Toby wasn't exaggerating. What he faced below was a hectic mess of narrow, alley-like passageways between structures pitched on steep inclines, with the best relief coming in the form of broad, cluttered rooftops, concrete terraces, and the occasional road-like structure, apparently for the actual equipment, earth-movers, and robots to get around on. In some ways, though, it was an Extreme Gear boarder's paradise, in that there were long, uninterrupted pipes running great distances, train rails, power cables thick and taut enough to grind on (and strung over some pretty nasty chasms, too), catwalks laden with safety railings, winch and pulley systems that the bold (and maybe slightly stupid) could grab onto, and just about everything else imaginable.

In short, it was one huge, gnarled, metal jungle gym of tracks and hazards. And many of those hazards sprang to life the instant he inevitably landed on that first huge rooftop. Red strobes flashed and flickered, and the sound of helicopter-like blades buzzing closed in quickly. Drab-colored surveillance drones (basically wiry little pods with dome lights, driven by a waist-mounted propeller system, and wielding nothing but a camera) gave chase immediately. Though they weren't shooting, they were still a threat, and that much became obvious when the first one to get in front of Toby decided to try to perform surgery on his face with its propeller.

Still, so far so good, besides that—There were only about three in pursuit at the moment, and thus far, the directed-energy gun emplacements were only just popping up, warming up, and firing their first (largely inaccurate) shots.


*** Back on the beach...


"Who do you flies even think you are?! I have a good mind to turn this WHOLE ARMY around just to wipe you off the—*BWEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOP.* WWWHAT?! *BWEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOP.* Augh NOT NOW. *BWEEEEEEOO—*"

So much for there being anything supernatural or ghostly about Eggman's communications with the outside world. That was a warning siren in the background, and the transmission cut off abruptly in the middle of it. Something was going on beyond that big cliff—There were even searchlights visible in the sky for a moment, if anyone had the attention to notice anything past the gleam of Silver Sonic's spikes.

"SILVER SONIC," the voice suddenly boomed again, "STOP PLAYING AROUND! YOU, SECTOR 9, NOW, MOVE MOVE!!"

In a bizarre turn of events, the floating disembodied Eggman head (complete with tattered garments and cobweb-filled 'stache, in full crypt-mode stage makeup) appeared floating somewhere over the abyss of the industrial chasm.

"THIS is what's causing the commotion?" barked the ghastly Eggman head. It began to oscillate wildly in place. "This?! IT'S A RUGRAT ON A FLYING SKATEBOARD, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!"

He looked like he was about to pop a vein. For a dead guy, he sure looked like he had high blood pressure.

"Save the mounted guns for the bigger fish! Valkyn squad, you can handle this. And deploy heavy ground units for intercept! Gun drones, check sector 1. Silver Sonic, reroute to sector 1, too! ... That is to say, sector 1, also, not sector 1-2! ... D-do you understand what I'm saying? I mean sector 1. Just go to sector 1."

True to his orders, there was a sudden, ripping screech from the skies, as bright red, jet-propelled miniature aircraft, not entirely like very large metal falcons, blazed in, engines roaring gratingly. They were quite a bit faster than Toby, but perhaps not as maneuverable; any time he was remotely in the open, they made outright kamikaze dashes at him, trying to give him some new, baseball-sized piercings with their sharp, golden-painted, beak-like nosecones. At the same time, another threat joined the fray: Hulking, dark-colored, heavily armored, humanoid-shaped machines were tromping out of various doors all over the facility, and lining up in any possible path of travel they could find to blockade the hoverboarder. Whenever he drew in range, they'd do any number of things, from trying to clothesline him, to outright trying to leap and stomp on him and his board. It wasn't going to be easy.

Some of the threats that had been relieved of their duty with Toby soon found their way back to the other disturbance, however: Jam and Rock. Propeller-driven surveillance drones started buzzing in their direction, and some of them were actually armed, as they soon discovered with the first rattatat-tats of automatic gunfire.

