(Copyright Act Admissions/Lanham Act Disclaimers. This piece infringes copyrights owned by Sega and DiC. It is not a product of Sega, DiC, or Archie Comics. All available rights are reserved.)

(10) Mobotropolis, 3 Brumaire 3235

HAIR FACTORY, the window said. Technically the shop was supposed to pay money for that, but nobody was worried about things like that with Robotnik's lines still somewhere fifty klicks or so outside the city and rolling back. Clarion said somewhere between twenty-five and a hundred klicks and included the official number of fifty klicks they got from the Palace; after a decade or so as the mouthpiece of Robotropolis, they found that a lot of their readers were thinking fool me a hundred or so times, shame on me. Times said fifty klicks. The Daily Sun, which had been riding the crown like it thought the spurs would stop the saddle from chafing, said probably thirty-five klicks, with a margin of error from twenty-five to fifty and with "loyalist intrusions" reaching as far as fifty klicks into Robotnik's lines near the branching of the Great River and the Little Smoky River.

Funny that even after deciding to get away from it for a while, the war could still have something to say to a hairdresser. Bunnie had her own room in Port Orange, pretty small, little water damage in one of the corners of the ceiling, but with all the military requisitions, there's no question she'd have to room with someone if she wanted something better. And stars and moon, that could be uncomfortable. She wasn't a city girl. And there was no one she knew. Not well enough for no sleeves . . . .

But work was fun. She'd gotten into hair because . . . well, there were a lot of reasons. Companionship hadn't been one of them, so that was a heck of a lucky accident. There were two of them squatting in the store to begin with, and now about five pairs of scissors paying rent on the stations that kept them in water and what electricity the city grid could spare. Lisa had the station closest to the cashier and she sighed again, her feline tail lowering, as more uniformed mobians came in the door, males. "Bunnie, you finishing up?"

Bunnie waved the delicate fingers of her gloved left hand as she switched off the clippers with her right. In a deep pink top today, with elastic wrists to keep the fabric from getting tangled up in the customer's hair—yeah, that was one of the reasons—and baggy blue jeans that bunched up well down over the ankles of a pair of sidewalk-scuffed boots. "Just give me a second, hon." Ejected the clipper guard onto her station, lay the clippers down in the plastic holster bolted to the wooden divider that kept her from Pierre's empty station (he was off today), and deftly whipped the apron from the customer.

The customer was a mole and the blunt contours of her head and her pink nose had made her face jut out from under a long drape of raven hair like it was some sort of wig that was slipping down off a bald scalp onto her face. The mole wanted to look like Mina Mongoose; honey, lots of ladies wanna look like Mina Mongoose, but that ain't no excuse for spiting your own face by trying to paste it on some airbrushed doll with body, fur, hair and eyes about as real as her voice. Bunnie gave her a bob—worried about a couple of slips, but you can't think about that, first thing she'd learned in beautician's school was that about a third of being beautiful was looking beautiful and about two thirds of it was feeling beautiful. A sudden whoops from her hairdresser and even Mina'd need a'couple of slugs to settle her down before lipsynching. Meanwhile, the mole's hair now framed her face, with a couple of pink highlights right down at the edge to make her nose feel a little more welcome. And more important, the mole thought—or knew rather, Bunnie shouldn't oughta knock herself—that it made her look good.

"Go knock 'em dead, sugar," Bunnie said, shaking the apron once more after her, like a slap on the back blown through the air. "Tehn-shun!" she cried brassily. "Get 'em up here. Go in rank order; they'll love that."

Looks like two specialists and a private, so they had to throw rock-paper-scissors. By the time the winner, a coati, came up, the phone was ringing. Bunnie's heart clenched and she felt the tingles all up and down her ears. "Bun-nie," Marco called, "do you know a tiger? He says his name is Andrew, and he seems rather familiar. Should I tell him to go take a cold shower?"

"Oh, shucks." The coati had already taken his seat. "Honey, Specialist . . . Olimander just set himself down and I'm just gettin' started. You tell him that I'll give him a call just as soon as the rush is off, alright? Not a moment later."

