Winter had come early and hard this year.
Miles glanced over the side of the Tornado, ice threatening to crust over his goggles. Far below snow blended with clouds to form an endless white expanse, while the Lost Hex spread out ahead of him, its colourful floating archipelagos at once alien and familiar.
Zeti territory.
He had... bad memories about this place.
Maybe he should have waited for Sonic. The hedgehog would have stopped him if he'd told him where he was going.
Well... fait accompli. Miles would have had to fly him up here anyway. Miles shook his head, pushing the yoke forward. The green grass of Windy Hill loomed up before him, free of the snow that blanketed the zones below.
Twice as cold though.
It was a much smoother landing than his last visit. He had both wings and a working propeller this time around after all, which felt like a rarity sometimes. Wheels crackled to a halt across frozen grass, and Miles slipped out of the cockpit, pulling his goggles up to his forehead. His eyes flicked between his computer pad and his surroundings. He'd only met a handful of Zeti, and every single one of them was strong, fast, and vile, even by his standards. Worse, with their power over electromagnetism they were perfect counters for Miles' technological arsenal. The only thing he had on hand right now that a Zeti couldn't break with a flick of its fingers was a pencil.
At least their population was low, Miles didn't want to think about what might happen if they weren't. Especially if overcrowding were to ever push them out of the Lost Hex and into the world below. Even Robotnik had trouble with the Zeti, and he was usually the one causing trouble.
Miles tapped his lip, breath misting into the frigid air around him as he swept his pad from side to side. A slow beeping tone picked up speed as he raced toward his target, skimming across the surface of a small lake like a hydrofoil as he approached.
Odd how it wasn't frozen, but given the ground under his feet was busily ignoring gravity? The rest of the 'Hex got a pass on his weirdness radar. Still, maybe he'd grab some water samples on his way back? Never too busy to science a thing.
The beeping accelerated as he approached a sheer cliff, its checkerboard earth tones stretching high above. Miles didn't slow, leaping into the air and angling his spinning tails to soar up into the sky.
Too high. Miles panted as he continued to wind his tails, losing altitude for a moment before slamming feet first into the side of the cliff. He skidded down the sheer surface until his tails reset, then pushed off once more. His tails buzzed into life a second time to let him crest the cliff at last, dropping to the grass on top.
The beeping was faster than ever. Miles glanced around with a frown, cupping a hand over his nose with a gloved hand and blowing on it. His fur was thick enough for the cold not to bother him much, but this high up in winter was punishingly cold.
… Nothing. No machinery, no emeralds, and nobody around. Grass, dirt and a few rocks, a nothingburger, as Sonic said. Miles scuffed at the dirt and kicked a pebble over the cliff, watching it fall.
... Felt real enough.
The scanner on his pad was going wild, almost a solid tone of noise. Miles put it away with a frown, slipping it into his hammerspace - folds of spacetime any mobian could make if there was enough chaos energy around.
And there was plenty of energy here. The reading was so high that Miles would have been able to feel it if he was someone more talented. He wasn't even second best when it came to chaos manipulation, after all. More like a distant sixth. Weird how the top three were all hedgehogs.
No rings around though, which in itself was unusual. They usually coalesced in decent numbers around a zone like this. Unless someone had collected them recently, or-
Wait.
Miles squinted at the grass near the middle of the clifftop, walking closer to get a better look.
"Well you're not normal."
A patch of purple grass, distinct among the green. Thorny vines grew from its surface in the same dull purple. No wonder Sonic hadn't seen anything. If the same thing was happening below then it was buried below inches of snow, and Sonic wasn't the type to go digging for clues.
Heh.
Miles reached down, running a gloved finger delicately across a thorn. The jagged tip broke off instantly, burying itself deeper into the fabric even as the branch of the plant crumbled beneath it. "Not normal at all."
Pulling out a sample container Miles squeezed the decaying thorn from his glove into its open lid. It degraded into powder almost instantly, a thin residue across the base of the glass all that remained.
It would be enough. Miles snapped the lid shut. He'd find some rings and use chrono control on it later in his lab. Now to grab some of the grass and he could get-
"I thought I saw someone wandering around my hills."
