Ruby Haze [Archie Sonic SI]

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 1: In Mercia Res

♦ 100

For the first time in my life, I finally achieved some measure of greater perspective in terms of my place in the universe. Not by deep diving through my issues and reaching a significant breakthrough. That would have been long-term progress. No, this was accomplished by gazing down at an alien planet and being unable to reconcile how small I was in comparison to it. That was before factoring in the dozens upon dozens of little moons that rotated around the sphere, each one a different size or shape moving at its own pace. They might have been dwarf moons, but they certainly dwarfed me.

Staring at it all for a few minutes, I had to admit: It was the most beautiful, terrifying photograph of the Earth from space that I had ever seen, even if it got many of the finer details wrong. Europe was scrunched-up and lost a lot of definition in the process. Africa was set askew until it poked South America and maybe India. Australia was a rough, circular patch of terra firma set in the middle of the Pacific. Most bafflingly, it seemed as though someone missed the memo about Southeast Asia being a region with many islands and treated it like an art project they needed to haphazardly glue together to meet a deadline.

It was certainly an unusual circumstance, hovering out in the oxygen-starved void far beyond any atmosphere and taking in all the little, tiny details of a world that resembled my own in the same way a chicken does a turkey. I hadn't been facing the right way to see what the New World looked like, but at a guess it would have been as screwy as the old one.

Regardless of whether air was abundant out here or not, my chest was rising and falling. Fast. I felt oddly breathy. The whole experience was nearly a dream, but I was too mentally aware and too active for it to be one. If there was such a thing as being too tired to dream, that described my natural state. I rarely dreamed, and when I did it was a chaotic mess of ideas that stopped, started, and stalled without tangible bridges between one thought or another. This global vista of deformed continents was too consistent to be something I imagined, and yet I could make out the infinitesimal details of whirling cloud formations and the very occasional pinpoint of electric light. Nowhere near as many lights as I was expecting.

♦ 99

Somewhere, deep in my bones, I felt a timer tick down. Unnerved, but curious, I traced that heavy sense of dread to a small weight on my left hand. A hot pink stud of glass or something along those lines was embedded on the front of my hand. Set in the center of it, wedged between sensitive nerves and tissues as if it belonged there. Around that pink stud was a black glove that covered the rest of my hand. Underneath the glove followed a black bodysuit that covered the whole of my arm and the entirety of my body.

"What?"

It was the first thing I said in space. Not very eloquent, but it got the idea across. The first thing I did since waking up this morning was discover a whole new dimension of anxiety and existential horror. That was bad enough, but where did my clothes go? Was I even wearing glasses? Who put that pink thing there?

♦ 98

"What!?"

I didn't know what the counter meant, but I also didn't want anything counting down while I was in space without a helmet! My heart raced, my head wracked with possibilities and hitting dead end after dead end in regards to solutions for them. If I could feel a battery being drained, what was I spending the power on? Breathing, radiation shielding, flight? What else?

Ninety-eight was still good, right?

♦ 97

I brought my hands to my head to massage my temples, inadvertently bringing the foreign object closer to my face than I wanted it to be. I think I could fly in one direction and hit the sun if I tried hard enough, but the weird glam rock was acting like a shortcut to the same sensation. A blistering source of heat and light that got more intense and less accommodating the harder I focused on it.

When my mind made the connection to heat and light, it clicked. I didn't know where it came from, but right now this thing was keeping me alive. I didn't go to sleep with a black bodysuit on either, but the odds were that the mysterious gem provided it for me.

Maybe I should find a place to land? Preferably a spot with a free atmosphere. Assuming this world was the same size as the Earth I knew, it had a tremendous breadth of options to pick from on short notice. I didn't have all day to choose, either. While I attempted to narrow down my options between Central Europe and an AWOL Iberian island, the pink stone flared up. It stung my hand, causing me to flinch as though I'd touched a hot stove. The 'stove' was still stuck on my hand, making the gesture useless.

"Ow! What is it now?"

Following another instinct guided by pain response, I reoriented myself on my axis so that I faced the endless starscape of space. Taking a moment to concentrate and pick out noteworthy events in the abyss beyond my comprehension, I found what the gem was trying to tell me. It looked as though a meteor the size of a semi-trailer truck was flying in my direction, on course to impact with my fragile body and smear me across its surface. The hunk of debris was grey and craggy, composed of iron first and a smattering of other metals second.

"No, wait. That's not a meteor, it's an asteroid." I could tell because it was some twenty meters across and getting bigger with each second, rather than shrinking when it burned up in the atmosphere. Lacking any practical experience in dodging celestial bodies, talking myself through the crisis situation was the best I could manage.

♦ 96

"What do I do? Fly? Now? Please!?"

I slowly backed away from the oncoming metal deposit, feeling a source of heat at my back and hand. Was that the burn from atmospheric friction already? Whoever said space was cold needed to get their facts checked, because it felt like a sauna when the only thing between you and a really big rock was a much smaller one. My heart only pounded faster as the asteroid zeroed the distance between us. Holding my arms out to block the asteroid was another instinct, equivalent to when you extend your hands to break a fall, only managing to mangle them.

"No, no, no! You've gotta be kidding me! Get away!"

The gem at my hand flared up again as my vision became awash with red. Dreams could be twisted, but this wasn't anything close to fair. I should have woken up a long time ago. At that moment, I went from panicked to angry. Furious, as I desired to vent all of my frustrations into the closest thing I had to an adversary. A target to hit. I lowered my right arm, giving my left room to aim at the asteroid flying straight into my personal space. The welling emotions gave way to an idea that blossomed into a way out.

"Take this!" I shouted, a wide bolt of pink and red energy surging out of the gem and colliding with the odious space junk! The display of power awed me as the colorful projectile rocketed towards its target, shattering the asteroid into massive chunks on impact. In its wake, meteorite fragments and a dispersing haze of dust were all that remained. The wreck was the same color as the trinket, transmuted from iron and other metals to a solid, shimmering crystal.

I took a moment to examine my work. "Wow."

♦ 91

That moment of wonder was brief, as I felt how much that took out of me. Mixed, rhythmic sensations of heat and pressure that added up to a shallower pulse of power. If the invisible numbers in my head were an abstraction of some kind, then I blew about a twentieth of the power I had overall on a laser light show.

Did this thing recharge? What happened at zero?

I started to have a sinking feeling as the pink dust got further and further away. Belatedly, I realized that it wasn't drifting from me, so much that I had started to fall down to the planet. Shooting a big energy blast at the asteroid significantly accelerated my descent, and I hadn't even figured out how to fly. Trying to force-correct my downward dive from orbit only resulted in flailing wildly without a clue as to what I was doing.

♦ 90

"Ah! AH! Slow down! SLOW DOWN!!"

The malformed globe spun around me faster that I could keep up, growing larger and larger still. My entire body was burning hot, surrounded by a bright corona of flame.

"It's official! I don't like this dream anymore! Space sucks! You can wake me up now!"

♦ 89

I felt bile rise in my throat. The sky was green, the grass was blue, and I was on fire. This would not have been how I chose to go out. Blazes of glory suck. I didn't want to die.

♦ 88

…Some time after I expected to have hit the ground, I realized I was still falling.

♦ 87

"ANY DAY NOW!" I screamed at the now useless gem, which had stopped responding to my aimless demands and was simply glowing. It should have let me fly by now! Perhaps I was venting at the entire solar system, because no one else could hear me anyway. Falling through the clouds and quickly reaching a terminal end point, the land below appeared to be wooded when I had the chance to look down. My spinning hadn't stabilized so much as slowed down, giving me the verdant view of the evergreen forest every few seconds.

Before I could figure out the magic words to give myself wings, I made an earsplitting impact with water. The right side of my body was wracked with pain, and it felt like a jet of water was sprayed up my nose straight into my brain. Landing in water at that speed was guaranteed to break me before it broke any falls. I wasn't in the mood to argue whether instant death would be a mercy at this point, because the immediate change in scenario elicited a more primal and panicked response from my hindbrain than falling from orbit.

♦ 86

I was far too deep into the water to grasp for the surface. My power probably let me breathe underwater if I was comfortable in a vacuum, but it felt like my lungs were filling with fluids anyway. Unable to reach for air or latch on to anything solid, I sank into my own anger and fear. Either the water was boiling, or it was just me. I just came out of space and was all sorts of mad about it. I was also upset about getting water stuck in my nose, an idiosyncratic train of thought I hung on to because I noticed a pattern with getting angry and getting results. The gem illuminated the dark depths of the water, and I thought of flying straight up to freedom.

"Ah! Stop! Stop! Too high!"

It didn't work as planned. My flight pattern was erratic. More like a fish being kicked around by an invisible force than soaring. There were multiple times I risked hitting a tree or sheer cliff and breaking my neck. Focusing my jittery jumps into concentrated movement took effort driven by desperation and adrenaline. Coming to a complete stop was harder, but in that moment I would have taken stable ground under my feet over bouncing around pinball-style.

♦ 85

Once I reoriented myself and regained a sense of up and down, I dropped to the wet ground and vomited. I was utterly tapped out in my physical and mental reserves. Launched out of orbit, partially drowned, and nearly splattered in the span of five minutes. Ten tops! I needed some time to unwind, puke some more, and then just lay down in the fetal position. I could barely feel the texture of the dirt as my fingers dug into the earth, but half of that was because of the odd gloves I was wearing. What were they, leather? Latex? I couldn't place the material.

"Stupid gloves," I muttered between ejecting copious amounts of fluid from my body.

The gloves vanished before my eyes when I spared an idle thought to wishing them away, seemingly costing the gem nothing to get rid of. I crawled back to the water's edge in a stupor, stumbling over gnarled greenery that nicked my exposed hands. It hurt a bit, but not enough to bleed. Besides, I didn't think I was ready to stand yet.

At the water, I carefully examined my reflection. My eyes were dark, sunken pits with red rings around black pinpricks of pupils. The light brown curls of my hair were a wet mop that crowned a gristly, disheveled expression. My nose was about the same as it was when I last checked, but it was swollen with a bold streak of blood running down one nostril. Was that from using the gem, or the crash? Either way, I looked terrible, my body and the immediate area around it were bathed in an eerie, ethereal light. I washed my face in the clear lake, something to keep my hands busy while I thought over what to do next.

♦ 86

The conspicuous icosahedron had cooled off somewhat from the dunking, but it still glowed faintly. I couldn't see all twenty sides with it plugged into my hand, but I knew a D20 when I saw one. Touching my left palm, I tried to feel the other end of the stone poking out; nothing was there. The gem looked so strange, without a layer of fabric covering where one connected to the other. Not pink or red as I first thought, but something in between. Magenta?

"Huh," I mused aloud, impressed by the cut. "Looks sorta like the--"

"Stand and deliver, varlet!" a voice behind me declared in the most jarring, broken Shakespearean English accent I could possibly imagine. As if a certain God of Thunder or the King James Bible was ringing in my ears. "You trespass upon sacred waters! State your business!"

The sudden noise had me spooked, then strongly bewildered once I registered what said voice was demanding of me. Was I going crazy? Was I still dreaming? Was anything here real? Was I real? I ran my fingers through my hair, hands trembling.

"Hey. Hey. Shut up. I need a minute here. Go away."

My voice was hollow. I didn't even bother to turn around when I answered back. In case it was a hallucination, I didn't want to give it the time of day.

The voice of a teenaged LARPer seemed flabbergasted. He faltered slightly as he pressed onward. "I shall give you no moment of respite, sirrah! As guardian of the Deerwood Forest and rightful steward of yon lake, I demand you state your intentions or face the consequences!"

Exasperated, I turned around. "Alright, already! What do you…?"

I was talking to a three foot tall teal rodent in a brown, cowled tunic with matching earth tone hiking boots. He was a furry Robin Hood ripoff with big green eyes and a stern scowl. Strangely not the strangest thing I've seen today, the first sign of intelligent life I've encountered. He was perched on a stump atop a short hill, a small longbow aimed at my torso.

".…Want?"

I wordlessly looked him over in stunned fascination. I thought he'd be human, rather than whatever he happened to be. An embodiment of the dangers of unregulated nuclear testing? My reaction was severe, but muted, because I could only believe he was as real as everything else that had gone on within the past few minutes.

Aside from that, I was left wondering if he had any arrows to go with the bow. I looked down, noticing a long shaft with a feathery tail lodged in my chest. That wasn't there earlier, by my own recollection. Weird. How did that happen?

Then yelped in shock and pain when it immediately started to feel like there was an arrow stuck in my chest! My first instinct was to yank it out, but it wouldn't budge! The attempt to jostle it loose only made it hurt even more!

♦ 85

"Ow! Ah! AH! You shot me with an arrow! Why did you shoot me with an arrow?!" I've never been hit by an arrow before, but it seemed the most prudent question to ask.

The short mammal took a step back, looking slightly less confused than I was. He nearly fell off the stump, turning the trip into a hop on to the hill.

"Lackaday, spellbinder! That was meant to be a warning shot!" he exclaimed.

"What was the warning? To wear some armor?! Good lord, this stings!"

"I merely meant to query thou in order to determine whether thee were friend or foe when thou turned swiftly without nary a warning!"

I pointed to the offending projectile with one index finger. At least it wasn't bleeding. Yet. "Really? Do we look like friends, you pistachio wingnut? I don't think we have a very solid foundation for friendship here!" My eyes were red now, so hopefully my anger got across without being muddled by ambiguity.

He raised his bow and prepped another arrow. I had my bedazzled arm extended and ready to sucker punch him with a laser. I liked my odds more than his if he tried that again.

"You descended from the stars as a fiery, baleful phantasm unto the bed of Never Lake! Am I not to assume you sought to violate and despoil its serene beauty to fuel your dark magicks, Overland warlock most foul and unseeming?"

"I don't even know what that means!" Academically I knew what some of his words meant, but not how they applied to the present standoff. Not that I would forfeit a shred of the argument by admitting that. Worst of all, I was pretty confident he had just called me ugly after shooting me. "And you're not so hot yourself, you jolly green halfling!"

He drew closer to me, getting up in my face. "Sheathe thine sharp tongue, pock-marked mage of ill repute!"

I drew closer to him, kneeling down slightly so he could hear just what I thought about him. "I've been to Renaissance fairs with more class and attention to historical detail than an overwrought, moldy stuffed shrew like you!"

Our potentially lethal altercation rapidly devolved into a furious storm of professional insult fighting. This was technically a conversation with another intelligent being, something I could really use to recharge my emotional batteries. Even if he was a diminutive, feckless git with poor trigger discipline and no pants to his name.

Idly, I noted my arrow wound wasn't bleeding as much as it should've. Wanting to yank it out was a gut reaction when I first identified it, but now I didn't want to risk doing that and having the arrow cause even more damage on its way out of my body. Considering I haven't died from exposure or blunt force trauma, it could only hurt so much if I pulled the arrow free later.

"You shall regret the false testimony borne about the virtue of my mother, you--"

"HALT!"

Neither of us were able to get another word in as several tall, imposing steel giants stomped free of the woodwork and entered the lake clearing. The three machines were nearly twice my height and fairly uniform in construction, seeming right at home on the set of a shoestring budget sci-fi film or a supermarionation production. Built with a minimum of articulation or moving parts, covered in heavy steel plates of armor that collected dirt and dust as they bowled over pine, stone, and shrub. They were armed with dense, welded bars of metal that functioned as crude and cumbersome clubs in their weighty hands.

A trio of blood red cyclopean visors glared down at us, followed by a litany of the local equivalents to the Miranda Rights projected through very cheap voice synthesizers. If they had a strong accent like the shrew, it was muddled by the modulator.

"ROB O' THE HEDGE AND UNIDENTIFIED COLLABORATOR. YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. DO NOT RESIST THE WILL OF THE HIGH SHERIFF. I REPEAT, DO NOT RESIST."

"Are those robots?!" I squealed with incredulous, barely-restrained indignation.

This whole day had been panic, terror, screaming, and pain. One crisis after another, all questions with no answers. There was an undercurrent to what I was feeling. The heavy, mounting pressure from the bottle I'd been filling up to compartmentalize every mental stress fracture was a dam about to burst from information overload, and I didn't really have enough information to be satisfied with what little I had.

The colorful vermin stood to combat position, turning away from me and aiming his bow at one of the metal men. I couldn't tell which part of them would be vulnerable to a humble arrow at a glance. The red visor eye, maybe? Unless 'Robbo' was packing more heat than he let on, I sincerely doubted the guy would manage anything more than wasting a shot.

Then again, he shot one at me just fine. Really, what did I know?

"Verily! These mechanical miscreants are the footsoldiers of the treasonous Sheriff! I know not your intentions, stranger, but surely you can recognize the need for--"

I growled and projected a conical ray of light from my gem. The light coalesced into a large, translucent left hand and wrapped itself around the body of the nearest robot. With a thought, I clenched the giant fist and crushed everything encased beneath it to scrap metal and glitter dust. The robot's head spun straight up through the air before landing on the refuse pile.

"…Cooperation."

The two that remained stared blankly at their comrade, who had become a used parts depot. They raised their metal clubs and slowly ambled towards us. "UNIDENTIFIED MISCREANT IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. ENGAGING WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE."

For my next magic trick, I focused on a rough circle around the two robots and set it ablaze with iridescent flame. The pillars of fire rose above the robots and met one another, freezing in place and solidifying into a crystal cage surrounding them on all sides. The bars of the cage were rough and jagged, giving them an aggressive look I could get behind.

It wasn't looking too bad now. If I could do that to all of my problems, I might be able to get ahead of this. I looked around, trying to find where that Rob rodent went. Annoying as he was, I would appreciate it if anyone stopped throwing curveballs and got to exposition!

There was a loud clatter like shattering glass as the armed robots stepped out of the remains of the pretty cage. I underestimated their speed; the doofy drones crossed the gap into melee range in under two strides. Their sudden blitz threw me on the backfoot, but I had enough time to raise a light barrier between me and the wrecking force of their clubs. Fragments of that interposing wall scattered over the ground as I was tossed reeling into a sheer stone wall. They knocked something loose with that heavy blow, and it wasn't a stronger tolerance for pain.

"Would you cut that out!?" I called out to them, nearly breathless but with enough air left to loudly complain at them.

There was a pause in their combat routine. The two machines were nearing closer. Another blast or two could do it, but I won't get a good shot if they beat me black and magenta first. If I didn't finish this soon, they might call for friends. Like that 'sheriff' of theirs, who I wasn't in the mood to meet if he was overtaxing people with death machines. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the income went into Prince John's space program.

"REQUEST DENIED."

The machines readied their blunt instruments to pick up where they left off. The path of the farthest one was intercepted by an arrow striking its foot from the angle of the trees. The tiny sliver of wood didn't pierce the armor, instead erupting into a bundle of twine that caught its two lumbering limbs and drew them together. The string didn't look nearly strong enough to do the job, and yet the steel giant tumbled to the ground with a solid clunk.

With that robot incapacitated, I was forced into close combat with the remaining one. It swung its rebar beatstick left and right, causing me to flinch and propel myself away with long, unbalanced jumps. Being craned around on invisible wires or hopping with moon physics was safer than trying to fly under duress.

I hadn't been in a physical fight in years, but the machine was encroaching on my comfort zone and bringing me right back into that violent headspace where blood pumped and common decency went out the window.

The difference was only this time, of course, I'd win.

Kicking off against a rocky spire, I rocketed towards my next victim with a left hook that exploded into a shotgun blast of pressurized pink mist. The pressure wave rocked the machine and caused it to bowl over. I was ready to keep wailing on the downed robot when I saw the mist harden over its upper body, forming a spiky layer of magenta mineral over their head and trunk in the shape of a frozen splash.

"Ha! Try breaking out of that, you tin-plated git!"

The robot's thick fingers dragged coarsely across the surface of the gem shell, too stiff to finely hold on as it futilely attempted to scrape free. Not wanting to risk whether it would actually accomplish the deed, I conjured a broad cylinder of solid light and drove it straight down on the robot's head. The result was total flattening and a small crunch where I had to guess its brain was. Brain or not, the body stopped struggling when that area was squashed into a solid disc.

♦ 75

"Aha! I got 'em!" Once the deed was done, there was total silence in the forest clearing. Rob left my sight during the skirmish, and hadn't returned after taking out one of the drones with his bow. I called out his name again, or what I was pretty sure his name was. No response.

With nothing left to smash into tiny chunks, the adrenaline started to bleed out of my body. The gem still had power to burn, but didn't. I fell to my knees, exhaustion returning with a vengeance once I had run out of targets. I was able to perform one last action while cognizant, and said action was ripping that arrow out of my body with all the force I could muster. It was a drastic act in delirium, done to keep me up, but instead it caused me to black out from shock.

Ah. There was the blood I was missing…


---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

Man, this took a lot of nerve for me to put online. It's incredibly niche but a story I felt like telling! I hope everyone enjoys it.

Ruby Haze takes place in the year 3234 on the Mobius calendar. (No relation to our own.) Very early in the events of the comic book, back when Mike "Sonic is Alf but blue" Gallagher was writing many of the Sonic stories. This was a very silly time for the books, to the extent that much of it had to be retconned/ignored to take anything after it seriously. They wouldn't be getting "serious" for quite a while.

Rob O' the Hedge is the rightful king of Mercia, a country that's all of France and the British Isles put together. Maybe other parts of Western Europe too? As you can guess, they are mostly used for Robin Hood parodies with a light sprinkling of Arthurian tales. I leaned into that, as many of Robin Hood's Merry Men were people he rescued or got his ass kicked by. This scenario is pretty close to that.

The robots are based off some unnamed baddies that appeared in Knuckles #11, Sonic #58, and Knuckles #12. Those issues are also where Rob first showed up. Similar, but much larger robots called G.O.O.N.s would latter appear in Chaotix Quest (Sonic Universe #46-#49), which was going to have Rob O' the Hedge but replaced him with Bow Sparrow at the last second for legal reasons.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 2: Unhappy Tree Friends

Last night I had the strangest dream. Not the regular kind of odd or curious, but far, far weirder. Perhaps uncannier than the infamous clown car chase.

At first, I thought I was awake. Then dreaming. Back and forth, as the narrative of my mind twisted and turned between ebbs and flows of real sensations and fantastical events. It was scary as all get-out. More a nightmare than a dream, too horrible to be anything but reality.

In that dream, the dinosaurs in tribal masks came into my home and tried to convince me it wasn't all that bad. I scoffed at them.

"Not that bad?" I shouted into their faces. Masks. "What part of that wasn't bad? Who invited you here… and when did my house become this huge cave?"

They spoke in pictures and I only understood a fraction of the symbolism, which was rude. All I caught was flickering fire, stolen wings, roaring thunder, and golden rings. As if they meant anything to me. The room flashed with light and inverted colors with each fleeting image. My surroundings became less distinct, increasingly blurry.

I couldn't tell if they were mad, happy, or sad with those silly masks on, but that hardly mattered now. They were leaving.

"Alright, forget the other questions! Just say it! Why did this happen to me?!"

The big, green one with a toucan beak taped to his face made a sound, and--

♦ 72

As my bleary eyes slowly fluttered to wakefulness, I awoke to a violent sneezing fit. I trembled from the force of it, and the sneeze was the starting gun for a sudden panic attack. I didn't know where I was and my body was wracked with new kinds of pain, both too light and too heavy when I tried to move my arms, legs, chest, and head. Forcibly slowing my breathing down to more manageable levels, I tried to set my mind on to more logical thinking. Recalling how I got here only in the vaguest of senses, I shivered.

Didn't know where I was, but I wasn't home. Nowhere near it. I could really use my allergy pills about now, but I'd settle for answers.

There was little light in the cramped room I'd been confined to, the only flashes of illumination coming from windows left ajar by whoever left me here. I wasn't afraid of the dark, so much as being in the dark after falling unconscious from shock and awakening in a mysterious place I didn't recognize. Tugging the thick, sweltering blankets off my body, I stretched and felt all sorts of acute aches across my body. I regretted getting up, but I was too scared to go back to sleep. Standing up from the outstretched cot was a slow and deliberate process. I had walked away from multiple fatal injuries, but it didn't mean I was going to start pushing my luck. The pain felt too real at the time to consider otherwise.

My eyes were more adjusted to the darkness, but not at a rate to my liking. More vision was more points of data, more knowledge. Eyeballing how much of my power I've spent so far and speculating how much it would cost to cast the equivalent to a cantrip, I nudged my crystal with one hand and imagined the room being a little brighter than it was.

No levitation, no crystal prisons, no roiling explosions that light the room on fire, and no giant boots to kick down the walls. Just some light. What was the point of a magical item of power if I didn't know how to control it?

I feared something would get lost in translation, but a conical beam of red poured out from my hand like a flashlight. With some mental tweaks, I could will the beam to change intensity and scope, make it narrower or broader. I didn't want to poke any eyes out yet, but a laser pointer could be useful for later. Waving the light back and forth across the room, I saw that I was inside a wooden hut with another tiny creature.

"Woah!"

I was thrown into the throes of terror in spite of how cute the critter was. They had a huge head with matching big eyes and eyelashes, with spikes pouring out the back of it like hair. The creature was outfitted with a blouse, a pleated skirt, sneakers, and gloves. Cute, sure, but I was expecting to be alone and they could have had a weapon behind their back. So I yelped.

"Eek!" she cried.

If the choice of clothing hadn't given it away, she sounded like a little girl. Frightened. She got spooked at the same time I got spooked, causing her to scamper out of the hut's doorless exit in a startled rush. It made me feel bad, though I wished it didn't. I'd been through a lot recently, and I thought I was entitled to traumatizing some children now and again. At least one, right? Like everything else going wrong in my life, there was a chance I could go back to sleep and pretend it never happened if I tried hard enough.

I felt bad anyway. Watching my head for the low ceiling, I followed her out of the hut and onto a wide, wooden bridge. The bridge was connected to a series of bridges, which were linked to other huts and ladders in a network of homes attached to thick tree trunks. I was the guest of a multileveled nest of tree houses.

My beacon swung downwards, but I wasn't able to see the ground on cursory inspection. How high up was this place, and could I request a hut with taller guard rails? They were fine for people that averaged around half my size, but didn't hit the mark for me.

"...Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you." My voice came out dull and hoarse. I wasn't as dead as I could have been, but I felt dehydrated and could really use a drink. Preferably on the rocks.

I dimmed the red lamp, turning it off and letting night vision take over from there. I wasn't submerged in total darkness. There was moonlight, and two of the darkened huts turned on their lights in response to the disturbance. I could see faint silhouettes of small humanoids peering from their doors and windows. A couple of pairs of eyes leering at me with hushed words exchanged between them in a way I didn't like.

I spotted the mutant animal child at an intersection of bridges where a platform was raised to form a common area. She was crouched behind a hooded figure I recognized from earlier. Taller than her, though not by much. His name was Rob, that much I knew for certain.

"Pardon the indiscretion of mine younger cousin, guest wizard. She had ne'er seen an overlander in person before."

What was I supposed to say to that? It took a moment to recompose myself, but I settled for a noncommittal "Uh. No problem."

Rob turned to the girl, who whispered something in his ear. He paused to listen before replying back at a similar volume, and she ran off to one of the larger huts in their treetop village. Big eyes poked out of the windows, the fear or anger in a few of them clear as day.

"Art thou with pangs of hunger, wizard?" Rob gestured to another suspended hut, where I could see candlelight and could smell something cooking. "We hath left aside a portion of vegetable broth for the hour at which thee had awoken."

I'd say he was being too casual about the whole thing, but the normal human response to this type of situation, as I understood it, was irrational fear and denial. Nothing that had been happening so far should have happened, and I'd been questioning it every step of the way, but I hadn't been running around or screaming in terror. Was that… normal? That almost always happened at the start of alien-flavored screwball comedies that tried to handle first contact with a quick joke, but I wasn't exactly laughing.

My stomach was audibly growling, so I defaulted to another, less complicated instinct. "Yeah. I can do broth."

What followed was one of the more awkward dinners I'd shared with another intelligent being. The suspended cabin had a fire pit beside our table to provide warmth. The dining table was smaller than I was used to. I was cramped under it, at constant risk of flipping the whole setup over if I twitched the wrong way. Rob laid out a wooden bowl and poured the orange broth in with a ladle, leaving a small loaf of bread beside it. Neither of us said a word until I was done, but I made fast work of the soup because I was starving and wanted to get this over with.

"So," I initiated, pushing the bowl and plate aside. "That all happened, right? Fell out of the sky, crashed, we er, talked, and then the robots…" I trail off.

The green mammal stared at me inquisitively, then nodded an affirmative. "Aye. It transpired as you recall. Sensing a disturbance at the sacred grounds of Never Lake, I misjudged you as an enemy and fired upon thee. When you came to my aid, I realized the tremendousness of my grievous error, and for your swift action I was in your debt."

"Oh." I took a sip of tea from a tall mug provided. Being incredibly undiscerning with tea, all I could say was that it was dark and burnt my throat while not tasting enough like coffee. I was too weary to taste it, but there wasn't enough caffeine to make a difference in my energy levels.

"Guess I should apologize for all of that stuff I said. Sorry. In hindsight, it was pretty uncalled for."

I may have been hopelessly confused and frustrated, but I wasn't going to let it show now that I got my cool back. That cool was a thin veneer and I was screaming internally since I got here, but I was going to hold on to the illusion of chill for as long as I could get away with.

Rob seemed to be put at ease by my words. He was more teal than green by candlelight, but I left my color swatch at home in my spare black jumpsuit. It was hard to say.

"Your apology is accepted, wizard, though I feel there is a debt to be repaid for my impropriety. These are troubling times in which we find ourselves in, but that is no cause to forget our better natures."

I nodded like I knew what was going on, allowing him to continue.

"I did not have the chance to introduce myself properly. I am King Robert O'Hedge. Known to friend and foe alike as Rob O' the Hedge."

"Well, I'm John," I replied. "Wizard."

I drink the hot tea and silently note these aren't the typical accommodations for a king, quaint woodland king or otherwise. Assuming he wasn't pulling my leg for one reason or another. Carefully phrasing my words, I prodded for additional context that would better let me pretend to know what I had gotten stuck into.

"I'll admit, I sorta dropped into your neck of the woods by accident. Didn't see that lake of yours until I was in it. My sense of direction is awful." I raised my hand with the pink rock on the back of it. The gem gleamed in the firelight. "This is something of a non-sequitur, but have you seen anything like this before?"

Rob shook his head. He looked surprised that I brought it up, as if I was supposed to know about how my own powers worked or something. Oh well. Everyone knows wizards are eccentric. It's the perfect defense for strange behavior.

"I have ne'er seen such a jewel before. If it is a work of spellcraft, then I can be of no aid to your queries. Our court had not been graced by a magician in ages. Recorded lore on magic was rare before the war began, and scarcer still with current strife. I could impose upon the Friar to search through the scrolls he was able to abscond with before the High Sheriff could abuse their knowledge, but much was left behind in our haste to escape capture by his sentries."

I wasn't surprised that Furry Robin Hood was friends with an animal of the cloth, but the talk of a war put me on the edge. What was the reason for conflict? Who was fighting who? I didn't even know the name of the country and I was already in the middle of their problems.

Oh, and magic appeared to be not only real, but something I could do. Swell. That tidbit went straight into the compartmentalization box for later.

"I'll have to ask your Friar friend about it later. Maybe you could tell me more about the current status of the … kingdom? As king, you're the best person I could ask about it."

"Very well. Are ye completely unfamiliar with the Grand Kingdom of Mercia?" he asked as he raised the kettle. "And would you care for more tea?"

"Yes and no. That is, yes to being not from around here, no to the tea."

Rob O' the Hedge stood from his chair, clearing the dishware from the table. He walked to a small table, where he picked out a detailed, hand-drawn map of the country for us to see. It was much like I expected from my short-lived perusal of the planet's surface: A country with the trappings of the British Isles and France thrown together. An elegant picture of a castle town was at the left of the map, surrounded by great plains in the North and swathes of untamed wilderness in every other direction. Scattered villages dotted the map, as sprawling roads connected most of them to the heart of the kingdom.

The map had some concerning additions besides that. How did they get their own Stonehenge where Scotland should be? Where did the Picts and Gauls fit in? Was the dragon in the right corner for flavor, or would I have to watch for one of those too?

"As a guest in our once-fair lands, I must warn you that the situation has become increasingly dire. Haiechester fell to the High Sheriff's army days hence. Several of my men were taken captive during the crackdowns, leaving the Crazy Kritter Freedom Fighters at a fraction of our manpower. We lost contact with the Highland warrens and the maquis in the South over the following nights. Many lost the will to continue the struggle and attempted surrender, but I fear for the lives of them and their families now that they are in the Sheriff's hands."

Full context or not, that sounded bad. Very bad. Several towns on the map had their names struck through with ink, presumably taken over or destroyed by the enigmatic Sheriff and his war machines. It made me stop and analyze them all with careful attention, the thought of cute talking animals dying in a campaign of suppression making me take this all more seriously.

Then I almost lost it. The name of the capital had been crossed out and replaced with something so juvenile I could hardly maintain a straight face after reading it. I nearly burst out laughing and had to cover it with a cough.

"S-Snottingham?" I said as I covered my mouth with my fist. I coughed a few times to make it marginally more convincing.

Rob's voice took on a more somber, frustrated tone as he rolled up the map and put it away. "Renaming Haiechester was the High Sheriff's first act after executing mine and Rosy's parents. They are lost to us, leaving the burden of liberating Mercia and avenging them to me."

My sense of levity evaporated, and the silence that followed was deafening.

"I'm sorry, Rob. I didn't know."

He glares at me. "I bear no further ill will towards you, wizard, but know this. I will not stop fighting until my kingdom is free. Even if my fellow countrymen are captured and I am consigned to carry on our mission alone." He exhales, some of the fire leaving his voice. "But this is not a battle for my younger cousin. Friar Buck was to take Rosy to our distant allies in Northamer, but the High Sheriff has redoubled his forces at the edges of Deerwood Forest since your appearance in Mercia days ago. I suspect they are aware of your presence here and are lying in wait to spring a trap for the both of us."

I didn't even crack a smile at the Friar's name when the joke clicked. I was more concerned about the unwitting consequences of my earlier actions against those robotic enforcers when something else suddenly occurred to me.

"I was sleeping for days?" I asked him, stunned.

"Like a babe. Friar Buck tended to your ministrations, and the others had a wager as to whether or not you would awaken at all."

A kingdom fell while my eyes were closed.

"Let's… Let's table that for now. Clearly we got bigger fish to fry here."

He looks at me funny. I roll my eyes and restate the question in a way he'll understand.

"Perchance we have more egregious concerns to address, King O'Hedge?"

Rob crossed his arms. We were sliding back to our initial rapport. "What concerns do you suggest so that we may address them, spellbinder?"

"A deal."

One of his eyebrows raised. With the size of his head, it was hard to miss.

"Pray tell. An exchange or an agreement?"

"Both. I help you fight the High Sheriff, at least on a temporary basis. Using the powers I have to help Friar Buck and Rosy to escape Mercia sounds as good a start as any. Once they're in the clear, you and I are going to go library diving for any books your kingdom has on magic."

"You seem fairly versed in witchcraft and arcane knowledge already. For what purposes would you need more?"

I was on a limited charge and desperate to know how to avoid being rendered powerless on an alien planet without any other means of protecting myself. Nothing serious.

"Knowledge is power, Rob. There's no harm in having more knowledge, but what I don't know can always find a way to hurt me."

Rob didn't have a response to that.

I extended my hand. "Based on what you've told me, you need all the help you can get. I'm offering."

"And if I were to refuse?"

"I'd leave. You know the forest, so you'd tell me which direction to fly in so that I don't give your position away to the Sheriff. Even if we aren't working together, I don't want to help anybody like him do what he's doing to others. Full stop."

Rob O' the Hedge became silent as he considered the proposed arrangement, staring at me, his rolled-up map, and then the shiny charm on my other hand.

"Is your word your vow?" he asked me as he examined my outstretched palm.

"...Yes," I replied after a stilted pause. "It's why I rarely give it."

We shook hands then and there, making us officially in this together.

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

The three dinosaurs in masks are, frankly, difficult to cover. The Ancient Walkers are a subject for another time. Read their article at your own discretion.

Rob's young cousin "Rosy" goes by another, far more popular name in the Sonic stories. I'll let you guess which pink hedgehog she's supposed to be.

Astute readers may recognize Rob's map of Mercia being a dead ringer for the World of Camelot. It isn't a 1:1 match, but I pulled from it as inspiration for the layout of the country.

There are in fact dragons in Mobius. They're probably not what you were expecting. Or maybe they were. In which case, you're cynical.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 3: Trailrazing

A few days passed in a listless blur after I cut my deal with Rob O' the Hedge. We would strategize, discuss the lay of the land, and leave the village of Hideaway for hours at a time to track the movements of the High Sheriff's robots whenever they made patrols. I didn't expect working with the nearest equivalent to Robin Hood to be as uneventful as it ended up being, but his Merry Men had split up over the past week on secret missions of their own. My power charge gradually decreased, but that was because I was practicing my flight in a safe environment rather than because I was diving headlong into danger.

The banality of being able to eat or bathe without anything trying to kill me went a long way towards restoring my nerves, but my evenings remained tense. Having slept for days, I spent the subsequent nights in a state of restlessness. I tried to relax and go to sleep, but there was a part of me that refused to sleep in fear of, for one reason or another, never waking up again.

The fact that I was burning through my tea rations like a fiend wasn't helping with the insomnia, but I wasn't going to give up caffeine addiction as long as it could still be sated.

Ultimately, there was still so much I didn't know about this world. Mercia was only one facet of this eerie planet, and what maps Friar Buck had in his study only gave me more questions than answers. I may have been too impulsive when I resisted arrest and broke those robots working for the 'High Sheriff', but the deed was done and I had no regrets. By context I could tell the guy was some sort of tinpot dictator. The lingering question was what I had to do next.

My first thought went to experimentation. Messing around with my new powers. The idea crossed my mind more than once, and I had to resist the urge to test my limits in a big way. I knew I could fly, project energy, make constructs, and breathe in space. That was cool, yes, but I was trying to lay low. A bright pink beacon in the dead of night wasn't exactly covert.

That left me experimenting in my hut. Anything too bright or noisy would attract the wrong attention, so I started small. I conjured little wisps of light that I could move around by thinking about where they were to go, like if I was juggling tennis balls that glowed. That didn't hold my interest for very long, so I plucked one from the air and bounced it against a wall.

It was a very important discovery. The balls had mass and form when I wanted them to. I knew I could make shapes and mass after forming a big fist and cages, so I conjured a featureless pink rectangle to my hand. Then I closed my eyes, concentrated on an idea, and opened them again.

In the place of the unmarked rectangle, I had drawn the Ace of Spades.

"Woah."

It looked and felt like a real playing card, even though I knew it was fake. The card had an intangible transparency to it that I could see through, a tell that it wasn't really there at all.

"Are these illusions? Can I do illusions?"

I did the trick a few more times, changing the design to other cards, random patterns, and even a mirror!

"Yeesh, I need to shave. Hey, I wonder if I can…"

I waved my hand over a writing desk left behind by whoever was the previous tenant of this medieval studio. A deck of cards appeared and I arranged them appropriately. One thing led to another, and I played solitaire. My default solo game.

Solitaire didn't take my mind off things like I was hoping it would, but the patience game centered my thoughts. Allowed me to take stock of what I've done, what I was doing, and what I wanted to do next. My mind wandered all the same, creating strange images that the gem would project and make 'real' during the matches. Tiny holograms of meeple or doll-sized monsters that would chase and eat the colorful meeple, throwing my cards into disarray.

By the point I had entirely abandoned Klondike for an illusory city the size of a chess board occupied with kaiju and robots (complete with sound effects and miniature explosions), it clicked that I may have overlooked a critically understated feature of my powerset: Programmed illusions that didn't seem to 'cost' much energy at all.

I felt like an idiot for not figuring that out sooner.

---

♦ 67

"Good morrow, pilgrim!" Rob O' the Hedge exclaimed as he entered my hut. We had a routine sorted out by this point, so I was expecting him when he barged in. "I hope you are well-rested, for on this morn you shall finally meet my brothers-in-arms!"

"Really?"

I got up from the desk and turned around. Something in my eyes must have told him that I was playing 'solitaire' instead of sleeping for the past week. Or maybe he saw a miniature cyborg gorilla putting a tarbosaurus in a full nelson on the table and didn't know how to respond.

"…Didst thou need a moment of respite to freshen up?" he asked sincerely.

"No no," I replied quickly. With a snap of my fingers, the animated game pieces vanished in a puff of smoke. I could get used to casually showing off like that. "You said we're meeting the… Crazy Critters, right?"

"Verily! The Crazy Kritters!"

"That's what I said, right?"

There was too much foliage to see the sun and a thick mist was glazed over Deerwood Forest. I had to take Rob at his word when he said that it was morning, but he hadn't steered me wrong yet. If anything, I was the one fleecing him. He still thought I was some sort of professional spellcaster, when I was really making it up as I went along. Rob O' the Hedge didn't strike me as naive, but he was putting a lot of faith in my capacity to deliver on the promises I've made.

I didn't promise him anything impossible, technically speaking, but I set a high standard for myself and had to stick by it.

Tabling my lingering doubts and stomaching another vegetarian breakfast, we stepped out into the main plaza of Hideaway that intersected between the homes and bridges. There were several animal people in the settlement: Dogs, pigs, mice, and a number of other creatures dressed in medieval peasant chic socializing with one another while they did their daily rounds of chores to keep the commune functioning. Their villages were all sacked or burned by the High Sheriff, leading them to move into Rob's halfway home while Friar Buck helped them find new places to settle away from the army's warpath.

The villagers grew silent as I passed, some trying to politely ignore me while others gawked. Their huge heads made up a good chunk of their body size, so it was hard to miss the unabashed disgust or distress on their faces. One woman clutched her young child and dragged them inside, a stereotypical 'don't interact with the undesirable' action that took me a moment to cogitate because of how surreal and disorienting the experience was.

I followed Rob down a plank staircase that winded down the trunk of a large tree supporting the suspended village. Sounds of activity resumed in my absence, which confirmed an unfortunate theory I toyed with while whittling the hours away with holograms and getting my head in order.

Once we were out of earshot, I addressed the elephant in the forest.

"Are you gonna explain that this time?" I whispered to Rob.

"Beg pardon?"

"Everyone being very uncomfortable with my presence. It was pretty hard to miss the first, second, and third times."

Rob's adventurous grin that he bore when going on a romp into the woods turned into a frown.

"Their reticence to welcome you as a fellow guest of Hideaway was inevitable, John Wizard." The name was something that he started calling me a while ago, and I hadn't bothered to contradict him. It sounded pretty cool. "These people have lost much, even before the High Sheriff's takeover. I was but a child then, but overlander aggression during the Great War spilled into Eurish and Efrika as they scrambled for fresh resources exhausted in their own country."

I missed a step going down the stairs, sailing off the edge and entering freefall. Not out of shock at what he said, but because I was incredibly clumsy and there still weren't any guardrails to be seen anywhere in the village.

"Wizard! Are you alright?"

"Y-Yeah!" I said as my body hovered midair, suspended in a glowing aura. Looking down, that fall would have killed me! Not wanting to push my luck further, I landed back on the stairs and held one hand to the tree as we continued down.

Taking a deep breath, I asked another question.

"How long ago was the Great War?" I paused. "How long has it been, I mean. I wasn't that old myself when it started."

"Some fifteen years hence? There are scars, still. Scars yet to be mended by time. Your choice of dress does not aid you in that area."

"It doesn't?"

"No. I know not if it is the standard wear for Overland cities, but your suit is not dissimilar to the uniforms of the Overlander military."

"Oh."

That would explain some of the 'hesitance', wouldn't it? When we finally reached the ground, I tried something I hadn't considered doing before. I wasn't wearing this jumpsuit before getting empowered, so the idea that I could change it wasn't completely out of left field. Taking a cue from local fashion, I focused my efforts on wearing something different.

"Will this work?" I asked as I gestured to my burgundy poncho.

A burgundy poncho was not the most extravagant thing I could imagine myself wearing, but it was simple and effective. The poncho had a hood for when it started raining, which had happened several times since I got here. English weather, to my lack of surprise.

Rob was slightly taken aback by my sudden costume change, but he nodded.

"It shall do."

We walked further away from Hideaway, not saying much else for however many minutes we spent reaching a clear blue pond. These trees all looked the same to me, so I couldn't tell if we were a mile from our starting location or walking in circles when I was told we were 'here'.

I looked around. "We are?"

"Thou did not jest about thine lack of directional senses."

"No, I didn't. Now, where are your friends? I can hardly see past my face out here."

"We're over here!" an unidentified voice said.

Attempting to look past the mist that resisted my attempts to see what was standing a few feet in front of me, I saw a handful of figures that stood near Rob O' the Hedge's height. Six in all.

"My friends and fellow freedom fighters," the teal archer called out to his kingsmen. "We have a new ally! Mayhaps ye would be so kind as to step forward?"

As they got closer, it became clear that all of the Merry Men were funny animals too. Not that I was surprised. The first one to approach was an antlered vicar with coarse robes of burlap dyed a dark olive green. Behind him was a pig in a brown tunic, a short rodent in a green cloak, a tall weasel in a grey frock coat, and a goat wearing a chartreuse cape with trousers. Each one was armed with a small bow and a short sword, but they were likely 'normal' size for the wielders.

"John Wizard, may I introduce thee to my good friends Friar Buck, Arthur Boar, David Dormouse, Will Stoatley, and Gilbert Woolhand!"

I kept a straight face and tried not to stare. I knew now that it wasn't weird only some of them were wearing pants, but was that a cultural thing? Were they rationing clothes like they were food? The Crazy Kritters, in turn, seemed rather unsure about me and my new poncho. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I looked like the bad guys of the last war, and they didn't see fit to make any comments while I chewed over it.

I held up a hand to break the awkward pause. "Uh. Hi."

"Hail and well met, friend," said the deer. He sounded like the one who spoke earlier.

"He's an overlander?" the dormouse asked cautiously.

"He's a wizard?" the boar grumbled in a dismissive Cockney. "That o'erlander ain't no wizard!"

My heart skipped a beat. Was I that much of a transparent fraud?

He continued his rant. "Everybody knows that wizards ain't anything but fakes and fraudsters!"

I nearly exhaled a sigh of relief then and there.

The stoat crossed his arms. "Are you calling the king a liar, Arthur Boar? We have his own testimony that this overlander is the genuine article."

"Feh! No offense meant to King O'Hedge, but I will believe it when I see it!"

I rolled my eyes. I didn't deserve back talk from Porky's nonunion Londoner cousin, so I drew a card from nothing and turned it towards him.

"Joker?"

Most of the Crazy Kritters were surprised by the trick, but not outrageously so. Friar Buck seemed amused, while the boar rubbed his chin as he critically examined my prestidigitation.

"Nah. Can't fool me, mate! You pulled that one out of your sleeve!"

I frowned. "Are you kidding me? That card didn't exist a few seconds ago. It's magic!"

"A likely story!"

Rob O' the Hedge cleared his throat to get our attention. "Doubts set aside, I have united our band together to discuss the increased encroachment of the High Sheriff into Deerwood Forest."

"They are making progress," the vicar said. "Slowly, but steadily. The traps we'd lain in advance will harm their efforts, but only for so long. The rain is a blessing, for it will hamper them further."

"What sort of 'efforts' are we looking at?"

The ram turned to me and gestured broadly, like he was measuring a big fish he nearly caught.

"A deforestin' machine. Big metal tower on wheels, with a dozen's worth of saws and twice as many mechanical miscreants guarding it from free-minded folks like us."

"We nearly got caught trying to get a good look at the thing!" Daniel added. "We have to do something before the High Sheriff discovers Hideaway!"

"Got that right! What do ye all say take those explosive arrows the ol' Tinker made for us and do some creative redecorating on that rolling sawmill?"

Rob made a fist in the air. "Well said, Will! Attacking the vehicle shall cause the High Sheriff no small amount of inconvenience. We shall take a route around the machine's path to study how it moves and functions! Then, we shall make our strike!"

There were noises of agreement around our group. I said nothing at first, because I realized I had run out of time before I had to do something big again.

"…Alright. Let's get going."

The Crazy Kritters paused, staring at me.

"What? What'd I say?"

Friar Buck bore a genuine smile of bemusement. If anyone else made that face, I'd call it smug.

"We won't be moving right away, friend. Your exuberance to aid our cause is noble, but haste, as they say, makes waste."

"What are we waiting on? The sheep and the mouse said the thing was headed this way."

I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth, but I had a point to make. Daniel and Gilbert seemed a bit miffed at me, but I ignored them. I didn't have it in me to say their names without cracking up anyway.

"Aye, they did. Yet there are some things that cannot be skipped over."

Around me, the Crazy Kritters had put together camp in record time. I didn't even notice them start the fire, but it was already at a steady blaze. Over the fire was a black kettle boiling water while the dormouse began handing out travel snacks wrapped in a paper bag.

"Would you care for a spot of tea?"

---

The Crazy Kritters moved at breakneck pace after tea break ended. I would have described tagging along with them as a long-term camping trip, but I'd never gone camping and didn't feel like a happy camper. Deerwood Forest was a natural maze, impossible to navigate and harder still to walk through without tripping on gnarled roots. King Rob and his yeoman pals could climb trees and hop between branches with ease, but it rained twice between hours of travel and I wasn't dextrous enough to do what they could before the wood became too slippery to grip.

I learned that the hard way during my scouting missions with Rob days prior, suffering from several slip-ups that would have ended my life if I couldn't fly. Though, looking back, I distinctly remembered landing face-first into a lake and being smacked around by those metal mooks like a crystal pinata. That all hurt at the time, but it didn't kill me. Maybe there was a force field or other effect preventing me from getting mangled or pasted while I still had juice?

After several similar examples of why I should leave climbing to the professionals, I started doing things my way. Careful, frugal applications of flight to travel were slower, but they built up my control. I was moving faster, more precisely, with each jump.

♦ 66

That said, glowing with a hot pink magical aura was a great way to lose the element of surprise. It was for that reason that I stayed at a distance, following the Crazy Kritters while they blazed a trail towards the enemy. I was to serve as the artillery when we eventually got there.

"I hate to be that guy, but are we there yet?"

The funny animals froze before turning back to me, trepidatiously. Arthur Boar angrily mouthed something out to me, but I couldn't read lips. When I shrugged back a reply, Rob O' the Hedge gestured for me to fly closer with a finger to his lips. I took the hint and shut my mouth, quietly relocating my body so that I stood right next to him on the thickest side of a free branch so I could see what everyone else was looking at.

Across from us was a wide clearing. It would have an inspiring sight to behold, once upon a time, but now the area was only worth looking at if you cared for picturesque storybook landscapes gone wrong. A pair of deep trenches had been dug into the soft earth by an impossibly large machine. In and around the trenches were the remains of stumps and felled trees, crushed wooden chunks and splinters intermixing with the rainwater that pooled in them. Near as I could tell, the trees weren't even hauled away for logging or to be used as fuel; it was too damp to set them alight, so they were simply cut down and left to rot.

The level of damage was devastating. I'd seen pictures of deforestation before, but never anything so large. So close. I could hear the faint whirs and hums of an industrial machine that softly seared through the otherwise tranquil silence of the forest.

"We are close," Rob O' the Hedge whispered. "I can hear the machine on the horizon. I will take point. Move fleetly and with care, lest we draw undue attention."

The whole group nodded. At first, the slog through the woods was boring, but now I was feeling a level of trepidation. Anxiety. An understated fear of what could do this sort of thing, and the fact I was willingly getting closer to it. I could hardly hear anything when Rob said the machine was close, but it wasn't long until the other Crazy Kritters and I started hearing it too. That whir got louder and harsher as we followed its trail of destruction, until I could hardly hear myself think over the incessant noise of trees being cut and dropping to the grass.

Being a talking sheep didn't help matters, but I would have doubted anyone who claimed to have seen a mobile siege tower with twelve retractable saw blades before seeing it for myself. The tower was a sheer block of metal on tank treads, nearly taller than the tallest trees in sight and as wide as four of the broadest ones tied together. Giant circular saws were attached to segmented arms that lurched out of the machine and felled all trees that stood before it. The machine looked heavy enough to sink into the ground, but some diabolical quirk of engineering allowed it to stay standing to continue its attempt at anti-arboreal anarchy.


The High Sheriff's robots weren't far behind the deforester robot. The big enforcers were easy to pick out and out at a distance, but there weren't many of them. There were smaller robots alongside the big ones that looked odd. Like mechanical simulacrums of the animal people, complete with jagged metal renfaire garb. I caught glimpses of similar robots on some of the scouting trips, but never got a straight answer on what they were.

"Tho-- --es lo-- --fferent," I said in a loud, but hushed tone. "Wh-- --e they?"

"Ro----s!" Will replied. "Th- ---riff uses ----ticize- ---tims as labor--- -nd extr- ---cle! Ste-- --ear!"

What'd he say? I could hardly hear him over the sawing machine, but he was telling me to avoid them? I pressed for more info.

"----r clear? ----ldn't we destr-- --ose too?"

"Nay!" Gilbert hissed. He had to all but shout over the machine. "W- ----not destr-- --em!"

I frowned. Was this the bad blood I was warned about rearing its ugly head? When I saw the robians things, all it seemed they were doing was following the giant sawing machine and clearing the road of obstructions. Some of them had melee weapons and crossbows that made me rightly nervous that one would hit me in the back if I took my eyes off them.

"Lo--, -'- trying to under----d what they do --- -'d appreciate o-- -- you explain---."

"-- -on't get it? What's ---re to explain?"

I was getting exasperated. Angry. What were they not cluing me in on?

"--, - don't get it! They'r- --bots, right?"

"--- robians are not mere machines, J--- Wizard. We --all espouse the diff--ences at a lat-- date, but -- must not --ek their dest--ction."

A chorus of steam vented out of the exhaust ports lining the metal tower as it ceased sawing and ground to a halt.

"-- didn't have any problems destroying the rest of the robots!" I said, shouting loud enough to be heard over the heavy machinery. "Why not crush these robots in particular?"

My voice echoed out in the briefly quiet woods, followed by a tributary moment of silence as every sentient being in the forest, living or otherwise, heard me blurt out a stupid question.

"You bloomin' idiot!" Arthur Boar shouted in my ear. "Could you say that again? I don't believe they heard you in Downunda!"

Once that moment was over, the robians aimed their crossbows at the source of the disturbance and started firing.

