Buddy was urgently gesturing that they needed to move, even as they flickered from a bear lady in a paint-splattered shirt to a wolf boy with a fancy coat on.
"Uh, right." Tom swallowed. Green Hill's library had been on the south side of town, which would mean they would need to head…
"That way." Maddie preempted him with a pointing finger and a sigh.
"…thanks." Tom accepted the hit to his pride. "Come on everyone, this way!"
Only a few of the hundreds of people present started to move, and Tom's painfully fake reassuring smile started to become painfully strained…
"Y-you all heard the man! T-this way!"
One of the animal people at the back of the group started yelling and gesturing for everyone to follow Tom. He was dressed like an attendant at an old fashioned hotel, or maybe on a train – a dark green coat with gold buttons, a red bow-tie, and white gloves. Between Tom, Maddie, Buddy and the train attendant, that seemed to push the crowd over the tipping point and they all started moving.
"Everyone remember, you have to stay on flat ground!" Maddie yelled. "If you get hurt by something glitching into where you are…!"
"Injuries from faulty collision detection may be of secondary concern." Unit suddenly added, spinning around to face behind the crowd. "ETA on Unit's comrades' arrival is thirty seconds!"
Panic suddenly spread throughout the mob, and the yells of the four people trying to direct it were immediately drowned out. Nearly as one, the crowd surged out, running down what was usually Green Hill's main street, but was currently a checker-pattern path through hills.
"No no no no…!" Tom's mouth twisted in panic. He was a sheriff, not a riot cop! They didn't train him for this!
Buddy, however, seemed to suddenly be in his element. The bird boy (then a rabbit man, then a young cat girl, then a –) thrust out an arm, and a grapple line shot out of it into the top of a nearby hill, dragging her (then a him, then a him, then a her –) up and over the crowd. They landed ahead of them, dashing forwards even as his zip line retracted back into their wrist launcher, and they were running hard to stay in front of the crowd.
The surrounding hills glitched again, but thankfully when Buddy turned to run around a hill that was suddenly in their path, the crowd turned and followed them.
Even as he himself sprinted to catch up, though, Tom noticed Buddy kept shooting looks behind themselves to make sure they weren't pulling ahead of the crowd.
(Tom had no way of knowing that the last time Buddy had gotten separated from a large crowd like this had been Operation Big Wave. It had… left its mark, that was for certain.)
Then Tom heard the sounds of engines behind him, and glanced back to see…
"…? Wait, those are Robotnik drones?" Tom blinked, confused. Rather than the silver-white oval-shaped machines he was familiar with, the robots flying after them now were blue and black, and looked far more like actual wasps then the stylised drones he knew.
"B-b-b-b-buzz Bombers!" Someone in the crowd cried, a shaky finger indicating the incoming robots. Tom suddenly fumbled with the weapon(?) in his hand, trying to figure out where the trigger was –
Buddy came to the rescue once again. He (then she, then –) immediately turned around and jumped on –
"Is – is that a pinball bumper?" Maddie nearly tripped as she stared.
There was, for no apparent reason, a comically oversized red bumper on the side of the path. When Buddy jumped on it, the spring underneath launched them into the air, at about the height of the Buzz Bombers. Buddy pulled the trigger on their weapon(?) and spat a long stream of fire through their numbers, causing melted robot parts to rain down from the sky.
"Oh thank heavens, it's the kind that doesn't use animals as batteries." One of the calmer animal members of the crowd sighed in relief.
Tom just gaped. "Doesn't use animals… what?"
"Tom, eyes front!"
Tom heard Maddie's warning too late. He looked forward to find that while looking backwards, his own sprinting legs had wondered off from the pack. Directly in front of him was –
Tom's jaw dropped.
Somehow, for some reason, the path in front of him rose up and around in a perfectly circular loop-de-loop, coming back down to the left of where it started. Floating around the inside of the loop were what looked like giant warp rings, spinning slowly in mid-air. As he watched, a spat of glitching went through the rings.
One shrank into what he could only assume was a proper warp ring, and another two stopped spinning and just started slowly floating down. But a couple rings had been sitting flat in the grass at the base of the loop, and three of them now suddenly sprang up, spinning in front of him. His foot went right into one, and Tom expected it to just be kicked away…
Ding!
