Chapter 16
After flying for about 20 minutes, our group had finally arrived at the location of Hang Castle, where Tikal gawked at the splendor of it, but also her sensing even further with her aura powers from the white emerald.
"This place is filled with the souls of the ones who lived her previously... almost 6 thousand years prior. The ones killed by my tribe," Tikal said with concern.
"Yeah, them Echidna men were pretty rude, but they let my ancestors be when they saw we were tough," Sticks spoke from my cleavage.
With our large group, we managed to get through the entirety of Hang Castle while defeating all the different blue robots powered by Chao... while also discovering by accident that, if one person hit the strange switch, all of us got flipped upside-down! And there was only the one that we saw, it being the one that appeared second. And I started to freak out when I saw the giant moon underneath me.
"O-O-Okay, this is freaking me out! We need to find another one of those switches or we'll be falling into space with the slightest misstep!" I said with concern, still as afraid of heights as Blaze the Cat was.
"Really? Those weird switches? Simple fix," Sticks said, me wondering what she meant... before she then simply chanted a spell in some ancient dialect before all of us then returned to normal as we found the entrance to Mystic Mansion! And roughly half of us fell onto our faces and asses when the gravity shifted, me included.
"Th-thanks, Sticks... ow... that hurt," I groaned, me feeling like I got a scrape on my nose.
"You're welcome. Now I need a reward," Sticks smirked, me groaning at that.
"Let me guess. You want to do stuff in there, huh?" I asked, hoping to censor myself with the fact that Cream and Charmy were with us.
"What kind of stuff?' Cream asked. I braced for impact from the blunt badger...
"Sex stuff, duh!" Sticks said, me smacking my face in annoyance before then seeing Cream and Charmy giggle at how she said that.
"You do realize that there are 6-year-old children with us, right?" I asked, Sticks giving me a raspberry afterwards, still in my bra. "That's it, get out of there," I frowned, picking her out of my bra and then handing her to Tikal instead, which Sticks simply turned back to normal size to prevent it from happening.
"Ey, I'm a person, not a doll!" Sticks groaned as we entered the mansion proper to see... a whole slew of ghosts that were dancing with each other.
"O-Oh my... t-this is really creepy..." Cream said with far as she held onto Cheese like he was a safety blanket.
"Don't worry," Shadow said as he held his hand out to the ghost gathering and then nodded. "I sense no evil intent or hostility in these spirits. Maybe we can ask them for assistance," he said, that making Vector's big grin show.
"Great! Let's do it," he smiled widely and at a louder volume. And it managed to get the ghosts' attention to us instead of their dancing.
"Nice one, Vector," Charmy smirked, me smiling at the innocence of the bee child and how he was much less annoying and funnier.
"Shut it, Charmy," Mighty frowned.
"Easy, boys, no fighting. Allow me to speak with them," I said as I then went forward and looked at the ghosts, who looked at our group in confusion. I noted that at least half of them were humans and the other half were Mobians. "Um, hi. Do any of you happen to know if there is a hedgehog-shaped robot in this mansion?" I asked, that making them gasp.
"Yes, we do know," said one of them, me recognizing it as a specific Echidna. Shade... so uh, yeah, Dark Chronicles wasn't happening, which I guess was a blessing. "He is in the deepest parts of this mansion, preparing tons of giant machines for something. We had to relocate here to the entrance to dance," Shade spoke, that making us nod.
"Do you think you could tell us how to get there? We need to stop him, because he plans to rule the world," Cosmo asked, that making another one of the people come forward, it being a human.
"Just go forward through this door and keep going along the path. Hit the cursed switches continually until you can get to the bottom. And please destroy the annoying robots on the way? They are much too loud and interrupt our dances constantly," he said, as I noted that he was dancing with another Echidna, her being redder in color.
