Chapter 16
Four hundred left. Knuckles thought. Frankly, it was much more than he had hoped for, but it also meant he'd have more kids to watch over. Then again, quite a few of the ones left belonged to street gangs, meaning they'd be able to handle themselves. Probably. The Oracle was nowhere to be found, which was probably safer in the long run. Knuckles could only guess that the Oracle had only been interested in getting away from the Robotnik's influence, and had tagged along with Knuckles' army for safety. He glanced over to the other side of the boat, where "prince" Sonic was being pestered by the psycho girl. Snorting he turned to look back at the water.
The king and queen had been young when he joined the Guard, but not this young. That, and they actually took their job seriously, especially the queen. She had only married in, but somehow she seemed far more up to the job than her husband. Probably why she had managed to survive. Knuckles shook his head a few times. No, that was not the way to think. But she had managed to keep her kids alive. The fact that she had already had her children had been a bit of a surprise to him, but he guessed it must have been some weird Mobian tradition.
Knuckles glanced over to the other boats as kids loaded on. He would have preferred the Northern army backing them up, but they were guarding their country. On the other hand, the Mobian freedom fighters had been resupplied with food and all the tracer ammo the North hadn't used, having decided that it was not able to penetrate the more reinforced armor of the Robotnik's war machines, instead opting to create heavier guns. This meant the freedom fighters would actually be able to make a decent effort to get to Mobius City if it wasn't t heavily guarded.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Hey." Amy said.
"Hi." Sonic replayed glumly, leaning on the edge of the boat. Just what he needed: stuck on a floating rock with a girl who refused to leave him alone.
"Yeah. I talked to Tails while you were meeting with the king, and I don't know if he told you this already, but he uses a giant emerald to power his plane. Isn't that so weird?" There was the audible sound of metal against flesh as Knuckles hit his forehead some ways off. Sonic tilted his head up and suddenly felt a bit less sick than before. His siblings walked over, Manic rubbing the green gem hung on his neck.
"Really?" Manic asked slowly.
"Yeah." Amy said, turning to face him. "I couldn't understand everything he said, but apparently he guessed that it could take electricity from the air." Manic and Sonia simply gave her quizzical glances.
"How big was it?" Sonic asked, turning around.
"About as big as his fist. Why?"
"Well it could be a Chaos Emerald." Everyone looked at him oddly. Sonic frowned and rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Chuck told me a lot of the Bard's stories as a kid, since I'm named after him and all. The Chaos Emeralds were something that kept reappearing in them. I think in one story they let a castle float."
"Right." Manic said, carefully tucking his gem back under his vest. "Anything else these 'Chaos Emeralds' did."
"Tons of stuff. Can't remember all of them, but they could definitely make stuff float."
"So then the gas-" Sonia began.
"Chaos" Sonic corrected her.
"-Chaos Emerald is what makes Tails plane stay in the air, and he must have another battery to steer the thing. The reason there aren't many more flying machines is that there isn't any dependable power source to keep them in the air."
"The Robotnik has flying machines, though." Amy said, feeling the need to be involved in the conversation again.
"I guess they were smaller." Sonia replied. "I don't know that much about mechanics." From there the conversation devolved into a discussion over different methods of education, while Manic and Sonic quietly slipped off to another part of the boat.
OOOOOOOOOO
Knuckles took the time to sleep while the boats sped out to the east of the Greater Isle, eventually turning south to loop back to Mobius. Sadly, he was woken up at various times by Sonic getting sick over the side of the boat, Sonic running on a boat when his stalker tried to help him out, and Sonic getting chastised by his sister for being rude. He finally managed to get back to sleep, but woke up still tired when they were coming close to Mobius' southeastern shore. He walked to the head of the ship to get a better view and frowned. Taking out the scope for his tracer, he scanned the port.
"Cop-bots." He said simply and loudly. The general chatter of the boat died off. Walking to the back, Knuckles explained to the captain of the boat. "He's got cop-bots waiting for us at the port, too many for us to handle. Alert the other boats and tell them to fall back." The captain looked at him quizzically but took out his own pair of binoculars and found that Knuckles was telling the truth.
"What do we do next then?" the captain asked, being rather partial to living.
"Can you make it through the Channel?"
"Yes."
"He'll have all the ports guarded then." Knuckles frowned as he said it. "We have to go back." His part in the war was over already. He noticed the captain biting his lips nervously. "What?"
"Well, the plan was to recharge the boats once we took the port so…" Knuckles stared at him in disbelief.
"How far back can we reach?"
"Halfway on Mobius' eastern shore if we're lucky." The captain stared back at Knuckles gaping mouth. "It was the only battery I could get, okay?" he said waving his arms.
"We'll have to land in Thran, then." Knuckles turned to the voices source, Sonia. "There's nowhere else to go, so we'll have to take Thran instead. It probably isn't as fortified as Mobius is." Knuckles sighed. He'd rather not be shown up by someone half his age.
