them. The energy shield suddenly goes out and two carefully aimed plasma shots disable the deflector arms.

"Shit!" cursed the fox as he tackled Slothic to the ground and behind some rocks that barely provide enough cover to protect the two against the plasma fire flying at them, "Ravager! A little help here!"

"On it!" yelled the echidna as he came out of his own cover and super heated his magma covered arms again before slamming them into the ground, sending volcanic spears into the remaining robots from below. One robot gets bisected from the spears and remains operational and tries to continue fighting before a steel plated boot crushes the robot's head. Ravager glares down at the robot before turning back to the other two.

"Okay, we're clear." said Ravager as he super cooled his arms after reforming the spiked knuckles.

The fox helps Slothic to his feet while the hedgehog continues to hold his left eye socket in pain.

"Make sure no more show up." said Slothic as he held the socket in pain.

"Right."

Ravager exits the cave and stands guard.

The fox helps Slothic over to a rock that can sat down on and gently pulls the hedgehog's hand away from the eye. The eyes all have extremely dilated pupils from the flashbang and look to be in pain even as they look at him. The socket is also bleeding.

"Can you see me?" asked the fox as he worked on cleaning the blood away.

"Barely. The bastard knew exactly how to counter me and when!" said Slothic before snarling at having nearly been blinded.

"Did you lose any of them?"

The demonic eyes all blink as they slowly return to normal.

"No but the bastard is going to pay for that! Bad enough I'm half blind with my other eye, I don't need to lose these!"

"You think he would have thrown that with your other eye out?"

"Oh I don't doubt it! He's smarter than he looks, I'll give him that! Never knew of a Scourge like this."

"But we don't have a Scourge back home."

"Remember, I went looking for Tails Doll after everything that happened and we got everything secure. I've done some traveling. Scourge is nothing but...well, a scourge. His intelligence varies though. He's either as dense as Sonic or he's unusually cunning. This one falls into the later category but much more dangerous. He WANTS this world to die."

"He's insane. The death of a world leaves a void for other entities to replace however they want."

"He said this plan has been going extremely well for him. We need to be more careful next time."

"I still say you need to get a replacement eye Sonic."

"It wouldn't be the same. I lost the original, so I lost the original demon eyes with it."

"But you're extremely vulnerable to blinding attacks with just this one you have left, not including the demonic ones."

"I can't help it. Replacing it now would throw me off anyway."

The fox finishes up with cleaning the blood away from the eye carefully and Slothic has the thirty demon eyes be replaced with his half blind green eye as he blinks with it a few times.

"Okay, it didn't bleed through." said Slothic as got up, rubbing his eye lightly after closing it.

"That can happen?" asked the fox, worry appearing on his face and Slothic nods silently, "Okay, next fight, you hang back."

Slothic is silent as he walks over to the machine he had been hunting, the fox following him.

"Can you destroy it?" asked Slothic as he pointed at the machine with a thumb. The fox goes over and looks at the control panel and begins working on it. After a few minutes...

"Screw it. This code makes zero sense." said the fox as he charged up the wrist-blaster and fired three three-round bursts into the machine and it immediately shuts down, "There, that's done."

The machine suddenly begins making a high-pitched whirring sound that only gets more and more shrill.

"Uh...Frenzy, I think we need to get out of here!" said Slothic as he grabbed one of the fox's arms and zoomed out of the he passed by the echidna, he also grabbed him and the trio escape from the machine's explosion. The three are standing on a hill overlooking the destroyed cave.

"So, he rigged the machines to explode when they're disabled huh?" said Ravager as he looked down at the ruins.

"Apparently. Anyone slower than Sonic would be killed in the resulting explosion." said Slothic, arms folded angrily.

"Or if you're a Hybrid." said Razor appearing out of nowhere and catching the trio off-guard as Slothic and Frenzy jump into Ravager's arms in surprise.

"DON'T DO THAT!" yell both Slothic and Frenzy at Razor before Ravager just drops the two onto the ground.

"Awwww, but it was so funny!" said Razor smiling.

"YOU ALMOST GAVE US A HEART ATTACK! AND FRENZY DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ONE ANYMORE!" yelled Slothic as he got up.

