In hindsight, Cosmo should have realized that she was walking into a trap. With the map she found in Bullet Station, she was able blitz through the rails and platforms and either fought through or avoided the swarms of Eggman's machina. But there was nothing when the Seedrian entered the plateau. There was also a convenient map on one of the monitors with blips signifying intruders. Of course, hearing that Nicole was in trouble overrode Cosmo's common sense.

So, here was Cosmo, tapped in a hallway with walls of hardened light blocking her escape. It was no surprise when robots waltzed through the walls of light to engage her. What was a surprise was the strange hovering coffin the robots were escorting. At least Cosmo thought it was a coffin. The device was shaped like a bell with a bust of Eggman on top of it and easily one and a half times Cosmo's height. While there was only one of it, there were more than a dozen Egg Pawns with shields and cattle prods in front of and behind her.

They're not using the lances the ones outside were. Given this is where Apollo and the others are, they must mean to take me alive Cosmo deduced I have had enough of that for one lifetime.

Cosmo turned the way she came in and ran. The Egg Pawns in the front ranks put up their shields while the ones behind them raised their shields over their heads like they were defending from aerial attacks. Perfect Cosmo thought to herself. Cosmo jumped over the enemy vanguard and hopped across the shields. The Egg Pawns furthest in the back lowered their shields, likely in an attempt to trap Cosmo behind them, but the other Pawns couldn't move out of the way fast enough.

Cosmo stomped with both of her feet onto one of the unshielded Pawns and grabbed its cattle prod. She jabbed one of the Pawns with the cattle prod and instantly fried it. Cosmo then electrocuted the Egg Pawns next to her in quick succession. The still functioning Egg Pawns seemed confused as how to get past the shocked husks of their fellows, given that Cosmo had hit them gently enough that they didn't fall over.

Cosmo breathed a sigh of relief Even if the find another way to get to me, I need only last until help arrives. A few moments later, Cosmo saw a shadow from above blocking the overhead lights. She quickly tumbled over and past one of the broken Pawns and had found that the working ones had distanced themselves from her position. Looking back, Cosmo saw the strange bell contraption was right where she was standing.

I underestimated that thing Cosmo realized. It had been hovering just a few inches off of the floor when it entered the hallway, and Cosmo had made a dangerous assumption in believing that was as high as it could float. She dodged to the side as a group of Pawns had charged at her and tried to shock her. Cosmo used their vulnerable position to tackle one of the Pawns into the others and grab another cattle prod. The Seedrian shocked two more Pawns before she heard an odd whirring noise from the direction of the bell machine.

Cosmo jumped and used one of the fried Egg Pawns as a springboard to get the most distant possible. Cosmo did a roll mid-air to see what had attacked her, finding a massive cuff closing itself right where Cosmo was standing. Landing at the end of her roll, Cosmo quickly turned her head to look at the bell robot and found that the cuff was a part of it. Instead of going after her again, the cuff returned to the of the robot and reconnected the bust to the rest of the machine. The most frightening aspect of the bell robot revealed itself, as Cosmo saw its body was opened like a coffin.

Cosmo ran towards the other end of the hall and used her cattle prod like a pole vault. She had briefly considered charging the bell robot but dismissed it as too risky. She had no idea what other capabilities it had, and she didn't know how far away Miles and Nicole were. While she might not be able to keep it from catching her forever, Cosmo only had to avoid it long enough for Miles and whoever Team Jubilee was to arrive.

The bell robot was far and away the most advanced Eggman robot in the room, as the Pawns had become thoroughly confused by Cosmo racing around the hallway and the unmoving and broken Egg Pawns. They could register shattered Pawns just fine but broken and still in one piece was a foreign concept to them. Something Cosmo used to her advantage, as she kept skipping across their heads like river rocks.

This maneuver was tiring but kept Cosmo moving fast enough that the bell machine couldn't catch her with the cuff. Cosmo had to be careful not to land hard enough that she broke any of the Egg Pawns. They were too tightly spaced for her to tumble safely, and it would mean getting poked with cattle prods. She focused so much on landing carefully, that she almost didn't notice the bell machine charging her.

Thankfully, Cosmo was at the edge of the Egg Pawn formation and was able to dive to the floor as it flew overhead. Cosmo heard some kind of static bang, as the machine presumedly crashed into one of the walls of light. However, the machine had left the cuff and bust behind and they raced at Cosmo.

Mechanical limbs ending with clamps seemed to sprout from the neck of the bust, grabbing Cosmo's arms and holding her up; her hands and wrists pulled into the bust itself. The clamp closed level with Cosmo's thighs but was much too wide to bind her legs. Instead, bolas fired from the clamp at different parts of Cosmo's legs before raising back to the neck of the bust.

Cosmo worked fast to start swaying her legs like a pendulum. The rest of the machine was stunned by its collision with the wall, but it was not broken. Cosmo quickly got the momentum she needed to kick the bust with force, eventually bouncing off the face and back of the head while picking up speed. She finally got the bust to stall and she made sure to use it to break her fall. The bust was no longer functioning, but still trapped the Seedrian's hands.

