Chapter 7 Capture the Flag (Mobius year: 3226)

The sun was setting on the Great Forest. They knew they did not have much time left. Sonic did not like all this sneaking around. The direct approach had always worked for him and he preferred it to stealth. But he knew that the objective would soon be in sight. A short distance away, hidden from him, Sally lay in waiting. For her, there was only one objective: stop Sonic at all costs. Rotor and Bunnie were nearby as well, paused and waiting for some cue. At the moment, Antoine was lost.
"Why am I always to be given such unuseful directions?" he thought to himself. "If I was not knowing for better or for worse, I would be saying to myself that I am trying to be avoided!" The light began to fail as night closed in. The others would have to act soon, he knew, and he intended to be in on the action. But it did not help if he was lost.
Not daring to call out and give himself away, Antoine began slowly backing up. There was a hint of an autumn chill in the early evening air and the floor of the Great Forest already had a few dead leaves, which, if stepped on, could give away Antoine's position. As he moved back, he brushed against the trunk of a young tree. It bent just enough to release a branch that had fallen from another tree overhead. The ground fall struck just next to Antoine.
"Help! Help! It is the invasion! We are doom-ed!" Out of sheer terror, Antoine ran. It did not matter to him at the moment just where he was running to. He darted straight ahead and plunged through a bush. As he did so, he fell to the ground. In his fall, he grabbed at something; a small square of red cloth tied to a stick.
"Antoine!" Sally yelled. He looked at the object in his hand.
"I have done it? Yes! Yes! I am triomphant!"
"Aw, man!" Sonic groaned. The others began to come out of hiding.
"Bunnie!" Sally snapped, "You were supposed to go for it!"
"No way, Sal!"
"Yes, way!"
"You said Ah was supposed to run interference for you!"
"I said Rotor was supposed to run interference!"
"I thought I was supposed to be guarding the flag!"
"Some kind of guarding, if you let Antoine get it!"
"Now waiting a minute! Princess or non…" They argued at full volume as they made their way back to Knothole Village, as it had come to be called. When Sir Charles had originally designed it, he had attempted to reach for the concealed look. It had initially been planned out during a time of war, so the concealment was meant to keep the coming war away from it as much as possible. As the children realized that Knothole had become for them a safe place where Robotnik's SWATbots were not going to intrude, they began to display differing styles of adapting.
Rotor, a young walrus, was thought at first to be the most serious potential troublemaker. He seemed most at ease when he was destroying things. It drove Rosie to distraction, but Julayla counseled patience. That patience was rewarded when, during one trying stretch when Rotor had spent three straight days taking things apart, he methodically made the rounds of the demolished objects and put them all back together in less than a day's time. In some cases, they worked better than before. Julayla explained that Rotor's mechanical aptitude was part of his way of coping with the situation: demonstrating some form of mastery over a world gone mad. She encouraged him in his interest in things mechanical and electronic.
It was a different matter when dealing with Bunnie, a close friend of Sally's and the only other girl among the children. A child of the southern provinces, she had no use for the formalities and mannerisms of the royal court. If she did not care for your company, she would just as soon make a face at you than politely tolerate you. Yet this also gave her a free and easy happiness that was delightful to behold. She was extremely conscious of the natural world around her, and especially so of her own body. The women did the best they could with Bunnie, hoping against hope that she would grow out of some of her more excessive behaviors by the time she began to mature. It was with Bunnie in mind that Rosie and Julayla declared the hut where the two girls slept to be 'Off Limits' to the boys.
If Bunnie was hard to deal with because she had not been exposed to court manners, Antoine was even harder to deal with because he had. The young coyote was the son of a minister in the King's diplomatic service; as a result, he had virtually from birth been exposed to the ways of the court. In Knothole, he clung to those ways with a fierce tenacity, as if he had personally been charged with safeguarding those habits and customs even if there was no royalty. Yet if he was loyal to those traditions, he was also so convinced of the rightness of his loyalty that nobody could tell him anything. It could be almost impossible to correct him. In time he even refused to correct his speech-an atrocious mangling of the language by someone who was not a native speaker. He would back down when he had to, but only to the grown-ups; he stubbornly held his own against the other children and, despite taking his share of lumps as a result, refused to yield. Julayla wondered if there were any way to sift through the chaff of arrogance to isolate the loyalty beneath.
Of all the children, perhaps the easiest to understand was Charles's nephew, Sonic Hedgehog, and that made him all the more exasperating to deal with. He was very straightforward in his approach to life. Unfortunately, in his quest for the immediate, he would sooner take a shortcut than not. It showed in his schoolwork, for all the children had to spend their mornings in Knothole's dining hall, which doubled as a classroom where Julayla did the best she could with improvised materials. It was hard to say whose patience was put to the test more during these sessions, Sonic or Julayla's. Somehow, Sonic needed a steadying influence, and he found it in, oddly enough, a new arrival to Knothole.