…but instead the ring vanished without a trace, as did the other two. Ding ding!
Tom was so confused. "Okay, I really don't think that's supposed to–"
"TOM!"
While he'd been distracted by the rings, he'd failed to notice what appeared to be a series of huge spinning rubber wheels sticking out of the ground in front of him, like a pitching machine for baseballs – only much larger, and spread out across the path.
And just like the rings before it, Tom's foot went directly into the old-fashioned dash panel.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" Tom screamed as the spinning wheels grabbed his foot and yanked, hard, sending him flying with enough force that he thought his leg was going to be pulled clean off. He fell backwards, and started skidding across the slick grass fast enough that he actually started to go up the loop.
Thrashing around, trying to get a grip, Tom caught a glimpse of more spinning wheels just before his whole body went into them. Whoosh!
The crushing pressure of the dash panel was nothing compared to the yanking force it imparted, this time on his whole body, and while Tom was just flailing and screaming in a panic he didn't realise that he was going up and over the top of the loop-de-loop.
"Ahhhhhhhh –!" Tom tried desperately to dig a hand into the soft earth and drag himself to a stop, but all he succeeded in doing was sending himself into a mad tumble as his body spun and spun.
He couldn't see that the path ended in mid-air shortly after the loop-de-loop. Nor did he see the red-and-black conveyor-belt-like apparatus at the end of the path – a jump panel – that flung him up and into the air.
"– hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh –"
There was another path on the other side of the small valley that Tom was currently passing over, but he didn't have enough momentum to reach it, and so just fell down into the path below with a solid-sounding thud.
"– hhhhhhh ah?"
Surrounded by the sounds of jangling metal, Tom gingerly pulled his face off the ground. The rings that had disappeared into his foot were now bouncing away, blinking in and out of existence until they disappeared altogether.
It did not help his confusion that Tom was not in serious – or any – pain after a fall like that.
As the sounds of the crowd he was supposedly leading receded into the distance, Tom groaned and rolled over, starting to slowly get to his feet.
"The boys better appreciate this when I find them." He grumbled.
He paused as a shadow was cast over him, and looked up.
"H-hi!" The train attendant guy was standing over him, offering a hand. "I'm Barry. Barry the Quokka."
"Um, hi." Tom grimaced, grabbing Barry's hand and pulling himself upright. To his amazement, he still didn't feel pain anywhere – whatever the rings had done, it seemed to have completely prevented his injuries. "I'm Tom – uh, Tom the Human?"
Barry gave a smile that looked even more strained than Tom's must have, worry very obviously leaking through. "Um, Tom, have you… never used a wispon before?"
"Depends." Tom answered, getting to his feet and brushing grass and dirt off of himself. "What's a wispon?"
"…um, the thing you're holding in your hands?" Barry cringed.
"Oh." Tom blinked. "Then… no. No I haven't."
"I figured…" Barry sighed. "I haven't either, but I think there's supposed to be a second button on it somewhere, for when you want to do crazy things like that?"
"Alright," Tom made a mental note of this, though he fully planned to never do anything like that again "one last thing. Why's it called a wispon?"
"Well, because of the wisp?" Barry scratched his head.
Tom frowned. "What wisp – gah!"
A green blob-like creature freaking phased out of the wispon like the St Patrick's Day version of Caspar the Friendly Ghost. It whizzed around his head a couple of times, making cutesy chirping noises even as Tom reflexively tried to bat it away. Giving what Tom would swear was a cute little wave, it shot back down into the wispon, which seemed to glow faintly for just a second.
Barry's gave another strained smile. "Um, well… that wisp."
"TOM!"
Maddie sprinted around the corner, her chest heaving with exertion. Seeing him, she slowed to a stop, bending over and placing her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. "You… you're alright…" She gulped down air. "I saw you get flung up that loop, and when you didn't come back down that way…"
"It's okay, miss!" Barry waved helpfully. "He had rings!"
Maddie lifted her head up, and shared a puzzled look with Tom.
Distant screams reminded them that they had other problems.
"Are there more robots around?!" Tom spun around, his eyes searching the skies.