Cosmo scrunched up her and sprung forward like a demented caterpillar, making her way to the closest broken-down Egg Pawn. Cosmo tripped the Pawn and then started slamming the bust into its body. Cosmo caved in its torso after just a few hits, before spinning her body around like she was breakdancing to use the jagged metal to cut the ropes around her legs. She got to her feet, but quickly deduced that the bust was too heavy for her to use the acrobatics she had been relying on. Between the dozen and a half Egg Pawns, the bell machine, and hideous hunk of metal weighing her down, capture was inevitable.

So much for not being a damsel in distress Cosmo thought ruefully I wonder how many more of these things I can bludgeon before I get shocked.


"Gah!" Stick exclaimed, "We've been here forever! Remind me why we don't just break the damn thing down!"

"Because, even with all of the elements and alloys that the Ancients discovered and invented, things that break our previous understanding of chemistry and metallurgy, Hard Light is the single most durable substance in the known universe," Tails explained as he worked, "Even if we could break through, it would regenerate almost instantly so long as there's power."

Tails and Team Jubilee had found their way to the hallway Cosmo was trapped in quickly, and Tails instantly figured out she was trapped by a Hard Light Cage. Amy's hammer working in tandem with Sticks' boomerangs broke through the walls to let Tails get to the electrical systems powering the Cage. Unfortunately, Eggman had thought of this, and set the Hard Light Emitters to cover themselves and the Cage itself was pill shaped and completely covered the hallway in between the walls. As such, Tails was working on faking a system error to trigger the failsafes and turn off the Hard Light Emitters. No one in their group wanted to sit around while someone was in danger, Sticks was the most vocal about it.

"Can't you just cut power to the whole thing!?" She demanded.

"Not without cutting power to the failsafes, and that risks creating a micro-blackhole," Tails explained calmly.

"Wait, so the whole world is doomed if you mess this up?" Amy asked worriedly.

"It would only consume everything within the Cage itself before imploding," Tails answered, "Our PSGs should protect us from the hypothetical blast, but Cosmo would be deleted from existence."

"Aaand, done," Tails announced, "Now we just wait."

"Great, more waiting," Sticks replied with her teammates giggling.

As the Hard Light Cage started flickering, it was clear to Tails and Team Jubilee that Cosmo was in trouble. She had some kind of metal ball stuck to her hands and was heavily outnumbered. They could also see the new robot model Cosmo had mentioned, but it was hard to tell what it looked like through the static of the fading light.

Amy materialized her hammer and turned to Cream and Cheese, "I think we need to use the Chao Cannon."

Cream nodded her head as Cheese floated directly in front of her. Cheese started revving for a Spindash as Cream used her hands to make him spin faster. The young Rabbit flew up to the ceiling with her Chao as Amy started spinning faster and faster; hammer gripped in both hands. As the Cage finally dissipated, Cream passed Cheese to Amy like a volleyball.

Amy smacked Cheese with her hammer, and he was launched into the hallway. Cheese not only tore through the Egg Pawns, but the strange coffin device as well, stopping only when he crashed into the wall at the end of the hallway. Cosmo and Pawns not directly in Cheese's path were knocked prone by the Chao's slipstream. With the Cage gone, it was clear that there were more robots ready to enter the Cage if needed. Cheese soundly destroyed them all.

Sticks ran over to Cosmo and shattered the ball around her hands, which turned out to be a bust of Egg Man. Cosmo shrieked as the bust broke but was relieved when a second attack never arrived.

Sticks helped Cosmo to her feet, "Sorry for the scare, but any hunk of metal needs more than a love tap."

The Badger then looked back at Tails, "Hey, you never said Cosmo was a Seedrian!"

"You know of my people?" Cosmo asked, surprised.

"The Willow Clan stopped by my hometown before the war," Sticks explained.

"Oh, my father Dispersed from the Willow Clan," Cosmo stated.

"Dispersed?" Tails asked.

Cosmo nodded her head, "Dispersal is when Seedrians leave to join other Clans. It's how my people maintain genetic diversity."

Amy rolled her eyes at her two-tailed friend, "Tails, you can analyze her culture when we've saved her people."

"Ah, right," Tails said embarrassedly, "If we stick together, we shouldn't have to worry about any more Hard Light Cages."

Tails turned his attention back to Cosmo, "How are you on Rings?"

Cosmo pulled back her sleeve to check, "Eighty-Five? I didn't think I was hitting them that hard."

"The PSGs don't just protect you," Tails stated as he siphoned some of his own Rings for Cosmo, "They also block the neurons in your muscles that prevent you from using you full strength. The PSG braces your bones and muscles, so you don't hurt yourself in the process."

A thought occurred to Tails as he gave Cosmo one hundred Rings, "Do your people have bones?"

