Chapter 14: The Launch of ARK-Diablon
Quite a few minutes back, Riku can be seen walking through the darkened metal corridors of Eggman's multi-building complex atop the Egg Continent. He has been stuck in the darkness for a while after dealing with the doctor's Death Egg Robot, and he felt as though he was making little progress in the way of getting out. As he traveled along the corridor, he kept a hand on the wall and continuously looked around, using his powers to ensure that he wouldn't be ambush by any turrets or something else equally deadly.
When he wasn't thinking about how he was going to escape this area, Riku was considering what he saw back in that make-shift museum of Eggman's past creations, more specifically the Egg Wyvern's presence. The doctor already noted that he had found it's presence suspicious, which made it a dangerous element in this scenario that the madman had concocted…But so long as Eggman learned nothing about the full extent of the boy's capabilities, Riku could at least take a breath and relax.
"This place is a maze…" He thinks to himself to avoid drawing the attention of Eggman over the intercom for now, and with a swing of his right hand out beside his body Riku summons for a bright flame to light the way up ahead. Revealing this one element didn't matter too much since he had already used fire earlier on, but it's presence here really didn't help Riku see if the end of this corridor was coming up ahead. In fact, all the teenage Overlord could see as he continued to walk was corners that turned to the right.
"Hmmm…" He murmured in his mind as he turned the corner and walked forward. There were no downward slants in the metal flooring, so he wasn't descending into a new area. With the light of this flame as his guide and the corners never seeming to end, Riku quickly put things together and commented in his head "So Eggman trapped me in an endless corridor…It's probably shaped like a square also…"
With these facts in his mind, Riku now tasked himself with finding an end to his entrapment. "Knowing Eggman, he probably put one door on each side of this area to make it harder to get out. One door will lead me back to the 'museum', two will probably lead to a trap, and the last one should get me out of here."
Not wanting to chance falling into a trap and wasting time that would be better spent trying to catch up with Sonic and the others, Riku decides to subtly use his electric powers to detect any wires, since obviously Eggman would connect them to any traps he may have set up. But to the boy's surprise, there wasn't any wires to be found in the general vicinity, indicating that the doctor's traps were either not electric powered or he just simply hadn't set any up at all.
"Guess that makes sense…He didn't expect someone to have to come here after all…" Riku thinks to himself. He then pauses for a moment and thinks about the room's setup, and with something bothering him he quickly pulls his hand away from the wall and goes to the other side of the corridor, placing both of his hands against the steel wall with enough force to create an echoing sound on the other side. Smiling, the teenage Overlord applied heat to the wall through his palms.
The heat melted the metal down in seconds, opening the way to another passage that led to a bright light in the center of this winding complex. Pulling his burning hands back beside his body, the teenage Overlord walks past the molten metal and heads to the light. Once there, he examines the area around him and notices three other passages. After that, he looks up towards the faint light and sees that it is coming from a pipe in the ceiling. Using his flight, Riku rises up through the pipe to escape Eggman's square-shaped maze.
Once past the tube, six pie-shaped plates press inward to trap the teenage Overlord in this brightly lit room, only for everything to blackened as the light shuts off in an instance. "You've got to be kidding me…" The boy states in disbelief in his head as he uses what little light was left in his vision to look around and see where he had ended up. But instead of being kept in the dark for long, three steel plates rose up around the boy, revealing the outside of the Egg Continent once more along with a large device that flowed brightly with red energy across hundreds of directions.
The red energy shared the same energy flow as the laser fence surrounding the mighty battleship, leading Riku to think that destroying this device would disable it. "Wait a second…Why would Eggman put me through a series of events that would lead me to the one thing keeping us trapped on his ship?"
Though Riku assumed that there was a trap in the vicinity with how oddly convenient this discovery was, he nonetheless drew his sword and wasted little time in cutting the device down the middle with the sharpest part of his blade. Electricity and energy builds up around the machine as the laser fence short-circuits outside, and in seconds an explosion that the boy protects himself with a very thin shield of air covers this rather miniscule room.
The teenage Overlord keeps the shield up until the smoke clears from the room, at which point he is able to look past the windows and see that the laser fence has been soundly disabled. There was no trick about it either, which puzzled the boy considering Eggman's usual attempts to deceive his foes. Putting his sword away, Riku then flinched in place as the walls around him began to slide into the ground along with the remnants of the device.
