Chapter 43: Seriously, Who Doesn't Know How to Double Jump.jpg
Retract everything said previously. If anyone tells Ross again that Angel Island is a scenic and peaceful paradise, he is going to poke his own eardrums out.
Yes, every Badnik was a harmless small animal inside a mechanical shell. Dr. Eggman's actual creations, however, were something else entirely -- each one more relentless than the last.
For a subtropical island saturated with humidity and layered in dense vegetation, setting it on fire was not supposed to be easy. Dr. Eggman had accomplished it anyway through nothing more than an unmanned aerial missile launcher and a bomber that was either packed with explosives or running its own internal munitions factory. Together, the two of them turned every green surface of Angel Island from living vegetation to open flame, then locked onto Ross and began following him with sustained bombardment.
The one fortunate thing was that neither machine carried machine guns or laser cannons. Missiles had an unavoidable delay between release and impact. Without that delay, Ross would have eaten his first hit already.
Dr. Eggman was a genuine evil genius. He was also, in equal measure, an erratic idiot, which meant the overwhelming majority of his creations had one extremely powerful advantage paired with an equally obvious vulnerability visible from the start.
When the bomber failed completely to put Ross down, Dr. Eggman ran out of patience and, for the umpteenth time, decided to handle things personally. He issued the bomber a standing order to continue bombing until its ammunition reserves ran dry, then swung his personal single-pilot aircraft around and went ahead to the waterfall area at the far end of the bombing run -- waiting for Ross to walk into the trap.
The terrain here had a specific shape. At the center of the waterfall zone stood an isolated platform, small and abrupt, like a candle stuck upright on a cake. On either side, wooden suspension bridges connected it to the surrounding cliff faces.
Which meant once both bridges were gone, anyone caught on that platform was stuck.
"Ha ha ha ha! Sonic! You may have turned yourself into some skinny humanoid shape, but you can't fool the great evil scientist -- me, Dr. Egg--"
Eggman's single-seat Waterfall Diver burst upward through the rushing current, and he had barely gotten his introduction started before Ross, using all his built-up momentum, launched into a direct elbow strike aimed squarely at the glass canopy.
Man!
Nobody was asking for the villain speech. Take the Mamba Elbow Strike.
In almost the same instant, the weapon port on the flank of the Waterfall Diver had already swung toward the wooden bridge below and fired a fireball clearly loaded with some kind of high-accelerant fuel. It spread and ignited the moment it hit, the entire bridge structure charring with visible speed. Which meant that once Ross landed after his elbow strike, the bridge would send him straight over the edge.
He was already mid-fall when it happened: a brief pulse of electrical current across his body, and then -- as if he had bounced off a spring in mid-air -- a complete anti-gravity jump from nothing, no surface contact at all. He came down in a controlled forward roll and landed clean on the candle platform.
[Electromagnetic Shield: C-class Nen tool. Consumable. Upon breaking, generates a layer of electromagnetic protection around the body.
Grants the player three temporary effects: Gold Ring Attraction, Magnetic Double Jump, and Electromagnetic Defense.
Other effects omitted.]
The terrain inside the Secret Realm was considerably more complex than the flat-plane version played through a screen -- a reasonable expansion that gave the layout actual branching paths rather than a single corridor. Following the floating Gold Ring trails still prevented getting lost, though Ross had taken a detour earlier to explore the expanded sections out of curiosity. Nothing new had been added beyond the terrain itself -- no additional rings, no extra item spawns. A mild disappointment. The Secret Realm was following the source game with strict fidelity.
Having found nothing interesting in the expanded areas, Ross had proceeded methodically through the zone.
He had deliberately held onto the Electromagnetic Shield for this moment -- the first major boss, the Waterfall Diver. The Bubble Shield was never suited for land combat. The Flame Shield had impressive attack power but terrible controllability, nearly impossible to contain once active. All that desperate full-speed sprinting through the bombardment earlier had been largely in service of keeping the Electromagnetic Shield intact.
It was the tool he had planned to use against Eggman from the start.
Eggman's pre-fight monologue had also, as a side note, confirmed what Ross had already concluded: in here, he was Sonic. Eggman appeared to be a fully accurate recreation of his canon personality, intelligence, and behavioral logic -- and yet was still bound by game rules. That distinction was worth studying in depth at some point. For now, the priority was finishing this boss and clearing the first major zone.
As a first-zone boss, the Waterfall Diver ran on fairly fixed movement and attack patterns. Even with Eggman piloting more freely than usual, it couldn't escape the underlying logic: dive into the waterfall to dodge incoming attacks, re-emerge to fire a fireball. A live pilot made it somewhat less predictable, but the foundation didn't change.
Ross personally had nowhere close to Sonic's actual performance specifications. TAS-level play -- eight consecutive hits in rapid succession for an instant clear -- was not possible without the Spin Dash. What he did have was every one of the machine's starting movements memorized cold. The moment any joint in the thing shifted, Ross was already moving in response.
The Sonic Elbow Strike missed occasionally, and there were moments where he slipped off the candle platform and came close to going over the edge. But every time it mattered, the Electromagnetic Shield's Magnetic Double Jump brought him back.
And every clean connection of the Sonic Elbow Strike dealt real damage.
After the eighth hit, the aircraft began radiating a warning glow from beneath.
Then:
Boom.
The Waterfall Diver, a modular assembly, shed its outer layer -- blue armor panels and twin flame cannons detaching together and breaking apart, exposing the core aircraft underneath. Eggman himself, face blackened from the instrument panel explosion, delivered the mandatory closing line: "I'll be back!!" -- then dropped with the exposed core into the ravine.
A large spherical mechanical capsule descended slowly from above, spring-loaded impact plates on both ends. Taking a pose borrowed from Mario -- Sonic's great rival across the console wars -- Ross launched a double jump into a Shoryuken aimed straight at it.
The capsule burst open with a sharp crack. A cascade of blue-and-white birds flew out and began circling Ross in grateful loops.
[You have successfully defeated the "Waterfall Diver" and freed the captured animals.]
[While fulfilling the Completion Vows "Full Hidden Item Collection" and "No-Damage Clear," you have completed the first major zone, "Angel Island," of Sonic the Hedgehog 3.]
[You have obtained Intermediate Access for "Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Angel Island Zone," partial Sonic abilities unlocked, and "Little Tyrant E-Wallet" unlocked.]