"I understand; but I would like to stay one more night. I have unfinished business here first. I'll come by the fortress in the morning." Tilly smiled.
Shadow nodded with understanding. "Alright."
"I have something for you." Rouge dug in her purse for the little white box and handed it to Sheptilah.
"Witch," she read the writing, "I guess nobody can spell my name?" She chuckled.
"Not by a long shot." Rouge scrunched up her nose cutely. "Since you're staying here, Eggman can show you how to use the phone. I preloaded my personal number and Shadow's in it."
Sonic's eyes lit up. "Ooh, can I have your number too, Shadow?" He was already planning to spam the hell out of him whenever he acted extra rude.
"No. This is GUN business." He was very serious-looking.
Sonic pouted. "Fine."
Rouge winked at Sonic. The blue hedgehog let a sly smile draw up on his face and he turned away. "I can respect that." He was going to get that number some way, somehow.
Thunder rumbled outside in the distance. Tails' fur stood on end and he whimpered. The poor thing was terrified of lightning.
"Are you afraid of the thunder?" Tilly asked sincerely.
"Y-yes," the fox swallowed, "The sudden loud noises and danger of lightning bother me."
Sheptilah felt severe guilt over involving these children in her troubles. How are they supposed to save the planet if they're just kids? Sure, they say they've done it before but it isn't something a child should have to do.
"I don't like it, either. We didn't get a lot of rain in the desert but when we did it was a bad omen. Hypocritical superstition since we use rainbows as our war emblem." She shrugged.
"She doesn't like tight spaces, either. Don't put Tilly in an elevator, she may kill everyone trying to get out." Eggman said. The group giggled and Sheptilah turned her nose upwards.
"Being struck by lightning is common when you're flying in a storm. I won't fly out in the rain, either." Rouge went up to Tails and smoothed down his fringe with her hand. He brushed her hand away.
The rain began to beat against the shack with fervor. Without a door or window panes the shack sometimes flooded but the wide brim of the straw roof usually protected it.
"Who designed this house? You're too close to the sea. What about the tides? A tsunami?" Tilly attempted to change the subject.
"I can outrun a tsunami!" Sonic crossed his arms. "Besides, I built this place and it's not finished."
"Huh," she paused, "Well that answers my question."
Back at the lair Eggman and Tilly were sipping hot cups of mint tea over the grimoire spread out on the coffee table. Eggman sat on the sofa while she sat cross-legged on the floor. The warm drink made her feel better. When she wasn't sipping it she let it float in the air next to her.
"Applying a living soul to a metal object seems to be almost impossible; at least if it's iron." The grimoire page was written in hieroglyphics and featured many intricate alchemic diagrams.
"The Kemetics were geniuses when it came to metallurgy. In Chu Nan they were all about healing. Most others wanted to turn garbage into gold. I think what you want to do with Metal Sonic is a combination of metallurgy and necromancy." Sheptilah bit her thumbnail in thought.
"I don't necessarily want to kill someone to get it done." Eggman was thumbing through a gossip magazine he had lying about.
"You don't kill for necromancy; you bring them back."
"Let's not mess with the dead, alright? Can't you just make him into a real boy like Pinocchio?"
"I'm afraid I don't get the reference." She chewed her nail down to the quick but it regrew instantly.
"A toy maker wished for the puppet he made to become a real boy and a blue fairy obliged but the puppet had to go through trials to earn total humanity."
"For the last time I'm not a fairy." She scoffed.
"I didn't say you were, Sheptilah." Eggman raised an eyebrow.
She exhaled slowly. "At any rate I don't think I'm gonna be able to do what you want with Metal. Sorry about that."
"It figures." He turned the page. He wasn't really reading the magazine. He was only looking at the pictures.
"Shadow asked me about talking to the dead the other day when I was in the hospital. Ever since I learned about Maria it's bothered me that he asked."
"You can't let him do that."
"I won't." She looked up at him with determined eyes. "My job is to protect him."
"That reminds me- you gotta get your act together. I… we... cannot have your suicidal ass get killed and ruin it for everyone."
She sat up straight and gasped softly. She looked around the room wide-eyed and then to Eggman.
"I'm.. I'm cured!" She said dramatically. "Oh, Ivo you've fixed everything."
She was rewarded with a pillow to the face. She grabbed hold of the pillow and squeezed it in her arms, giggling.
"I'm serious!" Eggman pouted.
"I know you are! I will live, for better or for worse." She stuck out her tongue. She finished off her tea and put the empty cup on the floor.
Eggman sighed heavily. He was too old for this nonsense.
"Do you think it's stopped raining? I wanted to go out and fly around."
"What? Like, on a broomstick?"
"No! On a rock! Why would I fly on a broom?" She shook her head with disbelief.
