Where indeed had the pink furred hedgehog gone?
As far as the world was concerned, Amy Rose the Hedgehog was a strong independent animal woman that 'kicked butt, took names, and didn't need rescue.'
Amy would always secretly disagree.
When she had been born, she was no different to the other populace of the planet who were ordinary, simple people that ferretted about their daily lives. Back in her younger years, Amy considered herself a classic girly girl; she loved cooking and baking and cleaning and eagerly entertained the idea of being a housewife, which was rare in the day and age where many women sought to find different plans for their futures. Her fantasies of being a mother and tending to her own home and greeting her spouse after they'd been to work with a hot meal and a warm drink was all she ever dreamt of and so, of course, she wouldn't hesitate to say that she was often taken for the kind of girl that would need rescuing. Not necessarily by a man, true - but she'd have preferred one all the same.
Then, of course, she heard of a rebellious young hedgehog boy with electric blue quills and feet that could outrun a jet plane.
Amy sighed as she cautiously trotted down the corridor, ears pricked forward for signs that she was getting close to her quarry.
As anyone could now tell you, to be involved with Sonic was to be in acceptance of what he did - and what he did was protect the people of the planet from any threats and have fun while doing it. Becoming an ally of his and joining him as a Freedom Fighter meant that Amy had to let go of her dreams of being a regular housewife with a regular home and a regular garden full of regular flowers where she would regularly hang her regular washing and wait for her regular freshly baked apple pie to cool off on the regular old brick windowsill.
So yes, she was a strong independent animal woman that kicked butt, took names and only sometimes needed someone to rescue her - but only because she had HAD to be. There hadn't been a choice in the matter.
Her current situation, on the other hand, WAS a choice and she'd be damned if she was going to go back without settling an old score.
Just ahead of her, Metal Sonic's red optics were illuminating the corridor in front of him as he hovered slowly to a stop. Amy stopped too, glaring at the back of the robot's head.
"...nOw wHAt Do yOu HOpE to pRoVE?" his grinding, false robotic voice spoke. Amy didn't say anything. "...YOu dONt fOOl mE, AMY ROSE. i CaN hEaR YouR hEArt rAce."
Teeth gritted against one another, Amy spread her feet a little further apart to give herself more purchase on her hammer.
"Don't flatter yourself," she snarled. "I'm not scared of you anymore."
"YEs YoU aRE." Metal barely skipped a beat in responding. "YOu rEek oF fEar."
Having enough of his ominous and over-the-top 'bad guy' routine, Amy raised her quills.
"Save your non-existent breath and put 'em up. I'm taking you down off your high horse."
Metal turned to look at her and Amy was proud that her heart only jumped a tiny bit this time.
"aLl bY yOUrsElf?"
With her confidence at a temporary high, Amy surprised herself by taking a couple of steps closer.
"I might not be like the guys with their speed and weapons and flying futuristic powers but... I'm still a hedgehog," she told him, "with a hammer."
Metal then produced a horrible sound which Amy then realised was just him laughing.
"yoU mAY HaVE pRogreSsED fUrtHER ThAn thE hElpLESs gIrl tHAt i oNce HaD tHE PlEAsuRe oF TOrMenTing mAny yEaRS aGo..." You might not have been able to see the grin but, boy, could it be felt. "...bUt dEep DOWn, yOU Are sTiLL hElPleSs. ... AnD yOU ARe sTiLL sCaREd."
"I'm a hedgehog," Amy repeated again, more to herself this time. "And I'm here to prove that I can fight like one."
For a brief moment, Amy could have sworn that she had the confidence to accurately identify the 'expression' Metal Sonic was pulling but that moment was gone before she could begin to think about it.
"...hEdGEhoGs..." Metal drawled, slightly irritated, slightly proud, "...dO seEm tO be ThE ulTimATe LIfEorMs oF thE uNiVErSe, dOn'T ThEY?"
