The alarms had barely stopped ringing from Nazo and Sonic's sparring match when new ones began to wail.
These were different—sharper, more urgent, the kind of alarm that meant genuine danger rather than accidental property damage. Nazo's chaos senses flared immediately, detecting a massive concentration of hostile energy approaching from the north.
Robotnik, he realized. He didn't wait the full week.
Of course he didn't. Nazo had been foolish to think that a man like Robotnik would honor any agreement, especially one made under duress. The doctor's pride wouldn't allow him to simply comply with demands, no matter how terrifying the being making those demands might be.
Nazo launched himself into the air, rocketing toward the source of the disturbance. Below him, he could see Freedom Fighters scrambling to defensive positions, civilians rushing toward shelters, the organized chaos of a community that had learned to respond to attacks with practiced efficiency.
But this attack was different from any they had faced before.
As Nazo crested the treeline at the edge of Knothole, he saw it.
The robot was massive—easily fifty feet tall, humanoid in shape but with proportions that were subtly wrong. Its chassis was silver, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the morning sun with blinding intensity. Its eyes glowed with an inner crimson light, and its form crackled with chaos energy that felt horrifyingly familiar.
Because it was his energy. His signature. His power, somehow captured and replicated in mechanical form.
"GREETINGS, NAZO!" Robotnik's amplified voice boomed from speakers embedded in the robot's chest. The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen—probably commanding this monstrosity remotely from the safety of Robotropolis. "I CALL THIS CREATION METAL NAZO! DO YOU LIKE IT?"
The robot raised one massive hand, and silver-black energy gathered in its palm—a perfect imitation of Nazo's own chaos attacks.
"I SPENT THE LAST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS ANALYZING THE DATA FROM OUR PREVIOUS ENCOUNTERS," Robotnik continued gleefully. "EVERY ATTACK YOU USED, EVERY TECHNIQUE YOU DISPLAYED, EVERY FLUCTUATION IN YOUR ENERGY SIGNATURE—ALL OF IT HAS BEEN PROGRAMMED INTO THIS MASTERPIECE!"
Metal Nazo fired.
The blast of chaos energy tore through the forest, vaporizing trees and scorching earth in a path of destruction aimed directly at Knothole Village. Nazo moved to intercept, throwing up a barrier of his own energy to block the attack.
The impact was staggering.
His barrier held, but barely. The force of Metal Nazo's attack pushed him backward, his feet carving furrows in the ground as he struggled to maintain his position. The energy was wrong—twisted somehow, corrupted in ways that made it harder to counter than it should have been.
"SURPRISED?" Robotnik's laugh was ugly and triumphant. "YOUR CHAOS SIGNATURE WAS INTERESTING TO REPLICATE, BUT THE REAL BREAKTHROUGH WAS INCORPORATING THE DATA FROM YOUR 'PERFECT' TRANSFORMATION! METAL NAZO OPERATES AT THAT POWER LEVEL CONTINUOUSLY—WITHOUT THE EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY THAT MAKES YOU SO UNPREDICTABLE!"
The giant robot advanced, each step shaking the earth. Its crimson eyes fixed on Nazo with mechanical precision, calculating, analyzing, preparing for the next attack.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED ME WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE," Robotnik said, his voice dropping to something almost conversational despite the amplification. "YOUR MERCY WAS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS. AND NOW YOU'LL PAY FOR IT."
Metal Nazo struck.
The battle was brutal from the first exchange.
Metal Nazo moved with a speed that belied its massive size, its chaos-enhanced systems allowing it to match Nazo's mobility despite the difference in scale. Every attack was calculated for maximum efficiency, every defense positioned with mechanical precision. It didn't tire, didn't hesitate, didn't make the small errors that even the most skilled organic fighters eventually made.
And its power was substantial.
