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Dawdle

Cries from the grave.
The echoes of the former rattle through my mind incessantly. Obnoxious. Inept. Unreliable. A useless husk I left behind continues to haunt me. Angry ghosts.
Whatever.

To be as worthless as Snively - had to stop and rest. Sleep. Eat. Consumes fluids. Releases other fluids.

"A-almost to the muh-main road!" his muffled voice cries out from under his pansy ass helmet and over the loud roars of the engine. Snively suggested we steel a vehicle with a cage, but that's not my style. I like the chopper. If he doesn't like it, he can walk or I can drag him behind me. I gave him the choice and he chose wisely. He sits in my lap like a frightened animal. Grinds his bare ass against my crotch and grunts. Pathetic. "Luh-left to hit it head on, ruh-right to follow it to our duh-destination."

Only little girls wear helmets, and they still manage to scrape their pansy-ass knees. Headlights off. I can see clearly even in the darkest of darkness. Cord wrapped loosely around my shoulder. One end dangles a nail gun over the open road. The other leads to a high powered battery strapped to my leatherclad back. Left arm nursing a rocket launcher against the side of my face. Bag of grenades in my teeth.
Desert's just as vast as its ever been. Dirt and rocks and canyons as far as the eye can see. Ripping ass like you wouldn't, but I would. If we crash, we just lose the meatsack. Something in my mind tells me this is all leading towards something much bigger than the runt.
Naturally I'm the one holding all the important supplies - his frail body can only handle so much.

He doesn't see the ramp in the dark.
"Nugget up," the warning softer than he can hear, but he responds quickly enough when the wheels leave the dirt. Lean far enough off the side of the bike to hang ten and regain my posture. The creature screeches cursewords carelessly. How quaint. A wave of sparks crashes over us, engulfing us as the bike skids across the worn and broken asphalt. Snively, as if he were built into the chopper itself. High gear drags us leaning dangerously to the right as the rubber on the wheels cling desperately to the ground. Experience realigns us perfectly and we are balanced once again, heading full speed down the road in an instant.

Urine soaks his assless chaps.
"AAAAA! AAAA!" Snively cries, visibly disturbed. Laugh to myself, but feel no real emotion. Just the understanding of the concept of satisfaction. These thoughts come and go. "Puh-please don't k-kill me!" Could comfort it but won't.

Smirk atop the vibrating thunder that carries us. Something sexy about a manly bike - a loud chopper tearing through the quiet of the night. More traces. More echoes of the creature I used to be. Memories of this and other things I've done, little more than second nature to me now. An embryo taking shape in the beforetimes.
"Chump," his whole body is shaking like a rattle. Must be terrified of the nature of nature. The motorbike glides seamlessly along the world below. Snaking along with what's left of the road. Boring as all hell. A question I don't need to ask. "This right?"

More ass grinding against my crotch.
"Yuh-yes. This should take us right to Rob-buh-bobo-tropolis." Man Town. A familiarity - a yearning. "My muh-master is there. D-defending the city with an army of mobians, roboticized muh-mobians and even suh-some humans. It wuh-won't be easy to get into, even with me as c-collateral."

What's left of my almost worthless former self would have me feeling anxious. Perhaps terrified. I feel the bike beneath me. Mouth and body defy me. Say things, do things. Unsure of what me really is. Disguised by darkness even my eyes can't penetrate.
"H-he'll p-punish me tonight," I see the ghost of myself hovering over me, looking down on me with disappointed eyes, "p-p-punish me for being a b-bad boy," I still feel nothing. I thought Snively was some kinda masterplanner.

"Are you my god or my goblin?"

"Can't stop - addicted to the shindig."

"We've both had a bad smell of it. It'd be easy to quit. Why not quit?"

"Choptop, he says he's gonna win big."

"I'll pull it out and make you smell it again - I'll bring your tongue with it, so you can taste it this time."

"Choose not a life of imitation. Distant cousins to the reservation."

"I'm proud of you. Get up, dingus. It's time for fisticuffs."

The universe is chaos. Shit often just kind of happens and it answers to nobody. Ask why. Get nothing. You're part of this. The things you destroy, the things you create. Sadness that you cause. Broken pieces in the wake of your step. New demons being born every second. The echoes of your existence will make their mark, regardless whether or not you or anybody else is around to hear or appreciate them.
Chumps at the gate saw me coming - readied their weapons. Grabbed the meat and kicked off the bike just as they started to open fire. Grunts of all sorts, husks of everything too desperate to carve their own path.

