Recursion Error
Episode 35- Diabolical sword, calamitous edge
"There it is..."
Even peering through a pair of binoculars at over a mile away it would be impossible to miss such a thing. A large, sprawling complex. A factory bigger than any other factory ever constructed by Eggman, save for the construction yards located in his own personal city of New Megaopolis used to construct the mad tyrant's Egg Fleet. A factory complex so large it could hardly be called just a factory due to its massive size.
The Freedom Fighters had been gaining some intelligence of the factory for a long time now. It was a major target; something that took a priority in eliminating. And until very recently its location had remained a secret. That had ended when they'd finally gotten wind of a possible location, and after looking around a bit, it was there.
"That's the factory that's been giving us so much trouble for so long. And one of the last ones outside of New Megaopolis to boot. If we manage to take that out it'll really go a long way in pushing Eggman back."
"You think I should get a hat?"
The sentence said by the voice near her caused the red-haired chipmunk to slowly lower the binoculars held up to her eyes. She looked down a bit, silently repeating the sentence she heard before shaking her head and turning to her right. "What?" Sally asked, looking down into the trench she stood in at the human sitting down with his back pressed against the trench wall next to her.
"A hat," Sorun repeated. "Y'know, like a fedora. Somethin' stylish. Bunnie manages to pull off a hat so I was just wondering if I should spring for one."
Sally's mouth opened to rebuke this, but when she realized just how absurd these words were she quickly changed her mind with a shake of her head and glared down at the other teen. "Sorun, I don't think now is the time to be thinking about this."
Sorun rolled his eyes at that. "Sally, you've had the both of us scouting around out here in the sticks for four days straight looking for this thing, and hey, we found it, so now is hat time."
"Could you please be serious about this?"
"I am serious about this. We already found the place so it's not like there's much else for us to do other than go back to the HQ and think up a plan of attack." With a soft groan Sorun stood up to his feet, turned around, and stepped to the top of the trench alongside Sally. "You think Honey'd make me a hat? She's probably a good milliner, right?"
"Maybe. I don't know." At this point Sally had slumped her body over the top of the trench, supporting her head with one of her hands as she continued to look at Sorun from the corner of her eyes. She wanted to scold him for acting so flippantly in the face of something so serious, but inside she knew that his logic in that there was nothing else for them to do at this point was sound. So instead she chose to give up a losing fight and let Sorun ramble on about his hats.
"I'm just saying, good headwear-" The human cut himself off suddenly, making Sally raise her head a bit in his direction. She blinked when she saw that he had completely stilled, his eyes widened in the direction of the factory. And then, without warning, he held his hand out towards Sally. "Gimme the binoculars."
"Wha-"
"Give them to me," Sorun demanded, his eyes still trained on the factory. Sally had started a bit at the snappish tone Sorun had taken, but nonetheless she still placed the binoculars in his hands. His fingers immediately curled around them and brought them up to his eyes, and after a few seconds of looking out from them a sound like a growl left his throat. "Tch, you're not gonna believe this. Check it out."
He removed the binoculars from his face and held them out to Sally. The princess looked down at the viewing tool being offered to her and then looked up at Sorun's face, but when he shook the binoculars at her with hurrying intent she snatched them up and looked back towards the factory. She brought the binoculars up to her eyes, and then looked around where Sorun had just been looking.
A soft gasp breathed past her lips when she pointed the binoculars near the front of the factory. There was a gathering of Egg Pawns- a large gathering, at least a hundred of them. Fifty were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a line on one side, with the other fifty right across from them in another line, creating a small aisle that lead right into the factory. On the other side of the aisle of Badniks was a small ship parked right on the ground, black and red with Eggman's logo stamped on the side, and most startlingly, slowly moving down that aisle of Egg Pawns, was him. Eggman himself, sitting in some small, floating, egg-shaped chair. She saw his mouth moving, evidence of him talking, but due to the enormous distance between them she couldn't hear a single thing. She was less concerned about not being able to hear him, though, and more worried about the fact he was there in the first place.
"Robotnik..." The name was practically spat with utter disdain as Sally lowered the binoculars. "What in the world is he doing there...?"
"Who cares? He's there." Sally glanced to the side at Sorun, and then did a double-take on him. Sorun's left hand was clenching his sword, Yamato, by the bottom of the sword's scabbard, and Sorun himself had a certain... look on his face. An almost eager expression that Sally just quite couldn't place. "He's right there... I could go there right now and-"
"And do what?" Seeing where this line of thinking was going, Sally reached over and shook Sorun's shoulder roughly so that he'd face her. "Sorun, there's a hundred Badniks standing between you and him. You'd get swarmed."
"Yeah, but I could get to him before they get to me..." Blue bolts of energy began to crackle along the length of Yamato's scabbard, worrying Sally even further. "Just one single Trick right in front of him and I could-"
"Sorun. No." She grew serious enough that'd she'd grabbed Sorun by both shoulders and whirled him around so that they were directly facing each other. "I don't know what you think you can do, and I understand Eggman being over there makes it really tempting to take a chance and go for him, but there are too many enemies. I'm not losing you over a stupid chance like that, okay?"
She could somewhat understand Sorun's position. Sally herself wanted nothing more than to run over there and attack Eggman. To beat him unconscious and drag him all the way back to Knothole to answer for his crimes. To finally lock him up and end this war once and for all. Him being just all the way over there created such a tempting urge to go for it.
But with that many Badniks over there, right in front of the biggest factory outside of New Megaopolis, that urge was little more than a daydream. They'd never successfully pull an attempt like that. The two of them would get captured- or worse. They couldn't run head-first without thinking. They needed to prepare. They needed the other Freedom Fighters.
They needed a plan.
She felt that Sorun was shaking in her grasp, and it was only then she realized how badly Sorun wanted to go over there and attack Eggman. He had a strained, conflicted look on his face, and his hand was so tightly wrapped around his sword's scabbard that the knuckles were white. However, to Sally's relief, he gave her a shaky nod, at which point she released his shoulders.
"Alright... alright, fine." Sorun took a deep breath, ran his right hand through his black hair, and then shook his head while making a low, frustrated growl. "I'll leave him alone, but if he's right there in that giant factory, Sally, then we gotta do something. We already need to destroy that place, but if he's gonna be there while we're doing it-"
"It's a great opportunity, I know, but we need to think this through," Sally told him, speaking slowly and calming in an effort to sooth Sorun. "We'll head back to Freedom HQ and think something up." She began reaching into her vest. "I'll call Tails right now and have him fire the Tornado up-"
"Don't bother, I'll get us back." Sorun walked past Sally towards the middle of the small trench they stood in, Yamato still in hand.
Sally's fingers briefly brushed against the communication device tucked into her vest, but she froze when she saw Sorun stop in the middle of the trench. Curious, she removed her hand and turned her body towards the human. "And how exactly do you plan on getting us halfway across the continent without a plane?" she asked, placing a single hand on her hip while she raised an eye ridge in his direction. "I thought your teleporting power didn't have enough range to cover that distance?"
"Tricking. And it doesn't." His right hand drummed across Yamato's white handle, and a ghost of a smile stretched over his lips as he turned his head halfway to Sally so that a single eye was visible to her. "I finally figured out how portals work."
"... Portals?" Sally's hand dropped off her hip, and now both eye ridges were risen in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I can do this."
Slowly, Sorun unsheathed Yamato from its scabbard. Once the blade was fully pulled out, he rose the sword upwards and made a single, vertical slash downwards. Sally had noted that a thin, blue line was left hovering in the air as a result of the slash, but before she had time to contemplate this Sorun had made another slash, this one horizontally. Another line was left in the wake of the second slash, forming a small, blue cross hovering in the middle of the air.
At first, nothing happened. Sorun was simply staring at the blue cross expectantly, and after a few moments Sally made the conscious decision to ask what was supposed to happen now. Before she could so much as open her mouth, though, the cross seemed to... open. The center of the cross folded into itself, and the space around the cross seemingly followed it. What was once a small, thin cross in the air was now a vaguely rhombus-shaped, two-dimensional hole floating in the air. What exactly was in that hole was unclear, because as far as Sally could see the interior was little more than a constantly swirling mass of dark blue energy, but it certainly looked like a portal. Not one she'd ever seen before, but definitely a portal of some sort.
"That leads to the HQ." Sorun's voice drew Sally's attention away from the portal, forcing her to looks towards Sorun in shock. "Just step in and it'll drop you off there."
"You're kidding me." Astonished, Sally's mouth had dropped open a tiny bit as she looked back towards the blue, rhombus-shaped vortex in front of her. "You... are you sure it's safe?"
"Sally, I promise you that this is completely safe." Sorun stepped to the side of the portal, crossing one leg over the other as he used his katana to point towards the center of the portal. "Princesses first, milady," he said, raising up his free hand to tip an invisible hat towards her with a small smirk on his face.
She actually laughed at bit at the display, though her quiet giggles quickly tapered off when she glanced back at the portal. The chipmunk took a hesitant few steps forwards, stopping just in front of the portal. The swirling, blue colors of various dark shades were even more vivid up close, and at this distance she could just barely hear a small thrumming sound coming from the inside of the blue vortex. Taking another glance towards Sorun, who gave her an encouraging nod with his head, Sally nodded back and stared towards the portal.
"Well... if he says it's safe..." Sorun usually wasn't too mistaken about his powers. In fact if there was one thing he put an unusual amount of energy into, it was mastering the abilities given to him by the Emeralds. So she trusted him when he said the swirling thing in front of her acted as a portal. "Here goes nothing..."
Taking a deep breath, Sally stepped into the portal.
Sorun felt a large swell of pride well up in him when he watched as Sally disappeared into the portal created by Yamato. He had a right to; the process and journey of figuring out how the Yamato was actually able to create portals had been an exhaustive one. He'd actually had to go and commit research to it after a while of getting disparaging results.
Well, it'd been a lot of work, but he'd pulled it off. He figured out how to use his magic katana to make portals. He already started imagining the use it would have in his personal life, as well as any possible uses for the Freedom Fighters. Instantaneous travel to anywhere in the world had to have some uses, and if he thought hard enough, he foresaw many congratulations from some of the Freedom Fighters for coming up with such a thing. It was a nice thought that made him feel warm.
And then he received a startling thought that made all his pride crash right down.
"Oh fuck. I never tested it with anything other than myself and some rocks." It hadn't even been that long ago, either. It was only just yesterday he'd finally figured it out, during his scouting with Sally. She'd been sleeping at the time, during which Sorun had been tossing rocks through a portal to teleport them all the way to the room he shared with Sonic in Knothole. He'd of course then walked through himself, and after concluding that he and the rocks made it stepped back out to the other side.
So he knew it worked for him. And he knew it worked for inanimate objects. But he didn't know if it worked for somebody who didn't have a connection to the Yamato like he did.
"... I mean it should be fine, right?" Sorun thought to himself, looking towards the portal with an uneasy look on his face. "Nah-nah-nah-nah, nah, I'm overthinking this. It worked for the rocks, so Sally... yeah, she shouldn't need a connection to Yamato for it to work. It's just a portal. She should be fine."
That's what he told himself, at least. Inside he was actually terrified he'd just done something horrible by having Sally walk inside of there. Like strand her on some random point on the planet. Such as a cave somewhere. Or under the ocean. Or even worse some kind of wonky in-between realm or something like that.
"Shiiiiit- okay, alright, let's just walk through and check it out." Sorun began to briskly walk through the portal. "Please be okay please be okay please-"
"- be okay- oh, hey, look at that."
Walking through the portal was just like walking through a doorway, with the addition of his vision being overwhelmed in blue, swirling colors in the second it took to transition between one location and the next. And so, he'd walked right into the middle of the Freedom HQ's main living room, the couch to his left and, much to Sorun's relief, the princess standing on his right. Sally was looking herself up and down with a surprised look in her eyes. Off to the side of Sorun's peripheral he saw Sonic's blue form sitting on the couch, his green eyes widened as he looked back and forth from Sorun, Sally, and the portal.
"Ohhhh thank goodness it worked..." Sorun mumbled in-between a wheezy breath. Sally's ears had perked up at that, causing her to look towards the bent-over human.
"What was that?" she asked.
"Er, nothin', don't worry about it." Sorun lifted up Yamato and slashed it backwards towards the portal. The rhombus-shaped opening in space collapsed in on itself, and then disappeared entirely to leave an empty patch of space behind. "Anyways pretty cool, huh? Instantaneous travel."
"Umm..." Both Sorun's and Sally's eyes were drawn towards the couch, where Sonic was still staring at them both with great confusion in his eyes. "What just happened?"
"That," Sorun began as he moved towards the couch, "was a portal, Sonic. Because that's a thing the Yamato can do. Make portals." With a sigh he sat down in the middle of the couch, crossing one leg over the other while placing Yamato and its scabbard over his lap. "I just transported me and Sally back from the scouting mission we were on."
He expected at least some congratulating praise following this. Receiving it wasn't one of the reasons he'd endeavored to figure portals out in the first place, but he still would have figured he'd get some recognition for it. What he was getting instead was confused, lost looks not only from Sonic but from Sally, too. The hedgehog was glancing at him from the corner of his eyes while Sally stood in front of Sorun, arms crossed and eyes looking down at him.
"So... portals," Sally said, as if trying to confirm for herself the phenomenon Sorun had created a mere minute ago.
"Yeah, portals," Sorun echoed with a nod. "It's good, right?"
"Yes, but I... I thought your sword could only cut things?"
Sorun shook his head. "No, it separates things," he corrected. "What part of 'separates everything' isn't clear here?"
The simple explanation didn't seem to do anything to ease Sally's confusion. In fact, she just seemed even more lost now. "But how does that make portals?"
"It... uh..." Clicking his tongue, Sorun glanced to the side at Sonic. "Hey, can you go get me a piece of paper real quick?"
The hedgehog looked just as stumped as Sally was over the development with the portal, but he still agreed to Sorun's request with a small nod. He stood up, and before anybody present could blink he was off in a blue speed blur trailing towards and up the stairs. Sorun stared off after him, and then looked back towards Sally.
The princess's eyes had briefly trailed along Sonic's path, and then with a soft sigh she looked back down at Sorun. "Out of curiosity, how far can those portals go?" she questioned.