The coati's shaggy brown hair almost hid the white of his ears entirely. Bunnie gently tied the tissue at his neck and buttoned the apron around it. She grabbed her scissors, reflexively wiped down the tangs. With the civilian brownouts, you couldn't be too quick of a draw on the clippers.

As she tossed her cloth back on her station, she felt the scissors rub against the nub of the armor mounts of her index and middle fingers beneath the glove of her left hand. Instinctively tightened her fist, winced as her flesh was pinched.

Third date, Andy. Gloves off.

Fixed a smile on her face. "Alright, Specialist. What'll it be?"

He was a male, so: "uh, I part it over here—" Drawing a line with his fingers through the left side of the bush. Given that he might be working the line, she'd have to compensate a little; unless things had gotten a lot better than she remembered they weren't paying for hair gel in the survival kits.

"Keep it kind of long with the winter comin' up?" she suggested.

"Yeah, that'd be good," he said, loosening up a little as she raked a comb through his hair, making it all lie straight down from the crown of his scalp. Good when they loosened up a bit, because it was actually easier to handle a little movement than a fellah trying to make himself into a statue.

"So where were you stationed last?" she asked. Generally didn't know where you were going until you were there. If you were high up enough on the totem pole to know, you probably weren't supposed to say.

"I was on training in Fortune Station, past four weeks. Before that . . . uh, I lived in Wolvesforge."

"Crossin' the lines! We're all proud of you, ain't we, barbers!"

"We sure are!" Lisa and Marco said, in unison. Lisa let a little of Bunnie's drawl into her voice as she said it.

"Head down, though," Bunnie continued, drawing up some tufts even with her comb, then pressing her fingers around them and cutting them down. "What they have you specializin' in? You look like a boom-boom guy to me."

"Really? . . . . They tell me demo is all bears, and . . . you know." Coatis weren't generally that big. Specialist Olimander was not an exception.

"Little guys like it the most. Guys who like it most tend to be the ones to get into it." She worked quick, moving to the right beneath his ear, then working up to his crown. "But no."

"No. I'm uh, a bot guy, actually. I did some electronics in high school. Guess that's enough."

His phrasing froze her for a second, before she realized what he meant. They were only putting together their first tech infantry company when she left the Queen's service, as they said. Most heavy manufacturing in Mobius was out east, where land and hands were cheap, so bot breakers were in greater demand than bot operators. Mechanized Army had blown the Swat factory in the south town and everyone in a couple of blocks of it higher than a sophomore on spring break before they pulled out of the city, the bastards. "They got stock for you?" she asked, not worrying for once whether she was pushing into Classified Info.

"Nah. They say they're putting us out with normal squads, see what we can scavenge in the field."

"They got you practiced on the Swat Twos? I only heard talk, but I hear they look like like a big ol' linebacker, stead of a bunch of stalks and wires think they're a person."

"Yeah. Look a lot clunkier. Are, too, but they're a hell of a lot cheaper to make. Cut down on everything. Just two lenses, too, instead of three." Bunnie stifled a wince as he turned his head more than a little slightly to look back at her. "You really know your stuff, don't you? . . . . What outfit were you with?"

"Aw, can't remember." He flattened his ears at that one. She was shy about it, but she had to explain. "We weren't using numbers and stuff when I got started."

As usually happened, being coy about it only made the coati's ears sink a little lower in awe. And as usually happened, she wondered if he thought she was some sort of show off. "Head steady. May want to close your eyes," she said, combing his forelocks straight down over his face.

"Why'd you quit?" he asked.

She sighed, carefully slicing at a slight angle to compensate for the part. "Bad injury. Got prosthetics, both feet." She decided to leave out the story about the burn on her arm.

"Oh, man, I'm sorry—"

"It's fine. Get around on 'em just dandy, for everyday stuff."

With Sally's help, she'd started getting looked at by the docs. They weren't medical doctors, not all of them, but they had doctorate and they didn't mind being called docs. The normal medtech didn't even know what to look for, just saw a healthy young rabbit with some things in her body that should have her convulsing in septic shock. Getting the armor off was something they could manage pretty easily—well, most of it. The mounts crafted to her skeleton they didn't want to mess with. Too tightly wound up with the nanites in her system to risk trying to crack 'em loose at the roots. Autoimmune reaction, or maybe a localized hypoimmune disorder at the point of removal. The docs had been very good for her vocab, she had to give 'em that.