"I wanted to warn you about the explosion after disabling the machinery but you ran off before I could so I decided to follow you." said Razor, ignoring the angry hedgehog.

"Wait, how did you know about it?"

"My eyes are CURSED! I'm batshit insane from them!"

"You don't seem insane."

"THE PAPER GOES IN THE DISHWASHER OF CHURCH PETER ILOSTMYMARBLES!"

"He is insane. That made zero sense." said Ravager.

"Welp, since you guys seem to be fine, I'll let you hunt down that last machine hidden away in what was Green Hill Zone." said Razor as he hopped off.

"Are you kidding me?! It's in Green Hill!?" yelled Slothic as he had arrived in the world at Green Hill but hadn't sensed any energy matching the machine they had just destroyed.

"So, does that mean we have to search the entirety of Green Hills to find it?" asked Frenzy as he thought it over.

"Wait! No it doesn't. Green Hills is now metal and concrete...how many caves are there in this world's Green Hills, or what was Green Hills?" said Slothic as he thought it over before asking Frenzy the last question. Frenzy pulls out a tablet and goes over the data on it.

"Three." replied Frenzy.

"Alright. We split up once we get to Green Hills. You find that cave, signal the rest of us."

"Got it." said Frenzy and Ravager at the same time before Slothic grabbed both of them and then zoomed off for Concrete Hills.

Concrete Hill, five minutes later...

The trio are standing under the lone palm tree in a sea of metal and concrete.

"Alright, split up. If anyone finds that machine, signal the others before moving to engage. The bastard behind this is smarter than he seems and may have plans to counter the three of us now on our own." said Slothic as he looked over the industrialized area sadly.

"Right." said both Frenzy and Ravager before they split off and began searching for the machine. Slothic stood under the palm tree a bit longer, looking up at it a moment before he zoomed off.

Slothic zooms through the industrialized zone and despite being nearly blind, he can see enough so that running at such high speeds is not a danger to him. He skids to a halt as he spots a cave and heads into it, looking for another one of the machines within but finds nothing. He senses for the odd energy the machines give off but finds nothing from that as well. He curses under his breath and leaves the cave. He gets ready to go meet up with one of the others until he sees three laser bolts fired off into the sky.

"Alright, he found it." said Slothic quietly before he zoomed off towards Frenzy's location.

Meanwhile, Frenzy ducked behind cover quickly after firing the signal shot as the robotic guards had spotted him faster than he thought they would. He activated the exo-arm deflectors as he also readied the repaired gauntlet for either energy blade or energy shield but didn't use it yet. Instead, he popped out of his cover as little as possible and open fired on the robots while using the deflectors to shield himself but quickly had to get back into the cover due to the sheer amount of plasma fire almost overloading the deflectors' capacity. In fact, he noticed that while there had been only four guards, he now had at least twenty of the Anti-Tails robots swarming him with several even trying to flank him.

"Okay, this is bad." muttered the fox to himself as he quickly looked over his situation and found it quickly getting bleaker and bleaker. He also now counted about thirty of the robots. If there's a robotic factory for these robots in that cave, there's no way the three of them are getting through unharmed. He's snapped out of his thoughts as a plasma bolt glances one of his ears and he yelps as the super-heated bolt burns where it passed over and he grabs the ear.

"Frenzy! Shield!" yelled Ravager from above as he jumped down from an overlook, arms super-heated to the point they're magma again. Frenzy quickly activates the energy shield on the gauntlet as Ravager hits the ground and slams his fists into the concrete-covered ground causing volcanic geysers to erupt from the ground underneath all of the visible robots, turning them all into molten slag.

However, he's forced to get into cover with Frenzy as a new wave of robots come out of the cave and fire at him as well.

"Well, that worked then failed." said Ravager as he tried to resolidify his arms but found his area attack had exhausted him.

"I think there's a robot factory for these Anti-Tails robots and it must be set for max or something because this is insane." said Frenzy before he fired at one of the robots before quickly getting back down in cover.

"So, we're gonna need help from the junkheap. Great." muttered Ravager as he grabbed a nearby rock, coated it in magma and then threw it at one of the robots, embedding the rock in one of the optics with the magma melting the internal components.

