When night finally fell, you were prepared. The only change in your plans was a surprise from Amy, a new set of armor that was much less protective, but dark to keep the aspect of stealth. Thankfully, it still retained parts of your favorite color of (f/c) in some little details.

Olive was to take you to the drop zone, staying out of sight with lower engine power as well as a half a mile or so away from the proximity of the base. This is where you'd descend onto the roof, an overhanging concrete shield that perched from the side of the cliff. The topography granted for a cliffside descent, allowing you to land close to a vent, your access inside.

. . .

Your aircraft flew through the air at lesser speeds, allowed for the quiet approach. Now that you and Olive were a team, you decided to give your shared transport, and home, a name. You wanted the cool and streamline kind of a name, and Olive wanted something similar but with more cute.

"-like Henry!" The canine said in front of you.

"No way, that's like a name for a 3D printer." You called back. "I say something sci-fi like the- the FF Hakon, or FF Endurance " You stuttered trying to think of something on the spot. FF for Freedom Fighters, like how waterborn ships are called SS.

"I actually kinda like the Endurance, but the FF sounds kinda lame." Olive disagreed, shaking her head sideways. "Just use SS like any other ship."

"So the SS Endurance?" You tilted your head sideways, making sure you got what the canine pilot meant.

"Yeppers." Her eyes remained forwards but gave you a thumbs up, "And so it was, welcome aboard the SS Endurance (Y/n)!"

Yeah, it does sound good. Not exactly menacing but it worked out fine, your ship was smaller than the normal escort rescue ships, so where you lacked cargo space it ade up for the lightweight speed. Speed and endurance were relative terms right?

A few minutes passed and you soon saw the ocean glisten from the reflection of the moon's light.

"Alright, we're going dark. I'm setting down a flare to distract any infected stragglers. You shouldn't find any inside but just be careful." Olive pressed a button on her control, it rapidly flashed red and then disappeared. The reflection of a flare made the outline of the ship a faint red, meaning that the distraction was successfully deployed. You soon would join it on the ground a mile closer to the base and were told to get ready.

Jumping from your chair, you made it to the hangar doors that began to slowly open. The SS Endurance came to a slow stop, hovering 10 feet above the ground. The grass blew violently from the engine's propellers as you jumped down, your landing muffled by the aircrafts.

Olive peeled back away to give you back your quiet. Immediately you turned tail and started running towards the base of the cliff, tapping your earpiece microphone to make sure it was working. Olive replied, good.

On your waist was rope to repel down on and other little tools like a screwdriver of small wire cutters. Sometimes when you looked down at your hands, the dark cover of night blended you in so perfectly you confused yourself.

If you heard a groan of an infected, you managed to jump into a tree and out of sight in the darkness of the canopy. They'd walk on by towards Olive's flare, a much more vibrant target. Soon, you resumed your trek towards the cliff, throwing your hands behind you and running forwards for those aerodynamics.

The forest reached all the way to the end, roots of trees dangling off of the edge of the cliffside. With a kick, you found a trump that was firmly attached to the ground, and tied your rope to it. Yanking the loop around your waist, it was firmly secured to your belt. Holding the rope with both hands, you took a deep breath, and began to repel down the side of the cliff.

The base was clear below you, pipes and vents protruding from the rooftops and sides of the cliff even. A sewage drain also stuck out from the cliff, but thankfully nothing was coming out of the smelly pipe work.

You've gone about 20 feet before the ground started to curve inwards, you'd have to start using your hands to climb upside down if you wished to stay near the cliff. There were at least 50 more feet to go. You'd have to rely on your arm and grip strength in order to not plunge down to the rooftop.

Your feet slipped off of the cliff and you were left dangling, eventually letting inches go off the rope so you could continue to descend. You were entered onto one of the hangar rooftops, where Eggman ships would enter the base from the air.

