Sonic Ballistic

by Shblue

A few years after Sonic & Knuckles, Dr. Robotnik returns with a raging yet calculated vengance to conquer Mobius and punish Sonic forever. What seems like an ordinary adventure at first will slowly transform and change everything Sonic knows about being a hero. - Childhood fangame idea reimagined as a hardcore epic, and depicted in text. Finished 2010, uploaded here first.

2. Sonic Ballistic, Part 1

Sonic Ballistic

Story Background

This story takes place a few years after Sonic & Knuckles and is the 'true' Sonic 4 in this timeline. All games up until Sonic & Knuckles are canon (except Sonic CD) but only the events of Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles are important. No other Sonic media is canon.

Since Dr. Robotnik's last defeat by Hyper Sonic at the Doomsday Zone, the doctor has completely disappeared, finally leaving Mobius in peace. The anthropomorphic Mobians, free from Dr. Robotnik's onslaught and enslavement into robotic servitude, developed a new civilization centered at Grand City, where most of them now live. Sonic and Tails have got a little bit older and mostly spent their free time exploring Mobius. A few days before the story begins, Sonic goes to meet up with Tails at his house, only to find a letter Tails wrote for him, hastily nailed to the door. Sonic reads it and runs towards Blue Hill.

Please see the General Game Information in the Introduction if at any point you are unsure of what is being referred to in the game explanations.

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Part 1

The screen fades in from black. Sonic runs on screen and is now able to be controlled by the player.

Every Act begins with a title card designed to reflect the style of the stage which displays the name of the Stage and the Act number. It slides on-screen, stays still, and slides off-screen in about 3 seconds. And so the first title card appears:

Blue Hill [Act 1 and 2] (1/1)

This is the introduction level. It has no enemies nor anything that will hurt Sonic. Its first objective is to present the most basic mechanics: running and jumping. Its second objective is to portray these mechanics as tools to overcome obstacles that are, in this case, literally in the way. As the game progresses, skill in these two mechanics, collectively known as 'platforming', will become increasingly important.

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For Act 1, the background music slowly comes in with a deep, low bass making slow revolutions. The squares bumble their way in lazily. Sloppy hi-hat hits slip in every now and then, with a rhythm akin to someone dragging their feet.

After a while, as the sun rises, the beats pick up. Fresh snares come in and the leading synths get more spritely and jazzy. The bass still does its own thing, slowly coming into focus.

As more sounds of vibrant, interesting texture and sexy drums are thrown in, keeping apace to the jumpy rhythm, the golden melody shines through just as the sun fully reveals itself from the obscuring horizon. It remains at this speed, with the instruments harmonizing and building off each other through the verses. Once the chorus hits, the hook explodes out with assertive chords that are then each taken and made into catchy subphrases that match with the running bounciness of the backing rhythm.

Act 2's background music will be introduced in the same way, except the instruments will come to full play in a shorter time, and their sounds have greater certainty from the start, as well.

Near the end of both stages, the drums will pick up speed and the crescendos will become less catchy and more harmonious. It would feel slightly "liquefied" as opposed to the "solid" strikes of the original chorus. This is an anticipatory signal of the stage's end, balancing out the comely introduction which opened it up.

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Sonic runs forward. The sun rises slowly over a gently rolling hill covered with blue grass and broad-leaved trees. Entering Blue Hill, he is presented with a variety of simple geological obstacles to dash through easily. There are boulders in the way to hop over, as well as small chasms that require running leaps to cross, but it is mostly flat ground. As Sonic climbs the hill, the slope gets increasingly steeper until he needs to jump off rock faces to climb the final cliff, but he never loses speed. A few of the rocks are fragile and will break when he lands on them or spindashes through them.

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Sonic holds a note he found at Tails' house which says, "Come quick. Blue Hill top. Serious situation. Will explain on arrival. -Tails"

The words are curiously serious and he's interested in what they mean. But he is carefree, bounding towards his destination effortlessly. The ground blurs underneath him. The blue grass flies by so fast it seems like Sonic is running on water. The world is nothing to his feet. He jumps through an overhanging boulder, splitting it into pieces. He lands on a flat ledge and looks backwards, seeing all the land he once ran over. He remembers every span of distance he ran across in his life...

Sonic is shot in the ears with an earsplitting bang. A gun. A gun?! It came from the clifftop. A moment afterwards, he hears a scream.

"Sonic!" Tails cries.

He is already running at full speed. He rockets up the ledges on the final stretch of the cliff and lands onto the flat hilltop. He sees Tails, pushed down on the ground, his mouth taped over, his limbs tied and aggressively locked down by motionless robots, their electric eyes glaring at nothing. Egg Robos. He sees the gun, its silver flashing in the morning sun. He already knew who. Who else? His eyes tracked up the arm to the man holding it.

"Robotnik!" Sonic shouted.

"You. You. It is you." Robotnik grumbles.

Sonic is unsettled by the response. Robotnik is nearly gritting his teeth, he's steaming so furiously. Sonic tries to ignore it. "Get that thing off Tails' head, or I'll..."

"Four times," Robotnik impedes. "You trounced me... four times! Every robot! Every weapon! And everything else you did! I was stupid. As carefree as you were. No more. I have had enough of my losses!"

Sonic snapped back, "It is really sad, isn't it! You never learn to give up – 'cause I'll take you down every time you try something stupid, like now. If you don't get that... that damn thing off of him, I'll buzz your arm off for you!" He scowled, but kept his distance. He could stop him, but this was new, and that was Tails, and that was a gun...

"No, Sonic. You will do nothing. I am sick of playing your kiddy games and losing... losing like an idiot! I am the world's greatest genius! Because of you, I forgot such an obvious thing... but that's the past, the past..."

Robotnik starts smiling. "This is how my genius plan begins, right here, right now. You, this mangy little pup, and your stupid world of peace are going to die, slowly, very, very slowly... and I will win. Heh. Haha. Ahahaha!" He lifts the gun as he laughs to himself.

Sonic loses patience, bored of tapping his feet. "Are you done now?!"

He charges at Robotnik, but is stopped by a new type of Egg Robo. In a blur it sidestepped in front of Robotnik. It resembles Robotnik to a much greater degree than the other Egg Robos did. It was his exact height and body shape, its metallic armor designed exactly like the red and black suit Robotnik always wears. Yet as an Egg Robo, it carries a jetpack and a holster for its beam gun.

"Egg Hunter, keep Sonic at bay." Robotnik commands.

Egg Hunter rams and knocks Sonic back, who's still unused to this new degree of enemy speed. Robotnik turns around to his Egg-o-Matic, his typical one-seater modular vehicle. This version is slightly larger and has a door on the side. Robotnik nonchalantly opens the door, then turns around again, grabs and picks Tails off of the ground with one arm as the two Egg Robos moved aside. He carelessly tosses Tails against the backseat. All the while Sonic tried to get close but Egg Hunter repeatedly blocked and pushed him away. How was it so fast? Robotnik was moving so slow!

Robotnik climbs in as Sonic finally gets a chance to slip past. Just as Sonic gets close, the Egg-o-Matic rises just out of his jumping range.

Robotnik turns over the door and looks down at Sonic."My final plan is perfect and absolute, so masterfully conceived that I have planned for your every possible action. Your very reality shall fester and decay into fetid chunks from your inside, out, and you will squirm and scream to the very end until you beg me to kill you. This is the end, Sonic. You are a hero no longer." He turns his head and starts laughing quietly to himself.

He then zips into the distance just as Tails wriggled his way to the edge. Sonic snorts, noting him fly towards the red mountain across from other side of the hilltop.

He then turns around, seeing Egg Hunter standing still, as he thought he was doing. Its eyes were flashing colors, but stopped when it saw Sonic turn. The two Egg Robos pulled up their guns. As they did so, he hears a dozen or so rockets pop and fly off behind him, and turns his head to see eighteen more Egg Robos launch out of the jungle between Blue Hill and the mountain. In seconds, they land one by one around Sonic.

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Blue Hill [Boss]

This is the introduction boss. Its objective is to introduce combat. In Sonic Ballistic, this involves two components: evading and attacking.

A new mechanism (although it was always available) is the spindash, where Sonic will curl into a ball on the ground, make himself spin in place, charge his spin such that he rotates even faster, and lets loose, rolling across the ground. When in spinball form, he will initially move at a speed related to how much he charged his spin, to a maximum limit. When Sonic jumps, he will also be in spinball form.

Any object which is weaker than his spinball will be destroyed instantly as he passes through it with a spindash or bounces off of it with a jump, typically exploding into various pieces, releasing a small animal inside. Objects which are stronger than his spinball will be partially damaged, and this damage will be hereafter referred to as a 'hit'. Strong enemies and some objects require several hits before being destroyed. Some objects may not even be affected at all by the spinball, but these will mostly be environmental objects and hazards, and not enemies. If an enemy runs into Sonic as he charges his spindash in place, this also counts as a hit.

If the player tries to make Sonic jump again while already in the air, Sonic will project his air shield (as in Sonic 3 & K). The air shield is the same distance from Sonic's spinball form as before and likewise does a single hit of damage to enemies. In this game, it can also deflect all weak attacks and projectiles. It is not necessary to learn to beat the game.

If Sonic is hit by an enemy attack or environmental hazard at any time including in spinball form, he will be hit.

In evasion from attacks, the safer method is to run, jump, or roll away, but Sonic may not always have the space to do so. If he judges where the attack is going, he can jump over or roll under it, too.

In order to maximize both safety and strength in battle, the player must learn the skill of observing the enemy's attacks, evading those attacks as they come, and striking immediately after when the attack is over and the enemy is most vulnerable. As the game progresses, enemies and bosses will become increasingly aggressive and the player must adapt to prevail.

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On that hilltop at the peak of Blue Hill, overlooking the dense jungle and mountain ahead of him, Sonic finds himself completely encircled by 20 Egg Robos. Each one is persistent and will not cease attacking until it is destroyed.

An Egg Robo's attacks consist of:

- firing a directed, pulsed concentration of energy from its beam gun,

- punching once with its free hand when near Sonic,

- or launching 1 of 2 very slow-moving homing missiles from its backpack, which can be destroyed if attacked.

They will randomly move close and far from Sonic, including flying into the air (within jumping distance). One Egg Robo ceases functioning after two hits.

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Egg Hunter fights in much the same way, however:

- his pulsed beams and missiles move quicker,

- he fires 3 beams one after another instead of just one at a time,

- he fires 2 out of 8 missiles,

- and his punch is not a simple jab but a 3-hit combo that stunlocks Sonic (keeps him stuck, unable to recollect rings, until the combo is finished).

He moves twice as fast as the other Egg Robos and tends to move to Sonic's blind spot. He goes down after eight hits in total.

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Fortunately, they don't all attack at once. Instead, the battle progresses in waves:

Wave 1: 1 Egg Robo

Wave 2: 2 Egg Robos

Wave 3: 2 Egg Robos

Wave 4: Egg Hunter (two hits before retreating)

Wave 5: 3 Egg Robos

Wave 6: 4 Egg Robos

Wave 7: Egg Hunter (two hits) and 2 Egg Robos

Wave 8: 5 Egg Robos

Wave 9: Egg Hunter (four hits) and 1 Egg Robo

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Torch Temple [Act 1] (1/2)

This level is where enemies start regularly appearing outside of boss battles. However, there will not be extended descriptions of enemy types or their locations in this manual. Unless stated otherwise, from now on every act has enemies. Additionally, the enemies reasonably fit the level's theme and difficulty in their types, positions and numbers.

There are many enemies from previous acts and Sonic games that may appear unexpectedly in addition to the new types. Nearly all enemies will attack Sonic on sight or otherwise defend a position from him, but there are a few who are malfunctioning or who even wander around peacefully. While uncommon, especially in the beginning of the game, there are a few 'elite' units which are stronger and slightly smarter than their counterparts. They will chase or hunt Sonic down through the act, even to the boss, as long as the path is clear. When destroyed, they release power rings instead of animals and the stronger they are the more they release, up to a maximum of 20 rings. Rarer than elites are 'allies' who actually help Sonic fight back their metal kin, but they are not 'elite' strength and they appear even less often in later levels.

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All of the instruments are purely percussive, on every side of the frequency spectrum. They thump out a sound like the steps of a fierce predator, pouncing and chasing the player with sheer power and speed. They are repetitive, with few changes, but they are entrancing with their natural sound.

Once Sonic enters the caverns, all sound stops. After a short period, a sole, distant drum hits once. It echoes for a long time, giving an impression of an endless expanse in space. It hits two times, the sounds reverberating off each other.

In the underground ruins, more drums pick up from the darkness. They have a steady pace, although the lead teeters between the new voices. They speak a tale reminiscent of people. A people who are fighting for their lives. The sounds are desperate. They are longing.