Having to quickly adjust to the drop in temperature around him because of the sun's disappearance behind the storm clouds, Riku finds himself standing atop a circular area with Eggman's insignia painted cleanly on the central area. The area was wide enough to signify a battle arena, which made the boy quickly assume that the doctor would send another machine at him for battle, but instead he quickly watched as the sky was filled with bipedal mechs and beetles that all shared a grey and white coloring to them and had a noticeable "G" branded on them.
The robots had came out of an invisible state and proceeded to swarm the Egg Continent, which activated the turrets lying near the Final Fortress in the distance, filling the already crowded sky with hundreds of laser made bullets that tear apart most of the robot troops deployed here today. Riku watches this event unfold for quite a few seconds before the turrets noticeably shut off and the robots fly towards the backside of the battleship.
"G.U.N. Robots? What's going on here, when did they show up?" Riku comments in his head as he glances back and watches the robots completely ignore his presence for the time being. Then the sound of engines roaring behind the boy causes him to turn his head just as a bolt of lightning comes down and signifies the falling of rain upon the area. The rain doesn't touch Riku's body thanks to a passive use of his powers, but the raindrops aren't his concern as he looks up at the robot responsible for grabbing his attention.
It was a particular tall robot with two meaty mechanical arms attached to two broad shoulders that projected an electromagnetic field around the entire thing. There was an anti-gravity device attached to the bottom of the robot that flipped around in place as two bulky legs floated underneath it, and vents sticking out from the back of the machine drained out an excess exhaust. The cyclops like yellow circle at the top of the robot's head suggested that it was the eye, but once the light-blue slit of light glowed below it Riku knew where the robot's vision lied. Though the robot's red coloring suggested that it was one of Eggman's mechs, the presence of the other G.U.N. robots clued Riku in onto who was in charge of controlling this machine.
But the fact that the machine was looking down at him instead of turning to face the Final Fortress worried Riku, whose suspicions were thus swiftly confirmed when a voice spoke through the robot's intercom. "So, you're the one who has allied with Eggman!" The surprising words spoken by this rough and angry sounding man took the teenage Overlord off-guard for a moment, causing him to blurt out without much thought "What did you say?!"
"Don't think and say otherwise. Agent Rouge called in just a while ago and said that Eggman had allied himself with another human to take over the planet. And seeing as you are the only other human on-board the ship, that makes you his ally!" The man speaking through the robot explained.
"With all due respect Com-" Riku was about to call the G.U.N. Commander out by rank, but realized quickly that revealing his knowledge wouldn't help his case in the slightest. Saying he was one of Sonic's allies wouldn't be useful either, since apparently Rouge had called the Commander and mentioned a human ally.
"Wait a minute…Rouge? I haven't seen her at all on the battleship…If anything, either she's been mind-controlled by Eggman or Eggman used a voice modification device to trick the Commander…" Riku deduced this after putting together all that he heard at the moment.
"Tch, I guess I can't expect you to listen to my side of the story, can I?" Riku asks as he draws his sword to combat the mechanical titan in front of him.
"There's no need to explain anything! You are working with Eggman, therefore you are the enemy of G.U.N. and thus the world! He may be related to Maria…But I cannot allow Eggman's attempts at world conquest to go on any longer! If Sonic won't finish the job, then I will now with my fully completed ARK-Diablon, the ultimate mechanical life form!" The Commander proudly proclaims the name of G.U.N.'s ultimate creation as he slams it's fists together.
"Sheesh, what a painful distraction I have to deal with…" Riku comments in a distraught tone as he considers all the facts at hand. Worst yet is that without the G.U.N. Commander noticing, a glass dome began to form around the battle arena, trapping the two in combat against their will.
The boy had to give Eggman credit where it was due, as begrudging as this admission was. "Since the G.U.N. Commander has no strong life-signature, I can't tell if he's actually piloting the machine or not…Eggman's probably hoping I don't consider this and destroy the machine entirely, killing the Commander and leaving G.U.N. without their strongest weapon. So by luring the Commander here with a fake message, Eggman will either ensure that one of Earth's greatest lines of defense will be destroy, or he'll remove the unknown element in his grand scheme…Me."
Riku tightly grasps his hand where the handle of his sword would be and kicks up into the air, taking flight and igniting his sword with fire as he says to the Commander "Alright fine then. I'm sorry we have to fight, but I promise to end this quickly…"
"Y-You can fly?!" The Commander proclaims in an understandable voice of shock, to which Riku replies with "That and much more. Like this for example!"
