Chapter 4: Fog

March 12, 1938

Flower Peddler Freed By Defiant Magistrate

In defiance of a letter from Chief Magistrate Jacob Gould Schurman urging city magistrates to impose heavier fines on flower vendors, Magistrate Sabbatino suspended sentence yesterday on a peddler in Coney Island Court, declaring that "nobody can tell me what to do except my Creator, through my conscience."

"I've read that H.G. Wells book, I know how this ends up!"

"We needn't worry, a bullet in the brain works wonders."

"Let's burn the bastards and throw them back into the sea."

On the deck laid a waterlogged and shoeless Amy Rose, and next to her an equally drenched Miles "Tails" Prower. Both were panting as their heads hugged the grainy wooden floor of the ship. Moments prior, Tails had exhausted the last of his spare energy reserves to lift himself and Amy onto the ship which had been plowing right towards them. After ascending past the bow of the ship, the two essentially crashed down into the deck.

"Did anyone else see that, those things just flew up to us right out of the water!"

Tails no longer had the strength to roll his head to look at the men talking down at himself and Amy. All he could do was relax his knee joints and go fully prone on his stomach. Neither paid attention to the approaching footsteps.

"What are you doing, don't touch it!"

"They're just kids, look how small they are!"

"The yellow one has two tails, and the pink thing has one eye! They're aliens and they'll kill all of us!"

"Kill? They can't stand on their feet!"

The crowd of seamen encircled the two creatures. They were cautious not to stand in the seawater the two were secreting from their fur and clothes. The troop largely had no weapons, save for a lanky soldier with his self-loading pistol in the back of the group. The one sailor who had started making his way towards the two stowaways stopped a yard away from their bodies. Their salty puddle was licking at his fading leather shoes looking for entrance. Excluding their swaying from the rocking boat, both the men and mutants were still. Waves crashed on the sides of the steel hull. The unaware seagulls bickered from their perched position on the mast overhead.

Like Tails, Amy was lying face down across the wood deck. Gently, the seawater flowed out of her ears and down the sides of her cheeks until reaching her chin and dripping down to the ground. Her entire body felt to her like it had the consistency of gelatin, but she was much more conscious than her ally. She blinked twice and wondered if the swooshing noises she was hearing were from the sea or from the blood rushing in her ears. Amy slowly brought her arm between her face and the floor and lifted herself up slightly; she looked up at the crowd surrounding her.

Bewilderment, disgust, and remorse painted the faces of the men. The rattle of the lanky soldier's metal pistol could be heard as his arms vibrated at the sight of her looking up. The men had all pressed back to try and make distance between themselves and the two on the ground. Feeling a thrash in the back of her throat, Amy began violently coughing up some of the water that had managed to sneak into her mouth. The men remained unmoving in the sight of her turmoil. Eventually, she stopped and cleared her throat. Feeling a light pressure against her lips, she wiped away loose saliva off her mouth and weakly smiled. "Sorry about that. And for sneaking onto your boat, haha…." With that, she dropped her head against her arm on the ground. Amy rotated her head to see Tails. He was slowly rising back and forth on the ground from shallow breaths.

In almost a whisper, one of the men spoke up. "Blimey, I knew the devil would speak our tongue." Amy snickered at the thought of being the devil, no one else laughed. By now, the crowd had attracted the attention of the whole ship—minus the crew piloting the vessel—who had started to form up with the crowd and ask questions, including the captain.

Expecting to see some sort of improvised bare-knuckle boxing event, the captain pushed through the crowd to get to his seniority spot of front row seat. Instead, he was greeted to the sight of a passed out humanoid fox and a slobbing female hedgehog both on the deck of his ship. His brow furrowed at the sight. "...Now where did you find two dwarfs with All Hallows' Eve costumes at?"

"Sir?"

"Get on your feet you two, where the hell did…?" The square-jawed captain had begun to pick up on the fact that none of his sailors seemed particularly amused by the display in front of them. He spotted in his peripheral that one of his soldiers actually had his sidearm drawn. Chasing up from the man's gun to his face, the soldier's eyes were staring directly at the captain in desperation. In fact, well over half the crowd was just staring at the captain.

His eyes widen and shot from man to man seeking answers for himself. "What is the meaning behind this?!" Instead of words, he was met with gazes. There were murmurs in the back and attempts at sentences, but nothing came to fruition.

