Chapter 6: Knuckles the Echidna

In a far-off room inside of the Egg Continent, the rotund Dr. Eggman can be seen with a blowtorch and a large chunk of red metal in front of him. He is working on binding an obscured object into the red metal, and the sparks barely give an idea as to what said object is. As he works on this ultimate machine he looks off to the left at a set of monitors he set up to observe the forces that have gathered on his mighty battleship. With Shadow on a platform and the mysterious boy flying towards one of his many buildings all that left was Sonic and Tails, who were beginning their fight with the mind controlled Knuckles.

"Like that will be too difficult for them…" Eggman says with little doubt in the abilities of his long-time foe. But the purpose of the battle was not to secure Sonic's defeat, but to stall the hedgehog long enough for the doctor to finish his work here today. Eggman quickly taps a button on the cuff of his right sleeve to switch one of the blank screens over to look at Cubot and Orbot through the eyes of Metal Sonic. With a voice box installed into the mouth of the metallic hedgehog, Eggman says through the mic attached to his collar "You two better be working hard on Project !"

Orbot flinches and quickly turns towards his observing mechanical counterpart, and as he holds his wrench behind his head he says to the doctor "Yes yes, we are working as hard as possible over here. But I will say that you should reconsider the name of-"

"I don't want to hear any lip from you Orbot." Eggman interrupts in a very firm tone of voice as he glares at the orbed robot on the other side of the monitor. "You likely have thirty minutes to an hour to complete this before Sonic reaches your location."

Orbot opens his metallic eyelids up wide and stutters out "T-That short of a time? But doctor, wasn't this whole grandiose plan of yours meant to permanently defeat Sonic? Why should this creation of yours even be necessary in that case?"

"What did I JUST say?" Eggman slowly growls towards the inquiring Orbot.

The orbed robot sighs and says to his master "Fine, fine…We'll try and work through the difficulties presented to us in order to get the job done. Then you'll get Metal Sonic off our backs, right?"

"Of course. Metal Sonic has his own job to do later on." Eggman states as he turns back towards his great machine and puts the blowtorch to it, only to realize something odd in what Orbot was saying and he quickly glances at the robot on the monitor and says to him in a pressing tone of voice "What do you mean by 'difficulties'?"

Cubot quickly turns to Orbot on the monitor while scratching the back of his head as he says in a blatantly pirate-y tone of voice "Yarr Orbot, is ye wires supposed to be set with such a glow of fire?"

Orbot, after briefly glancing at Cubot to hear him out, faces Metal Sonic and giggles in an embarrassed tone, while Eggman lets out an annoyed sigh as he slowly rubs the front of his face with his soot covered left glove. The doctor then shuts off the monitor before he can see anymore from the two screw-ups, proceeding to change the channel of his microphone so he can speak to another person.

"How is it going on your end? Yes, I see you masterfully diverted their group up into three, just as I would expect from someone of your brilliance." Eggman looks at the monitor with the mysterious boy on it and proceeds to say as he narrows his eyes "I don't like that boy's presence here. This is outside my normal experiences, but I think it would be wise to test his capabilities. Send one of my mechs his way, but proceed with everything else as planned. Eggman out."

Back at the landing zone, the red echidna Knuckles stands in the middle of the burning wreckage of Tails' Tornado Mk. III, barely affected by the fire around him as he punches his fists together ready to brawl with his two friends thanks to the Nega Hyper-go-on energy that was controlling his mind. The yellow fox was understandably pissed off in spite of Knuckles being under Eggman's control because of the damage done to his plane, and with his rounded arm cannon cocked at the red echidna Tails quickly fires an electric sphere at him.

Knuckles thrusts his right fist forward and punches the sphere, but doesn't really feel any pain because of the insulation in his gloves. The red echidna scowls at his friend and says to him "Darn it Tails, you're with Sonic too?! Fine, I'll just punch you both out and take back the Emeralds you stole from me!"

Tails lowers his arm cannon and says to his friend "Knuckles, I know this is hard, but could you not be a gigantic idiot for just ONE MOMENT and realize that what you're saying MAKES. NO. SENSE?"

Sonic smiles and says to his foxy friend "Tails come on, even if he wasn't under Egghead's control he probably would have been led into believing that we were against him. Thinking isn't his strong-point."

