Sonic Series Fan Fiction ❯ The Stage is Set ❯ The Return of the Ultimate Life Form Part 2 ( Chapter 12 )

A/N: Hey everyone! Been a while, but I'm back! Here's the latest chapter to The Stage is Set. If you've forgotten what happened since last time, this chapter shows the other team as they infiltrate Eggman's base to rescue Shadow, who is still being held captive. This chapter takes place at the exact same time as the previous chapter, just with different characters. Well, I'm done pointing out the obvious, so here's the next chapter! Oh, by the way, this chapter will be in Jinn's POV. So be happy! Someone other than Zane will be blowing stuff up.

Chapter Twelve: Return of the Ultimate Life Form, Part II

Jinn's POV

My eyes opened slowly, squinting at first. "Ahh...What happened?" I asked. I sat up and rubbed my head. "I feel like my head was pounded on by a rabid monkey..."

"Hey, you all right?" I looked up, seeing my brother walk up.

"Other than the pounding headache, yeah, I'm peachy," I answered, sitting up slowly.

"Good. Guys, we're moving out!" he yelled.

""Hey, I thought I was the leader," Sonic said. "But you are right, we need to end this once and for all."

"Can I get something for this headache?" I asked, still rubbing my head.

"Sure, just wait a sec," Amy said, walking out of the room.

"So, Zane, are you sure you wanna go through with this?" Sonic asked. "There's only five of you guys. You might get overwhelmed."

"No worries, Sonic," Zane said. "Do you know what happens when you blast a robot with a fireball?"

"Err...no, what?"

"The same thing that happens to everything else!"

"Dude, that line sucks!" Sonic said. "What'd you do, get that line off of some internet comic?"

"Yeah," he confessed. "Yeah, I did."

"Here, you go, Jinn," Amy said, walking back into the room. She handed him a glass of water and a few pills. "These should help."

"Thanks," he said. I swallowed the pills, then downed the water in a few gulps. "All right, I'm ready."

"Okay, then, let's go, guys!" Sonic said.

We split up into two groups, the fighters over with Zane, and the runners and fliers with Sonic.

"Oh, wait," Tails said. He quickly ran over to Keenan and held out the fake emerald. "Here ya go, Keenan."

"Thanks," he said, absorbing the emerald into his body.

He then walked over to Zane and held his hand out, giving an emerald shard to him. "Thanks," he said, sticking the shard in his arm.

[Are you ready for this, Kyle?] Jinn asked.

I still hadn't gotten used to sharing bodies with someone else, so I was somewhat startled by him. [Yeah, I'm ready,] I told him. [Next time you're about to talk to me, give me a little warning. I'm still not used to you.]

[You'll get used to it,] he said with a laugh.

I noticed Tails had made it back over with us, and was now waiting for Sonic to warp us out of here.

"All right, now are we all set to go?" Sonic asked. "All right then, guys, hang on." He took out one of the Chaos Emeralds. "Well, see you guys on the other side. Chaos Control!"

A strange feeling overcame me, like being on an elevator. An elevator that was moving forwards and fast enough that people seemed to be standing perfectly still. And then, all at once, the feeling was gone. I looked around, noting that we were still in a wooded area. "Hey, why are-"

"Shh..." Sonic said. He looked over a clump of bushes, then pointed out a group of robots similar to Gamma.

[I remember him,] I said. [I used to watch Tim play as him on Sonic Adventure.]

[Yeah, except this one's not being controlled by your brother, so it'll do its best to kill you,] Jinn replied.

[I can take care of myself.]

[Yeah, with my powers,] he said.

[Shut up,] I said. [I was able to take care of myself just fine before you awoke in me.]

[All right, all right,] he said. [Sorry.]

I sat and stared at the robots, waiting for Sonic to make a move, when one of the robots literally fell to pieces. I mean, arms, then head, and then the main body part fell to the ground. The legs and feet just stood there, then fell to the ground. The remaining robots turned and began firing machine gun shots, and Espio appeared.

"No, Espio!" Sonic yelled, jumping over the bush and heading towards one of the robots. I followed him, sending a disk of wind after another robot. The disk hit, and began tearing away the armor plating, then tearing the away at the internal systems and destroying the robot from the inside out. The robot was still able to fire before its systems stopped, although Amy blocked the shots with her hammer as she ran towards it, smashing its arm into it, finishing the job the disk started. She jumped away as the robot exploded, and headed towards another one. It turned around suddenly, and smacked her with its massive metal arm. Amy flew and slammed into Cream, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Hey, go protect them!] Jinn yelled.

