Chapter Twelve: Going In

I was a little stunned, but not as much as Lina. I waved my hands and snapped my fingers in front of her face...nothing.

"is she ok?" Sonic asked

"yeah, don't worry about her. so...what do we do now?"

"well, we are going to go for the mission at night, so how about just hanging out?"

"hang out? really?" Lina asked as she snapped out of her trance and came speeding over to us.

"sure, hang out, prepare for the mission, have some fun." Sonic was a little annoyed with us that we just repeated what he said, but I spoke up

"sure we can hang out, but I think you should cut the fusion for now, don't want to wear out the battery. :)" Sonic nodded as Lina whispered "killjoy :(" in my ear. Sonic cut the fusion and became Swift and Chris again.

"that was perfect!" Miles said as he, Chris, and Swift walked back to our picnic spot.

"you guys must be super-compatible or something, I've never seen a light that bright before!" I pointed out.

"it all comes with experience, cuz." Chris said jokingly. we all laughed at this and continued to eat our lunches.

"so, Swift," Lina asked "how did you two first come across each other?"

"well, it was all because of Chris' grandpa Chuck, he accidentally stole a chaos emerald we had back when we lived on earth, I followed the signature to Chris' house, and it was then Miles finished his prototype of the Chaos Morpher, I was supposed to be the first to test it, and coincidentally he was compatible with me, so we started kicking Egg-butt and taking names, and then Chris' friend Danny found he was compatible with Miles, and then Helen with Amy, and they all joined the team." Swift finished, satisfied with his recounting.

"and we can't forget when we found this place." Chris added, gesturing all around him. "after we had defeated Eggman, we followed him back here, and found a bunch of Chao being enslaved and oppressed by Eggman, so we freed them and left Swift, Miles, and Amy, along with the other mobians, to take care of them and guard the Chao. it was a few years later when Sclera showed up and Swift called us back here, and you know the rest." Chris finished.

"I miss Helen." Amy sighed, reminiscing. Swift walked over to her and put his arms around her.

"we all miss her and Danny, we miss everybody, but in just a while they'll all be back with us." he assured her. and with that, we headed back to H.Q. and readied ourselves for the upcoming event.

...

night had fallen on the grassy plain, (speaking of which, we learned from Chris that it was the entrance to the Green Hill Zone) and we had gathered at the edge of the forest. me, Lina, and Chris were in our Mobian forms, while Miles was going to fly along with us and I was commissioned to carry Amy.

"is everybody ready?" Sonic asked. all of us nodded as we took our first tentative steps into the forest. being Mobians, we all had good vision in the dark, and Miles had his vision goggles, so we could run at a fairly fast pace in the dark. I was concentrating on following Sonic, when I felt a pang of hopelessness hit me, then I remembered I was in contact with Amy, it must have been her thoughts.

'Amy, are you ok?' Nika asked. there was a pause, then a response.

'I am just so worried, Helen's legs are very sensitive to environments, and if she doesn't have proper care for a extended amount of time, she could be subjected to muscle spasms and eventually have them for the rest of her life, in addition to polio!' I felt her pain severely, and then Nika spoke up.

'Amy, I promise we will get Helen back, no matter what!'

'that goes I double for me!' I added

'thank you guys, let's give this all we got!' we all agreed on that. we continued to follow Sonic, twisting and turning toward our destination. I was subconciously following Sonic; my mind wasn't the least bit interested in the objective at hand. so it was a bit of a shock when I ran into Sonic.

'here we...' I caught a part of what sounded like Chris' thoughts; I could only assume he caught part of mine. an instant later, I felt Sonic's hand around mine, Chris spoke.

'are you ready?' he asked. as he did, I could also feel Swift's agitation in the background.

'I really don't know, I am worried, scared, unsure, and nervous at the same time.'

'I feel a little queasy.' Nika admitted

'take it from me, it's like that, your first real mission, but that's the reason we Chaos Morph, so we can lean on someone along with our teammates.' Swift said. as we released our grip...that's when the siren went off.

...

we had obviously underestimated our enemy, because we were still a half a mile away from the perimeter and the siren still went off!

'wait!' Nika exclaimed 'Terry, turn on your chaos sense!'

