Chapter 17 Mother Rosie
It was Rosie.
"Turn it up!" Sally urged.
"Yeah, right, and let the SWATbots know we're here."
"Sonic, be quiet!" They gathered closer to listen as best they could.
"Well, well, what kind of thief is this?" Rosie just stood there and said nothing.
"The face is familiar, but I can't quite place it."
"Sir," Snively piped up, "this is the former nanny to Princess Sally."
"Ah, yes! Miss Rosie, isn't it? Well, this is an occasion. And how is the Princess these days?" Rosie continued to be silent. Robotnik simply grinned.
"I thought she might still be alive. And if she is, that puts me in the awkward position of having a competitor. Bring her to me and perhaps I'll spare your life."
"Not for all of Mobius!" Rosie declared. Sally, who was apparently more worried about her nanny's fate than Rosie was about herself, could not help but smile out of admiration.
"Your stubbornness will be the death of you. And her!"
"She's just a child!"
"Child or not, she's also a symbol of resistance. And that's something I don't need. Snively!"
"Shall I prepare the roboticizer, sir?" The children held their breath.
"No, Snively. I'm not going to make this easy for her. She will tell me what I want to know, even if it's with her last breath. This will require some thought. Have the SWATbots take her away until I can decide just how I want to…"motivate" her." Rosie was led away and the children looked to each other.
"What's gonna happen to Rosie?" Tails asked, his voice wavering.
"We get her outta here, that's what."
"Sonic!"
"Sal, this ain't a milk run no more! It's now a search-and-rescue operation."
"Hope y'all got a plan, Sugar-hog."
"Okay, so we'll have to make it up as we go. We can't go back to Knothole and wait for Buttnik to come up with something first."
"I guess you're right," she sighed. "But how will we know where Rosie's being taken?"
"No problem, Sally," Rotor replied. "I figured out how to use this scanner to track her movements. See those numbers in the lower corner?"
"What is the good of the numbering when they cannot be telling us her locution?"
"I got that figured out, too. Keep watching." The children kept their eyes on the screen. As Rosie and the two SWATbots began to disappear out of camera range, Rotor would quickly key in a set of numbers on a nearby keypad. Instantly the image would shift so that once more she was in sight. After several minutes, they saw Rosie being placed in a holding cell with a numerical lock.
"Okay, now what?" Sonic asked.
"Now this!" Rotor turned off the image on the screen. It was replaced by a computer-generated schematic of Robotnik's headquarters.
"Okay, let me enter the coordinates for the last video image we saw with Rosie; that should show up on the diagram there."
"Well, something's flashing!" Sonic noted.
"No, I think these are the coordinates to this panel I'm using."
"So that's where we are, right?"
"Right, Bunnie. All we got to do now is get from point A to point B."
"And hope we don't run into any SWATbots on the way there."
"I hope we do, Sal," Sonic replied as he pulled the power ring from his backpack, "I'm in the mood to kick some serious can!" The path Rotor indicated on the schematic was mercifully short, and she was apparently being held on the same floor as the kitchen. Still, the children had no idea what to expect as they moved out into the hallway.
For several hundred yards they made their way down stark metal corridors with no doors or windows. Nobody said anything until they came to a large metal door that blocked their path.
"This could be the entrance to the cell block," Rotor observed. "If I can get this open there's no turning back." The others waited nervously as Rotor experimented with the mechanism. Sonic, however, was not nervous so much as impatient. He almost began tapping his foot on the floor when the door began sliding open. On the other side was a short corridor that turned to the right.
"Now what?" Bunnie asked in a whisper.
"Now we need a scout," Sonic replied. "Take the point, big guy." Beaming, Tails revved up and flew as close to the ceiling as possible, then slowly inched along it until he was at the corner. He only poked his nose around the corner for a second before hurrying back to the others and landing.
"What's the story?"
"SWATbots! Two of 'em. They're just standing there."
