SuperSonic Speed-- Chapter 26: A hall painted red
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Mushroom Hill 6/7/4460
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Sonic and Tails helped load Knuckles' hovercruiser with all of the grenades, bugs and weapons that the team needed. Sonic and Tails were both dressed in their combat jackets and pants.
Juke looked at the two, "If I was you, I'd get some sleep right now. Most missions don't have advance time like this to sleep with, so this is a luxury." Sonic just stared and stepped into the cruiser, a camouflaged ship with metallic insides and room enough for 10 people, equipment, and five beds.
"Sure is dull in here," Sonic thought as the dim lights were turned on to reveal an elaborate instrument panel. "Whoa! Knuckles, where in the world did you get all these weapons and stuff!" Sonic exclaimed.
"Where else?" Knuckles asked, peeking back at Sonic.
"Chaotix?" The blue hedgehog guessed, getting into the bed with his name in orange over it.
"Yep, supplier number one."
"So, why do we need these stupid seatbelts anyways for bed?" Sonic asked, fumbling with the five-point harness.
Knuckles flashed an often-missing smile, "You'll see."
Tails did the same, and Juke strapped herself into a seat besides Knuckles.
"Okay, sound off!"
"Juke Here"
"Sonic, ready to rock!"
"Tails ready."
"Alright then, WE ARE GONE!!!" Knuckles yelled as he pushed the throttle all the way forward and the team rocketed off of the island."
---
50 miles Northeast of Robotropolis 6/8/4460 0100
---
Sonic looked to his left and out the front window, he immediately recognized the surroundings even though about half of the ground of the village they were in was covered with cooled lava and burnt rubble, the standing buildings either partly burnt down or covered in scorch marks. "Knuckles! Stop the ship NOW!!!"
The echidna turned back, "Why? What do you need?"
"I need to see something, I know where we are!"
"Oh alright, but it had BETTER be important Sonic," Knuckles said as he dropped his speed from 1,000 miles per hour, down to about 200. Knuckles shut off the thrusters and the plane dropped from about three feet off the ground and slowly decelerated.
Sonic clicked off his harness and jumped down from the bed.
"Wait Sonic!" Knuckles called.
"Eh?" Sonic asked, puzzled.
Knuckles pointed to his bag. "You may want to carry some equipment."
"Good point..."
"Okay... grenades, all you do is stick your finger through the hole to trip the switch, and to turn it off, simply do that to the other hole. Red are fragmentation, which means they blow big time, and the blue are jammers, they interrupt the signal between the Central Core Unit and the audio/video system, so they can't hear or see you."
"Right..." Sonic said, only half understanding what the guardian had said.
"Don't worry, Juke will be going with you, you can lead the way, I have some last touches to this plan that I need to make." The red echidna hit the switch and the door folded down and into a ramp. The sun was setting over the part of the village which wasn't burnt from the Mount Marble eruption.
Sonic ran down and looked, remembering all too well where he was. The blue hedgehog slipped his metal gloves off and swung at the ship and winced as the impact hurt his knuckles.
"What in the world are you doing Sonic?" Knuckles questioned, looking up from his work.
"Nothing!" Sonic yelled, slipped his gloves back on, more than convinced the pain was real.
"So Juke, do you know where we are?" Sonic asked, scanning the horizon for a particular hut.
The Lieutenant pulled her uniform tighter and answered "Northern suburbs of Metropolis right?"
"Yeah, Grotto Village, this is my home Juke, this is what Robotnik took from me. This is what I ran from and this is what I'm fighting for."
Sonic and Juke sat on a patch of cooled lava. "You slept through Casino Night didn't you Sonic?"
The blue hedgehog nodded, watching the distance, taking in the condition of each individual house. "Yeah, I slept through it."
"Y'know, Robotnik bombed it so bad. There were craters EVERYWHERE."
"This isn't a competition Juke, you know it. All that matters is that Robotnik gets off the planet dead or alive-- preferably dead." He looked around; this was everything he had ever known reduced to nothing.
