The faces of my parents grinning happily down at me, my stocky brown furred father, my slender bespeckled white furred mother. I was playing with my wooden blocks when they suddenly came rushing over and making happy noises at me. It would be much later when my parents told me that I had managed to spell out my name
My flop-eared uncle Wallace was standing in front of me in his baker boy hat, white shirt and rolled up sleeves, tweed vest and red tie. He was grinning widely at me through a bushy mustache, an unlit oak pipe hanging from his lips. Fists swung at me playfully and my own adolescent hands felt barely up to the task for even this much.
A grinning blue eyed young girl pulls me along by the hand, basket in one arm, white hair and fur, blue shirt and purple overalls. I called her Princess because her family wore the most clothes in the town. Her cheeks would puff up in a manner I found amusing whenever I did this so I always did…
The sight of my hometown from an elevated position, scenic and calming. It was also a sight I'd seen countless times before and I long since took the view for granted. Home was familiar and most importantly, at the time, utterly boring. Day in and day out farming and maybe going out to scavenge the crashed airships, it was rare any of those were considered safe enough for children to tag along. I wanted excitement, I wanted adventure like the stories. I wanted to be more than some silly little farm rabbit.
The road was before me, the entirety of my home was behind me waving goodbye and calling out after me. There were tears and no little amount of attempted persuasion to stop me but I wanted more than this, I wanted- TO LIVE!
A stone of not insignificant size grazed my head as I plummeted, blessedly knocking me out of my shock. Barely a moment had passed but that moment was more than enough to be halfway to the ground. In a frantic moment I desperately went over everything I had on me that could do something to break my fall! There was nothing! Why the hell would I have something like a chute when I had Saffron to catch or carry me!? Not that a chute would help considering how close to the ground I was!
'STOP THINKING AND DO SOMETHING!' Roaring internally at my tightly clenched hands I forced them open and kicked.
Lady shot away from under me, crashing into the rubble strewn ground with a loud crash and larger dust cloud. It felt like my brain was being squashed into the bottom of my skull and my vision swirled as my blood rushed down my limbs. Somehow the leap was enough to slow my momentum significantly though not nearly enough to briefly stop or even reverse it. I must have blacked out for an instant as suddenly I found myself falling in an uncontrolled spin. There was no time to get my bearings and figure out where up was, let alone start whirling my arms to stop spinning.
CRACK!
'...I'm alive?'
That had almost certainly been a fall of excess a hundred feet, not to mention completely uneven terrain for a landing zone. I could take a fall of a hundred feet with merely broken legs though maybe that number was a bit higher now after my training. But I hadn't taken that fall with my legs, I had plummeted out of the sky in an uncontrolled spin and landed in a tangle upon my back. And yet I was barely in any pain from impact! Hell I probably hurt myself more by jumping off Lady!
'This armor was worth the investment!' I thought, marveling at my protective shell for the first time. Taking a moment to knock on my chestplate in appreciation I rose onto my feet.
The base of the cliff had already been a mess of broken rock and boulders, the addition of even more rock and boulders hadn't done much. Though one obvious change was the form of Lady partially buried face first into the rubble. I found myself just standing there staring at the still form of my mount. Strangely I found myself feeling rather morose instead of frustrated at the fact I'd have to replace my ride.
Rrrrrrrr!
Lady seemingly roaring defiantly to life had me hopping back in startlement. My hand was halfway to my chest to clutch at my heart before I caught the motion. I leapt forward and was at the struggling badnik's side in a moment's breath.
My metal mount was stuck fast. The wheel was spinning and sending loose rock flying more than it caught traction. It's arms was buried deeply beneath heavy boulders and pinned down, perhaps not much of a problem for say a crabmeat but motobugs weren't exactly known for their arm strength.
'Another thing to add to the list of upgrades.' I thought with an inward grumble.
Adding seat belts, upgrading the armor plate, better engine, adding flight capability. Compared to Dessy's near total remodeling all I did was make Lady bigger and install in a seat. To install everything I wanted its frame would need extensive expansion merely to make room. I wouldn't be surprised if Lady's remodeling would be as expensive as Dessy's.
'I wish I could afford the tech and parts that went into the Metal Sonic line.' I scratched my ears as I looked for a decent leverage point, Lady was heavier than a car certainly but surely I could push it loose with my legs. 'But just the common machine parts and upgrades for Dessy drained my allowance. I can't even begin to imagine how ruinously expensive any parts that would go into an Anti-Sonic machine would be for me. Hell, I'd probably not even be able to look at them in the first place.'