But she hadn't asked them to get the armor off until they told her they could fix her skin. Yeah, she'd fantasized about cracking the damn things off just so she could scratch all day, even if it'd make it worse, open some real sores where it just felt like she had cracks in her limbs glowing like red lava. But she was used to fighting with them, dropping to a knee to avoid fire with her own cover, not caring what she punched or grabbed with her left arm.

Healthy skin, though! Every moment was heaven. She'd had a mean son of a bitch whose only job was to follow her around every moment she was awake and in some of her worse dreams and tease her with a blowtorch. The docs had put him into retirement. She didn't care if he was lying on the beach somewhere with a golf visor on his head. A body that didn't need a pine-tree airfreshener hanging from its ears, a peaceful mind, and a whole lot of fighting instincts that weren't worth the couple of bullets it would take to blow her straight to hell if she was to react to gunfire by throwing a forearm in front of her face. Snively had always promised her that he and the tank could take care of anything wrong with her other than massive damage to her brain, but there wasn't any tank. Or Snively, thank gods.

So she decided to see what it was like being normal. Sally was okay with it, and after a little talking she was okay with letting her do it on the down-low, though Queen Sarah still didn't seem to get that if you let the Sunday mags do a seven-parter on the robot becoming a civvie, you weren't exactly letting her be normal. It had taken Bunnie about a year to realize that there were two of them: Sally, who was Sally, and Queen Sarah, who was like Sally, but not Sally. Bunnie knew a little something about the way you could be two people. One rabbit for the worms, one for grandma, another for the strangers that come to town. One fox who hangs out with his ma, one who hangs out with his dad. One coyote for the bullets, another for the books. One walrus for the world, and another for himself and his machines—though he'd share it, just a little, when you got to know him.

Queen Sarah was a good queen, for the time. Smart and hard as hell and never seemed to get tired. Wasn't much time to say hi. Last few calls she got a few months ago, in the middle of the night. But they weren't good calls, really. You could feel the function to 'em, Keeping In Touch. Bunnie thought it was partially a public relations thing, and partially as a favor from the Queen to her other self, for when the war was over. Wanted to keep things fairly light. Avoided some topics, such as: How Sally was doing. Antoine.

Tails. Seventy-five more clicks of hard fighting or so, till they cracked Ironlock and had him back and safe. She hoped the Queen'd be nice enough to give Sally a break then, let her visit the hospital for a few weeks. If he needed a place to crash, she'd be happy to put him. It'd feel like old times, kinda.

Sally wanted to hear about things like how Bunnie was doing.

Every third date, like clockwork, take off the gloves. Let him see the furless left hand with the little nubs of ferrocarbon-titanium compound still protruding above skin level. Tell him that the arm is like that, both the legs. I'm chock full of these little machines that are constantly fixing me up. Not as well as I used to when I was drinkin' regular titanium supplements; I think they're why I'm hungry all the time now, but don't get fat no matter how much I eat. And they're why you thought I wasn't a day over seventeen when I'm twenty-two, 'cause they're keeping me in prime condition. Pull up sleeve, to demonstrate that you aren't joking.

Find new boyfriend.

Oh, I'm doing just fine, Sally-girl. And she was, really. Off the lines, safe, working a fun job. One that even taught her why making herself prettier had made her feel so damn ugly. Yeah, there was only one man for her. She couldn't complain, even though it had only been a few months or so when she knew how she was beginning to feel about him, trusting herself to feel that like a person feels even though she was a monster.

Rotor had a full life. Died in the hospital. Har har—

Trixiana, she was cutting it a little close on the left. Moved around right to match. Specialist seemed to be okay listening to the radio.

She owed Rotor a lot, but the thing she loved him the most for was that when she pulled the covers tight up around her neck at night and listened to the critters in the walls, she didn't have to feel lonely for Snively.

