Chapter 4: An Emerald's Power
Chaos Emeralds are not all green in color as their titles may imply. They are called "Emeralds" simply because they all are from beryl deposits. This is not the case as there is not only a green one, but a light blue one, a blue, a magenta, a red, a grey (or clear), and an orange one. The Master Emerald is also green. Each jewel contains vast amounts of energy, and many creatures, such as Echidnas have created machines designed to tap that energy for the purpose of employing them for very large jobs.
The Echidnas, for example, use them to put Angel Island airborne when their very city was threatened by a meteor that would destroy their home. Using very advanced technology, they were able to exploit the Master Emerald's energy to lift their city, along with a large piece of Downunda, their former location, into the sky. As another example, dwellers in a huge cave have devised a way to utilize an emerald of their own to operate an expansive system for simulating night, day, and weather. These cave dwellers have kept such a secret hiding place underneath an island entrance for many millennia without being detected, without needing resources from the outside.
The emeralds' energy source is unknown and is presumably unlimited. The possibilities are endless in terms of usage of such objects of high potential, and many corrupt creatures filled with greed and evil have come to seek them for their limitless power.
Joe found himself clutched between overlander officers, fitted with handcuffs. The typical prison block scenery invaded senses like the smell of a dank, under-maintained factory. He was quite roughly thrown into a cell, littered with cigarettes, and damp with puddles, vile, contaminated puddles. A haven for POWs who got what came to them for making careless mistakes and failing their mission, which is what Joe thought of himself right now.
There was no problem, though, Joe reassured himself after breaking the handcuffs in two. He'd gotten out of a situation like this before without much conflict, the porcupine inwardly voiced. He proceeded to reach for the bars of the containment, preparing himself for the grueling task of–
His actions were suddenly cut short, however, hearing a disturbance down the hall. Joe thought they had already seen his doings on security cameras and responded, but his observations proved otherwise. Why would they be beating and shooting their own men? Joe slid to the back of the jail cell, and faked wearing handcuffs, just in case.
The last person Joe thought would come and rescue him stopped in front of the metal cylinders, "Why, hello Mr. Trouble."
It was a sad sight she had to admit, Joe amongst the humble rubble, dirt ridden floor, hands cuffed behind his back. He came to attention, pulling his supposedly handcuffed hands from behind his back, "Hello, Ms. Annoying," he smiled, disarmingly.
"For coming here with those fleshy freaks on my tail, saving you? Fine, I'll leave with the emerald. I'll be famous for my accomplishment, and you'll rot as a POW!" Sam smiled, mischievously. When she saw Joe saying nothing, she moodily erased her smile, turned on her heal, and started for the generators, Joe smiling after her.
What happened next surprised Sam as much as she surprised him with her appearance. A low grunt and metal's creaking caused her to spin around and come face to face with her porcupine friend, stoking her hair affectionately. The stunned look on Sam's face vanished to be replaced by her hand knocking the other one away.
"Not on the job, creep," Sam stated with a smirk. Handing Joe a pistol and his sword, she said, "Couldn't find your gun, so here's an extra," She turned towards the other rooms and Joe followed, covering her back.
The uneventful journey through the maze of overlander factory proved quite eerie. A feeling of anticipation kept the two on their toes, expecting to get jumped at any second, making it a laborious journey. They finally arrived at the vault on the other side of a large room about the size of two classrooms. It was relatively dark, metallic, and bare save for the two fluorescent lights illuminating the vault's door and very dim ones on the ceiling. The two had the same thing on their mind. A trap.
Retreating several paces, the pair held a hurried, whispered conference, "I'll go first, you cover me."
"No," Sam shot back, "your figure poses more of a threat, and I'm but a girl," she reasoned, "I go first."
Without making a reply, Joe nodded in agreement after brief hesitation. The black and grey raccoon turned and walked toward the threshold, and Joe positioned himself against the wall of the corridor. The girl stepped into the room taking slow steps toward the center of it. Joe keened his enhanced eyes for any movement around the room other than his friend's. His senses caught up to him and he could feel his arms extending, quickly, pointing at the top left of the large room at an overhanging section that slid out of place. Before Joe could react, however, Sam was already running toward the vault door, clutching her shoulder that was spilling blood. All recruits to the ISOO are trained and encouraged to not cry out at the sudden touch of pain, accepting, at least, a quiet gasp. Joe was out and firing at once, shooting the fleshies in the face through the small opening they were trying desperately to advance through. The hatch allowed only one to fit or fire through at one time.