"Scatter!" Rob O' the Hedge called out.

The Crazy Kritters lept and rolled in five different directions, leaving me dumbfounded as I was at risk of being riddled with metal bolts. I held up my arms to guard my chest and face, raising a spherical shield of energy around my body with it. The tree was punctured with the bolts that didn't bounce off my protective barrier, leaving me surprisingly unharmed.

"What the--?!!"

♦ 65

All around me, the Crazy Kritters were in combat with the forces of the High Sheriff. The robots were protecting their saw tower, while the freedom fighters were trying to shut it down.

Plink!

More bolts plinked--

Plink!

--plinked off my energy bubble while I--

Plink!

--tried to come up with a plan over that annoying--

Plink!

♦ 64

"Would you cut that out?"

I dived, my shield stretching into a cone as I rammed through a line of robians. They fell to either side of me as I zipped up and down, my shied acting as an improvised bulldozer.

♦ 63

I was flying on instinct, what little flying experience I had collected from flight simulators going straight out the window. I wasn't immediately eating dirt or passing out from vertigo, but my eyes could hardly keep track of the rapidly shifting scenery. It was a miracle I didn't accidentally hit an ally in the chaos.

As a counterpoint, there wasn't a rush quite like flying faster than I drove on the highway.

"I'm doing it!" I shouted as dodged infantry fire from up above. "Ha ha! I'm doing--"

My neck and everything attached to it ached from whiplash as I impacted against the sessile saw tower. The massive structure wobbled as I was flung backwards, sinking several feet into the mud while I tumbled and sputtered to the ground.

♦ 61

"…Ow."

Struggling to get back up, my eyes flashed open to find a red-tipped lance pointed to my neck.

"You'll draw nary a breath further, organic knave!"

"What?"

I blinked again, totally disbelieving of what was in front of me. I could believe the rest of everything that was occurring, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Attached to the pointed lance was a giant horse head made out of cast iron, with glowing red eyes and steam pouring out of its nostrils. Under the horse head was a large, barrel-like shield stuck to the front of a truck wheel. The horse head was nearing my face, making it harder to ignore it was there.

"Have at thee!"

Huh. Okay then. Guess I was crazy after all.

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

Hideaway's appearance was taken from the books. OSHA would have a field day there.

The Crazy Kritters are based on the Merry Men. Outside of Friar Buck, a canon character, these folks are OCs based on the ones nobody remembers.

Arthur a Bland / Arthur the Boar
David of Doncaster / David the Dormouse
Will Stutley / Will Stoatley
Gilbert Whitehand / Gilbert Woolhand
The Tinker / The Tinker

I won't explain them all, but Arthur being a boar was inspired from the pun (bland/bore/boar) and a robian extra I saw in a panel. Figured he could use a backstory.

I thought they were called the "Krazy Kritters", but that turned out to be wrong. The two "K"s would have been funnier, but I had to change it to the actual spelling for authenticity.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 4: Hammer and the Black Knight

This was it. This was how I died. Not in a car crash on the highway or by getting stabbed in rapid succession while minding my own business, but being gored to death by a mechanical unicorn on a unicycle. If you squinted, it was a very unhappy medium between the two.

I was lying prone on my back. Frozen stiff. The robot's steel horn hovering a few inches over my jugular. Made it difficult to think clearly about how to escape. I ended up walking away from Rob O' the Hedge's friendly fire, but this piercing implement was larger and aimed on a vital area.

I wasn't confident about my chances.

Moments dripped past slowly. My perception of time slowed to a crawl. The robot was trying to tease a response out of me. Even made a few more teasing remarks, but I couldn't hear them. If I tried to fly away it'd go straight for the kill. I could pull up a shield, but would I be fast enough?

My whole body was shaking. I didn't want to risk it.

"Not going to make this sporting?" the unicorn sneered. "Then I shall put you out of my misery!"

The lance retracted and then thrust down at me! I screamed, wanting to be anywhere but in the way of that horn!

"Ah!"

Colorful spots and flashes enveloped my vision! Red, white, and pink streaks of lightning raced across an endless expanse of purple and magenta clouds. Beyond that was nothing but black.

"Ah?"

♦ 60

I blinked. I was floating a couple of feet away from where I was moments ago. Unharmed, but rattled by the sudden jaunt and jostle. I didn't think I could teleport, but what else could that have been? Besides something I wished I knew about sooner.

The cavalry robot's horn was plunged into the ground where I had been. He retracted his horn with a snort and locked eyes on me again.

"So! It seems you have some tricks to you after all!" the machine said in an approximation of Received Pronunciation.

I kept my distance, scanning my peripheral vision for a status update on the Crazy Kritters. The stoat and dormouse had taken cover behind a thicket of trees, peppering the robians with suppressing fire while the ram and the boar took on the big ogre machines with their blades. The metal armor resisted sword swings and thrusts, but their joints and exposed wiring were another story. Where were the Friar and O'Hedge?

"What are you?" I asked the black, mono-wheeled menace. There were several other questions I wanted to ask, but there wasn't time to ask them all from a hostile foe.

"I am an enforcer of the High Sheriff's will!" the unicorn said as he revved up his engines and faced his lance at me. With the roar of an engine, he charged!

Even though I knew he was coming, it moved far too fast! I barely swerved to avoid a piercing blow, getting grazed in the arm by the sharpened tip of his lance. My black outfit was torn at the point of impact, slowly mending itself before my eyes.

"Alright, that's it!" I shouted as I went airborne, preparing a glowing energy ball in my hands to deal with him from above. "Can't get me up here, can you?"

The knight laughed. "Have you never played chess, peon?"

I thought about it for a second, as a torrent of flame erupted from the unicorn's back! In an instant, it took flight on rocket thrusters and attempted to run me through!

"THE KNIGHT JUMPS!!"

The distance between us zeroed out! I scrambled to get out of the way, only managing to disperse the energy I had gathered to make a flimsy crystal wall and deflect his attack. The monowheel made contact with my shield and ripped it to shreds before the knight bounced off my body and shot hot exhaust in my face.

I drifted to the ground, hacking up warm smoke and toxic fumes that had taken residence in my lungs. Too distracted to mount a real defense or offense, I instead tried to keep my eyes open and watch which angle this opponent would try hitting me from next.

"You've provided some entertainment, drood!" the knight said with a chuckle. "Overlanders and rebels of a mystic inclination are rather scarce in these times, but I'll relish the chance to paint my polearm sanguine with the humors of an Overland magician!"

I growled. An actual, primal growl that surprised me when it came out. A created rows of three-dimensional barriers and road hazards around myself, making it a little more difficult to reach me while I bought time and made a more concrete plan for escaping this fight alive.

"A maze?" The knight was already making his way through the projections, driving around walls and rolling over caltrops like they weren't there at all. "Surely you jest! My processor is the sharpest of all in the Royal Army!"

I fired an energy beam between a pair of pillars to slow him down, but all it did was tag his armor pink. If it impacted his progress at all, he didn't show it in the slightest.

"You only delay the inevitable! Perchance I could convince you to surrender? The High Sheriff would order you hanged, of course, but turning in your allies as well as yourself may grant you a stay of execution!"

I aimed one hand down to make a thick spike appear under him, but that only caused the knight to hop over it! What were his tires made out of, flubber? I couldn't even pop them with a row of razor blades that cropped up like grass.

"Not doing a good job of convincing me, Mister Ed!"

The knight stopped in his tracks, turning on a dime to face me. He was one straight shot away from finishing what he started and turning me into a shish kebab.

"Mister Ed?" he said, confused. "Though I am feared and known by my epithet as the Black Knight of Mercia, your irksome resilience has earned you the privilege of knowing my name!"

I formed another energy orb in my hands. The glow was nearly as shaky as I was, trying to hold it together. This next shot may be my last one.

"Okay. I'll bite. What is it?"

"You may call me… the Dark Horse!"

I stopped. The barriers and all of my other attempts to harry him dropped. The energy at my fingertips became a consistent rapid pulse as my eyes opened wide with unbridled rage.

"YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY!?" I snarled as I lunged at the unicorn with a massive, crystalline warhammer in my hands. The shaft was nearly as tall as I was, the boxy head not far behind it.

"Blimey!"

My rapid attack put the knight on the backfoot. He went into reverse to avoid getting his head knocked off in a single swing. I was moving the hammer faster than my arms could swing, so it was more like the hammer was moving by my will and the rest of me was along for the ride.

"Such fire!" the unicorn said as I tried to break him into little, tiny pieces. "Such a temper! But you cannot expect me to fall so easily to an untrained novice!"

I kept up my assault. As long as he didn't have time to prepare a charge, he could only swing his horn around to defend himself. If I could pen him into the trees or another large obstacle, he'd be the one going back to Snottingham in a box. Not me.

Our fight had taken us further away from the sawing machine. Right behind him, I saw a tree stump that had avoided getting ripped out by the robians due to our sudden interruption. I could still hear the sounds of combat elsewhere, but everyone else involved in this skirmish had the good sense to stay out of our way.

The stump wasn't going to be enough to knock him over, but it gave me another idea.

"Run out of power yet?" I asked as I continued by frenzy. I knew my own reserves had to be taking a hit, but I couldn't get a sense for how much I was burning without losing focus again.

"Neigh! My deluxe battery reserves would not be so easily expended by the likes of you!"

I levitated backwards and pointed at the stump, my hammer hefted up onto one shoulder.

"Good! My job is done, Rob! He's all warmed up!"

Dark Horse spun around, his upper body facing the stump. There, he saw Rob O' the Hedge in a pose, his bow aiming a luminous arrow at the knight's center of mass.

"Do mine eyes deceive me? If it isn't the braggadocious blackguard, the Dark Horse! For what reason do you vex these hallowed hinterlands when you could face me directly?"

The knight aimed his horn at the woodland critter that appeared before him. Sucker.

"My Sheriff has spent far too long searching for you, you vandalous hedgehog!"

I took the hammer off my shoulder, getting a better measure of its weight.

"You may strike me down, Dark Horse, but the will of the people will not be silenced so easily!"

"The will of the people? Fie on the people! They live to serve until we roboticize them! Then they have no choice but to work as gears and servos on the assembly line as our slaves!"

The image of Rob O' the Hedge shimmered slightly. A flash of pink fire went unnoticed by Dark Horse, who was too wrapped up in his own speech to notice my slip up from that nugget of intel.

"P-Poppycock! The Sheriff's dark reign shall come to an end, even if it kills me!"

The knight laughed again. "You've lost already, O'Hedge! Do my ears deceive me, or do I detect the sense of defeat in your voice, too?"

I lifted the hammer all the way behind my back, until it nearly scraped the dirt. The area around Dark Horse's wheel was being enveloped in crystal growths, a lattice of which had formed around his lower chassis and wheel hub.

When 'Rob' gave his counter-argument, I didn't even bother to throw my voice or change the way it sounded. I used the extra time to add a large spike to my hammer's face instead.

"It's not just your ears! Get gelded, horse!"

Dark Horse stalled, his one wheel spinning helplessly because my crystals killed his traction and suspended him above the ground. His boosters were jammed when I shoved spires up them.

"What?!"

His head and horn made it halfway back to me when I drove the hammer straight down.

"I've been dec--"

The iron horse's head was the first thing to deform, followed by his horn when it snapped off its hardpoint like a twig. The wheel popped under the pressure of the hammer, and the suspension broke in a shower of ruptured springs. His shield flew off entirely and embedded itself in a tree.

I thought the hammer blow had 'killed' the Dark Horse, but to my surprise the mangled knight wriggled loose from under my heavy mallet. Some of his metal teeth flew off when I caved the robot's head in, making it seem comical when he attempted to wobble away.

"Gadzooks!" the knight exclaimed in a whistling voice with motor oil spittle. "You put me in check!"

I groaned and used the non-business end of my hammer to shove him off his axis. The machine tumbled over and I held its head to face mine. Much easier to do without that horn in the way.

"Very funny. Now tell your goons to back off before I tear your head off and leave it somewhere."

"Neigh, drood! I shall never give into the demands of a freedom fighter!"

I spare a glance to where the bulk of the action was supposed to be. The combat appeared to have winded to a halt, as the Crazy Kritters left the robians tied up and the big drones broken down. A plume of smoke poured out of the highest segment of the tower. A rope spilled from a port in the tower, and out with it came Rob and Friar Buck.

What was my charge at?

♦ 50

Oh, that wasn't good. Halfway to being powerless, or worse. My heart sank at the thought of it when I felt a sort of hum in the air. A resonance that began from the stone on my hand. I blinked, and closed my eyes to concentrate on where it was going.

In my mind's eye, the center of the robot's body was glowing a warm reddish color. A warning? A clue? I had to know more.

"Tell you what. The offer to cooperate has been put to pasture."

The knight grimaced. "Put to pasture? You deign to mock an agent of the Grand Kingdom?"

"No," I said as I shrunk the hammer down to a pink crowbar and placed one foot on his twisted-up head. "I deign to crack you open and see what makes you tick."

Dark Horse let out a shill, metallic whinny as I snapped his breastplate off and examined his insides. A big, glowing cube covered in interconnected wires made up the bulk of it. It ran hot and was leaking caustic liquid, like a futuristic car battery. Some sort of power source?

A power source! I couldn't help but smile at the robot once I figured it out.

"Congrats, neigh-sayer. You get to help the cause by giving me a jumpstart."

Before he could ask what I meant, I plunged my left hand into his innards and pulled! Cascading arcs of bright white electricity flowed out of the Dark Horse's battery and changed color as they funneled into my shining gem!

♦ 51

"What are you… doing?" the machine asked, his voice becoming slower, more muted.

"I believe the practical term is 'siphoning'. Your power is mine now. Since your boss is the only guy with industrial capability around here, he's gonna have a lot more trouble now that I know what I have to do to keep the meter running."

♦ 52

The knight looked perplexed, but I didn't care to elaborate further. The lights in his eyes flickered until they died, and the battery went dead with him.

It wasn't worth much, but it was something.

I abandoned the wrecked robot and walked back to the rest of the Crazy Kritters. Looked like the tower was damaged, presumably with whatever was powering it. Darn.

"I dealt with the bad guy!" I shouted to my fellow 'freedom fighters'. "Now what do we do?"

They were looking at me funny. Again. The robians were bound and blindfolded, but I suspected they would have reacted to me going full ham on that and draining Dark Horse like a robot vampire. Now that I knew robians were converted animals or something along those lines, I felt sorta queasy, but not guilty.

Was I supposed to feel bad about what I did? I didn't feel anything about it, to the extent that I was concerned. What was I supposed to be feeling?

Rob O' the Hedge took center to address us as a group. "Superb work, friends! Were any casualties borne of our endeavors?"

"I'm alright," Daniel said.

"No he isn't," Will said. "He got shot in the arm and is trying to be tough."

"I can put it in a sling?" Friar Buck offered. Daniel nodded. "Good. Gilbert, Arthur?"

"Hale and hearty here."

"The only thing that got shattered is my suspension o' disbelief," Arthur said with his arms crossed. "Alright, mate, I fold. The man really is a wizard."

"John Wizard, are you well?"

I shrugged. "Fine enough."

Rob O' the Hedge smiled. "Then let us be off! The deforestation engine has been rendered inoperable, and further efforts to encroach on our land shall be hampered rather than aided by its continued presence."

I looked at the mostly intact vehicle. "Are you sure? If he got some engineers on site, I reckon the Sheriff could--"

The top, middle, and bottom segments of the tower exploded simultaneously. Bits of metal flung themselves to the ground, but none large enough to be dangerous. The machine was wrecked.

"Forget I said anything." I then turned to the robians. "What about them?"

"Alas, we must leave them."

"Really?"

Arthur Boar scowled. "What do you expect us to do with them? We can't turn 'em back and we can't do anything worse to them than leave them for the Sheriff to pick up later."

I could think of a few things they could do, but it wasn't really my call to make. I wasn't in charge and I didn't know enough to argue. Reluctantly, I nodded.

"Fine. We leave them. Leaving their weapons too?"

"Forsooth," Rob said. "They shall be of no use to us."

I looked at their scattered swords and cudgels. The strewn crossbows and all of the stray bolts.

"Don't think so."

"Beg pardon?"

I picked up the least damaged crossbow and started collecting bolts. One of the robians dropped a holdall bag in the fracas, so I looted that too.

"I'm no good with a bow and arrow. Unless we're swinging by the gun store on the way back, I'm taking one of these crossbows and maybe a club to go. Hey Will, pass that stick to me?"

Stoatley handed me the long, weighty staff one of the robians was swinging about. On account of it not being a very complicated weapon, I grabbed it and tested the length. It was perfect for self defense and a functional walking stick. Then I loaded a few other weapons into the sack.

"Think your tinkering friend could make use out of these?" I asked. "Better we have a bunch of junk we can't use than them."

"Sir Wagstaff is very resourceful. Indeed he could, if you can carry it all to his workshop."

I lift up the sack. It didn't weigh as much as it looked, but I had flight to provide extra lift. So it probably still weighed a lot but was distributed differently.

"I can."

"Then we'll be off. Another successful mission, one and all!"

I spared a glance at Dark Horse's ruined body before we left.

---

It was dusk when we returned to Hideaway. I tossed my new weapons bag to the least occupied side of my room, blew out the candles, and dropped on to my bed. I was too exhausted to fiddle around with a crossbow in low-light conditions and instead tried to get some shut-eye. Assuming nothing interrupted me, it'd be my first night of actual sleep this week.

My eyes closed, my breathing slowed, and I felt my consciousness slowly drift away. After a few seconds, I heard footsteps and immediately shot up again.

"Need something?" I asked whoever was at the door. "I'm awake, what is it?"

"Sorry," a young girl's voice said. I could make out a rough silhouette of her in the doorway. "I'll leave."

"Wait. Rosy? Rob's cousin, right?"

"Yeah. It's a nickname."

For some reason, she didn't speak in the over-the-top Shakespearean trainwreck that everyone else in Hideaway did. Not the RP accent of the unicorn knight, either.

"Right. Rosy, did you need something?"

She shuffled slightly. I relit my candle and turned around so that I was facing her. Rosy was a short, pink critter with huge eyes that was sufficiently less scary when I knew she was coming. Probably the most colorful one of them I've seen.

Rosy was wearing a cloak or a really big blanket. She got out of bed for this?

"Well… I was just wondering… You're a wizard, right?"

"Yes." It stopped being a weird thing to say in response to the question a while ago.

"I heard wizards are good at spelling," she said as she held out a letter. "Could you proofread this for me? It's for a… special friend."

I roll my eyes. "Sure, Rosy. I'm a decent editor. When do you need this back by?"

"Tomorrow. The courier takes it in the morning!"

We have a courier? Was it one of the Crazy Kritters? I knew I hadn't met all of them.

"Cool. I can kill a few hours working on this."

Rosy skipped out of my hut. "Thanks, John Wizard! You're the best!"

"Whatever."

She poked her head out again. "And good job beating that mean old knight! Nice hammer work!"

"…Thanks."

With my sleep interrupted, I pulled out the letter with the intent to look it over for any grammar mistakes or typos. Rosy sounded pretty young and her education was interrupted by a military junta taking over her country, so I didn't know what to expect.

Those scant expectations didn't prepare me for what I read on the first line. I had to stop, thinking I had misread it. Then I read it again. Slower, more deliberate. Just to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with how I was reading it, or some sort of linguistic quirk to the local language that I hadn't uncovered before.

It all made sense. In a gross, horrific clarity, it made sense in such a way that I couldn't ignore anymore. That was one of the first things I considered and the last thing I ever wanted to be true, because I didn't know how I would take the truth. I still don't know how I took it.

I couldn't even read the words after that initial line. I was so incredibly focused on who the letter was addressed to that I couldn't cogitate anything that came after it.

"Dear Sonic the Hedgehog,"

I stared at those four words until the sun came up.

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

Dark Horse is an original character based on the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog-style goofy badnik villains, with a malicious twist.

Amy Rose being Sonic's pen pal for a period of time before her move to Knothole was part of the reason she got kidnapped by Robotnik. Though the original issue had to deal with him being upset because of all of the fan mail Sonic received at Archie Comics because of the book, this was later retconned when they wanted to go serious.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 5: Splitting Hares

Recent events had made me quick to question my entire existence. Everything that's happened to me in the past, everything that had happened to me in the present, and everything that will happen to me in the future felt as though they had a black shadow of doubt hanging over them.

This was all boiling under the surface before I edited the letter addressed to Sonic the Hedgehog, Hero of Mobius, written by one Amy "Rosy the Rascal" Rose. My work was hasty and unsteady since I had spent hours of that time staring at the letter in shock, but Amy was a very good writer for her age. Eight, I think. I hardly had to do much before numbly handing it back to her for delivery.

Days tended to blur together when I didn't have a calendar on hand, but that was doubtlessly the biggest thing on my mind. Amy sent hearts and kisses for the conquering hero who put "Ro-butt-nik" in his place whenever the postman came by. It was nauseatingly gushy, to the extent I would have blanched if I didn't want to dry heave. Rob had kindly informed me that he sent an update to Knothole on our successful operations alongside Amy's letter, meaning it'd be a matter of time before Sonic the Hedgehog knew about me.

I eventually worked up the nerve to ask Rob the dreaded questions that I was afraid to know the answers to. Sonic was not only a real person, but he and his freedom fighter friends were the greatest stalwart defenders of justice West of the Central Sea. Their archnemesis was, of course, Doctor Robotnik, the corpulent global despot who placed the High Sheriff into a position of power so that he could pacify the Kingdom of Mercia indefinitely.

I wasn't trapped in a normal alien world. I was trapped in someone else's story.

How could I have been so blind? So dense? Rob O' the Hedge looked just like Sonic. The only difference was his color, and teal wasn't even that far off from blue! I should have put that together immediately. It was as though some part of my brain recognized all of the evidence, made the necessary deductions, and then burned the connecting bridges to that knowledge so that I was unable to put the dots together sooner. My own mind boggled me.

Why?

Gazing down at the Phantom Ruby on my hand, I wondered. This little pink rock from a game I liked (and another I didn't) was now stuck to me. Was it to blame? For my unreliable memory? For my mood swings? Where did the blame for my current circumstances start and end? If this Phantom Ruby was anything like the one I remembered from the games, then I'd only scratched the surface of the truly bonkers power it was capable of.

Changing reality on a whim. Flipping gravity like a switch. Creating life from nothing. Making suns and throwing them willy-nilly!

I shuddered. Who in the right mind would ever give that sort of power to me?

There was a yank on the rope attached to my waist.

"Hey!" Arthur exclaimed. "Keep it steady up there! We're delicate cargo!"

I replied back with a quick apology and balanced my flight. Had to keep my head in the game. There was so much to think about. In my absentmindedness, I had forgotten I was carrying Rob O' the Hedge, Arthur Boar, and Gilbert Woolhand in a reclaimed hot air balloon basket. David was on the mend and Stoatley was checking in with the South Mercian rebels. I hadn't met any of them yet, but the South Mercians had French accents so strong they could be read in the letters dropped off by the mailman. Said mailman was, himself, a French snail.

Ugh. If there was some threshold of frustration and confusion I could reach where my mindset looped back around to complete tranquility and acceptance, I haven't reached it yet.

Below us, the forest gradually thinned out. There were still evergreens in every direction, but as I flew further North we saw vast plateaus of grassland and stony outcrops among erected menhirs and dolmens. What I thought was the Sonic version of Stonehenge laid out on the map of Mercia was actually denoting a multitude of megaliths.

After noticing how easy it was for me to haul around objects, it was Rob's idea for me to do the same for the Crazy Kritters as team transport. A clever exploit of what I could do, but at my rate of expenditure I wouldn't be able to do it every time we needed to be somewhere fast.

♦ 45

Unfortunately, the Mercian Freedom Fighters wouldn't be motorized any time soon. I was able to sit down with Hideaway's resident tinkerer, an old schnauzer named Wagstaff, but the news he had about getting the rebels on wheels wasn't heartening. The High Sheriff held all of the cards in terms of power and production. Hideaway barely had enough material for us to scrape by as it was, but even if we had bikes and tanks the same Deerwood Forest that prevented the army from rounding us up for roboticizing would get in the way when trying to drive.

That was a shame. Mechanized infantry would be a serious edge. Even better weapons or armor could level the playing field. It wasn't impossible to get our hands on them, but as it was we were too outmanned and outgunned. I considered testing if I could simply wish them into existence with the Phantom Ruby, but what was my guarantee they wouldn't poof away when I wasn't devoting my continued concentration to them?

I slowed after we passed several rows of standing stones. The region looked downright Neolithic, and the idea that anyone lived here felt remote. We hadn't seen any villages or signs of civilization besides the rocks.

"Who built all of these things?"

"We know not their architects," Rob O' the Hedge said as he surveyed the area with his collapsible spyglass. "Legend tells of ancient droods who enlisted the aid of the Highlanders in erecting the megaliths and scattering them 'cross Mercia. Yet their purposes were lost to time."

"Druids? Dark Horse seemed to think I was a druid."

"Naw," Gilbert said. "Droods."

I rolled my eyes.

"Ah, right. Droods. Want me to drop us off here, Rob?"

"Verily. If thine eyes do not deceive me, then I have found our captured allies in transit!"

I gently lowered the basket and looked around. From a distance, it looked like a colorful ship of the line on a half-track was rolling down the Highlands. The battleship barely fit between the hills and followed the dirt road on a technicality, being far too wide to actually fit on the narrow strip.

"A landship," I uttered, unable to wrap my head around it. "Why does the High Sheriff have landships?"

"The great land frigates were produced near the end of the Great War. Built too late to serve their intended purpose, my father attempted to turn them towards peacekeeping ends."

Gilbert and Arthur brought smaller monoculars. I borrowed both to get a view for myself.

"They weren't very good at peacekeeping, but those big hulls and bolt throwers scared the Dickens out of common folk," Gilbert said. "When it seemed the peacetime was here to stay, King O'Hedge retired the frigates and broke them down for parts."

Rob gripped his telescope tightly. "Most of them were destroyed. I know not how he became aware of where the last ones were hidden, but once again the High Sheriff has subverted my father's legacy to his own malicious ends."

I glanced at the medieval anti-air guns the frigate was loaded with as it rolled closer into view. Those ballistae weren't going to be hurling bolts or stones if I got within firing range. I could see the gleaming points of massive harpoons. Land harpoons.

"Really, does everyone want me skewered and served on a hot plate?"

"Beg pardon?"

"You mentioned having a plan for getting onboard and freeing the prisoners this morning, right? I'm antsy about getting more people on our side, but not antsy enough to get a projectile log through my chest."

"Indeed, John Wizard. Wagstaff was one of few royal engineers granted access to the landship schematics in the crown archives. He revealed to me a hidden hatch in the bilge from which we may enter undetected and release the dyed warriors of the Highland Warrens from captivity."

According to the rundown of Mercian history Rob had given me, Mercia, the Highlands, and the Lowlands were once three separate kingdoms until they were united "in noble cause" generations prior. The Highlands maintained their own culture that drew strong comparisons to Medieval Scotland, but the monuments and his descriptions of woad-soaked fighting rabbits reminded me of the Picts too. I got the impression the Highlands were fairly Gaelic in nature, but I'd raise some concerns if the inhabitants started showing arbitrary Irish traits willy-nilly.

"Which part's the bilge?" asked Arthur.

"The bottom. Is the backdoor closer to the bow or stern?"

"Stern. Thou did not mention thee were a sailor."

"Took a boating course. The bilge and keel are extraneous if you're turning a ship into a carrier, so it's as good a place as any to hide an escape hatch." I paused, considering the potential uses for frigates on wheels. "For curiosity's sake, what happened to those landship designs?"

"Burned, at the swiftest opportune moment."

I shrugged.

"Oh well."

Admittedly, there was only so much you could do with a wooden personnel carrier before someone had the cheeky idea of tossing a match at it. It would have been my first solution to dealing with the boat and everyone in it if we didn't have hostages to rescue. Really, we'd be better off attaching wheels to smaller dinghies and using those for ground transport instead.

…Or, more practically, using carts and tossing the "land boat" thing entirely.

The four of us slid down the sloping hill, away from direct sight. I was better at keeping up with the group now, guarding the rear and carrying our equipment in my haversack. We darted between short tunnels carved into the knolls and tall, upright stones. That left us within close range of the lumbering craft, but there was no cover where we had to make a run for the stern.

"Hold on," I said, one hand extended. "May I try something? It might improve our chances."

"You gonna cut up the boat into chunks?" Arthur asked.

"No."

"Will you blot out the sun so that we may travel in darkness?" Gilbert suggested.

"No."

"Shall ye cloak us in the shades of greenery so that we may travel in disguise?" Rob inquired.

"No." I paused. "Actually, yes. That last one was correct. Allow me."

There were a lot of things I didn't know about military strategy or guerilla tactics, but one thing I knew was camouflage. Crypsis was a subject close to my heart. The stealth action games I'd been playing for years introduced me to the benefits of military camo. I went on to study it as a private passion, integrating it into my own games I'd run. I made a theatrical master camoufleur a major character in a supers campaign just so that I'd have an outlet for all of my cryptic supervillain desires. It panned out perfectly in terms of making my audience paranoid and letting me stretch my creative muscles, but it took me until now to realize I could apply that expertise to the real world.

Well, the world I was on now. Whether or not it or anything else was real at this point was academic.

Using the seas of grass as a focus point, I covered us all in wavy green stripes that blended in with the Highland hillsides. A magic coat of paint for everyone, from which illusory grass grew in my approximation of a ghillie suit. Considering the ghillie suit was generally believed to be a Scottish invention, I was merely repaying the favor.

The group examined themselves and each other. I was the only one who could see through the camo effect unhindered, but it wasn't like they were struck blind. It was easy for us to see one another at close range, but the sentries on the ship shouldn't be able to see us coming.

"Zounds!" Rob said as he walked up to me. "A clever display of thaumaturgy. Against the hills, it is as though we art invisible!"

"Thanks, but we aren't really invisible. If they see the grass moving funny, they're gonna shoot first and ask questions later."

"Aye. We shall travel one at a time to avoid arousing suspicion."

Rob raised his sword up to do a catchphrase. The others reciprocated his gesture.

"Crazy Kritters: Tally-ho!"

"Tally-ho!"

"Tally-ho!"

I couldn't resist. I raised my own sword up too.

"Tally-ho."

Rob O' the Hedge made his advance across the tall grasses, crawling inch by inch to the ship while avoiding contact with the massive wheels and caterpillar tracks. Gilbert and Arthur were next, followed by myself. I held my breath as I glided over the ground, freezing when I caught the eyes of a robian watchman glaze over me. Only when he turned around did I join the others.

We rolled under the ship and pried the bottom hatch open with our blades. Not wanting a repeat of the incident from last time, not a word was exchanged as we quickly climbed aboard.

The cargo hold was dark and foreboding. Not pitch black due to cracks of light from the decks above us. The telltale glowing eyes of the robots were absent, meaning we weren't detected. Yet.

Why was it so hot? We couldn't be near the engine, could we? This was the steerage, and would someone making a wooden landship be crazy enough to put a combustible engine in it?

Then again, I may have answered my own question.

"Permission to turn on the lights?" I whispered to Rob.

"Permission granted," he whispered back.

I dispersed our grassland camo and made another illusion, this time of a red ghost light to illuminate the immediate area around us. A good fifteen feet in a circle centered around myself.

There were several gasps of fear and surprise when I activated the lamp, and none of them came from us. The steerage was filled with rabbits in chains. Men, women, and some children, all of them in earth tones with drooping ears and drab, ragged clothing. Increasing the range of my will o' wisp, there had to be over a hundred of them crowded at the bottom of the ship! I hadn't seen this many people in one spot in a week, but this was by no time to celebrate.

"It's the Highland lops," Gilbert said in shock.

"King O'Hedge!" several of the rabbits cried out.

Their accents sounded suitably Scottish, but more than that they sounded desperate. How long have they been down here? I was distressed to see as many non-combatants as I did. I thought we were saving hardened warriors, but most of the men who would have been fighting fit looked ill or wounded. The traditional non-combatants were in a similarly sorry state.

What happened to them?

"People of the Highlands," Rob said in a gentle tone. "The Crazy Kritters have come to liberate you from the High Sheriff's bondage. Please, be still while we remove thy fetters and we shall lead you to freedom!"

There were muted cheers mixed in with sighs of relief. I was worried. With all of this noise, we didn't have long before someone heard the ruckus and came down here to check it out.

"We are saved!"

"Gramercy, your majesty!"

"Bless you!"

Rob looked uncomfortable with receiving all of their praise, but he humbly accepted them out of courtesy. I took my cue and pulled out the bolt cutters, handing pairs out to the Crazy Kritters and anyone else who was strong enough to use them. We worked quickly and spread out to free every rabbit in the steerage, though even when I was part of a rescue party I had to deal with animal people hesitant to go near me. Their need to survive weighted out over preconceived notions, allowing us to cut them all loose in minutes.

"Bad news," Arthur Boar said as we regrouped. "Going out the way we came's not gonna work. The guards will catch wise before we can make a clean break."

"Arthur's right. I don't think I can cover that many people. We'll be noticed."

"Forsooth, thou are right. We must commandeer this vessel from the Lansquenets for ourselves."

"Lansquenets?"

I wasn't sure why I asked. I was doubtlessly going to be meeting them anyway. Arthur was the one to answer my question as I searched through my bag for my next set of gifts.

"Mercenaries who terrorized Mercia on the High Sheriff's payroll. We saw their colors on the side of the ship. The Sheriff liked their work so much, he roboticized the lot o' them and they extended a permanent line of credit since."

"How quaint."

I turned towards the rabbit POWs.

"We brought some additional weapons. Swords and crossbows. Raise your hands if you're still strong enough to fight, and you'll be provided one or the other."

I gave them all a few seconds, but there were far less hands than I was hoping for. Most of the rabbits were still stunned that we came for them at all, unable to answer. Many of the ones who could work past that game changer were too weakened by prior battles and the rigors of confinement to take arms and fight again.

The volunteers we did receive were men with wrenched limbs or walking on crutches, young women in black robes, and children younger than I guessed the dormouse was. I thought we were pulling off the rabbit version of Braveheart, but it clicked: The Sheriff got all of the able-bodied warriors already. These were the survivors and dependents previously left behind.

Gilbert took half the weapons, but was more discerning with who he let receive them than I was.

"You sure this is a good idea?" he said to me. It was meant to be a whisper, but we were surrounded by people known for their heightened hearing. I don't even know why he bothered.

"No," I said. Meant it, too. "But it beats them staying defenseless."

I handed out the last crossbow to a young widower who had a look in her eyes that said "If ye dinnae hand me a weapon a'm aff ta pull it offa yer cold, dead hands." Those exact words were also coming out of her mouth, making the woman doubly convincing.

The tinker had me arming the partisans with plunger-tipped bolts, which looked stupid but had the power to knock a robian off their feet. It was the least lethal weapon we could agree on, and while I could argue with the aesthetics I couldn't find anything wrong with the results.

"The prisoners are armed, Rob." I look around at the ten or so rabbits we've armed. A tenth of the total prisoners. "Give or take. What's the plan?"

"Crazy Kritters at the front of the charge. Women and children stay in the steerage for now, but--"

The door at the top of the cargo hold swiveled open, and a metal badger head stuck out from it.

"Oi!" the brutish badger shouted. "What's all the ruckus about?"

I was the first to respond, letting loose a pink tendril from the Phantom Ruby and coiling it around his neck.

"What the!? I'm coming down there!"

He didn't know the half of it. I tightened my grip and yanked the badger to the bilge, dragging the ladder to the lower deck down with him.

♦ 44

The Highlanders who weren't armed, even in their suboptimal states, were strong enough to mob the robian and weigh him down with their excess chains. The robot badger didn't get much of a word in before being smothered. Above us, I could hear the heavy footsteps of reinforcements coming down from the gundecks. Judging by the garish uniform the badger was wearing, I had to assume he and his buddies were the Lansquenets.

"Looks like we're in for another fight. Does one of you want to say it, or should I?"

"Say what?" asked Gilbert.

The other Crazy Kritters were equally confused, but to my surprise the Highland partisans were on the same wavelength I was. Guess they had the word on their mind long before we got here.

"FREEDOM!!!"

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

The Highland region is inspired by Sonic and the Black Knight. Specifically the Titanic Plains and Great Megalith stages. Oh, and Scotland.

Making the Scots rabbits was inspired by a single character named Thorn the Lop, who was introduced to stand in for Mari-Ann when the Penders lawsuit caused them to remove all of his characters. She was a rabbit spearwoman described as a "Highland Lass". Since Archie Sonic's canon wasn't going anywhere anyway, I figured that was as good a place to start as any.

Braveheart is an alright war movie, but a woefully inaccurate film about William Wallace, the war he fought in, and the times he lived in. However, since Braveheart came out at the time the comics were running, I figured it would be funny if the Highland rabbits wore kilts and woad in line with the film's skewed perspective on Scottish history. I imagine it would have happened if they had the itch to write a story in that region during the mid 90s to the 00s.

Rabbit Mel Gibson is probably dead, though.

The Landsknechts were German mercenary soldiers known for rocking the Medieval world with their extremely flashy outfits and propensity for fighting anyone for any reason if the right amount of money was thrown their way. Their name (which is believed to have meant "Servants of the Land") was translated to French and lent to the historical card game "Lansquenet".

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 6: No Party like a Boarding Party

"Freedom alert!"

Great. That was faster than I was hoping for.

Wanting to act before they sealed the door, I flew straight up from the cargo hold and skipped the ladder entirely. Taking point wasn't something I was used to. After all, being the guy who stuck their head out of the trenches and risked losing it was a dubious honor. As the guy who was the fastest and at the lowest risk of getting hurt, I volunteered to be pointman anyway. I formed a forcefield around my body and looked around, to figure out which way the robians were coming from.

"Freedom is punishable by death!"

Robians. I knew what they were from watching the Sonic cartoons years ago. Doctor Robotnik -- I had trouble getting over the mental hurdle that he was real -- found a way to turn living beings into robots, like how he used animals to power badniks in the games. He took over a big city and expanded from there, using his roboticizers to turn victims into cogs in his war machine. Rob and the other Crazy Kritters explained it from their perspective, warning me that they were both serious threats and unwilling hostages. They held out hope that the people they lost could one day be restored.

"Stowaways detected!"

Based on what I remembered, I had the impression the vast majority of robians were unthinking drones. That was a pretty stupid assumption to make when I was warned about them being dangerous. Rather than slowly ambling towards me, the mechanical pikemen got into tight formation and rushed me from all sides! They were trying to burst my forcefield bubble from every directions, my shielding and my nerves straining under the pressure of trying to keep track of and keep out so many hostiles at once.

"Back off!"

I popped the field and expanded it outwards, throwing the pikers into disarray when they were slammed into the walls, floor, and ceiling. There was a litany of rattles and clunks when they made contact with the hard wood of the landship. I walked up to the last few that hadn't been incapacitated by my attack and smacked them down with my staff.

♦ 40

"You know, I don't remember being this competent," I said to no one in particular.

Then I looked at the cudgel I got days ago. What was it doing in my hand? Wasn't I holding my sword? I rummaged around in my bag to try and find it when I heard a voice from the ladder.

"Prittee, repeat that?'

"I said I cleared the way! Hurry up before they swarm!"

Rob o' the Hedge was the first to climb up the ladder. I grabbed his hand and helped him to his feet, followed by Arthur Boar, Gilbert Woolhand, the rabbit woman who threatened me earlier, a grizzled rabbit man with a limp, and a rattled rabbit boy who trembled. Rather than Scottish tartans, the Highlanders all wore black argyle with dark blue and green lozenges.

"What happened to the others?" I asked, disappointed with the fighting force we had to work with.

"They're better left staying in reserve to protect their families," Rob said with a twinge of somberness. "Be on guard, pilgrims. The Lansquenets were a feared fighting force prior to their present transfiguration."

When he got up from the ladder, Arthur withdrew his sword from between his teeth. I was sure I saw that done with a knife in a movie, but seeing a creature with a larger mouth do it with a larger weapon was uncomfortable.

"I don't know, I think we did pretty good so far! How many more decks are we lookin' at, Rob?"

"There are two more levels above us, friend. We shall brave these gauntlets and disable the frigate's weaponry from the interior!"

Gilbert brought a hand to his chin. "Were thee not wielding a sword earlier, John?"

I was going to give him a non-answer when the second wave of guards turned the corner and marched into view. These ones had heavier weapons and armor. Longswords in lieu of pikes, making them far more dangerous in the cramped confines of the ship than the others.

"Mobians on the orlop deck!" a mechanical hound with a feather in his cap shouted. He had notches cut into his faceplate like scars. "Surrender now! Resistors shall be terminated!"

Rob O' the Hedge took a flying spin into the air!

"You'll have to do better than words, robotic ruffians! To arms!"

As much as I wanted to confiscate the unattended pikes, we were forced back into close-quarters combat! The Crazy Kritters performed aerial stunts to dodge and weave over the lumbering swings of the heavy-handed shocktroopers. I was expecting no less from the swashbuckling heroes. Lacking their skills, I made a ring of pink spikes around the lops and myself instead.

The bushel of bristling prongs and tines caused the Lansquenents to falter, stumbling to a stop inches away from experiencing turnabout being fair play. I spared a glance back at the lops, who were all taken aback by my sudden display of magic. The young one looked more afraid of me than he was the robians, his crossbow shaking in his hands.

"What are you waiting for? Shoot!"

That snapped them all out of their awe, the two more battle-ready rabbits firing plunger bolts at the robians or swatting them away with blades.

When the rabbit woman ran out of plungers, she smashed her crossbow on a robian's head and hopped over the spikes trap so she could arm herself with a discarded zweihander. I didn't know what to expect, but I wasn't expecting that out of an albino version of Cream the Rabbit's mom. She appeared to be an adult, standing a good four feet tall compared to Rob's three-ish.

"What's the deal wit ye, O'erlander?" she asked me as she dragged the two-handed longsword into melee range with the Lansquenets. "Some sort o' drood?"

Unless she was a fighter on par with the Crazy Kritters, the rabbit was a goner. I tried to intercept her, getting in front of the woman and preparing to take down the foe she picked out.

"Something like that, but you might want to stand back while I handle them!"

She leapt over me in an instant, the heavy sword going high in the air and slicing clean through the Lansquenet's armor! The tin soldier tried to counter, but his sword-bearing arm was on the floor. She moved on to new foes, relieving several soldiers of their limbs.

"Gadzooks!" Rob swore. He delivered an expert riposte and performed acrobatic maneuvers around a Lansquenet in heavy mail, but his fleet footing was knocked out of step when he witnessed the damage she was doing. Gilbert and Arthur had his back, taking out his target without causing permanent harm to it.

"Finella!" the rough lop called out to her. "What're ye doin'?"

The rabbit woman, Finella, continued her assault. I know I could have stopped her, but I was more concerned about dealing with our enemies than our allies.

"They're already gone, Lennox! So ah say no more mercy fer th' tools o' th' Sheriff!"

That was a bleak way of looking at it. Not that I could argue. I didn't know how roboticizing worked -- none of us did -- but I did know the cartoon stopped being produced before Sonic and his friends could cure it. Did that mean a deroboticizer couldn't be made? I didn't want to hurt people who were turned into robots against their will, but if I had to pick between robians and people at risk of becoming them? It wasn't like there was a simple answer, but the look on Rob's face told me he saw it differently.

We couldn't waste effort fighting each other, so we fought on. Once we advanced to the upper deck of the landship, I erected more crystalline barricades to block off the stairwells around us. They wouldn't weather sustained hits, but they forced the Lansquenets to squeeze into a single passage or waste time trying to break them.

♦ 34

Unfortunately, the advantages we got from our surprise attack and swift offensive fell to the wayside when those inevitable reinforcements came down looking for a fight. Our group was more varied, more skilled, and definitely more spirited than the opposition, but the Lansquenets were a volume of steel and force we couldn't resist forever.

"Halt! Halt!"

"Enemies of the High Sheriff must be destroyed!"

Our group was starting to lose steam. The ground we gained began to slip away plank by plank. Prisoners were no doubt pouring out of the steerage since the Lansquenets were too busy to notice their escape, but now we had their undivided attention.

Gilbert rolled out of the way of a pikeman's thrust, a long gash being torn into his green cape.

"Lackaday! We're getting outnumbered!"

Rob fired three arrows in three directions at once, covering a swath of foes in tangling twine.

"Wizard! Wall!"

I formed a thick screen of pink energy over the passage to prevent the Lansquenets from filling the deck with bodies.

♦ 33

I was nearing closer and closer to zero, but this was no time to be frugal. Already, the robians were battering at the wall with their weapons. Cracks were forming along the surface when I heard a shattering sound from further down the hall.

"W-Whit wis that?" a young lop warrior stammered.

The clanks were all the reply we needed. I didn't have a grasp of how my crystal constructs worked, but it seemed as though they had a short shelf life when unattended.

The rabbit dropped his sword. "That's it! We're all gonnae die!"

Finella walked up to the fearful rabbit and grabbed him by the collar.

"Kinney. Kinny! Git a hold o' yerself!"

She slapped him in the face. It seemed to do the trick of calming him down. Finella then handed the rabbit his sword back after he regained his composure.

Arthur leaned next to Gilbert to whisper. "You think she's seeing anyone?"

Time and place, Arthur. I wasn't sure if she missed that or simply ignored it. Either way, Finella turned to me with motor oil covering her clothes and sword.

"Awright, Wizard Jimmy! Would ye be so kind as to git us out o' here?"

I looked around, trying to logic and reason a way out of the current predicament. I didn't know how to consciously teleport yet, or how to take other people with me if I could. Or if there'd be side effects if I actually managed it. So that was out. We had the option of continuing to shore up our defenses, but that would only delay the inevitable until I ran out of power. The Lansquenets were breaking in, one way or another.

We… We may just die here.

I scratched my beard nervously.

"…I'm taking suggestions?"

There were several suggestions from the Crazy Kritters and lops. None of them were very good. Rob O' the Hedge was quiet, carefully thinking while I was assaulted with dumb ideas.

"Make a cannon!"

"A giant sword!"

"Burn 'em all!"

"On a boat? Are ye mad, woman?"

More Lansquenets charged in, forming a long line of pikes as the crystal walls around us broke.

"Better suggestions, please!"

"Find a window! We'll take flight!"

"I don't see any windows!"

"Eureka!" Rob said as he pointed up at the ceiling. "Make an exit to the main deck!"

Why didn't I think of that? Talk about tunnel vision. I created a circular platform under our feet, pulling up the sides to form a conical drill construct around us. We were all going on a ride.

"Hold on!"

The cowardly rabbit clutched onto my leg. I meant that figuratively, but whatever. I drove the drill up into the ceiling and bored straight through. We left the Lansquenet soldiers in the dust and were revisited by the bright beams of daylight.

♦ 32

I blinked. Having taken us into the air, and we were now floating above a landship. I couldn't see the lops making their way out the back. Did that mean we were successful, or did we fail? The frigate was driving at a steady pace over the hills without any sails, leaving the spars bare, save for a tasteless flag bearing Robotnik's face set atop the main mast.

"No sails? How are we gonna shut this down?"

"Harpoons!" shouted Lennox.

"I like that! We take the guns down and--"

"Harpoons!" everybody in the bubble who wasn't me shouted.

"Ah!" I cried as I ducked out of the way of an oncoming giant harpoon volley.

What? How did they get back on the artillery so fast? I zig-zagged to dodge the projectiles, shaking up the passengers who were all holding on to me. I made a beeline for the floor of the main deck, slowing to a stop so that I didn't splatter anyone or lose my lunch. The spiral shell remained cohesive long enough for us to regain our balance.

♦ 31

When the dust settled, we saw a metal behemoth standing over us. Heavy and rotund, like an upright zeppelin covered in a mosaic of colored steel plates. It walked on two platforms that were thicker than tree trunks shadowed by a segmented metal tube of a tail. One of the machine's arms ended in a wide and stubby hand. The other had a very big harpoon gun.

The head was a metal rectangle with sabers sticking out of it like teeth. I didn't recognize it as a head until the robot started talking.

"WELL WELL WELL!" the fanged mecha in an elegant tricorne hat boomed. "IT LOOKS LIKE WE GOT COMPANY!"

"Kaptin Krogre!" Rob O' the Hedge declared. Who and what was that? Did they have some sort of weird history I wasn't privy to, or was this a thing we were always doing now?

"THAT BE ME NAME!" the robot bellowed back.

Our current foe, a robotic giant, talked like a pirate and had only one volume setting. I wasn't surprised, only annoyed. He took up a lot of space on the main deck, his loud guffaws traveling far and wide as he followed our movements with his gun arm.

Rob O' the Hedge nocked a new arrow in expectation of a fight. He had a variety of arrows in his quiver to pick from, but the head of this one looked decidedly wooden. Did he run out of explosive arrows in the struggle to get here? That didn't sound right, I would have seen fire if he used them. Then I noticed the bow knot on top of it. Another tricky type?

"Your crimes against Mercia stop here! On this day, the Highlanders shall be let free!"

"UNDER WHOSE ORDERS? THE O'HEDGES DON'T RULE ANYMORE! AH HA HA!"

"You brute!"

"Brigand!"

"Slaver of our kin!"

I tried to follow where the robot's eyes were staring, but they moved erratically and not always in the same directions. What animal was it supposed to be, a fat gecko? Was there a joke I couldn't cotton on to about lizards and pirates?

"OI! I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT SLAVIN' IS HOW I MAKE ME BONES!"

This was too much. Illusions were something I knew I was good at, so I made one of myself standing in place. Behind that, my real body slowly blended in with the grain of the wooden ship and crept into the background.

"Keep him talking," I whispered to the group. Throwing my voice as a hallucinated sound so only they could hear it. "I'll be right back."

Rob figured out what I was doing. He gave me a thumbs-up behind his back and carried on.

"Thou had to hath been a noble man at some point, Krogre! Do ye not have the will to resist the High Sheriff's influence?"

Once his eyes were off me, I vaulted off the edge of the ship and flew around the port side. My natural fear of heights had faded some since I could fly.

"Och, yer wastin' yer time! Krogre was a traitorous sellsword who never had a heart!"

I wanted to whack this robot from behind like last time and get out of here. Climbing over the stern, I was out of his sight and out of his mind. The illusory dummy stood with the others, who were in varying stages of battle-readiness. From Rob's cool determination, to Finella's borderline bunny blood rage, to Kenny wanting to rout at the next chance of danger.

Actually, why was he even here?

"THE LASS BE RIGHT, BOY PRINCE! NOT MUCH CHANGED, SAVE FER THE FANCY FULL METAL JACKET."

Krogre's steel tail whipped back and forth, scraping the deck. I changed my camo to a sky blue with cloud accents as I approached Krogre from above, aiming a crystal war pick at his head.

♦ 30

"Full metal or not, the Crazy Kritters could slay a giant your size any day o' the week!"

One swing should do it. A backstab did more damage than a flank, and I always played rogues when a game needed one to round out the party.

Krogre hefted his heavy handheld harpoon harpax.

"DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH HARDER! THE SEVEN O' YOU PIPSQUEAKS COULDN'T…"

Casters were always way too complicated. All of those spells to track, the extra dice to manage. Oh well. I prepare the golf swing and--

Kaptain Krogre's steel tail sprung off the ground and thrashed in my direction! The disguise and war pick vanished from shock, leaving me unable to dodge the metal appendage as it coiled around me! I was yanked up high into the air, hanging upside-down, and dangling over so many razor-sharp teeth.

"John Wizard!"

"THINK YOU'RE AN 'ARD BOY, EY?" the giant asked as he constricted tighter. I was confused at how he caught me, but my dummy was gone! "YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COUNT, YOU LITTLE SNEAK?"

I felt something crack. A rib?

♦ 29

Ow. Definitely a rib.

"Maybe? You didn't seem the--" He crushed me harder. "--TYPE!"

♦ 28

"To arms!"

I heard a light plink. Then a few more light plinks as the arrows hit Krogre's iron hide without impeding his attempt to crush me.

"Would you stop with the weak arrows?" I asked my would-be rescuers. "Try hitting him with something harder than wood!"

"YOU GOT A MOUTH, OVERLANDER! TOO BAD YOU'RE TOO SMALL TO KEEP."

Blood rushing to my head, I tried in vain to locate his power source like I did with Dark Horse. It was a warm core of heat somewhere in his heavily-armored gut. If only I could reach it.

"What does that even mean?"

Krogre swung his tail around. It was like riding a rollercoaster until the robot unwound his tail and let me go at full speed. I was freed from his snare in the most kinetic way possible.

"IT MEANS I GOTTA THROW YOU BACK IN THE SEA!"

I sailed into an out-of-control spin down the hole I had just made to escape the Lansquenets we left on the gundecks. The mass of robians that had been waiting for another chance to get at us now had a single target.

"KILL 'IM!"

They lunged for me as a rapid torrent of pikes, swords, and claws. I barely had the chance to raise a shield before they tore my defenses open and then began to tear at me.

♦ 25

Dragged away from the skylight, my vision was blotted out with a tide of cold steel. Whatever was happening up there, I was cut off. There was no one who could come to save me.

♦ 20

For every time I pulled out a new barrier or weapon, they hit me dozens upon dozens of times. I couldn't summon a solid shape that wouldn't shatter when I lost focus. The floor was covered in pools of glittery gem dust that sputtered out of the Phantom Ruby after consecutive failures to get even or get away.

♦ 15

My fight with Dark Horse was intense, but he was only one badnik. There were far too many of these guys and the power of the ruby was focused entirely on keeping me alive. No break, no respite. The machines wanted me dead.

♦ 10

My vision blurred as my body steadily gave out. I stopped fighting back. I was going to be beaten to death by an army of furry robots. In the dark. Alone.

♦ 5

The last reserves of my energy went into a scream.

♦ !!

The gem dust at my feet erupted into plumes of iridescent mist that enveloped everything in sight. Before my eyes, the depths of the ship were gone. They were replaced with a shifting expanse of magenta clouds and pink, crystalline structures that stretched across an endless horizon.

My body ached all over. I couldn't count the wounds, but the pain became an echo that reverberated across my mind. Over and over again, my agony and my anger magnified as I roared at the all-encompassing sky.

The eerie expanse shifted and changed, a spiraling vortex of colors that fragmented into portraits of the Lansquenets. They had glowing spots highlighted across their bodies.

Floating out in the void, I found that sword I had been looking for. Was this where it was hiding? I reached out for that sword and it levitated to my hand. The blade and hilt had accumulated a coat of ruby dust that made it shine in the uneven lighting of this strange place.