Whenever Sonic enters a room with a mosaic that tells the story of the ancient past, the drums will quiet down. The silence of the cold room seeps in. From this gargantuan abyss, a voice of completely alien form calls out. It holds pitches and then, as if without cause, spontaneously skitters across the shadows. It is without melody, without direction. It seems to howl. It sounds in pain. It coughs and shutters, then it falls. Yet it still whispers under this pressure, as the drums speak on without concern. It takes a breath, says a few more words, and vanishes again.

In the thin, dark cavern near the end, the one drum, in an instant, rattles itself and slowly trails off into the threatening environment. It plays an eerie, imposing sound, warning the player of danger ahead.

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Sonic jumps off of the other side of Blue Hill's summit and starts the level running down the nearly vertical rock cliff on the other side. Blue Hill sits right next to a deep valley filled with a dense jungle, surrounded by a ridge of dark red mountains. Within seconds the cliff curves and evens out as Sonic dashes into the shade of the tall and entangled flora.

Half of the first act will be navigating these woods and the rapidly moving rivers within. Although his path is fairly unobstructed, Sonic can easily jump over all of the fallen trees and rocks in his way. The rivers' currents will crush Sonic against the large bedrocks if he's not careful, so he might find it safer to cross them using the trees' branches instead of risking a running leap. Robotnik's robotic minions are all on scouting duties and do not notice Sonic unless he gets very close to them.

Upon arriving at the mountain, he will find an entrance in a cave at the base, with trees and brush cleared out of the way as if it was frequently used. Mixed with the cut timber swept to the side is rubble of hewn stone which bare engraved markings. Smaller bits of the rubble are strewn about the cave's entrance and it seems there was once a solid stone door there.

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The cave has a flat floor and the walls smoothly curved around in an oblong shape, as if mechanically dug. The light of the sun falls into pitch-black shadow which is lit up in even increments by torches carved out of the walls. Their flames blur together as Sonic speeds through the cave with nothing in his way. The cave slopes down, curves around, and continues for quite some time.

After a little less than a minute, somewhere far underground, the cave suddenly opens up to thrice its size. Before Sonic is a facade of an ancient temple with abstract religious decoration cut into the rock, vividly expressed with great light and shadow from four large torches against the facade. He follows the tiled stone floor within, past fallen columns and broken structures of some old, unknowable purpose. The temple is divided by rectangular chambers which are identical except for the wide mosaics on the walls. They are dusty and fractured but as Sonic walks from room to room what he can make out seems to depict a story. Somehow, he is reminded of the mosaic in the Sky Sanctuary (as seen in Sonic & Knuckles).

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- The first mosaic shows a large circle made of concentric rings around a messy knot of erratic zig-zagging lines. Short and flat across the bottom is a series of vertical shapes that resembles a large city.

- The second shows many horizontal lines of people walking close together through many small tunnels.

- The third shows two landscapes split by a horizontal line. The one above contains nothing but fire. The one below is clearly a city, with many people standing at the bottom, their heads turned upwards.

- The fourth shows the tunnels again, but at the right side they all connect to a single space filled with fire. Anthropomorphic figures of smoke run the other way through the tunnels, brutally killing with fists, knees, and choking grips all the people that remain in the tunnels with them.

- The final room is the most ruined with holes in the walls and large piles of rubble. The last mosaic shows a line of people on the bottom kowtowing towards something in the center which was replaced with a large hole in the wall. On longer inspection, most of the cracks in the wall seemed to focus right on this point, as if someone had smashed the depiction out of spite. Despite this, halos and rays radiated from it across the entire mosaic and are even marked across the ceiling, floor, and the other walls. Sonic walks closer, and he sees the people in this one were portrayed with very shaky lines and a grotesque anatomy of tiny heads and large feet and legs. The mosaic pieces themselves were very irregular. Sonic feels an uncanny unease looking at this one in particular.

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The following chambers have no mosaics and were similarly dilapidated. Although he notices a few stone doors, Sonic keeps going straight until he comes to a small square antechamber at the end with walls of 4 columns each around a small, broken offering table in the center. The torches are out in this room, but the room is still lit by a red glow coming through the small open doorway at the end.

Walking through it, Sonic enters an obsidian cavern with a cramped width not much larger than the doorway itself, which yet stretched out high above, below, and into the shadows of the distance. He finds that he is standing on a small ledge next to this thin chasm. Crossing the length is a plank bridge with thick ropes and wood. It is so narrow that it had less than an arm's length of swinging room to each side of the cavern. Sonic looks over the edge and sees the red glow flicker dimly from a gurgling stream of magma far below. He then looks above and sees the shadow of the bridge stretch up into a line of pure darkness obscuring the ceiling, if there even is one.

As Sonic steps onto the first plank, the ropes stretch and creak under his weight, and continue doing so with each step. Sonic walks across undeterred, holding his balance. After a short while, he coughs. The sound echoes loudly, sharply. As he walks, he notices the oddly straight geometries of the cavern walls, the polished stone edges sharply laid over each other. It isn't natural, and wondering on it, a cold tingle shoots up his spine. Just then there is a pop, followed by heavy splats! He glances down. A burst magma bubble drops back into the slow flow, hot steam rising, the burst lava spilling back down the walls below. Sonic decides to hurry along. He wonders how such an ancient, simple wooden bridge could survive above lava like this. Come to think of it, is he actually inside a volcano?

That spine tingle is suddenly flooded over with adrenaline. A high-pitched squeal dully comes through the left wall and resounds through the chasm. Sonic back-steps out of caution. At once, a thin steel pole with a razor sharp point cleanly pierces through the obsidian, right where his head just was. Right after, one by one, several more poles poke out. Then the squeal stops. Sonic stands still. There are no fractures in the wall. The poles very slowly recede back into their holes. For a few seconds, Sonic waits, hearing his breath and the distant gurgle and pops below. An awful feeling of anticipation comes to fill his gut like nausea.

Between the points the poles made, a laser shoots clean through the stone and cuts out a circle in three seconds. The circular slab slides out of the wall and tips over, slapping the bridge on its way down, causing the tightly tied bridge to start bouncing rapidly. Sonic tightly grips the ropes as it flung about. A plume of fire accepts the stone and riles the magma into increased activity as it spilled over and melted it.

But Sonic stares at the hole as an eerie, bright red light glows from within, spilling into cavern over the dimmer glow of the magma. A dome-shaped metallic head bearing eight circumferential lights emerges. It then rapidly stabs out its legs into the opposite wall and begins to draw out is full, mechanical body. Revealed, it is now silent except for a steady mains hum. It looks more sinister than anything Robotnik had designed before.

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[Act 1 Boss]

The robot resembles a spider, although twice as big as Sonic. Its head is spherical with lateral notches terracing the surface in addition to the eight red lights. The head is attached to an enormous plated thorax which it lifts above itself, suspended from the walls by the eight, thin steel legs. Through the plates is a glow from its internal engine, which shines more brightly out of its glass underside facing away from Sonic.

Its attacks are:

- 'running' across the walls to ram into Sonic (this is a good chance to roll underneath and attack its engine from behind),

- stabbing at Sonic once with one leg,

- stabbing at Sonic one leg after another in a scattershot pattern,

- firing and briefly sweeping its laser from the engine towards Sonic when he is behind it,

- and moving below the bridge to attack Sonic from below with all attacks stated above but the ram. It has a 50% chance of doing this every 3 hits. If it stabs through a plank on the bridge, it will then toss it down into the lava. While the bridge is quite long, it is possible for every plank to be removed and at that point Sonic should be on the other side or else be marooned.

After eight hits against its glass-covered core, the engine will explode from within, breaking the thorax apart and scattering the head and legs around until they fall into the lava below.

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[Act 2]

At the other side of the obsidian cavern is an identical entrance into another stone temple. The rooms within are shorter and less in number, but otherwise the same. At the end of the semi-symmetrical half, he enters a long and taller hallway with large columns and hanging bowls holding flames. He notices many doorways as he runs by, most of which are firmly sealed shut by doors of solid stone. Through a small square hallway he passes into a series of a new type of room which is gently lit by both flickering torches and the warm, steady glow of the square pools of lava. Lava pours into those pools in honey-like lavafalls from cut obsidian aqueducts that slope through the walls from room to room. A few of them are separated by more square hallways or vertical stairwells which lead to similar series of rooms.

While at first the temple's directed lava flow is out of his way, Sonic soon finds it obstructing his path. Although he can jump over the small lava pools, he cannot pass the larger pools or any of the lavafalls in his way. He must backtrack and take a path on a different level. Generally, the lower floors are larger but also have more room space carrying lava, and conversely the higher floors have less lava but are smaller. There are only 4 floors, however, and more than once Sonic will find each is a dead end. If he follows the lava flow backwards, he will come to a point in a room on some floor where he'll find destroyable rocks blocking the preferable flow path. Usually, these rooms have lava spilled all across the floor, and it's essentially a game of 'the floor is lava' to jump from the small islands to the target.

As Sonic goes deeper, he will find the temple sections broken up by large magma caverns. The caverns are dotted with islands of rock connected by wooden bridges at first, but later on Sonic will have to hop from island to island. There are a few stone bridges, but nearly all of them crumble into the lava just as Sonic walks on them.

He will come across a second large hallway, this one with streams of lava spiraling down each of the columns giving it a radiant glow. There are many aqueducts sloping back and forth above him as well, some of which carry lava and some which don't. Sonic should find a spot to jump onto the lowest empty one and make his way to the top. The next room is the largest magma cavern so far, and without any islands or bridges the only way across is a single empty aqueduct that Sonic will roll down in spinball form until he lands running on the other side.

Sonic re-enters the darkness of the cave tunnels, but here they are much more irregular and organic. The torches become more and more sparse as he goes forward, jumping across pits made from sharply angled slabs of rock and running through the flatter parts. The pits become increasingly difficult to leap over as the darkness wins over light in the space. At the end he finds himself by the last torch on a ledge overlooking a very large pitch-black drop of which the torch light only hints at its true depths.

He leaps in.

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[Act 2 Boss]

The hole smoothly narrows as he falls before opening into a very wide, vacant magma chamber. Vents that break through the ceiling carry with them beams of bright noon sunlight thin and wide from the unseen world far aboveground. The light splashes across jagged walls and a crusty, ashy floor.

As Sonic's eyes adjust, he sees the bright, contained, artificial light from a halogen lamp above the blue-gray sheen of a large metallic door on the distant wall of the chamber. He starts walking towards it when halfway across an alarm somewhere starts blaring and a bright orange beacon next to the lamp starts rapidly spinning its light over all the others.

The door swiftly swishes open and a mechanical behemoth trots out. A single robotic eye stares out from a small head in the upper-center of the torso. The robot is a slowly moving biped with giant piston-arms loaded onto the grate frame of an unfinished pipe-and-skeleton body. It bobs up and down on its pressurized, gliding parts. It does not change its pace as it approaches Sonic.

Its attacks are:

- approaching Sonic and throwing several slow consecutive "punches" either:

-.-.- high (Sonic can duck),

-.-.- or low (Sonic can jump);

- pounding the ground to dislodge chunks of rock from the ceiling,

- and charging up both piston-arms for a double "punch" attack that blows a strong shock wave against Sonic, who must run against the wind even if he avoids the punch, or be sent hurtling into the opposite wall.

Sonic can only attack after the last attack as it loses energy to move for a moment. Within the time it takes to hit it twice, it will regain steam. If Sonic attacks it at any other time, it will block his attack with its steel arms. It can be attacked anywhere on the main body, and the impact of the hits will increasingly bend the grating and pipes until they break and burst part by part starting after 4 hits..

Once Sonic lands eight hits, all of the remaining pipes quickly start bursting off, blasting steam into the air, forcing the machine to fall to its knees and then collapse onto the ground. The hot, white plumes of vapor quickly dissipate through the vents towards the free sky far above.

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Biomech Base [Act 1] (1/3)

The player is greeted to the first electronic theme with rapid hi-hats and a junglist mix of kicks and snares. The tempo starts out swift and keeps a steady pace throughout. Meanwhile, cute chirps and beeps pop in and out, sometimes colluding to join in on the melody for very short periods.

The rhythm mainly comes from a sick bass that rolls around during the verses but really pounds down during the chorus. The melody comes from some electric synths that repeat a catchy phrase over and over without much deliberation. During the bridge, they pop out of their normal behavior and crackle and buzz like arcing plasma. At the chorus, while at the command of the bass, they try to escape their usual nature into a striking harmonic blast that is quickly shut down into a meager oscillation between dissonance and consonance before crystallizing back into the all-too-familiar phrase just as the rhythm turns over.

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The door had since shut during the battle, but with a quick spin attack the seemingly sturdy metal breaks out of its slot and slides across the floor ahead. The floor is cement, and so are the walls and ceiling. The space is large but uninvitingly cramped with maintenance pipes, air shafts and other hardware, lit by weak electric lights. At the end of the room is an open elevator shaft. Sonic jumps down. He breaks through the ceiling of the stationary elevator car at the bottom, and from there breaks through the thin gate ahead of him.