"We can do that much. Thanks for the directions," Amy smiled as we then rushed forward through the entire level of Mystic Mansion, destroying all the robots and rescuing the 5 Chao in the process as well as finding the Chaos Emerald in the room with the giant skeleton, it being the purple emerald. And then, the area we needed to get to happened to be the big triple-altar area at the end of Sonic and Shadow's level, which was not like it was in the games. It was a hangar, one that had all the different ships inside of it!
"Damn, these ships are... massive..." Maria gawked before then looking at the one ship that was underneath all the others. "Oh... my god... that ship down there... it's got to be miles long! How is he going to get these out of here?!" Maria asked, me then hearing a voice.
"Oh, that is very simple," said the voice of Metal Sonic as he appeared from the bottom of the hangars and flew up to us. "With the data I have collected from all of you, I am able to use the Chaos Control. All I do is execute it and all of these ships will be in the air. And then, you can only watch from afar as I conquer the world!... And then, I will finally use my new power to destroy you, my loathesome copy!" Metal Sonic said angrily as he pointed his scarily sharp talons at Sonic, him looking at him in annoyance.
"GIVE BACK FROGGY!" Big shouted at him as he then tossed his fishing hook at Metal Sonic, me gawking as the lure turned into a trio of suction cups and he managed to latch onto him!
"Not yet!" Metal Sonic shouted before then slashing the fishing line that Big used on him! "I have almost finished, but I will not free them until then! But I believe our time is up," he said as I tried to focus. He was definitely going to use a Chaos Control, so I had to beat him to the punch.
"Chaos-" he was about to say before I said it first, but quicker.
"CHAOSCONTROL!" I shouted as I executed it before him, stopping time completely so he couldn't do anything. I then grabbed all of my friends and sent us down to one of the ships underneath us with my wind emerald powers. And by the time the time had resumed, Metal Sonic finished.
"-CONTROL!" he finished, us then gawking at how not only all of the ships were sent out of the hangar and we gawked at how we were sent to a very high vantage point in the sky! And Metal Sonic didn't notice! And we were on the start of the level of Egg Fleet!
"Whoa! What happened?!" Sticks asked before she looked off the edge and then, shortly after, she latched onto me with her claws digging into my skin and her fur standing up all over her body. "EEP! T-TOO HIGH! P-Protect me, weirdos!" Sticks said with concern, me feeling the pain, but standing strong.
"I'll allow you to stay in my bra, so long as you retract the painful claws!" I said in annoyance, Sticks then shrinking as I put her in my bra and sighed at how she was still shivering in fear.
"And I thought you had a fear of heights," Tails said, me nodding at that.
"Don't remind me, Miles," I said, him smirking at that. "Now, if we're done talking, let's go find out how to get to that ginormous ship in the distance... because I can sense that the miles-long ship in question is the one that has not only Metal Sonic, but is Eggman's prison and the holding area for the Shadow clones," I said, the group nodding as Vector then got a call on his radio.
"Your final mission is this. I have been captive, and am being held captive on one of the rooms on the flagship! You must defeat Eggman and find me!" the client said, me looking at Vector and him then speaking to the client.
"You got it," Vector said before the radio then turned off. "He better have the money up front, or we're gonna have fun giving him some punishment for foolin' us," Vector said as he cracked his knuckles.
"Agreed," Espio said.
"And I still want Eggman's secret treasure!" Rouge said with seriousness.
"Chocola, Froggy, Chao!" Cheese said, me nodding at that.
"We'll make sure all those things happen. Now, time to get going," I smiled at them. We rushed through the fleet, me needing to save myself from falling with the green emerald numerous times to prevent myself and Sticks from falling down for ages, and, of course, I still sucked at trying to ride the rails. And most of the others in my group were similar. And all the others were able to do that perfectly... except for Mighty. He had to resort to using the conjoiner ring to hang off the rails, which I saw was connected to the gold chain on Vector's neck.
"Well, at least we share one thing in common, mister Armadillo. We don't know how to ride rails," I said with a small bit of confidence.
