SONIC THE HEDGEHOG - CHAPTER III

Antoine and Beauregarde had followed a road away from town that led to a place surrounded by a green fence. Outside the fence was a parking lot that had a few vehicles parked in it, but those vehicles were being torn apart by several robots before the parts were being carried away by other robots.

"Looks like the locals were right about this place." Beauregarde commented, adjusting his hat.

Antoine kept observing the area in front of them. It had been described as the local theme park, though an advanced playground might have been a better term. A neon sign that was turned off called it Spring Yard and behind the fence he could see a few purple buildings, some taller than others, and what looked like a merry-go-round in there too. And of course, robots of all shapes were tearing the place apart like ants on a sugarcube.

"I know we were to expect robots here, but this is more than we can handle." Antoine noted.

"Bah, I've handled herds bigger than this, I think we can handle it no problem." Beauregarde remarked, taking out a gun from a holster.

"But sir, most herds don't have metal skin or built-in weaponry. Your firearm and my saber will be of little use against these machinations." Antoine objected.

"Come on, I thought coyotes were supposed to be wiley, not cowardly. Then again, you are Mercian." The rabbit chided.

Antoine frowned. "Two offensive stereotypes, sir I'll have you know I am a guard for the princess for a reason."

"Then show it by busting some tin cans." Beauregarde said before rushing towards the parking lot.

There were a couple of black armored androids called swatbots dismantling cars, until they noticed the rabbit coming their way. One held up his arm and readied a weapon, and while they had no faces you'd swear they were bored by this little interruption. Beauregarde took out his pistol and shot it, the bullet hitting the eye plate on the swatbot. The plate shattered and the optic circuits inside took critical damage, so while the swatbot was not defeated it was now rendered blind. It fired and missed the target, allowing Beauregarde to move in closer.

This prompted two other swatbots to fire at the rabbit as well. Beauregarde, having already gotten his weapon ready, fired at them first and again hit both robots in the eyes, blinding them. They fumbled blindly, allowing Beauregarde to get behind them and hide by the park entrance, where he gestured for Antoine to get to him now that they had the opportunity. Antoine ran to him and made it through the turnstile entrance, followed by Beauregarde.

"You're a remarkable marksman, Monsieur Rabbot." Antoine complimented.

"I may be old, but my golden eye is as sharp as ever." Beauregarde stated while putting more bullets in his pistol. "However my ammo is limited and blinding these walking toasters isn't going to be enough to stop them. You're going to have to cut them down."

Antoine gulped. "But sir, they have lasers and all sorts of weapons. All I have is my family sword. I will not be the most effective fighter."

"Then why did you come?"

"Because it is my duty to protect the princess. If I cannot keep her out of harm's way, it is my duty to be her sword on the battlefield."

"Then be her sword here and now. Unless your plan was to ask the robots to stop destroying the place."

Antoine gulped as if swallowing whatever response would otherwise come out, but his twitching hand grasped the handle of his sword before he steadied himself.

Looking around, the entrance of the amusement park was simplistic. There were trash cans and benches along with some shrubs and a cherry tree for flair. There was a gift shop and a small concession stand for people to buy things at, a white plaster building indicating it had restrooms inside, and drawn pictures depicting mobians, mostly children, bouncing and having fun. The only other things were the purple buildings of various sizes, and what looked like a little kid playground off to the side.

Damage was minimal here because it looks like anything metal was already gone.

"I've heard no alarms so looks like we still have the advantage of surprise." Beauregarde noted.

"Where should we go?" Antoine asked.

One of the buildings in the far end of the park exploded.

"I wager over there."

"Over there?" Antoine repeated, not seeing the wisdom in such a thing.

"Odds are there are more bombs around here, and I think we should disarm them. Maybe even take a few back to use against Robotnik, don't you?"

The coyote couldn't come up with an argument. The rabbit led them both down the primary path into the park, looking unafraid of being seen while Antoine would have preferred to remain inconspicuous.

Up ahead four blue balls rolled into view and formed a line, as if barricading the two mobians. The balls then changed into some kind of Pacman ripoff with scrawny arms and legs and a half-face just above the big mouth. All four made chomping motions before returning to ball form and rolling towards them.

Beauregarde put away his pistol and put on a set of brass knuckles. He pulled his fist back and when one of the balls got close enough he threw a solid punch at it. The damage was minimal but the impact forced the ball to swerve and collide with another, which made it collide with another that came right at Antoine. The swordsman jumped and landed on top of the rolling ball, kicking to keep atop until the ball opened under him. Right now it looked like a cartoonish scene of a person using their legs to keep a shark from eating them from below. With a sigh, Beauregarde came in and punched the robot in the middle of its mouth, damaging the clamp and making it go limp, allowing Antoine to get free.