Thankfully, you were able to successfully make your way onto the vented rooftop, using a tool to flip open the entrance, and sliding your feet in first. Checking for the clear, you crouched down as you began to walk forwards. Through an opening in the ceiling, nothing was around, the coast was clear. You placed your index finger on your communication and radioed over to Olive.

You were in.

Marching forwards, you took careful steps to not be detected in the vents. Occasionally a motobug duo would pass by under you. Left or right, the map you had studied throughout today was coming to use. Make a left at the T-junction, go 10 feet to another opening on your right, go until dead end, and drop down.

Slowly taking off the vent grill below, you leaned the panel to the side and allowed yourself space to squeeze through. Popping your head out, upside down, to see nothing around. The coast was clear, and you dropped down, landing on all fours for stability and to add some more area for the sound of your landing to cease.

You had landed in front of the doors to the control room, the most populated area in badnick activity. Based on your timing, a pair of motobugs would pass by- now.

On que, two motobugs on patrol came by the corridor, facing the large steel doors to enter the control room. This was a stealthy, spy mission, so you were forced to refrain from spindashing right into those vulnerable badniks. Instead, you hid in a shadow with the wall blocking most of your position. As the door opened for the motobugs, you slid in silently behind them.

Eggman's abandoned control room look very disorganized. Olive was right, some of the badniks must have been turned on automatically with no objective. Some were running into walls or spinning in circles.

The motobugs that allowed you enterance turned around quickly to go back and do the same patrol as before. What a poor life those soulless chassis had.

There was a rail stairway that lead up to overlook the control room. There were no guards, and you flew towards that direct. Careful not to make too much noise, you found a place to rest on your belly and overlook the operations. Motobugs and other construction based robots appeared to be organizing the organization, removing the same crate or locker and placing it right back.

They were all facing away from the main control panel, distracted by their false tasks or by each other. The room was rather large after all, the only issue would be sneaking into the center of the room. To your left were some nuts and bots from a badnik that managed to destroy some of itself. You rolled the steel piece in between your fingers, before looking to the door you entered in from. In about 5 minutes, the same pair of motobugs would come back.

Alright.

You got up to stand closer to the doorway while remaining on the level above. When the botobugs appeared after those 5 minutes, you threw the various bolts next to the badniks, causing a loud clank sound as they scattered along the ground.

All the badniks in the room switched their neutral blue lights to a violent red and ran towards the motobugs, assuming they were a threat, even the construction badniks. In cartoon fashion, even the robots appeared to be frightened, and began to run away, giving even more reason for the confused badniks to give chase.

You snickered to yourself at the easy gullibility of the poor soulless robots, and finally was able to make your way towards the operations control panel.

Scanning file after file, you used keywords to search through the notoriously weird ideas Eggman had come up with.

Metal. Virus. Metalvirus. Faceship. Ship. Virus Cure. Vaccine. Metal Virus Vaccine..... -inator.?

Nothing but old designs that never came to fruition. The data must have never transferred to this location. Damn...

...

Chaos Emerald.

There was one blueprint that popped up, a stone sculpt of a throne with 7 circular, rough cut shapes decorating the crest of the back headboard. No doubt about it, they had to be slots for the emeralds. Maybe it even powered something. It was currently located in Eggman's Faceship.

You carried a small chip for downloading the data, and began the export from the control panel, taking anything you could even if there was so little to begin with. It was either blank, corrupted, or erased and protected by an Eggman firewall.

"Come on..." You watched the green bar slowly fill up. 60%... 70%... 80%... 90%... You were nervous something would happen right before it finished, a classic moment in those spy movies.

"(Y/n)!" Olive screeched into your ear, catching you violently off guard even though you were keen on some sort of thing intervening on your download.

"OW- Olive please-..." You almost yelled at her, but turned your voice back to low levels as to not be heard screaming in the control room.

"You n-.#ed to LE-..#E." her microphone began to crack and break up. The sudden interference had you worried, even more so... when the base began to shake.

Wh-whatsss Goin OONN. Things will be picking up from here! I'm very excited about the release of chapter 16 >:)

Chapter Length @1730 Words