I shouldn't be doing this but I had to get this story out of my head and off my chest because Forces came out and all the cute Avanite that imagined Gadget and Infinite as a pair who had known each other previously, probably romantically, have been sunk by the canon. I knew it would happen but I fell in love with the ship anyway. Even if I'm going down with this ship, I will not go down without a fight! That's basically what this story is about.
Please send me reviews if you're as down for this as I am.
Gadget wondered if he was going to regret joining the resistance for the rest of his life. Perhaps he just wished that he hadn't been so good at being the rookie. Maybe if he hadn't he wouldn't currently be speeding towards an active volcano with Silver the Hedgehog at Knuckles' behest. He looked down at the forest speeding by below him and immediately had to look away. Despite being wrapped in the cyan glow of Silver's powers there was no coloured tint to the surroundings, making him acutely aware that he was flying at the cruising speed of a jet engine with no outer protection and the thought made him want to spew. So he tried to take his mind off it by focussing on the smoking mountain ahead of them turning the sky black with its smoke and ash.
"We're almost there."
Gadget turned to Silver in surprise. Then in embarrassment with a little bit of fear. He hadn't gotten a full grasp of Silver and what he could do during the days of the resistance, other than that the white hedgehog was psychic to some degree. The telekinesis was pretty obvious, but could he read minds too?
"You're looking a little green," Silver said with a grin. "I'll set us down the first chance I get, okay?"
Gadget gulped but it didn't help the nausea. At least Silver wasn't actually a mind reader.
"Don't worry so much, you'll be fine. You'll probably do great," Silver tried to encourage him, seeing as he wasn't talking. "Remember, you teamed up with Sonic and took down Dr Eggman. This mission isn't anywhere near as challenging as that. We're just disabling one of the Doctor's bases of operations to make sure he doesn't get to make a spectacular comeback anytime soon. And we'll meet Rouge inside. She'll have all the info we need to know, if we need to know anything. I mean, how much intel does it take to smash stuff? Am I right?"
Land first, then talk, Gadget wanted to say but feared that if he did all of his hard work so far to not get vomit all over himself would be ruined. Silver chuckled awkwardly and looked forwards. The volcano got closer and closer until they were beginning to see the blocky outlines of buildings on the lower slopes. Then suddenly there was a loud boom and a puff of smoke rose from the bottommost building.
"What?" Silver exclaimed. "Someone's already here? Rouge wouldn't start the fireworks without us, she's too disciplined. We should check it out."
Suddenly they were flying faster, somehow. Gadget closed his eyes and continued to wonder how he got roped back into these shenanigans. When they made it to the base of the mountain Silver landed them on the ground in front of the lab carefully and yet Gadget still had trouble finding his feet. As soon as he got steady, he doubled over and threw up. Not the best impression he could pull in front of an evil mad scientist's lair, especially after an admittedly epic victory against said mad scientist. He wobbled over to Silver's side and steadied himself against his shoulder.
"Please tell me Rouge has a plane or something," he finally spoke up.
Silver didn't respond, which got Gadget a bit more attentive. He looked at his fellow rebel, seeing his eyes flash and his hands still glowing even though they weren't flying any more. Apprehensively, Gadget turned his gaze to the entrance of the lab where Silver's anger was directed. The entranceway was littered with destroyed robots and the large reinforced metal doors were pocked with dents, scorches and bullet marks. Gadget thought he had to clean his glasses when he saw the silver-backed black jackal with the cannon arm of a robot that he'd been trying to use as a bazooka to knock down the doors.
"It's Infinite," Silver hissed.
Gadget was almost afraid. Almost because even though Infinite had been formidable something wasn't quite right about him now. He and the two Sonics had destroyed the Phantom Ruby, leaving Infinite without his reality-bending powers but it was more than that. The cannon fell out of his arms. His knees were bent and wobbling like he was struggling just to stand and his fur had the distinct shine of sweat. Gadget could see his sides expanding and shrinking with deep, laboured breaths. It looked to him like Infinite was sick.
A low growl came from the black jackal that rose until it became a roar. Gadget winced at the sound, at all the rage, frustration, and pain in that primal noise.
"Eggman! Show yourself," Infinite bellowed. "You knew about this, didn't you? You must have! I'll kill you, you lying bastard! Mark my words, next time I see you, you're dead!"
He choked at the end of the last sentence and then his knees knocked together, unable to continue the effort of holding up his body. Silver and Gadget gasped. They rushed to his side and while Silver just stared at the poor guy passed out face down on the ground Gadget dropped to his knees and put his hands gently on Infinite's ribs. He was still breathing but his lungs were pulling hard.
"Something's wrong," Gadget said. He looked up at Silver with imploringly wide eyes. "We need to help him."
Silver kept staring at Infinite like he didn't know what to do. "I... we can't... we're too far out..." he stammered.
"But you can fly! Fly him back to Central City and I'll clear this place out by myself."
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. I mean, I went into the Death Egg all by myself so... piece of cake, right?" Gadget said, not sounding as confident as his words made him out to be.
Silver glanced at him. "Sure thing." He opened his palm towards Infinite, wrapping the jackal up in his cyan powers. "I'll trust you to go on ahead. Make sure you fill Rouge in on what's going on."
He took to the air, towing Infinite behind him. Gadget watched them leave worriedly. Infinite had been a formidable enemy, so much so that even without the ruby Gadget couldn't imagine that anything would be able to take him down easily. And the source of his downfall apparently came from Dr Eggman. Gadget turned to the doors, now even more unsure about his impulsive decision than before but he couldn't back away now. Problem was, how was he going to get past these doors?
