Author Note: Back to school and back on schedule! And, hopefully, back to a moving plot!
Chapter 23
"You know." Tails said. "I almost didn't put the second seat in." The Tornado was flying over the waters of the ocean, sweeping away from The Robotnik's airspace before returning over Thran. Tails took a glance back at the soldier in the backseat of the plane, a fox by the name of Slagar who had been sent to keep him safe. The soldier was chillingly silent, making Tails feel the need to start talking on his own.
After the first two aerial battles he had found himself in, he began to find flying boring unless there was harsh weather or machines shooting at him. He didn't really want to start a conversation, but anything was better than the low roar of the engine and the endless water underneath of him. His flying was guided solely by instructions of "Fly this long before turning", and the times given were very long.
"Why was that?" Slagar asked, keeping his gaze on a pocket watch in his hands.
"Well, I was only working off of pictures from a book, and had to improvise for a lot of it. I didn't think I would ever need to have a second chair, but eventually I figured I needed to keep as close to the pictures as possible, so I put it in anyways." Tails said.
"Fascinating." The other fox said, barely moving. "You're going to turn in five minutes."
"Right" Tails said.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Now, step one:" Sleet said to the assembled assassins. "Reconnaissance." It was the day after the failed ambush, and Sleet, Dingo, and Espio were all seated around the remains of last night's campfire. Sleet had lashed the radio to his shoulder so Edward could hear.
"Normally I'd have Dingo do this-" Espio cocked his head to the side and gave Sleet an odd look.
"He's smarter than he looks, and he looks really dumb" Sleet said, not bothering to properly explain. "But he already offed a few kids so they won't trust him. He said he was working with me, so I'll be suspicious-"
"I should go." Espio said.
"I'm sorry kid." Sleet said. "But you'll stick out like a sore thumb on a four finger amputee."
"Then I won't let them see me."
"Then how do you get them to talk."
"I am certain they will be just as confused about the attack as we are, and will still be discussing it amongst themselves."
"Fine. If you get caught try not to mention us."
"I won't." Espio said, and with that he stood up and walked away, his body shifting to match the grass around him.
OOOOOOOOOO
Once again Espio chose to climb up to the roof of one of the small huts that the locals used. He began to shift from his current jealous emotional state to his neutral calm state, and then back to a state of boredom.
Nothing is happening. He told himself.
He flattened himself on the tiles of the rooftops listening to the mindless chatter of the children below. Actually, they weren't much younger than him, only a few years at most.
They're fighting at this young? This 'band' truly is made of monsters. Espio reviewed what information Master Mil-Lah had collected before sending him out.
They had posed as a modern music ensemble, playing among the lower class in the capital of Mobius and the Robotnik's empire. After inciting a riot that destroyed five of the Robotnik's machines they fled the city, taking with them roughly five hundred youths of varying ages. Outside of the city they met up with a mercenary they had hired, who supplied them with stolen weapons. Their origins and true plans are unknown, but it is clear that they plan to overthrow the Robotnik, which at this point in time would throw much of the Eiyou continent into economic chaos.
Espio had been sent by boat to arrive in Mobius as fast as possible, but when news transmissions from the Robotnik himself began to indicate that they had fled to Thran he paid the pilot to head to its northern shore and let him off. After that he had traveled along the coast on foot until he had met up with the pair of hunters and decided to follow them from there, knowing they could gather information far quicker than he could.
"Dude, I had this freaky dream last night." The voice belonged to one of the rebel leaders, the blue hedgehog named "Sonic". Espio listened in, staying disinterested so that his brown coloring wouldn't fade away. He missed out on the replies, but was able to hear Sonic as he went on to explain.
"Okay, so it starts off and there's fire everywhere, and I can't tell where I am. Then I see this echidna girl lying on the ground, and I go up to check her out- I meant see what was wrong with her- and all of a sudden she looks up and starts yelling about how she can't do anything. Then it ended."
Unless it actually did reveal something about Sonic's subconscious desires, Espio found the information to have been a total waste of his time. The three continued to chat about unimportant things, until suddenly they started talking about him.