Sorun shrugged. "Anywhere on the planet, I guess," he said. "I haven't really tested it out that much. The portal we just came through was the furthest I ever tried- oh, hey Sonic."
He saw Sonic's body stop right next to the couch before the loud, zipping sound that usually accompanied Sonic's running hit Sorun's ears. He saw that the hedgehog was clutching an ordinary, white piece of paper in his hand, which Sorun reached over to take from his grasp. He sat a bit forwards on the edge of the couch afterwards, watching as Sonic stepped besides Sally with both of them looking expectantly towards Sorun.
"Alright, I saw something like this in a movie once, so I think I can explain this," Sorun began. "You guys ever hear of a Einstein-Rosen bridge?"
Both the Mobians in front of him shook their heads, with Sally asking, "A what?"
"Maybe they call it something different here, doesn't matter." The human teen held up the piece of paper for the other two teens to see. "So imagine the three-dimensional space that this world inhabits is represented as a two-dimensional space, in this case this paper I'm holding. Now we say point A-" he pinched one end of the paper with his fingers, "- is where we are right now, Freedom HQ. And point B-" he pinched the other end of the paper, "- is, I dunno, Knothole City. And Sonic, you'd agree with me when I say the fastest way from point A to point B is a straight line, right?"
Slowly, Sonic nodded in agreement. "Totally, yeah," he said.
"Okay, but what if... we did this?" Sorun folded the paper in half so that the two points he'd been pinching were touching. "Basically what Yamato does is it folds two points of space together, and then," he continued as he used his free hand to pick the blade up, "it cuts a hole through those two points." He lightly jabbed the sword's tip through the piece of paper, puncturing the two points. "Now this is a 2-D representation of what it does, but in real life 3-D the concept is pretty much the same thing. Yamato separates the distance between two points of space, hence, portal."
Throughout the entire explanation it didn't appear that Sonic got what Sorun was trying to say. His face had been scrunched up in concentration most of the time, and there were even a few points where he seemed to begin to understand, but then as Sorun would continue the understanding would fade from his eyes and he'd degrade right back into befuddlement. In the end he seemed just as puzzled as he was at the beginning of Sorun's explanation.
Sally was the exact opposite. Unlike Sonic, she'd actually been nodding along with Sorun's explanation throughout the whole thing, and near the end her eyes had lightened up in realization. "Oh! So you mean to say it's a wormhole?" she asked.
"You actually understood that...?" Sonic mumbled out, sending Sally a helpless glance.
Sorun snapped his fingers and pointed at Sally. "Wormhole, right, that's the word," he said with a nod. "Yeah, the Yamato makes wormholes. I just kinda think of a location really hard and, you know, do a little of this and a little of that with the sword, and then we get a wormhole."
"Okay..." Sally trailed off, her eyes flicking down to the sword in Sorun's lap. "And you don't think that at any point in time something like the ability to generate wormholes to any location on the planet could be useful to us?"
At hearing that, Sorun's expression grew flat. Even more, that small, hopeful sense he'd get to hear some praise had been washed away and was slowly starting to be replaced by some other emotion he couldn't quite place. "I literally just figured this out yesterday. N-not even yesterday. It was last night!"
"Last night? When we were supposed to be sleeping to conserve energy for the extended scouting mission we were on?" Sally asked, her eyes narrowed slightly.
"I had a burst of inspiration!" Sorun argued. "You know how long I've been trying to figure this out? I've been trying to make wormholes with the Yamato since I first got it!"
"And it really took you this long to figure it out?"
There was an air of disbelief about Sally that Sorun found that he didn't like. And he was beginning to be able to identify that unknown emotion welling up in him. It was anger. "... I'm sorry, Sally. I'm sorry the guy with an intro-level education in physics took so long deciphering quantum physics to make wormholes so you, because I mainly did this for the sake of the Freedom Fighters, could use them." He crumpled up the paper in his hand, tossed it aside, and stood up to his feet. "I'm not even exaggerating when I say that. I literally had to go to the library and check out a book on quantum theory just to figure this out. You know how awkward it was going back there after I turned in that Chao book so late!? It wasn't even that one blonde dog lady manning the front desk this time! It was some bigger dog dude, J-something, I don't remember, I couldn't pay attention past all the scolding because he wasn't nearly as forgiving for my late return as she was!"
"Sorun-" Sally had tried to calm Sorun down by raising her hands, but the other teen's response was to turn his back to Sally while crossing his arms. She reached out a hand towards him, stopped halfway, and then slowly lowered her hand back to her side as her face downturned into a small frown. "Why didn't you come to any of us for help with this?" she asked in a quiet voice.
Glancing back at Sally, Sorun felt the tightness in his arms go slack when he saw her face. He sighed, and then faced back forwards while letting out a string of unintelligible grumblings. "Grmbfm... wnntbcl... wanted to impress Nicole... ffmgr..."
Sally blinked, her ears flicking in an attempt to hear what he was saying. "I'm sorry, but what was that?"
"I said I don't like asking for help a lot, okay?" Sorun said, turning his head to look at Sally out of one eye. "Seems like all I do all the time is ask people for help, and it... makes me feel useless, so I wanted to do something on my own, 'cause I thought..." He cut himself off with a sigh, shook his head, and then fully turned around to face Sally. "It doesn't matter what I thought. Can we just focus on the bigger issue here?"
"Sorun..." Sally shook her head in denial, and then took a step closer to him. "You're not useless," she said in a low, almost admonishing tone. "Don't think like that. I understand you worked very hard for this and I'm very grateful you did this with us in mind."
"... Hmph." He spun his head back around so he was facing away from her. "You're just saying that."
"I'm really not." He felt Sally's hand grasp his shoulder and softly squeeze it. "You know you don't have to be upset at asking us for help every now and then. You never had a problem with it before, and look how far it got you."
And yet he did. He always detested asking them, asking anybody, for help. It made him feel week and insignificant, but he always had to whether it was training in some skill he didn't have or help with his powers or assistance during a mission. He always did it without complaint because necessity demanded it, but that didn't change the fact he absolutely loathed asking for help. He preferred doing things on his own so others saw him as capable. Not looking like he couldn't do anything on his own without help from somebody.
That's why he wanted to be recognized for figuring portals out. Not because it was a power given to him, but because it was something he'd used his powers to make all on his own. And that... maybe it would make her a bit more impressed at him. But he couldn't deny that Sally sounded genuinely apologetic towards him. And it did feel somewhat nice being praised like that, even if it was mixed into an apology.
"... You really think the portals are cool?" Sorun mumbled out, still keeping his eyes away from Sally.
He could almost feel her roll her eyes from behind him. "Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"
"I want to hear you say it."
She sighed. "Sorun, I think the portals you make with your magic sword are very cool and useful to the Freedom Fighters."
"Apology accepted, you're forgiven." In a single beat Sorun whirled around to face Sally, his cold, sulky demeanor completely having vanished in a flash as he stared towards her. She had a light grin across her face, which made him breath out a single chuckle as he pocketed his hands and looked off to the side. "Seriously, though, there's still the whole factory thing we have to address."
"Right, I know." The small grin faded away from Sally's face as she turned towards Sonic, who had been mainly standing to the side the whole time. "Sonic, I'm going to need your help. Something big has come up..."
Tap.
An idea had been brewing inside of Sorun's mind.
Tap.
It was a pretty good idea. A fantastic one, even.
Tap.
The idea was simple: what if he just went and killed Eggman right now?
Tap.
"He's in that factory. Right there in person. In the flesh. Very stabable flesh." Sorun was sitting on the HQ's couch right now, idly tapping Yamato's tip against the ground as he was lost in his own thoughts. Others Sally had gathered for the impromptu mission were gathered all around him, though he tuned their voices out in lieu of his own internal thoughts. "Why do I gotta go kill myself getting the rest of the Emeralds if I can just go and kill the guy right now?"
The plan had been to wait until he had all the Emeralds. That had been one of the reasons he'd been so desperate to obtain the ability to make portals with the Yamato. Not only because it would be incredibly useful to the Freedom Fighters in their efforts to free the planet and for the praise, but because it gave him an in. An in to Eggman.
Get all the powers from the Emeralds. Use Yamato to make a portal in the general area where Eggman was in at the time. Go kill him. That was the general plan he'd been formulating for a while now. A plan portals made much more viable. He was usually in that city of his, New Megaopolis. Sorun never knew where, but with all the powers the Emeralds afforded him, he had to believe it wouldn't be that difficult to find him. And if not then to wait until he was in a easier area for him to search through. Somewhere he could reach, which, with the Yamato, was everywhere.
But if he was just in that factory right now he could skip all that and just go kill him.
"So that's forty-eight years lost to Emeralds, plus my normal sixteen years, which makes... sixty-four years in terms of my body's health. If I killed him right now and stopped getting Emeralds, that'd buy me, what, a few decades of life? Maybe four? Shit, it ain't much, but... but it's better than outright dying after I get number seven." He breathed heavily out of his nose and looked up at the HQ's ceiling. "Man. Maybe if I had a year or two to work up the nerve and ask her... jeez, something like that might actually be viable if I had some life to spare..."
A pipe dream, maybe, possibly, but that possibility only existed if Eggman died right now, and Eggman was in the open. Why, Sorun didn't know, probably planning something nefarious at that giant factory. It didn't matter. He was there. Vulnerable. Ripe for the killing.
Tap.
Fuck whatever prophetic nonsense the Neo-Walkers thought up. He was doing this his way if the opportunity was there.
Tap.
"Sorun, could you... could you please stop doing that? You're kind of making me nervous here..."
Ceasing his tapping, Sorun tilted his eyes upwards to the right side of the couch. Amy was sitting there, her hammer slung over her shoulder and her eyes nervously trained on Sorun's katana. Wordlessly, he lifted the sword up and, mimicking Amy, slung it over his own shoulder while giving her an apologetic look.
"Sorry, Amy. Pre-mission nerves," he lied, slowly drumming his fingers over the handle.
She pursed her lips at him in slight concern. "Yeah, this is looking like a pretty big one, huh? I'm kinda a little antsy myself here..."
"Ah-huh." Sorun absentmindedly nodded at Amy as he stared ahead, towards Sally who was standing near the end of the HQ's living room in front of everybody.
Credit where credit was due, Sally was quick to act. Whether it was because she realized that factory was a high-priority target that needed dismantling or she, too, was eager to strike while Eggman was there in person, Sorun didn't know. But whatever the case, she wanted to go attack that factory as soon as possible, possibly before Eggman left. Suited Sorun just fine. More people meant a greater chance of success. And with the Yamato's ability to make portals, he could transport them all inside of that factory and strike while he was unawares. Which would just further increase Sorun's chance of successfully ending him.
He just had to find him. While everybody else was going to town on that factory, he just had to find Eggman. He had something that would take care of the rest at that point. And then... then he just had to kill him. And then it would all be over.
"In terms of the interior layout, I don't expect this one to be similar to all the others considering its size." For a bit of time now Sally had been giving a briefing to those gathered, at multiple points addressing a crudely-drawn rendition of the target on a piece of paper taped to the wall behind her. "It's hard to say just what kind of numbers we'll be finding in there, but it's nothing we haven't dealt with before. We go in hard and fast, take out anything in our way, do what we need to do, and then get out." She turned her head back towards the drawing, eye ridges furrowed. "Furthermore, Eggman has been sighted on the premises. A target of opportunity like that is too good for us to pass up, so we're going now while our window of encountering him is open. Our mission objective is still the same: plant the explosives and then regroup so we can exfiltrate, but if anybody is to encounter Eggman you're to contact the rest of us immediately so we can converge on the target." She sent a pointed look in one of the Mobian's direction. "That means you, too, Sonic."
"Yeah, I get it, I get it," Sonic said, nodding at the princess. "No flyin' solo trying to get after Egghead. But you don't want us looking for him?"
"Dealing with him once and for all would be ideal, but we're already heading into this with a lot of unknowns." Sally shook her head. "As much as I hate to say it, he's a secondary objective in this mission."
"Well that's a problem." As much as Sorun hated to admit it, he saw the logic. It was Eggman. The man was dangerous. That was on top of whatever they were going to find in that factory. But if he was really going to carry out his own plan he couldn't follow that order. "Sorry, Sally. Afraid I'm gonna have to ignore that 'calling others for help' bit. You'd all try to stop me when I try to kill him."
There was another concern of Sorun's as he took a look around at those gathered. As it stood it was a pretty sizeable group: the entirety of the Chaotix. Amy, Sonic, Sally. Himself. That was it, though, which gave Sorun some concern. "Shouldn't we have more people on this?" he asked, voicing his concerns towards Sally.
"Trust me, I'd like everybody in on this, but some of the others are busy at the moment," she told him. "Antoine and Bunnie are running critical supplies to some of the outlying settlements, Rotor and Tails are performing critical maintenance on the Freedom Fighter Special, Rouge and Shadow-"
"They're occupied and we can't afford to wait, got it." Sorun breathed heavily through his nose as he palmed his face. Rushing into this because Eggman was there only to not make him a priority... he understood the reason behind it, but it still seemed somewhat ridiculous to him. Especially since they were going into this shorthanded now. "Nicole?" he asked, peering at the chipmunk through the gaps in his fingers.
"With Tails and Rotor," she answered.
"Mm." He nodded and lowered his hand away from his face.
Sally continued to look towards Sorun to see if he had anything else to say, but when he remained silent she looked towards Knuckles. "Are you and the Chaotix prepared for this?"
"We're as ready as we could be." Knuckles gave her a nod, and then turned to his side. "How we doing on explosives, Espio?"
"For our purposes we should have more than enough. We paid a special visit to the royal armory and carried back as much as we could per Sally's request," the chameleon answered. "I made sure to count."
The small glare that was sent his way from Charmy went ignored.
"Alright then." Sally turned back towards the sole human in the group. "This is all possible thanks to Sorun's new development. Sorun, if you could explain?"
All eyes turned towards Sorun, immediately straining his nerves. All this attention focused solely on him made him a bit uncomfortable, and he was already a bit restless over what was to come. But this was important, so he took in a deep breath and began his own explanation.
"My katana, the Yamato, has the ability to make portals to other locations. I'm not gonna get into the science of how it works, if I can even call it science, but I've... ehhh, I won't say extensively tested, but it's still a tried and true method," he said. He saw some of the others widen their eyes a bit, Knuckles in particular, and he tried his best to ignore it as he continued. "I know where the place is, so I'm gonna open a portal right into the middle of the factory. Where inside of the place that is I don't know, but it'll still be in."
