Chapter 8
While Knuckles wasn't entirely pleased with the prospect himself, the novelty of having an oracle at least kept the kids busy.
"Does he like me?"
"Does she like me?"
"Does he like me?"
"Does she like me?"
"Does he like me?"
"Does she like me?"
"What does my future look like?"
"What is in my future?"
"I die horribly, don't I?"
"Why, jack-donkey, why?" Came memorably from Manic.
"Accident. First, the last Oracle told me that he was going to give a prophecy to a man named Robotnik that would let him start the revolution. When he died, he told me I had to do it so that Mobius wouldn't be destroyed. I didn't believe him, and vowed not to do it. Unfortunately, I didn't think that the Robotnik would take the name after the revolution." Was the rather long reply.
"Right." Was Manic's response.
"you asked him, didn't you?" Yona said confidently.
"Asked who?" Amy said, trying to fake obliviousness.
"The Oracle dude, duh."
"Why would I do that?"
"Cause ya' wanna' know if Sonic loves ya'." Lisa said, poking her head in.
"Enh." Amy said.
"Scared ya', didn't I?"
"No." Amy replied defensively.
"Yeah I did."
"Who are you anyways?"
"Lisa, gang boss and fellow freedom fighter." Lisa spat on her hand and extended it. Amy did the same tentatively, and shook her hand.
"So, why are bothering me?"
"His brother's an old friend. I just want to talk to someone he may be getting to know soon. You seem safe enough since ya' don't have that hammer."
"It's right here, actually." Amy said, picking it up from in front of her. Lisa's eyes widened.
"I gotta' go now." She said and hurriedly went away.
"So how are you going to deal with this?" Draggo said.
"I'm increasing the quotas of my factories for mark seven enforcer parts. All the new ones except for the surplus will be pooled together as a single force. Once I have enough I will set them to pursue the rebels with periodic recharges. The rebels will be scouted out by a large number of mark six corvus units."
"No more negotiations?"
"Negotiations have failed."
"They probably would have worked better as your first option." The Robotnik eyes widened at the impudent statement, but he forced himself to calm down. After all, that was why he was employing Draggo.
"I don't know what you've been told," Knuckles sang out.
"I don't know what I've been told," The rest replied.
"But this song's getting' pretty old."
"But this song's getting' pretty old."
"You could cover me with fleas,"
"You could cover me with fleas,"
"But it would more than this song please."
"But it would more than this song please."
They had probably been marching for more than a month now. Their feet barely noticed the marching anymore, and they had reconstructed a loose semblance of their old life. People traded, gambled for, and bought the same fifty odd trinkets in a steady loop, and relationships started and died in the course of days. Right then the sun was beginning to set, but Knuckles was keeping the same pace. As the song came to an end, Manic turned his head and asked,
"Hey, shouldn't we be stopping soon?"
"Usually, but we're pretty close to someplace safer for us to stay. Ah, you can just see it on the horizon." Knuckles pointed forward. True enough, there was a black smudge over the crest of a far hill.
"Ah." Manic said as he saw it.
The sky was dark as they reached the doors of what was little less than a fortress. Knuckles pulled down on a bell rope and waited. A slot on the door opened and a human's head peered out. His face contorted a few times before he finally said.
"Cal?"
"Give me a sec." Knuckles said. Before anyone could ask a question he turned around and yelled out. "Yes, my real name's Calibar Anakin Felshio, but none of you are allowed to call me that. Sorry." He turned back to the human.
"That necessary?" The human asked.
"Unbelievably so. We need someplace to rest for the night before we continue."
"Where are you going?"
"Up north. I'm helping this band do a tour around the country." Knuckles pointed behind himself at Sonic and his siblings. "Showing them where to go, what to bring, how to deal with badland creatures, that sort of stuff."
"Oh. Strictly inconspicuous?"
"Like anything these days."
"Okay." The door opened, revealing the human. "Come on in and wait in the courtyard while I get the boss." Manic eyes flashed around as the rest of the kids filed into the… farm. Manic realized that the fortress was just a giant farm complex, probably supplying food for the rest of the Robotnik's empire. The farm workers who were still outside mostly went around the kids, only noticing them with passing interest. After a tedious fifteen minutes a human with glasses and a cane came out, smiling broadly. "Cal. Fancy seeing you again." He said, shaking Knuckles hand. "Your with a band now?"
