Chapter 44: The Search for Shadow and Rouge:
I'm Knuckles the Echidna! But they call me Knuckles!
Geez, what the hell happened HERE?! First, I was riding on the wing
of the Tornado, and then I remember hitting my hand really hard on
something, followed by me falling to the ground. Then Sonic tossed me
back into the plane, and I sat through several barrel-rolls and the plane
getting shot down before I was completely back to my senses. And
NOW I see a trashed robot, everyone parked on the side of the
freeway, and Sonic mortally wounded! If only someone could fill me in
on just whatever the fuck happened so I don't feel out of the loop!
"Okay seriously, where's that damn seventh chaos emerald?" Sonic begged, bandages present on his injured side.
"Beats me. Maybe it got stuck up your ass again." Amy replied lightheartedly.
"Ha ha, real funny!" Sonic replied sarcastically.
"But in all seriousness though, I don't know who took it, but I know it wasn't me." Amy said.
"Me neither." Silver, Cream, Tails, and the recovered Knuckles replied in unison.
"Wait a minute! That's it...!" Sonic said, though his thinking was cut off as he eyed Blaze still repeatedly ramming into the largely destroyed robot with her boost.
"Ow!" Eggman Nega yelled as his Egg Mobile was forcefully separated from the mech and slid along the ground a bit.
Then Blaze summoned the Sol Emeralds, causing them to rotate around her.
"Time to end this once and for all!" She said.
The panicked doctor looked around for defense and found the nozzle sitting separate from the mech. He quickly fired it at Blaze, knocking her over and blinding her with oil. She slipped on the ground and the Sol Emeralds fell too. The doctor managed to swipe them off the asphalt as Blaze was wiping the black slippery substance out of her face.
"Hey!" She yelled, giving chase only to slip and fall again, watching as the evil scientist proceeded to fly off in his still-intact Egg Mobile.
She gave chase, managing not to slip a third time and summoned a column of fire that managed to knock him high into the air and send him reeling off into the horizon.
"Quick, everyone! After him!" Blaze ordered, getting back into the car.
The downed plane followed the pink sports car as it drove down the highway in the direction that Eggman Nega had been launched.
"Shit, I forgot to ask Eggman Nega how he escaped his defeat years ago." Silver said, disappointed.
"What do you mean?" Blaze asked, "You never said that you'd had personal issues with Nega as well."
"Well, last I heard, he was supposedly dead after being crushed beneath a pile of rubble in the destroyed future." Silver started to explain.
"Destroyed future?" Blaze questioned.
"Don't worry, it's an alternate future. One that will only affect those of the Ifrit's dimension, and not us. Anyway, Nega used to be my nemesis when I lived there, and after a particular defeat I thought he was dead, but I guess he must have escaped and somehow entered the dimension where you're from." Silver continued.
"So you're actually from the future?" Blaze asked.
"Yes. 200 years to be exact. And even though I had managed to defeat the doctor, the Ifrit's dimension still managed to get destroyed in the future, so I decided to head back to the past and live there forever. I remember being compelled to come to this dimension when I heard of the cool inter-planetary roller-coaster that was being built, and that's where I met you." Silver replied.
"Gee, I'm just learning more and more about you!" Blaze commented, "...But we're still through!"
Silver slouched over in disappointment.
"Alright, I've finally figured it out." Sonic said, "Shadow and Rouge took the last emerald."
"What brought you to that conclusion?" Tails asked him.
"Well, according to Amy, the two supposedly pulled a trailer full of supplies all the way to Mobius National Park with nothing but Shadow's motorcycle. And that's impossible; no motorcycle has the horsepower to do that. Hell, I can't do that." Sonic explained, "And another big detail is that they called us to say that they'd made it safely, even though it had only been two hours since they left, and Mobius National Park is six hours away! So it's pretty obvious at this point; they used Chaos Control with the last emerald in order to get to the destination for their romantic camping trip, and ended up preventing me from helping defeat Eggman Nega when he attacked us!"
"Well, let's hope we get there before Nega does." Knuckles replied, "That way, we can use that last emerald to give him a taste of his own medicine."
Sonic nodded.
"But like Sonic said, the park is six hours away from the house. And we're only one hour into the trip." Tails pointed out.
"I can fix that." Someone said from in front of the three. It was Silver, looking back from the car ahead of them.
