"So, don't wait—Act now!" said Eggman in his best as-seen-on-TV voice, and concluded sinisterly, "I'll be waiting."

He shut off the transmission and dismissed the camera bots, which promptly buzzed back to the safety of the tower. Attention then returned to the matter at hand: His guests. Conveniently, Sheffer still seemed to be soaking up a lot of attention—So much so that Eggman looked on aloofly with mild amusement, resting his elbow on his ship's side, and his cheek in his palm, and just taking in the action. For a moment, he wondered why Silver Sonic looked so beat up... He had missed what did the damage, and pondered for a moment if the green hedgehog had actually been the culprit.

"I think he needs more spikes," he thought aloud. "Spikes always work. Everybody hates spikes! ..." Nod, nod, contemplate.

His brow suddenly twitched, and he snapped out of his daydreams of robotic improvement and world domination, and quickly craned his neck (Or whatever stump of something on his shoulders his head was partially embedded in) to look at the SSD's transport.

"You're still here?" he blurted, then realized no one could hear him. Oops. (Insert a choppy, arm-flailing snatch of the microphone.) "You're still here?" he repeated, and loudly. "Was there some part of something I said that you little ditch-diggers didn't understand, hm? Or maybe you were hoping I'd offer you a position in my new government... You know, if that's the case, I just might consider it!"

His grin spread.

"—But there are tryouts!"

*Click.*

... None of the gun turrets activated, surprisingly enough. Instead, the top of the tower looked like it began to reconfigure and open... and an all new gun, about five times larger than any of the others, sprang up quickly, flipped down with an extreme, heavy-metal clank, and hummed loudly as it tracked the SSD craft, both from the whine of the powerful electric motors that rotated it, and from the charging capacitors. It didn't have a perfect range of motion, but it was plenty for following aerial targets.

They had mere seconds before an armored, protective lens cover on the gun snapped open with lightning speed, and a blazing beam about a couple feet in diameter—A laser, obviously moving at the speed of light—suddenly appeared in the air, and attempted to cleanly dice off the rear of their craft (and with it, presumably, its main thrusters). Eggman was brutish and liked overkill, for sure, but preferred to play with his victims in that way.

Meanwhile, it seemed the group of punks off the side weren't warranting any attention at all, not even for their electric chao carrying his chain. On the trip there, thanks to the lowness of his flight, he only came within range of one gun; there was a nerve-wracking moment in which it panned and followed him, lined up a shot, then opened fire with a couple shots, but both blurts of burning plasma projectiles bounced off his little electric shield harmlessly. Seconds later, when he arrived against the tower, he was pretty much out of range of everything. Several guns swiveled and tried to point at him, but none were able to fire without hitting the tower itself.

The SSD drop-ship lurched as the super-hot beam from the tower connected and began to cut through the metal sheeting like a knife through butter. Alarms wailed ominously inside the aircraft as piece after piece of electronics smoked, and then wilted and fell apart in the face of the sun-like glare of the laser beam.

The starboard engine roared as uncontrolled fuel lines began pumping. The turbines inside the engines whined and screamed as the whole craft began, under the mis-matched power of the engines, to roll. The pilot apparently tried to compensate, because the port engine throttled up almost as quickly to match the thrust of its twin, raising the ship out of the line of fire of the beam.

The damage had already been done, however; the ship, now listing horribly, and unable to lower power on any of it's controlled jets, veered off to the side, and began to slip through the air as its inertia turned it further and further into a dive.

It roared off to the west, vanishing over the lip of the massive bowl of the island, and out of sight.

OOC: Taking over Silver Sonic for the moment. Sorry for the delay, Sheff.

--

After all the ruckus of trying to shoot Sheffer until his insides leaked out in seared, caked-up chunks, things suddenly got quiet on Silver Sonic's end of the fight. The large amount of clutter in on their battlefield had made projectile attacks and target tracking difficult, so, Silver Sonic arrived at one of those deadly, robotic, logical conclusions.

