(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.)

Great Forest, 9 Floreal 3230

The wolves began to ask questions first, their directness overcoming their lack of familiarity. To be honest, the questions were worth asking, given that Cat had begun to pull files off Snively's hard drive and was slowly assembling them into a picture of the roboticizer project: What were they going to do with the treasure? Was it time to contact Standard Army? When would they attack Robotropolis?

It would be good if the Princess could sort this all out.

Next, Tails joined in. "Is Sally okay?"

"Yeah, she's alright, big guy," Sonic told him, splayed on the ground outside his hut, arms covered with a thin sheen from pushups. "She's got a lot on her mind, you know. I mean, we all do . . . ." She'd been quiet, again, when they both woke up, but that worried him less, now; it was just a mood. He felt it, too. It was like they were sharing a brain and a pulse. "She wants to be alone for a while."

The fox nodded, sitting with his legs crossed. ". . . . You mean Rotor, right?"

Sonic sighed, quills rustling the stinkgrass. "Yeah. Other stuff, too, but apples and oranges. I'm going to miss him; he was one cool dude."

"Me too." Tails said. He put his elbows on his ankles and leaned forward, a contemplative pyramid. ". . . . Did we win?"

"We got the robo-stuff we needed. Buttnik's going to be history., Thanks to your fleet feet." Sonic grinned. "I'm proud of you, Tails."

The fox's ears went pink. "Aw, Sonic—"

"Couldn't have done it better myself—not as good, even. Sneaking around's never been my thing. You're a hell of a soldier."

Tails squirmed, scratching sharply behind his right ear, but he smiled.

Sonic grinned and leaned back, watching the clouds. "You don't gotta talk about it. Just keep fighting the good fight for Sal."

"For her? She'll probably never let me on a mission again. She probably doesn't want me to see sun again."

"Ah, don't be angry. She loves you."

"I know . . . ."

"You're lucky to have an aunt like her."

"She's not really my—"

"Yeah, but who cares? My uncle took care of me as far back as I can remember. He wasn't my dad or my mom, but I miss him like both of 'em put together."

Tails had ducked his head. "I don't like talking about my mom."

Sonic blinked. "Yeah, I know, big guy—I just—"

"Or my dad."

"I know he was kind of a—Listen, I'm sorry—Where are you going?"

"I don't know," Tails said. He got up and waded off quickly into the grass, towards the treeline.

"Tails," Sonic called, but he didn't finish getting up; the stalks had already closed behind the fox. And if Tails wanted to be alone, he probably oughta. He'd had as rough a go of it as any of them.

Sonic lay breathing for about a half a minute, then did more pushups; sit-ups. He sprinted to the river along a new path, leaping roots, propelling himself from trunk to trunk, seeing how long he could keep off the ground. Then he went back and shadowboxed the trees around the clearing, knocking the bark away with sidekicks. Made the sky turn, morning to afternoon.

When the sun had reached the beginning of its descent, light slanting down at a tottering angle, Tails returned. "Sally wants to see you."

"Yeah?" Sonic asked, flipping himself up to his toes, hissing at the pain that flashed like lightning up his belly to his neck. Tails still looked unhappy . . . spooked. "Where is she?"

"She said she'll be in her room."

"How is she?"

"I don't know. She wants to see you alone."

"Alrigh—"

"I think she's angry."

". . . .Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I'll go talk to her now, alright? Don't worry about it."

"Okay."

Sonic was still feeling a little weird when he found Sally's room open and went in, slamming the heavy steel security door into place behind him. Sally was sitting on the edge of her bed, and she was ready to get back to work: hair combed, bangs curled clear of her eyes, which were clear as glass. Vest and boots, arms folded. "Hey, Sal, looking good. What's up?"

"You're banished from Mobius," she said.

". . . . What?"

"We banish you. You are not welcome in our lands."

Sonic laughed. Sally's arms went weak and she turned her face away from him. Now he comes and holds her up and tells her that she is joking. She echoes; she is joking. He asks her what she wanted him for. She says oh nothing. His fingers are in her hair; he lays her back on her bed in this room deep under the leaves and dirt, her arms at her sides. Springs squeak as he eases himself down on to the bed beside her, his warm knee against Sally's soft arm. His face is not stern, but his smile is commanding. You're my girl, ain't you baby.

Yeah.

Sonic smiles, sliding his fingers into Sally's hair, coarsely combing it. Atta girl.

Maybe she tries to say something else but he slides his hand around her neck, lowers his face to hers. You know what you are? he asks.

She says nothing.

You're the prettiest squirrel in the world, he says.

Beautiful, she says.

Very beautiful—

Her limbs were still weak, but her lip drew up, a flash of humiliation burning through her face. "We do not desire to look upon you," she spat, more loudly.