At that moment, unpainted motobugs with laser cannons on the side drive into view and open fire on the Anti-Tails robots, catching the robots off guard due to the flank attack. Behind the mass swarm of motobugs stands a Robotnik but he's not this world's Robotnik as he has a miniaturized robot factory embedded within his stomach with three smoke stacks jutting out of his back. His hands have been replaced with tools for making robots and his feet have treads attached to the sides. His head has been stitched back on, with bite marks around the neck. His eye sockets are empty and hallow aside from a purple glow within. A tape recorder has been shoved into his mouth and fused to the inside of said mouth to keep it from falling out. The recorder activates.

"You cannot defeat me Sonic! I shall rule the world!" came Robotnik's voice from the recorder as the factory within his stomach activated and deployed a buzz bomber that was quickly modified by the tools-for-hands into having a more explosive payload instead of the single shot energy ball. Once finished, it activates and flies into the air and fires the new weaponry down at the Anti-Tails robots. The new weapon being a projectile designed like a stinger that explodes after a short delay after impact unless it hits, or hits near, an identified friendly. The fire rate is also much faster than the energy ball.

The brutalized Robotnik makes several more of the modified Buzz bombers that swarm the Anti-Tails robots, devastating the enemy robots as while they can shoot down the buzz bombers in one plasma shot, the stinger bombs can also one shot them when it hits the head or torso while dealing severe damage with hits to the arms or legs.

From behind their cover, Frenzy rearmed his deflector armed exo-arms while readying the laser blaster as Ravager resolidified his arms again. The two look at each other and nod before Ravager throws Frenzy into the air as he himself charges the robots using his arms as shields against the plasma while Frenzy fires at the robots from above. A blue blur shoots by the two and begins rapidly spin-dashing through several of the Anti-Tailses (2) while easily avoiding any return fire. Slothic jumps back from the robots and throws blue fireballs at them while doing so. He takes cover behind the advancing Ravager.

"I see there's more guards here than the first one." said Slothic.

"This is like the third wave!" growled Ravager before repairing some of the damage on his arms from the plasma fire.

"Third? Hmmm. Must be some really advanced tech in use then."

"Can't I just flood the place with lava?"

"Not a good idea. Someone is being held hostage and if the item tied to his life is melted due to lava..."

"I'd kill him as well. Isn't he one of the bad guys though?"

"Seems he got forced into working for Scourge. So, a bad guy forced to work for another."

"Great."

Frenzy landed nearby and used one of the destroyed Motobugs as cover. His deflectors sparking from overloading.

"Well, I can't fly and I can't use any of my defensive gear. They overload it too quick." said the fox as he worked to quickly fix the deflectors.

"Any ideas? We can't just fight this endlessly." said Ravager glancing behind him at Slothic who gains a thoughtful look as he closed his eye before reopening it with the thiry demon eyes active and the Anti-Tails robots begin quickly moving in reverse, like they're set in rewind. Those that were destroyed also get rewound. Slothic keeps the effect up until there's only the four original guards in view.

"NOW!" said Slothic as he charged for the cave with Frenzy and Ravager quickly following. The four guards are quickly caught off guard and destroyed and the three rush in while the mobile robot facory Robotnik remains outside. As the three get into the cave, they see a large high-tech robot manufacturing plant within the cave and Scourge setting the machine up at the control panel.

Frenzy has a small disc pop out from the gauntlet housing the energy blade and energy shield and throws it at the control panel even with Scourge being in the way. As the disc travels towards its target, it pops open revealing diamond-alloy razor blades. Scourge hears the disc pop and moves out of the way but it does cut his biker jacket along the side a bit but he himself is unharmed.

"What the hell?!" yelled Scourge in surprise as he was aware of having already set the machine up but had decided to get it going again, only to find himself having to dodge a deadly disc that now rendered the machine inoperable due the control panel now having a disc embedded in it. He then notices who it is and he growls as he pulls the Bowie Knife out of the holster.

"You three are a bigger thorn than I thought. Ready to go blind again faker?" snarled Scourge as he readied another flashbang.

"Not this time." said Slothic as he smirked and closed his one eye.

"Thanks for making it easy then!"