In a mellow, almost joking tone, Amy was the one to speak up. "My friend and I were looking to not drown if that's alright with you." The captain did not say anything, and continued to stare at the sight in front of him.

"Sir, don't listen to her rubbish, they're aliens!"

"Aliens? The only aliens you'll ever see are the Japs. Bring them down into the hold and get those masks off. We'll question them once we arrive in Alexandria." The men briefly gave each other a side eye. Not wanting to risk a court-martial, the front most men stepped forward towards the two. They flipped Tails over onto his back. One man stationed himself at Tails' shoulders, another at the feet. They counted down and simultaneously picked him up. Despite being exclusively deadweight, the men picked him up with ease. Amy was instead picked up by two men from under her shoulders and instructed to walk while being dragged along. The two men were both in an uncomfortable squat as Amy was just shy under three feet tall. She did not protest, she did not have the strength to both walk and argue at the same time. Rather, Amy focused on the ground and carefully placed each one of her steps one after another. The combination of her dripping dress, slick socks, and overall lack of power in her legs made each step a chore in and of itself. Though she would slip, the men continued to guide and drag her towards the innards of the boat. The dark oaken planks beneath her feet showed little sign of degradation, suggesting to her that they had been recently cleaned.

Out in front of her, the piercing of a wheel turning and grinding gnawed at Amy's ears. A haze of the musty odor of corrugated iron engulfed Amy, causing her to scrunch her face in disgust. They crossed through a metal rounded door frame and were inside.

One dinky red-yellow light emitted a quiet hum of electric heat. A multitude of bent bars criss-crossed over top of the light. All it served was to illuminate the ladder/stair hybrid to the underbelly of the ship. Light from the outside spilled into the cabin before being absorbed into the unpolished, cold metallic floor. The new floor was covered with outwardly facing half sphere indents. Amy's feet traced over the hills and valleys of the dynamic ground. They stopped.

One of the men holding Tails released his grip and descended down the steps. A clud of leather on metal rang out. The other man, still holding Tails, slowly dropped him down the steps into the awaiting arms of the now descended sailor. Once released, the second sailor followed them down the steps.

The men walked Amy to the steps and had her stand straight up. They turned her around to face away from the stairs and towards the door. She watched as one of the sailors outside closed the door and twisted the wheel lock from the outside. The soldier on Amy's left released his grip and descended down the steps. The remaining soldier released as well, but he instead positioned himself between Amy and the door. Without speaking, he directed her to climb.

One arm at a time, Amy reached out towards the railing of the stairs. The metal railing bit into her gloved hands and lashed out at her wet skin underneath. It was cold. The angle of descent was steep, so much so that she could not both hold onto the railing and reach the next step. Lacking shame, Amy relinquished the railing and went down each step one at a time on her hands and knees. Every stair she climbed down was followed by the sailor at the top climbing down a step too. The sudden Clunk from his leathery shoes distracted Amy into looking up at her captor/rescuer. He loomed over her. The red-yellow light illuminated only his face. His imperfections, cracks, ridges, folds, the sand in his eyes, the oils in his dirty blond hair, the uneven stubble beard on his face, all lit up on display. It was cold. He took another step down towards her.

The metal floor was not made for people not wearing harden shoes. The ends of the steps were jagged, short metal shoots waiting for bloody baptism. Amy's socks snagged these ends with almost every step, but she managed to avoid pricking herself.

With one last step Amy reached the bottom of the stairs and landed in a narrow hallway. On both sides were either doors or pipes. The doors had the same wheel contraption as the door outside, and the pipes presumably used the same metal as the rest of the ship. The dark red 'DANGER/HOT PIPES/DO NOT TOUCH' signs on every other pipe were hard to miss even in the dim lighting. Amy slowly brought her hand out towards one of the pipes to warm her damp gloves. A dull heat slid between her fingers as she inched forward. Sweet relief. The sailor who had previously descended reached out, gripped under Amy's shoulder, and pulled her back along. They were soon joined by the second sailor.

There was no longer enough room for the three of them to be shoulder to shoulder with one another, so they gave her the option of being carried or walking. Amy chose to walk. They lined up single file with Amy in the middle and took off towards the hold.

