Chapter 9: Wild Rose Ride

After being dropped into a pit by one of Eggman's devious traps, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles plummet through the depths of the Egg Continent for a good few minutes, their descent being forcibly slowed by an updraft of wind coming from down below. Once a large crimson rim fan comes into view, Sonic looks at Tails and extends his right hand, saying to him and Knuckles "Come on guys, lets do a quick Triangle Dive to get out of here!"

The three heroes quickly grab hands and use the wind to slowly glide over towards a bright holographic blue platform off to the right. Upon landing on it, a red light grind rail appeared below and the platform moves along towards a predetermined destination. The sudden jerk of the platform pushes the heroes towards the back edge, but a sudden fence of hard light created by Eggman from afar keeps them from falling off.

Sonic is the first to rise, followed by Tails and then Knuckles after. The echidna rubs his head since it impacted with the fence, and then swings his left hand out beside him and comments "Darn that Eggman! First he takes over my mind and then drops us into a pit!"

The blue hedgehog snarks to his echidna friend "Good thing Eggman is such a fair player sometimes, otherwise he'd have dropped us into a spike pit." Sonic walks forward to the center of the platform as they are carried through a bright tunnel filled with neon lights on the walls that rapidly shift colors with each second.

Folding his arms and tapping his foot impatiently because of how slow the platform was moving, Sonic comments in a nonchalant tone of voice "The atmosphere is fitting for a party, but right now everything is so drab. Come on Egghead, toss down a few robots or something, we're bored down here!"

The taunts of the blue hedgehog are at first not answered, leaving Tails with enough time to mention to his friend "Personally Sonic, I prefer to breathing room right now. We just got done fighting Knuckles after all."

Sonic turns around and throws his hands beside his body, saying in a joking manner regardless of the echidna's position in front of him "Yeah, but that's implying that Knuckles made either of us break a sweat."

Knuckles, with an annoyed squint of his eyelids, scowls and jabs his right pointer finger at Sonic, saying to him in a bragging tone of voice "Oh come on now Sonic, you can't tell me that you didn't have SOME difficulty fighting me!"

The blue hedgehog smirks and follows along with Knuckles' anger by saying to him in a taunting tone of voice "No, you're right Knuckles…You were maybe just a little bit easier to beat than Shadow."

The red echidna, not exactly the brightest of the bunch, smiles confidently under the assumption that Sonic admitted he was right on something, but after a quick turn of his head to share his smile with Tails he sees the yellow fox letting out an unsurprising sigh and quickly realizes what his blue friend was saying. "HEY!" He exclaims in angered disbelief as he turns and looks at Sonic with a pumped vein on his forehead.

Sonic chuckles and glances over his right shoulder, looking back on ahead as he notices that the platform has barely made any progress since he called Eggman out earlier. Trying again, the blue hedgehog cups his hands in front of his mouth and exclaims "EGGGGGGMAN! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR US!"

"Ugh, as much as it pains me to do so too…" Eggman responds in a deflated tone of annoyance over a speaker system hidden out of sight as usual. "What do you want you annoying blue hedgehog?" The doctor asks, his voice sounding more refined than it did quite a few moments ago.

"You didn't bring us here to show us to your funky disco hallway. You wanted to settle things? Then send every last robot you got at all three of us! Its boring right here!" Sonic explains his point once more now that Eggman was assuredly listening.

"Well too bad…You are going to have to deal with the ride for now. I used most of my usual robot resources to build the Egg Continent. You will just have to deal with what I got for now, Sonic." Eggman chuckles a bit at the end of his sentence as he realizes how torturous a slow experience is for the blue hedgehog.

"This is cruel, even for you Eggman!" Sonic says, and though his words depict fury his tone is otherwise nonchalant about the whole affair. Eggman then shuts off the speakers, leaving the three heroes to their affairs while the platform of light keeps going onward.

Sonic turns towards Tails and Knuckles, brandishing a pointer finger at them and saying in a headstrong tone of voice "Alright guys, what say we bail this boring ride and make a run for the end?"

