The Fox and the Seedrian: Frontiers
by milesprower06
Chapter Five
With a final flip of her wrist, Cosmo flipped the omelet in the pan a final time, before carrying it over to a carrying tray and slid it down onto the waiting plate, alongside a small pile of hash browns, before covering the plate with a stainless steel dome, and carried it out the back door towards the lab as the sub was just beginning to rise in front of the house.
It was a brisk morning, and the seedrian never tired of feeling the wet dew on the grass before it evaporated in the rising sun. She walked through the expansive backyard garden towards what could be considered the 'front' entrance of Tails' underground lab and hangar, built into the long hill as it descended towards the Sapphire Sea. It was considerably harder to find if you didn't know where to look, but fortunately for Cosmo, she knew exactly where her husband spent almost half his time. Just before the terrain started to descend towards the ocean, there was a deceptively simple wooden shack. The door was locked with a keypad, and she input the six digit code to unlock it. The door opened to reveal an elevator. Closing the door, the lift gently descended two hundred feet underground.
Thirty seconds later, another set of sliding doors appeared, and opened to reveal the control center of her husband's underground laboratory. Consoles ringed the edges of the room, a hologram-projecting diagnostics table was the centerpiece, and large windows provided a great view of the cavernous hanger below, where the space-faring Blue Hurricane was currently docked.
Chris Thorndyke, Tails' lab partner and co-founder of Topaz Harbor Technologies swiveled around in his chair to face her, having heard her come in.
"Well, good morning, Cosmo. This is quite a surprise. What can I do for you?" The young human adult asked.
"You can enjoy this breakfast for me. I knew you'd likely be down here alone this morning, seeing as how this is your day off," the seedrian replied.
Chris smirked as Cosmo set the tray down on the center table as he rolled his chair over. She lifted the dome off, and his mouth immediately began to water.
"Are you already going stir crazy looking for things to do?" Chris asked as he picked up the fork and knife, beginning to cut into the omelet stuffed with sausage and a garden's worth of vegetables.
"I wouldn't say stir crazy, just… Looking to distract myself and not worry about Tails and Lily," Cosmo sighed, taking a seat on the other chair in the room, rolling over to sit next to him. "By the stars, they've only been gone a day…"
"I can show you where they're at," Chris said after swallowing his first bite, tapping a few keys on the holographic interface built into the surface of the table. The table lit up, and projected a hologram of Mobius, which quickly zoomed into the Sapphire Sea, then to Angel Island, where three clustered red dots appeared several miles from the edge of the floating island.
"He didn't tell me they'd be able to be tracked," Cosmo said.
"He probably thought that if he told you about every single safety precaution, you'd think it would be more dangerous than it actually is," Chris offered. "He wanted to be sure we could find their precise locations if we needed to find them if something had gone wrong, or if there was an emergency, on their end or ours."
Cosmo continued to stare at the hologram of the island. If they had landed at the Master Emerald altar, they had already gone a fair distance into the jungles to the east of it.
"Well, at least they're together. I know Amy was worried about Sonic zooming all over the place and not sticking with the two of them. Alright, enough of that. How's Helen?" Cosmo asked, changing the subject.
"Opening the flower shop, that's the only reason I'm here this early," Chris answered. Helen, Vanilla, and Cream frequently changed shifts to keep thing interesting, and the only mornings Chris didn't cook breakfast for her was when she was on the opening shift, and was thus out the door before he was even up in the morning.
"Here's a question; Lily really hasn't pestered you or Tails about returning to Green Gate at all? After all, it's been about four years. I figured she'd want to return and see how everything's going," Chris asked, continuing into his breakfast.
"Not really, now that you mention it. I suppose those probes Tails has been sending out every six months sated whatever curiosity she's had. With how fast the fauna was spreading, there may not even be a suitable spot to land anymore."
Chris nodded. Even from orbit, the images the probes sent back painted quite the stark contrast to the dead planet they had been pulled to during the Meterex War; Green Gate was now positively teeming with flora of all kinds, reversing all the damage the Seedrians had done in their final years. Perhaps Lily was keen on leaving the planet alone to its healing, and concentrate on her life here on Mobius. He remembered how his interests frequently shifted as a kid, and no doubt her thoughts were now on her recurring dreams about the Master Emerald.
"Say, while I'm sitting here finishing this, I've got a comm frequency for Tails if you want to talk to him," Chris offered.
"No," Cosmo declined. "I don't want them to think I'm worried about them after less than a day. I was the one who convinced Tails to let Lily do this, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm up for helping you do anything else, though."
