Disclaimer: See last chapter.
Fire
"Alright, how did we get saddled with these guys?" Pink asked as he hovered near them. They looked up hopefully at him, before his one eye narrowed, and they returned to being panicked.
Whisper had taken them from the square, marching them to a nearby empty house. A conveniently empty nearby house. "Because we need answers. And these two are the only ones with any amount of answers right now," Whisper explained. The sides were a near universal brown or gray that showed the lack of paint. There were a few pictures on the wall, but they looked old and torn up by time.
"No, no, I get that. I meant how."
"Oh. That's because they're idiots," Orange commented. "Seriously. Skunks is one thing, and I mean I've met a few that are decent, but then there's these two. This wasn't in Shadow's little rundown was it?"
"No, they weren't. I completely forgot they existed."
"Hey!" Rough, or Tumble, Whisper still wasn't sure which was which, said. "We aren't that forgettable!"
"...To be fair, I did too," Orange murmured. "Green, Cyan?"
"Nothing around that I can find," Green said, hovering in after a moment. He and Cyan had left to try to see if there was anyone else in this conveniently empty house.
Orange was keeping an eye on the square, now with all the civilians gone and out of the way. Occasionally she could see a few people coming out, but it seems as if the wreckage from their fight was still there. There was a green uniformed Islander, a dog, sniffing around the wreckage. Whisper almost thought he was some kind of officer.
"Checked upstairs and in the basement," Cyan said as she came in from the dumbwaiter. "Seems all clear. Door's locked."
Whisper nodded. "Alright," she said, turning to the two on the floor. "Talk."
"What's there to talk!? Look, we just trying to get money to eat, to feed our starving families!" One of them said.
"Uh, Rough? We don't have no families, sides from each other."
"Shh, she don't know that!"
Yes she did. Whisper sighed. "I meant how did you get here."
"Oh! Why didn't you just ask?" Tumble asked. "So we was out of luck near Studiopolis, and that one Mirage Saloon place. And suddenly this guy popped in, as if by magic!"
Whisper stared at the other brother. "No, that's accurate," Rough acknowledged. "He just kinda popped out of thin air, kind of like that Starline guy did. And then he just pointed at us and was 'You. You be very good mercenaries, yeah?"
"And then we was saying 'we're the best of the best! Can't get no better than us! You gonna be only mumbling-"
"After messing with Rough and Tumble!" Rough grinned.
Whisper stared at them. "And that guy brought you here?"
"Eventually, yeah. He told us that he'll pay us these fancy coins, one each day, as long as we patrol around and do whatever it is he says."
"Coins?" Lavender asked. "Not regular money?"
Whisper repeated the question. "Nah, they only use these coins here. Food's cheap, assuming you can find it. There's all kinds of empty space here," Rough said.
"The entirety of the place is one giant temporal anomaly," Orange said as she stared out into space. "Get ready Whisper, there's a green dog is coming here!" She said.
"Alright. Canisters, don't come out unless I'm in trouble," Whisper nodded. The wisps nodded, even Yellow who seemed to understand that something in this situations was wrong.
They flew into the canisters just as the dog knocked politely on the door. "Oh hey that's the boss! We're in here boss!" Tumble called out.
Whisper sighed. They just had to make this hard. "I would've preferred you stay quiet," she said, before she opened the door. She made sure to keep the variable wispon out of sight behind the door.
He was tall, slightly taller than Whisper herself was, with black fur and tall ears that stretched on for a while, but he definitely had the snout of a dog islander. His green uniform was pressed and clean, and he had a small hat that sat between his ears, giving the impression he was a powerful person.
His eyebrows rose as he stared into the empty room. "Excuse me, miss, I'm looking for two of my..." He said, his voice deep and proper.
He looked behind her, to see Rough and Tumble tied up on the floor. "They seem to be behind you," he noticed.
"I was asking them questions. They should be in jail," Whisper said. The dog blinked in surprise.
"Really? They haven't been model citizens, certainly but they aren't...they don't seem that bad to me."
"She's lyin' boss! She never knew us from before! She's way too young to be the Restoration girl that disappeared!" Tumble yelled out.