"You know, those ninjas have got to be pretty dumb." It was Manic, the green hedgehog.
"And why do you say that?" And at last, Sonia was speaking.
"Well, they're going into this big hissy fit about how dangerous we are, according to you, but they were just sitting on their hands when a guy overthrows one of the longest established kingdoms in the entire world and replaces the entire government with: One, himself and; Two, a bunch of robots. I think that would sound just a little unbalancing."
Espio clenched a fist. How dare he insult his order's record? On the other hand, he was struck by the thought that he couldn't think of why the ninjas hadn't acted in that situation either.
What was done was what was done, however, and now they had to deal with the consequences.
"By the way," Sonic said. "Did I actually fight a water monster yesterday or was I just hallucinating?"
"Thanks a lot. I was counting on it being a hallucination." Manic said.
"Look," Sonia said. "There are all kinds of weird things that live in the wild and we don't know all of them."
"How many of them can speak echidna?" Manic asked.
"It could be like a parrot, okay? I'm just saying that it could have been nothing more than some kind of giant amoeba that happened to wander in. Whatever it was, it's dead, so there's no point in worrying." Sonia said.
Espio nodded. They had figured out a way to kill it. That would be important to tell the hunters. The bullets from the Robotnik's machines hadn't left any sign of harm, but obviously it was within their power to defeat the demon. Espio quickly filed that memory to the back of his mind. If he was not disinterested, then he would reveal himself.
The conversation between the three ringleaders soon veered to unimportant topics, and Espio found himself genuinely bored. Children. He thought. Children playing at being soldiers. According to their files though, they were only a few years younger than him. In any case, it was the experience that mattered. Espio crept away, back to the camp to report what he found.
OOOOOOOOOO
Athair sat cross-legged in a rock field, calming himself so he could search for the demon. Reaching his sense back to where he came from he saw a glimmer, no, several pinpricks of light together. He circled his senses around and around the village, spreading out to sense where the demon was. Then there it was, the shining light of energy that he was hunting. It was heading away from the village. Why? Then he reached farther, searching for one of the servers, and found it. A light traveling over the Channel, its path set to cross with the demon's.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Prepare to land." Slagar said. For the first time that day Tails could see land below him. He nodded and started searching for a flat piece of land. It would have been easier to land in a city, but the soldier had specifically told him that it was a bad idea. Finding an almost suitable stretch of grass Tails brought the plane down. As soon as the wheels touched the grass the two foxes were shaken about as Tails brought the plane to a stop.
"Done." Tails said as he turned off the plane.
"Good." Slagar replied. "Deppen is due east of here. Stay here and watch the plane, take off if anything you don't recognize approaches you. I'll deliver the news." Slagar climbed out and began walking, while Tails went to work making sure his beloved Tornado was in prime condition after the rough landing.
Slagar didn't give the puddle of water a second of notice as he stepped into it, but as he tried to lift his foot it became stuck. Grimacing, the soldier leaned down to investigate, but found himself unable to find anything unusual. He twisted around as he heard the liquid moving behind him, and narrowed his eyes at the sight of an anthro like figure assembling itself from the water, with glowing green eyes.
"Run, kid." Slagar yelled to Tails. The younger fox turned and widened his eyes at the monster. He was frozen in place as an arm made of water swatted Slagar away, and the second arm pointed at him. Suddenly the arm stretched out and Tails threw himself out of the way. The arm impaled the Tornado on one of its sides and out the other, then slowly retracted, taking Tails' backup power source with it: A large, green emerald.
OOOOOOOOOO
Death. Pain. Suffering. Misery.
OOOOOOOOOO
Sleet and Dingo looked up as they heard the crying echo across the plain. It was a different sound this time, but the both recognized the source of it.
"The demon." They said in unison. Both grabbed their guns and started prepping them, keeping their eyes in the direction of the crying.
Espio heard the weeping as he darted across the plain. If what the rebels had said about killing the demon was true, then this meant there were two of them.
The cries traveled farther on, the faintest whisper of them coming to Deppen.