"Exactly," Sally agreed, drawing all attention back to her much to Sorun's relief. "With Sorun's power we'll be teleporting right in the center of that factory, catching Eggman off-guard. We're going to use the chaos of our sudden appearance to our advantage and get those explosives placed before the Badnik forces have any time to organize any defensive action against us.
"Now, once we get in I want us all splitting off in pairs to go and set the explosives. Except... Sonic. And Sorun." Both teens perked their heads up when they heard Sally call of their names. "Surprise or not, there's still going to be a large amount of Badniks inside of that factory. I want you two running a distraction."
"A distraction?" Sonic repeated with a tilt of his head. Sorun remained silent, breathing out slowly as he thought over Sally's words.
She nodded. "It would take a lot of heat off of everybody else if the Badnik security forces inside the factory were preoccupied with two targets smashing through everything, and you and Sorun are the quickest at dismantling robots. So I want you two pairing up to basically run around the facility destroying everything in sight." She crossed her arms and looked in Sonic's direction, a small smirk playing across her mouth. "And if you just happen to run across Eggman while you both are tearing through the whole factory, well, more power to us."
"Ahhh, that's her play," Sorun finally realized, nodding to himself in understanding. "She wants us drawing attention away from everybody, and since we're gonna be running around everywhere there's a good chance we're gonna find Eggman. Then we call everybody and we show up to take him down." He glanced to the side at Sonic. "She's probably pairing me up with him just so he can make sure nothing happens to me since I'm our ride out, and because my powers make taking these things out real easy. And since I'd likely be there with Sonic when we first encounter Eggman, I'm right there to make a portal out for us if something goes wrong. Which it probably would with him. Pretty smart thinkin', Sally." Considering they had no idea what the inside of the place looked like, it was probably the best way to go about doing this. The main thing was just blowing that factory up to bring Eggman's Badnik numbers down even lower. He would have preferred just going straight after Eggman, but he could see why Sally wanted to play it safe. He himself didn't want anybody to be lost because they took a risky bet to try and end this prematurely. A great opportunity if the chance came up, but otherwise she was going for a safe, methodical win here. A guaranteed small victory for the long game with the lowest chance of life lost as opposed to a chancy instant win where something horrible could happen to them all. He could understand and respect what she was doing.
At the same time he couldn't go along with it.
"Still... it's gonna be pretty tricky dodging Sonic so I can go after Eggman on my own," Sorun continued to think. "I'm gonna have to ditch him at some point before finding Eggman. If we're together and we both get to him, then that's it. Nothing I'll be able to do. If I do it before, though..." His fingers idly tapped on Yamato's handle. "All I need is a few moments alone with him so I can use 'that'. It won't matter if they find us afterwards as long as I have it in my back pocket. But I'll still need to find some way to separate Sonic from myself..."
"I'm perfectly capable of doing that on my own," Sorun called out to Sally. "Just have Sonic help you all with the bombs. It'll go way faster if he's on that detail anyways."
He kept up a cool face on the outside, though he couldn't help but be overcome with silent frustration when he saw Sally shake her head. "No, I want everybody with a partner on this so we can all keep each other safe."
"Then pair me up with Knuckles. He can do as much damage as Sonic, and Sonic can take his place and set bombs," Sorun suggested. "Plus it'll be way easier avoiding a guy that can't run faster than sound."
Again, much to Sorun's consternation, Sally shook her head. "I'd feel better if you went with Sonic, Sorun."
"I knew it. She wants me protected since her entire exfiltration strategy hinges on me and my portals. Not even a day after I get it and she's already planning stuff around my power. It's as admirable as it is maddening." He let out a soft sigh as he looked down to the floor. "And I guess there aren't many other people she would trust more than Sonic to make sure nothing bad happens to me. Looks like I'm stuck with him."
"Aw, what's the matter?" There was a brief sound of rapid footsteps, and then Sorun noticed a pair of red sneakers in his peripheral. He looked up to see Sonic smiling down on him. "Don't feel like smashin' some bots with little ol' me?"
"Perish the thought, Sonic," Sorun mumbled in response, sitting back upwards while kicking his feet forwards. "Alright, fine. Me an' Sonic will go wreak havoc to keep the bots off you guys."
"And we'll make sure to keep an eye out for Eggman in the meantime," Sonic added, nodding towards Sally.
"Okay then." Sally closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and then slowly exhaled as she opened her eyes to everybody gathered in front of her. "So are we all set to go, then?"
There were cries of affirmation and grins all around. Everybody gave Sally readying nods and eagers eyes, causing her to smile the barest amount as she stepped away from the wall.
"Alright. Then we're a go," she announced. "Sorun?"
"One portal comin' up." Sorun bounced up off the couch and walked to the center of the room. He held Yamato's blade up in the air, but stopped short of cutting downwards as he looked towards Sally. "Just to be clear, when all the bombs are set we regroup and I make the getaway portal whether or not we found Eggman, right?" he asked.
She nodded in confirmation. "Yes, that's correct."
His eyes narrowed the smallest amount, though he'd turned his head away to cover them with his hair before anybody could see. "Just checkin'," he said, closing eyes to concentrate before cutting downwards. A blue line was left hanging in the air, followed by a second line bisecting it to make a cross. The blue lines and space itself folded inwards to create rhombus-shaped portal of swirling blue energy.
The portal made, Sorun exhaled and stepped away, swirling Yamato around in his grip and pointing the tip towards the portal. "Alright. Just step inside and we're in," he instructed them.
A few moments passed, but, for some reason, nobody stepped forwards. Eyebrows furrowed in curiosity, Sorun looked back at the crowd behind him. He saw from the corner of his eyes that Sonic and Sally were giving everybody else the same look he had, too, as they were all staring towards the portal Sorun had just made with some apprehension.
Hesitantly, Vector was the one to raise his hand. "Yo, uh... y-you're sure that thing is safe, right?" he asked, pointed towards the portal.
"Yes," came the laconic reply from Sorun. "It's safe."
"... You're sure, right?"
"I could always throw you through, Vector," Sorun threatened, a few spectral feathers appearing over his shoulder. "Have you take a real close look for yourself."
"N-nah, I'm good," the crocodile assured him, raising his palms upwards towards the human. "Though, uh, it's your portal. Why don't you go first?"
Besides him, Charmy gave a nod of agreement as he looked towards the portal. "Yeah, I'm with Vector. You go first."
Most of the others, save for Sonic and Sally, gave agreeing nods to the bee's request. The latter two just looked back towards Sorun, giving him shrugs as they nodded towards the portal. Sorun watched the entire display with slumped shoulders, and then finally gave a relenting sigh as he turned around to face the portal.
"Christ on a crutch you guys..." Rolling his eyes at the ceiling, Sorun stomped his way towards the portal, shaking his head a slight amount the whole way there.
Just as last time, the travel through the portal had been an uneventful, second-long walk of blinding blue light. The environment on the other side of the portal was wholly different from the interior of the Freedom HQ once he exited the portal: metal walls wherever he looked. A metal ceiling that was so high Sorun could barely see it. There wasn't much else to see besides a few metal support beams scattered around and, interestingly enough, a few conveyer belts suspended high near the ceiling and extending from a hole in one wall all the way to the other end of the room through another hole.
He heard footsteps behind him as the others began following Sorun through the portal. Sonic and Sally were the first ones to walk through the portal. Amy and the Chaotix came next, and once the last one came through Sorun walked back to the portal and slashed it with the Yamato, causing it to close and disappear.
There were some quiet mutterings from everybody as they looked around the giant room they'd walked into, some clutching the weapons few held or the satchels of explosives slung around their torsos. Sorun himself walked over to Sonic, tapping the blue hedgehog on the shoulder to draw his attention away from the room around them.
"Alright, let's go," Sorun said as he slid Yamato into its scabbard.
"Huh?" Blinking, Sonic whirled over to Sorun. "Already?"
"Yeah, we're here, clock's ticking." He tossed the sheathed katana up in the air, caught it halfway up the sheath with his left hand, and pointed it towards one of the myriad doorways at one of the ends of the room. "I have a good feeling about that direction."
"That direction, huh?" Sonic mused, turning to where Sorun was pointing while placing his hands on his hips. "What's so special about over there?"
Sorun shrugged. "Nothin', really. There's just so many ways to go that I picked a random place."
Breathing out a sigh, Sonic could only let out a small chuckle while shrugging his shoulders along with Sorun. "That's about as good as what I got." He craned his neck backwards to address Sally. "Hey, Sal, me and Sorun are gonna head out and do our thing. You good to go?"
"Yep," she said with a nod towards the hedgehog. "We're all good here. Stay safe you two."
"I always do," Sonic claimed, staying behind to shoot the princess two finger guns. Sorun had already started walking towards the doorway he'd pointed to earlier.
Rolling her eyes in amusement, Sally turned towards the others. "Alright guys, first things first we should..."
The rest of the Sally's words faded out as Sorun lengthened the distance between himself and the rest of the group. He was only able to enjoy the silence for about two seconds until he heard a small whoosh besides him, followed by a blue shape walking besides him.
"So this is exciting, huh, Sorun?" Sonic asked, his tone light and a smirk on his face as he interlocked his fingers behind his quills. "You and me, bustin' bots right in the middle of Egghead's base right under his huge nose."
"Yeah. Exciting," Sorun droned out, eyes still forwards.
"Ah, come on, man, lighten up. It's just a buncha Badniks. Nothin' special."
A short sigh left Sorun. "You're always so carefree during these things, aren't you...?" he tersely muttered, his grip on Yamato tightening. "You never change."
"Never have, never will." Sorun didn't even think he picked up on the human's tone of voice. He just maintained that casual demeanor as he kept walking alongside Sorun. "Well, in any event, we gotta make some noise to cover our pals. So let's shake the lead out and do it-"
"Don't you dare say it-"
"- to it!"
Sorun visibly recoiled, shuddering just the slightest amount as a soft groan slipped past his lips. "I hate that saying of yours..." he mumbled under his breath. It made no sense grammatically speaking and just sounded awful to Sorun's ears. But to his chagrin, Sonic, for reasons beyond Sorun's understanding, chose to make that phrase his go-to catchphrase. And he was fairly certain he died a bit more inside every time he heard it.
"Eh, you're no fun," Sonic said. "Let's find you some Badniks to go swing your sword at. Cuttin' some bots up should loosen you up."
For once, Sorun found himself agreeing with Sonic.
They'd tripped some kind of alarm at some point.
Sorun wasn't too sure when it happened. It wasn't as if he and Sonic were being subtle about what they were doing- they were basically nonchalantly strolling through the whole facility, destroying any robot they saw room after room. Perhaps a camera had seen them, or a stray robot had tripped an alarm, or some wandering patrol found the remains of one of their attacks. It didn't really matter since the whole goal was to draw as much attention to them anyways, hence the lack of subtlety on their part.
It seemed to be working for the most part. They'd entered another large room, mostly empty save for some high conveyer belts, some random crates scattered about, and the six Egg Pawns waiting for them as both Sorun and Sonic sauntered through one of the doorways.
"Feels like we're going around in circles from the way all these rooms look so similar," Sorun said, barely sparing the six robots in front of them a glance as their heads were skewered with Summoned Swords.
There was a loud, blaring sound as a large door to their side automatically opened up. Another squad of four Egg Pawns ran out, clutching their lances with their mechanical eyes affixed to Sorun's form. Before they even got close a blue, spinning ball collided into each one, the object cutting clean right through them with seemingly no effort whatsoever. Once the last robot was cut down the blue object stopped and untucked itself to reveal Sonic, who, with a light smile on his face, proceeded to brush the soles of his sneakers against one of the robots to brush them off. "Sorry, guys. You're just too slow."
Sorun rolled his eyes at the display, getting ready to say something before he heard another short alarm. Another door on the other side of the room began opening up, another squad of Egg Pawns rushing through towards them. Sorun had lifted up his sheathed Yamato to defend himself, but before he could even grab its handle Sonic's blue form had zoomed past him towards the approaching robots.
"Move it or lose it!"
As with the previous group, Sonic had made short work of this group of Egg Pawns by easily and effortlessly Spin Dashing right through their bodies. More and more alarms sounded as more doors opened, followed by more small squads of Egg Pawns pouring out, but before Sorun could even move to retaliate Sonic had beat him to it. The hedgehog's spinning form flew right towards each and every one, destroying them in a short and efficient manner before quickly moving onto the next.
"It's juicin' time!"
"Hah! Almost got me! Not!"
"Nice try, ro-butt!"
"This hurts to listen to." By now Sorun had given up on even attacking any of the robots, and had just let the hand holding his katana go slack to his side as he watched the blue hedgehog completely and effortlessly tear through all the robot forces around them. He couldn't help but momentarily grimace every time he heard a one-liner come out of Sonic's mouth, and the longer this went on the more tight his facial expression grew.
It was always like this working with Sonic, though "working with" may have been generous as Sonic always took any opportunity he could to smash more robots than anybody else. It was like a competition to him; something that used to have Sorun scoffing in amusement, but nowadays it just caused a quiet anger to simmer inside of Sorun whenever he had to witness Sonic and his antics.
If there was one single Mobian in all of the Freedom Fighters that got on Sorun's nerves the most, it was Sonic. It was always Sonic that drew his ire. Everything about him irritated Sorun to his core. The way Sonic always managed to go on these missions and take out all these robots without even trying. The way he always kept up that same flippant, devil-may-care attitude no matter what. That same carefree smirk on his face even as he recklessly charged into the most dangerous situations, and always made it out on top no matter what.
There were so many things Sorun felt every single time he did a mission with Sonic and had to watch him absolutely dominate the opposition. Admiration that was soon marred by resentment. Camaraderie mixed with anger. There used to be deep respect, but after a while of seeing the way the hedgehog acted around his adversaries it slowly started to erode into something else, and for a while he couldn't quite place what it was. But after having to see that same smile plastered on Sonic's face all the time as he sawed his way through all those robots, Sorun was able to finally place it.
