Sonic Runaways

"Let me just say, Regina, your half of the robots' programming is paying off splendidly!" Robotnik complimented the Iron Queen. She turned to him, looking away from the miner Badmechs swinging their pickaxes against the stone. "Maybe they're TOO efficient. This Quartz Quadrant will be nothing more than a crater by the end of the day, and we will have reaped all the minerals to be found here. With all that quartz, our Cosmic Eternity airship will have more than enough energy to revolutionize Little Planet, and we can use the excess energy to revolutionize some of the world below as well!"

"Yeah! But if it weren't for your idea to make the robots look like the bugs that pollinate the flowers, they would've been destroyed by those pesky weeds. We would have gotten nowhere!" Iron Queen replied. The vines were particularly active that morning, wriggling and stretching about. But they simply ignored the Badmechs. The plants only detected them as real bugs. Robotnik and Iron Queen were safe in the air. "I couldn't have ever come up with that on my own. Also, their designs are pretty!!" The two sat in silence for a while, both smiling.

"You're much nicer than your mother," Robotnik replied, reclining in his Rob-O-Matic.

"Say wha now?" Iron Queen asked.

"I understand that might sound weird," Robotnik sputtered, trying to save face while adjusting his glasses. He quickly reclined with his arms behind his back. "But she would have never worked together with me. I feel like this is the start of a beautiful friendship!" The Iron Queen smiled.

"Maybe if you weren't always making threats of war, you two would've been better friends," Iron Queen joked. "Then again… she was kind of a wicked old hag. She wouldn't have cared, really."

"Well then, I'm glad we can agree on that," Robotnik replied. He suddenly heard the sound of metal busting open, as well as fast footsteps that could only belong to one person.

"Aah! It's Sonic and Tails!" Iron Queen cried, standing up from her seat and looking down towards a blue hedgehog and a two-tailed fox taking out the miner Badmechs. "Is he still after that statue?"

"It's okay, Metal Sonic has secured the statue at the end of Stardust Speedway," Robotnik replied. "Her godlike powers are under our complete and total control. But nothing good will come of Sonic destroying those robots. Destroy him!"

"Gladly!" Iron Queen exclaimed. She shot forward and intercepted Sonic, who skidded to a stop. "It seems we meet again, commoner!"

"Hey, beautiful," Sonic replied to the Iron Queen. Tails bashed into the Dominator in ball form while the Iron Queen was confused by Sonic.

"Good job on that distraction, Sonic!" Tails cried happily. Sonic looked over.

"What distraction?" Sonic asked. Suddenly, Robotnik blasted through on his Rob-O-Matic and ran into Sonic, who was knocked forward with a grunt. He skidded across the floor, then nimbly dodged out of the way as a miner Badmech tried to drive its pickaxe into the stone under him, completely oblivious to the fact Sonic was even there. Robotnik inadvertently rammed his Rob-O-Matic into the Badmech, completely obliterating it.

"Gah! Irritating rodent!" Robotnik shouted, blasting towards Sonic. "This mine will be your tomb!" Sonic reached a conveyor belt that amplified his speed. With lightning-fast reflexes, he ran around and slid under many slamming pistons made to crush and compress as Robotnik followed behind him. Robotnik wondered why Sonic was going slow enough for him to keep up, when suddenly, Sonic made a u-turn, switching lanes onto the conveyor going backwards. He backflipped off of it and shot into Robotnik's Rob-O-Matic like a missile. Hitting it like a volleyball all the way into the Dominator. The two machines collided, and the two dictators landed on the ground a few feet away from the pods.

Sonic arrived at the wreckage, and helped Tails up, who had been dealing with the Iron Queen alone. "You alright?" Sonic asked, as Tails popped his shoulder back into place.

"Yeah, I'm fine…" Tails squeaked. He coughed. Sonic realized he should have brought Tails' meds.

But that would quickly turn out to be the least of their concerns.

"As for you," Sonic muttered, turning to Robotnik. He finally had a chance to interrogate him. "Turns out you really did lie about changing your ways. Can't say I didn't see it coming." Sonic pointed a finger to Robotnik's pink, slightly pointy nose. Robotnik stared cross-eyed at it in rage. "Where do you have Amy?!" Unbeknownst to everyone, one of the flowers growing and wriggling about the Quartz Quadrant sensed fresh meat. It slithered soundlessly behind a rock and used its underground root system to further scope out its prey through several senses.