Nazo found himself on the defensive almost immediately, dodging and blocking attacks that would have annihilated lesser beings. Metal Nazo's chaos blasts were devastating—not quite as powerful as his own, but close enough to be dangerous. Its physical strikes carried the weight of its massive frame combined with chaos-enhanced strength.
"YOU CAN'T WIN," Robotnik taunted as Metal Nazo pressed its advantage. "THIS MACHINE REPRESENTS THE CULMINATION OF MY GENIUS! EVERY WEAKNESS YOU'VE DISPLAYED, EVERY PATTERN IN YOUR FIGHTING STYLE—ALL ANALYZED AND COUNTERED!"
Nazo ducked under a sweeping arm strike and launched a chaos spear at Metal Nazo's chest. The attack connected, but the robot's armor absorbed most of the impact.
"YOUR BASE FORM ISN'T ENOUGH," Robotnik continued. "AND YOUR PERFECT FORM? I'VE ALREADY PLANNED FOR THAT! METAL NAZO CAN MATCH WHATEVER TRANSFORMATION YOU ACHIEVE!"
The robot's chest opened, revealing a cluster of weapons that charged simultaneously. Missiles, lasers, and chaos energy all launched at once in a devastating barrage.
Nazo threw up every defensive technique he knew, layering barriers and deflection fields in a desperate attempt to survive the onslaught. He managed—barely—but the effort left him momentarily vulnerable.
Metal Nazo capitalized immediately, its massive fist connecting with Nazo's body and sending him crashing through the forest. Trees splintered like matchsticks as he carved a path of destruction through the vegetation, finally coming to a stop in a crater of his own making.
"PATHETIC," Robotnik sneered. "IS THIS THE BEING THAT THREATENED TO DESTROY ME? THE CHAOS GOD THAT MADE ME COWER IN FEAR? YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A FAILED EXPERIMENT—A COLLECTION OF LEFTOVER ENERGY THAT SOMEHOW CONVINCED ITSELF IT WAS SPECIAL!"
Nazo lay in the crater, his silver fur scorched and his body aching from the impact. Around him, he could hear the sounds of battle—the Freedom Fighters engaging Metal Nazo's support forces, explosions and laser fire and the screams of the wounded.
Get up, he told himself. They're counting on you. Sally, Rouge, Bunnie, Amy—they're all depending on you to stop this.
But for a moment, doubt crept in. Robotnik's creation was powerful—more powerful than anything he'd faced in his base form. And the doctor was right: if Metal Nazo could match his Perfect transformation, what hope did he have of winning?
You know what you have to do, a voice whispered in his mind. The darkness within, stirring in response to his distress. You've been holding back. Afraid of what you might become. But if you want to protect them—if you want to save everyone you care about—you need to stop being afraid.
You need to show them what you really are.
Nazo closed his eyes and reached deep inside himself. Past the silver light of his base form. Past the crimson darkness of his Perfect form. Down to something that lay even deeper—a well of power so vast that even he had never fully explored its depths.
Robotnik thinks he knows my limits, Nazo thought. He's wrong.
Everyone is wrong.
Metal Nazo had turned its attention to Knothole Village, its sensors having determined that the primary target was temporarily neutralized.
"INITIATE DESTRUCTION PROTOCOL," Robotnik commanded gleefully from his remote location. "START WITH THE RESIDENTIAL AREAS. LET NAZO WATCH HIS PRECIOUS FRIENDS DIE KNOWING HE FAILED TO PROTECT THEM!"
The robot raised its arms, chaos energy gathering for a devastating area attack. The Freedom Fighters on the ground fired everything they had, but their weapons were useless against Metal Nazo's armor. Sonic attempted a spin attack, but the robot swatted him aside like an insect.
Sally watched from her position near the village center, her heart pounding with fear and defiance. She had her weapon raised, knowing it would accomplish nothing, but refusing to simply give up.
"Nazo," she whispered. "Please..."
The attack charged to full power.
Metal Nazo prepared to fire.
And then the world went dark.