He enters the base. The level starts in the ventilation area that lies over the base, consisting of large fans in a tall room with rectangular sheet metal shafts leading below into the base proper. Sonic breaks through the grating on one and rolls through inside until he drops into the storage warehouse below.

The large rooms are filled with containers and all sorts of metal parts and junk, including many inactive robots that can be destroyed despite not being any threat at all. In some parts he'll need to jump from the piles onto the storage racks and then from rack to rack. Although some rack levels are empty, most aren't and he'll need to jump to a higher or lower level or spindash through the junk to move on. Eventually, he'll go through a motion-sensing sliding door into a curved passage.

The passage leads to a well-lit corridor of normal height. He'll pass all sorts of active machinery in the background, along with computer terminals and small video cameras. He destroys the weak enemies in his way, running through more of the long passages that slope and bend even to hairpin turns. He starts entering rooms consisting of greenhouses monitoring various species of flora and glass cases containing trapped fauna inside who paw at the glass as Sonic runs by, unable to find a way to free them. He can reach considerable speed from the many tightly compressed curves that propel him through the small rooms and sliding doors. The simple-minded rovers start intermingling with larger assault-minded berzerker robots, but they are only a little harder to defeat. Although the path splits into many directions, they all connect and Sonic can maintain a steady speed throughout the act.

The act ends suddenly when one of the doors he passes unexpectedly slams shut and locks behind Sonic.

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[Act 1 Boss]

The room is a long horizontal passage, with copious, interconnected apparatuses lining the walls, churning away. Aggressive automatons immediately onslaught him a dozen at a time. Sonic easily dashes through them all and frees their animal cores. His enemies keep coming at him in unorganized blitzes that leave enough room for him to simply hop over groups of them, and this includes the flying robots overhead. Just before he comes close to the end of the antechamber, the waves of enemies increase exponentially in number. At the very end of the room, Sonic finds the endless robots are being spawned from a large machine with a familiar roboticization capsule at its center.

If Sonic can make his way across the unending stream of robots, he can attack the machine that is producing them. However, it is covered by plentiful sheets of armor. One hit will cause a sheet of armor to very briefly puckle in before bouncing off the machine from the air pressure inside, which deflects Sonic momentum and throws him a little farther than where he jumped from. Of course he himself will bounce off of the heads of the robots as he flies back and he can approach in the same manner. As he knocks off more sheets of armor, the air pressure seems to increase as Sonic gets deflected even farther back.

As he picks apart the machine's defense, he may notice that of all the hundreds of robots that flood forth against him, not one has a mind of its own. No, not even one robot attacks Sonic. None of them can attack in any way but to run into him; their weapons have not been attached yet.

With the last few sheets of armor left, vapor steams out of the vents on the top of the machine. The air in the room gets hot and muggy. After eight hits, all of the armor is removed and the roboticization process stops. Consequently, enemies appear at a much slower rate and will eventually stop coming entirely.

Instead, a defense cannon rotates out from behind where the armor was and begins to lob energy shots at Sonic. While Sonic can get close and attack the cannon from underneath, he will be directly in front of the small gate from which the robots come out. It is safer to bounce off of the robots and land on top of it. It is also more effective if Sonic can stay in place bouncing on the cannon. After four hits, the cannon is destroyed and is detached from the machine.

There remains two sheets of metal of armor, and after two hits the core roboticization capsule is unprotected. However, it is invulnerable. Despite that, a metal lid pops off of the top of the capsule, revealing a button in the classic style of previous roboticizers (as in Sonic 1 and 2). By jumping on that, the machine shuts down, its walls blow off and all of the animals yet to be roboticized inside are now freed. They run and jump and fly and dance around Sonic for a short while before scampering off to escape on their own.

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[Act 2]

Behind the capsule is a door which unlocks when the capsule is opened. After exiting that room, he returns to the same style of hallways and rooms as before. However, some of the room have automated turrets which turn and fire single shots at Sonic. They take one hit to destroy. Some doors also lock shut but they can be spindashed through. There are slightly more robots, too. The connecting passages curve around even more wildly than before, and some even turn straight upwards, requiring Sonic to be fast enough to run up the vertical floors to reach flat ground.

As Sonic penetrates deeper into the fortress, he finds some of the animal holding chambers have breakable glass. Unfortunately, most of the animals and plants in these areas are already completely roboticized. However, they are roboticized to resemble their previous forms and the animal-bots do not attack Sonic, lacking the weapons, energy, or even the programming to attack him. They walk and stumble about, or lay still across the dirt that used to be the only thing that the former animals could interact with to any degree. None of them notice each other or even Sonic.

When he finally reaches the bottom of the base, Sonic finds himself in an even larger storage room, with multiple floors, garages and cells containing hundreds of Robotnik's autonomous subordinates, dormant and motionless, awaiting future command. There are also piles of junk but this time they're at least more organized and out of the way. The door at the end of this room is guarded by small team of five Egg Robos.

The passage following is flat and tighter, with mechanically more reserved walls, tightly packing wires and tubes between sheets of metal, with diagonal posts vaulting down the ceiling. There is a camera every so often, and as this narrow pathway stretches on down a steep angle it becomes apparent it is leading to a high security area. The walls are only occasionally lit by small, pulsing red lights. Traversing the door at the end of this extended corridor, Sonic enters a cube-shaped room with every surface tiled with square, metal plates. Ahead of him is another door, and to the corner is a console behind a floor-to-ceiling sheet of glass. Before he could register the sights, the door slams shut behind him.

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Sonic turns and glances at the door, which locks itself further with steel cylinders slid over each other from edge to edge. Then he hears Robotnik's cackle. He turns again, seeing Robotnik walk up from behind the glass in the corner.

"You came! I knew you would. Haha." Robotnik applauded through the glass.

"I destroyed your roboticizer and freed all of your slaves. It's over. Your forces are gone. Hand over Tails!" Sonic demans.

Robotnik was smiling. "You did me a favor by destroying them for me."

Sonic was taken aback. He hesitated a moment, then asked, "You wanted me to do that?"

"I have no need for junk. That obsolete trash takes up too much space for being unable to do anything useful at all. Besides, the weak fleshy heart of you dogs is inferior to my new power source for my superior automatons," Robotnik explained disinterestedly.

Sonic growls. He didn't want to imagine what Robotnik did to the animals after they were freed. Anger quickly boils within him.

"You're a monster... You don't deserve to live..." he finds himself saying.

Robotnik laughs. "Nothing deserves to live. Especially not you."

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[Act 2 Boss]

Sonic is unable to strike Robotnik due to the sturdy, thick glass. Sonic must instead fight several defense weapons that appear from the room's walls and ceiling to keep himself alive.

There are three consecutive tiles on the ceiling and two down the wall above the entrance door which open up for a weapon to emerge behind them. ( As reference, the faces of the cube-shaped room are divided into sixteen square tiles, four by four. Robotnik's corner is snugly fit behind a square column of glass. ) The weapons appear one at a time randomly so long as the same weapon was not used up to two 'turns' before. After a weapon finishes its attack, it retreats behind the room and the tile shuts over it.

The types of weapon are:

- Weapon #1: Auto-turret (six hits)

-.-.- The auto-turret pops out of the ceiling's center tile. It attacks identically to the automated turrets so far. That is in detail, it changes its angle so it bears on Sonic, locks that angular position, fires, then unlocks and aims again. However, its shots are larger in size, slightly faster, and it fires a volley of 5 shots instead of just 1. It can be hit anywhere.

- Weapon #2: Lock-on laser (six hits)

-.-.- The lock-on laser pops out of the top wall tile. It tracks Sonic for three seconds, stops and charges for a half-second, then fires a thin laser beam for one and a half seconds. After this, it will be finished. It can be hit anywhere.

- Weapon #3: Spike ball spinner (six hits)

-.-.- The spike-ball spinner pops out of the wall tile directly above the door. It extends a short circular core via a steel pole, stopping the core in the very center of the room. Attached to the core is the iron spike ball. The core starts spinning it clockwise. At first, it is essentially rolling around the core, but as it accelerates it extends off the core by a semi-solid, visible magnetic cord which Sonic can pass through. It accelerates and extends for four seconds until it is just about skidding across the room's sides and Sonic will basically be jumping as soon as he touches the floor for a second. Before it spends another four seconds decelerating to a stop, Sonic can spin attack the core and deal it damage.

- Weapon #4: Fire pulse cannon (six hits). ( The same weapon as used by Robotnik's submarine in Sonic 2's Oil Ocean boss fight. )

-.-.- The fire pulse cannon pops out of the leftmost ceiling tile closest to the glass shield. It extends from its tile via its snake-like body while staying parallel to the floor. It can be hit only on the cannon part. It fires with the same pattern as before:

-.-.-.-.-.- with a high shot,

-.-.-.-.-.- a medium-low shot,

-.-.-.-.-.- a medium-high shot,

-.-.-.-.-.- and a very low shot that skids the floor, creating a wave of blue fire.

- Weapon #5: Slice laser (six hits)

-.-.- The slice laser pops out of the rightmost ceiling tile and can freely rotate 360 degrees. It is in fact the same type of laser gun as the one used by the Torch Temple Act 1 spider-bot boss. Unlike the previous weapons, it can rotate as its firing, giving it the hardest attack to avoid. To avoid it, Sonic must roll under it and then jump over it as the laser sweeps just behind him. He can wall jump to slow it down, too (if the player knows how). It can be hit anywhere.

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Immediately upon destroying the last weapon, whichever two floor tiles are next to the one below Sonic's feet will quickly slide open, letting metal cuffs burst out, turn, grasp his ankles and clamp tightly. The two restraint contraptions then slide back to the entrance door, causing Sonic to yelp from the sharp pain threatening to break his ankles. The cuffs flip to the side, throwing down his balance. He just barely catches the end of his fall with his arms, only to feel the cuffs slap to the floor themselves and lock in place. Although in pain, he pushes himself to his knees and tries to turn to see his bonds. He just barely grabs them, unable to feel around them completely. Robotnik cackles again.

He jeers, "Predictable. Without your legs, you are defeated. Oh, but you can spindash out of it! Do it. Try it now. Break your own legs, send the stumps' blood slapping against the walls! Ahahahaha!"

Sonic frankly admits to himself he's scared and tries to quickly think of a way to escape, but he can only think of moving his body around and breaking the cuffs with his hands. He again twists his back and reaches for them, but his ankles scream with fiery pain.

The glass shield slides up into the ceiling. Robotnik walks out from behind the console with a handgun.

"The game is over."

As his black suit shoes clack against the floor, he polishes the gun with a handkerchief. He comes to stand above Sonic. He outstretches his arm and puts the barrel against the front of Sonic's head.

"You are just another fragile, weak creature like the helpless excuses for matter you thought you freed. You are just another number I throw into my calculations and forget about."

Sonic is wrought with intense fear. There is nothing he can do. He doesn't try to rotate his feet or twist his body or fling his arms or hide his head. He stares at the cold, white floor. It's so cold. The cold, artificial air prickling his skin, seeping within. His mind was paralyzed. Every slice of time stood on the edge of oblivion. But he didn't think of time. He didn't think at all.

Robotnik pushes the cold metal against the top of his forehead, pushing his head up, forcing Sonic's eyes to see him. He didn't look away, but only stared wide-eyed.

"Every one of my failures can be turned around by just shooting one single bullet into your little hedgehog brain."

Sonic is silent. He realizes in this moment, he can only be where he is and stare back. Over his fear he breathes out the fire of his adrenaline-charged pumping heart. The only muscle he can move is his brow, twitching it against the cascade of terror, the certainty of death. He stares over the barrel at Robotnik's darkly bespectacled eyes. Robotnik looks back at him. His moustache twitches.

For a moment, neither of them move.

Robotnik raises the arm and slaps Sonic across the face with the hard pistol. Sonic's torso is sent leaning over his side, the pain then stunning him, shooting up his bound ankles, forcing him to force his spine and weight back upright. Then he is met by a wave of throbbing pain from his cheek and jaw. Something wet, warm, trickles down his chin.

Robotnik walks back to the console. "Killing you would be efficient... but that's not the plan. No, you will suffer to a satisfactory level soon enough..."

He looks at the gun for a moment. "You could not comprehend how badly I want to kill you, right now."

He puts the gun away and leans over the console, supporting himself with extended arms. "I want you to die. You need to DIE."

He turns his head up. The two dark lens framed across his eyes seemed to absorb the light around them. They were hungry, but they were nothing but pits of darkness. Robotnik's arms shake for a brief moment, then stop. "It is fine. You will die. You will die."

Sonic feels the cold grip of fear loosen reluctantly. But then he felt again the flame of hostility that refused to be intimidated. Without thinking why, he decides he must keep his ground even if it's on his knees. "You're a coward," he spat out.

Robotnik twitches with anger. "I am disgusted by your chirpy little voice... but it will sound sweet screaming in agony. You will see the world curl over and wither into dust by my command. You will be there from the first to the last moment and at the end all you will know is my invincible willpower and intelligence. Then... then I will slowly torture you, slowly, slowly... and you will beg for me to kill you. I will refuse, beating you at my leisure. Until I'm bored... then I'll leave you to die... alone, helpless, in the new world of Robotnikland..."

