I reached for her hand, but it was pointless. I almost reached the end of her rope, but my fingers just barely skimmed over it. All of that seemed to go in slow motion.
"Sonic, we're falling!" I yelled.
"Tell me something I don't know!" He replied. "You got anything to stop it?"
I shook my head and swallowed. "Not even any powers to slow it down!"
"Okay, okay, don't panic or anything." He answered calmly.
"Don't panic? Don't panic?!" I shouted. "We're falling to our deaths and you're telling me not to panic?!"
"For once," Sonic said, his tone suggesting a bit of a sigh, "I have a bit of a plan."
He grabbed my hands, which I found kind of weird. "What, do you want to take me on a date or something?!"
"I said not to panic!" Sonic repeated. "Now here... Let go of this hand... and wrap your foot around mine. Then kind of stretch out your other hand - no, your other hand..."
For once, Sonic had something organized. I was in a state of panic, and he had things under control, like it was something he had done a million times. Once we were all linked together, we were side by side, and it slowed our fall dramatically.
But we were still falling. Even as Sonic looked determinedly into the pit, I could sense that he, too, was afraid. And I thought I could see the bottom approaching us finally.
I didn't want to look as we went splat, so I closed my eyes, squinted hard, and tensed up. I was sure I was crushing Sonic's hand and foot, but in a matter of seconds, those would be the least of his worries, if he had any.
"Here we go..." I sighed, tensing up even more. But a second after I said that, we were suddenly slowed and jerked around.
"Tempo?" I said, opening my eyes. She must have let go, then jumped off the wall at the perfect time. She had grabbed the little remains of our ropes, and we were again hanging off the wall.
"Yes." She wasn't as excited now that her plan was over. That it had failed probably didn't matter. Her attitude would have changed eventually, but it was still a big step.
"Nice save, man!" Sonic shouted.
"I am still not a man." She replied simply. "I am a robot programmed to look and process-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did she break again, Mega Man?"
"Uh..." I stammered. "She was never broken."
"Well, at least she fights." He said, his expression becoming a bit more serious. "We're wherever here is."
The ground finally came, and Tempo let go. Sonic and I winced as the our feet hit something. It felt good to finally stand on something, rather than be hanging from a wall.
"So..." Sonic said, his hands on his hips. "Where do we go next?"
I looked around. I didn't know what I was going to find when I got to the bottom. "There's a little hollow spot over there." I said, pointing to it.
He shrugged. "Sure."
So we walked over to the little hollow spot. And we almost got killed.
It was a small little dome, but we didn't know if there was going to be a tunnel that led to somewhere else inside of it, so we decided to give it a chance. I didn't think it was that obviously a trap.
Once we were inside, I shrugged, and we were about to walk out. But the floor started to rumble. Tempo's eyes went wide. She grabbed her arms and sat on the ground.
Rocks started falling on top of us. And I'm not talking about little pebbles - though those were there too. These were nice sized boulders. I looked Sonic in the eye. We seemed to read each others' minds, because we both knew we couldn't get Tempo out in time. I grabbed his shoulders and he grabbed mine, and we created an arc over Tempo as the rocks fell over us. We curved our backs and moved our feet, manipulating the rocks to move where we wanted them to.
"Hey, dude." Sonic said. "I can't keep this up forever."
I looked up at him. He was shaking and his eyes were tightly shut. I kept forgetting he wasn't a robot.
"I... can't-!" He fell to his knees, keeping the arc in his back.
"Okay, hang on, I'm coming!" What would I do?! My powers... Which one...? Fire! I could mold the rocks together, and when we calmed Tempo down, she could help us get out!
I turned to Flame Man, and started with our feet. I got around Sonic, and had him shift around to get my side. It was a really small space.
"There we go." I said, turning back to my Mega Buster.
"Good." He said, out of breath. "But there's another problem."
"Huh?" I turned my head. "We could practically live here forever! Well, if we wanted to."
Sonic shook his head. "Can't... Breathe."
I hadn't thought about that. He had taken a lot of oxygen in helping build the 'adobe'. "I can check the levels." I told him. I touched the side of my helmet. It showed the toxicity levels of the area. "Fifty-seven percent of the area is covered with oxygen. So... You have about an hour left. Which means..."
I looked at Tempo. She was hugging her knees and hiding behind them, as if something was in the distance and coming to get her. "Tempo, we need you."
She shook her head. "We're gonna die."
"We can get out of here. We just need to take some precautions. Remember? We did it before, and we were fine."
She didn't do anything. She just looked straight ahead, as if focused on something.
"Please." I said, almost begging. "I need you. The city needs you. Sonic needs you."
I looked at the levels. They were increasing like I had predicted.
"I..." She said. "Can I...?"
"Yes!" I nodded a bunch. "Of course you can! You could save the world!"
She blinked. "Okay..."
I copied her drill power from her, and we got to work. Sonic was rubbing his temples and taking quick breaths. "Hang in there," I told him.
He nodded, and we continued working. At one point, Sonic had seen a flaw we hadn't seen. We had been trying to make sure the entire thing didn't collapse (as he sat around), but Tempo had missed something. I don't know how Sonic got to her in time or how he saw it, but the entire ceiling above Tempo collapsed. She would have been crushed if Sonic hadn't rammed into her, ultimately ramming them both into me.
"You... How?" She asked.
He rubbed his head in confusion. "You know... I'm not really sure. I just... had a feeling. In my gut. So I ran."
"Thank you..." She said, then went back to drilling, which amazed me. I would have expected her to stop again.
"Mega Man..." Sonic coughed. "How much longer?"
I checked. "Half an hour."
"I meant until the wall was done, not until my doom."
"Oh. We don't know." I went back to work.
Twenty minutes flew by. It wasn't looking good for Sonic.
"Tempo, we have to do something." I told her.
She knocked on the rock in front of her. "It's right there! I can feel it!"
"I really hope you're right." I replied.
Five more minutes past. Nothing. I gritted my teeth and pressed the drill into the rock, still aware of the rock around.
"Guys..." Sonic moaned. "I'm getting bored."
"Oh, sorry." I said. "The hallucinations weren't enough?"
"No." He replied. "I want a new movie."
"Yeah." a chuckled, shaking my head. "A movie."
"What were we talking about...?" He asked, sincerely confused.
"Ponies and dresses."
"Wait!" Tempo shouted.
"But I wanted to hear his reaction to that..." I pouted. "What if he-"
"Air!" She said.
"Where?!" I asked.
She pushed her drill in a bit more, then pulled it out. "Yes! It's the open. Keep going!"
We left that spot open, hoping to bring some new air in. The level of oxygen rose slower than I wanted, but it rose nonetheless. We poked more holes in, creating a door that I would mold together with fire. It took some time, but it gave Sonic some time to be able to actually breathe. It didn't take him too long to feel better.
"So what was your question?" He asked.
"What?" I replied. "I didn't have a question."
"Oh." He shrugged. "Well, let's not go into anymore suspicious hollow things, okay? That gives a major headache, and I feel like I'm on a cloud. Made of... Made of... Something."
I nodded. It was a great idea. Especially for him.