"Right now I'm starting to think I would have been better off coming here solo." The rabbit remarked, hitting the other orbs away. Though now he was breathing a bit heavier.

"I am not a hindrance sir. I am simply… less equipped for this combatant than you are." Antoine defended, using his saber to cut down another robot that tried to bite him. He was pleasantly surprised that he was able to damage it, though now as much as he would have preferred.

"You knew what you were getting into, so why didn't you prepare better?"

"I am a swordsman, I know how I fight best."

The robots were demolished, and Beauregarde allowed himself to sit down on a park bench with a deep breath.

"Are you alright monsieur?" Antoine asked.

"I'm not as young as I used to be. Thirty years ago when I was your age, I'd be able to take on every tin can on this island. Spirit's willing but the body has limits."

"Then allow me to go on further on my own for a time. Prove to you that you are not here just to fight on my behest." Antoine offered.

Beauregarde smiled. "You're a good kid, you just need to show more gumption."

Antoine went on into the park on his own, trying his best to hide his discomfort. When he was deeper in the park he saw some bee robots carry scrap metal in his direction. Not wanting to draw their attention, he saw a door into one of the buildings that park guests could go into and went inside, taking cover.

Inside he saw a large trampoline room, and bouncing along the various trampolines was some kind of mechanical monkey with a lightbulb on his head.

"Oh boy, I'm so glad the boss gave me the fun part of the job." The monkey exclaimed while playfully jumping all over the place. Until he saw the coyote that had entered the area.

"Who are you?" The monkey demanded, maneuvering to get off the trampolines and face the intruder.

Antoine felt less afraid since this robot's design was too silly to be considered threatening, but on the other hand this one could talk and seemingly think. So he drew his sword and stood defiant. "I am Antoine D'Coolette, and if you work for the nefarious Dr. Robotnik it is my duty to end you."

The monkey laughed. "End me? I'm Coconuts the Bomber, what can a dog with a knife do against me?"

Antoine grit his teeth while Coconuts opened a compartment in his torso and pulled out a grenade. Antoine naturally got panicked at seeing that, making the monkey robot smirk.

"You know what? I think I've got a better idea." Coconuts said before putting the grenade back and taking out what looked like a remote with a single red button on it. "I already put bombs all over this park to blow it up when we got everything we wanted out of it. Chase me down and stop me before I press this and we all go kaboom."

"You wouldn't." Antoine hoped.

"I'm a robot, what do I care if I get blown to bits? I'll just get put back together. Can't say the same about you can I?" Coconuts laughed before jumping onto the trampolines and rebounding all over the place before he jumped through a window, shattering glass and escaping outside.

"I don't need this." Antoine groaned before exiting the building to follow the mad monkey.

Coconuts had somehow rallied countless badniks in the park to ambush Antoine. He saw bees, crabs, hermit crabs, rolling armadillos, and floating sea urchins all ready to intercept him while the laughing monkey rebounded from rooftop to rooftop.

'The smart thing to do is to regroup with Rabbot and leave this place, but my gut tells me that if I refuse to play this cybernetic simian's game he'll blow us up before we leave. No, as much as I hate it, I must disarm the enemy.'

Antoine decided to ignore the badniks and focus on Coconuts, as difficult as that would be. He tried to get around the horde, evading the projectiles from the bee robots while the two types of crabs tried to cut him off. A floating urchin threw spiked balls at Antoine who deflected them with his sword, sending them at the crabs which halted them.

Coconuts jumped off the roof and got onto what looked like a go-kart track except the karts were replaced with large glass balls and the track was made of three tubes held together. He got into a ball and a bumper propelled him down the track, making him virtually impossible to catch up to.

'I don't need to catch him, the track will bring him back to me.' Antoine thought, running to get under the track. The badniks came after him and he got an idea.

Acting bravely, Antoine went up to the badniks and threw a rock at some of the bees that followed him. They of course fired lasers at him which he ran from, and like before they followed. Once he saw that, he darted around the support beams holding the tubes up. The bees kept firing and one hit his shoulder, bruising it but thankfully his attire had some built-in armor on the shoulders so it felt like a nasty fall to him. A few of the lasers hit the support beams but the damage wasn't as severe as the coyote would have liked. Even so, when the ball got there it got derailed and fell to the ground, cracking.

"Not fun you dirty dog." Coconuts accused as he climbed out of the ball. The end of his tail opened up and a large cloud of smoke erupted from within, obscuring him from sight. When it cleared, the mechanical monkey was gone.

