The Robotic Endgame

XV. Mega Man

Sonic sneered at the figures in the sky, still not able to stand up completely on his own. "Their timing is trash."

"That seems to happen to us a lot," I replied. "And this looks like a nice army of robot masters."

"They must have planned to go after the Master Emerald after stopping us at the military base," Tails explained, "but that didn't go as they had planned. So now they've sent more than they had planned after the Master Emerald."

"Sonic, are you okay?" Sally asked, touching his arm. "Can you fight?"

"I'll be fine by the time they get here," he replied. "I had thought maybe I was lucky enough that this wouldn't happen in a fight, but..."

"You knew this would happen after they used the weapon?" Tails asked.

"I would have been surprised if there weren't any side effects," Sonic said, "but I had hoped with all that rest they would be minimal."

"We can't let them have the Master Emerald, or Sonic will likely die," Knuckles said, breaking the happy mood.

"Wait, what?" Sonic frowned. "It can't be that bad."

"You're a ticking time bomb," Knuckles explained. "If you had all of the Chaos Emeralds, you could just go Super Sonic and the problem would be fixed, but we only have two. And I could order the Master Emerald to calm the energy, but it will take more time than we have."

"Then I guess we just have to win," Sonic said, standing with his hands on his hips and looking at the sky. "I've beaten all these guys before - let's see, I see Faker, Quick Man, and... Metal Sonic. Crash Man's probably in there somewhere, too."

"Metal Sonic?" I asked, tilting my head. "Is that what it sounds like?"

"A robot version of Sonic, yes." Sally answered. "It's incredibly fast."

"Great," I replied, "so we've got two super speedy robots."

"Chill out," Sonic said, a dangerous smirk on his face. "This unstable Chaos Energy hasn't come without a few benefits. I feel good, now. Let's get them!"

The robots were close to the island now, and I saw that Copy had brought a bunch of robot masters from different generations. There was Crash Man, as Sonic had guessed, Shadow Man, Freeze Man, Shade Man, and some others. But there was one robot that I hadn't thought would show up.

"Proto Man's on Rush..." I whispered.

"Is that the guy that attacked me when I first got here?" Sonic asked. "The red guy?"

"Yes," I said, turning to Sally. "Do you still have that helmet?"

Sally poked around in her backpack, coming out with Copy's helmet. I grabbed it, turning to the robots that were almost to the island. I hesitated, thinking about what sort of viruses waited for me. But it had to be safer than risking my IC chip. I put the helmet on, bracing myself for random things to be downloaded into me, but nothing happened. None of my sensors went off, and my systems showed that nothing was wrong.

"Look alive!" Knuckles yelled in a fighting stance. As they were landing, I noticed that they were all on vehicles that were similar to Rush - without faces.

Sonic ran toward them first, singling out Metal Sonic. The two of them raced down the stairs of the altar, and the rest split up to attack us.

I went after Proto Man, finding a way to release the pent up anger Dr. Wily had caused. Without any hesitation, Proto Man sicced my own dog on me, and I had to reply with a charged shot to his face. He whimpered as he flew off to the side, but he didn't get back up. I steadied my breathing, then turned to Proto Man as the rest charged through us toward the others.