CHAPTER 5
Hey everyone! Longest chapter yet! I put a lot into this one, rewrote it four times, trying to make it feel just right. I hope you guys enjoy it! Lots of things are being set in motion.
It had been pretty uneventful for Zulu since Rogue had reported what she had found out about the drug testing a week prior. He had spent his days relaxing outside under the tree in Tails' yard and sparring with Sonic, Silver, Knuckles, and Shadow in Tails' hangar. He was pretty much fully recovered from his injuries and was slowly getting better at keeping up with Sonic and Shadow. He also noticed a lot of improvement in Knuckles fighting style. Zulu gave Knuckles hard challenges when they fought, either handicapping him in some way like limiting the number of attacks he was allowed to make, or restricting Knuckles to be on the defensive only. Silver was an entirely different experience, but Zulu enjoyed in nonetheless. Silver forced Zulu to constantly be on the move, for any pause or moment of hesitation would result in Silver catching him with his psychic powers. Zulu's speed, strength, endurance, and reflexes far exceeded what they were when he first got there thanks to all the sparring.
It was early afternoon and Zulu was sitting on a bench in the hangar, wiping sweat from his face after a long session with Silver. Zulu usually trained for an hour with Sonic and Shadow in the morning back to back, then coached Knuckles for an hour and finished with an hour or more of endurance with Silver.
"Damn! Playing tag with you sucks." Zulu panted as Silver sat beside him, showing no signs of fatigue.
"Hey you got pretty close to me that time, but you are a pretty big target." Silver shot back with a smirk.
"Ha ha ha, funny." Zulu chuckled sarcastically, giving the silver hedgehog a smile. "So tell me, what's up with you and Blaze?" He asked, catching the reddening of Silver's cheeks and starting to laugh.
"I-uh-we um…" Silver mumbled, blushing harder and scratching the back of his head, staring at his feet and turning away from Zulu, who gave him a light punch on the arm.
"Excuse me gentlemen." Zulu and Silver looked toward the hangar door to see Vanilla walking toward them.
"Oh hey Vanilla!" Silver raised a hand in greeting, glad for the interruption.
"Hello ma'am." Zulu greeted her formally.
"Sorry to interrupt but I have a favor I wanted to ask." Vanilla said apologetically.
"Hey no problem! What do you need?" Silver happily replied while Zulu gave her a smile and a nod.
"Well, I just got called in to the hospital and I won't have time to pick up Cream from school, so I was wondering if someone could do that for me." She asked. Zulu and Silver exchanged a glance.
"Hmm." Zulu pondered, weighing the risk of possible discovery. "We would be walking her home?"
"Yes, but it's not a far walk at all, it just goes through a bad area and I don't want her walking alone." Vanilla replied. Zulu gave her a nod.
"Alright ma'am, we got it covered."
"Yeah don't sweat it Vanilla." Silver added confidently.
"Thank you two very much, I'll be off now." Vanilla gave them a smile and departed from the hangar.
Zulu and Silver arrived just as the bell rang and kids poured forth from the school. Zulu quickly crouched so he wouldn't scare the children by his size. A few minutes later both he and Silver noticed two big bunny ears perk up as Cream came outside and saw them. Zulu hadn't seen Cream since his first day in their dimension and couldn't help the big smile that formed as he watched her hurry over to them, excitement and joy plastered all over her face. She squealed and leaped onto Zulu, hugging him as best she could and burying her face in his neck. Silver watched with a smile as Zulu stood up, gently hugging Cream and laughing.
"Hey you stop that, it tickles!" Zulu chuckled, rubbing the top of her head and around her ears. Cream giggled and climbed onto his shoulder, hugging his head for balance as they began to walk to her house.
"Hi Silver!" She chirped, looking down at him.
"Hello to you too." He replied, giving her a smile. "How was school?"
"Good." She sighed. "P.E. was really fun, but I still don't like math." She made a sour face.
