Workin' through through the finger pain...O_x
Turns out I had a tetanus infection under my nail that was preventing it from healing. After a tetanus shot and a pile of antibiotics that sound like kryptonite(Cefalexin), I'm doing good...lost a noticeable chunk of my nail matrix, but other than that, a-okay! o_o
Helpful life tip: Get vaccinated! ...and maybe, don't wait eleven years for a booster...
I'm actually pretty much all healed up by now. But, hooo, that sucked a lot. x.x
On with the show! :D
-Chapter 104: High Ground 1-
At noon, Sonic tossed about in his sleep. A nightmare invaded his couch-bound nap.
In the doorway of his bedroom, he looked into the nearly empty house. The counter was missing, torn from the floor. Lightening Bolt members cleared furniture. Willy and The Chameleon with a section of couch. Dave with a flat TV, on his own. Charlie and a green rolled-up 'Amy's rug'. BG, Staci and Zooey left with arms covered in dresses. A fridge. A bed, his bed. Amy in her chair. Some other small things remained as well. A tea tin. Trash. Receipts.
Belinda turned at the front door, she held and carried a 'days old' pot of chilli away from her clothing. She spoke, "Mina is in trouble because of you and your stupid friends. People are coming for her. Fantastic."
Sonic turned to face Amy in her chair. In seconds it was nighttime and all the windows had gone missing. He blinked and Amy, was suddenly outside on the deck; her chair dangerously close to the edge. No railing. He reached out to her and his hand hit a door. He noticed he was now on the outside, out front, trapped there by a locked front door. He peered though the small window and saw Amy alone in the rocking chair, in the house now. "Amy!" he tried to yell, but only with a hoarse, quiet voice.
The door handle was too small for his big werehog hands to fit around. He looked into the window again. A hole formed beneath Amy. She and the chair fell down, into black water below. "Amy!" again, no voice but a whisper came out.
The remaining floor slanted. The fridge succumbed to gravity. It moved on it's own. The appliance slid and followed Amy.
Sonic scrambled around the house to get beneath it. The water was gone. The house was on the ground in the middle of a barren field of dirt. The windows had turned to solid wall. Sonic punched with all his might. He felt real pain in his fist and arm when he hit the outside of the building. Still, his big werehog fists couldn't make a hole.
"Bro! Wake up!" Knuckles shook a thrashing werehog until he saw opened eyes.
Sonic blinked to reality. He awoke to a concerned friend and a 'sleeping' arm. "I'm up, I'm up, tssss" he said with a gruff tone, sat up and held his shoulder. Air hissed through his teeth as he cringed in pain. He had transformed in his sleep, midday. His red and white shoes, augmented by Tails, had not busted unknowingly, but altered to a larger sized. Spikes adorned the tops with a band of metal across the foot. He quickly sat up fully, feet on the floor. He avoided accidentally skewing any cushions. "What's going on? Has Egghead made a move?" he asked and rubbed blood back to his scarred, sleeping arm.
"N-no. What the heck were you dreamin' up?" He pointed to the counter across the room. In his sleep, Sonic had punched the side of the kitchen counter and left a dent in the wood.
With wide eyes, "...I...can't really remember," he lied while he made sense of the things he'd seen.
"You're a lot harder to shake when your're this big. How come you didn't transform back? Sun's been up a while now."
He sighed. "Stress. I can't stop thinking about a lot of stuff right now."
"What stuff?"
He raised a tired, numb hand, palm up, "All the stuff."
Knuckles gave him a reassuring smile. "I got a good distraction for you then. Well, not really a distraction since it's gotta do with everything that's going on...but it's pretty cool." He gave a hopeful thumbs up. "Let's go see the glowing-purple-writing cave."
Along the way, Sonic managed to calm down and went back to normal. They met Sticks in the cave Knuckles had apparently known about since childhood, but never thought to mention until then. It was a single chambered, fifty by thirty foot long, eight foot high cave. On every visible section of wall were strange markings that glowed in purple. The lines of writing repeated itself every few dozen characters. It was writing none of them could identify. A lot of triangles, circles and x's were recognisable, but nonsensical.
"Huh, neat," Sonic sounded delightfully surprised and mildly impressed as he looked around.
Knuckles smiled wide, "Told you it was cool."
Sticks, who looked more tired than usual, yawned. "We've done test after test. Tails device is responding to something out in the ocean. The further inland we go, the quieter it gets. That means it's not coming from the cave, okay?" she said and turned to a collapsible metal and veneered press-board table. A small square device with a digital screen turned on. "This thing reads seismic activity on a quantum scale. Each time it spikes..." she waited for the next pulse. It aligned with the glow of the wall. "...the writing shines the brightest. The needle is picking up 'something', though, we still don't know what."
