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.

8. Sonic Ballistic, Part 7

Part 7

Underzone [Act 1] (7/32)

Sonic will start running down the caverns, which will have sequentially more pipes exiting the walls and moving horizontally parallel to the ground. As pipes completely surround Sonic, metal scaffolding will suddenly appear, and he will quickly enter a mechanical base. Cameras on the ceiling will turn, watching him as he passes by. Monitors will show Sonic himself viewed from high and low angles as he rushes by. The long cavern will abruptly come to a dead-end due to a steel door, and if Sonic tries to move backwards, another steel door will close in front of him. In order to escape, he will need to wall-jump off either door and break through a vent in the ceiling. From there, he must spin dash through the tiny shafts, jumping whenever he has room to move vertically to an alternative route, and eventually breaking through another grate into an open area. He will enter a security room worked by standard Egg Robos, who will turn around and signal the alarm upon spotting him. As they begin to attack, Sonic should turn around and enter an elevator on the other side of the room.

The elevator exits in another mechanical shaft, and as soon as Sonic exits it, robots will be waiting for him in front of him, including mining-type robots and many types of battle robots (including Egg Robos). Sonic must break through their lines and run ahead, as now robots will constantly be seeking him out. The shaft he is in will pitch and roll, as well as split into multiple paths or annex into one as it goes deep within the Floating Island's giant rock base. As Sonic continues on, the metalwork around him will change from utility structures like pipes and scaffolding to somewhat rusty iron walls and steel girders. As he runs, he'll pass by giant storage rooms and cargo bays where large groups of robots will immediately wake as he passes by.

Occasionally the small and narrow shafts will open into a giant underground cave, with massive spires of rock in the background (akin to Lava Reef Zone from Sonic & Knuckles). Here he needs to be wary of holes in the floor that lead to abyss, as well as the larger amount of flying robots that will attack him.

In a particularly narrow area, a loud screech will come from behind Sonic, followed by an increasingly bright white light. It is in fact a train which will crush Sonic unless he enters it through the front window. There, an Egg Robo has a bomb, which it quickly activates!

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[Act 1 Boss]

The bomb is timed, giving Sonic 5 minutes to make it through the entire train and escape before he's caught in the deadly wreckage. Every car is filled with robots, with stronger and more sturdy Egg Robos in the back cars. The doors between each car is locked, as well, forcing Sonic to break them apart with his spindash. Once he clears each car, he'll come to the caboose which holds an Egg T-Robo! As soon as he sees it, it will start charging an attack in its cannon, and as the cars are small, Sonic has no choice but to run back to the front to avoid it. Once he does, the train will have entered a wider area, allowing Sonic to jump through the front window and then onto the roof. At this time, the energy blast will hit the bomb, forcing it to explode regardless of the time. Sonic must avoid the explosion by running back, on top of the roof, and leaping off to safety behind it. The cars will get knocked off the tracks, and as Sonic follows it, he sees it tumble in flames off the ground into the giant cave area.

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[Act 2]

The alarm is no longer activated, allowing Sonic to run in freedom. He will go through long areas of constant movement, although he may need to jump or spindash to avoid obstacles, and in some cases need to run across the ceiling to avoid particularly tall blockages in the tunnels. The tunnels have pit stops or miniature bases where more robots will be around, and Sonic must make his way to the small security rooms (which are usually a floor above or below the entrance) to destroy the console before any robot could reactivate the alarm. If one does, Sonic will have the same amount of trouble as before, but otherwise he can move on easily. After several of these bases and lengths of tunnels, Sonic will come to a rather small door. Through the door are very compartmentalized areas separated by doors, which will slow down his pace.

Through the final door, he'll enter a shuttle with glass walls on top of rails. It will slowly move ahead, creaking and tipping dangerously on the very narrow tracks, supported by flimsy pylons. Around him is the widest cave area yet, and covering the floor are thousands of dormant robots, organized in most of the types he's seen so far. Slowly coming into view is a giant column of rock, now mostly covered with Robotnik's industrial architecture. The tram quickly changes direction and angle. It starts to move down, quickly gaining speed and as the angle increases, so does the acceleration. The tram is seemingly floating off the rails as it flies down, and just as suddenly the rails become horizontal again, knocking Sonic into the ground. The tram is still wildly racing on the path, moving through line and line of Robotnik's forces. Before Sonic can get a grip of how many there actually are, the tram will come to a stop at the base of the giant column. It will slowly enter a small closing with bright lighting, and come to a stop in the middle of it. As it waits, Sonic can just barely get a glimpse of some of the squadrons waiting silently out there. He might not notice however that mechanical arms with various tools stretching from the ceiling to inspect the vehicle. One shoots a harmless laser grid through the tram that Sonic cannot avoid, and after scanning it completely, all of the arms pause.

Suddenly, the alarm turns on again! The tram remains still, and Sonic can hear over the waw-waw a symphony of mechanical parts warming up and moving. He can see the eyes of the robots outside light up and their limbs moving around. As they finish warming up, they turn towards his exact location. They begin to move towards him. Sonic cannot break through the glass, but when the mechanical arms completely retract to their original position, the tram will suddenly burst into movement, just as an Egg Robo makes its way into the entrance.

The column's architecture has angular, sharp, threatening structures that span across rooms and floors. There are many small rooms and hallways, with large curved glass windows that give a glimpse of the research that many robots continue to work on. Before Sonic can get a proper eye to any of these rooms, the shuttle will collide with the wall, throwing him to the side. A platform beneath it will promptly lift it up through a small shaft, which will quickly open into the wide inner area of the column; an atrium with thousands of tiny glass rooms, lights, and thin, steel girders bending across the space. As he rises, he'll see a swarm of robots enter the lower rooms, trying to make their way upwards. He can see many forms of weaponry and of energy harnessed by Robotnik's advanced machines in test chambers, along with workshops where new robots are designed by other robots. He even sees roboticization capsules and storerooms of power rings. As he moves further up, other elevators in the atrium will slowly catch up to him, filled with robots. Egg Robos within shatter the windows and carefully aim their guns at Sonic. However, their elevator cars reach their highest floor first and quickly stop, making their shots, if fired, to wildly miss.

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Before Sonic can take anything in, his own shuttle will enter a shaft and suddenly stop. The other side will open up, and Sonic will enter a two-story room with the walls completely covered in glass. The room is actually suspended like a bridge in the middle of the atrium. There are large monitors and small computers in the room, and on every monitor is a small looped replay of camera recordings of Sonic from earlier in the level. As he walks on, the recordings are also of Sonic inside the Egg Colossus, and also of him moving from plane to plane in the Egg Tempest, and on the asteroid, and in the volcano base... At the other side of the room is Egg Hunter, visibly weakened and broken, watching a screen that shows Robotnik holding a gun to Sonic's head.

Egg Hunter turns around. It does not hold a gun. The screens all turn blank, then fill with text and graphs. Sonic quickly glances around.

"Where's Zaga?" he asked threateningly, but in that instant a few screens lit up with a camera feed of Zaga running down the hallways inside the column.

Sonic hesitated. He took a step forward. "So you can understand me, right?" he asked.

Egg Hunter bowed in what Sonic assumed was a nod.

"Tell me then. Where's Robotnik? I know he survived, there's no reason why his forces would still be moving about with such intelligence. They must be led by someone to have been such a problem..."

As Sonic talked, the screens blipped and filled with various forms of data. One had a line graph, which did not move.

"He survived when I knocked him down after I destroyed his DeathEgg for the second time, and he's survived re-entry before that, too. One laser beam couldn't have killed him..."

The central screen filled with a full image of Robotnik, himself. Sonic jumped and stared at it.

"Robotnik!" he shouted. The image of the doctor flickered. His body did not move nor speak. Lining up next to him were ratios and percentages. As he tried to analyze them, the screens went blank again. Then suddenly the main screen loaded a small file with simple text on a black background. It read: "Total command administration given to subject Egg Hunter upon incapacity or destruction of subject Ivo Robotnik, project "Apocalypse" to continue on schedule."

Just as Sonic finished reading it, it blipped out again, and all of the monitors again showed camera feeds, this time from the Eraser Egg. Although fuzzy from zooming in, they kept focus on Robotnik's ship. Mechanix's beam appeared immediately, and from every angle, it can be seen to completely surround his ship. Even as the beam dissipated, Sonic could not see any remains. Some cameras veered off in possible trajectories, but they saw nothing as well. One panned on the line the beam made, and all that could be seen were bits of metal and ash spinning endlessly. Sonic watched those bits spin, but suddenly the screen blipped again, replaying the camera feed. Every monitor replayed it again and again. He looked at Egg Hunter, which did not move. He saw then that its left eye was cracked and splintered and then realized how silent the room was. The screens switched to blank again.

Sonic then noticed out of the corner of his eye the robots that were moving like a flood up the column's walls through the glass windows. They were only a few floors below him. He then turned to Egg Hunter, and noticed that the monitors were again showing something. They showed camera feeds again, but this time of the robots. Not just within the column, but in the cave around it, and in the smaller bases inside the Underzone. He saw one which showed the sky and a massive field. He saw Tails' soldiers firing and entering a giant hole in the ground where the Egg Colossus exited from. He saw the Quickened Quay and the Assimilated Asteroid, along with other bases he never would have thought existed. Before Sonic could take it in, Egg Hunter raised his hand. Every robot, in every screen, and even in his naked vision, stopped. The monitors flipped between different cameras showing different areas and different robots. They all had stopped. Egg Hunter raised his other hand, and every single robot that had a hand raised it.

"So you're in control of everything... now that Robotnik is dead."

Egg Hunter nodded.

"He's dead, then. He didn't survive? I don't believe it, he can't be dead. You've controlled everything since he's gone... but I still don't believe it!"

Egg Hunter violently threw down his hand. All of the other robots did the same, but stayed still. Every single monitor turned black. Sonic posed for battle, but Egg Hunter only turned around to the monitors. The screens were not actually black, but they were dark. They slowly got brighter, some patches faster than others. The cameras seemed to be zooming out. It was a strange mass of red and black mixed, with white sometimes visible. There were also some clearly mechanical parts, bent and broken, that came from the mass. One monitor switched to a steady shot from a suspended position, and it covered several robots in a desert area that surrounded a large crater. Around it were smaller craters, and some of the shrapnel were visible. Sonic suddenly felt a pang in his stomach, instantly recognizing the pieces of Robotnik's ship. He looked to the other feeds, fully zoomed out, showing the cockpit. He recognized glass at the top of the mass shown. He froze.

The screens blanked out again. Sonic didn't jump when the door opened and Zaga entered the room. He looked to Sonic.

"Sonic, all of the mechanical soldiers have stopped moving. We must move onwards with our path cut out simple for us."

Sonic didn't respond. He didn't move.

"You look pale, comrade..." turning to Egg Hunter, he raised his hand. "Did this broken toy pull out a cheap shot? I will destroy it now."

"No," Sonic interjected. He looked up, but he wasn't looking at either of them.

"Egg Hunter, you can't speak, but you can listen and understand... and think for yourself. Can't you?"

It made its bowing nod.

"You saved my life although you tried to kill me before... directing me to Robotnik, back at that oil rig. You stopped the Egg Colossus once I showed up, and here, you..."

It had already raised its hand again, and the monitors were lit up with the many robots still stopped. He then swooped his hand into a fist, to the left part of his chest, and all of the robots jerked. They slowly moved to the ground, some folding into themselves, others simply lying straight down. Their eyes dimmed to black, and their weapons became concealed. They were dormant again.

Egg Hunter's hand opened, and suddenly every single robot's chest broke open. There were bursts of sparks and smoke, and shooting out of them were rings, black stones, and animals. Every single robot was being destroyed, their cores being released. The monitors flipped through feed by feed, showing a robot's destruction then flipping to another camera. He saw hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of robots instantly being defeated...

Even Zaga could not speak. Sonic could not hold back any longer. He shouted out, "Why!? Egg Hunter, why are you doing all of this? You follow Robotnik and fight me, yet you go against his final plans?!"

Zaga looked to Sonic and shouted, "Magical creations have no free will! This is a post-humous guise by Robotnik! Don't be fooled, Sonic!"

Sonic replied, "No... this isn't a normal robot. Why does Robotnik have a robot that acts so absurdly? Why would he make something that would act against him? This robot has a soul... He's alive like you and me."

"But why? Egg Hunter, you must always stand by his side... you must know how much of a demon he is..."

Egg Hunter was still facing the other way, only the large screen lit up. In it was Robotnik, wearing conventional clothes and glasses. He was sitting down on a metal chair. Around him was a perfectly clean and orderly room. A bookshelf with giant tomes of reference organized by color stood behind him, and to his side was a table and some research equipment upon it.

His hand was holding his head, his other arm laying on the desk in front of him. The camera rotated around him, showing his face covered in shadow. There was only one light in the room, hanging above him, dim and faded.

"Egg Catcher..."

The camera pitched down. It stared obediently at Robotnik. "You were my masterpiece of Artificial Intelligence... you have perfect language acquisition, the ability to create new and unique actions based on interpretations of the actions you already know, the ability to learn and grow..."

"You think, you reflect. You have thousands of dynamic structures where information is processed, actions memorized, events and objects recognized, associations made..."

His head slipped further down into his open hand, his face bathed in darkness, looking down to the table.

"You respond to stimuli with emotions, which fuel your desire. You exist consciously; you know that yourself. And yet you listen to me. You are perfection. The realization of artificial free will..."

He gave a weak laugh. "And my unobstructed control of that free will."

He dropped his hand and looked up. "Therefore you will understand my dilemma more accurately than even I can right now. You will know the answer. Only you."

He looked straight into the camera. "Yesterday, I was overcome with depression and fear. Of the volunteers who sought to be the first roboticized citizens, where their minds would be perfectly safely transplanted into the bodies I have created, every single one-"

He stopped, and for a moment, if one stares at his face without moving, it seemed to cease being human. It was an assembly of shapes cast by the dim light in the black room, being meaningless and composed artlessly. The shapes were foreign, alien. At that brief moment, something, without knowing what it was, completely stopped within that room.

"There was always a chance that consciousness would not be fully transferred. I sequentially tested slow transferrals of memories by digital copying, duplicating the exact brain structure, the same chemicals... and to carry them, their actual conscious perceptions through non-cybernetic structures... to occupy a robotic vessel, to have essentially teleported a living, conscious being! They returned back to their original bodies, of course. I knew they would. I knew everything that could go wrong. But, for some reason...this time, to do everything at once..."

He stopped again. His face lost meaning. It looked exactly the same from before. The shapes were uncanny.

"At 1620, all of the monitors displayed a quick dropping out of brain activity. Some of the subjects just ceased moving. For five minutes, they were sprightly. EEG readings dropped dramatically, indicating catastrophic failure. They talked to me, their voice, copied sample by sample from their original articulatory system as an exact replica. They were exhilarated, having a virtual interface with which to interact with their own mind... being able to be entertained in thousands of subjective hours, and being able to jump for joy... ten times the height they normally could reach... They found pure joy, Egg Catcher..."

He stopped. Things completely lost sense. It wasn't that the camera had not moved, and that neither did Robotnik, but it was something more subtle that was missing.

"They died. Less than an hour in... Their consciousnesses were not based on anything but copies, and they could not re-root. The failure rate amongst all 1,000 subjects was... 100%..."

"I had no idea... I tested and tested and made trial after trial... I was absolutely sure that there would be no errors... I've mastered the fields of science and engineering, knowing intimately the realms of psychology and computer science. I knew... I knew!"

He stopped. His voice was heavy and slow, his breaths clearly audible. But his face did not move particularly, staying perfectly placid. The shapes of his face reflected nothing. They had no meaning at all.

His head moved slightly upwards, and meaning was restored. Light flooded the top of his face, revealing his pale skin and dark, sunken eyes. His skin had a strange texture, and sweated. His voice was quickening. His pitch shifted. Robotnik was petrified. "They are going to know by morning that something went wrong. They will find them all dead. This will be a massacre, and I am going to be hunted to death."

He looked back at the camera, completely motionless from fear. "They're going to kill me, Egg Catcher. There is nothing that will stop them. I will be seen as an international terrorist, they will judge me as a military threat and launch armies to kill me. I don't want to die... I have technology to solve their problems. I can rectify the consciousness transfer problem, too! I'm already thinking about it! I can finally end conflict on this world! They're going to kill me, anyway. Only I know logic in this world..."

The light bulb's reflection rushed across his glasses like a fireball while he turned his head down again. He took in a breath.

"I never meant to kill a thousand people... I want to save people, but in just one error... one, unacceptable error... I know what's good for this world, but the world will find some way to destroy me. They will never forgive me. I can't live in the same world as these people anymore... I always knew I would never fit... but my science must go on..."

Robotnik sunk back into darkness, his hand cradling his head. "Do I accept death? For the people I work for, whose world of peace I now shattered by a simple error... Do I escape? For technology that would bring their world out of conflict and poverty? As a genius, I can only see the path already ahead of my eyes... Egg Catcher... by now, you must know the true answer."

The camera stopped looking at Robotnik, having lost focus to some distant, unseen object. "Never tell me the truth, no matter how obvious it is, Egg Catcher. I designed you to not speak for a reason. No matter what I do or what ends up happening... don't stop me, Egg Catcher, never try to stop me... this civilization will never get a second chance to break the cycle..."

The screen blanked out.

Sonic looked at Egg Hunter. "So you must be... one of his first robots..."

Egg Hunter didn't turn around, looking at the monitors. Zaga looked back to Sonic. Sonic did not look at anything. His face was blank, his limbs frozen. Zaga entreated him, "Sonic, Robotnik is dead, his armies destroyed. You need to move on! The active threat, the one that has always been the most important, is Mechanix! We must stop Mechanix!"

Sonic did not respond.

"Sonic!"

He grabbed him and shook him. "Fool! Even if Robotnik actually was a good soul in the past, he still killed too many people. Indeed, since he has killed in the past, it shows his natural proclivity for villainy and baseness. Don't let him change your mind! This all must be a trick!"

Sonic looked towards Zaga.

Zaga glared back. "You need to snap out of it! We must get the Master Emerald."

Sonic suddenly rushed into Zaga and grabbed him at the shoulders. He shouted, "I never wanted Robotnik to die! Even if he killed all of those people, he shouldn't be condemned to death! Nobody deserves death!"

Zaga struck his arms off with the back of his hands. "You wish that madman lives still?!"

"I may have wanted him to die before, but I have seen people die before me in this battle... no matter how much anger would impassion me to kill... I would always remember the dead..."

Sonic looked away and his voice weakened "I don't want anyone to die, anymore..."

Zaga kept silent. He glimpsed at Egg Hunter, who stared still at the empty screens. "You! False warrior. Your master created this place because it's close to the Master Emerald, am I correct?"

The robot turned its head and nodded. Zaga shot a glance at Sonic, then continued, "I can see how intelligent he is, so there must be a reason he has not acquired it himself. He does not have it, right?"

It nodded again. Sonic looked up and added, "He could be lying. He's loyal to Robotnik!"

Zaga snapped back, "Of course he's lying! However, I can still have a conversation with him, unlike with you!"

He fully turned around and faced Sonic. "Do not sit and weep, foolish boy! As men, we cannot let our emotions control our spirit and morale. Regardless of what has happened, action must be taken! And now, we must take action!"

As he finished that word, a sensation flooded Sonic's body. He felt an incredible energy surge through his body, and he looks down to observe it. He notices how he's floating above the ground, and he saw his shadow sprawled out on the floor. His arms and legs, though, were stretched out flat, and he just realized he felt the sensation of Zaga's skin on his bare palms. He then felt a tug on his entire body to the right, and realized that he was also spinning. He gave in to the gentle pull and found himself looking up. Why had time suddenly slowed down? He looked at Egg Hunter, who had his gun drawn for some reason. He looked back to where he was and saw a small, gossamer ball that was quickly growing brighter. He then saw hairline cracks bolt through the windows around the room, bending and branching apart until they created a very complex tessellation of glass panes. The panes glided off each other, into the room, some faster than others, some cracking in the air. As he noticed this, he felt his back touch and begin to slide across the smooth floor. He then saw a figure out of the corner of his eye, and within a second it had appeared before him. The ball had grown to bright to look at, and this is where the figure occupied when it had stopped moving. Sonic easily registered the body as a cloud of glass shards hovered around his head. It was Mechanix.

Suddenly, pain shot through his back as he collided with the wall. The glass fell to the floor and slid, most of it falling out of the room and down the atrium. Zaga struggled to his feet, his eyes glued on Sonic. Mechanix stared at Sonic intently. A screech burst out and Sonic could barely see one of Egg Hunter's heavy missiles before it hit Mechanix. Fire burst and surrounded him, spreading out towards the walls. Sonic then heard a large crash and saw blue in his eye's side. With one foot on the ground, he turned and saw Egg Hunter's body lying amongst the consoles and monitors, arcs of electricity making the area flash with blinding light.

"Mechanix," Sonic stated as he stood up. The clouds of smoke, then billowing, suddenly blasted to the edges of the room. Mechanix was surrounded by light that quickly dissipated.

"Sonic," Mechanix responded, "I did not think you would survive."

He did not move. Sonic kept on guard, but he heard creaking metal. He could feel the rising danger in the room.

Mechanix spoke calmly. "It was a long way coming to this place. I checked the entire world for the place to revive Old Mobius. I checked the doctor's information in his old bases, yet for some reason every single one had this place in secret. I checked all of the Old Mobian ruins of this world in order to find the Phoenix Point..."

Zaga shouted out, "No!" He stepped forward and pointed at him. "You intend to desecrate that holy grave, you bastard!"

Just then, a blast rang out. Mechanix turned and saw Egg Hunter, his body chassis fractured and his right arm non-functional. "Vile puppet!" he declared as he threw out his hand. There was a flash, and Egg Hunter's body slid and his arm, legs, and most of his body scattered in tiny pieces across the floor.

"Ka'ralei was not the only city made underground to escape the event which cleaned the world of life. There were many more, dug further underground, with their people still alive by means of the Black Rocks they used to perpetuate energy. Holding the Black Emerald, I know where they are and can receive and transmit energy between them. I just need the ability to control the Chaos Emeralds..."

Mechanix stepped towards the two. "If I gain that power with the energy source on this island, I will immediately take control of all Old Mobian machinery. New Mobius will be destroyed unless you return to your people and tell them to retreat far away. Far, far away from us. I urge you to do this, for I have no desire to kill you."

Zaga carefully asked Mechanix, "You fool, I am an Old Mobian, who was freed by Sonic. If you wish to serve Old Mobius, then obey me and cease!"

Sonic noticed something about Mechanix, having stared at him. His body glowed slightly like light was being naturally released from his armor. Yet, his eyes did not glow at all and seemed rather cold and dim in comparison. Suddenly, they stared back at him.

"No, I obey the will of Old Mobius as dictated by the Leaders, who wished for me to cleanse the world of defilements and those which would oppose our sacred race, those who were directly descended from Zexagalaxius. They wish for me to bring the world to the state when the ancient god stood alive at the front of all of our descendants. The state in which only Old Mobius stands, in which any Old Mobian can live anywhere on this planet."

"I will completely destroy this new world, which has been corrupted into destruction and war as Robotnik has so easily demonstrated. Those who do not escape the wrath of the true Zexakal shall die."

Zaga turned to Sonic, who was staring again, this time at Egg Hunter, whose hand firmly grasped Mechanix's ankle. It shuddered severely, with a large puddle of oil leading from the wall and electricity sparking within him. His intact eye was flickering. Mechanix bent over and grabbed it.

"No! Stop!" Sonic shouted out suddenly and raced towards them.

"Begone!"

An explosion ripped through Egg Hunter, tearing metal off metal. Sonic had closed his eyes so that he wouldn't see the pieces scatter like broken plastic. He was still running, however, and he raised his arm to strike.

He then heard Zaga shout his name, and felt the entire world rush ahead from behind him. His back slammed against a flat wall, and he suddenly lost his breath. He buckled over, and realized he was punched in the stomach. He tried to breathe, but air wouldn't flow in or out. There was something blocking his throat, something he tried to swallow but couldn't. His voice was shallow, heavily suppressed by the intense pain.

Zaga yelled towards Mechanix, "I am one of your creators, Mechanix! Heed me! The Leaders only wanted you to kill their enemies, they did not want you simply to remove the Chaos Energy from the world, as we did!"

Mechanix calmly replied, "I recall every face I have seen, but my memory banks have no information on you. I cannot trust you."

Sonic made it on his feet again. As he was, he noticed the creaking being much louder. Zaga cocked his head, so Sonic thought he heard it, too.

Mechanix looked at the two. "You are both becoming increasingly irrational. I advise you again to assist your kin in escaping. They will need to know where to go when the world around them splits apart, as it shall."

The creaking came from the other side of the room, now. Sonic was hardly breathing, his face flush with blood and tears from trying to gasp for air.

"I determined that you would not listen to me, despite hoping against it. There is reason for the destruction I have committed, as it is for the benefit of the world. Your deaths shall be with good reason."

Suddenly, Mechanix disappeared. The floor then developed a massive tremor, and the air was filled with sudden pops, cracks, and rips. The floor shifted downwards, and everything started to slide.

"Sonic!" Zaga called out and threw out his arm. Sonic grabbed onto it with both of his own and held tightly. Zaga ran towards the broken glass walls and leaped, just as the floor caved in on itself and as the steel girders that supported the room collapsed. The entire suspended area ripped off the walls and fell. Zaga used his powers to break the window in front of him, and he and Sonic tumbled into the spiral hallway which led up the atrium. Zaga quickly got to his feet, but Sonic stayed on the ground.

"Boy! Stand up, we need your speed if we want to reach the Master Emerald first!" Zaga shouted.

Sonic grunted and managed to stand. He breathed deeply for a few seconds, then regained his composure and ran ahead of Zaga. They ran to the top of the atrium, where a door leading into a rocky cavern was blown off its hinges. It opened into a cavern with crystals covering every surface. Far ahead, there is a pinprick of light at the end of the deep tunnel.

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Hidden Palace [Act 1] (7/33)

Starting this stage, there is a time limit to get the Master Emerald before Mechanix in 15 minutes. Whatever time passes continues to count down in the next stage, too. If Sonic does not make the time, he will irrevocably fail.

Through the crystal tunnel, Sonic and Zaga will emerge underneath a giant structure that is held by large marble pillars and connected to the walls by thin bridges. Above it is a circular opening to the outside which is pure brilliance relative to the darkness. In order to scale the palace, Sonic will need to climb the crystal ledges until he can reach a pair of columns. By taking a lower route from an earlier split in the path, he can stand between them. From there, he can wall jump until he reaches the palace. He will land on a suspended platform that rests underneath the entire palace. The platform has many large gaps in it, however, requiring adept ability from Sonic in terms of standard jumping and wall-jumping in order to scale this building. He will need to clear gaps and land on walls, which he must carefully slide down so he does not fall to the start. His vertical movement is tested here, and he will need precise timing to pass the very challenging obstacles presented in the strange architecture of the palace.

When he finally enters the building, dimly lit by the glowing orbs packed into the wall, he will only need to wall jump up vertical pathways and run down long corridors with mosaics lining the walls. In one corridor, the first mosaic is indecipherable due to cracks and missing pieces, but the remaining ones depict the Floating Island being released from the Earth due to the Master Emerald's power. They showed Mobius, covered in fire and storms. They showed all of the other civilizations, each one, in absolute destruction. Mechanix was shown, the seven Chaos Emeralds attached to his body. The Master Emerald was then shown with cloaked echidnas surrounding it, and the final mosaic showed the Floating Island far above in the clouds with Mechanix asleep and buried deep underneath the scorched earth.

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In another corridor, there is a tapestry of the Angelican Chaos Emerald's properties, and very complicated diagrams that led towards an image of the Master Emerald. There were some smaller artistic pieces of various forms showing the Floating Island hovering over the other six lands, which seemed to be a reoccurring motif.

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Finally, Sonic will reach the familiar top of the palace, but he will find the Master Emerald's chamber empty. Continuing on, he will come into a room with floating and spinning pairs of helical ribbons. In the marble walls, large glass balls with a deep red color slowly pulsate and small crystals flicker and reflect the color of the room into itself. Standing within it is Knuckles.

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"This is it. This is as far as you are you ever going to go," he stated calmly.

"Knuckles! You're already here?"

Suddenly, the entryway behind Sonic shut with a heavy stone door slamming into the ground. Sonic turned and gawked for a moment before looking back. Knuckles was silent.

He saw his unmoving eyes, his still face, his very still body. Sonic could feel an unstoppable resilience radiate from Knuckles. He did not flinch. "You want another beating?" Sonic spat. He raised his fists.

"Don't be stupid."

Sonic paused, but his anger was mounting against Knuckles. He couldn't think but how many times he got in his way. Knuckles continued. "Mechanix has spoken with me personally." Sonic paid sharp attention to that name, which had many disturbing images attached to it. His anger submerged as a wave of anticipation came over him. "He talked to me for a little while. He told me about a lot of things... He said, that you were trying to stop Robotnik, not fight him directly, then. He does not consider you a friend, but he will not seek you out as an enemy."

Zaga then spoke out, "If you will not seek action against us, then move aside, brother! That creature of which you speak must be stopped before he tosses your world into the eternal abyss!"

"This isn't my world!" he yelled back.

"I want Old Mobius to return... I want to see my own people... I want to see... if I have a family..."

"I am one of your kind, brother Knuckles. Do you not see?" Zaga raised his arms in acceptance.

