Sonic vs Robotnik

	"Well, I was not expecting that," Robotnik said as Tom and Maddie dropped out of sight.
	Sonic spun around and faced his tormentor with power cracking across his quills. He only had one chance to make this work. It was a moon shot. A William Tell. A blindfolded bull's-eye attempt in a hailstorm.
	And he'd have to do it faster than anything he'd ever tried in his whole life.
	"You want to feel the power of the real chaos so bad?" Sonic taunted. "You'll have to catch me first, Ro-Butt-Nik!"
	"Name-calling hurts, you petulant sack of spikes! And challenge accepted!" Robotnik slapped at his controls with fury, and the spinning cloud of mini drones twisted in the air toward Sonic like a slithering tech tentacle.
	Sonic launched himself in the air, and suddenly he could see everything in fine detail. He had sense it at the roadhouse, too, but he was having too much fun then to understand what was happening. All the madness, the mayhem, the pure chaos of the fight slowed down in his mind, and he could perceive every motion of Robotnik's mindless Badniks.
	With a light step, Sonic ran up the line of drones and into the air like a kid skipping across rocks in a creek. His sneakers pushed off the bots and sent him spinning right underneath the egg's bulky body. The bag of rings hung loosely in his hand as Sonic spiraled out and ran down the length of the building. He was in some kind of hyperspeed now-travelling at a pace outside the boundaries of reality.
	"Aw man, no one's going to be able to hear my jokes now," Sonic said as his feet slapped cracks into the windows of the building. "At least I'm used to talking to myself."
	As the cityscape blurred around him, Sonic caught a glimpse of Robotnik's egg-pod flying down the Transamerica building trying to catch him. Fat chance. That thing was a drag. An anchor. A dead weight. But then Sonic caught a glimmer of something in the corner of his eye. It was blue.
	Robotnik had pulled up a glass case containing Sonic's lost quill. And with a click, he activated the quill as a chaos power battery. The egg-pod shuttered with a reactive spark, and blue energy started coursing through the entire machine-Robotnik included. Shivers of electricity surged through his mustache, and the creep sped up not quite to Sonic's hyperspeed but close enough.
	"Yoo-hooooooooo!" he called to Sonic as the drones caught his pace and came into focus. "Don't run off now, hedgehog! It'll only hurt worse if you do!"
	"Don't go too fast, Robotnik! You're bound to hit the wall!" Sonic yelled as he cut back and ran around the corner of the building. He headed for the ground as Robotnik's cloud of metal clashed with the glass, sending shards flying into the street below. Sonic pumped a fist in the air at the sound. He was home free now...
	Until the egg-pod's missiles blasted off.
	Shoooom! Shoooom! Shoooom!
	A trio of rocket-propelled explosives curved around the building hot on Sonic's heels. He leaned harder into the run, pockets of glass shattering with each footfall. He could feel the rocket's heat behind him. Sonic needed speed. Crazy, mega, superspeed. He began twisting around and around the building, covering the skyscraper in a net of electric blue lines.
	With a zig, he led one missile astray, and it careened into the waters of the bay. Sonic spun around and ran head-on at another. Then, with a jump, he leaped over its nose, tapped a toe on its tail fin, and shot it far into the sky, where it burst like a fiery balloon. The last missile caught up to him at the top of the building, and Sonic led it straight toward Robotnik.
	"You think I can't see you?" the doctor cried with wild eyes. "With this power, I can see everthing! I'll be able to destroy all that is worthless in this world! Everything will be laid to waste by the botniks, and I will rebuild a flawless world as its god!"
	"Speedy delivery for the godhead!" Sonic called, and jumped aside as the missile collided with the cloud of mini drones.
BOOM! The drones shredded to ash across the sky, but the force of the explosion kicked Sonic off his feet. He fell to see Robotnik holding firm in his egg-pod.
	"He's got the power of chaos now," Sonic said as he dropped through the air in free fall. "I can't leave him with even a drop of that power." The street below rushed up to Sonic's face, but he grabbed a loose ring and called out. "You want power, Ro-Butt-Nik? You've never seen power like this!"
	ZAM!
	The ring opened up a portal in the ground, and Sonic fell through, building back up to hyperspeed. The doctor screamed as he flew down after him. "What are those?! What are you hiding from me, you illogical hunk of meat?!"
	Sonic tore through new ground, and on the other side of the portal stood a sight he'd only ever beheld in the poster on his cave wall: the Eiffel Tower. The ring had delivered them to Paris! Sonic sped through the streets in a haze of blue energy and sampled Paris life as much as he could in the seconds he was there. He inhaled a loaf of French bread to carb up, downed a dozen shots of coffee for a caffeine boost, and slapped a beret on his head for style.
	"Ooh la la!" he called, and whipped the hat off to slap Robotnik in the face. The egg-pod was careening wildly, never as fast or as precise as Sonic was when in control of his powers. "Come on, and follow the leader!"
	Schwooooooosh! Sonic sped up the side of the Eiffel Tower and left a streak of flames behind him. At its apex, he looked out over the great city and said goodbye. Robotnik rocketed up after him, but before he could reach Sonic-
	ZAM!
	Another ring warp, and the pair fell on the top of China's Great Wall. Sonic crouched low and sprinted down the length of the ancient structure. Robotnik swung in the air behind him, but no matter how many missiles the egg-pod shot off, they were all incapacitated by the waves of blue energy spiking off Sonic's body.
	Sonic reached into his bag, and he saw that there were only three rings left. "Gotta make it count," he said as he thought of the next place.
	ZAM!
***
	A ring warp sent them up into a cloud of thick desert sand, most of it kicked up by Sonic's smoking feet. In the distance, the Pyramids of Giza towered like alien arrows. Sonic spun into a superfast ball, and the lightning he discharged turned sand into chunks of glass as he zoomed toward the tallest Egyptian pyramid.
	"There's nowhere you can run from me!" cried Robotnik, his eye mad with electric power. "I'll destroy everyone and everything in my path to get you, hedgehog!" A final missile launched from Robotnik's egg-pod and bore down on him. Sonic looked up the length of the pyramid, knowing another second wasted could mean its destruction. "It was a good run while it lasted," he said, and tossed his second-to-last ring in the air.
	Zam! Boooooom!
	Fire and smoke poured through the other end of the ring portal, and Sonic collided with the ground in the heart of the Green Hills town square. The ring bag bounced off into the gutter. He crawled up on his kneed, but the impact of the bomb had shaken him. This was his last chance. His last hope. His final destination. Once way or another, it ended here.
	"You're an astonishing little creature. It will be fun taking you back to the lab and axamining you," Robotnik said as he hovered over him triumpahtly. "Any last words?"
	"Guac. I like that word."

- Chapter 14