"SNIVELY!"

Snively stood perfectly still in his chair like a statue as Eggman stormed into the control room with Sleet at his side. He took a quick peek behind before retracting his head as quick as he could, and as he bit his fingernails in trepidation, he wondered if this was it.

"Yes sir?", he squeaked.

"Forgive me if memory fails me, dear nephew," said Eggman, "but I was in this very same room just last night, correct?"

"Yes sir."

"And you do remember me telling you to send a pack of buzzbombers after the rodents post-haste, isn't that that so?"

"That is so."

"Indeed. And you do know that all buzzbombers are ordered to return to base once they have finished this task, do you not?"

"Yes I do sir."

"Indeed. In which case, WHERE ARE THE BUZZBOMBERS?!"

Snively just couldn't take it. He swiveled around in his chair like a whirling dervy, only ending after he'd gotten a few seconds to calm his words. "It wasn't my fault sir! The bombers had them on the run, they were running scared, everything appeared to be going so well—!"

Eggman stomped over to Snively and lifted him up by the front like an old black and white cartoon from the Federation. "If they were going so well, then where are my buzzbombers?!"

"Ah, yes," muttered Snively, "well, it's fairly simple really! It's just that, I mean, that is to say…"

"WHAT?!" Eggman roared

Snively couldn't delay the news any longer. "We lost them."

"TO WHOM!?"

"I don't know! I mean, it was probably the Princess and her accomplices, but who among them and how they could have done it—"

"Robotnik!" Another voice from the nearby door resounded throughout the adjacent corridor as it got closer and closer. Eggman could only groan like a man who couldn't imagine things could get worse, only for them to do just that.

"Oh, not now," he muttered. Before he could utter so much as another syllable, into the monitor room marched a tall overly muscular rooster wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket, with his comb combed like a mohawk. He was hulking and he was pissed, and a pissed hulked rooster isn't exactly someone you'd want to cross. Even to get to the other side.

"I want a word with you Robotnik!"," said the rooster. "Right now! Or else someone's gonna find out someone defecated in their coffee the next morning."

"A class act as ever," said Sleet.

"You shut up," said the Rooster.

"Oy." Eggman relinquished his grip on Snively as he plopped to the floor terrified, and with one hand now free, he used it to cradle his head to steady it for the oncoming headache. Having to deal with righteous upstarts did that to some people. "This will have to wait," he said to Snively. "But this is NOT over." Snively whimpered as he nodded in acknowledgment, and then scampered on back to his seat. Eggman proceeded to take a moment to gather himself like a man preparing to deal with hired help. As useful as they may have been, they could still be royal pains in the kiesters.

"Why, if it isn't Chirps! Mercenary extraordinaire! And conspicuously absent until just this moment."

"I was doing another job. Escort mission. Figured it best to get my backlog cleared before taking on a job this big."

"I suppose that's acceptable, or at least it would be if you didn't come barging in on your first day of work. Well, what's done is done. What seems to the problem?"

"What seems to be the problem? Everything! I thought this was going to be a simple hostile takeover. Take some locals hostage, threaten the king into submission, maybe rough things up a bit. Nothing too serious, you know? Just something to loosen them up a little. Like applying lube."

"Another mental image like that and you're fired."

"Hell, at this point, I almost wouldn't mind. Because next thing I know, not only do I find out the operation's already mostly done without me, but you know what else I find? Bodies on the street, houses burnt down to the ground, people running scared, the works, like how everyone reacts when I try to show them my family photos."

"You do realize that this WAS a coup, do you not?", said Sleet.

"We didn't have to go that far! They were practically in the Dark Ages, they couldn't do a thing! I've signed onto a lot of things, but I try my best never to sign up for anything that puts civilians in the line of fire. But I think I did just that."

"To be perfectly candid," said Eggman, "I"m amazed you lasted this long. Most hitmen don't last when they have such standards as you do."

"Yeah, but no-one's got the standards that I do, in more ways than one. And you know why."

"In a sense. But here's the deal. You signed on to help me subjugate the Acorn Kingdom any way you could."

"And I shouldn't have! Looking back, I know I shouldn't have. Part of me still thinks you slipped me some really wonky stuff in my brewskies."

"Maybe, but the fact is that you're still in my employee. You may still have your principles, but I'm willing to bet that said principles aren't as integral as you may think."

"And you can bet your arse they are. Guys like me, our principles are the only things that still keep us Mobian. So what this is is me looking at what I thought I knew I was signing up for without realizing I was really agreeing with everything I'm against. If this doesn't stop here, Robotnik, then I'm through."

"Is this about the bodies? Because if it is, I can tell you that they aren't going to be a problem much longer."

"And that just proves my point. You want a coup, that's fine. Heck, I love myself a good coupe. Or at least a chicken coupe. But this is far from a chicken coupe.""

Robotnik stared at Chirps like someone attending a comedy who didn't get the joke. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"That's the problem. You never do." Chirps then stormed off in a huff, it being clear that talking wasn't going to get either of them anywhere.

"Sleet," said Eggman, "keep an eye on him. He may well prove more trouble than he's worth."

"With pleasure," said Sleet. He pressed his ear to the door, listening to Chirp's footsteps and waiting until the very moment he turned the corner, and then walked through the doorway and crept after him in the shadows.

Eggman then turned his gaze towards Snively, almost like a bringer of death. "Now, where were we?"

Snively tugged his collar like he never tugged it before. He was starting to think that staying with his research job in the Federation might not have been such a bad idea…


"Sucks."

"What was that?", said Porker. Porker and Tekno had continued to sit in their cell for the last five minutes, twiddling their thumbs as they were unable to do much of anything else.

