The Eggman Wars: Ch. 3
2:23 pm
…
As the Mobius army continued their onward progress towards Eggman's base, Sonic narrowed his eyes and looked suspiciously from side to side. He had sensed something a while back earlier and wasn't sure, but now he was. Something was following them!
As he raised one hand to signal the army to stop their marching and take a break, Sonic pricked his ears up, silently trying to detect any unusual sounds. He heard the noise of metal clinking against metal as the soldiers took out their canteens from their large backpacks and began drinking thirstily, filling their mouths with freezing cold water. Somewhere, lurking in the shadows, someone or something was watching them…
As Sonic continued to survey the surroundings, a dark-gray raccoon approached him.
"Sir, what is it?" The raccoon questioningly asked.
Sonic shrugged, and shook his head. "Probably nothing Finnegan, don't worry about it too much…" On the journey from Mobius to this point, Sonic had recently gotten acquainted with Finnegan along the way, finding him to be a sneaky, dare-devil type of fighter. He was someone who was never afraid of taking risks or getting himself into danger. Sonic smirked: That was definitely the type of soldiers they would need in order to beat Eggman…
As Sonic dismissed him, Finnegan sauntered over to join a group of his friends in the middle of the pack. He plopped down and unshouldered his backpack, letting it lie in a soft snow bank nearby. As Finnegan uncorked the top of his canteen and gulped down its contents, he paused to glance up at the beautiful sky above them. The sun was shining peacefully; its rays just barely reaching the ground where they stood. But the walls mostly blocked it, making their pathway to Eggman's base barely lit; seemingly dim instead.
"I heard that we're just reaching the base; only about an hour away. Ready to fight some robots?" Finnegan casually asked his friend sitting next to him, a dark blue squirrel with a black eyepatch over one eye. The squirrel questioningly raised an eyebrow.
"You kidding me? I've been born ready!" The squirrel retorted indignantly, adjusting his eyepatch to appear more fierce.
Finnegan teasingly laughed, and reached behind his back to pull out a four-sided ninja star, seeing its razor-sharp blades gleam in the dim light. "Oh really, Harper?" He taunted. "You've been "born" ready?"
As the group of friends as well as the other soldiers carried on their oblivious, careless conversations, Sonic meanwhile scoured the foreboding shadows with his sharp eyes, looking for any possible indications of any suspicious activity.
"Hmm…" Sonic thought. He was almost sure whatever or whoever had been tracking them was right nearby if his predictions were correct.
"What's up?" Knuckles joined him, glad to be away from Rogue's constant pestering.
Sonic sighed. "Oh nothing really, just thought I heard something strange…"
Knuckles raised an eyebrow. "Something strange? You think someone's following us, is that it?"
"Yeah," Sonic slowly nodded. "But let's not tell the others until we're sure. I don't want to cause any unnecessary excitement as they're already nervous enough.."
"Should I tell them?" Knuckles asked, gesturing towards Amy and Cream, both of whom were taking a rest nearby.
Sonic nodded. "But do it quietly without making anybody else notice or become suspicious that something's going on.."
As Knuckles flashed a silent thumbs up and began casually making his way over to Amy and Cream, Sonic looked up at the sky and whistled through his teeth. Just a few more minutes and they should start moving again…
Back at the campsite, Finnegan was engaged in a friendly competition against his friend, Harper.
"Bet you can't hit the ground even if you tried!" Harper jeered, as Finnegan twirled the ninja star around in his hands.
"You bet? You're on!" He chucked the shruiken at the far wall, but as his and Harper's eyes followed the blade as it sailed through the air, their eyes met the ones of Metal Raymond's as the shruiken embedded itself right next to its face, exposing his sneak-attack plan.
"Mayday! Intruder! Whatever you have to say to tell everyone we're under attack!" Finnegan yelped and leapt up, drawing several more shruikens from his back pocket. Next to him, Harper scrambled upright and drew out a short dagger, twirling it expertly between his fingers. Around the camp, everyone heard Finnegan's cry of alarm and immediately stopped what they were doing to turn and face Metal Raymond, who was trying to slink away into the shadows after its plot had failed.
"You!" Sonic stalked over and jabbed a finger at Metal Raymond's metallic chest. "It was you all—"
CLANG!
Suddenly, machine gun fire ripped through the camp as soldiers were immediately downed by bullets; people screaming in pain. Up ahead, a group of scorpion-robots were assembled in a straight line, firing their turrets at a constant, steady pace into the unsuspecting Mobius Army. As destruction and mayhem occurred throughout the camp, Sonic shouted at the top of his lungs; ordering the soldiers to take cover.
"Take cover! Retreat! Fall back!" Sonic desperately yelled as he barely avoided a ray of bullets slicing into the snow beside his foot, tearing the ground up. He ducked under a nearby snowbank as Knuckles joined him moments later.
"What the hell just happened? Where'd they come from?" Knuckles shouted into Sonic's ear, who in response shook his head vigorously.
"I don't know!" Sonic replied in a frustrated tone of voice. He moved position to try and take a glance above the snowbank the two of them were hiding behind. Thankfully, most of the soldiers had also taken refuge in the many piles of ice and snow, concealing themselves from the persistent bullets that ripped through the ground around their feet.