It was a maze of pipes and passages. A left here, a right there. Squeeze through on your side to get through, do not trip over the incline. Bash your head on that pipe and off to the infirmary. Wait, you're a pipsqueak. That steam should not come out there. Crashes, whistles, orchestrated madness. A cacophony of industrialized might, maybe magic. Footsteps everywhere, loose wires jittering with galvanized shocks. A ladder where the top is showered in light and the bottom drenched in darkness. Lights would flicker on and off at regular intervals until one would understand the interval and then the light would change the frequency of the flickering just to throw off the observer so they would never quite understand the pattern that was going on or even if there was a pattern or why there would be a pattern to randomly flickering lights and if the patterns were just illusions masterminded by the brain to try and make sense of the flickering like there was some sort of bigger meaning until they would decide against it since it required more thought than it was worth to deduce random flickering that seemingly was not random until it was. Stray too far to a side and the pipes would remind you why the dark red signs were plastered everywhere and stray too far to the middle and the cold cold cold glow of the metal engulfing and surrounding would engulf and surround making you want to seek a gray area between the pipes and the middle so that you are lukewarm but all that really happens is one side of the body is scorched by pipes carrying steam from the three-drum boiler of the HMS Devonshire—built in the span of two years between 1926 and 1927 in the English effort to expand its influence in the Mediterranean perhaps to counteract the expanding Italian navy with their balding bulging eyed duce or maybe the French with their militaristic tendencies or just to stir up jobs and continue the notion that the English rule the waves or to modernize its aging pre Great War ships which the royal navy was still largely composed of or to make sure that the Germans never even had a single solitary fucking thought that one day they would have the ability to build up their fleet and take on the English navy and conquer the island and establish their thousand year rule over the Earth—through the ship to propel the monstrosity of metal through the water and the other side of the body was cold.

From the stairs the trio walked directly forward until they arrived at the hold. The leading man spun the door wheel counterclockwise until the hold door cracked open. They entered. Amy only heard the trailing man spin the door back around to lock it.

The hold was, like the majority of the underbelly of the ship, poorly lit. By now their eyes had adjusted to the lack of artificial or natural light and vision was the least of her concerns. Piled high with categorized wooden crates and pallets and barrels and the sort, the room was a floating fire hazard at sea. And more importantly, it was not a place suitable for the shipment of live cargo.

Tails was already on the ground next to crates with 'DRY FOOD' spray painted in white on their sides. The boxes themselves were not stacked in a particular delicate order, and Amy silently worried about them falling on top of Tails if a strong wave hit. She did not have much time to worry before she was shoved down next to him.

Under the cover of darkness, one of the men threatened that "one move from either of you and you're going home in one of those crates!" A sailor on the end whispered something into his neighbor's ear and walked off.

Clearly agitated, Amy retorted "Don't worry, we'll just sit here and let time kill us instead of the water." She placed her back flat against the DRY FOOD crate, crossed her arms and legs and let out a pouty hmph with her mouth closed.

"Good, save us the work."

Minutes slowly marched on as a staring contest broke out with Amy in the DRY FOOD corner and the three sailors in the ominous shadow corner. Her lip was puckered to the side like a bassist in the groove, eyes locked dead center with the man in front of her, eyebrows solidly angled. She had practiced this face so many times with Sonic that she did not need to put any thought into maintaining it, and instead thought about other things.

"I guess we're in some other human world. Not exactly friendly are they. How come when we take these stupid trips around the universe it is never to somewhere fun or pretty? Guess it's nice that they're letting us stay on the boat, could give us a blanket or something. Wow that guy is not happy that we are here, must be Tails, I thought I did myself up this morning pretty okay. I wonder if I should shake him up, he could handle this better than I can. He probably would have talked us out of here by now. If I say another word I might just need to break out my hammer. Good thing I was so worn out when we got on the boat or I might just had started swinging it when they called me a thing. And where did that other guy go? And weren't they supposed to take our heads off or something? Maybe he is looking for a saw. Ugh, god Amy why would you think that. Whatever it's my head I can think whatever I want. If they think we're scary evil aliens now just wait till they try and hurt us. Thinking about it, Tails and I could probably take on this whole ship. Yeah, the SS Rose, I can see it now. Cruising around, looking for Sonic, soaking up the sun, finding the emeralds. I don't think Tails could actually pilot something so, um, primitive as this thing. Like have they heard of lights? Or windows even. Frankly I could spruce things up quite a bit around here while we wait to dock. Where was it, Alex something the captain said. I mean, I think he's the captain. Oldest guy here at least. And where's all the ladies at? I know this is some sort of military boat but come on, this place smells worse than a gym. Hey, he blinked, loser. Maybe now they'll leave us alone... nope."

