"I hate places like this!"
Rouge was an outdoors person. In moderation. She liked sand and surf – just as long as there was moonlight accompanying. She was on good terms with flowers, especially exotic breeds – but she preferred them all the more if they were confined to pots and gardens. And trees were all right, she used to climb them all the time as a girl – but nice, tame trees that grew sparsely in a park, not murderous wood demons out to strangle her path!
"Two weeks. No wonder They aren't looking for me – you can't move anywhere in this swamp!"
Her path to civilization wasn't growing any easier. The jungle rushed at her with all its wild outgrowth: Branches refused to stay off the path; thorns grew plentiful on the vines that dangled in her face. She tripped and cursed her way through the untamed lands.
The moon was hidden as well – Storm clouds brewed over the jungle and blocked out the slits of light raining through the trees. Though nocturnal by nature, Rouge had to strain and squint to see properly through the broth of shadows. Her echolocation was no help either. She tried a few high-pitched clicks on the trees, and her screeches simply bounded back at full throttle, having struck an impenetrable wall. The jungle was thicker than any security vault she had ever peered into.
Near blind, she could at least use her sonar abilities to check the path ahead, and she clicked every few steps to make sure she wouldn't run into a wall when the road curved. There was nothing to save her body though, so she gritted her fangs and endured the cuts and scrapes. Thank goodness her leather suit concealed her entire figure.
"Emeralds," she panted, feeding her will with fantasy. "Bubble baths … chocolate … a dead weasel…"
A splash of pain in her stomach made gasp. Rouge bowed over, clutching her insides. It felt like knives were being rolled around in her gut!
"That would be supper," she winced. The fish. She should have starved. Now, she would have to walk with inflamed innards forcing a pile of indigestible poison through her system.
She kept walking with one hand holding her stomach, and slowly, she began to feel a change in the jungle, though she knew not whether for the better.
The road deteriorated into dry sand that crunched under her feet, and slowly, her sonar pulses began to travel farther. The trees were thinning out. Most were loosing leaves or shedding bark. The rest were dead. She could walk at full height without dodging brambles and roots, but at what cost, she wondered. Why was the jungle … she strained for a verb… crumbling? A train platform couldn't devastate this much, could it?
Her nose caught the scent of oil.
Then her latest echolocation came back and blasted Rouge off her feet! Something big, up ahead! Her stomach reeled.
She tried to save a mental snapshot of the intense sound waves. The object rebounding her singing returned only a thin, vertical strip, but a strip so incredibly tall! Higher than any tree! It wasn't the right frequency for bark either; it was higher … metal.
An antenna! A radio tower? It must have been for the train station, she was finally at the end of this nightmare!
Storm clouds bubbled and churned up above. The clouds were gathering, but there was not yet enough to unleash the downpour. The storm ground its teeth and thunder gnashed the skies.
Rouge tried to contain herself: the waves had come uninterrupted, so the path must not have veered. Perfect – she would beat the rain and get out of this hellhole! Rouge fought the knives in her chest and stood, limping down the road of ashes and dying trees, shrieking above the threshold of normal hearing and letting that strip of sound guide her.
She tripped on a rock and stumbled into a clearing. The storm snarled.
Her vision was beginning to blur – she really was sick, and what she could see made her sweat in a hot fever. There were no trees at all, here at the edge of a great cliff. Had she staggered any further, she would have gone over and plunged to her death. Below that, she could see only more green jungle.
"That damn cat! He sent me down the wrong way!"
She could hardly stand against the pain. But what was this antenna of metal she had discovered? Here, unburdened by the shadow of trees, her filmy eyes could dive down the cliff and follow the jungle growing in a deeper basin. Something else had grown out of the jungle, and it climbed higher than any living thing, towering up even above Rouge and her elevated ground.
A Tower – that was it. And she could see the black outline of a path stretching from the enormous spire all the way to her precipice, like the single branch of a dead tree. She trudged over to this pathway unafraid. Skyscrapers and towers were her element after all, and she couldn't last out here too much longer, sick and sightless.
She realized something: it was still dark. Not a single window shone a single light from the dead tower. It was empty.