"I'd be happy to help you if you'd like." Zulu offered with a laugh. "I was pretty good at math when I was in school."
"Really?!" Cream exclaimed. "Yay!"
"Woah, didn't think you'd have a brain since it would be starved of oxygen way up there." Silver teased, getting Zulu back for earlier.
"What do I look like, a mountain?" Zulu shot back.
"You sure are fun to climb on." Cream added, giggling at their banter.
"Careful Cream!" Silver said loudly, cupping his hands around his mouth and pretending to call up to her. "You don't have any safety harnesses!" Zulu raised his right arm and punched Silver on top of the head. "Ow!" Silver yelped and looked up at him.
"Sorry." Zulu said. "Your yelling caused an avalanche." He looked down at the hedgehog trying to keep a straight face before bursting into laughter along with Cream and Silver. They continued walking and teasing each other until they were about a block from Cream's house, when Zulu stopped walking suddenly and slowly looked around. His senses were telling him someone was watching them. Silver recognized this and motioned for Cream to hop down to him. He then grabbed Cream's hand and started looking around as well, checking the tops of nearby buildings. Zulu's sharp and experienced eyes quickly found three men who had been tailing them.
"Stick close." Zulu warned. "I've spotted three."
"I see them." Silver confirmed.
"On second thought, take Cream and stay with her at the house, I don't want you two involved if you don't need to be."
"Right…" Silver said hesitantly, regretfully pulling Cream away to her house, not liking leaving Zulu behind but knowing someone had to get Cream out of there and stay with her.
Zulu narrowed his eyes as he watched the three men break cover and spread out, slowly approaching him. He saw how cautious they were being and guessed they weren't heavily armed. He allowed them to close the distance to ten feet or so before addressing them.
"So am I safe to assume you're with this G.U.N. agency I have heard about?" Zulu asked casually. The men glanced at one another before the one in the middle replied.
"Someone called the police to report about a really tall man they had seen around the school. Our C.O. ordered us to investigate since we were in the area. Looks like we found the man our two "best" agents couldn't find, or rather, overlooked."
"Well good for you. Now if there's nothing else, there's a bunny that needs my help with her homework and I'd hate for her to have to tell her teacher she couldn't do her homework because her tutor was busy kicking the shit out of three secret agents." Zulu growled, having no patience for these men right now. He had been really looking forward to spending time helping Cream.
"Looks like she's going to have to get help from the silver hedgehog instead." The middle man smirked, pulling out what looked like a tazer and lunging toward him. Zulu calmly leaned back, raising his right leg, and drove his foot square into the man's chest with a brutal kick, sending him flying back 20 feet onto the road, past where his two buddies, who had been drawing their weapons, stood. He landed hard on his back and didn't move. Zulu watched as the remaining two, visibly shocked, glanced from him, to each other, to the one he had kicked. Slowly they backed away and grabbed their friend, hauling him over to a nearby van, which they entered and quickly drove off.
Zulu sighed and walked to Cream's house, knowing things just got a lot harder. He stepped up to the door and it flung open before he could knock. Cream jumped out and hugged his leg as Silver glanced down the street.
"Geez, that was some kick." He said. "We were watching from the window. Were they from G.U.N.?"
"Yeah." Zulu sighed. "They were going to catch on sooner or later." He crouched down and patted Cream's head. She looked up at him and he smiled reassuringly at her. "Don't you worry Cream, now, about that math homework?"
It had been a tough week for Erik. Time and time again, the teams he sent out never came back. Since the first incident a week ago when he lost a ten man team down at the docks, Erik had dispatched 12 more teams, with only five of them reporting back in. Two days ago a covert operative he had monitoring Sea-Tac airport, in case their mystery sniper decided to leave the country, had been found dead in a bathroom. His commanding officer Raeger was furious and had reached out to some of his operatives in other countries to see where the man would pop up. They had found a small amount of surveillance footage at Sea-Tac of the man they were after, but they couldn't find any records of what flight he took. Erik had sent his description out to Raeger's international operatives and was now waiting for word of any sighting.