Then, Joe heard a sliding behind him and he barely had time to dodge a laser blast to the left without turning. With the absence of a second gun, he whipped out his blade in a casual fashion, moving toward the second opening with his gun still fixed at the other hatch. His curiosity led him to see how Sam faired. She was not suffering any gunfire, and was trying to crack the code on the vault. Joe reasoned that he was a top priority kill, and the soldiers put their attention on him the most.
His driven attention proved his demise when the pain of laser burn etched his left side abdomen. The laser-proof vest he sported seemed to protect from most of the damage, but not its entirety. The fact that no cover was provided was confirmed significantly tiresome and annoying, "Genius," Joe thought in frustration, "friggn genius."
"Stupid decoder!" Sam exclaimed in her mind, "and I can't do anything to make it go any faster!" The command line like, small display ran through the possibilities of the thirty-two digit code, finding a match every eight seconds or more. The standard in opening the vault required an authorized individual to have an eye retinal scan, thumbprint scan, a four digit security password, and finally, a voice analyzer, but Sam was instructed to find an input and use the decoder to crack the code. She was only required to start the decoder, however, because the advanced software programming that the device included wirelessly infiltrated the overlander servers and tapped the vault door code (the file for the code was evidently encoded for further security purposes, but the decoder took care of it in a matter of seconds). Furthermore, Sam had to prepare all this with one injured shoulder under a bit of laser fire.
As she waited, Sam pulled a TLWD (which the others had shortened to "tlood") with two numbers to go, and yelled, "Joe, catch!" Seeing he successfully dropped his gun and caught the tlood, she took out her own and protected herself from the onslaught of laser fire the overlanders hurled at her when they realized her ploy.
No sooner had Joe caught up with her, using his newly acquired shield, then the heavy, thick vault doors suddenly swept open revealing a new passageway. With the tloods overloading, they ran inside with just enough time for the devices to shut off and the big vault door to swing closed, newly encoded with Sam's own thirty-two digit number.
The sad assembly of overlanders crowded the vault room. Some quietly, mourning dead friends, and others fixing patches to wounds of theirs or others. Higher ranking individuals were at the terminal for the vault doors, cursing the two assailants and their own, foolish selves.
"God!" a general said, "there were only two of them! How in hell could they have possibly escaped such a barrage? A whole minute and more we had them pinned up in this place with nothing to hide behind, whatsoever! Nothing!" The middle aged man's ranting continued with vigor, "and they were freaking kids! I mean I could have been their father, and I heard they only suffered one hit apiece! Can I ask you, private, how that is acceptable–how that is fathomable!"
"Sir, uh, it was impossible!" an accompanying soldier explained, in a wavering, anxious voice, "the porcupine was everywhere at once, dodging our fire, slashing anyone who dropped down, and pickin us off at the hatches! We couldn't get a shot in, he was–"
"Shut your no good mouth, private," the general interrupted, "Next time we'll get those furry freaks. That was just a warm-up. A surprise is waiting for them in there, and should it fail there's just gonna be another surprise waitin' on the other side of this door."
The old general smirked a mischievous smirk, inwardly hoping the trap inside would fail to that spiny bastard, "Right, men, "he shouted, "get yourselves clear of this room, I don't wanna see anyone still here, dead or alive, by the time I turn around, h'is that clear?"
"Sir, Yes Sir!" a unison of male voices rang back to the esteemed general, and the only sound left to be heard was the hasty shuffling of feet.
The inside of the vault was as dimly lit as the outside of it besides the fact that the fluorescent lights were now blue and lined the corners of the rectangular hall like strips of masking tape in four foot sections. The air smelled as the walls: metallic and dry with a touch of sin layered in a thin film. The most eerie thing about the hall, though, was the detail that it seemed to extend in an unprecedentedly, straight manner for at least a mile, until it disappeared as a result of perspective.
