I'm finally back and writing! Is anyone still here? Anyone still read this story?
Anyway, a lot has happened since I've been gone. Most important being the fact I survived a major tornado a few weeks ago. (Seriously. I live in the Ottawa region and there were several tornadoes that formed and completely destroyed everything). Don't worry about me, I'm fine though.
SunSera: I will say that one of those games are a direct inspiration for this story. I'll leave you to figure out which one, and experimenting on towns? Are you making early predictions?
Early morning, Gadget's POV
I woke up with a grumble and opened my eyes. I sat up and looked around to see we were still in that small log house we found. I felt warmth to my left, and saw Infinite still sleeping there, slightly snoring away. I smiled at the sight and began lightly shaking him with one hand to get him awake. After a few tries, he also began stirring.
"Come on, we need to get up." I said. I only got an annoyed grumble as a reply, which made me frown. "Seriously, we need to move before we're found." Infinite rolled over to face me and blinked.
"It's too early..." I shook my head.
"It's the next day, we need to leave." I honestly hated having to wake up my love like this, knowing he would despise trudging through more snow.
I watched Infinite blink at me again, and he sat up. "Fine. Where are we going?" He looked at me. I hadn't thought of that, to be honest.
"Ehm, somewhere where we can recollect and figure out what our next plan is without having to worry about the CDU finding us and throwing us back into that test chamber." I looked at him as he nodded. He got off the bed and did a few stretches.
I also hopped off the bed, and did a few stretches as well. Once I finished, I went over to the closet and found two pairs of winter clothes, long-sleeve shirts, jackets, pants, you name it. I picked out my pair and put them on, surprising that they actually fit me. I motioned for Infinite to come.
"What is it?" He asked, walking over to me. I showed him the pair of clothes, and he put on his clothes as well. We made sure we had everything we needed.
"Is there anything we're forgetting?" I asked, looking around.
"Nope. We didn't have much to begin with. Let's head out now." I turned and watched him open the door and leave. I got up and headed out with him.
We both looked around at the snowy land around us. I scratched my head. "Where are we gonna go?" I asked.
"Let's climb one of the trees, and we can scope out the area." He pointed to the nearest tree to us. I looked at him and nodded before we both jumped high up and clung onto the tree, and proceeded to jump further up it until we both got up to the top.
"I think I see a small town over there." I pointed in the direction I was looking at. There was a town with a few buildings along the main road. "We can hide up in the attic of one of those buildings and plan out what we're gonna do next."
I heard my love grin. "Actually not a bad idea, they'll think we're still out in the woods and probably want to avoid the town for obvious reasons, so they won't check there if we're lucky." I nodded at him.
"We'll have to jump tree to tree though. Can't leave footprints." I said, looking down for a moment.
Infinite hesitated and then leaped from our tree to the next towards the town, and I was right behind him. We had to be careful, as it wouldn't be hard to fall off and seriously injure ourselves.
I panted after a while. "You know, this is one time I wish I still had my grappling hook. Shame they took it off when I boarded my plane."
"You don't need the thing. All you need really is to have a proper sense to be careful." He told me. I kept that in mind as we continued hopping trees.
After about five minutes of doing nothing but tree-jumping, we made it to the outskirts of the town. Still on a tree, I watched Infinite as he amazingly lept off it, gaining quite some height and did some sort of air maneuver and glided fairly quickly to one of the buildings. My mouth was agape.
I couldn't waste time sitting there, so I slid and hopped off the tree and made a mad dash to the building. I jumped it's height and into the roof.
"That was pretty cool." I exclaimed. He smiled at me.
"Heh, it's a jackal thing." He told me, and found a hatch in the roof buried under the snow. I helped him dig it out and open it up. Both of us entered the attic without hesitation.
We closed it up and looked around. It was pretty dark, and neither of could see. I blindly searched around for the light switch, and by some miracle found it and flipped it on.
The old lightbulb flickered to life, and lit up the room. There were cobwebs, and some old chests. I sat down on one of them. "So, what's our next move?" I asked, looking up at the heterochromatic eyes of Infinite. He leaned against a wall.
"Like I said, we need to figure out whatever the Hell that experiment was back there. I'm thinking we could go back to that base and find out ourselves through a little violence." I nodded and watched him as he began to chew at one of his nails.
"Okay. What are we gonna do exactly when we get to the base? We can't go in there all gung-ho obviously." I said, making gestures.
He peered at me. "Relax, I'm not stupid. My plan is to create a distraction at the base so that everyone is forced to leave the main buildings. I remember seeing some huge refueling tanks by the hangars along the airstrip, so what I could do is set that off, exploding the tanks and hopefully some of the aircraft in the hangars. That'll force them to carry out their evacuation protocols, and during that time they're gone and dealing with the fire, we could meet up and sneak into that crazy scientist lady's office and steal the documents of this demented project." He explained throughly, I nodded occasionally.
"Sounds good. But what about the inside? Neither of us really know where the office is." I tapped my thumbs together.
I heard Infinite scoff. "Don't worry about that, they'll probably have signs indicating where it is. If not, I'll scare some idiot into telling us."
I got up and offered a fist bump. "Sounds like a plan." I said as he accepted the fist bump, but quickly pulled me into a hug for a moment. I laughed slightly as we hugged.
We stopped and he looked at me. "We should move in on this soon as they're still carried away with finding us." He explained. I nodded and smiled. I pulled him into a kiss as a return favour. I pulled out of the kiss and looked at my new love of my life. Both his normally white cheeks were red again.
"Adorable. Let's go." Infinite didn't say anything as we both left the attic. I went up to the roof and looked down on the main street, but immediately ducked down at the sight of Shamarian uniforms. I knew they couldn't be that stupid after all.