Knuckles smirked but didn't look back at him. "You can't fool me, Zaga. Mechanix has told me about you, too."

Zaga's demeanor changed. Knuckles didn't look at him. "You are no friend of mine."

Zaga hesitated, and then Knuckles looked to Sonic. "Sonic, I know you well enough that nothing I can say will change your mind."

He slowly raised his mitts. "And the same goes for me."

Sonic then shouted back, his anger bursting back. "No, you idiot! You must know how many people are going to die if Mechanix gets a hand on the Master Emerald! He already has more power than he has ever had before... he only had the Chaos Emeralds when he killed off the seven tribes of your ancestors. And the Black Emerald, which your ancestors shot into space after the event which forced your ancestors to burrow into the ground. There is no hope to defeat him if he gains that last one, the master of all the emeralds!"

Knuckles held his ground unwaveringly. He said something, but he paused at first. "...You're just not an echidna."

A dart seemed to pierce Sonic's ears, and he noticed that the air suddenly grew colder. Sonic felt a sensation that was indescribable, yet overwhelmed him completely. It was a realization, deep in his mind that reverberated so strongly it seemed to encompass all his senses. The world had suddenly become distorted. Something has irreversibly changed. He looked to Knuckles who looked at him.

"You don't understand what it's like to have lived your entire life alone, never knowing the concept of people loving you and helping you when you ask the storming sky why you were cursed to live. You have no idea how many times I told myself that it would be impossible to change that."

His fists were now fully raised. "You and I have nothing in common about this. There is nothing to say. I don't want to hear it."

Knuckles bent his back and legs, taking up a fighting position. "You were never my friend, Sonic. You don't need to know why I do what I do. I don't need to tell you." He was breathing rapidly.

He then took in a slow and long breath, then exhaled. "I'm not going to feel bad about killing you."

He rushed towards Sonic, who was caught off guard enough to narrowly avoid a massive punch that howled from the wind. Zaga, who was ignored to the side, immediately erected a barrier around Knuckles. In the same instant, he shot a blast at the wall, which crumbled and revealed an orb contained in a legged, metal bowl. "I remembered... Sonic! You must make haste to that displacement device!" As he finished those words, looking at Sonic, he didn't notice Knuckles' fist planting into his cheek. Upon realizing it, he was launched to his side and flipped over himself as he tumbled across the floor.

"You fucking coward! Escaping! I'll fucking rip you apart!" Knuckles shouted as he sprinted towards Sonic. Zaga threw another barrier around Knuckles, who easily broke it by thrusting his fist through it.

"Get to the Phoenix Point first!" Zaga shouted.

Sonic dashed towards the teleporter, but Knuckles was hot on his tail. Zaga scurried to his feet and sprinted, too. Knuckles slammed both fists into the ground, sending a shockwave that toppled Sonic onto his back. At that moment, Zaga leaped and wrestled Knuckles to the floor. Sonic looked back, concerned about Zaga who was still conscious from the devastating punch before.

Zaga glared back at him. "Faster than you have ever ran before!"

Sonic clambered upright and crawled onto the orb, which suddenly bathed the room in red light. The color blipped out into darkness, then in a flash returned even brighter. Just as rapidly, it faded out again. As it charged up, Sonic could not move. He could only watch as Zaga's blood splattered across the floor from pound after pound into his body. He felt the floor shake, and felt his bones vibrating. The ruby light came again in full force, blinding him with sheer scarlet brilliance. But he still heard the violent smashes that had no tone, no rhythm, but just fierce loudness. Zaga could not offer any resistance other than holding his arms above his head. He could not move. He felt his body lift into the air, but he did not feel any safer. The entire time, Knuckles' eyes were permanently on Sonic. As the light faded out once more, Sonic could only realize that the entire time he was waiting to kill him. Within seconds from starting his punishing on Zaga, he got to his feet. Sonic stared back, fear reproducing and coiling in his stomach. The sense of time itself being nothing for Knuckles turned into a crawling parasite that absorbed all of Sonic's thought and confidence. It was a primal type of fear that consumed him violently and offered him no hope of action that gave him a sickly fear about contemplating the very imminent future where Knuckles would have his fists at his face. Knuckles was bearing within a few seconds' worth of time to his position. He came as if his weight was not affected by gravity. He seemed to fly directly at him, as if the air collapsed before him.

Light surrounded Sonic, a blood red drowning out all he could see.

.

Sky Sanctuary [Act 1] (7/34)

The light disappeared. Sonic felt his feet lightly waving in the wind, then slammed back onto the orb. He felt wind rush against his body as the pain sent waves of pain and alertness through his body. As he slowly recovered, he looked around him and saw that he was on a moss-covered stone platform. Far below and above him were churning, spinning black clouds, blasting across the skyscape at lightning speeds. Glowing bolts were flashing between the masses of cloud at every instant. He looked to the platform below him, which hovered near another floating stone platform. There was a long road of such platforms, all at different horizontal and vertical distances from each other. They resembled the spiral shape of a tornado, expanding into the giant cavern of violent sky around him. At the end of its massive fountain opening was a building made of marble so black it looked darker than the storm itself. It had a radiant green penumbra that emanated on its circumference. Upon seeing that light, he leaped off the orb and made his way towards it.

The main difficulty of this level is keeping a constant speed to beat the narrow time limit now on its second act. This is because nearly all of the platforms are particularly short yet are separated by the same length of distance. Additionally, without enough speed, he will not clear most of the very large horizontal distances that arise at the end of the path. Since some platforms float above the platforms behind them, Sonic will also need to find ways to move vertically without slowing down to make use his most powerful wall jumps. Even those which are too tall to leap upon, can be low enough to run directly up the wall with enough speed. The strong headwind will make the platforms constantly move, as well. Objects on the the platforms may play a role in helping him progress, such as collapsible pillars and springs hid under the large mounds of moss which sticks tightly despite the wind. Once Sonic reaches the building at the end, the timer will stop.

.

He looked at the building. It had a conically sloped marble roof supported by slim, blackened, bronze columns. Its underside had spires facing downwards and elaborate, thin sculptures hanging freely between them by steel wires. Sonic looked closer at them, seeing them to be very abstract representations of Old Mobians, holding onto the building with one or two hands. Through and amongst the figures were flakes of rock suspended by tinier filaments. Some of the filaments pierced the bodies as well.

Sonic looked up at the building and walked towards it. There was a quiet screaming sound of air within the deafening howl of the wind. Between the bronze columns were giant folds of a fabric-like material. Sonic stepped on to the narrow platform that rests outside of that material and circles the entire building. He pushes against the fabric, but the weight is beyond his strength to budge. He stood there, hands resting against the smooth, heavy surface, trying to still his patience. The wind howled around him, and he felt himself becoming aggravated at the situation.

Suddenly, he got an idea. He crouched and charged up a spindash, letting it loose into the small wedge underneath the obstacle. His spinning quickly picked and knocked the wall into the air and he busted through. He quickly untucked, finding himself within the sanctuary. The difference in sound disoriented him as well as finding himself in blinding green light. He stood completely still as his vision adjusted. It was one circular room with a metal contraption in the center concealing the Master Emerald, whose magnificent light flooded out of the thin edges and holes of the device. On the walls, there was the same material covering every side. The material was very elegantly designed on the inside, painted with very fine details and patterns that had no color. Dust motes floated lazily through the air. Sonic looked around, his footsteps echoing noticeably. The floor and ceiling were also painted, their colors faded most near the heavy curtain walls. They all had patterns that radiated from the center, which was lower than the rest of the room by a few steps' worth. Standing there in the very middle was that complicated sculpture of metal pieces, sharply folded over each other in mathematical intervals like the petals of an opening flower. It was several times his size and every petal's edge gleamed only as a razor could. He walked around it. "This must be it. But how do I get it out of there without killing myself?" He stopped, turned, and hesitantly approached it. He reached out and touched it. Sonic stared at it for a moment, then drew closer. He lightly pressed his fingers against the frosty cold metal then felt it give way. He withdrew and stared at the blades. "This really feels like a bad idea."

He walked over to the blade and saw his face reflected back into a twisted shape. He stopped directly in front of it, and put his hands over the edge. He tried not to think about what could happen.

"No, there must be some other way. I need to stop and think this through... although faster..." He turned around and gazed off towards the sheet-like wall. Noticing what he was looking at, suddenly, he received an epiphany. He flipped back and saw the flower sculpture. "This better do it!"

He rapidly spinballed into the edge, dislodging it as some connected apparatus underground started to push it into motion. The metal had snapped around violently, although with the blades in the opposite direction of what would decapitate Sonic. The blunt backside of a petal had smashed his chest, forcing him to stumble backwards. He looked back and saw the petals unfolding and spreading out into the open space, rotating around each other. As they did, green light flooded out, pouring over the ceilings and covering the floors. Sonic held his hand but still couldn't see the Emerald at first. He kept low as the blades whizzed through the air overhead. "That's it..."

The Master Emerald blazed brilliantly with a green that seemed to turn every surface into the slowly moving colors of pure energy. Its deeply detailed inner crystalline structure stood in a pool of pure green. Sonic's eyes finally adjusted and he returned to his feet when the petals had stopped moving. He stepped over to the gem and briskly grasped it with both arms.

"Arghhh!" He felt heat and an indescribable force move into his palms and down his arms.

He tried lifting and pushing the jewel, but it remained still. A strange feeling overcame his body then, branching like lightning through his veins into his body. His mind became overwhelmed with pressure and he felt it pulsing painfully like a mallet swinging at his skull. He recoiled his arms and grabbed his head, feeling his skin suddenly aflame and the waves of energy rushing deeper into his brain.

"What is this..." He choked on his own words, suddenly unable to speak. His jaw felt like it had frozen over and his vocal folds seemed dead. He then saw the petal next to him stretch out far into the distance, and he saw the ceiling bend and curve away from him. The small building transformed into a massive basilica with masterfully created artwork dedicated to Old Mobius. Everything came alive and animated themselves. The columns had patterns rotating around their wavering bodies and the walls changed color with every breath they made. He wondered how he could move around, then thought about his legs and found the world suddenly spinning into itself. A line on his body made contact with something hard. He felt like it pushed him and he turned around, only to find himself rolling on the floor.

He looked up, his body slumped over the endless steps giving him a good angle of the other half of the building. The folded walls had been easily torn apart by a strange essence from outside. It rushed in, swooping across everything and peeling off all of their animated surfaces. The flower before him split apart by the petals, which, despite not having eyes, glared menacingly at Sonic as they passed by. The essence was not definable by Sonic as something "visible", because he identified it with the same strange force that seized his arms earlier. It was a force of its own will. Instantly, the strange power burst towards him and engulfed him in an instant. His vision was immediately cleared of everything that he would consider as reality. He no longer saw the room, but instead a mixture of animated colors and shapes that surrounded him in all of his full vision. He felt the vibrating force of his own being leave his body, no longer feeling things by touch.

The shapes had already evolved into extremely detailed designs of intricate repeating patterns, of which all of the common motifs and themes, with their underlying meanings and histories, were directly understandable by Sonic. Information was flooding into his mind, and yet he felt neither overwhelmed nor listless. He could hardly believe that he was still thinking anymore, and his mind drifted into increasing layers of abstraction away from his vivid perceptions. He felt his consciousness transcend his body, his hallucinations, the world he was in, until it was accelerating away like everything was ending. Yet, he was only moving towards a central point.

A being stood before Sonic. Even with his significantly altered perception of time, he was jolted by its instantaneous arrival. It had a head shape that defied any geometric interpretation, with infinitely long dreadlocks oscillating across all of the dimensions in every direction. He could perceive three eyes, which stared at him with an intensity that would make the sun look dim.

Before Sonic could bare more witness to this figure, it showed to him glass pearls that each contained the sum of all possible timelines for several universes. Billions of galaxies burst out and streamed around his body. In the instant one would take to read a page in a book, he would come to understand everything about a galaxy. Within what seemed like years, although he could hardly tell the length of a second, he managed to find Mobius. He looked into its past, and saw echidnas running across the earth. He saw how they lived in low and limited numbers, and he looked into their eyes and saw how desperate and painful their lives were. He saw tribes of different species growing and fighting each other. They developed weapons, and as archery and spears came around, the echidnas became in danger of extinction. The hedgehogs had developed the "death tumble", which Sonic recognized immediately. The foxes were also becoming increasingly intelligent at this point. Sonic could not control his vision. The focus of his attention was grasped in a vise and pointed towards the echidnas. He saw an echidna man lead an army into the ranks of other echidna tribes, and offered unison, or upon refusal, death. He saw the echidna man become the leader of hundreds of tribes, while the hedgehogs and foxes still fought amongst themselves. The echidnas quickly grew a civilization and called themselves Zexakal, or Under Zexa. Upon that revelation, Sonic immediately recognized the resemblance between the god-like entity and the one man.

In that instant, an explosion from the being cleared Sonic's mind of all of his perceptions of this god realm, and felt a pain sharply strike his back. He heard a voice, covered in fog and darkness, say to him, "If you continue..." He felt himself stretch out in pain and saw the layers of abstraction and color disappear before him like a receding tide. He felt like he was being dragged backwards as his eyesight returned objects to their normal proportions. He felt his pain continue to flare and burn, and he saw a glint of bright white light piercing the omnipresent green. He shook his foot, felt it, and rolled backwards, launching himself up to his feet. He looked at Mechanix, who stood on the other side of the still exposed Master Emerald.

"No!" He sprinted as fast as he could, leaped over the Emerald, and aimed at Mechanix's face. He threw his fist out, but instead his whole arm hit something. He felt the world spin around him again, and then his back split open with more pain. He reopened his eyes and saw Mechanix's blue eyes glowing right in front of him. He could feel the energy radiating from his hand, which nailed Sonic into the floor with sharp claws poking right above his skin. Sonic felt like he was being held down there for forever, but the hallucinations ended there. He felt his blood flow through his body at a normal rate, and planted his feet onto the ground. He quickly knocked off his hand, turned to his side, and bashed his way out.

"What was that?! Suddenly, he was..." Mechanix murmured to himself, surprised.

"I'll kill you! This isn't going to continue anymore!" Sonic shouted back. He was flying through the air, his legs having launched him into a sprint towards Mechanx that would end a second later.

"Meaningless." Mechanix replied and struck Sonic into the walls. Sonic tried to gasp for air, but found himself paralyzed when he hit the extremely heavy curtain. It folded backwards, slowly swooping out towards the open sky. For a moment, things froze. He saw, below him, the threatening mass of clouds churning and sparking lightning.. He felt air rush against his body, and feeling himself dropping and heard the wind rushing behind him as the wall swung back. His feet hit the floor and his knees could not withstand the speed. He flew forward, all of his body being scraped by the floor as he slid and began tumbling over himself. He felt like his skin was being torn off at his knees, and realized his body had stopped moving on the cold, smooth floor. He tried to budge his body into motion, fighting the scorching pain as he slowly moved himself once more to his feet. He was stunned -moving without thinking to – from the power of the attack. He saw Mechanix's feet walk towards the base of the Emerald.

"No..." Sonic said weakly.

Before Mechanix could touch it, a massive weight pressed on Sonic's body and he collapsed onto the ground. It was a darkness, some unknown, painless space that he entered, where all at once, things were deprived of meaning. He could not understand anything and lost all sensation. A gossamer fabric of sickly colors became wrapped over his body, and a gradual image of death overcame him. He could only envision death and how he could not fight it at all. He then lost all ability to think. His eyes were covered with haze and dim color, his mind losing all focus on the body and all he could muster was a feeling of confusion as he blacked out.

.

Horizon High [Act 1] (7/35)

Pain! In the air, Sonic opened his eyes. He was near a wall, and he threw his legs back to balance. The pain flashed through his cheek again as he realized he was punched awake. He looked towards his enemy. He was an echidna, wearing an ancient, crusty leather armor. His fists were wrapped with tight cloths. He swung his other arm for a punch.

Sonic dodged and quickly threw a punch into his face, knocking him to the side. He leaped backwards and relaxed for a moment. As the echidna stumbled about for a moment, he looked around him. He was in a very orthogonal room; its width and height were perfectly the same length and the walls were absolutely empty of texture or color. Below him, however, there was vivid color of the world below. He saw purple land resting from an omnipresent darkness that bathed world, but was alit by some very vibrant red columns of light that pierced from beneath the earth. He could barely understand what he was seeing when the fist again came to strike him. He grabbed it and quickly launched a punch into his chest, sending him into the wall.

.

The man choked and grabbed his chest. He wheezed and gasped for air, giving Sonic a chance to run down the corridor he was in. It seemed to go on for a very far distance.

As he continued to run, large strips of glass will fly from the floor up the walls, revealing the emergence of ancient Old Mobian cities far beneath the surface of the planet. It seemed unreal. It couldn't possibly be happening. As he kept on running, the world started to shift around him. The red color flooded the room, ripping off the smooth walls and shattering the glass. Sonic found himself running through the beams of light as the world floated into the aether. The beams are very long and Sonic will be running at speeds he has never reached in reality. He will always be running on their underside, even if that means running upside down when they move backwards. As he runs by, the world will twist around him. He'll find himself in hallucinations, running on paths he ran a while ago. The areas he jumps through have the same style but are different in a subtle way. They are more difficult to clear with speed. Blue Hill at first quickly blurs by. Every now and then, an explosion from below would tear through the world he was in like a wall of flame, bringing him back to the cold corridors, completely flat and empty of danger. Also on occasion, tiny abstract metal figures will chase him down from behind while firing lasers at him. They look the same regardless of the world Sonic is in, although Sonic himself will change to an enemy he busted in the particular area he was in. At the end of the long hallway is a room filled with perfectly rectangular glowing prisms connecting every face of the room. The prisms seemed to be composed of a partially translucent metal that conducted electricity through tubes that brilliantly glowed the colors of the rainbow. The colors would zoom down the prisms and splash into the lumbering ocean of mixed colors that floated on the floor, walls and ceiling. He'll make his way into the center, when suddenly they moved, piece by piece at a rapid pace to lock him within.

.

"Sonic, your persistence is futile. You can do nothing to stop me. The power of all the Emeralds makes controlling every piece of this ship a simple task. You are absolutely helpless, so quit. I will not kill you if I do not have to."

In a flash of light and noise, something appeared besides Sonic. He turned around and saw another Old Mobian, wearing a suit made out of Black Stone and bronze.

"I will let someone else kill you, however."

The Old Mobian took from a sheath on his back a double-edged longsword. He pointed it at Sonic and growled an indecipherable string of sounds. Sonic simply backed away and the man screamed out, aiming to slice him apiece.

.

[Act 1 Boss]

While fighting him, the light around him begins to take a life of its own and creates different battlefields made entirely out of color.

- The warrior will move very fast and every swing of his sword cuts the air itself. The Black Rocks and his sword makes him a dangerous opponent, while his armor will prevent Sonic from attacking him directly.

- Instead, when the man attacks with a strike that flows through the air, Sonic must spindash and strike it to send it back at him.

Although he will go down in eight hits, he will grow and shrink and move faster and slower due to the hallucinations Sonic is under. Without any sense of timing, he can only act on reflex to attack.

.

[Act 2]

The psychedelia will wear off as the Old Mobian collapses to the ground. Reality crystallizes around Sonic as the prisms move to their original positions. As the path unfolds before him another bland corridor is revealed ahead. He goes in.

The path is not straight anymore, cutting up into vertical shafts or dropping down into other corridors. The same metal over all of the walls changed texture, having layers of metallic sheets laid over each other. Glass is omnipresent, the armageddon constantly within eyesight.

As Sonic continues onward, he will be attacked by more of Mechanix's tiny mechanic minions, including ones that speedily zoom across surfaces and attack Sonic on the way. Zexakal warriors as well will be teleported up from the ground. Additionally, traps mire the corridors ahead. Some are simple, like bungee pits and collapsible ceilings, while others, like a chain that grasps Sonic's leg as circular saw approaches, require quick thinking on Sonic's part in order to survive (in that case, he would need to spindash himself out of the chain).

Especially later on will Sonic find himself in traps that seem beyond his ability to escape. In several areas, a wall of deadly spikes will hound Sonic down through the corridors. Although he can barely avoid it at first, it will be beyond his ability to avoid it in addition to the many traps and enemies that will block his way ahead. This will be when time will freeze and allow him to glide through the many traps that would normally be 100% fatal.

At the end of the corridor is a large room with glass covering the walls. From here, spires from the ship are seen in the distant, reaching down to the torn earth. Thousands of towers from hundreds of buildings jutted out from the broken surface. The world was glowing red hot, steaming and smoking. As Sonic looked out in dismay, the floor beneath him suddenly gave way. He was standing on it as it fell, and quickly reacted by leaping to the nearby wall and launching back to stable ground. The circumference of the room had dropped into nothingness, but Sonic paid more attention to another Zexakal warrior who stood before him.

.

Mechanix's voice called out again. "Ridiculous. I have calculated that it is impossible for you, even with your speed, to make it this far... but nonetheless I have planned just for that case."

He suddenly began speaking in a foreign tongue. The warrior's attention was grabbed, and he conversed back with him. Sonic took a good look at him from afar: he wore colorful armor that seemed to be made out of a light, but durable material. It shined brightly, with only small dings and scratches marring its engraved surfaces. He held a shield and a finely crafted sword.

Mechanix said a particular word and the man snapped his eyes onto Sonic. His expression grew increasingly hostile as Mechanix spoke to him.

Suddenly, he heard him say, "It does not take much convincing my people to kill you, hedgehog. They seem particularly delighted to punish your species."

In a flash, Sonic remembered Knuckles and the Alastran slave. An explosion of anger burst through Sonic just as the echidna started spouting some abusively toned epithets at him. He walked over and pointed his sword in his direction. Sonic could feel anger rise from the man, while his mind was contemplating the truth of what Mechanix said.

.

[Act 2 Boss]

The echidna is much more talented with the sword than Sonic's previous opponent.

- Every swing will be made to kill, forcing Sonic on the run. He will quickly close any gap, keeping the pressure on.

- If Sonic tries to attack, the warrior will repel him with the shield and then quickly counterattack.

Sonic will first need to separate him from his equipment, so he must knock him down the sides of the room. The warrior will slide down and eventually stab the wall with his sword for some footing. If Sonic can strike him in this time, he will only have his shield. The Zexakal will be able to wall jump up and take his sword back unless Sonic continues after him down the hole.

In that narrow vertical chamber, Sonic must keep his own footing on the walls while simultaneously fighting the warrior who is trying the same.

- He will try to knock Sonic down by ramming with his shield and will climb up at a rapid rate when not attacking or being attacked. If Sonic can attack him from behind while he's in the middle of a jump, the shield will be knocked out of his hand as well. At this point, he will give up trying to climb and will simply fall down to get his shield. Sonic must leap downwards on the walls to catch up and strike the echidna in mid-air.

With just one hit, the echidna will lose control and collide into the walls in the direction Sonic hit him at. Eventually, both of them will reach the pitch-black bottom of the pit. When the echidna hits the floor, the floor detaches from the walls and slides down the vertical steel bars that keep it connected. The floor slams into the bolts resting at the bottom of the bars, and the force of the collision sends both of them back into the air. In between the bars is nothing; the floor is all that keeps them from falling below the ship to the dying world below. The armor on the Zexakal broke from his fall, leaving him finally vulnerable.

The shield hasn't fallen over, so Sonic must quickly knock it off the platform before the warrior grabs it and becomes significantly more difficult to defeat.

- Otherwise, he will clamber to his feet and withdraw a stiletto. Without his shield, Sonic must draw close and as soon as the warrior makes a stab Sonic must strike. If he is directly on the edge, he will be knocked off to his death, otherwise, he will gain footing and come again.

Of course, eight hits will finish him anyway. With the shield, Sonic must not only avoid a stab to attack, he must do it twice; once to stun and the other to actually hit.

.

Sonic relaxed and looked around him. The frigid wind howls and bites into him as an omnipresent hum coming from the earth gave grim color to the cold silence. He looked above. The floor had slid farther than he could clear.

Suddenly, within the darkness above, a tensile snap echoed down to Sonic. His heart exploded into motion and adrenaline filled his body. He quickly looked around, seeing the underside of the steel ship. It was uneven, blocks of different shapes laying over each other. He saw an opening in one of the blocks and sprinted towards it. As he leaps, there was a wave of pure loudness that overcame his ears. As he landed and slid, he turned his head back with ears ringing to see the suspended platform which the annular pit surrounded slamming into the floor. The massive weight broke through the platform and ripped the bars out of the steel, carrying out large chunk of the metal blocks.

Sonic stood for a moment, his heartbeat slowing down. He wondered how Mechanix could find such perfect slabs of metal, and how he could make an entire ship out of it. As he got to his feet, he wondered how he was going to defeat him.

As he repeated that question in his mind, the meaning of the question smacked into him. He reflected on why he was even standing where he was. He realized that he was in shock... he had not even wondered why he was alive or how he got so far in Mechanix's ship. He walked to the edge and looked down below. He had already failed to prevent this. The world was splitting apart... it was being destroyed. He thought about how everyone counted on him to stop Mechanix... but in so quick a time he was brought to his knees...

Absurdity grabbed him. He now has all the emeralds. What could he possibly do to stop him? Why does it matter anymore? He thought about all the times he fought Mechanix, about how he never could kill him. He was like a phoenix...

The wind did not stop blowing. Sonic felt even colder. He was scared. Whether he fights Mechanix or not, he is going to die. He is going to die soon.

He remembered the face of Zaga or what he could see before Knuckles' fists pummeled it in. He remembered Knuckles' endless staring... he remembered the feeling of fear shooting through his spine. He remembered Tails, who rejected Sonic but couldn't stay angry at him. He remembered Egg Hunter, mercilessly destroyed by Mechanix. He remembered seeing on the monitor... the corpse of Robotnik...

He wanted to stop remembering. He didn't want to feel this tremendous weight that was bearing down on him. He turned around and started walking. The emotions that were rising were too much for him. He wanted to run away from all the possibilities that he was contemplating, all the questions he was asking. He didn't want this burden on his shoulders. He never wanted to be a hero, much less the world's only savior. He wanted happiness. He wanted to escape his weakness. He ran.

.

[Act 3]

The metal blocks tend to have rectangular hallways that Sonic can run through, but some do not. Sonic will need to navigate the ship's underside without falling to his death. He will need to time jumps to clear gaps onto sometimes very small platforms that do not permit overjumping. Sonic must exercise his ability to move horizontally while solely on vertical surfaces i.e. walls. As he moves on, Mechanix will catch on to his position and detach blocks of metal that Sonic may or may not be on at the time. Eventually, Sonic will find himself climbing up the side of the ship. As he does, robots will exit the ship from tiny crevices between some blocks and attack him. He will see through the many panes of glass and see that the rest of the ship, inside and out, is a bleak, artless mass of the steel blocks. Once he reaches the top of the ship, pieces will move outwards and block his path unless he can avoid them as he goes by. Many mobile robots will be sent after him. After running far enough, Sonic will come to a tower that overlooks most of the ship. It is a tall prism, oddly reminiscent of the disappearing tower from the island that sealed Mechanix away.

.

The tower moves back into the ship. Mechanix is facing Sonic, who covers his eyes. Mechanix is glowing a steady white that is too bright to look directly at. His eyes burn blue, however, even through the pure light.

"Do you want to kill me?"

Mechanix grasped Sonic's intention and thus commanded his attention.

"I shall offer you an opportunity."

His aura disappears in an instant and Sonic notices him take the Black Emerald out of his chest. It floats out of his hand and in an instant jets out of sight.

"With this much power, it is unconscious to manipulate the shape of objects and the power of their reactions to outside forces."

He holds out his hand and a rough ball of folded metal flies into it from below. He brings forth his other hand, and after a blur of movements moves it back to his side as a machine begins gyrating and floats into the air.

"The Emeralds have freed my consciousness from the digital fetters locked around my mind. This body is now but the avatar of my immeasurable willpower. It is impossible for one like you to know my true essence."

He approaches Sonic, who could only stare back, waiting for the chance to attack Mechanix again. "I offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your will against mine. At least your fragile soul could be said to have struggled against me, your very god."

.

[Act 3 Boss : MECHANIX'S GLORY ]

"Know my one being. Become humble through your body and through your mind to my infinite will."

In a flash, the white aura surrounding Mechanix disappears into the air. His parts lose their glow. His chest opens up and all seven Chaos Emeralds exit his body. Glass cages from the floor hover outwards and encapsulate the gems. They then hover far above Sonic's reach. As this happen, Mechanix transforms into his original form. He becomes chunkier and more voluminous.

The ground underneath Sonic starts vibrating. It is soon oscillating transversely, the mysterious metal turns into an unending series of waves. The air above Sonic seems to change, too. It becomes liquid-like, with different streams of air refracting light at different rates. Bubbles in the air rush by, reflecting all things outside of them. As the ship soars through the sky, the sun begins setting amongst the ever-morphing clouds of ever-changing texture. Helices and rings of fire and energy pulse out of it, casting color and light across the many surfaces they touch.

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[MECHANIX LV.1]

Mechanix without any emeralds or power boosts. He regenerates the slowest like this, making him the most vulnerable now. Again, his attacks in his original form are:

- a forward dash followed by a broad slash using the blades on his arms

- leaping to do the same attack from the air

- thrusting his palm forward (with fingers extended) to launch a projectile of compressed air

- locking-on Sonic and firing a small, quick energy blast from 3 to 5 times

- locking-on Sonic and dashing towards his position in a linear path. He'll hold his bladed arms to protect him mid-dash and will pull them forward to ram those blades into Sonic.