"Well, I didn't really have anything scheduled, this being my day off and all. How about you show me what you've changed with the garden, then we walk to downtown to surprise Helen and Cream? By that time, we could all do lunch together," Chris offered.
Cosmo's expression brightened.
"That sounds like a terrific idea, Chris."
After one of the best nights of sleep she could recall in recent memory, Lily was up at dawn, and already had her tent broken down and stuffed back into her pack while Sonic and her dad prepared breakfast to the sounds of the waterfall through the treeline.
"So, we should have our re-breathers ready, right?" Lily asked, as she ate the biscuits and gravy mix from the ready-to-eat pouch that had just needed boiling water.
"Yup, as a precaution," Tails replied. "Although we haven't had rain in the region in a few days, so it probably shouldn't be too many submerged areas down there."
Once breakfast was finished, they continued through the forest towards the waterfall. When they got there, Lily surveyed scene, and figured that a bridge must have been here at one time, judging by the wooden posts, not to mention the charred ropes that were tied around the splintered remains of logs dangling off the side of the cliff.
"So where to now? I don't see a way down," Lily asked.
"No sweat, Lily. With your dad, there's always a way down… And up. Ready, pal?" Sonic asked, looking over at the fox.
"Wait here, Lily," Tails told her. He took Sonic by the wrists, and they both leapt off of the edge of the cliff. His twin tails rapidly spun up, and the two of them slowly descended into the cavern below.
While she waited, Lily placed her hand on a nearby tree, and used her agrokinesis to will a vine to rapidly grow. It snaked through the grass, and soon draped down the cliff. By the time she heard the spin of her father's tails, she had nearly completed it.
"Rappelling down?" Tails asked.
"I don't want to tire you out too fast, dad," Lily said.
"I could say the same for you, Lily. Agrokinesis takes some energy, doesn't it?" he asked.
"It does, but I did just have breakfast," she replied.
"Well, then how about a second vine, so we can go in tandem," Tails replied, as he dug the connecting clip out of his pack.
Not willing to argue, and knowing that he was going to insist on safety first, Lily nodded, and went about growing a second vine that descended down right next to the first. A few moments later, the second one was complete, and they both picked them up and gave them test tugs before walking backwards towards the cliffside.
"Alright, nice and even," Tails said, clipping their harnesses together. "Ready?"
Lily peered over the edge, barely able to make out Sonic at the bottom through the mist.
The pair shifted their weight, and let themselves fall over the edge, their feet immediately catching the wall of stone, and they steadily descended together, kicking off the wall at the same time, falling a few feet at a time. As they descended, Lily noticed how the natural cliffside soon changed to ancient masonry, with the bricks having varying discoloration, from tan and brown to shades of teal and even indigo.
Two minutes later, they reached the bottom, and their feet hit the stone floor with a light splash, as the water from above gathered in small puddles that slowly trickled through the cracks and streams.
"Isn't this whole place supposed to be underwater?" Lily asked, taking a look around as her dad unclipped the tether holding their harnesses together.
"I'm sure more of it was when it was part of the continent, or just floating in the ocean when Knuckles hid the Master Emerald, and not floating in midair. It's important to remember that this place wasn't always an island, and that most of the ancient construction predates the separation," Tails told her.
"And believe me, I'll take this over half-submerged tunnels and corridors any day of the week," Sonic commented. "When I came through here the first time, I didn't have any fancy re-breathers. I had to rely on pockets of air coming up through the cracks, and do my best to keep my head above water."
"Well, lets go, and hope there's a way up to the gardens before nightfall," Tails told them, ushering Sonic to lead the way through the corridors ahead.
"Wonder what this place was used for in ancient times," Lily asked, eyeing half-pipes that could easily pass for water slides.
"I'd guess aqueducts of some kind," Sonic offered. "I wasn't down here too long, and hardly covered every inch of the place, but I imagine the ancients could have even lived down here at some point, judging by those pillars and arched windows."
The hedgehog pointed to the deep indigo walls on the edges of the very cavernous room, and the rays of the morning sun coming through the tall arched windows was the only reason they had enough natural light, and didn't need to pull out their headlamps or lanterns yet.
"Hard to imagine how they constructed this place," Lily commented as they ducked into another low tunnel, keeping their re-breathers ready as the water level was now just below their ankles. As the trio came out of the tunnel, they came to another cavernous room, and Lily noticed the rusted, inanimate remains of a robot.
"One of Eggman's?" She asked.
Sonic nodded.
"I guess not everything got washed out when the island rose again and most of the water emptied out," the hedgehog offered.