Tails interjects by mentioning to his friend "Not a good idea Sonic. That's super hot ionic energy. If we touch it, we'll be disintegrated."

The blue hedgehog argues his friend's warning by saying "But we could just run on either side of the laser to dodge the burning effect, right?"

"No Sonic, the heat surrounding the laser will burn us even if we stand beside it. The only thing protecting us right now is the platform we are on." Tails goes over some more semantics regarding ionic energy, which only causes Sonic to roll his eyes while Knuckles tilts his head in confusion.

"Face it Sonic, we have no choice but to wait." Tails speaks calmly to his friend, and the blue hedgehog responds with a gesture of indifference as he says to the yellow fox "Fine, whatever!"

Sonic walks off to the left and sits down, leaning his arms behind his head and crossing his legs as he points out to his two buddies "Just let me know when we finally get to the end of this boring ride."

The blue hedgehog dozes off without another peep, leaving Knuckles and Tails to converse between one another. First the two shrug at each other in regards to Sonic's behavior, and the yellow fox goes on to mention in a slightly jovial tone of voice "Hehe, sorry you got involved in all of this Knuckles."

Knuckles rubs the back of his head with his right fist knuckles, saying in a grumbling tone of voice "Ugh, don't apologize Tails, that darn Eggman is to blame. I got to actually share some of Sonic's sentiments here…I hate how we are just standing around doing nothing while Eggman lounges around laughing at our misfortune."

The echidna slams his fists in front of his body and scowls, saying in a tone of pure bravado "The sooner I get to punch that punk in his face and tear his continent apart piece by piece, the better I will feel about being captured!"

"If an opportunity arises to do so, I think I MIGHT be able to do something about the nuclear reactor without causing a feedback of energy that would blow this entire place apart. But I bet Eggman will do everything in his power to make sure I don't get anywhere near it. Personally, I kind of hope Shadow and Riku are ok out there without us." Tails states.

Knuckles flinches in surprise, saying to the yellow fox "Huh? Shadow is on here? …And who is this Riku person?"

Tails is about to answer both of Knuckles' questions, but he quickly notices that the red echidna is going farther and farther away from him rapidly. The yellow fox pauses and glances downwards at the platform, noticing that it's splitting in half with him stuck with Sonic while Knuckles is left all alone on his own half. "Knuckles, quick, get over here!" Tails exclaims to grab the red echidna's attentions.

Left to his own thoughts, Knuckles was oblivious to what was going on with the platform as he looked on ahead until Tails spoke to him, but by the time he reacts a large fence rises up on all sides of his body. Quickly the red echidna is trapped in place on the platform, while a similar hard light fence surrounds the platform Tails and Sonic are on. With all three heroes left with absolutely no means of escape, the yellow fox quickly turns around and with a snap of his fingers he exclaims "Sonic, wake up! Eggman pulled a fast one on us!"

The blue hedgehog opens his eyelids and quickly springs onto his feet, looking around him and saying to Tails in an almost bragging tone of voice "I told you we should have just ran on ahead!"

Tails turns to face Sonic with his eyebrows slanted in anger as he brandishes a pointer finger and proclaims "Oh don't get me started on this Sonic! We did the right thing here and you know-"

Before the yellow fox's sentence comes to an end, the platform reaches a sharp downward incline in the rail, which sends them rocketing towards a whirling light-filled tunnel, all the while Tails exclaims a dragged out "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" as both he and Sonic are sent careening against the back fence, split off from Knuckles' for the time being.

The two heroes are carried through a few yards of spirals rails and a couple of large loops, their bodies being flung back and forth against the fences without any end in sight as they are sent further and further into the depths of the Egg Continent. While Tails screams due to dizzying pain, Sonic pushes against gravity as best as he can and lets out a hollering cry of "WOO-HOO! FINALLY YOU DELIVERED A SWEET RIDE EGGMAN!"

The yellow fox, with his eyeballs being pushed into his skull, nonetheless turns to look at Sonic while saying to him in a stuttering, disbelieving tone as they are flung against the floor "I-I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'D FIND THIS F-FUN!"

