Chapter 6: I Despise You
Everyone was still in the Egg Grapes the next morning, as Eggman comes out of the base, rubbing his hands together and looking at Knuckles decisively.
"Oh, Knuckles!" Eggman calls out, as Knuckles doesn't make a move and is just standing there, lying against the Egg Grape, facing Eggman with his arms crossed and his eyes closed.
"Yeah, what do you want?" Knuckles says carelessly, as Eggman grins evilly.
"I've decided that you're life force will be used for the robot I'm making." Eggman says, as Knuckles could care less.
"Oh yeah?" Knuckles says carelessly. "Why is that?" He asks, as Eggman hits a remote button to bring out a white robot that looks like a dog, with red LED lights as eyes, to show Knuckles what he'll become.
"Because your genetic chaos energy mutation makes you the best choice. Besides Espio was a horrible choice to make anyway. That good for nothing ninja is now a robot slave of my own." Eggman says evilly, grinning as Mighty becomes very upset and Knuckles becomes enraged.
"EGGMAN, YOU…" Knuckles yells before being interrupted by Eggman.
"I was going to use Espio as its life force, but he was too tricky to get under control." Eggman says, remembering when he was going to use Espio, having him chain-cuffed and bringing him to the robot. "I'm going to use your life force to power this new robot that'll stop anyone else from getting to me." Eggman tells Espio, as Espio refuses to obey.
"Do you think that using me will be this easy?" Espio asks cleverly, as Eggman responds with nothing but pride.
"I've already got them all under my grip, and that pathetic croc friend of yours is also being stopped." Eggman says, as Espio just gets mad at hearing Vector being called, pathetic. He quickly pulls out a kunai, and throws it at Eggman, who barely dodges it as Espio breaks free and attempts to escape by camouflaging himself. However, a green figure appears, kicking him right into his back as Espio painfully flies into a glass chamber, slamming into the wall with full force. He then becomes visible again, holding his head in pain as he turns around to see himself locked in and Theotrin standing next to Eggman. "It's time to say goodbye, chameleon!" Eggman shouts, laughing evilly as Espio grips the wall in fear.
"What?! NO!" Espio screams, before being affected by the roboticizer. "AAAAAAAAAAAAGHH!" He screams in terror, as Eggman shakes his head and focuses on the real situation at hand.
"Let's see how well you do to stop me." Eggman says cleverly to Knuckles, before noticing something strange heading towards him. "What in the world is that?!" Eggman shouts, as Knuckles looks to see a large brown rock, flying towards his Egg Grape. It smashes into it, breaking it into pieces as it also manages to crack open Ray's before finally falling to the ground. "NOOOOOO! NOT AGAIN!" Eggman screams, as Knuckles jumps up and sucker-punches him right in the face.
"TAKE THAT! Eggboy!" Knuckles shouts in confidence, as Eggman stumbles backwards and falls onto the metal floor in pain. His face started to swell and turn red, as Knuckles prepares himself for a fight.
"It's gonna be real fun making you pay for what you've done!" Knuckles says sadistically, grinning as Eggman guards himself in fear and panic.
"OH NO!" Eggman screams, as Knuckles turns around to see Mighty's Egg Grape get smashed by yet another giant rock, before it fails to hit another, falling to the ground and cracking into pieces. Mighty escapes and gets Ray, who falls out, due to being afraid of cutting himself on the sharp-edged glass shards.
"Let's get this over with Eggman!" Knuckles shouts into Eggman's face. He prepares to hammer him into the ground at point-blank range, as Eggman cowers in fear. Theotrin, however, comes in and attempts to sweep kick Knuckles, only for Knuckles to duck under the kick and get hit by Theotrin's wind vortex that Theotrin tried using on Alisa previously. "What the hell?!" Knuckles shouts in confusion, before starting to scream in pain as he tries resisting being sucked into the vortex.
"KNUCKLES!" Everyone shouts concerned, as Mighty attempts to run up to Knuckles, before being stopped.
"No, don't!" An unknown voice says, as someone grabs Mighty's arm, startling him and surprising him. Knuckles is still resisting it, before becoming fed up with Theotrin's constant chuckling.
"I've had ENOUGH with your STUPID GAMES!" Knuckles yells enraged, while brutally punching Theotrin's arm and smashing it into the ground. This causes green elemental blood to start emerging from his arm, as he glares at Knuckles with hate.
"Insolent shit!" Theotrin says hatefully, as he punches Knuckles right in the face, with such speed that was too fast to stop.
"AGH, DAMN!" Knuckles shouts painfully, as Theotrin uses his wind control to push Knuckles off his hand and send him into the ground at high speed. However, a brown elemental is seen, grabbing Knuckles quickly and setting him on the ground gently.
"Hey, this isn't over yet you know." The brown elemental tells Knuckles, as Knuckles opens one eye in pain.
"Yeah, well I'm not done yet." Knuckles says, as he weakly picks himself up and rubs his face, as it starts to turn red. Theotrin seems rather surprised by the brown elemental's appearance, and chuckles softly with contempt.
"So you managed to survive my army, Dayton." Theotrin says, as Dayton looks at Theotrin with a hateful expression.
"Your army?" Dayton says sarcastically, spitting at the ground as Theotrin looks at him displeased. "Bullshit!" Dayton yells enraged, clenching his fists. The ground suddenly starts to shake abruptly, and all the Egg Grapes start flying upwards into the sky.
"What's going on?!" Mighty shouts panicked, as a massive wind current blows right in. Everyone tries to cover themselves from the current so they won't be picked up by it.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Dayton screams, as the wind current spreads across the entire globe and just gets stronger. Dayton eventually resorts to making a large rock cave around them, so they won't be so easily affected by the massive wind. Everyone breathes deeply in relief when they are sheltered by the rock cave.
