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27; I don't think anyone is reading this but i'll update anyway!


Chapter 2;


Sonic grunted in annoyance before getting out of bed. “Man, what a wake up call!” He grumbled as he slipped on his beloved shoes and combed back a few stray spikes. “And four am and they ask for help? Who do they think I am?” He gave himself a quick look in the mirror and winked at the reflecting image. Now ready he skipped out onto the landing and trotted beside Knuckles as they went downstairs.
“So what is it this time?” Sonic said, “they’ve lost something? Someone died? A house is on fire?”
Knuckles groaned. “Have some respect! Ever since egg man’s defeat we have been destroying his last citadels and factories right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“There’s one left, the most dangerous of them all.”
“Oh.” But his tone of voice was flat. Knuckles guessed he was still cranky from the party last night. It answered why he was being so careless about what was going on around him.
Knuckles went into the kitchen, grabbed Sonic’s backpack and loaded it with food. “And they say they’re being attacked by robots. Badniks.”
“But we destroyed them all.”
“No, not all. They must be survivors but the factory must be heavily guarded.”
“But the Marble zone is in a forest! Full of trees! It’ll slow us down. We need Tails’ plane or something…” He thought.
“Just run through the freakin’ forest!” Knuckles rolled his eyes.
Sonic smiled. “This will be easy so who cares, huh? We’ve done this like, four hundred thousand times.”
“Yes. Just like old times.” Knuckles gave the bag to sonic. “We must use stealth to get into their fortress and disable their main computer in the system. That’ll disable all the badniks. Every factory has one.”
“Yeah, I know! Now come on. I don’t want to miss breakfast!” He grinned.
They stepped out onto the porch. “Forty miles until we get to the forest.” Knuckles muttered just in case Sonic wanted to know.
“Yeah, yeah.” He grabbed Knuckles’ arm and sped off down the road so he wouldn’t have to worry about Knuckles slowing him down.

Forty miles did not take long as the blue hedgehog zapped past villages, hills and lakes and forgotten sites once belonging to Robotnik.
As Sonic entered Marble forest, Knuckles told him to stop. Sonic had to break hard. When he came to a standstill, the woods were eerily quiet and dark.
Knuckles, after taking a firm foot on the ground, brushed off the dirt that had collected onto his fur.
“Why did you tell me to stop?” Sonic cried.
“Shhh!” Knuckles whispered harshly, “there are things that live in this forest that are deadly. If we are heard our whole mission will be in jeopardy!”
“Well don’t get so crabby about it!”
“Look,” Knux confronted him, “I told you to stop because this place is very dangerous. There are traps everywhere, all designed to catch you so we’d better be cautious!”
Sonic shrugged, “so now what? I don’t see this so called fortress anywhere!”
“That’s because it’s in the centre of the forest!”
“And when did you get to know so much?” Sonic questioned, visibly annoyed.
“I know these places.” Was all Knux said as he went forward.
Sonic had no other choice but to follow, however, he did trust his old friend to the fullest extent. So together they forced their small bodies through the thick, wild grass that reached up to their shoulders.
The walk was long and they saw many strange creatures. Overgrown yellow flowers with curled petals swayed in the slight wind and it harboured large insects that had bold markings and razor sharp pincers.
Knuckles advised Sonic not to touch a thing. Most of anything living was poisonous. Sonic took the advice seriously.
Finally they could see the tip of the fortress. Sonic wondered how they could have missed such a place. And the scenery was all too familiar. It was like his dream. He got a nasty feeling that something was very, very wrong. He wondered if Red could sense the wrong in this place too. He was sadly mistaken. Knuckles proudly went on, confident and loyal to his job, his mission.
But they didn’t proceed much further. Knuckles stopped and pointed with his gloved fist at a bed of flowers that lay before them.
Sonic wrinkled his nose. “What?”
“They are poisonous to the touch.” The Gian ian muttered, “and there is no way around them.”
“What, those things?” And Sonic touched one of the pink flowers that dominated the whole area before them.
“Sonic, don’t!”
Too late.
The flower shot out an iron arrowhead from its centre and hit Sonic in the shoulder. “Oops.”
“You idiot!” Knuckles felt like throttling him, “you could die!”
“Not me, I’m Sonic the hedgehog!” He took the iron point from out of his skin and threw it aside. “I don’t feel any different.”
Knuckles wasn’t so sure. He had heard that these flowers were made by egg man himself but the deadly poison only affected a certain few. If Sonic was somehow immune, maybe that was why the flowers had just been left here, as a failed experiment. So, was it safe to cross after all?
“Let’s rest first.” Knux decided, “and eat. You need to keep your strength up. We don’t know what we’re going to face once we get inside the factory.”
“It’s going to be abandoned I bet! Like the one we intruded on last year!”
“Yes, but one out of thousands we sabotaged.”
Sonic sat. “Never mind. Let’s eat then we can get on with it!”
Knuckles discerned him carefully for any changes from the flower. But Sonic ate quite happily and showed no signs from any affect of the flower. So Knuckles’ theory was right. They had to be immune to the flowers. He was glad. If not they would have had to race back home and get Sonic help.
Sonic noticed Knuckles staring blankly at him. He frowned. “What?”
“Nothing.” Knux looked out onto the flowerbed again but an ill feeling did not leave his gut. Something didn’t smell right.
After Sonic had eaten his fill he stood back up again and pressed onwards, through the heavy, dense foliage of flowers. Many of the pink dainty plants opened up and shot at him but Sonic effortlessly dodged.
Knuckles was more careful but it didn’t pay off. As he tried not to disturb the flowers with their luring color, several fired at him. Stumbling and trotting onwards, he had managed to dodge them. Then he heard Sonic cry out, “a river up ahead and some badniks! Awesome!”
Red looked up and saw three; wasp-like robot creatures emerge from the ground itself. Dust and mud that thickened and had dried on their once, clean metal and their parts had begun to rust. But that did not fool Knuckles for one minute. They were quick and accurate. In seconds they were letting out streams of hot lasers, setting alight some of the toxic flowers.
Sonic launched himself up into the air, curled up into a ball and dived into one of the wasps. Knuckles could not dodge the flowers and the lasers at the same time, however, the flowers weren’t that dangerous at all, or were they?
Jumping around, out manoeuvring their blasts, Knuckles was safe. Sonic had destroyed one but the other two wasps flew higher into the dank air.
“Knuckles, climb up that tree and get them!” Sonic shouted.
The Guardian did not need telling twice. He threw himself at the tree behind him and started climbing while Sonic distracted the badniks.
Now high enough, Knuckles launched himself at the closet wasp. He managed to gauge its armoured hide. But the second locked its lasers at the echidna instead of Sonic and fired.


TBC