Chapter 21: Introspection/Devastation
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"What hit me?" muttered Rouge as she regained consciousness. She was lying on Miles' couch, a soft pillow propping her head.
"You have to love sub-sonic flying foxes," replied Ice, sitting nearby and reading a datapad.
"The Emeralds?" she asked as she tried and failed to get up.
"He took them, of course. Now don't fidget! I'm trying to clean that nasty gash on your leg." The bat froze at the second voice, slowly turning around, only to see Vertigo the Fox removing sand grains from a wound.
"What are you doing?" she demanded frantically, though she didn't dare to move.
The vixen rolled her eyes. "Have you ever regenerated with sand inside you? No? Believe me, horrible idea."
The younger adept shook her head. "No, I mean, why are you here?"
Vertigo's slight smile had never left her face during the scene. "My house is in ruins. Miles is my friend. We still don't know where he went. Why wouldn't I be here?"
"Why are you helping me!" demanded the bat, finally reaching the crux of the matter.
Satisfied with her task, the vixen wrapped a loose bandage around the gash, secured it, then patted it as if to congratulate herself of a job well done. Rouge noticed there were four more places where she had been treated.
"Why shouldn't I help you? Ice said he's sick and tired of putting you back together, though I'm sure some of the stories he's told me were exaggerations," she replied, throwing a glance to said shark who was still engrossed in his reading.
"I tried to kill you!" shouted Rouge almost hysterically.
The vixen snorted. "Have you ever even killed anyone?" The bat opened her mouth, but the fox interrupted her. "Directly, I mean, not through orders or collateral. With your own two hands."
The G.U.N. agent looked away, for once showing her thirteen years of age. "I fought to hurt you," she tried.
Ice put the datapad down audibly and laughed aloud. "Chaos adepts beat each other up all the time. The power wants to be used, remember? Other than that, your incident with Vertigo was just you being a brat."
Rouge pouted, knowing she was utterly defeated. "And you say that kit was what hit me?" she asked after a while.
The shark sighed. "Miles Prower, name not found. Seriously, G.U.N. has no data on him. I wasn't talking out of my ass when I told you he's a powerful Chaos adept."
The bat blinked, still a bit dizzy, and attempted to rise once more. She conquered the sitting position before deciding to try for more later. "Where is he?" she asked curiously.
The two older Chaos adepts looked each other worriedly. "He left," replied Ice. "Until later, by his words," he added, rolling his eyes. "Smart as a university population, but more reckless and oblivious than a speed junkie on speed."
"But he was asleep when I… acquired the gems," she mumbled.
Vertigo shook her head. "We checked. A mass of blankets and a device emulating sleeping breaths. It completely fooled us."
The shark nodded. "He had already planned this before your fight. I talked to some of the techs outside. I asked them to check and they think somebody might have hacked their systems. Miles was apparently looking through the reports for leads on the Chaos Emeralds and he seems to have found something he thinks good enough to follow."
"You don't know what?" she guessed.
Vertigo sighed, allowing a bit more of the worry she felt to appear on her face, and indicated a small hill of more datapads on a nearby table next to Ice. "If we knew where he went, we'd have followed. Miles is very capable of taking care of business, usually lethally, and has survived alone comfortably, but we didn't want him to be alone, especially with what he's been going through lately. Thing is, he could be in any number of places."
"We've been looking at the reports ourselves," continued Ice, shaking his head. "How the kid sleuthed something useful out of this utter mess caused by the communications block is beyond me."
Rouge rubbed her head, finding a couple bumps she hadn't noticed before. "That kid's really special huh? Maybe we should recruit him."
Vertigo growled in derision at that, while Ice shrugged. "I don't know if he'd accept. Good luck to whoever tries to train him though…" At the bat's questioning look, he sighed. "Miles probably has a couple libraries worth of martial arts knowledge crammed in his head, but he had had no practice before the Armada came. The kid's a sponge, though."
The vixen nodded. "It's true. During even the hardest fights, a part of his attention is focused on learning. I saw him gradually figuring out how to punch correctly following our lead, how to channel power, how to move and hold himself. Despite that, neither Ice nor I have ever attempted to teach him or spar with him."
The bat seemed intrigued. "But why? If half of what you've said is true, he'd learn fast and he'd put it all to good use."
The shark grinned a bit painfully. "We wouldn't survive his training," he quipped amused. "You see, Miles hasn't learned how to hold back. He has incredible control over his power, but he goes all out all the time. When he tackled you, he was being playful, really. And yet he didn't hold back an ounce of power, exactly as if you were an actual enemy."
"In other words, he's never learnt to 'play nice'," added Vertigo. "Somebody with comparable power would be able to train him very fast, but against one of us? We both have a lot better technique, of course, but the moment he gets pressed, he'd get lethal, without intending to. That's not something you can really teach theoretically. You learn it by age and by experience, two things he lacks. I personally wouldn't want him to have my accidental death on his conscience," she finished, morbidly amused.
"So here we are, waiting for him to either return, us to figure where he ran to, or to hear any reports about him blowing shit up," finished Ice sardonically, picking another datapad from the pile.