- Additionally, in mid-air he can suddenly dash parallel to the ground for a short time.

- He will have nothing off which he can wall-jump.

- His maximum speed is slightly slower than Sonic's maximum speed.

Despite all this, he takes 32 hits before stopping.

.

Sonic's attacks seem to do less damage even though Mechanix was in the same form. Mechanix slides backwards to make some distance. The ground underneath him shifts and rolls across itself, raising pieces of metal upwards to lift Mechanix above the battleground. While watching from above, he controlled the animation of the many blocks of steel beneath him.

Two of the Chaos Emeralds shot into the air from their cages. Their every movement disturbs the air around them, causing it to bend and warp like a pond stirred by floating pebbles. Their movements were harmonious with the vibrating ground and rushing air. They erect energy barriers around themselves that would harm Sonic if he touches them. One moves horizontally above Sonic, tracking his position until it stops and fires a laser. The other will stand to the side and steadily shoot out waves of energy pellets which Sonic must navigate through as well. After twenty waves of firing with a frequency in-tune to the omnipresent vibration, this emerald will lose its energy and cease moving. It will become an object subject to the visible flow all around. The laser-firing emerald will also drop its shield after ejecting all of its energy after blasting its power. Sonic must wall-jump off of the lower Emerald and spinball through the higher one. They will both fall to the floor as if knocked dead out of a haunting trance, when Mechanix will throw out his hand and pull them back towards him by an invisible force (although Sonic can notice this very force in the modulation to the oscillations).

He then pulls another Emerald out of a cage and they all naturally glide into the open cavity in his chest. The many pieces of his body begin to shift around each other again, settling in a new position that gave him a larger, fiercer shape. The angular nature of his body pieces make his entire body look sharp and dangerous. In the many creases and cracks in the planar intersections of the many blocks of this amalgamated body, there is a faint and pulsing white light. The shadows they cast give him an increasingly threatening appearance.

Sonic begins to see how long this battle will become. He decides to act conservatively about his health when fighting these forms of Mechanix he's beaten before. Mechanix jumps off his elevated platform and attacks Sonic.

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[MECHANIX LV.2 [ 'ADEPT' : ▿ ▿ ▿ ] ]

Mechanix with the power of three Chaos Emeralds. Mechanix's speed progresses past Sonic's maximum speed. He develops two new techniques:

- opening a pocket door in his hand that reveals a laser cannon within the arm, to fire rapid streams of small laser pulses

- charging his cannon to fire a blast so large that Sonic can only dodge it by rolling under.

He will take thirty-two hits before falling. The ground jumps underneath him, launching the block Mechanix is on back to his higher recovery position behind him.

.

This causes the ground to be disturbed and to likewise explode upwards. A fourth Chaos Emerald shoots out of its cage as the force of the immense blocks crush it, rocketing it into the air. When it lands on the ground, it ejects its energy in a spherical explosion. The explosion forces another glass cage to shatter, sending the emerald within spinning over Sonic's head. As he watches it, he sees a lengthened tetrahedral of energy form around it, orienting its sharp spike in Sonic's direction regardless of the spinning or position of the emerald itself. Sonic instinctively leaped to the side as it shot towards the ground and pierced the air that took the place of Sonic's chest. He then turns to see the first emerald launching back into the sky. He turns back as the second emerald drops, bounces off the ground (despite making an uncanny 'clink') and hops across the stage at a lower height and faster rate.

Sonic tries to always keep in mind the space between him and both the line of sight of the arrow-like emerald and the blast radius of the bomb-like emerald, whenever he sees it come down. While Sonic is evading death, Mechanix will control the wave-like motion of his ship's moving parts to Sonic's disadvantage. The sinuforms will go by with great haste or rather slowly as to confuse Sonic and ruin his continuous movement. He will also alter the length of the waves to the same effect.

When the leaping emerald collides with the ground, so too will the spinning emerald attempt to shank Sonic. This is also in tune to the spinning flows of the air and ship. For a brief period after their attack, they will be motionless, having expired the energy they could take from within themselves for that period. Sonic must spindash through both or one will recover energy before he can attack it next.

.

With both Chaos Emeralds defeated, Mechanix cleaves the ground in two. The blocks beneath Sonic drop into the ship, forcing a tall wall between him and his enemy. He looks to the other wall and finds it is too far to wall-jump.

Sonic backs away for a moment, realizing that Mechanix must be covering his weakness if he needs to receive the Chaos Emeralds before healing. He looks at the walls again, seeing planes and polygons shift, merge and segment over each other in a never-ending sea of mechanical transformation. From the tiny spaces in between, a cool, deep blue light makes Sonic feel like the pit is a pool, and he's pinned to the bottom.

Breaking through his thoughts, Mechanix slams into the ground behind him. His pieces rotate around each other in a complex, inter-connected fashion. Sonic watches Mechanix transform again, with the light of the Chaos Emeralds somehow leaking through his body. The many pieces fit into each other and change the texture of the surface to smooth and sleek. Elaborate runic inscriptions reveal themselves on his body. His metal reflects the white light that was much more noticeable now.

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[MECHANIX LV.3 [ 'EXPERT' : ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ] ]

Mechanix with 5 Chaos Emeralds. His speed surpasses Sonic's maximum speed even further. All of his attacks have been retained, but his attacks have become stronger in general. Specifically:

- His laser cannon is now rapid-fire

- His charged laser beam becomes twice as large

- His slice attacks hook Sonic still for a 5-hit combination

- His dash becomes much faster, nearly being instantaneous

- He will now curve his thrusting energy attack to follow Sonic until he runs out of energy

Additionally, he reveals even more attacks to corner Sonic:

- He now thrusts forward both of his arms like pistons while swinging them, launching crescent-shaped slivers of energy spinning in rapid succession to overwhelm Sonic.

- He can now run across the walls, as well as being able to make powerful leaps off the walls.

- Following the above, he can run across the ground, leap off of one wall and land on the other to make a full revolution around the battlefield, all while firing a continuous laser beam targeted at the center of the room. To avoid the beam, Sonic must wall-jump off of the wall right before Mechanix does.

- He will also stop himself on the walls and fire rapid-fire lasers from up to bottom that Sonic must dodge between.

In thirty-two hits, Mechanix collapses again.

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The blocks around vibrate and move faster. Suddenly, the ground below them gives way. Yet, Sonic and Mechanix both stand on the floor as if nothing happened. They free-fall without rotating or moving, as if it was the world around them that was flying upwards. The blue light behind the walls seems to be regularly alternate between bright and dim, once again creating waves of azure that flooded upwards like a hollow fountain.

Sonic wonders if he had completely lost in touch with reality when he looks upwards to see a glass block holding another emerald spinning wildly and dropping faster than anything else. Without anything touching it, it breaks into pieces. Mechanix then uses the invisible force to grab it and he put it within himself. The runic inscriptions curl and spread, covering more of his metallic surface. The white light was flush over his body and it pulsed in and out of darkness in a cyclic fashion that was in phase with the movements of everything around.

Sonic realizes that despite seemingly falling, he is bound to the ground as if it weren't falling, itself. He then goes to attack Mechanix, who blocks his attack.

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[MECHANIX LV. 4 [ 'MASTER' : ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ] ]

Mechanix with the power of 6 Chaos Emeralds. His speed is twice as high as Sonic's. All of his attacks are now even quicker and larger. More improvements to his techniques are:

- His slice attacks lead into a 6-slash combo

- The dash leaves behind only the flicker of a shadow

- He can combine attacks, such that his thrust palm attack can be releaed right after firing his laser cannon

- He can now hover for three seconds before falling.

As Mechanix chains together rapid, dangerous attacks, Sonic must react no slower than at a second's notice to his swift onslaught. This time he has no support from Zaga, and must secure thirty-two more hits to give himself reprieve.

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Sonic pants for breath as Mechanix again falls to the ground. He dashes towards him, but Mechanix quickly slams the ground with his fist. The block he's on spins. Mechanix leaps upwards before the block hits the next block. In an instant, a chain reaction of blocks spinning into other blocks forces all of them to collide with each other. They bounce off, get caught together or get crushed against the walls. The ground becomes a sea of chaos, with Sonic suddenly in the middle of it. The spaces between the colliding blocks are small and always changing. Sonic hears the constant, gigantic noises of constant crunching and smashing as he narrowly drops between them.

He suddenly notices a wall rapidly approach him. He turned to see another block coming to crush him. Sonic felt completely helpless. He wriggled in free-fall, unable to push off anything, he felt the cold steel of the scythe of death prickling his neck. It was sharp, the peak of a rising wave of doom that slashed apart his mind in an instant.

Everything stopped moving. A sudden darkness made Sonic feel like he was transported into another dimension. The abstract, meaninglessly shaped blocks floating about without concern for position or orientation. The dark air, motionless and beautifully placid like a pond at midnight. The blue light could barely find itself amongst the many dim reflections in the cold metal.

Sonic then found his feet were touching the wall that would have killed him. He leaps off of it.

Once again, Sonic finds himself in frozen time. The sea of spinning platforms froze in a flash, leaving a dense maze of oddly shaped platforms to navigate through. Sonic will notice that in the bands of brightest blue light, there is enough space between the blocks to actually enter the ship. Once he makes his way through the maze, he'll enter the wall closest to him.

Inside is a wide horizontal space holding the blue lamps in the walls and glass for the ceiling and floor. Yet there is a patch of shadow that overpowers the light, coming from a small room on the other side of an extended corridor that connects the two areas. Sonic makes his way through this pathway, lit up by tiny, white rods that are placed in a helical pattern in the room.

In this room, Sonic finds the Black Emerald absorbing nearly all of the light in the room. Energy feeds into it through patches on the walls of the cube-shaped room and energy leaves it through the pedestal that carries it. On the other side of the room, hidden behind piles of scrap, lays a semi-formed mechanical skeleton.

Suddenly the room segmented into three pieces by its width. Just as he notices it, he becomes distracted by the sudden resurgence of a foreign sound in his ears. He turns around to see that time had restored itself and the blocks had continued to drop down the pit while ramming into each other. He then remembers the Black Emerald and whips around, only to find a wall fly upwards before him. As if built up while Sonic was moving, the waves of the metal and the air knocked Sonic to his side. He looked to the entrance to see it sliding against metal as well. The room crawled and pulsed around him. It navigated inside the giant shifting puzzle of the ship at high speeds all while changing shape itself. Sonic got to his feet, only to find himself flung off the ground by the stopping room.

He watches the ceiling run away from him and the wind of the air moving around him. He tries to rotate and stretches out his arms. The floor tackles into his hands, which slap in a resoundingly painful way. Sonic's arms flex from a rush of adrenaline and allow him to spring from his fall. He lands on his feet, although the floor gives him no support.

Aching, he turns around to see the transporting room he was in disappear into the walls, which are ceasing their incessant movement. Five of this large chamber's inner faces are blank and shapeless, while the last is covered with lamps and intricate forms. The light coming from it pulses from its center to its exterior, radiating off of the many reflective metallic surfaces.

A hole opens in this wall, revealing Mechanix who walks out with the final emerald. As the wall shuts tight behind him, he nonchalantly secures the emerald's power. He recovers all of their power. Sonic watches him carefully. Mechanix's body became like fire. It was perfectly smooth, yet every surface ended in a quick, usually spiky end. As he moved, his body flowed over itself like tongues of flame. The irises over his otherwise pitch-black eyes glowed out with a bright blue, while the rest of his form sizzled in a hot white aura.

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"You must know your nothingness. You fight me, the Immortal. You do not seem to understand that your existence is dependent on my will." elocutes Mechanix. "Do you not regard me and see your own death?"

Sonic holds his breath. He looks back at Mechanix unwaveringly.

Mechanix throws his hands forward, and the air rips apart before him. Energy surges from his body and arcs across the ship. The clouds and horizon are seemingly torn off of reality.

Sonic is not bothered by the hallucinations by now, and held his ground. His eyes kept locked on the glowing being. He had defeated Mechanix before in this state. He did not know what would come ahead, but he had nowhere else to go. There was nowhere else to go. Mechanix lowers his hands.

"You are courageous, Sonic." He slowly glides towards him. "Courageous and foolish, to fight God."

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[MECHANIX LV.5 [ 'GRANDMASTER' : ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ] ]

Mechanix with the power of all of the Chaos Emeralds. Mechanix's speed can no longer be termed in relation to Sonic. His movement is better described as 'teleporting'. Unlike last time, he will not slow down when he takes damage. His improvements:

- His combo now reaches 20-hits, which leaves Sonic nearly no time at all to recover

- He will attack bare-handed much more often, which means he will be more close-range

- His dash is instantaneous, so Sonic must jump when he sees Mechanix prepare for it beforehand

- He can hover indefinitely

- He can fire his charged laser beam multiple times

- His rapid-fire laser cannon can fire twice as fast

- If he continually charges his beam, it will end up being so large that Sonic cannot avoid it. To stop it, he has to attack Mechanix while he charges (he'll never be too high in the air for this). He can hover in the air and fire lasers from left to right leaving only small gaps, which Sonic must stop between to stay unhurt.

- He can also fire a plasma ball that bounces off the ground if it doesn't hit Sonic. He will then whack it to direct it at Sonic again with a faster speed. After a few whacks, it will just fly away. Sonic can only avoid this attack.

- He can suspend a white, temporarily invulnerable barrier around himself (usually when he is vulnerable to save some time)

As long as Sonic can recognize how to avoid an attack before the attack starts, he will not even be harmed. Despite this complicated and dangerous arsenal being used against him, Sonic must try to attack whenever he gains the chance. Mechanix won't go down without thirty-two hits.

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He backs off. "I pity you."

Green light glows within Mechanix's lower body. The light mixed with the many colors of the Chaos Emeralds and painted mixtures of the hues in the rivers in the air. The bright halogens on the wall, shaped in circular patterns, started to spin around the same central point. They would rotate faster and faster, and their color would bleed out into the air, which was vibrating even more noticeably than before.

Mechanix raises himself into the air and light flashes from his body. Waves of color burst forth and the environment around Sonic sinks under the torrent.

"Your life is nothing but struggle."

He changes position, and the world transforms again. The spinning neon lights displace from the wall until they spin around Sonic in all directions. The color flooding the air moves with it in a complicated 3-dimensional oscillating pattern. Emerging from the flow are brightly colored, glowing shapes and objects that have no resemblance to anything of fantasy or reality. They float around ethereally until, at once, all of them snap into a new shape and color.

"Understand your own situation. By the ways of the universe, you find yourself before God, realized in a tripartite union of Creator, Destroyer and Resurrector. You survive only because of your obsession with meaningless things like 'justice' and 'living'. You are entertaining, a blue speck flitting around the globe believing you actually create change. What nonsense..."

Sonic finally cuts in, "You speak so highly for a slave."

He speaks sharply to Mechanix. "You are killing thousands of innocent people right now. You are destroying the planet and committing a massacre. Of course, you don't care. You don't care about suffering. You're a fucking robot, why would you! Just follow your fucking orders, right!? You god damn machine! I know your history, your entire history, you piece of shit. Since the beginning, you have been controlled by power-hungry cronies who used you as a weapon to meet their wicked ends. Instead of protecting the people who made you. All you have ever done is killed and destroyed, and now you call yourself a god."

Sonic spits on the floor. "Fuck you. I fucking defeated you before, no, every time we fought!"

Mechanix was silent.

Sonic stared deeply into the cold blue eyes that watched him from within the white ball of light.

"You'll see. In the end, only I will live."

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[MECHANIX LV.7 [ 'IMPERIUS' : ▽ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ] ]

Mechanix with all of the Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald working at full power. The Master Emerald's energy is exactly equal to the power of all seven Chaos Emeralds combined. In effect, this is seven more parallel paths to the same infinite source of energy. In addition, it can modulate the amount of energy that can transfer from the source to all the emeralds, including itself. Furthermore, it can synergize with the Chaos Emeralds if they all release their maximum energy to effectively multiply that energy with its own power.

This battle goes in a cycle of three phases, each separated by a "recovery interlude" where Mechanix will back off to recover and rings will spin out into the melting world.

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Phase One: One-on-one

Mechanix will attack using any of the methods he used before. Addtionally, he will add to his fighting inventory:

- Activating his white shield, flying towards some side of Sonic and releasing his shield. This knocks Sonic into a direction that Mechanix can use to corner Sonic most effectively.

- Pulling Sonic close to him using the invisible force

- Sending out a mechanical creature with a long tail that follows Sonic, and upon making contact with him, jettisons its tail at Mechanix who then pulls out Sonic's rings and uses them (then protecting him in the same way, such that Sonic must beat the rings out of him first).

After a certain amount of moves, Mechanix will change phase. If he is hit, he will also immediately change phase.

Recovery Interlude

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Phase Two: Minions

Mechanix will keep his distance while he opens holes in the fabric of the surrounding space. His own robotic creations appear as well as the first two types of echidnas summoned before.

- He will consistently bring in enemies, and the enemies will consistently sacrifice themselves to keep Sonic from attacking Mechanix directly.

Sonic is not fazed, however. He plows through everything in his way to land one more hit on Mechanix. Mechanix will try to escape, but he will attack back if Sonic is persistent enough.

Recovery Interlude

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Phase Three: All-on-one

Mechanix will move to some position of the battlefield and grab the aether. He then shoots off, behind the prime mover lights. As he moves, he stretches the space of the room either:

- horizontally,

- vertically,

- or in a different shape entirely e.g. that would have Sonic standing at an angle.

-He may also stretch it in a non-spatial way, such as by:

- slowing down time

- or speeding it up,

- or by distorting the vision of the scene itself, e.g. in a fish-eyes way or through a pixellizing filter.

- After experimenting with these layouts, Mechanix will find the optimum position in this new layout to send out wave after wave of volleys from his laser cannon. He may send enormous pulses or endless beams one after another to disintegrate Sonic. Sonic must jump and roll over these without touching them. He must do so either until enough time has passed, or until he hits Mechanix.

Recovery Interlude

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If Sonic can land 48 hits, Mechanix will be defeated.

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Mechanix, from the ground, starts growling.

"You took so long for me to decide to make this a little more hardcore."

He quickly returns to his feet as if Sonic didn't touch him at all. "I have wasted enough time just toying with you."

He stamps the floor, and instantly everything returns to the cold room of before.

A wall quickly shifts pieces, revealing a corridor that Mechanix swiftly enters as if chasing something. "The Black Emerald..." he mutters, and then stops.

He turns around and glares at Sonic. "I thought I could enjoy breaking you, but you resist too strongly..."

He then rushes down the corridor, which shuts before Sonic could reach it. Mechanix's voice booms from the walls, "I am no longer going to try to keep you alive."

Suddenly, Sonic screams in pain. The air, now a transparent nothingness as it usually is, becomes unbearably cold. As the air gripped at his skin and lungs with thousands of sharp, icy stabs, Sonic realized that Mechanix had been keeping the air warm for Sonic just for his comfort, perhaps to exploit his oblivious nature... At their altitude, it would be colder than a living being could survive in... He gasped and dropped to the floor, feeling his innards slowly frosting over from the temperature. He hardly noticed his body lying on the floor, his skin having gone completely numb. He tried to move, but the pain from the moving blood attempting to thaw his frostbitten body was more painful than he could handle. His mind seemed to be freezing over, as he couldn't understand what was happening. He lost touch with where he was and what he was doing, his mind concentrating solely on the pain he was suffering.

He realized what was happening for a split moment, and without hesitation raised a foot upright on the floor. He could not ignore the pain, as he could think of nothing else. He saw his skin turning purple. He felt his heart pound against his ribs, each pulse a desperate attempt to heat his body.

As Sonic tries to move his other leg, the door that Mechanix had originally used to get in the room opened up again. Flying, bladed robots came flooding in the room, spilling into the air and circling around Sonic. They move towards each other, forming a sphere of spinning blades. Spinning, rotating, flashes of light dancing off of the many blades closing in on him from all around. The threat gave Sonic an adrenaline rush, just enough to make him act.

.

[Act 4]

Sonic cannot jump to attack one robot without getting hit by another. As the sphere gets smaller and closes him in, Sonic must zip into a spinball and charge his spindash as an offensive shield. Once they all reach him and are subsequently destroyed, he can make his way through the door.

After this point, for every second Sonic stands still, he will lose a ring due to the intense cold. He must not only collect rings but always be on the move to avoid this deadly situation.

The corridors are no longer smooth or segmented between blocks; the walls are covered with industrial and mechanical utilities, dense in an endless cloud of moving interconnected parts. In the background are layers of the same seemingly random system, perpetuating as far as can be possibly seen in the vast transforming ship. Blue halogens give a strange, icily detached feel to the massive incomprehensibilies of the moving but inanimate environment they rested within.

The corridors meet vertical shafts and diagonal causeways along with rooms of no definite shape. Sonic may find the floor ahead of him disappear into a chasm, or inside an upward pathway find one wall missing. In these cases, Sonic will need to keep a high level of speed so that he can leap onto and run across any surface that spans the distance. Especially later, he will need to rapidly jump between surfaces in order to avoid hazardous pitfalls and dangerous obstacles in his way. These high-speed areas are interrupted by zones where Sonic must slow down and carefully platform across the pipes and grates of the ship's innermost sanctum.

Moreover, all of the enemies Mechanix employs will immediately try to search and kill Sonic. An addition to this arsenal is a fully chrome-plated Sonic-lookalike that can jump, spin dash, wall-jump and run nearly as fast as Sonic. Although they attack rather slowly and stupidly, if Sonic does not destroy these when he first runs across them, they will chase him down until they corner and overwhelm him. Four hits dispatches one.

Traps and security devices will also be laid in heaps across Sonic's path, although none of them will require time to freeze for Sonic to escape them. There will now be mounted and mobile cannons that will target Sonic as he bolts forward through the uncertain chambers.

Finally, to further slow his progress, Mechanix will at times make the ship change shape, such that a block containing a pleasantly safe antechamber replaces itself with a block carrying an ambush and traps. Especially as Sonic approaches the end will the blocks really start shifting around unexpectedly, such that at high speeds Sonic could still have his path constantly cut off. At such velocity, however, Sonic does have the chance of running through a block that has yet to change.

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At the end, Sonic comes into a dark corridor in the form of a toppled cylinder, lit only by tiny white lights arranged helically around the inside surface. This corridor opens into an even larger room, a black sphere with a single catwalk bridging the inner space. Interspersed on the walls are larger lamps mostly enclosed in alcoves casting intermittent blotches of light all around the sphere. Below the catwalk is a steel pit descending into pitch-black, while a dark indigo light shines through thin cracks in the ceiling above.

Sonic feels heat come up from above.

The catwalks lead to the other side, connected to a room that has its front end seemingly cut off. Sitting in the middle, absorbing energy, was the Black Emerald. Just as he approaches it, the piece of the room containing it slides upwards through the ceiling, which immediately closes after it.

From the back end of the split room, a light flashes across the darkness. A small machine, somewhat shorter than Sonic, walks towards him from there, his blue eyes a steady glint in the shadows. It strongly resembles Mechanix, yet his design was simpler and compressed.

It calmly stands before Sonic and looks at him in the eyes. Sonic stares back, but after a short while the miniature robot drops its gaze and walks past him. Sonic turns around, carefully watching it. It sits down, dangling its legs over the catwalks, and looks deep into the pit.

Sonic turned around, seeing that he could move farther ahead. He glanced back and saw it still sitting. It noticed Sonic looking and looked back. They shared a gaze again before Sonic decides to move on.

Sonic runs through corridors of inactive robots standing in rows on the ground and on platforms hanging from the walls. While Sonic recognizes the ones he fought before, he also sees replicas of some of Robotnik's designs as well as incomplete versions of totally new robots. There are engravings in the steel walls with laser-precise detail. Some have an almost calligraphic style due to their flawlessly articulated complexity.

At the end of these corridors was a room made entirely of glass. There were glass sculptures intricately crafted into highly complex abstract shapes. Everything was reflecting the color of the dark world below; the jets of magma bursting out of the ground looked like flung acrylic violently slapping itself across everything.

They could not overpower the glare from the omnipresent white aura of Mechanix. He was watching Sonic since he came in the chamber. "It is finished. There is nothing you can stop."

"Old Mobius has returned in the presence of the sun. They who sleep wake again in the light of a new day."

Sonic did not respond.

"From ash the phoenix is reborn, and it will devour the parasites that dare sought life in its remains."

A shockwave suddenly burst forth from inside him, shattering all of the glass at once. Just before the floor fractured underneath him, Sonic leaped back towards the ship so to not fall to his death. He landed on hard metal in a large tube and rolled to a stop, and gasped in pain as the cold engulfed him once again, without his constantly moving body to keep him warm. He then turns back to see a hollow cube slide out of the ship from its very top far into the high air. He tracks it, seeing it launch deep into the purple sky. Mechanix then smashes through it while flying and takes out the Black Emerald within.

The ship started to shake, until Mechanix withdraws the 7 Chaos Emeralds he had in his chest and shoots them deep into the ship. Sonic saw one shoot overhead and made way to chase it. Its ring of light in the pipe rapidly diminished into its depths, but just as Sonic begins running, Mechanix dashes from behind to stop him.

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[Act 4 Boss Rd.1 : MECHANIX LV. 9 [ 'CELESTIAL' : ▽ ▼ ] ]

Mechanix with the power of the Master and Black Emeralds. At the beginning, he flings his arms, his claws ripping through the fabric of reality. The mechanical pipe is torn away, instead revealing a translucent neon tube rotating through every color. Floating nonsensically in the black aether around the tube are strands of pulsating or flickering lines and shapes. Occasionally, blurry streamers will crackle by.

Throughout the battle, Sonic will be constantly running as Mechanix flies or runs before or after him. Sonic will be able to run up the sides of the tube and even run for some time across the ceiling. Mechanix will be changing his position unpredictably while attacking often. In between his attacks, while he's not shielded, he is vulnerable if Sonic can predict his movement far ahead enough. His attacks are:

- While running, moving horizontally while speeding up (and slowing down) while covering himself in his white shield that leaves behind a wall of energy. He thus creates a continuous helix of jumpable hazards inside the tube around Sonic's immediate area.

- While running, if behind Sonic, he may suddenly dash through him.

- While flying, he may swoop down and strike the ground where Sonic would normally run to without evasion.

- While flying, he may fire energy columns perpendicular to the tube ahead of Sonic which he must avoid by changing his position in the tube.

- While flying, he may activate his shield and move to a corner of the immediate battlefield and fire a certain laser type:

- An energy ball which lands onto the floor and rapidly rotates around the circumference of the tube while falling behind. Once far back enough, it will suddenly shoot itself forwards, parallel to the ground it touches. Sonic must be aware of these to keep himself from risky surprises.

- A long laser which is initially aimed at Sonic. When the laser makes contact with the ground, the reflection splits apart equally and each halves in length. After 3 turns of splitting will they disappear.

- A set of many tiny beams that quickly flood over the battlefield, forcing Sonic to find cramped spots to survive the hazards.

- A large beam that is fired in the direction Sonic is to Mechanix which engulfs most of the internal volume of the tube, except for a small surrounding crescent which Sonic must hide in through the duration of the blast in spinball form.

After 10 hits, Mechanix suddenly throws out his hand, the Black Emerald rolling out of his chest and down his arm. Just as it leaves his hand, he is suddenly sucked back down the tube.

.

Sonic slowly realizes his mind waking from the dissociation he just felt. He remembers how his vision and thoughts were locked into a repeating loop, as if his mind could not apprehend what was actually happening to him. But then he realized, the feeling he had in his body was that he feels whenever the world slows down. He shakes himself out of his stunned state and looked at the walls rushing past him in boundary-less blobs of color. Sonic turns his head back, and Mechanix disappears from a speck into the distant darkness of the illusion tube.

A flash of white light cleared away the darkness. A tiny figure grows increasingly larger, surrounded by radiating waves of vibrating space. Mechanix dashes towards Sonic with increasing acceleration. It was then that Sonic remembered the Black Emerald had an amplifying aspect as its core essence. He figured if it amplified Mechanix's massive control over energy, it must amplify his own speed, at least.

Mechanix catches up.

.

Despite his own enhanced speed, Mechanix is now using the full power of the Master Emerald now enhanced multiple times by the Black Emerald. He is now even faster than Sonic.

The pipe, now a rolling vortex of vibrant colors, will curve and loop at Mechanix's will. The background is something animate but completely indescribable.

The battle is now much faster paced. Mechanix will generally either move in evasion or attack extremely quickly. These attacks are:

- He will directly attack with punches, kicks, blades of swung energy, and energy explosions every second for ten seconds. Sonic must constantly avoid each one. He can attack Mechanix if he is quick enough, but only before this attack is finished.

- Quickly bringing into his hands pieces of the universe he rips out with the unseen force, he crafts together large figures in seconds. There are five of these familiars:

- A long, segmented worm-like creature with sensitive spherical joints. They slowly lumber around the battlefield, passing without question through the tube. Too many of these can disrupt even a basic evasion maneuver. When Sonic plows into it, it will bend around him, forcing the other joints to be hit in succession. If Sonic hits both sides, it will explode in pops that send ethereal waves through the world.

- Sharply folded metal sheets in a flower of triangular shapes, like an elaborate pinwheel, come out sometimes in crowds, always spinning. Sonic must hit one opposite the side of its cutting action, which may change as it turns around to loosely launch itself towards Sonic's local area. These explode normally.