Jarving was also aware of what happened at the airport, only he knew where Victor was headed. Somehow Victor had found out about Jarving's contact in Japan, and must be going to investigate for himself. That was the only explanation he could think of, so he had decided to warn his foreign ally.
"Hello?"
"It's Jarving, listen, you might have a visitor very soon."
"What? What do you mean?" The man replied, sounding nervous.
"Long story short, one of the team survived the ambush. He logically must suspect I was somehow involved and did a wiretap on me or something. Anyhow, through phone records or otherwise he found out about you and is heading your way. My best guess is he's already there. If he contacts you, get in touch with me as soon as possible, and if he asks any questions, don't lie, he will know if you do."
"U-Understood. Um what does he look like?"
"About that, you'll know him when you see him. Sorry to be so vague." Jarving said apologetically.
"Ah, still not safe over there?" The man asked, catching on.
"Exactly, I don't want to give a full description if I don't have to."
"Alright, oh, we are almost ready, day or two more tops." The line went dead.
Jarving slowly set the phone down and gently shook his head.
"Damn they are fast at making a portal." He muttered quietly to himself.
It was dark and raining in Tokyo. Victor was closing in on the location of Jarving's contact. A few days prior, Victor had gone back to the research labs and checked Jarving's communications from the day of the ambush, looking for who he might have called or gotten a call from to set up the ambush. He found a call from Japan that came in during their operation and he had made note of it. He carried no weapons on him, having left them all back in Seattle, stashed away at the docks. He had eliminated quite a few strike teams sent after him and he figured his enemy would stop to rethink their strategy, so he felt comfortable going unarmed. He had run into a spy at the airport, but it was no problem for Victor.
As he walked his head was on a constant swivel, knowing that who was after him definitely had people all over the world looking for him. Victor was positive he had already been identified and it was just a matter of time before they showed up to take him. So far people either ignored him or intentionally avoided him out of fear. Standing at around eight feet tall he towered over everyone else. Victor had always been a big man, and the augmentations just amplified it to the extreme. He was also rippling with muscle. Before the augmenting he had the build of a very tall power lifter, and now he just looked like a giant power lifter.
He was the biggest and strongest of his team, and also the most violent and aggressive. It was actually safer to be around him when he had the combat drugs in his system. However, the current situation dictated he use the utmost caution and restraint, and Victor had no intention of drawing even more attention to himself if at all possible. He had always been the lone wolf of the team, never spoke with any of the guys, but, that said, watching the team get shot to pieces didn't sit well with him. As he rounded a corner he thought back to the ambush and how he had escaped.
He had been hit on his right shoulder and fell off the platform. He had rolled when he landed and leaped for a boarded up door, hoping to take cover in the room he thought was behind it. Victor remembered crashing through the door and instead falling down an elevator shaft to the basement one floor down, followed closely by an explosion that rocked the foundations around him. Zulu had still been alive and fighting on the platform, as far as he knew, when the explosion occurred, and Victor wondered about whether he died from the explosion, or the gunfire.
He continued walking until he found the street that matched the address he was looking for. He had been walking for about an hour and was feeling slightly fatigued. Victor mentally gathered himself and focused on making a plan. He ran multiple options through his head and weighed the different outcomes, finally deciding on going in casually, only resorting to violence if necessary. He approached the building that had the corresponding address and casually walked up to the front entrance, large glass doors sliding apart to grant him entry.
Hitoshi Yatatsuba was doing a final test on the nearly finished portal with his small team of researchers when his phone buzzed. Curious, he pulled it out to see that the front desk was calling him.
"Yes?" He answered.
"A giant man just walked in, I'm hiding under the reception desk." The receptionist whispered. Hitoshi gulped, knowing it was the man Jarving warned him about.
