It's Back! Finally! I didn't give up right as things got interesting!

Chapter 12

Hours stretched out forever. Some people tried to sing, but it quickly died away. Finally, they came: an advancing wall of purple metal, every one of them looking the same. They were the result of hours spent building one specific part over and over, or putting the same two parts together, multiplied ad infinitum at a pressing rate, to create the army of robots before them. Knuckles bowed his head: he had seen this sight before.

Row upon row of strange machines stood before them as Regoban's distorted voice droned on about his mad coup.

"But you swore to protect the royal family; therefore I know you will not side with me. Sadly, you cannot be part of this perfect world. This is necessary."

And then the robots fired.

Knuckles picked up the radio.

"Hold you fire," He said. "Hold your fire." Everyone listened. No one wanted to be the first target of the mindless machines. Scrat watched the horde of purple giants, and said softly:

"We're all gonna' die." Knuckles tensed, but made his muscles relax.

"Hit the ground." He yelled. Everyone with him ducked. He then took the courtesy of firing the first shot. It was good, catching a cop-bot as its torso was turned ever so slightly. It stopped moving, and the rest of the army turned towards the source. Knuckles ducked below the window as a fusillade of bullets came at him. Suddenly the army shifted in the other direction.

Knuckles and the kids with him took the break to shoot at the army while its backs were exposed. The robots turned back towards them, only to get hit from behind again…

The Robotnik began sorting through programs for his machines.

"You should have divided them earlier, when you, you know, had time." Draggo said. The Robotnik yelled at him.

"Time? I had an empire to run while dealing with these infants." They both were very quiet.

"System." Draggo coughed.

"Dagh. All the propaganda is getting to me."

Knuckles and the kids with him shot at the exposed backs of the robot army once again, but this time only a few turned towards them. Knuckles ducked below the window and motioned for the kids to do the same. Bullets rained through the window and embedded themselves in the back wall.

"We have to move." Knuckles said. "We have to hit them from where they aren't watching." He looked around at his fighters. Scrat wasn't there, meaning he had left on his own accord. Knuckles crawled toward the next window, and carefully raised the gun over the edge, but kept his body below. No bullets came through. Knuckles risked putting up his hand. Still no bullets came. He motioned for the rest of the fighters to come over to him.

"We should be good for moving to another building. I'll cover you from here." Knuckles said.

Amy and Yona sat on the floor, watching bullets come from both sides of them. Obviously, shooting from both windows had been a poor choice.

"We're gonna' die, we're gonna' die." Yona screamed.

"No we're not." Amy said. She pulled out the radio Knuckles had given her, though she didn't know why, and turned it on. "I need a distraction, at the house with both windows being shot at."

"Which one?" A voice responded.

"The… give me a sec." Amy yelled out: "Can anyone describe where we are?"

"Yeah." Someone said. Amy tossed the radio to them, and they started talking about pink flowers on the roof. A few tracer rounds came through the window and hit the floor, but eventually one of the robots was hit, making them turn. Amy popped her head over the window sill, and began firing at the cop-bots in front of them. The rest of the fighters with her followed suit, but only used the one window.

Tails tied one end of the spool of wire to the circuit board. When he had eventually convinced himself to start working, he had decided that he would need to take the radio apart just to see what was broken. After that he was stuck trying to fix it with only his memory to work on. He had begun to use the margins of the code book so he could keep notes on what he was doing. Really, if he could get back to his home…

Tails pushed the idea away. He knew he'd get shot if he left the shack. Besides he was pretty sure he had done everything he needed. The Robotnik probably hadn't considered at the time that someone in Knothole could fix the radio, but that was lucky for Tails. He took the microphone and turned on the radio, adjusting its frequency until he heard something.

"Broken Treaty." He said into it.

"What the? Find a different, frequency you idiot. There's a code book isn't there?" a voice responded.

"Sorry." Tails went over to the book, and began looking for the frequency of the nearest town.

The Robotnik tapped his fingers in irritation. He had known the rebels would be able to fight back at least somewhat, but they were coordinated, planned… winning, for a given definition. Better than even the Tsarminians usually managed.