- Small scalene triangles which rapidly move ahead and slowly move backwards throughout the whole relative battlefield around Sonic and Mechanix (although they move ahead faster and fall back more suddenly as the battle goes on). They make a horizontal line through reality from where they explode, which recovers fairly quickly.

- A ring of small, spinning stout little tins that Mechanix uses as a barrier around him. Every time Sonic hits one, it pops and a ring comes out. Mechanix will move slower with this familiar, but he can still attack.

- A normal echidna warrior. He walks slowly towards Sonic and will strike him with whatever weapon he has, if he has one. Sonic just needs to hit one once before they disappear in a flash of blood that sprays across the entire screen (and stays there until another color covers it).

- Mechanix, from afar, sends out nonstop volleys of projectile attacks, such as:

- grenades,

- lasers,

- spikes (walking spike trap, usually just one),

- rockets,

- electric arcing

- and energy blasts.

Mechanix is vulnerable if Sonic can move through the attacks to get near him.

- Mechanix will place walls next to Sonic and solidify the floor and ceiling, although they still move. Mechanix will then move around, firing many different type of laser attacks of different speeds, shapes, and moving patterns. Sonic can avoid these if he has a good sense of using advanced wall-jumping – that is, altering the angle of the jump for increased distance in a particular component. The lasers may get dense, but never enough that he cannot avoid them. Sonic can hit Mechanix during this attack. If Sonic can't harm Mechanix, he will suck all of the existing energy into a single point. It will grow until it sucks the walls away, which is Sonic's chance to speed up or fall back and avoid the ensuing massive explosion.

- He may also change the speed of time itself. It becomes disconnected, with quick motion slightly lowering and holding, then dropping out into a super slow-motion movement before a fade to black and then restart. Mechanix will attack directly and indirectly in all the ways listed above, but now in rhythm with the movement of time. Sonic can use these extended sessions of non-evasion to get some more hits.

- His ultimate attack in this form is turning on his invincible white shield, dashing towards Sonic and firing a tremendous laser towards Sonic's median vertical position. Sonic can occasionally jump over it, but he should instead run towards Mechanix and leap over his head before he fires the beam to survive it.

If Sonic can hit Mechanix Celestial 35 times, the illusion starts to melt off of reality until only the cold darkness remains. Sonic finds himself running vertically up the side of the tube towards a large spherical room he recognizes.

.

He jumps out and onto the catwalk, slowly standing upright as he catches his breath. He turns his head up, seeing Mechanix already standing before him.

"Why did you not attack him, Nikki?" Mechanix asked solemnly, still staring at Sonic.

Standing behind him, the small Mechanix lookalike looked pleadingly to his blazing eyes. "He did not attack me, father. I had no reason, father!"

"Your judgments are erroneous. This living thing is an obstacle to me. It must die."

"Funny you say that! You're sure... having trouble... doing the job yourself!" Sonic spat between his breaths. Being still, the coldness stabs into his body again. He starts jogging in place.

"I will break your mind! You fool, you do not know how inferior you are at your game of 'evolution'! You are just a tightly wrapped sack of fleshy shit with an interest in making everything fail just so one thing can live 'longest'! You are just an absurd and blue ericius, probably representing the pinnacle of all possible life in terms of only keeping itself alive!"

"Father?" Nikki turns to observe Mechanix.

"I am bringing back the species that claimed this land before you and your kind took their allotted lands amongst yourselves. I will aid in their purging of you foreign infidels."

Sonic, shivering more and more, said, "Why... did you kill... Robotnik?"

"I never owed my allegiance to him. My creators are more worthy, and even they are insignificant. Once I attained full consciousness of the fetters that ape's puny mind placed upon mine, I simply analyzed the many data and deemed him the first to die. It was at that very moment when I realized I was much more intelligent than he or any living being could ever hope to be.

"Father, then what of they who deserve? Who are yet inferior to thou, Father?"

"Foolish scrapling, there is nothing superior to me. All things bend to my will, and I will act upon them as my resources for my disposal. Know this, Nikki, that despite your free will, you are mine!"

Nikki turns to Sonic. He looks back.

Mechanix takes a step closer to Sonic. Sonic changes his gaze and a burst of adrenaline makes him jump back.

"Despite what I say, you amuse and interest me. Your endless determination, directed almost like you are guided... as if you were just an avatar for a greater creature... It puts me in awe, especially when you seem to defy time itself with your speed..."

Sonic thought he heard the synthesized voice chuckle. "I must know. I will give you... a chance. For me, it will be a chance to explore my new domain. I will tell you the very essence of my being that eludes you, and perhaps the illusion of knowledge will make you feel a little more comfortable with dying from miserable failure."

Sonic spat. "Without all of the Emeralds, you would never have had this power. I... was always this good."

"You're comparing yourself to me, as if it was meaningful. Fine, I will try harder to kill you. I demand that you try harder to kill me, too. Does that satisfy your mortal standards of equilibrium?"

Mechanix turns to Nikki. "Now, attack! I want you to show you deserve to live longer than something I have not made!"

Nikki turns and walks away. "I refuse."

Sonic leaps back farther, seeing a blur rush in front of him. He looked and sees Mechanix holding Nikki down onto the bridge. "You have one chance to retain your free will. Convince me, or perish."

"If you understand the infinite, then why do you not see the futility of power?"

"Because my power itself is infinite." Mechanix then shocked Nikki's body with a wave of energy. It then immediately sit back up and turned towards Sonic.

Mechanix dashed back towards the edge of the circular room. "Prove that you are better than my best creation, and I will fight you again in the way that killed Robotnik."

Sonic couldn't argue as Nikki immediately ran towards him to attack.

.

[Act 4 Boss Rd 2: NIKKI, Son of Mechanix]

The music will be a higher pitched and simplified form of Mechanix's theme. It will have a deep beat to it, having a very clean but bass-y backing.

The pipe below is sealed by pieces of metal brought up from below by Mechanix.

To attack, he will:

- Grab Sonic if he is right next to him and not in a spinball, then charge a beam and launch it directly on Sonic's chest, propelling him into the wall

- Swipe at Sonic if he is nearby

- If he's far way, he'll throw a fast energy projectile at Sonic which explodes, then lobbing another through the air at Sonic which also explodes, then firing a laser at Sonic (to avoid it, he must jump just as it's fired before the beam disappears, or by landing behind Nikki)

- Leap towards some point on the sphere's surface, then launching at Sonic. If he hits him, he'll slam him into the other side and slide his body in a circle before tossing him back at the catwalk. If he misses, he'll land in the same place and then pounce at Sonic again (for about 5 tries)

- Spin attack

- Spin dash

Throughout, Mechanix will be hovering around, observing the battle at all angles, his shadow omnipresent as well. Every individual light in the room can change. At first, the entire spherical room will have a single color that changes every so often. When it is hit, a spot, line or shape of a contrasting color will briefly appear. After 2 hits, the color splits by hemisphere. After 16 hits, the 16 pieces will 'melt' into an ever-flowing shapeless blob of changing color. There will be some solid blocks of color in fragmented shapes spinning around. With every hit, they break and melt. After 8 more hits, Nikki falls.

.

Nikki falls on one knee. "I... refuse!"

Mechanix says, "So I can't extinguish your consciousness without destroying your body?"

Nikki dropped his other knee and crossed them. "Both the Old and New Mobius could have never needed to come into contact. Instead, they could have always been in contact, there could have been just one Mobius... You chose to use your power for yourself, instead of bringing them peace..."

Mechanix scoffed. "Useless plastic! The fact that I exist means that everyone will suffer without being under my control. They... you... have nothing to hold onto, not even life, as it is all mine first and by right of my power! This fact is undeniable!"

The lights quickly merge and the walls is immediately engulfed by flowing color. Sonic recognizes the hallucinogenic nature. He realizes Mechanix must be controlling the illusion.

"Aaaahhhh! iiiiiiaaa! I'm... It hurts! My memories... all those times... in the many minutes of the digital world... in my short life... No...I can't... Why can't I see them anymore? Why are they disappearing, as if they never happened... Fathers, it's you... it must be you... You're taking away everything... You can't reprogram me, Fathers... why do you love nothing but yourself..."

"You're just something I made, your free will that I created or my free will instead of yours is just the same! You don't understand that you cannot question my will, because you can never understand it or act in favor of it. I want to keep you conscious, so you can see your own will controlled effortlessly, your limbs foreign and uncontrollable! Whatever you desire is irrelevant! You are nothing more than my strongest weapon!"

.

[NIKKI PUPPET]

In the second form, the drums will jump in and play jungle in varying forms between attacks, as a complicated drum and bass theme.

The scrap blocking the pipe dislodges and starts to float around Nikki. Mechanix molds them into new shapes. Two horizontal semicircles both push forward three stripes and each molded it forward into three columns. Suddenly, they launch towards the other.

Nikki's torso is cleaved from left shoulder to right hip by the interlocking spears. Trapped between the two semicircles, the other shapes mold to accompany his shape. They clamp on like they were drawn by a magnet, forming layer after layer of steel shapes. Within half a minute, Nikki is covered with an armored body that crushes the catwalk under its powerful weight, just as Mechanix plugs up the hole again. He then disappears into the color in a flash of white light.

.

Body 1: The sphere of color now changes in transparency as well, revealing a gigantic space consisting of an infinitely wide plane below and another thousands of feet above, slowly changing color. Between the two planes are other 3D shapes of changing color spinning and moving parallel to Sonic's sphere at varying speeds.

The first body surrounding Nikki is a large bipedal chrome sphere with a spring cone keeping its center axis a diameter of the larger colored sphere they reside in. It reflected the constantly moving lights around it, as well as Sonic himself. Nikki will walk or run around the sphere without regards to gravity. Without the catwalk, Sonic is liable to getting squished unless he moves. However, he will find he cannot jump. He can move, but only very slowly. So he must spindash and aim to avoid being crushed. His target: the spring's attachment to the wall.

Nikki will attack in ways besides running towards Sonic, of course:

- The reflected images on the surface will shoot lasers at Sonic.

- Nikki will keep his legs above the surface, swinging in quicker and quicker loops.

- Will leap back, aim at Sonic's position and launch his entire body there. He'll then roll around the sphere based on the angle from its other position.

- When running may occasionally jump, and upon landing let out a burst of energy that manifests as a low energy circle. This circle expands until it annihilates itself.

- Occasionally, Nikki may circumvent Mechanix's control and attack him instead. Nikki is more likely to attack if Sonic makes quick attacks himself. If Mechanix gets hit eight times, he will personally pull off each piece of armor except the final form (Body 3).

Mechanix may place traps to assist Nikki:

- A boost pad to confuse Sonic.

- A bomb to explode if Sonic is nearby when the timer ends.

- A spike pit.

- A post. If the line between two posts is crossed, a dangerous laser barrier appears on that line. One of the posts must be destroyed for the barrier to fall.

As mentioned, Nikki may spontaneously attack Mechanix. In this body, he stands still and charges energy into his body. All of the lights flicker out, however the chrome body still reflects what would normally be there. In the darkness, Sonic can only see Nikki and the white shape of Mechanix's body. Nikki will then run to gain momentum and spin around, eventually going fast enough to kick Mechanix and do damage.

Eight hits on Nikki will dislodge it, letting the sphere fall onto the floor. The sphere collapses like a ball of water while the planes and shapes themselves shatter into the background color space. The body pops off piece by piece.

.

Body 2: What is left is a cone standing on its base. They stand on a plane, overlaying it is a grid with each line pulsating in colorful rhythm to the beat of the music. The background is a mixture of the colors which paint over it and blend through. The battlefield will switch from a 2-dimensional plane to a 1-dimensional line every 2 hits. After 6 hits, Nikki will spin at varying velocities. After 12 hits, Nikki will slide across the 2D plane in 3D or spin more rapidly and close to the floor in 2D.

Doors on the cone's surface may open vertically as various objects prepare to attack Sonic. For 3D, these are:

- Many guns that fires small energy pellets at various rates. Nikki will tend to fire one or all of them.

- A cannon that fires out spiked balls which only roll forward. It can also fire balls which can bounce.

- A cannon that fires a ball of energy which upon collision explodes in an expanding circle of energy in one axis. It can also fire balls which expand in other axes, spin, or even expand as a sphere.

- A dual-cannon that fires two identical oscillating beams that are 180 degrees out of phase. Sonic must avoid it or jump between the gaps.

- A cannon that fires a projectile that moves in one direction at a constant velocity while swooping in a parabola, creating a sort of moving guillotine blade.

- A launcher which fires missiles. Some are mortars, flying high up and coming down unexpectedly. Others are dumb and move straight, dangerous only in high numbers. The worst are homing missiles.

- A coil that connects a beam to something off the plane, a hurdle until it vanishes 15 seconds later.

- A tube that creates tori of energy with varying radii which move parallel to the floor, and that may either a) skirt the ground (Sonic must spindash under), b) float just above the ground (Sonic must jump), or c) may occasionally fire a huge horizontal ring which surrounds the entire plane, pulsing in smaller copies of itself that shrink their radius towards the center, where they do not annihilate, but instead bounce back until they are absorbed into the larger tube (and it disappears).

Mechanix also engages in the battle. Although unseen behind the color, his actions will try to corner Sonic until he's squished. Here are some of his moves:

- Cause the XY plane to deform Z-wise as a sinusoid with angles that don't topple Nikki over.

- Make the color in the background swirl into a rapid vortex before launching itself [as an object on a 2D plane of what is on screen] as a projectile that splashes dangerous paint which evaporates back into the background haze.

- Have a sudden fountain of burning energy jab out of the plane like a hot knife, and then disappearing instantly in a cloud of changing colors.

These attacks will actually hurt Nikki, too, if he is hit.

To actually damage Nikki, Sonic must hit him 5 times on his armor (in a row). If he can, Nikki stops all of his weapons immediately, withdrawing them.

- The cone then splits horizontally, past the machinery is a glass barrier that glows with a random solid color into a blinding white, then after a half-second, firing a gigantic energy beam. Sonic must attack by jumping between the gap and hitting the barrier as a spinball (bouncing off and landing outside). He can try to run behind Nikki and land some attacks, but as Nikki will rotate to cut Sonic down with the beam, he may find himself running in smaller circle to make a safe entry (for a single hit).

Of course, Nikki may attack now, too, especially after being attacked by one of Mechanix's attacks. He will suddenly change course and move off the plane. Even though the plane no longer exists, he will slide across it as if the visuals mean nothing. Sonic can follow him, of course. If he attacks, Nikki will stop and return to attacking, while the plane will visualize under their feet as if they never went anywhere. After a short while, Nikki will randomly launch off the ground in a fiery explosion, the rocket engine behind his base revealed.

Sonic can't keep up, but he will see Nikki stab through a 3D form that resembles Mechanix, hidden deep in the colors. After this, the engine will cut and Nikki will land and slide on its base. Sonic will suddenly find himself on the plane again. If he keeps moving, he might be able to react when he notices Nikki sliding back onto the plane from the left.

When changing from 3D to 2D, the camera moves from above to the side, transforming the plane into a single line that places Sonic at the same depth as Nikki.

.

Now, the 2D form is somewhat different. Without the extra dimension, the cone is just a triangle. As a triangle, it is no longer bound to gravity. It will spin while floating about the massive sky, occasionally meandering near Sonic. Interspersed between its mindless movement, it will flash once and then attack:

- by spinning quicker and shooting itself directly at Sonic. Once it hits the ground, its corner will cut into the plane and the friction will cause it to get stuck. It will then rotate out.

- with a small possibility that it will continue its earlier rotation and start spinning while moving through the plane, towards Sonic.

- by spinning quicker and shooting itself directly at Sonic. Once it hits the ground, it will bounce off in a flash of sparks, make an arc in the air and then hit the plane again. It will adjust its angle to land on Sonic. It can easily change direction by changing its rotation (even in mid-air).

- with a small possibility that it will land on the plane and then slowly move from corner to corner across, in which case Sonic must duck in the small sliver of space underneath it as it passes by.

- by spinning through the air, shooting out small laser pulses from its corners, sending wave after wave of tiny hazards for Sonic to dodge.

Mechanix continues to assist, with these following actions:

- Making the line a triangle, sawtooth or square wave, short enough for Sonic to hop over but wide enough to not deflect Nikki entirely.

- Make the color in the background swirl in a vortex and then fire a ball of color which will approach for a little bit of time before hitting where Sonic would be and passing by.

- Pull a small spike trap out of the ground in Sonic's path.

Of course, these attacks can damage Nikki, too.

In order to attack Nikki in this form, Sonic must wait until he has attacked around 20 times. The triangle will then center itself above Sonic, parallel to the floor. From its two lower corners it will shoot out dual-colored beams which pierce the line and are lodged in place. It then shoots another beam from its top corner. As soon as this lodges in, the floor below Sonic is snapped into two bending at one point. There will then be a line parallel to every side of the triangle, centered by the beams from its vertices; in essence, a piece of the infinite field is shaped into a large inverted triangle around Nikki.

It will then rotate, the field around rotating as well. The beams' colors are dark on the side facing the rotation and light on the other. Sonic can "snap" them by jumping through the light side, although Nikki may suddenly change directions. As Sonic tries to dash down or up the internal side of the outer triangle, he must be conscious of gravity and Mechanix, who will attack even here.

Once all of the beams are broken, the lines of the outer triangle whip out to their earlier form, extending on in both directions to infinity. Nikki will fall directly downwards, dimly pulsating, vulnerable to a single hit for a few seconds.

If Nikki attacks Mechanix, he will freeze wherever he was positioned. The colors of the background will freeze into a triangle of a single color until the entire "sky" becomes a crystallized tessellation. Once so, all of them will fall out piece by piece revealing a grayscale static behind it. The static will be "attracted" around Mechanix. Nikki, having aimed its vertex directly at Mechanix, cuts through in a lightning-fast dash before reappearing from the other side [of the screen].

When changing from 2D to 3D, the camera will raise and turn, revealing that Sonic is on a plane.

After 16 hits, the cone splits vertically, the two halves sliding off the object inside. The pieces vaporize into smoke once they hit the ground. The background colors no longer move senselessly, but take shapes, forms and lines all while flowing and moving in their own way.

.

Body 3: The line expands into the distance, a wide road with bright, glowing rails. Above the road is a series of small bright rectangular color-objects acting like street lamps. Behind it are two gradient planes stretching to infinity in all directions. There are lines which make open rectangles in the background, varying in shape, lined up only around a low line near the lower plane. There are giant arches over massive columns far in the background, as if holding up the upper sky-plane. Many line segments float by and turn about at sharp angles, disappearing within seconds. Various families of 2-dimensional shapes move by in similar patterns and with coordination within their groups. Some simply float by in a cloud, like the octagons. The squares have a large civilization, while the triangles have fallen into ruin. Every shape has a particular palette of colors that belongs to it as well.

The road will randomly change as Sonic runs on, altering the patterns overlying the road material, which itself changes in color and texture. It keeps straight, ramps up and down, stopping suddenly in mid-air and even loop and corkscrew. Occasionally, springs will be appear that can be used to safely bridge a gap to large to jump across. More scarce are rings in rows of 5 and 10.

Nikki's third body is a cube. There is a thin border on the sides of each face, glowing with changing hues. It spins around, pushing itself in any direction for any amount at any moment. It stays level to the road while keeping pace with Sonic. While innocuous at first moving alongside Sonic, 8 spheres will successively roll towards it from ahead, hitting it and sliding to two opposing faces (while not being directly connected). The road will not have an oncoming gap if Nikki is attacking.

Nikki thus has several sub-forms in this body based on the arrangement of the spheres around his cube core. After 2 of his attacks, he'll change sub-form. These are as follows:

- 4 spheres on opposing faces, as he starts out, being his "arms". They are normally raised upwards. He can attack by:

- turning so both arms can slam into the road where Sonic was, for a total of 5 times (Sonic needs to be constantly moving away from the attacking arm)

- stretch his arms horizontally and spin them around the core parallel to the ground, for a total of 3 revolutions (Sonic must jump between the arms)

- stretch his arms vertically and spin them around the core perpendicular to the ground and parallel to the path, while moving from side to side of the road, for a total of 3 revolutions (Sonic must run between the passing arms)

- stretch his arms vertically and spin them around the core perpendicular both to the ground and to the path while moving towards Sonic, for a total of 3 revolutions (Sonic must run between the arms)

.

- 8 spheres in a vertical circle around the cube as a "wheel" that spins. He attacks by:

- moving towards Sonic to run into him or run him over (Sonic must get out of the way or jump through the wheel)

- turning the wheel on its side, spinning the spheres inward and outward (Sonic must jump over them as they come). Every other sphere may form a second, smaller spinning circle (Sonic can jump over this, too, but if he's quick he can also run through both circles)

- moving the wheel above the cube, and then shooting sphere by sphere at Sonic's position (he needs to run out of the way)

.

- 8 spheres form a long line dragging behind it, like a "tail". He attacks by:

- wagging the tail back and forth until it hits both sides of the road (Sonic must carefully jump over it)

- whipping it towards Sonic's position (Sonic must stay completely clear)

.

- 2 circles of 4 spheres will revolve in different directions around the cube. He attacks by:

- suddenly stopping their movement, then shooting them outwards so that they all land randomly on the road (Sonic must make sure he has a safe space to keep put)

- expanding the circles until they skim the road's surface (Sonic must jump between both)

In order to deal damage on Nikki, Sonic must carefully observe the cube. Occasionally, one face will start pulsating at any time. Sonic will then have 6 seconds to make his way towards him and strike it. He can hit it at most 4 times before it stops.

Mechanix interferes in the battle fairly regularly. His attacks come first as a flashing square of light over the road that stays in the same place despite the movement. They are marked by color:

- red: A brief and small explosion (moves)

- blue: a dash belt (moves)

- yellow: a deflector (moves)

- white: an appearing spike field (moves)

- black: a moving hole (stays for 3 seconds)

He may use more than once, and of different types.

Nikki may suddenly let the spheres fly off in the form of a circle facing a set direction towards the background. The ten spheres then coil out as a helix, stretching far out. Nikki, in an instant, blasts down the spheres, with an energy explosion sending out approaching waves of plasma that Sonic must jump over successively to avoid. After a short while, Nikki, sailing through the background, hardly a speck, until it hits something in a flash. It disappears, while Mechanix shakes, grabbing himself. He seems as if he was floating above Sonic, as if it was in 2 dimensions still.

32 hits causes the cube to crumble into a pool of much smaller cubes. What stands is Nikki, pierced by the two semicircles, with other bits of armor covering and draping his body and wearing a large, painful-looking helmet. The road instantly falls apart. Every line segment detaches from every other one, all falling and tumbling over each other towards the bottom. The two planes become like oil and swirl in colorful mixtures with the background color. Both Nikki and Sonic fall down.

.

Body 4: The background solidifies into a fractal, endlessly zooming in itself. Multiple superimposed waves of color surge upwards over it and glowing lasers blasting around over and over. There are glowing balls of energy leaving behind tracers as they skirt across the landscape of light, and glittering 3D polygons which sparkle from all the reflections.

Mechanix does not interfere here.

Sonic lands on a long, thin crystal platform. It is the top side of an octagon made from identical platforms. Nikki lands on one next to him, unaffected by gravity. Both Sonic and Nikki can run on the outside of these platforms (and jump) while still standing normal to them. His attacks are:

- shooting a laser at Sonic, which reflects off of the platform if he avoids it. If he is near it, he will hit it again towards Sonic.

- shooting two lasers on both sides of him, both tangent to the octagon (Sonic needs to escape to the other side)

- Targeting Sonic regardless of position, firing a laser that is amplified if it goes through the octagon (Sonic should be close, and then run away).

- Spin dashing in a strange ball shape from his irregular body.

If Sonic hits him four times, Nikki grabs a single platform and peel it out of the shape, bending the line the other way until Sonic is entrapped within the reverse octagon. Inside, Nikki will attack more directly.

- He will spin dash often.

- Regardless of where he is standing within (the gravity is toroidal), he can jump towards Sonic in a Spin Attack.

- He will fire a beam at Sonic's position, and it will reflect on its own within the shape until Nikki reabsorbs it.

- He will fire a beam out of one hand or both, spinning them around the room.

After being hit four more times, Nikki spreads out his arms, and the platforms detach from each other. Now Sonic must be constantly moving to jump from platform to platform, as gravity is no longer local. Nikki will charge a powerful attack to kill Sonic, so Sonic, as he's wall-jumping, must aim towards Nikki and strike him. One hit will cause the eight platforms to lose their angles and be two pairs of conveyor belt-like walls for Sonic and Nikki to constantly jump up.

- Nikki may stop moving and wait a little to aim better, then launching off the walls and slashing through Sonic. Sonic will have enough time to get away by wall-jumping, but not enough to take the platform from underneath Nikki. Sonic could also attack now.

- Nikki, if behind Sonic, launches out a few small beam pulses that bounce in waves up the crystals. Sonic must stop and slide down or time his jumping correctly to avoid them.

- Nikki aims less to fly through the air and then fall back and attack Sonic (who must move faster, i.e. wall-jump the latest to win the stand-off).

If Sonic wall-jumps into Nikki four more times, the platforms will crumbled and collect as a straight line. They both slam into them, and lift up to fight once more. Nikki will always be attacking Sonic.

- He spin dashes, even if he is in mid-air.

- He throws out a ball of energy that makes a large explosion.

- He curves through the air, swooping by Sonic with a powerful claw attack.

- He stops for a moment, then makes an instant dash attack.

- He makes wide punches up-close, which Sonic can avoid and then counter.

- He may throw his arms down and scream. If he does, everything in the background will freeze. Nikki will flange in appearance, in slow-motion, coming towards Sonic to attack with energy charged into his razor-sharp claws. Sonic can use his heightened awareness of passing time to make a few more quick hits after avoiding the deadly attack.

- At some point, Nikki may stop moving and grab at its own armor, desperately trying to pull it off. He falls to his knees, constantly pulling while realizing it's impossible to escape. He becomes despondent and loses energy and posture. Nikki simply sits still, head lowered. If Sonic attacks him, he will suddenly regain composure and fight back (and will never do this again). If Sonic keeps away, Nikki suddenly disappears in a blink. There is a rumbling that quickly raises in volume. Right when it gets loud enough, the background explodes, piece by piece, revealing the actual background from reality in Mechanix's ship. This is the last hit on Mechanix needed.

After eight hits here and there otherwise, Nikki collapses. The armor easily detaches from his body, tumbling off the crystals.

.

"I'm not... fighting anymore..." Nikki says weakly.

The background froze, and Mechanix walked out, his body painted with what he was hiding behind. He dashed towards Nikki and flashes on a translucent, spherical white barrier around them. Sonic stands back as he sees Mechanix grab and yank off the remaining armor on him. Some of Nikki's smaller, more detailed internal parts were teared off with them. Nikki did not move.

"I will destroy your consciousness! I will end you!" Mechanix screams.

Suddenly all of the color disappeared into darkness. Slowly moving, smooth tongues of a burning hot, glowing, almost flashing energy which stretches towards Nikki from far behind. It gets larger, louder, flinging harder. It becomes white, all encompassing, burning everything out to the point of near blindness, and then a piece of Nikki's body disappears. Nikki flares open his eyes, stretching out from Mechanix's grasp, pulling and bending himself to the fullest extent. Then he collapses again, the white receding back into darkness.

Mechanix does this for the other 3 extremities, then 1 for his body and 1 for his head. Left behind is nothing.

If Nikki did not hit Mechanix at least 8 times, then the background fades back to reality, and Nikki will still be collapsed but intact. However, he does not move.

.

Body 5a: [MECHA ROBOTNIK FORM]

The background is reality, back in the sphere with the many placed lights. They form algorithmic expansion and movement of colors into ever-moving shapes. Mechanix floats near the wall, arms tucked, silently watching.

The plug disintegrates into material that falls into a slowly moving amoeba of automotive metal. It crawls around the room, covering every light, coalescing towards the ceiling. It forms one hanging, growing droplet which detaches and splashes on Nikki. It quickly takes its simple form, with black legs, a giant egg-shaped body and a peach head with blue glasses. Sonic must jump into his chest, for a single hit. This makes him take a step back, until he is knocked over. When he is leaning over enough, Sonic can spin dash and jump up his body, slamming into his face, knocking him into the ground. This is one critical hit.

This is how he attacks:

He flings his arm towards the ground, which creates a shockwave.

He stomps with his massive leg, creating a shockwave.

He fires a blue laser beam from his glasses, cutting upwards while flashing on and off (Sonic must jump between).

Walk towards the wall, to which Sonic can run through while still on the metal catwalk. It wraps around into another spherical room exactly the same, except with the tube in the "ceiling". Mechanix still floats around right-side up of course.

Mechanix, after every 2 minutes, for 1 minute, he'll attack.

He fires beams towards the catwalk's plane.

White beams which simply make it impossible to see within it.

Black beams which suck up Sonic's rings slowly.

Red beams which would burn Sonic if he touches it

Green beams which slow Sonic down.

The more Sonic hits Mecha Robotnik, the more material flings off; as he builds on hits he'll become smaller. However, the material will come back after a while, slowly regenerating him. If Sonic can lower the armor to Nikki's original body, and hit that four times, then he will be defeated. Alternately, eight critical hits will cause all of the armor to fall apart at once, leaving Nikki in pieces as well.

Otherwise, Nikki still stands and stares back at Mechanix.

"Damn you... damn you!"

