"Yaaah!" Sonic screamed.
He whipped his face around, searching for what had woken him up. A second blast of water splashed into his face.
"This is NOT cool!" Sonic shouted. He shook his head again, flipping the water off as he scanned for his assailant.
There! He saw something coming from his window. He dove out of bed and out of the way. Almost without pause, he leapt out the window and right onto his unseen attacker.
"Tails?!"
The kit was laughing. "Sonic, you're good!"
Sonic got up, dumbfounded, as Tails just kept on laughing. He saw that Tails was holding a cup; nearby, a bucket mostly full of water still sat. "I don't see what's so hilarious," Sonic said.
"Well," Tails said, recovering, "now that you're up, let's go training!"
Sonic's jaw dropped. "What time is it?" He looked around and failed to find the sun.
"It's after sunrise, I checked," said Tails.
The fact that there was some question told Sonic that it was way too early. "Tails, we need to get some sleep if we're gonna be hot for tonight's raid."
"Well, we get to sleep before we go on the raid, so we have no excuse not to start early in the morning. Come on, Sonic!"
Immediately the kit set off towards the forest. Sonic stared incredulously, and wondered to himself, What have I done?
He caught up to Tails quickly. "Uh, Tails… why're you so burnin' to train?"
"Because it's fun!"
"Fun. How?"
"Come on, Sonic. I slept just fine last night. I can handle being a Freedom Fighter."
Sonic wondered if Tails was right. Tails had never witnessed a Roboticisation, so Sonic kept his doubts. Still, there was no good reason not to actively help Tails out with this.
And maybe it would be fun, after all.
Sonic finally began to really wake up. "Alright, Tails, let's juice it loose! C'mon, you think you're too cool—just wait, an' I'll show you what chillin' is when it's done big time. I'm so cool I'm sizzlin'!"
Both Sonic and Tails laughed.
"Mark," said Sally.
Bunnie and Rotor exchanged worried glances. "That didn't work how it was supposed to," said Rotor to Bunnie.
"Got that right, sugar," replied Bunnie.
"Come on, you've got to do better," said Sally.
"She's just tryin' to make us sweat, Rotor hon. Let's think this through."
"I predict the game will end inside of six turns," said Sally.
"Just tryin' to psych us out, Rotor."
"Will the both of you muzzle it?" said Rotor, exasperated.
There was a stunned silence. "Sorry," said Rotor weakly.
"Don't you worry, Rotor. You had every right to say that. Sally-girl was acting so very…"
"I was talking to you, too," corrected Rotor.
Bunnie huffed indignantly. Sally grinned.
"Bunnie, you take over for a turn or two. I've got to make sure everything is working right."
"Oh, sure, abandon me now, jus' when we're in trouble."
"You were the one saying it was just Sally."
"But…"
"I'll be right back." Rotor rose from the table and waddled to his workbench. The project he was working on only required his direct attention for a few minutes at a time. To pass the hours, he'd brought up an old Mobian game called Markers. No one in Knothole had ever beaten Sally at this game—her powers of foresight were far too advanced—but Rotor had recruited Bunnie to help him. Between them, they'd been hoping to at least make the game close, and certainly to make it fun, while Rotor monitored the project.
Originally, they'd planned that Bunnie would examine the short-term aspects of the game, and Rotor the long term. The problem was that, although they had two players, they still only got one turn at a time—and their conflicts in deciding which of their views was more important were turning the game into a more one-sided win for Sally than was normal.
'Markers' was a game that seemed like it had been created by a committee. There were two ways to win and several different types of pieces. It bore a vague similarity to Terran chess in that there were a variety of pieces with different numbers, value, and abilities. However, there were two notable differences. The first was that each piece could be "marked", or threatened and forced to move or be protected, giving the player with the initiative an important advantage. The second difference was the win conditions. You could win either by capturing territory—getting a certain number of pieces up the board—or by wiping out your opponent.
This allowed for multiple roads to victory and several schools of thought on the "best" route. Some players were known for the brute force attack, crushing the opponent by never declaring "mark", thus giving them "free" kills that the opponent couldn't see coming. Other players favored a near-bloodless conquest win, using "mark" almost exclusively to shift the opponent from position and moving in only the pieces necessary to win.
Sally's strength was that she seldom showed her opponents what she was really up to. She always seemed to be accomplishing both win conditions at once.
