Chapter 3
"POSITIVE! HEDGEHOG LOCATED - HEDGEHOG LOCATED!" announced the mechanical voice of one of Eggman's search bots. It sped towards the entrance of TurboTime, followed by a couple others as a bright blue race kart came into view. Eggman's head whirled around so fast his own moustache slapped the sides of his face, and his snarl left no room to even hope that he was past his fury.
Said hedgehog hopped out of Rush's kart even before it stopped, and dodged groping mechanical arms, tentacles and programmers-knew-what-else with ease. He strutted across the station cheerfully, swallowing his last bite of chili dog.
"Oh! Oh, there he is!" Mary Niceland, who'd been rushing with everyone else in between games, stumbled to a halt when she spotted her 'baby'. She placed her dainty hands on her heart with relief. Gene snorted.
"About time. One more minute with that Loony Bin and I would've become a bad guy!"
Upon seeing the blue hedgehog safe and sound, Qbert happily jumped to his feet and turned to wake the sleeping children that had snuggled against him for the night by his own game's outlet. The small fox poked his sleepy head out from between his thick twin tails and followed Qbert's gesturing. Beside him, Honey stirred as well.
Likewise, the rest of the characters rushing around the station stumbled to a stop , and soon relieved exclamations filled GCS. Some promptly departed to their own games to let everyone know that the search was finally over.
Sonic waved a hand dismissively at the characters pressing around him and demanding worriedly where he'd been. "Guuuys, I'm alright! You shouldn' ever hafta worry 'bout me! So, what I miss?"
Eggman stepped down from his hovering air mobile and stormed towards the blue hedgehog, a thunderous look behind his dark glasses. Tapper followed after him briskly, none-too-hopeful that Eggman would have anything resembling a civil conversation with his unruly game protagonist.
"The Hell have you been?" spat Eggman.
While characters shrank away in fear, others pressed closer to their hero protectively. Sonic only pouted a little, unimpressed, and placed his hands behind his head.
"Was eatin', then I took a nap. Somethin' up with that?"
For a moment, Eggman was speechless; astounded at the protagonist's utter lack of concern.
"Doctor. Doctor, your temper," implored Tapper.
"You missed an entire working day. Does your pointy little head get what that means?"
"..I los' track of the time. I didn' mean it if that's what you're implyin'," said Sonic, finally looking a tad more serious. "I told ya; I fell asleep after eatin'-"
"You are the most pathetic excuse for a protagonist I have ever had the misfortune of meeting!" hissed Eggman. "You don't give a hack what happens to any of us, or to the game!"
"Hey now, come on!" The hedgehog said exasperatedly. "Ya don' have ta rub it in - I said I didn' mean ta - "
"Our game is out of order! You don't get a second chance, rat!"
"Doctor Eggman stop this right now," said Tapper sharply.
"I'm not a rat!" spat the hedgehog as his ears folded back and fur stood up. Mighty pressed in closer to Sonic, looking up at the scientist with angry, challenging eyes.
Mary shuffled up to stand in between the hedgehog and the scientist, and looked up at the latter defiantly: "You will stop this right now, Doctor!" she said resolutely even though her voice shook with fear. "I'll never let you hurt him!"
"Mary, get the heck away from him, he's crazy!" cried Gene, and tried to pull her away by the hem of her skirt.
"If I have to die, then so be it!"
Gene gaped. "Are you crazy, woman?!"
"Doctor Eggman, if there's anyone to blame, it should be me."
Every head in the station turned to look at Rush, who had stepped out of his kart and moved towards them.
"WHAT?" cried Turbo from his seat on the kart's rear. "We had absolutely nothing to do with th - Hey hey hey! No touching the kart you one-eyed hack!" He shouted at one of Eggman's bots curiously wrapping a tentacle around Rush's vehicle. He shoved it off with a disgusted look on his face.
"Argh that thing's covered in slime! Gross gross GROSS -!" and proceeded to wipe his hands on Vel's race suit.
"Arrggh TURBO!"