The pair slumped to the floor, allowing their senses to dull and take a break knowing that they were out of immediate danger for the moment. Joe was the first to break the silence, "Well, that was not on the agenda," he smiled.
Sam looked up to smile back, and her attention was averted to the strangeness of the hallway. Joe looked too after the raccoon got up and took a few steps into the passageway, "Weird," she said, "I guess it looks like we are in for a long walk."
Joe thought of this remark as very rational as he got up to accompany her, but he was pulled back by some other sense. He looked back only to be greeted by the vault door staring right back at him. Sam's beckoning for him to follow caused the porcupine to shrug the feeling off and jog down the hall behind her.
Huffing noises held supreme in the metal hall Joe and Sam were running down. Sam had the unnerving feeling that they were being watched, but she couldn't have possibly known for sure. One thing was for sure, however, was that the hall tapered as they got further down. This truth led to the idea that, when standing at the beginning of the corridor, the hall looked longer than it actually was. Pretty soon, the duo found themselves crouching to keep their heads from hitting the ceiling, which at the beginning of the hall was three heads above them. This made them slow to an exasperating, two miles per hour. Joe found himself crawling on the floor behind his friend through the now two by two feet wide "hallway," which had tapered to the point of no standing.
"Wouldn't you say that this is really inconvenient?" Joe pondered, aloud.
"For us, yes," Sam pointed out, "exactly the way they wanted it to be. Hold on a minute, I can see something ahead."
"God finally!" Joe rejoiced, "Is it a door?"
"Yep," Sam replied, "looks pretty small, too, no room or anything before it."
When they reached it, Sam found herself unable to open it, saying it to be opened by means of rotating a large knob with two prongs. She was pretty sure it only required a ninety degree rotation, too. After some attempts, Joe offered to try, so they started the awkward process of switching places. The tight quarters caused them to rub up against each other, making them slightly embarrassed.
When Joe finally found himself at the door Sam said, "This shouldn't be so hard for you. Where did you get that unnatural strength?"
"It's a secret," Joe said. The knob started to turn in unison to his grunting. The knob made ghostly screeching noises, as a result of great friction of metal on metal. Joe's super strength was actually a secret from him. After the Storm, he just remembered to have gotten very strong somehow. Strong in ways he couldn't have possibly fathomed. However, every time he surged blood through his veins and pumped his muscles up, flashes of a fluorescent green went on under his shut eyes; like a memory was trying to erupt from a green volcano and tell him everything that went on that day. That one day he couldn't remember anything, just that when he woke up the next, everyone said it was Sunday instead of Saturday.
The next room was about the same size as the room they had been ambushed in, but circular. The fluorescent lights were now bright enough to see everything in the room and were very white. With a loud clank, the little, heavy door fell into the room, the floor being ten feet below. A huge machine covered the whole room in circular symmetry. Like a stalagmite it tapered down to a console in the center, and tapered back to the floor like a stalactite. Sam said she supposed it to siphon the energy from the crystal. The console featured a basic computer and a slot for the Chaos Emerald, but what was meant to be in the slot was unexpectedly, missing.
"Dammit," Joe realized, "I knew it! This was all a diversion, we have to get–"
Svvvvvksh. The door the pair had come through was blocked off by a sliding door, inevitably meaning they were trapped. There was no other seen door or passageway leading out of their cage.
The computer monitor flickered static, and switched on to a blank, black screen. Then, about the time the duo arrived to the console via a bridge, a typed message appeared.
Dear friends,
I must allow myself admiration of you, for making it through the first little exchange we had against each other. However, this is where the road ends. This room is fully capable of releasing a second class toxic gas, giving your poor, little bodies only three minutes before they fail to remain in a conscious state. If you by chance feel that living as a prisoner is more fruitful than being labeled K.I.A., there are microphones on the ceiling you can shout: "Hail President Sufurr, future emperor of our planet!"
General I. N. Kain
p.s. watch out for their blades.
"P.S. watch out for their–" Sam was finishing, but was cut off as a shhhk noise came from the ceiling. All at once, four robots fell from four, dark circles.
The robots were metal, prepubescent child-sized skeletons with no mouths, and jet-black eye whites. Powered by small hydraulic motors, each carried a single bladed saber, and was very dangerous.
