A Wily tale, the beginning.
Part 23
Upon awakening Jonny found much to his shock and horror he was now suspended high above the ground by the neck of his shirt and coat. For a while Jonny could only look down in fear, silently praying that whatever held him aloft would not suddenly drop him like a stone. Down below him Jonny could see patches of forest amid a network of farmland and dirt roads. He could see a very small number of cars and other transports driving this way and that as well as a few tractors and other farming equipment. All in all a very peaceful place, the kind of place Jonny would love to live in. Now after letting his heart settle back down from the back of his throat to his chest he looked back to see what was holding him in midair. Jonny was greeted by a canine face with a teeth full of his clothes.
"Treble!" Jonny exclaimed in a mixture of happiness and surprise welled up inside him to see that it was Bass's former partner that had saved him. "Can you take us down Treble?"
Treble seemed eager to get the young man's coat out of his mouth as he descended to land in one of the felids. Much to Jonny's dismay Treble dropped him onto the dirt instead of setting him down gently. Jonny wanted to chide the wolf for dropping him like that but knew better than to yell at the very robot that saved his life.
"Was it you who saved me from the castle?" Jonny asked the robot that had just landed in front of him with far more grace than he had.
Treble being unable to wagged his tail a little and nodded his head in an affirmative. He had wanted to repay the young human for all the compassion he had shown he had shown since being disowned by Bass. Saving his life from certain termination seemed like an even trade.
Jonny knelt down and patted the wolf on the head, earning a smile from Treble as he wagged his tail even more vigorously. Jonny smiled, enjoying actually having a friendship with this wolf bot. It reminded him of his old dog Constance he had before... no he would not let such an unhappy memory spoil this moment. Right now he wanted to feel the exaltation of joy of having Treble as a companion.
Just then Jonny felt a tug at the tail of his coat. Turning Jonny was even more surprised to see a muddy and very tired Metool with a purple cross on its helmet.
"Holy crap Doc, did you run all this way from the fortress?" Jonny asked as he produced a rag from his coat pocket and began to wipe the filth from the Metool's yellow helmet.
The small robot smiled and hopped up and down at the attention he was receiving, even though it irritated Jonny as he tried to clean him off. After he was finished Jonny looked at the rag before he placed it back into his pocket. The rag was covered in oil and grease and now had a lovely mud and muck covering over a good half of it. With barely a thought Jonny tossed the rag into the grass and sighed.
"You feelin' better Doc?" Jonny asked.
The Metool squeaked in it's own binary language and hopped up and down ecstatically. Jonny smiled and patted the robot on the top of it's helmet before turning back to Treble.
"Well, is there anything left of the castle?" The young man asked, "Did the old man get out?"
Treble responded by standing on his feet, then pointing like a hunting dog to a plume of smoke on the horizon. Either that was the world's largest brush fire or that was the leftover smoke from the explosion of a plasma reactor. Jonny had seen pictures of these kinds of explosions in records in Dr. Wily's computer from his past failures, I guess this one was another set back for the old man. If he got out in time that is.
"Say Treble, you think you could take me to see the fortress, or at least what's left of it?" Jonny asked, kneeling down to get eye to eye with the wolf.
Treble gritted his teeth and whimpered a little, trying to voice how much he didn't want to go back there.
"Please Treble, I need to see how bad things are." Jonny pleaded, scratching the wolf behind his audio sensor.
Treble whimpered one more time and lowered his head, trying once more to discourage his new friend. Treble did not want to go back there because his programming had seen it as a hazardous area and it was slow to change on its own without outside influence like for example Bass ordering him into battle even when he was low on power. In hindsight Bass was not the master Treble wanted, nor did he want Dr. Wily because he would certainly dismantle him if he got the chance.
"Come on Treble don't make me beg, I want, no I need to see if anything's left." Jonny pleaded on last time.
Finally after all Jonny's begging and pleading, Treble sighed and relented. Treble showed his willingness to take the youth where he wanted by changing to his jet mode and laying in the dirt so Jonny could board him more easily.
Jonny stepped onto the flattened, board like portion of Treble's back, gripping the small Metool in one hand and steadied himself for an explosive takeoff. Thankfully Treble was wise enough not to do that with such an inexperienced passenger. The wolf slowly rose off the ground, allowing Jonny to keep his balance as they began to gain altitude and velocity in the direction of where Skull Fortress once stood.
Doc squirmed and wiggled as he tried to stay as close to Jonny as he could, surprisingly the little robot was seemingly terrified of being this high off the ground. Jonny tightened his grip and focused on the horizon and not on the ground that was now a long way beneath him.
