While Jam stood lifelessly idle in some kind of staring match with her fellow puppet, the incessantly undulating wisps of electricity congregated around that small point where the hedgehog's very not idle fist made impact for mere fractions of a second, before an unseen force shoved the pair away like two positively charged magnets.

The shield had absorbed the blow for the monkey, so other than being alarmed, she was alright, but happy she was not. Her jade eyes narrowed venomously as she reclaimed her footing, and stood up straight, her flickering orb momentarily spent.

"A'right, y'little s**t," she spat acidly in a low tone, dragging the back of her hand across her upper lip with a sniff, while gritting her teeth. "Try that again."

She stood there another moment, hands down at her sides, and held slightly away from her, seemingly inviting Sheffer to try. With just another eye's blink, however, a feeble spark ignited from the gem on her wrist.

Her hands curled into fists, and the first spark birthed two more, then four more, and progressively more, which wound their way up the monkey's frizzy, outstretched arm gradually trickling down her body and back up again in a Jacob's ladder-like pattern of movement, growing more intense with each repetition.

But still, she didn't advance; she seemed be waiting... or, perhaps more appropriately, charging.

That last surprise hit from Rock had done more than give the kid a reason to visit the dentist; it had knocked him clean out. Oblivious to Jam's cries or the chaos around him, Toby lay motionless on the floor, his jaw slowly trickling blood. As the boy slowly began to return to the realm of the living, he had a lot to take in. Toby's trip back to conciousness was like traveling from dream to nightmare, as his blinded eyes surveyed the situation.

It hurt. His whole face, especially his jaw, hurt like hell. His thought patterns fuzzy at best, Toby did his best to collect himsef, pushing back up onto his feet. There was no time to rest, and no time to nurse his wounds; a quick glance around the carvern revealed that it was still flooded with grizzled, ghostly, mechaical monsters that would like nothing more than to tear him to pieces. Kyle was nowhere to be found, let alone any of the other impromtu possee members he had teamed up with. That's what he saw, at least.

What he heard, however, was the a very familiar voice of one static-shocking simian. Desperate to find a friendly face, Toby's head darted around, catching the blurred sight of Jam just a few feet away, in heated battle with one of the undead underlings of Dr. Eggman. Toby grunted as he forced his body to move. Still dazed and confused, Toby at least knew enough to know Jam was in trouble.

The blood still flowing down his cheek, the vacant eyes of Toby Cotton fixed steadily on Sheffer. Green-bean was about to be fighting a two-on-one battle. Cotton's feet hit the ground steadily as he sprinted towards his target. Bending close to the ground, Toby pushed off as hard as his legs would allow, sending him hurtling at the Hedgehog at top speed, whipping both legs out to full-on stomp Sheffer in the stomach. If he wasn't paying attention, the target of Toby's rage would have a busted-up battering ram knocking on his door in seconds.

Meanwhile, across the room, the dynamic duo of Rock look-a-likes were flying as fast as they could towards the kangaroo rat and company. They twirled around each other occasionally, apparently flying in some sort of formation. Their tiny voices spoke in stereo.

"Miju, Toba."

Knuckles growled noisily as his target slipped just out of grasp. He could never jump quite as high as Sonic, and he certainly couldn't take to the skies like his little buddy, so the flying badniks were always annoying for him. If only Tails were here...

But the echidna quickly remembered, if a badnik was agile and irritating, they were probably just a distraction. A quick glance at his surroundings reminded him of familiar times. A small team of similar robots attacking in unison? He'd been through a number of situations like this. And it always meant one thing: This band of bionics had a leader. Take him down, and they all follow suit. It wouldn't take him very long to find a match for what he was looking for. Hiding behind one of the tanks, he heard his orders given through a crisp, electronic voice.

"SURRENDER TO THE WILL OF EGGMAN, AND YOUR MEANINGLESS LIVES WILL BE SPARED."

So it was with sudden haste that Knuckles dashed off to the side, leaped into the air, and swiftly shifted into a gliding stance. With surprising celerity, he rode the airwaves fist-first... straight towards the unluckiest shark to ever set two feet on solid ground.