"I'll be right there, don't move or call the police, I'll handle it." He said quickly, hanging up and hurrying up to the front area. When he entered the room he saw a giant man standing in front of one of the elevators. He glanced over and saw the receptionist was still hiding, but ok.
"Excuse me!" He called. The giant looked over at him and a shiver of cold fear ran down his spine. The man's eyes were like cross hairs, staring blankly at him as if he were a paper target. "J-Jarving informed me you would show up here." The man turned toward him and slowly walked over to him. "I am Hitoshi Yatatsuba, lead researcher at this facility, follow me, as I'm sure you have a lot of questions." He turned and began walking back toward the lab, feeling the man looming over him from behind but not hearing him take a single step. "Jarving told me you would think he was involved in the fate of your team, and not to lie to you, since you'd know immediately if I did." Hitoshi rambled on, nervous and disturbed by this giant who moved without a sound, which spoke volumes of his training.
They reached the lab and sat at one of the tables. Victor instantly recognized the portal in the middle of the room and tensed up. He glared across the table at Hitoshi who quickly looked away and reached for a phone. Victor grabbed his wrist and twisted it, almost to the point of breaking the Hitoshi's arm. Hitoshi yelped and struggled to pull his hand away.
"Look, ahhh, Jarving said to call him as soon as you showed up, he just wants to explain the situation!" Hitoshi pleaded. Victor released his wrist, slid the phone to Hitoshi, and stood up. Hitoshi watched for a moment as Victor walked around the room examining all the equipment before he picked up the phone. He put the call on speaker and waited as it rang.
"Hello? This is Jarving." He answered, catching Victor's attention and returning him to the table.
"Jarving, your man, he's here." Hitoshi stated.
"Victor? You made it? That's a relief. Well let's get straight to it. I know what you're thinking, and no, neither Hitoshi nor I had any involvement with the ambush." As Hitoshi listened to Jarving explain what happened he wondered if Victor would ever reply or say a word. He immediately regretted it.
"Understood sir." Victor stated after hearing out all of what Jarving had to say. His voice was deep, threatening, and Hitoshi never wanted to hear him talk again. He was sure that even the Devil himself would think again about messing with this man.
"Victor, we also have reason to believe someone else made it out alive. We have an eye-witness who confirmed that only five bodies were recovered." Jarving informed. Hitoshi saw something flash across Victor's eyes, he must know who survived.
"Sir." Victor started, causing cold shivers to run up and down Hitoshi's spine. "The only other person who could have made it out was Zulu. We were the last two alive and I never saw him get hit. How he would have avoided the blast though I can't say." He continued to report his account of the ambush and firefight, ending with his fall down the elevator shaft. Hitoshi began to get a creeping suspicion about how Zulu survived.
"Uh, Victor?" Hitoshi asked, receiving another look from those cross hair like eyes. "Could you please tell me where Zulu was when you last saw him, or draw a picture of the room's layout?" Victor gave him a small nod and went over to a white board. He drew a rough sketch of the room and any notable places or objects, like the portal platform and the nearby elevator shaft. He then wrote down where each member of his team had been and finished by circling the portal platform with the marker. "I assume that whatever we activated had something to do with the explosion?" Victor asked. Hitoshi nodded to him and took the marker.
"What you guys turned on was a portal. The portal was high jacked by the people who ambushed you and stored in that warehouse. The reason why they did all that is unknown and my guess is that the damage sustained by the nearby equipment during the shoot out caused the portals power suppression systems to fail, causing the explosion. However, what I can say for sure is that the only way Zulu survived was if he used the portal. From your account, he would have had enough time to get into the portal before it exploded." He tapped the marker on his lip before continuing. "The problem is that none of you knew what it was or what it did, so I can't see how he would have known to use it to escape."
"Even if he had known, Zulu wouldn't have used it." Victor stated. "Zulu would have died fighting with the rest of us rather than abandon us."