The yellow fox jokingly points out "Says the expert on the subject, right?" Sonic flinches momentarily and gestures towards his friend's rather good remark, saying in a barely offended tone of voice "Heh, I'll give you that one Tails."

Knuckles angrily scowls at his two friends and says to them "Hey! Stop conspiring and fight me already!"

The blue blur looks back over at the red echidna and says to him in a merry tone of voice "Sheesh, fine Knuckles, lets start taking this seriously, shall we?" Sonic then kindly gestures towards his foxy friend and says to him "Alright Tails, good luck here!"

Sonic then swings his arms back and sprints forward past Knuckles while taunting him with a merry "Catch me if you can knucklehead!" As the blue blur zips through the fire and blows it away on both sides of his body, all the while the red echidna turns where Sonic has ran off to and briefly exclaims "Hey!"

Knuckles quickly punches the ground hard enough to create an earthquake across the platform to try and trip Sonic up, which actually works to his advantage as the blue blur slips and crashes onto his backside, leaving him temporarily vulnerable to the red echidna's attacks. Knuckles pulls his fist up and looks at the debris around him. Picking up a battered propeller, the red echidna throws it hard at the blue hedgehog's head while he's downed.

Tails however quickly fires off another electric sphere that connects with the propeller mid-flight and blows it up. Sonic then uses his hands to flip himself so his feet are pointing upward before he switches into a ball-like form, revving himself up and charging at the red echidna as the smoke caused by the explosion obscures him for a moment. The wind created by his dash blows it aside, letting Knuckles catch on to Sonic's movements.

Even a dim bulb such as Knuckles could take advantage of this opportunity, and he quickly kneels down and uses his hands to grab onto Sonic's body. The rapid spinning of the blue hedgehog's body along with his momentum pushes Knuckles across the ground for a bit before he finally gets a firm grasp on his body. Knuckles then lifts the blue hedgehog up and spins himself around like a top, building up speed before flinging Sonic away from the platform.

Tails, who had a bead on Knuckles with his arm cannon during these events, hesitated because his friend was in the red echidna's grasp. Now that Sonic was in danger of descending rapidly towards the unknown depths of the Egg Continent, Tails wastes little time in declaring his friend's name in a frightened panic and quickly shooting Knuckles vulnerable body with an electric sphere. As the red echidna is briefly paralyzed to the point of his bones being seen between zaps, Tails swerves towards Sonic's flight path and launches out a claw attached to his rope from the arm cannon.

The claw wraps around Sonic's curled up body and with a quick tug Tails pulls his blue friend back onto the platform, dropping him off on the ground in front of him as he retracts the claw fully back into his arm cannon. The blue blur then gets back into a standing position after uncurling himself, though his head moved around a little bit out of dizziness, but once he recovered he just shook it once and grabbed his forehead while saying to his buddy in a thankful tone "That was a close one Tails, glad you were on that."

"No problem." Tails replies with a happy and appreciative laugh, but the tender moment is once again interrupted by Knuckles as he tosses a burning wing at the two heroes. Both of them quickly leap back to dodge the flying wing as it flies away out of sight, and as the yellow fox turns to face the red echidna as he lands he gives him a serious glare and states "You're just making this more difficult for yourself Knuckles!"

The red echidna, after pulling his right hand back, punches his fists together hard in the center of his body as red sparks begin to rise up and spin around him, followed by an intense heated glow circling around the bottom of his feet. "Lets kick things up a notch!" Knuckles exclaims as his body bursts out a dark red aura of heat and he quickly leaps straight at Sonic.

With fist flung behind his head as it is held tightly, the red echidna swings it down in an attempt to blow Sonic's head clean off, but the blue blur folds his arms in front of his chest and nonchalantly zips off behind where he stood to dodge the attack. Knuckles' impact with the ground causes an eruption of magma spheres in multiple directions, each one creating a tiny heated explosion as they make contact with the platform or the ground level of the Egg Continent.

Sonic has to zip left and right to dodge the attacks, while Tails leaps into the sky and uses the whirling motion of his tails to fly out of range of the spheres. While the bombardment continues on for a good few more seconds, Knuckles pulls his fist out of the metal platform and pulls it behind him while turning to look at Sonic. Charging up his energy, Knuckles thrusts forward with all of his might and with a rather lucky blow he manages to hit the blue hedgehog straight in the gut.