The now familiar sound of the wheel door opening rung out as more men entered. Amy did not look to see who it was. Instead they entered her view. First, the sailor who had left returned, and he had shackles in tow. Next, the captain in all his late forties glory. And then what can be described as no less than a mob of seaman, some with their sleeves rolled up, some with barely concealed blunt force objects. Lanky gunman was there too, gun present.

"Their heads still attached?" The captain pointed at the two on the ground with his lit pipe. The red tobacco embers stood out in the dank room.

"Couldn't find the zipper, sir." One of the three sailors said in a deadpan tone.

"Ha! They're too afraid to touch us. What, do they think we have space influenza?"

"I see." He took a deep inhale of his pipe and breathed out the smoke towards Amy and Tails. Obnoxiously, he cleared the back of his throat with an uncomfortable sounding gag, and then spit tobacco residue on the ground. The smoke lingered in the air, filling Amy's nose with a sticky cloud. She resisted the urge to scratch and cough to keep her stoic demeanor. He dug into his pocket and retrieved a thick match with a red tip. Curiously, he opened his mouth and stuck the match inside. He brought the match down across the backs of his top incisor teeth with force and conviction. The dwindling embers of his pipe met the now lit match and the two intermixed, bringing more tobacco smoke into the crowded storage room. The captain shook the match to kill the flame, and tossed the burnt stick on the ground with the flick of his thumb. He took a couple more puffs of his pipe before speaking again. "Listen here miss. I don't know why you two are here, and frankly I don't care. If you try to resist, we will not hesitate to bring the situation back under control." He paused. Lanky gunman squeezed around the grip of his pistol. Others around him tapped their various objects of choice in their hands back and forth. "Fasten them."

The sailor with the shackles stepped forward, he did not look excited. He cracked one end of the shackles loose opening it into a claw like shape. "Extend your arms and do not move." He said with an audible shake in his speech. The jitter of the chain bouncing off of its links reflected off each of the holds walls amplifying and making the sound obvious.

Amy sighed. She rolled her eyes, looked down at the floor, and held out her arms akin to a zombie. "Try not to sound too excited." She sarcastically interjected. She did not expect anyone to laugh, her assumption was correct.

With great deliberation, the man crept forward towards the seated girl. The room was quiet except for the sounds of the floor crackling under the sailor's leather boots and the chain dangling against itself. Finally, he snapped the manacle down around Amy's wrist behind her gold bracelet. Given her small arms, he had to twist the lock on the shackle until it was tightened fully, and even then her hands were more loose than protocol would allow. Luckily her disproportionately large hands would prevent her from slipping out. As he loosened the other side, Amy thought about how cold the metal was against her bare arm. Not as bad as the railings or the water, but on that same level. Once he finished binding her other arm, Amy thought it was over. It was not. He reached around his pants and pulled out another pair which had been shoved in his rear pocket. To Amy's surprise, he also joined her legs together. She did not complain at risk of herself and Tails being hurt.

Seeing the show come to an end, the crowd had begun to disperse. The captain stayed behind, still puffing away at his pipe. While the man worked with Tails, Amy quietly pulled her chains taut. They were pristine, clearly never used.

He finished tightening Tails' legs together and marched out of the room without saying a word to the captain. With his departure led to the arrival of men with much more impressive guns than lanky soldier had. Rifles, longer than Amy herself, shining even in the dim glow of the room. They formed around the captain, and they shared an unintelligible conversation between themselves. The jostling Tails experience must have woken him up to a degree, as he rolled onto his side to face Amy. His eyes were still closed. The sailors conversation finished. The captain made his way for the door, and the sailors with rifles pulled up seats out of the shadows and sat near Amy and Tails.

Walking away, the captain made one last comment. "I suggest you get some rest." He exited and tightened the door behind him.