"How are we going to catch up to the group? They don't know where they're going!" Maddie pointed out.
"T-there!" Barry pointed. "Those springs look like they'll take us right there!"
Tom and Maddie stopped to stare at where Barry was pointing. There was another bright red bumper on the side of the path, like what Buddy had used before. Above it, was another spring, somehow floating in mid-air with the aid of a tiny propeller at the back.
Tom took a nervous step back. "Y'know, Barry, you've been a really big help. But, ah… Maddie and I might take the long way around –"
"No time!" Barry grabbed both of their hands, the three-foot quokka dragging them forwards with surprising intensity. Caught off guard by Barry's sudden assertiveness, Tom and Maddie nearly fell forward, stumbling onto the spring together.
Boing!
As one, the three were hurled high into the air, impacting roughly against the second mid-air spring. To the surprise and confusion of the humans, the spring held firm against the impact, sending them off over a nearby hill with another boing!
Screaming and spinning through the air, and feeling like he'd just been hit by a truck, Tom saw a third spring in their path –
Except that a glitching fit suddenly overtook both the three of them and the spring, and they passed through each other instead of following the path. Barry started screaming as well, and Tom quickly spotted what he had – the spring would have knocked them safely away from a gorge that they were now hurtling towards. Desperately, Tom wrapped both arms around his wife…
Only to feel a cord suddenly wrap itself around him and the others, pulling tight and yanking hard. Tom caught a glimpse of Buddy, for that instant a bird woman in a frilly pink dress, having flown up and shot one grapple line at them and the other at the hill behind herself. Buddy's arms (now those of a black hedgehog boy dressed in blue) shook under the strain, but held out long enough to swing the three of them away from the gorge and back towards solid ground.
Tom felt the cable release them as they hit the ground at an angle and rolled in a mad tumble, eventually leaving Tom nearly nose-to-nose with Maddie, while Barry perched dizzily on his back.
Buddy (now a blue wolf boy) dropped to the ground next to them.
"Thanks, Buddy –" Tom started, but Buddy was already tugging on his hand, trying to pull him up.
It wasn't hard to see why. The crowd of people were running past now, faces and fur slick with sweat and most of them panting desperately. But none of them were slowing down, all of them desperate to escape the incoming robots and glitching environment.
As if summoned by that thought, Tom found himself holding in a cry as another wave of glitching passed over him. Wincing with not-quite-pain, he could see a similar wave pass though Maddie, Barry, and a couple members of the crowd, like Wade.
…hang on. Buddy had never stopped glitching, but why weren't the rest of the crowd glitching?
Tom didn't have time to think about it further, as Buddy urgently tugged on his arm to remind him that they needed to keep running – so they did.
"W-we're getting close to that library you mentioned, right?" Barry panted, clearly not used to this kind of exertion.
(Honestly, it was almost weird, seeing such a… well, normal alien after the three powerhouses that were the boys.)
Tom winced, watching for Green Hill landmarks as the landscape glitched again. That was the bakery, so… "We're about four blocks away. Nearly there."
"Oh, good." Barry sighed in relief. Then he looked up. "Um, is that a –"
"He's not a badnik, whatever that is." Tom answered preemptively, seeing Unit fly back over the group. "Unit, where have you been?!"
"Unit has been recording exertions of unfit organics for later review! Your tumbles in particular will provide endless hours of entertainment when edited correctly!" Unit cheerfully called down.
Yeah, letting the robot watch America's Funniest Home Videos was a mistake. Tom sighed.
"A-actually, I was going to ask if he was a G.U.N. drone." Barry corrected. "You already said he's not a badnik."
Maddie looked down at Barry sharply. "Hang on, you know about G.U.N. on your planet?"
"My planet?" Barry laughed awkwardly. "I know quokkas are kinda rare, but we come from Earth too, y'know?"
"To answer your implied question, robots that were created by Doctor Robotnik and that follow his orders are referred to collectively as 'badniks'." Unit clarified, interrupting Tom and Maddie's confused stare. "And speaking of such, several units of ground and air-based badniks stand in our projected path."
