Sonic Haven

Season 1 - Episode 11

"Plan of Action"

It had been a couple of days since they'd settled down in what they were now calling Haven, an abandoned subway station that had been converted into a low-level base of operations. Although the tension was still palpably high, everyone was starting to come to terms with their new surroundings. Though some were obviously faring better than others.

Antoine was still in a paranoia-induced spin that seemed to be getting worse, not better. Max was getting more and more isolated. Sally was still trying to pretend she was alright. And then there was Tails…

The two-tailed fox who'd been Sonic's best friend since the beginning of time had been rather quiet lately, which was unlike him. It wasn't like he was hiding, but he wasn't quite himself either. He seemed… detached.

When he finally saw an opportunity, Sonic took a moment to pull his friend aside in the subway tunnel just outside of Haven and talk to him.

He lowered his tone to make sure that he knew it was serious and to keep the conversation just between the two of them. "Hey bud, you okay? You haven't quite been yourself lately."

Tails nodded. A shallow and unsure gesture that wasn't instilling any confidence. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Sonic wasn't convinced in the slightest. Examining his friend's face, he thought he could see the problem. "Are you scared of something?" He asked cautiously. If Tails decided to get defensive about it, it wouldn't do either of them any good.

"Well…" Tails started to explain. "We have a whole base set up here and a group of people who want to make the best of a bad situation." He paused for a moment and thought about his phrasing carefully. "But some part of me is saying that we're not ready for this. That we're not ready for a fight. Shouldn't we just be trying to hide until someone else can take care of Robotnik?"

Sonic smiled. "I get it. And you're not wrong, we're not professionals." He put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "But you're not completely right either."

Tails didn't even try to hide the fact that he was confused. "What do you mean?"

Sonic explained. "We don't know if or when other, more qualified people are coming. As far as we know, this is all we've got. Sure, we could hide, but that doesn't mean that we should. If we just tried to lay low, Robotnik would find us eventually. And if all we've done at that point is hide, what good have we done? What was the point? Everyone here has a skill or experience that they can draw from to put up a good fight. Even you Tails."

Tails scoffed. "Now you're just overselling it. I'm not that valuable."

Sonic shook his head, a broad smile on his face. "Come on Tails, you think I'm gonna let that one slide? You're one of the best outside-the-box thinkers I've met. You're a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for."

"But do you really think we have what it takes to stop Robotnik?" He asked, still a little uneasy.

"Everyone can accomplish big things when they work together, in a team that will help them to succeed." Sonic assured him. "Just like they taught us in gym class back in high school."

Tails laughed. "Like that's gonna help. I was terrible at gym class."

Sonic raised an eyebrow. "Only because you chose to be, remember? You told me you didn't want to use your abilities to your advantage."

"Okay, okay, fair enough." Tails was pretty much begging him to stop at this point, halfheartedly begging anyway.

"Just believe in yourself Tails. If you do that, then I know we'll be fine" Sonic finished his pep talk with a thumbs-up.

Tails returned the gesture, still slightly giggling from Sonic's mentioning gym class. "If you say so Sonic."

Confident he'd lifted his friend's spirit, Sonic walked back into Haven with a smirk on his face. A voice from behind stopped him before he'd reached the small training area at the far end.

"I must say, you give quite the pep talk." Tiara said.

Sonic turned around, a little surprised that someone else had been listening to their conversation. "How much of that did you hear?"

She shrugged. "Not much, there was something about gym class, and Tails was laughing."

"Oh, okay." He relaxed a little bit. "I was worried you were eavesdropping."

Tiara shook her head with an innocent smile. "No, I'd never. I was just by the door when I heard you talking."

Sonic was still just a little bit confused. "Then why bring it up at all?"

She folded her arms in front of her, leaning her head to one side as she explained. "If Tails wasn't good at gym class, and you knew that apparently, then why bring it up at all?"

Sonic smirked. "'Cause I knew he'd laugh." He gestured to his friend who was now happily putting together a computer with parts Sonic had gathered the day before. "He jokes about it all the time himself. We both know that he could've been one of the best in his class if he'd chosen to be. But instead, he flopped around and ran awkwardly, he even failed the high jump knowing he could fly. He was sort of the class clown. He made everybody laugh and took the pressure off of their performances."

"That's such a sweet thing to do." She then felt a question leap into her mind that she just couldn't let go. "What about you?"

"I asked out of class. Took up assisting the football coach instead." He said in a dismissive tone. "I'd've loved to compete with them, but the coach told me that it wouldn't be fair." He shrugged. "He was right. I wasn't able to hold myself back like Tails was, so I had to find another way to help out the school's teams."