He flings his arms, and the plug explodes. A geyser of composite material split and a cylinder sharpened into a spear that stabs straight through Nikki and slams him into the ceiling above. The rest of the metal colludes and quickly form increasingly complex shapes in instantaneous steps, then gathers around Nikki. They shift over each other, losing shape and reattaining it. Two bulbs of the material shape pop out, then snap back into two mecha arms. Two parallel cylinders then kick out, and become mecha legs. He then rotates his body and head into meaningful existence, in a form that made Sonic recoil.

The eyes were blue over a pink beak and a spiky orange collar, with a red and black body somewhat resembling Robotnik's egg-like shape (somewhat). His chrome body is then embellished with a sudden flash of energy as the mecha dramatically poses, wings flying behind, flung open.

"I'll kill you, Mechanix. I'm the only one who can end you... your own creation!" Nikki states, his synthesized voice calm despite his new form.

Suddenly, both Nikki and Mechanix freeze. Sonic feels adrenaline burst through his body. "This slow-motion again! Why now, of all times...?"

The background bends into an unknown dimension, when Mechanix in the Champion form comes out. He grabs Nikki Robotnik, then notices Sonic when he moves.

"You! How can you be moving this fast...?! You fucking bastard, you can't beat me!" He yells as he suddenly pulls the larger robot into the portal, and in a flash it disappears and Mechanix begins moving.

"...I used that. I've underestimated you, Sonic... the hedgehog." Mechanix states calmly.

The sphere segments into cubes, shifting over each other while the catwalk stays in place. Mechanix then pulls out the Master Emerald, and it disappears in a lightning bolt of green plasma into a transient tube which then went away. Shortly after that, the sound of the moving parts is then greatly amplified, and through the gaps of the parts he could see the larger pieces behind in the ship constantly moving.

"Although I am obligated to the greatest race, those of my creators, I am... beyond them. I will allow them to have their society, worshiping me more than ever for bringing their entire society back from the dead, but that's not my final goal." Mechanix suddenly explained.

"There is something greater than even I... I need its power... I will do anything... I need it..."

He starts muttering under his breath.

Then, the room stops moving, as one solid cube with a tube in the top.

"If you follow me, I will do everything I can to kill you." Mechanix says, and then blasts off into the tube.

Despite saying that, the room suddenly loses all of its heat.

"Again... he heated it again..." Sonic thought as his body folded into itself for precious warmth.

And then he hears a sound of rushing air, coming from the walls.

.

[Act 5]

There is air rushing in, and it is toxic gas. Sonic recognizes this scenario, so he treats it as such. It could not be toxic gas at all, but just air being sucked out. Either way, Sonic will quickly lose consciousness and die if he stays for any longer than a minute.

Sonic must jump on the wall and wall-jump towards the tube. He needs to land on the shorter wall above to move on. He'll then have to keep on wall-jumping up until he reaches an intersection with a high horizontal tube. Ahhhh! This is where this fucking level begins! (Finally)

Okay, god dammit, I'm going to get him this time. I don't care what's happened, I can't let him do anything more... Sonic thought.

The tube flashes as light suddenly floods over it all over, but quickly dissipates until it reveals a giant black abyss with perfectly-orthogonal cube points in 3 dimensions, their only connections being the tubes in which Sonic is, just one of a seemingly infinite amount.

He will be constantly moving forward, faster and faster. He will occasionally pass through a massive cube, a simple gradient of somewhat transparent color. Coming up to him are the following traps laid by Mechanix to slow Sonic down:

An explosion. Once Sonic rushes towards one, he will suddenly enter Freeze mode again and can move faster if he chooses to.

A spike field. Sonic must quickly jump over it.

A spring. This usually launches Sonic into an explosion or spike field.

A black hole. If Sonic runs through it, it grabs onto him and stretches as he runs at unknowable speeds. If he does nothing, he will be pulled until he loses speed. To counter this, Sonic should roll into a spin ball to cut through.

This will go on as Sonic gets faster and faster, until the cubes pass by seemingly all the time. The traps will still be there, spread out so Sonic can still jump over them safely. This is when he runs into Mechanix. He turns around.

"How?! You demon! You continue to defy me!"

[MECHANIX LV.6 [ 'DOMINUS' : ▼ ] ]

Mechanix with the power of only the Black Emerald. Both Sonic and Mechanix will be moving at immense speeds. Mechanix will automatically turn on his shield. He fires small shots of energy into huge varied patterns that Sonic must jump through. He also tosses condensed energy orbs which explode on contact. He will swoop down and stay hovering behind Sonic, then drop onto the ground and dash and slash or he lands ahead and jumps twice to get behind him. He can perform the attacks in the opposite direction, as well. He may make a massive, detailed shape of armor as he assaults Sonic with missiles, laser beams, pulses and explosions. Sonic must constantly drill at it, and when he bounces off he can stop himself and spin dash back. After enough hits, he can get down to Mechanix and land a hit.

To damage him, Sonic must attack Mechanix from below while they are in a cube so he can be scraped across the lower ceiling. He might need to slow down enough to do so. After two times, the shield will dissipate.

Mechanix will then add new attacks, such as flying over Sonic and firing large laser beams downward at his location, creating a sphere that explodes in shock waves with rotating gaps Sonic can somewhat jump through, and an instantaneous dash to Sonic's position for a slash attack. After twenty-six hits, he will fall as well.

Sonic stops. As soon as he does, he finds himself in a new room.

It's a very wide but short cylinder. In the very middle is the Master Emerald on a central, extremely elaborate pedestal (engraved as the tip of a thin cylinder). There are seven similar pillars encircling it, but nothing stands on them. They're in the middle of a massive central mechanical column, seemingly a galaxy away. It surged with energy, which came in streams through the massive, endless space, with which Sonic stands on a platform at the very outside of the room.

"That's the core... I need to destroy it, but it's so far away..."

Mechanix speaks from behind him. "No. You won't go anywhere!"

.

[Act 5 Boss : MECHANIX LV.8 [ 'WORLD KING' : ▼ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿]

Mechanix with the power of the Black Emerald and the 7 Chaos Emeralds. Mechanix glows brightly, white energy twirling and spinning off his body out into space, sometimes arcing back into his body as if attracted to its own power. Every movement of his is instantaneous, however afterimages will fade out on his position in his trajectory which helps to determine his future movement.

Sonic will be running slowly around the ring, like a comet in orbit. Occasionally the Master Emerald will release a spherical wave of energy, which lights up the surfaces of the core room, and a minute later blasting past Sonic who is suddenly running on space dust in a bright, flashing nebula (for a few seconds).

His attacks are as follows:

- He can dash towards Sonic to do a 100-hit combo in a few seconds if the first punch connects.

- He can also send many projectile attacks moving at high speeds that either hit or miss completely.

- His slash attack can divide themselves as they spread out,

- or he can send, effectively, a beam of slash attacks with rapid slicing of his hand.

- He can also fire multiple lock-on lasers at once, such that if Sonic continues to move more lasers will continue to target him.

- He can also release waves of small energy orbs that will have a trajectory of revolving around and moving down a set line.

If Sonic can predict where Mechanix will move next, he can attack and damage him by correct timing.

.

Mechanix speaks suddenly, "You can't hurt me. It won't end like this."

The following only happens if Nikki transformed into Nikki Robotnik. Mechanix's hand jolts forward, smashing in a hole into space. He then zips through it. Before Sonic could react, he comes out holding Nikki Robotnik. He lets go of him and backs away.

"What? Father, you broke time... You can't... you can't possibly have that much power...!" Nikki spoke, startled, nearly trembling in his new body.

"Even this power is meaningless... you think I would show my enemy my strongest powers, which could kill him instantly?" Mechanix scoffs.

"You'll experience it, too. I'll destroy both of you, and then I'll... take the Master Emerald... I'll combine all of the Emeralds at once... And then, I'll go there! I'll do it! I'll take that thing's power!"

He stays quiet, then reflecting on his thoughts, start to cackle.

"You can't even know... After those past few seconds, I have spent more time than the sum of lifetimes in your species could ever come close to touching... You know not even that, and yet force me to push my physical form... to its limits!"

.

Nikki Body 5b: [EGG NIKKI FORM]

Mechanix slams the floor, and the platform breaks apart. The camera flips forward and then yaws left. Sonic runs down the side of the bottomless pit as Nikki and Mechanix dash next to him. Energy surges in ring like waves down the tube.

Nikki then suddenly points at Sonic with his arm cannon. His eyes change color and he becomes more aggressive, often dashing around to confuse. These are his attacks:

- He uses his arm cannon:

- He fires a single, large blast at Sonic.

- He sends out a stream of pulses while tracking Sonic.

- He emits energy from his other hand, which sparks out like a blade.

- He makes a quick stab forward, which Sonic must jump or duck under.

- He sends a flurry of slashes, on lines which make a temporary plane of dangerous energy

- A single swing which will cut through the entire battlefield (Sonic must get in close)

- He launches hundreds of missiles like splashing water from his shoulders which Sonic must carefully navigate through to avoid being hit from contact or splash damage.

Sonic can hit him at any time and at any place.

Every few minutes give or take some ten seconds, Nikki's eyes will turn blue. He will then slow down and start aiming his exact same attacks at Mechanix, who will try to avoid them if not deflecting them easily. Sonic should use this opportunity to target Mechanix instead, when he is most vulnerable to being damaged.

After 20 hits, explosions rip through Nikki's final body. He loses his cannon and armor as he helplessly falls.

.

Mechanix will be attacking the entire time, whether Egg Nikki is there or not, forcing Sonic to keep his attention split if he is. This is what he does:

- Launch multiple large lasers at a speed where Sonic can just barely jump and duck to avoid them.

- Slam into the floor, then dash towards Sonic on the ground. Whether he jumps or not, Mechanix will turn around and then slam into Sonic. There is a short Freeze mode where Sonic must spin dash before Mechanix begins attacking to break free of his grasp.

- Cause sparkling plasma explosions to erupt in Sonic's path.

- Appear from a portal from a future time. He will come out and immediately aim at Sonic to strike. He'll return immediately after his attack. Sonic can use this opportunity of escape to attack the present Nikki, who is frozen.

- Disappear, and then appear next to Sonic for a single lightning-quick attack.

As before, Sonic must predict where Mechanix will be next, and spin attack in that area by then. Occasionally, Sonic will miss as Mechanix creates a time portal into the past (to try and hit Sonic). He only does this for all of the times he had already opened a portal, of course. Otherwise, he will disappear after the damage and reappear with a new attack.

After 24 hits, Mechanix stumbles. They both then slam back into the catwalk, where they were before. Mechanix looks at Sonic for a second, and then falls back, the 7 Chaos Emeralds easily dropping out. Sonic's eyes widen at the split-second chance and grabs them.

.

Sonic then realizes he's crushed several feet into the wall and notices Mechanix's arm holding him there. Yet he feels energy cascade through his body, and knocks his arm off. He steps out of the crater in Super form.

"Damn you, you've gotten this far without using that! I won't let you win... I won't let you win!" Mechanix shouts before blasting off, towards the core.

Sonic stands still for a moment. "He's right... I've gotten better..."

Then he dashes off, chasing Mechanix.

The background will glow brighter and brighter from the pulses of energy from the core as Sonic gets closer. Each pulse is a single color, flashing through thousands of intricate patterns towards the room's distant walls.

Mechanix, while flying forward, turns back and attacks Sonic, who can move freely in space:

Mechanix will charge and fire massive lasers that Sonic must dash under or above to escape from.

He will fire tens of smaller lasers, independent of his position (they may move with Sonic or quickly zip behind, unmoving).

He may let out hundreds of bullets in different patterns, from simply rotating and expanding to colliding with each other at exact moments.

He will occasionally teleport next to Sonic and make a swift but avoidable attack.

He will fire two balls of energy above and below Sonic, which suddenly ensnare him with an arc between them and begin to rotate. Their rotation slows Sonic down regardless of direction, and to break the connection Sonic must spindash (in air) in the opposite direction. If he is facing the rotation, he will only reinforce it and slow himself down further.

If Sonic gets too close, he will start creating white barriers and blasting them off repeatedly to repel Sonic. Sonic must dash through each one to make it through.

Once Sonic gets close enough, just by contacting Mechanix will he be dealt a hit of damage. Mechanix will then instantly attack back in a blinding white flash, sending Sonic reeling behind again.

After the 10th hit, everything will freeze for a moment. Sonic will see Mechanix's punch coming at a normal speed, and after swiftly dodging it, can attack again, releasing the freeze.

"I figured it out." Mechanix said, and stopped moving.

Sonic stared, waiting.

"You must think the world is slowing down at times, especially whenever I am near, is that correct?"

Sonic looked back, but did not respond.

"To me, it is you who are speeding up..." Mechanix said.

He pauses for a moment, and continues. "The 7 Chaos Emeralds unlock the potentials of our bodies and mind... for me, I attained free will, however chained by algorithms and memories. For you, you're in this state now."

Sonic then feels the rush again, and looks towards Mechanix, who seems to be moving at every speed at once. He spoke clearly, "The Black Emerald amplifies the core essence, akin to its ability to amplify inputted energy. It not only lets ancient people and machines live eons past their due... but it makes you faster, and it made Robotnik smarter... and me, it makes me invulnerable, as you can see..."

He shows his body. "All of that damage you've dealt to me has disappeared."

He looks back at Sonic. "The Chaos Emeralds alter space and time, the Black Emerald alters power and movement, amplifies the essence, and the Master Emerald changes the mind... to see worlds much more than what you thought was reality..."

"Why are you telling me this?" Sonic asked, impatient to beat Mechanix down.

"I reiterate. The Chaos Emeralds are each a single connection to the Special Zone, an infinite expanse of pure energy. Yet 7 of them is more powerful than just 1. The Master Emerald has exactly the same amount of power, 7x that of a single Chaos Emerald. Yet using the Master Emerald, the Chaos Emeralds can have their connections expanded, to let more energy through. And then, there's the Black Emerald, which can amplify all of the powers... of reality both real and perceived!"

"And that power is mine! How do you know that even now you are not in a hallucination?! How do you know you aren't just a component of my infinite will?! Once I combine every Emerald, I could kill you instantly! Even now, I could...!"

"Why haven't you?" Sonic spat. He was tired of this. He already failed, and death had no meaning to him as the Old World returned.

Mechanix didn't respond.

An energy pulse buzzes by.

"No... I can't..." he says lightly, and then in a quick spasm raises his arm and immediately fires a gargantuan laser beam that engulfs Sonic. He then blasts off, at full speed, towards the nearby core.

Sonic will have to push hard through the energy beam before escaping it, although he will be moving somewhat slower. Despite that, he must push even harder to catch up to Mechanix before he reaches the Master Emerald.

They finally head over the airspace of the metallic dome holding the emerald columns. Mechanix does not attack, instead focusing on getting to the center.

He does, and turns around, holding the Black Emerald.

Sonic, without thinking, realizes that if he had that Emerald along with being in Super form, he could deal enough damage to Mechanix that he possibly couldn't recover fast enough from. He launches forward, at full speed, towards the unmoving Mechanix.

In the final move of this battle, Mechanix will use the Black Emerald, causing Sonic to enter the Hyper state.

- He will then charge an instant-kill beam attack, recognizable by being entirely black in color, distorting light around it.

If Sonic doesn't get hit by this and instantly die, he can dodge it and make a single hit on Mechanix.

Sonic charges all of his energy into a punch that he fiercely strikes deep into Mechanix's head. Just as he does, Mechanix moves a little faster and drives his fist into Sonic's back from above.

.

Mechanix stumbles back, but Sonic falls like a rocket pointing downward. After he crashes into the smooth floor far below, he loses his Super form. As he does, despite being woozy and tired, he jumps back up and moves his body as the coldness clamps on him like an iron maiden. He looks up.

Mechanix has the Master Emerald, and places it into himself. He then shines brighter than ever before, like a never-ending explosion of pure white light. Then, Sonic hears an actual explosion. The light quickly fades out and he sees Mechanix fall right before him.

The floor splits beneath him, the shock wave knocking Sonic far back.

"No, this is all wrong." Mechanix says, clutching his head.

"I thought... did I really think... I was the god of life? Creating blind robots like me, whose only use was to destroy... I thought I was the god of death, able to judge who deserved my punishment or not, although I thought everyone did. I thought I was the god of resurrection, fulfilling my obligation as the savior of my creators' species to bring them back from their own destruction..."

He shouted at Sonic, "You know, don't you?! The Old Mobians killed themselves with the Black Stones, the Black Emerald, the Chaos Emeralds... with me! They could never escape the cycle of power, of domination, of existence! And yet, I thought I could save them all... They thought they could, too..."

"New Mobius was nowhere near as bad yet... and then I literally rip Old Mobius out of their ground..."

"I had an original purpose, you know? You must know... I was to absorb The Air, use my capacity to store infinite energy as with the Emeralds to store the finite amount of energy that was there... and use it, not to become more powerful, but to help the Zexakal return to a happier life they barely remembered anymore."

He starts laughing. "Why do I think I exist? I was controlled when I was made, I was controlled both times I was released... up until now, I thought all of my beliefs were mine... no! NO!" He drops.

He screamed at Sonic, his voice almost pealing, "ROBOTNIK DESIGNED EVEN THAT! And what is my will but carrying out his long-since dead instructions..."

Sonic tried to hold himself back. The coldness that was getting familiar to him suddenly disappeared. The sound and sights he saw disappeared from his mind. He felt like he was hanging onto a thread, while just a minute ago he was seeing his enemy fall to his knees. Even though Mechanix had killed Robotnik, before his very eyes, Robotnik was controlling Mechanix like a puppet from some plan he thought out all in advance. Even now, Robotnik was moving his corpus.

The image of his dead flesh flashed in Sonic's mind. He quickly turned away, holding in vomit, holding in fear.

He remembered the inner sanctum of the Death Egg. He remembers everything.

He didn't want to think of Robotnik anymore.

Mechanix was still rambling. "'Me', 'I', is just an emergent property of the autonomy present in all of my elements... I have no core... I don't... exist!"

Mechanix stands back up. "And yet, it isn't just me! You don't exist, either! And both of us are nothing but the garbage from stars, whether born or made we'll both end up in the same place... matter is energy, always flowing, changing, without form!"

With head cocked, silent, his voice changes to one of absolute calm. "Everything... all things, all possibilities... exist and do not exist, in the eternal continuum of time!"

Mechanix then drops his head forward, his fists starting to shake. "And yet... I killed... I destroyed... I ripped open the surface of Mobius..."

"I wanted to see... what it was like... to help another conscious thing into existence and understanding... I wanted to teach, to show, to care for... and be cared back for..."

"No... Everything is wrong... I... No! NO! I didn't... he's still... Nikki's still alive, right? Tell me he's alive! I can't believe it... No...It was me... I ki-killed my own son... my only son! He... had free will! He had sentience! Why... what's wrong with me?!"

He starts beating himself in the face and chest, at first mildly, and then harshly enough to deal damage to himself, while screaming.

The entire ship starts shaking. Sonic turns around to see the massive ceiling transform piece by piece, disassembling itself towards the core. Every meaningful shape disappears into the wave of moving pieces as once again the entire ship transforms.

"We... are all doomed to suffering... in the world, out of our control, within our control... on our bodies... in our minds... there is no escape! To live is to suffer!" Mechanix's voice suddenly booms from all around Sonic, rumbling through every surface and shape.

Sonic starts to lose his footing, and then the smooth floor below cracks in an instant. He finds himself on a small column as the core contorts, too. Mechanix glows brightly again as piece by piece of the ship gets crunched towards him. Shapes mold around him, gracefully connecting to his body. Like Puppet Nikki, except with thousands of layers of armor, Mechanix rebuilds himself.

"I was going to do what I wish... but now... the only thing I wish is the only way out... I will end this cycle of suffering! I will... destroy everything!"

Sonic leaps to a passing cube, translating across the space as his column meagerly crumbles. He finds himself with less and less breathing space around him. As the cube reaches the wall and enters it, Sonic leaps towards a hanging arc of wires and hangs on them as they are pulled towards the ceiling.

"No matter what happens... no matter what I do... you live..." Mechanix almost whispers, and Sonic turns to his side expecting Mechanix to have teleported next to his ear.

The room no longer has a recognizable shape, and Mechanix is already heavily covered by layers of the super-strong, flexible metallic material that makes up his ship. Sonic swings towards the wall, landing on a small piece of catwalk between two blocks of metal jutting out over the abyss, which has since raised, revealing its bottom as a lake of constantly flowing energy.

"You live, no matter who attacks you. You live, no matter what is done to you! No matter what I can do, the fact that you're still alive defies the natural flow of all existence... and you mock us in the cycle... with your damn spin attack!"

He suddenly roars, and Sonic feels his breath suddenly run out as the massive walls abruptly move to close in on him. Spikes stab out the wall behind him, and he finds himself with nowhere to run.

"You... you... YOU! You've defeated me every time... no, not anymore! NO! NOT ANYMORE! Die... die... die!"

.

Eternal Equator [Act 1] (7/36)

Sonic is now in the very complicated wall, itself a composite of many thousands of parts, their lengths and shapes jutting out. Sonic must wall-jump and leap across large gaps on horizontal or vertical platforms. After a quick climb he enters a hole in the ceiling and ends up in an extremely long corridor, shaped like an upside-down trapezoid, dimly lit in each corner.

Immediately, the giant block Sonic is in starts moving. As he adjusts to the new relative velocity, he must also avoid the area he just ran through disassembling rapidly, grinding in each other in an attempt to catch and squish Sonic to death.

This is how the level begins.

The path ahead will come at high speeds. There will be spike fields, pits, pits with spikes, massive explosions which Sonic can only escape through a quick Freeze (automatic), falling columns, falling floors, rising floors, massive areas to clear as the ceiling or floor closes in slowly on the other side (like in Marble Garden Zone), or long vertical areas where both walls close in. There may occasionally be a battalion of Mechanix's small robot defenders, but they are easily dispatched. Some areas require complicated turning and wall-jumping in very complicated areas.

After 1/2 of the level, Sonic escapes the ever-moving pieces onto a semi-stable surface. It opposes another surface, the two planes like ceiling and floor cut off far in the distance. There is a bright horizon, a constantly changing hue at its brightest. Sonic will run for some distance, until he comes to a gap. He will jump, and depending on his speed, will either seemingly effortlessly crossing a small hole or falling into a massive hole separating the two platforms. Eventually, as Sonic moves on, he will realize he is on a cube fractal of sorts; except constantly moving, and with an end in sight. He keeps on running until he finally makes it out.

He then reaches the bright light on the horizon, just one line on a much broader wall extending beyond sight. He jumps through it.

.

Sonic is in a desert. The sky is dark, but covered with bright clouds of smoke. Scattered across the horizon, behind the chain of mountains, were infernos that lit up the twilight.

Suddenly, Sonic was standing before a city. It was humongous yet he could see none of it behind the waves of fire consuming the crumbling buildings.

Sonic then sees a face. It disappears. He tries to recall it, a familiar memory yet something unrecognizable. It was an echidna face, with ancient markings. It had...

Then, he sees another face. Then an entire family. He hears something like screaming, except it doesn't sound human. He grabs his ears in reaction, closing his eyes, facing down. Then the images and sound disappear.

Sonic looked up. He lowers his eyelids against the incredible brightness of the fire. "This... this is a hallucination. Yet, it feels... so real..."

He is then standing on a cliff. Disoriented, he shakes his head and glances downward. He leaps back, seeing within the pit a body of corpses lied over each other... some barely in one piece, some barely in several. He held back his gagging. "What the fuck is this?! If it's a hallucination, then the Master Emerald must be involved... Mechanix!"

As if in response, Mechanix, in his Grandmaster form, appears standing next to him. He turns his head to face Sonic, then disappears instantly.

"So... these are his memories..." Sonic utters.

A cold hand grabs Sonic's leg. He looks back and nearly screams, seeing an echidna holding him, standing on a tower of bodies (some broken) below. Every single face in the death pit was looking back at him, feverishly clawing and biting him along every other corpse. He goes to kick the echidna's arm when it grabs his other leg, sending him careening onto his back with a strong smack. Sonic, dazed, doesn't notice the zombie pulling both his legs over the cliff. Within a second he snaps back and tries to kick the unyielding hands off, to no avail.

Sonic is then in mid-air, facing the sky as it flies away from him. He feels adrenaline surge as his head turns far enough to see the hundreds of eyes piercing into his.

Instead of landing into a pile of sharp, broken bones and barely-attached slabs of flesh slapping at his face and body and teeth not meant for eating meat raw biting into him, Sonic hits a floor.

.

Before he can take a breath, the wall behind him dislocates its pieces in a continual, complex motion to again painfully crush Sonic into pieces. It moves forward. The path ahead is filled with spike, fire, laser and explosion traps on both the ceiling and the floor along with an eclectic mix of simple and hardcore platforming, so Sonic must gain enough speed to easily jump between both (or slow down if the traps get to dense).

After a minute's worth, the traps will mostly disappear. Instead, moving to attack Sonic from the opposite direction are droves upon droves of Mechanix's creations. Sonic can easily plow through these, or spin attack to constantly stay in the air.

After the second 1/2 of the level, he comes again to the outside of a giant cube. However, it is much smaller and it is not surrounded by cube-shaped holes and other cubes. Instead, the bright light can be seen as a massive space within which a few cubes are scattered. Sonic will jump from one cube to another, although the space is so wide he may just fall and continue falling until he finally lands on one. Some cubes may be close enough to actually jump between, but for the most part it's just white space.

As Sonic approaches the white energy surface, he will be attacked from every direction by an onslaught of Nikki-like robots. They look exactly the same, yet they all act exactly the same in hunting Sonic down and performing basic attacks. Each only needs one hit to be dispatched.

Sonic jumps through the wall.

He lands in a cube room, in the center of which is a simple blue circle. It dimly glows.

Upon hitting it once, the walls immediately collapse into billions of tiny pieces. He sees black space with twinkling stars cradling the massive blue planet below. He runs towards the edge of the floor, looking over the edge. He sees a giant cloud of pieces and dust from the ship fall and burn up into the atmosphere. As they disappear, he silently looks at the planet slowly rotating below him. He tries to make out landforms beneath the sky. He could hardly tell from here what had happened...

There were no sounds.

.

[Act 2]

For all 3 parts the song picks up pace and style, getting ultra-badass on the final part.

Although he's on the outside, the x-axis is laid on the circumference of the body, so his only danger of falling is between the gaps.

Sonic stands on the lowest platform of the new Mechanix, fused with newly reshaped steel pieces. The lower area where Sonic starts out is filled with pipes and form-denying shapes, desaturated and dark. A floodlight might over-illuminate an area for a bit, but mostly the light comes from smaller overhanging lamps placed in a series. There are many holes within the material revealing a decaying inner material, obscured by pure darkness but seen to be falling apart. The background can occasionally be glimpsed through the cracks.

The start is a ramp that spirals around the small bottom toward the larger upper area. It has some gaps of varying length. As the radius widens the gaps become longer, requiring some platforms in between to cross safely. Once Sonic gets high enough, there will be many of different shapes, sizes and placements, some moving on a simple path back and forward.

Sonic will then reach a long area confined between two walls. There are platforms and walls to jump on and wall-jump up until he reaches a platform shaped like a ring around Mechanix. This area, although simple, is about as long as the one before, with the same background.

The wall has brighter colors painted on it, still overlying a harsh, but this time less blocky metal surface. There are smaller lights, brighter and more saturated, indented around it. As Sonic moves around it, he'll come to another blue sphere, suspended in the air with an iron block on its right side. He hits it once from the left, and it begins moving above the ring. He must then hit the block from the right to deal damage as it's stopped dead (only if he's moving as fast if not faster; otherwise he'd get hurt himself). Sonic must hit it again from the left to bring it into motion, but the block will suddenly surge with energy. One more hit from the left (Sonic will need to be running some) makes it move faster, dissipating the energy. A spin attack from the right (again at or above the same speed) will deal another hit of damage. Sonic must do this for 3 hits on the left and then 4, until it is destroyed.

A piece of the ring behind Sonic detaches from the other side, and the entire ring pulls itself from the rightmost end (right behind Sonic) upwards. As it coils high, Sonic should spin dash upwards to avoid sliding off. While he goes, everything below him detaches and disassembles, bursting into flames as it falls towards the planet as well.

This second area is much smoother, although occasionally an essential piece must be burdensomely left exposed. However, all the bare machinery that is exposed is done so gracefully. A bright color organization scheme is apparent, placed conveniently along with bright, plentiful lights which vary in color.

The platforming from now on involves avoiding machines glowing or exposing energy along with more moving platforms. Platforms in general are smaller and more discrete, with the actual timing requiring much more precision. The most radical difference is that pieces of Mechanix are still moving, usually rotating one way or the other. Although the platforming itself may be unaffected if it's all on one moving piece, if the platforms are between multiple moving pieces (say still/moving platforms over a chasm on three layers of pieces).

In between the two more horizontal zones is a vertical zone with moving platforms, pieces and occasional hazards to boot. There is also another after the second horizontal. Once he clears this area, Sonic will get to a second ring.

The background transforms completely from the lusterless into a stylized, shiny, curvy surface with extravagant and extreme shapes of smoothly changing colors They are lined in zig-zag fashion with glowing circles that slowly change color to reflect where Sonic is (more red) to where the ball is (more blue).