"Sally, this isn't funny," Sonic laughed. "I—"

"We expect you to remove yourself from Knothole immediately. We—"

"Sally, stop!" he shouted. "Calm down! What's happened?"

"We will punish any trespass upon our sovereign—"

"SALLY!"

She looked up at his roar and a hard instinct kept their gazes locked. She'd known this would happen. If she broke up with him it wouldn't work, he was right there and she had to look at him every day; they lived together. And then, when she horribly saw that she could order him to leave, he wouldn't go. He didn't give a damn about her crown or anything that couldn't beat him up, and nothing could beat him up. She couldn't get free of him, no matter how hard she tried. His arm was around her neck, his lips at her ear, lulling her back to sleep—

She had prayed to Vidavin Vulanis. This was something she hadn't done for years, because the gods were a superstition, but she did it, for hours, and the answer came to her, how to hurt him. A weapon from the gods, a divine tool so terrible that when it struck him he wouldn't be able to look at her, any more than she could endure him.

The truth.

Without looking, she reached over, pulled open a small, decorative drawer in the lampstand and withdrew a gun.

Sonic had never seen it before. It was not a gun to fight cops with. Muzzle about a twenty-two, he'd guess. Pretty little thing: little white handle like a bar of soap. Sally thumbed back the hammer and set her elbow in her lap, leveling it at Sonic's belly. "Sally, stop it," he said. "This is stupid. Tell me what's wrong and—"

"This is for our protection from you."

"Enough of the we we we bullshit!" he bellowed. "You're angry, maybe you got reason, but I don't believe you're gonna shoot me. So just tell me what vase I knocked over and we can—"

"You raped me."

Sonic stared at her as though the top of her head had opened and bugs and vines had come crawling out.

"Sally!" he cried after a long moment. He laughed. Once. "Not funny!"

"You raped me."

"And—and when did I—"

"Yesterday." Her voice was very calm. "Here."

"But you—it was—you were—"

"I wanted it?" Sally said, a hot blush in her ears. "So bad?" She pouted her lips at him like one of the Port ladies, swiveled up onto the bed, on her knees, hair tangled in front of lidded eyes. "Oooh, remember how I begged you? 'Sonic, please, I need it in me, now—'"

"Stop it!" Sonic yelled, horrified. "That's not what happened!"

"No," she replied, looking up at him. "It's not."

It hadn't been like that, not at all. Sally wasn't like that, she was such a . . . mystery . . . she was gentle . . . subtle . . . . "You didn't . . . tell me to go," he told her. "You said my name—"

"I didn't fight you off hard enough?"

"Shut up!" Sonic snapped, and he suddenly realized that he had his right cocked at his side, and that his quills were shivering taut and upright. What the fuck am I doing?

This was insane.

"Look, Sally, don't joke. Please. I remember what happened, okay? I know that . . . it was good . . . for . . . I mean, at first it was kind of . . . but . . . ."

His ears were burning. What had happened to that oneness he'd felt; where had it gone? Had he imagined it?

"We liked it, Sally. I could tell . . . by the way you moved, everything. You weren't sleepwalking, for gods' sake."

"I was on drugs."

Sonic didn't say a word.

"Buds. I was upset. You may have noticed this coming back from the hospital. I took two buds. Then you tiptoed into my bedroom and—"

"Stop." He stumbled away from her, then felt like a coward. But he still didn't look at her. "I didn't know—"

"You didn't ask," Sally replied flatly. "Did I talk at all? Tell me. I honestly don't remember."

"I—You—but—I'm . . . . I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Sally, I'm—I thought that, that with everything, how horrible everything had been—"

"You thought that I'd want to get fucked," Sally spat. "By a thug." She was shocked, and then she wasn't shocked. She hadn't imagined them, but as the words left her mouth she realized they were true, a mosaic of truths that she had never wanted to see. He was a thug. He was a murderer. He was a maniac. Her mother would pass out. Her father would lock her in a School for Troubled Girls and lock Sonic in jail. Truth to truth to truth until she couldn't believe that she had been in love with him, that the part of her locked in her belly was was screaming and reaching out to him like a terrified kit.

"Sally." Hands on his forehead, staggering like a boxer without ropes. "—I want to be good. To you. I want to be good to you, take care of you. I—"

"How? You're an idiot. You can't do anything but beat people up."

Sonic looked in Sally's eyes and she froze. So tense his irises themselves seemed to vibrate; the hysteria of a man charging a machine gun. "I love you," he said.

"We don't care."

"Stop the 'we' shit!" he roared."Talk to me yourself!"

"I don't care," Sally said.

Sonic's belly ripped open and his guts spilled down his legs.

"I don't want to see you again," she said. "I don't want to think about you."

"Sally."

She shoved herself to her feet, gun still in her hand. "Stop talking. Get out."

"Don't do this to me, please. I can't—I need you."

"Shut up."