Place Unknown, Time Unknown

Some Day.

Okay, Day Sixty-Nine. It wasn't like it was easy to stop counting days. He did it every morning when he woke up. It was the first thing that popped into his head.

"Stop thinking, you two-tailed mutant," he muttered, rolling over on the limp mattress, folding his arms under his snout and laying on them. He'd put the mattress out on the floor again. Sometimes slept on it, sometimes under it. He liked the feeling, kind of cocooning, nesting. "How hard can it be? Not doing something. It's thinking that's hard."

Not for you, he thought, it's never been hard for you. But what came out of his lips was a soft, muffled sigh. "Shut up, Tails."

He hadn't been talking as much. The novelty had kind of worn off. And ultimately, he came back to the same thing that had shut him up in the first place: what did he have to talk about, even with himself? Stuff he'd be doing if he were in Mobotropolis, people he'd be seeing. Might as well cut himself. Stuff in the room. Analyze the differences between the different kibble bowls. There were none. Tell himself what he knew about Lady Renee of Pine Martens and her bosses Empress Amanda (of Skunks?) and Robotnik. Not much. She'd never talked about Robotnik. Was Robotnik dead? He didn't know. Did it matter right now? Probably not. End of that conversation.

Talk about what he was going to do to Renee and her silent brutes. Energizing. But kind of . . . repetitive.

He rolled over again, felt the wall cool against his back. Turned his eyes lazily up to the blocked window, perfect and white.

Tails also didn't like the way he sounded when he talked.

He guessed he hadn't heard himself for a while. His voice sounded lower than he remembered. Or maybe higher. Sharper. It didn't sound like his voice.

Maybe it was just that he didn't talk about the sort of things that he used to. It sounded worst when he talked about Lady Renee. What he wanted to do.

He really wanted to talk about it, to think about it. Over and over. Almost as much as he wanted to do it. Over and over.

"Stop thinking, Tails." He clenched both his hands to fists. "Do some pushups."

Tails did some pushups.

Some Day.

The food door slid open. Tails, sitting right beside, pushed a stack of bowls halfway through the opening. Willed his fingers to let go. Watched them like he was in the barracks a few years ago, waiting to see whether the river would give him the spade he needed to take the pot.

They scraped on the tile as they disappeared out into the hallway.

His breath quickened as he grabbed another pile. Put it into place. The guard took the bowls out. Tails was relieved. Stacked up all along the walls beside the door, making the cell smaller. They were driving him mad. Felt like they were going to topple over on to him. He needed to get control over some of the mess in here, and trying to send some of the bowls back out seemed like the best bet. Hell, even when you got sent to your room, they brought you food and stuff, right?

Tails' heart felt lighter and lighter the more bowls he passed into the hall. He wanted to kiss the guard. It was weird, the way cleaning up always took a weight off the mind. Maybe he'd put the cot back together today, too. Sweep the old kibble off the corner and put it in today's bowl, then send it out tomorrow! He grinned at the thought, finally everything in here spic and span. What a good fox, you weren't even told and you've cleaned up your—

His fingers seized tightly around the last little stack of bowls and pulled them back with all his might. They gave, then didn't—guard already had his dirty hands on them—brace against the wall, dammit, he should've had his feet against the wall, not let this bastard pull his hand out through the door, no, no—

He barked in pain as a boot slammed down on his fingers. Drew his hand back in a moment before the day's kibble scraped in.

"Fuck you!" he shouted as the door slammed. "Godsdamned bastard! I'll kill you! I'll kill all of you!"

Some Day.

Tails lay in the center of the floor. Every muscle slack. The time marked by the metronome of his breathing. Belly swells. Belly relaxes. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

"I'm dying," he breathed.

Inhale. Exhale. Closed his eyes. Feel where the ceiling is. He had a sense for where he was in the room, a perfect sense of the walls and the floor and the ceiling and the door and the closed window, like he could sense the position of his own body. He could feel kibble and little motes of dust against his floor. He could feel a fly crawl along his celing.

Inhale. "I'm dying in here," the words escaping from him like the air out of a popped bubble of scum.

