"Odds and bodkins! This is intolerable!" the Eggery complained loudly
after the sudden stop, dusting himself off in his seat. Sonic had just run
him and his transport full of luggage about five miles or so within a few
seconds. "Why don't people slow down and take the time to do things
properly! Rush here, do this, and so forth! The youth of these times, my
boy, don't appreciate the time and effort it takes to put together a city.
Although I must admit, this one is altogether disgusting. Hah! If you
were only old enough to remember the glory days of fair Mobotropolis!" He
punctuated this last statement with a leap from his standing position in
the transport.
"I am," Sonic answered bluntly. There were things to be done. Why couldn't this gent stop talking and get moving? They were walking only because Sir Walter seemed to insist upon it, and didn't understand about having to meet up with Tails before going back. And he wasn't looking forward to a lot of blather on the way either.
"Prffumph! Then you know exactly what I'm talking about. My dear nephew seems to have been a bit of a nincompoop in terms of running metropolitan areas. Into the ground, if I dare say."
"You got that right," the hedgehog muttered.
"And of course, I see you are equally perturbed about this, Frederick, and I can't blame you one lick, hah hah! So, ah..." Sir Walter scratched his head underneath his pith helmet. "What exactly, is the nature of this expedition?"
Sonic paused for a moment, trying to decide between keeping the farce going or telling him bluntly everything that was going on. 'Buttnik might be listening in somewhere and probably ready to try something dirty if he gave the truth away, so he opted for the former.
"Well, I don't know if dear, kind, sweet Julian told you, but we are actually on the way to see Princess Sally Acorn..."
"Indeed?!"
"Yes, and she's, uh, running a bit of a nature expedition of her own out there. I'd say more but, ah, we can't have our invaded. It might disturb the wildlife if unauthorized people poked their noses in." Heh heh. Have that for dinner, 'Buttnik, wherever you're listening from, he thought to himself.
"How exquisite! I never thought Her Majesty would grow up to be so naturally inclined! I will be most delighted to inquire as to your collective experiences. Very well, we shall tarry not a whit more. Onward!" Picking Sonic up by the quills on his head out of nowhere, Sir Walter hopped back into his chariot, placing the startled and angry hedgehog back down upon his feet.
"Hey! Where you get off messin' with the 'do, Colonel Mustard!" Sonic yelled just as Sir Walter turned the ignition on his transport, which drowned out his response.
"Glad you like the old gal!" Sir Walter shouted over the din in response. "I've been riding this craft for a good 15 years and the engine has yet to give me so much as a small cough! They certainly don't make transports like they used to. If only Julian were able to become secretary of travel, a path he probably should have pursued." The Eggery switched the transport's gears into something he liked. "Have a seat, Frederick, and we shall be off post-haste!!"
Before Sonic could comply, the machine lurched forward and inertia placed him where he was supposed to go anyways, albeit in a more cockeyed position. Off went the transport to its destination, at a respectable but still slow clip.
"Now, where exactly is this Tails fellow you told me about?"
*******************
Robotnik sat in a relaxed state, gloating in his central observation chamber. He'd just done something very brilliant indeed, a stroke of genius that enabled him to even impress himself.
It turned out the old man was going to be of some use to him after all. Oh, sure the friendly pat on the back he'd given him was probably out of character, and the rodent might have spotted it anyways. Still, the homing device now sitting on Sir Walter's coat unbeknownst to both of them was well worth a shot. All they had to do was get back to Knothole, and then it would probably take about a day to assemble enough weapons and SWATbots to put the rebellion down once and for all.
He turned and watched the tiny dot on his continental map screen. Bip, bip, bip it went, taking a bit of a detour along the eastern sector to go pick up that fox brat. Once they arrived, it would point in the general direction of Knothole, eventually arriving at a specific location.
Yes, it would all work so simply and quickly, just as long as the hedgehog didn't notice the homing device, and he probably would be too busy honoring the stupid truce anyways. Even if he did, who cared? There would be a next time, as many next times as he needed. Oh, how he relished the moment of looking in the last Acorn's face and watching her see her foolish rebellion die.