((OC: Collab netween me and Matt-man))

As Toby finished up his rail-side and continued his distraction-derby, the disembodied head of the island’s owner popped up over the inky black chasm. His commentary was less than flattering. Rugrat? Really? Toby’s deflated ego should have been the least of his worries, however, and with the face’s appearance came the summoning of a butt-load of extra bots, and one giant headache for our little boarding buddy. Muttering out a few obscenities under his breath, Toby shot into another alley-way, and actually managed to snag another ring in the process. The boy clutched the glowing doodad. “Here’s to hoping these things work…“

Most of the bright red Valkyns soared high above the alley, flashing about above, while a lone stray attempted to follow Toby in, and ultimately bit the wall and wiped out behind him. Its tumbling, flaming wreckage cartwheeled and barreled toward the kangaroo rat from behind, but lost momentum and just fell short of nicking the back of his board.

But all that noise behind ended up serving as a distraction for what lay ahead: Two of those hulking, black robots stepped out from the end of the narrow alley, impassably side by side, low in their mirrored stances, ready to get plowed into, or to spring and leap should they need to.

Just barely missing getting caught by the explosion behind him, Toby was a bit distracted when the two goliaths dropped in to say hello. “Aw geez!!” Toby flailed and looked for a way out, but came up with bupkiss, and he was getting closer to those clunkers with each second. With no options left, Toby popped the board up into his hand and skidded to a stop. “Alright, Bubba!! Let’s see how you jump!!” Immediately, Toby was bounding back and forth between the narrow alley walls, shooting up onto the rooftops above and seamlessly bomb-dropping back onto the board. “See ya!” There he went, shooting off across the rooftop.

The hulking robots glared upward at the retreating rat. One grabbed the corner of the nearest building and started trying to climb up, but it ultimately only ended up standing there, humping the structure and dealing some mild damage to its foundation.

Meanwhile, Toby's maneuver may have gotten him freedom from one enemy, but it put him in the path of a near drive-by lobotomy from a group of Valkyns. They were just alarmed by his sudden appearance as he likely was of them, so they weren't quite on track to hit him precisely, but just as soon as they had missed their initial shot, they started swooping back around, and darting full throttle at him as quick as they could.

“S$%*!!!” Inches away from setting a new fashion trend of being completely headless, Toby was in no position to be watching his language. If he was going to live, he was going to have to find a way to keep those birds away while simultaneously keeping out of the reach of the hulking monstrosity-bots, and quick. Kicking in the board’s boost, Toby leapt as high as he could, shooting over two consecutive roofs and straight into a giant, concrete cylinder being lifted into place by a nearby crane. Spinning wildly around the tube, the kangaroo rat shot out of the other side, flipping and twisting through the air and doing his best to find something useful. Then, there it was: a crane lifting nothing. “Perfect.” Grabbing the crane’s hook out of the air, Toby boosted once again, turning himself into a spinning cyclone around the crane.

“WHOOOOHOOO!!!!”

As he let go of the tether, Toby might as well have been a bullet, blaring through the air at such insane speed it couldn’t help but put some comfort distance between him and the bots. Frantically landing on one of the water towers, Toby jumped between the structures before leaping off, screaming to down near to the ground and weaving through a tangled mess of wires and cables.

The Valkyns swerved around in a frustrated mess—As frustrated as largely personality-less robots can get, anyway. They were having a hard time tracking his erratic movements; in the process of pursuing him in his spinning, one had already managed to run into a crane, and another had bit it in the hanging pipe. There were still lots left, though.