"Merde." Antoine groaned, running off to get away from the remaining badniks. The bees kept up, ready to skewer him. Antoine saw a vending machine tilted over, propped up against a building, and slid under it. The bees in heavy pursuit of him ran into the vending machine and were knocked out.

Antoine had a moment to hunt down his opponent in peace as no more badniks were following him. He couldn't find anything, but there was noise everywhere. Clacking, grinding, buzzing, none of it was overwhelming but all of it was constant. Then he noticed his shadow was getting bigger.

Antoine dove off to the side, landing on the ground on his stomach. Right behind him Coconuts impacted the ground riding what looked like a spring pad turned into a pogo stick.

"Damn, I wanted to see how much it would hurt you if I got you with this." Coconuts jested while rebounding back up. "Stay still and take a hit."

Antoine rolled away and got to his feet with Coconuts chasing him. The erratic jumping made it hard for Antoine to figure out how best to fight back, forcing him to stay on the move. All the while Coconuts kept up pursuit, even saying 'boingy' each time the pogo stick took off from the ground. Antoine passed a garbage can and threw it at his opponent, but it missed.

"You gotta try harder than that, dog."

"Then how about zis?" Antoine stood his ground, and at just the right moment swung his saber, severing the pogo stick and making Coconuts fumble on the ground. Antoine tried to skewer the robot simian but only did so with the tail. Coconuts detached from it like a lizard and ran off.

"Not so tough the moment you lose all advantage." The coyote muttered, wiping his forehead. "I need to end this madness now."

Antoine went down the trail his adversary had gone down, only to be intercepted by two swatbots. They fired lasers at him, making him scurry away in the opposite direction and hide behind a building.

"You're not playing very nice dog." Coconuts taunted over the loudspeakers.

"Says the scoundrel throwing explosives all over a children's play place." Antoine muttered, taking a few deep breaths.

Then he heard some ticking sounds, making him nervous. Antoine looked up and saw lots of small robots crawling down the side of the building. They looked like red eggs with silver casings and small insect legs and an antenna at the top. Each crawled down like spiders on a web making beeps and ticks, trembling a little.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me." He groaned, darting away from the building as fast as he could. When he got away the little robots went silent and still. "This must be what he meant by bombs all over ze place. I didn't expect zem to go looking for me too."

Ten minutes later a rather tense and tired Antoine managed to track down the monkey to what looked like a small lot filled with see-saws. There were some balls and hoops around, making him think this was meant to play some kind of modified version of basketball. Coconuts didn't care what it was for, rebounding from one see-saw to the next.

"You've done better than I thought you would dog to keep up with me like this. But I think it's time to wrap this up."

As if on command, a hovercraft went over and dropped five spheres onto the see-saws. They did not bounce back up. Coconuts then jumped over and landed on one of the see-saws, rebounding one of the spheres up much higher than expected. It went over the surrounding walls and landed in one of the other portions of the park, resulting in a massive explosion.

Antoine gulped at the sight and sound of the blast.

"Like it? There's going to be a lot more to go if you can't stop me!" Coconuts jeered, jumping around the see-saws in random directions, clearly in no hurry to get to the next sphere. At the same time the hovercraft floated around dropping more bombs onto various see-saws.

"C'mon dog, fetch!" Coconuts laughed, bouncing around.

Antoine frowned and drew his sword, but then he got an idea which made him smile. He then put his sword back in the sheath and turned away.

"What?" Coconuts asked, caught off guard. He came to a stop and saw the coyote walk away. "You can't leave!"

"Yes I can. There's no one here so no lives are at risk except my own. And while damaging this place is bad, if your only goal is to tear this place down then I think I'm better off fighting the real threats."

Antoine then paused to glare at the monkey robot. "And I'm a coyote, not a dog."

Coconuts grit his teeth. How dare this dog say he's not a real threat! How dare he not play his game!

"You're not going anywhere!" Coconuts shouted, going to the nearest sphere and grabbing it before hurling it at the coyote. Antoine reflexively drew his sword to block it from him, and the sphere hit the flat of his blade and rebounded right back to Coconuts.

"Oh cra-"

There was a massive explosion which sent Antoine flying away. He quickly and quietly said his prayers, certain that when he landed he might lose the ability to walk again. All because of some metallic monkey with a bomb fetish. This was not how a D'Coolette was supposed to meet his end.

To his surprise, he had a soft landing in an inflatable bounce house. His sword punctured it so it deflated, but the landing ensured he would indeed walk again.

"I'm out of here." Antoine muttered, rolling off the deflating bounce house and running out of the park. More explosions went off throughout the park, prompting him to run faster. He got to the entrance, seeing other robots flee too and ignore him, and outside the walls he felt safer.