And maybe, finally, that'd show the great Sir Walter Eggery what he was really made of.
Oh, where was Cluck? Robotnik wanted his personal assistant present to appreciate his glory and genius. He found the special intercom for the robot, and pressed the open signal button with a thumb.
"Cluck," he barked, "report immediately! I wish to see you!"
"Tibbles and bits, tibbles and bits, nothing cleans da-da-ditches like tibbles and bits!"
What the -
"Cluck, respond! What is your status?" Something better not happen to spoil his day.
"Tails is the proconsul of roam charges! He asphyxiated my ginger s- s-schnapps!"
"Make sense, you bucket of bolts!" Robotnik screamed, punching off the signal button and angrily clacketing commands into a keyboard with nearly enough force to break it. A spycam's viewpoint popped up on a screen, the one closest to Cluck's coordinates, inside a container factory. It was staring at a wall, point blank range. Useless piece of garbage.
After frenetically swinging the spycam around for about fifteen seconds, Robotnik finally located his lackey - or at least, what he thought was his lackey. Cluck's limbs were misplaced and moving unsafely fast in purely random fashion, so that he resembled a sparking, awkward metallic tumbleweed. Entering a 'follow' command, he traced the robot's movements, and found that it was chasing something orange and flying up a bit in the sky.
The fox.
So that was what Cluck had been trying to tell him, trying to convey the source of his malfunctions.
That little son of a -
*****************
"Help!" Tails continued to call out, trying to find either Sonic or some sort of ledge that the spastic chicken of doom wouldn't bash down to get at him. It seemed to be rotating faster, gaining on him a bit once in a while, and every time it did that he'd speed up as much as he could just to avoid getting run over. How'd that thing have enough control over itself to follow him so well?!
He sped through another corridor, trying to avoid the various machinery and bric-a-brac that seemed to be sitting around just for him to fly into. What had it been, half an hour of flying time? Tails should be getting tired...
No! He couldn't quit or he'd be pulp. Wasn't that just a great way to go, being mauled by a stupid thing that was a creation he half-made himself?
Careening around a corner, he looked up ahead and saw the last thing he wanted to see right about now. What kind of person would build a hallway that just had a dead-end at the end and nothing else? This was going to be tricky.
Running out of flying space, he turned in midair, and saw that Cluck had about fifty feet. It would have been a good idea to grab the pistol on the ground outside, wouldn't it? Well, it was there now and not here. Tails said a quick prayer of repentance under his breath as he held his feet forward, bracing for the impact.
The limbs ran into his feet first, at such a velocity that he found himself running on top of the mess just to keep from being pulled under. Goody, a break. He started running faster and faster, moving his spinning tails directly behind him, until he was able to skedaddle all the way over the torrent, and go back the way he came unscathed.
"Thanks, God, I owe you a good prayer tonight," he said aloud quickly, and zoomed back out the hallway. There had to be some sort of way to stop the monstrosity behind him, somewhere in the factory...
The industrial magnet! Perfect! But it was all the way on the other end of the building, the breadth of which he assumed he'd just traversed. What if he got tired and had to stop before he got there?
Well, Sonic would show up before then...wouldn't he?
*******************
"Tails? Where are you, bud? You're not gonna believe what I pulled off this time." After this initial boast, Sonic began to realize that something was wrong at the scene. Random metal boxes lay strewn about the factory floor, one practically ripped apart by some unknown force, and his friend was nowhere to be seen.
"Brrumph! If there is anything worth hunting in this city, m'lad, you best learn to keep quiet!" Sir Walter grumbled as he polished his plasma blunderbuss thingie of a weapon a bit with his sleeve. "Why, I remember my esteemed colleague, Sir Jeffery Stynkelstill, who had the most rare exquisite beast within his sights in the jungles near the Candes Mountains. He was forced to sneeze, and that lovely crested fezziwig heard it and ran for the hills, forcing his pursuit into a lair of - "
Sonic left the rambling Eggery to talk for a bit, and began to case the premises at a relatively moderate jog for him. A hallway here, a closet there - Tails could be anywhere -
Yeah, duh. Anywhere. He turned his view skyward to see if the fox had found a perch, but there was no ledge to be found. Crud, what if he'd wandered off? Man, he was probably lost and just wanted to go home. So did Sonic, for that matter. The day had been too weird as it was, and he had some stuffy aristocrat friend of Sal's family, apparently, to bring with him. Bailing 'Buttnik out, he'd decided, was no longer his idea of a good time.