All pretenses of Sonic's speed are killed instantly, and the blue blur coughs up a bit of spit past the head of the red echidna. As Knuckles pulls back his fist and steps behind a couple of feet as his prior magma eruption attack comes to an end, he happens to land on a mine that Tails had planted earlier, and the top of it pops open and a metallic fist punches Knuckles right up into the air with a mighty blow. The yellow fox then drops his flight for a moment and spins his body around, alternating between hitting him with his tails and maintaining a steady position in the air while the red echidna is dazed.

However, once Knuckles recovers and begins to be caught by the pull of gravity, he quickly thrusts his fist out and strikes Tails while his tails were out of range. The yellow fox is sent tumbling backwards through the air, but even as his flight is broken he didn't feel worried about his condition since the blow wasn't strong enough to prevent him from recovering.

Speaking of recovery, Sonic manages to deal with the daze of Knuckles' earlier punch, and as he pulls his hands away from his stomach he smirks and looks up at the falling red echidna while joking at him "I forgot how much of a heavy hitter you were Knuckles. But guess what? So am I!"

The blue hedgehog quickly curls up into a ball and revs up, waiting just long enough for Knuckles to fall halfway between his current position and the ground before he launches him forward and leaps into the air, ramming himself right into Knuckles' back hard enough to break him out of his powered up form. The red echidna's body is lunged forward as Sonic breaks out of his ball-like form and quickly chains his previous move into a spinning mid-air kick that strikes Knuckles multiple times in his vulnerable backside.

Sonic follows up by flipping himself in a vertical manner and using a mighty kick straight onto Knuckles' head that sends the red echidna straight into the metallic platform. The dent created by the impact is as deep as it could have been without the metal layer being broken through, and the blue hedgehog ends off his combo by pushing down his right foot to work in conjunction with gravity, rapidly dropping himself through the air and impacting Knuckles in the back with his dropping kick.

As Knuckles groans in pain, the blue hedgehog backflips onto solid ground while Tails lands on the opposite side of the dent in the platform. "Is that it?" The yellow fox asks as he looks down upon his red friend.

The purple fog hadn't yet vanished yet from around Knuckles' head, and unsurprisingly because of that the red echidna quickly springs back to life and after pushing himself onto his feet he leaps into the air and goes straight for a burning uppercut on Tails. The yellow fox leaps back and tries to fire an electric sphere at Knuckles, only for a click in the cannon to signify to him that he needed to wait a while for the energy to charge back up before firing a shot of that type.

"See Tails? He's way too stubborn to go down easily." Sonic points out as he shrugs his shoulders and smiles, deep down enjoying that the fight with Knuckles was still underway.

"Well we can't waste any more time with this Sonic. Not while Eggman is working on his 'ultimate machine'." Tails points out in rebuttal, which causes Sonic to stop kicking his feet against the ground as he hangs his head and swings his hand down, saying to Tails in a deflated voice "Fine Tails, I GUESS we could end this now…"

The blue blur then leaps into the air as Knuckles begins to turn to face him, and once he was high enough he taunts his red friend with a jovial "Hey knucklehead, you ready to give up yet?!"

Knuckles raises his fist into the air at Sonic and exclaims at him "Why do you always have to treat this like a game Sonic?! Can't you take just one thing seriously?"

Sonic smirks and says to the red echidna "What, and become like Shadow? Come on Knuckles, that's about as likely to happen as you never falling for a villain's tricks!"

The blue hedgehog then suspends himself in mid-air by curling himself into a ball and rapidly spinning in place as trails of light swirls and merge with his body bit by bit, and with Knuckles putting all of his focus towards Sonic as he holds his hands in the air ready to catch whatever the blue blur planned to throw his way he was unaware of the fact that Tails' arm cannon had charged back up enough to allow him one more shot.

The yellow fox slowly walks back and props his arm cannon up ready to hit Knuckles at just the right moment. Once Sonic has charged up his patented Light Speed Attack, his body glows a brightly blue-green shade and he launches himself straight at the red echidna. Tails fires an electric sphere at Knuckles before Sonic attacks, the high voltage forcing the red echidna to pull his hands away from the center of his body as he is electrocuted.