If the rebels weren't in buildings, though, they would lose almost any advantages they had. Luckily, he had sent Terminator, a machine perfect for clearing them out. Really, it wouldn't do any good where it currently was, and he knew that the rebels wouldn't have anything able to damage it. He directed it towards the first house, with the least fire coming from it.

Knuckles turned as he felt the building shake. How was that happening? He tilted his head as the house shook again. On the third blow the far wall was broken open. His eyes widened. Standing in the doorway was a robot he had attacked nearly fifteen years before then.

It was bulkier than most of its counter parts, but not taller. Its body was hunched over, with its head nearly level with its shoulders. Instead of claws, it had bulky hands, with fingers that seemed to compress together as one, and each hand had a gun mounted on the back of it. For some unfathomable reason, the machine had been painted deep blue.

Knuckles didn't bother to try and shoot it. He had tried that fifteen years ago, and it hadn't worked then. He ran out of the house, to the next one over. As he ducked in and slammed the door shut, he yelled.

"Molotov Cocktail. I need one fast." The people there shook their heads. He cursed, wishing he had kept a few of the gangsters with him. A fist tore through the wall next to the door, and the door swung open. The machine walked in, pointing its arm mounted guns. Before it could fire, Knuckles charged it, not knowing his own plan.

Terminator's programming told it to use its fists against a close range target, so it did. It lifted both fists and slammed down, but Knuckles jumped to the left, leaving it to hit nothing but ground. The robot lifted its right fist and tried to bring it down on him, but Knuckles sidestepped back in front. The robot brought up its left arm and brought it down. Knuckles stepped to the side, flinched as the massive hand came down to his side, and then stepped on it.

The robot tried to attack with its other arm, but it couldn't bend in far enough. It tried to lift its arm, but it didn't have the capability to lift both its weighted hand and the fully grown echidna. Knuckles looked at the blue head.

"Regoban, this is for all of them." Knuckles shifted his gun to the other hand, aimed for open crack between the head and torso, and punched his brass knuckle in. The spikes pushed into the crack, and Knuckles began to twist his fist. If the momentum-based arm motors were any basis for judging the designers forethought, there wouldn't be much keeping the robot's head on. He groaned as the knuckle began to bite into his hand, but he kept twisting. There was a snap, and the head jerked up noticeably.

"For who?" Draggo asked.

"The guard." The Robotnik answered.

"Oh. That proves your theory I guess." As the signal from Terminator died, Draggo noted: "And another one bites the dust. These guys have a great track record." The Robotnik noted to himself that the weight-based wrecking fists were not suitable for close quarter attacks.

Knuckles fired one more round into the robot, before pulling his tracer out from the hole in its "neck".

"Everyone good?" He asked. The fighters with him all nodded. "Thanks for covering me. You," He paused, and frowned at having to say it. "Did a good job. How's ammo."

"We've all got three spare clips left."

"What? You trigger happy lunatics. We don't have infinite ammo you know."

"Ah." Tails said to himself, when he had finally found a good frequency. He turned the dial on the radio, and listened until the static cleared away.

"Hello." He said. "Can anyone hear me?" There was the sound of someone yawning.

"What's the matter, kid." The person on the other end asked. Tails rushed the explanation

"Robots are attacking."

"Riiight. Look, you really shouldn't be using…"

"I'm serious. I'm only using this 'cause I knew how to fix the radio after it was broken and everyone else is fighting or keeping their heads down."

"Pull the other one. Look, if it was really serious there would be a number you'd give me."

"Oh, that's why he wrote that. Nine-oh'-four-seven-four-five-five."

"Oh…" The person on the radio began cursing and rummaging through where ever he was. "Where are you?"

"Knothole, little town…"

"I'll send it up. Just stay there."

Kenny poked his head out the window and fired a burst at the robots below. They turned to fire, and he ducked down. The situation wasn't good. He and the Scrat kid were taking out robots steadily from the top floor of the house, but quite a few freedom fighters had become pinned inside buildings, without anyone able to get the robots off of them.

