Disclaimer: See first chapter.
Damages
Whisper sat down, waiting impatiently for the GUN agent nonsense to come. A magenta-hued hedgehog, a mix of blue and pink, sat down next to her quietly. "So. Whisper. The wisps want to know if they're not going to be in trouble because they don't want to be in trouble and they're my friends and I don't have a lot of them so I think they shouldn't be in trouble for anything that according to Pink they may or may not have done because really no one was really hurt by it and they're really tired so if you could just let them be normal that would be fantastic and then maybe they can stop hanging about my room and constantly talking over the cutscenes in my game-" he said quickly, all in one breath.
Whisper stared at him. She had gotten maybe...one word out of every five of that. "Not sure if I can forgive them that quickly. But I'm willing to listen," she answered. The boy, Velocity, gave a quiet grin and whistled sharply. Immediately all five wisps gathered around and floated around Whisper, each of them having the best possible begging looks on them. They were seriously trying to guilt trip her into not being mad at them? "I'm not that angry," she started, "but I want you all there with GUN, in case they list out the charges. We can see the damage you all did," she said softly. The wisps narrowed their eyes, before they nodded and dove into the five canisters.
"Sweet! Game time for me!" Velocity shouted as he sped off from the couch. It was quite reminiscent of Sonic at his prime, actually, if only a bit slower because he was only around...what, ten?
"Hey, no speeding Velos," Amy shouted as she came back in from outside. She still had a plate of sandwiches in her hand, and glanced over at Whisper. "I know you're probably not too hungry, but I made some lunch for us all. Gary said he should be here in around ten or fifteen minutes."
Gary? Whisper wondered who that was. "Heh, I wonder if we can con him to staying for dinner again," Sonic joked. He turned to Whisper, "Gary's been our GUN liaison for a few years. We tricked him once into staying for Amy's meatloaf."
"Sonic!" Amy retorted instantly, "I worked hard on that. So what if I accidentally let it burn? For three hours," Amy said harshly, her grin saying all that was needing to be said. Sonic rolled his eyes.
The minutes went by quickly in silence as Whisper ate one of the sandwiches. It wasn't bad, a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so probably one of the kids chose not to have one. Whisper would take it without a problem. A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.
"Just come on in!" Sonic called out, winking to Whisper. She was half expecting Shadow, but instead a relatively short human male in an official uniform stood there with his hat off and held under his arm.
"Is there a Ms...Whisper, here?" he asked quietly. It was a breath of fresh air after dealing with the chaos that was Sonic's household.
He seemed nice and relatively friendly. He had several laugh lines on his face, and his mouth was permanently in some kind of smile. She sighed, and picked herself up. "I am," she whispered.
"Ah, hold on," he said, smiling gently as he tapped something on his ear. "There we go. Had to up my hearing aid. You're Whisper?" he asked again. She nodded that time, not wanting to confuse him by saying anything else. "Excellent."
"Gary, are you going to stay for dinner this time?" Sonic asked from the chair. He had on that mischievous smile that Whisper knew all too well. "I know Amy wants to make some solid lasagna next time you're around."
Gary, the human apparently, flushed. "I am...I'm honored, Sonic, but please I couldn't do so. I don't want to be an inconvenience for you or for your wife!" he said.
"Couldn't beat her meatloaf, huh?" Sonic grinned. Gary's face dropped. "No, Gary, we'll never stop holding that against you," Sonic laughed. "Go on, make sure she gets there in one piece and they don't eat her alive, alright? Or you know, that she doesn't eat them alive."
"Oh, I don't doubt that Whisper will be more than a handful for them," Gary answered as he walked out the door. His face fell as soon as the door shut. "Sorry about that. Sonic..."
"I understand," Whisper answered.
"He likes to tease things and when they get out of hand, his first instinct is to tease some more. I'm the first agent contact with them for the last five years. The ones before either went fangirl, a quick way to make Amy rise up, or left because it became too uncomfortable," Gary explained.