"Anything else you want to tell me about your extracurricular activities in high school?" She asked teasingly.

Sonic smirked. "I was pretty good at chess since that was the only thing they'd actually let me compete in." He straightened his expression, then got back on topic. "In all seriousness though, I hate seeing Tails, or anyone else, down on themselves. I've always tried to be an optimist, even if it's not the easiest thing."

Tiara nodded, then heaved a sigh. "Yeah, I know. When the sky is falling it's tough to tell everyone their umbrella will hold up." She looked him in the eye and gave him the most sincere smile. "Easy or not, it's appreciated."

"Thanks." Sonic said with a thumbs up. "And if you're ever having a bad day, just know that I'm right around the corner, waiting to flood you with even more stories from my high school days."

She giggled. "I'll keep that in mind, thanks."

He nodded and turned toward the training area in the corner to start the practice session he'd talked to Knuckles about the day before.

Tiara went her own way as well, turning toward the computer room where Nicole had set up her "home." Right now, she and Sally were working on evaluating the situation on the surface and determining a good target for them to strike first.

She walked in and sat down in a spinning black office chair in the corner right next to the door, spinning around and kicking it shut with her left foot. "So, what'd I miss?"

"Oh, nothing much yet." Sally said as she turned from the monitor to look at her friend. "We were just finishing up." After a short pause, Sally noticed something, something she wasn't about to let slide.

She turned back to the monitor for a moment. "Nicole, can you finish this up on your own? I want to talk to Tiara about something."

Nicole sounded a bit surprised. "Yeah, sure, I guess…"

"Great." Sally said, spinning around and crossing her arms. "So, Tiara…"

Tiara felt a bit nervous, thinking she probably knew what was coming. "Yes?" She asked hesitantly.

"Do you have something you want to tell me?" Sally said in a judgemental tone, keeping her pose as solid as stone.

"Psssh, Nooo." Tiara waved her hand in dismissal, hoping that Sally would just drop it.

Sally lifted her left brow slightly. "Then why do you have that look on your face?"

Taira started spinning side to side in the chair, letting her legs swing back and forth aimlessly. "No reason."

Sally chuckled, her expression softening. "What are you, five? Come on, spit it out." She leaned back a bit, the fake intensity completely gone. "Who is it?"

"Well," Tiara started slowly, trying to build anticipation. "There's this guy…"

Sally shook her head. "I knew it."

"What?" Taira asked, feeling accused somehow.

Sally smirked. "That's the same look you had on your face back in high school."

Tiara snorted out a laugh. "Now you're talking about school too. I feel like I'm back in my junior year again."

"Stop stalling. Come on, who is it?" Sally insisted.

Tiara held up her hands in surrender. "Alright…" She took in a deep breath. "It's Sonic."

Sally couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Seriously, Sonic?"

"Yes, seriously." Tiara shrugged. "Why? What's wrong with him?"

"You barely know him." Sally said as she crossed her arms again. Though this time she wasn't nearly as testy.

"Well…" Tiara started to explain, "He's funny, and cute, and he's a really nice guy." She decided to turn the tables on her best friend. "Are you telling me that you're not interested in him then?"

"Well," Sally said in a verbal retreat of sorts, "like you said, he is a nice guy. But his quips would get under my skin after a while. It would never work out between us." She shook her head. "Besides, I don't think he's the kind of guy who'd get tied down by someone else; emotionally speaking anyway."

Nicole chimed in from behind the two of them. "Aren't you guys going a little overboard with this? You barely even know him."

Tiara giggled. "You're looking too far into this."

Sally nodded in agreement. "We both learned the hard way to not rush into a relationship." She glanced sideways. "Didn't we Tiara?"

Tiara smiled, then explained. "I had a huge crush on the school's star quarterback while I was in my junior year. But, after hanging out with him for about three days I got tired of helping him carry his massive ego. I don't know if you can call it dating because we never even made it to our first date. But I won't jump into something like that again."

Sally doubled down on her friend's sentiment. "Same. I met someone nice at one of the annual royal parades. He was actually quite charming, but he never had any time. He canceled our first date six times. The last straw was when he canceled because he 'needed some time to himself.' I told him he could have all the time he needed, and that there was no need to reschedule."

"It sounds like neither of you has had any luck." Niccole said apologetically.

Sally just smiled. "Don't worry about it. We've learned our lessons and we'll make sure to take things slow, whether it's Sonic or someone else."

"If you say so." Nicole said in surrender.

"What about you?" Tiara asked.

