Red Rock

September 21, UC 0079

2129 Hours (PDT)

Tilly had been staring at the adobe ceiling in her room ever since Sonic showed up with the bad news. Her recovery from the previous Sand Blaster attack had been offset by Beauregard's death. Static in her bed, the little Armadillo found herself blinking back tears for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

A knock at the door. It was that Sally girl who'd escaped Oil Ocean with them. "Matilda? May I come in?"

"Yes," she told her.

The Chipmunk entered and took a seat at Tilly's bedside. "I'm very sorry about the Baron."

"He was all I had," said Tilly. "I never even knew I'd had a family before I met Mighty."

Another life destroyed by Robotnik, Sally thought. "You mean you never knew your Mom or Dad?"

"The Baron was the closest thing to a father I ever had," she said. "My parents died a long time ago."

"I know how you feel," said Sally. "When I was a little girl, I lost my parents to Robotnik's takeover. I got them back eventually, but then Eggman came to Mobius and we're still having to fight him. Even before then, I met other people I've grown to love, like Bunnie and Sonic. You have Mighty, too."

"I don't even know him," Tilly admitted.

"I'm sure you will in time," Sally assured her.

Tilly sighed. As kind as the princess' words were, the pain was as sharp as ever. "I'm worried about what's going to happen now that the Baron's gone," she said. "What if the Sand Blasters come back?"

"I don't know if they'd even try," said Sally. "Bunnie's the Baron's niece and she's been hurting as much as you. But she ran off to Sand Blast a little while ago."

"Revenge?"

"No doubt. But her decision's rash. Sonic had to go after her."

In the command center of the Sand Blasters' headquarters, Jack Rabbit received a most unwelcome revelation: "Spy-Eye ZG-35," an electronic voice buzzed over a speaker. "Sonic the Hedgehog spotted on Slott Avenue, heading north."

Jack scowled. "Terrific. First that Bunnie bimbo and now him!" He faced the Duck seated at a nearby console. "Clampett, patch me in to Reaper." Picking up a corded phone nearby, he waited for a response.

It came. "How's it going, Jack?"

"Keep an eye out, Reaper, Sonic's showed up."

Sapper laughed. "The deal was 10,000 for Beau's niece," he reminded the Sand Blaster leader. "Sonic wasn't part of the picture."

"Fine, I'll throw in another 5,000 if you kill him, too," Jack grumbled.

"I'll think about it."

Before anything could be done, however, a klaxon blared and the word "Intruder" repeated over the loudspeakers.

Jack rushed to the console and pulled up the camera nearest to the breach. A Legionized Rabbit in a cowboy hat was slowly making her way down a hallway. For some reason though, she was leaning against the wall. "She's wounded," said Jack, a little optimistically. "We have a chance!"

Bunnie wasn't wounded, but she felt like it. Having just received new robotic limbs, she threw herself into a fight half-recovered. Despite this, she did quite a bit of damage to Jack's bootlickers.

Now the pain from the surgery was starting up once again and at the worst possible time: she'd just busted into Jack's headquarters.

"Look what we have here," someone said from behind.

Bunnie looked to see the Avery, Jack's muscle, approaching.

"Seems somebody learned from her mistake last time," the Bear said, cracking his knuckles. "How many of your own friendlies have you killed tonight? Haven't heard from Shift."

"Y'all'd better bug off," said Bunnie, panting. "I've got a score to settle with Jack."

Avery chuckled. "Don't know about Jack," he said, "but I can help you."

The robot arm felt so heavy now. Bunnie could only move it slowly, giving the hulking bear ample time to get close to her.

He gave a strong punch to the cyborg's stomach, sending her rolling away a little.

In a desperate attempt at defense, Bunnie used her organic arm to raise up its cybernetic partner. "Get back," said Bunnie. "Y'all'd better get back!"

"What's this? Scared?" Avery said, sort of mockingly. "After breaking the Freedom Fighter's no-killing rule, you suddenly want mercy."

"Y'all killed my uncle."

"No we didn't. That was Reaper's handiwork. You can get mad at him… if you can find him."

POP! Bunnie's robotic fist took flight, smashing into Avery's chest, sending him sliding toward the hole she'd made coming in. It landed on the ground, beeping for a second before returning to the socket it was launched from.

"You BITCH!" he came charging for Bunnie, hands clasped for a monstrous haymaker.

In an act of desperation, the beleaguered cyborg unsheathed the progressive blade housed in the wrist of her robot arm: a foot-long steel blade. That was all that she was planning on, but something happened that Bunnie didn't intend: something caused the jets in her legs to jet out a small burst propelling her forward toward the incoming Bear. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting to get hammered.

Avery never hit Bunnie, though she was expecting him to.