"Since many of us apparently share abilities, I think I can get us there with Chaos Control just like Shadow did." He explained.
"Okay." Sonic replied, tossing him the yellow emerald.
After taking a deep breath, Silver raised the emerald above his head and yelled, "Chaos CONTROL!"
A blinding flash enveloped both vehicles and soon the group of eight was transported off of the interstate and into Mobius National Park.
"I can't believe that worked!" Silver said, tossing the emerald back to Sonic.
"Whoa, this park is beautiful!" Cream said, admiring the dawn-drenched scenery.
"And huge! Everyone split up so we can find Shadow and Rouge more easily!" Sonic said, running off to the left as fast as he could without causing more pain for himself.
Everyone did as they were told and started to search for Shadow and Rouge's campsite.
Meanwhile, Dr. Eggman Nega had managed to survive the unwanted ride that had been given to him, and his Egg Mobile was still intact, only suffering a few smudges. With a chuckle, he inserted all of the stolen sol emeralds into a medium-sized ray gun from his pocket, which immediately started to glow radiantly once the emeralds were inserted into it. He flew off through the park, attempting to find the heroes in order to exact his revenge.
Back in another area of the park, Sonic was sprinting through the grass-covered hills past the lake. He sniffed the air briefly.
"Hmm, chili dogs? Cupcakes? Cookies?" He pondered, running past a picnic table positioned beneath a tree, "This must be where we celebrated my birthday a few years ago...and then that Time Eater came along and crashed it."
Sonic suddenly screeched to a halt at the sight of a tent and a small trailer which was attached to a familiar motorcycle.
"This is it." He said, walking over, "And it seems that I managed to get here first. That's good."
Quietly opening the tent, Sonic looked over to one side as the mild rays of sun shone on Shadow and Rouge, both sleeping in the shared sleeping bag.
He silently stepped in and said, "Guys, wake up."
Sonic saw Rouge briefly toss and turn on the far side of the bed, but nothing else happened.
"Guys, wake up! We've got a problem!" He said again, but slightly louder.
"Ugh, not yet. I'm getting laid right now. Ten more minutes." Shadow drowsily said, not opening his eyes.
Sonic rolled his eyes.
"GUYS!" He yelled, hearing a flock of flickies fly out of the tree behind him.
The couple slowly woke up and noticed the blue hedgehog with a bloody bandage on his hip standing in the doorway.
"Augh!" Rouge screeched, quickly pulling the covers over the part of her chest that her nightgown was exposing.
"Geez, Sonic, what the fuck?" Shadow groaned, "...Wait! Sonic!? What are you doing here!?"
"Look, I'm sorry to disturb you like this, but we came here to find the last chaos emerald! Eggman Nega is here!" Sonic briefly explained.
"Huh? But how are we going to get home?" Rouge asked.
"Well for one thing, stealing a chaos emerald without asking and putting us in danger is no good! And don't worry, we'll figure something out!" Sonic replied.
The couple slowly got up as Sonic stepped outside to give them their privacy. He pulled out his own personal Miles Electric and turned it on.
"Tails, I found them. We're right by the picnic table. It's under a tree and by a lake. You'll recognize the area because of how it smells. Get the others, okay?" Sonic said.
"Okey-dokey!" Tails replied from inside the screen.
Suddenly, a cackle could be heard from nearby. Sonic looked around for the source.
"Well gee, it's awfully nice of you to tell your friends and I about your current whereabouts!" The voice said.
Suddenly, Eggman Nega appeared in his Egg Mobile out of thin air, right in front of Sonic, who did a large front-flip over him, only to experience more pain in his side upon landing.
"...But I already knew of them!" Nega continued, "Thanks to the signal that came from your chaos emeralds."
"Alright, here it is." Shadow said, "Don't worry, I sanitized it."
Shadow handed Sonic the green emerald before noticing the fat scientist hovering in front of them. Eggman Nega held up a ray gun that had seven holes in it, each one the exact size and shape of a sol emerald, now glowing due to them being full.
"Heh heh heh, it's a good thing I had a backup on me after you destroyed the original on the back of my mech. Now at the sight of your emeralds, I would like to ask that you hand those over as well, so I can have even more power to take over your world." He said, pointing his weapon at the two hedgehogs.