Sonic tapped an impatient finger on his arm as he watched Sticks presentation. "I-"
"Hold that thought," she said and made a hand motion to 'follow'. Sticks silently led them a few minutes walk to her 'scrambled' burrow. "As much as I don't like technology, I got no choice." She closed her door and watched the 'Tails Brand' scrambler show 'fully protected' with a small light in the back of her home. The nightlight size and shaped contraption looked like the silhouette of Tails face with two curved tails on one side.
"Listen up, this is how it is." The badger with dark circles under her eyes took a thin pointer of bamboo. She tapped it's tip on a topographical wall map. The shot of the local terrain showed lots of information. There was the city overlay, a series of 'x's' in the forest, circles in the jungle, arrows in the sea and indicators for elevation all around. "For the last couple days, Rabbit warren's are collapsing in these areas, marked 'x'. Tails has been picking up deep sea vibrations for a while, in this section. Cream and her sister can also hear something under our feet on the far side. As of this morning, I heard 'thumps' that didn't sound natural. Kind of mechanical and creaky. Now, Knuckles got his magical purple cave of wonders emittin more activity than ever? There ain't no seismic activity getting picked up by regular devices. So, what's the deal? Where's all the ruckus comin' from?" She paused for a second.
Sonic and Knuckles attempted an answer.
Sticks held up a hand and cut them off, "You're both probably wrong, unless your answer is: The island is a giant robot."
Sonic facepalmed.
"N-not exactly," Knuckles said and looked thoughtful.
She threw her arms in the air then quickly tapped on the section of jungle with all the circles. "It makes sense! Shadow and Rouge said a lot of the underground stuff still had power going to it; and some places were even systematically interconnected underground, in, sometimes, more than one way. City hall knows about this, that's why they hid the maps and tried to push Eggman off the island. That way he wouldn't be able to reactivate the device. That's why he wanted all the Chaos tech in the first place: To power it all! Mark my words! This rock has boots, and they were made for walking! This is just phase one; we're gonna see a lot more movement from here on out."
Knuckles chimed in, "The master emerald was able to float an entire island. Maybe he wasn't lying when he said he had it? It did go missing when they dropped Angle Island."
Sonic slumped his head over the back of the chair to stare upwards at nothing. "...if...," he said and sat up. "...let's say this is real-"
"-Because it is...go on," Sticks said and rotated her hand at the wrist to hurry him along.
"...right...then what? How would we even go about stopping him? If he's got us all under constant surveillance to a point we need to go to this length to talk, he'll counter any plan we come up with. On top of all that, we're going to need Shadow and Rouge's help, but if we tell Shadow, Eggman can find out through the Black Arm hivemind, which he now has full access to. His main plan is happening out in the middle of the ocean, so even if we did manage to get out there to find out what he's up to, he's already playing off my hydrophobia. That's not even counting how much trouble it'll be if he tries something during the luau, or Mina's concert at night while I'm-" Sonic transformed into his werehog form unwillingly. He sighed, "...we need Amy."
"That's true." Sticks put both hands on top of the pointer and it stuck in the ground in front of her. She yawned and spoke, "Amy's our main 'thinker' in the group; I wish I could think more for ya, but I've been up and on this for days now, and," another yawn, "Even I'm only so strong and coffee can only go so far to ward off the sleep demons, or ghouls, or faeries, or popcorn..." She slowly passed out as she spoke. The bending, bamboo pointer balanced her in place as she entered a dozed off state.
"Hopefully she doesn't end up with nightmares," Sonic mentioned and looked like he reminisced.
Knuckles turned to him, "Did you remember yours or something?"
Sonic took note of Knuckles perception. "Bits and pieces. It looked and felt so real, I didn't think it was a dream at first."
"Jules likes talking about dream symbols and interpreting them. Maybe she can help you out."
They headed to Knuckles and Julie-Su's home. Jules was on the deck out front, in a crossed legged position, eyes closed, as her lavender crystal shined and floated in front of her.
Sonic's eyes widened. "She's talking to Chaos? No way," he said with a cheerful tone.
Knuckles looked excited as well. "She's been trying for a while now. That's what you did last night, wasn't it?"
Sonic gave a single nod. He sat his werehogged self down in the sand nearby and laid back again. The sun had gotten intensely hot since the morning. He backed up into the shade of a palm tree. "Better."
"Hey, Rouge, what's up?" Knuckles noticed her sunning on a nearby towel.
Sonic sat back up and looked to his left, about six feet. "I didn't see you there. Hey," he said and got back up.
Rouge approached them. "Are we safe to talk?"
"Not right now," Knuckles said and hooked a thumb at his house. "In there when Tails is done, though."
They went in and left Jules to her Chaos Emerald time.
"One last sensor," Tails voice was heard from the other room.
Within the living room, Tails fastened the last part of the scrambling device to the ceiling. Cream handed him the final piece, a plastic cover. He fit it over the top of the silver, nail shaped censor and hit his wrist device. It activated and blinked with a red light every few seconds. "Now it looks like a smoke detector."
Sonic explained the findings of Knuckles and the sleepy Sticks to Tails.