Still, she decided to investigate. The pathway was, in fact, a tube of glass – her echolocation told her that much. It was some sort of moving escalator or tramcar to ferry passengers over to the skyscraper. All right, she had figured out what this thing was; now the obvious question:
"Who the hell tries to hide a skyscraper in the middle of the jungle!?"
She exhaled. "And why am I asking that when I know damn well who it is?"
Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and the world lit up enough for Rouge to see the face emblazed onto the door. Menacing eyes, hawk-nose. A fierce set of teeth comprising a doorway and a wild moustache.
She took a stiff breath. "The Doctor."
Now she knew what this place was: The jungle was Mystic Ruins, and this was the abandoned base G.U.N. had excavated long ago. She was standing at the gates of Final Egg.
And the thought worried her not the least. "Dusty ol' place," she tsked, drawing her nail through the lichens settling over the doorway. The stats of this fortress had been included in the briefing of her final mission. Suffice to say, it was large, and mostly cordoned off by think security doors, but all that really mattered was that G.U.N. had poked through and confirmed its vacancy: The Doctor had wiped the computers, pulled the power and left the place to rot.
Rouge looked up at the sky and the frothing storm. "Well, I'll be damned if I stay out here tonight." Storm or no storm, that was. She had experienced all the 'great' outdoors she'd ever want.
She didn't bother with the tramcar. Electricity was off, wasn't it? She climbed atop the tube, hissing at her stomach's protests. With wings spread to catch any drunken fall, she crawled across the jungle chasm and towards the growing tower. She would be lead right into the upper levels.
Rouge risked a tiny glance down, and saw the blurry devastation at ground level. Around the tower was a blast-zone of gray land, hollow of trees. The fortress was a spike of poison, driving oil and coolants and smog into the jungle and killing out plant life. No wonder that cat was afraid to go out at night – this place was like a cursed land. Something worse than jaguars or panthers had once slinked around the spire, and he no doubt still feared the long-gone sentinels.
At the other end of her tightrope walk, she realized just how small she was compared to the massive horizon of Final Egg. There was a grating at the top of the tube, which she smashed and lowered herself through. The entrance opened with a bit of stressful kicking. Every time she lifted her legs, her stomach grunted.
Dark. Dusty. She pierced the nothing with a flashlight's beam. A circular room. Control panels; empty green tubes; a strange podium with dangerous arms prodding the sides. "Gotta be a first-aid kit somewhere," she panted. Rouge took some cautious steps, tripped and rolled down a flight of stairs.
It hurt, but the shock of the fall was much worse. According to her flashlight, she seemed to be in some sort of gladiator arena, scarred by laser fire and with more Robotnik-Face doors lining the walls. Maybe He had thrown prisoners down here and let his mechs spar with the captives? The thought made her want to get up, but the pain shooting through her body was finally too much. She dropped in a sweaty mess.
Maybe her stomach felt a little better now, but she decided not to test anything yet. She would not go any farther tonight. Rouge pulled her gem-pouch from her belt and brought her treasures to the light. She wanted to enjoy these one last time.
One at a time, they came out. She would look at them; focus her jade eyes on the jewel in her palm. After awhile, she might touch them, but very gently. She would stroke her finger across the many faces of the diamonds, down the smooth curve of the pearls, and along the perfect circle of her black ring. Then, after an interval, she might wear the jewelry, and slip the bracelet or the necklace over her body to feel the cool touch of beauty spread though her limbs.
Beauty, order, perfection – they were all of these things to her. It was incredible, the way the minerals and elements arranged themselves into such pure forms. Not one jagged edge, not one rough surface; it was all smooth and perfected. It made her think there was some higher order to the world, some greater force that could bring insanity into focus, and channel beauty out of life. They were chiseled out above the rest, her children.
When she was too tired to go on, and when she had given her black-diamond ring a kiss goodnight, she fastened the strings of her purse tightly, and held the pouch fiercely in her hands, next to her head. If she loved one thing as much as her perfect jewels, it was a secret. These were for her, and her alone. She would be the only one so privileged as to gaze into their crystal depths, and she would revel in that superiority.
With the precious stones close to her heart, Rouge let her eyes drop down and take her to rest.