It was as I was thinking how to safely wedge myself under Lady that I paused. Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement. Looking over in the distance I was greeted with a sight that froze my blood and threatened to send me to my knees in terror. Melting out of the treeline was a mixed force of humans and mobians wearing camouflage clothing or cloaks.
'Oh right, I was nearly killed by people blowing out the road from under me.' I thought inanely, dumbfounded by the sight before me. 'How could I possibly forget?! Well it certainly seems like people really hate paying their taxes! Yeah seems like a measured response to the taxman!'
Struck dumb as I was, I failed to respond in any meaningful manner whatsoever as the somewhat distant figures opened fire. There I stood presenting the easiest target possible to my prospective murderers and I could only stare out at them like I couldn't believe the reality before me. And really it was just so much utter bullshit. Here I was not even two weeks later since I last found myself before a small army out for my blood, not just back in the same situation but even worse! At least last time I had an army on my side, this time my enemy had made sure to rob me of that advantage.
I don't know what snapped me out of my shock, either my will to live had finally overpowered it or perhaps a bullet had grazed me. Either way it was less a sudden return of control and more like the awakening of a sleeping limb. To my horror I found myself slowly turning away from the gun toting horde and beginning to walk away like I was out on a brisk stroll. If it weren't for the fact running and gunning made them such bad shots I would have been dead then and there. Gunned down as I strolled away instead of run like an idiot, such an ignoble end would have been well deserved. Maybe it was these disparaging thoughts combined with the mental image of me dying to a single lucky shot but my bodily control finally returned in full.
Picking up speed into a sprint I leapt forward towards a dagger like boulder sticking straight out of the rubble heap around me. My only hope of survival outnumbered as I am would be sticking to cover, that lot may be bad shots but there were a lot of them and only one needed to get lucky.
Bullets rained down around me even as I landed safely behind cover, bullets chipping rock surfaces into stinging clouds of dust and shrapnel.
'I really should have packed some grenades!' I thought with gritted teeth.
All I had taken with me were small arms and extra ammo. I wasn't actually expecting to get attacked within the borders of the Empire! Plus I had a whole fucking army of murder bots ready to retaliate with extreme prejudice at the first sign of trouble! If anything needed exploding I expected to tell a badnik to do it, not find myself suddenly bereft of the things and hunted!
'Stop freaking out! Focus on what you have and what you can do!' The intensification of fire on my position reminded me to keep moving. 'You've got a pistol and shotgun, you're loaded down with spare ammo, you've got the same armor as GUN's best and you've got your natural abilities! You don't even need to fight, you just need to survive long enough for patrols to arrive!'
I leapt and ran around and between the labyrinthine mess of boulders, the rain of bullets not ceasing for a single moment. With how outnumbered I was I didn't dare even risk blind firing at my enemies. Putting distance between myself and an army of people out for my blood was the priority and I-
There was a sudden high pitched and brief screech of metal that had my ears ringing. I felt like someone just gave me a sudden intense jab in the side of my back with the tip of a metal rod. The noise with the sensation shattered my concentration and I found myself tripping into a roll.
"Ugh!" I grunted both from impact and the sudden throbbing pain in my back. Reaching behind to rub at the ache my probing fingers found a shallow crater.
'I was shot…' I thought with shock before gritting my teeth in anger. 'AGAIN! I was shot AGAIN! FUCK!'
What should have been intense relief at the fact my armor stopped what was almost certainly a mortal wound was instead burning ANGER. I've never been so angry I actually felt a vein in my temple throb and heard my heartbeat in my ears. But then again I've never been in a situation where not even in the full span of a month I've had literal hundreds of people out for my blood. Never before had I been in a fight that resulted in more than bloody noses and bruises and yet I've now killed half a dozen people. Never before had I ever imagined myself on the side of the oppressors, always I've had fantasies of protecting my people against human expansionism and yet here I am putting the jackboot to anyone irregardless of who they were.
'This isn't FUCKING FAIR!' Gnashing my teeth in petulant rage I smashed a gauntleted fist against the ground. 'All I was doing this time was collecting taxes! I wasn't attacking anyone! I-I-I-FUCKING FUCK!'
"Hurry! He was around here!"
Ears twitching and shifting position I shot up onto my feet. Taking a complete guess on the source of the voice based on how close it sounded I took aim and kicked out. The boulder I had taken cover behind soared a short distance before landing again and rolling. I heard screams of pain and crunching noises followed a moment later by several crushed forms appearing in the boulder's passing. That got rid of a few but there was far more to replace them.