The cyborg cracked her eyes to peek. The blade had penetrated the Sand Blaster, but not fatally.

The blade retracted from the bloody wound it had created. It was in an extremely personal space.

The Bear trembled in pain; his eyes wide in shock. He dropped to his knees and covered his crotch with his hands as he fell forward. Blood oozed through his fingers. "My balls, my balls… you fucking bitch!" He so much pain, he couldn't move aside from his head. The only thing he could see was his former prey looming over him.

This wasn't the result Bunnie was looking for, but it was better than having her back smashed by the now-immobile Sand Blaster. Again, she aimed her cybernetic arm at the helpless foe. A small red dot appeared on the Bear's cheek. She wasn't in any mood for words. Not a witty one-liner or an apology for what she was planning to do. Just a blank, emotionless face. None of these so-called "friendlies" needed any sympathy.

"Bunnie, stop!"

The dot on Avery's face blinked out of existence. The Rabbit looked behind her, towards the new, familiar party.

Sonic had found her and he wasn't happy. "Don't you dare make another move," he told her.

"I'm gonna do this, Sonic," she said. "I'm ending this feud once and for all."

"By killing everyone you come across?"

"It's Jack's fault Uncle Beau's dead," she responded. "They're all gonna get it."

"Bunnie, look," said Sonic "I know you're hurting over what happened to your uncle, but killing Jack and his goons won't bring him back, and you're not gonna do anyone any favors if you die too. How do you think Antoine would react if he woke up and found out you'd gotten yourself killed?"

After what felt like an entire year, Bunnie lowered her arm and hung her head. Sonic had won the argument, Avery (and by extension Sand Blast itself) had suffered enough.

"Listen, we have to get out this place ASAP," Sonic told her. "This whole city—!"

"You ain't going nowhere!" The two ex-Freedom Fighters' attention was snatched by the appearance of Jack further down the hallway. In his right hand, he had a device that seemed to be an old camcorder with two rabbit-ear antennae. It was aimed squarely at them. "You did a mighty fine job wrecking my city, doll. Now don't move an inch and I'll think about throwing you two in a cell."

Sonic scoffed. "To think that I used to be your hero! Then again, it wouldn't be that different from the first time I'd paid a visit."

"You helped the DEL in the past, doc," Jack told him, "and your friend there's iced a bunch of my boys. Both of you are damaged goods."

"Nice gizmo, Jack," Sonic said in regard to the weapon he held. "Rob the toy section of a pharmacy to get it?"

"Prototype Anti-Legion Gun," said Jack. "Something Shift and Avery were working on. Won't have any effect on you, Sonic, but it'll make your little friend over there go boom!" He noticed its co-creator in a fetal position on the floor as a pool of blood slowly expanded. Whipping out his commlink, he called a med team to the ground floor.

"Jack, I'm not playing around," said Sonic. "Something is coming and it's gonna blow this joint to Kingdom Come!"

"Oh, really? What?"

"I don't know," Sonic admitted "but it's going to wipe this place off the map! You need to get everyone here out to safety right now!"

Jack laughed. "Something's going to destroy Sand Blast and you don't know what? Sounds like somebody couldn't think out their story."

The commlink buzzed. "Jack, it's Jolt. Airborne visitors in Sector 8."

"It can't be the Chapter," he said. "Not after today."

Muffled explosions could be heard from the other end. "These are bombers! You—!" Static.

"Still think I'm lying, Jack!?" said Sonic, angrily. "What matters the most to you? Your stupid vendetta or other people's lives?"

Jack wasn't responding. Paralyzed with shock, he could only stare at the commlink, seemingly unaware that he had let his anti-Legion weapon slip from his grip.

He didn't even notice the medical team that rushed in to collect the wounded Avery.

"Well, Jack?" asked Sonic. There was still no response. "C'mon, Bunnie," he told his friend, "we need to bolt, right now!"

They were off.

In the right frame of mind, Jack would have pulled the trigger and set off Bunnie's bombs without a second thought. But now his mind was blown.

Tex and Shift were dead, Avery wounded, low on manpower and equipment, not to mention the dome was still down.

The distant rumble was a reminder for him that Sand Blast was doomed.

Sonic carried Bunnie in his arms, in the same bridal manner he'd held Sally on their way westward. Spotlights still burned and neon still flashed, but the light the city emitted often caught the hull of large purple aircraft. "Heard the dude on the line say something about bombers," he told her. "Those are probably them."

"The blasting must be on the city limits," Bunnie suggested. "What if their boys on the ground got stopped by the beacons?"

"Makes sense," said the Hedgehog.

Out of the back of one of these large planes came a humanoid shape that landed further away. Another one came down closer to the pair's position, and then a third landed further up the street Sonic and Bunnie were on.