Intense jealousy. It was an ugly thing to feel towards the blue Mobian, Sorun realized it, but he just couldn't help it. He felt it whenever he looked at himself, at all his powers that were slowly killing him, and then he looked at Sonic. Sonic, who had so much power that all these robots trying to kill him were little more than a minor inconvenience to him, and all he'd ever had to do to gain his powers was be born with them and collect a bunch of rings. It wasn't that he was so careless, it was that he was so powerful that he could afford to be careless and then some. Because that's who he just was. Sonic.
Sonic. Who, no matter what, always made it through whatever challenge Sorun had seen the world throw at him with no effort whatsoever because he was just naturally that powerful. Who could go around with a smile permanently affixed to his face because everything just went right for him. Someone so admired by those around him that pretty much everybody adored him. A hero to the whole world. Somebody who had a loving family to go back home to.
What was Sorun compared to that? Somebody with powers that were slowly killing him, that didn't even put him on the same level as Sonic. He could never smile because every single day he was reminded of everything wrong with his life. He was always having to hide his true feelings away from everybody to spare them of his own suffering; he'd had to periodically stab himself with Yamato in secret just so they wouldn't see him having a panic attack and worry for him. His vain, basically thrown away, effort of distancing himself from everybody was all but in shambles at this point, and because of that Sorun himself didn't even know what his relationship with those around him was. He was a human stuck in a world of Mobians who barely even knew who he was, and his family was a whole other world away and lost to him forever.
Sonic had the opportunity of living an actual life once the war was over. Maybe even find somebody to settle down with. Die old and happy.
Sorun didn't.
He... couldn't outright hate Sonic. Deep inside Sorun knew these were all factors that Sonic had no control of. He knew from living and interacting with him that Sonic was a pure, kind-hearted, perhaps the most kind-hearted person Sorun had ever met, individual who always put the needs of others before himself. A completely selfless person who was putting his life on the line just as much as everybody else by being in the Freedom Fighters. He was the very definition of a good person. Sorun couldn't hate that.
At the same time, he couldn't help but absolutely resent Sonic for having everything Sorun didn't have and wanted. And these feelings always made themselves known whenever Sorun saw Sonic act this way on missions.
"Whoo! And that's another thirty down!" Sonic zoomed to a stop right in front of Sorun, looking absolutely no worse for wear and wearing that same cocky smirk on his face. "So what's the score up to now?"
"I stopped keeping count a few rooms ago," Sorun rumbled out, maintaining a blank stare towards Sonic's way. "You could always try and leave some for me instead of hogging all the enemies to yourself."
"What, and let you have all the fun? Not a chance," Sonic said.
"Tch..." Sorun turned his head away from Sonic and began walking forwards, Yamato tightly gripped in his hand. He sensed Sonic walking right besides him, and he felt the hedgehog's green eyes locked right onto his face.
"Say," Sonic said, "what's got you all grumpy?"
Closing his eyes to take a breath, Sorun stopped walking and then turned to face Sonic. "Your one-liners," he said. "They drive me nuts."
Sonic scoffed in disbelief at that. "My one-liners? No way, my one-liners are great. You just must be hard at hearing."
"You have absolutely no class. You just spew off petty insults at everything," Sorun claimed.
"What, and yours are so better by comparison?"
"I actually put a lot of thought into mine," Sorun said, brushing his right hand through his dark hair. "You gotta get creative when you insult somebody. It adds that all-important edge of intellectual superiority you need to make the insult legitimate. Without it all you have are cheap jabs."
Sonic blinked towards Sorun, tilting his head in thought and nodding along to Sorun's words as he seemed to think them over. And then he shrugged while shaking his head, saying, "Nah, Sorun, I think you're putting way too much thought into this."
Thump!
Sorun was ready to retort when the ground beneath them lightly shook alongside the sound of a distant thump. More and more loud thumps, almost sounding like footsteps, reached their ears as the pair turned towards the source the noise: a large, garage-like door built right into the wall they stood next to. A flashing, orange light above the door began flashing as the door automatically began to roll open, with Sorun's shoulders tensing when he saw what was on the other side of the door.
"Oh, it's one of these guys," Sorun mumbled under his breath as he watched the large, purple-colored Badnik walk into the room he and Sonic were in, giant hammer slung over its shoulder. "An Egg Hammer."
"Pfft. It's got nothin' on Amy," Sonic said, confident smirk on his face as he sized the Badnik up and down with his eyes. "Want me to take it out?"
"No. There's something I actually want to try out on this thing." Sorun walked past Sonic and towards the front of the giant Badnik, Yamato still clutched in his left hand. "It's my new move."
He stopped right in front of the Egg Hammer, with the robot's green, menacing eyes staring down right at the human. It hefted the hammer off of its shoulder and gripped it with both hands, readying itself to lift up and smash the hammer down at a moment's notice. Sorun, in response, breathed out slowly as he wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the katana's handle.
"Alright. You got this. You practiced it." Sorun's eyes narrowed up at the Egg Hammer as arcs of blue energy ran along Yamato's sheath. "Just concentrate... and aim it right..."
The power running along the length of the sword's sheath began to grow in intensity. It got a point where it began to glow so brightly that the entire sword, from its handle to the black sheath, had turned into a brightly-glowing blue color, with more wisps of blue energy slowly wafting off of it. There was enough Chaos energy that some of the quills on the back Sonic's head began to stand up, and he found himself taking an unconscious step backwards.
In the span of a single second, multiple events occurred. The first was that Sorun had pulled the Yamato out of its sheath a quarter of the way and, in seemingly the exact same movement, re-sheathed it fully. At the same time, a white-blue slash appeared in the air in front of Sorun, and then quickly disappeared. The space all around the Egg Hammer's body began to shift and warp afterwards, as if a dark blue, barely-perceptible bubble had wrapped around it.
And then the cuts assaulted it. Dozens of white-blue, crescent-shaped slashes appeared all at once in the air around the Egg Hammer, all curving in every conceivable direction at the same time and carving through the Badnik's body in the same instance. Slashes that cut with such intensity that they caused a chromatic aberration around the space they slashed in, slashes of red and blue flickering into existence for milliseconds besides the main slashes.
The display came to an abrupt end. The distortion in space and the myriad floating, crescent slashes disappeared almost as soon as they arrived, leaving behind an Egg Hammer covered in dozens and dozens of slash marks along its body. And then it tipped over and fell apart into innumerable pieces, all of which scattered along the floor.
All of this had taken place within the span of a single second.
"That..." Sorun breathed out, straightening up his posture as he ran his right hand through the dark hair hanging in his face, "... was Judgement Cut."
"... Wow." Eyes widened, Sonic stepped next to Sorun while peering down on the ground the Egg Hammer had been standing on. The nearly-uncountable amount of slashes that had completely decimated the Badnik had cut with such fervor that there were a number of straight grooves cut into the metal ground where it had been standing. "What did you do?" he asked as he turned his head to Sorun.
The human teen answered by holding the sheathed Yamato up for Sonic to see. "Eh, it's kinda complicated," he began. "First I make a slash, and then use Yamato's power to separate the distance between me and what I'm slashing at. Then I separate the time it takes for me to make the actual slash, so real-time it looks like I didn't really do anything. Then around the general area I'm trying to cut in I use Yamato's power of separation to break down the dimensional barriers around there, so once the space is broken up enough the one slash turns into multiple..." He trailed off when he saw Sonic's shoulders begin to sag in confusion, and after registering the lost look on the hedgehog's face he sighed and shook his head. "I use Yamato to slash at something from far away really fast," he explained. "Now if only I could figure out Judgement Cut End..."
"Why didn't you just say so?" Sonic mumbled out. "How'd you even figure out how to do something like that?"
"A lot of studying from that book I checked out and theoretical practice."
"You mean that quantum-whatever book?"
"It pays to read, Sonic." Sorun lifted his right hand up and tapped the side of his head. "Pays to read."
"I guess." Sonic's gaze travelled back to the rent-apart Badnik. "You didn't say a cool one-liner, though."
Sorun scoffed. "What, I'm supposed to waste my words on trash mobs like this? Please." More loud thumps stopped Sorun from saying anything further, and caused the two teens to turn around. On the other end of the room two more large doors had opened up, with two more Egg Hammers emerging and stomping their way towards them. "Looks like we have a couple more," Sorun said as he gripped his sword's handle. "How about-"
"I got it!" Before Sorun could get another word in Sonic had curled up into a spiky ball, began spinning, and shot forwards to the two Badniks. Sorun's eyes followed after the spinning hedgehog in surprise, and he found himself cursing under his breath as he stepped forwards to help Sonic with the robots.
Only, it seemed that Sorun's assistance was wholly unnecessary. Sonic's spinning form had locked onto the rightmost Badnik, curving upwards to connect with the spot its head connected to its body. Sonic's spinning body carved right through the Egg Hammer, and the robot's head soon fell away as Sonic uncurled and landed right on the headless robot's shoulder. The second Egg Hammer saw the decapitation of its twin, and soon unslung the hammer from its shoulder and reared it back in preparation to beat it downwards. Sonic, still standing on the headless Badnik's shoulder, stood completely still while cockily smirking at the second Badnik.
The Egg Hammer swung its hammer. Sonic had jumped upwards mere milliseconds before the hammer hit, the first Badnik's body crumpling under the hammer's weight. Sonic, still in the air, began spinning once more and launched towards the second Badnik. Similar to the first one, Sonic's body had sawed right through the head of the second one, ending with the blue hedgehog landing feet-first on the ground. The Badnik with the split head behind him wobbled on its feet, dropped the hammer it had been holding, and then finally tilted to the side far enough that it tipped over completely and fell down.
Sorun had been watching Sonic attack the two Badniks the entire time. When the first Badnik had fallen he felt his jaw clench tightly, and by the time the second one fell down he was clutching Yamato hard enough that his hand was shaking. And during the entire time Sonic had kept up that same, infuriating smirk on his face, which only served to make Sorun all the more upset.
"Of course. Of course the one moment I finally get to show off my Judgement Cut... he has to go and invalidate it by taking out two of those things like it was nothing." Sorun found himself looking downwards at his hands. At the small cuts covering his hands that were a result of practicing that move so many times until he'd gotten it right. Until he'd figured out a move that could instantly take down any Badnik. Something he could be proud of and call his. He didn't feel nearly as accomplished in acquiring Judgement Cut and destroying an Egg Hammer with it when Sonic had managed to destroy two with almost no effort at all on his part. "Why does he always have to make me feel so useless...!?"
He always did this to Sorun. Always. Even all the way back on the first day he came here, with that foot race. Even if it was indirect, he always had to find some way to make Sorun feel this way. To feel like his efforts amounted to nothing because of the natural power he wielded. Inferior. It was yet another thing Sorun couldn't help but feel whenever Sonic had the urge to show off in front of him.
And he always had to do it with that damn smirk...
"Whew! That was a great workout." Sonic blurred back to Sorun's side, wiping his gloved hands off on each other as he glanced at Sorun from the side of his eyes. "Let's keep movin', huh? I got a feeling we're gettin' close to finding Egghead in this heap."
"... Yeah. Let's," Sorun quietly agreed, spinning on a dime towards a nearby open doorway. He and Sonic walked side-by-side, the hedgehog absentmindedly whistling a small tune while Sorun silently fumed besides him, just barely managing to hold up a blank, passive face.
"Huh, get a load of this place, huh?"
"Mh." Sorun grunted in response, looking around the new room they'd both walked into with a disinterested look. "It's... empty."
The room they'd walked into was rather wide and circular in shape. In front of them was little more than a wide, metal walkway that connected all the way to the other end of the room. There was no floor otherwise; when Sorun walked to one of the edges of the walkway and peered down, all he saw was a drop so long it lead into darkness. He hummed from his crouched position at the edge of the walkway, and then craned his neck back to Sonic who stood behind him.
"Where do you think this drops to?" Sorun asked, pointing down into the abyss below.
Sonic shrugged. "Into a lower level or something maybe, I dunno. This place is huge enough for something like that."
Humming in response, Sorun stood back up to his feet. "Interesting." He turned back to Sonic, asking, "You think Eggman would be down on a lower level?"
"I mean, probably?" Again, Sonic shrugged. "Hard to say, but... eh, to be honest with you, Sorun, we've been at this a while. The others are probably gonna be finished pretty soon setting the bombs, so maybe we should think about heading back after a few more rooms. Shame if we don't find Eggman, but as long as this place goes bye-bye I'm cool with it."
"Well, I'm not." Sorun took a final glance towards Sonic. He gave him an empty look, and then turned back down to the drop below. "I wonder..."
BWAAN!
Both teens shuddered when a loud, blaring alarm sounded throughout the room a single time. All around the circular room orange lights lit up to highlight eight circular portholes that were built right into the walls. The eight holes opened up simultaneously, and something flew through each of them that made Sorun snicker at how ridiculously absurd they looked.
He thought they were small, green airplanes at first until he noted the mechanical wings were actually flapping to keep the small devices that were a bit bigger than Sorun himself aloft. And then he saw that, instead of a normal nose cone at the head of each small plane, was a round and bulbous nose cone styled into a face resembling Eggman's. The eight flying things surrounded the walkway Sorun and Sonic stood on in a tight circle, the light sounds of their metal plane wings flapping reaching Sorun's ears and causing him to scoff.
"A flying type?" he quietly mused as he slowly pulled Yamato from its sheath.
"Yeah. Egg Flappers," Sonic supplied, the name causing Sorun to snicker again. "They're about as annoying as they look, but be careful."
"They look ridiculous is what they- oh, they have guns." He only just now saw them as he looked closer at one of the floating, green Badniks. Just under its body was what looked like the small barrel of some kind of gun bolted right to its underside, the opening of said barrel aimed right at Sonic and Sorun. The same could be said for the rest of the Egg Flappers surrounding them.
Before any of them could get another word in edgewise, the barrels of all the guns surrounding them began to glow a bright yellow color. Sorun had reflexively surrounded himself in crossed Summoned Swords, and moments later yellow laser beams fired out of the gun barrels. The beams impacted the crossed swords defending Sorun all around, causing noticeable cracks and breaks to appear along their surfaces. Sonic hadn't missed a beat, and zoomed off to Spin Dash completely through one of the Egg Flappers. A few of the other green Badniks had fired their lasers at the hedgehog while he was still there, but through feats of exceptional prowess he'd flipped over and dodged through all the shots while spinning up again and smashing through another robot in the same movement.