An ear turned towards the western corridor. He thought he heard Tails' voice for a moment, and listened again.
"Sonic! He's after me!"
Oh, great. Motioning at Sir Walter to listen, he was a bit surprised that the guy seemed already to have heard it. Tails' calls for assistance grew slowly louder, and some other voice seemed to be shouting stuff wherever he was as well.
"Hark! Do you hear that, Frederick? Your friend appears to be in dire trouble! Well, as the great philosophers once said," he growled, pointing an index finger in the air, "a friend of my friend, is my friend! And the enemy of my enemy, is probably somebody pretty nasty indeed if my enemy hates him worse! Huh hah! I always did like the second half of that expression. Let us go, and - rrruph!"
Sonic had grown tired of the speech and merely grabbed his new pal's hand as he dashed by towards the direction of the distress. Right, he'd have to go slower than the speed of sound so he could still hear Tails. Hopefully, Sir Walter would stop talking for a bit before they got to the scene. He hoped there weren't too many hallways to look through...
"Look out, he's right behind me!"
Well, there was Tails all right. He was flying directly towards Sonic, a panicked look on his face. But what was he running from?
Sonic skidded to a halt, nearly losing Sir Walter due to his excess inertia as the Eggery fell flat on his face. He certainly didn't look happy when he flipped back to his feet.
"Now see here, upstart!" he barked, waving a finger at Sonic. "Of all the intolerable -hrruph! Must you be in such a rush that we lose our quarry? Hmmm?"
"Uh, actually, it looks like our quarry's coming to us."
"What?" Sir Walter looked up just as Tails blew by, giving them about ten seconds to look at the - at some - what in blazes was that thing? "Egad..."
"I claim this frog in the face of cold cuts!" exclaimed the sight as it did what could be best construed as stopping for a second. The thing seemed to spin and clunk in place, definitely rotating at a high rate, and uttering nonsense at the same time. It could be best summed up as...a possessed robot chicken -
"Cluck?!" both hunter and hedgehog exclaimed in unison.
"I am the prince of tides! Prepare to have brunch, Tonic the Eggnog!"
"Ya know, of all the funny nicknames your nephew has for me, that's the first time I've been called that." One minute he'd been managing a few controls as Sonic and his enemy were having dinner, now he was doing this. Sonic prepared to spin dash into Cluck and end his misery.
"Careful, Sonic! He's a maniac!" Aw, shucks. There wasn't any mechanical device that could stop Sonic the Hedgehog, and Cluck was no different. Why should Tails be so worried? He revved up a bit, gauging the distance at which he would strike...
"I must say, Frederick, if you don't stop dashing into danger, it'll get you killed!" A big hand once again picked Sonic off the ground. "Your protégé is correct, that chap is off his rocker. What did you intend to do, rip him apart with your bare hands? Indeed," Sir Walter huffed, holding him at arm's length sternly by the quills off the ground.
"H-hey!! Come on! We gotta stop him and this is how I stop things!" Sonic kicked and flailed helplessly.
"Nonsense! You'll not be injured on my watch."
Now Cluck began to bear down the corridor, menacing the three as they stood there arguing. What did this guy expect him to do, let a robot chicken of all things beat them all up? There had to be some way of taking it down... Looking at the blunderbuss held in Sir Walter's other hand, he figured he'd forget he hated guns just this once, grabbing it out of his hand.
"What in tarnation? Give that to me! Have you lost your senses?" Sir Walter blustered, also seizing the weapon back with his free hand but not freeing it from Sonic's grip.
"No time, m'lord, that thing's coming at us and we have to stop it somehow."