The over head gun fire stopped, and Kenny poked his head out a window to shoot at the same grouping again. There was a robot still aiming at him, though.

Scrat was reloading when he saw Kenny fall back from the window, followed by a red splash.

"I'm gonna' die." He moaned. He lifted above the window and saw the silver robot contrasting with the horde of purple. It was aiming where Kenny had been, but turned to look at him. Scrat ducked before it fired, and watched as the bullet removed a large chunk from the wall. He got on his stomach and crawled to the radio he had been given. He didn't get why, but he figured the ability to call for help should not be refused. He tried to talk to it. He gulped and tried again.

"I think I saw one of the special robots Knuckle talked about. It's…" Scrat dared to look out the window for a second. He got up and looked out the window again. "It's heading for the mounds. It's heading for the mounds!"

"The Mounds?" Draggo asked.

"Yes. Knothole's only true distinguishing feature. A series of over grown… trash heaps from before the Armageddon. The town used to attract quite a few archeologists, but in the past decade or so they stopped going through." The Robotnik responded.

"I wonder why that was?"

"Indeed. However, they would seem to be an ideal place to hide, away from the battle."

"I guess that will also help this one survive."

"Quite. This is exactly what Devastator was designed to do. It will not fail."

"Of course."

"I've got it covered." Amy said to the radio. She crawled over to the door of the house, but Yona tried to stop her.

"You can't go alone. It's stupid."

"I'll be a smaller target; they won't notice me if I don't shoot them. I need you to stay here and cover me." Yona shook her head.

"Amy, this is taking your-"

"This isn't about my crush! In case you hadn't noticed, Knuckles wasn't responding. Somebody has to do it, and I'm close enough to get there in time."

Knuckles looked at the broken radio.

"I take back everything I said about you people doing a good job." The fighters nodded. Another round of bullets came overhead.

"Well, what do we do now?" Someone asked. Knuckles promptly cuffed him on the nose.

Amy dashed between the purple figures, each one twice her size. Thankfully, they acted as she thought they would, not shooting her because she didn't shoot them.

Aleena heard a knocking over the gunfire. She went to her door and opened it carefully. A human kid fell in, holding his arm.

"Ahh." He moaned. Aleena helped him lean against a wall.

"Where is it?" she asked. He lifted his hand to show her. It was on the upper arm. She was almost sure the bullet hadn't hit an artery, but it still looked like he would bleed to death.

"They've got a doctor at the church. I'll take you there." The boy nodded and stood up to follow her.

Sonic stopped his incessant foot tapping. The sounds of metal feet falling were drawing closer. He looked at his siblings. Manic pointed to himself and then pointed forward. The green hedgehog walked to a mound in front of them and crawled to the top, barely poking his head over. He jumped down as a bullet went over his head.

"Bad news, dudes. Robot coming right for us, and he can shoot worth spittle."

"How far?" Sonia asked.

"Only a few mounds. We need to scram now."

"We circle around it, head towards the town, and hide in a building. We might be able to lose it, and hopefully some of the other kids can take it out while it's distracted with us." Sonia said.

"Sounds like a plan, now let's go." Manic said. They started running to the edge of the mounds, away from where they knew the robot was.

Crack

The bullet went where they had been seconds before. They didn't even bother trying to think, they just ran.

Amy panted as she tried to weave through the mounds. She had already seen the robot go into the mounds; she would be too late. When she saw her hammer, lying where she had left it under Knuckles' orders, she grabbed it without hesitation.

Crack

Crack

Crack

"Freeze." They stopped in front of a mound, and slowly turned to face the machine. It was the most anthroid one any of them had seen. It looked purely like a human wearing some archaic form of plate armor, a triangular grill covering where its mouth would be. It didn't have claws or other built-on weapons, just an unusually large, rectangular gun that it was pointing at them. There was a short groan, and then the Robotnik began speaking through it again.

"I am sure that if I was to meet you, you would have had absolutely wonderful personalities and characteristics, but that was not the way the world turned.

