Arc struggled to maintain a swift pace in the undergrowth of the rainforest. She was a city girl, through and through; as much as she enjoyed the descriptor of urban jungle for the endless expanse of Empire City, she couldn't see the comparison now that she was experiencing a natural jungle for herself. Cities didn't have overgrown roots and big-leafed foliage and consistently uneven terrain to mess up your walking, and buildings didn't have sporadic messes of branches and leaves to make climbing and jumping just as hard. The sidewalks weren't mushy and encumbering, and the streets were carefully planned to avoid being labyrinthine.

When she romped around her awesome city, all she had to concern herself with was her skill. How far she could jump, how high she could climb walls, how fast she could go. Those were the joys of freerunning, not pulling out all of her tricks just to reach her end destination to begin with.

It delighted her for the route on her communicator to take her to some ruins built into a hillside. She was stunned at how these old stones could glow, and much enjoyed that whoever built them picked bright colors to lighten the place up, literally. In a way, it reminded her of the way that the city was never truly dark at night thanks to all of the lights from streetlamps and rooms from houses and skyscrapers. Props to the ancient dudes for having that same sense of beauty.

She was taken aback by what she found on the other side of the town, though. A cave, illuminated by a similar sort of rock, took her through the hillside to the back of a raging waterfall that covered the other exit.

Arc: "There's a big waterfall here, you sure this is right?"

Knuckles: "Yes."

Arc: "And you expect me to go through it."

Knuckles: "Uhh… yeah. It forms some kind of water road that cuts through the jungle. I went and got Amy, she's better at this sort of thing."

Amy: "Yes, because apparently you thought it was a good idea to send our agents across the ocean without consulting me, when you don't even know how to run the mission."

Knuckles: "You can't deny how strange it is that we picked up those two readings! If it's not a Chaos Emerald, then what is it?"

Amy: "If it's an enemy, taking it on might be a big ask for Arc. If it's Infinite, it's practically suicide!"

Knuckles: "Look, it's too late to turn back now. Let's inspire our rookie to do her best rather than freak her out."

Arc: "Amy, it's NBD. We gotta do what we gotta do. Can't leave it up to chance, y'know?"

Amy: "… fine. Yes, your route takes you through the waterfall. It's an aqueduct system, which means it's elevated and will be faster going downstream than you could manage on foot."

Arc: "Cool. Guess all that's left to say is Geronimo!"

She took off at top speed, not letting the roaring, rushing cascade instill fear into her. Closing her eyes and holding her Wispon close, she launched in her strongest leap to dive through the waterfall. Despite her courage, physics had other plans, and her attempt quickly became a plunge as she was sucked down into some sort of strong horizontal pull with a less-than-pleasant hard ground beneath it.

Coughing and hacking, Arc tried to stabilize herself and regain her bearings. She was able to orient herself on her back with her feet downflow and wiped the water from her eyes to see where she had ended up. This "aqueduct" looked like an extended halfpipe one might use for snowboarding, or in this case surfing, due to the thick coating of water across the whole surface of the tube.

Amy: "Wow! That current is pretty strong! The satellite imagery didn't do it justice."

Arc: "This place is enough to make me dizzy."

Amy: "It might be better just to go with the flow."

Arc: "You're telling me. How's this communication device even still working after getting all wet like that?"

Knuckles: "It's the power of modern technology! And also Tails. He's been making waterproof stuff for years now, ever since I took a dive into an aquatic mine and accidentally lost touch."

Arc's enjoyment of the conversation was interrupted by several splashes. She looked around as much as she could, but she couldn't spot the sources until they nearly collided with her. She skittered to the side gracelessly to avoid several red chunks of stuff, and once she had control again, she saw that they were ladybug-shaped robots, with red shells and baby-blue faces that weren't ladybug-like at all. They were flipped onto their backs with singular wheels pointed up in the air.

Arc: "Guys, what are these things? They look like Eggman's work."

Knuckles: "Those are Moto Bugs! They're Eggman's, for sure, but they look destroyed. Do you think they were left behind from the last raid?"

Amy: "They're surprisingly… colorful, compared to what Eggman's been deploying in the war. Older models, maybe?"