Whisper resisted the urge to groan. She just wanted this madness over with so she could get out of here. Hearing that the wisps had...she looked around a bit.
Done a bit more than she had been led to believe.
She had thought they had just caused some craziness.
What they had done is essentially change the entire topography of Green Hill. Where once flat streets were, small mountains and hills rose up. Where hills rose up, flat ground was raised. Buildings weren't broken, but now some of them were tilted. There was a large stream of water from a nearby water main, creating a simple river that went through the entirety of the main drag.
And she hadn't even entered downtown yet.
Parked outside was a black van, and Gary held the back door open for her. She was glad she had at least her wispon, and the wisps were in their canisters, eager to try to prove themselves. There had been some shifty looks back there, as if they'd been talking about more than just what was going on in front of them. Orange, especially, looked a little more freaked out than the others.
Shadow was sitting on the other side of the car, looking bored and not buckled in. "Finally," he said as Whisper got in.
"You're coming with?"
"I'm your handler. Act as if I'm your lawyer, essentially. All messages come through me, and you'll get through without an issue," Shadow answered.
"You know you're scaring the girl," Gary said as he hopped into the driver's seat. "She doesn't need that, let alone from you."
"And yet you're the driver, and I'm the handler," Shadow answered. "Whisper has seen much worse than anything that GUN can throw at her," he said. He gave her a look. "Those wisps of yours...where are they?" he asked after a long moment. Whisper showed him one of the filled canisters, a Cyan who was far too tired to try anything. "Good. Good. Can you let me handle the talking?"
"Fine."
Shadow nodded, going back to staring out the window. The town and city of Green Hill had changed a bit over the last few days. She had last seen it in the rain at night, but now that it was relatively sunny and in the middle of the day, she could see much more. Although it didn't look much better really.
Paint was peeling off the walls of most of the buildings and shops, and several of the cars and vans had been overturned. Windows were broken, and she saw more than a few people on the street camping out underneath the awnings. As they moved into downtown, it wasn't getting better. Areas of the pavement had cracked, and there were scorch marks on dozens of the stairs, as if someone had taken a flamethrower to every stairwell individually. How much damage did the wisps do!?
The city hall had taken the most obvious damage. It's entrance had been caved in by a truck driving into it, and was surrounded by massive caution signs. The windows had been blown out, and several of the pillars had been damaged, some of them even in half. "How many people were hurt?" Whisper asked as she stared into the wreckage.
"Well, from what we could tell...no one," Gary answered. "We looked hard, but really the only ones hurt were those doing illegal things, and even then it was mostly just embarrassment. Except that Helen woman, apparently one of the wisps thought it would be funny to drop her off four floors."
"How hurt?"
Shadow shrugged. "Best we could tell, it broke her legs and that's it. No one else was physically hurt, although several people had their accounts drained in the matter of seconds."
"Wouldn't the banks do something about that?"
"They would if they could have. Cyan is...rather thorough when she wants to be," Shadow shrugged. Whisper knew that better than most. Cyan was also the one responsible for stealing Jet's chimichanga because she had been hungry while Whisper was on a stakeout, and the ramifications of that she'd been sorting through up until this whole mess. She hadn't just stolen the chimichanga, but also Jet's keys, half of the art aboard the Babylon Rogues ship had been turned a few degrees, and according to Cyan, they had yet to actually take care of the worm that she'd installed on their main computer.
Thorough. That was a good word for it.
They kept going for a few more blocks, until they finally stopped at a nondescript greying building. It had no identifying marks, except for a single black box on the outside next to the door. It had a small red light on the top, and she got out of the car at the same time Shadow and Gary did. The human leaned down and flashed a badge, letting the red light turn green. Whisper heard the door open. "We're lucky that Cyan didn't get into our systems. I doubt there was much we could have done."
She knew that Cyan was a strong wisp, one of the stronger cyan wisps, but skilled enough to act as more than just a power generator? She'd have to have a big long talk with the wisps after this. Maybe she'd even have it here while they're all tired and on her bad side. More likely to be accurate that way.