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"And it's not like I don't want to be with them, Vortex. I like them both, loads."
Miles held down a button on his console and a charging sound filled the air. Then his little sub leaped in the air, clearing a waterfall like a salmon, before resuming sailing against the Unity River current.
"It's just that… I think I was becoming a bit TOO attached to them. You know what I mean, right Hurricane?" He was only briefly glancing at his tails as he spoke, keeping most of his attention on the river before him now that he was alone. "Ice is a cool guy, even if he's silly at times. I bet he'll ask me to join G.U.N. at some point. And Vertigo's wonderful and she's already pretty much offered to adopt me; twice." He shuddered a bit at the notion. "That's a pretty big step. It won't be anything like a normal parent-child relationship, of course. And yet…"
He activated his drill, cutting through a huge tree log that would have decimated any other boat the size of his Sea Tail.
"And I guess they'll be worried about me, especially since I was rapidly losing my mind during that last part on Green Isle." He shook his head, a bit disgusted with himself. "Of course, Vortex! I know that emotions can often get out of control. I guess I'm also lacking a bit in that respect. At least some parts of me ARE four years old," he admitted, glad he was alone. "But it's one thing knowing the theory and another living through it."
His radar indicated a fight between G.U.N. forces and an Armada detachment happening just off the river bank. He considered helping out, then squelched that thought and submerged, glad the river bed was more than deep enough. His main incentive for taking his sub inland had been to remain inconspicuous, else he'd have flown to his destination.
"It's also a good idea to try and get a handle on myself before I hurt those two," he muttered solemnly. "Oh, I know what they'd think, Hurricane. 'Miles might be strong, but he's a kid. We should be protecting him, we don't care if we get hurt'," he mimicked, deepening his voice accordingly. "Thing is, I do care and they could have easily been injured if we'd attacked those battlebirds. They were cornered, desperate and, thus, dangerous."
He frowned a bit. "So I guess it's both selfish and selfless of me?" He considered that for a while, then gave up. "No clue, but it doesn't matter. I promise I'll take them along next time, Vortex, I really do. I'll just try to grab another Emerald alone before that. And if I mess up and get hurt, at least they won't pay for my stupidity…"
He decided to dismiss that line of thought. "Part of me hopes they will follow, but I guess they won't be able to find me. I knew what to look for when I skimmed those reports. They have no clue the temples were placed to form a huge rune standing for 'Chaos'. Whoever built these places sure loved their symbols…"
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The old owl mobian was pacing back and forth impatiently. "What's taking your men so long?" he demanded.
The officer next to him, a male sparrow, sighed, a bit vexed he had to put up with the annoying scientist. Doctor Fukurokov wasn't part of the normal battlebird chain of command, but he was still carrying the battlelord's mandate and this was his show.
"My men are doing their best to navigate back from the heart of the temple without losing the relic to the many reset traps," he explained calmly. "We didn't want to use the spring exit beneath the dais this time," he added in a severe tone that just begged to be questioned.
Fukurokov crossed his arms and did so anyway. "Somebody should have ridden that trap. A simple jetpack would have saved them from the fall. Now we are all in danger."
The officer glanced back at the two transport planes that had landed vertically just behind them. They were anything but conventional, being little more than experimental platforms for the Armada's head scientist. The sparrow respected his work, he really did. Now, if only the man himself was anything resembling bearable…
"You stopped at another dig site before this one then?" he asked, hoping that idle talk would distract the owl.
Fukurokov did calm down a bit, sighing deeply, and pointed at a secure transparent case loaded on one of the transport planes. The Yellow Chaos Emerald was inside, pulsating calmly. "G.U.N. is all over the island. They've parked some crazy battleship as close to the shore as they'd dare and they are using it to project their forces with impunity. The battlelord didn't want to commit too many of our air forces to a pointless battle, so our enemies have achieved air superiority by now, which makes our communications even harder and theirs slightly easier. I've only been able to jump to the two last dig sites because of the stealth generators on my crafts," he ranted.
Both avians were relieved when a team of soldiers emerged from the tunnel, carrying another Chaos Emerald, this time light blue. "Ho ho ho! At last! Load it on the second plane, into the protective case," he squeaked with authority. He turned to his subordinate. "What about the traps I requested?"
"My men are laying the lesser explosives right now. We're about to use one of your Golems to move the main bomb." The officer managed a smile. "So that's it then? We've found them all?"
The scientist scowled. "You've been out of the loop for too long. The battlelord has the Soleanna one, plus these two. Another one is missing. Its temple was recently emptied, one of my elite golem mechs was ruined and there was no one there except for some corpses. We're hoping the rest are hiding somewhere with the gem, but I'm not holding my breath."
The sparrow seemed ill at ease at the news "What about the other three?"
Fukurokov growled. "That's why I'm in a hurry! G.U.N. is only the second worst problem. We know nothing for sure, but everything indicates the other three Chaos Emeralds are in the hands of The Mael-Sprawler!"
The sparrow gulped. "That's just a legend, right?"
The doctor shook his head. "He might not be some eldritch abomination, but I assure you The Mael-Sprawler is very real and very dangerous."