Knuckles: "But what are they doing here? Maybe Tails can uncover some more info…"

Although it was hard to spot details while traveling in the swift current, the lynx could see that the aqueduct split into two ahead. Without any specific input from the others, she shifted her weight to move onto the smaller of the two routes, while the Motobug corpses drifted naturally onto the larger one.

However, her ears soon perked in alert to a launching sound, which was followed by more of the robots flying out from somewhere behind her and landing roughly onto the road ahead. These ones didn't pick up the current so well, and she shifted her weight to try and swerve around each one as she caught up to it. It was harder than it looked, and more than once she almost careened off the side of the waterway from either overcorrection or the force from pushing one of the lumps of junk away from her.

Something was suspicious about how in-the-way these robots were. Either Eggman had an ongoing presence here to generate all this scrap, or something was triggering it as a trap for whoever attempted to ride on the aqueduct. Any way you looked at it, there was something here that he went through a lot of trouble to make hard to find.

As it neared a steep-looking cliff, the ancient system had a break in it that caused the path to enter a sharp decline towards the water rather than connect across the top. Readying the chain in her Wispon, Arc eyed a sturdy-looking tree branch overhead and shot at it, using it to swing onto solid ground atop the cliff. She paused to let the vertigo from the water ride wear off while checking her surroundings. The night was clear, moonlight beaming through the clouds to illuminate the surroundings in place of the glowing ruins.

Off to the left, it was clear why there weren't any such ruins, as a much larger building had toppled to pieces and was now overgrown with purple vines and creepers. Impressively, some of them were large and strong enough to hold pieces of the stonework above the ground, which suggested they had been growing there for some time before the building collapse. Either the plants were ancient, or the destruction was recent. Or both; did she look an archaeologist or a botanist to you?

What the lynx did know is that the robots she could see farther up the road spelled bad news. They looked like the destroyed Moto Bugs from earlier, only minus the destroyed part, and also the colorful part, for that matter. They were simple gray spheres, but with a black visor with two glowing red eyes under a red line, and cyan circles on their left and right ends. Basically, they looked like any other fully operational Badnik.

Arc: "Hey, now the Moto Bugs are completely normal. You sure there's nothing going on here?"

Amy: "Tails says Silver is reporting some robots of his own. We have no clue what their objective is, though. They seem to be hanging around on their own."

Knuckles: "Which means they're most definitely not doing that! Eggman wouldn't just leave a legion of robots lying around with nothing to do!"

Amy: "Let's not jump to conclusions. We don't even know what they were here for before, or what that mystery signal could be doing to them."

Arc tuned out their conversation. Whatever the reason was, it couldn't be anything good, so she ran forward and destroyed them with an electrified flick of her Lightning Wispon. The buzzing sound of the electricity didn't seem to fade after she was done, though. She opened the clasp over the lid to see if maybe it was malfunctioning, and that's when she got attacked for real.

Her instincts kicking in, she ducked forward into a slide across the damp ground. The position it put her in allowed her to pivot around quickly, which was also a great way to activate her whip. However, it cracked into empty air, though she could now see numerous floating red dots that indicated her ambushers.

That was, basically, all they were: Two large red eyes attached to a small body in the shape of a small hook, both ends pointed down. They flew without any discernable wings or jets, but despite that, they were rather fast and very agile. It took some effort to dance through their repeated dives, and she was never able to get more than one at a time with strikes of the Wispon.

Eventually the Buggernauts were all gone, but she still felt on edge. Her eyes were shining and her mind was flying. It feels like… there's something nearby, she thought while peering around warily. Her head snapped to the top of a taller cliff nearby, where she swore she saw the glint of something in the moonlight. But there was nothing there.

What's this lunacy?

She still couldn't shake the feeling of being watched as she ascended to the higher cliff using her chain. From up there, she saw another section of aqueduct, albeit narrow, travelling further into the jungle. Mustering her inner determination, she plunged back into the stream, ready for whatever came her way.

Knuckles: "Well look at you, rookie. Having fun in the water?"

Amy: "What? Jealous you can't play on the slide, Knuckles?"

Knuckles: "This is no time to lose focus, that's all! Uh, be sure to give it all you got!"