You're not dying. You're turning into a robot.

No. Shut up. That's not right. Stop thinking that.

"I'm going mad," he breathed.

Very, very slowly, you are going insane.

No. Shut up. You're not going insane. You don't have crazy thoughts. You don't believe things that aren't true.

You're turning into someone else.

No. You're turning into no one.

You're turning into the cell. The cell is you. Like a cell in a body. The hallway brings you food and takes away your waste and. And.

No.

The longer he sat in here, the less he felt like himself. He felt . . . . he felt like putty. Like some kind of liquid, sloshing around the floor. When exposed to pressure, hard rigid, working its muscles.

But why?

Tails thought about rolling over, but he just kept lying. Breathing.

Is this what it feels like, when you go crazy?

Inhale.

What it feels like when you become one of them.

Exhale.

What they feel like, Renee and her slaves. Couldn't be. They're so well-defined, so themselves. Like a rule of logic.

If he tried to pull himself up into an imitation of her, be her good little fox, he would drip back into a puddle. He was safe from her. This was not what she wanted.

She will pour you into a mold, a pressure mold. Big steel plates with the shape of her warrior inside of them. They bake you, unseen, baking you hard.

She pushes a hard mask of a snarling fox onto your face and it sinks into your soft face and it molds you and it becomes your face and

"AAAAARRAH!" Tails pushed himself to his feet and grabbed the filthy bedsheet from the corner and felt the machine stitching part as he tore it, wrapping the fabric around his knuckles so tight it felt like his fist was bare bone, till it cut into his palm, then wrapping again, harder, both fists until his fingers were curled so tight that he couldn't hold things any more and he snapped his fists apart and ripped the bedframe aside to fall with a clang on the floor as he drove his fist into the steel plating of the wall as hard has he could. Left. Right. Left. Right. Bodyblows that cracked the skin under his fur and jarred his wrists until they were rigid, swollen, until the gray rag of the bedsheet was soaked deep red.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

Some Day.

All the cameras could see was Tails crouched in the far left corner of the room on his knees. Half-sitting on his ankles, spine under his orange fur bent to press the crown of his head into the angle where wall met wall.

That and him moving. She could see that. They could all tell.

That didn't matter. They've watched him forever, naked. They've watched him take a shit thousands of times. Don't think about them. They aren't real.

The vixen is real.

The stink, the high male fox stink that was deep into every surface into the cell, that oozed out of his pores and rode on his breath, made it easy to imagine the complement. Drink milk and think of a chocolate chip cookie, the sugar and cocoa. Taste peanut butter and imagine the sweet clumps of jam slipping on your tongue.

The vixen was bare to him, her fur sweet and redolent. She did not talk. She did not ask him if he had two of everything, in which case he would have to slap her across the face. But she had not spoken and he had slapped her across the face anyway, because they were in the Stone Age, he did not speak, he barked. He was a fox and that was who he was, he was a fox in a fox tribe

Miles of Foxes shut up focus

and underneath him lifting she lifted her haunches to him because he had seen her on her knees bent over to drink from the riverbank and he had taken her scent and wanted her and tackled her and held her beneath him until she wanted him and—

Tails' shoulders shook as he panted. The far camera could see his left elbow, peeking out from around his middle, over and over. His tails lifted, slightly, again, and again.

His vixen barked as he entered her, too large for her young, fresh body, tossing her head back, spreading wide the fiery red of her ears. Her tail against his chest, the shocking white brush teasing against his throat, wafting her scent to his nose.

Tails put his right hand out against the wall to steady himself. Cold. Slow down—

He did not restrain himself. This vixen was his. No other males would touch her for fear of his teeth and his axe. He felt her squeeze about him, tensing the muscles in her hips as he pressed hard between her shoulder blades with the heel of his hand, my vixen, mine, my vixen—

A soft cry from his Tails' throat, disappearing quickly in the cell's silence.

An escape of five minutes.

He had no good way to clean up.

Some Day.

The food door slid open.

Tails turned to liquid and ran slowly out through the opening. Slid beneath the kibble bowl as the guard pushed it into the cell. Ran around and under the tread of his boots, following the slope of the floor, till he found a drain. Ran out of the building, into the sewers. Into a river. Sank into the soil, evaporated into the air, lost himself in the sea.