"What are you talking about?" said the scientist, looking down at the blue-clad racer suspiciously.
"We invited him to hang out," explained the racer. "He ate a lotta chili dogs then kinda...fell asleep under the hot dog stand. You could never see under there unless you squat - it's too dark. Me and my bros had gone racin' and when I didn't see him there during the laps I thought he'd left! I only realized he was still there when Turbo found him-"
Eggman reached out a hand and pulled the racer closer by the jumpsuit. Rush let out an involuntary sound of alarm as the antagonist brought their faces close.
"You allowed him to eat as many chili dogs as he wanted?" He said sternly, as a scientist would when dissecting an astounding new piece of information for the first time. Tapper could almost hear the computational functions executing and concluding inside the genius creator's head.
Turbo, however, took it for assault.
"Let him go, you loon!" the racer - so small that the top of his helmet only barely reached up to the scientist's waist, jumped up out of his game mate's car and swung a small fist with all his might; a swing that took out one of Eggman's dark lenses.
Eggman was so surprised by the attack that he let go of the jumpsuit and staggered back a step. Characters either squealed or stood in shocked silence; others swore. The antagonist took off his glasses and looked at them, dumbfounded.
"You...those were my favorite pair."
"Holy...he actually has eyes," whispered Gene to Joe Niceland in horror. Turbo grabbed the back of his game mate's jumpsuit and pulled them both back, eyes on Eggman like he was a loose wild animal. Turbo definitely didn't like the scientist any more than he liked Sonic.
"RED CODE! ALERT! ALERT!" screeched the main search bot, a huge contraption with gleaming red eyes and enormous hooked claws for limbs. It rotated its head madly all around the station, like a demented lighthouse. All sixteen bots turned around and froze in attention. "DOCTOR EGGMAN ATTACKED! ATTACK MODE ACTIVATED!"
"No! No no no wait wait WAIT-!" screamed the Doctor in horror, to try and stop the loyal creations from aggression, but it was too late.
The one-eyed bot that was in love with Rush's kart turned around to reveal its large iris, and a beam of red laser shot through the station.
Without thinking, Eggman bonked Tapper on the head, hard. The barman made a choked sound of surprise, and like a reflex action, dropped to the floor like a stone as the laser beam tore over his head.
The bots launched into attack, and Game Central Station was thrown into battlefield mode in seconds, with Eggman screaming (along with everybody else) futilely at his creations to stop.
"Nice job bringin' your robots out into a station fulla people, Egghead! Pure genius!" shouted Sonic over the growing chaos, all his quills on end. Faster than the eye could see, the hedgehog rolled into a powerful living saw, and ripped through three bots before they could launch their own attacks.
Noise rose to a deafening, incomprehensible pitch. Tapper scrambled painfully to his knees, and moaned unhappily as his vision swam and nausea began to take hold. A mild glitch ran down his spine. Characters ran by him, shouting, barking orders, using their signature powers and attacks. He saw (what he thought was) Mighty the Armadillo grabbing the tentacle of one robot, and with strength so impressive for an armadillo his small size, brought it to the ground. Ray the Squirrel came down from above, and with pinpoint-precision, took out the bot's laser emitters with two fast kicks. Somewhere, Mayor Gene was being quite liberal with the words coming out of his mouth.
"Mary! Mary, look out!" came Sonic's frantic shout from somewhere far ahead.
Tapper turned his head frantically, but his vision muddled even more at the sudden movement. He heard the crash of an enormous weight against the ground, and his heart jumped in fear.
"Mary?" he called out hoarsely.
"Gotcha!" Sonic's voice said triumphantly, and he barely saw a blue blur running by with the Nicelander in his arms.
Tapper closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to will down the nauseous sensation roiling inside his body, but perked up at the panicked sound of Qbert's difficult language. His little friend was screaming for help amidst all the chaos and blurs and screaming, but no one was paying attention.
The barman tried to stand up, but when another glitch ran down his back, he stumbled into the nearest wall. Hoisting himself up again, he half-dragged his feet to where Qbert's SOS was sounding.
