Chapter 12

"Amy?" The voice crackled over the radio.

"Cream? Is that you?" She said into it, grabbing it off Knuckles.

"Yeah. I just wanted to tell you to be careful, you might be headed for a base… what's that?" Back at the base, she turned away from her microphone. She looked at someone else's screen. "What's that thing headed towards us?"

"I don't know, it's not one of ours…"

She stared at the screen for a few seconds.

"Shit."

"What?"

"It's a missile,"

"WHAT?!?" The other person turned and fled.

"Coward." Cream turned back to her microphone. "We're having a bit of trouble down our end, there's a missile headed straight for us." Amy was shocked to hear this.

"Get out of there! Get out of there now!"

"I'm going, I'm going… what… shit!"

"Cream? Cream? Are you okay?" Amy heard a crash and an explosion over the radio, and then just static. She sat down on the ground and collapsed her head into her arms. She started sobbing uncontrollably. Knuckles didn't know how to handle this. In his head, he said: This is going to be a long day…

Sonic and Tails hid behind a couple of barriers. They did so quickly as they heard someone coming. Sonic poked an eye round the corner. A lone guard. Wait, there's somebody else. Three figures walked up out of the dark. The guard pointed his gun at them. The gun bent out of shape before his eyes, and a gloved hand came out and pulled it away. The guard fell backwards. A cat came forwards with a flamethrower that looked ready to explode because it was so full. She stomped one booted foot on the unfortunate soldier's neck. She growled through her teeth:

"Which way to Naugus?"

"I… I don't know…" He responded in a panic.

"Are you familiar with thermite?" She demonstrated by firing the flamethrower off at a barrel. A couple of seconds later it was reduced to a pile of molten metal. "Now, do you want that to be your skull?"

"Eh… I think he's that way but I'm not sure…"

"God, nobody's sure of anything around here…" A squirrel came forward. He looked quite young, about the same age as Tails. Come to think of it both he and the cat did.

"Leave him. He's just another anonymous guard. They probably have no better idea than we do." A voice called from the shadows.

"Yeah." The cat kicked him in the head and left him unconscious.

"These are those weirdoes I was talking about." Tails whispered to Sonic.

A black blur flew in from behind them. After some audible struggling, it fell forward. Shadow had attacked another random. His victim this time was a light grey hedgehog, silver even. Holding his machete up in the air, he stopped to see a flamethrower and another bizarre looking firearm pointed at him. Oops.

"Wait, wait, wait." Sonic ventured forth to try and defuse the situation. Tails smacked his hand on his head. "This is my deranged friend Shadow who has a nasty habit of beating the crap out of whatever he can get his hands on. Please, don't mind him, he was just expecting some robots or guards or something. You say you're looking for Naugus?"

"Slow down… first, who the hell are you?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm Sonic, and…" He turned back to Tails. He motioned him to come forward. Tails did so wearily. "Tails here you already know."

Rouge walked forward having just watched the whole episode.

"Is this Sonic the negotiator?"

"…and this is Rouge."

"How many of you are there around here?" The hedgehog said with surprise and concern.

"If everything's gone to plan, one, two… nine."

"Nine?"

"Nine. Now I believe you owe us the pleasure of an introduction?"

"Uh-huh. I am Silver, and these are Blaze and Diesel." The hedgehog motioned to the cat and squirrel in turn. "We have come from the future to eliminate Naugus."

"Oh, that's handy, we were trying to do the same thing…" Shadow dusted himself off. "Him and Eggman."

"Who is this… 'Eggman'?"

"Oh, he's the guy who made all this." Sonic indicated the surrounds. "This used to be a forest, I think… something like that."

"We've never heard of him. He must have been defeated somewhere along the line."

"Yay, knowledge of victory…" Tails said with sarcastic enthusiasm.

"We don't know who killed him though."

"Ah."

"What?"

"That leaves a variable."

"Is that bad?"

"Could be. It could be good, but it could be very bad. It varies, that's why it's called a variable."

"Well, duh."