The first thing Infinite saw when he began to wake up was white. Just white, like one of those subconscious or purgatory scenes from the movies. He hoped he wasn't dead yet, otherwise Dr Eggman was getting off free and there was no way he would stand for that. As his brain regained its conscious functions his vision gradually got sharper and he started to see more detail in his surroundings, such as the ceiling tiles with fluorescent lights regularly spaced between them. He could feel his body again and everything attached to it—something pinched over his left index finger, a tube on his face blowing air directly up his nostrils, a blanket over his lower half that kept his legs warm but left his torso feeling frigid from a too-cold AC. So he was in hospital. He was alive so he needed to get up and get to Dr Eggman before someone else (like G.U.N.) got to him first and stole his thunder but his body fought back against any attempt to move. His limbs felt sluggish and heavy. All of his joints groaned their protest against him moving them and his mental faculties weren't fully recovered yet. He'd held up his hands and stared at them for three minutes before realising that they were his own ungloved hands, the ones that were attached to his arms that were attached to his body and with a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger. He turned his head from left to right. He was in a ward of some sort but the curtains were closed around his bed for total privacy. Every now and then he heard low voices and footsteps or the rattle of trolley wheels beyond the green veil.
There didn't seem to be anything worth seeing in his sectioned-off piece of the hospital but then his eyes fell upon the bed table on his right. A pair of glasses sat there innocuously, horn-rimmed with thick lenses. The way they were positioned gave him the sense that he was being stared at. He glared back at them.
"What are you staring at?" he growled in painkiller-induced madness.
He reached over to the table, fumbling around them a few times before he got a hold of the frames. He looked at them for a while, unable to recall why he was trying to get at them in the first place. Then he unfolded the arms and put them on his face. Immediately everything that had once been clear became blurry and indistinct. So the glasses didn't belong to him but he couldn't for the life of him work out who he knew with glasses like these who would come to visit him in hospital.
"Was... was that you talking?" a meek voice asked.
Infinite looked over the side of his bed. A red, amorphous shape rose up over the edge of it, growing taller and taller until it loomed over him. He punched it in that little black dot that he assumed was the middle of its face. It immediately retreated back beneath the bed.
"Ow! You didn't need to do that! I'm your friend, I swear!"
"You're a monster," Infinite slurred. His tongue was moving too slowly for his liking.
"No I'm not. You're just wearing my glasses."
The red monster resurfaced. It reached for him with tentacle-like appendages tipped in olive green barbs. Infinite tried to lean away from it and grab its tentacles but he was too heavy and his body too weak and sore. Sore was new, actually. It was beginning in the middle of his chest and radiated pain like a fire. The red monster easily overpowered him, held him down and pinned his arms to the bed.
"Stop moving. You're still recovering from surgery."
The world slid back into focus as the frames were pulled away from his face and the red monster became a red wolf leaning over him. The red wolf put the glasses on his own face and gazed at him with a forced expression. His smile said 'I'm glad to be here' but his eyes said 'I would rather be somewhere else'.
Infinite squinted at him. The pain in his chest was growing stronger. "Who are you?"
The red wolf chuckled nervously. "Don't remember me anymore, huh?"
Infinite tried to think, tried to get a handle on who this guy was that he was supposed to remember. He recalled fire and smoke from their first meeting. A warping noise. A white room with a window filled with robots. Two blue hedgehogs. He pushed the wolf away.
"You! You pathetic—rgh!" he growled. His hand went to his chest, trying to put pressure on the pain but that only made it worse. A rough and slightly sticky cloth bound his chest tightly. He looked down. The area where he'd put his hand had been shaved and a green bandage had been wrapped around his chest to keep the pad underneath in place.
Gadget watched him staring at the bandage in shock and swallowed anxiously. "You just had emergency heart surgery."
The way Infinite glanced at him felt as bad as a bite. "What's that got to do with you?"
Gadget flinched. "Er, the hospital needed someone to be a contact to share updates and information with. Me and Silver nominated ourselves to do that."
"Silver... that white one," Infinite muttered, wracking his mind. He glared hard at Gadget. "The two of you have no business poking your snouts into my life! You should have just left!"
"I'm sorry! We thought it was the right thing to do," Gadget explained, swallowing again. His throat was going dry quickly trying to think of a way to get this out gently. He couldn't face Infinite while he did this. "We found you outside one of Eggman's bases and brought you here because you seemed sick. Um... it's kind of hard but I was told to tell you this: your heart..."
"I know."
Gadget turned to him, shocked. "You know?"
"My heart is frail. The walls of my veins and arteries have thinned out. My immune system is weaker. And it's all Dr Eggman's fault." Infinite grasped the sheets so hard his nails tore through them. He snarled at nothing in particular. "No wonder he wouldn't just use it on himself."
"Use it...?"
"The ruby. He must have known that there was a fatal drawback to harnessing its power in an organic body so he used me as a lab rat and lied to me about the consequences." He glared at Gadget. "You and your cuddly forest friends in the resistance had no right to find out."
Gadget didn't have anything to say to that. Partly because Infinite was right. They didn't really have the right to butt in beyond delivering him to the ER. And partly because it was difficult to digest the situation at hand. Every time he saw Infinite during their war against Dr Eggman he'd never once thought that he was paying a price for unlimited power; that Infinite was just one with the ruby and not that they were both separate tools that the mad doctor had to force to work in tandem with one operating at a far higher capacity than the other. It was hard to think about, so much that he wanted to avoid thinking about it. The being of infinite power was sitting before him in a hospital, frail, sick, and vulnerable.