By the time the horde swarming into the rubble got over their shock I was already diving back into cover and safe from the hail of retaliatory fire. I had to keep moving though, obviously while I didn't think to bring grenades they didn't.
Explosions resounded behind me as I leapt again, showering in a shower of rock shards. I winced as I landed from the feel of several bits of stone finding gaps in my armor, nothing vital but places on my arms and legs started stinging horribly. Still I had to keep moving, somewhere off to the side I could hear the hurried scrabbling of feet over stone. Aiming blindly to my left with the shotgun I leapt briefly into the open, blind firing as I went. I heard a sound like a wheeze and a body hitting the ground and the fact I could now reliably identify that noise had my gut churning despite my anger.
More gunshots, this time from behind I felt two impacts. One bullet deflected off my helmet and another impacted solidly into a pauldon. I whipped around, my shoulder throbbing in pain though I hardly noticed. Several rebels had bunched up and presented to me a target even my amateurish shooting couldn't miss.
Rapidly I emptied my pistol into the crowd and would have been deeply gratified by the dropping bodies if it weren't for the detail I just noticed.
Humans and mobians working together again!' I thought as I leapt into cover. 'Because of fucking course I've got both coming after me again!'
No time to get fixated on that though, the rubble may be funneling the insurgents into manageable numbers but they were clearly trying to surround me. I was proven right a moment later when a shape leapt at me from the right.
My back impacted into a long piece of road and I had a brief moment to see that my attacker was some kind of amphibian mobian woman wearing a leafy cloak. With one hand she held the barrel of my shotgun away and with the other she raised a submachine gun to fire point blank. I raised my pistol only to remember I hadn't reloaded it yet. With a screaming warcry she let loose and I tensed as I expected pain to wash over me.
To my surprised relief however after a deafening racket and blinding flashes I barely felt the bullets as anything worse than light punches. The woman however screeched, dropping her gun as she clutched at her eyes and blood streamed down her face. Not only were the bullets too low caliber to really hurt me she had fragged herself with the deflected bullets. Wasting not another moment I lashed out with a kick and sent the woman crashing into a boulder with a sickening crunch and she immediately quieted.
All around me the sound of charging boots were resounding louder and louder, not only that but there was an ever growing earth shaking rumble. The blinding rush of anger drained out of me, leaving only frantic desire to live in its place.
'Fuck! I'm getting too distracted by fighting!' I thought in rising wide eyed panic. 'What the hell is that noise?! Is more of the cliff going to collapse?! I need to get out of here!'
Reloading my pistol with only some fumbling I moved again and tried to run away whenever I heard or glimpsed movement. Before long however I found myself with my back pressed against a boulder as no matter where I looked I saw insurgents taking positions just around corners. I was surrounded utterly and completely. They had clearly been overeager to just swarm me to quickly kill me, but I had bloodied their noses enough to handle me smartly. They had mobians and humans in their number, as strong as I was, as tough as my armor was, once they closed in they could drag me down with sheer numbers and I'd be as good as dead. My only hope now was to pick the path of least resistance and try to make a breakthrough.
Making one final scan of my surroundings I picked a direction that seemed to only have two people. I tensed my legs to make a leap for my life when the world before me erupted in noise and blinding light.
Already half frenzied by mortal terror as I was, the sudden chaos had nearly overwhelmed me. Having apparently fallen back onto my posterior I found myself staring dumbly as a rain of lasers exploded boulders and people both. Finally looking up I saw a battle damaged swarm of buzz bombers led by Saffron diving down from above.
'Oh there you are! I had nearly forgotten you existed, Saffron!' Came the half crazed thought. 'Finally come back from dropping off the humans to safety? What, were you bringing them back home to FUCKING METROPOLIS!?'
I was then reminded that despite the new threat arriving, the insurgents had very much not forgotten about me. There were a series of many little impacts all over my body but along with that was a number of intense stabbing sensations in my armor gaps. Looking to my left I saw another human insurgent ratcheting a shotgun while a monkey mobian lobbed a grenade at me.
Dumbly I lied there in increasing amounts of pain and injury and watched the grenade sail through the air at me. Head empty of all thought I swung my leg up and somehow managed to not only hit the grenade but give it a solid enough whack to send it flying back. The human had only just finished reloading his gun when the grenade smashed squarely into his face and rebounded off a short distance into the air. The monkey flailed in visible panic I felt absently sympathetic for and managed to catch the grenade only to explode an instant later.
'Well… another problem solved.' I thought with a nod when I heard a series of explosions echo behind me. 'What, are they just chucking grenades randomly in my direction now?'