Sonic actually finds it in him to laugh. "You're a child, Robotnik."

Robotnik violently slams the console, the sound reverberating across the small room. "Enough! See for yourself!"

He seemed to have pressed a button with his fist, as while he was shouting, a large, thin monitor began descending from the very edge of the tiled ceiling. He presses another, and an image of the Death Egg flashes on the screen, slowly sinking in a sea of clouds while falling apart in tiny pieces.

"It's falling!" Sonic cried.

Robotnik slams the console again, grabbing Sonic's attention. "Listen carefully, you mindless leech. I am letting it fall. It is nonoperational, so I want it destroyed, and a large swath of Mobius too. This is my 'Apocalypse'. Its engine is still powering the trajectory exhausts, which is stabilizing its descent. Very soon the engine shall run out of fuel and it will fall from its current position in the stratopause."

Sonic quickly realizes something and opens his mouth to voice it.

"Shut up and listen!" Robotnik barges in. "If you want to save Mobius from an impact explosion that will tear apart a large chunk of its fragile surface, you will destroy the entire thing within 45 minutes!"

"You madman, stop it yourself! Do you want to die, too?!" Sonic shouted. He imagines himself punching Robotnik's face into the wall, but the metal cuffs bind him tightly to reality.

"Fool, I let it fall. I want it to crash. It would be beautiful, but there is no consequence either way. Small things like this mean nothing to me." Robotnik then turned and walked to the door.

He walks through and it shuts.

"Robotnik! Robotnik, you coward! You fucking coward, aaaarrggh!" Sonic howls. "Damn it, this is insane! How can I move if-" He pulls his legs against the restraints and screams in frustration.

Suddenly, the cuffs release and he falls forward again. Surprised for a split-second, Sonic quickly gains his senses, throws his foot forward and catches himself, while wincing from the pain. He climbs on his other foot and painfully walks step by step to the door.

He enters another long corridor, but this one is lined with dozens of doors on both sides, all locked. He forces himself to start running, but Robotnik is nowhere to be seen. He tries to calm down and distract himself from the pain and thinks.

"I didn't see Tails... I really hope he's not behind one of these doors... Maybe... he sent him farther away..."

He reaches the door at the end which opens up to reveal a small vertical tube that reaches up all the way to the surface far above. He looks up at that distant, miniscule circle of light hovers in shadow barely lit by circles of tiny electric lights. Sonic jumps onto the opposing wall and then jumps off that to the other side even higher. He speeds up the wall-jumps until he builds enough momentum to run up the walls themselves. His pain fading away, he focuses on the light slowly enlarging ahead of him. To get that circle closer, faster, he runs faster, faster, and faster. Coming to the opening, he rolls into a spinball and lets his inertia carry him straight up. The warm light splashes all over him and the blowing wind swam into his lungs with the smell and feel of natural freshness free and broad.

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Falling Frenzy [Act 1] (1/4)

There is a time limit of about 44 minutes that will last from Falling Frenzy to the end of the next stage, DeadEgg. It is displayed as a timer underneath the ring count. If the time limit runs out at any time before then, there will be a cutscene showing the Death Egg's thrusters die out, the Death Egg rapidly accelerating towards the surface, and then crashing into it, causing an explosion and tidal wave of earth that wipes out a gigantic portion of Mobius, killing Sonic as well.

This Act has a recommended time clear of 6 minutes. Each act and each boss has a recommended time clear of 6 minutes and 4 minutes respectively, except for Falling Frenzy Act 2 which has a time clear of 8 minutes. To warn the player for spending more time than the recommended time clear for the currently played Act or Boss, the timer will change color.

After the time clear of 4, 6, or 8 minutes (depending on the level as mentioned), the timer changes to orange for the next 1 minute if it's an act or for the next 2 minutes if it's a boss.

After that, the timer turns red. The timer will stay orange or red unless the player can make up the lost time by the end of the next Act or Boss.

However, the timer will always be orange from "5:00" to "2:01" and red from "2:00" to "0:21". At "0:20", the timer moves to the top-center of the screen in twice the font size. At "0:05", the timer is thrice the original font size and each second ("0:05", "0:04", etc.) will rapidly change colors from white to orange to red to black from the start to the end of that particular second.

If the timer runs out, the player normally restarts the act after the cutscene. As the player may get stuck with an unbeatable time limit if there is not enough time remaining to clear the remaining levels, there are exceptions. The player will either:

- restart on the first act of DeadEgg if there is less than a total of 4 minutes for the following acts and 3 minutes for the boss,

- or restart on the first act of Falling Frenzy if there is less than 20 minutes by the time the player reaches DeadEgg.

The effect of this time limit is to challenge the player to become competent with Sonic's abilities if the player's skill has been at a novice level so far. More abstractly, it is a threshold to pass so the player can keep pace with this game's high difficulty curve.

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Chords quickly build up and then explode into the melody just as Sonic exits the pipe. The harmony fades as a rapid beat comes down. The rhythm remains the focus while the lead suddenly switches to a falling melody. It gives the impression of a lone hero fighting desperate odds.

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Sonic bursts out of the end of the pipe with a powerful leap, sending him flying high into the vast, cloudy sky. He spins through the wide blankets of cloud the color of gentle flames from the evening sun. Just as gravity catches up and he's about to reverse direction, he softly lands and rolls across a floating platform in mid-air.

The color of essentially everything in the level will change according to the colors of the sunset.

The sun is slipping towards the horizon's indefiniteness. The platform is made of a lightweight but durable chrome-coated metal reflecting the beautiful vista around him. Occasionally interrupting the shiny surface is a transparent material revealing the thin, ultra-lightweight skeletal structures keeping the platforms together. At the curved edge of every platform and at long, even intervals within them are small mechanical devices holding dimly glowing blue orbs, presumably the mechanism that kept them still in the air. Handrails lined with smoothly pulsating colored halogen lights point in the direction that leads up. As Sonic looks around him, he sees bright, floating guiding lights pulsating towards long runways floating at different altitudes, some with Robotnik's ships docked, locked down, and covered with wind shields. He guesses it is an air base.

But after quickly glancing around, Sonic's attention stays on the distant roar of thrusters and gushing wind, coming beyond the level of clouds still higher above him. He starts moving down the path.

While there are no dead ends, the platforms float in different islands, separated from each other horizontally and vertically by countless gaps (necessary to provide unobstructed passage of the high-altitude winds). The platforms themselves are usually quite long and mostly flat with a few small slopes. Only a few platforms are moving, and these ones have a simple back-and-forth path. At the edges of the horizontal layers of platforms are complexes which have the quarter-pipes and steps necessary to ascend. As Sonic climbs higher, he will have more of the lower platforms to fall upon if he does fall. He will also come across a runway every other 'floor'.

About halfway through, Sonic will find himself unable to reach the higher floor of a platform-complex. The lights pulsate around a platform's edge and up a vertical one. While it seems to be a trick, actually the platforms have a subtle pseudo-gravitational effect which will keep Sonic's feet running across it so long as he goes fast enough. Although, he will simply fall off flat non-curved edges. In any case, from that point on Sonic will find himself running up, down, and upside-down following the path, which will split into multiple directions but still lead upwards. As he dashes and curves through the air, he may even find himself on the opposite side of a platform he was on earlier. However, he must be wary not to fall off straight edges, and that if he jumps on the underside of a platform he will surely fall downwards. If he must cross a platform's gap on its underside and cannot reach the topside, he should instead build speed and spindash across the gap, if it is small enough to do so safely.

This act ends when Sonic reaches the final, highest runway, although there are more platforms still above.

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A very strong air current ominously pushes the clouds down into the air base. All of the platforms float heedlessly to the wind as humongous waves of cloud rush away. Revealing itself behind all the fluffy clouds is an immense, violent, gnashing dark storm. Yet pushing away even this growing maelstrom comes the true danger, every so often seen through the small holes torn out from the clouds. The finely engineered mechanical texture of that familiar gargantuan sphere of destruction slowly descends ever closer, bearing the power of imminent catastrophe.

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[Act 1 Boss]

There should be 38 minutes remaining. This Boss's recommended time clear is 4 minutes.

Sonic must not stop here and now but he does. The Egg Hunter stands before him. As they stand, the storm arrives. High winds tear across the platform and lightning begins its endless crackling through the dense plumes of dark cloud. It becomes difficult to see or hear, let alone keep still. Yet they stand.

A bolt strikes nearby, lighting up a figure Sonic did not see before standing behind Egg Hunter. He immediately recognizes the silhouette as Silver Sonic, but in the flashes of light he sees it is in some disrepair. Without a single sound, Egg Hunter commands Silver Sonic to attack and promptly thereafter jumps off of the edge of the runway and blasts its rockets at full power downwards away from the storm. After a few seconds, its jetpack's flames disappear into the tempest.

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The runway has just enough length for some moderate speed and space. Sonic can also uninterruptedly run to its underside from both edges, too.

Silver Sonic has all of his attacks from his battle on the Death Egg in Sonic 2:

- he can dash or spindash across the battlefield,

- he can dash through the air in a spinball,

- he can hover in the air as a spinball for a brief moment and then dash across the air while ejecting spikes in eight directions,

- and he can bounce across the ground in a spinball. Actually, he can now bounce several times.

He has twice as much range with all of these familiar attacks due to the relatively larger size of the battlefield.

He also has three new attacks:

- shooting a single laser beam from his eyes (Sonic can jump or duck to avoid it),

- dashing with high speed to deliver a rocket-thrusted punch,

- and rapid-firing shots from his finger-cannons.

Instead of attacking in a preset pattern like before, he tries to target Sonic wherever he is with whichever attack will reach, so long as it's not a repeat. The confusing environment and high winds do interfere with his targeting, but they affect Sonic just as badly. The winds can be used to his advantage, however, by using them to accelerate faster without worry of flying off the edge. However, the wind changes directions somewhat often.

After sixteen hits, Silver Sonic falls again.

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[Act 2]

There should be 34 minutes remaining. However, this Act has the longest recommended time clear of 8 minutes. The player should judge the distance from the goal as the timer constantly ticks down. This is doable as the player will always be able to tell how far Sonic is from the current goal. For this level, it will be how close Sonic is to the surface of the Death Egg, which will be completely visible in this Act.

This level introduces wall-jumping in the level design (it was always doable). To wall-jump, Sonic must jump into a vertical or nearly vertical wall, where he will stop on the spot, leaning against it. He must then jump again, although if he jumps in the opposite direction he will go higher and farther by pushing against the wall. If he doesn't jump on the wall, he'll just slide down it.

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The BGM is similar to the last Act's theme, however the beat trades its speed for intensity and the melody likewise follows suit, with a few chaotic tangents.

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The storm dissipates as quickly as it arose. The dark clouds brighten from the sun's blood-red rays before falling below and spreading away. The strong winds remain, but this time universally blow straight down. For above Sonic now is nothing but clear sky and the massive surface of the Death Egg pushing down on the air. Looking up, he sees its face, in the likeness of Robotnik, cracked and filled with holes, falling apart piece by tiny piece. The gargantuan and complicated inner structure within it is revealed by the sun's light creeping into all the fractures and gaps of Robotnik's former ultimate weapon. The exhaust released from its many engines roar loud enough to be an omnipresent, body-shaking hum.

Sonic knew that as soon as that hum quits, it would all be over.

A rectangular prism of five consecutive floors connected by a single pillar falls before him. Farther in the distance all around and above him he sees that the sky is littered with falling material flaking off of the decaying space station. Rivers of material continually collapse and fall out. He notices that he is below one such strand of junk that coincidentally is coming out from where the tear duct of the left eye would be. He tilts his head back as far as he could, but there is only the Death Egg. The sides of its massive diameter descend into shadow behind the reach of the ending day.

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Sonic has no way to reach it but to ascend using the falling detritus. And so he leaps off of the runway to a group of falling pieces of floor. From one he jumps to another, and then to another, taking care to keep pace so that he does not lose more height than he gains. These parts consist of varying shapes that test his quick judgments. Many are simple and flat, but there are also irregular shapes and composite structures requiring their own bouts of platforming to travel through. The parts may be falling straight down, right-side up, or they may be spinning in place and even moving laterally in some direction. Some even end up colliding with other pieces mid-air, altering both of their spins and directions. Sonic should take care to note any immediate collisions, especially if he is on the piece in question so as not to lose stability or even get crushed.

He lands on a small platform after the first series of jumping obstacles. Although he catches his breath, looking up he sees the rest of the floating air base is rather sparse and disconnected, probably from the falling junk crashing through it beforehand. But the string of stuff has ended and so Sonic looks for and finds another string falling by a platform parallel to his but some distance away. Fortunately, the junk is everywhere and he takes a horizontal route to his target.