"There he goes again. Being all amazing and showing off." Letting out a small scoff, Sorun turned his head around as more swords appeared around him to defend his body. He looked upwards, humming when he saw another walkway hovering right above the one he stood on. "Now there's an idea. If there was ever an opportunity to lose Sonic... well, it'd be now."
He glanced over at Sonic, watching as he smashed through his third Badnik. Clicking his tongue, Sorun glanced back up at the walkway above. He flicked Yamato upwards once in a tiny movement, and then twice, the movements having been so small his own eyes barely registered the sword moving. Two thin, blue lines appeared at each end of the walkway, causing Sorun to nod to himself as his lips thinned.
In that moment Sonic had hopped back onto the walkway in front of Sorun, a fourth destroyed Egg Flapper falling down into the blackness. From the corner of his eyes Sorun saw a fifth plane-shaped Badnik charging its laser cannon up, prompting him act. A Summoned Sword appeared in front of it at an odd, low angle, and when it struck forwards and impaled the Egg Flapper the machine was flipped upwards. At the same moment it flipped upwards its small laser cannon, having been pointed upwards, fired a laser right up to the walkway Sorun had cut earlier.
The yellow laser struck the walkway. There was a faint creaking sound, and then all of a sudden the walkway began falling directly down to the walkway both Freedom Fighters were standing on. Sorun blinked up at it, then looked to the side at Sonic who was too busy focusing on the remaining Egg Flappers hovering around them.
Two things happened in the same moment. The first was that Sorun, yelling "Look out!" at Sonic, manifested his Bringer Claw and pushed Sonic all the way to the entrance they came from. The second thing to happen was that he jumped right off the walkway mere moments before the falling one collided with it, the impact destroying the aforementioned walkway and causing both to plummet into the darkness below. Sorun followed the falling debris, his own body succumbing to gravity and falling downwards.
Sonic himself wasn't able to react at first, the shove from the Bringer Claw having been so forceful his body was sent stumbling forwards. He caught himself quickly with his sneakers sliding against the ground, though by the time he looked back the walkway from above had already crashed into the one he'd been shoved off of and fell down into the pit below. It was at the same time he saw Sorun's body plummet downwards along with the debris. He reached out to him and called out his name, but by then the human's body had already fallen out of sight.
Deeper inside of the factory the Freedom Fighters were assaulting, a faint, distant sound could be heard. The sound of light whistling, emanating from the red-cloaked figure that was slowly walking through the halls. His left hand clutched a piece of notebook paper, whereas his right hand was hefting a large sword that was currently resting on his shoulder.
Continuing his whistle, Rubrum continued to calmly saunter down the hall until he came to a crossroads: a fork in the hallway he was in. His whistling was disturbed a bit when he stopped walking mid-step, hopping back a few inches on his one foot until he finally set both feet down at the ground. He looked at the corner of the wall nearest to him, glanced at the paper in his hand, and then with a hum he shrugged the sword off of his shoulder.
With three quick swipes an arrow had been carved into the metal wall, pointing left. Satisfied, he rested the sword back on his shoulder and resumed his whistling as he made his way deeper into the factory.
And here he was again. Falling. It seemed like he was doing a lot of that recently.
Whatever this shaft was apparently went really deep, too, because he was about ten seconds into this fall. On the bright side, though, his plan was coming through real great. Sonic? Gone completely, or at least far enough away that he wouldn't be able to disturb Sorun if he found Eggman. When he found Eggman. If he was really here Sorun wasn't wasting any time in finding him and finally killing him so this war could end right now. He just had to worry about actually locating him.
But that came later. Right now he had to survive this fall.
"Ah, man, I just realized I'm gonna have to think up some excuse for why I didn't just fly out of here after falling," Sorun realized. The teen fell with his body parallel to the ground, his hands interlaced behind his head with one leg crossed over the other. "Eh, I'll just lie and say I got hit in the head by something. Should be believable enough. More importantly is how I'm supposed to find Eggman in this huge place."
He began humming as his body slowly spun around so that it was facing downwards. "Guess I'll just make a mad dash and hope I get lucky. The others should be fine in the meantime." He heard a loud crashing sound from the debris below him colliding with ground. "Oh, that's my stop."
Sorun saw that his body was quickly approaching flat ground. Right before he impacted it, he Tricked a few meters away from where the broken walkways crash landed. He appeared right on his feet, looked behind himself at the pile of twisted metal behind him, then made a light scoff as he turned back forwards.
"Sorun? Sorun!?" A voice, Sonic's voice, rang out in Sorun's ear and made him wince, and then he realized he was wearing an earpiece. It must have been Sonic trying to contact him. "Sorun, are you alr-!?"
The earpiece was removed from Sorun's ear without a second thought. Sorun looked thoughtfully down at the small, black device he held in his hand, and then shook his head as his hand clenched around it, crushing it in his grasp.
"Sorry, Sonic, but I'm doing this my way," Sorun said, tossing the fragments of the earpiece over his shoulder. "Now where the hell'd I end up?"
It was another walkway, it seemed. Wider and more heavily built by the looks of it. Where he was seemed to be a different story: a vast, open cavern that was so wide Sorun couldn't even see any walls when he looked left or right. Just more metal walkways and conveyer belts everywhere, all leading into giant metal spires that extended up into what Sorun presumed to be the cavern's ceiling, back up into the factory. He whistled at the sight, slowly making his way down the walkway he stood on as he glanced around at the environment.
"Man. I'm getting major nostalgia vibes from this place. Reminds me of the underground factory level from 'Automata'..." Sorun mumbled under his breath as he faced forwards. "Just how huge is this factory, anyways? I wanna believe that the factory up above caving in from all the explosives the other guys are placing is enough to bury this place, but sheesh... I just don't know." He shook his head and began jogging forwards. "Don't think about it too much, Sorun. Won't matter a bit as long as you kill that guy."
Running forwards, Sorun saw that the walkway he was running down was, oddly enough, leading right into a dead end. Specifically, the wall of one of the giant spires that lead up from the darkness below all the way up to the metallic ceiling. He saw that there was a small staircase to the side that wrapped up and around the spire, though, and to save himself some time Sorun Tricked to the highest point on the staircase he could see.
One Trick and some stair-climbing later, Sorun made it to the top of the staircase. Unfortunately he didn't find a door leading into the giant metal spire he'd been climbing, though he did find that the top of the staircase branched off into another walkway that connected to another spire on the other side. Sorun began running down it, but then he stopped halfway and huffed in frustration when he saw that this walkway just lead to another staircase wrapping around the other spire.
Glancing around, Sorun saw a conveyer belt across the way over the giant pit everything seemed to be suspended over. With another Trick, he'd teleported over there and arrived standing on a small, metal panel that was being carried on the conveyer belt. However, when Sorun looked down at the panel, he couldn't help but cringe in revulsion when he saw a bump in the plate that just barely resembled Eggman's face. The start of an Egg Pawn's head, with hollows eyes and a smile where the electronics would no doubt be socketed.
The teen heard a sudden whirring sound reach his ears, and looked up just in time to see a drill connected to a robot arm attached to the conveyer belt swing towards him. He yelped and jumped back a bit as the drill lowered onto the plate, louder whirring heard as the automatic tool began drilling rivets into the plate Sorun stood on. When he looked ahead, he saw identical plates ahead of the conveyer belt being worked on by other automatic tools. Welding guns, saws, drills and hammers working against the metal plates and slowing shaping the metal into the beginnings of a Badnik.
Sorun Tricked multiple times from plate to plate, ducking under and narrowly dodging a number of automatic tools that kept bearing down on the plates he kept teleporting onto. Their movements were repetitive and in sync with each other, though, and with a few seconds' glance he managed to ascertain the pattern they kept lowering into. Afterwards he was able to dodge and avoid all the tools with ease, and by the time he Tricked all the way to the end of the conveyer belt he found himself sighing in relief. The conveyer belt was rolling into a small, rectangular hole into the side of one of the spires, but when he looked slightly above the hole, he saw a small metal outcropping sticking out of the side of the spire. And a door right in front of that outcropping.
And then he heard a loud, hissing sound, causing the relief to fade from Sorun as he looked up. Right above him he saw what looked like a giant, rectangular press held above him from a mechanical arm hanging high over his head. Eyes widening in panic, Sorun Tricked out of the way just as the giant press smashed into the metal plate Sorun had been standing on previously. He appeared on the metal outcropping in front of the door, with the teen glancing back just as the press lifted up from the plate it pressed into. "Too close..." he whispered out as Yamato appeared in his hands.
After a few quick slashes a hole had been cut inside of the door, which Sorun quickly walked through. He entered to find a small staircase leading to the center of the spire he'd walked into, which, by all accounts, was rather brightly lit. It was only a few steps down into a large, circular room, though what alarmed Sorun the most was the fact that the walls of the room he'd entered were lined with three Egg Hammers hung up on racks inserted into large, tube-like grooves cut into the walls.
Even more alarming was the fact that, the moment Sorun stepped into the dead center of the room, the green eyes on all three Egg Hammers suddenly lit up.
The pale teen failed to suppress the groan he instinctually made when he saw the three large Badniks begin to detach themselves from the racks they hung off of. All three dropped down onto the floor beneath them, with Sorun feeling a slight tremor every single time one's feet touched down. Even worse was that it seemed each one had their own respective weapon on a separate rack right besides where they had been hanging previously, which they proceeded to reach upwards for and remove. While this had been happening Sorun slightly widened his feet as his hands clamped down on Yamato, his eyes glaring up at the three Egg Hammers.
"Alright. Three. It's no biggie." Sorun slowly exhaled when he saw the three large Badniks begin to slowly converge on him, each on holding a hammer of massive proportion in their hands. His sword began glowing blue. "Sonic makes it look easy. It should be easy for me, too."
In a quick draw and re-sheath, the middlemost Egg Hammer was consumed in a vortex of ethereal slashes. Unabated, Sorun shifted his attention to the right Egg Hammer and attempted to perform another Judgement Cut in order to destroy it just like he had the first.
Something had gone wrong, though. He'd managed the instantaneous draw and re-sheath, but a vortex of cuts hadn't completely dismantled the robot. The floating slashes had still appeared- sporadically, spread out everywhere and cutting to and fro uncontrollably. One of the slashes had appeared right next to Sorun, and although the teen tried leaning out of the way of it, the slash still caught him in his right shoulder and caused a cut to appear. A small thing that barely bled, but it still caused Sorun to bite back a growl of frustration when he saw he'd been the one wounded and not the Badnik.
"Still can't do them consecutively..." The ground underneath his feet began to softly shake as the two robots began closing in on him. Sorun's grip on the Yamato's handle tightened. "Of course I couldn't destroy two at once with it. Of course he had to go and show me up again... it's always him..."
Blue energy began wafting off the blade. Sorun glowered up at the two Badniks that stood before him, teeth grit in rage as more energy continued to gather around and leak off of his sword.
"Sonic...!" His frustration had reached a tipping point right as Egg Hammers raised their respective hammers in the effort of smashing Sorun. Yamato's blade had turned a solid blue color, bolts of electricity continually arcing off of it as Sorun's grip on the sword's handle became so fervent that the joints in his fingers began popping. This went ignored by the Egg Hammers, both of which proceeded commit to the motion of lowering their hammers.
In the blink of an eye, Sorun slashed outwards one single time. Following that single slash was a wide, blue line that trailed the entire wall that he was facing, with said line bisecting both Egg Hammers at the point their heads met their body. The blue coloring soon faded along with the energy wrapped around the blade, revealing a wide, deep cut inside of the wall that made it through all the way to the other side. The two Egg Hammers crashed down to the ground shortly after, their hammers and sparking, severed heads dropping down along with them.
The sound that came next was the intense sound of coughing and hacking. Yamato clattered to the ground after Sorun had lost his grip on it, the teen falling over onto his knees and hands while coughing violently towards the floor. Each cough came with a small splash of blood that flew out of Sorun's mouth and splattered on the ground right below him. After a few more heaves, the coughing fortunately ceased, leaving Sorun on all fours and staring down at a blood-spattered floor.
"... Can't even kill more than two of those things without becoming a bleeding mess," Sorun bitterly thought, using the back of his hand to wipe away the blood leaking out of his nose and mouth. All the frustration and envy from earlier began to simmer into cold animosity. Whether it was at himself and his own weakness or Sonic was unclear to Sorun. He didn't even have the energy to think it out and find an answer. But there was enough residual frustration for him to bang his fast against the ground. The throbbing sensation that followed this went to prove that it had been a mistake to do that, but something happened that distracted Sorun from the slight pain in his hand. A curious sight right next to where his fist banged down on the floor that only now caught Sorun's eye.
An arrow. For whatever reason, there was an arrow carved into the metal floor right next to where he'd slammed his hand down. Sorun blinked in confusion, and then traced the direction the arrow was pointing to the furthest corner of the room he was kneeling in. His eyes widened a bit when he saw that the arrow was pointing directly towards what looked like an elevator at the end of the room. And what's more, the elevator's doors were open.
"... What?" Sorun looked back down at the arrow, turned to the elevator, blinked, and then slowly stood up to his feet after scooping Yamato back up in his grasp. He slowly walked towards the elevator, taking careful steps as to not stumble, and then walked to the inside of the elevator while keeping a wary eye out. For all intents and purposes, from what he saw, the interior was just a normal elevator. When he looked at the control console, he felt an eyebrow rise up when he saw that there was another arrow scratched onto the wall. An arrow that was pointing to one of the elevator buttons, the second one from the top.
Though he was incredibly suspicious over the arrows he was seeing, Sorun was also intensely curious as to where they lead. And so, he decided to hit the button the arrow was pointing to. The elevator doors slid shut, and Sorun felt the elevator itself quickly shudder as it began moving up the shaft it was inside of. A couple minutes passed, mainly spent with Sorun impatiently tapping his foot in waiting, until he felt the elevator shudder again as it came to an abrupt halt. The elevator doors slid back open, Sorun poking his head out and looking all around to see if there were any enemies nearby. When he saw none, he stepped out of the elevator.
The area Sorun had stepped into wasn't all that much. It was just a tight corridor, one hallway going left and another hallway going right with low, overhead lighting on a high ceiling. Not interesting at all, save for the fact that, right in front of where the elevator opened and scratched right onto the dreary, dark blue metal wall, was yet another arrow carved onto its surface that pointed down the left hall. And even more interesting was the fact that "control room" was scratched onto the wall right underneath the arrow.