Whisper's eyes shut as she sighed. The dog suddenly turned much more conniving, much more studious as he glanced at Whisper. "You? The Root Clock grabbed you?" He asked. He seemed much more interested now. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
"No," Whisper answered instantly. She still had to find her friends, although whether that was Shadow, Violet, Sonic and Knuckles, or Tangle and Tails, she wasn't sure.
"That wasn't a request."
"Careful boss! She's tough!" Rough yelled out.
"She beat you? She must be," the dog said. Whisper honestly wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not. He seemed truthful. He reached behind him, and Whisper felt herself tense. He pulled some kind of square box, and she heard Rough gasp.
She slammed the door shut, taking off into the empty house. There was a kitchen, bathroom, foyer, hallway, bedrooms, and the basement. Easiest way to get would be through the second floor, if she needed to do another defenestration.
She barely got to the other side of the living room as the door simply disappeared. The dog stood there, holding the square box in such a way that made it obvious he'd used it on the door. "You have the Root Clock energy swirl all over you. You didn't do it right!" The dog yelled as he glanced downwards towards the device. "You're going to doom us all!" He called out.
The wall next to her disappeared as he aimed the device again. It wasn't a disintegration, not really. It was as if the wall had simply never been there. She raced up the stairs, making sure the variable wispon was on her back. She thought about putting it in front of her. At the very least, it would survive...but no, she couldn't think like that.
"Wait, boss, what about us!?" She heard Rough or Tumble ask as the doberman raced up the stairs behind her. She ducked as part of the ceiling disappeared.
"Later!" He called out. "For now I need to catch this criminal!"
"Not a criminal," Whisper retorted as she raced into a bedroom. There was no way out, except for the plastic window which even Knuckles couldn't break. She stood in front of it anyways.
The dog walked into the room behind her. "Nowhere to run now, wolf. Just come quietly. This won't kill you," he said, pointing the strange box at her. Part of her wondered what that meant.
Whisper stared at him. She dared him to come closer, to try to shoot at her. "Fine," he muttered, shaking his head quietly before he fired again.
She ducked to the ground as fast as lightning, letting the window be destroyed behind her. "Shit," he muttered as Whisper turned and jumped out of the now non-existent window.
"Green," she muttered as soon as she was in the air. More of the green uniformed Islanders and humans were waiting down below, each of them pointing those strange boxes at her. "Never mind, Orange!"
Green and Orange both came out of their canisters, but Green hadn't heard the last part, and they both imbued the wispon at the same time.
Whisper felt the umbrella rocket shoot her forward, across the entirety of the plaza. It was hovering her and it was using the rocket part. The wind blew passed her, and she was marveling at the fact that this should have been impossible. The variable wispon wasn't meant for multiple imbuements at the same time!
She landed on the other side of the plaza, on top of another section of buildings. Probably some kind of shops, she knew, but she hadn't had time to pay attention to what.
"Okay, what?" Orange asked as soon as she dis-imbued herself. "I knew there was more room in there, but now with the energy converter completely empty-"
"That was awesome though! Think we can do other combinations? Or, ooh, do you think we can pull off everyone!?" Green asked.
"I wouldn't want to, not really. Not yet!" Orange said. "That's not going to be easy to do."
"I know, but it'd be great!" Green said.
Whisper held up her hand. "I'll ask questions on the how later," Whisper said, as parts of the roof where she was standing started to disappear. "Any ideas besides run?"
"Nope." "I got nothing."
Right. So it was up to her. That was fine. She looked over at one of the skyscrapers next to her. "Green. Hover us over to the other side of this. Orange, keep an eye out in case they see us," she said, before knocking on Cyan and Pink's canisters. "Cyan, go up there and mark out an easy landing. Pink...keep us attached to the wall."
"Orr...I can force the wispon to go laserified, Pink can then use his power to keep us attached, and Orange can use hers to rocket us up!" Cyan came up with.
"Ooh, I like that plan! Yes, that plan! That plan!" Pink said.