Tom went slightly pale, remembering the tank-like robot that had chased his pickup. Buddy on the other hand reacted by somehow finding enough stamina to get ahead of the crowd once more, wispon held out in front of her (then her, then him, then –).
Tom looked at the hills on either side of their running path. "Hey Barry, don't suppose you can like… shoot lasers from your eyes or something?"
"Sorry, but I don't have any powers." Barry winced. "I'm only good for microwaving food and the occasional murder mystery. Why?"
"'cause we've got incoming!" Tom yelled, lifting up his wispon to point at the hills. Up above were red and black robots, shaped like eggs with arms and legs. Each of them had a jetpack, and a very, very large gun.
When the boys had brought Unit home, Tom had insisted that Tails remove all of his weaponry – which turned out to be two machine guns and a lot of micro-missiles. If the robots on the hill had anything like that kind of firepower, they were going to be plastered across the grass.
"Eggrobos!" Somebody in the crowd helpfully identified in a panicked scream.
The Eggrobos, now aware they were spotted, flew up into the air and begun to charge their oversized blaster pistols. Tom glanced desperately to the front, but it looked like Buddy had their hands full with other robots over there. His eyes dropped to the wispon in his hands…
"Oh, give that here." Maddie snatched the wispon off him, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The Hover Wispon shot out a big burst of compressed air in the form of a shockwave. The shockwave slammed into the Eggrobos and blasted them out of the sky, their jetpacks spluttering uselessly as they spun around in a downward spiral until they hit the ground, exploding on impact.
Tom waited a second to see if another wave of smaller robots was going to erupt out of the downed ones, like that stupid tank-bot, but they did not. He let out a shaky sigh of relief. "Wow. Sure wish we'd had one of these last time Robotnik came calling, huh?"
Maddie pushed the wispon back on him. "Yep. Now, next time, how about you actually fire this thing?"
"Unit has good news and bad news!" Unit called down, still hovering overhead.
"Yeah? The good news better be good!" Tom replied, fumbling his wispon around until he had the business end pointed in the right direction.
"The good news is that we have arrived." Unit continued, causing a wave of relief to spread throughout the crowd. Everybody started to slow to a stop and start panting desperately for breath. "The bad news is that there are now six squadrons of badniks in our immediate area. They have us surrounded."
Tom and Buddy (now a yellow hedgehog woman, then a pink bear boy, then –) shared a worried look. They only had two wispons and hundreds of people to protect.
"Tom, now would be a really good time for your mysterious friend to open that portal!" Maddie reminded Tom.
Tom swallowed. "Um, strange head-voice lady? We're here. Help?"
I'm not a stranger! You did a book report on me, back in fourth grade. Remember? You stayed up so late that you fell asleep with your head on the book; and woke up the next day with the page stuck to your face with dried snot?
Tom's face went completely blank. "…huh?"
"…Tom?" Maddie prompted.
Another wave of glitching passed through the landscape, and for just a moment, the hill next to them became a library –
– whose doors abruptly slammed open, a swarm of paper pages flying out and plastering themselves over the walls, floor and overhanging ceiling. The library was glitching violently, its outlines wavering like a mirage, but it couldn't seem to change back to a hill with the paper in the way.
It took Tom a moment to notice that the ink on the pages was glowing a faint purple.
Inside the doorway, it was harder to see the lines between the pages, until it seemed like the words themselves were forming some kind of tunnel that stretched off to infinity. Standing in the doorway were two otherworldly women. One was a young girl dressed in rich purple robes with elfin ears. The other was a serene woman in an elaborate blue and white dress.
Tom swallowed. "Nimue? The Lady of the Lake?"
The woman in the dress smiled and nodded, gesturing for them to come. "Yes, yes! Quickly, you'll be safe within the pages!" She spoke with an airy voice that made Tom think of faeries. The kind from folklore, not Disney.
…probably because he was now remembering that book report.
Buddy looked back and forth between the portal (?) and the crowd, who were only just starting to move again, shuffling towards the promise of safety. Her (now his, now her, now –) expression was clearly worried.
"A-are we being rescued b-by a book?!" Barry stammered, looking hopelessly lost.
Tom was also having second thoughts, but… well, it was either this or the robots.
Crash!