Scourge charged forward and swung the large knife at the 75% blind hedgehog only to get a fist to the stomach and then a slap across the staggered to the side after the slap and growled in anger as he looked at the hedgehog fighting him.

"Don't tell me you're one of those bullshit hearing enhanced dipshits." snarled Scourge.

"Well, your shoes and jacket are quite loud in this cave. Not to mention your anger is easy to sense as well." said Slothic calmly as he remained in loose defensive stance.

"Oh fuck you!" snarled Scourge as he threw the Bowie Knife at Slothic only for him to dodge it and the knife to get stuck in the wall behind him. Slothic then slow-claps.

"Good job. Now you're unarmed."

Slothic grabs his nose in pain as Scourge had decided to throw the flashbang grenade despite having not having pulled the pin since Slothic had closed his eyes. Scourge then kicks Slothic in the shin and then headbutts him, staggering him. Scourge doesn't let up as he quickly takes Slothic's legs out from under him and the nearly blind hedgehog falls onto his face with a thud and a groan from the impact. He rolls out of the way of the kick meant for his face and rolls away from Scourge and back to his feet. Slothic then delivers a spin-kick to Scourge's face, breaking his sunglasses. Scourge takes them off and then slams them to the ground and charges Slothic again.

As the two fight, Frenzy and Ravager make their way over to the other machine, their target and find that it is much larger than the first one they had destroyed, effectively having two power cores built into it. The two split off to deal with a power core each. Once they arrive at power core they chose, they work on destroying it. Frenzy open fires on the protective coating of the power core he's targeting with the tri-blaster while Ravager super heats one of his arms to punch through the protective coating and straight into the core. Ravager pulls the arm out, taking several components out with it as they melted and fused to the super heated arm. He throws off that segment of the arm, revealing the bone underneath before having a new coating of volcanic rock form over it. The segment he targeted begins to explode and he gets away from it.

Frenzy meanwhile has no luck in cutting through the protective coating with just the tri-blaster and he growls in anger before he brings out the energy blade on the gauntlet and slams it into the core. He cuts through it horizontally and then moves to get away as it too begins to explode.

Meanwhile, Scourge has Slothic on the ground and is strangling him yet the half-blind hedgehog begins to laugh, ableit raspy and strained due to being choked.

"What's so funny?!" snarled Scourge, his eyes red with anger.

"This. Tell me how it feels." wheezed Slothic as he held up the flashbang that Scourge had used as a projectile earlier, as he pops the pin with his thumb. Scourge's eyes widen before white clouds his vision. He yells in pain and grabs his eyes, freeing Slothic who then uses his legs and kicks Scourge off of him. Scourge lands on his back and is holding his eyes in agony. Slothic gets up and opens his eye. He then notices that the massive machine they were after was now exploding. He grabbed Scourge and ran towards the cave's exit.

Slothic drops Scourge off with the robot factory Robotnik and then zooms back inside the cave and comes back out a second later with Frenzy and Ravager. The cave explodes and the hill above it collapses down on top of what was once a cave.

"Is that it?" said Frenzy as he dusted off his arm.

"I hope so. If not, we can always get the information out of him." said Slothic, pointing at the screaming Scourge.

"Did you really use a flashbang on him?"

"Hey, he used one on me. I think it's fair I used one against him as payback."

"Fair enough."

Admin_Fun. ZoneWarden. Fun_Sonicmodel Loading into...WORLD_ZONE_DISTORTEDTIMELINEZONE_OMEGADELTA32...

Download Complete...

Admin_Fun: Huh. I guess he was reliable.

Admin_Fun Loading into World...

END CHAPTER

Hope you enjoyed and don't forget to read, review, follow and/or favorite. Constructive criticism is welcome, destructive is not.

(1) Yes, Frenzy has something based off of Tails Nine, as well as another character. Those deflectors are based off a design from a paradise with a red sun. If nobody gets that reference hint, I'm gonna be disappointed.

(2) What's the plural form of Tails? How do you say there's multiple Tails, or Anti-Tails in a scene?

Frenzy, Ravager and Obsession (robot factory Robotnik and is not directly named this chapter) are all fan-made redesigns from Slothic's world and are nicknames used within that world when outside of it.