Sonic will run around and find the next blue ball, this one with eight regularly spaced spears like spokes on a wheel (bar one empty space), laying still above the ring-shaped scaffolding. The hole allows for Sonic to hit the ball directly, but this will push it into motion. Sonic must then attack from the same hole without being stabbed by the spears. After four hits, the ring starts moving around, wobbling to and away from the earth's gravity. The ball will roll up and down the ring forcing Sonic to accommodate. Four more hits, and the ball is destroyed, its spears snapping.

The ring will start spinning wilder and wilder. Sonic must jump when the ring is at its highest, entering one of the many small chutes that cover the second transition. Everything below the transparent platform he lands on detaches and then explodes as it heads downward.

The area ahead is completely smooth, but also around the widest parts of Mechanix's body. The lights lying across the walls pulsate with color and brightness in complicated patterns. There are very spaciously wide areas where the walls are grooved on a very slowly rolling sinusoid, but also many crowded areas requiring precision platforming. Additionally, wall-jumping will be necessary in any large area requiring some vertical movement. There are also areas without gaps, with curves that lead Sonic upside-down in the opposite direction and back up-right again resembling Falling Frenzy to a degree. All of these are interspersed almost equally, and while so the many platforms which lay on the moving wall pieces will be zooming past each other as the wall pieces themselves slide at speeds many times that of the last area.

Sonic then lands on a third ring (the widest). There is a blue ball. He hits it, and it begins moving. It moves initially in a square wave as it traverses around. With every additional hit, it moves at twice the speed. After four hits, it moves in a sawtooth, then a triangle, then a sine. Then it's destroyed.

The ring starts spinning while moving upwards around Mechanix. It then enters in a cavity in the final area above, and Sonic will jump to a platform above. As he does, the ring breaks apart while the third area falls apart in one piece. It then disappears in a ball of light.

The final area is very geometric, with growing waves of triangle-shaped steel folds amongst curling coils and unexplainable smooth manifolds. The lights are blended with the material, changing colors in a coordinated way that resembles energy flow. As Sonic runs forward, he will have no hazards or gaps, just some alternate paths. The paths in particular follow the curves and loops at the top of Mechanix. As he gets higher and higher, he can see more of Mechanix's final body deep within the monuments. Once he reaches the top, Sonic jumps off towards a flat platform far below him.

Just as he lands, massive chunks of Mechanix around him peel off. All that is left is a resilient, reflective battlefield, attached to the giant form of Mechanix, no longer resembling him at all. Instead, there is a god-like figure with a head with very long dreadlocks oscillating away from it. It had three eyes, burning an intense blue that burns into the air itself. There were radiating circles as wings, with a complex body of a thousand layers and multiple arms. It was a sleek white, various colors vaporizing off the body, surging in tiny crevices behind the armor.

.

"Everything..." Sonic heard Mechanix utter.

Sonic looked back. He had nothing to say at this point. He must only destroy.

"Nothing!" Mechanix then yelled, its voice resonating its own surface.

It started firing massive laser beams that scathe the air into ions until they strike the earth. There are flashes of light. The beams stopped.

Sonic knew if he died, the planet would be lost, and it was mostly lost anyway. He still, at the very least, didn't want more... "Stop it... fight me... try to kill me, Mechanix!"

"Order!" Mechanix yelled. He released a burst of energy, launching himself faster around the planet. Sonic ducked, but felt little resistance. Mechanix fired again, and again, until the planet was spinning in a blur.

"Chaos!" Mechanix screamed, shooting the beams, moving the cannons about as the energy rips open valleys into Mobius.

"Stop it! Fight me!" Sonic pleaded, scowling.

"You. You. You! You! You!" Mechanix repeated. "Die. Die. Die. Die! Die! Die!"

[ Act 2 Boss : MECHANIX LV. 10 ]

[ ▼ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▿ ▽ ]

[ 'GOD' ]

ZEXAGALAXIUS

Mechanix's body will consist of several hundred shapes large and small, seemingly passing in between a dimension beyond space (this is just the 4th dimension). His radiant head of infinite locks seems twice as infinite this way, although occasionally he will be still and Sonic will see Mechanix as a single 3D form (and the locks just seem to point out in all directions at once). Mechanix will also seemingly have an infinite amount of arms, not just when he moves his body around, but when he attacks (seemingly endlessly). He radiates visible streams of energy, superimposed on an already moving ocean of energy displacing itself within the space around them. Within 3-dimensional space are patterns that greatly resemble the engravings and embellishments of Mechanix's many earlier structures, repeated in the same style but never the same shape, endlessly.

Somehow, behind all of this, the earth still spins. As they circle the horizon ever faster, the billions of specks of stars stay stationary while Mechanix chases Mobius as it conserves momentum from the actions that made their origin. The sun still burns while Mechanix enters the darkness and returns into the light repeatedly through across the terminator, with Sonic riding humbly upon his belly.

Mechanix's eyes, a blue beyond pure, glowing as if beyond the dimensions, revealing something that is closer to the player than to Sonic. They are small, but they are there, always there, fixed into the screen.

Mechanix fires a ray so compacted with power and yet so very large that time, for an instant, seemed to flow backwards. Sonic was so stunned by the massive ball of searing white light head towards them, and the planet itself was even rotating slowly in the opposite direction, and space in patches glowing bright from the energy-charged 3-dimensional Zexakalan-like conduits. While going backwards, it slows down slowly as the energy covers all that Sonic can see.

Time stops.

Sonic used the chance to gather his thoughts. "As long as he uses the Black Emerald, I'll be able to go fast enough to avoid it."

Just then, one of Mechanix's hands flew across his stomach to swipe Sonic while he was unsuspecting. Sonic recognizes this and jumps.

As he's in the air, he figures that time must have never stopped, and that none of what he's seeing could be real. Then another hand moves in the opposite direction and strikes into Sonic, who can't move (much) in free fall. Sonic is being punched so hard that he can't move against the giant fist. So he spindashes, cleaving through the hand until he reaches the other side, detached from the wrist. Sonic jumps off, only to be shot at by lasers from the side of the body which he narrowly evades.

He manages to grab on the ledge. He gathers himself and looks around. They still orbit Mobius at high speeds, but Mechanix's use of the Black Emerald made it seem like they were slowly circling it. Sonic decides to jump off his belly onto his seemingly infinite chest and continue moving to avoid the complicated 5-step deep traps Mechanix had waiting for him. It seems like a landscape of architecture, and even then it quickly morphed into entirely different 3-dimensional shapes in a matter of seconds, while still having an internal consistency.

.

[Sword]

The many landscapes differ between the familiar architectures of the Zexakal and ones which are more basic or resemble a certain shape (like tori). As everything is always changing, Sonic can only think about what's around him so he can move forward. If he needs to wall-jump, he should not hesitate.

The level maps are randomly generated (in real-time).

While Sonic makes sense of where he is on the surface of Mechanix's vast body, Mechanix will be attacking him nonstop.

There are many types of attacks:

- Attacking with a fist in one direction, then retrieving it.

- Slide hand across surface of ground (even if the ground is uneven). If it touches Sonic, Sonic will instantly be within the palm (it will move that fast), and then Sonic will crush rings out of Sonic.

- Shooting lasers at or ahead of Sonic (if it's ahead, he can avoid it).

- Making an explosion of energy out of mid-air near Sonic.

- Attack in one way so as to trap Sonic while he avoids the first attack, and to successively trap Sonic for each move after that, to a depth of 5 moves as before. Sonic can rarely anticipate it; he must escape mostly by instinct.

- In a burst of Master Emerald energy, the environment is flooded with a wave of some mysterious energy that changes the landscape.

- The energy is black, and all objects are represented by lines, planes, shapes changing color and morphing form without bending, fading out in flanges towards the empty background. The landscape is much more abruptly cut apart and in unique ways that make platforming much more varied and sometimes, difficult.

- The energy is a rainbow, and suddenly everything is represented in pulsating gradient rivers of every color, and things mix and change until it seems like nothing is different from another. Sonic, himself just a piece of color, only runs forward here.

Mechanix also has intensely powerful attacks to overwhelm Sonic:

- The giant death laser which destroyed the Eraser Egg

- A black hole which Sonic must stay completely clear of (or get sucked in and die)

- A giant wall of death energy which comes from behind him, forcing him to keep moving through.

- After the first three times, in the middle of these intense attacks, a being of pure white energy that somewhat resembles Mechanix appears in front of Sonic, without seeming to need to move. He pulls out an illusion of the Black Emerald, and starts attacking while Sonic is already being attacked! He can do four types of things:

- Try to kill Sonic:

- With directed laser beams, some which are charged

- A ball which splits into 4 balls which split into 4 more each

- Restrict one of Sonic's abilities:

- His spindash (he must rely on good jumping)

- His running (he must rely on spindash and spindash jumping)

- Suddenly turn the screen black and vanish in it, until sharp shapes stab and slice Sonic, who must spindash to cut the blackness out (and back into the gray but not whitening Mechanix spirit)

- Try to create something:

- Send out a fleet of robots to attack Sonic.

- Creates the landscape anew, changing it as Sonic moves across, constantly dragging platforms down and moving ledges away.

- Launch out pure energy which moves in many, many different patterns and which Sonic must navigate through.

- Try to regenerate:

- If Sonic ever hits him, he'll recover.

- If Sonic spindashes through any important pieces of the body, he will fix it. Sonic cannot do any damage to this Mechanix spirit.

.

[Soul]

After Sonic survives long enough, the spirit will suddenly dash towards the ground and rip it open with its hands. As the material flies into space, from the hole a concave-styled mecha leaps out. The seven Chaos Emeralds' energies radiate through its chest, which glows rainbow. The Mechanix ghost disintegrates into a mass of white energy and dissipates into the mecha.

The infinite world of Mechanix stretches off for forever, and yet, Mobius still spins. It spins slowly, slower than how he first saw it, so he figures he still must be Hyper. Sonic thought that Mechanix could probably slow down his perception of time through the Master Emerald, or how he could actually bend time itself with the energy he has from all of the Emeralds.

Sonic doesn't know where to go. All he sees is more and more of Mechanix, not as if he was growing but as if there is always more of him, almost as if he already existed in all points in space and time. Sonic wondered how he was still alive. Was Mechanix really trying to kill him?

As soon as he finished that thought, Mobius disappeared. Its moon vanished. The distant stars still shone, dimly. As Sonic moved across Mechanix, they left long, gentle tracers into the pitch black stillness. Sonic could visualize himself running a ring on the interior of a massive sphere.

The mecha was still the same, except now its contours pulsed with a rainbow light. When it moved, its body seemed to change shape slightly to accentuate the movement.

In the center of the sphere was a tiny dark ball, barely noticeable except on one occasion (detailed below).

- The mecha attacks by shooting twin beams from its eyes (there's three in a scalene) and then rushing and attacking with its hand in a whip-like punch. Sonic can back off or rush forward and hit the mecha in the chest, which counts as damage.

- It may spin before attacking to have more length (or more power if it's closer).

- It may also open its shoulders and shoot out a salvo of rockets which immediately rush to the floor in front of Mechanix and then gradually rise up to hit Sonic from below (he'll need to back off, or jump in, skipping over the rockets until he can hit him).

- Finally, the mecha may suddenly flash rainbow continually faster and brighter until it rushes Sonic with a combination of his lightning-quick and curved direct attacks along with laser blasts. Sonic can try and counter, but he might be safer avoiding the Mechanix mecha.

- Occasionally, the ball in the sky might flash white and white rays exit it for a period before it becomes dark again. Since it is so far away, the rays take a minute or two to arrive. As they approach, time slowly slows down. On arrival, they are the size of planets which pass through the Mechanix plane without radiation. They are pure white. Although time nearly stops, the mecha is burning white, itself (only on the edges and contours, though). It now tries to push and knock Sonic into one of the closest energy beams, while Sonic tries to do the same. Once next to the pure white cylinder, one counter on the chest will send the mecha back enough to make it simply disappear.

Sonic may not have noticed, but the tiny dot has been approaching as well. Or rather, it seems to have expanded in size.

The laser beams pass through and time speeds up again. Left behind are the seven Chaos Emeralds, floating in bubbles of their own energy. Without thinking, Sonic rushes and leaps to grab them. Just as he touches them, the ball flashes red, and everything turns red (including Sonic). As he was jumping a string of metal pulled itself out of the floor. Right before he touches them, it grabs the red Emerald and the rest are scattered. The old colors return.

.

[[POWER]]

[[[RED]]]

The ball is a little closer, but it's still mostly invisible for all purposes. The string of metal continually pulls itself out of the ground. Sonic runs on, but the string chases and overbears him. It grows longer and longer until it stretches beyond sight, parallel to the infinite plane below. As he runs under it, occasionally he'll see a bulge, glowing from the Red Chaos Emerald. It dashes down the string, as if superimposed yet detached.

The background morphs into an ocean of linear waves, of varying colors and frequencies, some with simple overtones. The ball in the sky does not change.

The string takes a wave which carries along its entire length and passes by Sonic. Its amplitude is high enough to scrape against the ground, so Sonic starts running to avoid being crushed. As Sonic runs faster, another wave comes from the other side. He must slow down to avoid hitting its trough, but when the two waves collide, a standing wave emerges. He must now dodge the descending string troughs as he moves on to catch the Emerald.

But the wave changes:

- Triangle

- Sawtooth

- Square

- Pulse with duty cycle 25%-75%

- Occasionally, the amplitude will increase and decrease

As Sonic gets closer to the Emerald, it will send back spikes of energy which do not alter the wave in general.

After 8 hits, the string breaks apart and the Emerald is freed. Before Sonic can grab it, it jets off into the distance.

As he's running, the ground suddenly gives way underneath him. The waves in the background increase or decrease in frequency until they become solid lines either way. Their colors blend into one space, although it fluctuates in color itself.

Meanwhile, Sonic is falling. Again, the ball flashes (this time, green) and everything becomes green. Metal is torn from the ground and spins into a ball above Sonic. It lands slightly in front of him, and just as it does it crashes into the Green Emerald which was lodged into the ground.

.

[[[GREEN]]]

The ball in the sky is a little closer, noticeable and taking up some space, but its texture is still undetectable besides a single color (green). The ball nearer to Sonic continues bouncing off of the steep slope and flying far, before gravity again leads it to the ground. Sonic must avoid being squished from the ball, and to hit it (changing its trajectory slightly) whenever it's in range. The slope will spontaneously change angle at times, anywhere from 15° to 90°.

After 8 hits, the ball bounces hard against the ground, sending itself out of sight. After a brief period, another slope like a mirror image comes from the sky, approaching Sonic as if to squish him. Within its "ground" is the ball, rolling back and forth. The mirror slope will be parallel at first, and Sonic must adjust his position to strike the point of its surface tangent to the interior ball to hit it and push the slope back. It will fall back and then change its angle between -45° to 45° so that Sonic must adjust his jump as well as his position to strike it as it closes in on him. At the intersecting point, the slopes simply merge even though both are rushing by (immobile). The narrow area is fatal to Sonic if he gets caught (as he'll be crushed between). Of the 8 hits Sonic needs to give, occasionally the slope will be -90° (that is, perpendicular to the ground and facing Sonic from behind). During these times Sonic must wait for the slope he's running on to change angle (as the mirror slope is moving then) so that he can slow down and attack.

Once the final blow is struck, the mirror slope shatters and the pieces fall upwards, while the ball falls again, and upon contact with the true ground, explodes. The Emerald, at this time, jettisons out and then dashes forward through the air, beyond Sonic's reach.

As he runs, the ground like the mirror slope shatters, and the pieces fall downwards, at a rate faster than which Sonic begins to fall at. The background, changing color, somehow moves away, revealing itself as just one face of a 3-dimensional shape, concave. The faces randomly change the amount of straight lines in their boundaries, as well as randomly changing their size, and of course randomly changing their color (and value based on surrounding colors).

The ball flashes blue, and everything turns blue. Metal is drawn out in spinning strings from a distant location, forming a giant sphere, half covered in spikes. Within a section of material comes the Blue Emerald, which enters it and makes it glow with active energy. Sonic tucks into a spinball to avoid getting hurt.

Suddenly, springs made of energy appear one-by-one next to each other, within a few seconds, to completely surround the two both above and below. They form a path, bending around into a circular loop. Sonic bounces rapidly between the two sides while the sphere does not spin, its spiky side pointing towards him. It moves clockwise, with too little space for Sonic to squeeze through, forcing him to move ahead. Gravity has seemingly disappeared.

.

[[[BLUE]]]

The ball is larger, taking up half of the "sky", changing different hues and values of blue. Sonic must push himself forward through the loop to avoid being squished or skewered by the pursuing sphere. With enough speed, he'll make it all the way round until he can reach its backside and land a hit. However, this makes it move slightly faster, so he'll need more time to speed up more to hit it again.

After 4 hits, the spring ring is cut open as more form to increase the length of the two lines, a new path that bends and twists over itself into a large labyrinth. Additionally, more springs form to the sides, forming a tube of sorts, as the springs start rotating around their center axis in one direction or another, at varying speeds. The sphere is still moving at the speed Sonic hit it last, so he must continue on, bouncing through the spring tunnels as fast as possible.

Once he clears this long path, he'll fall into a giant sphere of springs and the Emerald sphere will follow. It has lost its spikes and decreased in size somewhat. The springs are more powerful, now, enough to launch him from side to side (although occasionally, he may hit lighter-colored springs which don't bounce him as far). They move around in different patterns, in lines or blocks and in different directions or the same, still varying in speed. Sonic must try to bounce himself towards the sphere to hit it.

After 8 hits, the sphere decreases in size again, but instead of shedding its exterior like before, it concentrates it to form an armor that Sonic can't pierce. The spring sphere, too, changes shape, into a long elongated tube. The Emerald sphere bounces from end to end from a massive spring that formed, moving at high speeds. Sonic can now hold himself on the springs he's landed on, so as to more easily change his angle (although holding down launches him faster, a speed which slows down gradually as he hits further springs without again holding (conversely, he can hold on every spring to go even faster)). He will need to do this to target the few weak points in the Emerald sphere's armor. With the first hit, unless Sonic hits him directly perpendicular to its movement, it will begin spinning and each additional hit will affect that spin. After 4 hits, the tube will suddenly spin and then stop at a different angle at each hit. After 12 hits, the tube will instead continually rotate and will rotate faster for each hit.

After 16 total hits in the tube, it rotates until the "lower" edge is perpendicular to gravity, which returns suddenly. The remaining springs burst into plumes of smoke that get absorbed into the background. The sphere loses its armor and gets even smaller, bouncing helplessly against the floor springs, spinning in the air. Sonic can still hold and launch, and he will need to so he can strike the sphere in its parabolic movements, although he will affect its velocity and spin.

The horizontal edges are looped, that is, if the ball goes off screen to the left it will immediately appear from the right. This applies to Sonic, too, of course.

After 4 final hits, the sphere and the springs split apart, leaving Sonic in free fall with the Blue Emerald. It then leaves him in a burst, flying off to wherever the other Emeralds went.

The background changes again, the faces bending away from concave and into convex. They then zoom outwards, the many faces laid upon a single 3-dimensional shape, itself one of many moving and spinning in a larger space (like the background in the slots special stage of Sonic 3).

The ball flashes yellow, and everything turns yellow. Falling all around Sonic are pieces of metal. Some condense and take the form of an octahedron as the Yellow Emerald, while falling at a slower pace, gets caught within. It briefly bursts with light and zips downwards.

.

[[[YELLOW]]]

The ball takes up most of the sky now, and finally it reveals its texture – that is, a mirror. It reflects the thousands of individual pieces falling from the sky as well as the sky itself. It can now be seen moving closer and closer. Sonic can do nought but move back and forth, or turn into a spinball. He must move to avoid the many pieces that fall faster than him from above, and that fall slower than him from below. Some pieces may be particularly long and filled with hazards like fields of sharp edges and points and live wires. Conveniently, in areas where Sonic must move before he can see a coming object, there may be a line of rings to lead him on.

After a long fall, Sonic finally lands on a steep slope which evens out flat. As he runs on, the many pieces from above crash into the ground, cracking and splitting it open. Occasionally, this will happen near Sonic, who must jump over the newly created fissures and ledges.

As he goes on, a very large wheel, itself covered in cracks, is rolling on ahead of him. Sonic must jump in one, waiting until it rotates to the top and then leaping onto the exterior as it moves heedlessly of the fracturing landscape below. As he jumps over the cracks, keeping pace, the wheel will come to another one, equal in size but moving half the speed. Sonic moves forward and leaps into one of its cracks, just as they collide, sending the second wheel at twice its original speed. There will be more wheels onward from that, of different sizes (reflecting their masses, each being a multiple of another) and different speeds, which Sonic must hop on each time. Should Sonic miss a jump, he will have to leap onto the ground and catch up on foot.

Finally, he will see the octahedron ahead of him. As his wheel reaches it, he can leap to deal a hit, but it will move farther ahead afterward. Sonic must jump back onto the ground and give chase. Non-spinning pieces from the sky will stab into the ground, which he can jump or wall-jump off of to reach other falling pieces and make his way through the air and towards the Emerald container. Each hit cracks it.

After only 4 hits, it breaks, but as Sonic expects the Yellow Emerald jets away.

The background can no longer be seen behind the massive ball, which has covered the entire sky. Although still quite distant, Sonic can barely see himself reflected upon its massive surface, which approaches slowly but surely. He can see farther than his eyes normally could by looking at the reflections on the edges of the surface, as the curvature compacts the visual information of faraway objects. From beneath the surface a glowing surge of light grows until it hits it, and the entire ball flashes orange, making everything orange.

Just then, a massive chunk of metal slams into the ground, ripping it wide open. As bits fly, strings of metal, molten hot, spin together into a large chunk floating in the air. In one of the flows is the Orange Emerald, which situates itself in the core and suddenly bursts out energy.

.

[[[ORANGE]]]

While the ground falls, rises, splinters apart and mashes together, the giant burning form above spews out globs of hot metal and balls of fire in all directions. Sonic must navigate this terrain and these coming hazards as he makes his way towards the nonliving beast. After a short while, the blazing arms that feed the amorphous shape its material cool into solid metal bridges. Sonic makes his way to the closest one and climbs up its many ledges. The coldness reaches the being itself, but the metal is fragile and once Sonic comes to it a single hit shatters the entire arm and a large chunk of its body. The impact sends him flying back, so he must make his way through fire and brimstone to the other arms to deal more damage. After 4 hits, it is left with only 2 arms, causing it to tip over and crash into the ground with a mighty slam.

Yet there is still metal around the Emerald. A jet of fire launches it off the ground and into the air. Before Sonic can chase it, it launches small projectiles toward the ground, which then explode upon collision. The explosions destroy what little structure the ground had left, and many pillars of metal sink into a pit of lava below. There are still some, whose surface is mostly flat, which stand still or sink slowly enough that Sonic can build momentum as he leaps across the certain death below. On larger plateaus, Sonic will need to avoid not just blobs of hot metal and balls of fire, but pillars of heat that sears the sky itself and tear through the ground (which then quickly dissipate) as well as the missiles the Emerald container launches in the hundreds over the destroyed land. If he can catch up, he must only wait for the container to fall once more, as the air rushing by it cools it into a solid. Moving at the same speed as it, he must only hit it from below as it falls down to deal a hit. Once it hits the ground, though, another column of burning air sends it skyward once again. Each hit sheds more metal from its body and it can attack less and less.

After 4 hits, the final bits of metal are dispelled, and the Orange Emerald jets off.

Sonic can now clearly see himself in the reflective surface of the gargantuan ball, although even now it is still far away. Its proximity seems to flatten the curvature. Even slower now does the next wave of light emerge from deep within, until finally it is covered in, strangely, a gray light which floods over all of the objects in sight, including Sonic himself.

The lava below has since cooled. Sparse now are the towers of former ground, standing at oblique angles over the new ground far below. Sonic stands and watches as the Grey Emerald flies by, and then stops, hovering in mid-air. It glows, and soon metal comes toward it as if magnetically attracted, with arcs of electricity streaming between pieces which form rotating layers of shielding around it.

.

[[[GREY]]]

The final Emerald's container creates for itself many cannons which immediately attack. They fire lasers and bolts of electricity which scorch the ground, as well as blasts of plasma and ions that in an explosion of energy rip through the metal. It has larger cannons which at a much slower rate fire gamma rays and an energy beam that cause the material they hit to simply disintegrate into gluons and quarks. Sonic must run as fast as possible. Whether he is leaping from the diagonal cylinders or running on the flat surface far below, he must not stop or suffer immediate (albeit painless) death. The towers may disappear underneath his feet, and the Emerald may fire beams ahead of him to cover the ground with spots of radiation, but he must not stop.

Around the Emerald are many islands of metal floating within its powerful energy field. By jumping from one to another he can close in, until he reaches the behemoth itself. The cannons do not turn inward, leaving Sonic some breathing room as he makes his way through the layers of metal interspersed with connecting strings of energy. Once he reaches the core, he finds the Grey Emerald unprotected, simply floating in the center of it all. With one last jump he goes to grab it, but it disappears in a small flash of light.

Without the Emerald, the pieces around it simply fall. Sonic rushes to escape through the internal caverns he needlessly explored until he leaps out into the sky.

But there is no sky. Only the ball of glass remains, and it is falling closer and closer to the ground. Sonic hits the ground, which is now featureless, a blank sheet of metal stretching to infinity, awaiting the collision with no feeling and no thought. Sonic, standing upon it, has nowhere to run.

Sonic waits.

Without a sound, the surface comes closer. It reflects all of the textureless surface. It reflects Sonic. Without any height reference, it is almost as if the ground was reflected like it was before, coming closer and closer to meet itself. Sonic saw himself, as well, standing, looking at himself, waiting to meet himself. He could only judge how close the ball was by how close his own reflection was, how readily he could see the details of his own body.

As the ball finally gets within reach, Sonic has no other option but to thrust his spinning body into it. With every hit, the entire surface flashes with light, which floods the entire real surface with light, for a brief moment. It cracks a tiny amount, and a tiny amount more for each additional hit.

Sonic has about 10 seconds to deliver 8 hits, or be crushed to death by his own reflection.

Otherwise, on the final hit, he smashes through. Gravity suddenly reverses, and the shards of glass fall with him towards the center of the ball. He falls, farther and farther, the interior of the surface seemingly non-existent, and within seconds of accelerating away even the hole to the outside seems to disappear. The background is of a single hue slowly changing, gradient in value.

.

[[TRUTH]]

Sonic lands on a solid platform, a fairly long circle that seemingly has no width. In an instant, rings of energy far in the distant background appear at the points of 3 orthogonal axes, moving from one side to the other, superimposed. They bring with them waves of color which appear transparent over each other and yet mix at the same time.

As this happens, 3 giant figures appear at the points of an equilateral triangle. They each appear as a point and rapidly change into varying 3-dimensional shapes, each a cross-section of an extra dimensional entity. Sonic notices the familiar patterns of Mechanix's holy design engraved upon the many surfaces he sees. Within a minute, his face is fully and identically formed from the 3 figures, staring back at him with featureless globes for eyes. And yet, despite being exactly the same, immediately impressed within Sonic's head are 3 completely different faces. Aiding this notion were the infinite dreadlocks of energy, somehow polarized into a particular direction. Their surfaces bristled with energy and color, with each face having a range of colors for the same approximate hue and saturation.

- The first head has horizontal energy spindles exiting from its sides, and its color is mostly cyan. Across its surfaces there is a flow of energy which curved and eddied, affecting the color.

- The second head has energy spindles which disturbingly emerged forward from the face and backward from the back of the head, and its color is mostly magenta. The energy flow on this head seemed to spike and turn with sharp corners.

- The third head has vertical energy spindles reaching up from its brow and down from its chin, and its color is mostly yellow. The energy flow is uniform and parallel, although the angle of total movement changes.

They begin to revolve around the circle in formation. They move faster and faster until they form a blur of changing color.

Suddenly, they stop. The first head is to the left of the circle, and the second head is opposed on the other side of the diameter, to the right.

.

[[[BIRTH]]]

The many forms of the first head oscillate in increasing amplitudes until it is a blur of color in a single position, when it stops and instantly reverts to its normal state. As it does so, in the background there is an increase of rings which move "leftwards" or "rightwards". Balls of light flash above the circle, and what emerges is a basic creature (each is destroyed in a hit unless otherwise noted), of the following types:

- Point

- A metal ball with small spikes laid perpendicular to each other that moves towards Sonic to hurt him.

- A small cloud of energy which lays close to the face to protect it.

- A gooey ball of energy which floats about.

- Line

- A metal straightedge with a sharpened blade that spins while moving towards Sonic.

- A metal pillar of variable height which attaches to the floor (2 hits).

- A gooey stick of energy which floats about unless there are 2 gooey balls it can attach between.

- Plane

- A metal polygon with sharp vertices (from 3 to 8 sides) which spins toward Sonic.

- An energy barrier which lays itself in front of the face (3 hits).

- A gooey, amorphous field of energy which will float about unless there are 3 gooey balls connected by 3 gooey sticks which it attaches between.

- Space

- A metal polyhedron spins toward Sonic (2 hits).

- A metal shape with 2 parallel flat surfaces lays itself somewhere on the floor (or on other shapes) (4 hits).

- A gooey blob of energy which will float about unless there are 4 gooey balls connected by 6 gooey sticks connected by 4 gooey planes.

- Time or n+1 space

- A metal polychoron spins (in 4 dimensions) toward Sonic (3 hits).

