Sonic skidded to a halt inside Robotropolis, in the clearing that he usually met his Uncle Chuck in. For that reason, the SWAT-bot patrols were usually nonexistent, and they only came through on a regular timetable, so they were as safe as anyone could expect to be on Mobius.
Knuckles rubbed his arm for a second, trying to get the hot, pinched feeling out of where Sonic had grabbed him. Heading straight into Robotropolis for his vacation. Greaat. But he did need to find someone to help him, and his senses told him that that person was not on his island. Sonic seemed the best guess. But to the task at hand...
Knuckles glanced around. He had never been to Robotropolis, but he had heard enough to know that it was no paradise. Smog, garbage, and other nasty things that he couldn’t begin to describe filled his vision. Eeeew.
He noticed Sonic smiling sadly at him. "Yeah, just one of the many reasons to kill Robotnik before he turns this planet into a mound of garbage. But enough gawking, let’s-"
"Uh, Mon? I wanted to give you something first." Knuckles reached into his backpack and drew out two objects by feel. Looping one of the cords around his own neck, he handed the other pendant to Sonic, feeling the comforting throb of the green crystal.
"Uh, what is it?" Asked Sonic, looping the plain leather cord around his neck.
"A link to the Greater Chaos Emeralds on the Island." Replied Knuckles, with a grin on his face. Maybe now Sonic would trust him enough...
"Really? Way past cool, Knuckles! I can’t wait to trash ‘buttnik with this!" He held the gem up to eye level, then dropped it back onto his chest. "But enough yappin. Let’s go!" He pried up a hidden duct entrance and crawled in. After some hesitation Knuckles followed him, trying to ignore the nasty smells emanating from the hole. Double eeeew.
They crawled underneath the city, heading in the general direction of the control center. They stopped when they heard voices.
"Uh, uh, r, r, Robotnik! What happened to you?" Said a high, squeaky voice. Snivley. Knuckles tried not to breathe in the hot darkness. He could see Sonic’s shoe in front of his face and tried to smell the hot rubber instead of the foul air.
"I was, um, injured by a large blue dragon. Fortunately my nanitie systems were able to heal me so that I wouldn’t die from my, er, landing." Robotnik’s voice rang clearly down to where Sonic and Knuckles were hiding. Knuckles resisted the urge to stretch in the close confines of the tunnel.
"But anyway, Snivley, I have a task for you. Organize ninety or so worker bots, 100 SWAT-Bots, and my personal hovercraft. THE GOOD ONE. Then, watch Robotropolis for me."
"Uh, b, but why, s, ssir?"
"Because, Snivley," and here Knuckles could hear Robotnik’s voice getting angrier, "I want to GET THAT DRAGON!!!"They heard a metallic CLANG, as if something had struck a metal wall. They heard Snivley groan out a "Yes, sir." and scamper off.
"Man," whispered Sonic, "we’ve got to get back and help Aris!"
"My thoughts exactly." Whispered back Knuckles. They started crawling backwards.
What they didn’t hear was Robotnik asking the computer "Display specs for project filename: Blackfire", and his evil chuckling afterward.
Knuckles was a fair way down the tunnel when he heard the noise outside. He turned and looked towards his feet, to the surface. He could see the grate, and outside it...
"Uh, oh." He whispered to Sonic, "Mon, you had better come look at this." He flattened himself out against the side of the tunnel so Sonic could get past. Sonic flipped himself head-over-heels so that he could crawl forwards. He pressed his face up to the grate, then quickly pulled himself back into the shadows.
"$$$$!" He whispered, "there must be a zillion SWAT-bots out there!"
"Only a hundred," replied Knuckles. "That must be the contingent that Robotnik ordered."
"I don’t think that I can lose them all in the forest, and we certainly can’t take them all on by ourselves. There aren’t any other passages out that I can think of." Sonic thought for a second. "Er, let’s see. Can we use these little trinkets?" He asked, holding up the link.
"Yeah, I think that that might just work." Said Knuckles, drawing on the power of the emeralds.
A few moments later, two balls of flame shot out of the tunnel with a 
, almost completely destroying the whole contingent of robots. What were left were thoroughly destroyed in the second pass. The flames congealed to reveal two shapes, one red and one blue, both panting heavily. Utterly exhausted, Sonic and Knuckles slumped to the ground, ignoring the oil and robot parts.
"Woah, you never told me that it would drain ya like that!" gasped Sonic.
"It ... normally doesn’t." Replied Knuckles. He shook himself off and stood up. "Uh, we should really be going to save your dragon friend."
"In a sec." Sonic pushed himself to his feet and pulled out a power ring from his pack. "Never leave home without it!" He said, smiling. He drew power out of the ring, using it to combat the fatigue that he was feeling. Then he used his hands as a conductor to give some of the energy to Knuckles. He then dropped the spent ring in his backpack and stretched. "Race ya." He said to the red Echidna.