"... Someone out there is either looking out for me or this is a huge trap," Sorun thought to himself as he looked down left towards the empty hallway. "Either way I'll take it. 'Long as it takes me to Eggman, at least."
He didn't know if these arrows would, in fact, take him to Eggman or whatever this control room was. Nonetheless, it seemed incredibly convenient and suspicious for him to find these out-of-place markers so easily in such a big place. And, as it was, he had no other better places to be looking around in. So, against his better judgement, he started to follow the arrow.
It'd been around five minutes now since Sorun started following these mysterious arrows. So far it felt less and less like there was any rhyme and reason to these things and more like they were just leading him on a wild goose chase because, for as far as he saw, there wasn't a single control room in sight. Just more and more winding hallways.
And lasers.
"This is actual bullshit!" Sorun's thoughts screamed as he ducked under a yellow beam that swiped over his head. "It takes a special kind of maniac to put so many traps in the middle of a nothing hallway like this!"
He didn't know what he'd done - stepped over an invisible laser trap or stepped on a pressure plate or something - but there were times where he'd turn a corner, walk down a hallway, and traps would spring to life. Little emitters connected to rails built into the walls and ceiling that would make moving lines of deadly lasers Sorun would have to physically dodge to get by. Or just Trick through, though he felt himself alternating between dodging and Tricking just to conserve his strength going forwards.
"Whew, man..." He felt a ray pass over his back just as Sorun leapt forwards. He spun around right after, holding a hand to his back and sighing in relief when he didn't feel a charred spot on his back. His expression was soon wiped off along with an accompanying whine of dismay when he saw the hood of his blue, sleeveless hoodie lying on the ground behind him, the laser having cut it off. "Oh, man, Honey's gonna be pissed..."
Shaking his head in a dismissive manner, Sorun turned away from the severed hood and continued down the hallway.
After that it was more walking. More following arrows. The occasional laser trap. He did notice that the turning to a new hallways was becoming less frequent, though. And, more than that, by the time he noticed that he also noticed that the hallway was getting narrower. And much more linear.
There was a second thing he noticed, too. Talking. He couldn't make out the words or even the voice, it was just faint sounds, but he heard somebody saying something. That egged Sorun on to keep going a bit further, the teen straining his ears so he could try and make out that faint voice he was hearing.
Pretty soon, though, he was able to make out that voice. That grouchy male voice that grated Sorun's ears so much it made him want to tear them right off his head. That voice he grew to hate so much. The voice he associated with the one man who ruined this entire planet.
"Oh, yeah. That's him alright." He felt a strange combination of emotions begin to well in his chest when he finally made out Eggman's voice in the distance. Emotions that were accentuated by the look of grim determination in his eyes mixed with the strained, excited smile he had on him. Feelings of intense hatred and glee. Intense anticipation.
If he killed him, than all of this would finally be over. No more fighting, no more Emeralds... no more none of it.
"Alright, Eggman... your curtain call's here." Walking with a bit of a bounce to his step, Sorun tossed the sheathed Yamato up in the air and caught it with his left hand. "One last fight. Let's go."
At the end of the hallway there was a brightly-lit, rectangular exit. Sorun reached it without issue, calmly walking through as he gazed around the new room he'd walked into. There were two levels: the one he was currently on, and the second one that had no floor save for an outcropping of metal that wrapped around the entire room. Mainly empty, save for what what was on the second level at the direct opposite end of the room. A large computer console with multiple monitors displaying various images, two Egg Pawns manning the console at either side, and him. Eggman, sitting in that strange, floating chair of his. And from the looks of it he was currently yelling and pointing down at the two Egg Pawns.
"I don't care how many of them there are! Find them and detain them at once!" Eggman screamed down at the two Badniks, his face pointed directly at the monitors. Even from all the way in the back Sorun could make out a few of the images from how large those monitors were. He saw one image of Sally at a large, metal pillar, planting an explosive. Julie-Su was at her back, shooting down Badniks with that laser pistol she carried with her. "This is absurd... how did they manage to infiltrate my factory so quickly?" Eggman loudly muttered to himself, sitting back in his chair while tapping a finger against his chin. "I didn't even have any time to make the preparations I'd planned for them. It's as if they just appeared out of thin air..."
Any other of his ramblings were cut off when two Summoned Swords appeared in the air and dropped down through the heads of the two Egg Pawns. The sight startled Eggman enough that he leapt back a bit in his seat, holding his arms to the side with his fingers splayed out.
"Doctor Julian Robotnik!" Sorun called the name out loudly but almost lackadaisically, his arms lazily swinging from side to side as he slowly walked towards to the center of the room. Eggman's posture relaxed immediately upon hearing the voice, one of his fingers reaching over to press a button so that his floating chair would turn around to face Sorun. "Face-to-face and in the flesh at last! Only took four friggin' months..."
The expression Eggman's round face, which to Sorun was even more repugnant that his holographic counterpart, was about what Sorun expected: bored. Even past those blue spectacles hiding his eyes and the large, fiery orange mustache, the round man managed to look completely unimpressed at Sorun, leaning back in his chair while folding his arms over his lap. "Sorun," he called out in greeting. "It's Doctor Ivo Robotnik, actually. I changed my name all the way back when I first began my coup against the Kingdom of Acorn."
"Oh. Sorry," Sorun apologized, stopping in the middle of the room. "Kintobor, Robotnik, Eggman... what's in a name, anyways?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders up at Eggman. "Same douchebag behind the title no matter what you call yourself."
"Charming as always," Eggman drawled out. "So you and the rest of the Freedom Fighters have come to snuff out my final factory outside of my empire's beautiful capital city? Well, your timing is as punctual as it is annoying," he complimented, his head turning back to one of the monitors. "I had such a grand plan for you all, but then you showed up and ruined it all before I even got the wheels in motion! I only just finished drawing the blueprints up yesterday!"
"Well, you know, you always manage to stay one step ahead of us in these whack job schemes of yours. Nobody felt like letting you hold the streak," Sorun said. "To be completely transparent with you, finding you wasn't even a primary objective. Sally just wanted the place to blow with or without you in custody. Can you believe that?"
"It doesn't surprise me a bit. The Acorn brat never did have the stomach to make the hard choices," Eggman said, waving his hand aside. "So why is it that you're here, then?"
"I really didn't like her way of thinking. Figured if I brought your head back to her she'd forgive me for going against orders."
"Oh-ho!" A short, amused bark left Eggman as he tilted his head back to let the laugh out. He lowered it back down to look at Sorun, a small, challenging smile gracing his face. "Is that right? I'm not surprised in the least." He leaned to the side of his chair, propping his head up with one of his arms as he leered down at Sorun with that twisted smile of his. "I have to ask, Sorun. Why did you do it? Why did you side with the Mobians in Knothole instead of with me?"
Sorun scoffed and shook his head. It was the way Eggman had asked that question, his words. They were still packed with complete maliciousness like with most of the sentences he said, but there was something else at the back of that. A questioning tone that made it sound like he was legitimately confused at Sorun's actions. "You really have to ask something like that?" Sorun questioned. "You're that depraved?"
"Depraved, but not stupid," Eggman corrected him. "You could have had it all, Sorun. You have the drive. The will. You would have fit in no problem standing at my side. At having a place in my Eggman Empire and actually making something of your life. You could have had a place besides your own kind."
"'My kind'?" Sorun spun Yamato around so its handle landed in his right hand, his left still clutching the shaft of the scabbard. His eyes looked up and down the sheath, the teen muttering out loudly enough for Eggman to hear, "I don't have anything like that in this world. Not the Overlanders. Not the humans in Station Square. Not the Mobians. None of them are a part of my kind. An Earthling." He began running his left thumb along the sheath's surface. "Least of all you."
"But why them? Why the Freedom Fighters?" Eggman pressed. "They ruined your life by forcing you onto Mobius, and yet you still threw yourself in with them! Why? What could they have possibly had to offer you that I don't? What possible gain could you have had by siding with them when they're doomed to failure!?"
"You honestly can't figure it out yourself...?" A light, disbelieving laugh left Sorun as his eyes trailed upwards to Eggman. "I just don't like you. That's all."
Eggman's face scrunched up a bit, one part in irritation and one part in confusion. "That can't be all there is to it," he said, shaking his head down at the teen.
"What more is there to say? You flipped the world upside-down and made it a game of ruining and tormenting everybody. You treat torturing the planet like a hobby. Making everybody in Knothole suffer is little more than a pastime for you. You're trying to make an empire on the back of everybody's anguish for no better reason than you want to." Sorun's fingers tightened around Yamato's handle. "Frankly, Eggman, I'm sick of it. Sick of playing your game. And hey, you know what? I'll give you props. You're a master at playing this fucking game of yours. The fact you've been going up against people like the Freedom Fighters and Shadow and Sonic and made it this far with a winning hand just goes to show that behind that goofy exterior is a terrifyingly brilliant, insane, sorry excuse for a man. So you know what I'm not doing? I'm not gonna play your game fairly. That's just folly." Blue energy began to run along Yamato's length as he pulled the sword halfway from its sheath. "I decided... I'm just gonna cheat."
With a dead-set face of certainty, Sorun slammed Yamato back into its sheath. Eggman watched on in slight interest, humming under his breath as his glasses-covered eyes watched the sword. The entire katana began to glow a solid blue color, and as Sorun let it go it began to vertically float off the ground, handle pointed to the ceiling, and even began to slowly spin as it slowly rose up towards the center of the room.
"What would happen now is that we would have our big fight, and you would pull something out of your ass like call for a bunch of robots to distract me while you make a dramatic getaway or something along those lines. Then you go back home, cook up another scheme while me and the others keep fighting your forces, you deploy your plan we narrow managed to beat, and then this goes on repeat 'til people start dying." As Sorun spoke there was a peculiar sound akin to glass breaking. Eggman only continued to hum as around the edges of the room there were white, jagged lines appearing everywhere, like reality itself was breaking down, though seconds later they disappeared completely, leaving him, Sorun, and the floating, blue katana hovering in the middle of the room. "Yeah, that ain't gonna happen," Sorun finished off. "This place will be your grave."
"Is that so?" Eggman asked, drumming his fingers along the side of his skull as he stared at the sword floating in the middle of the room. "And you're going to do that with what? That sword?" He scoffed and tilted his head back. "I know from the combat footage I've seen the cutting abilities of that katana, but I fail to see what this little display here is supposed to do to intimidate me."
"I guess a little explanation is in order then," Sorun said, lazily looking up at Eggman with his hands in his pockets. "That sword is called the Yamato. To put it in terms you would understand, it's from a... storybook, I suppose you could say. From where I'm from."
At the end of his final sentence, Sorun Tricked out from Eggman's sight. The round man became startled and glanced wildly around, and then looked up when he heard a whistle gain his attention. Sorun was up on the ceiling, sitting on one of the ceiling's support struts and looking down at Eggman. His left hand was still in his pocket, while his right hand held a Summoned Sword that was resting on his shoulder.
"In this story the demon king Urizen, one of the Yamato's wielders, made a shield with it," Sorun continued. "I struggled for a while to understand how such a thing was possible, Yamato's power is the ability of absolute separation, you see, but while I was doing some reading it hit me. It wasn't a shield; it was a separate dimension entirely." He removed the spectral sword from his shoulder and poked it up towards the ceiling. Right before the tip managed to make contact with the ceiling, however, it was stopped. The air between the sword's tip and the ceiling wavered, as if there was an invisible barrier separating the two. "What I've done is I've taken Yamato and used its power of absolute separation to separate the space this room inhabits with the space the rest of the world inhabits," Sorun explained as he lowered the Summoned Sword back on his shoulder. "Where we are right now, Eggman? This room? It's a pocket dimension now. And you're stuck in it with me."
Eggman listened intensely to Sorun's explanation, his bald eye ridges furrowed in deep concentration. Eventually the full implication of Sorun's words began to seep in, though, causing him to lean forwards and grip the edges of his floating chair. "You didn't..." seethed Eggman, his fingers pressing down at the edge of the seat.
"Oh, but I did!" Sorun Tricked again, appearing on the other side of the room from Eggman on the second level outcropping. "Look around, Eggman!" Sorun called out, gesturing from side-to-side. "There's nowhere in the world for you to run because this room might as well be the entire world!" He stopped and pointed the tip of his sword at Yamato, which still hung in the center of the room. "Yamato's acting as an anchor to keep this room grounded to the rest of reality. You destroy it? That's that- this space gets destroyed and we both die. The only way to return this space with the rest of this world is if either I willingly dispel the Yamato or you kill me and cause it to dispel on its own. And I'm not dispelling it until you're dead."
That was the plan. Nobody, not even him, could enter or exit the separated space that was this room until Yamato ceased separating this piece of reality with the rest of reality. That meant that Eggman's chance of escaping from Sorun was practically nil. Which meant that Sorun... just had to kill Eggman.
Sorun expected a lot of reactions from Eggman. Shocked disbelief, sputtering rage, maybe even a bit of bargaining from his part. For the crushing reality of the situation to hit him when he realized there was no escaping the separated space Sorun had trapped him in. No escaping from the teen's wrath. And from the looks of it, at first, he was getting the reaction he wanted. Eggman, was folded over the edge of his seat, his arms still gripping tightly onto the edge even with his body doubled over it.
And then, he began shuddering. Sorun had assumed it was in rage or fear at first, but then he heard it. The laughter. Laughter that was quiet and almost inaudible at first, but then completely switched to booming, boisterous laughter when Eggman threw his whole body back. The mad cackling enraged Sorun as much as it confused him, making him lower the Summoned Sword down to his side as a deep scowl settled on Sorun's features. Finally, Eggman ceased his cackling with a loud, drawn-out sigh and looked towards Sorun.
"Oh-ho-ho-ho! So, you've gotten tired of my game and want to play your own, eh, Sorun?" A mad grin on his face, Eggman reached forwards and pressed one of the buttons on the console of his seat. "Okay, I'm game. We'll see just how willing you are to play with the big boys by the time I'm through with you."
"Yeah, keep talkin'..." Sorun muttered as the Bringer Claws appeared behind him. "They'll be your last words. Get 'em out while you can."