A female voice broke though Miles' concentration, sounding bored of the conversation already. He jerked in surprise, shrinking in on himself as he turned towards the speaker. Harmless. Small. Non-threatening. Not worth fighting.
He didn't want to fight a Zeti without any rings.
The creature didn't shift from her perch atop a boulder, gazing at him through long lashes and long green hair adorned with a single black horn. Her features, like the Lost Hex itself, were not quite of this world. Her legs and hands were glossy black, with rings of the same dark shade adorning her slender waist and wrists. The pattern was more reminiscent of clothing than skin, and the vibrant green of the rest of her body was far from natural itself.
"Hello, Zeena."
"Fox boy!" The Zeti's yellow and blue eyes lit up, her smooth features tinted by casual malevolence. "It's been a long time. Last time we met you were… strapped to a table, was it?"
"Sounds about right." Miles nodded. The last time they met, Miles had been trying to gun her down with an arm cannon. Reminding her probably wasn't the best idea.
"Mmm. Good times." Zeena ran purple nails, the same shade as the rings on her solitary horn, across her cheek, biting her lip. "Shame though. You looked better as a robot."
Miles' tails lashed through the air. He remembered all too well, the optical implant especially. But... if he stayed calm and played his cards right he might be able to avoid a confrontation.
"So, uh, yeah, since you guys have been coming down to the surface a lot lately, thought I'd return the favour and say hi." Miles trailed his foot along the purple grass, watching the blades crumble beneath his feet. New growth sprouted from the soil moments after it was gone. A state of constant growth and decay. Interesting.
"What are you talking about? Is Zavok playing around down there again?" Zeena tutted with a scowl. "Too much work if you ask me. That's why we don't follow him anymore."
Ah ha. So the Zeti, except, maybe, Zavok, weren't involved. That was a relief, if not too surprising. The Zeti were selfish and cruel, but not particularly motivated as a species, Zavok excepted. Miles nodded, slipping the vial back into his hammerspace. Getting away was more important than grabbing the sample right now.
"Well, it's been nice talking to you, Zeena, but I'd really best be-gk!"
A green beam of energy snapped around his throat the moment he turned away. Zeena yanked Miles backwards to the dirt at her feet with a thud. Her alien eyes gazed into his own as she peered down at him, her slender green tail coiling around his waist.
Just tight enough to hurt.
"Leaving so soon?" The Zeti lifted him off the ground, a smile on her orange lips. "I'm hurt, little fox. You don't want to revisit some of the fun times we've had?"
"I remember plenty well already, Zeena." Miles smiled at her despite the crackling collar at his throat. "Especially the conch."
"What?" Her grip loosened, fear crossing her face.
With good reason. The sound of a 'cacophonous conch', as Robotnik had named it, had a disruptive effect on Zeti neurology. After hearing it, their bodies, and powers, partially shut down, leaving them in agonising, helpless pain.
"Did you think I'd come here without one?" Miles grinned. "I'm not Eggman. I'm happy to use whatever works, again and again. I even set the noise as my ringtone. Wanna listen?"
He slipped his pad out of hammerspace, keeping it away from Zeena's hands as she tried to grab it. "Ah, here we are."
"No!" Zeena tossed him through the air, bouncing across the grass. The green energy tendril faded as she stretched a hand out towards him, yellow sclera of her eyes brightening.
"Never gonna give you u~" The pad sparked and popped as it overloaded.
"What the- you tricked me!"
"Did I?" Miles winked at her, letting the smoking pad fall to the floor. Purple grass crumbled at his feet as he slipped out of the way of her energy whip, crossing onto green grass once again.
"You little brat! You're gonna pay for that!"
"Ooo, almost got me that time." Miles wagged his finger and slipped out of the way again, pretending to be someone braver than himself.
He did have the frequency, obviously. In exactly the same way that he did have a rapid fire handheld microfission grenade launcher, a long range disintegrator beam, and a powered heavy assault mecha. Back in his lab, in schematic form, unbuilt and likely to remain that way.
He was already far too dangerous to have a means of enslaving an army of Zeti on literal speed dial.
He was arguably too dangerous to have the pencil.