With a furious yell, I drove my sword through the cloud cover of that opaque dimension and forced myself back into the real world.

♦ 4

A flash of purple lightning and a boom of thunder shook the landship. The gundeck had been flooded in crystal particles that amassed into an obscuring ruby haze.

"Urk! E-Error!"

I found my sword embedded in a robotic steer's chest. I yanked it out and moved on to the next one. Then the next. Followed by the one after that.

"Surround him!"

"Danger!"

I didn't know how to change them back. They weren't able to stop. It was me or them.

"For the Sheriff!"

In that moment of savage clarity, I picked 'me'.

Dispersions of mist clotted the air. I didn't stop screaming.

"Fall back!"

"Retreat!"

When the pack of Lansquenets tried to scatter, I held out a hand and pulled every last volt from those remaining. They went still in seconds.

♦ 20

When the light of their eyes went dark, I flew back to the main deck to finish what I started. The Crazy Kritters were scaling Kaptin Krogre on long ropes attached to arrows nestled between the gaps of his armor. The three lops were keeping Krogre's tail busy while Rob O' the Hedge tangled with his now serpentine head.

"TOO MUCH TO HANDLE?" the Kaptin teased while attempting to swallow Rob in one bite.

Rob was too far away for me to hear him, but I could always ask him later. I fired a thin laser beam through Krogre's neck and sliced his head clean off.

♦ 18

"AARG!!" the robotic reptile head said as it tumbled down the bow of the ship. "SHIVER ME--"

The landship shook. I'd never know if he was going to say the line straight or put a spin on it.

The Crazy Kritters climbed off Kaptin Krogre's body with haste. The lops were standing at a distance behind them.

"My word!" Gilbert said.

Arthur shared his sentiment. "What he said. Ye look like death warmed over."

"What happened to you?" Rob O' the Hedge asked. Genuinely concerned, but for what? I felt great. Powerful. "What have you done?"

"Only what I had to," I said as I landed down and tore my hand into Krogre's battery casing. "And by the way? Mission accomplished--"

♦ 28

My stomach lurched. The past minute of automated, frenzied violence caught up to me. In that instant, the veil was yanked over my mind and I snapped back to reality.

I took my hand away from the badnik boss and fell to my knees in shock. Rob shouted for me.

"John! What happened!?"

I did all of that. Somehow. Did I buckle under the stress and lose it on them? I didn't know and was terrified at the thought. When Rob got closer, I stumbled away.

"S-Stay back!"

No. That didn't make sense. It had to be more than stress. It was cold. Calculated. A butchering executed with ferocious precision that I didn't think I had in me.

That wasn't me. It couldn't have been me. Yet I could remember all of it with perfect clarity because it was like my own body had acted out my wrath against my will.

The realization that it could happen again, at any time, was when I well and truly panicked.

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

The argyle pattern is derived from a tartan belonging to Clan Campbell, a clan native to Argyll in Western Scotland. They're a very influential clan in Scottish history. Another one of the Clan Campbell tartans is associated with a historical Scottish infantry battalion called the Black Watch.

Lady Finella was a Scottish noblewoman known for allegedly assassinating King Kenneth II with an elaborate crossbow trap to get revenge for her son being killed in battle. Her tale ends when she jumps off a waterfall to escape capture. Though it's known a Lady Finella existed at the time Kenneth II died (though her name is spelled like a dozen different ways), there's debate as to whether she did it with the aid of Kenneth II's enemies, whether the cool crossbow trap part of the story made up, or if she did it at all.

Kaptain Krogre was a fun badnik idea. Captain Plunder meets an Ork Kaptain meets King K. Rool. Complete with a harpoon cannon arm and a robot landship serpent mode!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 7: What's the Matter

"John! What happened!?"

He opened his mouth, but he couldn't speak. No noise came out. A sudden bout of nausea took the words he was going to say and held them tight.

I killed those robians. That's what happened.

His body shivered like a leaf, his heart pumping at speed not too far behind it. O'Hedge tried to get closer to him, but he stumbled away.

"S-Stay back!"

With how suddenly and violently he turned in the heat of the moment, he didn't know if it was safe for anyone to get near him. The last thing he wanted to do was lose control again.

"Have a care! You're wounded!"

"I mean it! Back off!"

Leaning over the side of the ship to hurl, his head sunk straight down. Before he could reject his breakfast, he saw that the grass below us was gliding at a rapid pace.

"We're still moving?" he said mournfully. His chest, among other things, ached terribly. "Why are we still moving?!"

"Not just movin'!" said Finella. "We're headed fer the Ogre's Stairway!"

He looked at her in confusion, then where she was pointing. They were nearing a massive column of basalt pillars in the loose shape of a spiral staircase. The landship was big, but the spires that clung to the edge of a seaside cliff were bigger. If they hit it from one angle, it would launch them far into the deep blue. If they hit it from any other angle, they'd be dashed against the rocks instantly.

He barely had enough time to register the fact that they were in mortal peril again.

"No."

"No?" one of them said in shock. This time, I knew it was Arthur. "Come on, man! We've got to stop the ship!"

"N-No," he repeated with a stutter. The false image of cool and the trappings of adventure he'd so carefully cultivated to avoid thinking about the big picture were vaporized. He slid away from the railing and fell to the floor in a shuddering heap. "No. No more. Not again. I won't. I won't!"

"He's gone mad," Gil said in shock.

"Oh, shut up!"

The words were harsh, but true. He was too stunned by his sudden turn to face what was left of reality. Rob tried to rouse his wizard ally, but he wasn't responding.

It was hard to look at. Frankly, I had no idea why I kept this memory playing on repeat.

"The wizard's insensate!" Lennox said. "Leave him! We've got to get our clan out of here!"

"We need to drop the anchor!" Rob said.

The Kritters and Clan Argyle had an anchor to drop, so one of them took the helm and the others sprung into action. I wasn't very well helpful with that, staying where I was until the anchor digging into the hard earth caused me to get flung overboard.

It was almost funny, from a third-person perspective. I stopped the recording and played it back again, from the top.

"John! What happened!?" Rob's echo said.

♦ 16

I wanted to look over the scenes again. See how I could have gotten over it and acted. Maybe I could see what it took to stop myself from losing control next time. I struggled to come to terms with the fact I terminated those robians. I knew that I couldn't cure them, or stop them any other way, but did that mean I killed the people they once were, too? I didn't know.

Nobody said a word to me about it since we got back to Hideaway. I haven't been asked to go on any more missions with the Crazy Kritters. I supposed I wasn't the only one without a way to put their thoughts about what should happen next into words.

"Prithee, you really ought not to be doing this to yourself."

I jumped a few inches and the whole illusion dropped like falling shards of glass. We were back at my humble abode in Hideaway. I turned around, and there was Friar Buck behind me, looking concerned.

"How am I gonna learn from my mistakes if I can't study them in detail?" I asked defensively.

"Oh? And has your self-imposed isolation borne fruitful?"

I looked around. My room was a mess, having not been cleaned since I scattered my extra weapons about and broke down all of the furniture days prior. I still had to sit and sleep somewhere when I felt the random rare urge to sit or sleep, so I used magic to roughly kludge back together.

The fact that I was waxing and waning through basic bodily functions was terrifying. How much of it was sheer stress versus the gem driving me insane?

"Yes. Why, I'm feeling better already. Shouldn't you knock?"

"The huts don't have doors," Amy supplied helpfully from a window she was leaning out of. "Only curtains."

I blink. What was she doing here?

"You didn't see all of that, did you?"

"See all of what?" Amy asked.

I walked out of the room.

"Nothing, I'm taking a break."

"That is good," Friar Buck said with a warm smile. "Mayhaps ye can spare the time to nourish thyself?"

"Not hungry."

I jumped off the railing into a midair hover, away from Hideaway. If I couldn't reflect on what happened in my hut, I would do it somewhere else.

I need to get my head on straight. Recharge my batteries if another robot comes by.

"I think I'll do some flying. See if I can't watch the forest while Rob finishes the repairs on the Warren."

"Of course. I shall save thine findings from the archives for when thou art more available to see them."

I stopped.

"You found something?"

"Indeed, I have! Rob requested that I search through my stores of the Kingdom's records for anything that might spark interest in those of a… sorcerous inclination? Though, if thou art to be preoccupied elsewhere--"

"Nope. My schedule is wide open."

"How fortuitous! The stew I was boiling should be ready to serve. Rosy, would you care to join us as I regale our guest with highlights from the Matter of Mercia?"

"Lunch and storytime? Sure!"

---

We had lunch at the Friar's hunt, covering recent events I neglected to keep track of over the week. Slightly sanitized versions of recent events for Amy's sake, but I was feeling pensive.

"The damage to the Warren's that bad?" I asked Friar Buck.

A battery of artillery shells blasting their hillside village wide open was, in fact, bad.

"Sadly so," he replied. "I fear they may need to abandon their ancestral home if the burrows cannot be saved."

"Can't we bring them here?" Amy asked.

"Not gonna happen," I answered a bit too brusquely. "Hideaway can only support, like twenty people at once. People come and go because that's an iffy twenty. There's no way we're fitting over a hundred more bodies in Deerwood Forest and keeping a low profile."

"What? No way!"

"It's Rob's call, but he doesn't have a choice to bring them over."

Friar Buck gave a solemn nod.

"I have to agree, Rosy, though I wish their situation were not so dire. We will help them make other arrangements. Preferably those further away from the High Sherriff's scrutiny."

Based on her expression, it wasn't the response Amy wanted to hear. I changed the subject.

"You, uh, mentioned something called the Matter of Mercia?"

"Yes. The Matter is the sum of our history and the legendary deeds of heroes past."

"Brave stories of knights fighting ogres and dragons!" Amy added.

That sounded a lot like Sonic & the Black Knight. The only way to know if my guess on point was to press further.

"Color me interested. So what's the Matter?"

I froze. Did I really say what I thought I said?

"Not much," Friar Buck said with a sip of his tea. "Thyself?"

I groaned, realizing I was subjected to the feudal equivalent of asking for updog. Amy giggled. Friar Buck, to his credit, was graceful in victory.

"My apologies. In a moment of weakness, I could not muster the willpower to resist."

The rest of the discussion was more straightforward. The holy hart knew most of the stories that made up the Matter by heart. He filled me in on the short version of Mercia's founding by the first king, who was given a magic sword as a blessing by the fairies of Avalon to rule, and the various knights of his Round Table.

It was the Arthurian Cycle, more or less, and that all happened hundreds of years ago. The most important aspect I took from it was that it also contained recent history. Over a hundred years prior, what was now called Mercia was a smattering of smaller kingdoms. Friar Buck was light on the details to keep things moving, but a power struggle took place between the fiefdoms of West Eurish until King Sebastian Acorn lent aid to the O'Hedge family in uniting their lands under a single banner. The Acorn and O'Hedge families became allies, and Mercia stood as a united kingdom… until Robotnik went and ruined everything.

The most useful parts would have related to wizards and witches, but the sum of direct knowledge on them was frustratingly scarce. They would appear in a story to aid or hinder the hero and then leave the tale of their own accord, assuming they didn't get slain in the process. It seemed whoever wrote about them had a low opinion of magic.

"How accurate would you say these older records are?"

"I wish I could say they were a Matter of fact, but time has means of muddling truth and fiction."

Once I had the basics down, Friar Buck opted to reveal what he found in the archives.

"I uncovered the detailed records of an ancient kingdom said to have been founded on the edge of the Outlands," he said.

"A lost kingdom?" I asked.

"Pray tell, how familiar are thee with the Kingdom of Sylvan?"

"You mentioned it off hand. The home of Sir Tristam?"

"I know this one!" Amy declared. "The Kingdom of Sylvan vanished in a great flood! They say the valley around Sylvania Castle became a lake and a magical forest grew around it."

"Who says? This Sylvania place is news to me."

"They," she clarified. "Come on! The legends are as old as it gets."

"What, you know all of these stories already?"

"Only the romances," she says wistfully. "The best part of the story is the dance between Sir Tristam and Princess Yseult!"

"Do they escape the flood and live happily ever after?"

It was only an educated guess that their love story didn't come with floatation devices. Amy's face went from pink to red, and she crossed her arms indignantly.

"The love shared between a knight and his lady can never die!"

Friar Buck cleared his throat.

"If I may?" he interjected.

He drew a scroll from his bag, which contained a map and poetry appearing much older than the one Rob showed me of contemporary Mercia.

"The tale of old Sylvan was not one I took much stock in, but this map and extensive accounts from the bard Tailesin prove there may have been a good deal of truth to the fiction."

Ignoring the horrible pun of Tailesin, my mind stopped to put the pieces together. Kingdom of Sylvan? Sylvania Castle? Like the zone? Was this something I could use to my advantage, even if I hadn't figured out how to do so yet?

Wow. I never thought I'd be grateful for Sonic 4: Episode II. That level had some weird supernatural gimmicks to it, which was just what the doctor ordered.

"Since you brought Sylvania up out of the blue, I'm assuming there's a lost treasure or other weird thing buried there that might help me out?"

Friar Buck pondered the subject. Or he pondered if he should tell me what he knew about it.

"Perhaps," he admitted. "Sylvan was said to be a haven for the arts and sciences. That may well have included the mystic arts, as the king's advisor Salomo was rumored to be a warlock."

"Salomo?" I ask.

The name wasn't too far from Solomon. If that wasn't a wizard name, I didn't know what was.

"His capacity for spellcasting varied by the story's telling, but the only way to be sure would be to perform thine own inquiries."

Amy jumped up and down.

"We're going to the lost kingdom of Sylvan!" she exclaimed with glee.

"That would be far too dangerous," Friar Buck reprimanded. "With your cousin away, I have far too many duties to attend to in Hideaway to accompany our wizard friend, should he choose to pursue this inquiry."

"How come he gets to go?" Amy whined.

I took a closer look at the map. I was bad at directions, but the lack of GPS meant was getting better at navigating out of necessity.

"Two reasons. One: I'm an adult. My life is in my own hands, to make stupid decisions with as I see fit. Two: I don't get to go, I have to. It's either these ruins in the middle of nowhere or I make a play for the royal archives in Snottingham."

That was something I considered: Ramming my way into the High Sheriff's fortress and firing lasers until everything that moved didn't. If the badniks I've been up against were any indicator, it was a suicide mission. Not that it stopped me from considering it.

"I'm gonna scout it out and see what turns up."

"I would not advise that so soon," Friar Buck said.

"Why not?" I asked. "I'm not an archeologist, but I can be careful not to break anything."

"The ruins are the least of my concerns. Thou hath not yet fully recovered from thine battle fatigue."

Battle fatigue? What did that mean?

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Friar Buck frowned.

"Rosy, could ye be so kind as to fetch the poems of Tristam and Yseult for me?"

Amy nodded. She ran off to chase her love story. When the hedgehog girl was out of hearing range, Friar Buck continued.

"Thou must have time to heal. Truly heal, not throwing yourself into other projects. I was able to convince thee to care for your body with food, but thine powers are not a true replacement for replenishing the mind and soul. Thou run the risk of letting those wounds fester."

"I… I'll take that under advisement."

Amy got back with the materials Friar Buck asked for. He transcribed the info I'd need from the maps and the antiquated poetry onto a fresh scroll with neat calligraphy and handed it to me.

"Take heed that ye do," he said. "A willful spirit is a powerful force, but even an incredibly stubborn spirit has limits."

I got the picture. I still took the scroll with plans to leave as soon as possible.

"One last question?" I asked before I departed to do some amatuer gravedigging.

"If ye have need for my wisdom, I shall dispense it to the best of my abilities."

"Why doesn't Rosy have the same accent as everyone else in Mercia?"

I couldn't help but notice she spoke differently from the others. She wasn't even trying to emulate their thees and thous. Rather than share a koan or witticism, Friar Buck only shrugged.

"That continues to elude me. As do all trends of the youth."

Amy pouted.

"I'll have you know everybody in Northamer talks this way! It's cool!"

"Talks like me?" I asked.

"Talks like…" Amy trailed off as the gears in her head started turning.

Amy jumped onto the bench to face me eye to sparkling cartoon eye. It was both cute and incredibly unnerving.

"You're from Northamer?! You gotta teach me some radical lingo I can use for when I meet my future boyfriend Sonic!"

I felt a shiver go down my spine. It could have been from any part of that exchange and I couldn't tell you which. I said the first radical word that came to mind.

"Copacetic?" I volunteered.

"COPACETIC!" she cheered. "Wait, what's that mean? I gotta know!"

I smiled and made a show of checking my Phantom Ruby.

"Oh, would you look at the time! I got a date with some foreboding sunken ruins on the edge of the country. I'll catch up with you later!"

The look on her face as I turned and walked out of the hut without defining 'copacetic' was priceless. It'd be absolutely hilarious if I got her talking like a tryhard skater girl by the end of the week, so I put that on my to-do list as a distant third to getting my powers under control and reclaiming control of Mercia from the High Sheriff.

For the time being, I had to go to Sylvania Castle and see if anything there could help me. I still needed to have my priorities in order, but if I didn't include some fun diversions I'd lose my mind and go on a violent rampage.

It was safe to say that one of those was enough for a lifetime.

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

What's the Matter? The Matter is, to the surprise of nobody, the Matter of Britain! The tales of King Arthur that inspired Sonic & the Black Knight were a central focus of the Matter of Britain, so I threw them back into the mix for Mercia's fusion stew of European history. The Matter also included Lyonesse, the lost kingdom central to the tale of Tristan and Iseult. You can find parallels to it in the Breton tale of Ys.

Friar Buck's predilection towards puns is a canon trait of his character. I didn't make it up for the joke, but rather leaned into it so I could get the puns I wanted in this chapter. Amy being from Mercia was written up after she had already been inserted into the story, and she never was portrayed as having a Mercian accent, so I figured she taught herself to sound like she was from Northamer because she thought it'd make her sound "cooler".

Although I would totally make fun of someone else doing it, I actually do make use of radical to the max vernacular in my regular speech. I used to do it ironically but now I can't stop. I've since embraced that I'm a massive hypocrite and will continue to be so.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 8: Castle Splashers

Countershading: A form of natural camouflage that manifests as an animal's coloration being darker when observed from above and lighter when observed from below. A pretty clever trick for blending in with your environment, useful for predator and prey. It can be seen in mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish; I went ahead and added myself to that list.

Heading South towards the supposed site of Sylvania Castle, I wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. Recently, the High Sheriff cottoned on to the fact that the newest member of the Crazy Kritters could fly. Since that incident that went down in the Highlands, he's had his robian minions set up anti-air ballistas along the edges of Deerwood Forest. If I got careless or tried to ferry people around again, they would simply shoot me out of the sky.

I kept low to the trees to avoid detection, coloring my body to match the natural hues above and below. That appeared to do the trick for outsmarting any turrets, but I had to constantly focus to prevent my disguise from slipping. Even when I throttled my speed and stopped at landmarks to reorient myself, flight was still the fastest way to get from here to there.

The travel period was a few hours of refreshing silence that I was grateful for. My allergies stopped bothering me and I didn't bother asking why. I got to higher elevation when the forests transitioned to deep blue hills. Soaring past the pastoral mountain peaks and a thick bank of clouds, I realized in awe that I had reached my destination.

The wooded valley that stretched along the Mercia coast was filled with wildflowers and evergreens. I could smell the ozone from recent rainfall or thunderstorms. The dense forestry grew in and around the remains of what was once a sprawling walled city. Mossy stone towers, pillars, and arches stood tall and resolute in the large inlet lake that swallowed up what once was, if the legends could be believed, the Kingdom of Sylvan. The large, cathedral-esque keep near the center had to be Sylvania Castle proper.

I was floored. How exactly could anyone lose track of a place like this? I descended towards an aged walkway so I could get a better view of things on the ground.

♦ 13

By the time my feet touched the brick path, I was very aware of how close I was to losing power. Friar Buck didn't call me an idiot for rushing into this, but I was an idiot for not figuring out a better way to power the Ruby sooner. I tried to make a simple battery out of cans, copper wires, and saltwater, but the effect was practically nil. So what was I supposed to do? Hijack a coal plant? Daisy chain a potato farm? Stand outside in a thunderstorm and hope I got struck?

If this castle turned out to be a bust, my next priority was finding another one of the High Sheriff's machines and stealing their battery for my own use.

I sighed. One problem at a time. The ruins were as expansive as they were breathtaking. I didn't really know where to begin, so I walked around to see if anything outside stuck out as valuable. Nobody was around, so I exchanged my faux wizard robes for beige slacks and a red jacket. Not wanting to be caught unarmed in case I was wrong about being alone, I envisioned the dimension of pink mist and clouds in my mind's eye. After moments of searching, I found a short crossbow and made it appear in my hand.

They called it Null Space, in Sonic Forces, though this pocket dimension made by the Phantom Ruby looked more like Egg Reverie Zone from Sonic Mania. I didn't know the full extent of how it worked, but I've been using it as a storage area for all of the weapons and gear I've collected. If there was anything worth taking from these ruins, I'll be taking it to go.

The outside of Sylvania Castle had little to offer, but I wouldn't mind coming back here again for the view alone. In all of my exploring of Mercia, I had yet to actually see any castles up to this point. The castle of Snottingham and other fortresses in the High Sheriff's control were completely off-limits, making this one my first. My mind was abuzz with questions as to the people who lived here and the devastating storm that wiped this castle off nearly every map, but it wasn't as though there were any survivors left to ask. I had to ram those questions down to keep them from distracting me further.

I took the long way around the city to the castle, watching my footing in case anything tried to give way under my weight. The ruins had rusted weapons and other trinkets strewn about, but not much else that drew my attention. I stopped at the submerged keep. With the entrance and the first few floors having slipped under the lake, I climbed in via one of the overly large windows.

The inside of the castle was dark. That much was obvious when I walked into the building. I made a red lantern to guide my path through the crumbled interior, which was a shadow of whatever glories it once represented. Tattered banners and shredded murals lined the dusty walls. The normal furnishings of regular castle living were strewn about in a chaotic clutter.

If those weren't enough of an indicator that Sylvania Castle had more problems than water in the basement, the skeletal remains of munchkin knights battling each other to the bitter end certainly were.

"What happened here?" I asked nobody in particular. My voice had an echo that carried throughout the keep.

I sidestepped around the scene of what looked like a pitched battle, picking up a discarded shield to examine it. Besides, it wasn't too late for there to be--

I stepped on an off-colored brick. A barrage of arrows flew out of the wall and embedded themselves in the shield I had raised in a frenzied defense.

"Traps?! Really?!"

I dropped the shield in a rage. If this castle wanted to play hardball, then so would I!

I sent a flash of ruby light out into the dim halls, phantom tendrils snatching centuries-old weapons and armor from knights that were no longer using them. I only meant to raise some plating between me and any other traps that wanted to get in my way, but the metal bent and twisted as it clasped to my body, smoothing out in some places and spiking up in others. Before I could stop it I was ironclad, head to toe in a wicked set of armor!

"Woah…!" I said in surprised shock. That was awesome!

♦ 8

Then I remembered that I was supposed to be conserving power!

"Darn it!"

A wide, double-edged sword with red chain symbols running down the flat of the blade got into my hands at some point during the transformation process. I didn't know if it was made from other swords or got picked out of the pile, but I made quick use of it and the new armor to blow through all of the remaining traps and obstacles with gusto. Automated spikes and arrows couldn't slow me down.

♦ 6

I checked door by door, hall by hall. I had to ignore rooms that weren't immediately promising because decked out in full plate I was still on a timer. The stress was making my judgement worse, and the clock kept ticking down.

"Alright, that's it!"

I kicked a wall down in frustration before forcing myself to sit down on a pile of rubble and closing my eyes so I could calm down and think. It wasn't easy to get comfortable with the new armor on, but I managed.

The issue at hand was that I needed power as soon as possible. This expedition was looking more and more like a dead end. I could be here all night and not come up with anything because whoever lived and died here didn't have the courtesy to leave instructions for future tomb raiders. Where was Salomo's study, and could anything in it help me? After all this effort, I sure hoped so.

The mental fog started to pass when I took a breather, and the solution became clear. All I had to do was focus and remember what I did to that horse badnik. I spotted the compatible energy source he had in his chest more or less by accident. Why couldn't I try to do the same again on purpose?

Trying to brute force some kind of magic sense was like attempting to feel the texture of a pineapple through my eyes. Faint sensations cropped up at the corners of my awareness, but I couldn't tell if they were taste, sight, touch, or something new I lacked a word for.

When the sensory overload leveled out, it became comparable to thermal imaging. My immediate surroundings were tinged in shades of blue or green. I tuned my red aura out and tried to find foreign objects that pinged as being on the same wavelength.

There was a strong glow deep below me; inside the lake. It was difficult to ignore after I noticed it, but I put off any attempts at going down there because I can't exactly breathe underwater.

"Unless…"

The stairwell to the bottom floors was a murky blue pool rank with the odor of aquatic vegetation. I wasn't a great swimmer, but the armor meant I could sink straight down and fly back up once I got what I needed. I steeled my resolve as I stepped into the water with a force bubble full of air around my head. I didn't start drowning, so I'd call that a success!

♦ 5

The ruins of Sylvania Castle were bigger on the inside than they were outside. I followed the strange red glimmer as I slowly trudged through the sunken ruins. The route was made more difficult by floating debris that had to be carefully sorted through and broken down. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a cave-in.

♦ 4

It turned out that wasn't alone down here, per say. There were carps, trout, eels, and some spiny fish I didn't recognize. A lionfish, maybe? A lot about Mobius was weird, sure, but what kind of fish--

What kind of fish had hedgehog spines?!

The serpentine creature with a hedgehog's head darted past me and into the darkness when spotted! I fell back and banged my head against a pillar in surprise, causing cracks to form along the inside of my bubble!

♦ 3

No no no!

It shattered! Water started to flood into my helm! I held my breath and raced down the flooded corridors, battering through stone walls and pillars to reach my lifeline!

♦ 2

The Phantom Ruby dimmed to a pale blue as I impacted with a large vault made out of a gleaming white metal. The power that glowed behind the vault was evident; a brilliant gold that I could see with my own eyes through cracks in the stone.

I tried the door. It wouldn't budge! Trying harder, I only managed to bend the vault's iron handles! I banged on the surface with increasingly wild swings!

What is this made out of?! BREAK! JUST BREAK!

♦ 1

This was it. The end. By following my gut, I had walked down into the bottom of a submerged castle in heavy armor to look for something that I may have been hallucinating, and was about to be cut off from my mystical life support.

Here we were. In my death, the depths of my stupidity could finally be measured in liters per square inch. I would die here, all because I didn't know the combination to the stupid door!

The door's the only part made of metal!

Inspiration struck! With the last shreds of my power, I made a flickering ruby hand and wrenched the entirety of the metal door out of the stone wall! I experienced a violent lurch, and was flung backwards by the change in pressure!

I closed my eyes and expected the worst: That I was about to start drowning again. That I was back in Never Lake, and that I wasn't coming out this time around.

Wait, was that the lake from Sonic CD--?

I didn't have the time to finish the thought. Simultaneous jolts of energy jostled my body as I was enveloped in golden light!

♦ 5

I couldn't keep my eyes closed any longer. All around me were brilliant, golden rings! Glowing, metal hoops that were a foot wide, each one shining like the sun shone on them from every angle.

♦ 10

The rings and I were all being pulled along by the powerful current I had unleashed. I didn't know where we were going, but I was taking as many rings as I could with me!

♦ 20

I was so ecstatic to be alive, I didn't even care when a giant, yellow and orange fish tail smacked me in the face! I was gonna live to see another day!

♦ 40

The current forced me upwards, and I was launched out of the lake by a water spout! My armor came off in pieces as landed among the castle ruins, where I laughed with joy.

"RINGS!" I cried! "ALL I NEEDED WERE RINGS!"

I could still see more of them, floating at the lakebed! Rings! How could I not have realized it sooner?

I cackled. It all came together! Why wouldn't rings be the solution? If I could collect more of them, I could have all the time and power I needed!

I looked around the Sylvan Kingdom, the gears in my head really moving! I hadn't been this excited about anything since I got here, but now I could see the possibilities!

"This was once a city, huh?" I pondered aloud. "With some renovations, it looks like it will make for one heck of a secret base!"

The conclusion was a natural one to make. The High Sheriff already knew where Hideaway was in the general sense. There was no direction they could grow in without the enemy taking note, and we were already dealing with population problems. Now we had a new place and a ton of rings to power it!

I could worry about weird fish later. This was our windfall: A castle to ourselves! The best part was that this castle didn't officially didn't exist, and no one knew where to start looking for it!

I took comfort in this knowledge and understood it as an irrevocable fact until I overheard an aircraft engine exploding overhead. A Sopwith Camel that flew straight out of a Great War documentary went past the relics and was on a collision course with the trees!

The amount of emotional whiplash made my neck sore. I did the first thing that came to mind and raised the Phantom Ruby! The light from my gem enveloped the damaged biplane in a glimmering tractor beam, freezing it in place before carefully landing it in a grassy meadow.

♦ 38

I turned invisible. I didn't know who or what these people were. I didn't know what they wanted. All I know is that they picked the worst time and place imaginable.

Approaching the crash site from an oblique angle, I witnessed two figures climb out of the winged craft. The first was a blue-grey cat with yellow eyes. He was dressed in a stereotypical musketeer's uniform with fleur-de-lis emblazoned across his tabard. The second was a red poodle girl with a blue beret and matching cloak.

"Monsieur Chat!" the poodle said to her associate in an exaggerated French accent. "Whatever en Mobius was zat?"

"I do not know, but stay on guard," the cat ordered as he stepped out of the pilot's seat. His boots were made of an incredibly high-quality material, but I had the feeling they weren't real leather.

I was interrupted by Puss in Boots and a French poodle? I suppressed the urge to laugh as I got closer, because that was absolutely hilarious. Then I remembered that, since I could produce auditory illusions, I could make a bubble of silence around myself and laugh as hard as I pleased. Once that was out of my system, I began listening in on their conversation.

"Ze plane! She ees kaput!" the poodle declared after a cursory inspection of the engine with a large ballista bolt through it. "Now however shall we reach ze Forest of Dear Wood?"

Monsieur Chat checked his surroundings, presumably to look for me. He drew his rapier towards the distant mountains.

"We climb, Fifi. We climb."

"Fifi? Really? Aha ha ha ha!"

Fifi the Poodle turned towards me.

"W-Who said zat?!" she asked in fright. "And whatever do you think ees so funny about my name?"

They weren't supposed to hear that! My smile dropped and I hid behind a tree!

Chat ran back to the downed plane and entered a defensive stance.

"Who's out there?!" he shouted at the trees in vain.

I ignored them while I came up with a new plan. The element of surprise was mostly ruined, but I still had some tricks up my sleeve.

"Come out and face me like a man, coward!"

Not happening. Not when I couldn't keep a straight face.

"Be careful, Chat! It could be a ghost from that très spooky castle!"

Now, Fifi had the right idea! I made a pillar of fire appear before them, with two embers for eyes and a set of smoke streams as burning eyebrows! I couldn't think of anything clever to do for the mouth, so I didn't make one. Mouths were hard to animate, anyway.

"WHO DARES TRESPASS ON MY HAUNTING GROUND?" the phantom image demanded.

Fifi shrieked and jumped back into the plane!

"A G-G-G-GHOST!!!!"

"State your business or be scoured from this mortal plain!"

"We were just leaving!" Fifi said quickly.

Chat, to his credit, only looked perturbed by the sudden appearance of a phantasm in broad daylight.

"We are the Maquis! The fearless Outland Freedom Fighters who have eluded capture by barbarous Barbe Vis!"

The Outlands? Wasn't that where Will Stoatley was headed? We hadn't heard from him in a while, and I couldn't blame the snail mailman there.

"Do you know a weasel by the name of William?"

"If we say non, will you let us go?"

The musketeer rolled his eyes, but he kept his rapier pointed towards me.

"Sir Stoatley was our contact with the King O'Hedge and his Crazy Kritters. If it matters to you, spirit, he has been taken to Quart Quartz."

"And that would be…?"

The two Maquis members looked at my fiery projection funny.

"Oh, I'm sorry, do I look like a giant pillar of fire who goes out often? Come on, spill it!"

"It is ze -- how you say -- prisoner camp of Barbe Vis! He works ze people to ze bone, and turns zem into robots when zey can work no more!"

"Yikes. That's terrible."

"It ees! Très terrible!"

"What does any of this mean to you?" Monsieur Chat probed. "I demand you let us go to seek the King's aid at this instant!"

"What's it mean to me?" I asked back. I made the ghost evaporate. They weren't robians, they were allies.

Fifi gasped. Chat held his weapon tightly.

"It means you've come to the right place. John Wizard, provisional Crazy Kritter."

I bow. Not because I'm still being dramatic, but because the gesture still has some value in Mercian society.

"A magician?" Fifi asked in confusion. "You are dressed a bit casual for magic, non?"

I looked down to find I had reverted to slacks and a jacket, with a spiked gauntlet attached to my Ruby hand being all that remained of the armor.

"The help's free and you get what you pay for. Now tell me more about Barbe Vis."

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

As mentioned last chapter, Lyonesse is a legendary kingdom in Arthurian lore. It's the main setting of Tristan and Iseult, and factors into other stories (like being the battleground of Arthur and Mordred) in some adaptations. Lyonesse was destroyed after the inhabitants committed some terrible crime or another, being taken by the sea as if it was never there at all.

Prior to writing this chapter, I asked myself how one would write a classic drowning sequence from the games in narrative format. Now I know, and you do, too!

"Maquis" was a name attributed to groups of French guerilla fighters during World War II who would hide in the mountains and sabotage occupying forces when possible. Monsieur Chat, on top of being a transparent homage to Puss in Boots, is a Chartreux. It's a notable French breed. Charles De Gaulle, leader of Free France in WWII, had one as a pet.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 9: Sword and Bird

"You can't tell me you came all the way here to recruit people for a suicide mission."

Only hours into our trip through Deerwood Forest did the Maquis explain the barest scraps of why they had to flee the Outlands. From what I could gather, the robian boss in charge of the Southern Mercia region, Barbe Vis, caught wind of a Maquis raid ahead of time and captured the rest of the musketeers with their breeches down. Leaving Monsieur Chat and Fifi Caniche no choice but to take off in a ramshackle biplane and hope they landed where help was hiding.

I didn't know what their plane was powered by, but it ran out of juice halfway to the end destination. I had to catch their busted craft mid-flight before it could hit Sylvania Castle, and now I was the one leading them to Hideaway. It took a few rounds of "spin me around with a blindfold on", but I was a much better pathfinder than I used to be. By now, I could get around the maze of trees and brambles without getting completely lost.

From what they said before, the answer of what they wanted to do next was more or less what I expected: A prison break of a labor camp called Quart Quartz.

"Our goal is not a suicide mission," Monsieur Chat said bluntly. The tom in boots walked beside me, and the fretful poodle scout walked right behind him. "I have keen knowledge of the wilderness surrounding Quart Quartz. Entry without detection is well within our means."

"What about the inside? They've made some changes since they took over the quarry years ago, right?"

"That information has been more difficult to obtain."

"Do you know where the quartz goes when they take it out, or what it gets used for?"

"Pretty necklaces?" Fifi the Poodle offered. I shook my head, and she looked embarrassed for suggesting it. "Eheheh. I did not think ze robians went for jewelry, either."

"It goes to building castles and fortifications for the High Sheriff," Chat answered.

"Zey also put quartz in watches and clocks, non?"

Fifi paused to think of the implications.

"You don't think zey put them in ze robots, too? Do you?"

"That and more. Radios, computers, radar. You name it, there's a good chance you can find quartz in it. That pit mine might be a bigger cog in the High Sheriff's operations than you guys might have expected."

"All the more reason for the Crazy Kritters to aid us in its destruction," Chat said resolutely. "You did claim to be close to King O'Hedge. Should we expect our petition to be answered?"

They wanted us to risk our skins for a couple of people who were more likely than not already roboticized. At the same time, we could do a whole lot of damage by cutting off what might be the Sheriff's biggest quartz supply. I didn't want to promise them anything, but really. Rob O' the Hedge was a bleeding heart. There was no way he wouldn't want to help them once the issue of housing the Highlanders was handled.

"I'll see what I can do. Any other Maquis members we need to pick up for this mission?"

"All of our friends were taken captive," Fifi said quietly. "Kent ze Crow. Guadalupe Garou. Ze Four Minstrels of Bremen. We do not know how much time zey have left before…"

I nodded in understanding. We haven't heard from Stoatley in weeks; I wasn't optimistic about chances of getting him back in the flesh.

"Just you two, then."

I'd switched back into my 'wizarding' attire since picking them up and kept the sword at my belt in case we ran into any trouble.

"What is your association with King O'Hedge?" the cat probed.

I turned, rolled my eyes, and checked my compass again. We weren't that far from Hideaway. Or, at least, I didn't think we were that far. Maybe I wasn't as good at this as I thought.

"I'm the court wizard," I replied as I put the compass away.

"There's still a court?" Fifi asked, her voice full of hope and delight. "Zat ees wonderful news! I so missed ballroom dancing! Does Hideaway have a dance hall?"

"Ah. No, not really. That's just what I've been calling myself, since there doesn't seem to be a better title around."

She deflated a bit at the answer. I felt guilty about being the one who had to burst her bubble.

"Forget zat I asked. What does a court wizard do for a living, anyway?"

"I consult on magic policy and fight wicked ne'er-do-wells at the King's side. To be honest, I was in the middle of those wizarding duties when you dropped in."

"Did it involve that castle you were 'haunting'?" Chat interjected.

"Yes, actually. I was surveying the ruins for anything that might come in handy."

"Handy?" he repeated back incredulously.

"Relics and records that can aid our intelligence come first, followed by any treasure that could be traded to external groups in exchange for their aid."

I left the lake of magic rings out of the story. While the mobian musketeers seemed legitimate, I really didn't know them or have any grasp of how rare rings were supposed to be in this world. If it was anything like the games, I wouldn't have had to go to all of the trouble of finding them in an invincible vault underneath a lost castle. I was able to top myself off and take a bushel for the road while they weren't looking, but I still didn't know how many rings I had in total.

Once I did have the spare time to collect all those rings and miscellaneous forgotten treasures, we could use the castle itself as a fallback base. Or a second home for the Highland Lops, since the open plains were a definite no-go. As long as it was stable enough to inhabit without the foundation sinking further into the lake, I didn't see see why we couldn't put it back into use.

Monsieur Chat frowned.

"Do the shattered remnants of the Overland not pay enough to keep you on retainer?"

I stopped.

"Excuse me?"

"I could not help but notice that once you believed you were out of our sight, the first thing you did was return to doing what your predecessors first did when they first set foot on Eurish soil."

So much for not being caught. Now, I looked worse than if I did it openly.

"That would be?"

"I am not so young that I could forget the shock troopers helping themselves to our kingdom's valuables with the promise they would be put to better use in overlander hands."

"They're not going to the Overland or me." That second part was a bit dubious, depending on how you interpreted it. "Alright, maybe I'm not a knight or servant of the king like you are. The gold and rings are still going to the cause."

The cat's hand slowly went to his sword. I stopped, made an illusion of me who continued walking where they could see it, and hovered behind Chat in case it looked like he was about to act upon a misinterpretation of my intent.

"Pardon my ill manners, mercenary, but I am loath to trust the future of Mercia to a stranger with a tendency towards robbing graves."

"Look. Blind trust is a big ask and all, but we can't be that far from home base. When we get there you can ask Rob how trustworthy I am. Can't you trust me for a little while longer?"

"Well, you did first appear to us as a spooky ghost." Fifi said. "Not a very good way to make yourself seem trustworthy, non?"

I seamlessly went back into place with my double with nothing more than a flicker from my ruby.

97

"That was to make sure you weren't High Sheriff plants," I countered.

"Ze ghost act was to make sure we were genuine?"

"Exactly."

Now that Fifi mentioned it, was I going to have to start dealing with real ghosts if I kept playing amateur graverobber? I know Sonic Adventure 2 had a ghost infestation in Eggman's pyramid base. As long as I steer clear of pyramids with stupid grins on them, I should be okay?

"Are you sure Hide-away is meant to be this far-away?"

I checked the compass again. This part of the woods was looking a bit too much like the area we passed hours back for comfort.

"You idiot!" Chat hissed. "You've been holding that upside-down the entire time!"

"No I'm--"

I checked my compass a final time.

"Oh. I uh, guess I was?"

Monsieur Chat groaned in frustration.

"Enough of these games, wizard! Are you truly taking us to the King, or has this all been an elaborate trick?"

"Alright, alright! I got us lost, but I can fix this."

"Then do it. Need I remind you that time is of the essence?"

"Give me a second," I said.

I closed my eyes and focused. I knew where I wanted to take us, if not how to get there. I imagined ruby red threads encircling the three of us and envisioned the end destination with as many details as I could devote to it.

"What are you doing this time?" Chat asked.

"Teleport spell. Trying to concentrate."

I saw trees. A lot of them. Business as usual there for Deerwood Forest, but high above the ground were so many huts, and a community that tied them together in a time of great fear and uncertainty. That's where I would find Rob O' the Hedge, Friar Buck, and Amy Rose.

"Have you done this before?" Fifi asked.

"Yes."

The last one still threw me for a loop. The once-fictional Amy Rose, now as real as anything else happening to me. A patchwork of games and stories, weaved together into a tight web of uncertainty that gripped at my chest and refused to let go.

"What does eet feel like?"

"Not much."

Did Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters from the cartoon know about me? I don't think Rob would have forgotten to mention my name and what I could do if they're in communication with them. I'm going to have to meet them at some point.

"S-Should I hold on to somezing?"

"Your tongue, please. Need to focus."

I froze the image of Hideaway in my mind before it slipped away, filling the space in-between 'here' and 'there' with a trail of ruby light. If the Maquis were saying anything else, I ignored it.

I knew I could teleport. I've done it twice before. Both times were when my emotions were out of control. Lashing out, rather than anything directed like this. I just needed to do it on purpose this time and hope that it wouldn't be this mentally intensive every time I tried.

A pink flash of light enveloped us and the air shimmered, like a wave of heat distorting an image beyond comprehension. As the spell increased in magnitude, the two Maquis began floating in the air!

"SACREBLEU!" Fifi cried as she spun around uncontrollably.

Monsieur Chat was in the same situation, flung up into the air!

"Wizard, I demand you put a stop to this right--!"

92

"--NOW!"

The odd lights and colors disappeared as quickly as they came, and gravity reasserted itself around us. Thinking fast, I made a pair of pillows under the Maquis to soften their fall.

Chat landed on his feet. Fifi did not.

"Oof!"

I looked around again. Rather than being stuck in the middle of the forest, we were at the base of Hideaway, right before sundown.

"Ha! I did it!"

Chat lifted Fifi off her feet.

"Pardon if we do not share your enthusiasm," he said dryly. "Now, where is the King?"

"If he's back, he'll be up there. Follow me."

- - -

"YOU MET A MERHOG AND YOU WEREN'T GONNA LET ME SEE HER!?"

My return was met with an immediate ambush by the resident tiny terror, Rosy. After I pawned off our guests to the Crazy Kritters, Rob's cousin caught me unawares, got up in my face, and demanded to know everything about my trip to Sylvania Castle in as many excruciating details as I could give. Which weren't a whole lot yet.

I was beginning to suspect that being cooped up in Hideaway was making the young hedgehog go stir-crazy. The fact that she was supposed to meet her idol face-to-face and the trip got canceled again due to fears for her safety may have had something to do with it.

"I said a fish that looked like a hedgehog slapped me in the face with its tail. That doesn't necessarily mean it was a merhog."

Rosy crossed her arms indignantly. How old was she again?

"Well it serves you right for leaving me out of the fun!"

I sighed. I didn't know anything about dealing with kids.

"Rosy, taking you to a dark, flooded castle for 'fun' would have been a horrible idea. Also, can you get off the table? You're gonna get it dirty."

She hopped off the table in a huff. I wiped it down and took a sip of my unfortunately non-alcoholic ale. The brew tasted fine, sure, but I strongly suspected Friar Buck had a private stash of the good stuff somewhere around here. As I couldn't prove it and the man was above reproach, I was stuck babysitting Rosy with the cold comfort of sobriety. Her eye-scouringly pink room was a mess of old toys, a half dozen yellowed books, and wanted posters of Sonic the Hedgehog that someone smuggled out of Robotropolis.

Robotropolis. The black, industrial heart of Robotnik's empire. Near as I could tell, that was where the real action was happening. The forefront of the freedom fighters' struggles. I couldn't tell if I was sticking around here out of obligation to Rob or fear of what might happen to my fragile mind if I met Sonic in person.

"No fair! You're like, a fathom tall! How else am I gonna look you in the eyes?"

"Eat your vegetables?" I suggested. "Or you could invest in platform shoes. I'll front you the cash if you get a job for the summer."

She pouted. The effect was adorable, whether she intended it to be or not. I took out a stick of graphite wrapped in twine and went back to listing the rest of the shinies I encountered at the capital of Old Sylvan on a spare square of parchment.

"Did you find the rest of that wizard junk you were looking for?" she inquired. "Like Salomo's magic wand, or a dragon's eye gem, or the armor of the true king? Oh oh, did you see--"

I held up a hand to curb her enthusiasm. The next time Rob went foraging, I'd ask him to pick up a log of willow so I can invent aspirin.

"Didn't get the chance. The Maquis needed a lift here. Besides, it looked like there was a battle of some kind and a natural disaster that messed the whole place up before I got there."

"I knew it! Just like the story!"

"Right, like in the story. I'll need to go back over there once this quartz thing blows over--"

"Ooh!"

Rosy's eyes darted to the wicked sword that flew to my hand during my expedition. It was decorated with a pattern of red chains that ran down the broad side. I found it striking how the sword was supposedly lying under the water for centuries, yet it kept its edge and swung as good as new. Was that something I did, or a trick of the blade itself?

"What's that?"

"Promise you won't try to take it out of my hands and play knight with a lethal weapon?"

"Hey! I'm nine years old, not four!"

That answers that. I raised my poncho so she could get a better look at the sword. Her curiosity piqued, Rosy walked to her shelf and put a blue book with a sword on the cover on the table.

"What's that?" I asked. "A sales catalog?"

"No, silly! It's the Tome of Arms! A must-have for all weapon enthusiasts!"

I'd be skeptical of why Rosy had one of those if I didn't know what she'd be beating the tar out of people with later. She flipped through the pages with the practiced skill of someone who only had so many books to pass the time with.

"Now, let's see. Melee weapons… Swords… Swords of legend… Oh."

Rosy made a face that I couldn't decipher.

"What'd you find?" I inquired.

She pushed the tome my way so I could see the picture. On one page, my new sword was portrayed in full color: Red, red, and more red. The knight wielding it held the sanguine-soaked sword over a tower of bodies that didn't look like they were taking a mid-battle siesta.

"It's Morglay," Rosy gasped in surprise. "The Death Brand!"

I couldn't place where I've heard that name before, but it sounded bad.

"Is 'Morglay the Death Brand' as bad as it sounds?"

Rosy pointed to the description of the sword and I read out the details.

"Blade of Count Inganno? The traitor's sword?"

"Yeah! He betrayed the kingdom and held Morglay while he terrorized the lands!"

"Well, that doesn't mean--"

"Ew, gross! It says here he ate people!"

"You're kidding." I skimmed the page to see for myself. It was about as flattering as you'd expect an article about a sword-swinging cannibal marauder would be. "You're telling me I got the worst sword in the book?"

"Actually, it says Morglay is one of the finest swords ever made."

"So I should keep it?" I asked, unsure. The book was sending me some mixed messages.

"You should probably throw it back in the lake, Mister Wizard."

So that could be another reason the cat was giving me the stink eye. That, and they might have been a speciest who disliked overlanders on general principle. Couldn't tell, couldn't care unless we're forced to work together and it became an issue. Since it wasn't doing me any favors in the open, I stowed the sword in my pocket zone.

"I'll get around to it."

I stuck my head out the door, where I could overhear the tail end of Rob making some sort of noble declaration a hut or two over.

"…would never turn down a fellow freedom fighter in need!"

"Hey Rob! How's it going over there?"

Rob O' the Hedge stepped out of the meeting hut to go looking for me.

"Friend Wizard!" he exclaimed. "Are ye well rested?"

He tried to hide it, but I knew he had doubts about bringing me along since my last slip-up. I was helpful when I wasn't a wild card. A friend, yet a potential enemy. Even when I tried to telegraph what I was doing, we weren't ever quite on the same wavelength.

To be honest, I haven't slept in days and had another graze with death. The only thing keeping me standing was an occult artifact that ate video game power ups and may or may not be driving me insane. If I didn't go along, there was a nonzero chance that the Crazy Kritters would successfully sneak inside a prison camp and get themselves stuck there.

"Verily, milord!"

The teal hedgehog archer grinned at my attempt to speak the lingo.

"Excellent! The Maquis have called for their king's aid! Care to join us to discuss strategy?"

"In a minute!"

I turned back to Rosy, whose big eyes were downcast. It looked like she was upset about being left out of a violent, life-threatening situation again.

"Can you do me a favor?" I asked.

She paused to consider it, and then nodded. I handed her the paper I was working on.

"Do you think you can look these up in those books of yours while we're away? There's a decent chance Friar Buck will be going with us, and I need someone familiar with Mercian lore to help me put some pieces together."

Rosy read the notes I took and eyed them with suspicion.

"Wait, is this homework?" she accused.

"That depends. Can you aim a bow and fire it with flawless accuracy?"

"No."

"Fly or shoot laser beams?"

"Uh, no?"

"Run faster than the sound barrier?"

"The what?"

"Forget it. What I'm getting at is that you can't help us fight the High Sheriff head-on because you're too young and inexperienced."

"I've heard that one before," she grumbled.

"This is serious. I don't know if anyone gave you the whole explanation. One of these days, you'll be a real freedom fighter with a hammer of your own to swing--"

"Why a hammer? I mean, don't get me wrong. I like hammers. I just wanna keep my options open."

I crouch down so that I'm closer to her level.

"Amy? Listen. I know Rob has given you some training in case you're on your own, but until your cousin and the other Crazy Kritters can train you to a level where you can fight, running into danger would only put you at risk of getting yourself hurt. Or worse."

"W-Worse?"

She sniffled. Oh no, I might have overdid it trying to 'real talk' some sense into her. I held the weapon book up before she could start the waterworks.

"But don't worry about that! You see, this is how you can help the Crazy Kritters!"

Her eyes got wide for a good reason this time.

"My book? How does that help?"

"Honestly, I'm pretty sure half of the Crazy Kritters are illiterate." I paused to gauge her expression. If Rob was the king and Amy was his cousin, that meant she was some flavor of royalty. She hadn't even considered that she had a head start on an education that a vast majority of Mercian peasants could never dream of. "Being able to read anything at all is a critical skill, and I'm being pulled in too many directions at once to follow up on all of these fairy tales that have a foot in reality."

I gesture to her books.

"You said it yourself. You know all the romances. Considering the one about the sunken castle was right on the money, who knows what else is out there?"

Amy considered this.

"So I'd be… The team librarian?"

"You'd be the team loremaster."

"Do you think Sonic reads to help his friends?" she asked.

You'd need to pin his legs down with a large boulder first, but after that?

"Definitely. That is a very Sonic thing to do."

"Then I'll do it!"

"Radical."

She tilted her head.

"Radical?"

I did finger guns.

"Another word for your way-past-cool vocabulary list!"

"Woah!"

I could swear I saw actual sparkles in her eyes. We shook hands, and I was now confident that she'd have no more issues with wanting to endanger herself for danger's sake.

"I do have one condition!" she declared.

I raised an eyebrow.

"After we shook on it? You know that's not how it works, right?"

"Please, Mister Wizard?"

"It doesn't work that way, but fine. I'm a nice guy. What's your condition?"

Amy took an open box from beside her window and lifted it into my arms. I looked down, and saw that it held a cardinal with a massive head and a pair of injured wings lying in bedding. A mobini, or little animal, as opposed to an anthro mobian. They were rare due to an ever-present demand for critters to power badniks. The bird's breath was shallow, and one of its eyes was scarred by the slash of a talon. It didn't look like she was caring for him for very long, yet I could tell that she was caring for it the best she could.

"What happened to him?"

"This little guy got attacked by a raptor hawk." I held back a shudder. You learned to do that when a man-sized monster bird with projectile feathers came up in a conversation.

"Where'd you find him?"

"Out in the forest, when I was picking flowers. I think his flicky friends left him behind. Friar Buck doesn't know if he'll get better. Can you fix him? Please?"

At no point have I found any sort of restriction or limitations to my powers. I could fly, shoot lasers, contain objects in a zone of my own creation, and likely more I haven't had the chance to discover yet. The only limiting factors were how much energy I was willing to spend to make what I wanted happen, and if I could live with the consequences.

"Yes. I can."

Amy gave me a small thank you and I moved the bird box into a light clearing where no one could see me commit what might turn into a perversion of nature. All the while, I focused motes of energy into my ruby-studded hand with the intent to heal, not to harm. We'd see if the ruby knew how to tell the difference.

The mobini cardinal -- a genuine flicky -- was alive. Injured, but alive. In the back of my mind, I was looking for a convenient pet cemetery in case I screwed this up. If everything went as planned, then I could heal anyone who got injured in a fight. This was the safest, most ethical way to find out what would happen when I tried to directly affect a living thing.

"Okay, on three." I couldn't wait. "Three!"

The glow in my hands felt lighter, more uplifting, than what I was used to. Not like the force I used to attack robots with. I zapped the bird with a steady flow of what I was pretty sure was a healing spell, and the injured creature rose into the air in a haze of light. Its wings were outstretched, and I could see the lesser wounds sealing themselves shut. The worst injuries, those in the wing and eye, were reversed. As if they never happened at all, save for the scar over the flicky's eye that lingered.

89

When the bird descended to the box, it opened its eyes. Both of them were opened, now fully functional. The flicky flitted its small wings to test them out and rose into the air, affixing me a stern glare that hardly fit its tiny frame. The bird all but glowed with strength and vitality. I might have made him even better than before.

"So I can heal," I said in shock. "Or otherwise got you up and running again."

The flicky kept staring at me.

"Uh, you can go now. You're free."

Slowly, I raised my arm up and down. The bird didn't budge. Its head and eyes tracked my own no matter how hard I tried to shake it away.

"The miracle's over. Go back to your bird buddies." I waited to see if it'd move. "Flock off!"

