Embedded Files
Shortly thereafter, the royal plane touched down on the coast of the Emerald Hill Zone. The Tornado landed a safe distance away within a matter of minutes after. Sonic hopped down off the wing. The ride had been tense on the royal plane, with barely a word spoken. Most of the passengers had no idea what to expect. Sonic, however, had been cool and collected and even quite chatty with Tails. Deep down, Sonic knew he was potentially leading Tails into danger, so appearing confident to set his young friend’s mind at ease was important. In truth, Sonic was more than a little scared. Sally was right, he’d got no idea what awaited him on West Side Island. He was glad to have a group of friends with him who could help point him in the right direction.
The Emerald Hill Zone wasn’t too dissimilar to the Green Hill Zone, Sonic thought. This coastal area in particular, where Robotnik’s forces had seemingly not yet reached, was an area of natural beauty. The sea was a vivid cerulean blue, the grass a vibrant verdant green, the palm trees stood tall and proud, bearing beautiful palms and plentiful coconuts.
“Alright, everyone, gather round, we need a plan of action,” Sally declared as she stepped off the plane.
“That’s funny, because I’ve already got one,” Sonic responded, “I plan to track Robotnik down and give him a shoeing. Any questions?”
“Sonic, I’ve come to appreciate you’re the last person I can expect to listen to a plan,” Sally crossed her arms, “But I’d rather not put everyone else in the line of danger if it’s all the same to you”
“Fair enough,” Sonic admitted.
“Porker, you’re the least physical member of the team,” Sally looked at the somewhat nervous pig, “But we may well need your expertise. I want you to avoid conflict as a rule, but once the rest of us have smashed some Badniks, you’re to scavenge whatever pieces you can to try and come up with something or other to help stop Robotnik’s machines. You okay with that?”
“I can do that, sure,” Porker nodded.
“Antoine, you’re duty bound by my father’s instructions to stay by my side. However, I expect you not to take that instruction literally. You are to treat me as an equal during combat and never jeopardise yourself to save me”
“For ze sake of zis conversation, I shall agree,” Antoine saluted, “But I sink we both know I will not allow anyone here to risk harm if I can save them”
“Attaboy, Ant!” Sonic cheered.
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that, Antoine,” Sally gave Antoine a side-eyed glance, “Bunnie. Your roboticised limbs give you the greatest strength of any of us. I need you to get up close and personal with the Badniks. I think we can safely assume Sonic’s going to take the lead on combat, but you’re going to be his back-up muscle. Are you okay with that?”
“Heck, Ah’ve never really been in a fight before,” Bunnie replied pensively, “But, shoot, what good’s a big metal fist if Ah cain’t smash a robot or two with it?”
“Rotor, you’re our weapons expert. I know you’re not afraid to get into a fight but I want you to hold back to begin with until Sonic and Bunnie leave enough Badniks parts that can be repurposed into something we can use”
“You got it, Sally,” Rotor gave a thumbs-up.
Sally turned to Johnny Lightfoot, “And Johnny?”
“Yes?”
“Hit things”
“Yes!”
Tails walked up to Sally with some trepidation, “What about me, Sally?”
“You’re with me, kiddo,” Sonic cut in, “After all, you are my sidekick, right?”
Tails beamed with pride, “Sure!”
Sonic and Sally shared a knowing look. Sonic’s side was probably the safest place for Tails. Sally was in no rush to send the youngest member of the group into direct danger.
“So what are we going to call ourselves?” Tails asked.
“What do you mean?” Sally cocked her head.
“Well, in the comic books I read, all the superhero teams have a name! There’s the Revengers, the Zed-Men, the League Of Seeing To It That The Law Is Upheld In Both Spirit And To The Letter”
“Ah, the LOST ITs! My favourites!” Johnny interjected.
“So we need a name,” Tails concluded.
“I don’t know about that…” Sally responded, hesitant.
Rotor shrugged, “Well even if we don’t put it on T-shirts, it might be nice for the civilians to know, ‘Hey, the Good Guys are coming’”
“Seems to me we’re fighting for the freedom of West Side Island,” Sonic noted, “How about the Freedom Fighters?”
The friends look at one another. Bunnie broke the silence, “The Freedom Fighters. Yeah! Ah like the sound of that, sugah-hog!”
“Thanks, Bunnie, I knew you had impeccable taste!”
“Oh, stop, yer gonna make me blush!”
Sally smiled, “Then the Freedom Fighters it is”
Sally extended her arm, holding her clenched fist out. In turn, each of her friends placed their palm atop one another’s hand, uniting in a symbolic gesture.
