The Cog Metamorphosis

Chapter Eight

Silence soaked through the room. Once, the room had been alive with sounds; screaming, robotic footsteps, cold, dark voices. But now, as darkness overcame Toontown once more, the moon winning the battle it fought with the sun every day, the room was almost completely silent.

Almost. For the room was not completely dead; there was an irregular, infuriating drip every now and then. It was scarcely detectable, almost quiet enough to escape the unnaturally small ears of the dog there, but not quite.

After what seemed like months with his cream legs and arms bound to a hard metal chair, his mouth taped shut, and his emerald eyes covered with a blindfold, Tobi finally heard more footsteps. His heart sank a little; it was likely another Cog, and that never meant good news.

Drip.

A few seconds later, his suspicions were confirmed when tape was pulled away from his mouth quite suddenly, and the blindfold was yanked away. He saw a Spin Doctor in front of him, giving him an emotionless yet withering stare. Behind the Spin Doctor, there were several monitors displaying information Tobi did not quite understand. There were two automatic doors, now closed, with a series of wires leading underneath the doors.

Drip.

"You're a lot different than the last mindless drone I saw," Tobi remarked cheerfully, though he felt anything but cheerful, returning the stare of the Cog. "Actually... no... you're just as worthless. Sorry, my mistake!" he continued.

The Cog said nothing, but tilted its head, clasping a remote control in its left hand. It raised the remote control and pushed a button. Tobi's chair tilted backwards until he was facing the ceiling. He saw an old, thin, rusted pipe, the very pipe that was causing the dripping. The ceiling had a few more pipes leading out of it; interestingly enough, they all ended at the ceiling, and were all pointed downwards. Why would Cogs want anything pumped in to the room?

He couldn't tilt his head to look at the Spin Doctor, but his ears told him the Cog had not left the dark, square room. It had not moved, not even a little bit. Its complete lack of a reaction disturbed Tobi a little bit. After a few seconds, Tobi started to speak again.

"You're the quiet type, huh? That's great. I knew a guy who never said a word, you know. He was -"

"Quiet," came a low, loud command, from the Spin Doctor. "You will only talk about the subjects we have interrogated you about."

Tobi frowned. "Interrogation... wait, this is an interrogation? I thought it was a relaxing vacation myself."

The Spin doctor stepped a little closer and put its cold hand on his head. It started to heat up, until it was burning him. He cried out in anguish, but the Spin Doctor did not move its hand. The heat continued to increase, leaving Tobi to wonder if it may in fact overheat the Cog, but the robot showed no signs of stopping. Tobi found himself less and less able to concentrate on ways to end the torment, save for telling the Cog what it wanted, as the pain built up on his head. It felt like the skin was being ripped viciously off his forehead. Tobi finally gave up, stammering out, "I – I'll tell you!"

The Spin Doctor gave an artificial smile, but did not remove its hand for a few more seconds, enjoying the dog's reaction immensely.

Drip.

Tobi sighed and took a moment to recover from the torture, the agony not quite content to leave just yet. The Cog glared at him, and he noticed it begin to raise its hand once more to encourage him to hurry up. He realised quite quickly that he could not tell the truth, but only more torture would follow if he attempted to deceive them and he had no way of stalling for time. "Okay, okay... My partner and I were investigating a Cog base near Donald's Dock... we found some documents in a cabinet. We tried to leave with them, but we were caught. They brought us here."

The Cog processed the information. Then, it asked, "Why were you investigating us?"

"No idea," Tobi lied. "I'm just a Resistance Agent, okay? They don't tell me why I'm supposed to do something. They just make me do it."

The Cog scanned him. "You are lying," it stated. "I have detected several factors that indicate that you are lying."

Tobi opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a loud voice boomed over the intercom. "Exterminate the two subjects at once."

Drip.