"Just because Shadow is one doesn't mean-"
"i rEfer noT tO SHADOW. aLL hEdGehOgs." Amy stared at him, anticipating a foul move coming her way. "tHE PlanEt'S fIrST tRue ROyaLtY aS chOsen By tHe pOwERs of CHAOS iTseLf. sUcH a lEgAcy."
"...What do you mean?" the young hedgehog frowned, "Chosen by... Chosen by Chaos? Stop spewing every word you have in your vocabulary and let me turn you into shavings!"
"YOu DOn'T bEliEvE mE?"
"Considering what I know about you? No, not really. You're another of Eggman's products - how trustworthy is anything you say?"
Metal's feet touched the ground.
"woRrY nOT," he snarled, "I aM fINisHed taLkiNG."
- - - - -
The unearthly screech that came from the doll as Tails drove his screwdriver down through its blank face caused several ears to pivot back in discomfort. The combined efforts of the Allies had resulted in victory over most of the battle robots and the only remaining contenders was a sparking Tails Doll that was still wriggling its twisted body across the floor and Metal Knuckles, still locked in a ferocious fist-fight with the one he had been modelled after.
Now that Knuckles' allies had little to do and few enemies to occupy themselves with, the metal echidna was soon to find itself brutally assaulted by the likes of Omega and Shade who both found the robot particularly offensive. It took several headshots before Metal Knuckles dislodged himself from his primary enemy and backed off a little to confront these new attacks. Big the Cat was giving the Tails Doll a wide berth as he clambered over the remains of robots to reach the Guardian of the Master Emerald who was just recovering.
"Are you okay?" the large cat asked as Froggy bounded down his arm and perched on Knuckles' shoulder.
"Fine," Knuckles answered stiffly, cracking his back. He didn't feel the need to list the cuts and grazes and gashes that had been kindly given to him.
Around the room, Omega and Shade were knocking seven or eight bells out of Metal Knuckles, Blaze and Silver were finishing off the robots, Cream and Charmy were covering the entrances to be sure that no more were coming, Vector and Espio were over at the computer with Shadow and were desperately attempting to find a way of cancelling the future detonation, the Tails' Doll was being assaulted by Cheese, Amy was still missing and Tails...
...
Well, this wasn't the first time that Knuckles had quickly sussed that they were down by one fox.
"And here I was sure that Tails was the responsible one," Knuckles muttered to himself upon noting that his friend was now nowhere to be seen. "The sensible one. The one that promised me that he wouldn't let Sonic influence him so that he wouldn't feel the need to go off on his own after someone and..."
The Tails Doll broke his concentration with another screech and hoisted itself up into the air, knocking Cheese aside like a balloon. The red stone that hung above his head flashed ominously as he let out a high-pitched call.
"What's that thing crying about now?" Blaze hissed.
No-one had an answer but Metal Knuckles seemed to respond instantaneously to the call. It had been playing dead for a second or two after Omega had blasted one of its legs off but at the sound of Tails Doll, it sparked back into life and pulled itself into the air before Shade could spring at it again. Without warning or a moment of hesitation, the two of them rocketed off in the direction that Metal Sonic had departed, vanishing into the base.
"Now where do they think they're going?" asked Cream, not expecting an answer.
"Abandoning ship," Shadow huffed, departing from the computer where he, Vector and Espio had unanimously concluded that the countdown was going to happen and an explosion was imminent whether they liked it or not.
- - - - -
Ahead of him, Tails could pick out the sound of another fight, a much more personal one-on-one compared to the ballroom blitz that he had left behind him after retrieving his screwdriver from the Tails Doll's face.
When it was brought to his attention that Amy was MIA, there was only one explanation: she had gone after Metal Sonic.
Now Tails had gone after Amy.
"Do all hedgehogs do this?" he had thought in his head. "Must all hedgehogs go off by themselves? I mean, I suppose if it's a trait of their wild relatives then it could be a trait of..." He ground to a halt and ducked as a red beam of light sizzled over his head and burnt the tips of his head fur. "OW OW OUCH!" he wailed, frantically rubbing his smoking fur and sore ears before peering up and jumping to Amy's assistance.