As he spoke, Sorun watched as a white, dome-like covering began to extend up from the seat Eggman was sitting in. His scowl deepened, and he willed four Summoned Swords to appear by his side and fire off towards Eggman. They reached their mark too late, though, as the white plates had already fully encapsulated Eggman, and the swords merely shattered off of their surface. What had once been a floating chair now looked like little more than a giant white, floating, mechanical egg. A mechanical egg whose bottom opened up and allowed something to drop through.
Sorun tensed up his body as he saw the object drop, eyes furrowed in concentration as he readied himself for whatever it was. When he finally got a good look at it, though, he felt his form instantly begin to relax from the absolute bafflement he felt at what he was seeing.
It was a wrecking ball. An honest-to-god checkered wrecking ball colored in light and dark browns connected to Eggman's floating chair by a chain. Sorun blinked and tilted his head to the side, as if waiting for the wrecking ball to perhaps transform or something, but it never did. It just continued to simply hang off from the chair by the chain.
"... You can't be serious." Sorun actually dropped the Summoned Sword he'd been holding, not paying attention at all when it shattered against the ground. "You're going to fight me with that ridiculous thing?"
"You got that right!" Eggman called out, his voice seemingly projected from an unseen speaker somewhere in the egg-shaped chair he was inside. "It isn't too late to back out now if you're not feeling up to it, you know. Not even Sonic has ever succeeded in destroying my Checker Wrecker."
"This condescending bastard..." The snappy remark jabbed at Sorun's pride, enough that both his arms began to twitch. "That's it, you're dead!"
His Bringer Claws beat roughly against the ground, causing Sorun to shoot towards the egg-shaped chair and the wrecking ball hanging below it. The chair just hovered motionlessly in the air, almost as if Eggman was waiting for Sorun to make the first move. This just enraged Sorun and caused him to stop right in front of the enclosed chair, his right Bringer Claw curling into a fist, rearing back, and punching forwards at the checkered wrecking ball.
The spectral fist made impact. This was evidenced enough by the loud gong! sound that reverberated throughout the separated space Sorun and Eggman were in. What didn't happen, which immensely shocked the teen, was that the wrecking ball hadn't been smashed to powder by the punch. It hadn't even cracked in the slightest; just knocked back. What did happen was that that chair the ball was connected to spun around in the same direction it was knocked back in, causing the wrecking ball to spin completely around back towards Sorun. The movement had been so fast that Sorun had barely been able to register it, but when he did, he didn't have the opportunity to think about avoiding it with a Trick and instead instinctually rose his Bringer Claws up to block it.
The spectral arms blocking Sorun's body were directly hit by the checkered ball. Sorun felt intense vibrations assault his body as a result, and with a grunt was sent sailing backwards a bit. The arms flapped to stabilize him, and without missing a beat Sorun Tricked down the the ground floor.
"This thing's tough." Sorun began walking to the side of the egg-shaped chair, keeping his eyes up on it while he continually fired Summoned Swords at it. To his growing frustration, the swords continued to break off on the chair's surface, as well as the checkered wrecking ball and its chain. "I can't use Yamato while it's keeping this room separated. Guess if I can't cut him out, I'll have to just rip him out of that thing."
Ceasing his volley of Summoned Swords, the teen Tricked up to the top of the chair. Gripping onto the top of it with his bare hands, Sorun willed his Bringer Claws to beat down on the egg-chair's shell over and over again in an attempt to try and beat the metal paneling off to get to Eggman. No matter how many times to spectral arms rapidly punched the metal covering, though, it wouldn't dent. And when he gave up trying to punch it and instead tried having the claws pry the metal off, he found there wasn't a large enough seam in the metal plates for the spectral claws to find purchase on.
And then, the chair began spinning. It was slow at first, just fast enough to let Sorun know what was happening and make him grip onto the chair with both his real arms and spectral, feathered arms. The spinning increased to a faster and faster speed, though, and eventually it got to the point that the centrifugal force was beginning to pull on Sorun's body. Soon enough the speed proved to be too great, and as a result, Sorun was flung right off the pod.
Spinning around uncontrollably, Sorun's body was flung all the way towards one of the side walls. The palms of the spectral hands slammed into the wall right before Sorun impacted it to stop him from impacting it, a gust of wind from the sudden stop blowing Sorun's hair about as he breathed a heavy breath out. He looked back up towards Eggman, and then he physically felt his irises shrink in fear when he saw the wrecking ball heading right towards him.
His Bringer Claws attempted to push forwards in an attempt to block the wrecking ball. To Sorun's shock, the mass of the ball combined with its speed proved to be too much, and to his dismay the blue claws were destroyed completely when they made contact with the approaching ball. Thinking quickly, Sorun Tricked out of the way just as the ball reached his location and buried itself halfway into the wall.
Reappearing on the second level of the room nearby to where the wrecking ball smashed into the wall, Sorun was forced to stumble back a few steps. A dizzying sensation had hit him, and he began to feel a pained sensation run throughout his body as a few drops of blood began to pour from his nose. At the same time, the floating egg chair had pulled the wrecking ball out from the wall by its chain, and then began to quickly fly towards Sorun's position. It spun around once it got close enough, making a full rotation and then abruptly stopping to allow the wrecking ball to fling towards Sorun.
In an effort to protect himself, Sorun had erected wall after wall of crossed Summoned Swords. The Checker Wrecker smashed through each and every layer, though, however enough of its momentum had been halted so that Sorun had just enough time to reform his Bringer Claws to block yet again. The ball hit him, and, due to his weakening constitution, Sorun watched as his Bringer Claws dissipated on direct contact with the ball as his own body was once again sent spinning away.
With a pained grunt, Sorun's body impacted the ground floor of the room. It'd hit with such force that he bounced off, hit the ground again, and then began rolling with a pained cry leaving him with each roll. He fortunately came to a complete stop, lying prone against the ground. He laid there completely still for a few moments, after which a small groan left Sorun as he attempted to stand up.
He never made it up to his feet. Not because of the light bruising throughout his entire body, though he was certainly feeling that. No, it was that other feeling again. The feeling of his body crying out in pain and just giving out from the overuse of his powers. The feeling of deep, stabbing pains in all his organs that were intense enough that all Sorun could do was raise up to a single knee in a kneeling position. He coughed once, a spurt of blood flying out of his mouth, and then he looked up at the egg-shaped chair, panting heavily while a stream of blood dribbled out of his nose.
"I'm not... letting him get away..." He pulled deep within himself to manifest a single Summoned Sword in a vain attempt at attacking Eggman again. The sword had formed completely cracked and dim, though, and before he could even fire it off another fit of coughs assaulted Sorun, causing the sword to shatter completely right there next to him. "Damn it all..."
"Well, Sorun, I think I've senselessly beaten you around enough for me to get the idea across." Sorun's eyes trailed up to the egg-shaped chair, just barely being able to suppress his pained growl of rage when he saw the top metal plates fold back into the chair, revealing the man that was sitting inside of it. He was grinning from ear-to-ear, arms crossed and looking right down at Sorun. "And my oh my, just look at you. I didn't mean to bloody you up that much. You spend so much time around Mobians and you forget how fragile humans are compared to them, I tell you."
Saying nothing in response, half because he was too livid and half because he was physically capable of doing so at the moment, Sorun just watched with absolute fury in his eyes as Eggman's floated chair hovered over to the floating, blue katana in the middle of the room. Eggman hummed in intrigue at the sight of it, uncrossing his arms and rubbing at his chin with his right hand as he inspected the sword.
"The Yamato, eh...?" Eggman leaned closer towards the floating sword. Close enough that its glowing image was reflected off of the blue-lensed glasses over his eyes. He hummed once more, and then leaned back in his seat as the hovering chair floated back a bit. "Quite an interesting sword you have there, Sorun. The power to separate space itself... quite remarkable indeed. But not good enough." The chair began rotating backwards, as if getting ready to swing the brown wrecking ball hanging under it. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to call that little bluff of yours!"
The chair swung to the side, swinging the wrecking ball along with it. The weighted ball smashed right into the katana before Sorun's eyes, shattering it completely and causing the shards to dissipate into blue ash. The effect was immediately plain to see: the the space around the outer edges of the room began to slowly dissolve, as if there had been a large, invisible bubble around them that was slowly evaporating. The process had only taken a few seconds, and by the end the effect had gone away completely. Both the room itself and its two occupants were left completely intact, and Eggman, upon seeing this, began laughing again while Sorun felt even more anger begin to burn through him.
"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha..." Wiping an invisible tear away from his eye, Eggman leaned over the edge of his floating seat. One arm hung down limply while the other was folded over the chair's lip, Eggman smiling down at the defeated teen all the while. "You lose, Sorun. You've lost at your own game. Did you honestly think I was going to buy that whole 'the sword was an anchor' bit? You insult me, you really do.
"Now, I could end you right here and now, but where would be the fun in that?" Eggman's chair turned towards the computer monitors that were near the back of the room. He then leaned a bit back and began typing at a few of the buttons that were on a small console right in front of him. There was a single loud, blaring sound from the speakers inside of the computer console at the back end of the room, and as he continued to motionlessly kneel down on the floor Sorun saw all the computer monitors above the console turn red. The words that were flashing across the red screens, however, was what nearly made the teen's heart stop right there.
SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED
Self-destruct. The madman was actually going to blow the whole factory up himself. And soon, too- there was a five-minute countdown timer on the lower-right corner of all the screens. That only served to make Sorun panic even more.
"That's right. I'm going to blow you and the entire resistance to kingdom come," Eggman gloated, his devious smile turning gleeful when he turned back around to Sorun to see the dire-stricken look on his face. "Now, I have no doubt that you'll all pull off some miraculous feat that will save you from this catastrophe, and then we can do this again some other time. In the event this does just so happen to be the end for you, though, let me just leave you with this."
The floating chair carrying Eggman lowered itself and hovered closer to Sorun. He stopped right in front of him, close enough that Sorun was able to see his own reflection in Eggman's glasses. His kneeling body, completely beaten and at Eggman's mercy. It caused feelings of frustration and self-loathing the likes of which he'd never felt before in his life to erupt inside of Sorun. To see himself brought so low in front of somebody he hated so much and tried so hard to kill. He couldn't stand it.
"Look, Sorun, you got moxie. I'll give you that much. But that's all you've got. You really thought you could just waltz in here with all your shiny new powers and thought you could beat me? Someone who's been playing the game far longer than you?" A short bark of laughter burst out of Eggman. "Face it, kid. You're a complete newbie I can ride circles around because you're nothing but a punk riding on the coattails of a bunch of powers that were handed to you. You're not special. You're not fast or strong or clever like all the other Freedom Fighters.
"And you are certainly no Sonic."
Those were the words. The words that sent Sorun's ears ringing so loudly he could barely hear anything else over it. That made him go completely still as he looked up helplessly at Eggman, irises shrunken and shaking in indignation at what he just heard. To be compared to him and told that he was absolutely nothing compared to that hedgehog everyone around him adored.
To know he was right.
It hurt.
"Well, I think I've taken enough of your time. What little of it is left, anyways." Darkly chuckling, Eggman pressed another button on the console of his chair. The chair began to raise up towards the ceiling, where a section began to open up to reveal a well-lit shaft going further up into the facility. "Until next time, Sorun! Or goodbye in case this truly is the end for you! It's been a blast!"
"Get back here...!" The mocking wave that Eggman was sending down to Sorun as he ascended up the hole in the ceiling only further fueled Sorun's rage as he attempted to reach up towards the mad scientist. But despite his best efforts, nothing would come up. No Bringer Claws. No Summoned Swords. Nothing. Even the mere action of just raising his arm was so labor-intensive it shook from the effort. "He needs to die... I need... goddamn... goddamn it..."
His entire body flopped face-first onto the ground. Try as he might, nothing would respond to him. The best Sorun could manage was twitch his appendages and barely move his head enough to look up. Every single attempt at moving something resulted in a lance of pain that forced all his muscles to seize up. He couldn't even move, let alone summon one of his powers. And from his peripheral vision he could already see that Eggman was long gone.
And out from the corner of his vision he could see the computer monitors. The monitors and that countdown timer that was slowly counting down to the destruction of the facility. He had to leave. If his body wasn't failing him he could have easily left by summoning Yamato and making a portal out of here. But every single attempt was met with another spike of pain going through him.
"Come on... just let me do it..." A few wisps of blue power began to gather around his immobile left hand. The beginning shape of a katana began to form, but then Sorun's chest had tightened, and a pained cough accompanied by another splash of blood leaving his mouth caused the blue particles gathering around his hand to dissipate. "Everyone's gonna die if I don't..."
He couldn't do it. His body just wouldn't let him.
It was when the crashing feelings of failure, the feeling that he'd just let everybody down, began to hit him that he heard it. The sounds of rapid footsteps right behind him, out of the hallway Sorun had walked through to get into this room in the first place. A rapid set of footsteps going so fast it sounded like a continuous, zooming sound. Sorun knew fully well what that sound was. Those footsteps were Sonic's footsteps.
A myriad of emotions assaulted Sorun when he realized this. There were emotions of immense relief and ease knowing he wasn't completely helpless and there was now actually a chance of him not being blown up in a factory. All of that was buried under everything else that started to rise up in Sorun, though. He felt sheer mortification that Sonic was going to come and find Sorun in this state. This broken, defeated state that made it so he couldn't even stand up on his own feet. And even worse was knowing that it was him that had to come and save Sorun. He would have been fine if it was anybody else. But the fact it was him that was coming to his rescue had Sorun feeling even worse than he already felt, if that was even possible.
"Sorun!" Even hearing Sonic call his name out made Sorun painfully flinch. He hated this. He absolutely hated what was happening right now. The fuming rage he felt when he saw Sonic's red sneakers stop in front of his view was almost enough to override the pain he was feeling. "Sorun, are you alright!?"
"... I look alright to you?" Sorun rattled out, his voice low and breathy. He couldn't even manage a resentful expression to match the emotions he was feeling right now when he slowly tilted his head up at the blue hedgehog. Feelings of absolute resentment that only multiplied tenfold when he saw that look of intense concern on Sonic's face.
"Er, well... no, but it's gonna be okay, pal!" Sonic bent down and began to pick Sorun's body up. "Something got set off and this whole joint's gonna self-destruct! We gotta get out of here!"