"Oh, I would, but then all the power would probably go to your small head and it would grow even bigger and fatter than your stomach." Sonic replied as Shadow rolled his eyes at the joke.
"Huh?" Nega pondered, examining his stomach, "Rrgh! Do you ever shut up!? Fine! Since you want to do this the hard way, I guess I'll have to take your emeralds by force!"
He fired a blast at the hedgehogs, who dodged it. Rouge was coming out of the tent right as this happened and managed to dodge it too, though it ended up burning a very small but unmistakable hole in the back-end of the tent.
"What the...!?" She said, only to get yanked away by Shadow as another blast was fired, this time hitting the grass.
As the fight raged on, the others were approaching the scene. All of them gasped at the sight of Eggman Nega firing his deadly ray gun at them. Nega heard the gasp and fired a blast at them, causing them to all spread out to avoid it, with some of them even diving to the ground instead of running away. As he was focusing on attacking the others, Nega was suddenly knocked to the side by Shadow's Chaos Spear before his grounded Egg Mobile was rammed with Sonic's spin dash. The impact from the attacks sent him hurtling into the tree above the picnic table, where his Egg Mobile was rendered useless. The foliage of the tree suddenly erupted into flames, and Nega was sent scrambling for the ground, his ray gun still intact.
"Now!" Sonic and Shadow said in unison.
The chaos emeralds were summoned and circled around them both, before being absorbed within their bodies and causing them to glow yellow. Silver got up after having dove out of the way of the shot and saw this.
"I'll help too." He said, joining the circle and turning yellow as well.
"Uh oh." Eggman Nega said, breaking into a run.
However, he was too slow and was rammed from behind by all three hedgehogs, who had combined their powers into one large and powerful spin-dash. The force of the attack knocked two gadgets out of his possession, (the Sol Emerald Gun and the hypno-ray), though the doctor did not notice and instead continued to run into the forest, the trio of hedgehogs giving chase.
Immediately, Blaze hurried over and removed the sol emeralds from the gun, rendering it useless before briefly eyeing the other ray gun, but stopped as she read the label on it.
"'Hypnotism Ray - Causes whoever it hits to do evil things. What the effects are depends on the context of the situation'?" Blaze read aloud, "So Amy was right?"
She gasped, instantly feeling a sense of guilt for not believing her. Unfortunately, this touching moment didn't last for long as the fleeing doctor entered the field again. The angered Blaze summoned the sol emeralds once again, transforming into Burning Blaze. The doctor and his pursuers stopped at the sight.
"So it was you who caused an internal rift between me and my friends!?" Blaze asked, flames bursting out of her now pink form.
"Okay, y'got me. I used my hypno ray on your silver boyfriend in order to make him cheat on you since I knew that your pink friend was outside too." Nega started, with Silver adopting an angry facial expression as he spoke).
"And as a result, I created a diversion at your residence, and I was planning to use the opportunity to steal the sol emeralds while you were distracted. That is, until you woke up and caught me in the act." The doctor finished.
Without a reply, Blaze rammed into him, knocking him far away onto the mudbank. The doctor stood up, only to kneel back down as he found that his chest had been badly beaten and a few ribs had been crushed, blood running out into the mud. He vomited some more blood as he eyed the four powered up animals approaching him. The three super hedgehogs combined their powers along with Blaze, and together they formed a large comet-shaped projectile out of themselves and hurled it at the weakened doctor, knocking him high into the air above the lake. After this, they all separated and started to ram him repeatedly one at a time, keeping him in mid-air as more and more blood flew out of him and dyed the water red with every drop. As the exhausted group of four landed back on the grass and powered down, they watched as Eggman Nega's unconscious body fell into the waters of the lake and started to sink, covered in large bloodstains. Suddenly, the electricity from the many gadgets in the doctor's pockets increased due to the conductive water around them and an explosion took place, tossing his body into the air once more. Before he could even start falling, he was snatched out of the air by an alligator who had jumped from the lake, and brought down into the depths. Everyone winced at the sight, but shrugged since they had accomplished their goal.
Before anyone could react to what had just happened, Blaze left the mudbank and ran up to the by-standing Amy, immediately throwing herself into her chest, crying.
"I'm so sorry." She bawled.
"Ow!" Sonic said meanwhile, holding his side as the once small bloodstain on his bandages started to expand.
Silver and Shadow guided him to the picnic table.