The orange protagonist was backed into a corner by some game outlet, where he stood over the two children – Honey and Tails.
Tails was stubbornly trying to get away, to go help his 'big-bro' fight. Qbert pushed him roughly back with his snout and hissed at him. The bot cornering them slid open a third eye on its blank face, and a bright red laser beam began to load.
"Ge-get away from them!" cried the man hoarsely. He pushed himself off the wall and into the space between the trapped characters and the bot's talon-like feet. Qbert made a terrified sound of protest that Tapper ignored. He swung at the metallic body, but all that resulted was a weak, dull sound and Tapper's own hoarse cry as his tender knuckles flared with a new pain. But he didn't relent; he brought his foot up and kicked. And again he punched and he kicked; not once did the search bot give any indication of feeling his feeble attempts at attacking it. His heart wrenched with desperation, and his lungs burned with lack of breath; terribly out of his element he was.
He could hear Qbert behind him very well – every terrified word that came out of his friend's snout translated perfectly in his head, but he refused to stand by and do nothing. Everybody was out there fighting, risking their lives for their games and their friends, while he was trying hard to only keep his own stomach from spilling its contents – all because of a slight hit on the head.
What could he do? He had no special abilities. No super strength like Ralph, or super speed like Sonic, or super intelligence like Eggman...
"Make way, amico!" came a very familiar shout from his right. Tapper barely dodged clumsily aside as a red-and-white figure dashed by him and used his momentum to jump a gravity-defying thirteen feet into the air and shoot three fiery masses into the laser eye with scary precision. With a triumphant shout, the character shot three more fireballs between the robot's default two eyes, and the disabled contraption came crashing to the ground, it's most important circuitry destroyed.
"Mario!" gasped Tapper. "Am I glad to see you!"
The protagonist turned to look at his friend, and furrowed his thick black eyebrows at his weakened state. He saw Tapper's knuckles, red, dirty and swollen, and launched into an angry English-Italian rant.
"Siete molto spericolata omo! What'chou think you could do against that?" he waved his hands furiously towards the still robot. Mario very much talked with his hands. "Cosa? What-e were you thinking? Vuoi essere distruggere?!" he dodged a stray flying metal shard. "Because that's what will happen next time-a you try to be hero! Now get inside-a game! March! And Qbert, too! March! Babies. March!"
"Bossy," muttered Tapper, but allowed the hot-blooded protagonist to loop an arm around him and drag him to safety, too exhausted to put up a fight. Qbert followed dutifully with the two kittens, who were gazing at their unfamiliar savior with wide, awestruck eyes.
"Is everyone okay?" asked Tapper weakly.
"Bello," said the plumber dismissively. "Don'te worry. Sonic an' I more than capable o' taking care of our arcade, amigo. You. Rest," and with that, Mario pushed the man into a very familiar chair. Tapper then realized, with no small amount of surprise, that he was back in his own game. Of all places the rampant search bot had cornered them; it was right by his own game outlet.
He really must have been out of it.
"Mario…" he protested "Everybody else - ?"
"Me an' Sonic take care of it," repeated Mario sternly. "Rest. Qbert – look after Tapper. Babies, be good."
The kittens nodded, their eyes still impossibly wide, as the protagonist rushed out into battle once more.
"Did you see that?" shrieked Tails to his kitten playmate. "That was – that was so cool!"
Just don't let Sonic hear you say that, Tapper thought as he rested his head in his palm. Trying to ignore the nausea that still had not gone away, he smiled softly at the two youngsters as they hopped onto the counter and gushed to him animatedly about their new hero, and play-acted their rescue.
He smiled at the sweet little souls, and the throbbing pain gradually began to feel farther and farther away, because soon he could hear the contagious hollers of victory fill all of GCS.
OoOoOoOoOo
"I can't believe I missed out on all that! I mean…jiminy jaminy.."