She glanced over at Orange and Green. "There was plenty of room even with two of us," Green acquiesced. "After this, if she's wrong then we don't have to do her plans. But this one may work."
"What do you mean 'may work'!? When has my plans ever not worked?"
"Is that a sarcastic question?" Pink asked. "Because I can think of several."
"Alright, we'll try Cyan's," Whisper announced. Cyan imbued the wispon first, and Whisper felt the wispon get a bit lighter. Not so light it could take off on its own, but it was definitely shifting its own mass.
Pink imbued it next, and there was a sudden pull towards the skyscraper. A small pink line came from the wispon to the building, and Whisper took the moment to jump off of on the other side, keeping out of view of the enforcers. If that's what they were.
She felt herself be pulled, similar to the energy whips that they had used as part of the Resistance. Orange imbued the wispon next, and Green to make sure she didn't fall.
It took only a moment before Orange's energy overpowered the others, and she shot up to the roof of the skyscraper. She landed softly on the top, aided by Green, before the other three wisps dis-imbued the variable wispon.
"Alright, that was awesome!" Cyan decreed. "But how did you know that it'd work like that?"
"Cyan it was your plan!" Pink answered. "How did you know it would work like that!"
" I didn't! I had no idea!"
Whisper sighed. That was just like them, wasn't it? "I do want to know."
"Right, so Violet was messing with the variable wispon last night," Cyan started. Orange nodded, before her eyes widened.
"Wait, when she asked me how the energy converter actually emptied its energy!? I said it didn't, it was used to act as battery storage for us!"
"Exactly! She realized that we probably didn't need any extra 'battery' because the likelihood of us being drained was practically zero at this point. So she allowed it to flow into the wispon directly!"
Which was exactly what Smithy had taught her not to do. "Which made it have more room."
"Yeah but now the wispon can't be used to actually shoot bullets now. But I mean...that wasn't a problem right?" Orange asked.
No, not really. She almost never used it as an actual gun. It was capable of that, if she configured it the right way, not that she ever would. She'd used Orange for a sniper shot if she had to make one, as Orange almost never missed.
"Then she made one other change to the main configuration array," Cyan said. "But I didn't understand that one, Lavender did though."
"Oh yeah I remember that! She was saying there was some kind of bio-block on the...uh..." Orange started, before she knocked gently on Lavender's canister. "We're trying to figure out exactly what it was that Violet did to the variable wispon last night because now it allows multiple of us."
Lavender blinked. "Oh, the bio-marker? It was an energy marker that kept the configuration from shifting from one to the other based upon the original configuration, powered by whichever wisp was in there. It was a toggle, buried deep in there, and then of course the energy overflow had to be emptied."
Had...that been it? Was that literally everything that Violet had done?
A small sound made Whisper pause. She recognized it, but it's been ages since she last heard it. She raised a hand to her mask, letting the sound come out. "Whisper, this is Amy. I can't get into contact with Sonic or any of the others," Amy's older voice flooded in.
"They disappeared in front of me. I'm focused on trying to find them. Found Rough and Tumble, but..."
"Those two? Really? I haven't heard those names in years. We thought they'd turned over a new leaf."
She was taking the news of Sonic surprisingly well.
"Also, I'll see you in a few minutes. Tikal's watching the kids," Amy explained a moment after. Whisper blinked. Okay, she was not taking the news of Sonic's disappearance surprisingly well, she was in fact storming the place. She'd have to hurry if only to make sure that she didn't do exactly that.
"We will join you," Metal Sonic's voice said over the radio. Whisper gave a soft sigh. This was turning out to be a bad sign, immediately.
"Wait, no, don't!" Whisper tried to say before she was interrupted by a sudden cut out sound. Metal Sonic had disconnected.
"Was that just Metal Sonic?" Amy's voice asked over the radio. She must've thought that Whisper was talking to Metal Sonic only versus everyone on the radio. "Really glad I'm not bringing the kids. Be there in a bit! Don't do anything too dangerous!" The sound cut out from the radio.
"They're doing something stupid, aren't they? Whoever you talked to," Orange said. Whisper nodded.
