Sonic Apocalypse

Chapter 58 - Infinite

All of a sudden, there was a bright red glare that was borderline blinding to anyone in the vicinity. And on top of that, the six who had gained an entrance into the lab were all catapulted to opposite sides of said lab. The occurrence could only be described as a huge blast courtesy of one of Infinite's projectiles. But something didn't feel right, this particular blast was far more powerful than the ones they've been affected by before. Perhaps Infinite did end up getting those upgrades after all, or perhaps it was something far worse.

"What...what was that?" groaned Silver as he, as well as the others, slowly rose to his feet.

"It was Infinite. Undoubtedly." responded Blaze.

"Indeed, just stay on the lookout. He could be anywhere." warned Shadow as he took a gander around the laboratory.

Nearly two whole minutes went by and not a single sound could be heard. The only source of audio, besides the muffled sounds of warfare going on outside, were the soft pitter patters of their footsteps, none of which were Infinite's. Infinite wanted to make sure that the Alliance had felt a little more safe and secure by keeping himself well hidden before he would attempt his follow up attack.

"Huh...seems as if maybe Infinite left." chuckled Knuckles, breaking the prolonged silence within the lab.

Knuckles' comment was immediately met with a harsh shushing gesture from Shadow, who was adamant on making sure Infinite wasn't hiding anywhere amongst them. After another brief period of silence, huge waves of red and black cubes were summoned throughout the room. Six chains of cubes for six fighters. Each of them were flung in completely different directions from one another. This is exactly what Infinite's intentions were, separate the Alliance and force them out of their "teamwork" strategy so that he wouldn't make the same mistakes Metal Sonic had made prior to the Alliances arrival in Metropolis.

Not only did Infinite fling the six across the city, but he also spawned a frightening quantity of replicas that would attack each and every one of them. And just for a little cherry on top, Infinite hovered over the battlefield and would assist his duplicates by firing various projectiles at each of them at the same time they were battling countless copies of him. Needless to say, the six were quite overwhelmed. The more powerful allies; Sonic, Shadow, Silver and Blaze had their fair share of trouble, but Knuckles and Rouge were nearly defenseless.

The strange thing was, Infinite wasn't usually this powerful. Beforehand, he never had the power to spawn this many clones at one time, let alone clones of himself, while simultaneously having more than enough strength to continue attacking foes himself.

Sonic did his best to ward off the many clones whilst maneuvering his way around Infinite's attacks. Seeing as he was the fastest of the bunch, he was having the easiest time finding success in this battle. After using his homing attack to clear out a group of clones, he turned his attention to the airborne Infinite who shared a menacing glance of his own.

"Infinite! Where did you get all this power from?!"

"Isn't it obvious?" scoffed Infinite as he summoned the seven Chaos Emeralds, now entirely drained of their energy, and spun them around his body.

Sonic and the others gasped almost in unison as they noticed this, while also coming to the realization that Infinite definitely could not be stopped unless Tails showed up with his invention.

Fuelled by his pure rage, Sonic dashed through a crowd of Infinite clones as he made a leap straight for the real Infinite. The masked jackal spawned more clones in front of him as Sonic made his aerial departure, only for the blue hero to perform more homing attacks on them, which eventually lead to an opportunity to finally counter attack Infinite. Unfortunately, before any grand attack could be made, Infinite froze Sonic in place, rendering him unable to do anything at all.