"Why Ask Spy?" is story #2. We get some humor to kick things off as Rotor and Sally trick Sonic by having Rotor pretend to be a robot. Sonic, naive as he is, gets fooled by it very easily. On to business...they put the robot mask on Sonic and have him chase Sally in the Great Forest, but we aren't told exactly what the plan is yet. Tails sees this and freaks out, thinking Sonic is actually a robot. They choose to let Tails believe this, with Sonic taking off and Sally declaring that Tails saved her. She asks that they keep the incident a secret, so of course Tails prints a ****load of newspapers about Robot Sonic and how Tails himself is a hero. Buzzbomber swoops in and snatches a paper from him, and he doesn't even pay for it! So evil. The badnik reports to Robotnik, only to find that Sonic is already there working his scheme on him. Both Robotnik and Buzzbomber smartly consider that this may be a trick, so Robotnik tests Sonic by asking him the location of Knothole Village.
Before Sonic gets his cover blown, an alarm goes off, signaling a disturbance in one of the factories (the crab compound). Looks like it was Sally and Antoine who set it off, but when Sonic arrives, he stops so fast that the mask flies off and clamps onto Antoine's foot. Sonic sarcastically says what an unfortunate accident that was. A note on Antoine that I forgot to mention earlier: he's normally portrayed as a coward (especially on the show), but in the mini-series he hasn't displayed any of that at all. Still pretentious as ever though. Anyway, Sonic enters the compound and is met with a surprise: he discovers Uncle Chuck working on assembling Crabmeats. I should note that they say that Uncle Chuck is a robot, but he definitely does not look like one. All he has are swirly eyes which make him appear to be brainwashed. With that said...apparently Chuck's quota is assembling 75 million Crabmeats (holy ****!). Sonic tries to talk him out of his brainwashing to no avail. He also tries to embrace Muttski (who definitely looks the most robotic out of any other roboticized animal in the series so far), only for Muttski to attempt biting him. Sonic is real pissed off now; he returns to Robotnik and tells him that Chuck attempted an unauthorized coffee break which has since been corrected, and then proceeds to enter the location of Knothole in the missile computer. Instead of Knothole, Sonic sets the destination for Robotnik's largest factory, where all the Buzzbombers are made. Then he clamps the robot mask onto Robotnik's ass and we get our end-of-story punchline, "Glad to see Robotnik get it in THE END!" Good lord.
No ministories in this issue. The first story was interesting but it's also non-canon so it ultimately doesn't mean anything. For a what-if story it's alright though. The second story is what matters, and it's a great one. It's the first time we see Sonic get real serious about something (after failing to get Chuck and Muttski to recognize him), and although in the end he drops the cheesy punchline, we get that first "don't **** with Sonic" moment which is great. Good story to end the mini-series, now it's on to the real thing!
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HBJ Dubs
~Project 1000~