The blue hedgehog stood up. He was staring at a village that was erased from his inside, it wasn't like the mass of rubble he was looking at was what was deep down anyway. Way under, piled beneath the rubble and garbage in his head, Sonic was lead to a certain area of what was the lost Grotto Village. The layout had some familiarity, although he wouldn't admit to himself that he knew exactly where he was.
Juke had now caught up with the speedy hedgehog, "Watcha doin'?" She asked, wondering why the hedgehog had singled out the particular hut.
"Stay back, this... is... forget it." He couldn't finish, and it wasn't the fact that he didn't want Juke to not know, it was that he wanted to forget. This was Slam's house, the house he had spent his broken childhood in playing superhero up in the attic and wrestling in the basement. He remembered building cardboard tunnels and pretending they were air ducts.
He raced inside, rapidly searching for any signs of anything. But he couldn't see the inside at all, there was no power. Sonic smacked himself for not thinking of it sooner. The blue hedgehog went back outside, "Juke! Can I borrow your gun?"
"Why? Creepies inside?" The female hedgehog responded, curious.
"Naw, I just need the flashlight, can't see a thing."
Juke reluctantly handed it over, "Just twist the flashlight to turn it on and off and... uh... be careful, I don't need you shootin' yourself, you haven't been trained to handle one of these."
"I don't need you shootin' yourself," Sonic mocked, "really, how stupid do you think I am?" And with that, he walked back into the house.
Sonic flipped on the flashlight and waved it back and forth against the walls, some of them bore large, robot-sized holes, and a couple had BuzzBomber stingers sticking out of them. The couch and other various pieces of furniture were flipped over as cover and appliances and different items littered the floor, obviously thrown as last resort self-defense measures. Sonic walked over and saw the final resting place of several BuzzBombers.
"Serves 'em right," Sonic thought, maneuvering up the war-torn stairs, hopping across gaps. At the top of the stairs was a trail of blood leading straight down the hallway and leading to a hole in the wall at the bedroom at the end. Light from the sinking sun flooded through the hallway and Sonic attempted to shield himself. When he made his way inside the room, he noticed that scorch marks littered the room and it was quite obvious that the BuzzBombers had bombed it and someone was unlucky enough to have been blown out of the house.
The hedgehog knelt over the hole and looked down for a brief, telling second. He looked away in disgust and anger. "And Slam was telling ME not to die on him," Sonic thought grimly taking a minute to just sit inside. Head buried in an isolated corner of the room, he wondered how much worse it would get. First his mom, probably his dad, now Slam. He couldn't take this; this wasn't his specialty, even though it had turned into his war.
He remembered watching TV and playing with Slam. The hero never lost anything. The hero never cried. The hero never did it for himself, but for the world. The hero was the hero because he was perfect. He'd always believed it, but now the description sounded more like God than any possible living creature on the planet.
Outside, Juke waited impatiently and gave up, walking inside. "Sonic!" She yelled, but to no response. The room was too dark and made any vision at all impossible, and Sonic had her gun, and so she was forced to feel her way. "No light here, so he must be upstairs," Juke tripped over several pieces of furniture and various metallic parts and she made her way toward the stairs. She hugged the wall and climbed up. The Lieutenant gasped as her right leg fell through a gap she couldn't see. Standing straight up, she lifted her leg up and to the right, making sure she firmly had her foot on the next stair up before lifting her left foot. Juke did this with the rest of the stairs and managed to avoid several gaps that way.
At the top of the stairs, the lime green hedgehog noticed the trail of blood streaking out to the end where light flooded the inside and gasped... "Oh my god... he didn't..." Juke breathed, her emotions running wild, could Sonic have tried to shoot himself with her gun? And having that not worked, had he jumped off from the second floor? "SONIC!!!" She yelled as she rushed into the room, only to discover a very quiet Sonic in the corner of the room, her gun in front of him, its flashlight switched off.
"Sonic!" Juke asked.
"Yea..?" Sonic responded in his usual "I'm-okay-what-do-you-want?" type of way.
"Uh... that isn't YOUR blood in the hall is it?"