"What is it?" I heard Infinite ask, but I motioned for him to get down and be quiet. We peered over the edge, and saw their off-road vehicle. Two soldiers were busy conversing as I realized that this wasn't a search sweep, but just a few soldiers strolling by. I sighed in relief.
I looked to my side and saw Infinite eyeing something in the truck. "There's explosives in the back of that. I need those." He whispered. I nodded. "I'll go down there and take what I need. You keep watch and if anything goes wrong, I'm counting on you to help. Only two of them though. I'll be fine."
I looked back as he left and hopped off the back of the building. I kept an eye on the soldiers to make sure they weren't doing anything else. About a minute passed before they moved to the left of the vehicle, and Infinite took his chance. I watched him dart across the road and quietly opened up the back. He took the explosives and closed the door and glanced at me. He then makes it back across the road and back to me.
"Got what we need. We're ready to move on this." He said, laying down next to me. I looked back at the soldiers, who were getting into the truck and leaving.
"Pretty smooth. Neither of them noticed." I complimented.
"I'm a master of stealth. Its something you achieve from being in a squad like mine for so long." I got up, brushing snow off my jacket.
"Let's go, then. By the way, I'm not willing to hop anymore trees all the way to the base." I stated and got off the roof with my love behind me.
"I'm not either. Let's save our energy and just take a car for now." He told me. We walked over to the road behind the building and found a parked car there. I smirked as Infinite went over and broke into the car easily and started hotwiring it. I got in next to him.
He finished hotwiring and began driving down the road in the general direction of where the base was. Our job was made easier since there were roadsigns pointing to where the base was for some reason. I laid back and relaxed for a few.
"Gadget, we're here." He told me. I sat up, adjusting my glasses and looked around. We parked next to a forest.
"Uhh, that's a forest. Is the base behind it?" I asked.
"Yes. Let's go." He got out of the car, and walked towards the forest with the explosives and a knife. I also got out and followed him through the thick snowy brush until the base started to be visible. We continued walking until we got out of the forest and to the fence of the base itself and looked around.
"See the tanks there?" Infinite asked me and pointed to the right, where there were indeed the refueling tanks by the hangars he mentioned. I nodded. "I'll go and set these on those tanks. You stay put."
"Alright." I replied. Infinite quickly ran off towards the tanks. I waited for about five minutes unti he finally came back, giving me the thumbs up. We took cover behind a downed tree.
I felt Inf touch my shoulder. I looked at him. "Ready?" He asked.
"Do it." I retuned my gaze to the tanks, and heard Infinite press the button to detonate the explosives.
A few seconds passed by, and nothing happened. Just as we were letting our guard down, the tanks exploded in blinding fiery light. I covered my eyes for a moment and continued watching in amazement. Just as we hoped, the explosion was big enough to set off more explosive material in the hangars, creating a large chain of explosions along the airstrip.
"Woah!" I exclaimed.
"That was awesome. Alright... now we wait. Let them clear out of the buildings."
I looked over to a drain pipe next to us, and patted Infinite's back. "Hey, couldn't we use that to get inside?" He looked over to the pipe and nodded.
"Better than running in there out in the open." He told me. "Let's go." He went inside the pipe and I followed him. It was an awkward trek through the tunnel, since we had to keep our legs apart and on the slope of the tunnel to avoid the water.
We made it to a ceiling opening, which appeared to be a sewer grate or something. Both of us remained quiet as we heard the confused and scared shouts of the people above. We waited another solid five minutes, and opened up the grate. I sticked my head out and peered around. It was a sewer grate right in front an entrance to the main building, and no one was in sight. I hopped out.
"All clear." I confirmed. Infinite also hopped out and we carefully entered the main building, being wary of foes.
Just like we expected, nobody was inside due to the evacuation. We both vaguely remembered the office being on the second level when we were in that chamber, and climbed up some stairs. We walked out onto the second floor, where a scrambling dog scientist was desperately running towards us trying to get outside.
"Where's the main scientist office!?" Infinite shouted at him. The scientist began running the other way.
"I'm not telling you a thing!" He shouted back. Infinite jumped at him, grabbing the anthro and pushing him against the wall.
"Where's. The. Office?" I heard him demand once more. I ran up to them.
"I will not speak a word!" The scientist replied stubbornly.
"Want to play it like that, huh?" Infinite asked, and stabbed his knife into the dog, and they let out a shriek of pain. "Where's the office?"
"J-just around the corner. You cannot get in, anyway. Biometric security." They explained. I saw Infinite smirk.
"Good thing you're here, then. Come on." He withdrew the knife and I followed them to the office. The scientist put his hand onto the biometric scanner, and opened the door. Infinite pushed him inside.
I heard someone come behind us, and I spun around to see a human soldier running towards us with a handgun. I immediately reacted and kicked them so hard they spun and hit the ground, dropping their weapon.
The soldier got back up, and ran at me again. I jumped up and hit him in the face, grabbing his neck and bringing him down and I landed on one knee, snapping his neck.
"Not bad." I heard Inf compliment and I joined him in the office.
"Find anything?" I asked.
"Yeah, our friend here gave up the document quite easily." He motioned towards the brown dog on the floor. "Take this." He gave me a beige coloured folder that read "PROJECT NECORAVUS" on the front. I looked at Infinite as he kneeled towards the injured anthro. He held up one of his knives.
"Because you've been so cooperative, I'm allowing you a quick and short death." He stated.
"Wait, wha-" Infinite stabbed his throat before they could finish the sentence, killing them.
"Was that necessary?" I asked, standing over him and scratching my head. Infinite looked back at me.
"Anyone involved in this research deserves to die, Gadget. One way or another."
"I understand. We should get out of here, quick." I urged. He stood up.
"Yeah... let's go."
How's that for a comeback? I should be back and updating now. And reviews are always appreciated, you know.