"HOW COULD I NOT?! THIS IS MUCH BETTER THAN ANY OF THE RIDES IN EITHER OF THOSE CHEAPLY BUILT AMUSEMENT PARKS EGGMAN DEVELOPED!" Sonic responds with, which causes the platform to suddenly jolt to a complete stop and toss both heroes hard against the ceiling, where their bodies stick in place for a good long while.

Once Eggman has gotten over Sonic's insult to his magnificent creations and both Sonic and Tails have fallen off of the ceiling, the doctor reactivates the ride at full speed, sending both heroes hurtling towards a predetermined destination on this ride that seems to have no end despite how fast everything was going.

In another part of the Egg Continent, the good doctor was hard at work on his self-proclaimed ultimate machine like usual, his right hand being drawn away from his left cuff as he finished messing with the blue hedgehog on his ride. Letting out a distressed sigh as he glances down at the monitors and watches as the mysterious boy finishes destroying his Death Egg Robo while Shadow is still in the middle of a battle against the mind-controlled Rouge and Omega.

"Hmph…Of course my brilliant plan is once again starting to come apart." Eggman says with sheer indifference in his voice as he spins a wrench around in his left hand and turns to face his machine, brushing his right hand off to the side to command the platform the monitor were on to fly away for the moment as he goes to twist a loose nut on what appears to be the chest piece of his creation.

Smiling to himself, Eggman says in a confident tone of voice "Of course, that's the reason I have come up with multiple plans to keep that pesky hedgehog from reaching me in time, even with the help of each person he frees."

After tightening the bolt, Eggman flings away the wrench casually, his smile changing to a somewhat prudent frown as he thinks to himself "There is still the matter of that boy though…Hmmm…"

The doctor taps his right cuff to set up a line of communication with someone else on the ship, quickly saying to them "I need a status update, how is everything on your end? Yes, I saw how you managed to rile up Shadow there…You are lucky that he didn't end up blowing half the ship to smithereens in a bout of uncontrolled rage you idiot!"

Eggman's fury is met with a response he didn't like, as he goes on to state "Oh don't think you can talk back to me! Just hurry up and tell me how the last two are being converted!"

The doctor calms down a bit as news is given to him from the other side. He nods his head twice, murmurs a "Yes" a few times more than that, and then proceeds to mention with an eerie smile on his face "That is certainly good news. To be honest, I wasn't actually expecting you to get those two to…'help' us out, considering how tough their minds are compared to the others, but this just goes to show how potent the Hyper-go-on energy can truly be in capable hands."

"Its unfortunate that it will still be a while before they are ready to go, but remember, they are NOT to kill Sonic and the others. That honor shall be saved for me once I fuel my ultimate machine with the energy it needs. In the mean time, send as many of the other mind-controlled victims as you can to hold Sonic and the others off. I will get in contact with Orbot and Cubot and see if their machine is ready to go. Its been a pleasure to work with you, farewell for now." Eggman then signs off on the person he was speaking to, snapping his fingers off to the side to call upon the monitors once more so he could focus his attention onto Orbot and Cubot before he calls them up.

"Imbeciles, is that robot almost done?!" Eggman proclaims through the mic hidden away in his sleeve. The robots snap their attention towards their observer Metal Sonic, and Orbot in particular states "Y-Yes sir! It should be up and running in five minutes!"

"Good! You two are to deploy it at the predetermined coordinates to intercept that mysterious boy helping Sonic and his friends. I need to gather as much data on him as I possibly can just in case he might prove to be a hindrance to my plans." Giving orders to his two bumbling robot henchmen, Eggman then goes on to mention "Also, Metal Sonic shall no longer be observing you two. He needs to hurry on ahead to intercept Shadow before he can cause too much trouble."

Letting out a very relieved sigh, Orbot quietly states "Oh thank the maker, this whole matter has been WAY too stressful. If I had any skin, I'd be wrinkled for ages."

Eggman snarls and says towards his sarcastic orb-shaped creation "Make one more comment like that and I will put you back under watch in a heartbeat, Orbot."

