Hunt for Sol and Shard.

Blaze stares at the horizon of her home. "It is pretty quiet around here lately." She glances down and then at the ocean as it moves back and forth slowly, creating small waves. "At least it is peaceful." She slightly smiles and turns heading back to her home.

She walks to where she normally stores the Sol Emeralds and tilts her head confused. "Where are they?" She starts to look around a bit when she's suddenly engulfed in a strange white light. "What?" And Bam.

There she was. Back in the Mobian dimension. "Oh no..not again.." She looks around at the area she's in. "Has Eggman taken them again?" She starts to pick up on a slight hint of Sol energy and moves towards it. She looks around at the sky and the area she's in. "It seems that the dimensions aren't collapsing as quickly as they did last time." She stops further ahead as the energy starts to get stronger. She looks up noticing a rather large tower in the distance. "Hmm..that's more then likely where Eggman has it." She runs towards it making a bit of progress. Though she slows down when she notices a familiar red Echidna.

That same red echidna was a bit busy bulling his way through through any obstacles to reciprocate the look.  Knuckles, for his part, didn't notice the feline as she approached.  He casually flipped boulders out of his way, skimming trees with his shoulders, headed for the tower by the most direct route he could take.  One, maybe two more shards located in that tower, and the tower almost definitely belonging to Robotnik.  Who else would build such a thing way out here in the middle of...well, nowhere, basically?  The red Guardian's violet eyes flashed as he continued his wrecking-ball pace of smashing through anything on his path.  So focused was he on his task at hand, his usual awareness didn't pick up on the 'other' Emerald Guardian as he continued forward, quickly approaching the base of the tower.

The purple cat stopped and tilted her head. "Looks like he's heading to the tower." She started off after him, using the path he made as a way to run through the area with little resistance. "He's quite destructive. Hopefully our meeting won't go as badly as the last time." She looked up at the tower and noticed robots flying into it and flying out. "Looks to be heavily guarded." She focused back on the path ahead right before she would have gotten hit by a stray rock, barely dodging out of the way. "Guess I need to focus better.

She noticed the door ahead of the red Treasure Hunter. "Oh. he's almost there." She stopped. "I'm surprised he hasn't noticed my presence. He could detect the energy of the Sol emeralds at our last meeting. How could he not notice me?"

At the base of the tower, the red echidna quickly made as much a mess of the guard robots as he had the path he trailblazed.  No harder than normal, which gave more evidence that Robotnik's chubby hands were in it.  He began pounding in the security door, making dents with each punch.  He paused and suddenly stopped at one point when the door was half beaten-in, spinning backwards 180 degrees.

He stared at the feline with the same intensity as was in his purple stare when blowing a path earlier.  "You!" he shouted, though in a shout as much of surprise as of defiance.  He narrowed his eyes.  "...why are you here?  Tearing up reality again, or whatever it was?"

The cat closed her eyes slowly and crossed her arms. "That was not my doing. Your Eggman stole my worlds precious gemstones and brought them here." She droped her arms and stared at him. "That's what caused the spatial time rift. I put an end to it." She then walked up next to him and put her hand on the door. "And if I don't get the Sol Emeralds back it will start all over again." She moved back a bit and kicked the door, slightly denting it. "You're sure that there isn't another way to open this thing? The process of brutalizing it could take a bit." She stepped back and looked around the door area for a switch of some sort. She then looked to the top of the tower. "The Sol Emerald is up there...along with some other energy.."

The echidna tapped one foot for a moment, listening...which indicated that, perhaps, the voice of the young rabbit they both knew hadn't fallen on totally deaf ears.  He looked up the height of the tower, than back to Blaze.  "A shard.  Master Emerald.  He probably grabbed both."

He looked back to the tower, walking over and resting a fist against the partially-broken door.  "Unless you find it, I'm just going through.  Saves time."  He sighed, grumbling.  "The tower's too slippery to climb."  Then, after another moment, he went back to banging on the door, which slowly began giving way.

"Master Emerald?" The cat had never actually heard of such a thing back in her own dimension, and she certainly had never seen it on her very few trips to this dimension as well. She looked back up to the top of the tower. "It must be immensely powerful if just a shard is giving off that much energy."

