Sonic Haven Season 2 – Episode 4

Max took a deep breath as he approached Robotnik's base. He had to be careful, especially since he had no backup! They needed to know what was going on inside Robotnik's base and that meant running a recon mission as stealthily as possible. For some reason, Sally decided that Max would be the best fit for the mission, maybe because of his military background; he hoped that wasn't the reason.

He'd only been with the military for about three months before Robotnik attacked the city and flipped his life on its head. He had little to no real life experience, and only a minimal amount of training as it hadn't been deemed necessary to train extensively for more than thirty years, back when the kingdom had last been in a large scale conflict. He'd only decided to join the military because his father had served in that war and had said it was his dream that his son do the same should another war arise.

As he climbed into the sewer system that Sonic had used to infiltrate the building before, he thought to himself 'I wish I'd never joined.' He hadn't signed up for war in the first place, he didn't really consider himself much of a fighter. And what happened in the tank...

His heartbeat accelerated as he remembered what happened, the terror he felt as the Robian jumped onto the top of the tank and ripped off the hatch to climb inside. The look on his partner's face as the Robian grabbed onto him and mistakenly smacked his head into the top of the tank, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. Then it turned to him, looking at him with those dead, robotic eyes. What happened next is a blur in his mind, a blur that, rather than clearing over time, only proceeded to get blurrier and blurrier. Did he pull out the weapon? Did the Robian grab something to attack him with? No, that didn't make sense. The Robian wanted him alive. Surely it wouldn't have pulled a weapon on him.

He rubbed the side of his abdomen as he remembered the stab, the one that had nearly killed him. It haunted him to this day, giving him nightmares nearly every night. He wondered what would've happened to him if Tails and Knuckles hadn't tried to rescue him. Would he still be alive? Not likely. He should be thankful, yet he couldn't seem to remember even speaking to either Tails or Knuckles since they'd saved him.

To be honest, his life was a mess, and not only because of Robotnik, though that certainly didn't help. All he had to do was hang on. Eventually, things would get better, right?

As he brought his focus back to reality he realized that he'd made his way into the maintenance shaft that he and Tiara had used back when they were trying to rescue Bunnie. He tried to think about where he might find the food supplies that Robotnik had stolen. He stopped when he heard a knocking noise coming from the room to his right.

Curious, he climbed out of the shaft and walked through the hallway, turned the corner. There was a hedgehog, trapped by a force field in a room that was only barely big enough to house him comfortably.

Before he could think to ask a question, the green hedgehog turned and looked at him. "What do you want?" He asked.

"Who are you?" Max asked in return.

The two stared at each other for a couple of seconds, waiting for a reply from the other.

The hedgehog spoke first. "My name's Scourge, who are you?"

"Max." He replied quickly.

"Any chance you can let me outta here? Baldy threw me in here and I need you to punch that panel by the door and turn off the energy field." Scourge said as he pointed at the wall.

Max hesitated. He didn't know for sure that letting Scourge out of his cell would be a good thing. But, he reasoned, if Robotnik didn't like him, it was probably more likely than not that Scourge would be helpful.

Max hit the panel next to the room, turning off the force field and letting Scourge out of his make-shift prison.

Scourge walked over to Max and slapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks dude, now let's get outta here."

"Not so fast." Max interjected. "I came here for a reason, and you aren't it. I need to find where Robotnik hid the food that he collected from around the town and take a measure of his security so I know what we'll need to break it."

"Alright then." Scourge said with a smirk. As he turned away, his eyes strangely shifted from blue to emerald green and glowing. Then he took off, faster than even Sonic could keep up with.

Max waited, hesitating to see if Scourge would come back. Sure enough, he did. Scourge came to a sliding halt in front of Max, gasping for breath, his fur gone from pure green to slightly more of a pale teal color, his eyes once again blue.

"You... need to... see this..." Scourge wheezed in between breaths. He grabbed onto Max and drug him at high speeds to another part of the building, down, if Max's sense of direction hadn't been completely torn to shreds in the few seconds he was hurtling through it.