Not dark as in nighttime darkness, or the darkness of a storm cloud blocking the sun. This was absolute darkness—the complete absence of light, the kind of black that existed between stars, in the void where nothing could survive.
And at the center of that darkness, something was rising.
Metal Nazo's sensors went haywire. Every reading spiked into the red, then beyond, into ranges that the robot's programming couldn't even process. Warnings scrolled across Robotnik's displays faster than he could read them, each one more alarming than the last.
"WHAT—WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" the doctor demanded.
The darkness began to coalesce, drawing inward toward a central point. And from that point, a figure emerged.
Super Perfect Nazo floated above the battlefield, and he was terrible to behold.
His fur was still the deep crimson of arterial blood, his eyes still blazed yellow with black pupils. But now the black rings around his wrists and ankles had returned—voids in reality that seemed to drink in the surrounding light. The dark aura around him was so intense that it bent the visible spectrum, creating halos of distorted color at its edges.
And his expression... his expression was cold. Empty. The face of a being who had moved beyond anger into something far more dangerous.
"Robotnik." Super Perfect Nazo's voice echoed with harmonics that shouldn't have been possible, each word carrying physical weight. "I gave you mercy."
Metal Nazo turned toward this new threat, its weapons charging automatically. Super Perfect Nazo didn't even glance at it.
"I had you in my grasp. I could have ended you. Instead, I chose to let you live—to give you the chance to change, to become something other than a monster."
He raised one hand, and the black ring around his wrist pulsed with anti-light.
"You rejected that mercy. You attacked the people I love. You created this machine to destroy everything I care about."
Metal Nazo fired—a full-power chaos blast aimed directly at Super Perfect Nazo's chest.
The attack vanished. Not deflected, not blocked—simply erased from existence as it entered the field of absolute darkness surrounding the transformed hedgehog.
"You should have taken my offer," Super Perfect Nazo said quietly. "You should have used the week I gave you to run. To hide. To disappear into some forgotten corner of the multiverse where I might never find you."
He moved.
One moment he was floating in the air; the next, he was directly in front of Metal Nazo. His hand was already extended, already pressed against the robot's chest armor.
"Instead, you chose this."
Dark energy poured from his palm, and Metal Nazo began to scream.
It was a mechanical scream—synthesized audio designed to simulate distress signals—but it sounded horribly, eerily real. The chaos energy that powered the robot was being drained, corrupted, consumed by the void that Super Perfect Nazo commanded. Cracks spread across the mirror-bright chassis as the machine tried and failed to contain forces it was never designed to withstand.
"YOUR CREATION WAS IMPRESSIVE," Super Perfect Nazo acknowledged, his voice carrying easily over the robot's death throes. "BUT YOU MADE A CRITICAL ERROR IN YOUR CALCULATIONS."
He closed his fist, and the cascade of destruction accelerated.
"YOU DESIGNED IT TO MATCH MY PERFECT FORM. YOU HAD NO DATA ON WHAT COMES AFTER."
Metal Nazo exploded.
The detonation was spectacular—a pillar of silver-black energy that shot into the sky and was immediately consumed by the darkness surrounding Super Perfect Nazo. The robot's remains—what little survived—rained down across the battlefield in molten fragments.
In less than ten seconds, Robotnik's masterpiece had been completely destroyed.
Super Perfect Nazo turned toward the nearest intact robot—one of the support units that had accompanied Metal Nazo. The machine tried to flee, but a tendril of darkness wrapped around it and held it in place.
"DELIVER A MESSAGE TO YOUR MASTER," Super Perfect Nazo commanded, his voice resonating with terrible authority. "TELL HIM WHAT YOU SAW HERE TODAY. TELL HIM THAT HIS WEEK OF MERCY HAS BEEN REVOKED."
The robot's audio receptors recorded every word, transmitting in real-time back to Robotropolis.