"Give me that! Are you under the impression that my chief armory is a toy, good sir! I'll not murder him, even if he is an incompetent oaf!" And the two commenced to struggle over the blunderbuss, one trying to aim it at the monster that attacked and the other insisting that Cluck was sentient and could not be shot, Tails watching in horror as Cluck came closer and closer, his once-funny monologue now becoming a haunting rebuke...
The gun discharged once.
"I am," Sonic answered bluntly. There were things to be done. Why couldn't this gent stop talking and get moving? They were walking only because Sir Walter seemed to insist upon it, and didn't understand about having to meet up with Tails before going back. And he wasn't looking forward to a lot of blather on the way either.
"Prffumph! Then you know exactly what I'm talking about. My dear nephew seems to have been a bit of a nincompoop in terms of running metropolitan areas. Into the ground, if I dare say."
"You got that right," the hedgehog muttered.
"And of course, I see you are equally perturbed about this, Frederick, and I can't blame you one lick, hah hah! So, ah..." Sir Walter scratched his head underneath his pith helmet. "What exactly, is the nature of this expedition?"
Sonic paused for a moment, trying to decide between keeping the farce going or telling him bluntly everything that was going on. 'Buttnik might be listening in somewhere and probably ready to try something dirty if he gave the truth away, so he opted for the former.
"Well, I don't know if dear, kind, sweet Julian told you, but we are actually on the way to see Princess Sally Acorn..."
"Indeed?!"
"Yes, and she's, uh, running a bit of a nature expedition of her own out there. I'd say more but, ah, we can't have our invaded. It might disturb the wildlife if unauthorized people poked their noses in." Heh heh. Have that for dinner, 'Buttnik, wherever you're listening from, he thought to himself.
"How exquisite! I never thought Her Majesty would grow up to be so naturally inclined! I will be most delighted to inquire as to your collective experiences. Very well, we shall tarry not a whit more. Onward!" Picking Sonic up by the quills on his head out of nowhere, Sir Walter hopped back into his chariot, placing the startled and angry hedgehog back down upon his feet.
"Hey! Where you get off messin' with the 'do, Colonel Mustard!" Sonic yelled just as Sir Walter turned the ignition on his transport, which drowned out his response.
"Glad you like the old gal!" Sir Walter shouted over the din in response. "I've been riding this craft for a good 15 years and the engine has yet to give me so much as a small cough! They certainly don't make transports like they used to. If only Julian were able to become secretary of travel, a path he probably should have pursued." The Eggery switched the transport's gears into something he liked. "Have a seat, Frederick, and we shall be off post-haste!!"
Before Sonic could comply, the machine lurched forward and inertia placed him where he was supposed to go anyways, albeit in a more cockeyed position. Off went the transport to its destination, at a respectable but still slow clip.
"Now, where exactly is this Tails fellow you told me about?"
*******************
Robotnik sat in a relaxed state, gloating in his central observation chamber. He'd just done something very brilliant indeed, a stroke of genius that enabled him to even impress himself.
It turned out the old man was going to be of some use to him after all. Oh, sure the friendly pat on the back he'd given him was probably out of character, and the rodent might have spotted it anyways. Still, the homing device now sitting on Sir Walter's coat unbeknownst to both of them was well worth a shot. All they had to do was get back to Knothole, and then it would probably take about a day to assemble enough weapons and SWATbots to put the rebellion down once and for all.
He turned and watched the tiny dot on his continental map screen. Bip, bip, bip it went, taking a bit of a detour along the eastern sector to go pick up that fox brat. Once they arrived, it would point in the general direction of Knothole, eventually arriving at a specific location.
Yes, it would all work so simply and quickly, just as long as the hedgehog didn't notice the homing device, and he probably would be too busy honoring the stupid truce anyways. Even if he did, who cared? There would be a next time, as many next times as he needed. Oh, how he relished the moment of looking in the last Acorn's face and watching her see her foolish rebellion die.
And maybe, finally, that'd show the great Sir Walter Eggery what he was really made of.
Oh, where was Cluck? Robotnik wanted his personal assistant present to appreciate his glory and genius. He found the special intercom for the robot, and pressed the open signal button with a thumb.
"Cluck," he barked, "report immediately! I wish to see you!"