His mind started racing. He had not expected this; he was sure that as a Resistance Agent, he was of the utmost use to the Cogs. But clearly, he had outlived his usefulness, or had simply overestimated his importance. His heart sank as he realised his partner, a tall cream dog he only knew as her nickname 'Princess', was to be exterminated, too – he had no idea how co-operative she'd been, but if it was solely his fault that they were about to be depressed then whatever happened to her was his fault, too, and he was not eager to cause her depression.

The Spin Doctor quickly stepped out of the room, and a few seconds later, the dripping, leaky pipe that had been a minor annoyance to Tobi became a much bigger problem; black, disgusting oil began to pour out in to the room. His bonds sprung back; the Cogs were extremely cruel, apparently, and often made their prisoners believe they had a shot at escaping. But the doors were not overcome easily, and they could always detect that a Toon was trying to enter or exit, with heat detectors that scanned for elevated temperatures – Cogs were almost always hotter than any Toon.

Tobi realised the Cog's method of execution was to fill the room with oil and watch the Toons drown. But soon, the amount of oil being poured began to decrease, until there was none at all. Tobi's face had changed from one of terror to mild relief and puzzlement, until the mystery of what exactly had happened was resolved, when the same booming voice from the intercom spoke once more.

"Oil reserves are running too low. Switch to kerosene. We have a lot more."

Almost immediately, in the place of the sticky, jet black oil that had been pouring in, colourless kerosene began to spring forth from the pipe.

Tobi continued to panic for a moment, before he smiled, realising the solution, pulling from the inside of his mouth one of the few things he'd taped to his cheek seconds before he was caught that he could use to escape.

Most of his equipment was useless in this situation, but one single gadget still proved useful; a small modified matchstick, indistinguishable in almost every way from a normal matchstick. However, this matchstick burnt for longer and much hotter than any normal match. He moved towards one of the walls and struck it on the wall, lighting it. Aware of the speed with which the kerosene was filling the room, he climbed on top of the chair, tossing the match in to the kerosene which was now about halfway up the chair. After a moment, the kerosene ignited, fire quickly spreading through the room, terrible fumes being given off. Soon, the door sprung open, the heat sensors broken by the fire. He narrowed his eyes; he needed to make sure he wouldn't fall in to the flames, and after a moment, he pounced towards the doors. He made it out without falling in to the fire, which was always good – he was certainly thankful he wasn't currently burning to death.

Now, to find Princess...

Meanwhile

The Corporate Raider eyed Toon. E. Fish cautiously. It was, like most of its kind, only capable of following orders, rather than having any intelligent thought, but it had been pre-warned of the ability of the Toons in the area and was following orders to be stealthy. Other Cogs were also in the building, ready to take out other Toons, and if the plan worked out, nobody would notice the disappearance of the Toons for days.

The Cog prepared to strike, taking another step towards the sleeping cat, when bright lights turned on, illuminating the building. It spun around, dumbfounded, but was already being pelted with cream pies. It stumbled back before exploding rather dramatically. Upon hearing the commotion, Toony jumped up, wide-awake.

"What's going on?!" she yelled in confusion, finding herself facing Spotty and the owner standing in the hallway outside. Adrenaline pumped through her system and she found herself reaching for a gag.

The owner did not speak, so Spotty did. "There was a Cog, they must have found out you were here and sent him in! Damn – we're going to have to move again. I'll go wake u-"

Before he could complete his sentence, Toon. E. Fish was sprinting towards him, out of the room. "Behind you!" she cried, and they turned to face a Loan Shark. The owner was first to strike, hitting it with a cream pie. Spotty continued the assault with a water hose and the Cog stumbled back. Another Cog made its way in to the hallway from the entrance, a Bean Counter. Toon. E. Fish didn't give it time to retaliate, hitting it with a birthday cake, leaving the owner to lazily chuck one last cream pie at the Loan Shark before it exploded.

"Nice one, Zippy!" Spotty congratulated the owner. "I'll go to the entrance, there's bound to be more Cogs. You two should go and wake up Jake and Max – we need to move, before they know where we're going. I have a backup plan."