It wasn't long before they passed back over the first section of jungle, nothing seemed to be out of order until Jonny's eyes fell on a wide circle of fallen trees that had snapped under the explosion's power. Beyond these trees was an ugly scorch mark on the earth were Skull Fortress once stood.
"Treble, take us down please..." Jonny asked politely, much to the thanks of Doc who wanted to be back down on solid ground.
As they landed Jonny got a better look at the condition of the land where he and Dr. Wily had worked and lived for all that time. The ground had been charred to a fine ashen powder from the explosion but there was still some rubble where the fortress once stood, mostly crushed stone and molten twisted steel. After inspecting the rubble with the help of Doc and Treble Jonny found no sign of Dr. Wily, save except for a burnt scrap of his lab coat. Jonny knew that it was unlikely that the old man survived the blast and ever more so that anything that remained would be recognizable.
"Maybe Gramps didn't get away..." Jonny didn't know what to feel exactly to feel as he held the tattered scrap of his grandfather's coat. The old man was insane and a very dangerous man but now Jonny knew that he was totally without family. In retrospect it may have been better to have let the old guy stay in jail where he could have at least stayed alive. Jonny knew he should feel something but with the lack of any remains or evidence of his grandfather's death it was difficult for Jonny to feel any remorse.
Jonny let out a sigh and would have asked Treble to take him away from there but a strong hand stopped him. Looking back Jonny came face to face with a gruff and very angry soldier wearing a UN patch on his shoulder. Other soldiers surrounded Jonny, pointed their rifles at the young man and glared daggers at him. They didn't seem to care who he was, they just seemed to look at him the same way as those men who killed his parents all those years ago.
"Hey what are you doing? I'm not the bad guy here!" Jonny professed innocently, trying to dislodge the stronger man's iron grip on his shoulder.
The soldier responded by telling him to 'shut up' and ramming the butt of his gun in the young man's face. Jonny was knocked to the ground with a bloody nose, looking up from the dirt at Treble for support he saw only a trail of smoke as the wolf flew off.
The soldier that struck him pulled Jonny up by the collar and pulled his arm behind him in a submission hold. This group of UN soldiers thought they had it pretty good right now, they had kidnapped a collaborator of the wanted criminal Dr. Wily and were going to reap a juicy reward from their commanding officers. They had every advantage from numbers and weapons to physical condition and military training, Jonny had no chance against these brutes.
Jonny felt utterly betrayed by Treble's abandonment, after saving him from the reactor Treble was just going to leave him to face the possibility of being trailed and jailed just like the old man? Jonny hung his head in defeat and began to silently shed his tears, he knew that if the soldiers heard him the might start taunting him or worse start to clobber him.
"What's this little thing?"
Jonny looked up to see one of the soldiers tapping the barrel of his gun on the top of a small yellow helmet that lay on the ground. The others that were not 'securing the prisoner' came over investigate what the other had found. One of them immediately reached down and tried to pick it up but found that it was either attached to something much heavier than a helmet could be or it was that heavy. Whatever it was it sure seemed to grab their attention.
"When you're finished playing with that toy you can get your asses on the comm and hail HQ about us having a prisoner." One of them barked while putting his filthy boot on my back, pushing Jonny in to the dirt.
The other soldiers however gathered around the small helmet and tried to budge it loose from the ground. Much to their surprise it came loose, sending them all to the ground, only then was the mystery revealed to them. The helmet suddenly grew two small waddling feet and a small black head with big eyes and an 'O' shaped mouth. Before the soldiers could react and aim their fire arms the small Metool had begun laying down a suppressing fire of small plasma balls that caused the soldiers to scatter and take cover behind the various piles of rubble. The one that was standing watch over Jonny picked him up and attempted to carry him out of the line of fire. Jonny however easily figured out that Doc was doing this for him and did the first thing that came to mind. Jonny gripped onto the soldier's wrist and sank his teeth into his hand at the base of the thumb.
The soldier growled at pain as a small trickle of blood leaked from where he had been bitten and instinctively threw Jonny to the ground. Before the Soldier could grab the young man once more a violet blur shot by, gripping the young man by the leg and dragging him into the air. Jonny was lucky enough to reach out and grasp the small Metool before he was dragged upwards. The soldiers let out cries of anger and managed to get off a few irritated shots from their rifles before Jonny was out of their sight thanks to the thick tree line.
To be continued...