Scrap looked back at his path scornfully. He'd made horrible time in his opinion, only about three hundred miles that day. The moon over head lent him little light, his path shone with weak visibility. Running at decent speeds could prove a grievous error. It hardly mattered though; his destination lay before him. Over the crest of the hill where he stood, Robotropolis beamed spotlights all through the sky. Metallic minions bustled about leisurely in the distant carved streets, tending to their automated city. The navy blue hedgehog was surprised, or atleast an apathetic equivalent to surprise; he'd destroyed several robotic units on his approach: Could there seriously have been no alarm raised? He pricked his ears casually as he caught ear of a shuffling.

A compact bat-like machine fluttered clumsily in the trees, stalking him from behind. 'Wait for it...' Scrap bided his time in alert. Abruptly the thing screeched off wide around his left, making a break for the city it dispatched from. Scrap whirled around, deftly cocked his right arm, and fired out rounds in the menaces' flight path.

The unfortunate spy tripped across the ground with a muffled clatter, it's various inner workings spilling out over the sickly grass matting as the body cracked open like an egg. Oops, there went yet another unit.

Scrap reverted his level gaze to the city. Perhaps this wouldn't be as horrendous an ordeal as he'd previously conceived? Only time would tell on that. He'd learned by now not to take any chances by making false judgements on the appearance of a situation.

Shuddering, the half metallic Mobian raced easily to the top on a high tree some fifty yards off from the bat's smoldering remains. Surely something had caught a glimpse of the damn thing's destruction. No one would have heard his fire though; he was glad his gun had a built in silencing feature. The self-replicating bullet ability was also a nice perk. He had no idea how his technical components functioned, but he was glad they could perform as they did. Scrap refocused. Assuming the minor skirmish was noticed, something would come along to investigate, then report back its findings. If he could stand being patient, he might find an easy way into the city.

Sally halted her allies. They had made it to the outskirts of the dark city. Trying hard to prevent her boots from crunching loudly over the dead vegetation, she ordered no one break from the cover of the foliage just yet. Consulting Nicole, she measured exact distances and reiterated everyone's orders. Hushed affirmations we given as the moon slowly crept along overhead.

"Rotor, any last tips before your signal gets jammed?" Sally rasped into her comm.

"It looks like the break in patrol is forty-five seconds, get ready to sprint." Rotor aided before adding a more apologetic comment, "Sorry, you're on your own from here on out."

"It's okay Rotor, we'll be fine. You just manage home securities."

"Right. Over and out."

Sally clicked off her comm bracelet for radio silence as a Swatbot rounded an outcropping of trees. It strode into sight, visual scanners roving around in search of trespassers. Sally, Tails, Bunny, and Antone sit crouched, holding their breaths as they hoped the disrupter device Rotor had given them masked them from the infrared sensors of the enemy. The bot passed without alarm.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Sally stood. "We're not out of the woods yet gang, break across the field as quick as you can!"

The group needed no further prompting as they sprinted like mad toward the city. Tails made it first, smiling at the others in faux mocking. Sally was impressed at how Tails had improved his speed. "For the good of the team" he'd always said, but she knew it was for Sonic's sake, trying to live up to something the crazy hedgehog had put him up to no doubt. Tails was one who had taken his passing hardest of all.

Shaking out her thoughts as she also reached the cover of a rather large sterile building, Sally cursed herself. 'Stop thinking about Sonic! That was so long ago...' she mentally coached, also recalling how it seemed like it was only yesterday.

"Hun, we should get movin'." Bunny prodded Antone.

"Yez, I know, but... do we 'ave to?" the French officer moaned in reply.

Bunny thusly drug him off with a wink to the others. "Take care sugah's, ya hear?"

"No problem." Tails assured confidently in a 'no big deal' tone. He checked his belt just to make sure it was still there; it was, and still cradling all his detonators. Sally merely smiled.

An orange fox and brown squirrel broke across the courtyard of a reactor facility, keeping the cover of shadow on them. Making it to the air duct, Sally popped the grate, Tails hopping in swiftly to disappear only a moment later. She swung around to the loading and unloading docks to the back, hitching her shouldered pack up in apprehension. This was it, the breaking point of the mission would occur within the next few minutes- would they make it?

Shrugging off the bag, she deftly unzipped it and fiddled with the compact explosives it held.

Finally, an investigator! Scrap held fast to the treetop with ease, not worried that his dark blue on black would be noticed at the distance he stood off at. A scuttling crab minion circled the metallic bats resting site like a shark. It wouldn't find any clues it could make sense of. Scrap might have smiled out of smugness if either weren't a lost art to him. He statically surveyed the movements of the clueless robot with cold malice.

Leaning in with narrowed eyes, the hedgehog wondered. What had that crab just done? It reached down with a slashing claw, carefully retrieved something from the remains of it's production line brother, and headed off to the city. His eyes widened in realization, a record box! It had to be something along those lines, which would mean he would be discovered in a more identifiably recognition then he cared for, and he just couldn't have that happening, not yet. Had this happened with some of the other units already? He cursed himself for not staying to observe the aftermath of other crash sites he'd incurred.

Any sensible information on himself he could stop from getting across, he would.

Losing no time, he blasted down the tree, launching into a spin dash mid jump to tear across the ground and run the crab-bot through. It exploded fiercely in a hail of fragments. Scrap skid to an easy stop in his trail of ripped dirt.

Doubling back to the destruction zone, he sought out the claw that held the bat's gadget of interest. Finding it intact, he was fortunate that, having received no command to do anything else, the hooked hand still held what appeared a little black box. Lowering his gun, the hedgehog quickly destroyed the evidence. He didn't bother seeking out the crab's log box- it knew nothing of him.

"What a waste of time..." he huffed while turning back to the city. He'd already waited for one retrieval unit, he didn't have the fuse to idle any longer.

Sprinting off, he was set on getting into the city.

Things were not going his way. Dr. Robotnik sneered at the screen, "I don't believe this! It can't possibly be!" A solitary monitor emitted the only light in the room, Robotnik studying it incredulously. The screen flickered through an extremely brief looping video, recovered and down loaded from the black box of a caterbot. The good doctor was about to punch out the screen when the red emergency lights clicked into action with the automatically accompanying siren, "Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Security compromise within city limits!"

"Oh, what now!" he bellowed angrily to himself. "Like I need this, a master mind such as me! Why can't everything just go as I plan, as everything should!" Switching to a security monitor feed, his eyes widened just as quickly as his jaw dropped open. "No, it couldn't be! It couldn't possibly be!"