It was when Sonic was about seven years old that he disappeared from Knothole one day. This in itself was not unusual; he was prone to making himself scarce when he did not care for what was happening. Yet it was nearing nightfall when he returned without any explanation as to where he had been, without apology, and with a small child in tow.
It was a fox cub, little more than a toddler. Yet this fox cub had not one, but two tails. Nobody knew how he could have been born with two tails; the consensus was that he had been in utero when Robotnik's systematic destruction of the planet and his crash program of industrialization had begun to poison the air and sky of Mobius. The only other clue to his identity was the name "Miles Prower" written on the inside of one of his shoes.
Sonic finally admitted what had happened: on a surreptitious journey back to Mobotropolis, he had seen a fox couple, husband and wife, hide the cub inside a dumpster just before being apprehended by SWATbots. Sonic had waited until they had been taken away, and then retrieved the cub. Sonic never admitted it in so many words, it would not have been cool for him to do so, but it was clear to everyone that Sonic's heart had gone out to the little cub from the first.
"Tails" as the fox cub came to be called, grew into an active and happy child, apparently unscarred by any memory of being orphaned. He was doted on by Rosie, and treated like a plaything on occasion by the girls. Yet his attentions were on Sonic. As he grew older he was constantly shadowing the young hedgehog, copying his speech and his mannerisms devotedly. The women worried that Sonic's ego was getting quite big enough without Tails' hero worship.
But of all the children, Julayla was at the moment most concerned about Princess Sally. She was developing in a natural, unstudied way. She had a sharp intellect made sharper by study, yet she was not bookish; physically, she was strong and agile, and at an age when she might have been physically awkward she carried herself with grace. But something was beginning to change, and the change was worrying Julayla. She could not yet sense what exactly, but it was becoming clear to her that a part of Sally, a very vital part, was dying.
The day's activities had been routine. The children had either awakened before dawn on their own or else were gotten out of bed by Rosie. They slept two to a hut: Sally and Bunnie in one hut, Antoine and Rotor in another, and Sonic and Tails in a third. Rosie and Julayla knew that, when the children were a little bit older and stronger in the coming spring, work would have to begin on additional huts to encourage independent living and to prevent personality clashes.
Rotor was especially eager to set up housekeeping on his own, though the fastidious Antoine would have balked at the use of the word "housekeeping" in the same sentence as Rotor's name. It seemed the one thing of which Rotor was incapable. Spare parts and unrecognizable electronic components littered his half of the hut and drove Antoine to distraction.
The children then went to have breakfast in the largest of the huts in Knothole: a general-purpose building that served as both a mess hall and a classroom. Bunnie tended to arrive last, usually because she could not decide which color ribbons to use to do up her ears.
After the breakfast dishes were cleared away, it was time for the children's schooling. At ten years of age, they were literate enough in the Mobian language, except for Antoine, though his grasp of the planet's history was almost as complete as Sally's. Sally and Rotor were more adept at mathematics than the others, and there was no question that Rotor outshone the others in mechanics. Bunnie worked to keep up with the others, finding botany to be her easiest subject. Sonic tended to lose interest in just about everything after the first hour of instruction. Though Tails would spend some time in the classroom in the mornings, he was basically playing school.
By the time noon rolled around, Julayla would signal the end of class. From there, the children would tend to their chores, for Knothole still required a fair amount of maintenance. The huts and the bridge across the river had to be maintained, and that meant carpentry. Rotor was able to fashion tools for some of the tasks. The vegetable gardens that helped sustain them also needed tending.
It was at this point that Sonic tended to make himself scarce. Not that he was lazy; as with his schoolwork, he simply got bored easily. But if Tails wanted to "help," Sonic would pull his share of the load without complaint. However Sonic might feel about a particular task, he seemed to want to set a good example for the adoring cub.
Sally, however, would sometimes spend the afternoon in Julayla's hut. There they would review old volumes of Mobian letters and lore that Julayla had managed to save during the invasion, and the gaps in Sally's knowledge of the history of the House of Acorn would be filled in.
As evening approached, everyone gathered in the main hut for the second meal of the day. Then before bedtime, there would be play outdoors if the weather was right. Lately, this had meant dividing up to play Capture the Flag, a game of which Sally never seemed to tire. Yet lately it seemed that nothing went right when they played the game. No matter what team configuration they formed, something would happen to bring the game to a premature halt. Either Sonic would ignore strategy and make some rash move that would give away his position, or else Bunnie would refuse to try sneaking through foliage for fear of ruining her ears, or else Antoine would find something new to complain about, or else Tails would give away Sonic's position by ignoring everyone else and walking up to the hiding place of his older idol.
But this afternoon, with a slight nip in the air and the wind sounding through the trees, Sally seemed more than just lost in thought as she looked at the blank piece of paper on the table before her.
"Your first question," Julayla said. "What happened on this date in the year Twenty-two seventy-five?" Sally said nothing and wrote nothing.
"Did you hear me, Princess?"