"Yeah, I guess so," Mighty smirked... before I then noticed that he had something inside of his glove. Something... lumpy. And, of course, my compass was looking at it with intrigue.
"You've got the final Chaos Emerald in your glove, don't you? Can I have it?" I asked, that making the armadillo give me a glare.
"And why should I give it to a stranger like you?" he asked, me frowning at that.
"Point taken. Let's just say that those special gems have helped us out in the past and they may be the only thing to defeat Metal Sonic with. We're going to need to use their power to turn Super. He's copying all of our data, so he'll know our most powerful moves in BASE form. In Super form is the only way that I'm sure he could be stopped," I said, that making Rouge smirk.
"That's actually a very smart idea! And maybe we can finally see what this water dame can do in Super form," Rouge smiled widely at Chaos.
"That's what I plan on doing. But I'll need to get my powers back first. That metal-laden ba... bag of bolts stole them," Chaos said, censoring herself, as she was right next to Cheese, Charmy, and Cream.
"I knew what you were going to say, but as I said, I'd get in big trouble if momma found out," Cream smiled.
"She raised you well, Cream. That's all I have to say about that," I smirked as Mighty finally gave me the emerald and I simply gave it to Chaos, who now was in a different form, it being what would be her Chaos 3 form, as she had 3 Chaos Emeralds in her and I had 4 and a tiny Sticks in my bra. And it looked a lot like a normal fish, but with arms and legs. So, think a blue, see-through version of Darwin Watterson from Gumball.
"Your form changes with every emerald you get, huh? That's kinda cool!" Charmy smiled at her. We'd managed to get through all the robots in our way and defeating the blue robots in our path and saving the Chao. And what were they in? Every E-2000 model on the fleet's ships! And they were the tougher ones, mainly because the shields they had completely coated them in a shield similar to the ones that I made with the yellow emeralds' electricity powers! Meaning that, if you did attack, you'd get shocked and that the only attacks that'd work were water-based ones from Chaos and me! And luckily, as we thought, water was a big weakness to the E series, as Omega said earlier.
"Okay, after destroying this ship, we should be close enough to the flagship... how does it even stay afloat with how massive it is?!" Knuckles asked in shock.
"I'd say it's using some form of anti-gravity technology. One of the first accomplishments of the ARK and my grandfather, so it'd be no surprise that Ivo and even his creation in Metal Sonic would know about it," Maria stated, that making the Team Chaotix look at her in confusion.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, what?! Hold up! You're tellin' me that you're Maria Robotnik? As in, one of the ones that was presumably killed on the ARK attack 50 years ago? How are you alive? We've been wantin' to close that case for ages!" Vector said with seriousness.
"Um... it was mainly thanks to a former GUN agent named Ruby. She meant to shoot at Shadow, but shot at me instead... she then used one of the machines in the facility to rescue me, by downloading my conscious mind into a computer chip. And using that, she and GUN built me a new robotic body to look exactly like I would look like as an adult... but because of my history with them and how they killed my grandfather and kidnapped Shadow, Ruby got me into the witness protection program so that I would be untied from GUN and the ARK forever... I was finally able to get a life on the planet I could never go to when I had my incurable disease," Maria explained, that making them gawk... but it was also at this time that I sensed that there was a bit of resistance going on inside of Metal Sonic... almost as if Froggy and Chocola were... trying to break free?
"Talking time's over. We need to get going now, because I sense that Froggy and Chocola are trying to fight Metal Sonic from inside him! We need to save them before they get hurt!" I said, that immediately making all of us get going towards the final area of the game. The Final Fortress. And just from looking at it, the place was roughly 10 miles long and was at the least three miles wide at the widest parts!
"How much space does this thing require?! Whatever Metal Sonic has in this thing, he must be planning to do something incredibly nasty!" Cosmo said with concern.
"All the more reason to stop him! Let's take it down!" Knuckles shouted with vigor. We had to defeat the metal menace, rescue our little friends and Eggman, and destroy the Shadow androids before anything could be done!