"TELL HIM THAT I'M COMING. NOT TODAY. NOT TOMORROW. BUT SOON. AND WHEN I ARRIVE, THERE WILL BE NO MERCY. NO SECOND CHANCES. NO SURVIVAL."
He released the robot, which immediately rocketed into the sky, fleeing toward Robotropolis with its message of doom.
"TELL HIM TO SPEND WHATEVER TIME HE HAS LEFT MAKING PEACE WITH WHATEVER GODS HE BELIEVES IN. BECAUSE THE GOD OF CHAOS HAS PASSED JUDGMENT."
Super Perfect Nazo watched the robot disappear into the distance. Then, slowly, the darkness around him began to recede. The black rings faded from his wrists and ankles. The terrible pressure of his presence lifted.
By the time he descended to the ground, he was Perfect Nazo—still transformed, but no longer the reality-bending horror of moments before.
The Freedom Fighters stared at him in stunned silence. Even Sonic, who had seen more incredible things than most beings in existence, seemed at a loss for words.
Sally was the first to move.
She walked across the battlefield—past the fragments of destroyed robots, through the lingering darkness that still hung in the air—and stopped directly in front of him.
"You're hurt," she said, reaching up to touch a scorch mark on his cheek.
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing. Come on." She took his hand—his crimson, chaos-radiating hand—and began leading him toward the village. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Rouge, Bunnie, and Amy fell into step beside them, forming a protective escort that was more about emotional support than physical protection.
"That was intense, sugah," Bunnie said quietly.
"The bit with the darkness swallowing the attacks? Genuinely terrifying," Rouge added.
"But also kind of amazing," Amy finished.
Perfect Nazo—Nazo—let the transformation fade as they walked. Crimson returned to silver, yellow eyes to green. The familiar weight of his base form settled over him, and with it came an exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
"I meant what I said," he told them. "I'm going to end this. Robotnik has had his last chance."
"We know," Sally said, squeezing his hand. "And we'll be with you when you do."
"Not because you need us," Rouge clarified. "You obviously don't."
"But because we want to be," Bunnie said.
"Because we love you," Amy finished simply.
Nazo looked at the four women walking beside him—these incredible, brave, impossibly loyal people who had somehow decided that he was worth caring about. He still didn't fully understand what their love meant, still didn't know how to properly reciprocate it. But in this moment, he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
He would protect them.
Whatever it took. Whatever he had to become.
He would keep them safe.
In Robotropolis, Dr. Robotnik watched the footage from his surviving robot with mounting horror.
The destruction of Metal Nazo had taken less than ten seconds. Ten seconds! He had spent twenty-four hours of continuous work creating that machine—poured every resource he had into its construction—and it had been dismantled like it was nothing.
And then that message. That terrible, promise-laden message.
"I'm coming. Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon. And when I arrive, there will be no mercy."
Robotnik's hands trembled as he gripped the arms of his command chair. He had faced powerful enemies before. He had been threatened by beings who claimed they would destroy him. He had always found a way to survive, to rebuild, to continue his conquest.
But this was different.
This wasn't a threat from someone who might be defeated with clever strategy or superior firepower. This was a death sentence delivered by a being who had proven, beyond any shadow of doubt, that he was completely beyond Robotnik's ability to fight.
For the first time in his life, Dr. Ivo Robotnik felt genuine, absolute terror.
"What do I do?" he whispered to the empty command center. "What can I possibly do?"
His robots offered no answers. His genius offered no solutions. His pride offered no comfort.
He was going to die.
Unless...
A thought occurred to him. A desperate, terrible thought. A thought that would have been unthinkable under any other circumstances.
But these were not normal circumstances.
Robotnik pulled up his dimensional scanner, searching for energy signatures in neighboring zones. If he couldn't defeat Nazo himself, perhaps he could find someone—or something—that could.
After all, the multiverse was vast. Surely somewhere out there, something existed that was powerful enough to challenge even a god of chaos.
He just had to find it before Nazo came to collect on his promise.
The hunt began.