And less chance of them running away back into their canisters.
The inside was just as nondescript as the outside. There was a short hallway, all gray as Whisper was starting to learn was GUN's favorite color, again with another electronic lock. The inside of this was much more normal, in Whisper's mind. It was carpeted for one, with a few desks laying around in no seeming order. Chairs were scattered around, and on the far side was a blank slate of wall.
"Through here," Shadow said, pointing to another doorway. No electronic lock on this one, Whisper noticed. There were also no computers around, which was strange to her; a government facility should be nothing but computers.
This next room was a single table, with comfortable chairs all around it, like a giant meeting room that she'd seen in movies. "Take a seat," Gary said, "and I'll go get the General."
The chairs were fortunately islander-sized, whether that was because they knew she was coming or if they had a lot of employees like Shadow. It was surprisingly comfortable, and she sank down an inch or two on the cushion. "I thought you said you weren't a part of GUN."
"I'm not. Anymore. But I wouldn't leave you with the General alone, so I got reactivated while you were out. They fast tracked me in," Shadow explained.
"How bad is it?" Whisper hesitated to ask, but she knew she had to. Just the damage on the way in was a way to stamp into her mind just how dangerous the wisps could be.
Perhaps she was their guardian as much as they were hers.
Speaking of guardians, what happened to Knuckles?
"Could be worse. Green Hill is mostly islander based, and with Eggman's attacks in particular got used to the instant reshuffling. Already maps are being redrawn, and most people are happy about the changes."
Wait, really?
"Apparently Green Hill's been in a bit of a slump, because the unique checkerboard pattern of dirt hasn't been visible in years. Humans kind of paved over most of it. This...kind of resets the status quo," Shadow continued, oblivious to her thoughts.
"I didn't think islanders were so...trapped in the past."
"Green Hill is. It's where Sonic is. His prime days are behind him, much as he hates to hear it. And much like him, the city, too, is following."
"Which is why it's a damn good thing we brought you here," a loud booming voice said from the doorway. A tall thin man in a full suit, tailored to his exact proportions, stood there with graying hair. "Whisper, I presume?" he asked, staring at the wolf.
Whisper nodded, glancing into his eyes. He had a thin face, and it made her think the opposite of Eggman. Whereas he could yell and shout and stomp, and it'd be humorous to all, this man would stomp once and gain everyone's attention at the same time. This was not a man to cross easily.
"Pinton. I'm surprised you get so far in the ranks," Shadow claimed from the side. "Last I saw, you were still just a soldier."
"Shadow," he said, looking as if he'd just stepped on a slug. "I see that you feel the need to justify your existence again. Going to do something worthwhile this time?"
And Shadow just crossed him in around a minute, and the General just crossed Shadow in around the same time frame. This was going to be one of those 'she was stuck in the middle when she's technically the victim here' situations, isn't it? Whisper sighed. "Calm down. What is this all about?" she asked the man. He stood up a bit straighter, although how she had no idea, and walked around to the other side of the table where he sat down.
"It's about, Whisper, the fact you let your wisps run all amok around the entirety of the city and are entirely expected to to get off scot-free!" the man said tonelessly. There was an excitement to it from him though, one that put Whisper on edge. She felt the canisters shake on the inside of her jacket. The wisps agreed.
"She didn't 'let them'. She was unconscious! No one can control anything when they're unconscious!" Shadow argued. "They did that on their own behalf!"
The man pulled out a small cell phone like device, putting it on the table as holographic pages suddenly popped up not far above Whisper's head. "When the wisps started popping up, there were more than a few disagreements about what to label them as. Were they their own beings, or were they similar to pets? The courts eventually agreed to put them together with the chao under a special consideration, which is 'sapient pets'."
"And?"
"Sapient pets are wholly under the care of a single individual, or individuals in the case of families, and thus any damage that they may cause are solely the responsibility of their owners," the man said, sitting up straight again. It was obvious he thought he'd won.