There, he again jumps up through the junk until he reaches the top of the string. He spots another string, but with no platform near it he has to keep on crossing the falling parts to make it there. At the top of that string, he finds himself marooned until he spots a stable platform below but some distance away. Taking his chances, he leaps off and lands on it.

As he does, another large part of the Death Egg whooshes by him. He again looks up and sees the small parts crumbling off has led to the larger pieces losing support and crumbling off. Taking their size to his advantage, Sonic now uses the smaller, now more isolated pieces as bridges between the larger ones which have more vertical range. Some of these are so large that Sonic can even run inside them. However, he never rests as even these large ones can be spinning, upsetting his ability to jump out from their top openings. And again, even a few of these large ones crash into each other, which is particularly dangerous as the impacts can split them apart.

After a while he finds another floating platform, which he can choose to ignore if he doesn't need the breather. Either way, at this point the sun is almost gone, and the red light grays out as the blue darkness of dusk arises from the other horizon. He can no longer make out the sky above him, and barely even the edges of the vast, split face of the Death Egg glaring down at him, partly destroyed, like the approaching skull of Death. The greater part of its surface area is hauntingly falling back into shadow, except for a number of circles of flickering red light coming from the thrusters. Sonic recalls the time limit and presses on.

The path is increasingly difficult as the downward winds return to the intensity of the thunderstorm's, and exceed it. Consequently, his vertical reach is slightly diminished and the junk falls slightly faster than before. He comes to find wall-jumping as more successful in ascent than normal jumping, and starts trying to connect each wall-jump with the next to maintain momentum. It is hard, and with every mistake he finds himself dangerously losing a lot of height. Should he fall down far enough, he can find his way back to the more numerous air base platforms below, and if not those then at least the runway. While this keeps him safe from falling to his death, it is an attack on the time limit which is the other side of death.

The remaining platforms of the air-base are small, few, and far in between. But he rests on them anyway, as there are now gaps between the falling pieces as well. Impatiently he waits out for more strings of junk to cross, and gets frustrated as he notices some of them lead to dead ends in the sky, which he has no intention of getting caught in. It frustrates him all the more when he sees a platform he was aiming for being crashed into by junk and sent falling with the rest. Fortunately, this is not often due to their scarcity and small sizes.

Soon he is relieved to find he no longer needs to look up to see the Death Egg. Its surface is quite visible by just looking to his sides. Sonic is tempted to stay still and let it come to him, but he reminds himself he must explore the monster himself, and somehow find a way to destroy it from within on top of that!

And so he braves the final reach of space between him and the surface. It is not easy. Just under the immense din of the thrusters is the howl of the wind, as he has reached the region where it is most intense. His jump is significantly weakened here, which would have made it impossible to cross the large swaths of air between the scattered junk below. Here, though, the strong wind flattens the junk into [relatively] tightly-packed layers. The pieces are not spinning, and even though most of them are slammed into each other, the uniform wind keeps them [relatively] stationary. All Sonic has to do is run as fast as he can, wall-jump or jump onto higher layers whenever he spots an opening, and just keep moving.

By some bizarre miracle, on the other side of the compact layers of junk is a complete lack of wind. Parts are plentiful and fall at their normal rate. The only challenge is the lack of strings; he must make strong leaps from piece to piece which means he must concentrate the most right here. After that brief trial, he sees with incredulity and relief a floating runway, albeit a lot thinner than the ones below.

If Sonic reaches this point with less than 24 minutes remaining, the runway will be crushed into the Death Egg and he must continue using the falling junk.

At the end of the runway is a sharply angled ramp. Across its length is a still-moving conveyor belt moving quite fast. Without a pause he runs down its length, passing his barefoot full speed before dashing up the ramp and jumping off at the very end. He slices through the air and for a few joyful seconds it is nothing but ascent! He draws very close to the Death Egg, able to see the details on its surface... but it's not enough! He's still too far... he underestimated how close he'd get because of how large it really is up-close!

Without warning or event, Sonic suddenly feels gravity disappear from below and finds his flying speed somehow accelerate upwards!

In just a few more seconds, he smashes into the metal surface and untucks, instinctively running with his remaining horizontal speed. It is then he realizes and remembers that the Death Egg has an artificial gravitational field! (While deactivated when it was lifting from Launch Base Zone Act 2 in Sonic 3, it had to have its own gravity for Sonic to move as freely as he did in Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles.)

The camera will rotate at a non-dizzying, not-too-slow pace to make Sonic appear right-side up. The controls are locked as it does so because as the player holds right while Sonic is actually moving left now, the sudden stop and direction change would be very confusing.

Despite this, once the player regains the controls, the player can certainly change directions voluntarily! In fact, after a 15 second run to the right from where Sonic lands is one of the Death Egg's thrusters. This one is dead, however, and the immediate area is a mess of steel girders and chunks of metal, but if Sonic makes his way over and into the thruster, he'll find it's another entrance inside. The thruster ends abruptly in an even larger mess of junk, where it seems an explosion ripped through the thruster pipe, blocking off the fuel pipe and any other way out. But as soon as Sonic steps out of the pipe, he'll find a White Emerald shard! Finding this will end the Act and skip the Act 2 Boss, bringing Sonic directly to DeadEgg Act 1 at a position not too far from the 'normal' entrance. A first-time player doesn't need to worry about the White Emerald, however, and can ignore this secret for now.

The world enters twilight as the dying sun plunges upwards into the liquid horizon. It's surreal to see Blue Hill and the jungle and mountain of Torch Temple on the other side of the clouds on the ceiling-like planetary surface above, it too dipping into darkness. Looking across the massive but mostly featureless metallic landscape, time seems to slow down. Shadows lengthen out from the nose and broken glass-moustache of the face, stretching out in stripes from the thin and thick grooves and protrusions of the surface itself. The working thrusters seem like the last torches of hope as chunks of the new ground crack, dislodge in steps and slip out, flying straight up into the sky.

While Sonic runs across the surface looking for an entrance, he sees far in the distance a thin vertical shape. Closer, he sees it as the figure of a person. Even closer, it starts to look more and more like him, himself. Like this was all an illusion about to crack when he runs into the great mirror standing before him. But there is no mirror. Only that individual stands before him, with bright electric eyes staring mercilessly back at him.

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[Act 2 Boss]

If all went well, there should be 26 minutes remaining. This Boss's recommended time clear is 4 minutes.

For this fight, Sonic is always running to the left at a set speed and the screen is not centered on Sonic. Thus the player can move Sonic around up to the edges of the screen. If the player presses down, Sonic will roll into a spinball which will slow down until he runs into the right edge of the screen, where he will stay before automatically untucking after a second. If the player tries to spindash, pressing down will make Sonic roll and pressing Action will make Sonic jump from his roll. So, Sonic can't spindash during this fight.

Running on the ruined surface of the Death Egg, Sonic runs into Silver Sonic MKII (from Sonic & Knuckles), who immediately uses his ankle boosters to propel itself backwards while constantly facing Sonic. As it moves around Sonic while facing him, it will always be moving forward. This is a high-speed version of the previous Silver Sonic fight from Act 1. As they are moving, Sonic has much more trouble recovering rings. Once a ring bounces once, it will drastically slow down and fall behind, out of reach. Moreover, Silver Sonic MKII actually tries to take Sonic's dropped rings and prevent Sonic from catching any rings that pass by!

Mark II has the same attacks, except:

- he cannot eject spikes,

- and he cannot use the rocket punch.

Instead, he has a few new attacks:

- he dashes straight across the ground to behind (or in front of) Sonic, without rolling into a spinball (as in the Sky Sanctuary Act 1 fight in S&K).

- he pulls back his fist, targets Sonic, and dashes to his current position to throw a punch. If Sonic jumps straight up or away, he will jump and uppercut Sonic, the knockback of which will make Sonic vulnerable when he recovers.

- if he has 8, 16, or 24 rings, he will jump into the air and launch out an expanding circle of inert ring projectiles in 1, 2, or 3 waves, with a ring flying in each of all 8 directions (like Mark I's spike attack). Alternating waves change the angle to fill the gap of the last wave. (This is an improvement on the attack used in the Sky Sanctuary Act 2 fight in S&K).

Sixteen hits break him, causing his thrusters to fail. He turns around and tries to run like Sonic, but after 5 steps his legs give, he trips and falls flat onto the ground, breaking out in electric arcs as he is left behind.

Shortly after, Sonic comes to the end of the flat expanse and jumps into a giant fissure opening up Robotnik's death mask like a cracked egg.

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DeadEgg [Act 1] (1/5)

There should be 22 minutes remaining. The recommended time clear is 6 minutes.

There are no enemies in this Act.

The music for this act will be a remix of the Death Egg BGM in Sonic 2, with the various instruments composed of even more highly synthetic sound effects, with long delays and an echo that chill the spirit of the original. It should invoke a lonely, melancholic atmosphere.

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While the inside is virtually indistinguishable at first, as the moon rises, the moonlight starts to shine through the holes and fissures in the ceiling, revealing more of the mechanical ruins than is visible at first.

Sonic enters the Death Egg for the final time. He falls in the narrow ray of light shining down into the clouds of billowing dust. He lands on a steel girder sticking far out of where it should be, and runs down it.

Around him is a large hollow space filled with a deep darkness. At the edges of the space are a few structurally sound walls lit up by all sorts of lights as was normal before, but most of the walls are dark and broken apart. Within the space, connected to others by various holes everywhere, are jagged hills of dilapidated material lying against the walls and floor or sticking out in clumps from the thick section that made the ceiling/surface.

While the gravity keeps most of the junk settled towards the core, on the ceiling there is constant shifting and displacement. Finally the constant sound of the rocketing thrusters is quiet from within, instead replaced by the cracks of large electric arcs and the booms of small explosions busting randomly across the ceiling. In some parts, this seemingly disrupts the local gravity which allows pieces tiny, small and large to shift weight, crack and fall upwards towards the benighted surface of Mobius.

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This level consists of two types of areas. The first type is the one Sonic starts in: humongous cavernous expanses filled with collapsed and still-collapsing material that used to form large, connected zones of some function or another. There are hills of random junk to climb up and run down. There are girders, pylons and pipes sticking out into the air by their lonesome or connected together in the skeleton of the supporting infrastructure. These parts are mainly an exercise in platforming, although there are a few threats in the form of rows of jagged edges from junk (effectively spikes), intermittent electric arcing, burning pools of fuel, and the occasional random explosion.

The gravity in these areas is not always functioning correctly, and Sonic might find himself pulled towards some wall or another, or even back down to Mobius, instead of towards the core. Because of this, the path to the core is not a direct one. He may find himself at the edge of an uncrossable hole or fissure. Although he could backtrack for a safer route, time is of the essence. At least twice he will need to jump and fall back outside the Death Egg, to land on slabs of steel barely hanging on below. From there, if he is lucky he may find horizontal hanging-ladders (like the ones from Flying Battery in Sonic & Knuckles). It is more likely he'll have to traverse various types of pieces suspended from the surface, many of which will start detaching as soon as he lands on them. He might even have to once again cross falling pieces while outside. While he has no intention of falling off, should it happen he will return to Falling Frenzy... just with less time to spare.

The second type of area exists within the stable walls and floors, consisting of very long, straight corridors and narrow shafts to either fall down or wall jump up, recalling the style of the Death Egg from Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles. Some parts of these area are lit up and look identical to places Sonic has been in times past, with functioning motion-sensing doors, projection-bridges, and electric corridors with crossing conveyor-platforms. Most, however, are draped in deep shadow except for dim, flickering emergency lights, and are filled with destroyable debris (including broken robots) and holes leading back to the first type of area.

He moves between the first and second types a few times before finding a long path through the second type that leads him through the thick 'floor' to the other side, where the core is.

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Past the maze of the outer edges, Sonic will enter the hollow inner sphere lit up by the almost-completely intact core cylinder connected to the two poles of the sphere. The gravity is normal to Mobius here, so Sonic can't simply fall down to the core. While this inner space is more clear of detritus due to the thick wall separating it from the outer sphere, the bottom is densely packed with scrap and large pools of burning fuel. Small sections of the core itself seem broken, pinched in somehow, casting wide blocks of shadow against the inner sphere's wall. As for the wall itself which Sonic emerges from, from this side Sonic sees it was actually much thicker as is still visible in some parts. But large portions of it are melted and burnt black, leaving nothing but the stress-bearing structures beneath stretching out to the core.

Sonic now starts exploring this part. He runs across, wall-jumps up, and falls down the spaces between the orthogonal-and-diagonal meshes of girders. He spindashes into a few pipes that scoot him along more quickly. Although he finds it even more maze-like than the area before, the spaces are much tighter and comparatively, this part doesn't last very long. There is a wide gap at the edge, and while he may now think it smarter to take the risk and jump, the bottom of this inner sphere is deadly no matter where he lands.

