The five heroes rushed through the doorway, only to stop in their tracks. The room was obviously some kind of laboratory; giant glass cylinders full of a lime-green liquid connected to computers and analytical equipment were on one side with conversion equipment on the other. Auto-Fabricators were creating Replica Seedrians on the far side of the room. It took the heroes a moment to realize, with Cosmo being the first, that some of the captured Seedrians were inside the cylinders. The rest were suspended up above compressed into the fetal position and clearly roboticized. Seedrians were being queued for 'processing' through the conversion equipment for roboticization.
Cosmo and Team Jubilee rushed to the roboticizors and got to work either breaking the equipment or freeing the thankfully unconscious Seedrians. Tails made his way to the glass cylinders and the computers and started hacking their systems. Stopping the lab equipment from readying more Seedrians for roboticization was easy, the cancellation command going through without issue. Figuring how to free the Seedrians without killing them and what Eggman was doing with them was another story. Tails effortless unlocked the console, but Eggman always programmed his computers to activate traps and to wipe hard drives if things weren't done in a specific order. However, Eggman also put in subtle hints in his Graphical User Interface and Command Line Interface, so he didn't set them off himself back by accident. All Tails needed was time.
Because nothing could ever be easy and Eggman was paranoid, Team Jubilee triggered a countermeasure, "CRITICAL DAMAGE TO CENTRAL LABORATORY DETECTED," An automated voice screeched, accompanied by a blaring siren, "ACTIVATING VANGUARD."
A wall of light beamed over the doorway as roboticized Seedrians started falling from the ceiling, and that's when the heroes saw how bad this really was. As they stood from the fetal position, they saw that the Seedrians' had so many cybernetic implants installed into them that you almost couldn't tell they were organic to begin with. Helmets and protective visors were grafted into their heads, leaving just enough flesh exposed that they could be recognized by someone who knew them. Their arms had been replaced with weapons below the elbow and reinforced above it to better carry their weight, a heavy Wispon and military grade chainsaw respectively. Their legs looked like scaled down Super Badnik limbs. Their broaches were all glowing in their respective colors, with the silhouettes of wires barely visible. This was much worse than what they had been expecting.
One of the 'Vanguard' gave a command as they leveled their Wispons at the heroes, "GIVE PASSPHRASE IN THIRTY SECONDS OR BE DESTROYED."
Cosmo fell to her knees as tears streamed down her face, her eyes locked on the Vanguard that had spoken, "Apollo!"
"Damnit!" Tails exclaimed. He had to abort his hack to help his friends, which meant losing all of the data saved to the cylinder computers, "Cover me!"
Tails flew up to the elevated console in the center of the room; the place where Eggman always had his center of operations. The computers connected to the cylinders gave direct access to their operations, but the command console was the only place in the lab where they were going to be able to shutdown security. They could simply destroy everything, but only the five of them against the Vanguard, the Replicas, and anything that got away from Team Dark and circled back to the lab promised a quick death.
"PRIORTY-ONE ENEMY BIOMETRICS DETECTED AT COMMAND CENTER; ELEMINATING," A Vanguard declared as it leveled its Wispon at Tails.
Amy was quick to charge and swing with her hammer, barely knocking it off its feet. She looked back at Cosmo who was still a mess, "Sticks; keep Cosmo safe."
"Way ahead of yah!" The Badger called back.
Sticks slung Cosmo over one should and started weaving between the cylinders. Even if Eggman's robots were willing to damage lab equipment, the reinforced glass would still provide cover. Cheese flew above the Vanguard Amy had attacked and elbow dropped it, forcing it back on its stomach as it tried to stand back up. Cream, who had been revving for a Spindash, crashed into the Vanguard's side. Its body didn't break apart like Eggman's lesser robots, but Amy and Cream had done enough to break this specific Vanguard.
Amy and Cream split up to cover more ground. Amy started sweeping the legs and then attacking the Wispon arms. Cheese full body tackled the Wispon arms to leave them open for Cream to break them with Homing Attacks. The moving parts of a machine had to be more vulnerable than the rest of the construct by necessity, and the Vanguard were too bulky to get in melee range of Tails. There was also the hopelessly slim chance that they could save roboticized Seedrians, so the heroes silently resolved to only destroy them completely when absolutely necessary. Tails was doing an admirable job ducking and leaning to dodge laser fire, barely having to glance around to check his surroundings.
Meanwhile, Sticks had prevented Cosmo from hyperventilating, "Are you okay?"
"No, and I won't be for a while," Cosmo admitted, "But I can fight."
The Seedrian then pointed to the back of the room where the Replicas were, "Divide and conquer."
"I like the way you think," Sticks said with a grin.