"However, look at section 3c," Shadow pointed out, "in which it says that while sapient pets are wholly under a single person's responsibility, there are limitations, such as when that person is no longer suited for the responsibility of caring. Being unconscious at the time of the wisps rampage counts as being suited."
"Then she needs to give up the wisps, all five of them, until such point that someone more responsible can grab them. After all, this could happen again otherwise."
"Being attacked by the police and the gangs could happen again? I hadn't realized you were so forthcoming about your failures," Shadow snarked.
"I hadn't realized you were either. Wasn't it your fault that Helen decided to take that experimental drug of hers, which still has not worn off by the way and in fact may be permanent. Which is yet another box in your list of failures to tick off."
Shadow growled. Whisper held up one hand, "You said it's my responsibility for what they did. How much is the damage total?" she asked.
"Unknown yet. Estimates are at nearly thirty million," the man grumbled.
Pink popped out of his canister. "Only thirty million!? Seriously, we got like fifteen times that in cash for you. Just say you'll pay it," he advised, turning to Whisper.
"...We need to have a talk," Whisper answered instead. Pink's one eye opened wide, and she could see the faint signs of embarrassment coming from the wisp before he dove back into the canister.
"Can you not control your beasts!?" the man rampaged across the table. "Letting them out at any time is a fine-"
"She's allowed! She has special dispensation from her time in the Restoration and Resistance-"
"I'll pay," Whisper tried to interject.
"Special dispensation means only within their territories! When was the last time the Restoration had any such territory-"
"Their territory is the world!"
"The world can't be a territory, otherwise countries laws are overridden and we cannot risk angering all neighboring states just because you want-"
"She is a hero, and just as special dispensation was given for Sonic and Tails, she too also needs it-"
"Sonic and Tails were heroes, but look at them now! One's a cripple and the other disappeared off the face of the planet for years!"
"I said I'll pay."
"That doesn't mean it's gone away! I notice that Sonic's not in here despite him very obviously being at the scene of the attack! I notice that Violet's not in here, despite her flying the plane! Instead you're after the one person who really can't defend herself!" Whisper wasn't sure if she should be offended by that remark or not...
"And yet you're here to justify it! She doesn't need to defend herself because we have the rabid hedgehog doing it for her!"
Whisper sighed. She touched each of the cartridges, silently asking if they wanted to come out. Pink did, still slightly embarrassed, and Cyan. Orange came out to see what the fuss was all about. Blue and Green decided to stay in, although Whisper knew they were probably listening in.
Shadow and Pinton kept up their argument, going further and further into technical details about the scenarios. They hadn't even realized she'd taken the wisps out yet. "Cyan, can you go into the hologram projector and make it make a klaxon sound?" Whisper asked. Cyan grinned and immediately dove into the device. She covered her ears.
Both human and hedgehog immediately covered their ears as Cyan screeched through the projector. It was a mix of klaxon and megaphone, tied up with the sound of nails on chalkboard, as irritating as she could get.
It certainly shut them up at least. Whisper eventually relented, giving a signal for Cyan to tone it down. It took a moment, and after a quick second in which she turned it up a bit more on accident, it turned off. "Thanks, Cyan. Now, may I talk?" she asked. Cyan gave a salute of obvious taunting before she went behind Whisper's back with Orange and Pink.
"Fine, yes," Pinton asked. His face was flushed, and he was breathing hard.
"I asked how much the damages were because I want to pay them," she said. Pinton stared at her a bit, before he looked over some other documents on a different device.
"Nothing we have says that you should have anywhere near that amount of money."
"I know the Restoration didn't give that much to you. Even back-pay for twenty three years isn't that much," Shadow answered. Whisper gave them an unimpressed stare as Cyan did a little wave behind her. "Oh. How much was stolen?" he asked.
"Depends on stolen. See, we didn't steal a cent from anyone. But if someone were, to, say have a hoard of cash around in some mostly drugged out places, we might have, what's the word?" Pink asked.