"Bu-" "And that goes double for you, Cubot." Eggman quickly interrupts the other robot before he can even say a single word, and as the cubed robot scratched the top of his head in confusion and Orbot shrugged the monitor went blank as Metal Sonic went to issue the commands of his creator. Eggman snaps his fingers again to send the monitors off, and swiftly goes back to work on the robot in front of him…

Back with Sonic and Tails, the two have finally neared the end of this impossibly long rollercoaster-like ride, the platform grinding to a very sudden halt as the hard-light fence fades away and the two heroes are flung into the air back outside the Egg Continent. As both heroes tumble around high up in the sunny sky, Sonic lets out a joyous proclamation of "WOO-HOO!" while Tails lets out a drawn out groan and appears nauseated as he begins to fall first.

When the yellow fox is able to gain his bearings back, he quickly starts spinning his tails around and holds his hands down to catch Sonic. As Tails is jerked downward for a brief moment, the blue hedgehog looks up and says in a disappointed tone of voice "Come on, you just HAD to end it prematurely, didn't you Tails?"

"Better than you being a corpse on the ground…" Tails says as he descends towards the solid metal surface atop the buildings that they had seen from the landing platform earlier.

Sonic brushes off the yellow fox's concerns by saying in a nonchalant manner "Pffft, I've survived much great falls than this and you know it."

The yellow fox was about to talk back once more, but upon recollection he begrudgingly has to come to admit "Oh alright Sonic, I'll let you have that one."

The two heroes then land on stable ground as the hole they were launch from seals up shut. Looking on ahead as they stand beside one another, the heroes notice that the Final Fortress is still quite a way's off even though they were now far, far away from the landing platform. "Geez, Eggman really wasn't kidding when he called this place a continent." Tails says, the scale of this grand battleship starting to make him feel a bit dizzy as he thinks about.

"So umm…What happened to Knuckles?" Sonic asks as he looks around and notices a lack of the red echidna's presence in the area. Tails nervously scratches the side of his face and says to his friend "Knuckles got separated from us back on the ride. Who knows where he could have ended up."

Sonic rolls his eyes for a moment and says "Great, last thing we need is for Knuckles to go and punch stuff up. He'll probably blow us all to smithereens by activating that nuclear whatevermabob Egghead mentioned before."

Tails tries to be reassuring to his friend by mentioning "Relax Sonic, I told Knuckles about the device before we split. Not even HE would be dumb enough to strike that with his fists."

The blue hedgehog gives his friend a quick thumbs-up and mentions in a thankful tone "Quick thinking buddy. You saved our lives without even knowing it!"

The two heroes then look forward and notice two egg-shaped capsules have appeared out of the blue near the edge of the building's rooftop. The capsules open up as Tails gets a worried expression on his face like he did when Knuckles first appeared. And for once, Sonic has a bit of a look of surprise on him as the figure on the right capsule is revealed.

On the right is a girlish pink hedgehog wearing a red skirted dress and a red headband. She wields a yellow hammer that is roughly bigger than herself and has a distressed look in her eyes thanks to the Nega Hyper-go-on energy surrounding her head. The other person was a very young rabbit wearing an orange shirt and long floppy ears. Floating beside her is a little light-blue creature called a "Chao", that shared the misfortune of being mind-controlled alongside its friend.

"Even Amy and Cream are being dragged into this mess? Eggman really is getting out of hand with this…" Tails points out in an utterly melancholy tone of voice as he looks at the two girls and notices them preparing to fight.

This time around, neither mind-controlled victim says anything, signifying that Eggman was growing tired of trying to rile up either Sonic or Tails with words and simply wanted to have them perish at the hands of their friends. The blue hedgehog, in an odd display, says in a concerned tone towards Amy "Hey Amy, can you hear me at all? Come on, you and Cream need to snap out of this now!"

Neither girl responds, causing Sonic to scoff in a slight tone of anger as he reluctantly puts his fists up and says to Eggman as he's assumedly listening "This is despicable, even for you Eggman!" For once, the blue hedgehog's tone was serious, something Tails took great significance in hearing as he readied his arm cannon for a fight he'd rather not be involved in…

Next Time: Difficult Decisions