Miles ducked as a metal sphere crashed into the dirt behind him, then back flipped over it as the Zeti yanked it back towards her with a growl of rage.
"Stay still!"
Zeena spread her arms wide, grabbing a second metal ball from hammerspace and swinging them both together in a wide arc to crush Miles between them.
An opening.
Miles slipped forward and under as they clanged together, dashing forward to swing his tails up into the taller Zeti's stomach. She bounced back across the grass, crashing into a patch of purple thorns with an angry cry.
"Ow! Ow! Owwwww! They're in my hair!"
"Ooo, watch out, those prickers leave terrible stains. It can take days to scrub off."
"What?!" Her eyes widened in deeper terror than even the threat of the conch had evoked. "How dare you!"
Zeena flew upwards, blood trickling down her green skin from where the thorns had cut into her. Space distorted behind her as energy blazed from her hands once more. Dozens of large, exceedingly pointy, spheres thudded out of hammerspace around her
Meh. Worth a shot. It had been a fifty-fifty chance that the vain creature would run off to fix her hair. Miles yelped, hurling himself from side to side as she hurled balls at him one after another in rapid succession.
"Stop running and let me hit you!" The distortion grew heavier around Zeena, shadows deepening and widening as more and more spiky balls fell from nothingness. One projectile scraped past Miles' ear, spike tearing straight through in a spray of blood.
How was she doing that? Miles skidded under a salvo of spiked balls then launched over another, tails spinning to hold him clear until an opening in the pattern cleared up. He pulled out his energy cannon but it crackled into uselessness in an instant.
Ugh. Miles dropped it to the dirt and kept moving. Zeena was attacking far too quickly to even think about doing much more than dodge right now. He needed to wait for her to get tired, show some kind of weakness.
And then the space behind Zeena blinked. An enormous iris taller than even a human loomed up behind the Zeti, big enough to swallow her up in its pupil. The eye writhed from side to side as though trying to squeeze through the gap in space.
"What th- oof!" A ball slammed into Miles' stomach, red spraying through the air the fox bounced backwards across the grass.
"Hah! Got you." Zeena smiled, raising two more spiked balls above her head. "And now you p-ugh! Get off me!"
Crimson red tentacles had squeezed through the rift past the giant eye, coiling around Zeena in a heartbeat and dragging her to the floor. Her energy tethers crackled out of existence, dropped balls stabbing into the ground once more as she struggled in vain to tear the tentacles off her legs.
Miles weaved to his feet, white fur of his chest stained pink as he wheezed in a lungful of frigid air. More tentacles crept out past the giant eyeball to grab the yelling Zeti. Her foot claws carved a furrow in the earth as the tentacles dragged her backwards despite her overwhelming strength. The eye now bulged out of the rift in space, almost halfway through the widening tear, more tentacles slipping through around it.
… Well, he'd seen enough of the comics Knuckles hid under his bed to see where this was going. Miles glanced around the cliff face, clutching his wounded abdomen. He needed to get his pad back and get the data back to Sonic. Clearly something major was going on that was going to need all the muscle they could get to deal with.
"Eww! Gross!" Zeena finally fell back to the floor, now helplessly tangled in crimson strands as one wrapped across her face.
Miles sighed, dropping to a crouch.
As soon as he saved the Zeti.
Because that was what Sonic would do.
Bursting into a sprint, Miles pounded across the grass, stepping around thorns and grasping tentacles alike. He reached the immobilised Zeena in moments, leaping straight over the top without pause. He grabbed his pencil from the air around him moments before colliding, point first, with the giant eyeball.
And the entire world rumbled in pain around him.
Miles stumbled backwards, scrambling heedlessly through thorns to get away. But the eye, pencil still jutting from its surface, simply withdrew, its tentacles slithering after it.
He didn't even have time to register his victory. Air rushed into the empty space, threatening to drag him in with it. Fingers thrust into the dirt, Miles clawed his way hand over bloodstained hand away from the event horizon. Zeena skidded past him with a surprised yell, free from the tentacles but claimed by the vortex all the same, eyes wide with fear.
And she grabbed his tails as she passed.
"Oh n-ahhhhh!"
With a sudden, painful lurch, Miles hurtled screaming back into the void.