"Get your goddamned hands off of me..." If he had the strength to do it Sorun would have fought to wiggle out of Sonic's grasp just so he didn't have to suffer through this. But as it was he couldn't move at all, so Sorun had no choice but to quietly sigh and submit. "I can't make the sword..." Sorun managed to murmur out.
"It's fine, buddy, it's fine. I already ran everybody else out of here. They're all safe, so we just gotta bail and we're good."
"Of course you did... How did you even find me, anyways?"
"I kept running around until I found a bunch of those arrows you scratched into the walls a few hallways back!" Sonic answered as he turned around back to the hallway entrance, Sorun cradled in his arms. "Smart thinking, by the way. Made tracking you down a whole lot easier."
"I didn't... yeah, sure." He was too tired to argue the point and Sorun felt that taking the credit for the arrows would let him save some miniscule amount of face. Regardless, he just wanted to leave and get this day over with. "Just go."
"You got it! Let's juice!"
Sorun didn't know whether it was the wind tearing at his body from moving at super-sonic speed keeping him from passing out or the increasingly dismal feeling he felt in himself. He settled on his utter hatred for that phrase of Sonic's keeping him up.
The factory had blow up, of course. It hadn't been an overly showy affair. a loud boom, lots of crumbling metal and even more fire. Over the course of a few seconds the factory that had once stood tall was reduced to little more than flaming rubble.
A large distance away the Freedom Fighters that had went on the mission to destroy the factory looked on with victorious faces. There were cheers all throughout the group, some among them high-fiving others or giving each other congratulating pats on the back. Seeing how big an accomplishment this was, it was little surprise that spirits were high all around.
Sonic should have been happy along with them. He should have - he felt like he wanted to - but he just couldn't seem to bring himself to celebrate alongside everybody else. His thoughts kept being drawn back to the sole human in the group, and while everyone celebrated behind him the hedgehog found his eyes being drawn towards Sorun.
In his mad dash to get everybody out of the factory before it blew up Sonic had grabbed everybody one at a time and sequestered them all in a faraway hill that overlooked the factory in the distance. The hill, along with everything else around, was barren and filled with dead, decaying gray grass, though there was a tree in the middle of the hill. A black, dead tree that Sorun was sitting against. Completely isolated away from everybody else, and sitting on the other side of the tree so he didn't have to face them.
This was the reason Sonic couldn't be in a celebratory mood with everybody else. Because of how Sorun was acting. Ever since Sonic brought him to the hill here with everybody else the human had been acting extremely withdrawn, refusing to even speak with or look at anybody. For the life of him Sonic couldn't understand why; he'd thought it'd had to do with his injuries at first and that Sorun was just too tired, but that was minutes ago. Now the pale teen was moving around fine on his own, and even managed to make his katana which he was now staring down at in his hands.
He didn't know what the deal with Sorun was. So Sonic decided to go ahead and ask him.
Moving away from the rest of the group, Sonic began to slowly approach the human who sat with his back to everybody, full attention still down on his sword. He didn't even seem to register Sonic was approaching him at all, and Sonic himself felt his footsteps begin to slow when he heard Sorun utter a single word out.
"Power..." It was a word hissed out so quietly that Sonic had to perk his ears up just to hear it, and even then he almost wished he hadn't. There had been so much malice and hatred said with that word that it barely even sounded like a word to Sonic. More like a feral growl. It was enough to send a chill up his spine, causing him to gulp and reach out towards Sorun.
"Hey, Sorun? Buddy?" Sonic softly called out. "You doing okay there?"
Sorun's head had snapped up so suddenly it had startled Sonic. He sat completely still at first, and then softly exhaled as he shook his head and then turned to look at Sonic. He'd cleaned himself up and looked relatively fine now, though his black hair was a disheveled mess at the moment. And there was something to his eyes that made Sonic intensely worried over Sorun. He didn't know what it was. There was just something off about the way Sorun was staring right at the hedgehog, and he just couldn't place what it was.
"What do you want?" The question was succinct and seemed almost harsh in the way it was spoken by Sorun. It caused Sonic to falter in his movement, followed by him sighing as he stepped around the tree to stop right in front of Sorun, the human's eyes and head following him.
"Just... checking up on you," Sonic answered, finding himself nervously reaching behind his head to scratch at his quills. "So what happened when we got separated?" He decided to go to the matter directly to see if he could try and piece together what was going on. Or at least get some picture of what happened to Sorun to leave him in the state Sonic had found him in. He was glad he was fine now, but he'd be lying to himself if he said he hadn't been incredibly worried when he saw the human's body lying still on the ground like that.
Sorun slowly blinked, regarding Sonic with an expression he just couldn't read. Finally he sighed out again and began speaking. "I fell," he said. "Something was going to fall on you. So I pushed you out of the way and fell."
"Yeah, I got that much. Thanks, by the way," Sonic said, genuinely grateful for the quick save Sorun had pulled. "Couldn't you have just flown out, though?"
"Something hit me on the head."
Sonic found himself wincing. He'd wondered if something had happened, but he didn't want to think it was something like that. "Well, why didn't you call for help?" he asked him. "I was running around all over the place looking for you. You had me really worried."
"My earpiece fell out when I hit my head. I lost it."
At that, Sonic groaned and rubbed a hand across his face. "See, this is why I keep saying you need to get a wrist communicator like the rest of us so stuff like that doesn't happen. What was I supposed to do if I couldn't find you in time before the factory blew up?"
Sorun rolled his eyes up to the dead tree's bare branches. "I made the arrows, didn't I? I didn't want to slow down and wait for you when Eggman was somewhere."
"Oh..." So that was the issue. Sorun had been chomping at the bit pretty hard to get at Eggman now that Sonic recalled it. And he supposed the human had a point- he'd at least laid a trail for Sonic to follow to find him. He'd have to give him that much. Though the hedgehog felt a pit in his stomach begin to grow when he realized why it was the human was looking so dour and why he'd been in the state he'd found him in. "So did you find him?"
"..." Sorun shuffled uncomfortably against the tree and looked away from Sonic's eyes. "Yes."
"And what happened?" Sonic hesitantly asked.
"... Do I have to spell it out for you?"
"I... guess not, no." And that had what he'd been afraid of. Sorun didn't take loss well- Sonic knew that much from living with him for so long. He could barely even imagine what it must have felt like to him to lose to someone like Eggman, though he could sympathize, at least. "Are you okay?"
"... I shouldn't have lost." Sorun's eyes fell down to the sheathed katana in his lap, which he began to idly stroke at with his fingers. "I should have beat him. Not the other way around."
"Hey, I get how you fe-" Sonic cut himself off when Sorun's entire body violently twitched halfway through his sentence. His hands seemed to seize up on Yamato's sheath, and he began to lightly shake in place as the human's breathing became more shallow. "Er, uh, look, Sorun, nobody here was expecting you to beat Eggman."
"You could have."
The words felt like they cut deeply into Sonic. Inside, he knew that Sorun was probably speaking the truth. He didn't know exactly what had gone on in there, and honestly, Sonic wasn't really sure he wanted to know how badly the fight had went for Sorun. Physically speaking, though, he seemed alright. That's what mattered most to Sonic. It was the mental part that had him worried, and so, he decided that a bit of positive reinforcement was in order to get the human's spirit up.
"Sorun, listen. You did great." Sonic kneeled down in front of the other teen and extended hand towards his shoulder. Sorun flinched at the contact, though he did slowly turned his eyes upwards at Sonic as he gave the human his best reassuring smile. "I mean, all this that we did? We wouldn't have been able to do any of it if your cool sword hadn't been able to teleport us in there like that," he said. "Yeah, sure, it didn't end the best, but Eggman's a dangerous and crafty guy. And the important thing is that the factory is gone. That's a step closer to winning, right?" He gave Sorun's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Don't beat yourself up over this, okay? You did the best you could, and we all made it out safe and sound. Everything's fine."
Not once had Sorun's facial expression moved in the slightest as Sonic talked. Despite his best efforts, the pale human had only continued to stare at Sonic with that same unreadable, almost disturbing look in his eyes. Even as Sonic finished speaking Sorun's face didn't soften up in the slightest. He only breathed lightly out of his mouth and looked back down at his sword.
"Give me a minute or two and I'll make a portal back to the HQ." That was all he said. He didn't look back up at Sonic or even make the motion to speak any further. He only continued to look down at his sword.
Frowning, Sonic slid his hand off of Sorun's shoulder and gave the human a quick nod. He stood up and moved to go join the others, but then quickly stopped and craned his head back. "Hey, Sorun? I'm really glad you're okay."
"... Leave me alone, Sonic. Please."
His attempts at cheering the human up practically burning to cinders, Sonic decided to it call it quits there. "Sure," he muttered out, casting one last glance at Sorun before walking away.
"It's so easy for you to say that, Sonic. Somebody like you with power."
He'd failed. Worse than failed- he'd doomed himself. All because he couldn't beat Eggman.
What had gone wrong? That's what Sorun contemplated to himself as he continued to stare forlornly down at the sword in his lap. His plan had been flawless, or so he'd thought. Isolate Eggman in a pocket dimension using the Yamato so he couldn't escape and kill him with Sorun's remaining powers. Even tell a lie about destroying the sword destroying the pocket dimension instead of just destroying the barrier separating the space to scare Eggman into not attacking it. That hadn't worked at all. None of it did. He'd lost, Eggman escaped, and Sorun almost lost his life. He would have lost his life, and everybody else's lives, if it wasn't for him. Sonic.
Even as he heard Sonic step away from him, Sorun's thoughts on the hedgehog were so conflicted he couldn't make sense of any of it. He knew he had just been trying to make Sorun feel better. He knew and appreciated it because deep down he knew Sonic was a good person. But none of that changed what he was. How his very existence and all that speed and power he had seemed to invalidate Sorun's own existence and the life he was giving, especially when he failed in a situation Sonic would have won in.
And where did that leave him? Here, defeated. He'd wanted so hard to kill Eggman right there, end the war, and preserve what little life he had left. That's all he had wanted. But Sorun couldn't have even done that. Because, because why? Because he just wasn't powerful enough? Was that it? Was the issue truly that he simply didn't have the power necessary to defeat him yet? He needed even more Emeralds, perhaps all of them? Most assuredly that had to be the case.
So it'd been for nothing, then. That entire fight against Eggman had been nothing but a humiliating reminder to him that he was too weak to do anything on his own without these powers. That was just one single emotion swirling around in him- intense humiliation. Humiliation at being so weak compared to Sonic, and even having been called out on it by Eggman. At having been so weak he had to be saved by Sonic and entrust everybody else's safety to him. To be seen in that state, that helpless, vulnerable state that caused no end to the shame tearing through his very being. Frustration at his own weakness, and frustration at Sonic's seeming lack of weakness.
He'd just wanted to live a bit longer. Why couldn't he have had even that? He just wanted all this pain to finally end.
"... Fine. I guess it was too good to be true." Sorun jammed the end of Yamato into the ground, using it as a crutch to stand up to his feet. "I need all of them to take him down. I need power... more power..."
"Hey, Sorun?" The human straightened his body out a bit and turned his head to the side at the source of the voice. It was Sally, who had a look of worry on her face that was almost identical to the one Sonic had worn minutes prior. He could tolerate her, at least. She didn't make him feel absolutely worthless. "Are you doing okay?"
"If you mean am I good to make a portal for us to go back, then yes," Sorun answered. When Sally continued giving him that look, he sighed and turned his head away. "If you're about to go and lecture me for going off on my own like that-"
"Sonic told me. I know it wasn't your fault, Sorun, but..." He heard her stop speaking, and then watched as she stepped around him so she was back in his view. "He's really worried about you, you know."
"Mm-hm." Sorun pulled Yamato out of its sheath. "And?"
"I wanted to say..." When Sorun looked back up at her after inspecting his blade, he saw Sally wringing her hands together, as if searching for the right words to say. "You... did really well, getting us into that factory," she settled on, turning her eyes back up to Sorun. "I know I didn't make it very clear before, but it's really great you're putting in so much effort for the cause. I just wanted you to know that."
It was hollow comfort to Sorun's ears, and it did little to visually improve his mood, but it was still something. Acknowledgement. Something that said what he did meant something. Justification to his existence.
"Just," Sally continued, "if you can, please try not to go and run off on your own like that again. I know you have all your powers and taking on Eggman like that was really tempting, but you're not Sonic."
"You're not Sonic."
"You're not Sonic."
"And you are certainly no Sonic."
The words kept playing in Sorun's head over and over again. Like a constant reminder. For a single moment he'd even flashed back to that room, to him lying defeated under Eggman as he grinned maniacally down at him. But then he blinked, and he was brought back to the reality of him standing next to a dead tree with Sally right in front of him.
"... Why does he get to be so special, Sally?" Sorun's voice had come out quiet and cracked, his head turning back to his sword so that he could see his own miserable visage in the metal's reflection. "Why?"
"Sorun, you... don't talk like that." Behind Sally's chastising tone was a hint of worry that Sorun manage to detect. Even a bit of distress. A pitying tone of voice that did nothing to help his mood. "Sonic, he's just... he's just Sonic, I don't know what to say. But everybody's special. He has his speed, you have your sword... and without your sword none of this would have been possible." She took a step closer to him. "You should be proud for what you've helped us achieve."
Pride. He didn't feel prideful at all. He felt like his pride had been stripped away from him the moment he lost. From the second Sonic had seen him like that and had to go save him.
Sally seemed to see that Sorun's mood hadn't shifted in the slightest. It made her look a bit more upset, the chipmunk glancing back at the group near them before focusing back on Sorun. "I know you said that accepting help makes you feel useless, but we're a team, Sorun. Helping each other is what we do. Because all of that?" She gestured her hand out in the direction of the flaming factory remains. "Sorun, that wasn't just Sonic. It was us. All of us. And you're a part of us. You're far from useless. You mean a lot to all of us."
"... Sure, Sally." Yamato's edge cut through the air twice before she could respond. Space folded inwards, and a portal back to Freedom HQ was made. "Portal's ready." He took a step forwards, paused, and glanced back at Sally. "Thanks."
And without another word, Sorun stepped through it. The indescribable amount of self-loathing he felt made it so he couldn't even look back at anybody.