"Great," Joe felt exasperated, "what kinda second rate, cheap agents do they think we are?" The porcupine handed his already extended sword to the raccoon, "I can take two of these guys without this, go ahead and work on the others."
Without the protection of his sword's metal, Joe had to be cautious in his handling of his fight. Dodging a few playful swipes, he found the 'bots were actually going to be a challenge, at least without his sword. Between the two of them, the robots had Joe like the game Monkey in the Middle, and Joe found himself trying to catch a blade in attempt to steal a saber from either of the machines.
Meanwhile, Sam found herself reminiscing her teens when she took fencing lessons. Keeping the two side-by-side, as to avoid getting in between, she parried a few thrusts, and tried thrusting herself to find it blocked by the one on the right. She ventured a horizontal sweep to the right, finding the metallic monstrosities to simply duck before taking advantage of Sam's unprotected chest and aiming at her heart. The raccoon had barely enough time to bring the weapon to meet the metal of the robots' motion, but one of the sabers came to pierce her left shoulder. The sword belonging to the robot on the right had successfully stabbed her completely through.
Gasping in pain, Sam jerked her already wounded shoulder from the sword while having to intercept an oncoming strike of steel vertical wise from both of the constructions. Afterwards, she lurched forward into the intercept, causing the robots to loose their balance, and giving Sam a chance to slice the robot on the right, right through the middle.
To put it simply, what took Sam thirty seconds to do, Joe accomplished in the same time three times, "You okay?" he asked. She nodded, clutching her shoulder. With all four robots put down, the next of their worries were starting to become apparent. The room was filling up with a yellowish, deadly toxing that was being poured into the room from little tubes in the ceiling.
"Here," Sam handed back Joe's sword, who returned it to handle form and stowed it in a pocket, "better act fast or that gas is gonna put us out," Sam commented.
As the girl was finishing her words, the porcupine was walking to the ladder. With the fumes already down his nostrils, Joe was struggling to climb it. He reached the door, and mustered all his strength since his power was failing due to the toxins.
The door was smashed through, and Joe turned to his comrade, "Okay, let's hurry," but all he got as a response was a low groan and a heap of a body where he left her, "Sam!"
Joe dragged his friend down the tunnel they had been so foolishly led down. Like a bag of bones and muscle was his burden, unconscious and lifeless, but beautiful. Only this figure was not animate, due to the poisonous fumes they escaped from. Weighted down by those very gases, his strength could not keep its endurance for so long without it on the decay. He knew he had to keep moving. Fast, too. If he was to get Sam to safety, he would have to run or at least jog down the long hall back to the vault door where he had first sensed such a strange aura.
Joe neared the end. With his comrade over his shoulder, fireman style, he came to the spot that grasped at his mind earlier. Setting Sam at the wall, Joe found a tile on the floor and decided that that was the one to break through. With one, vigorous movement the tile fell under Joe's boot. Immediately inside was a blue, fluorescent glow that was slightly dull, and the jewel. A flash of neon, blue flickered through his mind. Hastily, he reached in, grabbed the glowing, blue stone, and pocketed it sensing a slight increase in strength and mental clarity. Then he reached for another pocket, this time on Sam's vest. Joe activated the encryption device–about the size of a portable media center–and held it near the door. A click indicated that the password was cracked, and without delay, he pocketed the device and slung Sam across his shoulders once more.
What met Joe on the other side of the massive door was a situation he had desperately prayed not for while carrying his raccoon partner back from down the hall. Across the vault room emerging from the hallway over was a huge energy cannon, remotely controlled, and aimed directly at them.
Clutching the newly acquired emerald, Joe had only time to mutter, "My God!" before the titanic weapon fired a stream of hot, glowing plasma straight for his chest. Sounds of explosions and ambient noises filled Joe's mind, but felt nowhere near dead. He gazed in wonderment at the blue, glowing, transparent shield that appeared as a globe, enclosing the two of them. The canon overheated and ceased fire after two seconds of constant pouring of energy, and like it, Joe's energy had been poured into the shield that had materialized. Blood rushed to or from his head, he couldn't tell, he only remembered getting fuzzy, numb, and dark, followed by complete and utter blackness.