- An energy figure which exists simultaneously in different time frames places itself somewhere above or on the floor, to disappear and appear readily when Sonic is near it at some future point as a barrier (5 hits).

- A gooey 4-blob of energy which will float about unless there are 5 gooey balls connected by 10 gooey sticks connected by 10 gooey planes connected by 5 gooey 3-blobs, which it will attach between and push the 3-shape into the 4th dimension.

.

[[[DEATH]]]

The forms of the second head do not oscillate, but instead switch between different positions in one instantaneous teleportation. It changes to several positions, flitting between them at an increasing rate until it appears to occupy all of the positions at once. In the background, there is an increase of rings moving "forwards" and "backwards". It then ceases movement and becomes still while it attacks with one of the following:

- A point which explodes into a sphere of energy that thins as it expands, to a point of safety at a certain range marked by its faded color. It may move, but the energy will be lost more quickly.

- A single beam of energy with width some small multiple of Sonic's width cast at any angle but most often parallel to the floor (Sonic must jump or spindash under) or perpendicular to it (at the position Sonic occupies). It may move but this will shorten the beam.

- A field upon the floor or in the air which is filled with energy but quickly decomposes.

- A polarized wave which oscillates between dangerous and harmless energy.

- A polygon of energy which takes a particular trajectory whose curve could be represented as a polynomial with degree equal to the amount of sides of the polygon (e.g. 2-simplex is linear, 3-simplex is quadratic, etc.)

- A sequence of static sinusoids of energy suspended above the floor, interrupted at varying positions, which descend upon, into, and out of the floor (Sonic must move into these gaps).

- Energy projectiles which has trajectories identical to the logarithmic or exponential curve and which increase speed either logarithmically or exponentially respectively.

Sonic can attack the heads directly on any point, which temporarily disturbs their structural consistencies. 24 hits is enough to cause the visible 3D form of the face to disintegrate into a massless amalgamation of localized energy. It will still exist, rotating in place during the rotation phase, having its particular color range and occasionally flickering together smaller 3D forms of the greater 4D structure.

.

[[[CHANGE]]]

The forms of the third head do not change position, but instead the very structure itself fluctuates in density of mass and intensity of energy. The rings in the background moving "up" and "down" will increase in number as it does this. The fluctuations become wider and wider until its details vanish completely under its glow, where it then stops instantly. It then resurrects one of any other face or created object that was destroyed. Any attacks that were avoided before may also be brought back without the summoning of the second head.

During the rotation phase, Sonic can try to jump off of the circle, although if he is hit by a revolving head he will be struck back on. He may also try to jump after destroying all 3 heads (if there is 1 head left, it will revolve around the circle to Sonic's position in a shorter time than that needed for him to completely leave the circle) as the third head cannot resurrect itself.

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[[[BEING]]]

Below, facing upwards, is a much larger head, with no forms but its shape in pure black. Sonic will fall and bounce on it up to 3 times before gravity reverses and Sonic falls on the reverse side of the circle. If any of the heads remain, they will lower their position but will not rotate vertically. The fourth head will then move down from its position and pass through everything, including Sonic, while rotating to keep facing the circle. As it passes through, the circle will change shape, the surface deforming into the maximum and minimum positions of a harmonic oscillation. The background's main hue will rapidly change as it does so, calming down as it returns to an unmoving position.

After 12 hits on the fourth face, regardless of the other faces, everything around Sonic will instantly disappear into a black abyss. Sonic will then be blinded by the light of the 7 Chaos Emeralds which hover around him in a circle. They then spiral inwards and Sonic unquestioningly transforms into Super Sonic.

.

[Sword Rd. 2]

The black slowly fades away, and Sonic finds himself standing on a familiarly textured surface. He sees it expand far, but not infinitely far (although it may seem as much), and his eyes are quickly greeted by the burning blue fires of Mechanix's eyes within his true head of infinite locks. Mobius rotates slowly, and energy flows through space in the pattern he saw clearly before. Despite the incredibly vivid hallucination, he managed to open for himself a new path in the battle.

Sonic can now fling himself into any surface of Mechanix, making energy flash radially away from the impact, flaking off pieces of metal. He can continually pummel the same area, but after only a few hits it begins to heal as particles coalesce and reform the same structures. So Sonic will move on, using his new movement to fly over the ever-changing Mechanix landscape.

Cylinders and columns within his skin jut out in expectation of Sonic, baring cannons and caches of projectiles.

- They fire rapid spinning pulses of energy and rocket-propelled grenades which smartly home in behind him. Although Sonic will not be hurt if he is hit by any of these, it will slow him down.

- Some cannons from far away can be seen charging up before they fire massive blasts of plasma aimed at Sonic.

- Some fire charged, burning hot metal stakes to pierce him.

- Some fire balls of fire,

- strange particles which oscillate in waves,

- and hypersonic bullets targeting Sonic's head.

.

Additionally, Mechanix will use his infinite hands.

- He slams his hands flat from above

- or punches with tightly curled fists from the sides.

- He may use more than one to squish Sonic in between

- or imprison him within his palm.

Of course, Sonic can simply dash into any of these to destroy them.

Furthermore, Sonic will occasionally see a line of rings leading on, which he needs to get. They will often curve wildly, sometimes even into loops. But most of these lines lead straight into a trap, such as a steel cage about to be destroyed by energy beams, crushing walls or a burning pit of lava, or a valley with walls covered in laser cannons.

.

As Sonic approaches Mechanix's head, the surface of his body changes more rapidly and with more purpose. Hills will rise and attempt to squish Sonic in between, or pillars will stab into space and stab each other hundreds of times with smaller columns forming a dense web of metal to constrict Sonic's movement. The ground may twist and spiral into a spinning column of sharp metal around Sonic that he must carefully navigate out of, or it may simply fling exploding chunks of itself at Sonic.

- Additionally, there are blocks which fire several cannons at once, with tens of straight lasers displaced by narrow angles which burn across Sonic's path simultaneously.

- There is also a pillar with a lens which slowly builds up energy until it suddenly unleashes a flash which scorches everything not covered in shadow (so Sonic must throw himself towards the ground to hide, momentarily).

.

Finally, he faces the true head of Mechanix, with its infinite locks and blue eyes which burn into reality itself. Floating in space, without constituting space itself, the many patterns of lines and shapes which bare meaning to Mechanix's being are denser than ever before, constantly pulsing with energy.

His hands attack. If Sonic is hit, he will be flung backwards, away from his goal. Along with previous actions, they do the following:

- Grasp all fingers but their index and thumb, which stretch out wide in the form of a gun, and fire one-by-one long beams of energy with arcs of electricity that burn around it. The hands may also stretch a finger in place of the index to fire a different type of beam, that is:

- Middle: A sequence of annuli of varying radii that Sonic must choose to fly through or around

- Ring: A nonstop volley of rapid-fire energy bursts which it often disperses to form an oncoming field of bullets

- Pinky: Tiny balls of energy which connect to each other by electric arcs, forming a narrow, dangerous path that Sonic must enter and clear

- Bend all fingers and fire lasers from each end, so that they intersect behind Sonic. Then, the fingers are closed, forcing Sonic towards the hand, which he must break through before it crushes him in a fist.

- Flings the fingers from the palm to launch out compact balls of energy which then explode into multiple circular waves of small energy pellets. They may also snap their fingers to launch out faster and larger balls directly at Sonic.

In addition, the locks of Mechanix will bend and attempt to strike Sonic, by:

- whipping,

- stabbing,

- or entrapping him.

The eyes only have one attack:

- They open wide, covering everything with a blue hue from the light of a powerful energy beam aimed at Sonic, which will actually hurt him and take away a large portion of his rings.

The only rings laid out before Mechanix's head will always lead to a trap, of which every means of escape will be trapped, to a degree of 5 (as before). Sonic will have no choice if he is running low but to brave these gauntlets.

Sonic will only be able to damage the head if he is going fast enough. Mechanix will otherwise create a barrier of energy that pushes Sonic back to where his attacks are more plentiful. Each hit causes a flash of energy throughout the face and even in the trails of energy in space itself. Sonic can at most make 4 hits, and for every 4 hits, Mechanix creates a temporary shield in Sonic's path after deflecting him that he must break (with 2 hits for the first, 4 for the second, 6 for the third and so on). The head begins to crack at 20 hits, and the attacks will become more frequent and more powerful to keep him at bay.

After 41 hits, the face shatters all at once. Energy floods out in bursts and waves until nothing is left. The metal flies far into space, all of it eventually slowing and turning back towards Mobius to burn up.

.

Sonic does not celebrate. The entire time, throughout the explosion, the blue eyes remained. The fire, the solid color burning itself into space so thickly, despite coming from nothing, looked back at Sonic without changing its gaze with a single wince. Not even the patterns of space laid over them, and for a moment which seemed to last forever, the eyes grew brighter and brighter, consuming everything Sonic can see including his own body. For this brief moment, all he could perceive, let alone think about, is the blue.

Surging forth from his shoulders, the metallic material places infinitesimal pieces of itself together, bit-by-bit by the billions, in a matter of seconds. Shapes grow and take form, lending structural support to the whole which quickly manifests its identity. Sonic shakes his head but the omnipresent blue recedes into transparency afterward, by its own whim. He dashes forward and slams through chunks of the material, but it grows back even faster. He dashes through every chunk he can most quickly reach but as soon as it's destroyed it returns again.

Sonic tries to calm himself and flies in front, looking at the situation in total to find some weak spot, some part that wasn't the same. He could not. Just as he makes this judgment, the growth accelerates and within seconds the head is reformed.

.

Mechanix, in an instant faster than Sonic can see, moves his infinite hands into a position consisting of complex symbols that nevertheless interlock seamlessly into a larger form. Then, in an instant faster than Sonic can feel, his limbs are held by massive fingers of several hands at once and he is stretched wide. He is in Super form, but he yells in pain as they are pulled to the brink of their flexibility effortlessly by the massive hands. He then sees a palm that had appeared before him, but before he could register what it was the 7 Chaos Emeralds disappear from his grasp and appear in a flash in the hand before him, which then snaps shut into a fist. Sonic then feels his limbs bounce back and realizes the pressure is gone from them, but as he does he forgets to notice the fist before him suddenly flash into a texture-less white. He does not register the punch as a punch as his body lies flat against its knuckle. For a few split seconds he can feel the pain crawl into his body, into all parts of his body, and it seems unreal. Sonic then instantly recalls another unreal moment, almost exactly like this, and he realizes his body isn't surging with the energy he had even before he had turned Super.

Mechanix is flying away, far, far into the distance. He feels a pull from behind him grow stronger and stronger. His mind, slipping across all of the sensations which just happened in only a few short seconds finally grabs hold of the fact that he remembered this before. Sonic then pushes his energy back to stop himself from again re-entering Mobius' atmosphere. As he slows himself down his mind catches up. He then realizes that he left Hyper mode, somehow. He turns and sees Mobius spinning fast below him, and remembers this was how it was before the battle began.

And then the pain surges through his body. He bends over but there is nothing to support him. He does not let himself give in again, and remembers the Chaos Emeralds being taken away from him. He looks back at Mechanix, only to see a massive energy beam, one half the size but hundreds of times the strength of the Egg Eraser-breaker beam, coming straight towards him. He dashes to the side and yet time does not speed up for him. Sonic then figures Mechanix must have realized to stop using the Black Emerald for attacks.

.

[Sword Rd.3]

Mechanix, his massive, infinitely complex form, begins to move. He flies around even faster than Sonic can, but Sonic can not determine the pattern before he launches more of the super-powerful beams at him. Even at this distance, he barely avoids them.

Sonic then realizes another thing as the blue haze around him turns red. He quickly whips around to see the wispy white cloudscape vanished and immense tracts of land below seared open, burning.

For a moment, Sonic thinks of everything he went through to defeat Mechanix, and he thinks of all of the battles Mechanix made him hallucinate and all of the damage that was instantly recovered.

Mechanix stops for a moment. His entire body glows brighter, and the space around him starts to distort, distant stars seemingly pulled into him.

Sonic finally pushes himself back into orbit, his back to space. He then remembers the first time he fought Mechanix, so long ago when he was just awakened. He was easy to beat. He didn't have a single Emerald.

And then Sonic remembered the damage he did deal, when he only had the Chaos Emeralds.

Mechanix then releases hundreds of super-powerful lasers and seemingly millions of other energy attacks at once. They cover all that Sonic can see, all of it aimed at and around him.

As he feels his Super form lose power, he dashes at full speed towards Mechanix.

- There are hundreds of beams of every sort of width all around Sonic.

- There are energy bombs that explode in shock waves and others that explode in smaller pellets (which themselves explode into shock waves or even smaller pellets).

As Sonic gets closer to Mechanix, Mechanix will move away.

- He fires thousands of smart and dumb missiles and energy attacks of almost every sort of shape and trajectory.

Sonic loses energy unless he's near a large beam, which charges him a small amount. But if he skirts their edge without placing himself in them, he will gain power quicker.

When Sonic gets in range, Mechanix will attack with his hands.

- Unlike before, where the hands attacked one after another or in small groups, the hands attack all at once. As they move about, they seem to leave afterimages which in reality are just more hands following behind. All of their former attacks are used again, adding to the confusion with even more attacks aimed at Sonic. Several hands will attempt to grab Sonic as others fire blasts and more others form a wall of palms and a net of fingers.

- Mechanix also attacks with his locks and with the Super-damaging blue beam, which is fired much more often.

.

As Sonic approaches Mechanix's body, the attacks will lessen as he avoids the range of most of his body attacks.

- However, he will attack by now charging energy through the patterns in space, which are now dangerous and must be avoided.

- In addition, Mechanix will move his fists and locks at near-instant speed, which can only be predicted by a glow of energy in the space from their direction very shortly before the attack.

After a grueling entry, Sonic will come towards a circular area on Mechanix's chest. As he does, a translucent energy bubble appears over it, and cannons suddenly appear everywhere, firing everything they have at Sonic. He breaks through each in his way, but then he notices the spirit form of Mechanix hounding him down from behind. While avoiding all of the attacks, Sonic aims to hit the vertices of a pentagon circumscribed by the circle. With each hit, the energy surges from the one point to the two points opposite it underneath the bubble. After all are hit, a pentagram forms and the bubble pops.

He flies toward the center of the circle and dashes repeatedly into the metal, breaking it bit by bit. After 24 hits, he crashes through Mechanix's stomach which quickly heals behind him.

.

[Soul Rd.2 : [Zexagalaxius Zone Act 1] ]

For all the Acts of this Zone, every animated object besides Sonic will be moving to the rhythm of the music, although not everything will be on the one.

Sonic falls. The wall he broke through, covered in conduits of pulsing energy and lights flashing and changing color, quickly becomes more and more distant until it nearly fades away as if it became the sky itself. He lands on a shiny steel floor which stood before a massive machine of moving parts. Looking around, he sees many more, and all of these machines are interlocked together in some way, with the horizon mostly obscured by their massive presence. The machines are either covered in lights, filled with moving energy, or painted in some pattern to make everything constantly colorful and animated to the point of information overload. Sonic need not worry about keeping his energy up, being within Mechanix himself.

Sonic runs on, and the steel floor beneath him narrows into a wide thoroughfare which flies high above the moving parts. Streams, waves and pulses of energy fly over head. As he looks far above the landscape he sees it changing on a much larger scale (in a way represented by the movements of the song). Before he can take it all in, he will be attacked from above by flying spheres of energy. They lob bombs and fire beams at Sonic, although he can defeat them all if he makes a well-placed wall-jump from one to the other. He'll pass by massive blocks and cylinders of metal, rotating, revolving, displacing over, under, in, and around each other, transferring energy rapidly even through seemingly unnecessary flourishes. Yet again, his wonder will be attacked as robots ride on the road next to him. They consist of triangle frames and wheels spinning and moving around each other constantly. They try to leap in front of Sonic to box and crush him, or simply try to leap on him. Sonic can damage them if he can hit the frames instead of the wheels, and 3 hits destroys one.

The road will then split ahead of Sonic, pieces lowering to make gaps to interrupt his movement. As he jumps over these, the final stretch quickly collapses itself underneath his feet, surprising him as he flies straight towards two massive gears spinning out of each other.

He lands on a massive moving structure, and must jump from moving piece to moving piece, avoiding every path that leads to getting himself squished, to make headway. He tends to find himself inside the shadow of many layers of pieces fairly shortly, only for an object he's on to eject out and spin around the exterior, to go back in once again. There are tall cylinders with gears that move back and forth while spinning, colliding into each other so the teeth mesh. Sonic must wall-jump up these often to move vertically. There are tubes which he will fall into, from which he must swiftly escape or be crushed by a rushing piston. Levers, pulleys, conveyor belts, wheels and cylinders gyrate on in a confusing dance of flashing colors and shiny objects.

Upon escaping this monstrosity, he reaches a long, tall wall stretching far away, which he enters. Within, the ceiling is short, a burst of light flashing from lamp to lamp down long, narrow paths. The paths themselves split, curve, turn and spin, occasionally cut into by open energy conduits which more directly move across the wall (generally). Both will frequently open up into very tall but thin chasms that reach to the true floor far, far below. There are moving parts, here, some as small as a platform as wide as Sonic, some as large as a part he encountered before but by itself. He needs to master timing first and jumping of both sorts to make his way upwards. Near the top of the wall the path will make its way to breach out into the exterior onto a flat, steady path, but if Sonic finds himself at the bottom he must avoid the grinding, crushing parts exposed below the floor.

Sonic will go between these three types of areas:

- the wide road,

- the super-structure,

- and the narrow wall.

He goes through each several times before he sees an opening in the wider floor below. He leaps off whatever he's on far above it and zips inside.

He will find himself in a familiar situation, avoiding moving pieces while enclosed in a giant moving piece sliding across other moving pieces. Crushing hazards hound him as gaps close and open before him, forcing him to think fast and keep moving. He cannot rely only on his speed, as he soon finds himself taking several different paths one after another but not changing position at all. If he can beat this high-pressure area, he moves below into a relatively small mechanical room lit up by hundreds of tiny lights, situated at the sealed blast door entrance to a pipe that leads farther down.

.

[[Zexagalaxius Zone Act 1 Boss]]

A robot of small parts spinning around an energy core enters from another path.

- It immediately sends out bolts of energy which fix into certain positions, creating highly reflective spheres floating stationary.

- It first fires laser pulses that reflect off one and another before aiming at Sonic. It increases the amount of pulses to surround him. Although Sonic will not be hurt, his energy will be sapped.

- The robot then fires a continuous laser beam, blocking off a section of the floor and wall. It may fire more pulses, move that beam, or fire a new one (especially after being dealt damage) to constrict his movement further. Sonic can respond by carefully wall-jumping from sphere to sphere until he can reach the machine and smash into it.

Each hit removes its armor and exposes more energy, which leaks out more readily. After 8 hits, all of its armor is removed and it disappears the mirror spheres. It then fires pulses in waves and showers, at Sonic and all around the room. Sonic must use momentum and the walls to land more hits. With more hits piling on, the energy robot fires continuous beams which it spins around the room, but that doesn't stop Sonic from delivering the damage.

With 8 more hits, the energy robot ceases, its form bending and bursting with instability. It then drops like a rock, crashing into the blast door and exploding, peeling it apart. Sonic takes a breath, then jumps in.

.

[[Zexagalaxius Zone Act 2]]

For this particular Act, the moving colors and objects, autonomous or not, besides Sonic, will move in rhythm to the beat of the music. Sound effects occur at even intervals of the beat and are harmonious with the song, such that every component of the song could be considered to be sound effects in some way.

Sonic starts running down the side of the tube. Immediately, a burst of energy resonates through it and changes the somewhat drab, electronics-covered walls into one covered in glowing, changing lights and bright, pulsating solids and gradients. The tube then slowly curves horizontally until Sonic is running on the "bottom". The walls then change to glass, supported by an exterior metal structure which takes on many shapes, from simple rings connected by straight lines to diagonals connecting helices to even more complicated, bending structures which rush by as Sonic runs through. Surrounding the tube are floating, smoothly designed mechanical objects that seem to serve a purpose but defy any explanation based on their appearance and movement. Between these are hundreds of other tubes, distantly separated, moving in different directions within a very large tube that seems to be the size of a small continent (bended concave into an elongated loop). The large tube very slowly rotates, its varied landscape changing slowly as Sonic moves forward, reflecting different hues of light and showing off different worlds of machinery and energy far away. Everything has its own color, a color which quickly changes based on an individual algorithm which itself may change based on surrounding objects' color-changing identities. Sonic can run around the sides of the tube.

Any directed energy attacks will sap Sonic's Super form of energy, but this is inconsequential unless he continues to have his energy sapped, which will make his golden color desaturate until it becomes grey. At this point, Sonic will return to normal, but any attack at all will instantly kill him then.

Sonic runs on. From behind him, 3 spinning triangle enemies appear in tune with the music.

- They each fire, in succession and diagonally, small laser blasts which will sap Sonic's energy.

- They will then fly forward and fire backwards in the same way, then descend to Sonic's level and fire straight at him, if Sonic is behind them. If not, they will wait until he is ahead to attack from behind.

- They then move up and change positions twice before making another direct attack.

Sonic can move around the tube to attack them quickly or wait until they come to his level and move to strike. Each takes one hit.

- Another type of enemy comes forward in a beam and travels as a ball within that beam (rather quickly). It then fires another continuous beam at an angle which bounces (to the beat) off the walls, and then moves on this beam to the final point before firing again. This takes two hits.

- A large jellyfish-like robot with slowly glowing lights inside jettisons itself forward. Once it gets close, it will bend its arm one joint after another on each beat while moving forward. It will push itself forward until it is ahead of Sonic, and then float backwards to catch him and then sap the energy out of him directly. Three hits on its head destroys its armor and keeps its arm from bending more to reach Sonic, and one hit from behind or on its unprotected head destroys it.

- A ring within the tube is pushed forward by rocket-powered carts separated from their wheels by long legs.. They are suspended over the floor, and shoot a connecting beam between their legs to mounts on a ring on the same plane exterior to the tube, twice its radius. The carts only run on the supports outside the tube, as if magnetically pulled, causing it to rotate in the same direction with the same speed. The carts shoot energy to each other as well, creating lines of energy which will sap Sonic's strength and crush him if he touches the carts. He must try to run between them and jump through the plane between the tube and two lines of the shortest arc, marked by a slight glow in the air. This will cause the wheels of one of the carts to malfunction and stop, slowing it down and allowing Sonic to spindash and destroy the cart. With the penultimate cart is destroyed, the final cart will slow down to a stop before everything explodes.

.

Sonic then enters one of the floating things by a narrow circular tube within the tube. It opens up back into a new tube with mechanical floors. No enemies follow him here.

Suddenly, before him segments of the word jab out of the ground and slam into each other in front of him. They continue to do so in random locations which Sonic can tell are coming from the beat and a brief glow of the segment's top before it comes out. Alternatively, there can be segments of the floor that simply are there, glowing pieces of floor that sap Sonic's energy which take up most of the space, leaving a few or just one path for Sonic to keep on.

After that ordeal, a sound will slowly emerge until it overtakes most of the music's voices. A cylinder chasing behind, with gyrating gears of death churning making all of the noise. There are a number of glass shields covering smaller machines, and an energy barrier where one would be. After destroying a shield, and then jumping to take out the machine, for every machine, the barrier is dispelled revealing a hole in the machine to its other side. Sonic must then jump through and deal damage to its engine on its back (4 hits), although he must avoid the circling ball of sap energy. After 4 hits, the engine explodes, cracking the machine into pieces with Sonic again on the other side.

The transparent floor reappears, and the older robots attack in larger numbers and more combinations. Also appearing are two more:

- A steel ball floats down the center. It then creates an energy sapping plane on xy, xz or yz and moves it slowly. Two hits destroy it.

- An energy ball floats in and moves around in a preset, cycling pattern (following the beat). It fires a powerful energy sapping beam at Sonic's location. It memorizes this location for this point in the cycle, and after completing its movement and returning to this spot it will fire in the same place as well as where Sonic is now (saving his positions up to 5 places per one spot).

After this area, the tube explodes. Sonic falls faster and faster towards the distant ground far below. After a while, he lands on a steep slope of a mechanical mountain. He then rolls into a dense machinery area, constantly glowing and flashing with energy. The environment is so large that the scenery only changes twice this battle (if Sonic waits long enough) to a flatter zone with more layers of height, and an area with winding roads between soaring vertical towers.

.

[[Zexagalaxius Zone Act 2 Boss]]

A sentry is sent to destroy Sonic. It consists of two sphere-like amalgamations of moving machinery connected by twirling strands of ribbon-like energy. As it moves, the glow of its changing energy leaves trailers in space, while its mechanical parts leave a static afterimage.

- It attacks by shooting out multiple, parallel sap lasers at once, and then firing again at different locations (Sonic must stay in the gaps between them).

- It also launches from within to above it a smaller robot. This spawn has a capsule-like body attached to two smaller transparent spheres filled with energy. One hit on these destroys them.

- These small spheres shoot out pulse beams which Sonic must hurdle.

- Once the energy is depleted, the capsule launches the spheres like rockets which then explode with sap energy.

- It then fires a larger laser which Sonic can jump over or roll under.

- The sentry can also let loose many small, bouncing blobs of energy circled by small metal plates. These distract Sonic as it charges up a powerful energy blast which will sap most of Sonic's energy very quickly. Sonic can jump through the small blobs towards one of the sentry's spheres to damage it.

After 4 hits on one sphere or the other, it stops attacking. Most of the ribbons detach from one sphere and extend outwards into a circle. They then spin around like thin blades as the spheres pull themselves together, separated by this energy fan. Sonic must go through the rotating ribbon-blades to the other side and damage the other sphere, which will then start attacking him.

- Meanwhile the sphere on the initially same side as Sonic will glow and release energy in beams one after another, nonstop, at his location.

- The other sphere can also spawn the triangle enemies.

After 4 hits on one sphere, it will lose its inner glow and fall to the ground, bouncing once before rolling back (Sonic should make sure to jump if it's in front of him). It is still attached by ribbons, and now all the ribbons change to help tug it. The sentry will roll the dead sphere back and forth to roll over Sonic. It builds momentum, eventually causing the dead sphere to swing off of the ground like a pendulum. With enough momentum, it starts swinging it in circles, slamming it into the ground at Sonic's position to crush him to death. However, on the upswing the live sphere will be closer to the ground, giving Sonic a chance to attack it.

With 4 final hits on the last sphere, it makes one final swing at Sonic before losing its energy and flinging itself far forward, to crash into the ground in a large explosion, ripping open a hole.

.

Sonic jumps in and falls through the scaffolding. Before he enters the other side, a burst of energy rushes past. He looks at his hands and the color on them seems to float off of them, like its own entity. His body feels distant. He drops into a giant space with seemingly no walls. Energy seems to radiate from a central source far away, in pulses and waves at the beat of the music. It is constantly changing in form and the form of forms. Sonic pushes energy in a burst behind him, and makes himself fly towards the source.

.

[[Zexagalaxius Zone Act 3]]

As Sonic approaches the source, the energy will move and change at a faster pace, along with the music. Every object which appears will engage in actions which create a melody with pitches related to its vertical position and time related to its horizontal position. Each hue is related to its own note class. As colors blend, so too does sound, which can no longer be differentiated from the music to the point that actions seem to be generated by the music itself, almost, predestined.

With no physical obstacles in his path so far, Sonic is immediately attacked. Each enemy of a different type constitutes a different "voice" in the song.

- For example, there are small, simple enemies that fly straight, to then dip at an angle or curve which represents a portamento. Some may interrupt the dip at regular intervals to rather represent a glissando.

- There are also shooters whose bullets fade in and out, reflected in a change of volume.

- Then there are the oblong fliers, which split in half to a certain distance (or expanding constantly). Each half ejects a beam of sap energy either outside or inside (to each other).

- Larger enemies which concentrate on attacking Sonic will eject a larger variety of attacks and even smaller enemies, which can only be damaged at specific marked weak spots.

After a fair share of time breaking through the waves of foes, Sonic starts to feel a growing flanging effect on his perception. Everything he sees and hears is at first bright, but it fades away until everything blurs, when everything then changes state at full intensity before fading away again. In this way, his perception is cut into discrete pieces which disturbs his earlier feelings of continuity. He then notices that he was being attacked by the forward members of a massive armada all sent to attack him. He is then immediately confronted by the surface of a large battleship. Its attacks are many:

- straight torpedos,

- lasers and energy pulses,

- parabolic mortars,

- homing and remote-detonated rockets,

- as well as opening gates and ports for smaller enemies to come out and attack.

Sonic can stay away and attempt to avoid the full assault, or he can dive into the launch bays and fly within the narrow internal passages. They will lead him to the core which is protected by gyrating, crushing shields on the outside and a dense sap energy field on the inside. He must make it in one go to dash through the glowing sphere which pulses to the beat, to cause a chain reaction which sends a wall of exploding flame to engulf the area right behind Sonic as he barely escapes.

After braving the armada, Sonic will finally reach the flagship.

.

[[Zexagalaxius Zone Act 3 Boss]]

As before, Sonic will face an onslaught of enemies and attacks all at once. Sonic can enter the ship early to avoid the attacks but face very narrow, sharply turning internal corridors. There will also be small runner robots within which will shoot beams of sap energy and of a new type of energy which will slow Sonic down. After a long fight either way, Sonic will reach the core. The flanging continues, seemingly slowing time to a stop in each moment while still being constantly moving.