Rob descended from the trees and affixed me with a confused expression.

"John, is anything amiss? I saw your magic at work, and--" He looked at the flicky and smiled. "I say! It looks like you've made a woodland friend!"

"I guess?"

I could tell my operation didn't go as planned when the flicky took advantage of my distracted state and tried to peck my eyes out.

"Ow! Stop that!"

The little devil tweeted with rage. Ultimately, I wrestled with the consequences of my hubris for an embarrassingly long amount of time until Amy pulled the flicky off with a bribe of bird seed. After the ordeal passed, she had the nerve to ask her cousin a cheeky question.

"Can we keep him?"

"Well…"

He didn't say no, and as a result I had to add 'flicky falconer' to my job list.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

As a primarily character-focused chapter, the notes for this chapter will be on the short side. This was originally going to be a more action-oriented chapter where they kick ro-butt and take serial numbers, but I had way too much fun writing the lore stuff and developing Rosy as a character that wasn't the stereotypical child pest. You know, like how she started in the comic.

While Morglay is a sword Lancelot uses in Sonic & the Black Knight, Murgleys is the sword of Ganelon in The Song of Roland. The appraisal tomes Rosy has in her room have also been borrowed from the second chapter of the Storybook series.

Flickies are a species of bird that anyone who's popped open a badnik should be familiar with. They originated from the Flicky arcade game, became a regular animal friend in Sonic, and got the starring role in Sonic 3D Blast! They're even a part of Tails' super state in S3K, where they flitter around Super Tails like cute buzzsaws hungry for blood. The other one with wings, the Raptor Hawk, is a foe in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. I don't suggest you play the game, but the picture of it sure looks cool!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 10: Heavy Mettle

Instead of a massive, singular pit mine in the middle of nowhere, Quart Quartz turned out to be a network of interconnected caverns and tunnels with dug-out sections exposed to the open air. It was a remote facility, situated deep into the Mercian hinterlands to rob its prisoners of any hopes of returning to civilization. Robian guards armed with big, cartoony muskets patrolled the perimeter of the mines alongside the tall 'ogre' robots I fought when I first landed on Mobius. While they watched the swampline on the ground, roboticized guards atop wooden watchtowers with bullseye lanterns standing in for spotlights. From my bird's eye view, I could see scores of mobians in chains pushing carts and carrying massive, cyan crystals by hand.

Once his aerial sweep was complete, the flicky dove at the oddly-angular woodlands and spiraling, rocky outcroppings where he returned to my arm. It was the same one we'd taken in, though over the next day it became clear that I'd done more than 'fix' his wings. His red feathers molted, replaced with a sharp set of magenta and white. The beak and legs, once a bright yellow, darkened to an ashy black. The flicky's temper mellowed out after the initial shock, and I was able to barter food for his continued cooperation. While there were other side effects I'd call beneficial, there was no getting around the fact I had irrevocably altered the flicky's nature with the ruby. I won't go 'fixing' anyone else unless there was no other choice to save them.

I turned to the rest of the party, which consisted of Rob O' the Hedge, Arthur the Boar, Gilbert Woolhand, Monsieur Chat, and Fifi the Poodle. A grand total of six freedom fighters versus a fully-staffed detention center. I didn't like our odds in a frontal assault unless I went for broke.

"Wot's the little flicky got to say?" Arthur asked.

The mobini let out a tweet.

"Figment says they've got guard towers there, there, and there," I recited.

Arthur frowned.

"Tha' was a joke, lad. Flickies don't talk."

"This one does. It's a magic thing."

It was less the bird talking, and more that we shared senses. What he saw, I saw. What he heard, I heard. I also now knew what worms taste like; not that I asked him to share it.

"I had heard o' witches having familiars in fairy tales," Gilbert said. "Figment, eh? It's nice to have a scout in the sky."

Figment preened.

"The guards are more concerned with folks trying to get out than in. We have the advantage there. That drain tunnel Chat knows can get us past the outdoors watchmen, but we can't say how many robians are gonna be crawling on the other side."

I turned to Rob and let him take things from there.

"Good show, John. Chat, dost thou know where Barbe Vis would be at this moment?"

The Maquis leader pointed out one of the stubby, brutalist buildings set upon the excavated hills.

"Barbe Vis oversees the mines from that command room," he said. "If we set off any alarms, he will know right away."

"Can he send a message to the outside from there?" I asked.

"Yes. Do you see the metal dish atop the tower? Satellite communication would put him in contact with the High Sheriff at a moment's notice."

"What about the roboticizer?"

"They must still be using one at Quart Quartz. Otherwise, they would need to send prisoners to Snottingham and back for robotization."

If Barbe Vis possessed a roboticizer on site, then we could attempt to steal it and send it westward to Knothole. Assuming it wasn't booby trapped. Rob told me second-hand horror stories about rebels thinking they were lucky to find an intact roboticizer, only to wind up on the receiving end of its effect upon trying to tamper with it. On top of that, Robotnik kept a tight grip on the technology by limiting the amount of times any roboticizers outside of his direct reach could do the deed before burning themselves out.

Taking one home was never going to be a shortcut to undoing the years of harm they've done. Sensing the mood had darkened, Rob O' the Hedge retook control of the conversation.

"Fret not, fellows. Together, we shall avoid the jailer's gaze and arrange for his prisoners to be set free," he said.

"A-Are you sure we can get inside?" Fifi stammered. "There are so many of zem…"

"I can do that," I said. "With a flick of the wrist, we'll be invisible."

Chat raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"You mean that camouflage trick we were informed of?" he asked.

"More than that. With more effort, I can make us impossible to see or hear in a bubble focused around myself."

"You are certain you can maintain composure for the whole of the endeavor?" Rob asked.

"Yes, assuming we all stayed close together."

I popped open a portal to my pocket zone and started handing weapons. Swords, bows, and arrows that would have only slowed us down if they were dragged along the old-fashioned away. I smiled slightly at the 'pugilist arrow' with a padded glove on the end and handed a couple to Rob. It'd come in handy if he felt the need to slug a guy from one side of a room to another.

♦ 86

"Are you sure you don't have any muskets in there?" Fifi asked. "I am better with ze gun then ze bow."

The subject of muskets surprised me the first time it came up, but they did call themselves 'musketeers' for a reason. The Mercian infantrymen the Maquis claim their origins from were early adopters of the gun. Or very, very late adopters, when you remembered they were up against soldiers with laser rifles. Apparently, Fifi was the best sniper the Maquis had in their ranks when her hands were steady.

"Will a crossbow do?"

"Oui. Eet will have to do."

I pulled out a crossbow to hand it to her, then stopped. I looked back at the mine.

"Do you want me to go get one?" I offered.

Her eyes went to a lone robian guard chicken who stalked the road like Elmer Fudd.

"Non, non! Eet would be far too risky!"

I looked away from Fifi, towards the guard. Then back to the pink portal I made that transports anything I desire to a dimension with seemingly infinite breadth and depth.

"Wait a second…"

I floated towards the robian from the sky, making myself impossible to see from their angle.

♦ 85

"What art thou doing?" Rob hissed, alarmed by my sudden action.

"Dat blighter's gonna give us away again," Arthur groused.

"Ze bag! Oh, where ees ze paper bag?!"

I got within four meters of the guard and held up a hand. Above that hand, a fresh portal appeared, roughly one and a half meters in diameter. On my other hand, I made an illusory shilling and ficked it at the guard's head.

"Zounds!" the robian squawked after it bounced off his tin hat.

The soldier turned around. It only had enough time to point his gun at me before the portal swiped them out of existence.

♦ 83

I tried exploring the limits of 'Null Space' in my days of isolation after losing control in the Highlands. Those boundaries were never found, no matter how hard I tried. Everything I sent in would drift in a void where fickle things such as time and space lost all meaning. Even so, anything I wanted was always where I wanted it, when I wanted it.

For that reason, it only took me a moment to rifle through my pocket zone and hand the musket to a rattled Fifi.

"Mon dieu," she whispered in shock.

"Gadzooks," Rob exclaimed. "What hast thou done?"

"I figured out a new trick," I replied.

I made a bubble and showed a visual representation of the captured robian in my hand.

"Poor Bremen," Fifi said upon recognizing the chicken.

"Bremen was their name? I thought 'Bremen' was where they lived."

"Non, ze Minstrels joined together because zey all happened to have ze same name. He played alongside Bremen ze Dog, Bremen ze Cat, and Bremen ze A--"

"John Wizard," Rob said sternly. "Look me in thine eyes and tell me thou didst not destroy him."

I paused, taking note that Rob doubled down on his stilted, Shakespearean tone got more pronounced when he was talking as King O'Hedge. I caught him slipping now and again when we were at rest. Enough to figure out his 'royal tongue' was an affectation nobility were expected to keep up in front of people. I don't even know if he liked talking that way. It was something he was expected to do as king, and he did it.

Right now, he wasn't talking as my friend, but as the protector of his people. A protector who didn't approve of me killing any more of said people than I had to.

My eyes flashed pink as I made a deeper scrutinization of the captured robian, in order to make sure that I didn't misjudge my gambit.

"The robian's in stasis."

"Thine meaning?"

"Depowered and in one piece. I can do that to as many of them as we need to until we can make a de-roboticizer. Or some kind of detention center."

"You are absolutely certain that they cannot escape?"

"Absolutely."

Rob deliberately read my face to check for any falsehood. He knew I was telling the truth and let out a sigh of relief.

"Then it is a sound enough place to keep them. Can thee do the same for the other robians, capturing them whilst we enter the mines from the tunnels and search for the Maquis?"

"I can, but we need to be quick about it. One guard being late to report in won't drive them to battle stations, but they'll notice something is up sooner or later. Then they'll report to the command room and…"

I stared at the command room.

"Any objections to me going up there and dealing with them first?"

"I do not object, Wizard, but it is as thou said. Have a care not to be spotted."

Monsieur Chat turned to me.

"If such a thing is in your power, then leave Vis alive. He has much to answer for."

I double-and-then-triple-checked Null Space for my secret weapon. It felt like a warm glow, only a grasp away. When I did see Barbe Vis, I'd introduce him to it.

"That shouldn't be a problem." I turned to address the poodle. "Fifi, can you cover me?"

"M-Moi?" she squeaked.

"You'll get to stay on this ledge and be out of the direct fire. If anyone tries to shoot me, you shoot them first." I spared a glance to Rob so he knew we were on the same page. "Joints and limbs only. Nothing they can't get back after a trip to the repair ship, okay?"

Fifi looked away as she measured the risk in her head.

"Oui. I will be having your back."

"Then we have our mission," Rob said. "To arms!"

Everyone brought their swords together. I took out a sword that didn't have a bad record.

"To arms!"

The conventional infiltration team departed. I made the effort to become invisible as a gradual process over the course of a few seconds so as not to unnerve my sniper any further.

"How will I know when to start shooting if I cannot see you?" Fifi asked me.

I set Figment on her shoulder.

"He'll tell you when."

"Oh! H-Hello!" Fifi took out a chunk of hardtack from her bag. It looked like it could block a bullet if she wore a whole vest of the stuff. "Does ze pretty bird want a cracker?"

Figment tilted his head and examined the biscuit before giving it a nibble.

It tasted like it had worms in it.

- - -

The intimidating, stark countenance of the command building and the gauntlet of stage hazards surrounding it didn't mean much when you could fly and were rather confident about your resistance to harm. Taking care of everyone in the brain first only made sense.

Due to my prior actions, the High Sheriff likely knew by now that the mysterious 'John Wizard' could turn invisible, hit like a freight train, or ignore gravity whenever he wanted. To prevent him from learning anything else, the name of the game was to strike fast, hit hard, limit how much I showed off, and leave him guessing where I'll show up next.

All I needed to do was hover above the miserable scene below without buckling to my better nature and rescue the prisoners right away. It was hard to tear myself from the sight of two bugs being shaken down for their valuables by the guards. They were standing next to a large, orange van that looked too modern for the rest of the mines. Some kind of delivery truck?

"No!" the butterfly girl with large, colorful wings cried. "Not me fiddle!"

"Music is banned!" the weasel robian declared before breaking the offending instrument on his knee. It split with a nasty crack.

"Nooo!"

The butterfly openly wept for the loss of her fiddle. The green cricket chained to her tried to rush the guard, to no avail.

"Ya brute!" he shouted in righteous indignation.

An iron pig smacked the cricket down to the dirt, causing the attached butterfly to go flying to the ground with him.

I forced myself to tune out the brutality. A decapitation strike would do much more for them in the long term than a straight brawl that let the bad guy get away to fight another day. Take Barbe Vis off the table, open new options, get everyone out of here.

I landed on a narrow, wooden bridge leading to the control room, ignoring the rickety platforms and rampant conveyor belts I would have had to negotiate if I was less smart. Taking a glance through the window, I saw that it was loaded with ill-maintained buttons and switches whose purposes I couldn't divine. Like an old Soviet power station, with the boards operated by stubby, can-shaped badniks on wheels. The one robian I could make out was a big bear in Napoleonic uniform with a jagged beard made out of blued metal screws.

Barbe Vis, or Screw Beard. If this wasn't my man, I'd eat his bicorn hat. The roboticized boss was looking down and enjoying the show.

"Do my ears deceive moi? Or is zat ze sound of a pretty girl weeping?" He reveled in their pain loud enough to hear through the glass. He twirled the wire of his brass telephone receiver in his clawed finger as he spoke into it. "Eh. Ze sound ees getting annoying now. Roboticize zem!"

The two watching the door had no chance of seeing me coming before they were bodily shoved into another dimension. Out of sight, in my mind.

♦ 80

With that done, I walked up to the steel door, coated my legs in heavy armor, and kicked it hard enough to knock Barbe Vis out of his chair.

"MERDE!"

First swear I've heard since I got here. Before he could make a more comprehensible response, I extended both arms and hosed the room in a deluge of pink liquid magic.

♦ 75

I entered the room, my feet not touching the ground as I walked towards the robian at the center of the glittery torrent. Barbe Vis tried swimming against the crystalizing tide, but he was far too heavy to do anything more than keep his head above 'water'. The little robots were swept up and frozen in place by solidified pillars of translucent gemstone.

"You're ze scarlet wizard!" Barbe Vis declared when he saw me.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Scarlet?" I asked dully. "That's a new one."

The crystals would immobilize him soon enough. I picked up his brass phone and cleared my throat.

"Belay zat last order," I said in a flawless rendition of Barbe Vis' accent. "We need ze bugs in one piece for questioning."

"You sure, sir? We're halfway done."

I whipped my head around to the events happening outside. The orange van was glowing and shaking. From this angle I could make out the crude label on the sides, clear as day.

2-FOR-1 BOT ON THE SPOT.

The roboticizer was there the whole time.

"Get them out of there!" I shouted into the receiver. "Do it now--!"

A gunshot rang out behind me as a ball of lead tore into the back of my head. The projectile broke up into smaller fragments that ran roughshod over everything past my skull cap, driving my face into the control board from the sudden shock of death's embrace.

♦ !!

The fatal injury disappeared in an instant, but the pain echoed as if I was being shot multiple times in rapid succession. I rose from the sparking electronics and let out a howl of pain. Ruddy clouds stormed around my head like a hurricane.

♦ 70

I crushed the receiver in my hand. Barbe Vis was behind me, an iron rictus and the smoking blunderbuss in his hands telling me all I needed to know.

"Ha! Not so invincible after all, Scarlet!"

The crystal flow had paralzyzed everything below the neck, and there was nowhere he could run. I felt an object come to my hands and an overpowering urge to beat him into scrap with it.

"Do your worst! I go to ze refuse heap in knowledge zat I served--"

I smacked him with the object, throwing the weapon out of his hands.

"That's all you can--!"

Then I hit him again, issuing a dent to his chrome dome as penance for mine.

"Your mother smells of elderberries!"

I hit him a third time. A strike across his rusted nose that bent it inwards.

"I'll never talk--"

"Would you shut up?!"

Then I hit the bear hard enough to tear his blue beard off its hinges. The robian's iron jaw became partially loosened with it.

"You insignificant, weak little…"

♦ 71

The brilliant, golden ring vaporized in my hands on final impact with the Barbe Vis' face, and the ruby haze that surrounded my mind went with it.

My hand recoiled back instantly. The robian let out a choked, mechanical creak that sounded like resignation.

"What was I…?"

Cautiously, I brought a new ring to my hand. Its glow touched my skin like a warm embrace. I was holding the light at the end of the tunnel.

"I…"

What was I doing?

Thinking quickly, I dissipated the crystals surrounding Barbe Vis, and picked him up off the ground. He was in no state to resist me anymore. I set his jaw back in place and focused my power to mend the physical damage I did before placing the ring in his hands.

♦ 70

"You… You need this more than I do. Take it, and remember whoever you were. Please."

For a second, I was worried I was wrong and that this wouldn't work like it did in the cartoon. That fear was washed away when the glow of the ring spread from the robian's hands and enveloped the rest of his body.

"Who I was?" the musketeer who had become Barbe Vis asked.

"Before you were changed."

I was horrified that I was nearly so taken by a sudden, bloodthirsty rage that I nearly forgot I came here to do exactly this. To save a person of high ranking in the Sheriff's army that could help us. His eyes blinked and his expression softened, the idea of regaining what was lost reaching him on a level beyond the mere words I was saying.

"Before," he echoed back, and I knew I wasn't talking to Barbe Vis anymore. "My word. Where ees General Armand? I must get back to ze front lines!"

I looked outside. The roboticizer was still on!

"No time to explain! Stay tight, and I'll pick you up in a jiffy!"

"Jiffy? Who ees El Jiffy?"

He looked understandably confused, which was preferable to being my enemy. I lifted up one of the crystalized robots and threw the red boulder out the window, shattering the glass. The massive gem boulder tumbled off a slide and bowled into a guard tower, topping it over in a cacophony of crumbling wood and metal.

♦ 68

My perception of lethal falls having been permanently skewed by falling from orbit, I jumped out of the window and landed on the roboticizer van. Summoning a full set of red armor around my body, I hacked the roof off the vehicle with Morglay and kept chopping at the flickering internals until the roboticizer ground to a sputtering halt.

♦ 66

I looked around, and saw that all eyes were starting back at me. Mobians in chains and robians with firearms alike. No one who expected me to drop in and pick a fight in a place as heavily fortified as this. Stealth was completely shot, and I prepared my defenses for a lot more shots to come my way. Now the only option was, as I said I didn't want to do earlier, to take all of them on and make the distraction worth it for the others.

When I put it all into perspective, this whole 'freedom fighter' shtick was insane. I wasn't a soldier. Or a swashbuckler. Or a hero. This wasn't even my country. Clearly, I was just a screwball who didn't know when to cut their losses or charge more for this kind of flashy nonsense that Sonic seemed to do for free.

Bringing a bright ball of light to my hand, I launched scattershot bursts of energy at any chains I could see. The prisoners and peasantry were freed from their bonds in a flash.

♦ 60

I raised a fist and tried to motivate the crowd.

"RISE UP, PEOPLE!" As I was the immediate threat, the robian guards ignored the awed prisoners and focused fire at me instead. The shots bounced off my armor. "LIKE THIS!"

I picked up a robian from a distance with a chain of pink energy and chucked him into an open mine cart, sending them hurtling through a line of their own.

♦ 58

The crowd started to act form my example. They shoved their attackers away, using spare mining tools as weapons before the initiative could be taken from them. One of the robians was disarmed by a projectile shooting their hands from the distant woods.

While the prisoners fought back against their oppressors, I hacked the bugs that were caught in the roboticizer free from their restraints and pulled the two of them out of the wreckage. The butterfly's body seemed intact, at first, but the wings on her back had become gray sheets of metal with thrusters and hard points. The cricket's legs had been completely converted, replaced by new, hydraulic equivalents.

I was too late.

"I'm so sorry," I said remorsefully.

"Sorry?" the cricket asked. "Yeh saved us!"

"Yeah!" the butterfly said in agreement. "We're alive thanks to yeh!"

They didn't look scared at all, in spite of what happened to them. Was the adrenaline postponing a total freakout? That, I could relate to.

More bullets flew past our heads. I set the bugs down on the ground and surrounded them in a protective prism of ruby light.

♦ 57

"On second thought, talk later! Take cover NOW!"

I raised my sword and free hand again, raising my voice so that all of the prisoners could hear me over the chaos.

"Anyone who wants to be free, follow my lead!"

"Who are you?" one of the prisoners asked. "You're not Rob O' the Hedge!"

"Got it in one!"

I forewent the crossbow and hit the robians with a hail of plunger bolts straight out of Null Space. Now that I know how to use my powers, I can't justify holding back and letting people be hurt by my inaction anymore.

♦ 56

I pointed at an ogre bot and drove a pugilist arrow straight through its head.

♦ 55

What was it that Vis called me again?

"Call me John Scarlet!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

Not too much to talk about this time.

While they aren't on Little Planet, Quart Quartz is based on Quartz Quadrant. It's one of the more simple levels in Sonic CD and has good music. What more can you ask for?

Like how Monsieur Chat corresponds to Puss in Boots, Barbe Vis is based on Bluebeard. I almost called him Blue Bear to remove any subtlety. The bluing of the metal on his beard to complete the joke was something I added later when I remembered what bluing was. If there was a dash of Pete's Cardinal Richelieu impression from that Three Musketeers adaption, I couldn't say.

Rings being able to help robians remember who they were in SatAM and the comics. The SI doesn't remember reading the comics, but he did watch the show.

Will Scarlet was the last notable member of the Merry Men that I didn't give an equivalent until now. Surprise!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 11: The Outlandish Connection

Once I started fighting my way through the prison's staff listing, the whole 'stealth' part of the mission fell through the window. The riot that this erupted into would have been a bad thing, had I kept to our original goal of going in, taking who we needed, and making ourselves scarce.

Since I successfully handed the mind of one of the High Sheriff's lieutenants back to its rightful owner, I had a better idea. I changed the parameters. Increased the scope. Now I wanted the whole mine under our control.

"Oi! Back in yer--!" a robian musketeer said as I lifted it by the neck. "Uh oh."

I chucked it into an open pillory and it snapped shut.

♦ 50

"Hold that thought."

I turned back towards the mouth of the nearest cavern, from which I could see more figures running towards me.

"Friend or foe?" I shouted at the figures, a glowing hand emitting a bright light to cut through the darkness.

"Friend!" Rob declared. Alongside him were Chat and the rest of the Crazy Kritters. The team were escorting scores of civilians to safety. "I see thou hadst gotten busy without us!"

"You're just in time. How did your side of things go?"

The Crazy Kritters took shots at the robians who were trying to corral prisoners back to their cells or otherwise retake control of the situation. Declining the offered bow and arrows earlier, Monsieur Chat rushed the guards with his blade.

"We were unable to find William Stoatley or the remainder of the Maquis. Prithee, were thee successful in disabling Barbe Vis?"

I shot crystalizing beams at the guards nearest to Chat, pinning their feet down so he could disarm them with his swift, practiced efficiency. It was like watching a surgeon put their fencing hobby to work. Or a fencer with a minor in anatomy. His agility was such that he could run and jump across the alternating conveyor belts without losing balance.

♦ 48

"Yes and no," I answered vaguely.

Rob shot a pugilist arrow at the robian on a tower, delivering a long-distance uppercut to its jaw.

"Aye and nay? I needeth more of an explanation than that, pilgrim."

"Do you remember those rings I mentioned to you before we left?"

Rob nocked six arrows at once and fired them at a robian goon squad armed with man catchers. They all fell down in a chorus of thumps.

"Thine rings of power thou found amidst the ruins of Old Sylvan?" he asked. "Were they sufficient for thine purposes?"

"It felt like I got a boost when I touched them, but it turned out that's not all they're good for."

I pulled out a handful of plunger bolts from Null Space to see if I could repeat his stunt when a whistling rocket of red light burst out of the woods. It was none other than Figment, who bowled over the remains of the mob like a feathered wrecking ball with a furious tweet.

"Dang, I didn't know he could do that! Think that's all of them?"

"Thou art beating around the bush, John. What didst thine rings do when ye gave one to Barbe Vis?" He looked at my ruby-bearing arm. "And why do ye have two on thine gauntlet right now?"

Shadow wore a pair of inhibitor rings to restrain his power. I figured he was on to something.

"There's one more!" Monsieur Chat shouted.

He pounced at the final threat from above, only to be grabbed by a red and black ogre bot covered in an extra layer of spikes that made it reminiscent of a zeti. Chat struggled in the looming machine's massive, constricting grasp.

"FREEDOM FIGHTER CAPTURED. CRUSHING WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE."

While Rob and I readied another attack to pry him loose, a jagged silhouette got behind the robot and twacked their metal shin with an iron cane.

"Oh, no you don't!" Barbe Vis shouted at the robot. He had the good sense to put his ring on his wrist so as not to drop it. "Unhand my brother-een-arms zis instant!"

He thwacked the bot again, knocking it to the ground and throwing Chat into the air. Barbe Vis caught Chat in his arms. I was going to take the opportunity to pinch the robot's head into a ball of scrap with a ruby hand, but a musket ball from Fifi went through one of its mechanical eyes and neutralized it instantly.

Chat stared at his rescuer with a look of shock and anger.

"YOU!"

"That's right!" the mentally-restored musketeer said with his bear trap grin. "I bet you were not expecting Sir Bruin to make a comeback, ey Ty… Balt!?"

Sir Bruin stopped talking when he noticed Chat trying to put a sword through his neck.

"You are not Sir Tybalt!" Bruin said as he dropped Chat in surprise.

Chat landed on his feet and readied his blade for a second attempt. I stood between them before it could get worse.

"Alright folks, that's--"

"I am his son," he said at volume a shade below a yell.

"Son? I never knew Tybalt had a son! Why, you'd have to be--!"

Chat didn't give him the chance to finish the sentence, suddenly charging with murderous intent. I erected a force wall before Chat could take his head. Or mine.

♦ 45

"Get out of my way, overlander! That is Barbe Vis!"

"No, he isn't. Not anymore."

"Have you gone mad?!"

The din of the battle had faded to a halt, as the robians were rounded up into the same cells they once guarded. The freed peasantry looked upon the current scene in a crowded circle.

"Not anymore?" Rob repeated. When my meaning hit him, his eyes opened wide. "By the Ancient Walkers! I hath feared it to be impossible!"

"Wot's he talkin' about?" Arthur the Boar asked.

"What I'm talking about is that restored his mind with one of these."

I pulled out a spare ring and held it up. The glow became more intense as it drank in the moonlight, which seemed to reflect on the other rings worn by Bruin and myself.

"You expect me to believe the metal butcher is his old self again?" Chat said as he slowly stalked the edge of the barrier wall. "Surely it is a trick!"

Sir Bruin took off his hat.

"It ees no trick. My living nightmare has finally loosened eets grip on me. Though I do not know for certain how many years Robotnik has taken from me."

He turned to Rob O' the Hedge.

"If zat cat is Tybalt's son, would zat make you one of ze king's boys?" he asked Rob. "My liege. What year ees eet?"

"Three thousand, two hundred and thirty four."

He takes a step back, his mechanical joints rumbling with the shock.

"Sacre bleu! Zat ees over ten years!"

I waved my arm, and the force wall vanished.

"If we're all done fighting? I think I have some explaining to do."

- - -

♦ 35

What followed was the most tense tea breaks I've ever seen. I didn't even think it was tea time, and yet I found myself at a table sipping a cup of dried leaves mixed with river water I boiled in excess to keep out any bacterial pests. At the table listening to my explanation of rings were a calm Gilbert, a chatty Arthur, a fretful Fifi, and a simmering Chat. If Rob didn't go with the former robian boss and ordered Chat not to follow, I think he might have made another play at him.

"…So that's what rings are, at least in my limited understanding of them. Any questions?"

Arthur raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"We get the ring stuff already. Wot'cha doin' with the whole Scarlet business?"

"Hmm?"

"You shouted to all them folks that yer gonna call yerself John Scarlet. John Wizard not fancy enough fer ya?"

"Oh, that? Bruin mentioned something about me being the 'Scarlet Wizard'. Presumably, that's what the High Sheriff's been calling me. Frankly, it sounded cool to pass up."

Arthur let out a snort.

"O'course. Cool. Blimey, you sound like that Rosy gal."

In addition to freeing all the prisoners, clearing out Quart Quartz to make sure no robians were left to their own devices, and sending the latter to Null Space for later processing, we set up an improvised soup kitchen. With some foraging and raiding the facilities' scant pantries, we had enough food to provide stew and tea for the liberated masses. As some of them were here long enough to forget what a hot meal tasted like, it seemed like a good idea to prevent people from panicking at the continued sight of 'Barbe Vis' and my 'frightening overlander wizard' self. In Rob's own words, the weather "twas becoming rather chilly" anyway.

Was it? I hadn't noticed Mercia being all that cold, or getting colder, even though we were in the equivalent of Western Europe creeping towards winter. It was therefore very cold, and yet what would have been the chill of the wind felt oddly muted. Why? I partially slid the black glove off my hand with the Phantom Ruby on it to see if my sense of touch was better with it off.

Immediately, I took note that my hand had taken on a sickly pallor. Paler than it was when I last checked. The Phantom Ruby was set in the back of my hand, as it has been for some time now, though the rents surrounding it looked less like burn scars and more like the singed pages of a book pulled from the edge of a fire. The pink glow along the veins of my hand had become more intense. Harder to ignore. Pulling the jumpsuit's sleeve down further, I could see that the glowing veins spread down to my wrist, stopping where I wore the two rings as bracelets. The wind felt hot and cold to the touch until I slid it back on.

"Monsieur Chat?" His orange, feline eyes bored into mine. "I understand you're still skeptical. About me. The rings. I can understand that."

"Yet you persist in trying to convince me you are more than a charlatan."

Gilbert raised an eyebrow.

"Ye cannot deny he has powers of some sort after seeing them in action, can ye?"

"I do not deny the 'wizard' possesses powers I do not understand," Chat clarified. "Abilities that are impressive enough to sway the king's judgment. He may have even convinced himself that he has done a miracle."

I frowned.

"I'm still here, you know." I unlatched one of the rings from my arm and tossed it to him. He inspected it. "Keep it. There's more where that came from."

"From the lake of rings surrounding Sylvania Castle?"

"You knew?"

"From the moment I spotted them, and before you attempted to explain what we mobians already knew to us. Power rings are said to gather at holy places, coming and going as they see fit. The Overland underestimated their value as a source of energy, ignoring them in favor of oil and other vile things that harmed their lands."

Well. I was a bit flush at that.

"Did everyone already know rings were a thing, or…?"

"We didst not want to interrupt thine explanation," Gilbert explained.

Fifi gave a nod as she handed Figment another biscuit.

"Oui. You were very into eet."

Chat rolled his eyes.

"They were but a legend until shortly before the Great War, when the Kingdom of Acorn used their rings to power Mobotropolis. There are other things they are said to be capable of, yet your claim that they can liberate the minds of robians remains to be proven."

"By all appearances, he was rather lucid," Gilbert said. "Remorseful, even."

"Yeh. An' they say Sonic fellow o'er in Northamer whizzes around like an arrow thanks to rings."

"Do you have Sonic the Hedgehog on call to corroborate this?"

"Bet we can ask him to visit before the next time the Floating Island flies o'er Eurish."

My eye twitched. I could wrap my head around rings being common knowledge, but Angel Island too? Could I have traveled there the entire time? I opened my mouth to ask about it when a creak of old wood cut me off. Bruin l'Ours stepped down from the half-wrecked stairway to the command room with Rob in tow. We all turned to them.

"I have convinced General D'Coolette--" The turncoat underboss stopped to correct himself. "I have convinced Ze High Sheriff zat your attack was repelled, and zat I will be needing more robots and materials to replace those you stole and sabotaged."

The High Sheriff, as it turned out, was in the same boat as Sir Bruin. He was a member of the Acorn Army assigned to protect Mercia when Robotnik came a-knocking. The two of them didn't just have their memories suppressed, like the rest of the robian rabble who get reduced to primal growls and simple sentences. Bruin and D'Coolette had shell programs overwrite their original personalities so that their strategic minds could be put to evil ends.

If that wasn't a living nightmare, I didn't know what was. At least now we have an inside man who can order whatever we need from Robotnik's catalog. A few more 'thefts' here, a couple of staged 'losses' there, and the Sheriff won't catch wise to the grift until we have enough materials to wage a real war. We turned the remote roughs of the Outlands into another stronghold.

"Z-Ze Sheriff does not suspect a thing?" Fifi asked. Her hands shook as she poured the kettle into a cup… and the table. Evidently, she was still freaking out about having a conversation with what was previously the Maquis' worst enemy.

"Not a thing. Still, Eet shames me to see what Armand has become. What I was turned into."

Monsieur Chat stood up.

"Fifi! You cannot buy into this nonsense, can you?"

Fifi's grip on the kettle slipped, pouring a modest amount of scalding tea on my foot. At least that part of my body was registering heat properly.

"Ow."

"Sorry!"

She set the kettle on the table.

"H-He does not seem to be attacking us, non? Eet ees nice to think zat ze rings let people who get changed have their old lives back. Even as robots."

"It isn't a long term solution," I said. "Rings aren't forever, and I don't know how long the one I gave you will last, Sir Bruin."

The mechanized musketeer sagged. I didn't like being the one to tell him his free will was on borrowed time, but someone had to. If rings were infinite, I'd give every robian one and tell them which direction to march in for payback.

"Zat ees what I was afraid of. You would need to stop by all ze time to give me what I need to avoid becoming a pawn of ze enemy again. Eet ees… unsustainable. I will do what I can with ze time I have."

Rob O' the Hedge put a hand on his shoulder.

"Fret not, Sir Bruin. Our allies in Northamer hath informed me of a means by which thee wouldst be free to aid us our cause forever more."

"The Knothole Freedom Fighters?" I asked.

"The very same. They call the contraption a neuro-override device. If we couldst secure one for thee, we wouldst have a spy in the High Sheriff's upper echelons."

"It would be my honaire to serve ze crown again. Zen, with hope, we can get ze General back and turn zis whole war around."

"You claimed to know my father," Chat interjected in a non-sequitur.

"Aye. I did. Never have I seen a braver musketeer than him."

"What was his daughter's name?" he asked.

Bruin scratched his metal beard. He went out of his way to 'trim' its most dangerous points once he had his bearings again.

"Your sister's name? I was zere when zey were picking ze names, you know." Chat analyzed the robian's response, measuring his words syllable by syllable. "Oscar for a boy, Rose for a girl. Zat would make you Oscar, zen?"

Monsieur Chat said nothing at first. Then, his muscles slowly relaxed. I hadn't seen him do that before. The guy was a meter of paranoia and bravado stacked vertically.

"I am willing to entertain the idea that you are Sir Bruin for the time being. But should it appear that you are turning again, I will do what I must to protect Mercia."

Bruin nodded in solemn approval, some sort of unspoken understanding going on between them.

"I would expect nothing less from ze child of a true musketeer."

The whole exchange felt like we were intruding on something private that I lacked all the context for. Which is why I was glad when the two bugs from earlier rocketed towards us. Emphasis on 'rocket' for the butterfly, who wasted no time practicing with her metal wings. Her grasshopper boyfriend followed behind her, using his springy legs to make huge leaps.

"Can we… join the… freedom fighters?" the grasshopper asked between jumps.

"We'll be the freedomiest freedom fighters tha' ever did freedom!" the butterfly corroborated.

I could better discern the pair's Irish accents now that we weren't having to deal with immediate threats to life and limb. They both landed at the king's feet in a stumble, having not yet mastered their new appendages.

"We'd be honored ta serve, milord!" they said in unison.

The group looked at them, bewildered.

"Does zis happen all ze time around ze Crazy Kritters?" Fifi whispered to Gilbert.

"Only since Mr. Scarlet joined our ranks. The lad is something of a magnet for the wyrd."

"I see," she said with a nod. I should probably take offense, but I couldn't argue with the logic.

"You two seem quite eagar," Rob said of the two. "What art thine names?"

Rather than give a straight answer, the bugs got up and took out a pair of fiddles. The grasshopper's instrument had a red 'EVIDENCE' label across one side, while the butterfly's was an older one hastily held together by tape. Without warning, they sang and played on the spot.

"~A pair a' traveling bards we be
From a humble shire by the Central Sea
Me name's Presto, an' Cadence is she
We want ta help fight now that we're free!"

Presto the Grasshopper did a clumsy jig with his new legs and stepped aside so Cadence could go next. Her thrusters hovered above the ground like a harrier jet.

"~Yer tales inspired us to roam once more
To travel the kingdom, as before the war
Spreading merriment, from shore ta shore
The bard's callin', we shan't ig--"

Cadence's fiddle broke in her hands.

"Och! Not again!"

I walked up to Cadence, who looked very distraught over the fate of an instrument that wouldn't have been broken if it was more empathetic before they got turned into cyborgs.

"May I?"

She slowly nodded. I didn't know how to fix a fiddle, per say, but I held the halves in place with magic and imagined what the instrument might sound like in one piece. A glow washed over the fiddle until the two pieces became one with a red finish.

♦ 34

"Give it a try."

She did.

"It plays like a dream. Thank ye again, Sir Wizard! We could never repay yer aid."

"Think ya could fix our robot parts, too?" Presto asked.

I shook my head.

"I'm sorry, but it's too dangerous. I won't try and brute force deroboticizing anyone with magic before I can study the effects in a safe, controlled environment."

The bug bards seemed crestfallen at the news, though not for long.

"Ah well!" Cadence replied as she landed and retuned her instrument. The steel wings folded back in response to her shifting balance.

"We can get used ta these!" Presto said. He walked around with better precision than before.

"Do ye lot even know how to fight?" Arthur asked.

"We're fast learners!" Presto said.

"Fast as can be!" Cadence added.

"I do like ze way zey play," Fifi said. "Even if zey do not fight, ze music could lighten our spirits, non?"

"And rarely do we get recruits this eager to get into the thick of it," Gilbert said.

"Eagerness cannot supplement a lack of skill or experience," Chat said. "It may take months to train them to a passable level of expertise for field operations."

"We'll do it!"

"Sign us up!"

These two were being shockingly chipper about the horror show I bore witness to. The only other character I knew who went through a botched robotization procedure was Bunnie Rabbot, and she was hardly happy with it in the cartoon. Did the consequences not sink in?

The more I thought about the swiftness of their decision-making and their overall twitchiness, the more clear it became that they were putting on a brave face for each other. The other mobians we freed gave them a wide berth, clearly frightened and put off by their unwanted augmentations. What are the odds they could go back to that shire of theirs and be accepted, looking like they did? I was going to advocate for letting them join when Rob spoke next.

"Presto and Cadence?" he asked. The King had their full attention. "We would be most elated to have thee in our ranks, provided that ye allow thyselves time to rest and take stock of themselves before ye begin any sort of training."

They looked at each other.

"We can do that," they said.

"Excelsior!"

"Does this mean they are joining the Crazy Kritters or Outland Maquis?" Gilbert asked.

"They are not joining the Maquis," Chat corrected.

Fifi sighed in disappointment.

"You can stay with us," I offered.

"I expect zat we shall need all of ze help we can get," Bruin l'Ours said grimly.

The bards, too hyperactively focused on joining our merry band, were late to notice the robian in our midst. They let out a gasp of fright and hid behind me of all people for protection.

"Relax, guys. He's on our side now. Care to fill us in on what that's supposed to mean?"

"Ze Sheriff was more zan upset about Ze Crazy Kritters' recent successes. He has figured out zat ze robians will no longer be enough to slow ze rebels down. You, Monsieur Scarlet, have left a strong impression een spite of my attempts to underplay your actions."

"Didst yon Sheriff allude to his newest plans for our capture?" Rob asked.

"Not een so many words."

Bruin l'Ours placed a paper strip on the table. I mistook it for a grocery store receipt, but the contents were far more dire: A production list straight off the assembly lines of Robotropolis.

"What ees zat?" Fifi asked.

"A list of my new recruits. He has remanded several squads of SWATbots to my control."

"The Sheriff is finally taking us seriously," Chat mused.

"SWATbots?" Presto asked. "What're those?"

"Robotnik's own tin soldiers. Along with a large assortment of badniks. Zis force ees only part of ze first wave of reinforcements from Robotropolis sent to flood ze country. Already, Ze High Sheriff has called for new badnik bosses to replace ze Lansquenets in ze Highlands region."

We all knew this was coming, sooner or later. The High Sheriff was sending in the big guns. Being 'captured' was a lot less likely with purpose-built war machines, and it'd be a lot harder to escape them if you did. A lot of people began talking at once.

"Mon dieu! We cannot fight an army of badniks!"

"Woman, would ya pipe down and grow a spine already?"

"Arthur, please!"

"Don't talk to Fifi that way, you chauvinist pig!"

"Would a song make everyone feel better?"

"How about this one? ~I'm just a juggler, an' everywhere I ger--!"

"Enough!" King O'Hedge yelled. "We have all discussed the possibility of The Sheriff calling his master for aid before. We will need to alter our methods, train thyselves beyond our prior limits, to overcome these new tribulations. No matter what it takes, our resolve to reclaim our kingdom is resolute. Is there anyone among us who would disagree?"

That quelled the argument. No one spoke up against what he was saying, as we were all devoted to this. I was expecting Fifi or the two new ones to back out, but they stood their ground. They were sticking to it.

"If he's upping his game, then we need to do the same," I said to break the accompanying silence. "Go quiet and bunker down for a few months if we have to, as long as we never stop working to kick the legs out from under them."

"What do ye propose?" Rob asked.

I dropped a handful of gold coins from Null Space into my hand.

"That depends. How far do a couple tons of quartz and gold go on the black market?"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

"Bruin l'Ours" alludes to two French folktale bears of note: Bruin the Bear from the Reynard cycle and Jean de l'Ours, or John the Bear. The latter is known for swinging around an iron cane. His personality should also remind readers a bit of Porthos from the Three Musketeers.

"Sir Tybalt" hints at Tybalt, the Prince of Cats from the Reynard cycle, though the Tybalt, Prince of Cats you see in Romeo & Juliet is more known these days than the original. The chapter also has a hint at where Monsieur Chat is coming from, besides standing in for Sir Percival from Sonic & the Black Knight.

Presto & Cadence are very, very loosely based on the main characters of Tempo on the SEGA 32X, Tempo & Katy. Or at least, they draw their roots from the times I portrayed them as psychedelic space cadets in my VeloCITY/Sonic campaign. They lived in the Special Zone and could break out into dance numbers to destabilize reality. For reasons you can guess, I greatly toned down all of that nonsense so I could put a new spin on the charming duo.

For those who revisit prior chapters or still need to read them for the first time, I spruced up the accents on a few characters to make them more consistent. Let me know if I missed any.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 12: Road to Leonus

Compared to the cold-to-temperate climate of Mercia, the air outside the deck of the old patrol ship was warm, humid, and overall unpleasant. It was almost like I was back home in Florida, save that we were sailing through a strait wide enough to split a continent in half. I couldn't see both sides of it unless the sky was cloud-free. Along the coasts, I could make out a pair of Mediterranean forests with tall cypress trees and berry shrubs, beyond which lay twin mountain ranges and the ruins of another lost civilization.

I furrowed my brow and took out my notepad.

ARZ in Southern Europe Eurish. Echidna made? Nocturnus? Someone else?

It couldn't be the Overland. Most of their cities were, regardless of their current status, built all the way on Northamer's east coast. By the time they started expanding into other continents, they were a bit past stone columns and arches. This stripped-down warship I took passage with was evidence enough of that; they left it and several other vehicles behind during a hasty retreat. From what I could gather, the current captain had been using it to smuggle people and contraband through the Dire Strait ever since.

Whatever that salty seagull's story was, it was a smart idea not to look like something he likely killed a couple of during his time in somebody's navy. I'm grateful for the Crazy Kritters accepting me as one of their own, but Friar Buck said in no uncertain terms that few mobians had any warm and fuzzy feelings about mankind. A lot of the mobians I rescued tended to avoid me after the first meeting on the Robotnik association alone. As such, what the captain and the rest of the crew would have seen leaning on the railing was a brawny lion in a purple vest named Maciste. Who he was before meeting them wasn't as important as the fact he was willing to pay handsomely for a ride back to his home country.

That ride wasn't a short one. The distance between Mercia and the Kingdom of Leonus was a voyage of several weeks by water. When I asked how far my money would go, I didn't think I'd have to go this far to spend it. An Efrikan country that predated the Great War and weathered the harsh years as an oil supplier to Robotnik, Leonus had less scrutiny on it than other places did. It was the ideal place to do my business and leave in the cover of as much anonymity I could buy.

As could be expected, the Lansquenets being roboticized in lieu of receiving payment caused the rest of Mercia's mercenaries to flee in droves. I was informed by a few Quart Quartz prisoners who once traveled those circles that West Eurish used to have a strong mercenary tradition in the vein of ancient Greece or Iron Age Spain. What remained of the Overland settlements on the continent bunkered down in the mountains and took to shooting anything in sight, chasing the local mobians off as well.

Unless I wanted to try my luck with a bunch of crazy isolationists, Leonus was my best bet. I invited any of the Mercian freedom fighters to come with me on my 'shopping trip', but they politely declined. Rob told me that he would be "loath to leave the kingdom at such an hour" and that he trusted me to spend literal heaps of gold and treasure wisely.

I thought he was joking until he clarified that he had one hundred percent faith in me. When Chat called his liege a naive fool under his breath, I couldn't help but agree. What would he have done if I pocketed the money and never came back? Not that I would, of course. It was the principle of the thing. The guy was way too trusting of me when I had no idea what I was doing in this crazy world of hedgehogs that can break the sound barrier.

"Could you believe it?" I asked Figment. He turned to face me briefly before his head returned to the water, ignoring me. "Hey, if you want to go fishing, be my guest."

Figment would fish while I mulled over the fact this world looked too much like mine to be a coincidence. Not when I knew for fact that the cartoon's production bible confirmed Mobius was a future Earth so thoroughly ravaged by some disaster or another that it became nearly unrecognizable. Settled by the new dominant lifeforms that had no idea of those that came before them. The trip of a few weeks started to feel like a couple of months after I recovered that scrap of knowledge and stopped sleeping again.

I turned the page to the next side and continued writing.

Angel Island travels and can be tracked. Where is it now? Babylon Garden in the desert? G.U.N. and U.F. anywhere? Are they crazy like Overland?

In one corner, I etched out a circle with three arrows poking out from the bottom and sides in an upside-down triangle formation. Then a trio of lines radiating from the middle out in directions not covered by the arrows.

If G.U.N. turned out to exist here, in some form or another, then I needed to look for that symbol among the hundreds of derelict satellites and extraneous debris in orbit. When I find it, I'll know I hit the jackpot.

Need to solve the power problem. Gas? Thermals?

Sure, John. Stick your hand in an oil well or active volcano and see what happens. Unless I could gobble up the Oil Ocean Zone and take it with me into Null Space, I needed to think bigger than conventional power.

More rings? CEs? Where can I find them? Cocoa Island?

I didn't even know where that was, let alone if it existed in this world. The first thing I needed to buy was a map that covered the whole planet.

What about drives? DG energy? Wisps? What else?

I put down the pencil when Figment returned with a sea bass bigger than his entire body and began ripping into it.

"They taste better cooked."

That was enough writing for now. If a solution was going to come to me, it wouldn't be like this. Surrounded by more questions than answers. I might get some of those answers from Knothole's agent they sent to meet me in Leonus, but I had no clue how I'd react if that contact turned out to be Princess Sally or the Blue Blur.

I was walking back to my quarters to get away from the midday sun when I heard a loud trumpet note being played in the distance.

"What was that?" I shouted to the crow atop the… crow's nest. In spite of being a modern ship as I'd known them, the vessel was refitted with sails and other trappings more suitable for a Spanish galleon. That included a steel drum atop the mast, from which the crow could pull out his spyglass and see what was going on.

I didn't need to bother asking. Seconds after the horn went off, I heard the motors of multiple light watercraft being pushed into the channel.

"Pirates!"

The wolves rode in on ramshackle hoverboards held together by waterproof glue and sheer ignorance to the fact they should have sunk. It wasn't until I could see the midair tricks and the light streaks they left behind that I realized their boards were extreme gear.

"All hands on deck!" the ship captain called out.

The raiders struck fast, riding the waves and treating them like ramps so they could land onto the deck. They raised their gear like shields and drew their swords, which were gladiuses that matched their vaguely Greco-Roman armor.

"We're taking your ship!" a brown wolf wearing red and blue, star-studded armor declared with a vicious glee. "All passengers get off here!"

The wolves aimed their weapons at the outnumbered crew, threateningly goading them towards an inflatable raft. The sailors that were able to arm themselves with spears on short notice were disarmed just as quickly. If this ship wasn't the only one I could find sailing to Efrika on short notice, I would have gone with one that had better protection.

The pirate dressed like hoplite Evel Knievel, who looked to be their boss, poked me in the stomach with his sword.

"Hey, hairball! This is your stop."

"I don't suppose I can convince you to take me the rest of the way?" I asked.

He laughed.

"You're a funny guy. Now get on the raft with the rest!"

"I have money."

The wolf smiled.

"Then empty your pockets first. They say purple's a rich color. Are you anyone worth ransoming?"

Frankly, I've tangled with worse in the past month. Killer machines over twice my size and far more times theirs. My powers didn't make me invincible by any means, but if the worst they could bring out were metal swords, I was fine. My only concerns would be scaring them off without ruining my cover or wasting too much power. I only brought fifty rings.

75

"I'm giving you one warning to pack up and leave," I said firmly.

"You crazy lion!" the seagull captain shouted at me. "You'll get us all killed!"

His smile twisted into a scowl.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" he snarled. "I'm Hector!"

Hector? That's what he was going with? I frowned and reeled back my fist.

"Don't care."

Before the stammering wolf could violently respond, I punched him with what I hoped was less force than I used to take out robians and badnik bosses. That still turned out to be too much force, as the pirate captain was flung clear past the railings and into the water with enough leftover momentum that he skipped on the surface.

74

Oh dear. Was I getting stronger, or was I just bad at holding back? Still, I had to make that look intentional. Focusing to keep up my disguise as a large lion, I cracked my knuckles and added a bit more 'oomph' to the sound effect as I did.

"Who's next?"

The rest of the wolf pack formed a tight circle and boxed me into an arena of shields. I could see the intricate designs they drew on them: Giant beasts, mobian knights, spiny badniks, and humanoid shock troopers. Swords poked out of the openings between shields to prevent anyone from getting cold feet. As one of the warrior wolves entered the arena, a sword flew over the shields and I caught it in one hand.

"A fair fight?" I asked, surprised.

"The Dire Wolves haven't had a good scrap in a while," the wolf growled. "No honor in beating a tough guy if we cheat!"

A spare board was tossed to me after that. My grip was awkward until I found the hand holds, and the rest became natural. The pack engaged me one one at a time when they sensed I was ready to defend myself. After that, it was a trial to beat a more skilled, more numerous foe at their own game.

72

It put me at a disadvantage, but I aimed for their weapons and armor to minimize the injuries I caused. Smashing up robots was one thing. Hurting other living beings -- even if they wanted to give me new breathing holes -- was another. The crowd of rowdy pirates hurled barks and jeers at me as I methodically took their fellows down, one by one.

"Scaredy cat!"

"Hit harder!"

I was pushed back by a wolf bashing me with his shield, resulting in me getting a jab in the back and a shove back into the middle of the ring.

70

There was a gasp from the crowd as I scooped the wolf up with my shield and hoisted him over what was left of the phalanx. I went in harder with the rest of them, using my extra strength and reach to dispatch the pirates as quickly as I could without killing any of them. The sword edge wouldn't work for the job, so I flipped it around and beat them with the pommel until they were all lying down on the deck.

Now I was certain I was getting stronger. I was exerting as little Phantom Ruby power as I could manage. This was all 'me'. Even if I was in better shape than when I got here, there was no way I could fight off this many people at once as a normal human.

Or, to put it another way, I was in such bad shape before that my exponential level of improvement can only be explained with magic.

68

"Anyone else want to test their might against Maciste the Lion?"

"You're no lion!" I turned around to see that the ship captain and crew had taken to pointing their weapons at me next. Including one that looked like a harpoon gun, because I haven't seen enough of those for one lifetime. "You're an overlander!"

I looked down to confirm that my illusion had fallen through during the fight. I was a bit more worn-down and haggard than I would be otherwise, but there was no point denying what I was to them.

"I suppose I am, yes."

"Get the heck off my ship!" the captain ordered.

"What about my ride?" I asked pointedly. "I paid it all up front at your insistence."

The gull then pointed his speargun at my head.

"And I don't deal with you dirty, deceiving overlanders! Leave!"

I held the barrel of the speargun and calmly pushed it away. Whatever fear I was supposed to feel in regards to sharp objects close to my face stopped functioning after years of oral surgeries and more recent threats to my life. Figment, who had up until now been watching us from the sidelines and consuming his catch, flew off.

Real show of solidarity there, Figment.

"I didn't want to have to fly the rest of the way myself, but if you insist."

A wet, gauntleted hand clawed its way onto the deck from the water. It was the wolf pirate Hector, whose sword and board were strapped to his back.

"That's some way to show gratitude!" the pirate spat at the captain. "We Dire Wolves respect our enemies!"

"Yeah!" another wolf cheered.

"Even if they are ugly!" a third one added.

I rolled my eyes.

"You're too kind."

"Yet you would so brazenly insult one who has saved your lives?" Hector asked.

The captain didn't seem at all fazed by this appeal.

"If you want him so badly, then keep him!"

"We will!" Hector exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"We welcome you to our ranks, wolf brother!"

This was going too fast. I held up a hand.

"Alright, slow down." I turned to Hector. "Thank you for inviting me to your pirate crew. We'll have to sort out the details later." Then, I turned back to the captain. "Are you absolutely certain you won't be willing to take me the rest of the way to Leonus?"

"You deaf and stupid? I said I'm kicking you out!"

A pity. I crushed his speargun in one hand and shoved a crossbow from Null Space into his neck.

67

"Ack!"

"You greatly underestimated how much I need to take this vacation. Now, get off our ship before I tie you all to the bow and pluck your feathers out by hand."

The seagull had the good sense to keep his beak shut after that. We rounded up his crew and once again separated them from their weapons. While the Dire Wolves canvassed the boat, Figment returned with an old-looking strongbox in his talons.

"My money!" the captain cried.

"Wrong. Our money."