The young women rushed to the androids and started breaking things. Sticks could pick off two at a time, as her twin boomerangs cleaved through their bodies. Cosmo did a baseball slide into the closest Replica and kipped up to perform a suplex, slamming its head into the floor with enough force to break its neck. Cosmo grabbed the limbs from the Replicas Sticks broke and started using them as improvised weapons. Sticks had made her way to the other end of the Replica assembly and started dancing through them with her boomerangs.
"PASSPHRASE VERIFICATION FAILURE; DESTROYING INTRUDERS," Apollo announced.
As Amy tried tripping another Vanguard, it raised its leg and stomped on the head of the Piko-Piko Hammer. Amy had to jump back to avoid getting slashed and had to fall prone to dodge the laser from its other arm. Amy looked back to see how effective the Vanguard's own weapons were against them but was dismayed to find that their broaches produced an opaque energy shield to block laser fire. It was only up for a moment, but that was all you needed when dealing with supersonic speeds.
Hearing a Vanguard stomp towards her and rev its saw from behind, Amy pulled one of her spare hammers out of digital storage and swung with a full three-sixty spin. She knocked the war-saw away from her and into another approaching Vanguard. The saw bounced off the Vanguard but left notable damage. More importantly, the deflected saw didn't trigger the energy shield despite being mere inches below the broach.
"Wispon fire doesn't work, but they can cut each other!" Amy yelled out. She hadn't figured out how to best use that information to their best advantage, but that didn't mean someone else couldn't think of something.
Amy leapt into a Homing Attack at the Vanguard she had just parried. Her body slammed into the Vanguard's chest, knocking it off balance. Amy used the momentum from the Homing Attack to swing her hammer with extra force, snapping the head of the hammer off the handle but forcing the roboticized Seedrian prone. Amy then used the broken handle of her spare hammer as a spear to stab another Vanguard at her flank in the neck, instantly neutralizing it. She wasn't sure if the lack of bodily fluids made it better or worse for her.
Hearing the Vanguard that had caught her Piko-Piko Hammer approaching her, Amy did a backflip off the victim beneath her and landed next to her real hammer. Amy happily rearmed herself and hit the Vanguard as it turned to face her. The hammer slammed into the broach, shattering it. The Vanguard's chest exploded in the same instant. Amy kept her grip on her hammer, but the force of the blast sent her spinning. Amy did several rotations, displaying impressive balance and spatial awareness as she stepped over debris, and finally came to a stop as the Piko-Piko Hammer collided with a Vanguard. Looking at her signature hammer, Amy saw that the side of the head that broke the broach had cracks spider webbing through it.
In the heat of the battle, the ladies forgot to cover Tails. The Vanguard had given up on trying to shoot the boy-genius and knowing scaling the sheer metal spire he was on top of was impossible, the roboticized Seedrians started using their saws to topple the command console. While the trio of Vanguard had electrocuted themselves in their efforts, they did succeed in making the console fell. The flying Fox used his capabilities to direct the console to fall on top of as Vanguard as possible before abandoning it.
"We've got in-coming from behind!" Tails announced as he tossed a Dummy Ring into an Egg Pawn that had stepped through the Hard Light Barrier.
Cheese hovering around Cream seemed to confuse the Vanguard's targeting systems and left them helpless against the young Rabbit and her pet. However, Cheese was visibly tired, and Cream was having to work harder and harder to compensate. Amy was fine on her own and didn't have another person to look after, so Tails decided to back Cream up.
Tails did a set of small, but impressive, aerial maneuvers to dodge enemy fire and positioned himself above one of the Vanguard in Cheese was whittling away at, "Take a break, little buddy!" Tails called out to the Chao, subconsciously quoting his big brother.
Tails did a Stomp Attack and connected with the top of the Vanguard's head, finishing it off. Tails performed a backflip off of the broken servitor and revved a Spindash mid jump; a technique he and Sonic had invented and perfected before leaving for the Starfall Islands and crashed into the Vanguard dueling with Cream. Tails' ears twitched as he heard Cheese thanking him with a cheerful 'Chao,' before nestling in between Cream's ears.
"I managed to keep the system from activating more of them, but we have to destroy the ones currently online," Tails yelled out to everyone, "Hold nothing back!"
Back-to-back with each other, Cream and Tails looked around at all of the broken pieces of machinery and had the same idea, "Double Thunder Shoot?" They asked each other at the same time.
"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Cream said with a grin before the two fliers separated.
Energy shields completely blocked energy projectiles, but merely blunted physical projectiles. That said, Cream and Tails had to target down single Vanguard with entire debris barrages to overcome their sheer bulk. The fliers also had to limit their movement in the air to stay accurate, leaving them open to return fire. The Thunder Shoot strategy was quickly abandoned.
