(Hey guys! I'm back with story 2! I suppose this could be a few months after my previous story with how it takes place. I'll try and post a chapter close to every day. :)

Warning: Extreme emotion or crying may occur at the end of this chapter.

I almost made myself cry proof-reading this.

Enjoy!)

"Alert, Eggman activity, South Robotropolis. Alert, Eggman activity, South Robotropolis."

Nicole's voice reverberated throughout Freedom Fighter Headquarters. I was sitting at a table in the middle of a meeting with the other leading Freedom Fighters, but I wasn't really there – my mind was wandering. Upon hearing the alarms, I banged my head against the table in frustration, choosing to be stubborn.

"Not…again…I…don't…want…to…go!" I grumbled with each head-bang.

"Sonic, get moving! You're leading the attack!"

"Why me?" I asked, propping my head up with my hand. "Why can't someone else do it for once?"

Sally just glared at me and put her hands on her hips. She could get me to do anything with that look.

"Ugh, fine," I groaned, standing up and making my stubbornness clear as I stomped past her. I joined several other Freedom Fighters outside of the headquarters and casually pushed my azure quills back and looked at the group I was to lead.

"So…" I began, leaning against the building. "Let's head out."

"Hold it," one of the younger Freedom Fighters said. "Don't you have a plan?"

"Uh, not really. But I've gone through multiple successful missions without a plan. Plus, that's kind of Sal's bit, not mine."

The Freedom Fighter just shrugged his shoulders. I turned to Sally, who was looking at me disapprovingly.

"So where are we stationed?" I asked, ignoring her look.

She shook her head at my behavior. I smirked a little. "Your team is stationed at South Robotropolis to search for Amy and Tails, who we haven't heard word from in days." Sally replied, looking at a holographic map on her comlink, which was strapped around her wrist. "If we find a lead—"

"Wait, Tails and Amy?" I stopped her. "What are they doing there?"

Sally sighed in exasperation. "They were on a spy mission. You really need to pay attention during the meetings. We're meeting by the old spy shack outside of South Factory 557."

I just shook my head. "Fine, let's move." Without hesitating another minute, I raced off.

"Wait, that's not the entire plan!" Sally cried. But she was too late; I was gone, my super-sonic speed leaving the rest of them coughing up the dust I left behind.

I raced in and out of town in a flash, not waiting for the others. If my friends were involved, I was all business. I knew something had happened to Amy and Tails. It was instinct. This kind of thing was common with me, although it wasn't always with two of my best friends. I wasted no time reaching our meeting place. I was tapping my foot rapidly and impatiently by the time the others showed up.

"You could've waited," Sally said, stopping her hover scooter nearby.

I shrugged. "You're too slow," I sang half-heartedly. I was bored. I needed action. "So what's the plan?"

"If you'd listened to me earlier," Sally gave me a look. "Your team will be creating a diversion out front while my team battles the robots further out. If and when we find a trail, you and I will head inside. I'll shut down the defenses while you find Tails and Amy."

I nodded, trying to get my heart into the battle. "Sounds good. Let's do it to it!" I shook the bad feeling about my friends long enough to give a cocky smile.

"Hands in," Sally said. The two teams put their hands in the middle of the group; Sally's and mine on the top. "Freedom Fighters on 3. 1…2…"

The whole team lifted their hands from the pile in unison and chorused, "Freedom Fighters!" We wished each other good luck and the teams rode off to their destinations on their hover scooters. I stood alone with Sally by the spy shack.

"You ready?" I asked, looking at her.

"Definitely," she smiled.

This has been something we've been doing together for a long time. We were used to danger; it was second nature for us. No matter what Eggman throws at us, we'll fight it, despite the odds. There was no doubt in my mind that we'd succeed again.

I returned her smile. We did our secret handshake and raced off, me leading. It didn't take long to reach the spot where Amy and Tails had been stationed. There were definite signs of struggle – broken robots and robot parts lay everywhere, charred marks on the ground where lasers hit and where robots exploded…and a broken – and very familiar –red and yellow hammer laying in the middle of it all. I confirmed some of my worst fears and took off after a dark line of smoke in the sky from one of Eggman's polluting air ships, Sally a couple yards behind. It led us to one of Eggman's main bases. We searched the building until we found a large enough air vent for us to crawl through. I pulled off the cover and gestured inside.

"After you," I said.

"You're such a gentleman," Sally replied, rolling her eyes but going inside. I smirked to myself and followed, replacing the vent cover and crawling after her. We moved painfully slow; she paused to look in every room we went over. We did our best to keep quiet – low, short breaths and gentle, careful movements. After a few minutes, I grabbed Sally's arm, stopping her. She looked at me curiously, and I pointed ahead.

"Listen," I mouthed. We both fell absolutely silent and listened intently. After a second, we both made out a faint whirring of a robot passing. She and I pressed into an air shaft that broke off from the vent, holding our breaths. A minute later, the whirring got louder and one of Eggman's miniature hover spy-bots flew down the vent. It paused in front of our air shaft, looking around. I prayed the shadows hid us well enough.

Sure enough, a red light beeped twice on the robot, indicating no luck in finding anything, and it moved on. We waited until we couldn't hear its whirring before letting out our breaths and continuing on.

"That was close," I whispered.