'but we are still too far away!' I countered, but I already knew Nika's answer. initiating her plan, I grabbed Sonic's hand once more, immediately we synchronized our chaos sense. it was nothing like I had never experienced before, and I felt Nika and Swift's amazement as well. our sense reached all the way to the fence of the fortress, and we saw ten beings (those being Danny, Helen, Frances, Shadow, Rouge, Blaze, Silver, Cream, Cheese, and Knuckles) hopping the fence. one of which had no chaos energy at all. deactivating the chaos sense. we turned to our friends.

"they escaped!" I exclaimed.

"let's go meet them!" Sonic ran ahead to help, with me and Fiona close at hand. in about three seconds, our groups merged into one big one. I saw a lot of the true mobians staring at me and Fiona. Amy hopped off of my shoulder and headed straight for Helen, who was being carried by Shadow, unconscious for some reason. Miles rushed over to Danny and sat right on his head, cuddling his scalp. after the reunion, Sonic motioned everyone to follow him back to the field. as we silently headed back, we heard a loud BOOOOOOOOM! behind us. and another, and another, another still...then, it stopped. I sighed in relief...that's when I ran into something metal...

...

after rubbing my head to calm the pain, I saw everyone else looking up, I did the same.

'uh-oh...' Nika thought, worried. what we saw was our worst nightmare, a Gold Golem. on its shoulder, a dark figure perched. the eyes of this figure were shining a dark, deep, fiery yellow. it spoke in a deep, rich, eloquent voice.

"I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but you have given me no choice to bring out my fiercest weapon. it's too bad, you would have made such good allies." it then snapped his fingers and the Golem started toward us, charging to stomp us into oblivion. I uncapped my canteen and threw some ice darts at it...and it didn't even make a mark. Sonic tried multiple homing attacks in various possible weak spots...still nothing. we all went for a group attack and the same result ensued.

"FALL BACK!" Shadow yelled. we raced through the forest to loose the Golem. I looked back over my shoulder, the Golem wasn't stopping. the trees were twigs under the feet of a cat...and we were the mice. I ran and ran and ran, periodically looking over my shoulder to make sure I was far enough away. I turned to see Shadow struggling with Helen; he couldn't get up enough speed to activate his hover shoes because of all the obstacles. I veered over to him and picked up Helen's lower half. we ran like that for what seemed like forever, and then I heard a low beep coming from the Morpher, meaning low battery.

'we have to finish this now.' Nika said. I agreed, but what to do? me and Nika started thinking...but there was nothing coming to us. I knew I entrusted Sonic with the emerald, but I had no idea where he could be. I could see Shadow was becoming exhausted, he was probably running before this, and had already used much of his energy. I turned to see the Golem was gaining, and we were out of options.

"Krystal!" I heard Fiona's voice behind me, I turned to see her motioning toward a cave she had found, and we met her there and set Helen down. "I have a plan, but we need to gather the others." she explained.

"ok, me and you will try and find them." I told her. we stood at the entrance of the cave, I took Fiona's hand and activated the chaos sense, trying to find our friends, I was starting to feel the effects of the low battery and the chaos sense was very weak. I spotted some silhouettes around the Golem and we immediately headed in that direction. sneaking peeks through the trees, I saw that they were attacking again, but nothing was getting through.

"guys, this way!" me an Fiona yelled as we headed back to the cave. when we returned, we were finally all together. "I've got a plan, but it is risky." Fiona explained.

"what is it?" asked Silver.

"ok, so if Shadow chaos controls me and Blaze inside of the Golem, we may be able to heat it up enough for you guys to create a dent in it, forming our own weak spot and then we'd be able to defeat it."

"but we don't know what is inside that thing, it maybe solid gold." Rouge pointed out.

"I doubt it, where would he get all that gold?" Knuckles replied.

"it's the only plan we've got." I said.

"I'm in." agreed Blaze.

"then lets do this!" Sonic cheered. I felt him hand me the chaos emerald which I used to recharge the battery, then gave it to Fiona who did the same. the only one who hadn't was Shadow, he was silent. I said

"the rest of us will distract it, Shadow, are you ready?" he gave us a silent nod.