"We have skulls and other bone structures to protect our vitals, but the rest of our bodies are purely supported by cell walls," Cosmo explained, either pleased with Tails' interest or having something to take her mind off of the ordeal she just faced. The Fox couldn't tell which.

"Now is not later," Cream called teasingly, "You should check out this new robot."

Tails nodded and made his way over to the wreckage while Amy and Cream worked together to dislodge Cheese from the wall. Cheese had shot straight through its body, leaving a head sized hole but otherwise leaving it undamaged. The shell was much thicker than it appeared, giving it plenty of space for wiring and multiple batteries to power the devices within. The bottom quarter had the highest concentration of batteries, likely to power the small hovercrafts built into the 'skirt' of the machine. Those were easily the most expensive parts of the machine and it made since for it to be on a different power circuit to help protect them.

"Fascinating," Tails marveled, "It's like an Iron Maiden with tasers instead of spikes, clearly designed to disable instead of terminate. It's also large enough to hold someone of Big's size or bigger. Even if Eggman was simply making something in case the Deadly Six come back, he no longer has the means of controlling them. So why would he want the Zeti alive?"

Cosmo stood by and did her best to follow Tails' stream of consciousness, but he kept referring to people she didn't know and using jargon she didn't understand. The way he could figure out so much about this machine so quickly just by looking at it amazed her. Every day Cosmo spent with Tails, she better understood why he was Sonic's righthand in the fight against Eggman. What neither of them noticed was Sticks staring at Tails with narrowed eyes.

Tails and Cosmo were brought out of their trains of thought by a cry from Cheese, celebrating his freedom. Cosmo and Team Jubilee made quick introductions before moving on; pleasantries could wait for when they didn't have a job to do. The group started hearing fighting in the distance as they moved deeper into the facility. Prower Company and Team Jubilee paused for a brief debate before deciding it was best not to go out of their way to join which other group was fighting Eggman's Robots. The lack of radio contact and the sounds of battle echoing throughout the largely doorless base, it would have taken an unacceptable amount of time to track them down. However, this other group proved to be an amazing distraction for them, as they pushed into the heart of Dreadnaught Plateau without further resistance.

Tails realized that since this was, in-part, a prison, the traps would all be made for pacification and wouldn't trigger if there weren't any robots to capture escapees. As long as this other group, likely Team Dark if the ceaseless gunfire was anything to go by, kept pulling security, Prower Company and Team Jubilee wouldn't have to worry about being attacked until they found the captured Seedrians.

Nicole finally contacted Miles and Cosmo again. The whole canyon was a dead zone, extending a few feet past the edge of the canyon. GUN technical units had already determined that many of the platforms Eggman erected had radio jammers built into them, but it would take at least another hour before enough of them were disabled to allow radio contact. Tails suspected that Dreadnaught Plateau itself had jamming equipment and anything not using Eggman's communications network was going to get blocked.

Fortunately, Eggman had a particular way he liked structuring his bases. Given that Amy and Tails had been fighting him for so long, they had a nearly clear picture of how the facility was laid out. They were proven right as they found robots still at their posts. These machines were here to give time for other robots around the facility to encircle the intruders and to give the more powerful things under Eggman's command time to prepare. Of course, they were barely enough of them to slow down Sonic and were torn apart in an instant before the five heroes present.

Another giveaway that the heroes had found what they were looking for, was that found the only door in the whole base: a surprisingly plain looking, if sizable, sheet of metal. The only things differentiating this from one of the walls were that it was at the end of the guarded hallway, had a computer console suspiciously close to it, and that was unpainted. It wasn't even emblazoned with Eggman's insignia.

Tails ran up to the passageway with his goggles on and started typing something into his AugRI, "This door is made from one of the Ancestors' alloys. Any explosives we'd use would us and any of the Seedrians on the other side at risk."

"Could we cut around it?" Cosmo asked, "The walls are painted, so they are probably made from a different material."

"We could, but there's one problem," Tails stated, "Without getting a look at the electrical work on the inside, we could accidentally cut life-support to the captives or trigger some kind of trap. Eggman has done things like that in the past."

"GUN gave us something for this," Amy announced.

Amy started messing with her bracelets. The Ancients were digitizing whole personalities and consciousnesses and storing them in cloud servers while Mobius was entering its Bronze Age, but the people of Mobius had learned how to do the same thing with objects a century ago. Amy's bracelets didn't just look nice, they doubled as storage devices for digitized equipment. The bracelets didn't have the same kind of capacity cloud servers did, but they also couldn't be blocked by Eggman's jammers.

"Catch!" Amy called out, as she threw square devices to everyone but Cosmo, who happened to be the one furthest away from her.

Not needing any instruction, Tails and Cream flew up to the top corners of the door while Sticks and Amy moved to the bottom corners. The Hedgehog pressed a button on her device and a white light fired from it into another one of the devices. The light continued shooting into the other devices, tracing the door, until it returned to Amy's feet. She gave the door a tap with her mallet, and it fell to the floor with a thud.