Instead, he must keep on exploring the girders until he finds a way into an intact part of the wall on its outer edge. The area within such a part is similar to the aforementioned second type of area in style, but the corridors are instead rather short and connect to medium-sized rooms with glass windows and computer consoles. At the end of this brief area is an antechamber with a monitor that lights up when Sonic enters and a locked door that would open into the same gap that stopped him just earlier. The monitor displays, "Arrival in 10 seconds" and counts down. Sonic has to wait. But when it's time, the door opens as a floating, open-air shuttle bus approaches and stops on-level with the floor. Once Sonic steps on it, the door shuts behind him and the shuttle flies at a moderate pace towards the core. Instead of heading straight, it approaches in a curve, turning around the core.

While it does this, Sonic will start to see in the background a distant hole in the top part of the inner sphere, and a hole in the same position in the outer sphere even higher above. As the shuttle moves around the core, he notices pieces of a familiar, bright red, narrow girder sticking far out of the general mess below. Looking at it, he then immediately notices a large humanoid shape sticking out of the mess. It is none other than the destroyed remains of Robotnik's Death Egg Suit, or "Big Finger" (from Sonic & Knuckles).

The shuttle connects to a small building, and Sonic again walks through the door and antechamber into another room with tall glass windows. Then the Act ends.

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[Act 2]

There should be 16 minutes left. The recommended time clear is 6 minutes. There is still a significant portion of the time limit left, which should leave the player to believe that there is more than just this act left. With the last Act's lack of a boss or any enemies, the player may be suspicious of what lies ahead. But there is no time for hesitation. The time limit has become the true enemy.

There are no enemies in this act, either.

The music for this act will be a remix of the Death Egg BGM in Sonic & Knuckles, with a higher tempo and endless, droning repetition with distant electric howls.

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For a moment, Sonic wonders why he hasn't seen any enemies at all, but quickly decides the threat of the Death Egg crashing is enough for Robotnik to throw at him. He runs out of the room.

He finds himself on a complex of catwalks leading to and from a few cylindrical towers horizontally suspended from the core by long, sturdy beams. The catwalks go on for some distance before connecting to lower or higher levels of catwalks with simple diagonal slopes. Sonic simply follows the path. On occasion he enters the towers to find the inside only has a sloped path spiralling around a still buzzing auxiliary generator, before exiting out back to more catwalks. In short time he reaches the wall of the core cylinder, which again is much larger up close than it seemed from a distance. He enters it through a large sliding double-door.

The area inside is the standard narrow-corridor-and-shaft design. This time, the walls are no longer just bare metal and electronics; they now have a sleeker, lustrous design, with thin but bright lighting lining the bottom and top edges. The path branches often but all lead deeper inside. There are also a few small computers rooms between the corridors, but most of the screens are inactive or display static. Only a rare few are active but they only show indecipherable technical information and graphs.

He finally comes to a large corridor with signs signifying the imminent inner core. The floor is lined with robots, but they are all deactivated and not even broken in any way. The blast door at the end doesn't open for him, but 4 hits breaks it open. He rushes inside.

The inner core of the Death Egg is not an industrial or technological area. On first glance it is a simple, almost comfortingly normal interior space meant for anyone to walk through freely. Sonic stops. The shock of what he sees reverberates from his eyes into his mind, shaking up all of his memories, sending a chill vibrating down his spine, through his flesh and across his skin.

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Here, he finds Robotnik's secret temple in worship of himself, in the heart of his gigantic, world-destroying battle station crumbling apart in the shadow of the sun.

It remained perfectly intact.

There are statues of Robotnik in various heroic poses, pointing towards the sky, pointing towards himself, his hands open into the air, while standing on mountains of the pieces of slaughtered animals large and small. Lining the walls are elaborate drawings and lionizing paintings, mechanically made, depicting all of his great works: the Scrap Brain factory complex, the Sky Base zeppelin, the Oil Ocean, Metropolis, Wing Fortress. Gimmick Mountain, Scrambled Egg, the Mean Bean Machine, Electric Egg, the Veg-O-Fortress, and of course the Death Egg. And countless smaller images of roboticized Mobians, of great swaths of polluted, destroyed earth, of Mobian homes and villages on fire and in ruins, of Mobians bloody and broken and...

The walls they sit on are designed to match his own likeness. One style is the "W" shape of his yellow cape over a large red segment for the shirt, with a proportionally shorter black segment below as his pants with an overlaid series of white dome lights representing his buttons. There was also another color scheme: of peach, with a series of black circles above, a pink sinusoid waving between below, and orange zig-zag wings below that, all exaggeratedly resembling the shades of his forehead, glasses, nose, and moustache.

Sonic comes to a long, dimly lit passageway with a glass wall on one side, behind which is a running demonstration of the roboticization process.

- In the first window, plush puppets are dragged out of their niches by badniks. A few are dragged individually, pierced by badnik pincers or stingers. Most flee from their homes en masse, their environment destroyed by fire and bulldozing, and they run into open cages.

- In the second window, they are transported to a roboticization capsule and crammed inside.

- The third window reveals, in the case of a single doll, the mechanical process which locked it into a single position by a body-tight metal wrap crushing and ripping the soft plush. It is then placed inside the shell of a badnik by a crudely painted factory.

- The fourth window shows an army of badniks awaiting the command of another Robotnik statue, motionless in pose, lit from behind by an oddly natural light. Behind the crowd, unnoticed, are twitching and broken badniks flailing against the chains restraining them to a line of posts. A few of the badniks are opened from the side, showing the plush animal inside, thrashing about in the tiny space inside. They uncannily opened their mouths like puppets as a pre-recording of actual Mobians screamed through a speaker... and then they are shot by a line of badniks opposite them, at the back edge of the small army. The shot badniks stop moving, the posts draw into the floor, and are quickly replaced by more. As Sonic passes the Robotnik statue, unable to draw his eyes away, he sees behind him the fifth window.

- The fifth window is a large technical diagram depicting the movement of energy to Robotnik's factories. And the source was an incinerator. A conveyor belt carries plush animals, with vividly depicted and unique serious injuries, strapped down with chains, into the incinerator. And the smoke blows the turbine, which works the generator...

The circus has just begun. After that tour, Sonic finds himself in a zoo of every badnik he's ever fought. They are real. Behind clear windows, they meander about lazily until they see Sonic. They stop. They watch him silently. In a burst of anger he runs up and spin attacks a window, and it bounces him back. He is stunned. They watch him without moving. He whips around, seeing their beady electronic eyes, and he hears the same Mobian scream from the previous room. He slams shut his eyes and throws his legs down to get out of here. There are many badniks and the zoo is long. He looks, looks up, to see how far the exit is, but the room only turns a corner, and in the corner of his eyes he sees them stare. All of their glass eyes stare at him without judgment and without emotion, and they stare directly at Sonic, at his face, at his eyes. As the path between the terrariums and aquariums curves around, Sonic cannot keep his gaze downward, hidden. At every turn he is forced to look back at them. Upon seeing the exit, he makes way for it immediately.

He comes into a wider area, completely dark except for the lamps shining on a series of figures lining the walls. He tries to look and he sees the inactive recreations of every sub-boss he's every fought, in uncovered alcoves with walls painted from the environment Sonic fought each one in. There are signs with information for each one, complete with full schematics and Robotnik's original intention for the creation. Upon seeing another double-door ahead he heads straight for it. After a long run, he manages to reach it, this shut door. Just as he pushes on the bar on this locked shut door, he suddenly hears a torrent of whirrs and hums surge up from behind him. He turns around. The lights on each machine flood the darkness with color. They rotate their parts, their drills and cannons. Some have already launched their engines and charge at Sonic all together.

Sonic, knowing he has no time to waste, spin dashes through the door and keeps running. And he keeps running. The new room is an incredibly long yet thin corridor. There are tiny lights on the floor that barely light the walls up to Sonic's height. The walls narrow in very slowly, to exactly the length from one elbow to another. The air is stale, still, and smells of oil. Above, even just above his head, there is only darkness, the ceiling out of sight. He keeps running, through the hallway, this seemingly endless hallway, and he hears something heavy give way. And then a loud screech, which does not stop. Sonic tries to ignore it, but it only gets louder. It sounds like sharp metal slowly scraping against more metal.

As he finally catches a glimpse of the sliver of light from the door far ahead, he sees it catch off something reflective hanging. He runs past it, but within a few seconds he sees more and more blips of the dim light. It is dreamlike, like slowly descending flakes of snow appearing out of thin air. He looks up.

He stops, seeing his own face staring back at him. It descends very slowly, not moving in any other way. The body, hanging upside-down, sinks out of the darkness into the dim light and he sees it is a metal Sonic, a design he has never seen before, of blue paint, 3 spines, black eyes and a jet engine in the torso. The screaming noise of scraping metal only gets louder and Sonic starts moving forward again. He sees clones of the metal Sonic descend, their forms appearing out of the blips of light, and he then sees Silver Sonics, Mark I and II, just the same, hanging, dead. Suspended by twisting cables, they sink through the small air down to the floor. Sonic continues running as more bodies are exposed by the dim lights below. They are at eye-level with Sonic, their dead expressions facing him as he runs past. The exit still remains far away.

The pain of the noise forces Sonic to look up in exasperation and he finally sees the ceiling, slowly sliding down the walls. The grinding metal is piercingly loud now and the pseudo-Sonics touch and fold across the floor and each other. Sonic can no longer run between them and the thick vines of wires and cables, so he must spin dash through them. The ceiling is now coming into full light of dark blood. The Sonics bend and pile on each other. Sonic spin dashes, ripping through them, tearing through them, rushing to the light of the exit. After endless spindashes, he finally breaks through the slightly opened door at the end and escapes certain death.

Sonic takes a quick look back, but his vision is caught. As the rusty edge of the ceiling starts to lower in front of the door, he jumps and loses a breath for the entire corridor lit up at once. He sees hundreds of digital eyes flash on, their bodies waking, squirming, struggling, tangled between themselves and the cables. Some start violently shaking, tearing at the cables, bashing each other, their eyes staring at Sonic clutching at anything to escape. Sonic watches in horror as the ceiling slowly and inevitably wraps them in ropes, constricting the dense piles of Sonics until they have no room to move anything but their arms and heads. A Silver Sonic by the door throws out its arm and clutches at the smooth ground in vain, scraping it with its fingers with an eerie copy of the screaming metal. It could not move. It budges its shoulder, its arm tightly bound by wires and the weight of another Silver Sonic. It slaps the floor in desperation, it curls its hand into a fist and slams it down and it slammed repeatedly as hundreds of identical robots behind it struggle frantically to escape. Sonic is silent and frozen. They punch each other if they could, they violently throw their heads back trying to cut whatever they could with the blades of their quills. And all, all of them, repeatedly twist and fling their arms and legs and body and head, repeating the same movements over and over, more and more violently. And most of them stop trying to move and only look at Sonic the hedgehog, motionless with vivid, living eyes. The ceiling is halfway down the door's height. There begins the crunch of metal.

Sonic looks at the Silver Sonic, which had stopped moving although its arm was out of the doorway. Without thinking, he drops to a crouch and grasps its hand with both of his own and pulled and yanked. He leans back, pulling with all of his strength and weight. The cables are tightly binding the Silver Sonic within the death chamber, but Sonic did not stop to cut them. He only pulls harder. He closes his eyes, grunting, sweating, ignoring the shriek of metal death. His mind is black and empty of all but his arms.

Slam.

No sound.

Sonic looks at the door, the wall. Silver Sonic laid there unmoving... but in one piece. Its head turned to the side, eyes giving a small glow on the metal floor.

Sonic backs away. What... what was he doing? What was he doing?! He hesitates in the face of memory but turns and he runs away.

He enters a commercial area, showcasing Robotnik memorabilia and Robotnik merchandise. There is a store dedicated to the Robotnik comic book, a store filled with Robotnik television shows and movies, a Robotnik bookstore, even Robotnik-themed restaurants. He saw a sign pointing to "the Egg-o-Matic wing".

"What the fuck," Sonic

Behind glass, holding open arms wide, glassy-eyed Robotnik fuzzy stomach long silky mustache hair. Death Egg plush pillow, with lights behind the eyes in the fluff of the pillow for the kids.

And then Sonic saw the Robotnik porn shop.

Sonic had enough he ran. He does not want to see anymore. The path slopes down. He smells some type of grilled food, some comely flavor of an unknown meat in an unknown yet tasty sauce. He keeps his eyes directly at the ground, but things snagged the corner of his eye like a fish hook. A television plays a Robotnik-themed anime with Robotnik characters on screen using Robotnik items and participating in Robotnik events with Robotnik fights for Robotnik justice. Another Robotnik anime to compete, a Robotnik video game, Robotnik news, drama, comedy. He did not see but he heard, and it was Robotnik's voice and machine-made sound.

He turns a corner around a Robotnik recruiting station to the badniks, but he must look to see the eyes of an Egg Robo permanently attached to a chair. It slowly swivels as it stares at Sonic. Sonic looks back at it.

Finally, he sees a pair of doors to use to finally escape to get out to get the fuck away from here! He smashes through them.

