Chapter 8: Kill/Womb
-s-t-h-
Miles dizzily returned to his feet, after verifying the ground was indeed below him and had stopped its obnoxious spinning. While his body screamed at him to rest, he needed to make sure he had actually won. Discarding the remains of his ring, that had withered away to a dull gray, he reached for his pouch and retrieved another one. "I'm getting addicted to these things," he muttered wearily, turning to regard what had been his opponent.
He needn't had worried. The giant walker had been smashed to a pile of slug and would never work again, unless each of its parts was smelted and recycled. One of the pilots was utterly not in the mood of regaining vital functions ever again, but the other was still breathing and conscious, slowly crawling out of the remains of his perch.
The battlebird noticed him and froze. Many emotions passed from his face, including fear, indignation and denial. Miles found himself hesitating. He knew he should finish the deed and destroy his opponent. The avian mobian was half-way there, anyway, sporting many potentially fatal wounds.
The soldier noticed his hesitation and managed a pained smirk. "Well, why haven't you killed me yet?" he taunted. "Getting cold feet?"
The much younger sapient tried to glare at him. "You will answer my questions," he demanded snarling, hoping his voice was not shaking. It was far simpler when his foes were faceless and armed.
Fear flashed again in the birds eyes, followed by some wet, bloody coughing. While he had extracted himself from the wreckage, he was unable to stand. "Sure," he spat, trying to keep his face blank. No matter how much he loathed it, he knew he was at the kit's mercy.
"Another fox. Female, older than me. I overheard you talking about her. Tell me what happened to her." Miles tried hard to hide his feelings but his worry still seeped into his voice uninvited.
The battlebird grinned. "Oh, I know her, alright," he responded. "Caused a lot of damage. She was almost as tough as you. Commander Kukku the 16th captured her personally after a long duel." His smirk turned uglier at that. "I bet he wanted to have some fun with her. Can't blame him, she's a nice piece."
Typically, the two-tailed kit completely missed the implication, blinking obliviously before sighing in relief. "Alive then. Were is she kept?"
The battlebird eyed him incredulously. He had expected an explosion, verbal or physical. "I'm not sure," he replied truthfully, too stunned to think of a lie. "Our main base is off the island, but he have an outpost on the northeast shore. Or she may be kept close to the Volcanic Tunnel. We've sent scouting robots there because of an energy signature that…" He stopped abruptly when he realized he was saying too much, eyeing Miles critically. "You really are just a kid, aren't you?"
The fox shrugged. "Technically," he replied, trying to push back the fatigue that was still looming at the end of his consciousness.
"Going to save her, then?" asked the bird, trying to keep his tone innocent.
"Sure, after I rest a bit. My house is just a two and a half hours from here," he replied absently, turning to stare south. A second later, he glared at the bird, who was looking very smug indeed. The fox had just given away his house's position. Miles turned away, inwardly cursing himself a blabbermouth. He had intended to let the bird be and changing his mind now, killing him in cold blood, seemed to be beyond him.
Seeing him distracted, the soldier unwittingly solved that problem. His hand reached for his sidearm and he shot a bullet right in the middle of the tiny fox's back. The victim yelped in pain, but the bird was even more surprised as he saw the projectile ricocheting off the furred skin, leaving a small, superficial injury behind. He only had a second to contemplate that, as the vulpine's tails reacted reflexively, slashing at him after making themselves razor sharp.
Miles turned around flabbergasted, only to see his would-be assassin dead as a doorknob, neatly sliced to three. His bloodied twin appendages, twitching nervously, were all the clues he needed. "What? How?" he tried, sighing in exasperation a second later and resisting the urge to vacate his stomach.
He decided he urgently needed some rest and was ready to use the last of his energy to return back home, when his eyes fell on the crashed walker.
From where many components could be salvaged intact.
Components he had no other way to find.
"I really shouldn't," he muttered to himself. "I'm not even sure if I'll manage to carry enough in my state."
He valiantly resisted for two whole seconds before practically leaping at the metal husk, pain and tiredness forgotten.
-s-t-h-
For the first time in two days, Miles woke up in his own bed after voluntarily going to sleep. The tiny fox sighed a bit. He couldn't recall any nightmares, but he still felt restless, even after taking a much-needed bath and sleeping for a full ten hours.
He left the bed, intending to retrieve new gloves and socks, when he felt a stinging pain from his arm. Curious, he checked the area, only to find smoothly furred skin. He moved the appendage again and the pain came once more.