"Let's see," Sonic sarcastically began, "D'ya think if that blood was mine that I'd be awake or alive enough to talk to you? But for your info, no that's my friend Slam's blood, and I warn you not to look out the window, it's not a pretty sight."
Sonic stood up; it wasn't like he could cry here with someone else in the room anyway, "I'm ready to go after one last stop."
He flipped on the flashlight and began to walk slowly through the hallway, and even slower as he descended the gap-filled stairs. At the end he "jogged" out into the sunset, Juke running full speed on his rear.
"Geez! Slow down already!" She yelled, fighting to keep up with the SuperSonic hedgehog. He stopped as he got near the next (standing) house. This one had had the paint burnt off of it and the roof had been annihilated.
Sonic's jaw gaped at the sight "Was this the right house?" He stormed inside, turning on the flashlight of Juke's gun. Waving it back and forth he checked the almost unrecognizable layout, "Definitely the right house," Sonic walked out of the house; he couldn't take the sight of the wreckage of everything that he had known for the first fifteen years of his life.
He slowly walked out of the house, Juke catching up with him shortly. "What did you find?" The Lieutenant asked.
"Fifteen years worth," Sonic muttered.
"eh?"
"Never mind." The hedgehog walked toward the hovercruiser, "It's so hard to believe that this was what I had known for fifteen years, and it's so weird... if I didn't take off for Central Metropolis like I did, I woulda ended up like Slam--- red and dead. Could I have saved him? Couldn't I have taken him to Central Metropolis with me?" Sonic opened the cruisers side door.
"Naw, your brain was too clocked with the whole situation to be thinking level-headed. Of course with your training now, you'd know not to freak," Juke hopped in after Sonic, who had strapped himself into the seat behind Knuckles. She took a seat next to Knuckles and strapped herself in, "We're ready to head to Central Metropolis Knuckles."
"Don't kid yourself, Central Metropolis doesn't exist anymore."
Sonic's eyes widened, "Whaddaya mean 'doesn't exist'?"
Knuckles turned on the thrusters, "You'll see Sonic," He pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go.
---
Mushroom Hill 6/7/4460
---
Sonic and Tails helped load Knuckles' hovercruiser with all of the grenades, bugs and weapons that the team needed. Sonic and Tails were both dressed in their combat jackets and pants.
Juke looked at the two, "If I was you, I'd get some sleep right now. Most missions don't have advance time like this to sleep with, so this is a luxury." Sonic just stared and stepped into the cruiser, a camouflaged ship with metallic insides and room enough for 10 people, equipment, and five beds.
"Sure is dull in here," Sonic thought as the dim lights were turned on to reveal an elaborate instrument panel. "Whoa! Knuckles, where in the world did you get all these weapons and stuff!" Sonic exclaimed.
"Where else?" Knuckles asked, peeking back at Sonic.
"Chaotix?" The blue hedgehog guessed, getting into the bed with his name in orange over it.
"Yep, supplier number one."
"So, why do we need these stupid seatbelts anyways for bed?" Sonic asked, fumbling with the five-point harness.
Knuckles flashed an often-missing smile, "You'll see."
Tails did the same, and Juke strapped herself into a seat besides Knuckles.
"Okay, sound off!"
"Juke Here"
"Sonic, ready to rock!"
"Tails ready."
"Alright then, WE ARE GONE!!!" Knuckles yelled as he pushed the throttle all the way forward and the team rocketed off of the island."
---
50 miles Northeast of Robotropolis 6/8/4460 0100
---
Sonic looked to his left and out the front window, he immediately recognized the surroundings even though about half of the ground of the village they were in was covered with cooled lava and burnt rubble, the standing buildings either partly burnt down or covered in scorch marks. "Knuckles! Stop the ship NOW!!!"
The echidna turned back, "Why? What do you need?"
"I need to see something, I know where we are!"
"Oh alright, but it had BETTER be important Sonic," Knuckles said as he dropped his speed from 1,000 miles per hour, down to about 200. Knuckles shut off the thrusters and the plane dropped from about three feet off the ground and slowly decelerated.