It is a room with a low ceiling and a bottomless floor. Bridging the door to the next door is a horizontal platform and a familiar sign bearing the image of Robotnik stands in the very middle. And around the room randomly throughout the pit are thin columns standing out of the darkness, each holding its own Robotnik sign. They all face Sonic. They all turn to face Sonic. Their painted faces face Sonic as he runs. He passes by the sign which spins in a flurry of sparkles, only to return to Robotnik's face. He exits through the next door.

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[Act 2 Boss]

There should be 10 minutes remaining. This Boss's recommended time clear is 4 minutes.

Sonic finally arrives at the central core of the Death Egg: the generator room. It is a very wide circular chamber with a large cylindrical machine taking up most of the space in the center. Four stripes of layered glass circle around it, showing an ongoing reaction of fuel inside the core tank which sends waves of glowing energy up metallic plates and wires into a gyrating, buzzing contraption, which itself connects to the reactor tank above it. Large fuel tanks are attached to the walls and connected to the core cylinder via transparent pipes which pump in glowing fluid. Near the top, long mirrors lining the walls are angled up to the ceiling.

He steps on metal grating and looks below to see the long tubes of the chamber and generator descend down many floors, and looking up it ascends just as many. He assumes it's as long as the outer core structure itself.

Figuring that the current state of ruin was caused by the last time he was here, Sonic then remembers that once Robotnik's Death Egg Suit was destroyed, its explosions somehow connected to the Death Egg. He suspects that the volatile fuel, whatever it is... hopefully inorganic... is pumped and used throughout the entire space station. If the fuel control is disrupted before the generator deactivates, it should melt down. And without control or power, a chain reaction set off in the core should spread across the entire structure and obliterate the Death Egg once and for all. He sees just below the see-through ceiling a large computer console, resting on a ring platform that's cut out from the sides of the generator's thick metal wall.

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Sonic jumps and wall jumps onto and from the many platforms and pipes attached to the generator to make his way up to the top.

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Landing on the solid steel floor there, he sees in the center a thick but transparent tube where within electricity arcs from this section of the generator to a diode in the bottom of the next section of generator above. He also notices that the mirrors are angled for someone up here to keep open visuals on the core reactions.

He walks over to the console only for a dome-shaped energy barrier to project out and block it from him. A tinny, broken klaxon wheels and clicks lamely through the air and the lights shut off. The emergency lights with their broken lamps slowly spin cones of red light over the bright glow of the reactor.

Sonic is annoyed for a brief second when he is alerted by the sound of metal breaking and banging about above him. He looks up and sees a ball of machinery crashing down through the metal floors.

In a few seconds it falls down past Sonic followed by a rain of grating pieces. It then slowly rises before him. It's a very old machine, all of its parts visible with their dust and dents. It uses a combustion engine to keep itself aloft with 4 rockets around its clunky underside. Two large spiked spheres hang from chains coiled up behind its flimsy armor.

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The armor is no joke though. Sonic cannot damage the robot at all. Instead, to 'win', he has to stand in front of the console so the robot's attack smashes into it. Otherwise he can run around the small console floor to evade.

Its attacks are:

- spinning its two large spiked balls around in a falling circle, the two swings completely out-of-phase, (it's risky but Sonic can jump and roll between them)

- and locking-on Sonic before hurling a single spiked ball at his position.

It is this second attack which passes through the barrier and breaks the console. The first will just bounce off.

The reactor's glow will radically change color and start flashing brighter and brighter. Sonic jumps off the cylinder with a smirk and plows through the door opposite of his entrance to escape. All of the alarms go off and the Death Egg slowly starts to rumble.

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[Act 3]

The time limit still continues! There should be 6 minutes remaining, but the level can be cleared in 3 minutes at best with a flawless playthrough.

In addition, a wall of death will chase Sonic down this level. If he is caught by it at akk, after his quick death there is a cutscene showing the Death Egg explode into thousands of pieces. They rain down on Mobius, and that's it. Sonic will be dead.

An explosion from the core sends a shock wave launching Sonic off his feet. He slams into an air vent, but after a short flinch he runs again. The walls start to shake as he exits a short corridor into a wider maintenance tunnel. A few cracks in the pipes on the walls blow out steam as he runs through.

Sonic runs at full speed down the tunnel before leading into a large central shaft. He carefully jumps to a lower tunnel, when mid-jump the shaft's ceiling explodes downwards. The old robot blasts in front of a wall of fire. Sonic jumps and turns to run, and the robot immediately turns in and chases after him. The wall of flames surges in right after.

Its armor is now burnt off so it's vulnerable to being attacked. At first it seems to risky to try as Sonic will be incinerated if he slows down too much to finish the fight. So he must avoid the robot's persistent attacks while keeping forward momentum, and counter-attack only if he's safe to bounce back on solid ground. Sonic's primary concern is to escape.

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- Area 1: Sonic runs through ventilation rooms, pumping rooms, fuel tank storage rooms, and small power control rooms. While they are all flat, there may be one or two hazards in each room from pre-existing damage. Steam and constant electric arcs may stand in his way, but in the fuel tank room the fuel tanks explode in a rapid chain from behind as soon as the fire bursts in. Sonic must not slow down there at all or risk death. Meanwhile, the robot uses either of its two attacks from the fight before while keeping at a set but close distance from Sonic. Sonic can get two hits in this area.

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- Area 2: Sonic breaks down a door and runs across a long, single catwalk which stretches from the core structure back to the main wall. The wall of fire suddenly blasts out into the open air of the inner sphere, giving both the robot and Sonic a short boost. It also breaks the bridge's support, causing it to fly in the air before dropping and yanking a whip-like wave of falling catwalk down towards Sonic and the robot.

In the background, one can see the whole Death Egg shaking apart, chains of explosions rippling out of areas with a lot of fuel, and the core itself blasting apart piece by piece, as if struggling to be destroyed as slow as possible. Any place that somehow still had power would be awash in waves of rotating, flashing colors from alarms. The alarm sound itself was drowned out by the constant noise of the space station shaking apart.

As for the robot, it continues attacking, and Sonic can get up to four hits on this otherwise easy part.

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- Area 3: This area has sections in the styles of both Sonic & Knuckles' and Sonic 2's Death Egg Zone. They have more vertical drops and turns but are mostly hazardless. Instead, intersecting paths from the left, above, or below sometimes surprise Sonic with an oncoming wave of explosions. Sonic must keep concentrated and not hesitate. Sonic can get three hits in this area.

As Sonic gets closer to the outer sphere, he can see through broken walls the outer sphere and the outer shell of the Death Egg. Beyond giant fissures, growing in size from the constant destruction, the surface of Mobius is much more close, and therefore visible, than before. Between the moonlight, the giant, shattered shadow of the Death Egg returns the darkness to the night. Most importantly though, these views tell Sonic how close he is to the end of the escape.

As the timer approaches "0:00", the surface will get increasingly close. From in here, Sonic actually has 20 more seconds to escape the Death Egg. If he is still within, a separate cutscene plays showing the Death Egg smashing into the planet from inside. There is a brief moment after the starting collision and before the collision with Sonic where one can see earth, metal, and fire explode together in a flash of light.

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- Area 4: The robot backs off out of sight although it isn't destroyed yet. There is no wall of fire either so for now nothing chases him but time. Sonic re-enters areas from Act 1 involving more complicated movement across tunnels, shafts, and girder structures in open air. Now there are many more hazards of the types from Area 1: steam, electricity, and explosions. There are also segments of ground scorching hot or even on fire. Especially in the open outer sphere, the junk will be constantly shifting around and changing the ground underneath him. Areas inside may crumble, dropping deadly chunks of ceiling or having the floor fall away beneath.

As he gets halfway through the outer sphere, he can see explosions dashing up distant sections of the wall. Fissures crack through gargantuan spaces and entire sections crumble either inward or out into the sky. There are large gaps in Sonic's way and he has to be careful not to fall in. He may get stuck, having to waste time getting out, or he'll fall into a pit of dangerous hazards or worse, simply falling into open sky. At the end of this area, he must learn how to run across ceilings to cross a huge chasm caused by a large piece of the floor simply falling away.

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- Area 5: Sonic stops as his path has abruptly ended. A massive chunk of the Death Egg starts to rip apart before his very eyes, creating a gigantic ravine between him and the final stretch out the side of the Death Egg. He then hears an explosion from behind and within seconds sees the spiked ball robot charging at him. As it does so, the very floor Sonic stands on budges downward and he sees a distant fracture zip far around him. Soon, the whole section he is in cracks apart and crumbles into pieces. Before it's too late, Sonic jumps and breaks through layers of broken metal in walls and ceilings to climb back up and leap to more stable pieces of ground. But then those start to fall apart too!

The robot smashes through the debris behind Sonic and relentlessly chases him down while he runs and jumps up a waterfall of scraps and fragments. He can't move fast even if he wanted to, and finds himself forced to fight the robot while constantly saving his own life. He often finds it easiest to do so in the room-like parts, before or after they fall, as the robot can't break them easily. He can counter-attack once every now and then before returning to platforming. If he stays still too long, he'll find the robot breaking his footholds if not hitting him directly with its heavy ball-and-chain attacks. After six hits in combination with the hits above, or sixteen hits in total, the robot is finally destroyed. The final hit knocks it back, cracking it and causing tongues of fire to shoot out of it. It then falls away with the rest of the junk before exploding.

Sonic can take a short breather once he finally reaches the other side of the ravine. The time is almost up.

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- Area 6: Explosions are rocking the entire space fortress. The background is lighting up with electricity and fire, everything melting, burning, and crumbling apart in a bath of enfueled fire.

Sonic must combine running at high speeds on both floors and ceilings, quickly timed jumping over a few series of small platforms, and wall-jumping with high precision and speed up short walls to keep his speed while clearing the last distance. It is tense, and it is nothing but platforming.

Halfway to the end, a light flares from the core. It is followed by an enormous ball of fire and a shock wave with the boom ripping off all of the weak areas of the structure. The explosion is still expanding as Sonic is running, and as the fire engulfs everything in its way, smaller explosions connect and chain out of it, consuming the entire battle station in every area. The final stretch is still solid for as long as Sonic keeps top speed and permits no mistake. He will be disintegrated in an instant otherwise. Bouncing off surfaces for 7 seconds he passes through the outer wall of the Death Egg. He crosses it in half a second.

What remains is a single red pylon stretching far out into the sky. It is a 5 second straight run. Sonic can survive as long as the explosion doesn't touch him. At the very end, he leaps out into the air.

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The player now gets to control Sonic's limbs and facial expression in the air and adjust them however wanted. This will be how he is positioned for the remainder of the cutscene.

Sonic is soaring through the air as the entire Death Egg explodes at once behind him, a constant sparkling, flashing ball of light and color, so bright it completely illuminates the night like the angry return of the sun.

Relieved, Sonic relaxes and closes his eyes as gravity and the fresh air takes him. He then suddenly lands on solid ground and finds himself rolling down a slope of some sort. As it evens out, he opens his eyes and wonders if he landed on another floating air base.

It's not. He looks at it, at the path it made into the distance. It is a sparkling, beautiful material: fading from pure red to deep blue and full green while remaining glass-like, like the rainbow fire of an opal burning with animation. It made a road through the high air, twisting and turning in loops and curves without weight or support, chasing west after the departed sun.

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Silver Skyway [Act 1] (1/6)

This level is just for pure speed. There is nothing to slow Sonic down.

As time goes on, the moon will rise higher and the stars and constellations slowly become completely visible.

A catchy melody waving along in an upbeat but relaxed mood, before breaking out with a groovy bridge and chorus.

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Beaming in the light of the rising moon is the rain of metallic scrap across the sky, along with a few lumbering clouds. The stars come out, starting to twinkle, and high above there are noctilucent clouds, glowing irridescently at the edge of sight.

"What the heck is this?! It's just floating in the air, and I happened to land right on it?!" Sonic laughs as he looks at it stretch on through the sky, floating still and not moving an inch.

The edges of the road are lined with silver sinusoidal forms. The road itself is constantly changing colors, in waves of hue pulsing rhythmically down its serpentine path. It likes to go straight, letting Sonic pick up or keep top speed, before flipping out and swinging around in every direction, sending Sonic in turns, circles, loop-de-loops, emmelmans, corkscrews, helices, and tight dense knots through the upper troposphere.

Sonic then sees where it leads to. A thin, stone tower pierces the sky and the rainbow crystal road is shooting out from a hole in its topmost roof. It then drapes down its sides in a helical pyramid, before flinging out high in the air in a gigantic slope. After a short period, he reaches that slope and ascends the final helix around the tower. He makes his way around the long vertical loop when the road suddenly shatters into glittering sparkles of light. But the floor disappeared at just the right time and angle, flinging Sonic in the perfect parabola that brings him flush with the inner walls of the tower. With this boost from gravity, Sonic blasts down the hollow tower.

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Mechanix Seal [Act 1] (1/7)

Calm ambience of lapping waves, a gentle breeze with occasional gusts, and quiet electronic hums.

