Chapter 20 Dealing with Life

For almost a month after Bunnie's partial robotization, everyone poured their energy into trying to get Bunnie on her feet and getting her to come to terms with what had happened to her. She had learned how to walk again and control her robotic arm. Once Bunnie was back on her feet, she made it a point to someday exact her revenge on Robotnik. Rotor was still unsure exactly how Bunnie was able to control her robotic limbs, but she seemed to have complete control over them. Within a few days of her being back on her feet, Rotor made a waterproofing compound in his hut and used it to waterproof Bunnie's robotic limbs.
Robotnik also had some things to deal with. When Sonic had pushed him, he had grabbed hold of the Roboticizer's table to steady himself and then the computers started up again. As soon as the computers came back on, the machine started up again and his left arm was instantly roboticized. He knew from various experiments he had run that the process was irreversible, so he was stuck like this much the same way the rabbit was. At the thought of a rebel creature walking around with much stronger legs and a stronger arm, he slammed his fist onto the main console. The console dented with a shower of sparks and acrid smoke rising from it.
Sally had also grown to understand that the citizens of Knothole would be living in danger constantly, as Bunnie's kidnapping had shown. She also noticed that the attitudes of everyone changed after she and Sonic had carried Bunnie back to the village and her anguish was known to Knothole. Sonic seemed to be the most worried out of everyone; the hedgehog had the feeling that Robotnik would be able to find out the location of Knothole through Bunnie's robotic limbs, though Rotor repeatedly told Sonic that such a thing was impossible. Eventually, Sally and Rotor were able to convince Sonic. Tails and Antoine did what they could for Bunnie, mainly being there to catch Bunnie if she fell and keeping her active.

Aaron and Sam resolved to not go back to Mobius for at least six months in case their presence there had somehow changed the planet or its inhabitants. They had grown close living together for almost two months while Aaron's parents were away on business. Samantha's parents had come home one evening while Aaron and Sam were at her house taking care of what needed to be done there. They liked Aaron and were glad that Samantha had already made some friends since they had moved to Texarkana. After talking for about an hour at Sam's place, Aaron went back to his house leaving Samantha at her house with her parents.
Samantha told her parents about the trip to Aaron's parents cabin up north in Minnesota and the street races that Aaron took her with to and Aaron's taking her out to dinner a couple times. Knowing that no one would believe her, she left out the trip to Mobius, which would be very difficult to explain. From meeting Aaron for as short of a time as they did, they liked him and had no problem with their daughter spending time with him.
When Aaron got back home, he went in, grabbed some of his rap discs, and after loading them in the car's disc changer, went out looking for some street races. All through all the races he was in, Aaron kept thinking of Sam and how he already missed having her with on his races. He was so lost in thought he ended up losing two races; Aaron kept having a feeling like he had forgotten something someplace, but he could not figure out what he could have forgotten. Once he got bored with racing, Aaron went back to his place and climbed into bed.

