Even though the alarms were already going off, Sonic still found it surprising when the ceiling started to fall as he ran. That wasn't one of the traps he had encountered thus far.
"Guess they found out I escaped…" he said aloud to himself. "Oh well! It's time to kiss this snooze-fest goodbye!"
He could see an exit at the end of the hallway. The stars beyond it called to him, and he rushed to greet them. However, they were suddenly ripped from his sight as he tripped and fell into a small hole in the ground that opened up before him. A careless mistake, though he knew it was from exhaustion rather than recklessness. Everything was starting to blur, the sights and sounds and feelings merging into one giant stressor. I'm so close… but so far, all the same.
Some floating white spots caught his attention. He was half-certain that he was hallucinating, especially once they coalesced into figures he recognized. There were three of them, all with pale, spherical bodies concentric with singular eyes. Each one had two antennae and three tentacles.
Sonic was still too dazed to formulate words, but the White Wisps didn't need them (and it's not like he had Tails's translator to be able to speak with them anyway). They dove into his body, creating a warm feeling that almost glowed through his skin. Hallucination or not, the energy felt real, and that's all he really cared about. He clambered up out of the hole he was in, the ceiling raising up from the floor, and broke out his Boost as he shot past it and out of the base.
He jumped out onto a rail, then realized exactly where he was when a large, blue sphere emerged from behind the constructed background he had just departed. "Woah… we're off-planet!" he exclaimed, his voice a muffle in the low atmosphere. "I guess anyone who crosses Eggman gets a one-way ticket to space. There's no way I'm sticking around here!"
A swarm of Buzzbombers, presumably the same ones from earlier, rushed past him to block his path as the rail curved around to the side of the space station. Their bolt brains never learned, and he just Homing Attacked across to a series of connected steel-gray platforms leading back inside. Without much of anywhere else to go to, he followed it, using his speed to climb up the sides of the platforms instead of jumping. He was serious about not dawdling.
Back inside, more crusher ceilings tried to impound him in a series of tight hallways. This time, energy blasters joined the mix, shooting triads of blue spheres that he had to jump around while navigating a vertical chamber.
Sonic couldn't imagine that these are anything other than death traps designed specifically for him. Eggman knows he doesn't do well in tight places. It was flattering, really. He would have to pay back the mad scientist for putting him in this jam later. How am I going to do that? Never really thought about what I would do after I got out of here…
He exited back out on another rail, this one curving a bit wider around the outside of the spherical satellite and meeting up with two others. In fact, it wasn't any old station, as he could now plainly see from the oversized face and even more oversized nose and moustache looming over him. "So he had me locked up on the Death Egg, huh? This big ball of scrap just won't stay destroyed."
The thought was dropped as more robots came out to stop him. These ones were blue and Egg Pawn-shaped, with a notable lack of legs that were made redundant by jetpacks on the bots' backs. They were easily identifiable by the large shoulder-mounted mirror-like guns as Egg Chasers.
Sonic liked Egg Chasers. They were predictable. Those lasers took a moment to charge, and it was plenty of time for him to get out of the way. Even as exhausted as he was, it was child's play to hop back and forth between the rails and dodge the flashy rays of destruction. "I'll be outta here in no time. Just wait and see, Egg- whoa!"
In his moment of cockiness, all three Egg Chasers charged up and fired at once. The hedgehog reacted just in time, ungracefully chucking himself off of the rails into a freefall. He was quite thankful that another set was below him, though the Egg Chasers lived up to their names and quickly aligned at his head once again. Not wanting to take his chances again, Sonic jumped onto the leftmost rail and took its exit back into the Death Egg.
Although the area was unusually dark, Sonic kept on running. He could barely make out the ledges he was hopping over and the corner that he just barely made the turn for, and when he saw light below him, he took a gamble and hopped the rail to go meet it.
He landed in an odd, vertical chamber with a line of red casings going down the middle of it. Something about the setup seemed familiar to him somehow, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what. He could only guess that it was some kind of red energy tank.
Dismissing the idea, he started clambering down the shaft while thinking about his next move. It's not like he could swim out into space. I know! I'll just grab a shuttle! he realized. The one I came in on must be around here somewhere. I could do with a little space cruise on my way home.