Tails sussed out a rational series of thoughts. "Interesting. It does sound plausible to have something going on underground. Only a couple of us specialise in digging or maneuvering in small spaces. Why would he need to make the island move though? Any big move would draw too much attention, and any small move would be cumbersome and ultimately unnecessary. Plus, it's out in the ocean; if the island was a robot of sorts, we'd detect more inland disturbances. I say what we've been picking up are the sounds of a factory producing robots. Or, possibly, an attempt to replicate the Chaos technology from the old laboratories. I say it's more likely the latter, not the former; simply because we aren't hearing any repetitive assembly line noises."
They all heard noises outside. Sonic and Tails looked out the back window. A swath of eight Gogo'Ba tribe members bowed and chanted to Sonic. They all knelt down on small blankets and laid their bodies flat to the ground when they worshipped. "Oom ba-ba. Oooom bababa. Go-omm ba-ba."
Sonic shut the window and closed the wooden slat blind. "Bah, we don't have time for that." A swoosh was heard. He looked out through the blinds again. All the Gogo'Ba members had vanished. "...no time." He closed the blind again.
Jules walked in and saw Sonic the werehog in her living room. "Here you are. Did Chaos talk to you yet?"
Sonic looked confused and scratched the back of his head, "Yet? I talked to them last night."
She shook her head. "I mean today. When I spoke to Chaos just now, they said something had changed. Whatever Rolph told us is no longer true. Chaos was clear that what he told us before was accurate, but since Dr. Eggman can hear the hivemind now..."
Sonic sighed, "He countered us already. Dammit...but he can't hear us or Chaos can he?"
She shrugged, "Maybe?"
Sonic turned to Rouge, "What was it you wanted to talk about?"
Rouge held a hand out. A thin gold chain pooled in her palm. "When I grabbed the heart necklace that activates the inhibitor rings, I didn't realize this was tied up with it."
Sonic used a single claw and took the necklace. "Is this the one we got from the doctor down in the ruins?"
Rouge nodded.
Sonic thought about it. "This could work." He sat on the floor and stared hard at the necklace that dangled from a claw.
"Ooh, think time," Knuckles joined him in the cross legged 'thinking' that he saw. He too stared long and hard at the necklace. Knuckles put on his 'concentrate' face.
After a few moments of silence, "Hmm...if," Sonic began as he shrunk into his regular self once again. The thin piece of jewellery stayed looped on his finger. "If we go back to Eggman with this and say it was stolen by accident, he'll wonder why we know it was stolen in the first place. If we say we know the Lightening Bolts took it the night they got the Chaos tech, we'd be throwing the Bolts under the bus. He could use that as leverage to turn the people or the Bolts against us. However...it could be a good excuse to drop by. Wasn't this Snively's father's necklace?"
Rouge nodded.
"I did recognise it, so I'm technically not lying when I say 'I think it's Snively's now.' Where to say that we found it though..." Sonic paused in planning. He recalled that Hugh had an identical piece. It occurred to him, "Where did Shadow go?"
Rouge shrugged. "I can't know."
Sonic thought again. "Right...at least he won't be in trouble if Egghead starts anything. I doubt even the good doctor would be dumb enough to take him on with three emeralds on hand."
"Two, actually, dear," Rouge said. She got a look of confusion from Sonic. "He slipped Amy's emerald to Mina last night. He figured that if Eggman tried anything, she'd be able to protect herself. Shadow thinks he's going to try something at her concert."
Sonic panicked and turned back into his were form. "She's in trouble! Dammit!" He got up and began to leave. "Chaos contacted me in a dream earlier. We need to go get Mina."
"Maybe tell me more about this dream while we walk?" Jules said as she and all the others quickly left the house.
Inland, at Bonnie's cafe, Mina was spotted by a fan who had been tipped off. Mark the tapir peeked out from beneath his black hooded sweater. He snapped a pic of Mina. "A large mocha with extra whip cream? Mina loves it sweet." Mark sent that message with the picture as a broadcast to his local fanclub. 'Can't believe the Egg man was telling the truth for a change!' he thought as he watched Mina sit down to enjoy her drink peacefully.
Fans from all around the island saw the post and began to make their way to Hedgehog Village by foot or car, sea and air.
Eggman witnessed all that happened. "Excellent. I can speed this along then."
Orbot nodded solemnly.
Eggman rotated a dial on his console and monitored the levels as they change. "...that should be ready by tomorrow morning." He and his right hand bot, left the sub lab and made their way to the surface. "Time to bask in the chaos of Mina's fans flocking to her, and unknowingly right into my army." He grinned wide with bright white teeth that stood out against his dark black eyes with red irises.
When they left the room fully, a red light shined bright. A label that read 'max capacity' flashed on the console.
Out at sea, a lock burst on Eggman's underwater base. Seawater rushed in at an alarming pace and began to drain the surrounding ocean from the shore.
The shore on the far side of the island began to noticeably recede.
Hehe :)