The shopkeeper examined Brandon 4 more closely as the boy and the man ran along side each other. Brandon seemed to be growing less and less concerned about their pursuers as the two ran, and was now simply enjoying himself.
The shopkeeper almost tripped as he saw Brandon's height shoot downwards, leveling off just above three feet. But after a few minutes he seemed to return to normal, growing even larger than before. It was at that point the shopkeeper realized that Brandon hadn't grown again, but rather he had shrunk to the same size.
Even more puzzling was trying to figure out what Brandon was becoming. His features mirrored Sonic the Hedgehog increasingly, but the closer he got, the more divergences the shopkeeper could see. The spikes on the back of his head, for example, were growing past where sonic's were, and the outfit that was developing was completely out of place.
The shopkeeper's train of thought was interrupted when a blast from one of the robots hit the wall next to him. He jumped and swore a little, deciding that for now he should focus on keeping up with Brandon.
Back on Angel Island, Brandon 3 was pouncing upon the robot, jabbing the spike like tips of his fingers into the robot's belly. He smiled in satisfaction as he punctured the metal carapace and hit the robot's core, causing it to shudder and collapse.
As he triumphantly strode over to the piece of the master emerald, Brandon failed to notice as his new dreadlocks had grown past the point of that of the previous guardian's, nor now they were starting rearrange themselves in an entirely different fashion.
Brandon 2 puzzled over the mechanism for a moment, before deciding to try and just wing it. Hopefully Tails hadn't left the inner works of the device too complicated to figure out.
As he set about tinkering with it, Brandon realized that the workings of the machine seemed quite simplistic, and he was quickly getting a feel for precisely how it worked. Of course, anyone else there would have noticed how the machine was far from simple, and perhaps that Brandon's ears were beginning to move up his white and orange covered head.