She slowly backed up and looked for a switch by the door or any other way to open the thing, but to no avail. Sighing she crossed her arms and waited for the red guardian to smash the door in. "Do you need assistance?"

"The Master Emerald."  The Guardian spoke reverently and proudly, then bashed the door harder.  He growled, "He's been behind breaking it three times," then punched the door hard again.  One more punch, while growling, and the thing caved.  "I guess not on the help.  Thanks anyway."

Knuckles glanced inside, checking the area for any traps or guards of such.  Since the door was just beaten in, an alarm blared in the background, but as yet enemy activity in the area remained at a minimum.  "Move!" he shouted, the bolted.

Blaze climbed over the wreckage of the door before dashing off into the building. She quickly caught up with the Echidna and looked around. "Doesn't seem to be to well guarded." She glared at an approaching robot and launched off the ground smashing into it with a firey spin. She landed back on the ground and dashed up to Knuckles again. "Alright..correction. Doesn't seem to be to well guarded YET." 

She looked up and then forward. "There must be a lift or a set of stairs in here somewhere." She was merely following the energy of the Sol Emerald for now. But in truth despite that she didn't really know where they were going.

Knuckles took a glance back towards the cat, pausing at the next corner.  Throwing a hook punch around this corner and blowing out a hover-bot's visual sensors, he then took a more careful look around the corner.  After a few moments of scanning the area and taking in the activity there, he turned back to Blaze, gruffly informing, " 'Yet' is right.  The next hallway is packed with robots, there's some kind of lift tube.  The power feels like it's from way above...I take right, you take left."  Taking up position, he was ready to get moving into the fray as soon as Blaze responded, regardless of whether she went by his plan of action or not.

Blaze dashed quickly over to the left side of the hall and nodded at Knuckles. She then dashed down the hall kicking and melting any robot who dared to get in her way. Various fireballs were thrown about along with the flashes of her blazing kicks as she bounced around the room taking out the 'bots. She landed gracefully in front of the tube ignoring the smoldering wreckage of various robots that was left in her wake. "Where are the controls for this contraption?" She said before glancing to the right to see if the red guardian had done as well as her.

A red haze and a red blur were all that appeared from the right side of the room.  The Chaos Guardian pummeled his way through the opposing forces, jumping, rolling, bashing, punching, jabbing, uppercutting, hooking, kicking, spinning, crushing, eradicating, wrecking, gutting, exterminating, shattering, ruining, maiming, trashing, totaling, ending, eradicating, wasting, annihilating, butchering, ravaging, defacing, mashing, crumbling, beating, trampling, squashing, crunching, pulverizing, pounding, desecrating, crashing, clashing, disabling, breaching, crippling, decimating, vandalizing, shattering, mangling, undermining, obliterating and generally destroying the robots.

Very little remained on that side of the room.  He finished about the same time as Blaze, then tapped on the hard plastic casing of the tube.  "Dunno."  He might have punched it, but...he'd done enough battle for a while.  So he walked towards the back of the tube, encountering a panel with a lot of blinking, complex-looking lights.  "...where's fox-boy when you need him..."

Blaze walked around to where Knuckles was. She stared down at the panel. "Hmm. Look for a call button. That tends to be how lifts work." She glanced around the tube to watch for any remaining hordes of robots. Sure enough there were still some coming at them. "They don't give up do they. You try to find out how to work this thing." (Blaze you fool.) She dashed around the tube and jumped at the robots, flaming foot first.

The echidna looked up at the cat.  He probably would have moved to protest her leaving him to do this job, but she was gone too quickly, and there were robots to deal with.  The guardian scanned the rows of buttons for any kind of label, but they all appeared to be symbols made by the same mad creator of this tower.

He pushed the one that most closely resembled doors, causing the tube to start to rumble.  Concerned by this, he started pressing other buttons, including one that caused visor-wipers to start on most of the robots.  The upside, of course, was blinding them.  The downside was that it was...well, water.  The doors to the lift shuddered open and the red Guardian sprinted around to the front.  "That's our cue!"  Unfortunately, when he looked inside, it was more of the same: Robots not being able to see but splashing water around.  He went back to pounding on these new forces.

