He felt the back of his head against cold steel. He had a bump somewhere on it, where he had hit the ground. He opened his eyes. It was a dark corridor; the lights were blown out.
"Silver, are you okay?" Blaze jumped on him and shook him a little. He jumped a little, startled.
"AH!"
"AH!"
Tails smiled and chuckled to himself. Then he looked back at the wrecked robots on the ground, their circuits and hydraulics scattered around like children's toys. He definitely made short work of these, he thought to himself.
"How did you do that?"
"What?" Then he saw the wreckage strewn across the floor. "Oh… uhm… sorry to disappoint, but… I don't know…" Tails raised an eyebrow.
"Right…"
"It'll become clear, eventually…" he turned and picked up his gun. "… I hope…" he whispered to himself as he walked away to investigate the corridor ahead. Blaze quickly hurried to catch up with him. Diesel and Cream waited for Silver before following.
"So… I keep hearing this name, Nazo… what does it mean?" Tails asked idly.
"You're being pretty oblivious for someone supposedly so mythology-savvy…"
"Okay, just come on. Spit it out."
"Okay. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right?"
"That has to be the most over-quoted law of physics in the history of the universe."
"…and every force has an equal and opposite force. Correct?"
"Stands up in my book so far,"
"Well the energy of the Master Emerald has to be balanced out somehow. The positive energy spawned the angelic races…"
"Umm…"
"And the negative energy spawned Nazo."
"…why did the positive energy spawn hundreds when the negative only spawned one?"
"That is, one extremely powerful being, capable of bringing rack and ruin upon the world."
"Makes sense,"
"The races of angels, Nazo and the rest of the world will usually live in their own planes peacefully, until you get screwballs who decide to play with the Master Emerald."
"Like Naugus,"
"On the nose. Naugus has existed for thousands of years, prolonging his own existence by magical means. He was sealed away 5,000 years ago, just after he was released, by the tribe of Babylon, who have held the 'keys', so to speak, to his 'cell', and entrusted the Master Emerald to the Echidnas. And then…"
"…Eggman conquered Babylon garden ten years ago and released Naugus with the intention of aiding him in his world domination pursuits. That part I know."
"…right. And Naugus had his own plans to ravage the world by summoning Nazo…"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa… wait up a sec. Didn't you tell me earlier that you didn't know what Nazo was?"
"Oh right. Yeah, I was screwing with you there." She grinned. Tails grumbled.
"Hey, what's that?" He stopped suddenly. The others quickly caught up.
"This is the hub of the industrial sector, the main smelting plant," Silver explained. "It's not far from the centre of the base…"
"…and Eggman…" Cream added determinedly.
"…oh, I'm closer than you think…" A voice called from behind the giant pot of bubbling, molten steel. The familiar oversized, orange moustache on a fat man seated in a hovering, eggcup-like craft sailed over the boiling metal and stationed itself at its lip.
"You!" Tails shouted.
"Looking for something?" The doctor span the piece of the emerald on his finger before grabbing it and stuffing it deep into a pocket. "I'm going to live up to that promise I made. Cold dead hands, you hear me?! Cold dead hands!" At that he turned his craft and fired two missiles at the structures supporting the smelting pot and sped away. The beams began to buckle and give way, causing the pot to fall towards the helpless bunch. Silver stuck his hands out in desperation, hoping something might happen…
…and happen something did. He was holding the pot and its contents a mere metre or two above the cowering group.
"RUN!" He yelled. Without coordination, the group split. Tails and Blaze ran one way, Diesel and Cream the other. Silver tried as best he could to hold the metal long enough for everyone to clear, before letting go and rushing for a route for himself. He leapt forward to the base of the pot, and scrambled to get around it. The ground tilted slowly down, and he could see streams of burning iron trickling towards him. He got up and started running as fast as he could away from it. Unfortunately, the ground got steeper, and the liquid metal faster. He read the sign on the tube he was about to descend. 'Shaft to Iron bin' . Oh, well done, idiot… he thought to himself. The slowly descending ground became outright vertical shaft and he began to fall away from the smouldering metal. With enough will, he managed to conjure up the same disc of psychic energy that had saved him before. This is useful… As he neared the bottom of the shaft – another pool of molten metal – he got ready to pull up and escape the shower of liquid industrial death following him. However, the pool was not much better. There was barely enough room for him to stand up in without melting his feet, and there were occasional flares coming up, leaving white hot marks on the scorched ceiling. He braved the pool to the other end, which had a very narrow opening with which overflow escaped. It was going to be a very tight squeeze. He knelt himself down on his board, trying to flatten down his flamboyant quills, which would inevitably catch on the ceiling. Worse still, a shower of metal began to pour over the opening, making it a suicide mission to pass through. But it was too late to turn back now, he had committed. He closed his eyes tightly, and concentrated, hoping for something to happen again, another mystical force produced from nowhere. As he heard the hissing of water droplets vapourising as they hit molten steel rise and slowly fade, and a wave of cool air wash over him, he opened his eyes slowly. He had made it through the falls of liquid metal and out into a vast chasm, with a small abandoned control centre in suspended in the middle. He made his way over to it and set himself down on the roof and entered via it. He took a moment to steady himself after what had just happened.
Tails picked his head up from the ground. He had taken a sharp blow to the nose from having fallen a bit too hard. He wasn't bleeding, but it still stung a bit. He quickly got up off the ground and inspected his surrounds. Blaze was beside him, unconscious. He smiled when he saw her breathing calmly. He looked behind him to see what had happened. The giant pot lay there, blocking the path back. He also saw a beam that had swung down, which appears to have been what knocked them out. The molten metal had solidified around it, making passage back all but impossible. He examined his surrounds a little more before climbing back to his feet. He nudged Blaze awake before insisting they carry on.
Diesel sat to one side puffing. He watched the molten metal darken and solidify, mere metres away from him. Cream had been lucky enough to get away aswell, by the fluff of her tail. He pulled her away from the hot metal frantically, only noticing how he was holding her minutes of close hugging later.