Right now, Bunnie and Rotor's forces were in the midst of falling apart. Sally had cleverly punched a hole in the middle of Bunnie's lines and Sally was now surging through the gap, causing havoc in Bunnie's plans.
Bunnie scratched her head. "Have you ever lost at this, Sally-girl?" She moved a piece to try and salvage the situation.
"Yes, when I was first taught the game at the palace. I really didn't know the rules—I just moved the pieces I liked looking at." She smiled, and fingered one of the pieces she'd captured. "But I didn't like losing very much. After we came to Knothole, I learned the rules and read up on tactics. I knew how experts played the game before I ever played one of you."
"Didja hear that, Rotor? If we wanna beat her, we're gonna have to do our homework."
"I tried, once," said Rotor as he inspected something. "I couldn't understand the notation."
"Well, so much fer that," she said.
"I'll show you how some time," said Sally, as she moved a piece. "It's been good training for me. Mark."
Bunnie's jaw dropped. Sally had put an entire wing of Bunnie's army in immediate danger and forced Bunnie's only real defending piece to leave its position. Mechanically, Bunnie withdrew the piece.
"Sally-girl, you are amazin'."
"Thanks, Bunnie." When Bunnie looked at her, Sally seemed to be staring through the board and into something else. What, exactly, Bunnie couldn't tell.
"You thinkin' about somethin'?"
"Always, Bunnie."
"No, Ah mean somethin' else. Not here."
"Not really." Sally drove home her advantage on the board. "I was just comparing my situation here to our fight against Robotnik."
Bunnie looked. She couldn't see a similarity. "Sally-girl, all Ah know is that you're whuppin' my tail!" She tried to save as much as she could. She tried to withdraw a piece from the deathtrap Sally had set up.
"Let me show you." Sally then proceeded to remove almost her entire army before making a move with one of her few remaining pieces.
Bunnie was stupefied. Her situation had seemed hopeless just a second or two ago. Now even the forces she had remaining could definitely overpower what Sally had left on the table. She moved aggressively, no longer restrained by Sally's reinforcements.
Sally responded while talking. "This is just how I feel like when fighting Robotnik. He's got power, he's got numbers, and I've got to shift him from position with a small group of irreplaceable pieces."
Bunnie moved to sacrifice a piece, hoping it would force Sally into a poor position. "Mark," she said.
To her amazement, Sally attacked. The piece that was threatened pounced on Bunnie's sacrifice. Automatically, Bunnie exacted revenge.
Sally responded simply, moving her other pieces forward. Bunnie didn't understand. Sally's move had slowed Bunnie down, but only by a turn. She moved to trap Sally, cut her off, and destroy what she had left.
Sally moved one last piece. "Markout," she said.
That was the declaration of victory! Bunnie took a second look at the board and realized painfully that Sally was right. Sally had exactly the number of pieces necessary to declare a "conquest" win, and they were all just in the right positions. If Bunnie had had another turn, she could've reduced Sally's force and broken her ability to win—but Sally's timely sacrifice had kept Bunnie from acting, giving Sally just enough time to move into position.
"I never saw it coming," said Rotor, who had returned to watch the end of the game.
Bunnie laughed. "Well, good then, 'cause I didn't either! So, Sally-girl, just how does this matter to us 'n Robotnik?"
Sally smiled. "You get to be Robotnik's army. The pieces that I had in the beginning of the game are all the animals in the rest of the world. They're holding Robotnik in place by keeping him engaged.
"The pieces I had at the end of the game… well, I like to think that those are us. We're outnumbered, outgunned, but we don't have to destroy everything to win. That's good, because we don't have any hope of destroying it all. But if we weaken things enough, we can punch through and finish the war in one good shot. We just have to play it smart until we get the shot."
"That's all nice, Ah suppose," said Bunnie. "But who-all is this one?"
She held up the piece that Sally had sacrificed to buy her time.
Sally grimaced and looked away.
"You're right. Maybe this wasn't the best example."
An uneasy silence fell over the hut. "Sally-girl, good game," Bunnie declared.
"One of these days," Rotor said, extending a paw, "I'm going to figure out how to beat you at this."
"Good luck," said Sally, laughing. She shook Rotor's paw, then Bunnie's. "Now, I have to see if Robotnik is impressed by my skill with board games."
"Well, Sally-girl, if this war comes down to who can play 'Markers', Ah feel pretty sure that we can win it!"
To be continued…