"What if he didn't use it willingly?" Jarving added.
"Explain." Growled Victor.
"Well you said it yourself that when you got hit in the shoulder you were flung off the platform. Zulu must have gotten hit as well, being a sitting duck up on that platform after you were knocked off. The force of a hit would have thrown him back into the portal." Jarving finished.
"Hmm. I guess that's the best theory we have right now." Hitoshi concluded. "Well the next portal is nearly done, just a day or two more."
"Victor, you up for finding Zulu?" Jarving more ordered than asked.
"The first objective when scattered and separated is to regroup." Victor said in response.
Erik stepped off a plane at a private I.A. military airfield in Tokyo. It had been approximately 20 hours since he had gotten world from a Japanese operative that their man had been spotted. He was eager to find him, and knew that Tokyo was where he was currently. Raeger had informed him that the portal had come from one of Jarving's contacts here in Japan, and was most likely in Tokyo. Erik was one of the few who knew about the portal and what it was supposed to do, but he had been kept in the dark about the fact that it had actually worked.
Erik was whisked away from the airfield to a small, private building owned by Raeger. It was used as a headquarters by people Raeger had stationed in Japan where they could communicate with the other operating HQ's around Japan and share intel with one another. As Erik entered the building he was approached by Niko Furyumi, who was in charge of Raeger's Tokyo branch. Niko lead him to their briefing room and got him up to speed on what they knew.
"Your man is on foot. He is avoiding any interaction with anyone to leave as small of a trail as possible, so we won't be able to track him through the public transport system." Niko began. "All we have come up with is a few traffic camera photos and a lot of useless eye witnesses. We can't find out where he was headed exactly."
"Well our best guess is Jarving's contact, but we never found out where they were located." Erik added.
"Yeah, we've been looking, but they are really good about hiding their research."
"Indeed." Erik nodded. "We just have to hope they slip up soon."
"We have started investigating every power outage that occurs in the city. It's only a matter of time before we find one caused by an E.M.P. So far our sensors haven't picked up much, nothing large enough to constitute a portal being tested anyway."
"It is also possible that the one that was destroyed was the only one they had, and they don't have another made yet." Erik added, getting a nod from Niko.
"That's what I've been thinking as well. All the more reason to find them quickly." Niko finished.
It was getting close to evening as Victor wandered around the building, noting all the staircases, elevators, and emergency exits in case the people hunting him showed up before the portal was ready. It was his second day and Hitoshi had told him that tonight might be the night. Victor made his way to the lab after mentally cataloging the final emergency exit at the rear of the building. He entered to find Hitoshi hurrying around excitedly, checking and double checking that various wires and cords were all plugged into their proper places and that all his equipment was operational.
Hitoshi turned to see the giant man as he entered the room and hid the shiver of fear he felt run through him.
"Ah, Victor, I'm making the final preparations now. We are only going to have one try at this, since whoever is after us will surely detect the E.M.P. this will cause."
"Just make sure it works." Victor growled dismissively.
"Y-Yes, certainly." Hitoshi looked around at each of his research teammates and they all gave him a nod. Everything was ready. "Alright Victor, here we go, step up on the platform." Hitoshi hurried to a desk and began imputing a complex sequence into a console to start the portal. Victor casually stepped up onto the four foot high platform, ignoring the stairs leading up to it. He turned to give Hitoshi a nod, then closed his eyes. Victor heard the machine whirl to life and got the ok from Hitoshi. He opened his eyes and stepped through the portal. In that moment, across two dimensions, sensory alarms went off in Raeger's building, the G.U.N. complex, Tails' house, and Eggman's base, all signaling a massive E.M.P. just occurred.
Victor found himself in the middle of a dark street, and nodded his head. Hitoshi's portal worked, and now the hunt was on.
"Alright Zulu." He muttered to himself. "Lets regroup."