"Me?" Nicole asked in surprise. "No no no. I don't exactly get out much. Especially since I'm, well, you know." She was talking about her being trapped inside of a machine, something which had no doubt impacted her social life.

"Sorry, I forgot." Tiara said in a low, apologetic tone. Truth be told, she had forgotten that Nicole was trapped in cyberspace. She'd only known her for a couple of days but already viewed her as just a normal person.

Nicole let out a small sigh. "Don't worry about it."

Sally quickly changed the subject before any more feelings were hurt. "Did you get it finished?" She asked with a note of optimism.

Nicole perked back up, at least a little. "Yeah, I did. You wanna see it?" She asked.

"Sure." Sally said, trying to match the positivity.

A set of locations and numbers appeared on screen for her to look at. She studied it for a moment, trying to pick one out of the group. She finally settled on one toward the bottom, putting her finger on it to mark it for Tiara, who was following along.

"There, we have our target." She said in a note of triumph. "Now let's go tell the others."

A few minutes later, everyone in Haven had gathered in their little meeting room that sat in the center of the station. It wasn't much, a table and some office chairs with a monitor on the wall opposite the door that was connected to a desktop computer. Nicole had displayed herself up on the screen so that she could be part of the meeting and could also manage the information that needed to be displayed.

Sally opened the discussion without much fanfare. "If we're going to try and strike at Robotnik, we're going to need to pick targets that are both effective and as low-risk as possible." She held up a hand as if to stop herself. "But first we need to bring everyone up to speed on just what we're dealing with."

Nicole pulled out a folder and threw an item up on the screen for the team to see; a picture of the Robian suit.

"Robotnik's main force is made out of Robians, which we're all very familiar with. It's a robotic suit that latches on to an organic host and covers them in a metallic shell which both protects them and puts them in a medically induced stasis so that they can be controlled by Robotnik." She pointed at the shell of the suit and kept talking. "The outside of the suit is made from a hardened titanium alloy which we've decided to call Robonite. It's virtually impenetrable, at least by normal means. As of now, that is about all we know other than the fact that the control unit rests on the back of the host like a backpack."

Nicole pulled up another image, this one a picture of another type of robot. Its menacing look sent a chill up everyone's spine. Tall and almost muscular looking, it had a domed head with an angry red slit on the front instead of eyes and was covered head to toe in overlapping heavy Robonite armor plates. It was also painted a dark gray color that would make it hard to spot in poorly lit areas or at night if not for the ever-present blood-red line on its face.

"This is what he's been working on since the barrier went up." Sally said, pointing at the screen again. "It's the Superior Weaponized Attack Troop Robot, or SWAT Bot. The shell is again made out of Robonite, but this time it's much thicker. It's also fully robotic and has an iron frame which makes it both extremely heavy and extremely sturdy."

Max spoke up from the back of the room, asking a question that was on several people's minds. "Why does he need a second kind of soldier? He knows we won't attack the Robians because there are people inside. We won't have any qualms about damaging his SWAT Bots."

Knuckles shook his head. "Maybe. But the Robians are also limited. Because they were intended to be suits with people inside of them, you can only go so far without killing the host."

"So we just smash the new ones. Shouldn't be that hard." Sonic said with a shrug.

Nicole raised her hand to make a comment. "Actually, the SWAT Bots are more than likely too armored for us to damage them directly. We would need… um. We'd need to… use some kind of weapon… or something. Most likely."

"First thing's first," Rotor said in a low voice, "we need to stop the production of those bots."

Sally nodded. "I couldn't agree more, which is why we've already identified a potential target."

Another image appeared on screen, a factory not far from the middle of town. She continued: "Factories like this have been popping up around town. This one was put up first and has a stockpile of SWAT Bots ready to go."

Antoine chuckled nervously. "Zen perhaps we should be finding anozer target non?"

Bunnie shook her head. "We need ta fahnd somethin' uh his ta take out that'll hurt 'em Antoine. We can't just sit here on our fluffy tails and do nothin'."

"Don't worry," Sally said reassuringly. "We have a plan." She pointed to the picture of the factory. "This one in particular has been drawing power from all over town. If we can break in and hack the control terminal inside, we can force the production line to overdraw from the power stations and overload the system."

Sonic nodded. "Alright, sounds good. How do we pull it off?"

"We'll have to tap into the mainframe directly." Sally explained. "It won't be easy, but Nicole should be able to break the encryption from inside the computer. We just need to get her inside."

"Can she transfer herself?" Tails asked.