"All of them. Amy, Metal Sonic at the least. That probably means Surge and Kit too, as much as I don't like that idea," Whisper admitted. "At least Jewel and Belle aren't coming. They aren't front-liners."
Pink shook his head, "Ah, no they aren't. But if Amy's coming, then what about Thunder and Velocity? Or Mata?"
"Probably means they're coming," Green said with more than a simple hint of worry.
"Amy said she left them with Tikal on Angel Island. So hopefully, no, they aren't."
"Phew, I was worried this was gonna be the last act for a while," Blue muttered. "Everyone's getting together for one last push, definitely trying to finish up."
"This isn't a story," Lavender spouted, rolling her eye. Mouth. Mouth eye.
"We've been saying that for ages but he doesn't believe us either," Cyan admitted. "At this point we just chalk it up to 'its a Blue thing' and call it a day. That's just this one, not most Blues."
"I was about to ask..."
Whisper sat down on the side, glance that most of the enforcers were now crawling down on the building down below. She could see their green uniforms trudge down the swiss-cheesed shop. It was unlikely they'd think to look up.
She had a few things she needed to do now. First things first, come up with a plan. Much as she'd done back at the Restoration, she came up with a bunch, and threw a bunch away just as fast as she did.
A; she needed to find Tangle and Tails. That was still priority. Abandon the others to look for them, and once she found them, hope that they knew where to find the others. Or make a time machine so this never happened.
She threw that plan out instantly. She wasn't about to leave Violet or Shadow, or Sonic or Knuckles, in their hands for any length of time if she could help it. Tangle and Tails...would simply have to wait.
Amy and Metal Sonic, at the least, were coming in as support. Which meant that maybe Sage, Surge, and Kit were too. Hopefully the three kids wouldn't, but Whisper knew better than to hope.
But how to find any of the two groups? Had the same thing happened to her that happened to the others? THere were more people here than there were before, certainly, and Rough and Tumble were...still in the business, apparently. They hadn't had time to explain anything.
And what had the enforcer meant by 'She'll doom them all'?
She was getting nowhere with no information, and considering all she's heard and experienced here, she doubted she'd get many answers.
She should probably start with going to the gates, making sure that Amy, Metal Sonic, and whomever may be accompanying them don't come in.
Actually the gates had shut, right? She should go check it out anyways. A loud banging sound rushed past her ears, and she held her ears shut for a moment. "Alright, so who let Blue explode?" Green asked.
Blue hovered next to him. "I didn't eat the chili, I swear! That wasn't me!" He 'offered'. Whisper sighed. Probably not the wisps then, considering it came from...the gates.
Oh no.
Amy was faster than Whisper had thought. "Green and Orange, imbue. We're going to check that out, it sounded like it came from the gates," Whisper barked with no more hesitation. The wisps gave a mock salute before Green and Orange imbued into the wispon.
Immediately she felt the umbrella control her fall down while Orange kept her at speed. A kind of orange umbrella, actually, if she had to guess. How the variable wispon had that configuration, she didn't even know.
She exited the square to find that the city...changed. Before it had been relatively vacant, with empty blocks everywhere she looked.
Now there were dozens of people everywhere, looking up and over and the green uniformed enforcers walking down each street. None that she recognized.
As she got closer to the gates, a few people started to call up to her to get her to come down, and she realized something had indeed happened. The gates had rusted shut.
And were being pounded down by something on the other side. Whisper reached up to her radio with her other hand, hoping that she could rely on one hand to hold herself up. As long as Orange didn't try anything fancy, she'd probably be okay.
As soon as she heard the sound of it going through, the gates folded in on themselves, and Whisper saw a very, very angry Amy Rose. Her usual dress was changed for a sporting outfit, and she had the kind of steel in her eyes that showed she wasn't about to take no for an answer.
Before Whisper could shout anything, or say anything, Amy ran into Zerotime. The instant she got past the first block, the green uniformed people showed up...and then Amy promptly disappeared.
"It's alright!" One of the green uniformed women shouted out. "The time trap got them. We'll deal with them in the prisons. You're all safe," they announced, the citizens around them all breathing a sigh of relief.