He imagined her struggling to stand on a pebble as she levitated. This he had to see. They went outside to check the weather. It had in fact cleared up. Only a few small clouds remained, hiding the waning moonlight.
"Awesome!" Sheptilah bounced on the balls of her feet. "I love flying." She walked around the outcrop and found a loose chunk of volcanic rock and, with magic, chiseled it into a surfboard-like shape.
She laid it on the ground and stepped on it. She took a stance like a skateboarder with her right foot forward. Magic flowed through the soles of her feet into the stone and it floated several inches off the ground.
"Huh. I imagined a boulder." He scratched his chin. "Where are you gonna fly to, anyway? Stay away from the water."
"We're going to survey the island." She grinned mischievously.
"We?"
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him onto the stone and took off. Eggman let out a high pitched squeal and grabbed onto her waist. He held on for dear life fearing she would let him fall.
"Shadow doesn't like flying, either! It must run in the family!" She laughed into the wind.
"I like flying when I'm the pilot!"
"You're squeezing too hard! I can't breathe!" She slowed their speed. They were at least one hundred feet off the ground, safely floating above the shoreline.
"Sorry." He let his grip loosen. "What are you looking for?"
"I'll know it when I see it." She didn't find anything suspicious. She found it marvelous that the small island was made up of many different biomes. A desert, a tropical jungle, a forest, mountains and snow. This island is a great resource for an apothecary, she mused to herself.
"I think I'll make myself a house here. It'll take a while to synthesize the staff and for you all to gather the Emeralds right? So I'll make my own place. Maybe I'll even open an apothecary."
"Why can't you just stay in the tower?" Where I can keep a close eye on you, he thought.
"It's iron. Makes my brain feel like it's vibrating being surrounded by so much of it." It only took about an hour to make it around the island. Eggman finally relaxed and kept his hands on her shoulders for stability.
"Nowadays witches fly on broomsticks, vacuum cleaners or in mortar and pestles. Well, at least Baba Yaga does for that last one."
"Baba Yaga?"
"Baba Yaga is an old white-haired woman with a face like gnarled bark. She's got iron teeth and lives in a hut that walks on chicken legs."
"She sounds wonderful!"
"The roof of her hut is covered in human skulls and the fence around her domain is made of human bones." Eggman said matter-of-factly.
"I rescind what I said just now."
"According to my grandmother." he switched to a very heavy Russian accent. "Ivo, If you misbehave Baba Yaga will come to you and steal you away in the night! She eats children!"
Sheptilah laughed. "That's ridiculous! Children taste awful."
A moment of silence passed. She landed softly back at the lair in the garden and laid on the cold, damp grass. Eggman flopped down unceremoniously, glad to be back on solid ground.
"How do I use this thing?" She pulled the phone from out of her headspace. Eggman took it and turned it on.
"It's really easy." He swiped across the screen with his thumb to unlock it. "You just lightly tap the glass."
"This is so weird," she was delighted that it lit up on its own, "And it's so light, too."
"It's not waterproof or anything like that so be careful with this thing." He didn't mind teaching someone how to use technology. In fact, he liked it; but it was frustrating to teach someone from the Bronze Age the basics.
"So you've captured electricity and in turn trained it to display certain things on glass with metal backing." She smiled so wide her nose was scrunched up.
"You make it sound like intense dark magic." He chuckled. "It's just basic technology."
"But it's so cool! You know I've never really seen what my own face looks like? I get trapped in reflections so I never kept anything big enough to work as a mirror around. Now I can."
The black screen of the phone in sleep mode made it so she could see her face faintly but not trigger scrying.
"You don't know what you look like? You've never even had a portrait done?" He shook his head.
"Our painting style was more of an expressionist look than a realistic one." She pouted. "I know my eyes are purple!"
"Here." He took the phone and held it up to her face. "Say cheese."
"What?" Then a snap! A small flash of light came from the phone. Sheptilah jumped. "What was that?"
"The flash," he handed the phone to her, "Look."
She held the phone with one hand and lightly touched her cheek with the other. "That's so strange… and I'm really cute." She snickered. "That's so cool. For the first time since I was awakened I really like the future. I'm going to take photos of everything!"
"The phone can only hold so much memory." He warned.
"What makes it forgetful?" She raised an eyebrow.
"N-no, it's not that, it's that it can only store so much data."
She scooted up next to him and asked to take a picture of them together.
"Alright, I always oblige my fans."
"Your fan?" She turned to him and looked at him with a somewhat disgusted expression. He had a smug, toothy grin across his face when he took the picture.
"Hmph! You wanted me to make a weird face."
"Oh, yes."
"First you blow up the moon and then you make me look weird. I should turn you into a toad. A little toad with an impressive mustache." She secretly loved the picture, though. Had she had this technology back in her time it would be filled with her mothers and Hebat.