"Acting as a guide." Knuckles said. The man looked around at the crowd.
"Does it really take this many people? They've got an army here."
"Kind of surprised myself. Publicity, accounting, electrical work… and protection from some of the things you might find in the wild. The guns are just a precaution, really. They don't even keep them loaded." The man nodded as he continued to look around the crowd. When the last worker went inside, the man looked Knuckles in the face and said quietly.
"Cal, I know your dead."
"Godric, I know you can see I'm not." Was Knuckles' reply. Godric shook his head.
"Freedom fighter. You've become a freedom fighter with a gun and some slogan and you've dragged these kids in with you."
"I wasn't the one who charged the theater. They brought themselves into this mess."
"You can't win."
"So unimaginative. Fifteen years is an amazingly long time without some kind of rebellion taking place. I'm only keeping these kids around until I can get them to a safe place. Then I start seeing what the North has been up to."
"You can't be sane."
"How so? The North already did a lot of maneuvering to have their royal heir become 'overseer' when they could easily have had a better politician. Instead, they kept a king in charge. The North does not like other people trying to control it." Godric sighed.
"You're not anything like I remember."
"I know."
"Have your army camp here. Do you need blankets?" Knuckles raised his eyebrows. "I want my old life back, frankly. Besides, would he believe me if I told him someone I knew was dead was raising an army against him? Also you didn't answer the question about the blankets."
"The cloaks work fine." Knuckles said. As everyone began to settle down and wrap their cloaks over them, Manic mentioned to Knuckles.
"This feels wrong."
"Your paranoid." Was Knuckles' reply.
"I kinda' live on paranoid."
"So do I." They both nodded at this sentiment.
Godric looked up from his book and through the window out at the courtyard one last time. They should have known better. Going down the hall, he went to the farms radio room and picked up a book listing a series of frequencies. He chose the frequencies labeled as "There is a hostile force present" and went over to the radio. As he tried to turn a knob, it fell out onto the floor. The door closed behind him, and the light turned on. Godric turned behind him to see Calibar and a green hedgehog that had been nearby.
"Ya' know, it's a bad idea to underestimate people's suspicion." 'The hedgehog said.
"I'm sorry." Godric said. Cal is insane. He's going to kill me. "If I didn't the punishment would be… be…"
"Actually this works out for everybody." Calibar said. "You are still a loyal servant, and we are still alive because we held you hostage."
"What about the Enforcers?" Godric asked. Knuckles cursed under his breath.
"You set cop-bots on the kids?"
"Just to keep them in place until the Robotnik arrived. I mean you told me the guns weren't loaded, so they couldn't really fight back."
"You didn't hear the part about charging the theater? These kids are lunatics." Knuckles pressed his palm into his face. "And I hid the ammo before we went after you."
"*BZZZT* YOU ARE UNDER CUSTODY. REMAIN STILL UNTIL TRANSPORTATION ARRIVES."
"What do we do now?" Amy asked to no one in particular. Sonia carefully tossed her something. Amy caught and looked down slowly. It was an ammo cartridge. Amy looked quizzically at Sonia.
"I didn't trust Knuckles." She tossed a few cartridges around the rest of the kids huddle. "Be careful as you shoot. Tracers are have a low recoil and a high accuracy, but fire five rounds with every trigger-pull. Don't aim in any friend's direction. Don't shoot wildly." Amy tried to put in the ammo cartridge. It took her awhile to find the lever for keeping it in. "The safety is above the trigger. Aim first. Cop-bots don't respond unless actually attacked." Amy saw kids on the ground pointing their guns up slowly. "Call out a number. They're one through ten from left to right. I have one."
"Two." Amy said, pointing at the Cop-bot second from the left. All the other numbers were called out."
"If we all hit at once, we won't have any trouble. Aim for the center." Sonia said. "Fire on three."
"Three." Amy lifted the gun to her head.
"Two." Amy lined her eye up with the sight.
"One." Amy put her finger on the trigger.