Sonic clicked off his harness and jumped down from the bed.
"Wait Sonic!" Knuckles called.
"Eh?" Sonic asked, puzzled.
Knuckles pointed to his bag. "You may want to carry some equipment."
"Good point..."
"Okay... grenades, all you do is stick your finger through the hole to trip the switch, and to turn it off, simply do that to the other hole. Red are fragmentation, which means they blow big time, and the blue are jammers, they interrupt the signal between the Central Core Unit and the audio/video system, so they can't hear or see you."
"Right..." Sonic said, only half understanding what the guardian had said.
"Don't worry, Juke will be going with you, you can lead the way, I have some last touches to this plan that I need to make." The red echidna hit the switch and the door folded down and into a ramp. The sun was setting over the part of the village which wasn't burnt from the Mount Marble eruption.
Sonic ran down and looked, remembering all too well where he was. The blue hedgehog slipped his metal gloves off and swung at the ship and winced as the impact hurt his knuckles.
"What in the world are you doing Sonic?" Knuckles questioned, looking up from his work.
"Nothing!" Sonic yelled, slipped his gloves back on, more than convinced the pain was real.
"So Juke, do you know where we are?" Sonic asked, scanning the horizon for a particular hut.
The Lieutenant pulled her uniform tighter and answered "Northern suburbs of Metropolis right?"
"Yeah, Grotto Village, this is my home Juke, this is what Robotnik took from me. This is what I ran from and this is what I'm fighting for."
Sonic and Juke sat on a patch of cooled lava. "You slept through Casino Night didn't you Sonic?"
The blue hedgehog nodded, watching the distance, taking in the condition of each individual house. "Yeah, I slept through it."
"Y'know, Robotnik bombed it so bad. There were craters EVERYWHERE."
"This isn't a competition Juke, you know it. All that matters is that Robotnik gets off the planet dead or alive-- preferably dead." He looked around; this was everything he had ever known reduced to nothing.
The blue hedgehog stood up. He was staring at a village that was erased from his inside, it wasn't like the mass of rubble he was looking at was what was deep down anyway. Way under, piled beneath the rubble and garbage in his head, Sonic was lead to a certain area of what was the lost Grotto Village. The layout had some familiarity, although he wouldn't admit to himself that he knew exactly where he was.
Juke had now caught up with the speedy hedgehog, "Watcha doin'?" She asked, wondering why the hedgehog had singled out the particular hut.
"Stay back, this... is... forget it." He couldn't finish, and it wasn't the fact that he didn't want Juke to not know, it was that he wanted to forget. This was Slam's house, the house he had spent his broken childhood in playing superhero up in the attic and wrestling in the basement. He remembered building cardboard tunnels and pretending they were air ducts.
He raced inside, rapidly searching for any signs of anything. But he couldn't see the inside at all, there was no power. Sonic smacked himself for not thinking of it sooner. The blue hedgehog went back outside, "Juke! Can I borrow your gun?"
"Why? Creepies inside?" The female hedgehog responded, curious.
"Naw, I just need the flashlight, can't see a thing."
Juke reluctantly handed it over, "Just twist the flashlight to turn it on and off and... uh... be careful, I don't need you shootin' yourself, you haven't been trained to handle one of these."
"I don't need you shootin' yourself," Sonic mocked, "really, how stupid do you think I am?" And with that, he walked back into the house.
Sonic flipped on the flashlight and waved it back and forth against the walls, some of them bore large, robot-sized holes, and a couple had BuzzBomber stingers sticking out of them. The couch and other various pieces of furniture were flipped over as cover and appliances and different items littered the floor, obviously thrown as last resort self-defense measures. Sonic walked over and saw the final resting place of several BuzzBombers.
"Serves 'em right," Sonic thought, maneuvering up the war-torn stairs, hopping across gaps. At the top of the stairs was a trail of blood leading straight down the hallway and leading to a hole in the wall at the bedroom at the end. Light from the sinking sun flooded through the hallway and Sonic attempted to shield himself. When he made his way inside the room, he noticed that scorch marks littered the room and it was quite obvious that the BuzzBombers had bombed it and someone was unlucky enough to have been blown out of the house.