"Sucks that we're still stuck here," said Tekno. "Should escape. Should do something. We had a lockpick, I'd get us out of here easy."

"Well," we don't have one. And I don't think our new friends have one on them either."

"No, but you've got the next best thing." Without any warning, the walrus spoke, picking himself off the ground and rubbing his eyes as though he just had a short nap.

Porker jumped back towards his corner, yelling in fright as though he'd just seen a ghost. "Um, uh, w-well! Y-you're up! That was quick."

"I wasn't even out," said the walrus. "Name's Rotor by the way. Pleasure to meet the both of you. Now, let's say we get out of this hole?"

"Hold up a minute. If you weren't ever actually knocked out, then just what are you doing here?"

"It's like they said Here I was, showing up in town to see the festival and maybe see if I could join Robotnik's thinktank only to see that they'd leveled half the town by the time I got there. All it took was a quick look around to see why, but it wasn't long before the SWATbots were on my trail. Which as it so happened was a good thing."

"You can't be serious."

"Think about it. I let myself be captured and I get a chance to be taken to the heart of the whole operation, maybe even get a chance to help stop this before it gets worse."

"Your stake in this?", said Tekno.

Rotor was clearly a tad offput by Tekno's rather direct demeanor. "Uh, if you mean why I'm doing this, I guess it's because I can't stand anyone being made slaves or prisoners just because someone says so. Got kind of a history with that come to think of it."

"Well," said Porker, "I'd welcome any chance we could take to get out of here. What did you have in mind?"

"This." Rotor raised one mighty fist and pounded it into the ground. When he pulled it up, there was nothing underneath but a fist-shaped crater.

"Talk about a crater," said Tekno.

"Good Gaea!", said Porker. "No-one should be that strong! Or at least most people shouldn't."

"My tribe isn't 'most people', said Rotor. "In more ways than one. In any case, I'll get us out of these bars in a jiffy! Well, maybe. There's only one problem, which is—"

Tekno already had it figured it out. "Which is, how do we get out without alerting the guards or setting off the security systems?"

"Bingo. I'm no lockpicker, so it's not like I can get us out that way. The only thing I can think of is turning those bars into scrap. If I had my tools, I'd have more options, but they confiscated them when they brought me here. At this point, I don't know what else to do."

"I do."

Chirps came strolling around the corner like a boss, waltzing up to the cell like he owned the place. "Name's Chirps Been hearing you all might be in a jam. Always did love jam myself. Strawberry is divine."

"Who're you supposed to be?", said Porker.

"Like I said, I'm Chirps. Mercenary extraordinaire. Technically in Robotnik's employ. But I might not be much longer."

"Why's that," said Rotor. "And why should we care?"

"You should care because, oh, hold on a minute." He then redirected his attention to the SWATbots, still guarding the cell. "This is Chirps, Deputy Executive Officer. Code 651211. New orders. Couple of prisoners running around a good six corridors south carrying explosive monkeys. Hop to it." And sure enough, as the SWATbots marched off with their new forcibly given orders, they did indeed hop to it.

Chirps waited until the SWATbots were out of earshot. "I might be your only ticket out of this place. I've also got a ticket to the movies, but that's neither here nor there. What is, is this." He pulled out a small key from his pocket. "This is the key to your cell. You use this, you're out. No muss, no fuss. Like the gel I use on my comb."

"Don't know this is a trap," said Tekno.

"And you don't know if it isn't. Sides, we're both from the Armada. No use hiding it, I can tell. And birds of a feather should trust one another."

"The Armada?", asked Porker. "You haven't so much as mentioned anything about an Armada before, Tekno."

"Didn't want to bring it up," said Tekno. "Bad memories."

"Yeah, well," said Chirps, "that can wait. Do you wanna get out, or you do wanna be cooped up here forever? Assuming he doesn't just roboticize you all first."

Porker, Tekno, and Rotor all looked at one another as if their lives were on the line. On the one hand, they didn't know much if anything about this Chirps fellow. For all they knew, he might have been some recent creation of Eggman's, built to lull them into a false sense of security. For whatever reason. And yet, there was still the chance he was on the level. They couldn't pass this up.

"Do it," said Porker.

"You wish is my command. For the next minute or so anyway." Chirps fitted the key into the lock like a glove and swung the door wide open. "Right, come on out of there, hurry! And someone's gonna have to carry the stiff!"

Rotor lugged Marcus over his shoulder, and the lot of them started hurrying down the corridor as if running from the hounds of hell themselves.

"This way!" said Chirps. "I've done my homework, both literally and figuratively, and there should be a secret passage somewhere around the corner!"

"And your reason for wanting access to this secret passage would be…?"

A smug, slightly nasally voice had called out from the opposite corridor, stopping the group in its' track. Cooly leaning on a wall, it was none other than the one person Chirps hated more than Robotnik. Sleet. "Should've known. Like a tumor, he's there when you least expect it."

"I could say the same about you, but I suppose there won't be much of you to say anything about in the next fifteen minutes or so."

"Sleet, look around you. Being a mercenary is one thing, but being a terrorist is another, and yeah, that's what we are here. Unless you're on a terrific pay-grade, it just isn't worth it."

Sleet slowly started to grin like a madman. "Fortunate for me then. I got the higher cut."

"Of ribs? Sorry, couldn't resist. But look Sleet. You start this, and you'll be starting something that ain't gonna stop. You know what I can do. Do you really wanna go down this route?"

"I'm sorry, but did you say fried chicken was on the menu? I do believe you did."

"Right. Stand back, people. This is gonna get ugly. And dirty. Literally."