"Procured for ourselves?" Orange volunteered.
"Taken with no mercy because honestly, druggies," Cyan answered.
"Procured. We procured it for ourselves. And because we are, as Pinkton over there as obviously said, nothing more than 'sapient pets'," Pink said, glaring at Pinton despite massacring his name, "naturally we had to give it to our owner. Who is, without a doubt, Whisper."
"Hence, nearly...what, five hundred million? Some absurd number. We're just pets, what do we know of math?" Cyan asked, shrugging. Whisper shot him a look. "Please, just because we're energy beings and I regularly imbue computers and thus have to be ridiculously good at math doesn't mean that I know anything of math."
Shadow chuckled.
"I assume you can understand them?" Pinton asked the black hedgehog. "My superiors weren't notified that she would be so forward as to let the wisps out of their containers."
"Pink said they took the drug money. And Cyan was saying that they don't know the whole number, because what do they know of math?" Whisper translated.
Pinton blinked. "I...that's illegal! You can't just take-"
"They can," Shadow interrupted. He was scrolling through a few documents on the projector. "Right here, criminal laws in South Island territories. The right of cash seizure. Anyone who is attempting to stop crimes of a fiscal nature is authorized fundage of twenty percent of what they take."
"Drugs aren't fiscally related-"
"No, but trafficking in them? Making them? Under the South Island laws, they are," Shadow answered. "Twenty percent. Of...how much?" he asked.
Whisper looked at Cyan. She grinned. "Five hundred fifteen million, seven hundred twenty six thousand, nine hundred and thirty seven dollars, twenty six cents. Twenty percent of that is; one hundred three million, one hundred forty five thousand, three hundred and eighty seven dollars. And forty five cents, but there's a point zero zero two there, so I rounded down."
Pinton stared as Shadow rehashed the number. "Holy shit," he said quietly. "I hadn't realized it'd gotten that bad."
"Neither had I. Sonic hadn't warned us," Shadow agreed. "But as far as the wisp thing goes..."
"I mean, we'll send her an invoice once the estimations are done," Pinton said. He was still taken aback it seemed, both by the absurdly large numbers and that Cyan could do that off the top of her head. "How...did they even have that much lying around?"
"Oh, that's easy. We had Orange to spot, Pink to go in and grab it all, Blue to ensure no one stopped us, me to hack in and open the doors, and Green to hover it to the bank," Cyan answered.
"And there were like fifteen or sixteen warehouses full of the stuff And that's just the money. Seriously, the amount of drugs for sale in this city was simply astonishing. We took care of that for you. Honestly I think we curbed the entire industry in the entire South Island region," Orange said.
"Yeah. It was fun, too. Can we do it again? It was fun cutting loose like that." Pink asked.
Whisper shook her head, "No. No, you will not 'cut loose' like that," she said harshly. Pink's eye widened, and the flush of embarrassment came back. "If that's done and over with?" she asked the man.
"Y...Yes. Certainly. We'll...just charge your bank. Or something. And the police will definitely need to take the majority of the-"
"I think we've already proven the police will do no good here," Shadow offered. "Why not a third party who has no stake in this to hold onto it?"
"Who would you suggest?"
"The Restoration," Shadow answered.
Pinton glared. "...Fine. Fine, we'll let the Restoration hold onto the money for now. But someone will need to get their cut."
"Of course. Let me walk you out," Shadow said, a snarl on his face as he motioned towards the door. Pinton glared, his eyes narrowed as he walked towards the door.
Whisper was alone in the room now. She tapped both Blue and Green's canisters with more than a handful of anger. "Oh crap, we're doing this now!?" Pink asked. Oh good, Whisper thought, he seemed to get it.
"We're doing this now."
"Shoot! Quick, Cyan, hide me!" Pink yelled, hiding behind the much smaller cyan wisp.
"Hey, get out of there, I did much worse things than you did!"