"That's where the walker's bullet got me yesterday," he recalled, before the truth hit home. "The bullet is still inside! The wound closed around it," he deduced, his mind conjuring visions of permanent injuries and lead poisoning.
True enough, he could feel a foreign item inside his flesh, trapped there due to his Chaos powers. The fox wished he knew enough curse words to properly express what he thought about the situation. Limited as his medical knowledge was, he knew he had to somehow remove it. Even worse, he didn't have any painkillers that could mute the pain without knocking him out. A Power ring was also out of the question, as its augmenting effect would heal any attempts to reach the bullet.
It took him half an hour, a very sharp knife, a set of pliers, a bucket of tears, half a bottle of disinfectant and some bandages to properly fix the problem. A very subdued Miles cleaned away the mess left behind with revulsion. He could almost feel his muscles and skin already knitting themselves together. "A Chaos adept, huh?" he mumbled, this time dourly. "Makes half of the first aid booklet useless."
Only after spending five hours in his workshop, tinkering with what he had recovered from the walker, did the vulpine cheer up. It was a bit before noon when he was ready to go. He did feel a bit guilty for not going after Vertigo at once, but he knew very well he needed to rest and prepare if he were to have any chance freeing her. Removing the bandage from his arm, he nodded a bit grimly at the faint scar that would soon vanish. He replenished his bomb supply, wore a backpack full of food, water and some tools and gadgets and donned his pouch, containing the red Chaos emerald and about thirty rings.
Miles felt a lot more confident now. "No worries, Vertigo, I'll get you out in no time," he declared optimistically, completely ignoring the fact he only knew of a very general location. From the walker's mostly corrupted memory banks he had managed to retrieve a crude map of the island with some major locations marked on it, which he had printed. The Volcanic Tunnel, however uninventive as far as names go, was his first destination, circled with a red marker.
He was about to start dashing, when another thought struck him. Grinning a bit, he thrashed his tails twice to warm them up, then leaped in the air, spinning them faster and faster. Opening his eyes, he regarded the landscape below him with awe. This was the first time he was flying without a life or death situation at hand and he found he loved every second. The air rushing around him, caressing his fur, the stunning view that even placed his augmented vision to the challenge, and the feeling of freedom, of defying gravity under his own power. Miles was certain he had never felt so good before.
His limit was just a couple minutes, but he found his stamina recovered pretty fast, so he alternated between flying and running. Circumventing around the town of Poloy to avoid the unpleasantness involved, he flew across the Unity River and reached another, unnamed forest in just a few short hours.
It was then he first started having doubts. The supposed entrance to the Volcanic tunnel was somewhere inside the new forest, but he had no idea where. He still entered the dense vegetation with little fear of becoming lost. He could always fly above the trees and find his way back, after all.
The plan, however vague, had been to search for any hint of volcanic activity. There was a large mountain range to the north and he guessed some of them could be volcanoes. Said plan proved to be unneeded, though.
As soon as he was well within the forest, Miles stopped, standing very still, as if trying to hear something. Even his tails stopped moving, freezing in position. It was too strong to be a hunch, yet he couldn't quite identify it. It almost felt like a siren's call.
"I should probably ignore it, Hurricane," he muttered, bringing said tail in his grasp and hugging it for comfort, hardly registering the action. "It could be some sort of trap." His other tail leaped to his grasp as well, as if jealous of the attention. "On the other hand, we have no other clue. We could keep wandering around this forest for days and not even come close to that tunnel."
Half an hour later, he was standing before a gaping cave entrance, slightly smiling. Following the call had proven to be the right choice. Judging from the cave's position and the faint smell of sulfur coming from inside, this place had to be the Volcanic Tunnel.
At first, the cave's interior seemed very uninteresting. Aptly reflecting its name, it consisted of nothing more than a long underground passage. The fox's opinion changed very fast when he reached the tunnel's end.
Miles found himself in a massive underground cavern of black basalt rock, shaped like a mostly even dome. A special variety of phosphorescent lichen seemed to coat its walls, lighting half of it with a low green glow. The other half of the cave was illuminated by a deep red light, coming from a pool of red-hot lava that encircled the cave's lone structure.
The tiny vulpine gazed at said structure with unbridled awe. It was an ancient ziggurat temple, made entirely out of dark green marble and large enough to fill half of the cave. Apart from windows too tiny for even Miles to squeeze in, it only featured a single entrance, a majestic gate shaped like the open muzzle of some unidentified, yet obviously carnivore, animal.