Knuckles complied, dropping into a ready stance. "3...2...1...GO!" He yelled, and they sprinted back to the great forest.
"...And that brings us to the coup. Julian moved against my father and in one hour had roboticised almost the whole population with Sonic’s uncle’s machine, and driven the survivors into hiding. He changed his name to Ivo Robotnik, and turned Mobiotropolis into Robotropolis, a waste dump. We escaped, though, because of my mentor, Julianya, and my nurse Rosie, and then only because they knew the location of Knothole and Robotnik didn’t. We have been making attacks on Robotropolis for the last eleven years. And that about sums it up." Sally punched a few buttons on Nicole. "Okay, now shift back to full size." She held the computer up at eye level and watched as Aris grew from sonic size to her full size, then nodded and tried to make some sense of the readings.
Aris peered over the trees. She could see a lot from this level, including a blur across the plains that would be Robotropolis, and a strange flash of metal entering the forest.
A strange flash of metal entering the forest?
"Uh, Sally?"
"Shhh, Aris. I’m trying to get this figured out."
"But-"
"Please, Aris."
Aris sighed and tried again. "Sally-"
"What IS it, Aris?!"
"Well, I thought that I saw a strange flash of metal ent-"
ZAP!
Her words were cut off by a yellowish colored laser beam missing the tip of her nose by a foot. She reared back, startled, as a large group of roboticized mobians came out of the trees and tried to pin her down with lengths of galvanized steel wire. Ineffective, of course, but it was the best that the worker bots’ limited programming could come up with.
Robotnik’s hovercar floated into view. He fired a retaining beam5 that struck Aris’ side and froze the muscles in her legs so that she couldn’t move. The worker bots then used the wire to fasten her to the ground. Aris looked around for Sally, but she seemed to have hidden in the trees. Only dragon-sight could make her out, hidden in a unobtrusive bush, and shivering from the effort of keeping her body temperature low. She turned back to Robotnik and spat her disgust at him.
She missed, though, and gobs of gooey dragon spit rained down on the worker bots holding the cables. The cables disintegrated, leaving puddles of biodegradable mush.
Worker bot #33906 was one of the bots holding the cables. When the cables disintegrated, he stepped back like a good robot and waited for instructions, absentmindedly scratching his wrist. Ohhhhh, that felt good...
He stopped. "Metallic skin doesn’t itch!" He said to nobody in particular. Then he realized that he was speaking without being ordered to. What...
He glanced down at the aforementioned wrist. As he watched, the sandy brown color of his own fur started blocking out the silver, and the metal peeled off and fell away. He was turning back into a hedgehog again!
He yelled out for joy, rubbing at the metal and watching as it peeled off. He danced around, then yelped as a laser beam almost impaled his foot. He looked up and saw Robotnik’s ugly face peering at him over the side of the hovercar. He backed into the forest, then fell over a prone squirrel hiding in the bush. Robotnik took aim again, but was distracted by a large dragon chomping the front of the hovercar. Robotnik reached under the seat for his club, hoping to dislodge Aris with multiple blows to the snout, but Aris’ tail came around and knocked him out of the hovercar. Aris then spat the whole wreck on top of him.
The former worker-bot rolled to his feet, then bent to help the squirrel up. He gasped. "P-Princess?"
Sally smiled weakly and stood up. "Yes. I can’t believe this! An actual deroboticizer! Isn’t this great, uh, er,"
The sandy brown hedgehog smiled. "Daniel, your high-"
Sally cut him off with a sigh. "Just Sally."
The hedgehog was unremarkable, other than the fact that he had just been deroboticized. Average height, short but prickly spines set in a conservative sweep instead of spiked, and Khakis. Sally broke off her casual observation to the sound of a sonic boom. Her blue boyfriend skidded to a halt in front of them and glanced suspiciously at Daniel. "Who’s that?" he asked succinctly.
"Sonic!" Sally yelled, bursting with excitement, "we’ve found a deroboticizer!"
"Say WHAT!?" Said Sonic and Knuckles at the same time.
"Daniel here was just deroboticised! We can finally undo all the harm that Robotnik has done!" She swept Sonic up and gave him a kiss that could have melted a three-foot-thick block of solid tungsten.
"Wow." He said dreamily. "Uh, Sally?"
"Yeah, Sonic?"
"I’ve got to figure out how you kiss like that."
She smirked. "You won’t."
Aris shifted her head’s position so that she was looking straight at the four of them. "Y’know, Robotnik’s already called a retreat, so shouldn’t we be getting back to knothole?" Sally looked around. Not a single robot remained in the clearing, only a few deroboticised mobians. "Alright," she said, calling to the others, "we’re going home."
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