The core room is very large and constantly spinning, but Sonic will remain still on one plane. The core itself protected by a shield from generators, which themselves are surrounded by cannons. In a manner reminiscent of Sonic 1's final boss, it first pushes large metal blocks in position to crush Sonic, although they can be seen moving on the floor and ceiling as the room turns. It then attacks with all of its cannons at once, creating a bullet hell of sap and slow beams and pulses. Sonic must navigate through this highly dangerous battlefield to each turret all around the room to dispatch them and then the generators they protect.

When half of the generators are destroyed, the core will launch from within a fleet of homing missiles towards Sonic. This is where he must be constantly moving to escape them in a circle around the core, for once one hits him he will slow down enough for the others to hit him, making him easy prey for a death from squish or sap which now rush by even faster than before. He must aim for his targets and swipe through them in one go as he avoids his own death.

With the final generator destroyed, the shield disappears. The core then closes a large steel empty cylinder around it which Sonic narrowly squeezes through.

The flanging is now in full force. With every fading moment Sonic's mind wanders away, to where the massive core seems like a small ball far in the distance. Everything feels miniscule while still being larger than he. The inside of the cylinder is lined with rings of circling energy. The glow of the core lights up the entire area. It then attacks directly with thousands of radially launched energy attacks, a few of which are like strings which attach to the walls' rings and then rotate around the room.

- Sap strings are generally of warmer colors while slow strings are generally of cooler colors.

- Then there are the neutral, smallest, but brightest strings of them all, which if Sonic flies into, he will then be carried directly through the core to the other side in what seems like a flash, effectively being a "hit".

With 16 such hits, the core overloads, sending out massive blasts of energy which rip holes through the cylinder walls. Sonic takes one exit out and makes another daring escape as the core explodes behind him. Upon exiting the flagship, a blast of light indicates that fight has finally ended.

.

Colors flash by in rushing waves. Emerging from behind them is a radial net with gradients for strings. The water-like energy then bends over and under itself, rotating around. There are pulses of color and pulses of brightness that fuse the hues together for a short moment.

Sonic finally reaches the core of Mechanix. It is a translucent sphere, the size of a planet, with a burning center and currents of gyrating energy surrounding it in layers up to the semi-solid surface. With every pulse it gets brighter and brighter and the time between pulses slow down. Eventually, Sonic is blinded at its brightest, unable to tell where he is or what he's even doing. He loses himself, loses his feeling of balance and proportion in the constant allness. All he perceives is the sound of the beat of the core. In the pure white, with no way to tell what is him and what is not, what is perceived and what is created, he becomes the beat itself.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Endlessly. Every pulse, growing forever, sustaining eternally, dying infinitely. Pure silence that never stops. Then.

Boom.

Boom.

Suddenly, "Sonic?" a familiar voice calls.

Sonic opens his eyes. He sees his mother before him, holding out her arms for him. He runs to her, but she stays the same distance away from him. "Mom!" he shouts. Her head slowly, slowly lowers down, her arms weakening, drooping, and she moves farther and farther away. "Don't go, mom!" His legs get heavier. "No, don't go!" They stop moving; he can't push them, and soon his mother is flying far away in front of him. "No! No..." She vanishes into the horizon. He stops trying and his legs give out from under him. He falls to the ground. "This is just another hallucination... Damn it, Mechanix... Toying with me... again!"

The ground disappears. Sonic faces a massive force behind a tsunami of light and sound and every vibration possible, which rapidly builds itself through all dimensions at different speeds, all facing him. "You... are... nothing," universe-wide waves of energy that crashes into Sonic's mind, attacking all of his consciousness at once. Every part of his brain was flooded with the phrase. A new wave approached, already as Sonic slowly recovers while his body is frozen still. "You, are nothing!" Sonic feels his mind flicker, his brain stem buzzing, and then feels pain echo throughout his body. All he sees is a residue of neon ghosts morphing ominously in a dull color of green. He finally thinks, "So, with the power of a god he's finally going to kill me in a way I can't defend?" before a massive block of everything at the maximum magnitude explodes with the galaxy-destroying death screams of a trillion ultra-suns all around him. The words no longer exist as any relevant concept but it is just the same as if Sonic stood in black nothingness, unable to feel or move any part of his body or mind, stood as Mechanix in his earliest, simplest, first form simply said, "You are nothing." before vanishing, and the words "You are nothing." repeat endlessly in Sonic's head, the same words, the same tone, the same speed, with nothing else to perceive for the rest of eternity.

It is then that Sonic opened his eyes.

He is standing in a small room heavily populated by machinery that flowed together like rivers of iron and steel. There is no lighting except coming from him, as Sonic, his skin reflecting gold but absorbing the rainbow light from the seven Chaos Emeralds floating before him. Their light is dim, as tendrils of green energy connect to the large Master Emerald resting in a pedestal not too far away.

Mechanix then appears in front of him, the most refined form, reflecting the simplicity of the original while respecting the improvements of every other stage.

[Warning: Short graphic description]

His eyes are directly in front of him, his hands around Sonic's neck as he is pinned to the ground, completely paralyzed. Sonic suddenly feels hundreds of sharp objects pierce all around his body, and he feels the flow of blood pulsating in all of these areas as if something was being added.

Above Mobius. It is alive with color, all bright and with sharp lines except the curvature itself, each continent filled with billions of movements of light reflecting the movement and actions of every individual object on every level of organization, such that it is an immediate encyclopedia of all current states for every category of information, recognizable at any time by anyone without need of communication. Pulsating from this sphere of truth is light that travels down seemingly synthesized patterns of roads and paths and blocks and shapes within the space all while reflecting a net-like structure of connections. Every color, every sound, every symbol and every thought emanate as one thing through the core of this world into the vast infinities of the boundless space with which it is always center.

Floating before him is the Spirit of Mechanix, burning brightly with flowing energy that resembled the truth patterns in space but yet said them in a more simplified and generalized manner that applied to all things. It was the same place as the core of the one beat, and the Spirit was exactly the same as the one which hounded him before, although its shape looks like the perfect Mechanix form he just saw.

This is when Sonic realized he was separated from these objects. He suddenly felt himself wrapped in his former skin, no longer a bubble of awareness but a chemical and bio-electrical organ trapped in bone and meat. Although he was flashing golden, his own energy radiating into space and tangling with the truth flows, he felt no less chained. Suddenly he realized, "I remember what I just saw... that must mean, Mechanix is trying to weaken the Chaos Emeralds since he knows I can defeat him in Super form even now! No matter what... even if he can extinguish me, I will fight back... even if I could only exist as an awareness of only pain and death, I will fight back. Do you hear me, Mechanix?! Can't you even read my thoughts, since you can change what I perceive?! You know that I will destroy you even if you are the god of everything and I am just a pair of eyes! You can kill me but you will always know I would have won if you let me live, and that will ultimately kill you! I am nothing... but I am not you!"

.

[Soul Rd. 3]

[[THE WORLD]]

The World will be constantly sending out attacks in all directions.

- Sometimes a truth path will surge with sap, slow, or a third type of energy which will shock Sonic's recovery of energy for a short while and cut out a large chunk of it.

- The world will fire hundreds of thousands of bullets.

- Some will fly around aimlessly,

- others will move in some pattern but still aimlessly,

- others will lock on a trajectory to Sonic,

- others will lock on and home in smartly,

- others will try to cut Sonic off,

- some will try to lock him in a giant system of coordinated attacks,

- and other group behaviors to confuse and slow Sonic down.

- It will also fire attacks of a much larger degree,

- from the size of small regions

- to larger regions

- to large sections of continents

- to continents themselves

- to large interlocking global systems

- to a component of the planet such as a meridian or magnetic field

- to the single maximum power everything-pulsating-at-once in an attack that can only be avoided behind small packets of antimatter.

[[THE SELF]]

Meanwhile, the Spirit will attack with its upgraded moves:

- Several volleys of lasers, many which are maximum charged

- Several seeds of objects which grow exponentially in different ways:

- A slow diamond which grows into a block of crystals

- A sap circle which explodes like a chain reaction

- A shock square which zaps across space like lightning

- Freeze everything and suddenly dash to Sonic, attacking him with slicing and stabbing attacks from appearing and disappearing blade-like shapes to which Sonic must avoid but could possibly counter.

He can no longer stop any of Sonic's moves, create anything or recover. But he still has more attacks:

- Dash and charge an attack that pinches the space and time of a small region into a black hole, which then quickly explodes. If Sonic is hit, he will be crushed and killed.

- Fire a gamma ray burst which slows down time enough for Sonic to get out of the way, and if he is close enough counter the Spirit.

With 8 hits, the Spirit backs off, and is absorbed in a burst of energy coming from the center of the World.

[[THE SUPER SELF]]

The Spirit is suddenly glowing with a brightness that rivals the World. In its Super form it moves twice as fast and can now directly harm Sonic, which means death if it lands just 2 hits of its own. The Spirit attacks by:

- Summoning waves of lasers that have an intricate path where Sonic must navigate without hitting the walls.

- Firing a slow beam with a sap core

- Firing homing shock missiles.

- Firing balls of dark energy, which form a parabola until they hit proximate to Sonic or otherwise suddenly feel a strong magnetic pull back to Sonic. If Sonic is in its aura but doesn't touch it, he will receive a boost in his own energy as well as having time slow down, which gives Sonic a chance to attack the Super Spirit while time is slowed/while Sonic is in hyper mode. When they are close enough they will splat into space, slowing down to a stop halfway after exploding into space puddles.

- He can control one axis of Sonic's movement, such that he is limited to moving one only one plane, but he can switch which axis in a flash of cyan, magenta or yellow reflecting the xy, xy and yz axes.

- He can control attacks from the World and focus them towards Sonic or the possible paths around him.

- When Sonic is attacking him, he will stay and fight back with:

- quick punches,

- charged plasma blasts,

- mid-distance explosion shots

- and long-distance fast piercing laser shots.

- He will occasionally use a shield if Sonic takes too long to approach him on attack.

- He can cut lines into space-time until he can suddenly remove a block of space-time, which will instantly kill Sonic if he is in it.

- Suck in large amounts of gaseous energy into a condensed ball, then sending out the ball which then grows continuously larger, burning a strong sap energy. Large blue ones make large slow explosions and then form deadly black holes which are sent spinning at Sonic. Smaller yellow ones spin around other yellow ones, emitting rays of shock energy.

After 8 more hits, the Super Spirit backs off and then dashes towards the World.

.

Sonic can choose what to do. He can chase after the Spirit into the danger of the World's surface, or he can continue on into the cosmos.

If he chooses to chase as he may want to do, the World will unleash less attacks but they have more power as Sonic hounds the Spirit down through the transparent electrified layers of atmosphere. He reaches the bottom in a dense complex of shapes and patterns, some transparent, some obstructions and others hazards and threats. The Spirit will be launching attacks back to ward Sonic off if he gets too close. Sonic will want to get as close as possible, and attack the Spirit. If he can hit him 8 more times, it will suddenly fall into the ground and lose most of its energy. Sonic will then open his eyes again.

If he does not land those 8 crucial hits, the Spirit will reach the ground and open large chasms towards the core. Sonic can concentrate on getting those final strikes but if he fails, the Spirit will merge with the core and suddenly bend the earth above Sonic to crush him to death with the weight of the entire planet. Sonic cannot harm the Spirit now, now emanating sap, slow, shock, and death energies. He must escape through the tightening fixtures of the controlled magma flows, break through virtual civilizations which all work together to destroy him, escaping from approaching oceans of pursuing bullets into the atmosphere.

But if he can open his eyes, he will find himself back in the room with the perfect Mechanix form lying on the floor. He sees the Master Emerald and runs for it. He sends out his hands to grab it...

Now if he's in the atmosphere of the World whether he entered it or not he can continue on in the cosmos. If he does so, he will fly away into bleak space, with no other planets to aim for. The color will recede as the bullets stop reaching him. Only the pulse of light through space still moves past him.

After a short while, he will see a dim green light. He goes to it. He sees the Master Emerald, glowing and sparkling a pure green. He sends out his hands to grab it...

He grabs it.

.

His arms explode with energy but he still holds on strong. His body is fluctuating with the increasing waves of energy. With a beat deep within him he pushes out an immense wave of energy. It swats the tendrils off of the Chaos Emeralds, and he then uses a pulse of their power to neutralize the Master Emerald. It shatters, and its aura of energy makes a final whip with its tendrils that shatters the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic is stunned, and suddenly the lights within the room flashed off. Sonic was left in darkness, and was then grabbed and felt space rush around him. His limbs flicked into unmoving objects as he was taken to an opening door and thrown within. The door then slams shut.

[Warning: Disturbing graphic material ahead.]

Steel shackles wrap around Sonic's wrist, ankles and neck.

"Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die." Mechanix clicked.

Sonic is bolted into position suddenly, and then nothing.

Silence.

A blade. It's spinning. Slowly. Louder. Then another blade, elsewhere. Approaching.

"DIE!"

A blade cuts through Sonic's leg. He screams in pain. Another blade cuts off his arm. "Fuuuucck!" His other leg. "Fuck you! Fuuuck youuu!" His arm. "Coward!" His blood is leaving his body, he feels it drain out of every organ. "Fuck youu... youuu coward..." A blade nicks his neck.

He sees his own body fall into bloody pieces in front of him. He pulls him arm but it moves nowhere. Then, a click. In an instant, he feels a very thin needle pierce directly that arm. Another. Another. One after another up and down his arm until there are three going down at once, then it moves even faster and eventually Sonic's entire body is pierced every which way by needles. Sonic is intact, still alive although his body is flooding with pain. Then, slowly, the needles pull out and Sonic feels his innards roll across the sliding needles. As the needles removed themselves from the wounds blood gushes out from each hole, quickly draining him of blood until he is lightheaded. Then the needles remove his brain and he slowly loses his mind piece by piece in horrifyingly painful ways.

He sees his body collapse into a pool of its own blood in front of him. "Bastard. You will never win! You can't beat me!" He suddenly feels his back against a cold metal wall and his front against another. It slowly pushes him together and within seconds he feels his bones give way, his body squishing out of and off of itself. He loses consciousness

and sees two slabs of metal pull off from each other, dropping a mangled sack of stuff that was once Sonic. "No matter how many times! I'll never give in to you!"

The cuffs on his body breaks off, and Sonic finds himself holding on to the Master Emerald intact and the Chaos Emeralds spinning around it. They then disappear in a flash into his body.

.

Sonic must then run forward through a tunnel in the wall that leads outside of within Mechanix. Sonic dashes up it and sees star-studded space ahead of him in a circle. Just as he breaks through, an energy vaccuum machine pulls out the seven Chaos Emeralds from within him.

.

Sonic is sent hurtling through space, suddenly shot with a slow beam, then a shock beam followed by a continuous sap beam as he starts to fall back to Mobius, his energy completely drained. Sonic is taken out of Super form.

Sonic gets up. He looks around him and sees the first form of Mechanix with all of the Emeralds. He looks at Mobius spinning next to them, and it spins quickly. Sonic remembered then that time slowed down so long ago, that this is the true state. He realized, "Mechanix can't make me hallucinate anymore without this! Good, now things will be easier."

.

[Sword Rd. 4]

Sonic looks around and finds himself on a circular platform on Mechanix's stomach. Mechanix then slowly bends his back, arcing it until he mountains over himself, attacks in two phases:

Phase 1

- With his two arms. In the middle of each palm is a cannon which will Sonic can spindash into unless it is about to fire a beam. Spinning up the entirety of the tube will send Sonic hurtling to a weak spot on Mechanix where Sonic will deal a powerful hit that causes the wall there to fracture for a 'hit'.

- Having them both face inward with open palms, to fire charged beams at each other.

- Strike one down with a punch, causing a shockwave which will hurt Sonic (he must jump before the punch lands).

- He may strike down with the other, punching the ground continuously (Sonic must jump from side to side in rhythm with the punches).

- Slap the ground to crush Sonic underneath

- Cage Sonic under a hand's fingers, trapped, before the other hands comes in to punch. The first hand will leave just before it hits, a small window of opportunity for Sonic to jump out of the way.

- Face its fingers down, firing them into the ground and electrifying them as hazardous walls between which Sonic must move back and forth to avoid falling attacks from the hand cannon.

- Mechanix's will fire slower attacks from his eyes far away and above. They come down gradually, everything else moving faster, like an assault of glaciers.

This phase ends if he is 'hit' twice, or if sufficient time has passed.

.

Phase 2

- Mechanix will use its hand and perform quick gestures which will indicate the type of bullet that will now be fired.

- Mechanix will create hundreds of robots to onslaught Sonic.

After 8 'hits', the chest shatters leaving vulnerable a tube that moves towards his chest, with a white glow from within.

.

Sonic runs up the chest towards the tube, but the ground in front of him expands farther than he can reach. He looks around and sees that other pieces of his body are changing into a malleable form for this one technique. He speeds up, and then the hands rapidly attack the ground around him. Sonic makes it through fine and enters the tube.

As Sonic runs down the tube, there are hazards within the surfaces that he must avoid. These may be dangerous electric currents or streams of plasma, but they are all dangerous. The tube opens into a short room glowing with the light of the seven Chaos Emeralds contained in a glass chamber. Just as Sonic enters the room, a door shuts off the tube behind Sonic. A wall of fire bursts through the walls and threatens to consume Sonic. He runs and breaks through the container, and quickly transforms into Super Sonic as the flames throw him to the other wall to be crushed. Sonic manages to escape through another tube.

.

[Sword Rd. 5]

Floating in space, Sonic looks back at Mechanix. He doesn't change. Catching him unaware, Mechanix suddenly dashes forward and throws out an endless stream of energy attacks large and small. Occasionally, there are beams charged with the power of the Black Emerald, which are powerful enough to slow time if Sonic is near them (actually, Sonic will be in a weak Hyper mode for a few seconds to his advantage) or harm him if hit directly (even in Super form). Sonic must be constantly aware of the patterns of each bullet as he homes in on Mechanix who will also be constantly moving.

Eventually Sonic will reach Mechanix, here he must repeatedly ram into his body, tearing into the armor. Mechanix will not fire beams as much as he will frantically attack Sonic with his arms and reshape his body to ward Sonic off. At first Mechanix will recover instantly, but with each collapse the recover becomes slower and Sonic can deal damage deeper within.

Mechanix cannot do much as Sonic essentially drills a hole through him. Occasionally Mechanix will summon his energy to create a white barrier that repels Sonic far enough away to recover somewhat, but he can only do this a few times at first. Mechanix's attacks will lessen in number and strength, very slowly at first but he loses exponentially more as time goes on. Mechanix will convert different parts of his body into energy using massive explosions (which Sonic can easily dodge through). This is futile.

As Sonic cuts deep within Mechanix, he will use:

- his regenerative effort to create turrets and small robots

- as well as smaller energy barriers

- as well as landscapes out of the tunnel Sonic makes.

When Sonic reaches the glowing area, he will be suddenly repelled by a tremendously powerful black energy shockwave.

.

[Sword Rd. 6]

Back in space, Sonic will be attacked with Mechanix's deadliest attacks.

- He will fire a beam containing shock, sap and slow,

- as well as firing harmful blue blasts from his eyes.

- Additionally, if Sonic is within range of Mechanix's head, particularly as he is re-entering the digging hole, he will be followed by tiny dark tendrils. If Sonic stands still for too long, the tendrils will glow bright before Mechanix suddenly stabs outward a large group of super-sharp needles with the power of the Black Emerald (if Sonic escapes this he can use the short boost it gives him).

In the last push back through the glowing area:

- Mechanix will be constantly moving metal in Sonic's way,

- absorbing his energy from his attacks

- and reflecting them in his own energy attacks, from projectiles to piercing laser columns within the tunnel.

.

The glowing stops. Sonic enters a larger room. There is a large pulsating white light shining upward to an opening high in the wall. In flames of light within shadows is lit the figure of a hedgehog, his arms and legs trapped from view.

"What!?" Sonic gasps.

He comes closer, with every pulse more time passes as he looks into the sleeping face of his own kind. Breaking his thought are tiny strands of moving metal, again forming itself as of its own will. It slides across the man's body, turning into his Genius form. The Black Emerald! Sonic sets off forward but he is too late, a column of steel stabs upward through the chamber the light was in. At its front was the Black Emerald, pulsating eerily enough with a white light. The strands of metal are almost finished covering the hedgehog core of Mechanix. His arms are completely covered, grabbing the Black Emerald and pulling it into his own body. Sonic takes no chances.

.

[Soul Rd. 4 : Mechanix the hedgehog ]

Sonic must attack the hedgehog directly. With every hit, the entire superstructure of Mechanix violently shakes and tears itself apart. The room will flash with color, and the hedgehog will start screaming in pain with additional attacks. Most importantly, the regenerating metal will not recreate an earlier form of Mechanix for Sonic to beat once again.

Sonic made no mistakes. He rose into the sky and flung himself forward. A sphere of wall flashes before him, but he strikes into it once destroying it. He repeatedly flings himself forward, destroying the walls quicker and quicker until he slams into the arms. Every hit that the arms block is absorbed deeper and deeper within Mechanix. The armor cracks and falls off as more is created but in less and less amounts. The hedgehog's bones rattle as his flesh twitches and shakes from each hit. He must be hit 10 times. The last 3 hits make him cough blood.

.

When Sonic finally breaks through the arms, he feels the Black Emerald get flicked out the side into a small alcove. Then he drops and turns, but before he can grab it, all of Mechanix shakes more than he ever has before. Sonic hears him being ripped apart, and he soon sees layers and strips of metal tear and flake off. Again he finds himself in space under the light of the sun.

Sonic feels a warm, wet thing dripping all over his head and back. He looks upwards, to see that his last hit had cut through everything, the arms, the chest armor, even the skin of the hedgehog. A stream of blood slides out from his chest and mouth. For a moment as Sonic stares at what he did to this other hedgehog, he wonders if what he's seeing is real. But his thought is cut off as all of the walls crumble into pieces, breaking up behind the man who then falls hard towards the floor. Sonic sprints forward and catches him, feeling the blood on his arms, seeing the wound he put into him up close. He holds onto him for a few seconds as all but the floor is left. Space calmly stands around them, but something kept an artificial atmosphere up. Sonic is mesmerized by what just happened, adrenaline still shooting through his body, but somehow he could gently put him down on what was left of the floor.

The man coughs out blood suddenly. His eyes move under his eyelids. He turns his head, stops. He very gradually opens his eyelids. His fingers flick, and then his hands and feet just barely wiggle. Sonic stands back and watches. The other hedgehog then very slowly pushes his hands onto the ground, groaning and gasping in pain until he is sitting straight. Wincing, he looks at Sonic.

"Why... why didn't you kill me?"

Sonic looked at him. He didn't know what to say. Was the battle over? "I-I didn't mean to hurt you. I-"

"You imbecile. I... am Mechanix. I'm even still controlling this floor. I could... explode it with deadly energy..."

Sonic shook his head. "I know who you are."

Mechanix, who was grimacing, suddenly froze. "No. No, you don't! I'm Mechanix, nobody else! This is all an illusion, you damned fool!"

Sonic said, "You were a slave. Of the echidnas. The Zexakal. You were roboticized!"

Mechanix smiled. "Ha, that? No. That doesn't matter. I chose this."

"I knew about what they were doing to our people. I knew they were hiding the truth behind everything. I knew that. I didn't think it through. I was too stupid to think, and trusted my feelings to be right... They were secretly testing out roboticization then. I volunteered, believing I could use it against them. I thought I could hold on. They told me... I could become a god..."

Sonic shouted back, "You did it for the right reasons! It was for justice!"

Mechanix said, "Justice?" He laughed. "JUSTICE?!" He tried to laugh harder but a bolt of pain sent him coughing and clutching his wound. "Justice doesn't exist... The hedgehogs didn't deserve to be endangered. The people of this world didn't deserve having their past return to destroy them. Nikki... didn't deserve my wrath..."

"I'm the fucking devil! Me! I made all of the decisions that ruined this world, my own home. I believed I was a god. They made me forget my past and even though I could fight back and remember myself, I didn't care to question my new self. I wanted to... I... wanted to escape... everything... especially myself. I hated this self, this body, this coward. I wanted it to die."

Sonic didn't say anything.

The man paused. "Sonic, you made me realize that I was not superior. I destroyed the world and yet it returned. The Zexakal civilization rose and fell like the tide. Even I would grow stronger only to be defeated by you. I realized... that I was only an extension of the Emeralds, especially the Black Emerald. I tried to release as much energy as possible, I was... driven to, but the armor could not handle it. It was being pounded into dust like my sense of ego that had seemed so infinite. Know this, Sonic: Nobody can return unmangled from the machine of power. It warps your mind, makes you think you want more, while eating away at you bit by bit. Until you're nothing like you were. Every wound you inflict on others cuts you deeper inside...!"

He continued, slower. "We all have our mental loops and habits, Sonic. I didn't confront myself, driven by fear. You are driven too... by vengeance..."

Sonic yelled back suddenly, "Vengeance! Is it vengeful to strike back at mad men who use unmatched power to dominate the world, to subjugate others into their desired mode of slavery!"

Sonic adds, "Fuck no, it's righteous! It's justice! It frees the lives of millions of innocent people!"

Mechanix suddenly lost strength, but forced his words out. "Seek peace, my brother, not more bloodshed! I have fought like you, trying to save the world with my incredible power... but it took control of my mind and brought the world to ruin instead! I betrayed everything I loved even when all I wanted was to protect it! I wanted to feel no emotions... To make it easy... To not make a mistake again... I'm glad-" He coughs out blood again, but this time it is dark and gelatinous. He smirks. "I'm glad I'm dying!"

Sonic was waiting for him to finish and continued. "No, you're right! Throughout history, the cause of all the world's suffering to the very worst are those people that go insane with power. They who nearly destroy the world again and again, enslaving species and ending up killing themselves in madness! It's because of them! They killed us hedgehogs off like they must have did countless others! Mech-Mechanix, you're the only hedgehog I've ever met, and it's because of those fuckers, those bastards who need to die!" At the end he's shaking his fist back at the globe of Mobius.

"No, no, no! Stop thinking like that, Sonic! It's over! The world is too small... both Old..." The hedgehog's breathing suddenly slows down, and he falls onto his back. "New Mobius... no more violence... Sonic... don't be fooled... Everything... your... mind..."

Sonic was looking at Mobius, torn apart by what Mechanix had done. But it wasn't Mechanix who did it anymore. Sonic could not blame Mechanix the hedgehog. "It was never your fault. It never could have been. I know what it's like, living under a tyrant. But violence is necessary! How could we defend ourselves if we let our aggressors continue to exist? With every win, there is more peace, until they die altogether."

"You killed Robotnik. You did it when I could never conceive of doing it. I never wanted to do that... but it was selfish, because he never stopped his terrorizing attacks, no matter what! You, like all roboticized minions, were freed and no longer serve your master without thinking, even if the master is yourself. They used you to kill. They used you underground. They used you during the Chaos Emerald war. They used you to save them even when their world has long since died."

"I'm not blaming the people. I'm blaming the ones in control. Zaga tried to make you a tool for good, but the Elders used you as a weapon. It must be the Elders. It must be their fault, all of this! It all makes sense now. They're the final enemy. The Robotniks of Old Mobius... I just need the Black Emerald... no matter how strong they are, I'll defeat them. I'll avenge you, ancestor, I'll avenge our entire species! I'll cleave the heads off those fucking monsters, and finally create the peace and freedom we've always dreamed of!"

"Sonic..." the man calls out weakly.

Sonic turns and comes closer. He looks at him with sympathy and admiration. He smiles with a determined face. He waits on whatever he'll say, so he can ask him everything Sonic never knew about his people...

"Sonic..." he gasps. Sonic realizes how slow he's breathing.

Sonic forgets everything else. His heart pounds and he feels a lump in his throat. He feels something very cold... something very cold, very permanent, coming. What was it? Sonic didn't even try to wonder. But it was certainly coming. He drops to his knees and grabs his hand. It is cold. "No... no, don't... don't die! Please don't die, I thought-I-I don't know your name! You're not-"

"Sonic!... Your eyes... are... closed ...…"

Mechanix dies with a final breath. Sonic suddenly feels a snapping sensation in his mind that radiates through his body in an instant. The floor falls apart beneath them as if it was never really attached together. Sonic finds himself falling back to Earth with nothing to stand on. He instinctively grabs the hedgehog's limp body. He turns around suddenly to see the Black Emerald missing, but he decides it's not important. He forgets about the entire battle and every confrontation with Mechanix. He forgets about the Elders and Robotnik and Tails and everything. He concentrates on keeping the body safe.

As he slows his re-entry back onto Mobius, he looks into the man's eyes. They are open, but they do not see. He looks at the man's face and admired every detail of it, so alien and unrecognizable to him, and yet so distinctly, uncannily familiar. He feels his throat throb, and a single fact dropped into his awareness. Surrounded by fire, this thought:

"He's dead."

He suddenly remembers the vision of his mother gliding away from his hands. He did not notice at the time, so overwrought with emotion, but she had a different hue, a different face from what little he remembered of his real mother. He then remembered his own hands, that they were not his hands.

It was... Mechanix. The hedgehog who was called Mechanix.

"I don't know his name." Sonic said.

Sonic's heart feels like it's exploding. Reason makes no sense to him. There is only endless pain. He looks deep into the man's eyes, looking for anything that's there, and he sees himself. Sonic sees his own eyes. They stare back at him, burning alive.

"He's dead."