The two nodded and split up, Zippy going in to wake Max and Toony going to wake Jake. She entered his room to find him still fast asleep despite the commotion. "Typical," she mumbled to herself, and shook Jake. "Wake up, Jake!" she snarled.

"Are you... a giant turkey? Come here... in my belly..." he whispered, still asleep.

"You never stop thinking of food, do you?" she hissed. She shook him a little harder, waking him up. He widened his eyes and saw Toony.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Hi, Fi – I mean, Toony!" he greeted her. "Why are you in my room?"

"Cogs attacked," she stated simply.

He jumped out of bed, suddenly frantic. "Where are my gags? How many of them are there?!" he questioned her, but she put a restraining paw on his chest.

"Relax, idiot. They've been dealt with. But we have to go, now."

"Is everyone okay?"

"Yeah, everyone's fine," she replied with a slight smile. "The owner – Zippy, I think his name is – is getting Max. We're gonna have to move to somewhere else, Spotty says he knows a place."

Jake nodded, taking a few breaths. She sighed. "You'd think you'd never seen a Cog before, with how panicked you are!"

He rolled his eyes. "Well I've never been attacked by Cogs in a motel that I barely know after Cogs sent us to an island and I almost drowned!" he snapped. Toony was a bit taken aback by the outburst of aggression, but regained her composure quickly. "Hey, don't take that tone with me," she replied coolly. "Anger's my thing!"

He cracked a smile. "Doesn't hurt to try. Let's go outside, Max will be waiting for us."

Toony nodded and Jake quickly grabbed his bag. They proceeded outside, but there were no Toons in sight. "He's probably just having the situation explained to him. Let's go join them," Toony said. They entered the room where Max was staying, and at once felt a cold chill. The thing that first drew the Toon's attention was the gigantic hole in the ceiling, revealing a pitch-black night's sky, the darkness only disrupted by silvery, twinkling stars challenging darkness. The second thing was Zippy, slumped against a wall, seemingly unconscious – or worse. Max was gone – Jake spotted, in the distance, high up in the sky, a Big Cheese carrying what seemed to be Max, quite clearly sad.

"NO!" roared Jake, furiously glaring at the sky. "COME BACK HERE! RIGHT NOW!" but his words were wasted; if the Cog had heard it, he did not return. Toon. E. Fish was having much the same reaction as Jake, screaming at the sky in anger, as if the loudness of her words might stop the drone from absconding with her friend.

Sheriff rushed in to the room, shocked and frightened at the noise coming from the room. "What's going o – oh!" he gasped. Instead of yelling up at the sky and the Cog who had now vanished in to the night, he rushed over to Zippy.

"You two, get your gags ready, there might be more Cogs coming – we have to get out of here, just as soon as I've got Zippy patched up," he commanded quickly, stooping over Zippy to see his injuries. Zippy's eyes were glazed over, and he was drooling a little. "This doesn't look good," he muttered to himself. He turned around to see Jake reaching for his mobile phone. "No! Don't call anyone!" Sheriff mewed. "The phone might be traced. Right now the Cogs will think we're depressed. We can't let them know otherwise."

Reluctantly, Jake nodded and put the phone in his pocket. Toon. E. Fish let out an involuntary growl. "What about Zippy? You said it isn't good – what if he ends up depressed?" Jake asked in a small voice.

Sheriff paused, unsure of himself. "I... oh, I don't know... we'll have to get him to a hospital," he replied. After a second, he realised that his friends were looking at him expectantly. "Toony! Check outside for Cogs. Come back inside as soon as you've checked, okay? Jake, once she's back in you'll help me get Zippy to the kart," he ordered, trying to sound confident for the benefit of his friends.

Toony rushed out and Jake moved closer. "Sheriff... they took Max. How will we get him back?"

There was no reply for a second. Sheriff cocked his head to the side, observing Sheriff, who had stopped.

"Sheriff... we are getting him back, aren't we? Sheriff?"

"We don't have time to worry about that," Sheriff murmured. "Whatever's happening to Max could just as easily happen to us. And it will, if we're not careful."