Standing back was a scarily difficult affair, intense aches and pains flared and throbbed throughout my body that had me understanding what an old gray fur felt like on the daily. Unwanted empathy for the elderly aside I heard the approach of boots and prepared for another assault only for it to arrive in odd fashion. Three insurgents backed into view, weapons held warily towards the direction they were backing from. Somehow these three had completely forgotten I was here if the horrified surprise in the eyes of the insurgent who spotted me was any indication.
Lashing out with a kick I sent one sprawling into their fellows and had them all in a tangle on the ground. They tried to scramble away or get their weapons up again but two shots with my shotgun had them all safely dead or at least safely bleeding out. Absently replacing the shells in my shotgun I glanced around the corner they had come and was met with a shocking sight.
Somehow even more battered than before, Lady was hopping from boulder to boulder in order to traverse the rough terrain. Standing atop her back was the ramshackle form of Alfa. The damaged monkey bot stood proud and tall as it could, cackling in an electronic stutter as it tossed bombs everywhere.
"YOU STILL A-A-ALIVE CONY?!" Alfa shouted with an electronic stutter to its voice. "YEAH Y-YOuuuUU ARE!"
'...I'm getting that monkey a tune up if we get out of this.' I thought with a shocking amount of relief at the sight of him moving again. 'Definitely deserves it.'
Victory wasn't clear even with the tide beginning to turn, the addition of over a dozen badniks and some custom numbers no longer made this fight suicidal but it was hardly good odds. I'd seen badniks lose a fight with numbers in their favor and it most certainly wasn't here. If only Dessy hadn't been lost!
The rumble from before had grown to become audible to normal hearing and keeping my footing became difficult on the shifting stones. I looked up in time to see the ground explode in a shower of dust and stone amidst a crowd of insurgents. Soon the dust cleared and I was met with the welcome sight of Dessy's dented form sticking out of the ground. Clearly it had gotten buried and managed to dig itself free with the use of its grinding teeth… teeth which currently held the crushed lower half of a human.
I could only stare up in horror as Dessy revved up its shredding teeth and the human disappeared into its maw with a choked off scream of agony. Twin streams of blood and ground meat and bone erupted out of the debris vents in the side of Dessy's head. The insurgents had understandably frozen in shock at this sight of brutality, something Dessy was only too happy to take advantage of.
As it surged forward in serpentine movement it managed to snatch up two more insurgents in its grinding maw. From its three carrier segments out swarms nine drones, each one like a miniature of Dessy's head and armed with a small laser. Along its sides the laser emitters light in a deadly cascade of blazing death. The insurgents returned fire, rockets and bullets both managing to hit Dessy's armored sides even as it slithered about, leaving trails of red in its wake. Dessy's armor was made of stronger heavier alloys then my own and was in thicker plates atop of that, bullets pinged or smashed apart harmlessly and even the rockets did little more than add dents. They were more successful in bringing down the drones but those were expendable and could be packed back into their carriers for repairs.
'Are… are we winning?'
It certainly seemed like we were from all the screams I could hear. But I couldn't see anything from where I was. For all I knew the badniks were making a supreme effort but would succumb to numbers soon enough, maybe we actually were winning but the survivors were being driven in my direction and would swamp me. There was one way of finding out however and I wondered which was stupider, keeping my head down and not knowing the flow of battle or sticking my head out in the open and risking it getting blown off.
Well… here's hoping I at least don't see it coming.
"It's just been nothing but shit choices…" Muttering under my breath I clambered atop a boulder and took in my bearings.
Well it was as bad as it looked but not nearly as bad as I thought it'd be. Everywhere I looked were the ravages of this battle. Dessy's sheer bulk was flatting the rubble and leaving a blood slick trail in its wake. Bodies of insurgents were scattered about, a lucky few were merely dead on the ground but most were not whole, torn apart by Dessy's firepower or Alfa's bombs. There were survivors despite the badniks' best efforts but they were in full retreat to my utter relief.
Looking up I spied the still headless statue of Robotnik. With the loss of the head and road its completion would be delayed until both were replaced. Speaking of losses… it was supposed to be my mission to deliver safely wasn't it? I mean my job was to collect taxes and I did that… it was just blown up in the process of transporting it. And now I'm making excuses and reaching for justifications. This was clearly all some grand pageantry for the Doctor's sake and the actual value of the taxes was practically beneath consideration. But at the same time this pageantry was important to Robotnik for reasons beyond the material, the symbolism of the conquered giving tribute. Really I ought to be panicking about now but I was feeling a bit drained at the moment.