Hector stepped forward and, after gesturing for me to crouch down, whispered a devious idea in my ear. I took a handful of gold coins and tossed them in the raft.

"Here's a severance package for your crew. I want them to think about how your stupidity lost them the closest thing they'll see to stability for a long time."

The sailors, which once had mixed expressions, all looked very angry at their captain. For as long as his position will last. I put my foot on the raft to kick it into the strait.

"Can I get my inhaler?" the crow asked.

I sighed.

"…Sure. Someone get the crow his inhaler. Then we go to Leonus."

I turned around.

"Unless, of course, anyone has a problem with that?"

The Dire Wolves quickly shook their heads.

"Good. I enjoy a trip with quality customer service."

- - -

The rest of the voyage went a lot smoother once the ship was overrun with lawless extreme sports enthusiasts. The Dire Wolves were surprisingly good company, if on the wild side. The days passed with us exchanging tales of our travels and a few of them randomly tackling me for another go of it. It was like going from one dog and zero little brothers to twelve wolves that counted as both. They were fascinated with my battles against the High Sheriff, and I was able to convince them to teach me a few of their fighting tricks in exchange for some of the 'fancier' weapons I received in Mercia.

Hector, unsurprisingly, turned out to be the oldest of the bunch. He cut his teeth fighting other 'warbands' in West Eurish, including overlanders who had taken to working for the highest bidder, until he eventually formed his own gang of wolf cubs he picked up along the way. He was relieved when I told him I had no intent of taking his place.

Over time, the forests gave way to dry brushland, and then a wide expanse of desert. We passed a few fishing villages and clay forts on the way to Leonus' premier trade city. If Robotnik cared about Efrika in the slightest outside of those oil wells, he would have torn them down years ago. Not because they were a threat, but because he could.

"We will reach Casabana in a day's time," Hector informed me. I don't visibly react to the obvious play on a famous Moroccan city. "Are you sure you don't want us to wait for you? We don't like to leave wolves behind, John."

"I'm sure. I don't know how long I'll take to buy the weapons and muscle I'll need. Then I'm taking them all through a portal back to Mercia, because I've wasted enough time as it is to get to Efrika on the down-low."

He nodded.

"If you need our help, just call."

"That's nice of you, but how am I supposed to call? We don't exactly have--"

He tossed me a bulky satellite phone.

"I put our pack under the contacts."

"Oh. Thanks."

Well, they were scavengers. Foraging leftovers from the Great War was how they kept their gear working. It made sense they'd stumble into something like this sooner or later.

"There's one last thing the Dire Wolves wanted to give you before you left."

I raised an eyebrow. Hector led me down the deck, where the Dire Wolves were messing around with a red board I didn't recognize. On the 'shield' side, there was an image of a lion's head surrounded by wings and spikes.

"What's that?" I asked before it was unexpectedly shoved into my arms.

"Our parting gift," Hector said. "Your own gear. We called it Red Chimera!"

I picked up the board and got a feel for its weight. I then, at their urging, I put the board down and stepped on it. My balance was wobbly, at first, but eventually I got a grasp of how to stay aloft. We spent the rest of that day and night getting in as much training as I could with the extreme gear.

I hit the ground enough times to figure out I needed more practice before I did anything more complex than fly in a straight line.

65

That morning, the ship set anchor just outside city limits. From what I could see, Casabana was a large port town protected by an old, bleached kasbah. While it looked free and prosperous on the outside, the odd turquoise hover unit scanning for threats in the sky made it clear that this place was Robotnik's property.

The Dire Wolves put out a wooden plank.

"This is as far as we can go, wolf brother."

"I don't know what to say. Thank you for the board, and for being good company."

Figment made a retching sound.

"Oh, shut up."

I snapped my fingers and made an illusion cage to carry him in while I went around town.

"When you have to go on the sand, use the board," Hector said. "Otherwise you'll be eaten by sandcrawlers."

Sand crawlers? I toyed around with the words in my head before coming to a decent guess. He can't possibly mean--

"They're giant worms," he clarified. "With teeth."

"Ah."

I got off the boat and clenched my teeth at the slight tremor from the sand.

"Well, it's time to go to the city and never enter the desert!" I said with too much cheer. I put the Machiste disguise back on, got a running start, and jumped on the board before anything could come out of the ground. "See you guys later!"

"Bye!" the Dire Wolves said back.

Figment squacked indignantly as I rode towards Casabana.

"No, no, and also: No! I can fight robots and pirates, but draw the line at graboids!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

We begin this chapter with a cameo from Aquatic Ruin Zone, which our overburdened protagonist must sadly ignore. He's got bigger bass to fry. Anyone who can decipher the image our SI is drawing earns themselves a cookie.

The Dire Wolves were inspired by Greek hoplites, Roman legionaries, and Waterworld. The idea to have their boards and shields be one and the same came to me during the scene where they land on the deck. I didn't want them to toss their boards or constantly zip around the ship, so I came up with shield gears.

My choice to use 'Casabana' was 'inspired' by Archie Sonic the Hedgehog #52, in which the characters are put through a bewildering and tone deaf adaptation of the classic film that actually happens because a magic flying dress suit teleports Sonic to the Casablanca zone. Remember, Robotnik died like two issues ago! What the heck are they doing in Casablanca?!

I have no answers. It just sorta happens and they gloss over it like it never happened.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 13: The Home Front Line

An ominous moon hung over Deerwood Forest, which was not quiet tonight. Not in so many years has the forest been a place at peace.

Tonight, the forest was screaming. The sky was awash with black, choking smoke and the buzz of saw blades. A graveyard of stumps and burning villages were all that was left in the wake of the tall, imposing SWATbots as they meticulously destroyed the ecosystem. Tree by tree, branch by branch. They hauled the logs into large hover trucks, pausing in their tireless efforts only to capture the fleeing village folk for the roboticizer in Snottingham. If not stopped, these police robots that were modified for clear cutting would deforest the whole of Mercia in no less than a month.

That was when the cavalry arrived. From atop the trees, a hail of arrows rained on the lumberjack SWATbots and their offroad vehicles, rendering the latter inoperable. The disruption forced the badniks to cease their operations, though only a fraction of those iron-tipped arrows struck true and took their foes down outright. That left scores more for the Mercian resistance to deal with themselves.

"Halt!" the SWATbot captain with a metal feather in its steel cap declared. The captain's synthesized voice, the same as countless other SWATbots across the globe, was donated by recordings from Robotnik himself. "Battle formations!"

The SWATbots took to action, their saws and log-sawing subroutines set aside in favor of their primary purpose: Riot suppression. Their wrist-mounted laser weapons fired in sequence at the shaded tree tops, melting the light snow off the evergreens and disabling a few of the slower rebels instantly. The rest scattered like a horde of vermin, presenting too many targets moving in too many directions for the badniks to hit their marks.

While the badniks scanned the forest for further signs of resistance, their audio receptors picked up a light 'twang' once the straps securing the logs to the trucks snapped open. They rolled free and loose, bowling squads of SWATbots to the ground. From the darkness, a singular mobian form emerged with their arrow nocked for another shot.

"Freedom fighter spotted!" the SWATbot captain declared. It ran around the logs and raised an arm to shoot the offender where he stood. "Fire at--!!"

The captain should have been more choosing with his words. Rob O' the Hedge fired his arrow, swift and true, striking the SWATbot cleanly through the thin, red line of his optical visor. Their leader was now offline.

The rest of the Crazy Kritters stood at his side. Friar Buck, Arthur Boar, David Dormouse, and Gilbert Woolhand. Behind them were the newest recruits, the cyborgs Presto and Cadence, along with a few new faces Rob had yet to become acquainted with. There was strength in numbers, to be certain, though Rob wished he had more time to familiarize himself with his new brothers-and-sisters-in-arms.

"Tally ho!" shouted Rob in a brave battle cry. "Crazy Kritters! To arms!"

The more experienced veterans led the charge with their swords, hacking at the downed SWATbots with their swords. The badniks' standard-issue plating was tough and dense, designed to shrug off far worse than anything that could be forged by a mere smith. Yet all of that engineering meant little in the face of a sturdy log cracking their armor open like a lobster shell. The rest was a matter of cutting their exposed wiring to ribbons.

Friar Buck, who took an oath of nonviolence as one of his many vows to the church, was content to step back and provide morale to those untempered rookies whose spirits might be wavering in the back line. The chaplain's calming presence kept their aim steady as the partisans pelted the remaining badniks with bolts and arrows.

"Keep the pressure on!" Rob said. "We shall send these mechanical varlets back to thine makers!"

While it took time to adjust to their new circumstances, the cybernetic bards well earned their place among the freedom fighters. Cadence the Butterfly flew over the battle with her jet wings, holding Presto the Grasshopper by the arms so he could deliver spring-loaded kicks to the SWATbots and knock them off their feet when she dove.

"We've got 'em on the ropes!" Arthur shouted as he cut down another SWATbot.

Gilbert stood at his side, taking more precise aim with his blade strokes.

"I'd advise tempering your enthusiasm!" he said to Arthur.

"Bah, poppycock! We're winnin', ain't we?"

They were. It was a pleasant change of pace from the acres of ground they've lost in the past few weeks. Sir Bruin's early warnings of the attacks could only do so much when the High Sheriff didn't stop sending wave after wave. Rob dodged the hail of laser beams from the remaining SWATbots and used his sword to break open the locks keeping the prisoners in their cages. The leader of the Crazy Kritters led them out, one at a time.

David's ears perked up, through and over his hood, and he stood in place.

"Do ye all hear that?" he asked the others. They shook their heads.

"Prittee, what do ye hear?" Rob asked. "Reinforcements?"

Were they too slow to prevent the robots from sending for help? The resistance fighters relied on hit-and-run raids to survive. If more robots were coming, they needed to expedite the second part of their strategy and make their leave. Otherwise, they risked all of the people they were trying to save.

David's ears adjusted themselves, like a natural radar.

"I couldst not say. It does not sound like a vehicle or marching soldiers."

As David pondered over the source of the noise, it was seconds later that they could all hear the sound of a rushing engine overhead. A large, black shadow loomed above the clearing on a pair of rocket thrusters. It was a mechanical woodsman in gold in silver that bore a large, double-bladed ax whose edges shone with a wicked gleam in the moonlight.

It was a super badnik. Bigger and badder than the rank-and-file. Smarter than they looked. A metal monstrosity that would be a suitable challenge for Sonic the Hedgehog himself. Or the wizard, John Scarlet.

Neither of which, of course, were here right now to deal with it.

"I doth suppose that be what ye heard?" Rob asked dryly.

"Blimey! I suppose it was."

The super badnik swung its weapon in a wide arc, chopping the tops off the trees and raining chunks of wood on the rebels!

"Take cover!"

The warning, whoever shouted it, was too little and too late. The freedom fighters were driven back into the woods for protection, and the villagers they were rescuing could only scarcely avoid being crushed. A couple of the SWATbots were less fortunate, vanishing beneath the heavy debris with a loud, definitive crunch.

"Look out!" Gilbert cried.

With a shove, he pushed Rob out of the way of a stray laser bolt that was discharged from a pulverized SWATbot limb.

"Gilbert!"

The shot went directly towards his hand, forcing him to drop his sword from the sudden shock to the extremity.

"I'll be fine!" Gilbert said with a pained grunt. He wrapped the fresh wound with his green cape. "Let us make haste and get out of here!"

They were in a full retreat. The metal lumberjack pursued them, cutting a swathe through Deerwood Forest as if it was made out of butter.

"We need to slow its advance!" Rob shouted as he fired a litany of arrows at the super badnik in vain. He thought he had an arrow for every occasion, but not one seemed to do the trick. No weakness to be exploited or chink in the armor.

"I've got it!" Presto said. He bounded towards the machine and set his legs on its arms at full force. Presto then went at full speed in the opposite direction. "Woah!"

Cadence dodged an ax swing and caught him before he could splatter against a tree.

"Careful, Presto!" she chided him. "The rest of us isn't made of metal!"

Rob turned towards Friar Buck, who was escorting the villagers out of harm's way.

"Friar Buck! How much time shall ye need?"

"However much time ye can provide," he said earnestly.

Rob felt around in his quiver for his last two arrows. He would need to fire the first before he could use the second with any reliability. The one that had an extra punch to it, if not the sort that ended in a padded fist. He would have to make them count.

In spite of its size, the robot was moving too fast for him to guarantee the initial arrow would hit the mark. He had little option but to fire it anyway and hope the Walkers -- blessed be their name -- would throw him a bone for once. Before he could take the shot, a hefty stone was tossed at the back of the super badnik's head. It stopped and turned around, twin jets of steam pouring out of its head.

"Over here!" Arthur shouted, a smaller rock in one hand. "That all it takes to get yer attention?"

"Arthur! Hath ye gone mad?!"

Arthur Boar ducked under the ax.

"I'm buying time!"

"Get out of there!"

The super badnik lifted its ax again, and Rob knew he would be too late to stop it. Arthur was less swift to avoid the blade this time, resulting in a long gash being sliced through the back of his thigh.

"ARGHH!"

Arthur Boar let out a coarse howl of pain, and Rob fired two arrows.

The first one was borne out of his early tutors' many failed attempts to teach him chemistry. A spark from the flint at the tip of the arrowhead ignited the magnesium powder attached to the arrow, releasing a blinding light in the super badnik's face. The second, a red-tipped TNT arrow, sailed cleanly past its head and hit its intended target with a loud boom. The machine's sensors were too disoriented by the sensory overload to navigate, or notice the others pulling Arthur away from the scene. By the time the robot could reorient itself, its body was already enveloped in the shadow of falling timber.

With a tremendous slam, the terrible woodsman was felled by a humble tree. The battle was won for the Mercian Freedom Fighters.

"Three cheers for Rob O' the Hedge!" one of the laymen exclaimed.

"Here here!" the crowd shouted.

Yet, as Rob led the wounded survivors away from the wreck of strewn badniks and machinery, he couldn't help but feel that the war was becoming too much for him to handle.

---

"The casualties?"

It was the first thing Rob asked Friar Buck the moment they each had a moment to spare. Rob from coordinating with the other resistance leaders in Mercia by their new radio devices, and Friar Buck from his work tending to the wounded. While it was always meant to function as a secret refuge from the Sheriff's machines, Hideaway was becoming more akin to a field hospital with every skirmish. The last days of autumn gave their home away from home an oppressively somber atmosphere.

The two of them sat at a wooden table in Rob's hut. Not a place one would recognize as the dwelling of a king, though Rob felt more at home among the trees than he did in any castle. As the cold was beginning to come in earnest, the Friar served an herbal tea of his own recipe meant to warm the heart and calm the distressed soul.

He had a feeling they would need a lot of tea for this one.

"Several men-at-arms were wounded in the SWATbots' opening salvo and the strike of the wood-cutting machine. We art doing thine best to heal the injured, but…"

They had no true chirurgeon at their disposal and, with their resources as strained as they were, it would be a miracle if Arthur walked or Gilbert held a bow again.

"Thou art doing the best ye can with what we have, Friar. That is all we can ask of ye." Rob opened his mouth, stopped to collect himself, and then asked the question he still had on his mind since last night. "Any deaths?"

"Nay. Bless the Walkers that we have not lost any more lives to this struggle."

"Aye. Bless them."

Rob thought himself the reverent, god-fearing sort of gentlefolk, but he was less certain of providence's hand in their lack of fatalities. The High Sheriff was once an Acorn general, by Sir Bruin's reckoning. He may well have been burdening them with injured soldiers by design. Forcing them to make the sadistic choice between spending time and resources ministering to their wounded or leaving them behind to fend for themselves.

Even in the privacy of his thoughts, Rob instantly felt guilty for using that word to refer to his own friends and countrymen. Burden. Did they not deserve better from their king than such a dismissive turn of phrase?

"A shilling for thine thoughts, Robert?"

"The calculus of war hangs heavy on my head," Rob said with a sigh. It had been on his mind for some time now. "I do not know if I am still the leader the people need. Or ever was."

Friar Buck gave his friend and liege a calm nod of understanding.

"Yours is a struggle many leaders come to when the dawn seems out of reach. Rest assured, I believe ye to be the best king Mercia could ask for in their time of need."

Rob wasn't entirely comfortable with being compared to his father like that. He knew that the former king was a harsh, but fair ruler. Definitely more seasoned. Though, knowing his father was set in his ways, rigid in sticking to past rulings and edicts in a way that bordered on stubbornness, he had to admit the Friar had a point.

Their relationship as father and son was complicated, to say the least.

"The best king? Mayhaps, but the best leader? There are times where I think I should cede more control of our forces to more experienced generals."

"Such as?"

"Lady Finella and Monsieur Chat have both proven themselves capable leaders of their own freedom fighter cells."

"That is true," Friar Buck conceded. "Though their methods, at times, leave much to be desired."

To put it more bluntly, they were too bloody-minded. Lady Finella still wore the robes of a widower as she cut down robians with her ancestral sword and fell into frightening berserker rages. Monsieur Chat is more restrained on the outside, but under that frigid personage is a furious, revanchist heart. Angry at many things.

Perhaps some of that fear and hatred would lose its bite if Chat was given the opportunity to be more open with herself? Friar Buck hoped so. He was the sort who liked to believe there was hope for everyone, no matter how far they strayed off the path to inner peace.

"You are right again, old friend."

"And Sir Bruin, though a great boon to our cause, is unreliable due to circumstances out of anyone's control. If his status as a spy were ever to be uncovered by the Sheriff…"

"Aye. It is for good cause that we keep our flow of information as one-sided as we can."

They pondered over the turbulent state of affairs for a moment of blessed silence. At least, until Amy barged into the hut with stacks of gauze in her arms.

"Is this the medical hut?" she shouted over the gauze covering her face.

Rob pulled the gauze off his young cousin's face.

"Sorry, Amy. You'll want the hut further down that way."

"Ohh. Thanks, Rob!"

"Thank you for helping tend to the wounded," he said.

"I'm doing my part!" she exclaimed as she jogged in the pointed direction. "As a FREEDOM FIGHTER!"

A small smile formed on Rob's face. He couldn't help it.

"What of John Scarlet?" he then asked Friar Buck. "He is not a brilliant strategist by his own words, yet he has pulled off feats I would have considered impossible before."

Friar Buck tensed up slightly, but Rob was too distressed to take notice. Now, that would be a risky proposition…

---

"Do you do confessionals?"

Friar Buck stood from his records to take notice of John Scarlet. He was not well-versed in overlander anatomy, but it was clear to anyone who cared to see the signs that the man was ill at ease. His skin had long settled into an unhealthy pallor. He had only lost weight since he first arrived in Eurish. A pair of restless, glowing eyes, twin lanterns as red as rubies, scoured the darkness in search of an answer. Any answer at all.

Putting that overwhelming evidence aside, it was the witching hour. Far past the time anyone with good sense should be awake. An opinion that was a tad hypocritical, the Friar knew, given that he was staying up late updating a kingdom's worth of records.

"What troubles your mind?" Friar Buck asked earnestly, though he suspected that would come off as a loaded question.

Not wanting to disrupt the scrolls set on the available seating, John made a chair out of naught but pure aether and sat at it in reverse.

"That ah, depends on whether you can keep a secret."

Friar Buck frowned, concerned for what this was about more than anything else. It was not uncommon for mobians from all walks of life to come to him in times of doubt, but the penitent having to double-check whether or not they could be reported for what they were about to say was rarely a good way a confession started.

"I am forbidden to reveal anything a penitent confesses to me."

"Oh. Uh. Good."

The overlander said nothing for a few seconds, then it all came out at once.

"I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Beg pardon--?"

"I've been making up the wizard thing as I went along. The magic's real. I just don't know how to control it. "

Friar Buck, to his credit, kept his composure throughout this very distressing revelation. With a gesture, John took off his gauntlet, pushed the pair of power rings down his sleeve, and pulled away the black skein of his body suit. The red stone inlay went much deeper than Friar Buck imagined, digging deep into his flesh like a monstrous leech or lesion.

"The Phantom Ruby is the source of my power. I know the name of it because it, ah, told me? And I've been getting the hang of the different things I can do with it. But I don't know everything it's been doing to me and that scares me."

"I see," Friar Buck said. "Should we start at the beginning?"

"I figure it began when I woke up in space."

That was just the beginning of what would become a very long confessional.

---

"Friar Buck?"

Friar Buck poured another cup of nerve-steeling tea. He would have to make a separate pot for himself later, with the last ingredient included, once his duties for the evening were properly attended to.

"Mister Scarlet is an overlander of many surprises," the Friar replied neutrally. "However, it would be quite difficult for him to maintain the kingdom's confidence on his own."

"As he hails from the Overland. Of course. Even in times such as these, old wounds linger."

"Indeed," Friar Buck replied. Though, given what he had heard, he wasn't certain John Scarlet came from the Overland anymore.

Rob O' the Hedge stood up and stretched.

"So I really am the best hope we have, eh?" Rob asked, letting his accent slip out of sheer exhaustion. There was no one else around to catch him anyway. "In that case, I shall endeavor to do what I can without any more whinging or moping."

"It is no sin to have these doubts, Robert."

"Then why do I feel wrong for having them?"

Rob checked the window. The sun was not wholly visible between the trees, especially at this time of year, but it was at its highest point in the sky. Break time was over.

"Duty calls?"

"Yeah. I've gotta--" Rob cleared his throat. "I am overdue for leading the next patrol at yon forest's edge. The enemy does not rest on their laurels, and neither must I."

"Good hunting, Rob O' the Hedge."

Rob descended down a rope that had been put there for descent at a rapid pace.

"Verily! I shall return anon!"

Rob O' the Hedge would keep fighting. Holding the line from tyranny. As the king, he could do no less.

Though he hoped John would return soon with what they needed to brave the winter.

---

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

I believe 'super badnik' is a loanword from the post-reboot continuity. It typically refers to those jumbo badniks and mini bosses that take a few heroes working together to beat. It also applies to specially-designed bots like the E-Series and Metal Sonic. Classic fans should recognize the one in this chapter as Hey Ho/Hei Hou from Sonic & Knuckles.

~He's a lumberjack, and he's okay! He works all night and he works all day!

The next chapter should return to our regularly-scheduled protagonist. Depending on how people felt about this special chapter, there might be more like it in the future.

 

[weredrago2]

I've made a gallery of the different art I've gotten for this fic here. A couple of examples are below.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1qdOgb1vt5_jprDBRJZUdZCgr7k_k2XyT

John Scarlet

Figment

Chat and Fifi

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 14: Shop the Kasbah

1. In the beginning, there was Chaos.
2. Mobius was without form, and full of fury.
3. The Ancient Walkers observed the Chaos as it shaped the world.
4. From the Chaos came the elements of fire, water, earth, and air.
5. The Ancient Walkers exist to unify the Chaos.

"More coffee, sir?" the periwinkle gazelle waitress asked as she passed my table.

I set down the Tome of the Ancient Walkers, a copy of which was granted to me by Friar Buck as reading material for my journey. It was an aged book with a three-toed, reptilian foot on the cover, and here I thought the Mercian fleur-de-lis had the same origin as the French one. The prose was thick enough to stop a bullet, but I powered through it so I could better understand the beliefs of the people I was working with.

Or, to be a bit more honest with myself, the people I was friends with. I didn't think I would have gone this far if they were still strangers to me. Or gotten this far without somebody I could talk to about my problems. If I couldn't call them friends at this point, who could I?

"Yes, please," I replied.

She refilled my earthenware cup, pouring hot, sweetened coffee over ice cubes and a lemon slice. The cup that was currently being used by Machiste the Lion. There was a decent chance that they'd still take my money if I was an Overlander, but I wasn't going to take any risks of showing my real face until I met the spy Princess Sally sent to do the handoff for the Neuro-Overrider chip.

"Thank you."

Besides, mobians demonstrably treated me better when they thought I was one of them. Another face in the crowd who tipped a bit better than the rest. One lion out of the countless felines that made up a lion's share of the Leonus population.

I took a long sip. I've never had mazagran before, though as an iced coffee, I couldn't complain. The iced coffee tasted distinctly like coffee, something that I thought I'd never drink again. On the contrary, I was inundated with the smell of roasted beans throughout the market stalls of the city.

Besides the cats, the rest of the Leonus population were other animals that could be found across Southern Eurish and Sub-Saharan Efrika. Dogs, mice, deer, zebras, birds, and a few species I couldn't place. The reason they were here was that Robotnik's only concerns in Leonus were their resources. Iron and carbon for steel. Precious metals for circuit boards. Crude oil for fuel. The infrastructure for it to be a tributary was already set in place by the Overland during the Great War, so why complicate things if no one was resisting? To the people of Leonus, the change in regimes changed little for their status quo.

I wasn't privy to the details, but the result of whatever bargain King Leonus struck with Robotnik was that the royal family remains where they are and his kingdom is "spared" any direct predations by the Empire. SWATbots and hover pods were an infrequent sight in the country, concerned only with keeping the roads open for material shipments. Acts of resistance were rare and fleeting. The Dire Wolves warned me that the region had issues with roving gangs who would attack convoys, though the ones crazy enough to try their luck against a badnik escort were a dying breed. No points for guessing what was killing them.

For a brief, fleeting moment, I thought seeing a city full of living, breathing people not under immediate threat of the badnik jackboot would put me at ease. A few days in Casabana were enough to prove me wrong, as nearly everyone I passed in the city was suffering.

The concept of a "safe" anywhere in the Robotnik Empire was so tantalizing that it attracted desperate mobians in droves. Many of them were exhausted, dirty, and disheveled. As if they'd walked twice as far as the distance I sailed to get here. Among them were the ailing and injured, who were left untreated outside of using crutches and covering infected areas in bandages. Few children on the street had been spared the shaken, haggard expressions that the adults bore. Fewer still walked or ran around the narrow streets of the medina with any parents to supervise them. Casabana had flesh-and-blood guards to enforce order, but they were more concerned with discouraging theft and scaring vagrants off the streets than anything close to justice.

My heart ached at the sight of it. Things in Hideaway were rough, but everyone got food and medical aid when it was available. Money was hardly a concern in the face of constant danger and a mutual struggle. I quietly gave alms to any beggars who approached me, but what else was I supposed to do? Punch poverty? I couldn't do much more than small acts of kindness without drawing further attention to myself. If I was discovered by the wrong people and was forced to go loud now, the agent from Knothole would get spooked, I wouldn't get the Neuro-Overrider, and our robian spy would eventually turn back into a Robotnik loyalist. Mercia falls because I couldn't keep my cover.

That was why I was here, in Ricky's Café Northaméricain, in spite of the name making me want to crawl out of my skin. It was quiet, for a bar with a casino and live band. After the exchange for the chips was done, I could meet back with the fixer Knothole was "pretty sure" wouldn't stab me in the back and seal the deal on the rest of things we needed to turn the situation in Eurish around. Then when Mercia was liberated from the High Sheriff, I could go back to worrying about what was going on in Leonus.

Figment chirped. I shifted to check that he was still in the illusory cage I made for him under the table. Slight spot fixes to his coloration made him indistinguishable from what he used to look like.

"Need something?"

He looked into my eyes. I received a flash of rapid images. The sick and hurt, begging for money and medicine. My hand raised to heal his wings and eye, from Figment's perspective. The images were arranged in such a way as to suggest I try the same thing on all of them, with a dash of confusion as to why I hadn't gone ahead and done it already.

"You think I haven't thought of that?" I hissed in annoyance.

I shot a few pointed images back at Figment. Regardless of the intent to heal, I split wounds open and kill my patients from shock. Their mangled limbs reshape into monstrous, alien appendages, because I'm not a doctor and the Phantom Ruby isn't a medical device. I raise my hand to "end their suffering", and what pours out is a stream of crimson fire.

Mobini are smarter than the animals back home, and Figment was smarter than the average flicky. The cocky bird sobered up once he realized the only reason we were having this psychic conversation is because I got lucky and didn't have to force a wounded animal through extra layers of torture before putting it out of its misery with a shovel.

"Look, I'm sorry for snapping at you." I sliced off a strip of mechoui from my plate and slid it to Figment through the bars. As it turned out, they did serve food here if you asked with a stack of gems in your hands. "Just wish I could do more right now, that's all."

He tilted his head at an angle, pondering my words. I sat back up when I observed a gray ram with black, curly hair and a short beard enter Ricky's. He wore a hooded cloak with a small, acorn-shaped brooch.

"Cripes, really?" I muttered.

Some spy. The only reason he wasn't wearing his allegiance on his sleeve was that it was already pinned on his chest. It's a wonder they didn't have me show up as a blue hedgehog instead of a lion. The ram glanced around the bar until he eventually locked eyes with me. His were hazel, while mine were a ruby red that had to be suppressed if I didn't want them to shine through the glamour. He walked up to me.

"Are you Maciste?" he asked. The ram's voice was deep. At a guess, he sounded about my age or a few years older.

"I am."

"I'm here to speak to Mister Scarlet. Can you take me to him?"

"Yes." I stood up. "He's waiting for you in one of the reserved rooms."

I gestured to get the attention of the waitress from earlier. With a whisper and a few more coins exchanged, we were given the key to a private room that would do for our meeting. No visible cameras or listening devices, and I didn't take this place for the kind that would spring for anything more expensive than that.

The ram sat across from me at a round table shuffled in for our benefit.

"Apologies for not taking off my hood earlier," he said. "There's a good chance the SWATbots have my face recorded in their memory banks."

While he lowered his hood, I slowly unwound the illusion of Maciste the Lion. It flaked off in smoldering pieces, rather than all at once, as though the spell was a costume I was wearing, or a second skin to be shed. My body was left feeling like I had untensed all of my muscles at once after the process was complete. I then sat down next to him, one hand held out.

"Let's try this again. I'm John Scarlet."

The ram gave me a look-over, visibly perturbed by my transformation. His eyes lingered on the Phantom Ruby, which lay in a metal gauntlet secured by a pair of power ring bracelets. With my use of the Phantom Ruby reserved to keep up the disguise, the faint glow that was spreading down my wrist began to recede. Perturbed or not, he did shake my hand.

"My name is Ari." It wasn't a name I recognized off the top of my head. "On the behalf of the Kingdom of Acorn, I'd like to welcome you as the first overlander to join the fight."

I frowned.

"First? I didn't know. Out of how many…"

I trailed off, because it occurred to me that I didn't know how many humans were still around after the Great War. Ari misinterpreted the gap in my knowledge as exasperation.

"Out of the millions of overlanders, you are the first I know of that's taken up the cause. We've tried to send missives to MegaCentral, the Overland city north of Robotropolis, but we don't even know if their people are aware of what's going on beyond their borders."

Millions. That can't be all that's left. Can it?

"That's… disappointing." I changed the subject. "Did you bring the chip?"

Ari nodded. He pulled out a drawstring pouch that reminded me of the Crown Royal bag I used for dice. He carefully pulled out what looked like a white poker chip. I took the chip and scrutinized it. The thin lines and dots of a circuit board decorated the surface.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"The device has a small magnet. Attach it anywhere on the robian's head, and the chip should do the rest."

"Should? Please explain."

"Rotor made the first model so that anyone who was roboticized could go through the process and keep their free will. As Barbe Vis--"

"Sir Bruin," I softly corrected.

"As Sir Bruin was roboticized over a decade before the brain-burn-thru patch or the other firmware updates, this custom chip should be able to piggyback off the energy of the power rings and return his free will to him."

"That's… less than I was hoping for, but it'll have to do."

The way Rob O' the Hedge put it, the device sounded like a miracle cure. It looked like we were still a long way off from one of those.

I pulled a spare bag out of Null Space. The contents of the bag were wrapped up in dark cloth to mute out the intense shine they gave off when grouped together. I handed the bag to Ari, and let him take a few seconds to inspect it.

"Are those what I think they are?" he asked.

"If you think you can smuggle a few rings out of Leonus without being caught, you're welcome to take a few back to the freedom fighters as a gift. I'm sure they can find a use for them."

He covered the power rings and put them back in the sack.

"Thank you. I'll have to pass through Armada territory, but I'll get these to Knothole as soon as I can."

"What's the Armada?"

"The Battle Bird Armada. They're one of Robotnik's allies, a traveling militant group that's currently hovering around Central Efrika."

If the Armada were what I'd otherwise call the Battle Kukkus, I'd need to keep an eye out for them.

"Good to know. Anything else I need to clear up with you?"

"No. We had to meet in person to make sure the chip wasn't intercepted, but future messages will be sent to Hideaway by Dove."

"Works for me."

I started towards the exit.

"One last thing."

I stopped, and turned around to see what Ari had saved as a final surprise.

"As I'm sure Rob O' the Hedge has already let you know, the Kingdom of Acorn has disavowed the usage of firearms many years ago."

I raised an eyebrow. They knew to meet me in Leonus, where I was going to meet an arms dealer they vetted to sell me items to assist in the war effort. Heck, I had a new semi-automatic pistol strapped to my belt as we were speaking. It wasn't difficult to get my hands on one in the market, even if I was bewildered by it being identical to a Colt 1911.

One of the most recognizable guns on Earth. What was it doing for sale on a rack next to sci-fi laser blasters and a handful of homemade bolt-action rifles?

"I'm aware." I was trying to find a polite way to say that it was their hangup and not mine. "Will this become an issue?"

"Personally? I don't have a problem with it. Our kingdom has cleaned our hands of those kinds of weapons, but I can't say I blame you or the Mercians for using whatever you need in order to protect yourselves from Robotnik."

"What about the other freedom fighters? Will they make an issue of it?"

"Rotor has made dangerous weapons for the others before, and Princess Sally didn't object at the time. If the Rebel Underground knows what you're arming the Mercian rebels with, they're content to turn a blind eye for now."

For now. That was a rather vague answer. What were they waiting for me to do that would make it not okay anymore?

"Right. I'll do what I can on my end, and you do what you can on yours."

"Good luck, John Scarlet."

I focused, reapplied my disguise, and walked out of the room.

♦ 60

"You too."

He seemed like an alright guy. Now all that was left was for me to deal with someone who was anything but.

- - -

With the chip secured, I took off from Casabana at cruising speed on my extreme gear, the Red Chimera. Figment kept pace, the two of us leaving a pair of magenta light trails as we sailed across the sand. The internal mechanisms of the board were not unlike a ramjet: Once you had a running start, the air-breathing engine did the rest. It saved me a lot of energy that would otherwise be devoted to flying myself.

The arid sea of sand beyond Casabana was all-encompassing. If I didn't already know where I was going, my only landmarks would have been the inland oil refineries. Endless rows of pumpjacks drew countless gallons of black gold from the ground, moving in sync with colossal drills boring into the sand and unidentifiable machinery that blighted the sky with smog. Colossal tanks with Robotnik's face on them were a common sight as I went, the scale of extractraction being performed here nearly paralyzing to witness.

The largest oil facilities on Earth could crank out only a million or so barrels of crude a day. These sprawling facilities had to have dwarfed them.

I hit the booster with my foot, kicking the Red Chimera into top speed. I slowed down only to avoid dust devils and hover pods, the latter of which got scarcer as I rode further on into the desert. Once we were far, far away from Robotnik's pervasive piping, I pulled out the clamshell communication device the fixer gave me. Though it looked more like a metal hand mirror than the proper satellite phone I got from Hector, it'll have to do.

I dialed the one contact and made the call. To his credit, he answered on the first ring.

"Wes Weasley speaking!"

One of the lights on the device blinked on, revealing a hologram projector. The mobian that appeared on the device was a brown mustelid in a yellow tweed suit and fedora. The hologram itself was restricted to a grainy, bluish image, but my brain filled in the gaps. He wore large, rounded glasses and a perpetual grin that went as far as it needed in order to secure a sale. His apparel and demeanor invoked the image of a classic door-to-door salesman, while his product catalog could arm an insurrection. Which, while dubious in terms of moral footing, was exactly what I needed.

"It's Maciste. Can you hear me?"

"Maciste, palsy! You're coming in loud and clear! How can I help you on this fine, wonderful morning?"

Wes Weasley verbally glad-handed me over the line while gesticulating wildly on the hologram. I recognized his Top Cat-esque tone and mannerisms from one of the cartoons, granting me a small amount of experience to lean on for talking to him. Not that I needed a ton of prior knowledge to figure out Wes Weasley's shtick.

"Mister Weasley, I--"

"Oh, please! All of my friends call me Wes!"

I declined to address a guy who'd have sold me to Robotnik for two mobiums on a first-name basis. The reason he can't is that he was caught selling to both sides and forced to pick ours. In a move the freedom fighters should have seen coming, he opted to move his operations out of Robotnik's direct crosshairs and became one of the top black market dealers in Efrika. His racket back in Northamer was taken over by a hare named Downtown. No longer directly aiding either side of the war for Mobius, Wes Weasley was content to rake in the cash from its festering criminal underworld. A scenario much nastier than the cartoons presented.

Trusting him beyond appealing to his greed was a bad idea. Simple as that. After a pause, I picked up where I left off.

"I'm calling to confirm the status of my order."

The deal was simple. I put out a bounty on any and all military hardware that was left "unaccounted for" following the end of the Great War and the rapid collapse of the Overland as a political entity. All of those weapons and armor may have fallen into private hands or rotted in abandoned army depots over the years, but I was putting a lot of money down on the hunch that Robotnik didn't care about this continent enough to check. The bandit gangs he was ignoring had to get their equipment from somewhere.

Half the contract was finding them. For every gun or vehicle Wes Weasley could restore to working order, I'd buy them. If I liked how these refurbished products performed, I'd go back to him to buy more. A few days after making that arrangement, he rather enthusiastically informed me that he would have no issues supplying my demand. The guy offered me a cigar and everything. Given the surprised look of his hyena hirelings, I'd introduced him an opportunity for profit he couldn't refuse.

"All of your items have been tested and accounted for, my good sir! After you deliver the payment, we can discuss who you'd like to hire from our expansive contact network for some temp work."

It nearly slipped my mind that I still needed to hire mercenaries to train the Mercians how to use all of this new kit. I could drive a car perfectly fine -- ignore anyone who says otherwise -- but I've only held a real gun once before my recent practice with the new pistol. Any merc wary of high-risk jobs would look at training the rebels and see a cozy gig where they'd never see a fraction of action unless something went awry. The ones who lacked the patience for that were welcome to earn their pay in a more direct fashion.

"Then you wouldn't mind if I pick them up today?"

"Not at all! When should I be expecting you to visit?"

I didn't think of myself as a gullible person. Definitely was a sucker when I was younger, but these days, I could shut down an annoying telemarketer when the need arose. On the other hand, I wasn't arrogant enough to think I had the chutzpah to wrap the swindler who outplayed everyone else around my finger. Instead, I'd have to keep him off balance.

"I'm a few minutes out."

"That close?" Wes Weasley repeated. His eyes widened. "As in, you're heading this way right now?"

Keeping my heading and following the map coordinates in the communicator, I made my way to where Wes Weasley has most recently been conducting his business. Figment split off from me, becoming a blurry shadow in the heated air. He'd be my eyes and ears in case it looked like this deal was about to go south.

"Will that be an issue?" I inquired.

"Ah, not one bit! We were just scrubbing off the last of any pesky identifying logos and serial numbers. Stop by whenever you like."

"I am. See you outside."

I closed the hologram phone. I didn't like the way he sounded near the end. At least the end destination, a derelict military base surrounded by tall sand dunes and rusty barbed wire, was dead ahead. Stacks of sandbags and rubble were built up to support the fence with the semblance of a defensive wall.

I hit the brakes and dismounted my board. The layman would assume this place was abandoned and left to rot since the Overlanders retreated west, but there was a pair of armed Mad Max cosplayers at the gate. They were two, tired-looking hyenas. One with spots, and one with stripes. Spots and Stripes became alert as I walked towards them.

"State your name and business!" Spots barked.

The guards were armed with battered and beaten SMGs that hopefully didn't reflect on the quality of what I was buying.

"My name is Maciste, and I am here to pick up some equipment I've purchased from your boss," I said slowly.

Stripes picked up his walkie-talkie while Spots kept his gun on me.

"Hey boss, we got a lion here who--"

The reply was instantaneous, the bulky handheld nearly jumping out of Stripes' hand from how loud Wes Weasley was shouting.

"Would you nincompoops let him in already?! Maciste is a VALUED CUSTOMER!"

The hyenas lowered their weapons and were swift to get the automated gate open for me. Once I was in the base, I could see Wes Weasley driving up to me on a desert beige motorcycle with a faded emblem of an upside-down triangle in a circle on one side.

"Maciste!" he called out to me. "Like what you see?"

I smiled. Extreme gear was fast, if you could hold on and keep the contents of your stomach where they belong, but a half dozen of these would make a huge difference.

"Got any more in the back?"

Wes Weasley led me to one of the large hangars that had yet to collapse, one of a few sources of shelter out here from the blistering sun. Inside, I could see Wes Weasley's mechanics putting the finishing touches on an entire fleet of American ground vehicles.

"Take a look around," Wes Weasley offered with a gesture. He got off the bike to follow me as I did so.

There were more of those scouting and reconnaissance bikes, of which there were several being repainted in forest green camouflage. Beside them were several boxy, tracked APCs and armored trucks whose parts were in a variety of colors. Like the pistol, they were dead ringers for military equipment from Earth that should not be here.

"How did you find all of this?" I asked in shock.

"There's a booming aftermarket for Overland parts." Weasley said with glee. "It's a shame they aren't exporting these days, but the Nasty Hyenas and Bear Pack have been scavenging from these bases and Robotnik's scrap yards for years! I figured, if you put all of those pieces back together, you'll have enough parts to get you where you're going!"

Are these from G.U.N.? Is the Overland the United Federation? None of these details were adding up!

I was ecstatic to have these in my corner now, but at the same time I was frustrated by the lack of answers. I crouched down to investigate the cars and APCs closer. Figment tilted his head to the side. It triggered a slight twitch that I felt on my own neck.

"Then these are members of the Nasty Hyenas?"

Wes Weasley's smile became a bit more strained. He leaned in close to whisper.

"This pack of mooks is on the outs with Cannibal Queen Petra," he said conspiratorially. "It's a sensitive subject."

"Say no more," I said in such a way as to imply I understood any of that. Or that I simply wanted him to stop talking.

I stood up. Figment took off, gliding over the base as a hazy mirage. Wes Weasley patted me on the back before leading me away from the vehicles.

"But enough about that! How's about I show you some of the premium, refurbished weapons we have in stock for your freedom-fighting purposes?"

"That would be--"

I felt a set of claws wrap tightly across Figment's neck, yanking him out of the sky! His vision was covered by a red, sharpened glove, and the two hands held him in place no matter how hard he struggled to resist.

My heart started to accelerate.

"What's the matter?" Wes Weasley asked in faux concern. "If you need to set up a payment plan, we can negotiate ten easy installments of--"

The walkie-talkie on Wes Weasley's belt popped off with a message from the doormen.

"Boss, your other visitors are here!"

I spun towards the fixer, faster than I intended to.

"Visitors?" I asked in a stern, forceful tone. A hint of a lion's roar slipped its way into Maciste's dialogue. "You brought other visitors to an arms deal?"

The hyenas stopped working on the vehicles, and Weasley took a step away from me.

"Now, now, Machiste! It isn't what it looks like!"

"Are you sure?" I asked with a clenched fist and fangs bared. I could get away from this with my powers, sure, but I needed answers on where in this chain of events I was found out. The best way to do that would be to confront Weasley with an angry lion. "It sounds a lot like you're setting me up for a trap!"

He raised his hands in surrender, fearful of any physical harm that he might have coming. I stayed my hand, though the hyenas didn't seem all too concerned their employer might be moments from being torn in half.

"Relax, Maciste! They're the mercenaries you're hiring!"

"I didn't say who I was hiring!" I growled back.

"And I can respect wanting to be thorough with your selection, but these people were very eager to meet you! I put them at the top of my recommendation list, but they insisted on meeting you in person!"

"We did," a new voice called out from the other side of the hangar. "We threatened him into compliance. You should've done the same."

I turned around, and could make out four individuals past the sun's glare. A brown wildcat with blue gloves and boots, a manic green frog in an aviator's uniform, a large gorilla in a military-esque helmet and trousers, and a blue bird of prey with Figment in his claws. The ape stepped forward to address me again.

"Our master wishes to test your attributes," he said in a deep baritone. "Step forward so we may determine your worth."

My mind reeled. The next thing I did was, in hindsight, not very diplomatic. I was at the end of my wits, and did not need another stupid thing thrown at me.

I stepped forward, dropped my disguise, and unloaded my pistol into Magilla Guerilla.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

Ari the Ram and Wes Weasley both hail from the cartoons. Ari is from SatAM, and Wes Weasley is from AoSTH. Ari is on the plain side, but I find Wes Weasley far more interesting. If you're familiar with older shows and films, you might recognize Wes as a blatant ripoff of the famous "King of Chutzpah", Phil Silvers. One of his most famous performances was as Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko on The Phil Silvers Show. In addition to Wes Weasley, this fast-talking con man character also inspired Top Cat.

The appearance of a few real world weapons and vehicles, while a bit jarring, was meant to feel more jarring to the SI than the reader. Not incidentally, these are all specific references to military equipment that has shown up in different hands throughout the franchise. Most of them ended up in Shadow the Hedgehog's hands. He's a busy guy like that. In the Shadow the Hedgehog game, Maria was shot with the classic 1911! This is censored to a laser gun that "zorches" her like it's Chex Quest.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 15: Ring Elimination

The bangs of the pistol being fired multiple times echoed loudly in the hangar. You can't really appreciate how loud a gun is until you fire one enough times to cause permanent hearing damage. 'Permanent' damage that unwound itself as I turned invisible and left an identical copy in my place. I had to get closer if I was ever going to pry Figment out of the blue bird's hands.

♦ 58

The gorilla took to being shot better than I expected, the dented rounds dropping to the floor after inflicting minor bruises on his chest. He and the rest of his gang seemed unperturbed by my attack. The wildcat with blue boots and gloves winced slightly at the loud noise, but other than that? Nothing.

"Are you done?" the ape called out to my double.

His face was locked into a frown, looking even more nonplussed than before. Was he angry I attacked, or disappointed I failed?

"Who are you?" I asked, throwing my voice across the room.

"You have other things to worry about than our names," the hawk holding Figment said. "Now come outside and accept our challenge, or your little friend becomes my prey."

Figment glared at the larger bird with hateful eyes, struggling to get out of his grasp but coming up short. The frog cackled, eyes and grin uncomfortably wide, his head tilted at a similarly eye-watering angle.

"Prey-stray-play!" the frog chanted in a sing-song tone. "Won't you pla~y with us?"

What a bunch of freaks. I raised my fists, channeling power through them.

"Not interested. Let the bird go."

I wasn't confident I could take them out in one attack without hurting Figment. Could I run a portal over the bird man's arms and yank Figment free on the other side? My regular senses weren't telling me much, so, following a strange spike of heat from the Phantom Ruby, I examined them deeply with my sixth sense.

Unexpectedly, Wes Weasley walked between us. He was fearful, by the tone in his voice, but his self-preservation was outweighed by profit motive.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen! Are we not civilized mobians?"

My extrasensory perception was suddenly awash in the intense glow the four strangers exuded. I was used to people giving off faint pinpricks of 'heat' I could filter out, but something inside these weirdos made them glow like the dense electrical batteries powering Robotnik's super badniks. Or power rings. For that reason, I had to assume Wes Weasley looked at me and realized I didn't fit into the 'civilized mobians' category.

"…Or other perfectly fine examples of civilized life? We don't need to solve all of our problems with violence, do we? Not in a hangar full of all of my products?"

"My products," I chastised. "Don't go anywhere with them while I deal with these bozos."

"Whatever you say!" Wes shouted as he jumped behind a blue Humvee. The rest of his hirelings took the memo to take cover.

Each of the strangers' auras varied slightly, though they all had one thing in common. Emblazoned on each of their foreheads was an invisible, green diamond. The more I tried to scrutinize the strange sigil, the more evasive it became.

What the hell am I looking at?

The brown cat moved his head back and forth, seemingly the slowest to shake off the noise from the gun. Sensitive hearing? My illusion body walked closer to the group, and I had him crack my knuckles to present an air of confidence.

"Look, if you want to take this outside, I'm--"

The cat lunged into the air like a bolt of lightning, ignoring the illusion and heading straight towards me! I only had moments to raise up a shield and dampen the blow, but the flying kick was enough to launch me into a display rack.

♦ 54

"I was expecting more from our target than that," the wildcat declared as he rejoined his group. He moved faster than I'd ever seen a mobian move. Or anything else with a pulse. Was he as fast as Sonic? "A disappointment."

I emerged from a pile of bicycles dazed, confused, and with a wheel around my neck. Figment let out an angry tweet at his handler. My ears were ringing, but I could still hear through his.

"Move on to Plan B," the ape ordered. "Lynx, finish him off."

The lynx pulled out a knife. Not a combat knife or medieval dagger. He had a ninja kunai. I wanted to go in hard before he used it, but I couldn't do anything until they let Figment go. The magenta flicky started retching, a bit of spittle and something white hanging out of his beak. Figment sent me a simple diagram of what he was about to do.

Clever bird.

"This whelp is ill," the hawk said in disgust. He raised a talon towards Figment's eye. "If its owner isn't worth our time, then can I put it out of its misery?"

"Don't you dare!" I shouted.

I stood myself upright with flight and tore the wheel off my neck. My armor was on.

"If you must," the gorilla said dryly.

I summoned a matching pair of giant, crystal projections appearing above them. The hawk took his eyes off of Figment long enough for the flicky's beak to tighten around the large fish bone he coughed up and jab it into the hawk's hand.

"OW!"

The hawk let go of Figment with a yowl of pain, allowing my familiar to get loose and fly out of the danger zone. My crystal hands spread wide enough to reach both ends of the hangar entrance and moved straight ahead. It'd hit them like a gentle shove from a freight train.

♦ 50

The force of the palm strikes kicked up a gust of wind, throwing tools and other unattended items throughout the hangar. They stopped outside in a jarring halt, being held in place by the gorilla's own arms. He was strong. Far stronger than I was expecting. The phantom hands that could budge a tank only shifted him back a few inches at the most.

I rocketed towards where my hand projections stopped, pushing them the rest of the way shut into an all-encompassing crystal shell around the gorilla manually. He was stronger than me. The one thing he didn't have was leverage. The barrier clasped shut, sealing him in place. His heavy punches left cracks in the surface of the magenta prism, telling me I didn't have long before he was loose again.

♦ 48

I thought of drawing Morglay, and the traitor's sword appeared in my hands.

"Who's next?"

I glanced around, trying to find where the other three went. Stacks of oil drums and refuse scrap metal littered the deserted base. The lynx was on the ground, kiting around my midair position. Above me, the angry hawk was chasing Figment, who kept his distance and played evasive to avoid being eviscerated. I was about to shoot the hawk down with a hail of arrows and crossbow bolts when a thick, slimy tongue wrapped itself around my leg.

"What the--"

The crazy frog whipped his tongue down, forcing me back to the ground as the lynx came from behind and delivered a series of rapid-fire kicks to my back. This time, I planted my feet and held my ground. A row of long crystal spikes crawling down my legs were enough to discourage the frog from doing that trick again, leaving him to watch and laugh as I took on his much faster friend.

"Hee hee hee!"

♦ 44

I made a series of exploratory swipes to try and bait the lynx into giving me an opening. All of them were misses, as I couldn't move my body fast enough to keep up with his.

"You flail like a child," the lynx said between lackadaisical dodges of Morglay's lethal edge.

I trusted my arm to reach for his tail or ears. He was right in front of me one moment, then darted away before I could grab him the next. If I didn't think he was a ninja before, my doubts were banished.

"Illusions are meaningless to me! I could hear your heartbeat a mile away!"

One thing he certainly wasn't was humble. I kept the flat of my blade level, sticking out in plain view. Since he telegraphed so boldly that he couldn't see through them, I made an illusion of my head looking around to prepare for the stray cat's next strut.

"I'm sick of you dancing around!" I called out to him. "Hold still!"

The lynx silently landed on my blade once my 'head' was turned in the other direction. Sucker.

He got one syllable into another insult when I made Morglay vanish from under him and played the illusory buzz of a deforesting machine between his ears. Before the dazed feline could hit the ground, I punted him into a car on cinder blocks with a hard steel boot.

♦ 42

One down. Three to go. I flung a handful of projectiles at the hawk to keep him off my Figment's tail. My familiar flew close to me for cover.

"Head to that armory the weasel mentioned," I ordered Figment. He gave me a short nod and took off. The ape's massive fists punched a hole through the crystal shell.

"Wear him down!" he commanded the others.

My suppressive fire was cut short by the frog tossing a steel barrel at me with that twisting tongue of his.

"See if you can catch-fetch-wretch this one for size!"

I opened a portal in front of the oncoming barrel, the other end of it facing right back at the frog. He took off on unfurled flaps of skin like a flying squirrel, gliding to a new position. The steel drum ruptured, leaving an oil slick across the road.

"Hee hee hee!"

With my focus split, the hawk took the opportunity to rake open my torso plating with his sharpened talons. He dove around my body, cutting other armor pieces loose as he did so. I let out a grunt of pain from how shockingly deep the cuts went.

♦ 38

"ENOUGH!"

I flipped my surroundings to their mirror image and filled the air with fake Figments, the suddenness of it forcing the hawk to reorient and lose speed. The Figments flew into a circle and became one of the largest, heaviest things I had in Null Space: The white-metal door to the vault beneath Sylvania Castle. It came down on the hawk like a cartoon anvil. He was fast enough to avoid being crushed by it, with only his leg pinned to the ground against the oil slick. That would have been enough to let him slip loose, but I pointed my finger at and a pink spark fired out. The spark stopped inches above the oil and his head.

"Move and you're deep fried," I said darkly.

These people were trying to kill me; I was returning the favor. The hawk winced, affixing me a spiteful glare, but he wasn't going to blow himself up. He was out.

The frog swung down from the roof of a building with a giggle.

"Oho? What have you got in store for me-hee-hee?"

I slammed a giant, crystalline jar on the frog without saying a word.

♦ 35

The frog crawled around the edges of the cylinder, trying to stick his head through the openings I left in the top. They were too small for him to squeeze past, but he got disturbingly close to an escape. He plopped down on the ground, arms crossed.

"Drat! And double drat!"

"You're lucky I put holes in it."

"Au contraire! No cell can hold-fold-cold me!"

I received a mental photo of the armory and switched my vision to what Figment was seeing. The flicky was glancing at rows of ordinance in the stuffy warehouse. A lot of weapons. Rifles, SMGs, machine guns, rocket launchers, and bombs. Some solid ammunition, and others exotic laser ones. I needed something quick I could use without lots of training.