"I'm sorry, Julayla. It's just that… oh, what's the point?" She let the pencil she was holding fall to the table. Julayla rose from her chair and seated herself on the bench where Sally was seated. She knew better than to say anything right away. "Julayla, why am I doing this?" Sally eventually asked. "This would all make sense if I were going to rule Mobius one day. But it doesn't make sense." There was a pause.
"What happened?" Julayla finally asked.
"Last night, when I was in bed, I closed my eyes and tried to remember what my old room looked like. But I couldn't. I couldn't even remember the color!" She looked at Julayla, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. "I'm forgetting it, Julayla! I'm forgetting it all!" Sally threw her arms around Julayla and began to cry. Julayla said nothing and simply held her close. After a couple of minutes, Sally was able to regain her composure.
"I'm sorry," Sally sniffled.
"Don't ever apologize for caring too deeply, Princess. You may go now, if you want to."
"Thanks."
"And tell the other children that there will be no class tomorrow." Sonic and Tails were back in their hut. Sonic drew the shades of the hut and looked to see that the door was bolted.
"Okay, Tails, nobody can see in. You ready?"
"Uh huh."
"Go for it!"
Tails closed his eyes and his two tails began moving in a circular motion. Nothing else happened for a second. But then Tails began slowly rising off the floor.
"Doin' good, big guy!" Sonic said. "Keep it up." Tails looked rather awkward with his legs dangling beneath him and his rump in line with his head. But he continued to slowly gain altitude. He managed to get halfway to the hut's ceiling when, exhausted by the effort; he let himself fall into Sonic's outstretched arms.
"Way to go, Tails!"
"How far did I get?"
"About halfway up. You're getting better each time."
"Cool! When are we gonna show the others?"
"Pretty soon. But it's our secret until then, okay?"
"Okay. Sonic?"
"Yeah?"
"How come you didn't finish your supper?"
"I don't know; I guess I'm just tired of having the same stuff all the time. And I was thinking about how Uncle Chuck used to make chilidogs. They were great," he added as he unbolted the door.
"What's a chili dog?"
"Oh yeah, I guess you never had one. Man, are you missing out!"
"So, how did he make'em?"
"Well, you know what a hot dog is, right?"
"Uh huh."
"And you know what chili is?"
"No."
"Oh, right. Well, it's sorta like a real spicy bean stew."
"Eeeew! Doesn't sound so good to me!"
"Well, trust me on this one: it tastes a lot better than it sounds!" Just then there was a knock at the cabin door. That meant one of the grown-ups doing a bed check. Sure enough, a second later the door opened and Julayla looked inside.
"Is everything all right?" she asked.
"Uh huh," Tails replied.
"Those aren't proper words, Miles," Julayla said. She never missed an opportunity to correct Tails' speech, just as she could never bring herself to call Tails by his nickname. She felt nicknames to be improper, especially nicknames that were so anatomical.
"Sorry. Everything's okay. G'night!"
"Good night Miles. Good night, Sonic." She waited until the two boys were in their respective beds. She then extinguished the candle that burned on a nightstand close to the door. Once she closed the door, however, that was no guarantee that Sonic and Tails would go to sleep. In fact, most nights it was their cue to continue talking.
"Where did Uncle Chuck live?" Tails asked in the darkness.
"In Mobotropolis; in the city."
"Where in the city?"
"In a house, a place bigger than this one. And not too far from a park with a really neat playground. I'll show you," Sonic said as he pulled a flashlight from under his bed and turned it on. He then got out of bed and walked to a small table and chair in the room. He took a scrap of paper and a short pencil.
"OK, let's say Knothole is here. This is the Great Forest and it comes out to just about here. Right here's the park and the playground in the park. And there's a block of houses over here. And… This one, from the end, that's where Uncle Chuck's house is."
"Cool! Can you show me where it is for real some day?"
"You can count on it, big guy." Sonic turned out the flashlight and the two found their way back to their beds. "Man, this is nothing like living with Uncle Chuck!"
"What was it like?"
"In some ways it was kinda fun. It was just the two of us, nobody else. He worked a lot, and that was kind of a drag, but we still spent a lot of time together. Maybe that's why he made chilidogs: they were real easy and it was just for the two of us. I guess the worst part was cooking the chili, 'cause it always took forever! He had to get the spices mixed just right, and he always used to sweat that part. But that was cool, too, 'cause that's when Uncle Chuck and me, we'd just talk to each other while it cooked. Kinda like you and me are doing now."
"What'ja talk about?"
"Just about anything. And Uncle Chuck never talked to me like he was a grown-up and I was a kid, the way the grown-ups around here do. I think that's one of the things I miss most about Uncle Chuck. He tried talking to me about his brother a couple of times, about the kind of life he led and stuff, but I guess I wasn't paying all that much attention back then. Now I wish I had. 'Cause now I know he was talking about… about my Dad. Only I didn't know it and Uncle Chuck didn't want to come out and say it." Sonic was about to go on, but he stopped. Across the darkened room he could hear the steady rhythm of Tails breathing. Sonic smiled. "Sweet dreams, little bro," he whispered.

(End of Chapter 7)