I flew over towards their bodies, knocking away the robot that had smacked Amy. The robot stood back up and turned to me, shooting vollies of bullets in my direction. I simply created a sonic boom and knocked the bullets back into it. It collapsed onto the ground. "Boo-ya!"

"Get offa me, you big, metal creep!" I turned to see Rouge being held by a robot who had began operating a drill on his head. "I said get off of me!" She swung her legs up and kicked the robot off of her, and it sailed back into a cluster of bushes.

"Take this!" Sonic yelled. He jumped at the last remaining robot and did a jump kick to its head, then zipping down and smashing it in the back before it landed. It popped back up into the air, where Tails smacked it back down and through a tree. "Good job, little bud," he said, settling back down. "Hey, are Amy and Cream all right, Jinn?"

"They should be fine," I said, looking them over. "They were just hit a little too hard. How's Espio?"

"I'm fine," Espio said, limping into view. "A bullet just grazed one of my legs."

"Will you be all right?" I asked.

"I should be fine. As I said, it just grazed my leg."

"Grazed my little toe," Sonic said. "You've got a trail of blood seeping behind you."

"Hmph," Espio muttered. "I'm a ninja. We don't show pain or weakness."

"Well, if you're gonna keep going, you need to wrap your leg up," Sonic said. He walked over to me and ripped part of my shirt off.

"H-hey!" I protested, although it was a tad bit too late for that.

"No worries, I'll pay ya back for it," Sonic said, walking over and wrapping the ninja's injured leg in it. "There, now you should be fine."

"Well that's one problem taken care of," Rouge said.

"Whaddaya mean?" Sonic asked.

"What are we gonna do about the two sleeping beauties over there?" she asked, pointing to Amy and Cream.

"Good question," Sonic asked.

"I can carry Cream," Espio said. "I won't be able to do too much, but I can still help carry her around."

"And who wants to carry Amy around?" There was a silence for a few seconds, before Charmy volunteered to do it.

"Okay, now we can go," Sonic said.

"Urf..." Charmy said, picking up Amy. "She's pretty heavy."

"If you say that when she's awake, she'll probably try to rip your wings off," Sonic told him.

Charmy instant;y froze and dropped Amy, and flew up higher. "W-will she really?" he asked.

"Settle down," Sonic said. "I was just kidding. Now hurry and pick her up, we still got a little ways to go."

"O-okay," Charmy said, still a little uneasy.

As we began walking by the bushes that we came from, the robot that got knocked away jumped out and swung, nearly hitting Sonic. Sonic proved too fast, though, and jumped back. I took the initiative and began pounding it on all sides with strong blasts of wind. It compacted the robot into a nice, neat cube.

"Hehe, good job," Sonic said, walking up and knocking on it. "I probably couldn't have done it better myself."

[You couldn't do it at all, you cocky furball,] Jinn said.

[Settle down,] I said. [Let him be cocky. I think it's funny.]

"Okay, now I believe we can continue on," Sonic said. "So let's go!" With that, he raced off with the rest of us scrambling to keep up with him. "Hey, you guys are slow!"

"Shut up and slow down!" Rouge said.

"You'll have to catch me fir-Oof!" Sonic said, running into and bouncing off of a wall. "Oww...Where did that come from?!"

"It's Eggman's base," Tails said. "You should've been watching where you were going."

With a few unheard words, Sonic stood up. "Well, we've arrived. Now we need to get in"

"Leave that to me," Tails said, smiling. He reached into his tails and pulled out a couple small, black boxes. He hooked them up to the wall and pressed a button. Then he ran back about ten feet and hid behind some trees. "Get over here!"

It was too late, and the bombs exploded, sending fire and flaming pieces of brick and metal flying at us. Tails cried out, trying to warn us, but the explosion drowned out his voice. Out of pure instinct, I raised a barrier of wind up in front of us, deflecting the debris from hitting us.

After it was safe enough, Tails ran over to us. "I am so sorry about not warning you guys," he cried out. "Are you guys all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sonic said. "But you should've warned us."