Blaze turned when Knuckles had finally gotten the door open. "Finally." She drop kicks one last robot before running towards the lift and past Knuckles, launching herself into the robots full speed with a fiery spin. After trashing the ones that Knuckles already hadn't she landed and looked around inside the lift. "Any button to make us ascend..?"

Knuckles looked around, seeing no visible means of making the lift ascend.  He tapped the walls all the way around, listening intently.  He turned back to Blaze and shrugged.  "I got nothing.  Guess we need another way up."  At the word 'up', the doors shut.  "Command acknowledged.  Analyzing voice sample...invalid user detected.  Releasing paralysis gas."  "...seriously?"  But a telltale hissing sound echoed in the confined space.  The echidna threw a few solid hits to beat out the lift roof, then started climbing up the inside of the tube.

Blaze looked around at the elevator room and then up at the hole that Knuckles had made. She shrugged and hopped up and out of the hole. She clung to the side of the tube and looked down. "Esh.." She closed her eyes and looked up slowly starting to climb. Just don't look down. She notices Knuckles further up and blinks. "He moves rather quickly when it comes to climbing.

Only once or twice did the red Guardian glance back down at his fellow tower saboteur.  She looked slightly...concerned, maybe?  Definitely was moving slower.  When he reached the doorway for the next floor he put a fist against it, then decided it wasn't worth the effort of punching out.  He could probably deform it, but...his notice brought him to an easier, if only temporary solution: climbing onto a maintenance platform the tube opened onto opposite the doors.

Knuckles looked back towards the open tube from his new vantage point.  '...hm...she could melt the doors, maybe...'  A glance backwards, however, changed that thought.  This platform and its roughly square shaft were smaller but went up next to the main tube the whole way, opening onto the elevator each floor.  Additionally, the three walls besides the tube were covered in complicated-looking components.  Easier to climb, and it would do a lot of collateral damage.  He smirked.  "Eggman finally did something right."

Blaze finally reached the top and climbed to where he was. She slowly stood up next to him and glanced around the tube. Barely catching his comment she speaks. "The question is...is him doing something right beneficial or damaging to our cause?" She looks towards the doors and tried to think. "Using my flames could open them but...it could damage the entire tube.." She stared at the doors more closely. "Are there any buttons around it?"

He glanced back as she climbed up to his level."Hm?  Well...fire's probably a last resort."  He poked her shoulder and gestured to the maintenance shaft that ran parallel to the main tube.  "How about this?  Climbing and collateral damage."  Apparently the idea of 'live wires' was lost on the echidna, as he seemed fairly ready to start climbing up this area.

"Erm...you do know that the electricity is on inside of here correct? Damaging such a fragile area could end with you being shocked to death." She looked at the area more closely. "Perhaps we can climb it without damaging the area. Shouldn't be to difficult to avoid the wires."

The Guardian glanced askance at his search partner, but didn't say anything to contradict her judgment.  He looked back up the shaft.  "If you think so, I guess..."  Momentarily closing eyes, he appeared to be thinking..."We have to make it quick and we have to make it careful, then."  He glanced at the wall for the wires; when he didn't find any there he pounded a fist into it and started going up, making slower progress this time for being more careful.

Blaze looked back down the tube and then up before sighing. "We must progress even higher.." She clung to the wall and slowly started to climb after him, putting her hands anywhere that she could put them that was safe. Sure she could try to use her claws or even her flames to make the climb easier..but it involved the risk of getting shocked, deadly or otherwise. She grimaced and continued to climb after the Echidna, refusing to look downward for the whole climb.

Continuing to climb, the echidna only glanced down every once in a while.  He worked up the face of the wall, making progress as he noted by looking out into the tube...and when they finally reached the top, where closed doors waited beneath the ceiling, he punched out the doors from the inside, entering the doorway, bracing himself, and offering a hand to help Blaze up since his glances indicated that she might be having a harder time.  Around that same time, though, the maintenance shaft started shaking.  "...wah...woah!"  He gripped the doorway tightly with one hand, still reaching with the other.

A frown suddenly appeared on the cat's face and she scurried up the tube the rest of the way, using the Echidna's arm as a launch pad of sorts into safety. She slowly stood and dusted herself off after landing. "Ahem. Shall we continue before this whole hunk of junk collapses?" She continues to frown, not pleased with the reaction she had to the tube moving.