Airborne - lead the bike and open fire with the rocket launcher. Poor fucks in front of the gate don't even realize what's about to hit them. Clutch tightly to the useless shell for the extra momentum. Right arm hanging onto my screaming bargaining chip. His pathetic cries muddled with gunfire.
Chopper spins awkwardly into a group of four or five. Could count. Won't. Force sends them crashing into the gate and the rocket follows up, blowing it wide open and obliterating the opposition.

Drop the useless cylinder when it's done carrying me and fall at the same rate. Ardent bits of metal and flesh whiz past my head arbitrarily.
"Fuck me! Fuck meee," the chip cries into the cool autumn air as gravity claims us. Bodies burn. So does the gate. More gunfire. Didn't take out all of them - not even close. The element of surprise only lasts so long.

Alarm sounding. Earsplitting noise, if I were to be subject to such a thing. Fires crackle. Bits of exploded equipment and flesh cook in the night. The road embraces my boots, right arm still clutching Snively tight against me.

Impact sends shockwaves up my legs and into my taint. Knees flowing with momentum, bending rapidly. Tactical roll. Catch the empty rocket launcher just as I hit the ground, and just before it does. Toss it towards my enemies and led slugs plink off of it, shielding us.
Set the twerp down and snag the bag of grenades from my mouth with my left hand. Cartoonishly off balance. His body kisses the ground.
Right hand snatches them, removing the pins with the thumb and tosses them at points of interest almost automatically and with the speed of a slot machine paying out. Hot shrapnel tearing apart flesh and dismantling robotic figures.
A few make cover. Discard the empty sack and advance. One quick dropped loop from my shoulder and the nail gun finds its home comfortably in my hand. Grip tightens and trigger finger holds off at the ready.

Creature makes itself known. Screaming and discharging his weapon. He gets off maybe two shots before two nails are buried in his forehead - and one in his throat. Body gurgles and falls.
Second, two nails in the throat. Third, a sniper, four nails through the eye of his scope. Unload into a fat goon's face.
Toss the useless weapon to the side. No signs of life.

Except.
Turn around to face the sniveling little coward. Snively. Such an appropriate name, his master gave. Words escape me.
"Any pieces missing?" not concern, not curiosity. Business.

"Aaa~ aaa~" it squeaks pitifully. "Muh-muh-"

"Use your words," I say impatiently, approaching. "Why am I here?" a question, abrupt.
Boots crunch against gravel. Advance.

"P-p-p-p-" he whines, rolling over in either pain or shock. "Pluh-lease!"

A scrape and the world loses its color. The lights are gone - smoke surrounds me. Violin playing in the distance for pieces of myself I no longer recognize.
Snively's skin goes limp, sags over his bones as his skeleton breaks free from its sarcophagus of meat. Tearing through it like a pushing a rock through a sheet of wet toilet paper. Organs and skin plopping to its feet.

Shambling, it crawls towards me. Touches my leather pant leg. Looks up at me with dead, hollow eyes. Slackjawed. It speaks to me.
"You've destroyed everything you've ever loved. Everything you've ever cared about. You are a hollow husk of the mobian you once were. Your morals and values were the first to go - along with the one you looked up to the most. Sonic the hedgehog is dead because of you. So many... So many that you swore to value until your final steps. And yet you keep walking, don't you? Walking over their corpses."

The ghosts of my past clawing at my shins. Skeleton crawling up my torso. Draw the .357 from my belt. Eight shots, locked and loaded. Pull the hammer back as I press it against my temple. The steel should be cold against my skin but I feel nothing.
Caress the trigger guard, then the trigger softly, lovingly. Slowly.

"The bones of the weak crumble beneath you. You can't escape us - you can't escape your fate."

Pull the trigger and the creature shrieks through static. Blink. Nothing's changed. The runt is back in his meatsack. Clinging tightly to my shins. Crying.
Barrel of the gun still smoking. My head didn't so much as cock in response, the bullet just went right through - temple to temple.

I can almost feel the cold night wind blowing through the gap in my skull. The gap that's already correcting, healing itself.
Look down at the pathetic crying human clinging to my shins.

"I nuh-need you until we g-guh-get to master," it trembles.

Decock my weapon. Stuff it back into my belt. There's no escaping any of this.

"What day is it?"

"The thuh-thirty-first of October, suh-sir." Lightheaded. If you could call it that. More the understanding of a definition. "Wuh-we don't have a lot of t-time, they'll be on their w-way."
Is it midnight or noon? Regardless, may be this be the most memorable Halloween of our very timeline.

ÆdS - 2016