Speaking of which…
Tom slowly turned around, filled with dread. There was a massive purple robot, two or three times as tall as the human it vaguely resembled. It hefted a giant spiked hammer, and was lifting it up with vicious intent as it strode towards the group.
"Egg Hammers?" Somebody in the crowd whimpered. "That's not fair… Eggman never sends Egg Hammers to Green Hill Zone…"
Another two crashes heralded another two Egg Hammers jumping down to surround the crowd. In the sky behind them were dozens more Eggrobos and Buzz Bombers.
Tom tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. "Uh…"
Barry had turned as white as a sheet, while Buddy griped the handle of their wispon so tight the material was creaking.
Buddy, now a light blue bear man (then a dark red cat boy, then –) held the Burst Wispon out in a two-handed grip, and let loose the same stream of flames that had been wrecking badniks left right and centre. The Egg Hammer they targeted, the one closest to him, continued to stride forwards, even as the thick armour on its feet started glowing cherry red with the heat.
Feeling the ground shake under him, Tom remembered that he had problems of his own, and shot the Egg Hammer in front of him with his Hover Wispon. The blast of air barely made it flinch.
"Merlina…" Nimue said, her tone expectant.
Tom's eyes were fixed firmly on the robot about to kill him, so he didn't see who Nimue was talking to, but somehow managed to hear the other woman in the page-portal sigh over the panicking crowd. "Very well," she said with a crisp British accent "I will buy us time."
Suddenly, the wind was swirling around the group. Despite the area being all grass, huge plums of dust were picked up and sent into the air, obscuring the view of the Buzz Bombers and Eggrobos. The Egg Hammers stopped walking for a moment to shield their faces with their hands.
A figure dashed in front of Tom, slashing at the Egg Hammer's spindly legs with a freaking sword. Somehow, the blade cut through the metal armour, and the Egg Hammer fell backwards; struggling to right itself like a turtle on its back.
Then the man, clad in chain-mail and wearing a helmet with the visor down, yelled out: "Abominations of steel and thunder! I, Sir Gawain of Camelot, stand in your path! By my honour as a knight, you shall go no further!"
Then he dashed off to go deal with the third Egg Hammer.
I'm losing it. Tom thought to himself. For a second there, I could have sworn Gawain looked like Knuckles.
Tom glanced back at Buddy, catching the moment the wolf girl (then a bird woman, then a –) dashed out of the way of a hammer swing, keeping the stream of fire up until the robot finally fell.
"Everybody, please, come this way! Merlina's spell won't last for long!" Nimue called.
Tom looked back. The girl with the elfin ears – Merlina, apparently – was holding out a long staff with an orb on the end, her face focused intently on the storm.
"We're being rescued by a storybook, okay, whatever, but why is Merlin a young girl now?!" Maddie threw her hands up.
"She's Merlin's granddaughter." Nimue explained shortly, still gesturing people inside. "You're thinking of a different version of the story; and that was Arthur, and… look, we don't have time for this!"
With the sounds of the third Egg Hammer falling, the crowd finally started moving. Nimue and Merlina stepped aside to let the people past, Merlina still concentrating and Nimue shouting encouragement to the crowd.
Tom took a step forward… then paused. "Maddie, don't wait for me, I'll follow once everyone's inside. You should –"
"Nu-uh." Maddie immediately shot him down. "I leave you alone now, and you're going to do something stupid."
"Okay, that's fair, but also, really hurtful." Tom pouted.
There was a strange groaning noise coming from the pages that formed the portal, and Merlina and Nimue both shot them worried looks. The building around it was glitching worse than ever, its outline writhing like a snake trying to escape.
Barry laughed nervously, shooting a worried look at how much of the crowd there was left to go. "H-hey." He said, clearly trying to think about something else. "D-do you think they'll have dry cleaners in there? My uniform isn't supposed to be hand washed…"
"Yeah, I think you're out of luck there." Maddie played along. "But can't you just… not wear it?"
"I… guess?" Barry chuckled weakly. "Only 'cause I'm a boy though, otherwise that'd be weird."
(Halfway around the world, a chipmunk princess clad only in a pair of boots sneezed.)