Her slide was soon accompanied by another that filtered in from the right, and the two quickly became an entangled weave as each one took on its own winding path full of curves and dips. Wanting to get a better view, Arc was able to shift her weight to splash off the side of her slide, acrobatically performing a flip in the air to retain her velocity to land on the other slide. From there, she spotted a tree branch growing out of the side of the cliff and again used it as a grapple point for the Wispon's chain. She swung up and over it to land on a skinny piece of land sticking up from the jungle around it, quickly spotting yet another type of robot ahead of her.

This one looked like a mantis, the recurring theme of red eyes looking particularly menacing on its sleek body and two large scythe-like appendages that were actual blades. It motioned to slash at her, and the two blades detached from its body to become spinning projectiles of death. Like before, she slid under them, but she had enough push this time to slide directly into the Slicer, performing a leg sweep for good measure to topple it over the side of the cliff.

Getting covered in mud, another thing I don't care for about nature, she griped now that her mind wasn't preoccupied. Fortunately, the cliff ended in front of a third road, and when she hopped in, most of the mud was cleaned off of her by the current. Its route made it feel like a real slide, as it dove down and then went in a clockwise loop before converging with the other two near the ocean.

That was to be their final stop, it seemed, so once again she exited the ride by pulling herself out using her chain. She used several old pillars that stuck out from the water as a set of swings to get across to the dry land on the other side.

Amy: "The reading is really close now. Silver just claimed the Chaos Emerald, and he'll meet up with you soon as reinforcements."

To avoid revealing her location, Arc simply hummed in agreement as she carefully climbed up to the clearing ahead.

There was definitely something off about the barren patch of land nestled against the face of a cliff. It was unusually dark, for one, being at just the right angle that the base of the cliff was always shrouded from the moon. Well, at least that made it a good place to hide until she could confirm what the mystery signal was.

"Have we met before?" a female, country-sounding voice called from somewhere before she had covered even half the distance.

So much for that, the cat mentally complained. A figure emerged from the shadows on the left, revealing herself to be a violet Mobian with a black coat and pants appropriate for travel, along with a wide-brimmed black hat. She wore leather gloves and hiking boots that were a darker purple.

Amy: "The mystery signal is coming from her! I'm positive of it!"

"Not unless you were also jailed by Eggman aboard the Death Egg. I'm here looking for something that may belong to him, do you know anything about it? I hear it's really close by."

The mysterious woman immediately leered at her, and her hands defensively covered the pockets on her coat, almost as if she was prepping for a quick draw. Too easy.

"What's it to ya?"

Arc was about to give a quippy answer, but her senses went on full alert yet again. This time, the threat was real: A scrapped pile of metal and spikes shot down from over the top of the cliff right at her. She barely dodged it, landing roughly on the ground before springing back to her feet.

The action confirmed that those Moto Bugs on the aqueduct were no coincidence, and whoever was responsible was making themselves known. A third Mobian walked to the edge of the cliff, silhouetted against the moonlight all around. It hoisted a gun of some kind with its right hand, albeit a strange one with an enormous, bulbous barrel. Without hesitation, it leapt down from the cliff right towards Arc, firing a wispy blast the weapon with a piston-like sound. The lynx obviously didn't stay where she was to find out what it had shot, but it became apparent anyway as she felt a breeze coming from the blast.

Arc went straight to the purple Mobian, picking up her in a bridal carry and leaping to the edge of the clearing to dodge another blast. She placed her down and stood protectively in front, electricity crackling from her Wispon as her pursuer stared her down. It was a canine with green skin, body armor, and a muzzle-like gas mask over its snout, plus a one-eyed visor and a pair of goggles.

"You… I know who you are," she spoke to the other one. "You look just like Ledge described."

"Correct," the wolf replied, her voice distorted by the mask. "I am the Alpha. I assume he also told you what I want." she continued threateningly, raising her weapon to point it at her. "Hand over that Wispon before I have to hurt you to get it."

"In your dreams, apocalypse reject," Arc spat. She whipped out her chain, the attack but a flash of lightning, but the Alpha ducked it effortlessly and launched towards her. Arc didn't expect that and got tackled flat on her back, with the Alpha on top of her.