"But I've only heard rumors. Is that Mael-Sprawler such an issue for the Armada?"
"I know I am, but what are you?"
Both birds turned around at the new voice, suddenly acutely aware most of the soldiers that were supposed to be guarding the area were missing. They eyed the newcomer blankly, then, in the sparrow's case, amusedly. Fukorokov's face lit up in recognition, though, followed by abject horror. "It's him!" he shrieked, taking a step back and aiming a custom pistol at the very young two-tailed fox.
The sparrow looked from the intruder to the hysteric doctor in wonder. "He's just a baby," he deadpanned.
Miles frowned, a bomb appearing in his gloved hand. "That's not a nice thing to say."
"Don't move!" demanded the scientist. "I won't hesitate to shoot you!"
The kit rolled his eyes. "That looks like a KO70r blaster, modified for faster reload and less knockback," he observed. "I have four rings worth of power in me, above my own reserves. I can withstand about six-point-five shots before you can really hurt me, provided you can hit me," he explained confidently. "Also, I can short-circuit its type c3ff nickel-based capacitors with a tiny chaos burst and have it blow up in your face," he added boredly.
"'Some level of mechanical aptitude', my feathered ass," muttered the owl, slowly backpedalling up the loading ramp of one of the transport planes. "Even you can't stop both planes from leaving," he shouted. At the same time, he conceived a desperate plan, hoping the sparrow in charge of the dig site had been truthful. Covertly bringing his free hand to his back pocket, he retrieved a small remote.
Miles also had a hand behind his back, guiding his fox drone towards one of the planes. "Can't I? These are some nice VTOL thrusters on those planes. Model SU-313, I believe?" he asked taking a step forward.
Fukurokov froze at the movement. "SU-314a custom, actually," he corrected uneasily.
The kit nodded. "Very efficient, but they still need about two minutes warm-up and you haven't even started yet," he reminded him lazily. "Ten seconds to take care of your remaining men, twenty to break that nice sturdy carbon polymer Emerald case -seriously, try reinforcing it with Morganite next time- ten seconds to rip that armored ramp you'll obviously raise off the second plane, five seconds to deal with you and another twenty for the second case. That still leaves me fifty-five seconds before take-off, if you start now."
The scientist was sweating bullets at that point. "You…!" he tried.
Miles rubbed one of his ears with one of his tails, his drone having placed a batch of explosives on one of the planes and heading for the second. "Look, just give up. Give me the Emeralds and you can walk away alive," he offered, trying to be merciful. It wasn't easy after weeks of battling –and killing- the Armada.
Doctor Fukurokov sincerely considered that. His current plan to get out of this mess was a longshot where way too many things could go wrong. Then he remembered what the battlelord would do to him if he came back empty-handed. Lowering his weapon, he covertly pressed one of the extra buttons he had installed, something he hoped the kit had missed. Closing his eyes, he depressed the trigger towards the ground and a blazing flash of light stole everyone else's vision. Miles flung his bomb blindly and if the doctor hadn't retreated further, he'd still be dead. Knowing he had to move now, he ripped the remote off his pocket and frantically manipulated the controls.
Miles tried to dodge a familiar sound, but the golem mech, a huge bomb strapped on its back, collided with him and rocketed towards the tunnel hiding the now pillaged Emerald temple, taking him along.
"Detonate the whole thing now!" ordered the battlebird scientist desperately, spittle flying from his beak.
The sparrow officer was still rubbing his eyes. "No! My men are still…"
Fukurokov shot him right at the head, killing him instantly. Ignoring the bits of blood and gray matter on his otherwise white lab coat, he feverishly searched the corpse's pockets, retrieved another remote, tore off the protective covering and pressed the sole red button while jumping further into the plane. Many smaller explosions followed, heralding the big one that pretty much collapsed the mountain in which the ancient temple had been built. The fireball that was caused came out of the tunnel like from the muzzle of a flamethrower, its tail end washing over the two planes. The scientist squeaked as he had to pat a couple feathers that had caught fire, then grabbed the intercom.
"Take off as soon as you can! Engage the stealth generators at once. We're going back to Babylon Six," he ordered, not waiting for an answer since his ears were still ringing. "Die Mael-sprawler," he muttered, looking out of the window as the two planes took off. He was just about to collapse in relief, when he heard another explosion from outside. Eyes wide, he watched as the other stealth transport became visible again and promptly crashed a short distance from the decimated mountain.
Fukurokov gulped, hoping a single Emerald and the fox's demise would placate the battlelord enough to preserve his life.
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End of Chapter 21.
Cliffhangers rarely get more severe, I know. The next chapter will deal with the aftermath. Fair warning: It will be brutal and not for everyone. There will be a weak stomach notice at the top.
Tails appeared as soon as Mael-sprawler was said three times. I wonder how many caught the reference.
I hope Tails' characterization is still believable. He's been through lots of ups and downs and just look at the people he's in contact with: Spies, a vigilante, a mad scientist and a thrill seeker. It's a wonder he's not completely insane, already.
Anyway, thanks for reading and remember to leave a review.