"Tibbles and bits, tibbles and bits, nothing cleans da-da-ditches like tibbles and bits!"
What the -
"Cluck, respond! What is your status?" Something better not happen to spoil his day.
"Tails is the proconsul of roam charges! He asphyxiated my ginger s- s-schnapps!"
"Make sense, you bucket of bolts!" Robotnik screamed, punching off the signal button and angrily clacketing commands into a keyboard with nearly enough force to break it. A spycam's viewpoint popped up on a screen, the one closest to Cluck's coordinates, inside a container factory. It was staring at a wall, point blank range. Useless piece of garbage.
After frenetically swinging the spycam around for about fifteen seconds, Robotnik finally located his lackey - or at least, what he thought was his lackey. Cluck's limbs were misplaced and moving unsafely fast in purely random fashion, so that he resembled a sparking, awkward metallic tumbleweed. Entering a 'follow' command, he traced the robot's movements, and found that it was chasing something orange and flying up a bit in the sky.
The fox.
So that was what Cluck had been trying to tell him, trying to convey the source of his malfunctions.
That little son of a -
*****************
"Help!" Tails continued to call out, trying to find either Sonic or some sort of ledge that the spastic chicken of doom wouldn't bash down to get at him. It seemed to be rotating faster, gaining on him a bit once in a while, and every time it did that he'd speed up as much as he could just to avoid getting run over. How'd that thing have enough control over itself to follow him so well?!
He sped through another corridor, trying to avoid the various machinery and bric-a-brac that seemed to be sitting around just for him to fly into. What had it been, half an hour of flying time? Tails should be getting tired...
No! He couldn't quit or he'd be pulp. Wasn't that just a great way to go, being mauled by a stupid thing that was a creation he half-made himself?
Careening around a corner, he looked up ahead and saw the last thing he wanted to see right about now. What kind of person would build a hallway that just had a dead-end at the end and nothing else? This was going to be tricky.
Running out of flying space, he turned in midair, and saw that Cluck had about fifty feet. It would have been a good idea to grab the pistol on the ground outside, wouldn't it? Well, it was there now and not here. Tails said a quick prayer of repentance under his breath as he held his feet forward, bracing for the impact.
The limbs ran into his feet first, at such a velocity that he found himself running on top of the mess just to keep from being pulled under. Goody, a break. He started running faster and faster, moving his spinning tails directly behind him, until he was able to skedaddle all the way over the torrent, and go back the way he came unscathed.
"Thanks, God, I owe you a good prayer tonight," he said aloud quickly, and zoomed back out the hallway. There had to be some sort of way to stop the monstrosity behind him, somewhere in the factory...
The industrial magnet! Perfect! But it was all the way on the other end of the building, the breadth of which he assumed he'd just traversed. What if he got tired and had to stop before he got there?
Well, Sonic would show up before then...wouldn't he?
*******************
"Tails? Where are you, bud? You're not gonna believe what I pulled off this time." After this initial boast, Sonic began to realize that something was wrong at the scene. Random metal boxes lay strewn about the factory floor, one practically ripped apart by some unknown force, and his friend was nowhere to be seen.
"Brrumph! If there is anything worth hunting in this city, m'lad, you best learn to keep quiet!" Sir Walter grumbled as he polished his plasma blunderbuss thingie of a weapon a bit with his sleeve. "Why, I remember my esteemed colleague, Sir Jeffery Stynkelstill, who had the most rare exquisite beast within his sights in the jungles near the Candes Mountains. He was forced to sneeze, and that lovely crested fezziwig heard it and ran for the hills, forcing his pursuit into a lair of - "
Sonic left the rambling Eggery to talk for a bit, and began to case the premises at a relatively moderate jog for him. A hallway here, a closet there - Tails could be anywhere -
Yeah, duh. Anywhere. He turned his view skyward to see if the fox had found a perch, but there was no ledge to be found. Crud, what if he'd wandered off? Man, he was probably lost and just wanted to go home. So did Sonic, for that matter. The day had been too weird as it was, and he had some stuffy aristocrat friend of Sal's family, apparently, to bring with him. Bailing 'Buttnik out, he'd decided, was no longer his idea of a good time.
