Chaos Strikes Back
Location: Mystic Ruins, Jungle Time: Morning
Eggman found himself in the deepest of the jungle, after long hours of research, combined with his own experiences and knowledge of the area, he had calculated the location of an artifact of great interest for him. Not willing to risk the chance to acquire such an important prize, he had prepared for an expedition immediately.
For this purpose, he had brought Rusty Rose, not only for her unexpected abilities as a lab assistant, but her discretion and fighting skills.
They had travelled light, taking only the Egg-mobile and some Motobugs. There was no need for more, Eggman had a small secret base there, nothing to impressive, but enough to use as a camp. Besides, he did not wanted to attract any attention to the expedition, the less people knew about what they were attempting here, the better.
The base had been unused since the Chaos incident, when he had tried, and succeeded, to trick Sonic into collecting the Chaos Emeralds for him. Bah, what a failure that turned out to be, he had lost the Egg-Carrier, both of them at that!, and the Chaos Emeralds in the end. But this time it would be different, his visit to Mystic Ruins would be much more fruitful this time.
Not that the Chaos incident had been a complete failure. He had been able to test his E-100 series in different situations, with mixed results. Zero captured the bird with the Chaos Emerald, and Amy Rose for some reason, but then went rogue to hunt the bird, Eggman never figured that one out. Beta failed to defeat his younger brother, even as Beta Mk. II, but was completely loyal to him. Meanwhile, Gamma defeated Beta and matched Beta Mk. II without any upgrades of his own, but rebelled against Eggman and hunted down the rest of the E-100 series. Delta, Epsilon and Zeta on the other hand, had been complete failures, even after their upgrades they had been inferior to Beta and Gamma. If only he could build a E-100 with the strength of Gamma and the loyalty of Beta.
And more important, all the information. Stone tablets, ancient texts, murals and many others sources of information he had acquired back then. He had learned of the tribes that used to live in the area, their lives, their conflicts and even their deaths. It was thanks to all of this, that this expedition was happening, that he was closer to his objective.
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Location: Mystic Ruins, Eggman Secret Base Time: Noon
It took longer than expected to find the base, it had been overtaken by the damned jungle, needing his badniks cut through the vegetation with their claws. If he had know, he would have brought some Fire Breath to clean up the place!.
The inside was in much better condition, if it was not for all the dust!. He activated the cleaning system to deal with that, releasing some Duster Bunny, one of his less memorable badniks, to deal with the dust while Eggman himself reactivated the base systems with Rusty assistance.
In less than two hours the place was fully functional. There was still some parts inactive and some dust here and there, but it was the parts of the base they were not planning to use, yes, the base was as operational as Eggman needed to be.
He prepared the computer to allow the Motobug to connect and be supervised while Rusty took care of making the necessary modification to the badniks. After some minutes, his robots rolled out to the base and started scanning the selected area, leaving Rusty to supervise them through the computer.
Eggman waited for the results while the Duster Bunny keeps cleaning the place down further, the rodents powering them up seemed to have hold up well enough, but upgrading them to his chaos drive technology would be necessary if he decided to fix the base, he would not suffer that obsolete junk unless completely necessary!.
But that could wait until his actual project was finish, he would have time to restore his base and upgrade his badniks latter. Yes, the Motobug had almost finished mapping the area while he was considering the future of this place. The Duster Bunny had also finished cleaning the main room of the base fully and were starting to clean the rest of the place. Meanwhile, Rusty had started with the calculations needed to find there objective, unnecessary, he could do that in a fraction of the time it would take her, but he appreciated the attempt at serving him as best as possible, if only everyone did that!.
"The scout party has completed their task, we got a full scan of the area" Rusty voice said, getting Eggman immediate attention. He brought up the scan data to the front of his screen, vegetation density, water purity, ground composition and many other bits of information of varying importance. But the most important of all was energy readings.
He started the calculations where Rusty left them. A big portion of the data had already been discarded, the readings attributed to both plant and animal lifeforms. He discarded others that matched the readings of different types of insects and fungi. Then the kinetic energy from ground and water movement. And finally went the heat from many sources, from animals to the sun itself.
The map was much clearer now, a big portion of the area completely clean. But it was still not enough, so he got rid of the data caused by the wind and gravitational effects. Perfect, the reading were much clearer right now.
He just needed to add one more filter and... there, the map was done. It was a much clearer image without all the junk data, most of the map was now empty of most energy readings.
By considering the locations of those readings, the interference cause the jungle density and the composition of the ground in all of those areas... done.
"Behind the waterfall, of course!" Classic, this kinds of things are always hidden around water. "Rusty, start moving, we found it!" He didn't wait for an answer, he didn't need one.
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Location: Mystic Ruins, Ancient Shrine Time: Evening
With one final impact from Rusty hammer, the wall behind the waterfall collapsed, revealing the inside of the ruins to Eggman. The architecture of chamber was very different from the one used by the Knuckles clan, perhaps it was from one of the tribes they had attacked, or perhaps it was even older, it was hard to tell without a more thorough analysis, what it was not hard to tell, was the purpose of this place.
The engravings on the walls showed groups of people, priests perhaps, bringing sacrifices to their objects of worship, from fruit to animals of different kinds. Their "idols" becoming stronger from this sacrifices, while their forms shifted to reflect this new power. Just like Chaos had done with the Chaos Emeralds. Now he was fully sure, he was in the right place.
"Go my badniks! I want a full map of this place!" And any possible traps they trigger, is one less trap he needed to worry about.
Rusty started moving behind them, until Eggman hand grabbed her shoulder.
"Not you Rusty, the Motobug can map the area by themselves" She was more useful at his side, both as an assistant and a bodyguard, that hammer was good for more than breaking walls.
It only took some minutes for the map to be complete. None of the badniks had activated nor found a single trap, either the architects thought that hiding the place was enough protection, or all of the traps had fallen apart with the passage of time.
Well, based on the map the fastest way to move through this priceless ruins to his objective was... in straight line.
"Rusty, dig!" He stated while pointing in direction to the chamber they had to get to.
Wall after wall, they all fell against the strength of Rusty and her hammer. Each blow getting him closer and closer to his objetive. Until, with one final blow, the last wall collapsed.
The final chamber looked completely different from the rest of the shrine. It looked like some kind of garden, or at least how a garden would look if it didn't get any sunlight in thousands of years. All through the ceiling, were smalls holes to allow the sunlight to pass, and all of them were blocked by the same dirt that covered the whole place. The only life remaining in the rooms were the fungi growing all around the place, as if they needed more mushrooms!. But more important, in the middle of the room, was a small pool, and in the pool, was the origin of the energy reading they had followed.
He walked into the pool, with Rusty at his side. His Motobug had surrounded the thing, covering for them in case of emergency. But the scanning made it clear, there was only one thing there. He stopped in the center of the lake, with water covering him all the way to the waist and started searching in the water until his hands found something.
"Finally!" It was cold and by most standards it would be dead, but Eggman knew better, it was not dead, it was dormant.
Ancient Chao Egg retrieved!
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It took me longer than expected to finish this one, and i ended up changing a lot in the end, but i think this version is pretty good. I hope everyone like it.
And in case you are wondering, the secret base is from Sonic Chronicles, where Eggman had an abandoned one by the swamp, while the Duster Bunny and the shrine are both made up for the Omake.