"What is that?" Dalin asked no one in particular. He looked behind him, and still found no source for the crying. The worst thing was how much it sounded like the demon's scream. Dalin ran to tell Knuckles what had happened.
Athair heard the crying as he ran, and it only confirmed what he knew was up ahead. His path was fixed, and he barely noticed as he collided with the mouse-women from Deppen, knocking her down. He simply righted himself and kept running, ignoring her curses.
OOOOOOOOOO
The demon's right arm had changed, bulging as a skeletal arm formed inside of it, the emerald from Tail's plane imbedded in the skeleton hand. Slagar winced as reached for the sidearm under his uniform. The monster must have broken a few ribs when it hit him. He took careful aim for the arm. If it had come for the gem, he reasoned, and the gem made it grow, then removing the gem would weaken it. The gun was a pistol pattern Robot Destroyer, specifically reverse engineered from the Robotnik's weapons to destroy his machines. Slagar felt confident that it could handle a single gem.
Boom
Slagar saw the shot stop as it hit the edge of the monster's hand. The creature looked down before the oversized bullet exploded, tearing the creatures arm apart and sending the rest of it collapsing on the ground in a puddle of water. Slagar turned to see if Tails was alright when a pillar of water shot out of the ground and sent him flying back again. He twisted his head to see the monster standing over him, letting out a soft sobbing. The right arm and the emerald looked entirely untouched. The right arm rose to finish him off, but the creature was cut off by a hail of bullets slamming into its head. The creature looked up and hissed with the same tone of sorrow.
OOOOOOOOOO
Sonia panted as she ran to keep up with the rest of the group. When Knuckles had heard the crying he had said it belonged to one of the monsters like the one that had attacked the village. They had to see whether or not it really was a monster, and so he chose to take the three with him in case they needed to destroy it. As they crested a grassy hill they finally found the source.
The monster was similar in substance to the last one, but its right arm was much larger than the left, and had some kind of skeleton in it. Stranger still, though, was that it was threatening a fox in the gear of a Northern soldier on the ground, while Tails' plane sat behind it. Right before the monster could bring down its arm Knuckles swung up his rifle and opened fire, hitting it square in the head. The monster looked up at them and hissed loudly, starting to dash towards them. Before Knuckles could even grab one of the ring cases he had brought the soldier twisted around and opened fire on it with an over-sized pistol. The bullets punched into the creature, causing it to still its advance up the hill. Then the bullets exploded, tearing the demon apart and causing it to fall on the ground in a puddle of liquid.
The soldier struggled to his feet and began signaling frantically as the freedom fighters started to walk closer.
"It's not dead." The fox yelled. The ground exploded behind the soldier as a fountain of water shot out, taking the shape of the monster. With one blow of its giant hand it smashed the solider into the ground. It let out another disturbing wail as it once again began to climb the hill towards the Mobians.
OOOOOOOOOO
"If we're lucky this'll finish them off for us." Sleet said. He and Dingo were crouched behind a knoll, observing the fight from a distance.
"They claim to have killed the demon from the village." A voice said. Sleet looked over to see a green patch of grass in the shape of a chameleon crawling towards them.
"They did?" Dingo asked.
"At the very least, they believe they did."
"How-" Before Sleet could say anything more something ran up and vaulted over them. All the three hunters could make out was a flash of red hair before it was gone.
OOOOOOOOOO
Knuckles had already tossed one of the boxes to Sonic when a red figure collided with the monster, smashing it into a puddle of water on the ground. As it slowed down it became clear as an old echidna, jumping far too agilely for his age. With a quick twist of his body the echidna dodged the monsters huge right arm as it punched out from the ground, and then the echidna ducked in to punch the monster's reforming head, shattering it once again. Manic leaned forward from the group of freedom fighters to get a clearer look.
"Isn't that your grandpa?" He asked.
"Yes." Knuckles said quietly, too shocked to move.
Fun Fact: There is a genus of giant amoebas named Chaos, and a particular species with the scientific name Chaos Chaos.