“That’s a real touching scene ya got there!” a high-pitched voice called out from above. The group turned around to see a red robotic monkey up a tree, a rotating yellow beacon light on its head, “To bad for you I’m gonna take you stop you before you get started, all for Doctor Robotnik! Yeah! Yeah!”
Sonic looked up at the Badnik, “And who are you supposed to be, exactly, ugly? Delusionbot 5000?”
The robot fumed with anger, “I’m Coconuts! I’m a Prime Badnik! And I’m gonna be Doctor Robotnik’s favourite! Yeah! Yeah! YEAH!”
“No, no, no,” Sonic called back, charging towards the tree. Coconuts was ready for him, however, throwing down a barrage of his namesakes from on high. These were no normal nuts, however, as Sonic noticed as he leapt sideways to narrowly avoid one and it embedded itself in the ground. These coconuts were metal and very heavy. One of these to the head would leave a lump, that was for sure.
Sonic barrelled into the tree with a Super Sonic Spin Attack and it shook violently, much to Coconuts’ displeasure, “Hey! Whadda you think you’re doin’?!”
Sonic grinned, “Just shaking things up! Bunnie, care to lend a hand?”
“Oh, y’all know Ah’m a very carin’ individual!” Bunnie rooted herself to the spot then, to everyone’s surprise, fired her robotic arm forward on an metal cable, “Bet y’all didn’t know Ah could do that!”
Bunnie’s roboticised hand grabbed onto the tree and clenched hard. With no effort to herself, Bunni began shaking the tree with ludicrous force as Coconuts screamed in fright. In almost no time at all, the monkey bot flopped out of the tree and landed on his head.
“Prime Badnik, huh?” Sonic stood over Coconuts, “You know your lack of a hostage just means you’re ‘prime’ for a kicking, right?”
“Oh no…” Coconuts groaned.
“Oh yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Sonic smirked. He wound up his foot and booted the little droid in the head, which disconnected and rolled into a wall. The light came loose and bounced pathetically on a spring.
“When I get out of this, you guys are in so much trouble!” Coconuts’ disembodied head shouted.
“Oh yeah right,” Sonic scoffed, “When you pull yourself together, we’ll be long gone. But just to be on the safe side, I don’t want you messing with our planes, so…” Sonic picked up Coconuts’ body and hurled it into the sea, “I hate littering but I’m taking no chances. Come on, guys, we’ve gotta move. Now, Coconuts, you stay here and think about what you did! This is really no way to get a head in life!”
Coconuts shrieked, “That’s not funny!”
“Heads up!” Bunnie shouted. Up above, a Badnik that resembled a wasp, propelled by rocket boosters sailed through the air.
“Yeah! You’re in for it now, hedgehog! That’s a Buzzer Badnik! They’re the latest in aerial assault! You don’t stand a ch—”
Before Coconuts could finish, Bunnie hurled one of the metal coconuts through the air and smashed the Buzzer to pieces which rained down from the sky.
Sonic looked at Coconuts’ head and smirked, “You were saying?”
Coconuts grumbled to himself.
Rotor headed over to the fragments of Badnik, “Nice shot, Bunnie! Took out the head and the CPU- sorry, Porker- but saved the stinger. That’s the part that’s weaponised too by the looks of things. I think I might be able to use this”. Rotor picked up the Buzzer’s stinger and slid it over his arm like a gauntlet. He wriggled his fingers around a bit and, eventually, a spark of flame shot out of the end. “Oh yeah,” Rotor smiled, “I can definitely use this”
As the Freedom Fighters moved on, leaving two smashed Badniks behind them, they talked among themselves.
“That thing was like an upgraded Buzz Bomber,” Sonic noted, “Not as quick, though. I guess they’re more of a patrol unit”
“Which means we need to be on guard for more of them,” Sally noted, “Any one of them could report back to Doctor Robotnik that we’ve arrived, so stay alert”
“I feel like we lost the element of surprise when Coconuts showed up,” Johnny shrugged, “Even an idiot machine like that will have alerted Robotnik”
“You make a good point,” Sally admitted, “Everyone stay sharp”
“I’m always sharp, I’m a hedgehog,” Sonic quipped.
Tails giggled. Coming up to an old log bridge, the group began to cross. Tails got ahead of the rest, his twin appendages dangling lazily behind him. Suddenly, as if leaping for bait, a piranha-like Badnik leapt from the waters.
“Tails, look out!” Sonic cried out, zooming forward and grabbing his friend to safety with split-second timing.
“A Chopper Badnik?” Johnny asked.
“Not quite!” the fish replied, leaping from the waters once more, almost taking a bite out of the petrified Porker, who dropped to the ground in fear, “Chopper’s yesterday’s news! Say hello to his replacement, Masher!”