Using Figment as an anchor, I made a small portal to his location and plucked a cylindrical smoke grenade off the shelf. The frog's manic smile turned upside-down when I pulled the pin and slid it down one of the 'air' holes. The jar was quickly enveloped in smoke. After that, it was more choking than laughter.

"Just kidding about the luck thing. Have fun hotboxing."

The last thing I sent to Figment was a simple directive.

Stay out of trouble. I'll be back soon.

The lynx, hawk, and frog were down for the count. I'd check on them when I was done with the last one. I turned to finish off the ape when he dove through the fractured crystal trap in a lunge, the remains of it crumbling to a glittery powder. He was on me in an instant, forcing me to become aware he was roughly my height and much broader in width.

"You should have stayed down," he said as he drove a massive fist into my chest. I was sent straight through the perimeter barricades and onto the hot desert sand. Somewhere between the impact and hitting the ground, I felt every bone in my torso shattering and gluing itself back together. Then the head and spine, which were the things I landed on.

To call dying multiple times at once a bad fall would be an understatement.

♦ 28

My eyes were closed for an indeterminate period of time. The Phantom Ruby still had juice when I opened them again, but I struggled to rise. Super strength being applied to a hand that big was like taking a cannonball. Taking a cannonball meant pain. Pain still hurts, regardless of whether I could heal it later. What remained of my armor was beyond repair, thoroughly warped by the force of the gorilla's punch. Including the parts he didn't directly hit, like the two rings from my gauntlet that I'd absorbed unconsciously. The Phantom Ruby was working overtime to keep up with my new job as a human ragdoll.

The gorilla vaulted over the ruins of the wall and made his way towards me. Behind him were the other members of his gang. The lynx was heavily bruised from his front-ender, the hawk was flying with a broken foot, and the frog was covered in sooty residue. It was obvious they were raring to go for Round Two.

I could nearly take them on one at a time. With the lynx sensing my movements, the bird tailing me in the air, the frog reeling me in, and the gorilla breaking me in two, I was outnumbered. Outplayed. I couldn't beat them as a team, and my chances of escape were low unless I wanted to toss everything I'd worked so hard to get.

My blurred vision slipped between what my eyes could see and what they couldn't. A large, green figure loomed over the four. Immaterial. Indistinct. Three emerald eyes glared down at me with the contempt spared for the flies on your windshield.

Death was staring me in the face again, and I was left shaking.

Shaking?

I was suddenly struck with inspiration. A way out that didn't involve a desperate resistance until I inevitably lost control to the Phantom Ruby. To buy time, I encouraged the adrenaline surge that followed, forcing my body to rise with more than telekinesis. The flow of energy from the mystical gem was redirected inwards, focusing on my biology. Muscles, blood, bones, and tendons. They'd need to be stronger than they'd ever been before.

♦ 20

I knew the Phantom Ruby was turning me into something else. Whatever it was, I didn't know yet. Nor was I going to wait and find out. I took out seven of the power rings I saved for an emergency and strapped them to my body. One on each wrist and ankle. Two on each arm and leg. One around my neck. Luminescent lines spread across my veins from the source, weaving a path that went from my arm to the heart. The rest of them went straight into fueling the metamorphosis to prevent me from going dry.

♦ 10

From the heart, my blood pumped ruby red through the skin and became the other kind of plasma. The colored mist surrounding me burst into flames, my hair standing on end before erupting into a pink inferno. At that moment, I felt brilliantly alive. Running hotter than hot. The rings restrained the energy boiling inside, preventing it from exploding outwards anywhere but my head or the twin spheres of white, purple, and violet coalescing around my hands. They had their second wind, and now I had mine.

For however long it lasted.

♦ ̵̶̵̢̧͜͟͞Ꝏ͏҉̸̡̛͘͟͡

I rammed into the group at full speed. They slowed down their advance and scattered when they saw me coming at them like a man on fire. A glowing blast of violet dispersed the ghost into motes of green that were never there at all. The numbers advantage was still in their corner, but all I had to do was keep on pushing until the time was ready.

"What did he do to himself?" the lynx called out as I got all-too-close to hitting him. He was starting to slow down, and a solid strike from my fists as they were now would be a career-ender.

"He's adapting. Now it's our turn!"

I focused my assault on the ape above the others. He was their leader. If I could keep him fighting, he couldn't give them directions. The others were having a harder time harming my reinforced body. I was better at fighting back this time, delivering intense burns with my punches while the rings resisted his sledgehammer impacts. The hawk's attempts to separate me from my rings came up short. When he tried that enough times to become predictable, my arm reached several meters past its length to yank him out of the sky and slam him against his teammates.

♦ 8

The rest of the brawl became a violent, drawn-out blur. They were still trying to wear me to a standstill, and I was too stubborn to die. The light tremors and disturbances of the sand where no one was standing told me I was close to finishing this.

♦ 6

"YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOUR NAMES!" I shouted when the combat reached its inevitable lull.

"We are the Fearsome Foursome!" the hawk spat out. "I am Predator Hawk."

The rest gave me their names while we all struggled to catch our breath.

"Lightning Lynx!"

"Hee hee hee! Flying Frog!"

"Sergeant Simian. And you?"

"JOHN… WORKS… FINE."

I was starting to notice a pattern. All of their names were stupid.

Before we could continue beating on each other, a colossal, eyeless monster arose from the sand between us. It looked like a big, greenish serpent, with a large maw of teeth thicker than railroad spikes. Twin rows of needles ran down its body, to sense its surroundings and obstacles as it swam through the desert. The creature let out a horrid, guttural growl that could rattle bones as it sniffed out its next source of protein.

That was a sandcrawler. Inside of its gaping mouth was a smaller, angrier sandcrawler.

I took a step back, one centimeter above the ground. My feet still have not yet made vibrations on the sand since I got up. The giant worm paused, as though measuring how many of the Foursome it could swallow in one bite. They froze, preparing for when the sandcrawler would make its lunge.

That was my plan the second they moved this fight away from the base. Bait them into being a monster's lunch and leave it at that. Then the two-faced beast went and bowled towards me.

"It's a heat seeker!" Predator Hawk said with a hint of relief.

"IN A DESERT?!" I roared with anger.

This whole planet was stupid and didn't make sense! I just wanted to dig my fingers into this insane world and make it make sense to me!

"EVERYTHING IS HOT IN A DESERT!"

The sandcrawler didn't argue with my logic. It just moved in to swallow me whole. I pounced on the worm in a savage rage and annihilated its heads in a double-fisted frenzy.

"DIE! DAMMIT, DIE!"

Green ooze splattered and dyed the sand. I didn't stop until the titanic monster stopped moving.

♦ 4

I rose from the creature's corpse, walking back towards the Four Who Wouldn't Quit.

"ARE YOU DONE YET?"

Lightning Lynx opened his mouth.

"We are honor-bound to--"

"SCREW YOUR HONOR! I'M ASKING BECAUSE I STILL HAVE ENOUGH FIREPOWER TO GLASS THIS DESERT AND PUT SANDWORMS ON THE RED LIST!"

They said nothing, but Flying Frog kept laughing. I didn't know about killing everything in the desert, but I was more confident about turning them to ash. All I had to do was aim and fire.

Another side of me bucked against the idea of it, telling me that I still had a choice in this. The Phantom Ruby wouldn't be forcing my hand. If I took their lives, I'd have to live with it.

I don't want all of this blood on my hands! Why are you making me do this?!

"WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE YOU STOP?" I screamed.

Sergeant Simian spoke. I don't think he minded being vaporized for whatever cause brought him to pick a fight with me. His soldier theme implied he held a lot of loyalty to something.

"Will us to stop. Not with your words or your might. Your will."

"IS THAT ALL YOU WANT?" I gathered a stream of dark mist from the fringes of my mind and cast them out, enveloping the Fearsome Foursome in a ruby haze. "STAND! DOWN! NOW! DO IT NOW!!"

♦ 3

Their eyes opened wide. The Foursome tried to fight back against the command, but I overwhelmed their wills. Quashed resistance and smashed it to pieces. The diamond sigil on their foreheads faded into the background, obliging to my temporary domination.

Without saying another word, they left. Walked and limped out into the desert. I kept watching them until a white hovercraft stowed away in the dunes took off with them in it.

It was a victory. Hard earned, because I didn't get a win on this horrible planet otherwise.

I stumbled back towards the base, my body slowly cooling down as the restraining rings bubbled up and melted into my skin. The hyenas saw me coming back and drew their guns.

"DROP THEM," I snarled.

♦ 2

They threw down their weapons in a panic. Wes Weasley ran into view, being harried by Figment. I couldn't help but notice he had a suitcase with laser guns poking out of it in his hand, and that he was trying to reach one of the air bikes leaning on a post.

"You crazy bird, can't you see I'm getting the heck out of Desert Dodge?"

He got pecked in the nose. Figment must have been feeling generous, or too lazy to rip the guy's glasses off before going for the eyes.

"Owch!"

I reached for Weasley's collar and lifted him up into the air. Suddenly, I was there.

"HAVEN'T YOU HEARD YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU?"

Weasley started babbling incoherently. He was out of excuses and the only thing he thought had left was to beg for mercy. The fringes of his blazer started to burn up in my grip.

"I'M NOT GONNA KILL YOU," I said loudly, though more quiet than before.

He stopped crying.

"You're not?" he asked, legitimately surprised.

"NO," I said with a smile. "YOU'RE BEING NATIONALIZED. WELCOME TO YOUR FULL-TIME POSITION WITH THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS LOGISTICAL DIVISION. I'LL BE YOUR BOSS. YOU CAN CALL ME SCARLET."

I held him up for the rest of the hyenas to see.

"ANYONE GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"

The hyenas shook their heads furiously. I lowered Weasley to the ground, and Figment landed at my shoulder.

"GET ME A CAR BATTERY--" I cleared my throat. "--And a burner phone. I want to hire all of those mercenaries in your rolodex."

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

The Fearsome Foursome are a band of oddball villains who have worked for multiple characters over the length of the books. They might be named after a famous group of football players. Or it might be an attempt to do a play on the Sinister Six. I don't know. For most of the story they had zero backstory. They'd simply show up when an issue called for them and a gaggle of other criminals to do so. Their origins weren't elaborated upon until the tail end of the original continuity. Except Lynx, who we found more out about during the Iron Dominion thing. He's secretly a ninja simp.

Sandcrawlers made their appearance in the comic as a feature of Angel Island's Sandopolis Desert. The smaller ones can have reins attached to them like horses or camels, making them one of the few beasts of burden on Mobius! I cracked up when I found that out.

"Hi ho, Shai-Hulud!"

While its possible they only came into being after Angel Island got nuked, other games (Sonic 4, Sonic: Lost World) feature badnik and organic sandworms in them. As such, I interpreted the sandcrawler as being a predator that popped up in deserts across Mobius. How else are you going to harvest the ingredients for Lemon Sun Drops? This one having two heads was a nod to Beetlejuice.

John Scarlet's transformation method and new abilities have roots in other parts of the series. I'll leave it at that for the time being.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 16: Guns for Scryer

For how brief my battle with the Fearsome Four was, the aftermath of my furious life-or-death struggle lingered. Once the adrenaline and power rings were all used up, my body was left wracked with horrible aches and pains. It took days of leeching volts out of an Overland fuel cell and an old diesel generator to get back to a reasonable level of strength. My nerves burned all the same, and they burned the most where I used rings to prevent my body from exploding into ruby confetti.

That was a stupid idea. Stupid. Reckless. What was I thinking?

In spite of all of that, the pain was a marked improvement from feeling like a ghost trapped in my own skin. All of those weird phantom sensations and bouts of numbness came to a stop after I forced the Phantom Ruby to finish up what it was doing to my body. With the metamorphosis complete, excess weight was replaced with lean musculature. Lingering imperfections in my eyes and sinus were scoured away, leaving my senses sharper than they've ever been. The glowing streaks of energy that ran down my left arm, which were slowly receding with a power ring set over them, were now a permanent fixture.

What didn't kill me made me stronger, even if killing me was never their main objective.

The few things the Unfab Four let slip about their motives remained stuck in my mind. Who sent them to 'test my might'? Whoever they were, the green mark they put on those goons had to be some kind of magic. The kind that wasn't broken after I used magic of my own to overpower their minds. The sigil merely stepped aside and let me do my work.

Was that the 'test'? Seeing if I could, or would use my powers like that? Push me to my limit and see what happened?

Mission accomplished. Until the last second, I didn't know I possessed the power to mesmerize people. Rob them of their wills, attach strings to their minds, and tug them in whatever directions I desired. It made sense, considering that the Phantom Ruby is supposed to be able to control what people perceive. Changing what they could think was a logical next step, though now that I could dominate minds and inflict mass hypnosis, I wasn't exactly in a rush to do it again.

As it would turn out, I wasn't the only one marked by my act of desperation. Thick, black lines rippled across the once-pristine Phantom Ruby's surface. I didn't know what that meant, but my bond to the gem felt stronger than it had been. The power flowed out of the Phantom Ruby much more readily than it did when I first got it, and more efficiently. There were depths to it that I had yet to explore. Until I stumbled into a spellbook or other snippet of arcane knowledge, the best I could do to keep up with this other magician was to eat more rings and continue experimenting with the Phantom Ruby on my own.

"Watch the door," I said to Figment. My familiar gave me a short nod. He'd already healed from our fight with the Four, and was raring for action again.

He'd get more action when we got back to smashing badniks. I closed my eyes, and the cramped dimensions of the derelict officer's quarters I've been licking my wounds in were replaced with the fluorescent expanse of Null Space.

♦ 30

My own world. Like building blocks, I could form geometric shapes and rearrange objects I'd dragged in here as I saw fit. My first priority was sorting all of the junk I'd stuck in here and forgot about, making them easier to draw from later. The weapons and ammo I'd collected were plucked from the void and arranged into neat racks, including the safe door I've been using as a blunt instrument. I put the most care into an improvised mausoleum to store the petrified robians, sealed in crystal until we could cure them all.

There was an almost therapeutic aspect to trying to enforce boundaries onto a place otherwise lacking in them. Raw chaos I could grab by the neck and force to make sense.

For now, I constructed a rough ruby floor, table, and chair. They were sturdy enough to hold my weight and wouldn't go flying off into the endless horizon, which is all needed. On one hand, I wove threads of pink into a translucent, glassy sphere charged with the ephemeral aspects of the Phantom Ruby I called upon to create portals and teleport. My spatial awareness was always poor, and yet, I could finely intuit the gulfs of space and matter between Mercia and Leonus as though they were laid out on a flat map. A map that could be folded, twisted, or weaved through at my leisure.

"Here goes nothing," I said, as I willed the scrying orb to show me what I wanted to see.

The image was fuzzy, at first, the surface too thick and cloudy to see through. Same as the other prototypes. I was going to chuck it into the abyss and start fresh, but this time, I attempted to painstakingly purge the imperfections from the sphere, 'tuning' the signal until I could sharply make out the snow-covered trees of Hideaway.

"Aha! Bingo!"

My first crystal ball. Now this was a breakthrough. Definitely couldn't make one of these babies before. An incredibly useful tool, though trying to scry on places I'd never been to, like Robotropolis, resulted only in white noise.

♦ 25

I shifted the 'lens' of my perception around the village until I found Rob or somebody who could pass a message along to him. That duty ended up going to Friar Buck, who was hunched over a writing desk transcribing the contents of an old document onto another, fresher parchment by candlelight. From Null Space, I opened a violet vortex that swirled with splotches of white and magenta right outside his hut.

♦ 22

With a wave of my hand, I donned on a magenta wizard hat and cowboy poncho to fend off the chill. The poncho went over a black tunic and trousers tailored for my dimensions. The Phantom Ruby was set into one of my leather gloves, inserted in such a way that obscured the point where it fused into my hand. The gloves were matched by leather shoes with steel spikes and a leather belt with a hexagonal buckle. The leather was imitation, in the same way I hoped everyone else was wearing the fake stuff, too.

I stepped through the portal and knocked on Friar Buck's door.

"Who is it?" the vicar asked, surprise from the late-night disturbance clear in his voice.

"John Scarlet," I answered softly. "Can you remind Rob that we'll be ready to move shortly? Same place as before."

Friar Buck opened the door. His eyes were wearier than when I'd last seen him, on a jump from Efrika to Eurish I did to prove it could be done. I was only around long enough to drop off the first wave of critical supplies and give the Crazy Kritters a window as to when I'd send along the rest. That wasn't nearly enough time to see if they were holding up.

"I shall pass the message along. But first, how hath ye been? Hath thine efforts in securing aid from distant Efrika fared well?"

"We can talk about me later. As for the mercs…"

- - -

"It says here you had experience as a drill instructor during the Great War."

The man's dossier was that of a decorated officer. I would have conducted these interviews in disguise, but it's not like I could hide I was human forever. Instead, the backroom of a seedy cantina that was more Jabba's than Rick's served as the clandestine location for these mercenary interviews.

"THAT'S RIGHT!" the canine in full military dress shouted at me from across the short table we were sitting at. The tall, muscular mobian was still wearing his old helmet and service ribbons. He looked like the type who didn't take them off. Ever. "WE CHASED THE ENEMY ALL THE WAY FROM NORTHAMER TO THIS WALKER-FORSAKEN DESERT!"

It was hard to tell if Sergeant Doberman had any lingering enmity of the overlanders from that alone. Naturally, the sellswords that refused to cooperate with overlanders outright did not make it onto Wes Weasley's short list of hired guns who were willing to work with me and take contracts against Doctor Robotnik. Doberman appeared to be eager to fight anyone for anyone, so long as he had more opportunities to pin extra medals to his chest.

"That's good to hear, though, if you could lower your voice--"

"YOU JUST GIVE THE ORDER, AND I CAN TURN A MEWLING BOX OF KITTENS INTO A SQUAD OF HARDENED KILLERS WHO'LL TAKE ANY HILL AT THE DROP OF A HAT!"

He was a good candidate, if not one for stealth missions. The fact that he advocated for the usage of machine guns and rocket launchers might be the bone of contention preventing him from joining the Freedom Fighters. That, or because the Freedom Fighters are strapped for cash and I couldn't see them getting into the drug trade.

"Sergeant Doberman, you have the job. Mister Weasley should fill you in on the details."

"WAIT ONE MINUTE, BUSTER! DID YOU SAY WEASLEY?"

I frowned.

"Yes? He mentioned you worked with him on a raid of the Veg-O-Fortress."

At that moment, Wes Weasley walked in to check on our progress. I must've forgotten to put up the red stopper that signified I didn't want anyone entering.

"Johnny Boy! How are the interviews… going?"

I could tell from Weasley's strained grin that he wasn't expecting me to be interviewing Doberman yet. The sergeant stood up and pointed an accusatory finger at Weasley, who attempted to look innocent.

"THERE'S ALWAYS A CATCH WITH THIS DRAFT-DODGING CON MAN!"

Wes Weasley angrily pointed a finger back. This was the first time I saw him break character from his salesman persona.

"Oh, please! You think those tanks you play with grow on trees?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I had to cut in.

"Look. I'm running this operation. Not him."

"THOSE TANKS WERE ON THEIR LAST TREADS WHEN YOU SOLD THEM!" Doberman shouted past me.

"You don't need to shout every word," I groused. "I can see this isn't going to--"

"Read the fine print, buster! Maintenance was EXTRA!"

I stood up and dug my fingers into the wood until I felt splinters.

"Would both of you KNOCK IT OFF?"

Sergeant Doberman stopped. Wes Weasley also shut up because he remembered I was holding his purse strings.

"I, er--" Doberman stammered at a normal volume. I amped up my voice to prevent either of them from cutting me off again.

"I NEED A DRILL INSTRUCTOR TO TRAIN ANTI-ROBOTNIK PARTISANS IN EURISH. DO YOU HAVE THE CHOPS TO DO IT OR NOT?"

Sergeant Doberman snapped to attention, giving me a salute.

"Sir, yes sir! When do we move out?"

For a moment, I thought I was unconsciously mesmerizing him. As far as I could tell, that was his genuine snap reaction.

"A few days. We'll keep in touch."

- - -

Next, I moved on to arranging for a bush pilot to smuggle supplies for us on a more regular basis. Wes Weasley said he knew a daring soldier of fortune who'd risk doing the route as long as we had gold to spare. Considering how Weasley also said he was 'old pals' with Doberman, I had to take his claims about Le Duck's talents with a grain of salt.

To my surprise, Captain William Le Duck appeared very qualified for the job. The white duck wore an aviator suit and blue scarf, so he looked the part. Beyond that, he was a Mercian airman who'd been flying since their short-lived air program got off the ground. After the Great War, Le Duck took his flying skills into the private sector, having spent the Robotnik years as a flier-for-hire.

"Just one thing before I sign on ze dotted line," the duck said. Naturally, he had an accent that made him sound like a bad French impression. "To be clear, I will not be expected to participate een any direct fighting, right?"

Some soldier of fortune. On closer inspection, his record showed most of his flight hours were from barnstorming and air tours for wealthy patrons. Le Duck visibly wilted when I stated in no uncertain terms that he was going to have to make the supply deliveries in unfriendly airspace. At night, unless he wanted to do the High Sheriff's anti-air a favor and perform his illegal missions in broad daylight.

"Captain Le Duck, your skills would be underutilized if I only used you as a combat asset. Pilots of your calibur are very rare, and you would serve best in a supporting role."

"Zat ees a relief. Een zat case, I would be happy to deliver ze shipments!"

While everything I said was true, the real reason for his 'supporting role' was that I didn't want Le Duck chickening out during a dogfight. He was strictly on cargo duty only. If the aviator didn't come with his own biplane, I might've avoided hiring him entirely.

"Excellent. Is your standard rate acceptable, plus hazard pay?"

Le Duck held up a hand.

"Non."

"Double?"

"Non, non, zat will not do, either!"

My fingers came back to the wood, before I slowly retracted them. I wasn't going to ruin a table every time I lost my temper, and if I lost my temper without any power rings left, I didn't know for certain when I would get it back. Instead, I took a sip of my mazagran.

"Captain Le Duck, how high are you expecting me to go?"

He shook his head.

"You misunderstand, Monsieur Scarlet! Ever since Sonic and Tails rekindled my adventurous spirit, I have been meaning to repay the favor! For you freedom fighters, my fee ees halved!"

I blinked. That was much better than I was expecting.

"It sounds like there's a story to that," I said. "Care to share?"

"There ees! We were in the Temple of Komometz, in Soumerca! Eet was dark. Eet was dangerous! Of course, I was not scared een ze slightest…"

- - -

Two down, one trio to go.

"How do you deal with stressful situations?"

That was a loaded question.

"I try to take them in stride with a sense of humor," I answered one of my interviewees dryly. "How about you?"

The green bird -- couldn't tell what kind -- with a red bandana and a feathery cowlick rocked in his chair as he gave the question thought. His hand went under the table, and it came back with a round, black bomb. The deadly explosive looked like it was ripped straight out of a cartoon, but that didn't make it any less deadly.

"Blow them up, I guess!" Bean the Dynamite said absentmindedly.

The cream-colored polar bear sitting across from him brought a mittened hand to his face. He looked tough, and watching him pick up the remains of a truck assured me that he was at least as strong as Simian.

Bark the Polar Bear, befitting the strong, silent type that he was, said nothing in regards to Bean's antics. His silence said enough: He thought Beam was botching the job for them. Which he would have, if I hadn't already thought up a way to deal with a bomb being lobbed my way the second I saw their pictures in Weasley's contacts. I knew of them from before, and in a world where familiar faces were scarce, scant recognizability was enough for me to consider them worth the risk of approaching for the job.

I still had to be cautious, as there was some concern on my part that they were working for Nack the Weasel. Nack was a known Robotnik collaborator. As it turned out, the bird and bear answered to a red fox in a yellow and white bodysuit instead.

"Bean, what did I tell you about showing your 'collection' to clients?" Fiona Fox's tone was light, but firm, like she was talking to a small child. They've had this conversation before.

"Don't?" he fielded bashfully.

"That's right, Bean. Put it away."

Bean's beak bent into a frown. He lowered the bomb back under the table, and it was gone.

"Sorry, Mister Scarlet," Bean said, looking suitably ashamed. Or, he would have been suitably ashamed, if we were talking about a pet frog in class and not a bomb.

I couldn't resist checking under the table. It really was gone. I knew how I could pull that off, but what was his excuse?

"How did he…?"

"It's best not to ask," Fox said. "Sorry for that. I told Bean what you were having us do, and he got ahead of himself."

"That's quite alright."

I waved it off, to Bark's relief. I generally knew what to expect out of those two, and whatever I didn't get from the video games came up within the first five minutes of the conversation. Bean talked a lot, and Bark didn't say much at all. The mission I had for this group was sabotage, plain and simple. I set up the targets, and they knock them down.

Fiona Fox, on the other hand, was a wild card. Specifically, a Jack of all trades. Not an exemplary fighter, medic, pilot, treasure hunter, or tactician, Fox was good enough at all of those things to be worth the money. Other than that, her personality was much harder to pin down. I was grateful for a note from Weasley not to mention a certain bat she had a bone to pick with. Which was just as well; Rouge was the kind of agent who contacted you, and was practically impossible to contact if she didn't want to be found. The master thief was unreachable, leading to Weasley to suggest I get in touch with Fionna Fox instead.

"There's one last thing I need to make sure of," Fox said cooly, in such a way that confirmed to me she was a teenager trying a bit too hard to sound like an adult. "Will Sonic the Hedgehog be anywhere near this?"

That was a worrying question. From the tone, I took it she wasn't on good terms with him.

"Not likely."

Fiona Fox mulled over my answer before turning to her two cohorts.

"Good. Bean, Bark? We're in."

"Woohoo!" Bean exclaimed.

Bark gave a nod.

Even with that red flag hanging high, I was willing to take a risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, I could take all the help I could get.

- - -

"I got a few people." Back in Leonus, Figment heard a knock on the door. "Sorry, I'm needed elsewhere."

"Try not to overextend thineself," Friar Buck said with a concerned expression. Then, his face became harder to read. "Thine voice sounds different from before."

"Different?"

"Mister Wizard!"

I heard a shout behind me.

"You're back!" Amy cried. She was in a green winter coat, and was dragging around a black tome thick enough to stop a drawbridge. "Look at what I found!"

I turned around.

"Sorry, Amy. Gonna have to give that a read when I get back for real. See you soon!"

She tilted her head in confusion.

"But, you're already--"

I took a step back into Null Space, closing the portal behind me. A quick consultation of the crystal ball told me that space was already cleared near Hideaway for our arrival. Room had also been set aside in the valley around Sylvania Castle and the abandoned plot outside of an old cathedral in the Outlands for the same reason. We had to get everything ready days in advance, in order to make it all run as smoothly as possible.

I walked back to Leonus.

"What is it?" I called the person at the door.

The voice on the other end of the door was one of the hyenas.

"Everything's ready for the uh, movement, boss."

"Excellent. I'll be out to do the final inspections shortly."

I reeled my arm across the room to the door, the hand hooking on the handle several meters away. With a twist, the handle was turned, and the door opened. When I let go of the handle, my arm snapped back into place with an audible crack. It was a new trick that I stumbled into when I reached out and slammed Predator Hawk into the sand, possibly a side effect of my overclocking move. Evidently, it was here to stay. Once I was fully healed, I planned to integrate my increased flexibility into my combat repertoire.

I walked out to see that it was the spotted hyena, Stripes. Next to him was the striped hyena, Spots.

"Where are Weasley and the mercenaries?" I asked the hyena.

Spots and Stripes pointed at the center of the base, where I could see Wes Weasley, Doberman, Le Duck, Bean, Bark, and Fox. They were standing next to all the military hardware I've accumulated for the trip: Crates of weapons, six Humvees, four pillbox-style APCs, a dozen motorcycles, and twice the rest put together in bicycles. While most of the vehicles retained their standard drivetrains, a couple of them were retrofitted with gravity drives and boosters ripped straight out of extreme gear. I insisted that they have governors attached, to head off any skewer-related accidents that might come from boosting at full tilt through Deerwood Forest.

I gave the hyena a nod and walked towards the group, with Figment not far behind. Wes Weasley was filling the air with idle chatter, trying to sell them all a few more weapons and protective equipment before we departed.

"Is everyone here?" I called out to the ensemble, once I checked off all the guns and vehicles on the manifest.

"Ready to depart, sir!" Doberman said.

"We're ready," Fiona Fox replied. "Where's the plane?"

"I do not think everyone will fit een my plane," said Le Duck, gesturing to his red biplane that was wheeled in.

"We aren't taking a plane," I said as I held up one hand.

Channeling the loose threads of space between two points and giving them a pull, I illuminated the midnight desert with a large, magenta portal back to Mercia. The resulting wormhole was wide enough to drive the trucks through, which is what the hyenas would do once they picked their jaws off the floor.

♦ 17

I then stuck my hand through the gateway and opened smaller portals to the Outlands and Sylvania Castle, where the rest of the boxes were headed.

♦ 13

I spared a glance at the assembled group, who were in varying stages of shock. Weasley and the hyena gangsters who saw me pull this trick before were quick to recover and started loading cargo through the gateway.

Well, not Weasley. He was 'supervising'.

"Ooh, shiny…" Bean murmured, entranced by the swirling colors. Bark pulled on Bean's bandana to prevent the dazed duck from wandering into it without supervision.

"The overlander ees a witch!" Le Duck cried as he hid behind a box in fright, waving around a three-toed silver medallion in my general direction. "WITCH!"

"You don't want to stand there," I said diplomatically.

Le Duck read the label on the box of grenades and relocated himself to a pile of sandbags.

"Ah, merci, mon ami." He cleared his throat. "WITCH!"

Fiona Fox rolled her eyes.

"He's got a portal generator in his glove, you dummy!" she scolded.

She had a sharp eye. Not the complete picture, but she made a rational leap in logic from the clues provided. Doberman was the next one to regain his composure.

"O-Of course! I recognize a piece of bleeding-edge military technology when I see it!"

"Yes, yes, I was telling a joke," Le Duck said sheepishly, sliding the talisman back into his coat. "Must we go to Mercia zat way?"

I gestured to his large, red biplane, where they were loading up the supplies for his flight.

"Le Duck, you're the only one who doesn't have to take a portal. Your first shipment to Villa Stella isn't for a couple of weeks."

"Villa Stella? Zat is familiar territory! I will see you there!"

Once his plane was loaded, Captain Le Duck took off in his plane then and there.

"Any more tricks like that we should know about?" Fiona Fox asked as Bean and Bark walked ahead, followed by Doberman.

"I'll give a briefing later," I answered succinctly.

Finding the answer sufficient, she hopped into one of the truck beds as the vehicle drove through the vortex without another word.

As I watched the crates and vehicles pass through the gateway, Wes Weasley sidled up to me, pointing a thumb towards the remaining boxes. They were loaded with non-perishable food, clean clothes, and medicine from my own discretionary budget.

"You're absolutely, positively certain you want us to just give these things to the folks in Casabana?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Scarlet, palsy! I just don't see the profit in it! We wouldn't even be selling at cost!"

Weasley, to his credit, had superficial charm down to a T. That was the sort of thing that got your foot in the door as a door-to-door salesman, but he wasn't a door-to-door salesman anymore. If he kept thinking like one, he'd be missing out on what would otherwise be a very easy grift for him to pull off.

"Then you're only thinking in material terms. Tell me, what's the one thing you can't buy in Casabana?"

Wes Weasley paused to consider the conundrum.

"Chaos Emeralds?"

"Exactly." I stopped and realized his answer wasn't remotely right. "Wait, no! That's wrong! I was looking for 'charity'!"

"Then you came to the wrong place."

I glared at Weasley, and he let out a nervous chuckle.

"Stay with me here. Have you seen Casbana? The only thing you can't find there is charity. A helping hand. Ever wonder why Al Capone sponsored a soup kitchen?"

"Who?"

"Scratch that. Does Downtown Hare sponsor any soup kitchens?"

"A couple, but I never saw the appeal of it myself."

"The appeal is that if you provide people with the things they need to survive, they'll remember it. Keep giving to them, when no one else will. You'll get a lot more loyalty and goodwill than if you sold at cost. You can't buy either of those things with gold."

Wes Weasley was flummoxed by the paradox of giving a little and getting a little. Then, it clicked. He rubbed his palms together greedily.

"Aha! I knew the poor are an untapped market! I just needed an in!" He shoved his hand into mine and shook it. "Oh, I knew signing up with you would be a good idea!"

That was… close enough to what I was intending. I'd have to check in later to make sure he doesn't take it in the wrong direction.

"I'll keep in touch," I said to him, once the cross-country transport was done.

Weasley stopped paying attention to me. Rather, he had the hyenas loading up his luxury hovercraft with crates.

"Move it along, boys! We're gonna be giving those huddled masses a very merry holiday!"

I stepped back into Mercia, onto a Deerwood Forest clearing. A layer of snow covered the ground. Several of Deerwood's giant trees were nearly barren of their leaves, changing them into ominous pillars of wood laid out across the landscape. Rob O' the Hedge and David the Dormouse were in the middle of the fracas, dictating where different resources would be moved and allocated.

"Hail and well met," I said as I flew over to them.

"Friend John!" Rob replied in greeting. He was his usual, bombastic self, though I could sense a degree of exhaustion beneath the surface. He was tired. "You hath certainly delivered on thine word! And then some! These armaments and conveyances should tip the scales of war in our favor."

As they walked through the Outlands portal, I saw Monsieur Chat passing a wad of mobiums to Fifi. The former forked over the cash with a scowl, while the latter was happy to receive it.

"I didn't want to disappoint."

Presto and Cadence were carrying a box as a duo. Presto lifted with his legs, and Cadence lifted with her wings. Lady Finella and her Highlanders came through the Sylvania Castle gateway to assist, though most of their supplies were strictly civilian. That didn't stop Finella from heckling Spots and Stripes until they handed her a crate full of SMGs.

"It's good to have you back."

"It's good to be back." Back to what I'd been calling my home away from home. Home in general was starting to feel like a distant concept. Considering that it was past dark here, too, Friar Buck was likely putting Amy back to bed. "Hey, where are Arthur and Gilbert?"

Rob hopped off the stump he'd been standing atop.

"David, couldst thee handle things from here?" David Dormouse gave a quick reply, and Rob started to walk back towards Hideaway. "Come with me."

"Where are we headed?"

"It wouldst be better if thou saw them for thyself."

We stopped at a white tent that had been erected in the middle of Hideaway while I was away. It only took me a moment to realize its purpose.

"Oh."

The levity drained out of me when it once again hit me that we were at war, and that this was a medical tent. While I was a continent away, the war was happening without me.

"The High Sheriff has escalated his effort to exterminate us, requisitioning super badniks to serve as horde commanders for his robotic raiders."

We burned the midnight oil catching up on what I missed. The kinds of killing machines that were picked out to deal with The Scarlet Wizard and became their problem instead. No one died yet, but the ones taken alive had only the roboticizer to look forward to.

The next morning, I'd check to see how bad the damage was.

Then I'd make sure it didn't happen again.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

As with Wes Weasley, Sergeant Doberman and William Le Duck are from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Doberman had about as many appearances as Wes Weasley scattered over the show. Le Duck, on the other hand, was a one-episode wonder.

Bean & Bark were characters created for Sonic the Fighters to pad out the roster with more play styles. Bean's design was a nod to Dynamite Dux. The two characters took on a life of their own over the years, alongside fellow side character Nack the Weasel/Fang the Sniper. The trio have been mainstays in the comics as Team Hooligan, and they've gone so far as to get an appearance in Sonic Mania. They never got a starring role, but that doesn't make them forgotten.

Fiona Fox's backstory is, in the spirit of the comic book medium, too complicated for its own good and involves being replaced by a robot. While it isn't 100% canon, I gave Fiona her jumpsuit early because the alternative was just her wearing a belt, shoes, and bow. Which would be kinda weird when most of the female characters wear actual clothes.

Yes, I know Sally didn't wear pants until the reboot. She had a jacket.

 

[weredrago2]

Metal Sonic Jazz
Non-Canon Bonus

Compared to the frenetic gunfight that nearly lit the Oil Ocean on fire, the flight to my next destination was relatively uneventful. Taking off from a runway in the Great Desert, my aerospace frame flew at supersonic speeds over the body of water separating Northamer from Soumerca. Sonic could keep his bragging rights about being the fastest thing on the ground, but Jet was going to have to take the lead out if wanted to stand a chance against a performance machine with a cruising speed of Mach 2 like me.

The drawback of flipping down my nose cone, drawing in my limbs, and transforming into a space jet was that I had to see through the cameras on what'd otherwise be the back of my head. Their shutter speed was fast enough to stop me from crashing into anything at full speed, but they saw the world with significantly less depth and sophistication than my primary sensory core. The one I had to conceal behind a visor to avoid terrifying people when they saw a giant, red orb glaring at them.

I really need a press agent. Maybe Sally can stick a fridge magnet to my chest and call it a symbol of friendship?

I tuned into the Robotnet to pass the time, routing my traffic through the orbital Sky Spy I hijacked to mask my location. The Robotnet was much like the early internet on my Earth: All channels were reserved for military intelligence, and fairly dead outside of it. All activity was nominal at Robotropolis and the territories operated by the Sub-Bosses. The most recent messages were a pair of global orders from the Big Egg himself to report any signs of 'malcontent machinery' and a mass recall on any badniks too old to be compatible with the patch he designed to lock me out of the chain of command.

Recalling all of those outmoded robots and rolling out new ones to replace them was going to be a significant strain on his resources, even if it was a smart idea in the long run. According to encrypted messages passed along to me from Crocbot -- the tin tyrant of Downunda whose ambitions creeped far beyond his official directives -- Robotnik had been getting stricter with the freedoms meted out to his more intelligent robots since I went 'rogue'. There were harsher material quotas and stricter check-in times. Failure to comply with either would result in their warranties being voided with extreme prejudice.

It seemed my rather close attempt on Robotnik's life during whatever he was planning at the Carnival Night park spooked him more than I thought. I only had one shot at ending this madness before he realized I wasn't beholden to Metal Sonic's loyalty coding, and I missed it because I was too disoriented by freshly booting up into a foreign body to land a kill shot. Sir Charles was still helping me come to terms with the fact I was no longer made out of flesh, blood, and sinew, but that little hangup wouldn't stop me from trying to take Robotnik down when the opportunity presented itself again.

Was I always this cold-blooded? Or would that be coolant-blooded? Whatever.

Regardless of the fact that I wasn't the robot he programmed, Robotnik thought I was one of his and was acting accordingly. Considering that Heavy and Bomb really did go rogue at the same time I escaped, he wasn't totally off base. Robotnik's intent to throttle the independence of his far-flung super badniks like Crocbot and Octobot was reading loud and clear. They publicly took their lumps, but the fact I received an ironclad gift basket from them both told me they were considering a defection of their own. The 'defective' members of the Badnik Horde were to be dropped off to be dropped off at holding areas like Scrap Valley and the Robo Hobo Jungle to be forgotten about. I'd have to check on Ditso and the others to see how they're holding up, once the Surveillance Orbs have cleared out.

My GPS pinged as Mt. Mobius Island came into sight. The colossal mountain that was the area's namesake loomed over the long stretches of brush and woodlands surrounding it. Rusted spikes and vents peppered the surface of the mountain's jagged cliffs, and a boiling sea of lava cast it in an eternal dance between light and shadow.

Without the mustachioed scowl carved onto its face, one could forget that Mt. Mobius was once known as the Veg-O-Fortress. Soon, it'll be known to me as my new base of operations. It took Sonic the Hedgehog three separate attempts to break in and wreck this place, and it now layed abandoned to the elements of earth and fire. The island wasn't too far from the mainland, but it was too dangerous for anyone to come snooping around without a good reason. All that was left of the Veg-O-Fortress was one bad eruption away from becoming completely unsalvageable.

I switched to subsonic flight, a hair below stall speed, and flew into the narrow tunnel at the base of the mountain. A long rail ran atop the lake of fire, but I trusted it as far as I did the comically large flippers. I'd take flight over the fickle whimsies of Robotnik's deranged pinball architecture any day of the week.

>SELECT: TREASURE SCOPE

My radar attachment popped open and scanned the area. Unfortunately, what little Sonic didn't smash up left much to be desired. The lower levels of the Veg-O-Fortress that weren't reclaimed by lava were smeared in a thick paste of toxic waste, the kind of which glowed neon green and gave Geiger counters anxiety. Having to land to turn the geothermal pumps back on, I did an aerobatic loop, flipped up my main spine, and extended my legs atop a thin strip of land that I hoped wouldn't strip my blue-and-flames paint job.

Once my feet were on solid ground, my left ear began to buzz.

>INCOMING CALL FROM: KNOTHOLE
>PRIORITY: LOW

Low priority? That meant it wasn't an emergency call, which was usually the only kind I received from them. After that were requests to know my location and activities, to prevent any wires being crossed between their missions and mine.

>ACCEPT CALL

I extended my ear into a full satellite dish. The video feed from the freedom fighter's base in the Great Forest started to buffer in the top left corner of my HUD. Ambient radiation from the toxic waste and volcanic heat did little to disrupt my advanced communications suite. I was expecting it to be Princess Sally, as she was the one calling nine times out of ten.

"John here. What can I do for you, Princess Acorn?"

I almost went by Kilroy, but the best way to hold on to my old identity was to keep my name. I was also proud of how I sounded, as it took hours upon hours of tweaking my voice box from the Sonic-esque default to one approximating my old one. The end result was, for reasons I could never hope to comprehend, a voice that sounded an awful lot like Tom Kenny. Not that I was complaining.

"There may be a mistake. I was attempting to contact Metal Sonic Version 2.5."

The young woman on the other end of the line spoke crisply and with fine precision. She sounded an awful lot like Sally, but her inflections were too stilted. Automated. The video feed I typically expected was replaced with a 'NO OUTPUT' message. Either Sally was replaced by a very poor Auto Automaton, or…

"Nicole?" I ventured. "You're the AI who helps the freedom fighters."

It was more polite than saying, "Hey, it's Sally's feature phone!"

"That is correct," Nicole said flatly.

>SELECT: PLASMA PULSE

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. I walked further into the ruins of the Veg-O-Fortress, one arm transformed into a cannon connected to my engine chamber to pick off obstructing debris.

"What can I do for you?" I asked. "You have the right guy, but it's John. Not Metal Sonic."

"Updating your registered name in my database." She paused. "Database update complete. I wanted to ask you a question, John."

A large, serpentine badnik reared its reptilian head out of a pool of boiling sludge. The badnik was heavily damaged, either from a prior fight or the slime it was left to fester in, but functional enough to talk and fight.

"Back for round four, needlenose?" The badnik craned its neck closer to me. "Did you get a quill wax--?"

>SELECT: MEGA MUCK

One of my arms became a hose. I fired a stream of purple, quick-drying ooze at him and kept walking.

"A question?" I inquired.

"HEY! GET BACK HERE!"

I shot another blast of mega muck over his snout. The stuff was too toxic for me to risk using on organic targets, but when would I need to do that when there were guys like Rexxon? I had to pay him back for all of the grief he gave me in the game somehow.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Sweeping up the place. What was your other question?"

"If you do not identify as a former Metal Sonic, what makes you what you are?"

I frowned. The mouth on my face plate served no practical purpose, but my smart metal constitution allowed me to fabricate all sorts of things on the fly. A mouth was easy, and it still felt weird not to have one.

"I've been over this with your friends, Nicole." As well as that annoying skunk I wanted to turn into a fur hat. "Appearances notwithstanding, I'm decidedly not one of Robotnik's tinker toys. May I ask what brought this on?"

"You are the only first artificial intelligence I have had comms access to and would wish to have a conversation with."

What, she was lonely? I felt kind of guilty for dismissing Nicole as a glorified user interface for a supercomputer, when she clearly had a lot more going on under the hood. Another half-wrecked badnik pounced down from its ceiling perch, this one a hissing spider tank with Robotnik's face and a tail-mounted laser cannon.

>SELECT: PLASMA PULSE
>SELECT: BUMPER SHIELD

"I'm flattered, but whether I count as an artificial intelligence or not remains the million-mobium question." I took shots at the badnik's limbs with one arm and deflected lasers with a star-emblazoned shield on the other. "Am I a human whose mind was uploaded into the body of a robot, or a power gem that was cut in such a way as to think it was me?"

"What is a 'human'? You have used the word in the past, but I do not know what it means."

I ran up to Scorpius and knocked his metal teeth out with a swing of my bumper shield. The rest of the badnik went reeling, its twisted limbs landing in a heap over the rails.

"An overlander, if you prefer. Robotnik got his hands on a power gem with 'me' etched onto its surface, and he plugged it into his robot without reading the fine print. I took over from there."

The power gem in my orgone fusion engine thrummed from the burst fire. That green hunk of rock was the only thing keeping me alive. A scratch on my Grease record was unfortunate; a scratch on the mineral with my soul written on it was unacceptable. As I was more interested in dodging death than emulating Sonic, I was free to mix and match schematics from across the Metal Series until my core was protected with enough composite plating to shrug off anything short of the Eclipse Cannon. The final result of my retooling was that I was now a steel juggernaut over twice Sonic's size. The fact that I could still move like a rocket with a running start was a side benefit.

"Do you know why your personality matrix was encoded into the crystal lattice of the power gem? Or how it entered Doctor Robotnik's possession?"

"As much as I'd like to know, I don't have a clue. Did Heavy and Bomb get these kinds of questions?"

I should talk to those guys more. Heavy was a real gentleman. He insisted that I be given a chance to help the good guys if he and Bomb could, which stopped Knuckles and Mighty from punching my lights out. I had no idea what was going on in Bomb's robo brain, but he was probably on the level?

"Yes," she replied earnestly. "Heavy and Bomb were robots who turned against Robotnik of their own free will, and power gems are believed to be involved in the process of those free wills manifesting. In debriefings with the Rebel Underground, they have described your situation as similar, but unique."

"Is that a thing power gems are known to do?"

"Data is insufficient, as power gems are less stable than chaos emeralds, and are therefore harder to predict. Causing spontaneous sapience is something power gems are now known to do."

I dismissed my weapons and stopped at a large terminal that Sonic must've sped past before he could think to bulldoze it. Extending a footlong data spike from my arm and jamming it into an exposed port, I quickly analyzed that most of the contents on the hard drive were inaccessible. Possibly fried.

If I couldn't get this working, this whole excursion could be a bust. At this point, there was no harm in asking for help.

"Nicole, if I sent you the schematics of a Robotnik computer that's been damaged, could you tell me a way to retrieve the contents or get it working again?"

"Certainly. Please send me the data."

I imagined that I would have blinked if I still had eyelids. That was easy.

"Thanks, Nicole."

I transmitted what scant information I could. A few seconds later, she provided detailed instructions on how to carefully remove the terminal's casing and interface with the data I needed on the drive directly. I had a lot of mechanical know-how saved in my knowledge banks, but this was far beyond what I could come up with on my own.

"You appear to be at Mt. Mobius. Would you like my assistance in reactivating the geothermal generators of the Veg-O-Fortress?"

"Nicole, were you able to figure all of that out from the tiny packets of data I sent?"

"No. You left your GPS on and have been transmitting your location to me."

I turned my location off.

"Aheh. Now that you mention it, I could use a hand putting this place back together."

"I do not have hands. Can I still help?"

"I don't see why not."

The next couple of hours were spent listening to Nicole talk me through the arduous process of repairing the critical infrastructure of the volcano base with only the other pieces of junk that were around. Once I had the hang of things, Nicole filled the air space with stories about what her friends got up to when they weren't fighting for their lives. Teenage gossip wasn't exactly riveting, but I let her talk. She obviously needed someone to hear her out. By the time we were able to get the pumps online and drain the interior of the base, I had a much better grasp of Nicole's emotions as they carried through her vocoder. Her genuine voice.

"Thank you again for the help, Nicole. I don't think I could have figured any of that higher-level engineering on my own."

"It was no problem! We should do this again sometime. When will you be converting another former asset of the Robotnik Empire?"

"You don't need to wait for me to do that if you just want to talk," I replied.

"I see. Then I would like to do this another time. Sally needs the radio. Goodbye!"

"See you later, Nicole."

>END CALL

Nicole was a good kid. I'd have to get her an actual body for her birthday. Like an Auto Automaton shell that she can pilot remotely and better interact with her friends. Or a bomber plane, though that be my own bias bleeding through.

I dialed up another number on my contacts. Heavy picked up on the first couple of rings, his boisterous tone nearly knocking my antenna loose from the volume.

"Good evening, my fellow goodnik! How are your salvaging efforts at the old volcano base?"

I put my receiver back in place and turned his volume to the lowest setting before 'mute'.

"N-Not too bad, Heavy. In fact, if you're interested in breaking out the old repair-bot protocols, I've got a real fixer-upper that might be up your alley."

"That's splendid! Capital! What do you say, old chap?"

"Ping!" chimed Bomb.

"I couldn't agree more! It sounds like a job for the Mechanix!"

"Ping ping!"

"Verily! We'll put together a shuttle and make our way over there, post haste!"

"I appreciate it."

>END CALL

My final task was to climb down the levels of the Veg-O-Fortress until I reached the gutter where I left Rexxon and Scorpius.

"You!" Rexxon called out to me. His jaw strength was a lot higher than I thought for him to be able to chew through that Mega Muck. "You're not Sonic at all!"

"No kidding."

I walked closer to them. Scorpius hissed at me again. Could he not talk?

"What are you gonna do to us?" Rexxon asked.

>SELECT: METER WRENCH
>SELECT: SLICER BLADE

"A repair job." My arms became a giant wrench and a mantis blade that went through the painstaking process of cutting Rexxon loose and reattaching the parts I detached Scorpius. "You two look like you could use a visit to a mechanic."

"Why're you helping us now, when you tarred me and beat the tar out of him?"

"It occurred to me that I'll need robots to guard the base while I'm away. You're both already familiar enough with this facility that I'm willing to renew your lease on life. Any questions?"

Rexxon shook his head.

"No questions. I'm in." Scorpius let out a horrid screech. "Scorpius says he's in too."

I finished my spot repairs and let them go to their assigned areas until the Mechanix arrived.

"Excellent. My name's John, and I'd like to welcome you to the Goodnik Horde."

- -

Spoiler: Author Notes / Lore

This is the first "What If" chapter of Ruby Haze! Should it not have been made clear before, nothing in this chapter has occurred (or is occurring) in the same universe as the numbered chapters. Metal Sonic Jazz and any other bonus chapters should be considered as taking place in their own, hypothetical universes.

This SI's Metal Series body combines features from the Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Silver Sonic, and the ambiguously canon Mecha Sonic Model No.29, or Rocket Metal. Most of his weapons and attachments are borrowed from Robitnik's disparate inventions or other badniks, with a dash of Mega Man for texture.

This chapter also doubles as a tribute to Sonic Spinball. Why not, really? I had to set the chapter somewhere.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 17: Crystalline Methodology

It's been said that the human brain prefers patterns and routines to spontaneity. New things take time to comprehend. Setting up a schedule would, at least in theory, reduce stress and reallocate that processing power to where it could be better spent. The craziest shakeups to the status quo could be survived and managed if there was time to better understand them.

Time wasn't a luxury on my side. I couldn't take a vacation in the middle of our battle against Robotnik's forces to decompress and compartmentalize everything being thrown at me, but I had enough self-awareness to recognize that I was fraying around the edges. The Phantom Ruby was reactive to my mental state, if not psychoactive. I already had high blood pressure and anxiety before all this started; I could and would lose control again if I didn't find a way to keep my innumerable stressors under control.

The name of the game was to adapt or go crazy. As going crazy wasn't in anyone's best interest with a WMD strapped to my hand, I forced myself to create a routine out of the extremely volatile, unpredictable, and chaotic career of being a freedom fighter.

My mornings began at midnight, when I would assist the night watchmen in monitoring Deerwood Forest for threats while the rest of the freedom fighters rested. It was now solidly winter, and the cold had a chilling effect on our forward momentum. The season would be one of rest, recovery, and playing on the defense. The villagers we'd taken under our wings could hardly farm, so they foraged for whatever they could find to supplement their diets of meted-out rations without drawing the notice of badnik patrols. That diet would have included meat from hunting and livestock, if the mobini hadn't developed fascinatingly annoying behaviors to avoid such a fate.

A bright blue raccoon poked its head out of the evergreens, interrupting my train of thought. It began to approach the treetop platform I'd been standing at. Without any goading or provocation from me, the raccoon got close, started to wag its tail, and let out a sorrowful whine. Its big eyes bored into the dried apple pastry in my hands, which was a significant step up from the culinary act of desperation that was hardtack.

"Go away," I said without malice. "I'm an apex predator."

The raccoon called my bluff. It sensed I wouldn't cause it harm, and refused to budge. He kept staring at me until I tossed the critter the rest. Satisfied, the tiny raccoon chewed up the ersatz Pop-Tart, gave me a hug, and scampered away back into the woods.

I let out a weary sigh. More mobini would come back later and do the same thing, scoping out the saps who wouldn't turn them into stew and guilting them into giving away food instead. This adorable freeloader had developed a taste for MREs, and learned to wait until Figment was away to avoid getting squawked at. Other creatures have taken to moving into a warm home until the weather was more favorable, practically domesticating themselves. If only irksome animals were my greatest concern.

A few minutes later, my familiar arrived from his sweep. I analyzed the forest with my crystal ball, while he got a deeper look through the trees.

"See anything?" I asked.

Figment shook his head. He didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I knew what he saw, but I had to ask. Since he also saw what I saw, I knew that he had consciously opted not to mock me for once again being taken for a sucker by that raccoon. It was the dead of night, and we'd see the light of the flamethrowers coming from Snottingham by now if the super badniks were on the move.

A peaceful silence reigned for the period of time that followed, so I took out a book to better pass the time. It was a thick, aged grimoire, with a black cover and yellow pages. The Ars Ixia sat heavy in my hands, the weight from what almost seemed to be more than the physical volume of the contents would imply. It took many cold, dark hours of solitude for me to make any progress in deciphering the secrets within.

In hindsight, I don't know why I was expecting this to be a technical manual for learning magic. The Ars Ixia was the kind of reading material that got mobian witches invited to Burning Man, Salem-style, encouraging its jealous processors to make it about as easy to sink your teeth into as a cement éclair. Large sections of the book were too damaged to be legible, and what parts of the cryptic manuscript I could read often discussed concepts I lacked a background knowledge to fully grasp the subtleties. In spite of these setbacks, I was able to identify that the parts I could get were of critical importance.