Whisper said nothing as Cyan dug her own grave. She gave a quick glance to Green and Blue, their eyes downward and looking like they honestly didn't want to be there. "How much was the damage you two? I recognized most of it," she asked.
"A good maybe...half of the structural?" Blue offered. "I made sure not to hurt anyone. And even the pavement is cracked but it's not actually broken. I mostly just wanted things to be...well, different," Blue finished.
"Yeah, what Blue said. I was mostly the land rising. It was fun, I'd never actually tried to just let everything out before. Most of the time it's just small things."
One ear was focused on Cyan who was arguing with Pink and Orange over who 'did the worse amount of stuff', but the other was focused entirely on Blue and Green. "How are you all so powerful? Wisps aren't that strong, at least from what we know."
"The older we are, the stronger. For me, it's more stuff I can lift. When we imbue the wispon, or something like Sonic, we can't use our full strength, that would break them. But a partial? Absolutely. For this? We went all out."
"We are old, Whisper," Blue said, "I know we don't seem like it, and we don't act like it," he coughed a small 'cyan' in there, "but we're old. Hundreds of wisp years old. Millenia, for Earth."
"You have no natural lifespan."
"We're energy," Orange offered from the side. When had she stopped trying to argue with Cyan and Pink? "And moreover, we're sapient energy. Eggman labeled it 'Hyper Go-On'. We never named it. But it is us. Our bodies are composed of it."
"We generate it naturally. We don't waste any, and we hardly use the stuff we have," Blue said. "And that's...why I think we need to Vow."
"Vow? Really Blue? Really-" Cyan said, followed by an emotional flux of stability and pride, reservation and honesty. "A Vow's no laughing matter for anyone."
"Only the Mother Wisp took a Vow in recent history," Orange said. "We are nowhere near her level. And you want us to do it? Why?"
Whisper sat down, letting the wisps talk about it without her input. This was something that was up to them, not up to her. She was only council, someone to be asked advice. Right now, this was solely the wisps. She had a feeling this was something that no one other than wisps were ever parlay to.
"You saw what we did out there. How much could we do? This is just us! We're old, and we're not much younger than the other elders, but this is just us! Just us five!"
"Imagine if Red had been here. Or worse, Black," Pink said. "I agree with Blue. We should take the Vow."
Cyan looked down with her one eye. "That's true. If Black were here, there'd be no Green Hill left. If Red...it'd be nothing but a burning wreckage. And we opened that door."
"So now we should close it," Orange said. "I agree with Blue and Pink. We should take it."
Green hovered around, "I don't think we should," he said, "we were good for how long? And suddenly, now it's a problem? We don't do much damage in the best of times anyways. The one person who got hurt was a transformed monster, and the most we did was break her legs. We shouldn't take a Vow just on the other side of this. We should take our time. It may come time when we need to do this again."
"Four to one, Green," Cyan said. "But a makeshift council like this, I think we need to be unanimous. I'm all for taking a personal geas though, and we'll see how it goes."
"I can see that. Geas it is for me then," Blue said. Pink and Orange both nodded, and Green took a sigh and nodded his own agreement. "Wording's like this then; I-" he started, following with that same emotional rollercoaster that was Blue's name. There was more to it than that, Whisper got. A sense of responsibility, of uniqueness, of self-restraint.
Each one came up, and repeated the same thing. By the end of the fifth one, Whisper was trying to breathe deep. This was the wisps emotions, not her own. It was hard to separate it though, as it seemed they spoke through her own emotional wavelengths.
"Agreed then. We'll see how this goes, and whether or not we should Vow," Orange said. The other four wisps nodded, and that left only more questions in Whisper's mind.
The original version of this chapter was...not the best. So I added a few more scenes, and added a lot of clarity. Still not too happy with it, but at least it doesn't jump around like last chapter did. Also, for the first time I missed a posting day. FFN was down, and that's where I keep all of my up to date edits. That will probably change here in the future...
Until Next Time!