Not one to accept defeat so easily, she attempted to shock her assailant by stabbing her with the Wispon itself. However, the Alpha used her own Wispon to parry it, shifting her position to try and pry the weapon from the cat's paw with her other hand. Arc continued to struggle against her hold, but it was no use. Whoever this girl was, it was obvious that she was a professional at this.

However, she stopped, as both of them were alerted to another sound, a droning that the striped cat recognized. Eggman's shuttle, occupied by Silver of course, had appeared over the treetops and was making its landing in the clearing. The shuttle bay opened before it even reached the ground, and said hedgehog jumped out while glowing with power.

It was the Alpha's turn to leap away, as the psychic made a three-point landing that released an electric shockwave from the palm that hit the ground. It didn't affect Arc somehow, which she was grateful for as it gave her the chance to recover. The Alpha took one look at the two of them and immediately grabbed something from her pocket and jammed it into her Wispon.

"Blasted hedgehogs, getting in my way! Soon enough I'll catch one of you on your lonesome, and the Wispons will be mine."

She pointed the weapon straight up, and the three tripod legs began spinning in a circle and emitting a green glow. It lifted her into the air, rising past the trees and the cliff and travelling away into the night sky.

"… well, that was dramatic," Silver commented. "Are you okay?"

"Nothing that won't heal, except maybe my pride. I'm more worried about the mystery signal. It was a Mobian girl, and she…" she looked around, noticing that the purple one had disappeared. "… escaped."

"No, I'm right here," the country voice corrected from the direction of the woods. Arc still didn't see any sign of the voice's source, until she dropped out from a tree right in front of the cat's face, startling her.

"Woah! How'd you do that?"

"I know the ins and outs of the jungle, is how. Been living here a long time, protecting these lands from loggers and other destroyers of nature, until Eggman made a home here." she explained. "But where are my manners? I think a proper introduction is in order. Flora the Porcupine, pleasure to make your acquaintance," she said with a slight bow and tip of her hat. Now that she had given her species, Arc did notice a lot of short spines along the back of her head. How they didn't poke through that big hat was beyond her, though.

"My name is Arc. Arc the Lynx."

"And I'm Silver the Hedgehog! I don't mean to cut the courtesy short, but what do you mean by Eggman making a home here?"

Flora walked over to the base of the cliff. Silver nodded and glowed cyan with his power to provide light. Next to the spiky Mobian was a metal hatch embedded into the cliff, resembling the entrance to a high-security vault.

"This. He has many of these secret rooms scattered around the jungle, and he fortified them very strongly. I spent months picking off his robots to try and find a way in, but then he left as suddenly and mysteriously as he had arrived, right before the war started. Then, about a week ago, he came back to cover his tracks, by burning the whole place to the ground. I believe you were there for that."

"He was," Arc answered, somewhat bitterly.

Silver gave her a short, quizzical look. "It's good that we understand why now, because it didn't make any sense before," he added.

"There's a little more to it than that, though…"

She reached inside her pocket and pulled out a strangely-shaped gem. It had around twenty faces to it, but every one was curved outwards, with all of the vertices sticking out. It was a maroon-ish color, with darker purple stripes carved through the inside that hurt to look at. Both of the Resistance members stared it.

"I don't know what this thing is, but it must be of value to Eggman. His attacks had to have been been targeting those secret rooms, because inside one is where I found this. That was actually right where you fought the Red Mask. I reckon he was after it too."

"It reminds me of Infinite himself, a bit…" Silver wondered. "We should get it back to Tails. He'll be able to figure out what it can do," he proposed, gesturing towards the shuttle. "That is, if you're willing to come with us."

Flora looked around. "Well, this is my home, but… if you think this gem can help bring about global peace from Eggman, then that's more important. I'll go with you."

Odd choice of words, Arc noted. As they began their return to the shuttle, she nudged the porcupine on the shoulder.

"Yo, Flora, was it? I just gotta say, sneaking into Eggman's base and stealing that thing? Pretty cool." She offered her closed fist up, but Flora looked confused.

"Uh, thanks, but… what are you doing with your hand?"

"Aw, c'mon, it's for a fist bump! You make a fist too, and we bump them together!"

"Okay, I guess…" She awkwardly pressed her gloved fist against the black-and-yellow one. Arc beamed; it was good enough for her!