"Trust me Felix – it's better you weren't out there! It was mayhem! Absolute destruction!" Gene waved his arms dramatically as he rolled his eyes upwards towards the ceiling of Tapper's. "It was so wrong on so many levels – I've never been inside Sonic's game before so I don't know what kind of hell happens there on a daily basis, but that kid is a hero. A hero, I tell you! Those monstrosities shouldn't even exist, game or no game! You…you're not made to destroy things, Felix – you fix things -"
"And for that we're the luckiest NPCs to have ya," finished Joe Niceland sincerely.
Gene nodded. "Yeah. The point is, you wouldn't have been able to do much out there – it was the freakin' Arcade Apocalypse! I seriously thought we were all gonna die!"
Still, Fix-it Felix's clear blue eyes looked a tad troubled. He finished up by lifting Tapper's left palm carefully and tapping each knuckle very gently with his golden hammer, and then proceeded to do the same on the right.
"Thanks, Felix," sighed Tapper as he rubbed them and felt almost no pain.
"Oh my pleasure, Tapper. I just..I wish I coulda done something more.."
Tapper shook his head. "You're doing the one job no one else in this arcade can do, and it's the most important one, so stop putting yourself down. Mayor Gene's right – it wasn' exactly fun. And trust me when I tell ya – with all due respect – you are not cut out for that kinda thing – destroying and blowing things up..I mean, look at me – I did nothing at all and I was a mess."
"You tried to protect Qbert, Tapper! That's not 'nothing'!"
"I just stood in the way. If it weren't for Mario over there, both of us coulda been goners, and those little children…they coulda died, too.
I could barely keep my own lunch down and stay conscious, Felix..turns out I'm utterly useless in these kinds of situations."
Felix opened and closed his mouth, unsure of what to say, and Tapper felt guilty dumping those depressing thoughts to him – Felix shouldn't be worried about making him feel better – nobody was.
"Say," he said kindly to break the handyman's uncomfortable situation. "You've already seen to everybody's wounds, right? Have something to drink, my recommendation – you must be exhausted!"
The place was almost as crowded as it had been on TurboTime's anniversary party, and since the arcade would not open for a couple more hours, Tapper knew he was in for another busy, busy night. He made an especially luxurious drink for the sweet handyman and excused himself briskly.
Of course, it goes without saying that Sonic got away with it again. No one but Eggman and Tapper seemed to remember that this chaotic chapter in their lives would never have happened in the first place if Sonic was where he should be during game time, although the man did not miss the spiteful look Turbo was giving the hedgehog from where he was huddled between two very disheveled, exhausted twins.
The day ended with the speedster being an even bigger hero than ever before, adored by all, and Eggman more of a bad guy (and more feared) than ever before. People barely looked at him. The scientist sat alone on a high stool, his usual favorite spot where he would talk with Tapper – about the only friend he had – whenever the man could spare a few minutes. Even Tapper had to admit; it wasn't fair. He loved Sonic – it was so hard not to, but it wasn't fair.
He would have to do something about it, soon.
OoOoOoOoOo
Next day morning came, and gamers gradually started to pour into the arcade.
No one knew what was going to happen with Sonic's game, and Tapper found himself praying fervently that Mr. Litwak would at least look at the console screen one more time before he thinks of pulling the plug. Even during game time, he prayed silently. He didn't forget Eggman's words about unplugging, and if no one else in the arcade was willing to listen to that mad 'Loony Scientist', Tapper knew he understood what he was talking about.
When SegaSonic's simple music started to fill the arcade along with everybody's else's, and the game's dedicated fans cheered, his heart soared in relief, and some part of him thought, I haven't felt this happy in some time.
The inner sense of peace was promptly and rudely interrupted by some kid at the console. "Mr. LITWAAK! Did somebody play with the Difficulty levels again?"
For someone who was very mindful of their game's perfect functioning, Eggman indeed looked like a lunatic antagonist set on Insane Mode. Tapper swallowed hard as he watched from his own console screen and admittedly, shrunk inwardly at the scientist's demented laughter as Sonic lost his rings again. And again. And again.