The closest could be seen the most clearly of all: it was green and had a single horn on its head. A mechanical construct, it had only one pink eye and it brandished some kind of gun. To Sonic, this seemed like the descendent of stuff like Robotnik's SwatBots and ComBots from back in the day, but the size of the thing would have made more sense for that one universe where the Freedom Fighters were giant monsters. For a moment, he was thinking another DEL unit had showed up to avenge Beau, but then he caught sight of a familiar insignia emblazoned on the shield mounted on its right shoulder. "Zeon!"

"Zeon? Sonic, you mean that…?"

"Bunnie," he interrupted, as the machine began firing off its weapon "if we don't get the hell out of this place right now, we're dead!"

Sonic took off, fleeing toward the outskirts of Sand Blast, weaving his way down streets and through alleys and avoiding panicked civilians also trying to escape.

The vicinity of the city was pocked with blast craters and a few tanks, frozen in place by a beacon. They were behind the enemy lines now, but weren't sure if the enemy knew about them.

When Sonic finally came to a stop, it was on a bluff just across the river. The view wasn't as spectacular as it would have been from atop the Great Canyon, but they could see enough of the carnage going on.

It would seem weird for them to be bombing vacant desert, but given the status of that tank they'd passed on the way out, the objective was obvious: knock out the beacons before sending more ground machinery in. Those large machine guns rang out within Sand Blast itself. "Well, Bunnie," said Sonic, "I think you got your wish. I don't think Jack's going to make it at this rate."

She wouldn't argue about that, but the matter left her hollow. "What have I done?" she said.

"I'm not going to lie, Bunnie," said Sonic, "you really fucked up. You shouldn't have tried to run off in your condition, feelings or no feelings."

"I killed people, mutilated them!" she said, breaking down. "How am I any different than Jack, or even Eggman?"

Sonic held his friend close. He recalled what Scourge said to him not all that long ago: "I know why you hate me. It's that all it takes is one bad day, and you'd be just like me." He wasn't wrong. After everything Bunnie had gone through in the recent past, she was just hanging on a thread. Having her uncle die what the pair of scissors that cut it. "Bunnie," he said "you're still alive. Listen, you're strong and you're better than either of them. None of us are going to desert you over something like, as heinous as it is. You just need to keep moving forward." He looked back at Sand Blast: a terminal city on its last night as what one could barely call a defense force engaged in an uphill struggle to put those giant automatons down. Despite his skills, Sonic wasn't even sure he could stop all of this by himself. "We need to get back to Red Rock," he said reluctantly. "I'm just hoping they don't find it."

Much of the damage to Luna II's docking bay had been rectified, though it was still obvious it had seen its share of action recently. Two vessels, a Pegasus-class battleship and a Salamis-class cruiser, would be moving any minute.

From the control room overlooking the cavernous shipyard, Wakkein and several other officers watched as the two ships below were primed to go.

A voice from the intercom: "This is Salamis. Launch prep complete!"

"Roger," the technician replied. "Gate fully clear. Proceed to main gate. White Base is on standby. Output rising."

The next voice to be heard was Bright's: "We have our orders from Federation command. We're bound for Jaburo!"

"We wish you a safe trip back to Jaburo," Wakkein replied. "Godspeed!"

The Salamis moved first, her engines roaring like an otherworldly beast and slowly eased toward the sub-gate which led to a tunnel out of the asteroid.

Once she was through, it was White Base's turn to head out.

In time, both vessels were spaceborne again. Time of departure, 0808 Greenwich Time on September 22, UC 0079.

"Sir, do you think they'll have any chance of making it?" asked a lieutenant to Wakkein's right.

"The brass have no idea what it's like out here on the front," Wakkein admitted. "Unfortunately, the most I can do is wish them luck. In that regard, all I can say is 'who knows'."

"A single cruiser escort is a joke," the tech remarked. "What is headquarters thinking?"

"These are cruel times, aren't they?" the commandant lamented. "War brings out the worst in everyone. God forbid that White Base is captured or sunk, Robinson. The very fate of the Federation rests on that ship."

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

WOOOOF! This chapter was a pain to write, with the opening between Sally and Tilly being the heavyweight with the Sonic-Bunnie-Avery scene coming in a close second. Thankfully, some input from SonicEvan and HyperionGM helped me survive. In all honesty, the parts on Luna II were perhaps the easiest here.

The idea for the anti-Legion Gun actually came from Evan, who suggested a Roboticizer Gun that could affect Mobians who weren't given immunity from the Bem and potentially destroy anything robotic. I thought a weapon that could set off Legion bombs would be better-suited for his guys, may they rest in peace. Its design was influenced by a laser gun Eggman used to destroy Tails' watch he was using to fiddle around with to help Sonic defeat Metal Sonic.

As for Sapper's whereabouts… well, just you wait.