With a flip, he reached the floor at the bottom of the room. A small hallway led out of it, and Sonic had to stop himself from going full sprint because otherwise he would've gone straight through the door at the end into open space. His green eyes looked around for a place to go. There were some more rails below him, but he could also see the Egg Chasers circling the area above like hawks. There was little chance they wouldn't spot him the moment he stepped out somewhere. But he didn't really have any alternatives, so he took a deep breath and jumped out.
Catching the rail was pretty easy, and just as he expected, he could soon hear the faint roars of engines through the limited atmosphere. The Egg Chasers lined up in three rows again, which was a major problem when this rail was by itself. Linked shoulder-to-shoulder in front of him, now accompanied by an identical set behind, they were primed to kill like a firing squad. A half-dozen in total.
"…and eggs come in dozens, so this is clearly another half-baked scheme, haha!" he spun out loud. I'm glad no one was around to hear that. Even I have to admit it was pretty bad. I guess Eggman's finally improved his AI a little, though.
Sonic was feeling pretty good right now, but he knew he couldn't tank a laser to the face when the reality was that he was running on White Wisp fumes… if even that. Keeping an eye on the approaching guards, he looked around for an escape route. The Death Egg was nothing if not daunting, as any enormous, heavy-armed fortress in space ought to be. It didn't faze the Blue Blur anymore due to that "getting destroyed repeatedly by him" part, but that didn't make it easy to get around by any means. Something else caught his eye then, something that looked to have disembarked along with the Egg Chasers. He knew what his plan was going to be.
At that moment, a squadron of orange spaceships flew past in a V formation, like they were jets. They looked like jets, too, with a central cockpit and wings with turbines on them. Tails would be proud of him for knowing that. I'll be home soon, little buddy.
The speedster quickly jumped and Homing Attacked onto the back of one of them. Concentrating on his Boost energy, he channeled it into the spaceship, altering its momentum to make it start turning to the left. It was a technique he had learned by mistake back on Planet Wisp, when he got impatient on an elevator platform and wanted it to go faster. It actually did, much to his surprise, and he had since practiced the action a little to try and gain finer control.
As if those large eyes were watching, the Death Egg responded immediately. The ships pulled a 270° by turning around and dropping straight down. Sonic had to leap and dig his fingers into a gap above the windshield to prevent himself from being flung into free-float. The surface of the gray sphere was above him now, and a multitude of automatic turrets came out and began visibly charging energy. Thinking quickly, he kicked to push himself off and targeted one of the wings of another craft for a Homing Attack. A cyan glow came from the spaceship he had just left as it got completely vaporized by the energy shots.
"Man, they're packing a lot of firepower. Still, it doesn't matter if they can't land their shots!" he thought aloud as he fastened his grip on the wing.
The ships swung around in a large loop, and when they righted themselves, they were headed straight towards the Death Egg, which was being lit up around them like holiday lights from the turrets. Seeing the display almost took Sonic's perception away from a rectangular recess in the Death Egg's carapace. It had to be a hangar for spacecraft. He could find his shuttle there.
"Here goes nothing!" he called out, mostly to boost his own confidence. Now that he was standing upright again, he was able to take a running start to jump between the squad members. It was like galactic hopscotch, except each time he stepped off a square, it was spectacularly blown up by its own home base.
However, even his speed wasn't able to match the correction of the turrets' fire. Each jump was a narrower and narrower window, and he was quickly running out of ships to joyride on. Too close to give up now! I've got to get it just right. Here we… Go!
The hedgehog jumped just as his platform was destroyed, and the momentum propelled him right towards his target. He failed around in midair a bit, but as the gravity normalized itself, he was able to turn himself upright and enter a dive into the bay.
Ledge forced himself to avert the gaze of the civilians in the shuttle behind him. The cardinal needed to keep up his suave appearance, for his own confidence as much as theirs. The truth was, he was scared to all heck and back, and he didn't want to anyone to see the faltering look in his eyes.
Knuckles' order of Sonic-at-all-costs didn't last very long once they pulled red alert. Rouge was able to confirm that Sonic somehow escaped of his own initiative after the gates were opened, which was totally in-character for him. But that meant he needed to arrive at the shuttle bay of his own initiative, too, because they had no way of knowing where he was. In the meantime, they had gathered all of the prisoners they could and safely escorted them to the bay themselves. And they couldn't just leave everyone here, so most of them loaded into shuttles and escaped while they could. Things really hadn't gone well for the rest of the gang, so Ledge stepped up and stayed behind with some brave volunteers to defend one last ship until their hero arrived.