"Not for long." Gripping the power ring, Sonic dashed to the corner, banked off the wall and sped past the two SWATbots standing guard in front of Rosie's cell. Sonic screeched to a halt at the other end of the corridor.
"Yo! SWATbutts!" The two SWATbots rotated their heads, their bodies remaining stationary.
"C'mon! Let's see what you got!" The two raised their arms and sent several rounds of blaster fire down the corridor. Rosie gasped and covered her eyes as the wall at the far end crumbled in spots. Even before the smoke had cleared, Sonic was poking his head around the far corner.
"Pretty lame, guys!" Now the two SWATbots began giving chase, which was the point of what Sonic did. Sonic took off with the bots in pursuit. Just as they rounded the corner and were lost from sight, Sally and the others emerged from hiding and gathered around the door to Rosie's cell.
"Children!" Rosie whispered. "What are you doing here?"
"Getting you out," Sally replied.
"You children must leave now! You're in danger!"
"Not without you, Rosie." Sally looked at Rotor who was still studying the lock.
"Can you figure it out, Rotor?" The sound of a distant metallic crash drifted around the corner. Rosie and the children looked in that direction and heard nothing else.
"Uh-oh," Tails said.
"Rotor, what about the lock?"
"I think I can do it, Sally."
"You think?"
"Sally, this is a grown-up lock! I'm gonna need some time."
"That's something we might not have." Just then they heard another sound from around the corner, this one very familiar. A split-second later, Sonic rounded the corner then screeched to a stop.
"Sonic! What about the SWATbots?"
"Don't sweat the bots, Sal. I creamed 'em."
"Wow!" Tails said.
"Rotor, keep working on that lock! Sonic, what are you talking about?"
"They chased me into this blind hallway with no doors or nothing. They musta figured they had me, so I kinda slowed down. Then just before I hit the wall I juiced up it and ran the ceiling. The bots plowed right into the wall. You shoulda seen it."
"You ran the ceiling? Cool!" Tails gave Sonic a look of total admiration.
"Yeah," Sonic replied casually as he slipped the power ring back into his backpack, and then took it off. "I gotta get Sal here to help me work on my landings, but…"
"Sonic!" Sally had cried out because Sonic had absent-mindedly hung his backpack on the cell's locking mechanism, which stuck out from the door. Now the numeric display on the lock was glowing brighter than before. The numbers were sequencing through at an alarming rate.
"Now look! You just undid all Rotor's work!"
"Hang on, Sally," Rotor said. "Look!" The displayed numbers continued sequencing faster and faster for another two seconds, then the display went dark. At that moment, everyone heard the locking mechanism reset. Rosie tried the door and it slid open. Rosie stepped outside and several of the children put their arms around her.
"How'd ya do that, Sonic?" Tails asked, convinced yet again that there was not anything Sonic could not do.
"I dunno, little bro. All I had in my backpack was that power ring."
"It must have overloaded the locking mechanism," Rotor guessed. "Wish I could take it back to Knothole and check it out."
"You'll have to hunt for souvenirs another time," Sally interrupted.
"The Princess is right," Rosie said. "We've wasted too much time already." She started walking quickly down the hallway, back in the
irection they had come.
"Where are we goin', Mizz Rosie?"
"To the kitchen, Bunnie."
"We just came from there," Sonic said as Rotor opened the metal door. Just then a deafening warning klaxon sounded in the hallway.
"No more time for talk, children. Run!" Retracing their steps, the children and Rosie soon found themselves back in front of the kitchen. Rosie waited until all the children were inside. She then closed the kitchen door and began moving several garbage cans in front of it.
"That ain't gonna stop 'em!" Sonic said.
"No, but it will slow them down, and right now that's all we need." Rotor, Sonic and Antoine joined in, finding things to heap in front of the door. Rosie then hurried to the door to the freezer.
"Rosie, no!" Sally cried.
"It'll be alright, dears. This is our way out."