Returning to the floor, Tails was set upon by a Vanguard with a milky white broach. The Fox almost effortlessly dodged the wild swings of the poor Seedrian's war-saw but was blindsided as it jabbed him with its Wispon and fired. The blast sent Tails flying. While the Wispon's barrel was damaged, the lab was barely large enough for the drop in effective range to matter. Another Vanguard stomped on Tails' chest and pinned him to the floor. Tails managed to catch the Vanguard's saw with his hands as it tried cutting his head off but could hear the other one approaching.
"Help!" Tails yelled out over the 'Ring Leak' warning of his PSG.
A boomerang clashed against the Vanguard's helmet. It looked up to assess the origin of the attack, only to have Sticks leap at it. The Badger managed to force the roboticized Seedrian off Tails as she whaled on it with her boomerangs. Cosmo rushed in to block the war-saw of the Vanguard with the white broach, using the severed saw of another Vanguard as a shield. The quick thinking Seedrian raked her saw like she was filing nails to keep it from being cut all the way through. Cosmo's saw was damaged beyond repair, but all the teeth of the Vanguard's saw were broken in the process.
Cosmo pushed the Vanguard back with her saw and used it as a bludgeon, snapping the saw in half. The Vanguard fell to the floor and Cosmo used its vulnerability to jam her broken piece of metal into the barrel of its Wispon. Either not realizing it had been disarmed, not caring, or trying to self-destruct with Cosmo nearly on top of it, the Vanguard fired it Wispon. Cosmo tumbled backwards to dodge most of the explosion while the Vanguard was ruined. It was still functioning, but it was rendered helpless.
The Vanguard were proving more difficult than the rest of Eggman's robots. There were precious few places where they were weak, and they only exposed those weak points for a short time. As Tails had inadvertently shown, a single mistake meant trouble. If any two of the heroes slipped up at the same time, it would mean death. Prower Company had a very brief rest between Dreadnaught Plateau and Eggman's prison camp. Sticks was a new hero and Cream didn't have as much experience as she tried living a normal life in times of peace. Everyone was getting tired and it was starting to become a hinderance.
Fortunately, a voice familiar to the veteran heroes rang out, "INFERIOR CONSTRUCTS: PREPARE FOR PERMANENT SHUT DOWN."
Tails swept Cosmo's legs and used himself as a cushion as she fell on her back. A relentless hail of bullets rained overhead, accompanied by gatling gun fire. The standing Vanguard's energy shields betrayed them, as they only superheated the metal bullets and made them that much more effective. The gunfire ended seconds later, and the active Vanguards had been utterly destroyed in that short amount of time; all save for Cosmo's brother.
"Heaven and Hell!" Sticks yelled out.
Cosmo needed a moment to find the Badger, trace her gaze, and was shocked. A massive robot, easily two or three heads taller than any person, stood on the inside of the Hard Light Wall. Cosmo and Sticks watched as a dozen gun barrels retracted into the machine's arms, only for clawed hands that gave Marrow a run for his money came out. Its upper body looked like a gigantic spinning top. Its broad shoulders had upside down horseshoes emblazoned on them and stook out diagonally upwards, a requirement to keep its body-length arms from dragging along the floor. Its 'waste' had piping circling it like a belt with a heavy armored skirt protecting its thighs and knees. Its head was oddly under designed, appearing to be a simple gilded box with bright red eyes shining from within. Thankfully the construct was painted with GUN officer uniform colors; forest-green and platinum. However, it was still disconcerting to have what was obviously a dedicated war machine appear out of nowhere when they were already fighting robots.
"TEAM JUBILEE AND PROWER COMPANY: WHAT IS YOUR STATUS?" The machine asked.
Tails got out from under Cosmo and stood up, "I don't think any of us are injured. Oh, and E-One-Twenty-Three, thanks for the save."
"YOUR APPRECIATION IS NOTED, MUTANT GENIUS," The robot replied, "CAN YOU DISABLE THE HARD LIGHT CAGE?"
"So long as the emitters are on this side of the Cage," Tails answered as he made his way to the doorway, "Can you tear down the wall on either side here?"
"Wait! Why was this thing able to get past the Wall!?" Sticks demanded, "How do we know it's not one of Eggman's?"
"STAND DOWN ARMS, FESTERING RODENT," The machine ordered, "I HAVE A BUILT-IN CONNECTION TO THE EGGNET THAT ALLOWS TO BYPASS ITS PHYSICAL SECURITY PROTOCALLS."
"So, you are an Eggman robot!" Sticks yelled with an accusatory finger pointed at it.
"YES, AND WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON THE DOCTOR, I SHALL MAKE HIM BEG FOR DEATH AND DENY HIS REQUEST," The robot stated as it used its claws to shred the walls and expose the wiring.
"Sticks, it's really okay," Cream said as she interposed herself between her and the robot, "Omega is on our side, and he's a good friend."
Omega saw Cosmo drop to her knees. He was about to offer aid, when he saw what she was kneeling at, "ALERT: ACTIVE ENEMY COMBATANT DETECTED."