"This was… unproductive to say the least. I'll inform the princess that we're better off focusing our attention elsewhere." He said, dusting off his attire before a memory came back to him. "Oh no, Monsieur Rabbot!"

He went back inside the park to the bench where he had last seen the rabbit mobian. The bench was empty, Beauregarde was nowhere to be seen.

"Monsieur Rabbot!"

Another blast went off nearby, encouraging Antoine to vacate the park again. Once out he looked around, hoping the marksman had left already and was waiting for him outside. Beauregarde was not there.

"This is not good."


Instead of falling, Nicky discovered he was running, as if he already had been and only just now realized it. He came to a stop and saw he was in some weird tube missing the top half, so perhaps he was in a giant trough or something similar. The 'walls' of the tube were yellow-orange with an indigo sky visible and stars of every color shining above. Up ahead he saw a chaos emerald, but this was a yellow one.

"Okay, what now?" He asked.

"This is your second trial." Someone replied, with another figure like before appearing out of random colors. Like Cal, this too resembled a human adult man dressed in outdated fashion, only he was sideways, as if gravity didn't exist for him.

"Am I supposed to run? Not exactly a challenge you know." Nicky pointed out.

"I am Al, and you are right, running is not a challenge for you. Which is why you will not win by running." The sideways man said with a thumbs up, or was that thumbs sideways, before hundreds of small explosions covered his body and he vanished.

Not knowing what else to do, Nicky ran to the yellow emerald but it hovered away from him. Not surprised, Nicky kept going after it, and it stayed out of reach.

"Okay, he's making me work for it, but at least I'm in control of my own movements." The young hedgehog thought, speeding up but still unable to acquire his prize. The tube made a few turns forcing him to run along the walls which threw him off a little, but he kept it up. But the gem always stayed ahead, the gap never getting smaller no matter what.

"Wait, is that a loop-de-loop?" Nicky asked, see the tube curl up and around up ahead of him. He gulped at his unexpected increase in difficulty and tried to go faster, figuring momentum was his only way to handle this.

He got to the part where the tube curled upward and he ran up, the momentum helping him. Unfortunately, the feeling of running up instead of forward and the fear of when he'd get upside-down got to the ten year old boy and his speed dipped, though the yellow emerald proceeded. In the end, gravity overtook him.

'I'M FALLING!' He screamed in his head like any child in his place. And being a hedgehog, he instinctively curled into a ball to better withstand the impact. To his surprise, the landing didn't hurt but he kept rolling thanks to the slope of the tube. When he uncurled and got back to running, he saw the yellow emerald but ahead but much closer than before. He tried to reach it but it was still out of reach.

'I got closer, but still not close enough.' He rued, picking up the speed but so did the gem. His focus on the target made him nearly miss a collection of spiked balls up ahead on the track, tripping him and making him roll again. He uncurled and winced, slowing down, yet the yellow emerald was now closer.

'Weird, it's like whenever I curl up, the gap closes. Is that the key to this?' Nicky thought, and decided to give it a try. He curled up and rolled, and it seemed like the yellow emerald was letting him catch up. When it got close enough that there was no way he couldn't just grab it, he uncurled and reached out, but the gem jolted ahead, just enough to taunt him.

'Oh come on! What am I supposed to do?" Nicky asked, annoyed, before jumping over more spiked balls that this time he did see coming.

"You already figured it out, just do it." Al told him, yet was unseen.

"Do what? It's not like I can use my speed when I'm not using my legs." Nicky argued.

"Have you ever tried?" Al asked.

Nicky rolled his eyes. "Oh sure, I should just curl into a ball and use my super speed when I'm rolling instead of running. Like that makes sense."

"You're a super fast hedgehog child living on a floating island trying to fight off a man who can turn living people into robots. What about any of that makes sense?" Al asked, and Nicky suspected the sideways man was laughing at him.

Huffing, Nicky used a corner to build up some momentum and curled into a ball. When he rolled, he tried to propel himself forward with some kicks but doing so was difficult to time and only slowed him down.

'Hmm… well, in the last one I sort of just made myself jump in midair by willing it. Guess it couldn't hurt to try that here too.'

Back in a ball Nicky told his body to roll faster and to his surprise he was building speed. He span like a wheel on a racecar, and to him it even looked like he was creating sparks. He pressed forward, the air ahead of him being cut, and the gap between him and the gemstone diminished. He jumped while still curled up and when right over the yellow emerald he reached out… and succeeded in grabbing it.

"Congratulations my boy. Now on to your next test." Al declared.

"Another one?" Nicky groaned, and again everything went white.