An ear turned towards the western corridor. He thought he heard Tails' voice for a moment, and listened again.
"Sonic! He's after me!"
Oh, great. Motioning at Sir Walter to listen, he was a bit surprised that the guy seemed already to have heard it. Tails' calls for assistance grew slowly louder, and some other voice seemed to be shouting stuff wherever he was as well.
"Hark! Do you hear that, Frederick? Your friend appears to be in dire trouble! Well, as the great philosophers once said," he growled, pointing an index finger in the air, "a friend of my friend, is my friend! And the enemy of my enemy, is probably somebody pretty nasty indeed if my enemy hates him worse! Huh hah! I always did like the second half of that expression. Let us go, and - rrruph!"
Sonic had grown tired of the speech and merely grabbed his new pal's hand as he dashed by towards the direction of the distress. Right, he'd have to go slower than the speed of sound so he could still hear Tails. Hopefully, Sir Walter would stop talking for a bit before they got to the scene. He hoped there weren't too many hallways to look through...
"Look out, he's right behind me!"
Well, there was Tails all right. He was flying directly towards Sonic, a panicked look on his face. But what was he running from?
Sonic skidded to a halt, nearly losing Sir Walter due to his excess inertia as the Eggery fell flat on his face. He certainly didn't look happy when he flipped back to his feet.
"Now see here, upstart!" he barked, waving a finger at Sonic. "Of all the intolerable -hrruph! Must you be in such a rush that we lose our quarry? Hmmm?"
"Uh, actually, it looks like our quarry's coming to us."
"What?" Sir Walter looked up just as Tails blew by, giving them about ten seconds to look at the - at some - what in blazes was that thing? "Egad..."
"I claim this frog in the face of cold cuts!" exclaimed the sight as it did what could be best construed as stopping for a second. The thing seemed to spin and clunk in place, definitely rotating at a high rate, and uttering nonsense at the same time. It could be best summed up as...a possessed robot chicken -
"Cluck?!" both hunter and hedgehog exclaimed in unison.
"I am the prince of tides! Prepare to have brunch, Tonic the Eggnog!"
"Ya know, of all the funny nicknames your nephew has for me, that's the first time I've been called that." One minute he'd been managing a few controls as Sonic and his enemy were having dinner, now he was doing this. Sonic prepared to spin dash into Cluck and end his misery.
"Careful, Sonic! He's a maniac!" Aw, shucks. There wasn't any mechanical device that could stop Sonic the Hedgehog, and Cluck was no different. Why should Tails be so worried? He revved up a bit, gauging the distance at which he would strike...
"I must say, Frederick, if you don't stop dashing into danger, it'll get you killed!" A big hand once again picked Sonic off the ground. "Your protégé is correct, that chap is off his rocker. What did you intend to do, rip him apart with your bare hands? Indeed," Sir Walter huffed, holding him at arm's length sternly by the quills off the ground.
"H-hey!! Come on! We gotta stop him and this is how I stop things!" Sonic kicked and flailed helplessly.
"Nonsense! You'll not be injured on my watch."
Now Cluck began to bear down the corridor, menacing the three as they stood there arguing. What did this guy expect him to do, let a robot chicken of all things beat them all up? There had to be some way of taking it down... Looking at the blunderbuss held in Sir Walter's other hand, he figured he'd forget he hated guns just this once, grabbing it out of his hand.
"What in tarnation? Give that to me! Have you lost your senses?" Sir Walter blustered, also seizing the weapon back with his free hand but not freeing it from Sonic's grip.
"No time, m'lord, that thing's coming at us and we have to stop it somehow."
"Give me that! Are you under the impression that my chief armory is a toy, good sir! I'll not murder him, even if he is an incompetent oaf!" And the two commenced to struggle over the blunderbuss, one trying to aim it at the monster that attacked and the other insisting that Cluck was sentient and could not be shot, Tails watching in horror as Cluck came closer and closer, his once-funny monologue now becoming a haunting rebuke...
The gun discharged once.