"We're going to Thran, then." He told the captain who quickly alerted the other ships to the new plan. Knuckles walked back onto the deck, where there was a general murmur about what was happening. "We've been forced to land in Thran." He said. "We'll have to be subtle and quick, and take the port quickly before the Robotnik can notice. Remember how we fought back at Knothole. Stay in buildings, shoot only when you have a clear shot, and don't risk the lives of any civilians. We want them on our side. Everybody clear?" A general cheer confirmed this, and everyone set to work getting their guns ready. Sonic looked up as he saw Knuckles and his sister walking back.
"Lemme guess: You don't want us to fight."
"It isn't necessary. The town will only have a small number of cop-bots spread throughout it. I want you three to stay with me so we can find a safe place to occupy while the rest of the army clears the town. You will fight only if necessary." Knuckles said. Sonic rolled his eyes and mumbled a "fine". Knuckles nodded and went to prepare himself.
OOOOOOOOOO
The servitor class robot raised its head as the first ship docked off of the schedule.
"*BZZZT* SCHEDULING ERROR *BZZZT* PLEASE IDENTIFY YOUR-" A racket off shots demolished its center, and the boats load of freedom fighters began to get off.
"Astounding subtlety." Sonic said to Knuckles as they walked off last.
"I messed up the fire setting once in fifteen years." Knuckles snapped back. Turning, he used single shots to disable the rest of the port's various servitors before they could call an alarm. As the other ships came in Knuckles turned on the radio and began trying to coordinate the army's spread throughout the town to make sure nothing was missed. As he did so he maneuvered himself and the three to a nearby warehouse, where they had the thrill of disabling a whole five cop-bots. Knuckles had them barricade in a back corner while he continued to try and coordinate efforts. A half hour after they first declared the town clear there was another outburst of fighting against the cop-bots assigned to guard the various factories in the town.
After it was all done, Knuckles led the three back into the open air, and met back up with the rest of the freedom fighters.
"That was sloppy." He said. "You showed no coordination, no discipline, and you didn't even think to check the factories. Because of that we need to leave here soon to find a quieter location." He found himself looking at a wall of blank faces. "What?"
"Maybe it's the fact you never told us to do that until we had already started." Sonic said. Knuckles grabbed his arms together to keep from punching him and mentally cursed himself. He had thought it would be obvious. As he noticed a large number of skunks gathering, he realized the locals had no idea what was happening.
"Does anyone speak English?" he asked.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Hey, be careful man. You're gonna' kill the poor the thing."
"But I'm scared."
"Don't take it out on the poor frog." The large, dark blue cat frowned and carefully put the frog back into his waist pack, where it poked its head out before quickly falling asleep. Turning back to face his companion, a green bird in a leather jacket, he started rubbing his hands together nervously without the frog to focus on.
"What are they doing here?"
"I don't know." The bird said. He glanced back to the attackers in the town's center, where a pink hedgehog had begun speaking French in fits and pauses. "Stay quiet and we can ask." The cat kept his mouth shut by force of his hands, but began to bounce from one foot to the other out of nervousness. When the hedgehog finished whatever she had said, the bird motioned with his hand and lead the cat over to them. Clearing the throat he began talking, trying to remember at least enough Mobian English to make sense.
"Hello, my name's Jet and my companion here is called Big, and I am very sorry to trouble you guys, but Big and I speak English, so we will need a separate explanation on what is happening." The hedgehog nodded, bit her lip, and began talking in a near jumble of Mobian accenting that took the bird a small bit of thinking to understand.
"Er, we're part of an armed revolt against the Robotnik and we just took this town, but you should return to whatever you were normally doing."
"Oh, that's interesting. This place really could use a revolt or two. Well, we were just held over because I was not informed about the 'no money, no performances' stuff they have over here, and I think Big ended up on the boat by accident."
"Really?" The hedgehog asked.
"It was a good place to fish." Big said before walking off. The hedgehog turned her attention back to Jet and cleared her throat.
"So you two were only visiting?"
"My plan was to do a tour of this continent, but when I got here I found out that paid performances were illegal and got detained, along with Big here."
"What kind of performances?" the hedgehog asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"Trick boarding." Jet said, raising himself notably. "You see, I am the Jet Hawk." The hedgehog stared at him blankly, causing him to slump again. "I'm big back in Neworld."
"Of course."
"Yeah, so… I'd really like to get back to Neworld as soon as possible, so if you guys could, like, go take out a seaside port during your whole rebellion and all, I'd really appreciate it." He looked back up to see the hedgehog staring at him open mouthed. "How about I join you guys until then." A metal wrapped hand fell on Jet's shoulder, causing him to jerk to standing straight in an instant.
"Do you know anything about the area?" the person behind him asked.
"Some…" Jet said carefully turning his head to look at the echidna behind him, clearly older than the rest of the rebels.
"You're in then. What about your friend?"
"He has my maps."
"I see. We'll be heading to Spire first, and we'll see about your ride later. Be ready in an hour." Taking the hand away, the echidna walked off to talk with three hedgehogs, while Jet walked over to Big and stuffed several pamphlets into the cat's waist pack.
"Can you hold onto these please?" Jet said quickly, before immediately turning to walk somewhere else.