The teenage Overlord flies straight at the robot's chest, disregarding the presence of the electromagnetic barrier as he felt as though his strength would be enough to penetrate it. With sword swung at the barrier, Riku hit it with enough force to send Diablon back a good twenty feet through the air, but did absolutely nothing to scar the robot itself. Looking at the robot with a puzzled expression as the scar left across the barrier by his flames faded away, Riku commented in his head "Well, guess brute forcing my way through isn't going to work…"
Through Diablon, the Commander explains to the boy as he brushes his right finger against the part of the barrier that was attacked "Ha! This barrier was designed to block attacks from Sonic and Shadow when they use the Chaos Emeralds. As impressive as your attack was, it won't ever put a dent in this barrier!"
Riku thinks to himself "Then I'll just have to pull it off!" And with a quick thrust of his left hand the boy expected the barrier to be dismantled via his electric powers only for nothing of the sort to happen, much to his surprise. "…And there's another flaw in my plans." The boy thinks in a dull tone of annoyance as he pulls his hand away.
Diablon raises its right leg up and kicks Riku hard, sending him flying straight up into the dome, his back slamming hard against it as his arms and legs soon follow. The teenage Overlord then quickly peels his right arm away from the glass dome as Diablon fires a pure beam of energy at him from the Cyclops-like eye at the top. Blocking the attack with his sword, Riku squints his eyes as the bright light of the energy spreads around him.
The teenage Overlord pushes against the beam with all of his strength, straining his right arm in the process until he manages to force the beam back against itself and dispel it. Riku then leans forward and kicks off of the dome with his feet to launch at Diablon as the laser beam managed to shut-off the electromagnetic field around the titanic robot temporarily. Swinging his arms out beside him to the right, Riku prepares electricity around his sword and throws it straight at the chest of the robot.
The swipe of electricity hit's the robot before the shield turns back on, and pierces the metal shell to reach the wiring underneath. Diablon goes on the fritz for a few moments, breaking the G.U.N. Commander's control on the machine as Riku flips himself around to position his feet towards the shield, which he bounces off of and performs a couple flips as he descends towards the ground.
Though the shield was still up despite the short-circuiting attempt, Riku didn't dissuade himself from attempting to bypass it as he quickly dispelled his sword as he slammed his hands against the ground and spread out a sheet of ice along the ground past Diablon's notice. Once the ice ended up underneath the robot, Riku leaped back and drew his sword once more, watching as the robot regains control, and the Commander looks down at the boy and exclaims "Hold still darn you!"
Firing off another powerful laser from the eye, Diablon drops the electromagnetic barrier just long enough for Riku to crack a smile as he leaps back again and snaps his left fingers to utilize the sheet of ice, which grows upward in seconds to engulf the bottom half of the legs, keeping them trapped tightly enough that the Commander stops firing the laser off to pull his barrier back up. From far away on the controls, the Commander tries to get the legs to move, but the sharp chill in the ice makes it impossible for them to budge even an inch.
Riku comments in a joking manner "Should have attached a weapon or two to the legs." He then ignites his sword with raw fire and swings it at Diablon's legs like a boomerang. Watching as the sword glides through the air and rapidly spins around like a saw blade, the teenage Overlord takes a couple steps back as his weapon slices right through the part of the legs above the ice, cutting through them like butter due to the sharp contrast in temperature between them.
With half of the legs gone, the rest of them soon follow in being detached from the bottom of the gravitational field, leaving the upper half of the body to remain floating in the air of the dome. The barrier reforms around the smaller robot as the ice around the legs melts off and causes them to fall down atop their burning upper halves. But the Commander wasn't worried about the legs, and Diablon began to glow with red light around it's entire body as he said "Hahaha! The legs were only a distraction! You've given me enough time to charge Diablon's ultimate attack!"
Swinging his right arm out beside him, Diablon disables his electromagnetic barrier once more as he takes all the energy gathered within the core of his body and fires it out in a gigantic, spherical burst as he declares "Antimatter cannon…Fire!"
The energy exuding from the barrier was certainly not made of the material declared, for otherwise Riku would have been wiped off the face of the Earth along with everything the energy touched, including Diablon itself. But there was still much to be concerned about, as the teenage Overlord felt the power of the energy before it was launched and immediately took to stamping his feet against the ground and crouching down, using his Earth elemental power to pull some metal up to protect the front of his body.