The hedgehog knelt over the hole and looked down for a brief, telling second. He looked away in disgust and anger. "And Slam was telling ME not to die on him," Sonic thought grimly taking a minute to just sit inside. Head buried in an isolated corner of the room, he wondered how much worse it would get. First his mom, probably his dad, now Slam. He couldn't take this; this wasn't his specialty, even though it had turned into his war.
He remembered watching TV and playing with Slam. The hero never lost anything. The hero never cried. The hero never did it for himself, but for the world. The hero was the hero because he was perfect. He'd always believed it, but now the description sounded more like God than any possible living creature on the planet.
Outside, Juke waited impatiently and gave up, walking inside. "Sonic!" She yelled, but to no response. The room was too dark and made any vision at all impossible, and Sonic had her gun, and so she was forced to feel her way. "No light here, so he must be upstairs," Juke tripped over several pieces of furniture and various metallic parts and she made her way toward the stairs. She hugged the wall and climbed up. The Lieutenant gasped as her right leg fell through a gap she couldn't see. Standing straight up, she lifted her leg up and to the right, making sure she firmly had her foot on the next stair up before lifting her left foot. Juke did this with the rest of the stairs and managed to avoid several gaps that way.
At the top of the stairs, the lime green hedgehog noticed the trail of blood streaking out to the end where light flooded the inside and gasped... "Oh my god... he didn't..." Juke breathed, her emotions running wild, could Sonic have tried to shoot himself with her gun? And having that not worked, had he jumped off from the second floor? "SONIC!!!" She yelled as she rushed into the room, only to discover a very quiet Sonic in the corner of the room, her gun in front of him, its flashlight switched off.
"Sonic!" Juke asked.
"Yea..?" Sonic responded in his usual "I'm-okay-what-do-you-want?" type of way.
"Uh... that isn't YOUR blood in the hall is it?"
"Let's see," Sonic sarcastically began, "D'ya think if that blood was mine that I'd be awake or alive enough to talk to you? But for your info, no that's my friend Slam's blood, and I warn you not to look out the window, it's not a pretty sight."
Sonic stood up; it wasn't like he could cry here with someone else in the room anyway, "I'm ready to go after one last stop."
He flipped on the flashlight and began to walk slowly through the hallway, and even slower as he descended the gap-filled stairs. At the end he "jogged" out into the sunset, Juke running full speed on his rear.
"Geez! Slow down already!" She yelled, fighting to keep up with the SuperSonic hedgehog. He stopped as he got near the next (standing) house. This one had had the paint burnt off of it and the roof had been annihilated.
Sonic's jaw gaped at the sight "Was this the right house?" He stormed inside, turning on the flashlight of Juke's gun. Waving it back and forth he checked the almost unrecognizable layout, "Definitely the right house," Sonic walked out of the house; he couldn't take the sight of the wreckage of everything that he had known for the first fifteen years of his life.
He slowly walked out of the house, Juke catching up with him shortly. "What did you find?" The Lieutenant asked.
"Fifteen years worth," Sonic muttered.
"eh?"
"Never mind." The hedgehog walked toward the hovercruiser, "It's so hard to believe that this was what I had known for fifteen years, and it's so weird... if I didn't take off for Central Metropolis like I did, I woulda ended up like Slam--- red and dead. Could I have saved him? Couldn't I have taken him to Central Metropolis with me?" Sonic opened the cruisers side door.
"Naw, your brain was too clocked with the whole situation to be thinking level-headed. Of course with your training now, you'd know not to freak," Juke hopped in after Sonic, who had strapped himself into the seat behind Knuckles. She took a seat next to Knuckles and strapped herself in, "We're ready to head to Central Metropolis Knuckles."
"Don't kid yourself, Central Metropolis doesn't exist anymore."
Sonic's eyes widened, "Whaddaya mean 'doesn't exist'?"
Knuckles turned on the thrusters, "You'll see Sonic," He pushed the throttle as far forward as it would go.