The basic principles of these Ixian arts are derived from the very essence of nature. Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. With mastery over the elements of Mobius comes the mastery of chaos itself. Chaos is power, controlled by your will. With a deep power stone in your possession, the gateway to the crystalline magicks becomes open.

The grimoire echoed the sentiments of Friar Buck's holy book, with a more pragmatic edge to its doctrine. I initially dismissed their description of the classical elements providing the foundation for form beyond the primordial chaos as figurative and allegorical, but this cast a couple of the tricks I've been pulling off in a new light.

Blasts of ruby-red Fire. Strength and toughness of the uncompromising Earth. Ethereal flight across the Air. Now, I have flexibility like Water. Even if it was a stretch.

It also confirmed that I had been using the Phantom Ruby to skip the entry-level magic and jump straight to the extremely dangerous stuff the entire time I've had it. The "crystalline magic" was the expression of the fifth element, harnessing the raw chaos of the universe through a "deep power stone". The grimoire was scant on what that field of magic actually entailed, but my illusions, hypnosis, and crystal constructs had to come from somewhere. Chaos manipulation was being hyped up in the book as a discipline on the arcane deep end, and I'd been doing it from day one.

Perhaps that's why using some powers with the Phantom Ruby felt more taxing than others? A high amount of inexperience leading to a lot of energy going to waste? Did I already count as having a deep power stone, or would I have to keep searching for a real chaos emerald in order to increase my output?

Past the various rites and incantations, there were also detailed illustrations of mythological creatures. These diagrams were more akin to an old encyclopedia on natural history than the fanciful portraits in Amy's story books. The most striking of them were depictions of chao-like fairies, fire-breathing dragons, and colorful, fearsome ogres that invoked the imagery of viking raiders. The spikey barbarians also looked a lot like zeti, if filtered through who knew how many centuries of misinterpretation.

Are zeti merely myths here? Or actual beings that faded into legend?

I rolled my eyes at a drawing of a black and red ogre kicking a puppy, a jagged grin scrawled across his face.

That settles that. The only remaining question is if the Ogre's Causeway in the north is somehow linked to the Lost Hex.

Eventually, the arcane lettering started making my eyes hurt. I put the book away and continued experimenting with the apprentice evocations. I could have done this and the crystal ball scrying indoors, but I didn't want to shut myself out from the outside world. Again. I short-sightedly asked Figment to start pecking me if it looked like I was isolating myself from the others, and boy did he relish the opportunity. The devious bird wouldn't take "I changed my mind", "you can stop now", or "stop yanking my hair because I don't know when I'll start losing it" as viable answers.

Practicing magic from the ground level was a struggle, as I had to reject the glittering pink constructs of the Phantom Ruby in order to learn the fundamentals. As such, I kept things simple to start with. Taking a note from Avatar, I adjusted the way I moved while trying to conjure the different elements. A firm, rigid stance as I lifted stones, a fluid posture while melting snow back into water, more flowing motions while summoning a light breeze, and then I dropped all of that so I could light the pipes and cigarettes of the night watchmen without looking like a weirdo.

I wasn't sure if the motions themselves were doing anything to assist me, but they helped reorient my mind towards the ideals of each element. Switching gears as cleanly as possible. It took painstaking effort to work backwards. Unlearn old habits. All so I could gradually untether the different aspects of my magic from the glittering pink constructs generated from the Phantom Ruby. Breaking the quintessence up into the base four.

After a while, the other stiffs on the graveyard shift stopped reacting when I would flex my spellwork to pass the time.

♦ 30

This new form of magic I was exploring was intellectually stimulating, though I doubted these cantrips would do more than distract a badnik for a few seconds before they tried caving my head in with a laser-tipped mace. I'd need a lot more time or raw power than I had for the elemental spells to do anything more than that. Like always, the Phantom Ruby did the bulk of the heavy lifting. Without it, I couldn't start as much as a spark.

When the sun rose, I closed my book and observed the changing of the guard. They'd need me in Sylvania soon, while Figment would stay here in case of an emergency. I spared the Ars Ixia one more inquisitive glance before depositing it back into Null Space.

I suppose I'm some kind of lucky not to have done myself in with a hex gone awry. At least getting my hands on one of these was easier than I thought it'd be.

- - -

"Can I read your fortune? Please?"

My first thought upon finding out that Amy was holding the genuine book of magic hostage in exchange for me spending time with her was that I probably could have avoided this. Amy was trying to hand it to me before the Leonus supply drop, and then later realized this was a more clever way to get what she wanted.

I couldn't be mad. Not just because I appreciated her sharpened bargaining skills. She was being really helpful, plucking this book out from wherever she found it, and this was how I could repay the favor. Was I really so busy that I couldn't spend a few minutes indulging her? That it would somehow cause me harm?

"Pretty please, Mister Wizard?"

I thought about mobians being roboticized on assembly lines and megafactories churning out toxic smog, then chucked those thoughts out. I couldn't be everywhere at once, and Rob had all but ordered me to take a break from field activity since I told him about how thoroughly unrelaxing my trip went. So I did have time for Amy today.

"Okay," I conceded. "You can show me my fortune."

Besides, I couldn't say no to those eyes.

"Woohoo!" Amy threw her disheveled deck of tarot cards into the air, and then scrambled to pick them all up again. "Follow me!"

Once I'd said yes to getting my future read, Amy led me to her room, which had the windows covered with blankets. The only light inside were a dozen candles she set up to enhance the atmosphere. Amy had me sit at a wooden chest she'd put a cloth over, and from the other side she was busy at work reshuffling the cards.

"Have you had your fortune read before?" she asked.

"Not really," I answered. JRPGs didn't count. "How's it work?"

She lit up when I said that, and began shuffling more dramatically. The cards were of varying conditions, colors, and stylings. I got the impression that she had to scavenge her cards from whatever loose ones she could find, until she was playing with a full deck.

"First, tell me your problem!"

"My problem?"

"Yeah! If you have a problem, the cards will show the way! So, what is it?"

I didn't know where to start.

"How about we let the cards decide?"

She beamed at my answer.

"Okay! I'm going to do a three-card spread! One for your past, one for your present, and a card for your future! Then we'll know what your problem is, and how we're gonna solve it!"

Amy tossed down the first card, which bore the picture of a compass on a map. I don't think I've seen that card before. Are the arcanas different here?

"What's that?" I asked.

"This card's a good one! It's about visiting new places, starting new journeys, and meeting new people! Pretty cool, huh?"

"So my past involved me going somewhere new by surprise?"

Was I reading into that too much? Even with all of this literal, bona-fide magic I was dealing with these days, I didn't want to become too susceptible to magical thinking. It was still a bit eerie for my first card.

She eyed me suspiciously.

"Are you sure you didn't do this before?"

"Sorry, sorry. Carry on."

Satisfied with my answer, Amy drew the next card. On it was a glossy, green emerald. She frowned, realizing that the gem should be facing me and not her.

"That's weird. The Master is for strength, control, and confidence. What's a card like that doing in reverse for your present?"

"Beats me." I tried to give a noncommittal shrug, and Amy gave me a look I couldn't place. We said nothing for several seconds. "Did you want to draw a new one and try again?"

She shook her head with conviction.

"No way! The cards are never wrong! This is the same deck that revealed to me that I'd meet Sonic the Hedgehog, and that one day he'd marry me!"

I opened my mouth to introduce her to the concept of confirmation bias, but opted against it. This was her moment, so I'd let her have it.

"You are the card expert."

"That's right! Don't worry, Mister Wizard! We'll find a way to fix your problem in no time!"

She drew the third card, which bore a group of mobini in a circle, holding hands, surrounded by a giant heart.

"What's this one?" I already had a guess as to what it was about on the image alone.

"This card is my favorite! It's about community, friends and family! People you trust to have your back!"

"I… see."

Amy struck a dramatic pose.

"I know you came from a different place, and you haven't felt like you fit in, but that's okay! I believe in you, and Cousin Rob and everyone else believes in you, so you can believe in yourself, too!"

I blinked.

Did she just…?

I let myself smile for once. She was supposed to be the heart of her team, so I couldn't be too shocked she suspected I was going through something.

"Heh. Thanks, Amy. I appreciate it."

"You can count on me!" She picked up the magic book from her bed, and spun around in a twirl, which caused her to smack me in the face with it at full force. "Oops!"

- - -

I clutched my head. As it turned out, my future had a couple more headaches in it.

"Pick up yer sword, drood!"

While I was away in Efrika, the Lops of Clan Argyle had adapted to their new warren the best they could, digging into the hilly area around the old castle grounds. I didn't know what her status was before they were attacked by Robotnik's forces, but Lady Finella has been the undisputed clan chief since they resettled. When she wasn't busy caring for her family, Finella insisted that she be the one to handle my lessons in swordsmanship.

"Sure, sure," I said groggily. I got off the ground with a grunt, and picked up Morglay from the ditch the sword fell into when it last got kicked out of my hand.

"Good. We ain't yet done wit 'yer trainin'!"

In Lady Finella's own words, Rob O' the Hedge was "a touch too soft", and Monsieur Chat "swings like a wee lass". I had to admit, neither of them had the ideal skill set to train me with a heavier blade. Nor did I imagine Chat would consider it a good use of his time.

Naturally, Finella had me perform our training duels with the real sword I'd be using in combat. I went at her again, a bit more cautiously than before, and the end result was the same. The battle-hardened lop rushed past my guard and knocked me over.

♦ 25

"Yer far too careful," Finella chided. "Yer big n' strong, so what're ye holdin' back fer? Put yer back into it!"

We began again. If my last couple of battles have proven anything, it's that I can't always shy away from close combat. Nor should I, with my augmented biology putting me at an advantage against regular mobians and the weaker badniks. High-powered ruby blasts were too draining to abuse. More recently, several of my challengers have had more than enough armor or mobility to make picking them off at a distance easier said than done.

"Keep yer focus!"

Getting frustrated, I fought more aggressively, putting Finella on the backfoot. I didn't want to put all of my strength behind a sword swing, in fear of taking things too far, so I summoned my extreme gear shield and pushed her away. The extra reach and momentum from my extending arm caused her to go hurtling back into a snowdrift. Instead of falling through, she landed on her feet atop it.

While holding a claymore. How'd she manage that?

"Aha! Now we're talkin'!"

Before Finella could lunge at me, the duel was interrupted by an armored truck tearing up the ground in our direction. The swordswoman and I dodged out of the way, while the heavy offroader kept going. I flew after the runaway vehicle, which was moments away from slamming into one of the stone pillars around the castle. I could see the lop inside of it, a young man that had clearly freaked out and forgotten how to drive.

I didn't want to wreck the truck or the driver. Without a lot of time to do anything too elaborate, I got back in front of the truck and dug my heels in. With pink spikes shooting down my legs, I pushed as hard as I could to stop it.

I'm as strong as I need to be, and I need to be strong enough to stop three tons of truck!

The force field protecting my body curved around the vehicle, giving me the leverage I needed not to be sent over, under, or through it. The ground I was standing on was still covered in icy dirt and slush, so we skidded until the crystal hands I shoved inside the car pushed the rabbit out of the driver's seat.

♦ 20

The hands took control of the vehicle, heading off a head-on collision. I let out an exhalation of relief when it came to a complete stop. One of the hands I made tossed me the keys before I cast them all away, and I investigated the lop inside to see if he was still with us. Finella and a few of the other lops came around to check what happened.

"Kinney!" Finella said as she rushed over to him, her usual rough tone completely vanished. "What'n the Walkers happened? Are ye hurt?"

"A'hm awright, Finella," he said in a daze. "Jes' lost control o' the crazy thing."

Upon confirming he was in one piece, Finella went from hugging Kenny to throttling him.

"Then what th' heck did ye think yer doin', givin' me a heart attack?!"

Ah, there it was. Seeing that nobody got hurt, Finella started chewing him out and threatening to restrict him from driving anything with more than a single wheel. As she was currently indisposed, the middle-aged lop with the mutton chops and walking stick walked up to me. He was Finella's right-hand rabbit. I believed his name was Lennox?

"Thanks again fer having Clan Argyle's backs. Think we could bother ye one more time to get that thing back to its shelter?"

I opened the door to the truck and adjusted the seat for my height.

"Need a ride?" I offered, taking note of his limp. Lennox accepted.

The drive to the stack of storage containers we've been using as an improvised garage wasn't too long. The truck was a big and armored beast, giving it some protection in case the passengers ran into some trouble. Though if they ran into a lot of trouble, the plan was to turn around and keep driving until they lost it.

"I hope the other people we're training to drive are having an easier time of it," I said, to ward off the silence. This model didn't come with a radio that wasn't already ripped out.

"We're gettin' the hang of it, Drood Scarlet. Ah've been plannin' to get more time… behind the wheel?" I nodded. "Behind the wheel, once time allows. Bein' able to operate one… it helps me feel like ah'm doin' my part again."

Lennox's sentiment was, sadly speaking, not an uncommon one. Not everybody who was wounded in the frequent hit-and-run skirmishes made a full recovery. I knew that the Mercians' grasp of medicine was much better than ours around the same time. It's just that they were outmanned, outgunned, outarmored, and running on a shoestring budget. Mobius didn't have beasts of burden, outside of a few apocryphal descriptions of creatures in distant lands, so being able to drive the vehicles and fire mounted weapons would give those who had been rendered unable to help otherwise a fighting chance.

Unless…

Figment's suggestion that I just fix them still rang in my mind. It would be crossing a line I didn't think was ready to cross, but at this point, did I have the right not to cross it?

"Somethin' on yer mind, lad?"

I blinked. Lennox and I were outside the garage, idling. The scrappy motorpool across from the Sylvan valley was managed by my new hyena hirelings, who were enthusiastic about putting together vehicles that would see some action against the badnik horde. I wasn't surprised that most of them stuck around, since I was paying them, but I was surprised at how many of them made overt oaths of loyalty after witnessing my takedown of the Fearsome Foursome. Maybe it was a holdover from their gang?

I shook my head. Finella was right about me not being able to keep my head on straight.

"Sorry. Just tired. I need to stop by the Lake of Rings for a bit, but after that, I'd be happy to help you get some practice with one of the smaller cars we got."

"Then haste ye back, Sir Drood. Ah'n git some rest when ye can."

"Thanks."

I left the truck back at the garage and headed for the Lake of Rings, which lay deep in the sunken remains of Sylvania Castle. Being far less afraid of the dark, tunnel collapses, or drowning than when I started, I took a plunge into the water and made my way through the murky depths. The waters surrounding the castle were surprisingly warm, in spite of the cold that had struck the rest of the country. That warmth became stronger as I reached the breathtaking grotto that had formed in the castle interior. It was almost like a natural hot spring, though the temperature never reached the point where it burned the skin. Instead, the touch contact of the power rings were incredibly relaxing.

♦ 21

I found this place after a few more explorations of the castle. I used the rings to recharge my batteries, so to speak, taking advantage of the silence to clear my mind while I was at it. However, each time I took a dip to replenish my energies, the waters had less rings to give. Considering that the one near Knothole manifested about a ring a day in the cartoon, I didn't until recently stop to consider that these ones could be a limited resource. Unlike in the games, these rings didn't exactly stay still for me to count them, leaving me at a loss to count how many were left. It was possible that the only indicator I'd get was when the grotto froze up or went completely dry.

The part about trying to relax also never worked. At the back of my head, I felt like a greedy dragon, hoarding all of this wealth that didn't belong to me. All of this magical might at my fingertips, and I couldn't help anyone with it.

Powerful and helpless. A real losing combination.

- - -

I knew going into the medical tent would be a misstep. A mistake. Then again, I never took anyone's advice. Why would I start taking my own?

The first thing I noticed when I entered the tent was the smell. The interior reeked of medical poultices, a sweet scent from the honeyed mead used as a sterilizing agent, and the odor of there not being enough of either to go around. Next, were the sights. Illuminated by candlelight, I could see two rows lined with wounded soldiers covered in cotton gauze, with scarcely any room left between them. The nurses that I could see were almost exclusively, tending to the mounting wounded the best they could.

I heard several gasps of fright as I entered, from the nurses and soldiers who were awake enough to register my appearance. My glowing eyes and figure, in the dark of the early morning, must've conjured the menacing image of a SWATbot. Alternatively, my very presence, as myself, was dredging up old fears of the Overlanders that were never quite put to rest. I removed my hat and worked a minor illusion to try and dampen the effect.

"Ees there something I can help you with?" an older goose nurse not-too-kindly asked. I could tell the others were deferring to her. She also didn't seem to be one of my fans. "I won't have you frolicking around here, causing a disturbance without a good reason."

I opened my mouth to try and formulate an answer when someone interrupted.

"Oi! Lay off the bloke, Bertha!"

Turning around, I could see a grizzled Arthur Boar hobbling towards me on crutches. One leg was covered in a splint and thick bandages, focused around his thigh. Hamstrung was the first thought that came to mind, followed by guilt that I actually thought that.

"Arthur," I greeted more quietly, trying to minimize the amount of noise I was making. "How have you… been?"

Was that really the best I could come up with to say to a guy that'd been mauled by a super badnik? "How've you been?"

"Could be better," Arthur said with a grunt. "Gilbert! The wizard's here!"

Bertha Goose looked like she was about to battle ax him for getting out of bed, but Gilbert Woolhand went to her and smoothed things over. The ram was the only male nurse I could see. One of his forearms was wholly covered in wrappings, hand included. He could walk, though I could tell he was as exhausted as Arthur. Not wanting to cause further trouble, we left the tent, and I set a few chairs I had floating in Null Space.

"Hail and well met, John. How fared your travels to Leonus?"

"Smooth sailing. Nothing I couldn't handle."

We passed the time catching up, with me glossing over the worst of it. They could use some good news while they recovered from their run-in with the Hey Ho. A mini-boss from Sonic & Knuckles, and a lethal deforesting robot here. If Sonic could take something like that on in eight hits, then I could've done the same.

But I wasn't here.

"Let's stop with the beatin' around the bush," Arthur said finally.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

I was expecting what he was about to say next, and I still wasn't ready when he said it.

"Wizard, we've got a boon to ask of ye."

"Arthur, no," Gilbert pleaded. He then stood up, which only incensed Arthur more.

"Why bleedin' not?! We know what he did to that bird!"

We all knew what this was about. It'd be cruel to make him spell it out in so many words.

"Arthur, I don't know if I can heal the kinds of injuries you have," I said apologetically.

They had the kind of injuries that I didn't think he or Gilbert would be recovering from any time soon. It might be a few months, if not years, until they were fighting fit.

If they ever healed at all. With the severity of their wounds, it was just as likely they wouldn't be seeing another day of action for the rest of their lives.

"Have ye even tried? We've been put up for weeks!"

"Of course I haven't tried! Figment's a mutant because of me! How am I supposed to know what that'd do to a mobian?"

Arthur rose from his chair, actively fighting off attempts from Gilbert and I to help him with his crutches.

"Then let me be your test of it! I ain't doing much else like this, am I?"

"Ye cannot ask this of Sir Scarlet if he isn't ready!", Gilbert said morosely. "He is not yet ready!"

The suggestion I would heal them when I was ready read loud and clear. No doubt the idea to ask had crossed his mind after weeks of waiting for a recovery that might never come.

"I don't know if I can heal anybody! I'm not a doctor!"

Arthur pointed one of his crutches at my chin, accusingly, putting himself at risk of falling over to prove how desperate he had become.

"If you're not a doctor, then we'll take a miracle worker! Just wave your arms and make one happen! Do ye really think at this point that I care about the costs? Name your price!"

"Arthur, it could kill you," I hissed.

Arthur Boar whirled around, nearly striking me with his crutches.

"Maybe I'd rather be dead than dead weight!" the pig shouted as he trundled away.

"Arthur! Where are you going?"

"If you're serious about helping us, then let me know when you're willing to man up!"

I watched him limp off, back into the medical tent. I told myself that I couldn't do anything more to help him.

Another lie. I could go in there, right now, and roll the dice on all of their lives.

"He doesn't mean that," Gilbert said to break the silence.

We both knew he did, and that Gilbert was holding out hope that I'd change my mind later down the line.

"I know," I eventually replied. I handed Gilbert a ring. To his good hand. "See if this helps."

He nodded, somberly.

Ultimately, their magic wouldn't lift a finger without a practitioner to direct it.

- - -

♦ 30

"Why?" I asked myself, more than the rings. "If I can't work up the nerve to help, then why am I even here at all?"

I worked in public health. I did first aid training. That wasn't nearly enough medical experience to fix traumatic injuries. If I gave the Phantom Ruby the loose direction to heal, would it not be given free reign to make any other changes along the way? I didn't take a Hippocratic Oath, but that didn't mean I wouldn't feel the responsibility on my shoulders if anything went awry.

I also did FEMA training. Disaster response. Disaster relief. Hurricanes, floods. Nothing this big. I was overwhelmed. On another world. Nothing I knew was helping. Without the Phantom Ruby, I'd be dead before I hit the ground.

It all went back to the Ruby. If I didn't have it, I'd be worthless. While I do have it, I need to do something. Without it, what skill did I have that would be useful? Lying through my teeth? How long would that stack of cards last? It never lasted before. Why now?

Why was I still screwing around here, living in the trees, when I could drop an asteroid onto Robotropolis and call it a job well done? Wouldn't that be enough? It'd only consign the robians who were dead in every other sense to their fate. Does that make it okay?

Would that ever make it okay?

Naturally, no one answered.

Then I felt a presence, rippling across the water. Beneath the surface, close to the grotto. Suddenly on my guard, I switched to my extrasensory perception and tried to identify the source of the danger. They were hard to track, until I tuned down my awareness to roughly the amount of vital energy emitted by the average mobian. There.

I was officially fed up. I reached for the mystery intruder with a giant crystal hand and hauled them up in the air inside a massive bubble of pink glass.

I don't know what I was expecting to find inside the bubble. A robot shark? A giant pike? Instead of either of those things, the woman trapped in the glass was a blue-eyed hedgehog with orange quills and teal skin.

"Hey! Let go of me!"

At least, that was her top half. Her bottom half was the yellow-scaled tail of a tropical fish. She swam around the bubble in an irritable stir, like a goldfish in too small a bowl. Certainly not a lionfish, like I thought the last time I saw one.

A genuine merhog. One more cryptid off the Ars Ixia's checklist.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"I don't… I can't possibly have time for this."

I probably owed Amy another card reading for being right about the merhogs.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

The Ars Ixia alludes to The Key of Solomon, a Renaissance-era grimoire on sorcery that was purportedly authored by Solomon, and the later The Lesser Key of Solomon that was made in the 1700s. With a bit of Pliny the Elder's Natural History thrown in for texture.

The initial draft for this chapter called for the cards Amy is using to be the conventional tarot cards. By the time I actually wrote it, though, I realized I could use her Fortune Cards from the more recent media instead. It's a shame about the book being delayed. Now I won't know if my guesses were on the money until next year.

This and the next chapter will be touching upon some loose ends I planned to deliver on since Scarlet has returned from his mission abroad. I'll see you next time, with a chapter that will probably be called Third-Degree Burnout.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 18: Edge Cases

In spite of the rocky first contact with the merhog, I was able to get her to calm down once I lowered the crystal bubble and transformed it into an open basin.

"My apologies," I initiated.

The aquatic mobian could now splash out of the tub whenever she wanted to, and I stepped back to give her ample space if she chose to do so. For now, she cautiously didn't. Surprising or not, this unexpected stranger looked more afraid of me than vice versa.

"Who are you?" she asked. "And how did you find this place?"

The merhog's breathy voice and odd, chimeric appearance were familiar. Did I recognize her from something? I was going to ask her a few questions of my own, but one of us had to introduce themselves first.

"I am John Scarlet. Chief wizard in the service of King Robert O'Hedge of Mercia."

She frowned.

"I don't know many of the rulers or lands on the surface."

Clearly, they must not get a lot of news down where it's wetter. I had a hunch that there was one ruler above the waterline she would recognize.

"Let's keep things simple. I'm a wizard, and I am a part of a group of freedom fighters fighting Doctor Robotnik. Perhaps you've heard of him?"

Her teal face got a bit greener around the gills after I dropped that name. With the Central Sea being much smaller and boxed in between the four surrounding continents than the Atlantic Ocean, Robotnik's navy had a much easier time patrolling its waters. Considering the sheer volume of Choppers he had chewing out smugglers and rebels, it wouldn't surprise me if the merhogs got picked up on his sonar.

"We Mertopians have no love for Robotnik! He would have taken over our city years ago if it wasn't for Sonic and Tails!"

I blinked. I knew to expect a few Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog characters at this point, but really? We're including one-episode wonders, too?

"That would make you… Merna the Merhog, I presume?"

She gasped. "How did you know my name?"

I pointed to my pointed hat.

"Wiz-ard. And you could say that Sonic and I swim in the same circles." Merna was relieved that I meant her no harm, if unimpressed by the pun. "We have a common friend and a common enemy. Tell me, how did you get so far from Mertopia?"

Merna remained a bit skeptical about my intentions, answering the question without completely answering it.

"This place suffered from an earthquake, or some other disaster, many ages ago, opening the catacombs below this castle to the sea. I was exploring them when you caught me."

"You wouldn't happen to know the merhog that I ran into a while ago, would you?" The one that popped my air bubble and slapped me in the face with her tail.

"You snuck up on me," Merna answered with a hint of embarrassment. "I'm sorry. I was more careful with my visits to the grotto after that, in case you held a grudge, having the fish warn me if you were here so I could hide."

I nodded along to Merna's explanation, including the part about her talking to fish. Why not? I had a psychic bond to Figment, and all of the fish were mobini, too. I raised my arm over the waters of the grotto. With a force of effort, I drew a golden ring to my hand.

"Looking for these?" Before she could deny it, I offered the ring to her. "Take it. And a few more. We have enough to spare."

It was close enough to the truth if I was going to get my foot in the door with Mertopia. Stunned, she accepted the ring.

"Thank you, John Scarlet. Our city uses these power rings to keep Robotnik's sea badniks at bay. I had given up hope on being able to collect them from the castle's orichalcum vault before you arrived."

"Orichalcum?" I asked. I almost hoped she didn't mean that vault door I'd been using as a blunt instrument.

"Yes. Legend says our people used the unbreakable metal for tridents and armor in the Forgotten Age, but no one knows how to make it anymore. Your spells must be amazingly powerful to destroy it without a trace!"

Merna did, in fact, mean my fly swatter.

"I have my methods," I said humbly.

Suddenly, I felt a mental tug from the other end of my bond to Figment. Again, the bird really liked to yank my chain. Switching to his vision, I could see that Figment was ushered into one of the reefer containers we've refurbished. The intermodal containers were relatively easy to get your hands on in Leonus. With mobians averaging much smaller than humans, it was my idea to purchase a couple as a stopgap solution to our housing and building shortage. David Dormouse was at a desk, listening to a crystal receiver he used to monitor radio transmissions throughout Mercia.

Figment leaned over to read what David was writing. Numbers? Coordinates? Whatever it was, he seemed pretty rattled.

"Is something wrong?" I heard Merna ask.

I shifted my focus back to her.

"Sorry, I'm needed elsewhere."

I conjured a short stack of rings near the water's edge, and raised my hand to create a portal back to Hideaway.

"Wait! There's something I'd like to show you, before you leave."

I lowered my hand, and Merna jumped into the castle waters with the grace of a dolphin.

"Follow me!"

I followed along by less elegant means, propelling myself through the water with my power. She led me into a dark tunnel I had previously overlooked. When we resurfaced, I walked past a waterfall into a secluded cenote, surrounded by blocky cliffs, fruit-bearing trees, and other forms of vegetation on all sides.

"What is this place?" I asked.

Merna followed me onto the surface, hopping along the wet rocks on her now-rigid tail. It was really uncomfortable to look at, so I stared back towards the new environment. There were no signs of animal life, at first. Then my eyes locked on a pair of white eggs with light blue spots, a yellow hue atop their shells, surrounded by a ring of wildflowers.

I know these eggs.

Several small, round creatures flew in from the bushes and trees to approach us, their heads shaped like large teardrops. Without any fear, or trepidation, one of them got close enough to touch, and a flood of memories rushed back to me in an instant.

I know them.

On an instinctual reaction, I took a ripe, orange fruit that had fallen from the trees and offered it. The chao ate it with gusto, a tiny heart appearing above its head as it did so.

A chao.

My guard was down, because I wasn't expecting to see them. Not here, or now. Once the first cracks came through, it was a deluge that wouldn't stop. Countless hours of care and affection, devoted to creatures that weren't truly real. That was nothing compared to how real they were to me. Now they were here, before my very eyes.

"This is what my people know as a chao garden," Merna said. "They form around lakes of rings, as the creatures are attracted to the clean waters and abundance of magic. As a powerful sorcerer, I must ask you to protect…" She paused. "Are… are you crying?"

I turned away, towards an open area of the garden where I wouldn't disturb them.

Control yourself. Focus on your breathing. Focus on the present. You have work to do.

I recomposed myself and opened a portal to Hideaway. Before stepping through, I charged myself up with rings until I was operating at half capacity. That should be enough, but if anything went wrong, I could just use the rest of my backup rings stored in Null Space.

♦ 50

"Consider the chao garden under my protection."

Merna would have to see herself out. Meeting a merhog would be a lot more exciting if I had more time to lose. I walked through the portal and entered the mission control room.

"Right on time," Fiona Fox said with a sarcastic drawl. She was sitting at a table next to Bean and Bark, across from the Crazy Kritters. The original group had whittled down to Rob, Buck, and David. They were now supplemented by the cybernetic Presto and Cadence.

"Hail and well met, Mister Scarlet!" said Presto and Cadence in unison.

I gave them a polite wave. I exposed no trace of my prior break in composure from moments before. I could worry about the chao garden later.

"What's the situation?" I asked.

"Poor tidings from Sir Bruin's burgeoning resistance cell," Rob said with consternation. While the statement sounded vague, he could only be talking about one thing.

"I repeat, expect two full companies of the mechanical men-at-arms, led by a horde commander each," the unfamiliar voice said. They had a robotic, though discernibly upper-class, British accent. "One is traveling east to burn a swathe across Deerwood Forest, and another traveling south to scour the ruins of Villa Stella."

"That doesn't sound like Bruin transmitting," I said in confusion. Not nearly French enough.

"Yon herald is Chancellor Hood," Rob elaborated. "Former advisor to the throne, presumed lost o'er a decade hence. Sir Bruin was able to locate him thanks to his limited access to the Robotnet, and thine rings have allowed him to regain his past self."

The Robotnet was, to my knowledge, the closest thing Mobius had to an internet. It was a global satellite network that carried data packets to and fro across Robotnik's empire. You had to be a master hacker to sneak past the encryption, or get the passwords from a badnik before the codes were swapped out for the day. Like when the Allies cracked Enigma, we had to be careful about when, where, and how we used intel from it.

"A pair o' companies?" Presto said confidently. "We can bop twenty badniks without breaking a sweat!"

"Presto, I believe you are thinking of a playing company," Friar Buck said patiently.

"What's the difference?" asked Cadence. "The SWATbobbies don't do ten to a company?"

"A SWATbot company has one hundred members," Rob said darkly.

We all stopped to appreciate the severity of what was on the horizon.

"We're gonna need the Maquis for this," I said.

We'd need a lot more than that to ward off two hundred robot stormtroopers, but Doberman's light armored force wasn't remotely ready yet. Using them now would be setting them up for slaughter. We needed to think outside the box, and fast. Trying to get Bruin to call them off was out of the question, when the High Sheriff could overrule and send him to the scrap heap for going on the fritz.

"Aye," said Rob. "Prithee, canst thou summon them from the Outlands for us? Time is of the essence."

"Certainly."

I took a step back and warped my body to the outskirts of Villa Stella.

♦ 47

I took on the guise of a hooded churchmouse and scurried across the city, which initially reminded me of historical paintings of Paris. The wooden cottages and stone buildings that remained standing in the wake of artillery fire had a distinctly Renaissance-period flavor. The rest were crumbled ruins suffering from a decade or so of neglect. Debris spilled onto the cracked and weathered streets, which were overgrown with vines and weeds.

Villa Stella had, for the most part, appeared to be abandoned, after frequent raids on the lingering population undertaken by Barbe Vis. The raids stopped after we changed him back into his old self, but that didn't mean the Mercians felt any safer to walk around in broad daylight. A large, brazen tower in Robotnik's image loomed over the tarnished jewel of the Southern Mercia, its glowing eyes casting a sinister glow through the thick tarp Sir Bruin ordered his bots put over it while the ghastly thing underwent 'seasonal maintenance'.

I took a circuitous route until I could see the pointed arches of the faded green and red cathedral the Maquis were bunkered down in; a last sanctuary from Robotnik. Approaching the back door, I knocked out the first few notes of a tune that sounded an awful lot like La Marseillaise. After a moment, a pair of familiar eyes greeted me at the slit in the door.

"Who ees eet?" asked Fifi the Poodle. Not wanting to waste time, I shed my disguise, causing her to jump back from the door slit. "O-Oh! One second!"

I heard the sound of several locks shifting in and out when the door opened.

"Thanks, Fifi. Is Monsieur Chat around?"

"Yes, but what ees wrong? Did something happen?"

"Not yet, but we're gonna need you and Chat. Fast. King's orders."

We walked through the old church, which had a large and spacious interior. Stained glass windows depicted mobian saints and taloned sigils, though many of them had cracked or been boarded up. I could see refugees huddled on the varied levels of the cathedral, taking advantage of the blankets, cots, and food I got for them. It warmed my heart to see them put to good use, but the looks I got from the ones that would look me in the eye weren't exactly those of gratefulness. It was the same looks I got from Chat: An undercurrent of fear, a distaste bordering on hatred, and reluctant, bitter acceptance.

This went beyond what Robotnik alone took from them.

"Fifi?" I asked quietly. "Robotnik wasn't the one who laid siege to Villa Stella, was he?"

She turned back to me, conflicted, before reluctantly answering the question.

"Oui. Eet was ze Overland, during ze war. I imagine you were but a boy zen, non?" I wordlessly nodded. "I was not very old zen, either.

"So this was… all you've known?"

"Not all. Zer are good memories, too." Fifi raised a hand, presumably to put a hand on my shoulder, when she realized she couldn't reach. She awkwardly put it down again. "I did not ever blame you for zis, John."

I didn't have to look far to find a mobian who did. Monsieur Chat rappelled down from an upper level of the cathedral, landing in front of us. He kept one hand on his rapier, as always, at least when I was present.

"Mister Scarlet. What brings you here?" The question was phrased in such a way as to imply I wasn't welcome in a place of worship.

"Two super badniks, two hundred SWATbots, and half of them are headed here." I kept my response clipped and direct as I opened a portal behind me. This day has dragged on for long enough, and I could use a good fight with robots that had it coming. "Would you like to help us fight them, or will you be content standing there and being snippy with me?"

♦ 42

Fifi stiffened up. Chat glared at me, but said nothing as he went through the portal.

"I shouldn't have said that," I admitted.

"Eet was only a matter of time," Fifi said with a resigned sigh. "Please forgive Chat. He carries a heavy burden on his heart."

"I'll try to keep it professional."

"Thank you, mon ami. Let me get my new gun."

Fifi walked away, only to return with a black, polymer bullpup rifle with a red laser sight. The high-tech heavy weapon was only shorter than her by about nine and a half centimeters, making it look enormous as she marched through the portal with it. That was one hell of a step up from a musket. We'd need the extra firepower.

I walked back to the mission control as Fiona Fox was working through our plan.

"We have enough of a head's up to set up an ambush at these locations," Fiona said as she marked down a pair of locations on a topographic map of Mercia. "Two companies of SWATbots, two super badniks. Here's my idea for what we're going to do about it."

I was initially hesitant about letting a mercenary be involved in strategic operations, but for all of her playing hardball during contract negotiation, the red fox clearly relished the opportunity I was handing her to make the badnik horde bleed. Her gang had proven themselves well worth the money when they wrecked several forts the High Sheriff was setting up in preparation for this inevitable forward push. I didn't know what her issue was with Sonic, but she obviously had a bone to pick with Robotnik, too. Instead of taking the sign-up fee and bolting, she took the initiative. My contribution to this was sharing my crystal ball, giving Fiona and the others additional perspective on where to strike.

Once we were done scrying the would-be battlefield, I leaned down and examined the map more closely; spare game pieces were borrowed from Amy's toybox to mark down who was where. Black checkers and backgammon counters representing the enemy. A white King, a white Bishop, and two white Knights for the Crazy Kritters. A white queen, a white rook, and a green meeple for Fiona's squad. A metal boot and thimble tokens for the Maquis. An old die carved from bone for marking myself.

"Can I switch to the race car?" Bean asked. He appraised his meeple and found it wanting.

"I do not think we have a race car," Rob said, while he checked the bag to make sure.

"If I can't be a car, then can I be the boot?" Bean spun around towards Chat and Fifi. "Hey, let's trade!"

"I am not trading for the meeple," Chat said in a deathly serious tone. "I am the boot."

"Would you like to trade for ze thimble?" Fifi offered.

Bark rolled his eyes. Taking that as a contribution to the debate, Bean shook his head.

"No way! Bark says he thinks thimbles are lame."

Fifi looked scandalized. Bark was about to open his mouth when Fifi barked back.

"Ze thimble ees not lame! You take that back, Monsieur Polar Bear!"

Ah yes, look at us being professionals. I very calmly slammed my hands on the table.

"Guys. Guys. Can we stop being picky about the pieces and focus?"

Everyone stopped squabbling about the dang pieces and nodded. I pointed at the meeple and gave it a zap, making it look like a metal roadster.

"There. Happy?"

"Yep!"

"My gratitude," Rob said tiredly, before returning to the map. "As Fiona Fox has said, we shall strike from these two elevated points. The strongest of us--" he said while gesturing to Bark and I, "--shall assist in setting down fallen logs and boulders for the traps, which shall be supplemented by our new explosives." Bean's eyes lit up at the mention of you-know-what-goes-boom. "When the time arises for us to spring the trap and strike at their armies' flanks, our forces must be evenly split to handle both."

The Outlands team was going to be the Crazy Kritters, the Maquis, and Figment. The Deerwood team was going to be Fox, Bean, Bark, and myself. The bombs and satchel charges, followed by the falling rocks and logs, should thin out their ranks enough that we can take out the rest. If anything went wrong in Deerwood, I'd be there to pull us out with a portal. If anything went wrong on the Maquis side of things, I'd make a portal and we'd jump in to intervene. The tricky part was that I couldn't be in two places at once.

While we had a general idea of what the SWATbots were capable of when fighting in bigger numbers, the giant pair of question marks surrounding this mission were which kinds of super badniks we'd be dealing with once we got there. Not even Bruin was privy to what the High Sheriff got from Robotropolis, outside of their loose categorization as 'high-energy pest exterminators'. There were a smattering of combat models exclusively designated as super badniks, like the Hey Ho, though the High Sheriff could also bring out a boss bot that was a normal badnik ballooned to an enormous size.

No matter what they were, we had to take a gamble on them both being something we could handle. The alternative wasn't worth considering.

Then, if we did it this time, then the High Sheriff would know we can handle it, and double down for the next wave. Then the next. Until we couldn't do it anymore.

This wasn't sustainable. Something was going to give, but it didn't have to be today.

Not if we could hold the line for another day longer.

"John?" Rob asked.

We were outside, on the snow, waiting for me to do the honors and send us on our way. Friar Buck gave me a compassionate look. I took a moment to absorb the rest of my emergency rings, because there was no way I wouldn't need them.

♦ 72

"I'm ready."

I ripped open the two gates, and mentally prepared myself for the next fight of my life.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

The "Robotnet" is a backporting of the Eggnet, Robotnik's communications network that appears in later stories and other media. Before the name "Eggnet" was used, we were already aware that Robotnik (and later Eggman) used satellites to keep in touch with all of his minions. I figured it was called the Robotnet first, and he changed it to Eggnet later.

In the same way that Quart Quartz invoked Quartz Quadrant, Villa Stella is a sendup to Stardust Speedway. I don't know when the idea came to me to merge it with Paris, but Paris is known for having its own famous church and tower. Why not put them together?

Fifi's new firearm is based on the Laser Rifle from Shadow the Hedgehog, which itself resembles the Walther WA 2000. It's a very unique-looking gun that they only made less than 200 of, making it a collector's item that shows up more in fiction than the real world.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 19: Burnout at Both Ends

The moment we were out of Hideaway, I knew I only had so much time and power to burn before the main event. I kept a stable portal up so that we could move people and material back and forth as needed. It was a steady drain on my power, but one consistent portal was less intensive than ripping open multiple portals in rapid succession. The strain only increased with portal size, numbers, transported mass, and frequency. Otherwise, I'd repeat that trick where I vanished a few robians into Null Space on the whole army.

♦ 65

The first ambush site was at the new northwestern edge of Deerwood Forest, where the former treeline was beaten flat by a fresh round of clearcutting and firebombing. The High Sheriff has made gradual progress into the heart of the forest, but the fact that there were still seemingly endless acres to go was a testament to how 'ever' these evergreens could get. The second site was easier to defend, being that the most expedient route to Villa Stella included a bridge over a frozen river. Blow up the bridge, and the heavy metal minions fall through the ice into the drink.

Using my newfound influence over water, I lifted up curtains of snowdrift while the Crazy Kritters and the Maquis set down the black, spiked mines Bean was handing them from… somewhere. With a snap of the kooky bird's fingers, the minefields were primed. I used bright, illusory markers to remind everyone where not to step. Bark and I then took strips of metal and bent them into jagged knots. I did the first, and Bark followed my lead.

"Prithee, what didst thou call these unconventional obstacles again?" Rob asked.

"They're hedgehogs," I answered with a wry smile. I was saving that one for when it felt like we could use an ease in tensions. Friar Buck was better at puns and bolstering the spirits of the rebels, but it was deemed better that he stayed behind in case the worst happened. The joke got a smile out of the king and a hearty laugh from the bard bugs.

Figment returned from an aerial sweep of the Outlands as we were placing the last traps at both sites, and Fiona Fox got back from her scouting run of the road to Snottingham not long after that. The two of them did recon under an invisibility spell I cast on them.

"They're a few minutes out," Fiona reported, as she stowed her airboard and high-tech binoculars in the bushes. "About three SWATbot platoons, a pair of sky bikes, a hover wagon, and no sign of the super badnik."

"Same thing on Figment's end," I replied with no small amount of annoyance.

My familiar clicked his beak, flicking his wings up and down. Was he apprehensive? Afraid?

Chin up, Figment. We'll get through this.

He bobbed his head up and down, fanning his tail. That was an aggressive gesture, followed by Figment projecting an equally aggressive image of him tossing a hammer at my head.

Alright, alright. You aren't afraid. You're what, ticked off? At the SWATbots?

The next pictures Figment sent were of a clean, blue sky. I was initially disoriented, until I realized this was not a hypothetical, but a memory.

Figment looked to his back, filled with pride for the rest of his flock in formation. They were migrating east, in search of a good place to roost on their long journey home, when a dark silhouette stole away the sun. Figment only had a moment to look up, and the next thing he saw out of his left eye was the flash of a steel talon raking it out.

You're expecting an attack from the air. Like the raptor hawk.

He clicked his tongue in affirmation.

And… I'm sorry that happened to you.

The flicky quivered slightly, before backing off from the psychic line. I initially thought that Figment was found by himself because Amy said his kind were rare in Eurish. She filled me in on the fact that the Flickies migrated throughout Mobius to other realms via portals, like in 3D Blast. I didn't push him further for more information, because his feelings about the matter clearly weren't something he wanted to get into now.

I went back through the portal to the Outlands and informed the Mercian rebels that the badniks were almost there. With an additional suggestion to keep their eyes on the sky.

"Keep thine wits about thee, pilgrims," Rob o' the Hedge said to his kingdom's defenders. "I suspect we shall have need of them."

A black remote with a big, red button on top was tossed through the portal in my direction.

"Here's the detonator!" Bean shouted. "Have fun!"

I scrambled to catch it before it landed button-first. Once it was secured, I then gently handed the detonator to Rob.

"Thine choice of myrmidons has been… eccentric, to say the least."

"Cheap. Effective. Free of quirks. Pick two."

"Verily."

Rob, Presto, and Chat were going to be the first ones to run in and strike the badniks from their flanks after the bridge went down. Cadence would provide cover from the air by dropping grenades on the armored targets that avoided the traps or could keep themselves floating above the ice. Fifi will provide cover from the hill with her laser rifle. Everyone was ready to enter their fighting positions when I stopped them.

"Real quick, I have one last thing to do."

"Then have a care and be quick about it," Monsieur Chat said curtly.

He had a point. Instead of saying what I was going to do, I channeled the energies of the Phantom Ruby into a pink aura around each of them.

"Mon dieu!" Fifi exclaimed.

The aura stretched around them, transforming into a bright pink force bubble. With further adjustments, the protective sphere became nearly imperceptible.

"Barrier spell," I explained quickly. "It should block a solid hit, but no more than that."

"That didn't take much out a' ya, did it?" asked Presto.

"We wouldn't want ya exhaustin' yerself fer our sake," Cadence said.

"It's not a problem."

♦ 55

"Then your warding spell is much appreciated." He then turned to the rest of the Mercian fighters. "Prepare thyselves! The enemy approaches from the north!"

I took that as my cue to leave, returning to the mystically-camouflaged area where Fiona's team and I would be taking our places for the ambush. Figment was staying behind so that the two teams still had a line of communication. If something went wrong, he'd give me the message to switch venues. Minutes later, the SWATbot company finally came into view.

This was my first time encountering SWATbots, and the metallic enforcers weren't too far from what I remembered. They were tall, armored humanoids with spiked domes for heads. Their helmets had a single red camera eye built into the visor, granting them the profile and depth perception of the mythical cyclops. The bad aim of their singular wrist blasters was hardly a factor when they overwhelmed their foes in a tide of laser fire.

Like Fiona said, this company had two SWATbots on air bikes leading the front, followed by an armored hovervan. The rest marched on foot. They were less than uniform in makeup. I recognized the classic white-and-gray SWATbots, a few in all-black paint jobs, and then a couple of ramshackle ones in warm hats and mittens. Those couldn't be the SWATbots from Sonic Christmas Blast, right? Whatever. It's not important.

The company slowed down as they stepped into Deerwood Forest. As they entered the kill zone. We needed to time this right, to maximize the impact. Bark did a warm-up stretch. Fiona had one hand on the detonator, and another on her holstered blaster.

Several specialist SWATbots with red hot flame decals on their armor departed from the troop carrier and started walking towards the trees. Not close enough yet. Bean looked at Fiona, the SWATbots, then me, and finally, the Phantom Ruby on my glove.

"Hey Mister Scarlet!" Bean shouted in an approximation of Dennis the Menace. "Can I hold that shiny rock you have there?"

Thankfully, I've learned to make these things completely soundproof since last time.

"No, Bean. You cannot."

Several more SWATbots entered their positions for the deforestation mission. Bean siddled a bit closer to me so he could better bask in the Ruby's magenta radiance.

"Oh, come on! How about a little touch?"

"Bean, drop it," Fiona said, her thumb hovering over the detonator. "I need to time this perfectly."

I tried to ignore Bean's antics the best I could. Bean, like the other two, was very good at what he did. He was trickier to wrangle, but I thought I had a handle on him.

"There's gonna be a lot of stimulation out there in a couple of seconds, alright? Try to think about that instead."

The badniks fired up their flamethrowers and prepared to wish us Deerwood Forrest a very warm Christmas. Bean counted on his fingers for a couple of seconds to pass before grabbing my hand and pressing the Phantom Ruby to his face!

"Just a peek!"

"G-Get off me!" I said in a sudden panic.

My left arm reeled back on instinct, causing Bean to go airborne and kick Fiona's hand, jolting the detonator button in shock! Bark tried to pry Bean off of my hand before something regrettable happened, but by that point it was too late.

♦ !!

Suddenly, everything around us was enveloped in an all-consuming explosion! Incendiary, fragmentary, chemical, and even atomic!

(Or plastique, if you're into it. If it's got a fuse, who am I to refuse?)

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah! All of it was going off in a beautiful cascade of cacophonous detonation! Everything that could explode, DID explode! Planets, stars, and whole galaxies consumed in a vortex of boom, never once again to be repeated!

Pretty cool, huh? One of those relatively, infinitesimally small and humble explosions was the minefield we'd rigged to blow. You never forget where you started!

Wha? The minefield? Who said--?

I shook my head to get rid of the blearing spots in my vision and the deafening ring of onset tinnitus. When I opened my eyes, everything around me was in a state of devastation. I couldn't tell up from down. I was alone, trapped between megatons of force.

What happened?

The twinkling supernovas are oh so shiny…

Who said that!? Get out of my head!!

When I looked further beyond the explosions, and the answer became clear, I all but snarled. I reached past the illusions, past where Fiona and Bark laid in a daze after that sudden burst of ruby mist, until my hand stopped around Bean's neck. It took a bit of applied force to get him to let go of my Phantom Ruby.

"Eep!"

♦ 56

My emergency ring came into play before I could boil over. After that, I didn't need it to tell me how angry I was. Bean just hopped, skipped, and jumped over my quirkiness threshold.

"Never. Ever. DO. THAT. AGAIN."

For a split second, I thought I saw genuine terror in the duck's eyes. Then his tongue poked out of the side of his beak, in spite of my vice grip, and the fear was gone.

"Okay!" Bean said jovially. He kicked his legs in the air. "Can you let me go now? I have this mercenary gig to do, and I don't want to be late!"

I dropped Bean and turned my head when I heard the faint, multiplicative hums of several wrist blasters charging up to fire. The mines took out a good chunk of the badnik company, but that still left more than enough standing to turn us all into Swiss cheese.

"Surrender now, and we WILL shoot!" declared a SWATbot with a blue head.

I raised up my hand and whipped up the illusion of a massive explosion into a very real storm of growing pressure around us.

♦ 53

"Oh, blow it out your exhaust port!" I goaded the SWATbot captain. Nearly all of these badniks have been smart enough to banter. It left them dumb enough to take bait.

"Do you kiss your motherboard with that mouth!? FIRE NOW!" The laser blasts disappeared into the growing whirlwind, which sucked up the traces of wispy delirium that lingered over Fiona and Bark's heads. "FIRE HARDER!"

♦ 50

Bark let out a faint grunt of confusion as he shook himself off and got back on his feet. I tried to help Fiona get steady, but she shoved me away.

"What in Mobius was that?" Fiona almost shouted, thoroughly unnerved. At that moment, she looked more like a scared kid than a hired gun. It made me remember how young some of the people I was fighting alongside were.

I had a theory on what Bean did, but I'd need to mull on it later.

"Backlash," I said simply, as the whirlwind around us reached critical mass. "Can the three of you still fight?"

Bark gave a curt nod and revved up a swing of his arm, while Bean nodded wildly with a pair of bombs in his hands. The two then looked back at their boss for confirmation.

"We're good to go," Fiona Fox said. "Bark, you know what to do." He nodded, and I could see that some tension left his body when Fiona regained her swagger. She then pointed to Bean, who was trying to look innocent. "Bean. When we get back to HQ, you're grounded."

The duck let out a nervous chuckle.

"ARE YOU ALL DEAD YET?" the SWATbot captain shouted through the tempest. "DON'T MAKE ME COME IN THERE AND CHECK!"

I saved the SWATbots the trouble and released the accumulated energies as a tide of force, flinging the badniks closest to us into the hazards we lined along the forest edge. They didn't stop until they were impaled on hedgehogs or sliced into chunks by wire.

♦ 46

I drew my sword and dove right into the horde. Bean hurled black bombs at clustered targets, blowing them to smithereens. Bark battered the badniks with his fists and a beaten-up hoverbike he used as a blunt instrument. Fiona Fox was an agile blur, using the environment to her advantage as she took potshots at the enemy with her blaster. I imagine I would've been overwhelmed if I went against these SWATbots on my own, so I appreciated the extra hands that had some powers in their possession, too.

In an unexpected show of flexible tactics, a few SWATbots realized how bad this was going for them and huddled behind the flipped-over van for cover.

"Does not compute! These soft targets are not soft targets!"

"Game over, mech! Game over!"

I teleported around the van, stretched my arms all around my body, gave my spine an extra twist, and took out a line of SWATbots in a single swing. Enhanced strength and elasticity meant I could put a staggering amount of force behind a blade when I was sufficiently motivated. Morglay's razor edge and physics did the rest.

♦ 44

How was that for putting my back into it?

I raised the Phantom Ruby and shot a series of tendrils into the exposed fuel cells of the bisected SWATbots, draining their batteries for energy. Unfortunately, they were only worth a mote or so of power each.

♦ 52

"This job is too easy!" Bean shouted as he rolled a bomb at a squad like a bowling ball.

"Stay on guard!" Fiona said back. "We're not out of the woods until we see a super badnik!"

We didn't have to wait long for the other jackboot to drop. I heard a whistle overhead and looked up, which was when I saw a lot of firebombs headed straight for us.

"TAKE COVER!"

I immediately raised up thick, pink walls to soak up the damage from the oncoming payload, which collided against the grass and trees. The cold was barely an impediment to the opening salvo, which vaporized the nearby snow banks. Not even my magic shields lasted particularly long under direct bombardment. More whistling firebombs followed after that, until the immediate area was consumed in a massive wildfire.

♦ 45

With all of the fires in the way, I could only barely get a clean look at the super badnik. It was a blue, bulbous artillery platform, suspended midair on four jets. Three mortar tubes extended out of the machine's top, and right below the camera stalk it had for a head was a conical cannon that shot out billowing bursts of flame.

"It's a Fire Breath!" Fiona said.

The super badnik played keep away, only coming into close range to pour more superheated fire on my flaking protections. That was when Bark dug his mittens into the terrain and hoisted a stone the size of a car at the super badnik, forcing the Fire Breath to juke out of the way before it could shell our positions again. "We need to bring it closer!"

Bean and Bark flung more projectiles at the Fire Breath, but the death-spewing bombardier was too far away to retaliate against. I generated an illusory double of myself to test how it'd react to a direct attack. He charged towards the Fire Breath's flank to perform a sword charge, only to get grievously burned when the super badnik whirled around on a dime. It was already unbearably hot, and my lungs were burning from the smoke. Getting closer without better defenses for the heat was out of the question unless I wanted to sweat out all of my Ruby power.

