Coop, even with all of his might, could not part the rigid arms of his captor, at least from his disadvantaged posture. The robot just continued on its way, bouncing, shaking, and occasionally torquing from side to side with the eagle's struggles, but still ultimately arriving at its destination.

It pressed Coop against the receptacle on the wall. The tubular opening was going to be a bit difficult to get a struggling bird of his size into... if not for a secondary feature. The yellow and red spot on the center of the harvester's head emitted an odd light, like some sort of optic signal, which was received by a unit on the wall above the opening. In response, a strange sphere of some sort of bizarre energy immediately surrounded Coop, seemingly freezing him in place, and all at once silencing his struggle.

The vacuum tube then proceeded to ingest him.

... Or to try to.

He was kind of stuck.

The harvester robot stared for a moment, then tepidly began shoving, while the vacuum tube made a persistent slurping noise.

While all of this was happening, a pair of Buzz Bombers and a trio Orbinauts began heading the group's direction. Apparently, something dangerous had finally spotted them, and was quickly closing in. If they wanted to get to their objective without eventually having to fight every robot in the woods, they'd need to hurry.

Meanwhile, the harvester continued ineffectually nudging Coop, as if afraid to push too hard.

*Slurrrrrrrrrrrrp*

Midian's eyes squinted a little at the incoming robots. Bees were bad. Giant robotic bees with guns on their butts? Worse. And maybe even worse was a bunch of little ball robots being orbited by maces nonstop.

"Just hurryitup—I'll keep the dangerous-looking ones busy," he said vaguely. (He seemed to be heading toward the orbinauts, for what it was worth.)

Under the extra pressure of the sudden shove, the field containing Coop burst appropriately—like a bubble. However, the bird was sent on a tubular adventure, like it or not.

The robot, on the other hand, just sort of awkwardly faceplanted against the wall above the opening, its big, awkward, ugly body too fat to fit. It hovered to the side, disoriented momentarily. It soon began targeting Tabitha with the laser on its forehead, though.

Coop disappeared with the sound of roaring air and rage.

The Orbinauts looked simple enough at first, but it soon became a cruel reality that when you're not a super-speeding blue hedgehog, spiked balls hurled full-force from their orbit around a hovering robot are actually pretty dangerous.

Midian skidded and stopped, torquing his body to face them with his right side and, in the process, just narrowly causing the first of twelve possible shots to miss. He slipped backward a step, bucking back at the waist as if evading a punch, arms loose at his sides, as the volley continued. He ducked, swerved, swooped and turned, scuffing up gravel and dirt, sliding like some kind of dancing snake. He slapped one aside to steer it away from his face with his leather glove; another he outright kicked out of the air with a boot that easily reached above his own head.

He seemed entirely too confident doing this—not at ease, as he was still intently focused, but still very... flowing. Flow only goes so far, though, and one spiky projectile still winged him across the head in a glancing blow, sending him windmilling backward onto his tail on the ground.

At least they were out of shots by then.

... Nope. These Orbinauts apparently had the ability to draw their projectiles back to themselves.

Midian reeled a moment there on the ground, holding his head.

With Geoff keeping the harvester busy (see: confused and off-balance, as it jostled and bonked against the structure of the station) and Ace leaping into action, things actually seemed fairly controlled for the moment.

*Paff, pop, pow.*

One a piece did it, easily. As usual with Eggman's lower-tier baddies, their destruction was not particularly impressive or fiery, but instead came with only a satisfying pop and the release of cuddly woodland creatures.

The rest of the harvesters continued doing their thing, as if unconcerned with what was going on. Buzz Bombers were flying in fast and loud, though, the blasting reports of their "stinger" cannons blowing across the field and echoing off the metal building.

Still, it was nothing they couldn't handle easily. They were only an inconvenience and delay. Avoiding or fighting them off was inconsequential. With the Orbinauts out of the way, and nothing else to speak of except for some maybe aggressive (or just irritable) Caterkillers, the group's victory was assured.

The pipeline was a cramped, swirling, uncomfortable mess. The thick, transparent stripes of windowed panels helped provide some sort of orientation along the way so that they weren't lashing about in utter darkness, but it was still by no means comfortable, and, if only for a moment, it must have made one wonder how it was Sonic dealt with this kind of nonsense all the time. He was always rolling around, curled up in a ball, often blasting along through tubes just like that, but he never seemed to get dizzy.

Sunlight flickered, and streaks of green grass and trees, brown rock, and blue sky were all that was discernible at their crazy speed. Sometimes the pipe went straight, sometimes it turned, twisted, and ascended. The only way anything could come into clear focus was if it was going the same speed they were, though—and something, or someone, did.

Bright red shoes made a super-rapid "tuddtuddtuddtudd" noise against the metal and plastic. The vivid blue runner spiraled around the tube, defying gravity and narrowly avoiding support structures, as he looked down at the surface he ran on, peering at the group with curiosity, as if looking at a bunch of colorful fish in a tank.

Sonic waved to them.

Suddenly, a noise like a bunch of glass marbles being rapidly crushed by hammers pierced the tube. Bright orange tracer rounds actually very nearly peppered the group and the hedgehog running on their container, fired from some unseen source. He looked up quickly, then in a blink and a whoosh, he was gone, as was the gunfire pursuing him.

Without warning, their sunny tube-cruise suddenly went black as they entered some kind of unlit structure, or maybe went underground. It was hard to tell. Yellow caution lights soon flashed, and some sort of honking siren went off, before a violent diversion in their path was felt (detectable by the way they suddenly rammed into a much harsher turn than they had felt at any point prior).

Along the tube, until Whoosh, schunk, plop, squelch. Well, it was a soft landing at least... but in retrospect, that probably made the entire thing worse. It was dark. It was uncomfortably damp-- moist, even. It reeked of a thousand unpleasant things, all of which mingling into an aroma that might accurately (if euphemistically) be described as smelling like death. The smell itself left the distinct taste of tar and burnt mattress in the mouth.

Speaking of mattresses, Rodolf pulled what seemed to be a bit of one off of his horn after he pulled himself up. "That was pleasant," he remarked as though it were a bit of a bumpy car ride and not... whatever it was they had just experienced. Where had their little adventure led them?

Why, a fantastically huge subterranean garbage dump, situated in an equally fantastically-huge subterranean cavern.

Of course!

To elaborate: it was as though all of the world's garbage for the past hundred or two years had migrated, like a salmon, using the guidance of ocean currents and the alignment of the stars to come to rest at its intended home, with enough room left to manage for another couple centuries. Common household garbage, enough rotting foliage to clog every drain-pipe in the world, scraps of metal, robots ranging from fragments to nearly-whole but clearly-busted; truly, a dumpster diver's dream. It was certainly deeper than any sane man (or even any questionably-sane man) would care to measure.
A quick look around would reveal no readily-accessible means of escape, except for what seemed to be chute openings, placed at irregular intervals on the high-above ceiling, closed tight by numerous smashed-shut metal barriers. Perhaps there was an alternative, but between the low light and the vast size of the dump, nothing presented itself.

"Oh lord that's foul," Mako groaned, his voice more than a bit muffled. The shark sat upright and immediately spit out a mouthful of leaves and ash, and continued to spit, fairly confident that the offensive taste would linger in his mouth.