As Scourge came to a stop, Max felt his guts slam against his ribs and he felt like throwing up. He tried to stay upright, but lost his balance and fell over. When he finally stood up, he stayed crouched behind some crates Scourge had stopped behind. He collected himself, then gazed over the top carefully, trying not to draw attention to this side of the room.

What he saw gave him pause; a tunnel, long and wide, with S.W.A.T. Bots marching through by the thousands!

"Oh my word!" He exclaimed in a whisper.

He quickly hid back behind the crates and looked over at Scourge. "Well, now I know where all those S.W.A.T. Bots He's been producing went!" Max said quietly.

"So, whaddya wanna do?" Scourge asked.

"Right now, grab some food and get out of here. I'll tell the others about this and we'll come up with some kind of plan later." Max said as he turned to leave.

Scourge grabbed his arm and, again, drug him through the building, sliding around corners and barreling through hallways at near the speed of sound. He stopped outside of a warehouse just beside the building they'd been in a moment before.

"Your food's in there." Scourge said as he nodded his head to indicate the building. "Can we go now? I've found just about everything in this city except for where your friends are hiding, and not knowing something drives me nuts!"

"Alright, but we move at my pace." Max said as he willed his stomach to stop spinning.

"Fine, lead the way." Scourge said impatiently.

As they walked away, Max took note of the fact that Scourge didn't seem tired. "You seriously checked the whole city? When?" He asked.

"When I ran away back when we first met. I checked everything in town and came back. I'm used to it, did it all the time back home." Scourge replied like it was no big deal.

"No wonder you were gassed." Max said softly, wondering just how fast Scourge had actually gone.

"Yeah yeah, pick up the pace would ya. I wanna get somewhere before that Tyrant finds us and disembowels us or something." Scourge said overdramatically.

"Alright alright... sheesh!" Max complained as he climbed to a slow but steady jog.

(liiiiiineeeeee)

"A tunnel?" Sally asked, not believing what she was hearing.

"Sacre Bleu!" Antoine exclaimed before passing out into Bunnie's arms.

"Yeah, a tunnel, filled to the brim with a few thousand S.W.A.T. Bots traveling down it to wherever the heck it goes." Max said exhausted.

"Great," Sally said as she rubbed her forehead, "now what do we do? I wish Sonic and Tiara were still here."

"Yeah." Tails moaned from somewhere off to her left.

"Relax toots, you don't need anyone but me!" Scourge said with an obviously overconfident tone.

"And who are you?" Sally said in a tone surgically designed to deflate his ego as much as possible. She was fairly well practiced at it too, having dealt with royalty in the past.

"I'm Scourge, Scourge the Hedgehog! Fastest, strongest, and most fashionable thing alive! I think it's safe to say that the scales of war have just tipped in your favor." Apparently, Sally's words didn't do as much damage as she'd thought. "And you are?" Scourge asked with a raised eyebrow as he looked over his sunglasses to examine Sally's 'features.'

She cleared her throat before speaking. "Ahem. I'm Princess Sally, You do what I say and we won't have a problem, got it?" She said with as much royal flair as she could muster.

"A princess huh? Well I..." He was cut off as Knuckles came up from behind and grabbed Scourge, holding him in the air and leaving his feet dangling just a few inches off the ground.

Knuckles made sure he commanded attention when he spoke. "You treat her with respect and you won't have a problem with me. Trust me, you don't want to get on my bad side."

It now seemed that everyone on the team was trying to knock Scourge down a peg. Unfortunately...

"Perfect, don't move." Scourge said as he looked down at Knuckles. Then his changed from blue to green and he started vibrating back and forth rapidly before falling through Knuckles hands and walking through his body to stand on the other side.

When he'd finished, his fur had turned a slight teal again, as it had back when he'd scouted the town, but he hid his exhaustion well.

Apparently, Sally thought, nothing would shake him. It didn't really matter at this point. At the very least, it appeared that Scourge was on their side, and she would take any help she could get at this point. But the future didn't seem very bright, and without food, she wasn't sure how long they'd last.