"Fire." Amy felt the gun twitching as she fired at the cop-bot. The first shots went too far up, hitting it in the head. She hurried to aim lower and fired again, going between its legs. The cop-bot was trying to aim with its broken sight sensors. Amy pulled up the gun's barrel and finally hit its center. The cop-bot stopped. Twisting to her right, she helped another kid take out the last intact cop-bot. Amy lowered her gun as she tried to bring her breathing under control.
"Everyone alright?" She yelled. Nobody said anything about blood or death. "Anybody hurt?" People checked around each other. Everyone was alright, though farm hands were begging to try and see what had happened.
Godric looked out the window.
"Tracer fire." Knuckles said. "I told you these kids were crazy. None of the bots fired either. Not bad. Now would you mind being a hostage for me?"
"Um, no, not at all."
Sonia kept her rifle sweeping over the area in front of her, which kept most of the farmhands from bothering the freedom fighters. She was very, very glad that she had thought to take the ST-17's manual, and to steal ammunition. Turned out to have been good thinking. Knuckles' yelling finally came.
"Alright, lucky day for you kids, you made it safe and sound. So, who stole the ammunition I expressly told you fools not to touch? I know it wasn't Manic."
"Me." Sonia said. Knuckles look at her oddly.
"Why?"
"In case you were incapacitated."
"Oh. Good thinking." Patting the farm's boss on the shoulder, Knuckles addressed everybody. "Now, because of my good friend here, we can all go back to sleep, and not panic like a barrel of monkeys." Nodding, the farm hands went back to their rooms. Cal hadn't been dangerous ever. Knuckles turned to the freedom fighters. They nodded. As Sonia lay back down on her cloak, she took the time to congratulate herself.
The next day, Sonic woke up around the same time as most of the farm hands. He clipped on his cloak, slipped his guitar on his back, and picked up his gun. He had tried to give it to someone else, but everyone seemed to think he deserved on, which was stupid because he couldn't even load it. He had fumbled with the cartridge until somebody had taken it and loaded her gun in about two seconds. He sat next to Manic and Sonia as he ate his cold breakfast.
"Nice job last night." He told Sonia. She shrugged it off.
"Anyone with a calm head could have done it."
"No." Manic interjected. "I know I wouldn't have tried to disobey Knuckles, and it's usually a fact of life that I'm on armed people's bad side. So, why'd ya really steal ammo in the first place?"
"I didn't trust Knuckles."
"Sonic, can ya' cover me while I run for my life?"
"Sure." Sonic said.
As they left the farm and headed North, Dalin sidled up to Scrat and began chattering.
"Hey, did you see me take out that cop-bot last night? did you not see that?"
"You missed twice."
"Missed? I riddled it with bullets."
"After it had already been disabled."
"Maybe they put the core in a different place, just to be sneaky. You don't know."
"Never mind." Scrat grunted.
That night, Sonic began practicing loading the gun over and over again.
"Dude, you'll break it if you keep doing that." Manic said.
"Manic, unlike you I don't already have experience using guns."
"You think I used guns? If I used guns, I'd be more likely to kill someone. If I kill someone, then there would be more people wanting to kill me. Net loss." Sonic took out the cartridge and began shouldering the gun.
"Am I aiming at you?"
"Yes, so put it down before you shoot my eye out." Sonic lowered the gun and pointed it at the ground.
"I just want to be ready for the next time we're in a fight."
"Seriously, most of fighting with a gun is just convincing yourself to do it. And seeing as you're a nut who attacked a cop—bot with his bare hands, I really don't think that will be a problem."
"What about aiming?"
"Well, uh, cop-bots are big targets and…"
"Their centers aren't. Now can you let me practice without a running commentary?" Sonia sighed expressively and shook her head. Boys.
The Robotnik sniffed as he went into his old lab. I have not been here for a long time. He went over to three metal tubes, and pressed the button to open them. Three metal faces stared back at him.
"Devastator, Annihilator, Terminator. I have need of you once more. You did well last time, but it seems that fate saw fit to cheat you of victory. Remember the queen? The children survived. For the sake of peace and order, they must die." The three machines eye pieces were fully lit. Their master had finished his address, and was now giving them the relevant data. After he was done, they walked out into Mobius, turned, and walked north.
Author note: And that's why you haven't seen the Oracle of Delphius. And there's character development. Yay!
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