"But…" Rosie gave Sally a sharp look, as if to reprimand her. Sally understood, and she saw for a fleeting moment a deep pain behind Rosie's look. She knew that Rosie was equally aware of the weight of horror in that room, but that there was no avoiding it. She opened the door and the children began crowding inside.
"What kind of place is this?"
"Never you mind, Sonic. Now follow me." Rosie led them off to the left toward a darkened corner of the room. Sally brought up the rear, her heart beating wildly as she glanced around her. Rosie led them through a door into another room. Though smaller than the other room and not as cold, Sally still felt the same sense of foreboding. Once again, almost everything in the room was metal. In the center of the room was a large metal table with slightly raised edges. It appeared to be tilted at a slight angle, toward a grate set in the floor. There was a large sink in the corner, and hanging from racks on one wall were many cruel-looking knives and saws.
"Is this some kind of operating room?" Rotor asked.
"I want you children to forget about this place," Rosie said as matter-of-factly as she could. "Now give me a hand with this." She bent down to lift the grate, and several of the children joined in.
"Now what?" Bunnie asked.
"Inside."
"Down there?"
"It's only water, dear. Now hurry!" The children dropped down the several feet into the shallow water of the pipe below the floor. Tails was too afraid to even fly down alone unless he was holding Sonic's hand. Rosie was the last down the pipe, pulling the grating back into place. She then began shepherding the children down the pipe toward the place where it emptied out into an open sewer in the shadow of Robotnik's headquarters.
At that moment, Snively and the SWATbots were in the kitchen. They had broken through the pile of debris in front of the kitchen door and were looking around. Snively stepped over to the communication panel.
"We've sealed off the exits to the building. They must be around here somewhere. We're searching the kitchen area now."
"Don't disappoint me, Snively; I want her back and I want her now!" He looked around the room, his eyes resting on the door to the freezer. A small trail of mist was seeping through the bottom of the door; it was not completely closed. He pulled on it and it swung open. Stepping inside, he looked around.
"SWATbots! I want you to…" Before he could finish giving them orders, Snively stepped on something that wasn't supposed to be there: a small patch of ice near the wall. Apparently, something had been spilled there recently and had frozen solid. Snively lost his footing and fell, his head hitting the metal floor. The SWATbots just stood there, passively awaiting instructions. By the time Snively had picked himself up off the floor and the pain in his head had subsided, Rosie and the children were making their way down the darkened streets of Robotropolis.
There was less light in the Great Forest than on the streets of Robotropolis. Yet the darkness of the forest held no fear for the children. In fact, they took comfort from it. They had been tense and anxious all the time they were in the city, not knowing whether there were SWATbots in pursuit of them. Bunnie was close to tears by the time they reached the outskirts of Robotropolis, but now that they were back in the forest it was as if she could not remember what had scared her.
"Children," Rosie asked, "you still haven't told me what you were doing in that place."
"It was my idea, Rosie," Sally admitted. "First Honor is tomorrow and…"
"And you thought that Robotnik's kitchen was the only place to find milk. Bless you, dear, I already had plenty put away for First Honor."
"What?"
"That's what I was trying to tell you, Sal!" Sonic piped up. "Julayla told me that we didn't have to sneak into Robuttnik's place to get any milk."
"You are meaning we risk-ed limb and life for nothing?"
"It weren't for nothin', Ant. We still got Rosie outta there, right?"
"And I'm grateful to you all, children. But I won't be putting you through that again. That was my last time inside that dreadful place."
"It was?" Sally asked.
"It tells me more than ever that we have to rely on what we grow ourselves to provide for all our needs. Miss Julayla and I had been talking about it and it looks like the time is right. Some of our meals may be a little plainer in the future for it, but it's a small enough price to pay."
"So where the hoo-ha is the milk, anyway?"
"Left-hand cabinet, second shelf, second-largest canister."
"That stuff? The kinda crumbly white stuff that looks like big snowflakes?"