"Well, good to know I haven't been raising nudists." Tom muttered.
The pages groaned again, and this time Tom could see them actually bend inwards a little. The glitching seemed to intensify further, like piranhas sensing blood.
Tom glanced around. At a guess, about two-thirds of the crowd had passed through the page-portal now.
Sir Gawain ran up to the back of the crowd and added his own shouts of encouragement.
Tom heard more loud thudding, and just for a moment he thought he could see a really big silhouette through the dust. "Okay, okay, time to go! Everybody, I don't want you to panic, but… maybe panic? Run!"
"Unit thinks it will take your advice." Unit said quickly, and the little robot zoomed into the portal.
Barry shot Tom an awkward look, gave a little wave, then turned and ran for the portal himself.
The pages let out a crunch sound, now pending inwards very noticeably.
"Sir Gawain, you must return, else you will be lost!" Nimue called, her tone worried.
"Never fear! I guard the rear, and shall return as the last of my charges reach safety!" Gawain proudly declared.
Tom and Maddie shared a worried look.
Buddy (now a cat boy, then a dog girl, then –) took one more look around, then dashed over to where Gawain was at the end of the line. Everyone was nearly through now…
But suddenly, Merlina let out a cry of pain and collapsed to her knees. The barrier of wind and dust dispersed instantly, revealing behind it…
"D-d-d-d-Death Egg Robot!" Somebody screamed.
It looked just like the robot that Robotnik had used the power of the Master Emerald to create, and was only slightly smaller. Its one red eye glowed ominously as it stomped towards the library, its footfalls visibly shaking the ground.
Tom and Maddie turned to run, Gawain and Buddy just in front of them. Nimue was helping Merlina to her feet, dragging her back into the portal.
But the Death Egg Robot (one of the mass-produced self-piloting models used during the War to Take Back the Planet) let out a huge electronic 'roar' of synthetic noise, and a red beam erupted from its central eye to smash into the library roof. To Tom's horror, tearing noises immediately sounded from around him…
Buddy turned around, face set in determination.
A wire cord shot up and into the Death Egg Robot's shoulder, pulling the pink rabbit girl (then a red bear man, then –) up after it.
"Buddy!" Tom and Maddie both screamed, reaching out for them, but even as the beam suddenly veered away the roof made sudden cracking noises, and Tom could see the page-portal tear apart even as Gawain tried to grab for them, and then the roof was falling…!
…
…
Everything hurt.
There might have been a ceiling beam on Tom's legs. It certainly felt like it.
The walls seemed to be glitching, their outlines flickering, but the space inside wasn't disappearing. Tom didn't understand how that worked, but for now it was just one less thing going wrong.
Maddie was next to him, but she wasn't moving.
"Maddie? Maddie!" Tom shook her, hard, even as the sudden movement made his own head swim. She didn't stir.
"Nimue!" Tom cried out, desperate. "Merlina! Anybody! Please! Help!"
Books are strewn out all around him, so he grabbed at any within reach, shaking them as though he expected pixie dust to just magically come out and help. The Wizard of Oz. Peter Pan. Arabian Nights –
A thick golden ring dropped loose from the pages. Half delirious from pain, Tom desperately pawed at it. Smoke erupted out of the ring, as did an otherworldly woman with brown skin, pink hair and pointed ears, floating in the air in a simple dress and sandals.
"Help me." Tom begged.
The woman shook her head, pressing the ring into Tom's hand. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to wish for it!" She said, sounding generally regretful.
Tom gripped the ring tight in a fist. First fae and now a djinn? He knew just enough mythology to know that was going from the frying pan and into the fire. But…
"I wish you'd help us!" Tom cried.
Shahra grabbed both Tom and Maddie by the shoulders, and the world seemed to spin as they somehow fell towards the still-open copy of Arabian Nights, until they were swallowed whole.
AN: Okay, did not expect a new Sonic game to drop between chapters 7 and 8. Barry the Quokka doesn't officially have a name (you give him/her one at the start of the game), but they're called Barry in the promotional material and in the game files, so unlike poor Buddy Barry gets to stick with one name and gender.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is free on Steam, and can be finished in about two hours. Go play it. It's fun. :)