Already, many of them were starting to load their guns and fire back into the ranks of the scorpions, retaliating with deadly effectiveness and force. Several scorpions toppled over with holes through them that made them slightly resemble Swiss cheese. As more and more scorpions were destroyed and the soldiers quickly found out that the tide was turning in their favor, more and more of them started to grow reckless and run through the crossfire to a snowbank up ahead in order to get a better shot.
"What are they doing?" Knuckles growled, a bullet barely clipping one of his dreadlocks. He tried to make out what was happening, but the smoke from the guns and the mist from the snow made the battlefield very foggy and hazy to even see through. "Why are they moving ahead? Tell them to come back or else we'll be overstretched!"
"Fall back!" Sonic shouted, and used his super-speed to run from his current snowbank and zip past the flying bullets all the way to one of the front piles of snow. Seated behind it was no other than Finnegan and Harper.
"What are you guys doing?" Sonic shouted, his voice almost inaudible as the screeching sound of metal grating on metal filled the air. "You're going to get killed!"
In response, Finnegan nonchalantly shrugged and turned to Harper, grinning fearlessly. "No we won't! Come on, let's move up closer!" The two of them were about to sneak out again when Sonic roughly grabbed them and pulled them back.
"Are you guys even listening to me? Look!" He pointed above the snowbank to where the scorpions where slowly advancing. The closest one was so nearby that Sonic swore he could have just leaned over, reached out, and touched it on the head.
"Unless you want to be caught in the middle, I suggest we go back!" Sonic tried to reason with the two dare-devils.
Finnegan scratched the back of his head. "But how?" The three of them momentarily paused from their conversation long enough to duck and pull their feet in as machine gun fire ripped past their snowbank all over the place, rendering it impossible to return the way they had come.
"Oh great. That's just perfect." Sonic growled under his breath, and quickly tried to size up the situation. Already, the front line of scorpions were starting to close the gap between them and where Sonic, Finnegan, and Harper were hiding. "I didn't come all this way just to die here…"
"Watch your back, Sir!" Finnegan pushed Sonic away as a scorpion appeared around the corner, about to fire its gun when Harper threw a dagger at it, slicing right through the turret on top of it. It cleanly split in half as Finnegan then threw one of his shruiken at its head, short-circuiting the robot into blowing up.
"Yeaah!" the two fighters gave each other quick high-fives as Sonic helplessly muttered words of prayer under his breath.
"If I survive today, I swear I'm going to-"
"Look, over there!" Finnegan pointed as he and Harper peered over the top of the snowbank. Shockingly, the scorpions were actually retreating! They had turned around and began scurrying towards back towards where they had come from; Eggman's base.
"They're retreating!" Finnegan gave a whoop of delight and started to excitedly pat Harper's shoulder. "We won!"
A cry of victory arose from the survivors, temporarily forgetting about the fact that they had just come so close to losing a few moments before. Many of them started to throw their helmets and weapons into the air, shouting triumphantly.
Nearby, Finnegan bent over, grabbed a handful of snow, and flung it up into the air as a white mist seemed to explode from his hands, slowly falling and descending upon him, Harper, and Sonic.
"Hey, cut it out!" Harper shoved Finnegan into the snowbank as he stuck his tongue out teasingly.
"Nyah!" Finnegan taunted, then did a somersault to propel himself back on his feet.
Meanwhile, Sonic was joined by Amy, Knuckles, and Cream, all of whom had bizarre and confused expressions, unanswered questions written all over their faces. Knuckles reached out and extended a hand to help Sonic back up.
"Sonic!" Amy ran over and glomped him tightly. "I thought you were a goner!" She let go of him and started to reprimand him. "Don't you ever—"
"Alright alright, jeez!" Sonic backed off and held his hands up in the air in a sign of mock surrender. "I'm fine, I'm fine!"
"You okay? I sure thought we'd lose you after seeing you trapped in crossfire up in the front!" Knuckles exclaimed and patted Sonic on the shoulder to make sure he was alright.
"Yeah, yeah, I said I'm fine." Sonic brushed Knuckles' hand off and then paused to gaze at the causalities that lay scattered around the area.
"Only 16 dead, none injured." Knuckles did a quick headcount. "And then we killed 19 scorpions out of roughly 300." He glanced at Sonic, who was still remaining quiet. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Wait a second…" Sonic trailed off. "Where's Metal Raymond…? Why didn't he join in the fight?" Sonic wondered out loud, voicing what had been bothering him lately.
Knuckles shrugged. "Ah well, who cares? That's good for us, isn't it? Who knows what would have happened had he joined…"
Sonic shook his head. "No… that's not good." He glanced up at the sky, but then suddenly snapped his head back down to look at Knuckles. "That's not good at all…"
"Why?" This time it was Amy who asked the question.
"Because…" Sonic sighed, trailing off. "The only reason they would have left so soon is if Eggman called them back…"
"And why would he do that?" Knuckles wondered out loud.
"Because I think Raymond and Galaxina have been discovered." Sonic softly replied as the wind whipped past the narrow corridor, rendering an eerie, hollow whisper drifting past the lonely battlefield.