"I'm sorry, Sonic," Tails said. "I just figured that if you saw me run for cover, you'd do the same thing."

"Tails, we never know what you're doing." Sonic sighed. "Oh well, we might as well get going." We turned and headed into the hole that was once a wall, and instantly a small army of robots stood in our path. "All right, time ta party!"

We rushed into battle, me staying behind and covering Espio and Charmy, along with their 'baggage'. Sonic zipped between them at high speeds, taking random parts from them as he did so. When he got to the other side of them, a trail of arms, legs, heads, and other parts from them lay behind him.

Tails and Rouge jumped in at this time and began smashing the robots. They were dispatched quickly and easily.

"That was a little strange," Sonic said, walking back to us. "These robots didn't seem powered up at all.

"I know what you mean," Tails said. "Maybe all the powerful ones are being used against Knuckles and the others."

"Probably." Sonic turned and tapped the toe of his shoe on the ground. "Time to go." We exited the room, heading down a long hallway with doors on either side of us the whole way down. "Stay here, I'll go check things out." Sonic went into his fastest mode and just disappeared. We heard doors opening and closing quickly, and Sonic appeared back in front of us, holding a rag in his hand.

"Well?" Rouge said. "Did you find Shadow's cell?"

"No," Sonic said, grinning. "But check out what I found." He held up the rag, which he unfolded and held up. It turned out to be a towel, which had the words, 'I am the Eggman,' printed on it in large red letters.

"That's disturbing," I said. "Look at the size of it."

"I know. It could easily wrap us up twice over and still have more cloth left over." Sonic tossed the towel aside. "But Shadow wasn't in any of these side rooms, and that only leaves that room over there." He jerked his thumb behind him. "There's a door at the far end of this hallway that I hadn't checked yet. Odds are that Shadow's in there."

"Then why are we still here?" Rouge asked, starting off. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to putting an end to this."

"I agree," I said, following her. We reached the door in a matter of minutes, but came across a small problem...

"Locked?!" Sonic said. "Now what're we gonna do?"

[Lesse, he could ram the door at high speeds and knock it down, the bat chick could kick it down, the fox could blow it up...need I continue?] Jinn said.

[Hehehe,] I replied. [Maybe I should take care of this.] I walked up to the door and rested my hand on it, concentrating on my powers. I released a shockwave of air, knocking the door off of its hinges.

"Thanks Jinn," Sonic said. He walked ahead into the room, followed closely by everyone else. A lone figure stood in the middle of the room, and as we entered its eyes lit up in an eerie green color. "What's that?"

Without warning, the mysterious robot leapt after us, swinging at whoever he got close to. With speeds nearly matching those of Sonic's, he was tough to keep up with, and he easily smacked Rouge and Tails away. It got a few blows in to me, knocking the wind out of me. Sonic came up behind him and kicked out at him, smashing him in the back of his head.

The robot tumbled over onto the floor.

"Darn...Seems to be a Phi," Sonic said.

"A Phi?" I asked.

"A type of robot Eggman made during the time when we met Emerl." The robot stood back up, and Sonic readied himself, while Rouge and Tails came back to join us. "They never had this kind of speed and strength at one time though."

Armor began falling off of the Phi, revealing newer looking orangish armor.

"No way!" Sonic yelled. "Emerl, is that you?!"

The robot chuckled. "Long time no see, Sonic. What's up?"

"Emerl, are you really working for Eggman?!"

"Of course," he replied. "How else would I be able to repay him for reviving me?"

"How about you repay me for stopping you from destroying everything?"

"Don't worry, I'll give you a proper burial once you're dead," Emerl said with a laugh. "That should more than suffice."

"I got this," I said, stepping forward. "I'll take him on my own."

"Are you crazy?!" Tails demanded. "Emerl's much more powerful than the last time when Sonic defeated him."

"Well, I need to know how well I stand up to my brother," I said. "If he were here, he probably would've turned Emerl to a roasting pile of nuts and bolts by now."

"So what does this have to do with you wanting to fight by yourself?" Sonic asked.

"I wanna test myself," I said. "Let me do this, please."

"Fine," Sonic said.

"But Sonic, we should fight as a team!" Tails said. "You barely beat Emerl by yourself last time!"

"Yes, but Jinn and Zane are on a whole different level of fighting than what we are," Sonic stated. "If anyone can do it, it would be one of those two."