Amy wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but she was straddling the robot's back and had the handle of her hammer rammed up against his throat, threatening to tear the horrible thing clean off the torso.
Metal, on the other hand, had one of his limbs tightly wrapped around Amy's left leg and the other hand was clutching her waist.
Snaking trails of blood had coursed down her side and dotted the floor beneath them, but she hardly noticed her injuries. She was in the midst of inflicting years of due payback on her enemy and she wasn't going to go down quite as easily as she once had in her youth.
"You know what?" she shouted at the back of Metal's head. "I'm done! I am SO done with being pushed around, kidnapped and held hostage. I'M DONE with that!" Her free leg rooted itself in the small of Metal's back. "And so are you, you UGLY KNOCK-OFF!"
She pulled with her hammer and pushed with her foot which forced Metal to let go and they both crashed to the ground.
That was when Tails flew in and dragged Amy out of the way before Metal could whip his claws round at her and cut her open.
She had damaged his throat with her hammer so that he couldn't directly communicate with words anymore but that hadn't stopped him from calling out for his own allies with what was left of his voice, producing the most horrific scream ever to have been heard from any robot. The clock was ticking and the facility would blow. Metal reasoned that, with its current state, battling wasn't the most sensible thing to do and it was better to get away and plan revenge on your enemies than get blown up in the bid to destroy them now.
With the last of his energy, Metal Sonic rose up into the air and flew away in a burst of heat. In a matter of seconds, Metal Knuckles and the Tails Doll had followed after him, paying no attention to Tails and Amy on the ground.
Both were panting heavily and it was only now that Amy began to feel the sting of her wounds.
"P-Please, Amy," Tails breathed, his chest heaving. "If you're... g-going to be... like Sonic in... in doing that... Please don't pass it on to your kids."
"HEY!" Knuckles skidded to a stop in front of them. "Are you hurt? What happened?"
Tails hurriedly explained everything but Amy refused a helping hand, pulling herself up by using her hammer.
"Forget about me!" she thundered. "Where have those creeps gone?"
"Doing a runner," Silver suddenly answered, appearing next to Knuckles. "The facility is going to self-destruct in..." he checked his wrist and discovered that he wasn't wearing a watch, "...in a little while."
Amy's quills were still tight from her fight with Metal. A hedgehog with tightened quills found it difficult to calm down.
"But we haven't found Sonic," she said.
"No, I know that," Knuckles nodded. "The others have split up. We're covering the entire base and we're not bothering with stealth anymore. Can you run?"
"I can do better than run," Amy told him, gripping her hammer again and proving her point by putting her full weight on her injured side and giving it a swing.
Tails pressed a few switches on his communicator watch but it was totally dead. Letting out a humph, the irate fox glanced at Silver.
"You'll be quicker in the air," he told him. "Leave us to look for Sonic as a three."
"And take hoppity here back to Big," Knuckles added, prising the amphibian off his shoulder where he was still sitting and dumping it in Silver's hands.
"Are you sure?" Silver questioned, "I thought it was agreed that you guys shouldn't be left-"
"We're not by ourselves!" Knuckles groaned. "Please, just hurry! The more allies we have divided up into teams, the more ground we'll cover, the quicker the search, the sooner we get ourselves outta here!"
Not daring to argue further, Silver was off, returning to find Big and resume his own search.
- - - - -
Writer's Note:
7 parts for 7 Chaos Emeralds.
Anyway, next chapter is a wee bit darker than the rest so please forgive me (it's not THAT bad, I've been told...) It happens to be the very first bit of Chaos Born I ever wrote that actually inspired the entire story so I feel like I need to include it. It's also my favourite chapter because it's a small study into Sonic's character and how he can be perceived by everyone else and I find character studies fascinating!
Thank you for all your comments and support! Stay awesome!