He sat down on her bed, grabbed quills tight, felt them cut through gloves to skin. "I need—all of you. I need Knothole. I don't know anyone else. I don't know how to—I don't know what to do. I don't know anything."

Sally's mouth twisted, eyes stinging red. "Just go. Now. Please."

"Please, I can't go," Sonic begged, words quick with panic, pulling the live quills from their roots. His heart was racing. He was trapped. He was being crushed. "Put me in the brig. Lock me up. Let me stay, please."

"Go now," she said, a catch in her voice, "and I won't tell anyone what you did."

"No." He looked up, adrenaline spike setting his jaw, clenching his fist, first tears forgotten on his naked cheeks.

"Go," Sally continued, voice sliding up in pitch, "or I will be forced—"

Sonic's voice was like taut razorwire. "If you say one word to him." He got to his feet with a smooth, slow motion, stepped toward her.

The end table thumped the wall as Sally backed into it, panting as she retrained her shivering gun on Sonic's head. "Tails deserves to—"

His right exploded and she ducked, but he grabbed the gun, yanking it down and forward, jerking her face into his left fist. Her head snapped back and the lamp bulb popped white; the gun was in his right fist and he brought it down into her, again, again, again, again—

Up from the nadir of his panic Sonic saw with electric, mad clarity the swollen, warped flesh and clumps of bloody fur, her jaw shattered by the pistol's hammerpoint, the dark indentations where eyes might still be, and it was a wound, just a big wound where she was supposed to have a face, broken and inert on the shattered lamp. His fist throbbed around the gun.

She was dead.

Sonic lowered his snout, closed his teeth around the gunbarrel and pulled the trigger.

Metal rattled cold against his teeth. His arms began to shake. He pulled again. Click. Click.

He broke the wheel, his breath one long, rising, continuous wail. The gun wasn't loaded.

Sonic screamed.

Then he dropped the gun, turned, and ran.

Quiet.

Sally remained slumped on the end table, bent against the wall, almost completely motionless. If one waited and watched carefully, little bubbles formed at her lips as she breathed.

She couldn't move. Her body didn't work. She couldn't see.

Noise

". . . . Sally?"

She couldn't answer. The kit's voice was sick, nauseous, flooded by memories like foul pus from a burst cyst, old memories, his dead mother, his monster father—

"What did he do to you?" Tails roared.

Lupe field-dressed Sally, lancing the most dangerous swelling with her hunting blade. The medscanner took care of her blood chemistry, its calm synthetic voice telling Tails how to spike her arm and set up a drip of blood, glucose, and opiates—gentle, just enough to keep the pain from pushing her into madness or spurring her to try to move. For everything else, Cat had sent wolf runners to Four Mounds for the doctor. Tails should have gone, being the last ambulatory member of the great and glorious Royal Army of Mobius that had ever seen the scumbag MD before. But Tails had no intention of leaving Sally's bedside, and the way he snapped at anyone who came in, one hand squeezing Sally's fingers and the other squeezing a pistol, no one tried to change his mind.

Sally could see from her left eye. Some sort of hot pressure made her vision warp with strange colors and rings. She didn't speak, it hurt too much. Her cheeks were damp with drool; swallowing hurt too much.

With her right hand and focus she could scratch messages with a pen Antoine had wheeled in. The shock of it, seeing mon Princesse perhaps even more injured than himself, had snapped him out of his dark stupor. He was everywhere in Knothole, supervising Cat's codecracking and talking Lupe through skittishness brought on by the sudden, disastrous violence.

Sally wasn't sure how much time had passed. The lights in the med center did not dim. Tails did not sleep. The doctor did not come.

"No," Tails was saying, and Sally was again blinking her way slowly over the fuzzy line between sleep-thoughts and waking-thoughts.

"Just for five minutes, Tails," Antoine replied, and Sally heard his chair squeak outside of her field of vision, to her right. "You must secure the door. No one gets in or out of Her Highness's room. Yes?"

The kit's gloved fingers squeezed her for a moment longer. Then she heard the fox stand up. "Yes, Sir."

The door closed, and with a whirr of motors Antoine glided to her. He had the soft, shrunken look of a person who hasn't been moving or eating much, but the eyes didn't belong to that face anymore. He was approaching his old self: awake, alert, pessimistic.

And embarrassed? "I have come from Cat." He held up a sheet of paper, carefully lowering it over her good eye. "Look at this."

It had the hot, dusty scent of fresh laser toner, but it was a scan of a pen scrawl on blank paper. It began with big block letters at the top, sloppy with the press of time: EYES ONLY ROYAL COURIER.

Sally didn't need to read any more to know why Antoine was embarrassed, but she went on anyway.