And so, he just stood there a moment as the hedgehog rapidly approached him, to see what exactly it was the guy was going to actually try to do to the armored hulk when he got there.

OOC: Eh, it's fine. I don't have any complaints.

---

Halfway through his already projected path, Sheffer heard the gunfire stop, taking a glance over to the metal hedgehog. It now stood there, no guns a-blazing, just watching him in silence. It turned with his movements, only tracking him for the time being.

This wasn't right. Through that metal shell and within its circuitry, he just knew that robot was trying to plan something or another. Whether it was simply to think ahead for its next attack, or wait for an opportune moment to do so, Sheffer now felt at unease from the mechanical being's inactivity. He himself would now have to contemplate on what to do next, not wanting to close the gap between him and it for the time being.

But what else was he supposed to do? Sit here and have a staring contest with the thing? No. He had intended to try something, anything, to stop the robotic creation, even if he failed in process. And he definitely could not do that sitting there like a bump on a log, useless. He had his one, easy, pain-free try clasped in his hand, and the sturdy pipe in the other; a shield and a weapon. No guts, no glory, they always say.

Without a moment's hesitation, Sheffer twisted his board, now aiming straight for Silver Sonic. He immediately shot forward, accelerating quickly, dirt and dust being thrown up behind the board. This would a be a headlong offensive strike if anything, Sheffer not allowing himself to back out.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon... do something!" he muttered under his breath, his eyes fixed on the robot, just waiting for it to make its move. He was completely alert, ready to avoid anything thrown at him in a moment's notice. He wasn't going to lost the ring just yet...

Silver Sonic's arms remained at his sides, just barely bent. There was a slight movement of his horrifying, gun-fingered hands, too slight to really likely notice or even be alarmed by (since they didn't move to aim directly at the hedgehog, anyway). Then, just a couple seconds before Sheffer was to get within range, there came a single, sudden blast—Not targeted at him.

Ten plasma bolts simultaneously blasted the ground a short distance ahead of Silver Sonic, and an utterly obfuscating and disruptive plume of dust, smoke, dirt, and fine gravel exploded high into the air. The robot had timed it such that, by calculation, Sheffer's momentum would almost invariably carry him at least to the other side of the curtain of debris... but once there, the hoverboarder would find the robot conspicuously missing.

Just a second after Sheffer came to a stop, there was an ominous whoosh from directly above, and then about a tenth of a second later, a wrecking ball of steely spines dropping right on his position like a bomb. Silver Sonic was done playing games; rather than chase the speedier hedgehog around or try to counter him in any kind of direct way, he had launched himself skyward along with the creation of the makeshift smokescreen, with every intent to just land on the kid, then go on with business.

Meanwhile, Eggman smiled at his handiwork, and relaxed in his ride. A quick look around revealed nothing but that green hedgehog, and the others were completely out of his sight.

"Hm... They're gone," he half-sighed as if disappointed. Perhaps he had wanted an audience for a little longer, or just someone else to pick on. But, just then, the communicator in his Egg Mobile rang with a series of shrill, high-pitched beeps. A press of a button later, and a volumetric display appeared in front of the doctor, with a video-phone image of President Towers.

"Oh-hohhh! So nice to hear from you—And so promptly, too."

Did the hedgehog think he would have time to lay there, and that the elaborately ambushing robot would then cut off his attack after scoring a blow? On the contrary, before Sheffer even hit the ground, the burly machine crouched, emitted a whining sound as its heel wheels spun and threw up gravel, and its rockets roared. Silver Sonic whizzed briskly across the ground, skidded to a stop right over the hedgehog, and rammed his hand down to try to grab the spiny one by one of his legs before he even had the chance to make that slow, slow, dazed rise to his feet.

All things going as planned, the metal hedgehog would be holding its fleshier challenger single-handedly inverted in the air in front of it, like an overpowered bully dumping the change out of a victim's pockets.