"I can't." Nicole clarified, looking a little embarrassed. "I tried, but Robotnik's firewall is just too tight. We'll have to find a way to connect me directly."

Sally spoke up confidently. "I think I might know how we can work it out."

"Okay then." Sonic said as he glanced around the room. "After we get that worked out we'll come up with the rest of the plan. Until then, we should be done."

As the others got up from their chairs and made their way out of the room, Sonic dashed over to Sally to discuss her idea further. "So what did you have in mind?" He asked. "A thumb drive or something?"

She smiled. "Actually I was thinking something a little more advanced. Any chance you could help me get some supplies from the electronics store on the south side of town?"

"Say no more." He said as he scooped her up and dashed to the store in only a couple of seconds.

She stammered as she fixed her hair. "That's… not what I meant. But okay." She took a moment to reorient herself in the store. "How in the world do you see anything when you're moving that fast?"

He chuckled. "You get used to it after a while."

The store was full of various bits of tech, from headphones to computers along with aisles of cables and batteries all laid out in a somewhat easy-to-find fashion.

Walking down the aisle to her right, she looked over a set of newly released phones. "How long have you had your speed?" She asked, just making small talk.

"As long as I can remember." He said scratching his head. "I don't even know where it came from. I mean, neither of my parents are fast. And considering what other people have told me, I'd say I'm probably the first person with this kind of speed in history."

"Must be pretty cool." She said in a passing notion.

He sighed. "A lot of people feel that way."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "How do you feel?"

He tapped his foot a couple of times as he thought about what to say. "It's a blessing and a curse." He stopped tapping and crossed his arms. "I mean, obviously it has its advantages. But it's hard to be patient with other people when you can do everything they do in less than half the time."

She could tell there was more billowing under his skin. But rather than saying something, she just waited for him to continue.

"It's also hard to stay put." He said after a few seconds of silence. "There's a constantly burning energy in me that makes me feel anxious if I stay still for too long." He smirked. "Tails claims that there's nothing that could keep me in one place for more than a day."

She grabbed one of the phones and turned to face him. "There has to be something."

He shrugged. "There probably is, but I haven't found it yet."

She walked over to the counter where the register was before realizing what she was doing. She shook her head as she turned around. "I swear I'll never get used to just taking something. It feels wrong."

He smirked. "Hopefully this whole thing won't last long enough for us to get used to it."

She lifted herself into the counter, put one leg over the other, and turned her head to look out the glass storefront at the setting sun. Though still beautiful, its image was distorted by the barrier at the edge of the city.

"So you really think this will all be over soon?" She asked longingly.

"Sure." He said with a confidence that wasn't entirely truthful. "I mean, once we find a way to bring the shield down and the military can come rolling in, Robotnik doesn't stand a chance."

She half nodded, but something else was on her mind. "What do we do until then?"

Sonic was a little confused. "What do you mean?"

She thought about how to phrase her next statement very carefully. "Robotnik is a genius with far more in terms of resources than we can ever have. Normally we wouldn't stand a chance against him. Right now, we have surprise on our side since he most likely won't be expecting an attack while the shield is still in place. But when the surprise runs out, and we have to take him on head-to-head, how do we win?"

He walked back and forth, trying to stir the thoughts in his head and come up with an answer. "We're the aggressors. As long as we can keep ourselves hidden, Robotnik can only be on the defensive. That means we control where and when the fight happens. All we need is a good leader to keep us out of trouble."

She glanced at him, raising a questioning brow. "Do you think you're qualified."

He took a half-step back and raised his hands in defense. "Whoa, I never said it should be me."

"No." She admitted. "But you've kind've been the de facto leader since we got this group together."

"Maybe." He admitted. "But you're the one who came up with the plan to take out the factory. I never would've thought of that."

"While that may be true," she said slowly, "I have no idea what to do once we get in there. I don't know what the inside of that factory looks like. There's no plan for that."

Sonic thought about it for a moment, then posited his idea. "Then how about this: you handle the overarching, long term plans. And I'll handle the heat of the moment changes, since thinking on my feet is what I do best."

"So I'm the strategist and you're the field commander?" She asked.

He nodded. "Something like that."

"Okay." She said as she hopped off of the counter. "Then I guess we might have a chance after all." He picked her up and readied himself for the dash back to Haven. "Two heads are better than one. Right?" She asked as she looked at him with cautious optimism.

He smirked. "Right." Then he took off towards their secluded base, the hope of somehow winning an impossible battle clutched tightly to his heart. And as they reached their base, the sun finally hid itself behind the horizon. Thus letting the night, and tomorrow's plan, hang ominously overhead.