"Shh," Sally hushed. I nodded and followed her down the vent again.

After several minutes of crawling, Sally stopped and pointed out of another air shaft we were near. Outside of it, I could see a room filled with computers, screens, and blinking lights.

"We found the computer room," I said under my breath, smirking to myself. Sally just rolled her eyes. She crawled into the air shaft and took a small tube out of her vest pocket. One end was thin, like a whistle, and the other end was shaped like the barrel of a gun. She stuck it between the bars of the shaft and blew into it. A dart shot out of the end and hit the neck of one of the three guards at the computers. She did the same to the other two. All three slumped over, unconscious. I couldn't help but grin to myself.

"You continue on to find Tails and Amy," she whispered. "I'll call you in about 15 minutes."

I gave her a thumbs up and waited for her to open the shaft and drop down into the control room. When she replaced the shaft cover, I continued on down the vent.

I didn't want my part of the mission to be too easy. So as soon as I was far enough away from the control room to eliminate any suspicion of Sally being there, I dropped down into a hallway through another air shaft. An infrared laser security system lay ahead, and for fun, I tripped the system with the toe of my sneaker. I smirked as the alarms started, and in my head, I could almost hear Sally groaning. Some automatically activated robots came out of panels in the wall and started firing lasers at me. I leaped over the laser blasts and they hit the ground, leaving charred marks where they hit. I laughed and spin-dashed into one of the robots, jumped behind another and let a third blow up the one I hid behind. I then jumped on the third robot's shoulders and jumped off as it shot its own head and fell over in a sparking mess. I homing attacked the rest and raced down the hall, sticking my tongue out at a nearby camera.

As I continued down the hall, miniature laser cannons came out of the walls and fired at me, but their aim was so off that I knew that Sally was controlling them to keep her cover hidden. The doors ahead started to slide shut, but I zipped underneath them just before they closed.

I reached an intersection. The hallway that crossed the one I was in was darker, lit by dim lights along the wall and a number of security features happened to be absent. I figured that that was the hallway Eggman used to get to the different rooms in his base. The hallway I was in was lit and littered with security measures. I shrugged and raced down the darker hallway, doors slamming down behind me as I raced by, missing me by inches. Speed detectors. Naturally.

I raced passed a suspiciously dark room. I pulled a Michael Jackson and moonwalked backwards to check it out and peered into the blackness – the only light was thin streams of moonlight through high, small, rectangular windows.

"Hel-looo?" I called inside. My voice echoed.

"SONIC!"

The scream made my blood run cold. The two voices were like something you'd hear in a horror film; terrified and blood-curdling. It was immediately followed by dark, maniacal laughter. I recognized the voices. Tails and Amy…and the laughter belonged to Eggman's.

I stood stunned in the doorway. The lights turned on, and I saw them tied up in the middle of a large, relatively empty room, surrounded by a semi-circle of robots standing several feet back, pointing their guns at my friends, awaiting commands. One wall of the room was almost entirely glass, and I could see into the next room. Eggman stood amongst various machines, looking sickeningly proud of himself. I took a large step into the room my friends were in, heard a bang and almost ran into a thick glass wall. I was trapped in a half-cylinder made of glass, the top, back wall, and bottom made of steal. I frowned, completely trapped.

"Let them go, Eggman," I said tersely, fists clenched at my sides. The intense look of fear on Tails's and Amy's faces was enough to give me nightmares.

"Not just yet," Eggman said, his voice echoing on hidden speakers. "I'm conducting a little experiment." He started to walk towards one of the computers. I suspected what he was going to do, and a look of horror crossed my face. I backed up as far back as I could before the steal wall stopped me, preparing to spin-dash at the glass, when metal bands slid around my hands and feet, binding me to the wall.

"NO!" I shouted, thrashing harshly against the restraints, the metal rubbing painfully into my wrists and ankles. "Don't you dare!"

Eggman just smirked and pressed a button on the keypad.

It was all I could do not to scream. The robots opened fire on my friends. They screamed and ducked their heads, as if that'd protect them against the blasts. I struggled, using all my strength against the metal, my back arching at the strain.

"No!" I shouted, and with the uncanny amount of strength the fear and adrenaline gave me, I snapped the metal bands and fell forward, immediately spin-dashing the glass before hitting the floor, which shattered. But it was all in vain. Time seemed to move in slow motion. I watched one laser hit Tails in the chest. I watched the sickening bloom of crimson red blood on his white chest fur. He slumped forward, and I screamed his name. Tears streaked down Amy's face as she realized what happened. In a whirlwind, I smashed through all of the robots in a second, and they all sparked as soon as I left them and exploded one by one. I raced over to Tails and Amy and untied the ropes holding them with shaking hands, the only noise a ringing in my ears.

Tails fell into my lap. I rolled him over and fear, sadness, and rage filled me when I saw his face, my fingers trailing along his cold cheek. He had been terrified. His eyes were unseeing, emotionless. Dead eyes. I was too late. My best friend was gone.

(Whoooo….OK, don't cry. I will not cry. I am not Elise. Or Amy. Or whatever. I'm gonna work on Chapter 2. I kinda wanna cry. :3 What did you think? Intense? Should Tails die? Or somehow come back? I apologize if I just killed your favorite character.

Stay tuned for more coming soon!)

~SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd