12. Bunnie Crosses the Line
Bunnie couldn't believe her eyes. She considered whether she'd been knocked out by a falling branch, but the two echidnas were no hallucination. They were very real, and so was their strange craft with its even stranger weapons – for what else could the gun-like contraption affixed to the handrail be? The heat thrown off by its flight mechanism sent up waves of loose debris and beat down the tufts of grass growing at irregular intervals on the forest floor.
She shrank behind her tree, thoughts of attacking them momentarily shelved. Knuckles was the last echidna on Mobius. That had always been what she believed. He was the last of his kind; the last of the Guardians and the last of his species. His stoicism on the subject didn't make it any less true. Even Sally had verified this – echidnas were never numerous on Mobius. Wary, overly intellectual and self-contained, they withdrew from life with other creatures centuries before, and through disease and other trials their numbers eventually dwindled to only a handful, and then only one. It was a sad affirmation of what could happen if all creatures, regardless of species, didn't pull together to survive – now more than ever in the diktat atmosphere Robotnik had established.
Bunnie was no expert on echidna culture. Nobody was, really, not even Knuckles – Guardians were removed from normal life and had developed their own customs and traditions based mainly around Angel Island and the Emerald. One thing everyone knew, though, was that more than any other species, echidnas hated technology. It was one of the reasons they'd died out from diseases easily cured by modern medicine. Even the Wolf Pack, with their deep spiritualism and close ties to nature, didn't snub the good some technology could do. It was something of a boogieman mother used to frighten kits: "If you don't take your medicine, you'll end up like the echidnas!" Long before she met Knuckles, Bunnie herself had heard creatures likened to echidnas when they were frightened or wary of one of Rotor's new inventions: "You are such an echidna!"
To see two such creatures now, piloting a craft more advanced than anything she'd ever seen before, made her mouth drop open. Could everyone have been wrong all this time? Had echidnas been on Mobius all along, living in secret by themselves and quietly building machines more sophisticated than even Robotnik's clumsy SWATpods?
Had Knuckles lived thinking he was the last of his kind, with all the loneliness and sorrow that entailed, for no reason? The thought made Bunnie's heart ache.
One of the echidnas spoke. The voice was male, deep, with a resonant quality that put Bunnie in mind of Antoine when he tried to serenade Sally. "You're certain there were vreemdelings here?" He used a word she didn't understand, but there was no time to ponder it as his companion replied.
"Positive. We can't afford to take any chances. You know the orders: all creatures are to be captured and taken to Robotropolis or terminated and their bodies brought back." This voice was fluty, possibly female, with a hard edge like two knife blades being rubbed together.
"Whatever we were chasing, they escaped while we were breaking through the canopy. This dreadful forest is a nightmare to manoeuvre in. Give me a flat plain or the blocks of a city any day." The male spat. Bunnie heard it sizzle before it hit the ground. The heat from those flight pads was tremendous. Already it had baked the grass and leaves into curls. "Robotropolis. Not a real city."
"Stop whinging, you sound more like a newly-hatched than a warrior. We have to find those escapees. The village was empty. If we track them, maybe we can find where the other targets are hiding."
"These vreemdelings have no courage. Would you abandon your home without a fight?"
"I'd fight to abandon my 'home'. And stop using such language, it shows a lack of intellect."
Bunnie's head whirled. These echidnas were working for Robotnik? Or if not for, than with him at least. Knuckles's species or not, that automatically catalogued them under 'enemy' and made them very dangerous, especially in the current situation. She hefted the balloon full of metal-eating solution. She needed to take care of these two before they could follow Antoine and Rotor. Maybe then she could subdue them and find out what the hip-hop was going on here.
"Did you hear something?" the female voice demanded. "Ready the laser. I think we're being watched."
"You mean one of the vreemdelings is actually showing some spirit?"
Bunnie hid behind her tree trunk and heard the craft whirr a little nearer.
"Perhaps they didn't run away after all - "
Now! Bunnie leaped out and hurled her balloon at the underside of the craft, right at the flight pads. The craft jolted to one side with incredible speed and agility, but the balloon hit its edge and solution sprayed in a wide arc – maybe not enough to totally destroy the mechanism, like she'd intended, but enough to throw it off-balance and send it careening towards the ground.
A look of shock etched both echidnas' faces. The female struggled to regain control, punching buttons and yanking on a baton attached to the handrail. The craft, however, was obviously not designed for such bumpy motion. As it bucked and twisted the male echidna was thrown from his perch, sliding right off the oval floor and into a clutch of gorse bushes. The female, showing great skill, managed to rotate it in a half circle and point the laser at Bunnie before crashing into a tree, leaping to safety only milliseconds before impact. The craft crumpled like tinfoil and fell to the ground, sputtering red and yellow sparks.
"Filthy vreemdeling!" the male roared, heaving himself out of the bushes. He was stuck all over with thorns, especially his tail and headspines, which Bunnie knew from her time with Knuckles were quite sensitive. "I'll tear your eyes out!"
The female made no such declaration. She just got up, walked back to the sparking craft and twisted off the laser with one metal hand. Then she levelled it at Bunnie, who was too shocked at the gleam of cold steel fingers to acknowledge the danger she was in. It was only the male echidna running towards her, recklessly crossing the female's line of fire, which shook her from her trance and saved her life.
Bunnie dived aside to avoid the male's headlong charge. He scooted past her and she rolled under a patch of large flat leaves, lost from sight of either echidna. Scurrying as best she could on all fours (more difficult for her than other creatures because of her unyielding metal limbs), she hurried back to the balloons. The leaves behind her were shredded by laser-fire, pieces of charred greenery floating down like black snowflakes.
Bunnie reached the sacks, scooped them up and kept going upright. She kept her ears flat against the back of her skull to stop them from showing above the foliage, but her movement of the leaves gave her away.
The ground in front of her suddenly exploded. Bunnie was thrown backwards, slamming up against a tree and taking the brunt of the blow to her spine to protect her precious cargo. The metal lower half of her torso prevented any huge spinal damage, but the wind went out of her and she spent a few seconds marshalling her scattered wits – in which time someone tramped towards her on heavy booted feet. Bunnie kept her head down, feigning unconsciousness rather than trying to break and run so they could shoot her again.
"I don't know what Robotnik was talking about. These vreemdelings are weak as newborns. Even the ones who put up a fight are no match for us."
"Don't underestimate your opponent. Look – augmentations."
"What? A vreemdeling augmented itself?"
"It may be more resilient than you give it credit for." Something cold and hard tipped Bunnie's chin. Bunnie smelled a strange scent, nothing like Knuckles, as the female drew closer to examine her. "Some kind of Lagomorph, I'd say probably a member of the Lepridae family, and attributes suggest a female in late pubescence-"
"Stop pushing your studies at me. Use words I can understand."
"It's a rabbit girl, you idiot; not yet fully matured but old enough to be a threat if she's as augmented as she looks-"
The words were directed away from her, probably as a result of the female echidna speaking over her shoulder. Bunnie made a snap decision and grabbed the barrel of the laser pointed at her throat. Crushing the barrel with her roboticised hand, she twisted to reach into one of the sacks with the other and hurled a balloon. The throw wasn't completely wild, but it wasn't as accurate as it might've been had her eyes been open and fully focussed.
It was still accurate enough.
The female echidna screamed as her hands and lower arms dissolved. "Aanvaller!" The words came out as a gurgle, and Bunnie realised with dismay that her melting fingers were clutching a throat that was also turning into a mass of green paste and mist. The ruined laser dropped, forgotten, as the echidna staggered back, foam forming at the sides of her mouth. Her eyes were round and fixed on Bunnie in surprise - surprise that became flat and eternal as she slumped, coughing and retching, to the forest floor.
"Vreemdeling!" the male yelled, leaping over the body of his companion to attack Bunnie.
There was no time to grab and throw another balloon, so Bunnie met his strike with one of her own. The punch wasn't as powerful as his, but it connected with his shoulder and allowed her to stand and deliver another to his jaw that laid him flat. He snarled and kicked out with both feet. Bunnie learned they were metal when the kick sent her lurching backwards with a fresh dent in her shin and a sensation like jumping into the deep part of the river only to learn the rock-bed was higher than you thought.
"Unf!"
"Moordenaar! Vuiligheid!"
"Speak Mobian, will ya? If'n you're gonna insult me at least let me know how bad your mouth is so I can beat it the right amount."
He blocked her right hook and her haymaker, and then met her knee with the flat of one hand before it made contact with his stomach. Bunnie spun into a snap kick and got some satisfaction from her heel sending him back a few paces, but it quickly evaporated as he came back at her with a flurry of jabs that forced her up against a tree. The echidna was good – very good. He wasted no movement and seemed almost to anticipate her actions before she made them. She was holding her own, but only just.
"Puny piece of filth," he snarled. "You think you're good enough to take the life of a Legionary?" He shoved her hard and she had to step over the blank-eyed female echidna.
"I didn't mean to!" Bunnie kept the thoughts of what she'd done at bay by concentrating on the situation at hand – there was nothing but vengeance and murder in the male echidna's eyes. They reminded her of nothing so much as Robotnik's eyes when she was captured at the factory. Robotnik wanted to kill and destroy anything he couldn't control or corrupt. To see a face so similar to Knuckles in shape and colour, yet so different in intent, was jarring. Bunnie found it difficult to reconcile the creature trying to kill her with the one she'd fallen in love with.
"Vreemdeling!" the echidna shouted, thrusting an elbow into her stomach and reducing her to a gasping heap.
Bunnie fell nose to nose with the dead female. She scrambled away, but her chest convulsed as she tried to suck in air and she coughed violently. The male echidna grabbed her ears and yanked her upright, staring hatefully into her face.
"Vreemdeling," he said again.
"What … the hoo-hah … does that mean?" Bunnie gasped.
"It means you are not an echidna, therefore you are filth."
He tightened his grip on her ears, which weren't as sensitive as an echidna's spines but weren't entirely without pain receptors. Bunnie winced. "That ain't no way talk to a lady." She dunked the balloon she'd palmed when she fell, bursting it open on his feet. The male yelped and toppled, letting go of her as he threw out both hands to brace his fall. Bunnie leapt aside to escape the spreading puddle of metal-eating solution, but reached across and pinched a nerve in his neck that rendered him unconscious before he could regroup – although what he could do with no feet was debateable.
Bunnie hastily turned him over to prevent a repeat of what had happened before, but the male had no metal above his knees. Still, she felt sick at what she'd done. She could feel the female echidna's gaze on her as if she really was watching what she did next, and couldn't bring herself to turn around as she gathered the sacks and made off into the forest. She worked on instinct, covering her tracks as she went, not questioning whether it was wise to have left the male alive. Freedom Fighters didn't go that far – they didn't kill.
But she had.
The moisture that fell in the dust as she passed was not solution from the balloons, but her own tears.
Sally ran.
She was self-aware enough to keep herself under cover, but everything else was a blur. She kept thinking of Dulcy, and the sound of lasers echoed in her head, as they would do for a long time to come.
I left her to die, she kept thinking. She was my friend and I left her to be murdered.
Intellectually, Sally knew there had been no other option. If she'd stayed they would both be dead now. Dulcy had sacrificed herself so that Sally had a chance to escape and live. Still, knowing something with your head was very different than knowing it with your heart – and right now Sally's heart ached just as much as it had each time she lost her father. Maybe even more, because those times she'd been helpless to stop what was happening, whereas this time she hadn't been an onlooker. She had been there, held Dulcy, smelled her blood and … and …
Tears blinded her for a second, so that when she instinctively darted left she didn't, at first, understand what she was seeing. She crouched low under giant fronds of bracken, cursing herself for not thinking about where she was going like the great tactician she was supposed to be. But more than that, she stared, flabbergasted, at Knothole.
Or rather, at what had once been Knothole.
Everything had been destroyed. Huts stood half or wholly collapsed, their thatched roofs on fire. Some had been blasted into pieces that were spread everywhere, roof beams sticking up like ribs wrenched from the chest of some massive beast. The grass was either churned up into muddy sods or had been burned away to blackened oval patches, like scars on the very ground itself. Everything Sally might have recognised stood disfigured, wrecked, ruined – everything she'd spent years building up had been razed. She could hardly believe it had taken so little time for Robotnik to smash it all.
What was she doing here? She should have been running … somewhere else, at least. Had her subconscious driven her back here to make sure everybody had gotten out before the SWATbots came?
One of the huts juddered. Sally watched, transfixed, as it exploded outwards and a figure picked its way over the wreckage. It had shiny metal fists, too big for its body, which it clanged together in some semblance of a victory dance – presumably over defeating a defenceless hut from the inside. There was no mistaking what the creature was.
But there aren't any echidnas left on Mobius!
And yet, evidently, there were. Or at least there were pieces of echidnas left – grafted to robotic parts and set in motion like clockwork figures after they'd been wound up. Terrible speculations appeared in Sally's mind: had Robotnik captured the last echidnas and done this to them? It seemed the most logical explanation. Had there been an unknown colony of these insular beasts, which he had discovered before them? Robotnik had been searching for any surviving dragons for just that purpose.