The steel is pushed further up into the air as Riku slowly steps back to avoid being thrown onto his back by the combination of the steel and the antimatter cannon. When the boy felt that the attack was nearing an end, he wasted little time in slicing the steel in front of him with the hot tip of his blade. He then bent the top part into a sharpened point, suspending in the air with his left hand before pointing it at Diablon and firing it straight at the core without hesitation as the Commander proclaimed in shock "What kind of madness is thi-"
The sharp steel punctures through the core of the robot, ripping straight through the other side without a single droplet of blood coming out, confirming Riku's suspicion that the Commander was controlling the robot from afar. Electricity flows out from within the puncture mark as Diablon's anti-gravity device goes haywire, causing the machine to plummet towards the ground rather anti-climatically as the Commander's voice states in a melancholy tone "N-No…I still couldn't do anything…Even without a prototype…"
Diablon collapses against the ground chest first, the arms limping flat on both sides of the body as Riku dispels his sword and comments in a loud enough tone to the G.U.N. Commander "I'm sorry I had to fight you, but Eggman deceived you into wasting our time…"
"W-What?" The Commander says with what little energy was remaining inside of Diablon's voice box. Riku is about to explain in better detail what was going on, when all of a sudden Eggman interrupts the scene in a tasteless tone of voice "How ridiculous. I shouldn't have expected the pitiful G.U.N. Commander to do anything…You're a disappointment to your race, a mockery to history itself."
"How dare you-" The G.U.N. Commander's outrage in regards to Eggman's comment is interrupted by the Eggman insignia splitting apart in the center of this arena, which Riku directs his attention towards as something begins to rise out from the underground.
Eggman speaks during this time, saying to the teenage Overlord "You've taken down one of my greatest robots and the ultimate creation of G.U.N….But your luck is at an end, boy. I am quite proud of this next achievement, even if I have tasked it's creation and piloting to my two diminutive, imbecilic robots… "
The robot emerges all the way from the underground of the Egg Continent, revealing a gigantic machine with a serpentine body, four elongated arms with pulsating blue-electric claws, and a head that took on the form of an openly fanged mouth filled with ghastly eyeballs of two sizes. There was one gigantic one in the middle and three smaller ones on each opposing side of the bigger one, each one containing see-through glass in the iris. The remaining feature of note on this robots was a glowing mane on the back of the head that contained a bright, translucent violet glow and consisted entirely of hair textured rods.
"Meet Mecha Dark Gaia! A recreation of one of the finest monsters I ever gazed my eyes upon in all my time on this Earth! And best of all, for the sake of accuracy in regards to it's power, I was able to salvage some Dark Gaia energy from my good old Eggmanland to use in powering this machine. I don't care how strong you've shown yourself to be so far, child…Even Sonic himself had trouble facing this creature!" With Eggman's boasting out of the way as Mecha Dark Gaia casts it's gargantuan form across the battlefield, Riku once more draws his sword and scowls.
"Cubot my good friend…You better not screw this one up for us, or the doctor will throw us into the scrap heap!" The normally stoic Orbot says in a tone of urgency from the cockpit of the machine, to which his dapper friend replies by mentioning "You kidding? I'm as serious as I've ever been!"
Orbot replies in a melancholy tone of sarcasm "And that's what I'm afraid of my good friend…That's what I'm afraid of."
As Riku prepares to combat the machine, he hears a faint cracking glass above him. As water drips into the battlefield, he looks up and sees much to his surprise Sonic dropping down from the sky. The blue hedgehog sticks a perfect landing in front of the boy, his legs spread out as he plants his right hand against the ground and stares up at Mecha Dark Gaia with a nostalgic smile on his face. In his usually cocky tone of voice, Sonic says "Geez, you guys started a party and didn't invite me? Talk about a bad show of manners Eggman!"
As the blue hedgehog puts himself upright, Knuckles and Tails fall down beside him, and for a few seconds Riku stares at the three gathered heroes before Eggman interjects with utter shock in his voice "S-Sonic?! You managed to deal with my mind-controlled minions?! Grrr, I guess I should have known better than to trust weaklings to handle you and your friends!"
Sonic gestures with his right pointer finger up towards where Eggman's voice is coming from as he states "Yeah, I'm not happy about what you did to my friends Eggman! I'm going to mess you up for that later, but for now I'll be satisfied with scrapping another one of your mechs!" The blue hedgehog pounds his fists together ready for battle, and Tails and Knuckles simultaneously put up their dukes with equal amounts of enthusiasm.
Riku, turning towards Diablon as it appeared ready to shut down, said to the Commander "I guess there will be no more objections about whose side I'm on now?" To which after a moment of silence the G.U.N. said with his voice distorted by the fading voice box "…None whatsoever…I wish the four of you the best of luck here…" The G.U.N. Commander signs off, and as Diablon goes silent the teenage Overlord turns towards the mechanical roar of Mecha Dark Gaia and swings his sword out beside him ready for battle…
Next Time: Full Throttle