Sally had been through a lot lately and needed some time alone. Behind the village, the clearing where the children played Capture the Flag still stood. Going out to the clearing, Sally sat down on the log that sat at the edge of the clearing and picked a small flower from under the edge of the log.
"Hello, little flower! Maybe you can tell me what I need to know!" She proceeded to pluck each of its petals while repeating the phrase that many girls learned as they came of age.
"He loves me… he loves me not." Sally spoke as she pulled the first two petals from the little flower. Finally, she reached the last of the petals and was more than disappointed when she spoke the words that one never wanted to hear.
"He loves me not." Sally said as she rested her head in her hands and let out a sigh.
"Guess I won't find any answers tonight. Things seemed much less complicated when I was young. Back then, my thoughts were on anything but romance… fun was fun, but my duties as Princess always came first…" Sally's thoughts went back to when she was a young girl, before the betrayal and even before she met Sonic. Memories of Sally running and playing with her mother and father, thoughts of life before the third war, thoughts of everything that had happened in the last year.
She broke down and cried for the first time since Julayla had left her in the meadow where she now sat. The memories had become too much for her to handle and she cried. She was not sure how long she cried, because next time she opened her eyes, the stars were out and clearly visible. One particular star caught her eye, as it seemed to slowly be moving in the sky. Dismissing it as one of Robotnik's recently launched satellites, Sally started back toward the village. Looking back over her shoulder at the sky where the satellite had been, it looked as if it was getting larger in size. Hiding behind a tree thinking that it may be some kind of spy camera, Sally watched as it crashed about halfway between the city and the village. The impact of the object was heard and felt all the way back in the village. Sally jumped from behind the tree and ran to the crash-site.
Meanwhile, inside of the village, Sonic and the rest of the Freedom Fighters had heard the crash of the object and ran to investigate it. Rotor joined them a few feet behind the rest with his metal detector going. After walking from the village for about fifteen minutes, they caught up with Sally.
"Sonic! You saw it too?" She asked as they came over the small hill that lay between Robotropolis and Knothole.
"Saw it? We heard it! That was loud enough to wake the dead!" Sonic replied. Rotor was walking slightly ahead of the group swinging his homemade metal detector in wide arcs, watching the needle for any movement.
"Rotor… are we headed in the right direction?" Sally asked, watching the needle on his metal detector inch its way up the scale the closer they got to the object.
"My metal detector thinks so, Princess. In fact…there it is!" Ahead of them, they could clearly see the crater from the impact of the object. Sally started towards it, when Rotor reached out to stop her.
"Sally, don't go too close to it… we don't know what it is!" Sally ignored Rotor and kept walking to it. From four feet away, Sally could not feel any heat from it. She inched closer to it and touched it. The object was a white ball, no more than a foot in diameter. The ball seemed to glow from within.
"Way cool!" Sonic said under his breath.
"You're right, Sonic! Cool to the touch!" Sally spoke, looking at Rotor and then Sonic. Rotor came over to where Sally stood, touching the object. The ball was the same temperature as the air around it.
"I've never seen anything like it! What do you suppose it could be?" Rotor asked, conceding that he had no idea what it could be. Sally shook her head.
"No idea either… though it may well be the answer to my wishes." Sally said under her breath. Realizing that they were close to the city, Sally grabbed the glowing ball quickly and they all hurried back to Knothole. Once there, they took the ball to Rotor's lab where Rotor proceeded to perform a battery of tests on it.
First, he tried cutting it open with a laser he had gotten from a SWATbot Sonic had destroyed. The laser bounced off the orb, as Rotor had come to call it, as if it was a mirror. Next, he tried submerging it in acid, which just boiled and sizzled off the orb almost like the ball was made of some sort of metal. At one point, Rotor even tried to crush the ball with a crude bench vise. When he let up on the pressure, the ball just rebounded back to its perfect round shape. Having run out of ideas, Rotor gave up on the orb for the night and left it sitting on his workbench. Sleepily, he crawled into bed and fell asleep.
During the night, Sally awoke from another disturbing dream to find her hut was brighter than usual. Slipping out of bed, Sally left the hut and found that the light was coming from Rotor's lab. After thinking for a few seconds, she decided she would investigate it. To Sally's surprise, the light dimmed as she entered the lab. As the light appeared to be coming from the back of the lab, Sally headed straight there. Where Rotor had left the orb sitting, a small palm-sized computer now sat. Sally cautiously walked over to it and picked it up. Once the small computer was in Sally's hands, it turned on.
"Hello, Sally… I am Nicole." Sally looked around the room, trying to find where the voice was coming from. The computer blinked three lights and then spoke again,
"Sally… I am Nicole."
"What are you?" Sally stammered.
"I would be your friend, but that is a choice only you can make." The computer said in a female voice. Out of the corner of her eye, Sally saw movement amongst the stacks of papers and components. Turning, she saw that it was Rotor followed by the rest of the Freedom Fighters.
"We heard voices… you okay?" Rotor asked, coming up to where Sally stood.
"What's that?" Sonic asked while pointing to the small device she held in her hand. Sally shook her head and handed it to Sonic.
"I dunno… you tell me." Sonic flipped the device over and looked at the back of it. Shaking his head, Sonic handed it back to Sally.
"No clue, Sal. Rotor, any idea what it is?" Sonic asked, handing the small computer to Rotor. Rotor looked it over same as Sonic did.
"Well… it's a small computer. Where'd you find it?"
"I found it in the same place where you left that white orb. I woke up and saw some light coming from your lab here and I found that computer sitting there. Was that what was in that orb?" Sally asked.
"Maybe… but where were the voices coming from?"
"The computer… it can talk and understand Mobian." Rotor picked the computer up and opened it. Immediately, the computer acknowledged Rotor by name.
"What languages do you understand?" The computer blinked two of its lights and then answered,
"I understand and can speak English, Mobian, Chinese, French, Binary, and over a thousand other languages from this world and many others." The computer replied in perfect Mobian. Rotor handed it back to Sally.
"What should we do with it? What was all that it said?" Sonic asked, once again not trusting a machine.
"Like it or not, she's staying with me in my hut. She was listing off the languages that she speaks and understands, though I've only heard of two of them… French and Mobian. The others aren't from around here." Sally replied. She closed the computer and started heading back to her hut. The rest of the kids went back to their huts and crawled back into bed.

(End of Chapter 20)