Except … except this didn't match up with Robotnik's modus operandi. He loathed flesh when it wasn't his own, and desired above all things to turn every last Mobian into a Robian under his control. There was no way he would have allowed any creatures to be as these were, a piecemeal batch of flesh and metal. Even Bunnie had been an accident; one which Robotnik had announced several times he wished to rectify by 'finishing what the Roboticisor started'.
But there had been SWATpods in the attack on Knothole, and there were SWATbots marching around the remains of the village now. It didn't make any sense. Etched with guilt, Sally still pushed aside her grief for Dulcy and her home to consider what was going on. Knothole was gone, destroyed by a combination of Robotnik's forces and these new semi-roboticised echidnas. Several more of them came into view as Sally watched, some riding hovering ovals with handrails attached, some walking about like the first one she'd spotted. None of them had identical metal limbs. Some were more robot than flesh, while others had only one hand, one foot or part of their faces roboticised. It was a bizarre sight, and also a sinister one. Aside from the obvious physical difference, and their presence in the Knothole raiding party, something about these echidnas was so alien from Knuckles or his father that Sally's stomach actually lurched.
"There's nobody here," one echidna proclaimed.
"Well, there wouldn't be, would there? All the cowards upped and ran for it the moment they heard our superior forces coming," replied another. She spat on the ground. "Filthy vermin."
"Nevertheless, we should finish combing the area before the Leaders arrive," said a third, and Sally heard the capital 'L' as clearly as if she'd read it. This echidna tapped at his ear under his headspines – or at least where Sally assumed his ear would once have been, based on his next statement. "We need to ensure there are no survivors. I have received a transmission that the Leader of this faction was shot down in combat, but there has been no sign of a corpse. Group Fourteen dispatched a creature of designation Draconus-glacies. They are currently removing the remains, but there was no sign of any creature of designation Sciurus-niger in the immediate vicinity. Our orders are to ensure this 'Princess Sally' has not returned to this location. If she has, orders are that we shoot to kill."
Sally froze. Then, slowly, she crawled backwards, trying not to disturb the bracken or any of the other low foliage that might give her away. She even held her breath, as if her shallow breathing could be heard.
And perhaps it could. Certainly, when one echidna with a metal plate on the back of his skull turned in her direction, she wished she could momentarily stop her heart so he wouldn't use its terrified beating to locate her. Her fingers cramped in the dirt and her knees ached against the hard ground where no grass grew, but she didn't dare move. Even blinking suddenly seemed like a bad idea against the obvious laser rifle strung across this echidna's back.
"Groups Seven and Eight, progress in an easterly direction -"
"Aaaaargh!"
Bedlam erupted in the form of another echidna ploughing through the trees on the other side of Knothole. He was wild-eyed and silver-armed, and behind him came a female whose eyes were both covered by a visor with a single roving red diode.
It was the male who had cried out. "Gae-Nar is dead!" he shrieked. "One of those vermin murdered her."
"Gae-Nar?" echoed several echidnas. "But that's impossible. How?"
"They melted her augmentations! She choked to death on her own metal!"
The metal-eating solution, Sally immediately thought. That meant someone had engaged this new enemy – probably one of the Freedom Fighters rather than an ordinary villager if they had access to the solution. But who? And had they survived the encounter? Sally's stomach dropped at the idea they might not have made it. Please let whoever it is be okay. I can't face losing anyone else today.
"Is Rykor also dead?"
"No, he lives, but his augmentations are gone too."
"Ugh. Better to die a warrior's death than to be crippled," said an echidna whose headspines were all an array of coloured wires and steel.
"Rykor can be repaired. Gae-Nar's life is not so replaceable," said the echidna who had received the transmission about Dulcy. "Spread out and find whoever is responsible. They cannot have gotten far."
Sally needed to get away, and she needed to do it now. She backed up yet further, intending to stay hidden for as long as she could. However, she knew she may need to make a run for it and hope she could either outpace these echidnas and their SWATbot helpers, or at least that she knew this forest better than they did. She suspected they couldn't manoeuvre those vehicles very well through the closely packed trees, just as SWATpods found difficulty in doing so. That was her only, extremely thin hope, and it offered even thinner comfort.
Stupid. Why had she come back? Sentimentality? Or just plain idiocy? Grief had made her thoughtless, and now it may cost her more than just embarrassment and ridicule from Sonic.
Sonic …
"There!" All Sally's fur stood on end as the echidna with the visor pointed in her direction and yelled, "The heat signature of a living creature."
"Get it!" shouted her partner.
With no weapon and no other option, Sally did what she'd been doing far too much of lately.
She ran.
To Be Continued …