"Okay then, so I'm taking you all down one at a time? Sounds good to me," Emerl said.

"Sorry, but you won't be beating me," I said, charging some wind energy into my hands.

"We'll see," he said, charging at me. He jumped and aimed a kick at my face, but I dodged by it and flew up into the air. I took the wind energy into my hands and began throwing bursts of energy at him. He took a few hits by was still standing. He began laughing, and then he took to the air also. He flew at me and threw a barrage of fists at me, which some of them got through and did a fair amount of damage to me. I landed and held my stomach, which was now in a serious amount of pain.

"Hehe, give up?" Emerl said.

"N-never," I managed to say, but his attacks really got to me.

"Jinn, catch!" Sonic yelled.

I turned around and caught what he threw at me, a Chaos Emerald. I absorbed the power into my body, then turned back to Emerl. "Heh, now you're going down!"

"We'll see, won't we?" he said, landing on the ground.

We rushed at each other and began punching at high speeds. We both got a bunch of hits in, but neither of us backed up. The brawl continued on for what seemed like hours, and then we backed up from each other. I was breathing heavily, and my body hurt.

"That's the difference between you and me," Emerl said. "I'm a robot. I don't feel pain, or fear, or fatigue. You though, you're almost done, and you have a Chaos Emerald backing you up. You're a joke."

It was then that I just decided to let rage take over. It's the kind of rage that you keep hidden inside, the kind that nobody ever sees. This rage has been bottled up for as long as I can remember, mostly because of my brother. "Stupid Tim," I muttered before falling victim to my rage. I rushed at Emerl, smashing him with all my might. Every blow I landed made me feel better, and I wanted to do it again. Over and over I smashed him, not giving him a chance to fight back. When I was finished with my beating, I kicked him up into the air and created a disk of wind energy, which flew at him and cut him in half. Not finished with him yet, I blasted his remaining parts to make sure he was finished.

After a few minutes of calming down, I looked towards Sonic and the others.

"Not bad," Sonic said. "I was kinda worried that you were gonna come after us next, but that was cool."

"Sorry about that," I said. "I usually don't lose my temper like that."

"Heh, no worries," Sonic said. "But we need to keep going, we're almost done."

We continued into the next room, which led to another hallway, although this one didn't have any side rooms. We dashed through and came to a dead end.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Break down this wall," Sonic said. "There might be something behind it."

"Okay," Tails said, walking up to it.

Sonic jerked him backwards. "Not you. Last time you used those bombs, we nearly got fried and impaled."

"Hehehe."

I walked forward and blasted the wall down. Beyond it was yet another hallway. "How many hallways are we gonna have to go through?"

"Quit whining," Rouge said. "This isn't exactly a walk in the park for us, ya know."

After going down that hallway and two others, we reached another room. Walking in, we saw Dr. Eggman in his walker and a robot standing next to him.

"Is that...Omega?!" Rouge said.

"I thought he got scrapped," I said.

"He was," Rouge said. "He must've been rebuilt."

Dr. Eggman turned and laughed his ridiculous laugh. "Welcome, Sonic and friends, to your demise."

"Come and get some, Eggman!" Sonic said.

"Hahaha! I think not. To get to me, you will have to go through my most powerfullest robot yet. Go, and destroy them Omega!"

"No," the robot replied.

Eggman looked at Omega. "What?!"

"I am not going to help you, Dr. Eggman." The robot backed up over to us. "You have finally built the perfect robot. And now I will do all that I can to extract my revenge upon you."

"Revenge?!" Eggman demanded.

"For locking me away."

"You're still going on about that?! Hmph, fine then, I'll deal with you all myself." He took out a black stone. "Watch, and be amazed at the powers of my Dark Emerald!"

"Here, Sonic," I said, handing his emerald back to him.

"Thanks," he said.

"And, to make things a little more fun..." The emerald began shining brightly, and then the light died down. The other team stood in front of us.

"Hey, look," Big said. "The others are already here."

We all turned to see the others. Sonic transformed, his golden body expelling lots of energy. "I'll finish you for good this time, Eggman!" Sonic yelled.

"Where's Shadow?" Vector asked.

"We dunno..." I replied.

"I'll kill you, Eggman!" Sonic yelled, jumping at him.

End Chapter Twelve

A/N: I'll get the next chapter up ASAP. Until then, R+R!