Defenseless, Sonic's Light Speed Attack hits its mark hard and true in a mere second, striking Knuckles with so much force that he'd likely be torn apart if it wasn't for his stubbornly high durability. The blue blur pulls back and lands on the ground as the streaks left by his attack fades away and the purple fog around the red echidna's head starts to the vanish. Knuckles collapses forward, but manages to plant one fist in the ground before he falls all the way. Dazed and barely conscious thanks to Sonic's attack, Knuckles murmurs out slowly "D-Darn it…I failed to protect the E-E-Emer…Huh?"

Knuckles snaps out of the mind control as every fragment of purple fog disappears from sight, and upon looking up and seeing the blue hedgehog standing in front of his he asks in a weakened tone of voice "S-Sonic? Is that really you?"

The blue blur happily replies with "The one and only."

The red echidna then grasps the front of his head with his left glove and shakes it around slowly, saying in a bewildered tone of voice "What have I been doing? Where am I?"

Tails interjects at this point, saying to the rather dazed Knuckles in a quick yet wise sounding manner "You were under Eggman's control and sent to fight us. We are currently on his latest waste of metal, the Egg Continent."

Knuckles glances over at Tails and says in yet another puzzled tone "T-Tails too? …Eggman was controlling me?"

The yellow fox nods his head, and as the dizziness from Sonic's Light Speed Attack starts to wear off Knuckles is slowly able to recall the events that led up to this point "T-That's right…Eggman ambushed me and knocked me unconscious…And I remember waking up in some strange laboratory with a bunch of pods…Shadow was in one of them, but that's all I remember…"

"Yeah, well we already dealt with Mr. Black and Moody on the ground." Sonic points out as Knuckles finishes recalling what he knew, but he goes on to say "But Eggman ambushed you? Sheesh Knuckles, you should be thankful he didn't swipe the Master Emerald while you were unconscious."

Knuckles gets on his feet and looks at Sonic, saying at him in a snippy tone of voice "Hey, I'll have you know I wasn't even on Angel Island when that stinking Eggman attacked me!"

Though Knuckles sounded proud of what he said, Sonic and Tails quickly let out annoyed sighs as they reacted differently to the news, with the blue hedgehog raises his hands and shaking his head while Tails slaps the front of his face and slowly slides the fingers down. "Knuckles you idiot!" The two exclaim in utter disbelief.

The red echidna looks back and forth at his two friends, a puzzled expression crossing his face as he says to them "What? What did I do?!"

Sonic spells it out for his pea-brained friend as he communicates with Tails "Well Tails, now we know what Eggman's endgame is."

The yellow fox nods his head, but gestures with both arms as he says to his buddy "Well Eggman's definitely after the Master Emerald, but all of this seems like overkill if that is his only goal. And what would be the point of mind-controlling Shadow and Knuckles then?"

Knuckles slams his fists together and says to interrupt his two buddies "That scumbag Eggman always pulls these dirty tricks whenever he tries to defeat Sonic. Of course that madman would go this far in order to try and beat Sonic."

With a scowl on his face, the red echidna turns towards Sonic and says to him with a burning passion in his voice "Well if Eggman's launching an assault on Angel Island, then what are we standing around for?! We need to punch this ship apart and crack Eggman wide open!"

Tails sighs and says to his hot-blooded friend "Once again Knuckles, your 'punch first, ask questions later' shtick is just going to cause more trouble than necessary for us."

Knuckles turns to face his friend and says in a loud, accusing tone of voice "And just what do you mean by that Tails?!"

"He means that unless you want to blow us all sky-high with your recklessness, you will listen to everything I have to say!" Eggman's booming voice cuts in on the conversation between the three heroes, and with his hologram looming beside them they turn to look his way.

Knuckles in particular raises his right fist in anger and says to him "So you decide to show yourself, eh? Come on over here and face me! I'll punch your lights out!"

Eggman says in response to the echidna's hot-blooded bravado in an utterly sarcastic tone of voice "Yes, I'm sure you will. But first, how about you three enjoy a nice fall?"

The doctor taps the cuff of his outfit's right sleeve as a wide grin crosses his face, and immediately afterwards three holes open up underneath the heroes' feet. Knuckles and Sonic fall in a mere second while letting out a prolonged, surprised yell, but Tails manages to hover above the hole with the help of his tails for but a few seconds before Eggman activates a powerful vacuum that drags the yellow fox right down the tube to join his friends. As the holes are sealed up tightly, Eggman's hologram laughs joyously for a good few seconds…

Next Time: Eggman's Test