Meanwhile, the erratic cat that Ace had become didn't seem to show signs of calming down, even as his blows landed. If anything, he seemed to be reaching even higher peaks of anger, spitting out promises of murder at random intervals. But as he did, his movements slowly but clearly became sloppier, and it was a matter of time that someone like Rock find the opportunity he did. Press as he might against the simian's arms, they simply would not budge. When Ace saw his head reel back, his reaction was based on one of the purest instincts one can experience.

Not in the face.

In a twisted reflection of their first encounter, Ace turned down his own head, and thrust it forward in a near perfect duplication of Rock's own attack-- forehead to forehead. The results were hard to determine. Should the monkey have released Ace's jacket by then, the cat would simply stumble-fall painfully to his back, but quickly reach into his pocket in a desperate attempt to keep his foe at a distance. Was it the grenade Rock had lent him earlier...?

Actually, no. If Rock wasn't careful, he'd be subject to a direct hit in the gut by... the very crystal that was controlling Ace. Plucked right out of his pocket. By himself.

A spilt second before the busted up boarder would've actually landed a hit on the monstrosity tormenting Jam, his robotic rival turned his head toward the approaching attacker.

"TARGET ACQUIRED."

D*** SENSORS!! Before he even realized what was going on, the decrepit deviant had schootched aside, latched onto his leg with its metal claws, and had chucked him into the air. His fall, however, was broken by something significantly less hard and metal, and distinctively fleshy and more...

"GaahGnnNNNGH!!!"

...electric. The current Jam had been storing went straight through the kangaroo rat's body, causing him to convulse wildly as every muscle in his body seized up. The poor boy just couldn't seem to catch a break, and the whole scene looked incredibly painful. Once the shock had fizzled out, Toby dropped to the ground once more, his clothes charred and black around the edges. He was literally smoking.

Sheffer's attack had been a smashing success... however, it came with a bit of an unexpected side-effect.


"RE JU!" Aaaand there it was. Half of the boy's faithful chao was suddenly on Sheffer like white on rice. His tiny hands glowed with energy as he focussed, and in moments the chao was swinging lightning fast, deadly accurate, CE fueled jabs at the hedgehog.

Thing 2, on the other hand, swiftly descended on his kangaroo-rat companion, almost immediately moving to shuffle through the contents of the boy's pockets. "Hababi!!" With a small exclamation of triumph, the gelatinous gemini yanked the offending crystal from Toby's pocket, flinging it across the cavern. It smashed to bits as it hit the metal floor.

As focused as she'd been on rending the offending baddie's CPU (among other things) from its chassis, her train-like objectives completely derailed when she caught sight of her only other ally in trouble (in trouble on her account, it might be added). She shuffled to and fro, side to side, and lined herself up juuuust right to place herself directly under the spot where the airborne kangaroo rat would be flung.

"I gotcha, I gotcha!" she repeated almost as a mantra, dancing about beneath the boy with her arms outspread for her catch. She actually did line it up fairly well, too. The problem was more...

"GaahGnnNNNGH!!!"

"S**T! Oops! Sorry! Sorry, sorry!"

Despite her very ardent efforts, she couldn't seem to undo her oversight and get far enough away from the fried rodent fast enough to do any good (and she did feel really bad about it), but she didn't spend too much time mulling over her screw-up. Some other flitty robot had descended on the grimy green one she'd been fighting, while Jam noticed another moving towards her fallen comrade a little too late to do anything about it.

"HEY!" was all she could get out as she lunged for the creaking, bat-like bot, narrowly missing it's sputtering wings before it did -- something to Toby, resulting in his immediate replacement with yet another hostile.

With a livid sneer the likes of which few had seen on Jam, she back-handed the pink-eyed white chao (which was in no way related to a dragon) with a fierce vindictiveness that needed no words to convey it; electricity voraciously coated her arm, and happily transferred to whatever she touched.

With that, she turned her wrath on her former comrade, taking advantage of his felled position (still booting up, maybe? Jam didn't care), and beginning to plow into him with a relentless thunderstorm of lightning fast jabs and punches. Whatever she thought she was breaking, she seemed hellbent on giving it the Rock touch; tearing it apart with her bare hands, if it came to it.