He watched, spine and tails tracing a loose s-curve on the floor, as the guard's boot nudged his day's kibble into the room.

Get me out of here, Tails thought. He would not let himself say it. Get me out of here. Please open the door and let me out of here.

The food door slid close and the bolts fired with a bang. Tails could briefly hear the guard's boots, retreating back down the hall.

Some Day.

Tails rubbed his face hard against the wall. The wall pulled hard at the fur of his cheek. He could feel all the individual hairs about to rip from the heart of the follicles deep in his skin. He moaned in pleasure.

He had run at the wall as hard as he could and bruised his shoulder and his head, and he'd screamed and thrown himself back against it, plastered himself to the wall, chest and legs and arms and face, and he squirmed, whining, and feeling the stimulation all over his body, like someone ripping at his fur with a steel brush, he needed a steel brush because it was spring he didn't know what season it was but he needed to brush his fur he needed to be brushed and feel that ripping all over his body all over his back and front and his tails every bit of him and he was going to rub himself against the wall until his skin was bare and raw.

He closed his eyes, rolled, pressing his tails and his back to the cold steel. Rolled his shoulders, whining softly.

Some Day.

It was late, very late, before Tails realized that the lights were not turning off.

He looked up at them, briefly, stared at them. For a moment it seemed to him that they were dimming slightly, but he was expecting them to turn off. To turn right off, flick from light to darkness and let him sleep. He was tired. He had been working all day. Pushups, situps, standing on one foot, standing on one hand. He couldn't remember all he'd been doing. Why was he supposed to remember something like that?

But now the day was over, and he was tired, and now the lights turned off, and he went to sleep.

The lights did not turn off.

He stopped looking at them. The Lady could see the things he looked at.

He was tired. He lay down on his back, in the middle of the floor, and slept.

The light bathed his eyelids, made blood vessels glow pink. He could only see pink.

Tails opened his eyes. The lights were on. The room was bright white.

Any moment now the lights were going to turn off. They'd just turn off.

They should have turned off before. He was almost sure of it. But the lights were on: that was just proof that he wasn't judging the time right. He wasn't a clock. He could be wrong by a few minutes, or an hour. Or two, even. Any minute now, or hour, the lights were going to turn off. And that was when the day was over.

The lights were not going to stay on forever. They'd turn off, soon.

Tails closed his eyes. Took a deep, long, relaxing breath.

His eyelids were pink.

Tails opened his mouth and screamed, spit flying from his teeth to dapple on his face. He opened his eyes and screamed at the lights behind their gray cage, as loudly as he could. He grabbed his shaggy hair, pulled strands from him with hot pops of pain deep in his head, felt them sliding greasily between his fingers. Screamed, rolling onto his side.

The lights did not turn off.

He screamed, crawling under the mattress, pulling it to the corner, hiding, the light coming in at all the corners as he pressed his eyes tight and filled his world with his scream. A scream like laughter, like water, like feathers, a scream that didn't stop, like bright white light in the darkness.

He opened his eyes. The lights were off.

Tails collapsed to the floor, the mattress flopping loose on top of him. His body shook with a sob that emptied him of air, collapsed his throat, so that air rasped slowly back in with a long, strangled whine.

He was going insane. She knew how to make him insane. If she hadn't before, he'd just told her how.

Tails wept for a long time before there was nothing in him and he passed out.

Some Day.

The bolts slammed, all of them, like the sudden blast of a shotgun. Tails screamed in shock. In a tangle of limbs on the floor he rolled and skittered to the corner beside the toilet bowl, pressing himself flat to the wall in a futile effort to hide and shield himself, staring at the open door from over the corner.

The Lady was standing there, in her clean, starched black uniform, red epaulettes standing out firmly against the black fabric and brown fur at her neck. The stainless steel collar about her neck had no stain. The brighter fur of her face framed a tight black mouth, eyes that narrowed, a black nose that wrinkled.

"You stink," she said.

Kain Blackwood 2010