"HRM Max IV, High Command Mobotropolis." "Re. Priority Appropriations." Signature unreadable, but scratched beside: "APD, Science Ministry"—Advanced Programming Division? Applied Projects Director? She gathered in slow tracks of her left eye that the memo was a suggestion to move research money from something called Project Redsky to two other projects, designated Pullo and Helper. Helper was well-known history by this point: an early name for what later became Project Flyswatter, the advanced combat robotics project that, championed by General Kintobor, would result in the Mobian Mechanized Army's tech infantry and victory for Mobius.

That left Project Pullo, of which she'd never heard. But the name was familiar: Pullo, the bruiser bruin bedeviled by the enmity of the gods, the unkillable bear of myth. Demigod patron of martial artists, weightlifters, bodybuilders, anyone who valued personal strength.

The author was a big booster of "P. Pullo."

"P. Pullo is READY FOR MOBIAN TESTING NOW. Gen. Kodos GREATLY exaggerates risks, achieved 70 pct. successful nanobot integration w/immune sys in animal tests; v. increased strength, endurance, advanced heal factor. NEW CONSIDERATION: advanced heal sugg. poss. increased transplant success, MACROCYBERNETICS. Sugg. for rapid deployment of Pullo tech w/in 12 mos. put grunt in tank NOW!!!"

Nanobot infiltration.

Macrocybernetics. Implants, that is. Like, say, a radio in the brain. Armor mounted in flesh, on bone.

And at the top, a date that put the memo just a touch too early for General Kintobor to have had anything to do with the project's initiation.

Four lives, now, to get her hands on these papers and prove to the world that Robotnik was a mad scientist who treated her people like cattle. And her father's advisors couldn't even be bothered to talk about 'preliminary testing on soldier volunteers' or 'reassignment of non-essential personnel to voluntary weapon-system research.'

Grunt in tank.

"This is probably the worst that Cat has found," Antoine apologized, taking the paper away. "But there are other documents mentioning Pullo over your father's signature, on the royal letterhead. Captain Snively's own notes frequently suggest that his own experiments developed from his investigation of Science Ministry weapons projects that researchers loyal to your father destroyed at the time of the coup. He calls it the 'Recovery Project.' As of yet, however, there is still no evidence that any actual testing of the technology on persons occurred during your father's reign."

That could be the day two headline. King Max Did Not Actually Put Grunt In Tank.

"As of this moment, Your Highness, only Cat and I are aware of this. Two young wolves have helped him with his work, but he has not let them read the documents. I felt that you should be consulted to determine what course of action would best—"

Her pen bit into her notepad, cutting out block letters. BURN THEM

Antoine nodded. "I will ask Cat to do what he can to remove the unfavorable portions of the evidence from the original drive, in case Robotnik has additional copies which he may attempt to release to the public and blunt our offensive. It may take time, however, and—"

TAKE IT

He nodded again, while saying: "Are you sure? If the propaganda war is to be two-sided, it is essential that Robotnik not be permitted to seize the initiative by releasing—"

Sally underlined the words.

"Yes, mon Princesse. . . . may I return? To speak to you soon?"

Her neck was swollen, she discovered as she levered her skull up a centimeter, down.

Objectively, she considered, drifting, waiting for the doctor, there was just as much reason for hurry as there had been a day ago, when she was rushing her people at the doors of Napiers Hospital without wasting time on things like breath and food and the value of their lives. There was more reason for hurry, in fact. Antoine was perfectly right, as he always was.

But that hot insistent need for everything to be done now, to be accomplished now, was gone. She was floating outside of her body, outside Knothole, outside the planet. Time ground away beneath her, slowly, spilling left to right. It was simple to take the country back, like building a structure from the ground up. Start with strong foundations. The speed of building is not important; its unyielding soundness is.

The threats were clear. Robotnik would fight back, hard and slow, but he wasn't the immediate problem. Mobius had never freed itself because of the constant, pointless infighting among its rebels. And it was clear where that would come from now: Griffith Varitek. And possibly Ari Koren, in the Standard Army.

She'd have to arrange a meeting with both of them.

The tools were at hand. For policy and diplomacy Antoine: loyal, perceptive, a worthy aid and test to her judgment. For combat, Lupe Almatrican and her wolves: brutal, experienced, and as loyal as she intended to be to them.

And of course Tails. Fierce as Sonic; smarter. He'd grow into an ideal commando, in a year or two, one with the personal loyalty to her that was beginning to run in short supply among her gunmen. And if he was hurt—

She tested herself.

She imagined two grief-stricken Privates dragging Miles in by his arms, his torso almost discorporate with red holes, his snout still twisted in a grimace at the pain that had chased him out of the world.

Thinking of it, Sally felt a sort of—letdown. She wished the breaks had gone another way.

Other than that, she felt nothing.

She felt nothing at all.

Despite the violent and unanticipated complications, the patient experienced a remission of symptoms and was recovering. The operation was a success.

Kain Blackwood - 2009