Sonic Heroes (2003)

Sonic Heroes Chapter Twenty-First

Night managed to cross the heroes once again, the third morning being sapped away by their adventures through the Egg Fleet. But by either fate or a ton of luck, the four teams managed to reach Eggman's Final Fortress...

A massive mechanical marvel all by itself, it outsized every ship in the Egg Fleet, with a few heroes comparing it to a whale. Team Sonic had been the first to step foot upon it with Sonic grinning, Tails gasping in awe, and Knuckles simply gaping.

"Oh, the Egg Carrier has nothing on this thing," Knuckles whistled, still taken aback at the immense size.

"Well, this has to be Eggman's headquarters; of course it'd be big, fancy, and over the top!" Sonic exclaimed.

"It's pretty much an airbase, Knuckles," Tails pointed out, scratching his ear. Knuckles just shook his head in bewilderment.

"How does it stay afloat? !"

"Well," Tails began, emitting a light cough. "I'm lead to believe that it has something to do with the air pressure and-"

"Erm...Nevermind, doesn't matter. Let's just take it down." The echidna folded his arms. "So, how do we plan to do that?"

Tails gestured to the main hull of the fortress, as if Knuckles was automatically supposed to know what that meant. When Knuckles didn't catch on as quickly as Tails had hoped, the fox began to explain. "I'd assume that this ship is being powered by...well, a power core, and I wouldn't be surprised if the energy being used came from Grand Metropolis..."

"So bust in there and bust the power core?" Sonic asked, absentmindedly tossing his blue Chaos Emerald up and down.

"That's the plan!"

"Sounds good to me!"

Sonic motioned for the other two to follow, with Knuckles letting out a crazy battle cry before taking off after the hedgehog. Tails chuckled and flew to catch up, until a flash of lighting caused a bright scar in the sky, with the thunder being the sky's pained scream and the rain that fell afterward the tears.

"...wait up! WAIT UP!"

Tails wasted no time in flying toward what could possibly be a suicide mission...better than taking his chances with the storm.

. . .

"Well...here we are," Amy breathed, her boots squeaking against the wet metal. The rain was much more menacing than it had been in the forest, and the lighting didn't just startle Tails...

Cream's ears straightened out perfectly when the blinding flash lit up the sky and the rumble of thunder pounded against her ear drums. "Ooh, this is...quite overwhelming. I really better pull myself together..."

"Are you afraid of storms, Cream?" Amy asked, glancing over her shoulder and looking concerned. To Amy's surprise, Cream shook her head.

"No, I actually love storms..." she glanced up at the sky worriedly, cringing when another lightning bolt struck. "It's just...this one seems very violent..."

"It's not so bad," Big promised, ushering Cream under his parasol. "I've endured storms much worse than this back in Mystic Ruins!"

Amy, meanwhile, took the lead and looked around. The deck didn't appear to have any definite way to go, let alone a sign that said "Eggman- this direction!"

"Ugh, where are we supposed to go from here? I know Eggman's on this ship and all, but it's so big..."

Cream peered out from under the umbrella, noticing more grind rails reaching about the fortress. On them she saw Team Dark grinding away, which she quickly pointed out to Amy.