'At least the statue didn't take any damage.' I raised my right hand to shade my eyes against the sun.
Crack!
Wuh?
I blinked and found half my vision quite suddenly obscured by a spider web of white lines. My right eye socket throbbed in a familiar pain. Huh, was I stabbed in the face again? Strange, I didn't see anyone rush at me. Pawing at my right eye was oddly difficult, as if I had spent the night sleeping on my arm and my hand was still waking up. Eventually I managed to pluck something hot and mostly flat from the right side of my goggles. It was a little black met- why did my hand have a hole in it?
'Oh… I was shot again… wasn't I?' A wave of surrealness washed over me and it felt as if I was seeing the world through a long dark tunnel. I looked up in the direction I vaguely felt the shot had come from and saw only fleeing forms of the insurgents disappearing into the treeline.
Crac-CLANG!
Blinking again I found my sight suddenly blocked by a scorched, dented metal wall. Looking up I saw Dessy had coiled around me in a protective posture, its shredding teeth revving to such a crescendo it sounded more like an enraged shriek. The upgraded caterkiller then unleashed a blinding fusillade of laser fire though at what exactly I could not currently say as enclosed as I now was. There was the sound of more explosions though not in a direction I expected.
Standing contrasted against the horizon the headless statue of Doctor Robotnik started to topple forward. The great edifice of the Doctor after having been kneecapped by very well aimed shots had nowhere to go but down and did so with great calamitous clatter. After staring at the empty space where the statue ought to have been for several long moments I felt all the energy I had flow out of me. It was all I could do to merely fall to my knees and not topple off the top of the boulder in imitation of the statue.
A moment later the sound of a gently revving engine approached and Dessy uncoiled a bit to allow me to see Alfa driving Lady towards me. Alfa didn't look any worse for wear though that wasn't saying much considering the condition I found it in. Lady however was covered in tiny craters from high caliber bullets and one side was ripped completely open by a lucky rocket. My transport did not sport the quality of armor Dessy did as it wasn't exactly meant to be rode into battle. Just another thing I'd have to rethink going forward…
"Hey cony!" Alfa waved from the driver seat. "You alright?! You look almost as bad as I fee-fee-fee-fee-fee-"
Seemingly stuck in a stutter, Alfa's body suddenly froze and it slowly toppled from the driver's seat to fall to the ground with a crash. It lay there utterly frozen for a long moment, the impact having at least knocked it out of the stutter.
"ERROR!"
"... Yeah, I feel the same way." Sighing I pushed off the ground with an effort that felt deceptively herculean.
From above I heard the low roar of thrusters and saw that Saffron had returned with the surviving flyers. Not a single one was without battle damage from bullets but out of all my machines only Saffron was barely touched. It hovered in the air above me looking all in the world like it hadn't been in a battle for our lives, in fact the only damage I could make out was a couple scratches. Guess I had designed it well… at least that means I don't really have to worry about needing to upgrade it as well.
Picking up Alfa I began the arduous task of folding it back up again for transport.
As much as I wanted to immediately turn tail and run back to the Mother Egg I still had a job to do. Doubtless, Robotnik already knew about everything that happened and considering that none of my badniks had suddenly boomed with his voice he expected me to finish it. So I'd have to finish my route, collect the rest of the taxes and then finally return to base for debriefing. Already that last part felt like a blade hung precariously above me, ready to fall at any minute.
"... Okay, let's just get myself patched up first." I muttered as I unpacked my first aid kit from Lady's fortuitously undamaged trunk. "I need to project a strong first impression and I can't exactly do that covered in blood."
So much to do and the job was barely halfway finished, but as bowel freezing as the unknown of whether or not there would be further attacks was… nothing compared to the distant overhanging dread of what would be Doctor Robotnik's reaction to my failure. Would he be raging and take that out on me like he had done to so many other personal minions? Would he be dismissive and take this as a sign that organic minions were worthless? Would he demand I work even harder, as hard as a machine to prove my worth?
No matter what it was I'd be finding out one way or the other eventually…
-TBC-
Author Note: AND I'M BACK AGAIN! After nearly getting my house burned down AGAIN!
After a brief evacuation I'm back and lucky enough my home wasn't burned this time, sorry for the delay.
Anyway
Reginald's first failure, how is Eggman going to take it? Well if he was Archie!Eggman he'd be halfway to being Adam Smasher right now wouldn't he? Games!Eggman is a different beast, kinder, more human. We'll see how things go when Reginald comes back from the job.
Hopefully there won't be another goddamned forest fire so there shouldn't be excessive delays in the next update!
Until then.