The time trap? Which meant that there was something going on here.
Whisper knelt down on the shop roof she'd landed on, taking out the wispon and activated the scope. "Can you read their lips?" She asked Orange, focusing on the woman who'd shouted.
She was some kind of cat, like a leopard or similar. "I can. Just keep focusing, and I'll try to get what you miss," Orange said for a moment.
Whisper wasn't the best at lip-reading, but she'd had to do it enough that she knew most basic phrases. The important bit was to watch the shape of the mouth, and the tongue inside it. Most people had a noticeable accent, even if they didn't think it.
"Trap always...moment. Prisons...fifth floor," Whisper said after a long moment. The woman was asking another of the uniformed men to keep an eye on the prisons, on the fifth floor. But the fifth floor of what?
She hadn't noticed anything like a specialized jail yet. Which meant it had to be part of some other building, like an array of shops or the palace. There was a big palace right in the center, and Whisper felt the urge to check it out, but had waited until she would have had to.
A big palace like that meant things were kept there, like people or treasure. She wasn't much of a treasure hunter, but if the treasure was other people...
The sound of a rocket approaching brought her back out to the forefront. "Prisons are on the fifth floor of the palace, left side," Orange reported back. "I think we can find the others!"
"Hopefully we can also use that to find Tails and Tangle," Whisper admitted. She glanced out the gates, as the large flare of sand floated up. That would be Metal Sonic, probably. "Metal Sonic, don't come in, I repeat, do not come in!"
Metal Sonic seemed to not hear her, or just flat out ignoring her as he rammed into where the gates would be, going right past them a second later. Almost as if she knew what was going to happen, he disappeared a second later.
"What's with these interlopers!? That's the second one today!" The same woman shouted.
"Fifth actually!" Surge's voice called out as she roared in a hail of electricity and lightning. Kit was right behind her, a tsunami of water gliding over the non-existent desert.
Whisper blinked. Right outside was a canyon. And it was not the canyon that they'd come in from. In fact it didn't look anything similar to where they'd come in from.
Before she could think to ask, or tell them to stop, both Kit and Surge disappeared from out of her view.
Whisper sighed. "They're like lemmings, it feels," she sighed. "Time to stage a rescue operation," she said a second later.
"It was always going to be one. The question was how many allies were we going to have?" Orange asked.
"My vote was going to be on three. Total, not including us. You, Shadow, and Violet." Green offered.
"To be fair, my vote was on everyone. That'd you ever met in this new time," Blue said. "And...I'm kinda close!"
"You're close nowadays, but when we started I thought I had a pretty good guess!" Green said.
Pink's eye narrowed. "I thought it was just going to be Shadow and us. Because you know, we shouldn't have brought Violet along."
"She wanted to come along, and I wanted to prove how dangerous these adventures could be," Whisper shrugged. "Let her know she shouldn't compare herself to her dad."
"I don't think it worked," Cyan said. "She's still comparing herself to her dad, and she's on the trip."
"No one else coming in? Come on, we still need Belle, and Jewel. And the other three kids although I'm hoping they don't come in," Cyan shouted into the canyon outside the gates.
"Hey, you!" One of the enforcers shouted at her. Whisper stopped and froze for a moment. "You're not supposed to be on the rooftops. They're dangerous," they said, fairly reasonably. "There's a staircase behind you to get down,"
Whisper raised a hand, as if saying thank you, before she walked out of his view. "How to get to the palace...?" She muttered, before she glanced up. The palace was huge, but she had a decent location now. Fifth floor, left side.
The enforcer down below didn't seem to have recognized her. "Pink, imbue? I think we should try to avoid getting spotted," Whisper said.
Pink nodded, his confusion evident. The spiked hammer wispon popped itself up again, before Whisper switched it to the line configuration.
She flipped it onto a nearby pillar, before she swung herself off into one of the more empty blocks, leashing from one line to another. She'd get there soon, and this was much, much faster than running.
"Out of the Frying Pan, and into the Fire."
Until Next Time.