Instead, you were born with the intent of assuming supreme executive power through no skills or effort of your own, to help perpetuate a broken, corrupt society. You were cut off from that, but then you chose to try and take apart the more stable system for no reason I can find.

If you were to continue your course of actions uninterrupted, the world would eventually reach its breaking point and collapse back into barbarianism. What I am doing is not personal, simply what I must do.

And this time I don't think anyone will be coming to save you, at the last second, seeing as they are busy fighting already. I especially doubt it would be with a…"

"SLEDGEHAMMER?" The machine turned to see who had yelled, and Amy took the opportunity to bring down her hammer on the robots gun. The weapon bent from the blow, and the robot threw it away. A small gun popped up from the robot's right wrist, and it lifted the arm to point at Amy. She ducked as the arm stopped, barely dodging the bullet.

"no, No, NO!" The Robotnik yelled. Everything was going wrong for his machines. Devastator grabbed at the hedgehog attacking it, lifting her up by her neck.

"Gah!" Amy yell as she swung at the machine's arm. She hit the shoulder, crumbling the metal plate inward. The whole arm seemed to die, falling limp and letting her out. She scrambled behind the robot, as it began to turn. A gun came out of its left wrist, and it pointed it at all the hedgehogs in front of it.

"Die!" The Robotnik yelled, but a stream of glowing bullets slammed into the robot's left shoulder. At first they did nothing, but they slowly began to go through. The stream stopped as the arm fell down uselessly besides the robot.

Amy turned to look at their savior. It was Sonic, pressed against the mound, holding a tracer to his shoulder. He stood up and walked in front of the crippled robot and looked it in the face. There was a whirring as the robot looked down at him.

"Hey, 'Botnik. How you doing?" The machine didn't answer. "Does this mean I can talk? Good. Now, you've been going to a lot of effort to kill me and my buds, 'cause you think we're these big time crazy rebels." Sonic shook his head for effect.

"But we're not. I was just the singer in a rock band until you came and tried to kill me. All that "heir to the throne" stuff? I get it, but I just don't care. Now, you on the other hand? That I care about.

You're a loon! You get the first inkling about us being the heirs and you totally lose your mind. You're going to all this work to kill us, when I know you could be doing something worth it. I wasn't going to be a rebel. But after this," Sonic pointed to the robot. "Sending some insane super-prototype just to kill me…"

Sonic shoved the machine to the ground and jumped onto it, putting his face over its, and yelled:

"I will fight you! I will take apart everything you've built! Even if it makes the world burn, you would have burned it in the end just to feed your ego! I will break this cage you've built to keep everyone in, and I won't be the person you tried to mold me as with your system!

I'll be the rebel!"

Tails head twitched away from the door as he heard someone come again.

"Kid? Are you there?" Tails picked up the microphone and answered.

"Yeah."

"He wants specifics."

"Who?"

"Who do you think?" Tails mouth dropped. The king was asking him about something? How did he answer? What if he got it wrong?

"Just answer already." The person on the other end yelled.

"Sorry. Okay, First I met the Mobians, and they weren't here for any violent reason…"

Aleena helped the boy over to the old fox, who led him down to the basement of the church.

"Thanks, miss." The boy said before he fell unconscious. One of Aleena's friends from the town grabbed her and showed her a seat.

"That was so brave of you. Staying out there to help him…" She was cut off by the purple hedgehog.

"I need to leave."

"What?"

"I was recorded by some robot helping one of the rebel's here. I'm his enemy now. I need to leave, no, I need to be thrown out." She felt bad about lying like that, but it wasn't horribly untrue. It would have been enough to get her in trouble if she wasn't already marked for death.

"You'll come back after the battle's over, right?" Aleena could only shake her head.

"I've waited long enough. There are just things I need to do. I will come back when I can, but it will be a while."

"I see." That last note was filled with melancholy. Aleena was amused by the foxes reactions to the day. Invading robot army? Fine. Injure kids being pulled through a church? Fine. Friend willingly leaving? Whatever will I do?