No robots had launched an attack on them yet. Sonic was probably Eggman's highest priority just as he was the Resistance's. Unfortunately, that good luck was not to last. Out of nowhere, a green figure dropped from the ceiling on a metal line and swung right into Ledge's chest. Winded, he fell back onto the ground, only barely keeping his grip on his flamethrower.
Looking up at his assailant, he saw a canine-like figure. It was hard to identify much about it, because it was wearing a gray helmet over its entire head, revealing only two very angry green eyes. Olive-green light body armor gave it protection over a black bodysuit, with gloves and boots of a similar color. However, the most important part of its gear was the large, lime-green gun that it was pointing at his chest. The barrel seemed to be a sphere, with three antenna-like things coming out of the bottom like tripod legs. The agent was holding the sphere by a large handle with a trigger.
"Your Wispon or your life," it demanded bluntly. The voice was muffled by the helmet and didn't sound particularly high or low. Ledge's guess from it and the general body shape of his attacker was that it was a woman. But he also had other thoughts on his mind.
Wispon? Is that what this is called? How does she know that? That… couldn't possibly be one in her hand, could it? Is she working for Eggman? Did he actually keep a copy of his prototypes?
"Five seconds before you become space debris," she snarled.
"W-well, but, you haven't even seen the demo yet!" he tried to retort, bringing up the Wispon and letting loose a stream of fire to compensate for his admittedly not-so-spicy words.
The canine didn't even flinch, and Ledge's smirk was almost literally blown off of his face as a powerful gust of wind was shot out of her own weapon. His flames dissipated instantly as they were cut off from their oxygen source, and the red firearm was knocked out of his hand due to the force and surprise of the blast.
Before she could finish her job, the enemy Mobian became alert at something and quickly sidestepped to avoid a blue blur that just about ran her over. The red bird sat there in shock as Sonic the Hedgehog stood between his green foe and himself. Without further hesitation, the spiny hero spun up into an airborne ball and slammed right into her, simultaneously performing an upward kick that disarmed her as she flew back.
Although she landed hard, she quickly rolled backwards and onto her feet again, swooping up her Wispon shortly afterward. However, she didn't attack, clearly in thought and probably weighing her options.
"… you got lucky this time, bird-brain. But the Alpha will be back." She shot her hook up to the ceiling and quickly disappeared without a trace into the vast mechanical structures of the Death Egg.
After a moment, Sonic spun around and offered his hand out to Ledge. "Easy there! Everything's cool."
"I-I… thank you, Mr. the Hedgehog," the bird responded, accepting the offer, the two jointly hauling him to his feet. Ledge could feel himself putting in most of the work, though, and he didn't need two guesses as to why.
Sonic merely chuckled, before flashing his signature one-sided grin and thumbs up. "No need for formalities, just call me Sonic! Besides, you're the one here to rescue me! I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. It's been a while since I've seen a friendly face."
Behind them, the volunteers on the ship began cheering loudly, and both Mobians realized they ought to get going. Ledge grabbed his Wispon and ushered Sonic onto the shuttle, quickly making sure no one else was around before entering. He announced that they would be taking helm in the cockpit and please not to disturb them, before closing the door and starting the launch sequence Tails taught him.
After he and Sonic had gotten seated, the inventor was about to initiate a call to the others when one of them beat him to it. The voice on the other end was quickly identified as Knuckles.
"Hey, rookie, you still in one piece?"
"Don't you want to know how Sonic is?"
"SONIC!" another voice cut in over him. "I'M SO GLAD!"
"Hold up, Amy. We're all happy Sonic is alive! But he won't be for long unless he gets off that egg in a hurry."
Ledge looked over at the blue hedgehog who was supposed to be his co-pilot. The key word was supposed to, because he was out cold in his seat. Now that the bird had time to get a closer look, he could see the full extent of the damage Eggman had dealt to the world's savior. His body was brusied and cut all over, disfigured splotches of black and blue (a sicklier shade than normal, that is) here and there, and while Ledge figured he was probably pretty lean, right now his figure was downright emaciated.
They could worry about that once they were on solid ground again, though.
"No need for concern, Commander Knuckles," Ledge replied. "Our hero is resting easy."