The Masher launched itself from the water once more and shot clean through one of the bridge’s logs, sending splinters everywhere. There was a sense of panic among the friends- but not Johnny Lightfoot. He eyed one of the large fragments of wood on the bridge and felt a sense of destiny calling to him. He picked the wood up and waited for the Masher to reappear, as if sensing its movements. When the fish launched itself from the waters once more, Johnny swung the wooden stick with all his might, as if hitting a home run, and shattered the Masher into a thousand pieces, freeing a Mobini bird from within. The bird gave a little tweet of gratitude before fluttering off.
“Johnny, that was amazing!” Rotor complimented his friend.
“Nice work, Lightfoot,” Sonic gave a thumbs up.
Johnny felt the heft of the wood in his hands, “I wish I’d brought my trusty metal bar with me”
The group travelled on for several minutes, experiencing little resistance. Whatever Badniks they encountered were soon dispatched by Sonic, Bunnie and Johnny, with Rotor providing support with his Buzzer gun. The friends came to a naturally-occuring moebius strip, which Sonic and Tails amused themselves by running over and somehow managing to defy gravity.
Over the next hill they came to, the mood changed.
Sonic raised a hand, “Listen… do you guys hear that?”
There were actually two distinct noises. One was a high-pitched repetitive, extremely loud sound. The other was more of a low rumble. Crucially, whatever it was the sounds were coming from were both getting closer.
“Sonic, watch out!” Tails shouted.
Without any further warning, a huge armoured car with no passenger sped into sight, the cause of the rumbling noise, a whirring drill cone mounted on its front. And, up above, the repetitive high-pitched sound revealed itself to be the helicopter attachment attached to an all-too familiar sight: Doctor Robotnik’s Egg-O-Matic hovercraft.
As Robotnik roared with laughter, the Egg-O-Matic landed in the large passenger seat of the car and the helicopter blades folded away.
Sonic looked his enemy in the eye, “What’s with the helicopter blades, egg-features? Getting too fat for your hovercraft to hold you up without a little extra lift?”
“You won’t be laughing once I’ve drilled a hole through your stupid face, rodent!” Robotnik snarled, grabbing at the controls of the car, which shot into life almost immediately. The speed of the thing surprised even Sonic as he leapt towards the nearby coconut trees for safety. The Freedom Fighters were sent scattering.
Robotnik drove like a wild man, erratically swerving. It meant it was rather difficult to aim a shot at the machine for any of the Freedom Fighters. Tails tried to swoop from above but had no luck. Rotor found himself unable to take a shot for fear of missing and hitting one of his friends.
Johnny looked hard at the fragment of wood in his hands and knew what he had to do. He took aim and threw the lump of former tree right in Robotnik’s path- bullseye! The car drove over the wood and it became wedged in the wheel arch! Robotnik revved the accelerator furiously but neither the splintered log fragment or the wheel budging. After giving off smoke from the friction, the tyre burst loudly.
“Rotor, now!” Sally shouted.
On the opposite side of the vehicle, Rotor took aim at the rear tyre and fire a burst of fire at it, popping it instantly. As sweat formed on Robotnik’s brow, Antoine leapt in from behind and stuck his sabre through the other rear tyre.
Sonic coolly walked up to Robotnik, “How about that? One wheel on your wagon- and you’re not rolling anywhere”
Robotnik looked around him frantically. The Freedom Fighters were closing in. “I still have a trick up my sleeve, you furry fools!”
Robotnik jabbed at a button on his console. Suddenly, the drill cone launched itself forward, with Johnny barely able to dodge in time. The cone wedged itself in a nearby coconut tree and cut through it. Robotnik realised too late his error as the tree plummeted downward and smacked him square on the head with a thunderous crack.
Everyone looked around slightly awkwardly. On the one hand, that was a thoroughly unpleasant visual. On the other, it was Doctor Robotnik so they weren’t going to shed any tears for him.
After a lengthy pause, an exasperated roar emanated from the car as the helicopter blades activated, slicing the tree away and Robotnik took to the skies in his Egg-O-Matic. Surveying the damage to his car, Robotnik could only offer one response: “I HATE THAT WEDGED LOG!”
“Great work, everyone,” Sally said with pride.
“Sally, over here!” Sonic called. He led the group to a familiar sight: a Prison Egg Capsule. “Ladies and gentlemen, your royal highness, if you’ll permit me?”
“Of course,” Sally smiled.
Sonic leapt up onto the large yellow release button atop the capsule and it popped open, freeing dozens of trapped Emerald Hill folk inside. They cheered for their saviours, variously shaking their hands, asking for autographs and the like. The heroes couldn’t stop in one place for long, however. They had to follow Robotnik’s trail before he got too far away, even if it meant following into danger.
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