Meanwhile, Alisa and Sonic start feeling the wind breeze coming in from a sandy beach next to the base, and they start to get confused.
"Hey, do you feel that?" Alisa asks, as everyone else agrees, with Tails getting confused by this, thinking about the warm weather and the bright rising sun.
"A wind current like this in this kind of weather is highly unusual." Tails explains, as it gets extremely strong quickly and everyone is picked off the ground.
"WHAAAAAA!" Everyone screams, as Alisa freezes her hand onto an ice structure that she just made. She starts to freeze everyone's hands inside of her ice, first by touching Sonic as she sends her ice energy through their bodies to get to everyone.
"Don't worry about getting frostbite; this is for your own safety." Alisa says, as their hands finally freeze and they dangle in the air. As they are all dangling in the massive wind, Sonic winks at Alisa impressed.
"Nice thinking!" He congratulates her, as she smiles in response.
"It comes naturally." She says humbly, still dangling in the air.
Kyousuke and Vector are still sleeping, as Kyousuke just wakes up from resting. He feels the breeze, which suddenly becomes very cold, and he starts to shiver.
"What the hell?" Kyousuke says confused, as the wind current then speeds up to extreme speeds and Kyousuke is sent flying towards Vector. "WHAAAAA!" He screams, as he lands right into Vector's chest, causing him to wake up and cough in a bit of pain.
"Man, what's going on?!" Vector shouts shocked, as Kyousuke is carried into the air by the wind. He grabs a tree branch, with Vector desperately holding on to the same tree with both hands.
"VECTOR!" Kyousuke shouts worried, as Vector holds on even tighter.
"I'M ALRIGHT!" He shouts to him, as Kyousuke's branch breaks off and Kyousuke starts to fly into the air.
"NOOOOOO!" Kyousuke shouts in panic, as Vector grabs his leg and pulls him to the tree with his brute strength.
"Don't worry, I got you!" Vector shouts, as Kyousuke holds onto the tree for extra support.
Meanwhile, everyone with Dayton is surprised that he saved them all with the rock cave.
"This is impressive!" Mighty says surprised, as Theotrin declares a final battle, while flying into the sky with Eggman.
"Next time you face me, be prepared to die!" Theotrin declares to everyone all over the planet, as everyone else except Eggman instantly disagrees.
"Oh Yeah! Bring it on!" Dayton shouts angrily, as everyone else starts shouting as well.
"Not today or any other day." Alisa says to herself, as the ice still is holding them up in the air as they dangle in the air like dolls.
"Yeah, you keep saying that." Kyousuke says out loud, still holding onto the tree, as Vector chuckles.
"Right?!" Vector shouts, agreeing with Kyousuke and still holding onto him. The wind eventually dies out and Theotrin and Eggman, as well as all of Eggman's robots and everyone in the Egg Grapes are nowhere to be seen. Kyousuke falls to the ground as Vector regains his balance and walks over to Kyousuke.
"Need a hand?" Vector asks, as Kyousuke willingly grabs it.
"Thanks." He tells Vector, as he gets up and brushes off his coat.
"Talk about global warming." Vector says jokingly, as Kyousuke shrugs his shoulders in response and looks up at the sky.
"It's only morning." Kyousuke says surprised, as Vector suggests that they should get moving.
Meanwhile, Alisa and the others are still hanging from their ice-frozen hands. Alisa then melts the ice as they all safely land and try to warm themselves up.
"Oh my! My hands are freezing!" Amy says shivering, blowing warm air onto her hands to warm them up. Sonic is also shivering and is surprised to see Alisa standing there, being completely fine.
"How come you aren't freezing?" Sonic asks Alisa happily, as Alisa shrugs her shoulders in response.
"I'm an ice elemental, it doesn't bother me." Alisa says, as Tails warms his hands up with his tails.
"Oh, that's right!" He says, as they all take a minute to warm up before forming a new plan, now that their old plan had been trashed due to Eggman and Theotrin moving into the sky.
On the other hand, Dayton destroys the rock cave, watching it dissolve into powder as everyone brushes their hands off, starting to focus on the situation at hand.
"Thanks for that." Mighty says, thanking Dayton. Dayton just merely nods as Knuckles starts explaining what happened.
"Ok, we need to find Vector and that kid right away!" Knuckles says, before Ray intervenes.
"What about Sonic and the others? They escaped too!" He informs them, as Dayton quickly comes up with something impatiently.
"Alright, you two go find this Sonic and the rest of them, and he and I will go find this Vector." Dayton commands, as Knuckles gets a bit irritated.
"The name's Knuckles for your information." Knuckles says irritated, as Dayton doesn't really seem to care.
"Yeah, whatever, let's just get going." Dayton says, heading off towards a forest seen very far away from where they were, as Knuckles follows behind, annoyed. Mighty and Ray set off together to find Sonic and the others, with Ray walking slowly.
"I hope Vector's ok." Ray says worried, as Mighty assures that he'll be ok.
"Don't worry, he's gonna be fine. He's as strong as me now, remember?" Mighty says, as Ray remembers happily.
"Oh yeah, that's right!" He says relieved, following behind Mighty, picking up his speed.
Meanwhile, Knuckles is still annoyed by Dayton's attitude back there, and starts to question him about it.
"Hey, what gives? What's with the attitude?" Knuckles asks both concerned and annoyed, as Dayton, still in his elemental form, continues walking forward in a bold and domineering way.
"This someone named Kyousuke left our planet in a time of crisis, and it's time to get payback!" He says, clenching his fist, as Knuckles ponders about who Kyousuke might be as they head towards the distant forest ahead of them.
As of now, the real action is just beginning!