"You're perkier than usual." He leaned forward. "You haven't threatened me like that in days."
She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, "It's the moonlight. It feels nice." She looked at his shoulder and then his hand. She extended her pinky in order to test the waters. Slowly her ring and middle fingers followed. She almost was close enough to hold his hand.
"Doctor Eggman?" A familiar voice called from around the corner. It was Dave with the last Hanukkah gift.
Sheptilah took her hand back.
"Dave?" Eggman called out.
The blue river rat heard his voice and ran to it. When he saw the witch sitting beside him he went into hero mode.
"I'll save you, Doctor Eggman!" He put the small box down and tackled the woman.
She yelped with surprise and fell back. Eggman scratched his head.
"Dave, what are you doing?" He was unbothered by the 'attack'.
"On behalf of the Lightning Bolt Society I'm getting revenge for you!" He lisped. "I heard she tried to kill you!"
"Oh, hey, you're that cute blue boy from earlier!" Sheptilah smiled.
"What? Dave, get off of her. She's the Egg Boss of this island. Besides, we cleared all that up."
Sheptilah moved her bare feet under Dave and lightly pressed the soles against his ribcage, gently lifting him off of her and setting him down on the ground.
"W-wait you're the Egg Boss? For this island?" The poor kid was so confused. "I'm sorry, ma'am."
Sheptilah sat up and combed through her hair with her fingers. "We resolved our earlier fight. We're friends now. What's the Lightning Bolt Society?"
"Oh!" Dave stood up. "I founded it. We're a group of evildoers who live on this island. We hope to someday take down Team Sonic!" He took a heroic stance.
"I see," she raised an eyebrow and smirked, "Good work."
"Thank you." He bent down and picked up the box. "It's the last night of Hanukkah, Doctor. Here."
"Dave, I appreciate it but I don't celebrate. You can keep it." The Overlander tried to let him down easy.
"Oh," Dave frowned, "Well, sorry then. I'll see you around then."
"Wait," Tilly spoke, "How'd you get here from the beach?"
He turned to her and looked serious. "Don't ask questions you aren't prepared to have the answers to." Dave walked away and disappeared from the edge of the outcrop.
"I don't know how any of them make it here without swimming. I just don't ask." Eggman patted her on the shoulder.
"Furries." Was all Sheptilah could say.
"What was that unfinished business you mentioned earlier?" He was fiddling with his gauntlet.
She closed her eyes. "It's this. Just hanging out here. GUN is nice and all but they made me sleep in a prison cell. I don't like it there. Anyway, I wanted to verify that you shut down all your side projects like I asked you to."
"I haven't raided the village since you got here." He huffed. "I can't shut down everything. I still need to produce my things, refine the oil for my machines, et cetera. I have, however, stopped harassing the furries."
"Speaking of the Mobians… what is up with the injectors? Are you really going to remove them from the Egg Bosses?" She said.
"If you survive, you will force me to. If you die, you can't stop me from reneging on my word and I absolutely will not release my underlings." He decided brutal honesty was the policy to use. He needed her to live. He has plans to exploit hers and Shadow's magic to take over the planet after the witch-eaters are disposed of.
"What do they even look like? They have to be small, right?" She certainly didn't forget what she promised Shadow.
"Yes, they're tiny. I'll show you. They are one of my finest inventions."
Eggman's lair contained many workshops and even more storage rooms. Most of it appeared to be junk and old robots he planned to recycle at a later date.
He held up a tiny disc-shaped object. It looked like a little metal button. "This is it."
"And it goes behind the ear?"
"Yes, nestled slightly into the bone so that it cannot be cut free." He flipped it over and showed the bottom side of it. The little discs had a sort of claw that embedded into the bone.
"That's horrifying. How do they even come out?" She bit her nail.
"They don't." He narrowed his eyes at her.
"You have no way to even remove them?" Her upper lip was curled in a slight snarl.
"Not without them exploding, no. I never designed them to be removable. However I can invent a way to remove them safely if you were to persuade me to."
"Persuade you?" Her cheeks prickled as they reddened. What the hell was he asking for?
"Yes. Remember earlier? Survive everything and I will be forced to do it."
"Oh." She looked at the floor. Thank the gods.
"What did you think I meant?" He crossed his arms.
"Don't be coy with me," she snapped, "Humans never change."
"What, did you think I was going to ask for sexual favors?" He chortled. "Dear God, woman. I've seen you shape-shift rows of fangs into your mouth. I'm not stupid nor am I interested."
"And you'd be smart to remember that!" She grinned. "I'm gonna kick your ass when this is all over."
"Let's go back to talking about alchemy over tea and cake. I have more questions about what you can and can't do." He gestured to the door.