"Yes, Miss Bunny. Its powdered milk. We use so little that it would go bad if we used only fresh milk. Use the measuring cup in the canister with a cup of water. I dare say there's enough in there now to carry you through three First Honors." By this time the group had reached the bridge. They could see Julayla standing in the doorway of her hut, a dark silhouette against the light inside. Apparently satisfied that Rosie and the children had returned safely, she stepped inside and closed the door. A few seconds later the hut was dark.
"We'd all better turn in, children. It's been a long night, and I don't think Master Tails will want to be falling asleep in the middle of his own party." She cupped the cub's face in one hand; Tails grinned broadly.
"We're all gonna party hearty, Rosie; don't worry about us."
"I do worry, Master Sonic. Just my nature, I suppose. Good night." Rosie walked across the bridge and back toward her hut. Sally, who had been looking at the dark waters of the river flowing beneath the bridge, turned to face the others.
"Bunnie, guys, I'm sorry I put you through all this. If I'd checked in with Julayla instead of worrying about secrecy, I'd have known that Bunnie had the right idea all along. I guess I've still got a lot to learn about being a leader."
"No harm no foul, Sally," Rotor replied. "Besides, we still got in and out of there in one piece, and helped spring Rosie!"
"Yeah, and don't that beat all!" Bunnie added.
"What do you mean?" Sally asked.
"Ah mean her sneakin' in and out of Robotnik's kitchen all this time!"
"Yeah," Rotor added. "And doing it to put food on the table."
"And she goes and says she's worried 'bout us!" There was an awkward silence while the children thought about it. Finally Sonic spoke,
"That's grown-ups for you!"
"Come on, guys," Rotor said, "we can still get a few hours sleep before we raid the kitchen and get the milk for Rosie."
"You're right," Sally admitted. "Let's turn in."
"No way!" Sonic said forcefully.
"What?"
"There's something I gotta say first!"
Julayla opened her shutters a crack. It was not enough to let much light into her hut, but it was enough to watch the scene unfold. She saw the children, each carrying a bowl, approaching the door to Rosie's hut in a group. Their attempt at stealth by walking on tiptoe was undercut, however, by their whispering and giggling. They were soon there, and she saw Sally knocking on the door.
Julayla looked hard, trying to count the children. Sometimes she thought she saw Sonic among them, other times he seemed to disappear from view. She rubbed her eyes, wishing she had put on her spectacles first, but she was confident that Sonic was somewhere among them.
Now she watched as, one by one, the children walked up the steps and handed Rosie their bowls. She could not see Rosie's face clearly, but she knew that Rosie was beaming with an entirely unfeigned happiness.
Before the last child had presented his bowl to Rosie, Julayla closed the shutters. She would not begrudge Rosie the joy of receiving a mother's due on First Honor. Besides, Julayla told herself, there was too much to do to prepare for Tails' weaning party later in the day. There was no time for her to feel sorry for herself. She took her time getting dressed, then walked toward the door. She opened it, looked outside, and gasped.
For the old feline, who had never borne children and on whom no one had ever bestowed a single thought on First Honor, looked at the base of the steps leading up to her hut and saw six children standing there. Each one carried a bowl of milk.
She felt herself sinking to her knees. Sonic, who was the closest to the stairs, walked up and smiled as he held his bowl out toward her. She took it from him, bringing it to her lips. She drank from it, the smoothness, and the sweetness of the milk unleashing a flood of memories. As she set the bowl down beside her, Sonic stepped forward and threw his arms around Julayla's neck. Julayla wrapped her arms around Sonic as well, and he whispered something to her that none of the others could hear. Sonic then walked down the steps and moved to the back of the group where he stood next to Tails.
"Sonic?" Tails whispered.
"Yeah?" he whispered back.
"You said this would make Julayla happy."
"Yeah, so?"
"So how come she's crying?"
"It's a grown-up thing."
"Oh."
(End of Chapter 17)