Dark Bat

"You can grab these harmless guys for a ride."

- Description, Sonic Unleashed

The Dark Bat (ダークフロート) are a type of Dark Gaia's Minions that appear in Sonic Unleashed. Easily the most harmless of Dark Gaia's Minions, they are the air troops of their kind and serve mostly as a method for the player to travel across gaps. They only appear during the game's nighttime stages.

Appearance
The Dark Bats have a mostly egg-shaped body with purple eyes and small horns on the top of their body. Their lower body mostly consists of a large lower jaw with a horn-like growth at each jaw joint and two in front. They also have a small, thin tail extending from their back.

Behavior
Despite being a member of a highly destructive and evil species, the Dark Bats are quite harmless. They are completely non-aggressive and are described as "not particularly hostile". Flocks of Dark Bats themselves tend to reside wherever the density of Dark Gaia's energy is at its highest and feed off it.

Powers and Abilities
The Dark Bats are able to move around by teleporting into an area in a puff of purple smoke. As a Dark Gaia Minion, the Dark Bats can possess people by latching onto the deepest, darkest part of the heart, and generate despair, negative emotions or even erratic behavior that are completely opposite to the person's personality.

The Dark Bats are able to levitate and move through mid-air, albeit at a rather slow rate. However, they are capable of carrying a great deal of weight, such as Sonic the Werehog, without straying from their path.

Attack Patterns
Unlike the rest Dark Gaia's Minions, the Dark Bats never attack the player, nor can they deal damage by any means, making them completely harmless enemies.

Overview
The Dark Bats came into being at the beginning of Sonic Unleashed when their source and creator Dark Gaia broke apart from its premature awakening. The resulting fragments from Dark Gaia then scattered across the world and became the Dark Bats and the rest of Dark Gaia's Minions. They first appear in Rooftop Run Night Act I: Alleys of Spagonia on the PS2/Wii version and Windmill Isle Night Act 1 on the PS3/Xbox360 version.

The Dark Bats are easily the most harmless and weakest of Dark Gaia's Minions, as they possess no means of attack and have very little health, meaning they can be killed with one or two hits.

In gameplay, the Dark Bats serve as a method for Sonic the Werehog to travel over bottomless pits or large gaps. On the PS3/Xbox360 version, this is done by having Sonic grab onto a Dark Bat and pull himself forward to either solid ground or another grabable object until he has crossed the gap. On the PS2/Wii version, Sonic must grab and holds onto the Dark Bat and then ride it through air while controlling its movements by swinging back and forth.

In the cases where they are needed for transport, killing a Dark Bat will only cause another one to instantly appear and take its place at the exact same position. This is done to prevent the player from unintentionally halting their progress throughout the stages.

Upon the reconstruction of Dark Gaia by Dr. Eggman, all of the Dark Bats along with the other Dark Gaia minions were returned to the beast, who was later defeated and sealed within the planet's core.

Archie Comics
The Dark Bats make an appearance in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series and its spin-off comics published by Archie Comics. In this media, they are Dark Gaia Monsters that began emerging from the core of Sonic's world during the Shattered World Crisis. They first appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog #260, where a swarm of Dark Bats and other Dark Gaia Monsters could be seen terrorizing Westopolis in an amateur footage.