"Wait," Cosmo yelled, as Omega spun up his guns, "We can still save him!"
"NEGATIVE," Omega replied, "ALL EGGMAN CONSTRUCTS MADE SINCE NEO-METAL'S COUP ARE BUILT WITH SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCES. THE BOMB IN ITS CPU WILL DETONATE IF THE WIRELESS COMMAND TO DO IS RECEIVED OR IF IT REMAINS DISCONNECTED FROM THE EGGNET FOR TOO LONG."
"What!" Cosmo shouted with despair, "Surely there's something Miles can do?"
The sound of Tails' tools stopped as his posture slumped, and he lowered his head. No one needed to see his face to know what the answer was.
"THE WIRELESS COMMANDS THAT CONTROL THE ROBOTICIZED FAIL IF THE SUBJECTS CAN EXPRESS EVEN A MODICUM OF THEIR OWN THOUGHT, REQUIRING EXTENSIVE NUERAL IMPLANTS AND REMOVING PARTS OF THE BRAIN" Omega summarized, "EVEN IF THE WIRELESS RECPTOR IS REMOVED AND FREEDOM OF WILL IS RESTORED, NO ASPECT OF THE SUBJECTS REMAIN ONCE ROBOTICIZATION IS COMPLETE."
Omega leveled his arms at Cosmo and her brother and drew his guns, "WHOEVER THIS WAS TO YOU IS DEAD IN EVERYWAY THAT MATTERS. STAND ASIDE OR EUTHANIZE THE SUBJECT YOURSELF."
Cosmo solemnly forced the broach off her brother's chest, requiring some effort as it had been wired into his chest, and started walking away. She stopped holding back tears as she heard Omega's guns spinning up. Cream and Stick were quick to embrace Cosmo. Amy would have joined in but would have to cross Omega's line of fire to do so. They had failed in their mission, but Cosmo felt something in heart through the pain of loss. She had never felt it before, she knew the name of this terrible emotion that burned like the sun: hate. Cosmo hated Eggman and would do whatever it took to make sure he never did this to anyone else.
AUTHOR'S NOTES-
Things got pretty bad very quickly. It is a small comfort, but there were plenty of Seedrians who hadn't been turned. And they can probably restore free will to the unactivated Vanguards, they can't self-destruct if they haven't been turned on. They also captured a massive Eggman base. This chapter had multiple shifts in perspective, but I didn't use the Horizontal Rule because it was all in the same scene. I felt it would be unnecessary, even counterproductive or confusing, given that every instance of the Horizontal Rule had also denoted a different scene in the story up until now.
I think I did a good job of giving everyone time in the limelight, everyone except Cream. I do feel kind of bad about that, but I also felt that writing like that is important to the narrative. She has only been mentioned in recent Sonic games, so that tells me that everyone's favorite Rabbit isn't as dedicated to adventuring as the rest of the cast. Sure, she'll do what she needs to, but it isn't something she loves or even enjoys. Cream only seems to go on these adventures when someone in her family or the whole world is in danger. Makes you wonder if something has happened to Vanilla and/or Chocola in between Sonic Frontiers and now, maybe I'll explain why Team Jubilee is doing raids on Eggman bases with GUN instead of going on that road trip later in the story. ;)
I know I've said it earlier, but I felt that making Lucas a bad guy in any way would be lazy. However, I still needed a reason for Cosmo to a reason to go adventuring with Tails and Nicole. There's also a massive age gap between Cosmo and Galaxina in Sonic X. I don't know how long Seedrians live for in the anime, but Galaxina was an adult when Cosmo was born. I know I made both Tails and Cosmo much older than what they were in Sonic X, but a having a middle sibling in between Cosmo and Galaxina also gave me a solution to the narrative problem of why she would choose to go after Eggman instead of returning to the Oak Clan. Her people are still recovering, there are the people that have been saved from Eggman's stasis pods who haven't even started recovering, and then there's the issue of trying to integrate mind-wiped cyborgs into a society that's borderline technophobic. The fact they were once people that have friends and families waiting for them only gives Cosmo more reason to stay behind. Having someone important to her get roboticized gives Cosmo plenty of reason to go after Eggman herself, and it emphasizes how dire this is for the Seedrian race as a whole. She had to tear her own brother apart and then stand aside as he was gunned down. Not only does she know what it's like to have someone she loves be turned into a monster, Cosmo also blames herself for this happening to Apollo, given that she blames herself for so much of the Oak Clan being moved to Rail Canyon. It's not just revenge for Cosmo, it's getting as close as she can get to fixing, what she sees as, her mistake. I find it interesting that Cosmo and her sister were named after space. Even before the Female Seedrians' flight from Green Gate, Galaxina was named after their galaxy. So naming Apollo after a Sun God made since in my mind, given that the sun is effectively what makes life possible on Mobius.