"Why would I tell you, you dishonorable little gerbil?!" Robotnik shouted. Sonic zapped Robotnik's nose as a warning. "Ow! Okay, I'll tell you… she's at the end of the Stardust Speedway. But you'll never be fast enough to save her!"

"What do you mean, fast eno---?" Sonic asked, insulted. He then heard Tails cry out in pain. He looked to his left, and saw a flower trying to drag Tails away into a small crevasse of other plants. They all writhed and nipped in his direction like hellish starving baby birds. "Tails!" Sonic shouted. He ran towards the flower and Spin Dashed right through it, cutting it in half. The flower was cut off its stem, and landed dead on the floor. Sonic caught Tails and began to evade the other plants as they lunged for him.

"Quickly, Regina! Climb aboard the Rob-O-Matic!" Robotnik shouted.

"But the Dominator---!" Iron Queen whined.

"There's no time! Come along now!" Robotnik instructed. Iron Queen stamped her foot and screamed angrily. She dashed over to the Rob-O-Matic, looking at the Dominator sadly. She breathed in painfully.

"Shoulder transportation formation! Activate!" Robotnik and Iron Queen shouted, as Iron Queen jumped onto Robotnik's shoulders while he piloted the Rob-O-Matic. The engine huffed and puffed and choked to life, and the two got off the ground, flying away. This prompted the plants chasing them to focus their attention back to Sonic and Tails, believing Robotnik and the Iron Queen to be pointless to pursue.

Sonic set Tails on the ground. "Are you okay, Tails?" Sonic asked. Tails had a nasty dark red mark around his ankle from where the flower grabbed him. Tails inhaled sharply.

"I'm fine!" Tails muttered, though he could hardly stand due to the throbbing pain. "But this won't end well for either of us if we don't do something, and fast!" The flowers were closing in. But so was something else. Something much larger, much more metallic. Something much more airborne.

The Cosmic Eternity.

"Hey, isn't that--- Robotnik's airship?!" Tails shouted, nearly jumping out of his skin.

"That's good, right?" Sonic asked, stomping a flower to the ground quickly. "It'll mechanize all the flowers."

"Yeah! AND US!" Tails shouted.

"Well then… I may just have an idea!" Sonic exclaimed, snapping his fingers. He broke into a Spin Dash, and cut down through the stone floor like a buzz saw. He then dug forward in ball form until the laser couldn't touch him. Tails climbed through the hole, to see Sonic had made a small burrow with more than enough space to fit both of them. "Welcome to paradise, Tails."

"Heh, good thinking…" Tails chuckled, still shaken up. He sat down. They could both hear the awful metallic crackling from the surface as everything above them was being mechanized. Tails saw the tangled roots in the dirt turn to wire. "I'm surprised you're so adamant on saving Amy. We could've been out of here just like that. But… you decided to stick around to try and save her from being mechanized or metallified or whatever."

"What can I say? I can't just leave her here," Sonic replied, staring off at the wall. Tails looked down to the floor.

"What are we going to do after this is all over?" Tails asked. "Even if we do save Amy and survive, we have nowhere left to go. I doubt many places are safe from the Iron Dominion on its own. Not to mention Robotnik's working with the Iron Queen now."

"We'll figure it out," Sonic replied. It was a simple answer, but also one that Tails never thought of.

"Yeah, I guess we'll worry about it later," Tails sighed, sliding down the wall and onto his back in exhaustion. He coughed.

"No, we won't even worry about it. We'll just run with whatever happens," Sonic replied. "I know there's a way out of this. If we made it out of the Robotnik Empire, we can do anything."

"I guess… we should get to this 'Stardust Speedway' and find Amy. It's quite literally a small world, I'm sure we'll find it sooner or later," Tails replied. "But that also means the airship will mechanize everything on Little Planet soon. So we better get moving if we wanna survive."

"Yeah! That I can do," Sonic replied, as he grabbed Tails' arm and ran out of the burrow.