... But matters only turned worse. Or better. It was hard to tell which, but either way, the Extreme Gear's famous turbulence, though a boon to other Gears, proved to be an incredible nuisance to the small aircraft trying to fly behind it, and soon, Valkyns that tried to pursue too closely, or simply crossed Toby's direct path by happenstance, ended up twisted and thrown about by the wake, and sent careening off into the cliff wall, buildings, and—

The water towers. One bright red Valkyn crashed through two towers consecutively, punching straight through the first with a jet of water, before smashing into the next and utterly breaking apart inside it. Yet another that attempted to follow the rat underneath ended up getting tossed upward by his turbulence, and managed to punch through one tower leg entirely, and crash into another one. As Toby whizzed out from beneath the towers, the damaged leg buckled, and the last remaining water tower just plain fell off the terrace with a mighty groan, boom, crash, and roaring splash, as water poured all over the buildings below and raged like a typhoon down into the lava-filled pit, creating an eruption of steam.

The Valkyns were all gone.

Distantly, an scratchy, infuriated scream could be heard echoing through the pit.

Upon hearing the carnage behind him, Toby glanced backwards. “…Holy cow.” The boy’s jaw dropped open as he sailed onwards, glancing back occasionally to take a look at the scenery that just couldn’t seem to stop destroying itself. “…Didn’t see that coming.”

Rock's chase to the power plant was... less interesting than his cohorts' respective pursuits. Toby had successfully gotten so much attention that virtually all Eggman's aerial forces were on him, leaving Rock dealing with nothing but drones along the way.

... Drones that were already mostly lying dead on the ground, their delicate electronics fried utterly. In fact, there were only two robots he encountered on the entire run: One was one of the black-painted behemoths like Toby had run into earlier, and it was so slow that all he had to do was detour around it and keep running. The other was a single functional propeller drone that Jam had missed, and, to put it bluntly, Rock just plain pulled out his shotgun, gave it both barrels dead-center, and kept moving.

By the time he arrived to the fenced-off field of transformers, the show was already well underway, and he stayed well out of the way.

"..."

He stepped back from the fence, and looked around as the lights flickered all across the round, crater-like chasm. The smell of burning wires wafted heavily, and in the distance, he saw the telltale explosions, crashes, and resulting waterfalls from Toby's run.

Then, with a mighty, descending, pooping-out hum, everything went dark. The coils and cores in the transformers were cooked. They didn't explode dramatically or anything, beyond showering some sparks here and there, but the smoke was heavy and nostril-burning, not unlike how one would imagine a warehouse full of broken, burning-out clothes dryers to smell. Sparse, but bright white emergency lights clacked on with loud, heavy, breaker-like noises. They by and far failed to light any particular area very clearly, though, and the orange glow coming from the bottom of the pit remained the strongest source of light and sound; the bubbling lava was suddenly audible since everything had gotten so eerily quiet, and the only sign of mechanical activity was the buzzing of distant propellers, and the whirring of uncoordinated robots as they stood and peered about aimlessly.

"I could get used to this," Rock thought barely aloud as he stepped to the edge of one of the concrete terraces, looking down into the pit for their next goal while he waited for Jam to finish up. *Click*—The sawed-off broke down with the press of a lever, and two empty shells plinked hollowly on the ground, while he leisurely replaced them with two more from his bandolier. "Point at objectives, watch'em blow up, not have to lift a finger..."

*Clack.*

Whether or not it was enjoying itself by then, the calls from the machine's overlord could not be ignored. Once it blew past Ace and his buddies, the rust-colored monstrosity would go rolling off down the beach, and the three had more or less succeeded in holding off what must have been the island's biggest watchdog.

... If they continued paying attention to it, they might have noticed it draw to a stop, turn around and face them, and start racing back their way before tucking into another loud, blazing spin. Was it actually ignoring the demands of its creator?

No, actually, it simply had decided on taking a shortcut. Or rather, making one. Before it reached the group the machine's heading began to arc to one side until the big speeding black bowling ball was pointed right at the cliffs. It slammed into the mountain's side with what looked like the force of an express train, causing the ground to quake once again, and rocks blasted out behind it as it disappeared into a newly-created, circular cavern smack in the broadside of the peaks.

There was an interesting side effect to this course of action, in the form of a sudden landslide that began thundering its way down upon the group with deafening ferocity.