A/N: Woooooops! ; I completely forgot this existed. Sorry about the approx. 55 day delay on the new chapter, I got distracted by various other projects... well, here it is... please don't kill me...

Chapter 38

Diesel spied the edge of land on the horizon. He reached for the mike.

"Okay, folks, we're nearly there, please fasten your seatbelts for landing, keep all hands, legs and other appendages inside the plane and stash any weapons in the overhead compartments." He could hear giggling from the passenger section.

Tails came up to the bridge. Silver followed, rubbing his eyes.

"What's going on?" He yawned.

"Got land in sight." Diesel replied.

"Don't land just yet. We need to see what's there." A light beeped on the control panel.

"Incoming transmission."

"Put it on the screen." The screen flickered into life.

"Well well well… what have we here?"

"Eggman…"

"Come crawling back, have we?"

"We did a favour for you, it's time you did a favour for us."

"No, I did a favour for you in giving you that short cut."

"You seemed pretty desperate when we found you."

"Hmm. State your terms."

"You have a piece of the master emerald, correct?"

"How did you know?"

"That's not important now. We need that piece."

"Well… it's going to be a little harder to get it off me, seeing as this time you're not pointing a shotgun to my head. What do I get in return?"

"You get… well…" Tails thought for a second. "How does safety in the knowledge that the world won't be destroyed by Naugus sound?"

"Ho ho… even though the destruction of the world is indeed a tempting idea, I must say that in this particular case it would be best left unsullied. Although I must say, Ixus will find it rather difficult to summon Nazo with only three quarters of the emerald,"

"Nazo? What?"

"Whoops, I said too much. The bottom line is that you'll have to prise it from my cold dead hands, and so will Naugus if he wants it that badly. Good day to you," The screen went black.

"Fine. We'll have to do this the hard way." Tails looked out over the landscape. "I see some buildings."

"Of course, it would make sense for Eggman's ships to do as little flying in polar climates as possible, so they must land there and go on land to the hub at the pole,"

"Silver, how did you know that?"

"This base is still here 200 years later, we've possessed it ourselves. I live here in the future."

Tails raised an eyebrow.

"Well, that will definitely make things easier." Diesel set down the plane.

Stepping out into the cold with thick coats on, the group made their way forwards to the entrance. It wasn't guarded, or even locked, but the inside was still fairly cold. They breathed easy in the belief that they would be relatively safe for most of the journey. Their peace was broken by two shots that whizzed over there heads. They ducked but they were unfortunate enough to be caught out with no cover.

"We are FUCKED!" Cream said under her breath. Another hail of bullets came towards them. Silver looked forward. The robots braced to fire another shot. As they fired, Silver threw himself straight up with seemingly no effort. He held his hand out in front of himself.

"Silver, NO!" Blaze shouted. A mere instant before the bullets would have impacted, they stopped in midair in front of him. He remained like that for a few moments. The bullets floated aimlessly in mid-air. A few light objects nearby began to move around slightly. Then, with a hand gesture, the bullets shot straight back to the robots. A couple of things at the sides of the walls were sent a metre or two. The first wave of robots fell. The second wave charged forward. These were, instead of the cheap, Naugus-sponsored SIPR-series, the more advanced E-series, developed more since the original takeover. They were sturdier than their predecessors, and more intelligent. They were very unlikely to charge mindlessly in the general direction of an enemy only to walk off a cliff, a common glitch in earlier models.

Silver simply ran towards the advancing robots with equal speed. The robots outstretched their weapons. Silver stopped short of one and ducked down. The robot seemed to carry on on an invisible ramp over him and landed a few metres away. He threw a few more robots to one side or another psychically, and the last two he threw away from him. As they began to regroup, he decided to have some fun. He picked up the one that had run over him and scraped it along the walls. He began to smash it into the other ones, turning them to scrap. He carried on until they were little more than debris. As he was about to smash the pile of scrap metal into the wall another time, he suddenly blacked out and collapsed. The metal fell to the ground, unsupported.