Save for Lily periodically stopping to take pictures with her weather- and water-proof camera, the trek through the ancient waterways went on without incident.
"Well, in addition to what you're here for, Lily, I'm sure you'll put together quite the scrapbook," Sonic offered.
The trio traversed one more tunnel, and came out to one last cavernous room; this one with one of Eggman's old containment capsules. It had been blown open long ago. Lily hoped that the animals contained within had been able to safely make it out of these labyrinthine aqueducts safely.
As they closed in on the capsule, she felt the ground under her feet vibrate, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest when a geyser of water shot out of the ground a few feet away from the capsule. The column of water shot up for several seconds, even going through a hole in the roof, leading to her drawing the conclusion that this geyser was a frequent occurrence.
"A geyser? On a floating island? How?" Lilly asked after she had caught her breath.
"You probably think we're pretty deep underground, but we're actually just beneath the surface. Under these aqueducts is the lava reefs, and that causes the geyser," Tails explained.
"It's also our one-way ticket to the Marble Gardens," Sonic said.
"I know what you're thinking, Sonic. When you get up there, find something to tie one of your ropes to, so Lily and I can get up safely. Hope you're ready to get wet, hun. We're hardly going to make the entire climb between geysers," Tails warned her.
Lily saw Sonic step over to the destroyed capsule, and saw him impatiently tap his foot, until the ground started to vibrate again.
"Geronimo!" The hedgehog shouted, jumping up and curling up into a ball, before the geyser erupted, sending him rocketing towards the roof, and he quickly vanished into the hole in the roof.
Tails couldn't help but smirk at his best friend's antics. He had kept his promise to stick together, but knew there would be times such as these, where momentary separation would be necessary, and he took those opportunities to be, well, to be Sonic.
The geyser erupted two more times before the end of a rope appeared through the hole, and was slowly lowered down to the ground. There was a third eruption, sending the rope swinging wildly, but it swayed back into position as the geyser subsided.
"Alright, re-breather in, Lily," Tails told her, taking his own out of his pack. Lily did as she was told, and once it was in, she gave her dad a thumbs up.
"Now, once I put this breather in, we're not going to be able to talk, so listen up; after the next geyser, I'm going to fly you as fast I can to the rope, and we'll both start climbing. When you see the geyser come at you, brace yourself against the wall, take deep, steady breaths, and wait until it passes to keep climbing. Understood?"
Lily nodded and gave him another thumbs up, being effectively muted by the water-breathing device.
His instructions finished, Tails got his re-breather in just in time for the next geyser to come. Right as it finished, he took his daughter by the wrists, and flew her towards the rope and hole in the roof. She reached out for the rope and grabbed onto it, tight, quickly climbing into the water-made vertical tunnel.
"Geyser!" Tails yelled, his speech muffled by the re-breather, but intelligible enough to be understood.
Lily ceased climbing, put her feet against the far side of the wall, and pushed her back against the other side, anchoring herself in place just in time for her whole body to get absolutely soaked with a jet of water. She clenched her eyes shut and focused entirely on keeping her lips tightly sealed around the re-breather. As soon as she felt the upward pressure subside, she continued climbing, only this time it took considerably more effort, as now she and her pack were dripping with water.
"Keep coming, you're almost there!" she heard Sonic call from up above.
"Geyser!" She heard her dad warn, and again braced herself against both sides of the wall.
Her dad had to be right about the lava reefs below, because this water was considerably warmer than what they had been walking through for the last hour and a half.
Once again, the pressure subsided, and Lily re-doubled her efforts on getting to the top. She saw Sonic's hand reach down to offer help, and she grabbed on tight, and was pulled up through the top, quickly followed by her dad. She let go of Sonic's hand, and rolled onto the grass. Barely two seconds after her dad emerged from the hole, the geyser erupted again, showering them and the immediate area with lukewarm water.
Now out of danger, she pulled the re-breather from her lips and rolled over to her knees, getting to her feet.
"Wow, Knuckles wasn't kidding…" she commented, dropping her pack once she was far enough away from the geyser and shook herself off as best she could, with Tails doing the same. She was guessing it would be awhile before they were completely dry again.
The trio did a quick check of their packs to make sure none of them had gotten torn, and the contents weren't damaged. After that, they put them back on their shoulders, and stepped through the brush, and Lily gasped at the sight that was before them; the rolling hills dotted with pillars, statues, and crumbling structures.
"Welcome to the Marble Gardens, Lily," Sonic said. "The perfect destination for archaeology and lunch."