Deciding he had gawked long enough, the preadolescent prodigy focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The heat from the lava moat around the temple was oppressive and by the time he reached the bridge connecting the shore to the temple, he was already soaked with sweat. Gulping and trying hard not to envision what would happen to anyone, Chaos powers or not, that would fall in the lava, he gingerly crossed the bridge, ready to fly at the first sign of instability.
Ancient rock seemed to prove reliable, however, and he reached the other side without incident. Surprisingly, the heat from the molten lava behind him seemed to somewhat subside, as if the temple itself offered a measure of protection. Most people would feel intimidated by the maw gate, yet the tiny fox felt fascination instead. The green marble had been exquisitely carved, each tooth sporting unique decorative etches, each seemingly telling a story.
To his astonishment, the prodigious kit realized he could decipher some of the carvings, although he had no idea what the language was called. "This is getting creepy, guys," he muttered, tails softy rubbing each other. "How can I know all these things? How could I have amassed so much knowledge in the few years of my life I can't remember?"
Staring at the corridor before him, he felt unreasonably annoyed when no answer came to him from its depths, ears folding backwards. Shaking his head, he started walking forward slowly, occasionally stopping to read what seemed like important passages.
"Let's see…In the year 6430 of the order of Ixis, the two warring races… no, tribes. The two warring tribes of flaming fur and quilted heads… vanished?" he recited aloud, squinting at the last word. His knowledge was substantial but hardly complete. "Were annihilated," he decided. "The tribe of the sacred Chaos-marked was washed away by… a demon of water?' A liquid dragon? Not sure…" He paused for a bit, thinking it over, then went on. "…while the tribe of the Machine was banished to the tentacled darkness, leaving behind soldiers of… learning metal? What could that mean?" A tail scratched his head in confusion at that. "Few survivors were left. In the confusion, we… took? Snatched? We 'acquired' the Seven of the power… or perhaps the 'Majestic Seven', hiding them away and shielding them from greed…"
Miles pondered that carefully, remembering what little he had heard from Vertigo. "The Majestic Seven must be the Chaos Emeralds. She told me they were hidden away on this island, so it fits. If that's true, then this temple must be…"
He was caught in mid-sentence when a deafening screech assaulted his ears, followed by a green streak, originating from the shadowed ceiling and heading right towards his face. The sound was so sudden, the fox completely panicked, his legs freezing in place. One arm reflexively covered his eyes, while the other made a feeble attempt to swat whatever was coming.
He was expecting the thud of flesh, but what he heard was anything but.
'PIKO'
Flabbergasted, the vulpine mobian opened his eyes, trying to make sense of the scene. Lying on the ground and completely totaled was a robotic contraption of sorts. Miles hazarded it had been a small bat robot. "One of the battlebird scouts," he concluded aloud.
If he hadn't been so spooked by its sound, he could have easily destroyed it with his bare hands. What was grasped in one of these hands, however, was much more peculiar. The tiny vulpine blinked in confusion. The item was a slim, orange and blue mallet, that looked like a plastic toy one would pick at a fair. He mentally calculated that something like that would never be sturdy or heavy enough to damage the bat scout, however. In fact, he could barely feel any weight from it.
When he let it drop to the ground, though, his jaw almost followed. The hammer made another obnoxious 'piko' sound, just as it shattered a dozen sturdy stone tiles on the floor and the foundation below them.
Just as Miles numbly calculated his hammer would need to be around forty times his own weight to have such an effect, the offending weapon vanished in thin air, letting him to stare at the small crater left behind.
"At least I'm not getting bored," he muttered, still not sure what had just happened.
-s-t-h-
End of chapter 8
I have been aiming for equal parts of drama and humor here and I hope I have balanced them properly. The hammer is an in-game weapon and yes, it does the same sound as Amy's, though it's more compact.
The bullet remaining inside the wound is a constant regeneration problem, along with improperly set bones. I wonder how often Sonic and co would have to deal with it, if the games were a bit more gritty.
One reviewer mentioned the Earth-Mobius thing. I never liked that plot device of Sonic X. For me, it was merely done as a cheap way to introduce Chris Thorndyke and it horribly clashes with many of the games, both old and new. In my stories, Earth and the game Mobius are exactly the same planet and all Sonic X events bend to accommodate that. For this story, it only means there are humans and mobians coexisting in the same societies and that GUN exists and will play an important role. Note that Eggman and Sonic have yet to meet each other.