With one step, Sonic bounds down a hundred meters. The force of his speed blasts apart the stone pillars and bricks making up the tower walls. They fly up into the air, breaking into dust blown into the wind. The clouds whoosh by and Sonic soon sees the horizon of the ocean through the open windows zipping by. Shortly after, he sees the beach of an island the tower sits upon.

He starts to see the tower is attached to the edge of a gothic cathedral, but soon finds himself seconds away from the ground. Fortunately, the walls gradually curve and transfer him safely but rather quickly across the ground. He then blasts through a wooden double door, sending flying a cloud of splinters, exploding out of the nave of the cathedral.

He tries to skid to a stop and slides down the marble hall. He finds it's abandoned, with the walls broken in holes and covered in vines, and parts of the floor grassy and covered in plants. However, there remained a few stained glass windows intact, with abstract and detailed designs, and broken but impressive statues of religious figures. Sonic can't slow down enough though, and breaks through the larger wooden doors in the lobby. As he flies over the staircase and onto the grass, he slows down much faster. He comes to a stop.

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He finds himself on the top of grassy hill overlooking a small temperate island in the middle of the sea, shaded by a thin blanket of mist. It is still night, but mostly cloudless. The low tide shines its content back at the moon.

Sonic explores. There are hills and fields of grass, pockets and small forests (mostly of willow and maple trees). Sonic runs up and down the rolling, smooth hills with ease as the waves roll quietly over long stretches of sand. Sonic goes through a few rock gardens and groves before he finds a few separate ruins. There are piles of stone rubble, but also intact foundations with large, fractured marble columns. In one ruin, he'll need to climb on top of one and hop across the others to get across.

He enters a vine-covered pergola in a forest when he finds a staircase leading underground. He enters a series of torch-lit anterooms (they look similar to Marble Zone from Sonic 1). He descends a few more staircases before turning around through another corridor. He sees a dead end ahead, only to notice in the darkness a figure running away from him. Curious because it didn't make any sound, Sonic enters the last room. He hears the clanks of iron as he finds the room hollow and empty. The floor shakes under his weight and he hears gears creak and shift. Sonic realizes it's an elevator as it slowly descends into darkness.

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[Act 2]

Ambience of long, dark tones crawling out of silence.

Basement Floor 1: The platform comes to a stop, sliding into a shallow pit. Ahead is a dark square tunnel with damp stones and puddles on the floor. The only light comes underneath the bottom stones, an unnatural dark red glow. The walls are covered with abstract engravings of spirals and zig-zags, probably representing wind and fire. He then enters a large hallway facing a bright red light, casting long black shadows from the iron columns and vaulting. It opens into a truly massive chamber wherein stands an incredible four-story iron and stone statue of magnificent form and minute detail. Between all of the millions of crevices is the source of the red light. It is bipedal, but its species, gender, and even emotion seems impenetrable. A castellated wall stands between Sonic and the idol, but he sees a half-circle's view as he runs around it to the other side. He then goes through an identical hallway and stone tunnel before entering a large spiral stairwell.

BF2: At the bottom, he enters the second basement floor through another stone corridor, although this one is larger and slightly dryer. It seems to have once been booby-trapped, as it is filled with many broken hazards. There are shattered spikes, frozen smashing columns, and burnt-out fire pits. Although a handful are still alive, they are easy to pass. He enters the second floor of the idol chamber, goes through another trap corridor, then runs around the next stairwell.

BF3: The third floor is different. The noise of metal creaking and churning grow louder and the red light burns brighter. Stones have fallen out of the wall, showing iron girders behind them. Long arcades of stone columns give way to I-beams on a metal plate and mesh floor hanging from the ceiling above darkness. Below in the darkness, the red light trickles down giant gears and axles slowly moving a gargantuan hidden machine. Past the third floor of the idol chamber is a similar metallic antechamber, but it has live hazards. There are many electric arcs and spikes of sharply frayed mesh. He then reaches the third stairwell, a hollow steel-and-handrail staircase on iron plated walls.

BF4: At the bottom, Sonic finds the walls are simply hanging in a wide abyss. Below and around it is empty space and the sparse clockwork of the monolithic mystery machine, slowly rolling on. Trying to make sense of it, Sonic keeps moving and finds the fourth floor corridor is simply a rectangular cage of mesh swinging a little from his side to the other side. He walks into it, hearing the metal clink underneath him, and looks above him as he walks. He sees the two floors above him are also hollow bridges of iron and metal, and only the first floor is actually rock. Even the great statue itself was hanging from the rock ceiling. All else was shadow. It was an extremely large cavern, completely dwarfing the size of the island just above...

The cage comes to a metal cathedral hanging by the very bottom of the idol. A clear, bright red line of curved light shines just under the idol's feet, facing towards the cathedral's side. It is the top of a gigantic pillar, with neon red light emitting from its circular capital and plinth something six stories into pure darkness below.

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He enters the wooden doors into the atrium, and then enters the nave. It is identical in size and overall shape to the one above ground. Yet it is twisted into the decaying frame of metal. It has walls of dented iron plating and chain-link fences, steel posts and beams, and chipped fans chopping the red light in malicious shadows across the hollow floor. There are bronze statues of Mobioids intact, and moving too, with jerks in rotating parts.

At the end is simply a hollow circular space. It has the same radius as the tower above, but this one goes straight down into the shadows. The only thing keeping Sonic from falling is a chain-link floor. But in its center is a wooden gate, and Sonic jumps on it and falls through. He should wall-jump on his way down or otherwise get hurt. There is a solid bottom, littered with piles of skeletons. Creeped out, Sonic quickly moves into the next corridor.

The walls curve around in a sleek chromed steel. Thin conduits of red energy pulse down crevices branched in simplistic patterns. He then finds himself standing on a small square platform overlooking a large room below. The walls are futuristically structured with moving energy and lights that is completely different than anything he's seen before. In fact, it seems almost more advanced than anything Robotnik made. Industrial design takes on the role of powerful abstract religious in shaping the room, making Sonic curiously look down. He sees all of the energy connected to a triangle recessed into the wall. A robotic figure is interlocked into the machinery of the glowing triangle in the wall. He then looks at what he saw standing next to it: a familiar man with his floating pod. Sonic jumps down.

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Sonic lands on the steel floor with a clangy thwack. The room echoes and then stays silent. A rhythm of red light followed by darkness pulses down through the designs on the walls and floor of the room. Sonic can't help but look around at all of the light and form coming into this one being. He takes a closer look at it, seeing its front bathed in shadow from the great light behind it. It looks stocky and around Robotnik's height.

"You survived." Robotnik says, staring at the creature without turning around.

"You need to stop underestimating me. I knew the Death Egg inside and out. It's blown up now and you're trapped. It's over, Robotnik."

Robotnik only kept looking at the creature, silent.

"Before I beat you up, I'm curious. What is that?"

Robotnik turns around, smiling, his spectacles reflecting a flare of red light.

"This, this is the most powerful robot in the history of Mobius, "Mechanix"! For once, even I am in awe! They tried to seal it away, but they never thought someone like me would exist in the future. Now it is mine."

He turns and raises his arms. "Awaken, Mechanix!"

The red light starts to dissipate. Replacing it is a rainbow of hues as like the colors in the road of Silver Skyway. They pulse polyrythmically in colored waves towards the darkness of the ceiling. A machine of restraints and tubes slowly rotate and detach from Mechanix. The many connecting tubes and scaffolds to the robot slowly rotate and pull off of it. Its eyes pulsate a deep azure, dimly. It raises its left arm, then its right. It leans forward and bends its legs, then jumps high into the air. It lands flat on both feet with a resounding clang, and walks behind Robotnik. Sonic keeps his cool, while expecting a long explanation.

"Long before your stupid people's idea of history, there was a more advanced civilization that ruled the world. There are many locations like this, simply located deep underground. They were not that smart though, just like you, and nearly obliterated themselves with an apocalyptic weapon that scorched the entire surface of the planet."

He turns with an open hand at Mechanix. "Beyond that technology is this, the zenith of Mobians' intelligence. They called it the "Ultimate Being" and worshiped it as a god, their own creation. It succeeded in its purpose to cleanse the overworld of deadly radioactive gas, reversing their own foolishness. It bears the work of a hundred geniuses and harnesses the power of life and death. It is incredibly powerful, and the secrets of its design are so efficiently manufactured that even I'm amazed. This is the last thing the planet of Mobius can teach me."

"Hahaha..." he slowly turns back to Sonic. "The true genius of it is, my plan involves me learning something and completing the final phase of the plan, as part of the plan. Ahaha! It's just a puzzle, that's all it is!"

Sonic says, "He must be really strong, huh? So I'm not just going to run over there and beat you up?"

Robotnik laughs. "No. Mechanix!"

Mechanix tenses and then takes a wide battle pose.

"Kill that hedgehog!"

Its eyes beam with blue light, then it suddenly dashes at Sonic!

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[Act 2 Boss : MECHANIX]

Mechanix has a blocky and sharply angled body, seemingly made out of cubes and pyramids. Its design repeats smaller shapes in fine detail. A slim visor sweeps over its glowing eyes. His body is a blank white with subtle changes to various colors.

Robotnik is in the background watching the fight, directing Mechanix by moving his arms in ways like a punch or a swing, and Sonic can look at it to predict Mechanix's attacks (but not his movements). For movement, besides running somewhat slower than Sonic, he can jump four times as high as Sonic, wall-jump just as high, and perform short mid-air dashes.

His attacks are:

- (Robotnik punches) Dashing forward to slice with his blade-covered arms,

- (Robotnik jumps and punches) Leaping up and doing a mid-air slice-dash,

- (Robotnik punches with both fists) Thrusting forward his palm with claws extended, launching forth an energy projectile resembling a spinning crescent,

- (Robotnik presses his index finger and thumb together) Locking-on Sonic and firing a quick energy blast from its outstretched hand multiple times (Sonic should keep moving to avoid being hit),

- (Robotnik swings his arm wildly) Locking-on Sonic and then dashing at him with a powerful energy thrust attack (Sonic must avoid standing on any point of the line between Mechanix's initial position and Sonic's previous position, or else be hit).

Sixteen hits knock Mechanix back and he falls on one leg.

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"Very impressive indeed, ahahaha!" Robotnik suddenly cackles, his hands in his pockets.

"What?! I just beat him! Haha, you fool, I'm coming for you next!"

"Now wait a second, Sonic! Isn't it better to hear me talk? So you can learn, dunce? After all, you learned how to evade Mechanix from me, did you not?"

Sonic snorts. "Yeah, okay, that was totally why I won."

"Imbecile. Your puny brain only comprehends what it's seen. This was just a test. I was simply testing its power at its very minimum! Did he not put you on the defensive at least once? Right after being revived!"

"You should understand quickly because it's quite effectively the perfect Metal Sonic. The core of its power is the core of yours. The ability to harness energy itself, the capacity to direct the flow of a stream of infinite energy..."

Sonic smirked. "I was wondering how those were involved this time. Can't you rely on anything besides the Chaos Emeralds?"

"I don't give a shit what you think. They are more worthy of my possession than anything else in this weak, incompetent world. Animal cores are marginally better than gas, and Emeralds are condensed Power Rings anyway."

Sonic sighs in disgust, hearing about the animals. "Face it, you're actually pretty stupid. How many times do I have to bash you on the head with the Emeralds you never get?"

Robotnik snickers. "Arguing with you is very amusing. Small child, have you lost your emeralds? You don't seem to have any on you!" He says while making an exaggerated frown.

Sonic laughs but hesitates. Robotnik continues, folding his arms behind his back, "My plan is so veritably manifested that I can tell it to you directly with no consequence. With the seven Chaos Emeralds, I will unlock the transcendent powers of Mechanix and conquer the world shortly thereafter. And in the meantime, I will launch all of my most powerful attacks against Mobius. Even if you succeed in defending the world from me, you absolutely could never stop Mechanix from destroying the world. I bet my life on that."

"Nice idea, leaving things up to chance!" Sonic suddenly shouts and sprints towards Robotnik.

Robotnik laughs and nods, then lobs a grenade four seconds into its timer. It immediately explodes in front of Sonic, who reacts by skidding to a stop to turn. It's a flashbang, and Sonic is blinded and stunned by the noise for a split-second. Through a blur he walks forward, only for another explosion blast in front of him, followed by a plume of smoke and dust. He flinches away covering his eyes, then turns back and painfully opens them again.

Robotnik sits comfortably in his Egg-O-Matic while Mechanix leans against the side of the backseat. The smoke clears behind them. A hole is blown into the wall with rubble skewn across the floor.

"You operated exactly as planned. You destroyed the Death Egg with just enough time for me to free Mechanix. Then you helped validate its strength! Oh, you good boy! It is such a shame you have to die. Goodbye!"

He rotates around and jets off into the cavern, already gone from sight.

"Damn you, this isn't over!" Sonic yells.