Aleena went over to the church door and grabbed one of the tracers carelessly left on the ground. She picked it up and ran out, dodging to the side of the door as soon as she left. She watched the doors close, and then began heading back to her house to pick up her gear.

"…um, 'Botnik?" Draggo asked tentatively.

"Robotnik!"

"Robotnik?"

"What?"

"Why aren't you doing anything?"

"I'm thinking." Draggo just gulped. He knew very well how tenuous his position was, and he also knew what it would be like to have to work in one of the Robotnik's factories.

He couldn't understand, however, why the Robotnik was acting so scared, no, terrified of a single hedgehog that had suddenly got an attitude.

"Truly, they are the three." The Robotnik whispered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Oh. Bye the way, what color was the Queen again?"

"Purple."

"Now, I've never seen her but, there is this purple hedgehog I'm seeing on this screen, and she's like, forty something, so not really someone who could have been with the rebels."

The Robotnik shrieked.

Sonic turned to his companions.

"How's it going back in town?" He asked. Amy took a few seconds to realize she was supposed to answer. She just wanted to hug him for being alright.

"Not good." She finally said. "Robot's are keeping everyone's heads down, so they can't shoot."

"They need a little diversion, I guess?" Sonic asked. Everyone with him wondered why he was grinning.

"Yeah…"

"We're going in."

"What?" Sonia and Manic yelled in unison.

"That's insane." Manic said. "We are going into a fight we were specifically told not to? No way." Sonia was about to add on, but stopped herself as she thought about it.

"He's right." Manic looked at his lost support. "We only need to distract some of the robots long enough for another group to take them out. We need to act as a diversion."

"Didn't Knuckles say…" Manic tried to counter.

"They already know we're here. They'll come eventually." Sonic nodded.

"Well, let's rock and roll." He said. Sonia and Amy nodded, and Manic was left with all three of them looking at him.

"Guess I got no choice, now do I?" Shrugging, he followed the as they charged into the fray and then paused to grab one of the ammo bags.

Aleena crawled into the house, ducking below the aim of the robots. A human was already there, but no one else.

"Shouldn't you be in groups?" Aleena asked.

"Hans was hit. They're taking him back to the Shanks." Aleena nodded and looked around for another exit, but there was only the one she had come in by, meaning she was stuck. She looked over to the human, who was shivering at the current silence.

"What's your name?" she asked, hoping to strike up a conversation.

"Yona. Yona Navreen."

"Mine's Aleena Needleson. I'm a local."

"Where'd you get the gun?"

"It was a loose one at the church. I wanted to fight."

"Why?"

"Ivo killed my husband."

"Who?"

"Ivo Regoban. He calls himself 'The Robotnik' now, right?"

"Oh." Yona said quietly.

"What about you?"

"I just kinda' ended up here. I mean, I dragged my friend, Amy, whose a hedgehog by the way, to a bar, and we saw this band and then she got a HUGE crush on the guitarist, who was another hedgehog of course, and she pulled me to this concert they were doing, but then a bunch of cop-bots showed up out of nowhere and said they had to die, and made everybody else leave, but then Amy gives this big speech about how wrong it is and charges in with a sledgehammer-"

"Um, can you hurry up a bit?"

"Okay so there was this big fight, and after it was done this echidna said the Robotnik would kill everybody and led us up here, and there was also something about the princes and princess but he didn't say all that much. What?" Yona looked at Aleena's blank face.

"He wasn't after me." Aleena whispered.

"What?" Aleena grabbed Yona by the shoulder.

"He said the heirs were here? Who did he say they were?"

"The band."

"The blue, green, and pink ones? Did he say that?"

"Yeah. It's 'cause they have these weird necklaces…"

"Oh, God." Aleena said, leaning back. Her kids were alive but Ivo's robots were chasing them. She could only hope they were alright.

"We won't last much longer." A human with a purple headband yelled.

"Shaddap." Liza yelled. "You remember how we fought back home? When someone tried to take our turf, we kicked them out. The Sharks? Out. The Jets? Out. Well think of this as our turf, and those robots are on it."

"If we give them a target they'll tear us to bits."

"We wait for them to turn. When they do we'll hit 'em so hard they won't know who did. You got me?"

"Yes." The human squeaked.

"Good." From outside, they heard the rate of gunfire suddenly pick up and someone yelling.

"Hahaha. That's the best you got? That's right turn to face me." Liza grinned as she stood up in the window and began firing indiscriminately at the robot's backs, along with the rest of her gang that were still with her.

Sonia nodded as some of the robots fell without having been shot by her or the people with her.

"Hey, sis, can you come with me?" She turned to look at Manic. Funny, how comfortable he was with calling her "Sis" after only a few months of knowing each other. She really could only consider him a friend at most.

"Why?" she asked.

"Some people are going to have used up all their ammo. I need back up for handing this out."

"What about Sonic?"

"Ah, let him be a hero for a little bit. 'Sides, I'd like someone with a cooler head. Come on." They began to work their way into the town.

"What about the people right there?"

"Do ya' remember that Liza girl I mentioned once?"

"Oh. Old girlfriend."

"Heck no. Gang boss, a real nasty, vindictive one. I've robbed her more times than I can count."

"Why?"

"Food, okay? I need to eat, they need to eat, and we can't both get it."

"That's all you did before you met us?"

"Pretty much." Sonia stared at her brother for a few seconds, trying to understand how he could live from one stolen meal to the next, and having to survive violent criminals. "What?" Manic asked, looking back at her.

"Nothing." She said, shaking her head. They continued into Knothole, ready to aid the battle.

Sonic and Amy made their way into the house, checking its occupants. It was almost the worst people he could meet.

"Oh look. It's mister 'gang filth'. We all remember him don't we?" The rest of the gangsters with Liza nodded very slowly.

"Hey. Try to kill me later." Sonic replied. "We've still got a few robots to handle. Can you take care of things on this end?"

"More than you can." All of the gangsters laughed.

"What?" Amy asked.

"Ah, never mind." Liza said. "It wasn't that funny anyways. Alright boys, you heard the king, we're moving out."

"I'm not the-"

"Well there's only two boy heirs, right? Someone has to be king, right? You're the only ones who could be." Liza waved as she and the rest of her gang moved off to the next house. Sonic nodded to Amy, and they went back across the street.

Knuckles and his fighters fired another volley into the robots outside. Someone appeared to have broken the machines' concentration on their point, giving him the chance to take out a whole squadron of cop-bots. He heard a coughing and turned to see Manic and Sonia stumble into the house.

"Happy birthday: Ammunition for everybody!" Manic threw down the bag and ducked, with Sonia following him, Knuckle ducked below the window as another round of bullets came overhead.

"What are you doing?" Knuckles barked. "I told you-"

"One of the robots found us anyways." Sonia said.

"Damn. Where is it?"

"Scrapped in the mounds." Manic said.

"You still shouldn't have-"

"Somebody needed to." Sonia said. "And we were the only ones able to. Us three and Amy.

"Who?"

"The one with the crush on Sonic."

"Oh. Why was she there?"

"She knew the robot was coming for us. She saved our live actually."

"I see. Where's Sonic?"

"Causing a distraction."

"Idiot. Manic, Sonia, stay in here while we push in. I think we're finally managing to push back the machines, but I still need you alive. Got it?"

"Yes, mom." Manic said.

"Good. Come on kids, we're moving out." Manic and Sonia watched Knuckles and his fighters leave, and then turned to each other and nodded. Grabbing their guns, they poked their heads out of the window and began firing.

Sonic yelled as he fired into the metal horde, watching them fall from the gun-fire of the freedom fighters that held the city. They fired bullet after bullet and emptied clip after clip, but finally, by the end of the day, the last of the cop-bots in the city had been destroyed.

Author Note: That part with Scrat and the radio? most important part I planned for an "OC". by the way, they're mostly references to other series, and just there to fill up minor roles. I'll be trying to correct my more obnoxious OC usage as I go on. R&R Please!