This was possibly the worst time for Figment to chime in with how the team in the Outlands was doing. Their situation was not dissimilar from ours; blowing up the SWATbots was the easy part. Only instead of a Fire Breath, they were being chased down by a giant firefly robot with a yellow and red body attached to a massive light bulb. The big bulb shot down pillars of light at the ground below, melting everything in its path.

I recognized that one as a Hotaru Hi-Watt. The metal lightning bug moved too fast to nail with a bomb arrow, had a protective field that shrugged off laser rounds, and deployed a swarm of smaller clones after Figment cracked its bulb with a ramming beak attack. I felt more than a few of the protective barriers I made pop, which was all I needed to know that I needed to wrap this up before anyone got killed.

♦ 38

I fortified my shields and barriers with a crystal rampart, which drew some heat away from the parts of my defensive line that were coming apart.

On paper, I had five elements to play with. I had to toss out three because earth wouldn't reach, air would burn up, and water was rapidly leaving the equation. That left my crystals and a whole lot of fire.

Dammit! I'd kill for a fire shield right now!

♦ 30

Then I had an epiphany. I focused my efforts away from the standard barriers of crystalline magic, gathering the abundant sparks and embers of the burning forest into an insulated bubble of heat around myself. This improvised power-up was steadily coming together, but it was taking too long to form.

♦ 25

Figment shot me an update: Everyone had to retreat to avoid the super badnik's ceaseless advance, which gave the Hi-Watts free reign to continue towards Villa Stella. The badniks gave up on the rebels and moved on to leveling buildings, their other objective for being there. Figment was following their wake to give me the most up-to-date info on their location, steering away from the laser beams fired at him by the Hi-Watt swarm.

Figment, keep on it! I have a plan!

Before I could act on that plan, I needed to concentrate on the element of fire. I knew the physics behind what made a fire burn, but magic needed more than oxygen and kindling. It needed the spark of an idea I could latch my mind around. The Ars Ixia described fire as sharp, subtle, and mobile. Fire is hungry. It can create, consume, transform, and destroy. For the sake of expediency, I focused on its most ruinous aspects.

Hand me a match, and I'll burn an empire to the ground.

I took a deep, deep breath, and the wildfire surrounding the forest drew itself around me as a glowing flame shield! I flew straight towards the Fire Breath like a missile, shooting a scattershot array of crystal beams to pin the hovertank down.

♦ 20

I could very intensely feel that this prototype element shield had some holes in it, as the Fire Breath's main weapon blasted through the gaps in my protection like a water gun full of molten lead. I kept on firing lances of pink energy until I successfully crystalized that cannon barrel shut. The next time it tried to fire, the super badnik began to sputter and smoke from a catastrophic backfire. I got in close, knocked the badnik off its axis with a red hot kick to the head, and covered the rest of its exposed frame in a crystal shell!

♦ 10

I wrapped my hands around the crystalized Fire Breath and hefted the artillery bot midair. The Hotaru Hi-Watt, having dismantled several other buildings that remained from Villa Stella, now locked its eyes on the cathedral. I tried to stretch open a portal that would be wide enough to get the heavy super badnik through, but a shock of pain ran down my left hand and I dropped it!

♦ 6

"No, no!"

I tried stretching my hands to catch the falling Fire Breath, but I couldn't hold on long enough for the Phantom Ruby to cooperate and open a portal big enough or fast enough!

No! Not now!

Figment ducked past the Hi-Watts and made a beeline for their big brother, leaving a starry trail in his wake. When he flew rings around the Hotaru Hi-Watt to try to distract it from attacking the church, I realized there was one final option we hadn't tried yet.

Figment! You're a Flicky!

My familiar gave me a derisive snort as he dodged and weaved through laser fire.

Figment, listen! Your species makes portals naturally! I'm not a member of your flock, but we're linked! I need you to help me make a new portal, or everyone in there will die!

Figment slowed his pace, causing a heavy weight to settle on my chest. When I was about to give up hope, he accelerated. Going faster and faster, until the start of one red light trail around the super badnik and the end of another became indistinguishable. I felt the connection between Figment and I strengthen, until the anchor became stable enough for me to make the giant gateway stable.

♦ 1

"Bark!" I called out to the polar bear, who was still coughing off smoke inhalation, but decidedly more intact after all of that firepower than most mobians would be. He was until now shielding his team from the stray debris. "Knock it through the portal!"

I weakly gestured to a large gateway. With the Fire Breath in freefall, Bark had just enough time to jump high and spike the super badnik like a volleyball through the vortex.

On the other side of the country, the Hotaru Hi-Watt was bisected by a portal generated around its center of mass. A crystal boulder ran through the top and pulverized the super badnik's brain processor, right before it and all of its orbiting Hi-Watts were caught up in a massive explosion of light and fire.

"Three points!" a singed Bean called out, before he fell over again in exhaustion. A couple of daisies were held in his hands over his chest.

A wave of relief fell over me. Followed by the pull of gravity. I grabbed onto the side of a tree before I could crash, digging my fingers into the dry wood, then slid the rest of the way down to the ground. I didn't feel like doing a lot of moving afterward.

Thank you, Figment. We did it.

He said nothing, but this time, I could feel something approaching warmth.

The good kind. I think I've had enough of the raging inferno kind.

Fiona Fox walked up to me, appraised my injuries, and pulled out a handheld radio.

"Hey, Davey? Or whatever your name is. Can you send for a truck? Our ride broke down."

Bark, ever the trooper, dragged us most of the way through Deerwood Forest until we got a ride home. The night was still young, and since I'd later confirm that nobody died, everyone was in the mood to celebrate.

It was a good idea to celebrate the unambiguous victories whenever we got them.

Spoiler: Author Notes

To enhance the experience of this chapter, play Shudder () from Einhander. It really spices up a boss fight! If you want something more Sonic-y, try this remix here ()! These two super badniks, Fire Breath and Hotaru Hi-Watt, are from Sonic 3 and Mania, respectively. I reckon we've been long overdue for some good old minibosses.

The "barrier spell" is, of course, a nod to the Barrier power-up. AKA, the Shield! They're normally blue, and sometimes green. Pink is a new one. The recreation of a Fire Shield as a protective spell came together as a natural progression after that. More of such shields and other reproductions of power-ups might appear in future chapters.

As for Figment the Phantom Flicky, covering a bit of his background has been on my "to do" list since his creation. The initial drafts for this fic didn't have him at all. He's grown on me since then. Figment's powers are derived from things we've witnessed other flickies doing in groups, but he is a genetic freak, and not normal.

 

[weredrago2]

Please vote on which of these you'd like to see as the next Bonus Chapter!

https://strawpoll.com/ajnEODBAxZW

All Along the Space Colony - Maria Robotnik, age 12, is a bright child with no future ahead of her. She's smart enough to know that Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome has no known cure, and that she won't live to her next birthday. Her only hope was with Grandpa Gerald's groundbreaking research with Project Shadow, but hindsight is 20:20. This version of Maria knows that time is running out, and that radical actions need to be taken if her family are going to survive the tragedy that fate has prescribed to them.

Birdland - Fritz the Cockatiel is among the flying elite of the Battle Bird Armada, a militant order whose wings of terror spread across the skies of Mobius! While outwardly espousing a loyalty to his Battle Lord's desire to reclaim the lost glory of their Babylonian ancestors, Fritz is among a scant handful of those born into their ranks who thinks that generations of "crisscrossing" in the family tree have left Battlekukku XV a bit too coo-coo to be calling the shots. Fritz and his Flying Circus Squadron remain loyal for now, but a borderline maverick strike against the nominally-allied Robotnik regime has put them on the propeller's edge of being declared Babylon Rogues.

Ra Moon Daydream - Far away from the world of Sonic the Hedgehog lies a disparate zone protected from evil by the robotic superhero known as Mega Man! However, the mad scientist Doctor Wily has traveled to the forbidden Lanfront Ruins and uncovered an evil far beyond any that the world has seen before: The alien supercomputer, Ra Moon! However, something has gone amiss in the eons since Ra Moon fell into dormancy. The evil energy it once radiated has disappeared, and its dark consciousness has been replaced with one whose intentions appear to be far more benevolent. Will this new Ra Moon lead humanity into a new golden age, or hasten their invevitable urge towards self-destruction?

Silver Linings - In the year 3437 PXE, Silver the Hedgehog is the last hope for his doomed timeline. Entrusted with one of the seven Time Stones, Silver has traveled as far back as chronos control would take him: Two hundred and three years back into the past, at the tail end of the First Robotnik War. More even-tempered and pragmatic than the Silver of the Prime Zone, this psychokinetic Knight of Chronos will do whatever it takes to change the course of Mobius from a bad future into a good one. Even if he must reach beyond the boundaries of time itself to make his dreams come true.

Valtron Child - On the opposite end of the Cosmic Interstate from the Mobius we might recognize lies its grim counterpart, where good is bad, and right is wrong. The era of the Great Peace was shattered by the destructive acts of Sonic the Hedgehog and his Suppression Squad. Prince Robert's kingdom had weathered the waves of anarchy that Sonic has left in his wake, only for Robert to be overthrown in a peasant revolt led by an enigmatic revolutionary named Jean Valtron. Hopes of reform and liberty under his sapphire blue banner are quickly crushed, as Valtron's reign of terror becomes worse than anyone could have ever imagined.

Closing date is whenever I finish Chapter 20. Do note that going forward, these will only be done once every 10 chapters or so. I'm doing another one now to make up for the fact I didn't have the idea to do these until I was already 15 chapters in.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 20: After Dark

The planet Mobius, which was likely Earth before some catastrophe or another, had thus far thrown a lot of challenges at me. I fell from space. I've fought hordes of evil robots who would gleefully shoot me down or ram me through if given the chance, and they got more than a few licks in. I've learned enough black magic to violate moral and ethical barriers that were previously unthinkable. I wasn't sure if I was processing the fact I might be the only human on the continent, but I was at the point where I could deal with it enough that I could keep on living. Keep on surviving.

That being said, I wasn't expecting Friar Buck to invite me to help with catering for our post-battle soiree. There was more than enough food to go around now, so why not do something special to celebrate a solid win against the High Sheriff's forces? A party was good for our morale. The Friar asked if there were any good recipes I knew from my homeland, and I did the best I could with what we had.

"How's it taste? Does it need anything else?"

Friar Buck lowered the ladle into one of the stainless steel pots that was warming on the canister stove. He deftly manipulated the utensil past the strips of salt pork to scoop up some mixed beans to sample. I understood that the Friar was still considered a pacifist because he laid nonlethal traps, bolstered spirits, and didn't directly dirty his hands in combat, but his declared status as a vegetarian was a lot more iffy. I was pretty sure that eating beans boiled in the same pot with meat was cheating.

"I say! The legumes taste splendid!" he said.

"Thanks. I was worried I made a bad call."

Since I didn't have too much time to decide what to make, and whatever I made needed to feed more people than I could spread a pizza or two, feijoada was what I ended up going with. A hearty stew of beans and pork. The national dish of Brazil. Simple enough that I could make it from memory. The recipe normally called for black beans, but I had to work with the kidney and pinto beans that were included with some of the meal rations. I was also able to secure some turmeric for the yellow rice that went with the feijoada during my trip to Casabana, giving my contribution a bit of a Cuban flair.

When it was done, it should almost taste like home. It was nice to do something that didn't involve inflicting large quantities of violence. Maybe I could cook more often? I'd have to try making café con leche or a pressed sub another time.

"Nay. I'd say the dish fares well, John."

If Friar Buck's response told me anything, the feijoada should be received decently enough. He wished me good tidings and stepped away to observe -- as well as subtly taste test -- what everyone else was cooking. The villagers that had been at or around Hideaway were going to be bringing roast mutton, custard tarts, boiled vegetables, cooked haddock, sweet rolls, and meat pies. The Mercians of the Highlands and Outlands were invited as well, which meant we could expect French and Scottish dishes at this potluck. Cuisine that wouldn't be out of line for the Middle Ages… until someone brought out a tray of black pudding on whole wheat smothered in a paste of minced beef, cheese, and vegetables.

I did a double take when I saw that last one being prepared on a tray. Was that a local attempt at a chili dog? It looked like a certain blue hedgehog's influence spread further than his direct contributions to the freedom fight.

Once the preparations were completed, the feast began in earnest. I hadn't seen this many mobians in one place since… ever, really. Except maybe when we got Clan Argyle loose from that landship. Each of the disparate levels of Hideaway, from the treetops to the forest floor, was flush with people enjoying a bit of happiness in an otherwise miserable situation. Rob o' the Hedge was at the center of the festivities, being hoisted up in a makeshift throne for everyone to see. I knew he got flustered in regards to the whole 'king' part of being a king, but he was being a good sport about all of the extra attention. I doubted I'd be seeing much of him one-on-one. Amy followed her cousin's palanquin in a Ren Fair princess costume and chucked confetti until she had to be tucked away for bed.

I was happy for them all, sure. I was enjoying the food, too. It just took some reacclimating to the extra noise and people. In all directions. With the only respite from the buzzing atmosphere being wherever Figment went after he snagged a whole pig and flew away to eat in peace.

Good food or not, I already knew tonight was gonna be a hard one for my nerves.

"~Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, addity,
Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, ay,
Singing too-ral-li, oo-ral-li, addity,
And we'll see you in Priscilla Bay!"

Presto and Cadence, being minstrels by trade, went all-out with putting together a show, whipping up a band from a few villagers who could play instruments and carry a tune. The civilians initially gave the two of them the cold shoulder. There was a general stigma around the entertainers' profession of choice, and people were scared of the mechanical parts they were stuck with, but the two of them gradually won over the crowd with their regular service to the king and their ability to lift anyones' spirits.

They both bowed to the audience.

"Thank ye, thank ye!" Presto said.

"We haven't had this warm a' reception since we played at Scarburrow!" Cadence added.

When the applause died down, Presto cleared his throat.

"Now, we'd like ta play this next song as a tribute to our fightin' wizard!" Presto pointed me out, as though I was possible to miss in a sea of munchkins. "Give it up fer Sir Scarlet!"

The response was tepid, with a few claps and huzzahs sent my way out of obligation. I appreciated the gesture, and I could tell the bards were trying to help sway the opinion of the common folk in my favor, but I didn't expect it to work for me as it did for them.

At the end of the day, the cyborgs were still mostly mobian. I wasn't, and never was. Seeing that I wasn't quite getting the reception they were hoping for, the two salvaged the festive mood with a rendition of their newest fighting song, Come Out Ye Metal Mans.

If I still had a charge of magic, I'd have used them to walk off and rejoin the party with a new face. Blend in with the rest. Instead, I've had to come as I was.

A human. An overlander.

♦ 0

Pushing myself past my limits and going further than that meant I was officially out of juice. The Phantom Ruby's pink hue was replaced with a dull blue. It left me feeling weak and sluggish, not having a constant flow of magic keeping me vertical, but it was preferable to instant death. Dying when the Ruby went dry was a dumb thing to worry about, in hindsight, but I had a lot of dumb worries mixed in with the real ones.

I gave a grateful nod to Presto and Cadence for the tribute and disengaged from the crowd, making my way down one of the spiral staircases around a tall tree to the snowy ground. When I put a hand on the thick bark of the olden oak to hold myself steady, a set of thick spikes popped through my gloves to strengthen my grip.

Not again.

It was one of those worries of mine that was finally coming to roost: That the Phantom Ruby had made me as much a mutant as Figment. I'd noticed one of the most recent modifications to my body, two feral sets of claws, shortly after that last badnik skirmish. They were on my hands when I grabbed onto that tree to stop my fall, and they lingered, independent of whether the gem was powered or not. Shortly afterward, I discovered a new set of fangs that had grown in to replace my incisors or canines. I wasn't a dentist, but my tongue certainly felt the new additions when I nearly lost it while eating. While they weren't retractable like the claws, the fangs were less visible when I kept my mouth shut.

Any one of those changes, several of them in tandem, or some specific alterations wrought to my vocal chords, could've accounted for my voice being rougher and raspier than before all of this. Assuming it wasn't, of course, from all of the screaming.

That cinched it. The Phantom Ruby was turning me into a damn werehog.

There was a pattern of cause and effect to these accumulated changes. The more I was hurt, the more Phantom Ruby energy I burned up, and the more monstrous I became after it healed the damage. What didn't kill me made me stranger.

Fine. Fine! I guess I'm not human anymore, either!

My claws carved a bit too deep into the wood, leaving thick gashes through the bark. With a force of effort, I willed them to recede back into my skin. Now they only looked like unusually sharpened nails. Barely visible through the holes in my gloves.

Why was it happening? Was it a reaction to my desire to be stronger? To not be hurt? Were the energies inside this thing on the same wavelength as Dark Gaia?

Ah, yes. Dark Gaia. The apocalyptic force of destruction that would burst out of the mantle like an egg and end the world. Not exactly something I was looking forward to. With any luck, it wouldn't be a problem for a few more eons.

Then again, that didn't track. Figment's mutations or mine weren't affected by the cycle of day and night. And how could I be a werehog if I wasn't a hedgehog in the first place? Would I be a werewolf? Or a were… man? Is that even a thing?

I took a deep, deep sigh.

You know what? No more thinking, when I can do the rhyme of it.

The food was nice. Great, even. It's just that this was what I was looking forward to all night. Moving around the mass of mobians who were loitering in one spot of this liminal fairgrounds or another, I made my way to a congregation that had formed around the base of the tree. Several wooden barrels were rolled out and stacked together with faucets on tap; the centerpiece of an improvised outdoor pub, stocked with what everyone could scavenge from a kingdom's worth of abandoned cellars and hidden distilleries. I sat down at the counter and waited to be served.

And waited. I rapped my fingers against the table, which went from a tapping to a rhythmic series of clacks.

And waited. The sloth tending the bar was slowly, very slowly, serving everyone. I appeared to be at the bottom of the list. If I was even on the list.

"Barkeep! Three more sarsaparillas for our adventuring party!" Bean shouted, causing the sloth to slowly turn around again before he could hand me a drink. Any kind of drink.

So much for an open bar.

It was time to take matters into my own hands. Still seated, I stretched my arm around the counter and helped myself to a bottle of genuine Highlands whiskey on the other side of the pub. It was sitting on a table next to several other whiskeys and several bottles of Villa Stellan vintage wine, the lot of which were the subject of a heated debate between Finella and Chat as to which beverage was superior. The whiskey tasted like warm, malty ambrosia burning a path down my throat. I made sure to replace the bottle with a low-shelf beer; the two of them could bond over how much they both hated it.

I went back and replaced a bottle of wine, too, because I didn't want to look biased.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see David Dormouse nursing an ale next to Gilbert Woolhand and Arthur Boar. Arthur gave me a dirty look, but didn't say anything. Probably because he'd have to grab his crutches and brave the snow if he wanted to confront me. I doubted whatever he'd say to me would be about the alcohol.

It's a party. Just. Drink. And try to be happy for a night.

I liked the Not Scotch, but it needed something more. I reached to where someone laid out the sodas in the snow to cool off, ignoring the cries of alarm as my arm sailed high over the crowd to reach the bottles. I wasn't sure if the ultra-sugary drinks would take off on their own here. Which was probably the best for Mercia's long-term health, but tonight I wasn't worrying about the long term anything. Or whether or not this Whiskey and Coke was actually a Whiskey and Chaos Cola with the label ripped off. I just needed to sit down and pour myself an easy cocktail on the rocks.

"Was it three fingers Jack, or three fingers Coke?" I asked myself, before erring on the side of more Jack than Coke. Not exactly a highball anymore. The horn shape of my drinking horn also skewed the numbers a bit. Who's to say if I poured too much whiskey on the first go, and had to drink it back down so I could get the measurements right?

Once I got it down, I drank. The smokiness now had a complement of sweetness to it.

I could've used one of these months ago.

It's a shame we didn't have anyone here to represent the virtues of rum. Then I could put together a Hurricane or Mai Tai. Or a Mercia Libre!

Heh. Now it really was like a vacation. Being trapped in another world, depending on how you thought about it, was just a permanent kind of vacation. Severed all of the old problems, since no one ever came back from these kinds of things. My Earth felt like it was one bad day away from destroying myself anyway. I made my escape, and I was free!!

For all of its problems, Mobius was a clean break. This was a place where I had power. Actual power. I'm more important now than I'd ever been as a cog in a machine. People needed me here. Genuinely so. Even if they didn't always give me the respect I deserved.

Who cared? I was free now. No old job, no old money woes, no old family keeping me down.

But no old friends, either.

I wonder if they still thought about me.

Are they still wondering where I went, after I never logged back in again?

Do they miss me?

I'd… hoped I'd be the happy kind of drunk, too thoroughly hammered to think long before these thoughts came back to haunt me.

The best I could hope for was that they kept their health, and I kept mine.

…

I refilled the glass and took another drink.

Feeling relaxed enough to slide back into old habits, I pulled out my communicator to check my messages. It didn't take Ruby energy for me to draw small things like that from Null Space anymore, though the biggest thing I could bring out like this was Morglay.

There were a couple of unread emails on the device. A timetable for the training of Doberman's armored regimen, which was coming together nicely. They said they were happy with the crates of beer being deployed to their location. A reply back to the warning I sent Hector and the Dire Wolves about the extra scrutiny in the North Central Sea, mentioning they were staying in the south until things died down. An RSVP for when the Cult of the Ruby Flame planned to ritually consume my flesh next week.

The only video message was a holographic recording, a few hours old, sent by Wes--

Who plans to do what??

I reopened that email chain from the hyena biker gang, catching up on a trickle of messages that this discount communicator I got from Wes Weasley erroneously marked as spam. I like to think I would've noticed that I had a cult sooner otherwise!

The first one was only a couple of days old. An introductory statement peppered with awe of my divine power, sent with devotional regards from my high priestess. The hyena in the picture bore a resemblance to the forewoman assigned to manage the motorpool, Benzina. No, scratch that. It was Benzina. The image was grainy, but I could see that she now sported a fierce, magenta mohawk that was dyed the same hue as the Phantom Ruby. Benzina wanted me to rest well in the knowledge that she made sure none of my adherents were slacking on the job. They were all really excited by the opportunity to bask in my glory, and would stick around for at least a month to fight in my honor after I 'departed'.

It'd be commendable, if it wasn't for the whole 'they want to eat me' part. I tried to pinch the bridge of my nose, only to poke my eyes with the new claws.

"Ow!"

The other messages were updates on the process of the Ruby Flame changing their leather jacket patches and paraphernalia from the generic spikes and bleached skulls I found them with to things that more strongly invoked the imagery of Figment and I. Pink, red, and purple accessories. Even new tattoos, which took the form of bizarre, geometric shapes.

The most recent email was the invite to the upcoming feast, with a diagram for seating arrangement around the altar. The upcoming event was why they declined to participate in this one. They had to abstain from certain foods or drinks for religious reasons in the lead-up to the ceremony, and the Crimson Flame didn't want to spoil their appetites.

How pious of them. I poured myself another one and dialed up Weasley. After a few rings, I was taken to his answering machine.

"Wes Weasley here! I'm busy with another client at the moment, but if you can leave a message, I'm sure I can--"

"Pick up the phone, Weasley," I harshly whispered into the mic. "Or I have the hyenas serve you as an appetizer when they take me out to dinner. As the main course."

The voicemail abruptly cut off, replaced with a live feed of Wes Weasley, who was still scrambling to switch out his night cap for his fedora.

"In my defense, I thought they only did that to their kings! And that the rest of their mobian-eating talk was a scare tactic! You must've made a great first impression on them for them to go to all the effort of doing it for real!"

"Do I have to worry about them getting rowdy if I refuse?" A dark thought occurred to me. "Did they already get started?"

He waved his hands furiously.

"No siree, sir! No need to worry about that second one! Look, palsy! Am I right to say they've gone and made themselves up as your new fan club?"

I haven't exactly pushed it, but they have been following my commands when I asked them to do things. How was I supposed to know they'd take it this far? I officially regretted bemoaning that no one appreciated me. This was easily too much in the opposite direction.

"Of a sort."

"Then what's the big problem? Just tell them you don't want to be a served man! And besides, I saw how you handled those super mercs and the sandcrawler. They did, too! Do you really think a mere pack of hyenas could cook your goose unless you wanted them to?"

He… actually had a point. Besides, I probably shouldn't do anything rash while I was in the middle of attempting to make myself blackout drunk.

"You're right. This is… manageable."

"Exactly! You just sit back and let old Wes handle the business side of things."

"Any word on a chaos emerald?" I asked, unsubtly changing the subject.

He cringed.

"I've got good news and bad news. Good news first?" He didn't stop to receive an answer, instead turning his communicator's camera to a gray, angular tank. It almost looked like an Abrams, with a pair of Browning M2 machine guns mounted on top of the turret hatches. "We're getting this bad boy gift wrapped for you to pick up. A prize gift for a valued customer! On the house!"

I smiled.

"Oh, the places we could go with more of these. I'll let you know when I'm back in Casabana."

"Unfortunately, I ran into a bit of a snag trying to find you one of those, ah, aoschay emeraldsyay." He was pretty cautious about those, preferring if I didn't mention them in calls any more than I had to. "His Egg-cellency has the distribution chain for those things under lock and key. And by the way I hear it on the Krudzu vine, Robotnik hasn't had much luck in finding any new ones since Nack dropped the ball on his last contract."

"That's a shame. No other clues for where I might find one?"

"Your best bet would be to go fishing around in a pocket zone for a stone of your own, or to try and settle for a power gem. I could probably make that happen with some capital up front! But if a you-know-what were to, say, fall off the back of a hovertruck? You'd keep your rights to first refusal, no butts about it!"

"Ees this seat taken?" a voice to my side asked.

I turned to face Fifi the Poodle. I only knew two people with that accent, and the only way Sir Bruin was getting buzzed these days was with an electromagnet.

"I'll talk to you later," I said to Weasley.

"Ta ta for now!"

I snapped the hologram phone shut and turned back to face my friend. By this point, I was feeling especially lightheaded, and a lot more conversational. I wasn't gonna let a little bad news get me down!

"Heya, Fifi! Sit on down!"

She took a seat next to me, and gave a sigh of relief.

"Merci. Now zat Le Duck fellow might take ze hint." Looking at my back, I could see that a tipsy William Le Duck was giving her the goo-goo eyes until he tipped over. I doubted he'd be deemed airworthy come tomorrow morning. "He ees friendly, bus let us just say that he ees not my type."

"How'd the battle go after I left? I heard you took out, like, fifty SWATbots on your own!"

"Eet was only twenty five at ze most!" she said bashfully. "Much of ze hard work was done by ze bombs, and by Monsieur Chat's bravery and skills with ze sword. And zen you took out both of ze super badniks! And without ze shields, we would have been--"

"Details, details!" I pulled out two glass flutes from behind the counter. "How about a toast to the best sniper in the kingdom?"

"I would be honaired, but I was hoping you could help moi with something first? A little thing, before ze night gets too late."

"Sure! What can the resident wizard do for you?"

"Not too loud!" she whispered. She did a sniff. "Sacre bleu, are you drunk already?"

"Nah," I gestured to the whiskey. "I've only had…"

When I looked, the whiskey bottle was knocked over by my hand and completely empty.

Whoops.

Fifi shuffled out of her chair.

"Maybe zis was a mistake. Sorry for ze bother. Good evening, Monsieur Scarlet."

I held out a hand.

"Hold on! If you came to me, you definitely need some magic done. Is anyone else offering magical consultation that I don't know about?" She shook her head. "For free, even?" She shook her head again. "Didn't think so. From that angle, what do you have to lose?"

Whatever it was, I hoped I could fake it without actually having magic. And significantly drunker than I thought I was moments ago.

No sweat!

"V-Very well. Do you have a spell that can make me more…" She struggled to get the next words out. "Valorous? I have a, erm, thing I must do tonight. I need to be very brave, or I will not do eet. Een fact, I would put eet off another day! And zen another! FOREVER!"

I glanced back at Chat and Finella. They were both holding the cheap beer bottles, pointing and yelling at each other to figure out which one of them sullied their table with it. Taking another look back at Fifi, I could see that she was still staring wistfully at her debonair hero, her heart aflutter.

I was probably intoxicated enough that Figment would feel it in the morning, sure, but I could've manually blinded myself earlier and still see the torch Fifi was holding for that behatted cat. At this point, I was confident enough that it went both ways, and neither of them had noticed enough to act on it.

Let's see if I can fix that.

"Finally working up the nerve to tell him, huh?"

"H-Him?" she stammered. "Oh! I mean, um. Whoever could you mean?"

I gave her a look. She was blushing furiously.

"Your poker face? It's garbage. Get a new one."

She sighed.

"Fine, fine! It ees Chat. Will you do eet or not?"

My eyes went back to the flutes.

"I'm all out of spells for the night," I said honestly. Fifi's ears and tail drooped, until I followed that truth with a massive lie. "But I have just enough magic left to brew a potion."

"Y-You do?" Her eyes narrowed. "It ees not a trick to make me as drunk as a lord, non?"

While I was curious about how alcohol would affect mobians, given the difference of average body weight, that wasn't my intent.

"Not at all. I don't know how long you guys live, but if you're anything like me, then you've only got one life to live it. So I'm gonna do you a solid."

Doing a spin of my wrist to make what I was doing seem more impressive than it really was, I exorcized a gin off the shelf and poured the spirit into a metal mug. Next, I took a lemon from an opened crate and crushed it, the fresh juice going into the mug with the gin. Then I started to shake.

"What ees zat concoction you are brewing?"

It was a classic cocktail. Since cocktails didn't really take off back home until the 1800s, it might as well be a new artifice. With some humorism mixed in to make the bluff stick.

"A little bit of alchemy I picked up on a trip to New Orleans. An elixir to… boot your sanguine and choleric humors! They call it a French 75."

"Soixante Quinze?" she asked. "Why would you need so many Frenches? What even ees a French?"

I laughed off her question and poured the mixture into one of the flutes, before topping it off with the Outlands white wine. I made a gesture of sprinkling an infinitesimally fine powder into the cup. The only reason she couldn't see it was because it didn't exist.

"Ta da! Gin, lemon juice, and champagne. Plus a pinch of fairy dust."

"Zat does not sound so bad. Except for ze poor fairies." I sliced a bit of lemon rind to hang atop the glass for extra flair. "D-Did you always have those claws?"

I slid the glass to her.

"Come on, drink it! Before the magic wears off." She stared at the glass, not drinking it. My mood darkened a tinge, and I frowned. "Remember what I said a second ago about only having one life to live?"

"Yes?" she fielded cautiously.

"You're a freedom fighter. Chat's a freedom fighter. Dangerous line of work. There might not be another chance like this one, and you know exactly what I mean by that."

I slid my thumb across my neck. Ignoring the facts that people died and that this celebration was half a memorial for those lost didn't change the fact that Fifi might not get another shot. Better to do it now, failure or not.

"But what if I am rejected? What if I ruin what we already have?"

"Won't happen."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Experience. And not the magic kind. You're in love, so stop making yourself miserable second-guessing it!"

It's a sad day for romance when I'm the one who has to speak on it's behalf. She considered my words of wisdom and, with some reluctance, took a test sip. Then her eyes opened wide.

"Ooh! Eet has a kick! Like ze recoil of a cannon!"

Fifi drank the rest without further prodding.

"Took you long enough. Can you feel the elixir fortifying your soul?"

"I think I feel eet!" she exclaimed. "I feel incroyable!"

I picked her up out of her chair and gave Fifi an encouraging push in the right direction.

"Then go over there and follow your heart, girl!"

She took the cue, running straight towards her knight. Chat turned towards her, holding one of the beer bottles in his hand.

"Fifi, can you believe one of these blackguards would be so uncivilized as to place this swill next to the pride of our--"

Chat was interrupted by Fifi embracing him to deliver a passionate, film-worthy kiss. He seemed confused and shocked at first, only now being shocked out of the phase where he didn't know they were already an item yet. Once he figured out what was going on, he was quick to reciprocate the unspoken declaration of love.

He also did the leg-raise-up thing after they started making out. If this doesn't get Chat off my case, I don't know what will.

Lady Finella looked at the young lovers with a joyous, if wistful, twinkle in her eye… until her eyes landed on the empty bottles next to me. Not wanting to disturb them, Finella started stomping towards me with a rolled-up sleeve and a spoon.

Where'd the spoon come from?!

"Scarlet! No one dares take a drop of Highlands whiskey without tryin' my haggis first!"

Seeing that my good deed for the night was done, I started walking in the other direction at a fairly upright gait. This had to be a power thing, because I didn't feel like I'd trip or fall over if I got into a serious situation.

Then again, I was very, very drunk. I extended my arms up to the treetops, flung myself onto the walkway, and then tumbled straight over the railing I installed to prevent that sort of thing from happening. When I landed back on the ground, entangled in my own limbs, it was Lady Finella who dragged me up by the ears and forced me to finish a plate of haggis in front of her. I managed the feat, made my leave, and threw up only after I was absolutely, positively certain that she wasn't around to misconstrue the act as an indictment on her cooking.

Once the last trial of the evening was complete, I started making my way back to my hut. It was probably a good idea to call it quits while I was ahead.

"Hey Wizard," Fiona Fox said, leaning on the side of the rail I overshot. "Heading to bed already?"

The red fox was sitting on top of the railing I put along the walkway, in the way that people do when they've never fallen several flights before.

"Yeah?" I said. "That was the plan, yes."

"I've got an offer to make."

I waved her off.

"You and your team did good out there. Just eat, drink, and be merry for the night."

"They won't let me drink!"

What, really?

"How… old are you, again?"

She crossed her arms.

"Thirteen and a half," she grumbled.

Huh. I guess I needed to remember that Tails could fly a plane with a machine gun on it at like, eight? I almost forgot that, with how relatively normal Amy behaves. Mobian kids could be way more competent than their ages would suggest.

"Whatever. I'm sure your offer can wait for tomorrow."

"That depends. Will your blue rock there change back to pink in the morning on its own?"

I frowned. Clearly, she had a hunch it wouldn't.

"It's not any of your concern, Fiona. You're a merc."

She made a falsely innocent face.

"Not any of my concern, huh? Then I guess you aren't interested in finding out where you can get a chaos emerald."

"You know where I can find a chaos emerald?"

She shrugged.

"I might. But if you wanna hit the hay now and get some shut-eye, old timer, then it's like you said. I'm sure it can wait until tomorrow."

I rolled my eyes.

"Alright, fine. Start talking."

"Good wizard. Here's my offer."

At some point after Fiona Fox started talking, my hippocampus stopped recording. It tended to happen when you drank far too much than any doctor would find advisable.

When I next woke up, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a biplane over Angel Island.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Not much to say this time, really, save that every time I tried to finish the chapter, it got a little longer instead! I had to chase it down and nail it to the wall so that it was postable.

At his request, I include here a credit for the chili dogs, inspired by a comment from @Storyteller222. I also didn't explicitly mention beans in this version of the chili dogs for the sake of @N'Oni, because there's a lot of contention as to whether or not beans belong in chili at all. I don't want to spark a firestorm of a debate about it here.

The next chapter will be the non-canon bonus: All Along the Space Colony!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 21: Touching Base

"Are we there yet?"

The island that was steadily coming into view was astonishing in its beauty and scope. Lush with natural life, the nearest half of the landscape that I could see was covered in thick, tropical jungles. Another third was consumed by a large, foreboding desert and surrounding dry shrublands.

"Are we there yet?"

Between the diverse biomes of the island were other striking features that drew the eyes. Rivers, lakes, canyons, and just enough mountains linked together to qualify as a mountain range. One of the high peaks was powdered with thick layers of snow, while the one across from it was glowing red with flush flows of volcanic lava. I'd done a fair bit of traveling thus far, but nothing could've prepared me for the sweeping vistas of the landmass below.

"Are we--?"

"For the last time, Bean!" our pilot, Fiona Fox, shouted in exasperation. "YES!"

The view was made especially impressive by the fact that the island below us was a good eight miles above sea level. It was kept afloat by the grace of the Master Emerald, and little else. Take that mother lode of a gem away, and the island would fall straight down into the barren savannahs below. The island was a flying miracle, with nothing else like it on Mobius.

"Angel Island…" I said in awe, before a sharp pain reminiscent of an ice pick jabbed into my skull. The hangover I'd been dreading from the party we had last night was picking now to make itself known. "Oww."

Bean climbed up the wing like a gremlin and got very close to my face.

"GOOD MORNING!" he screamed, managing to make my headache even worse.

"A little quieter, please," I tried to say over the rush of wind and the aircraft's engine. With the intensity of the sun beaming down on me, I could really do with a pair of sunglasses about now.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. Looking to the wing across from Bean, I could see that Bark was sitting a bit precariously on the other one. He was offering me a water bottle.

"Thanks, Bark," I said hoarsely. I opened the water bottle, and its contents splashed all over my face because I wasn't used to drinking in an open-cockpit plane. "Refreshing."

"Sounds like you're awake," Fiona said to me.

"Awake enough."

"Good. We're gonna be landing in a few minutes."

It was just enough time for my memories of how I got here to piece themselves back together.

- - -

"Ever heard of the Floating Island?" Fiona Fox asked.

"You mean Angel Island?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Angel Island. Floating Island. Whatever you call it. You know any other islands that fly?"

"Do the Lost Hex and Little Planet count?" Fiona gave me a funny look, which made me aware that I should probably not talk about those while thoroughly hammered. "Yeah, I've heard of the 'Floating' Island. Why do you want to go there?"

I could think of a few good reasons, but this wasn't my idea. I kept my guard up, understanding that the liquor made me much more suggestible than I would be otherwise.

"It's got a trove of leftover badniks and other junk from when Robotnik tried to take over the island." Sonic & Knuckles happened already? "We can borrow Le Duck's plane, take a haul of premium salvage, and then head back here once we've reaped the rewards. One day trip!"

"What about the chaos emerald?" I asked pointedly. If that was what Fiona was going to dangle in front of me to get my attention, then I wasn't going to let her overlook it.

"Rumor has it that Doctor R lost one over there, and that Nack the Weasel was sent to retrieve it for him. He got beat up by the Guardian of the place and left the island empty handed. His rep's been in the dumps ever since."

"So?"

"That means the island should still have a nice, green emerald to match your pink one, just waiting for us to pluck it!"

I wasn't convinced.

"That's implying the emerald is where a vague rumor last said it'd be."

She frowned in irritation. I was drunk, not dim.

"Okay, I'll admit, it's a bit of a long shot! Your rock runs on electricity, too, doesn't it?" She cut me off before I could deny it. "You weren't all that subtle when I saw you drain those SWATbots for power mid-fight. Or when you asked Wes Weasley if he could fence you a chaos emerald."

"Ah."

"You aren't gonna get a lot of wattage out here in the boonies. That's a fact. But Robotnik built whole power plants and badnik factories on the Floating Island. We can use those to restore your energy, and then some!"

I stopped to think. If Sonic & Knuckles happened a few months ago, then the infrastructure that Eggman set up around the different zones would still be reasonably intact. If nothing else, this was the ideal excuse to go and see the place for myself!

"What do you get out of this?" I asked flatly, not wanting to be misdirected.

"A modest finder's fee," she said coyly. "A girl's gotta save up for her retirement fund."

"At age thirteen."

"And a half," she insisted. "Are you in or out?"

I briefly weighed the pros and cons. The pros were that I could go to Angel Island, which would be incredible. I could explore the zones from my childhood. I could restore myself to full charge. I could meet Knuckles! I could see the Master Emerald!

The cons were that Fiona transparently had another angle she wanted to exploit, and by leaving now I risked abandoning Mercia to the massive threat that still loomed over it. Not worth it.

"Out. The High Sheriff could pull another move tomorrow, and we barely stopped him this time."

She scoffed at my concerns.

"Oh, please! All of Robotnik's stooges need to send reports whenever they ask for backup from Robotropolis. People roboticized, resources extracted, and badniks lost. I don't think he's going to be in a rush to announce how badly he lost a SWATbot company and two super badniks, unless he wants to spend the rest of his days as a garbage cube."

By that logic, we had at least a day or two while the High Sheriff covered his aft and padded out his numbers on the paperwork, if not longer.

"Hypothetically speaking, how far is the island from here? Do you have a way to track it?"

"I pulled some strings and spent my advance on one of these."

She unfurled a crisp, printed map of Mobius. A far cry from the aged parchment that Rob showed me of Mercia. I kneeled down to get a better look.

"See the dotted line that winds around the page?" I nodded, and she pointed to a spot in the middle of Efrika. "I did the math. Right now, the Floating Island is close enough to Eurish that we could fly there and back in a few hours. But it won't be hanging around there forever."

Did I miss Angel Island on the way to Leonus? Was it closer to Eurish when I crashed into Mercia? I closed my eyes and tried to focus through my lightheadedness.

"In other words, this is the best opportunity we'll get before Angel Island is long gone and the High Sheriff receives reinforcements."

"Exactly."

This was beginning to sound like a pretty good idea. Which meant, given my current state, I needed a second opinion, ASAP.

"I wanna run this by Rob first."

"Suit yourself," she said coolly.

I steadied myself on the guard rails as we went to check on where Rob ended up at the celebration. He was standing at a warm fire, arms wide, regaling a group of villagers and freedom fighters as to one of our adventures.

"To which Sir Scarlet replied: 'Tis not thine ears deceiving ye, mechanical varlet! 'Tis I! And our fair wizard smote the Dark Horse of Snottingham with his crystal hammer!"

There were cheers and 'a hey nonny nonnys' from the crowd, especially at his slurred approximation of my Central Florida accent. Rob o' the Hedge stood up and towards me when he saw us, a bit uneven on his feet.

"Hail and well met, John! I was just recounting the tale of our conquest of the deforester!"

It was funny how long ago that felt. Less funny how terrified I was at the time. Now, I was pretty sure I could dismantle that robian knight in a couple of seconds.

"Hey Rob. Fiona had a proposition that I needed to run--"

"We're going on a quest to the Floating Island!" Fiona declared boldly, causing a stir of surprise and awe to erupt through the crowd.

"The Floatin' Island?"

"That fairy land? Poppycock!"

Taking a count at the empty bottles around the fire, I realized Rob might've been even more tanked than I was. He embraced Fiona's slapdash mission statement with open arms.

"A journey to the mystical island of the good folk? Huzzah!"

Fiona didn't miss a beat. She did a curtsy and imitated the King's royal tongue.

"Verily, milord! We need but your say to venture off on this virtuous mission!"

"Then ye both have my full approval!" he said with merry mirth. "Be sure to bring back tales worthy of the bards' retelling!"

Friar Buck rose from his seat, more composed than either of us. He affixed a disapproving stare at Fiona before turning back to Rob.

"Still thyself, my liege. Perchance thee should have a decanter of water, and--" Suddenly, Friar Buck's face became a shade of green and he covered his mouth. "By Aurora, I'll be right back!"

He bolted off, in the direction of the nearest bathroom. Not so far that we couldn't still hear him.

Yeesh. Poor guy.

Waiting a few seconds to make sure he wouldn't be back any time soon, Fiona pulled out a previously unopened bottle.

"A toast to a quest well under way!"

"Hear hear!"

I could've pulled the plug on her unvarnished scheme then and there, saying I wouldn't go and going back to bed. It's not like anyone but Fiona would remember the fact she was trying to hoodwink us into sponsoring this expedition in the morning. Once she had the king's approval, Fiona had Bark drag out and fuel up Le Duck's plane for takeoff.

I could've called it off at any time. However, I couldn't blame the alcohol on the fact that I really did want to go to Angel Island at some point. It simply helped nudge that decision into me deciding to go right away.

Unfortunately, I forgot to hydrate before taking off.

- - -

We touched down on a narrow strip of pavement on the edge of Angel Island, adjacent to an industrial facility built out of purple tiles, red steel, and yellow bricks. The Robotnik-designed command station surrounded a large lake full of thick tubes that snaked in and out of the surface, in a rounded-out valley flanked by craggy orange rocks.

Hey, this is Launch Base Zone!

Alas, my migraine only intensified after we landed. Going to Angel Island was risky, but not a bad idea on its own merits. Going to Angel Island with a hangover, though? That was dumb. As I was now, I might not be able to get a word in before Rad Red knocked my block off. I groggily climbed out of the passenger seat and stretched, relieving no small amount of tension in my back and neck. The stretches I learned from physical therapy were once again coming in handy.

Bean and Bark got off the wings, the latter especially relieved to be back on stable ground. Fiona Fox hopped out of the plane next, seemingly no worse for wear from the trip. Not a hair out of place. From the plane's storage, she drew out an electronic device shaped like a stopwatch and popped it open. She frowned at whatever she was seeing on it.

"The jewel radar's on the fritz." she said.

"Is that going to be an issue?" I asked.

"No. We'll just have to search by eye."

"Searching for what, exactly?"

"Salvage and treasure. Duh." She closed the device. "Oh, and your chaos emerald."

She turned to Bean and Bark.

"Alright, boys! Look around for anything that isn't nailed down and still has a resale value. Bonuses for the first one of you that finds a terminal I can hack into."

They were an efficient team. Fiona would point out items worth taking, Bark carried them back to the plane in a neat stack, and anything that was rooted to the ground, Bean would unroot with his bombs. While they got started on that, I drew my left hand towards a yellow and purple machine that resembled an electrical transformer. Arcs of electricity flew off it until the transformer snapped, crackled, and popped.

♦ 10

The Ruby flashed from blue to magenta, and I felt the familiar veins of energy creeping down my arm once again. In an instant, the most severe side effects of my hangover faded into the background. I was now revitalized, and a bit more aware of my immediate surroundings. However, my extrasensory vision, like Fiona's radar, was interspaced with a gloomy, green mist.

Is this chaos energy? An effect of the Master Emerald's presence?

Whatever it was, it caused my own radar to become fuzzy. I couldn't get solid readings for anything past line of sight. Nor could I tell where exactly the spectral miasma was coming from. Even so, I could determine that the whole Launch Base had a lot of machinery that was still powered by the hydroelectric dams connected to the water. Fiona, noticing that I was standing around and seemingly not doing anything, assigned me a task.

"Mister Scarlet, if you'd be so kind as to carry our things?"

I made a portal and deposited the group's collected junk into Null Space.

♦ 8

We passed checkered floors, miniature minarets, and exotic machinery that I couldn't identify. After a good half hour of observing the trio loot the Launch Base, watching for any oncoming dangers from leftover security badniks, and playing their bagman, I cleared my throat.

"Fiona? A word, please."

"Yeah?" Fiona said, disinterested. She was still tinkering with the radar, attempting to get a signal through the interference I'd encountered. "What's up?"

"In private. From employer to employee."

Fiona frowned and put the gadget away.

"Bean, you're on plane duty," she ordered.

"Break time!" Bean exclaimed.

"Bark, you're on Bean duty."

Bark nodded. Seeing that this was a break from the heavy lifting, Bark popped open a bottle of ginger beer from the cooler they brought along for the trip. Bean sat down next to him.

"Ooh! Pass me a Primal Venom!"

Fiona and I walked away from the biplane, until we stopped at the lake edge. The body of water was surrounded by verdant bushes and greenery, which were undisturbed by the industrial developments surrounding them.

"Alright, what is it?" she said testily.

I waved my hand at the lake, causing a water spout to refill my bottle.

"Do you have a plan? Besides venturing into uncharted territory on a scavenger hunt."

"Of course I have a plan. And it's not a scavenger hunt. It's a treasure hunt. How's about you kick back and take a chill pill while the professional treasure hunter does her job?"

Take a chill pill?

It was officially time to put my foot down.

"Simmer down with the attitude, Fiona, and try to remember who is paying whom to do what."

"We're still looking for your chaos emerald," she said dismissively. "It's taking longer because the jewel radar isn't working, but it'll go a lot faster when we find the computer room. Let's head back and do that, shall we?"

She started to walk away, until she noticed that I wasn't moving.

"Don't you think I've given you enough leeway by letting you order me around and take me away from Mercia to use as a backpack while you do your little 'side hustle'?"

"Backpack?" she said, caught off guard by my accusation.

It came to me not long after my hangover wore off. I held a small portal in my hand to demonstrate.

"The real reason you brought me here. How else did you plan to carry the salvage to your dealer without a cargo plane? Were you gonna have Bark balance all of the scrap metal and copper wire on his shoulders?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Right. Did you think I wouldn't notice your so-called radar is a hand mirror?" I had a crystal hand remove it from her possession and deliver it into mine. With it, I could determine that my eyes were still quite red. "I can sense energy around me, and I couldn't help but notice this device didn't have any power running through it."

I then tossed it into the water.

"Hey! Do you have any idea how much a chaos emerald detector costs?"

I didn't have the time or energy to go in circles with her over this. Wanting to move things along, I cast a faint cloud of ruby energy over her mind.

"Anything else you'd like to steal behind my back while you spent the whole day leading me on a wild goose chase and hoarding the premium goods for yourself?"

♦ 7

"Ancient echidna relics are worth a fortune on the black market!" she answered greedily, before swiftly covering her mouth in shock that she just gave away the grift to my face.

"Uh huh. No mention of that emerald that you were so sure about?"

"W-Wuh?! How? I mean, I didn't mean--!!"

She took a step back, terrified. The magenta cloud around her thoughts darkened and stormed up. In this moment, I could more thoroughly feel the fear she had for my powers. Not wanting to take things too far, I willed the ruby haze to dissipate.

"Do I look like the kind of person who would care if you stole from Robotnik?" I didn't give her the chance to answer. "Of course not! I'm more annoyed that you felt the urge to lie about it. To my face. Badly. Going through hoops to try and sell me on this treasure hunt while I was drunk!"

"Now what?" Fiona said defiantly. "Gonna pack up and go home? Throw me in the brig?"

I massaged my temples. She was acting completely different from the mercenary I thought I hired. If it wasn't for the fact I knew Rouge had a kleptomaniac streak wider than Bean's, I expect I would've vastly preferred the bat on an Angel Island excursion to this bratty teen fox.

"Don't be ridiculous. We're not leaving without a full haul of tech, including enough parts to build a generator we can hook up to a water wheel or two back in Mercia. Just remember which one of us is in charge of this mission going forward. Understood?"

Fiona glared petulantly.

"I said, am I understood?"

She kept trying to stare me down. I stared back, until she inevitably broke eye contact. She backed down.

"You wanna be the one calling the shots so badly? Fine! What do you want me to do, boss?"

It'd have been more accurate to say I was in charge again, but I'll take it. I pointed to a yellow castle connected to the water pipes that stuck out on the otherwise serene lakeside. I could tell from the external rotating cylinders and active flamethrowers that the castle still had power.

"That has to be the powerhouse for the Launch Base. The computers that run this place can't be far behind. When I'm at full power, we'll use any land surveys Robotnik saved on the drives to cut down our search time for his other remaining strongholds on the island."

"Then we'll head over there after we pick up Bean and Bark. Will that make you happy?"

"Happy enough."

Another thing I could do when I had full power was get another bird's eye view of Angel Island and better reorient myself to find the other zones. Fiona wasn't wrong in that any one of them could have useful salvage.

Wait. Bird? Did I leave Figment behind?

Uh oh. I hope he didn't have a hangover, too.

My concerns for my familiar were interrupted by a sudden, rustling sound from behind us. Fiona was quicker on the draw than I was, firing her blaster pistol at a large, bulbous entity that rose out of the bushes! Her shot was deflected by a flicker of the big red and yellow machine's spindly arm, which was hauling a laser cannon with a barrel bigger than my head. It then elevated itself further upwards on its rocket pack, nearly blotting out the sun from its rotundness.

If that wasn't bad enough, I could see a few more of the ovoid 'bots dropping in right behind it.

"The leader of the invading force has been identified!" the Egg Robo shouted, before swinging his gun around to point it at my face. "Prepare to be scrambled!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Welcome to Angel Island! I've always wanted to take the fic here at some point. Why not now? Apologies for not having All Along the Space Colony be the next update, as I said it would, but that one needed more time in the oven before I could post it.

The top view of Angel Island from the start of the chapter is modeled on what I could find in the CSE, and cross-referenced with what I could determine from other guides. The specifics of Launch Base are derived right out of Sonic 3, because you can't beat the classics.

Egg Robos only had two appearances in the comic proper, but considering how striking they are in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it'd be weird if I didn't use them while I had the chance.

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 22: Lo-Spec Robo Go!

Time ground to a halt as I considered my options for how to resolve the problem of a bunch of Egg Robos crawling out of the ironwork to kill us. It wasn't an act of chaos control; I hadn't cracked that move yet. Rather, I was able to reap the benefits of my enhanced reflexes and savor a bit of bullet time.

The first one that'd have to go was the one pointing its heavy-duty blaster in my face. I was without armor and on very low power, so I couldn't do anything fancy. The Egg Robos were too wide in all directions for me to get a clean slice through their bodies with Morglay, so I popped out my claws and dealt with this one au naturale. One firm hand on the badnik's forearm, and a steady grip on its eyes. In two ripping motions, the badnik went from a problem to a solution.

"He tore out my optics!" the Egg Robo screamed. "MY OPTICS!!"

Gotta love super strength.

"Grab the gun!" I ordered Fiona, gesturing to the dropped limb and blaster while using the defaced, disarmed robot as a shield. She picked up the firearm and started firing upon our attackers, though she had to hold it with two hands to avoid being knocked back by recoil.

With my fingers already past the badnik's hard, external shell, I drained it of energy and tossed the smoking husk of its remains at the oncoming jetpack troopers. Once my hands were free, I cast a pink barrier on Fiona.

♦ 6

"Huh?" she sputtered, slowing her rate of fire. "Why are you--"

I hoisted her onto my shoulders, and she grabbed on to my neck as I broke out into a run.

"H-Hey! Put me down!"

"Keep shooting!" I snapped.

Fiona used my collar as a stabilizer while I jumped high and stretched my arms around a thick water pipe, leaping over a giant bomb with Robotnik's face on it that one of them rolled into the spot where I stood. Once I had grabbed on, I used the pipe to swing through air, Tarzan-style. The badniks' laser shots went wide, causing one of them to fire a hole into the high-pressure pipe and spray itself into a short-circuit.

"How many of them are there?" I asked, as my fist expanded in size and swatted down another Egg Robo on its way to another pipe.

"Like a dozen! Hard to count when you're shaking me like a sack of potatoes!"

No more than the amount of eggs you'd find in your average carton. Typical. Bad jokes aside, I simply wasn't going fast enough to shake them. Regardless of the Egg Robos' goofy shapes and builds, they had no issues keeping pace with me. From the heavy weapons they were packing to their swift and relentless pursuit of us, I could tell these things were a massive step up from the SWATbots that made up the dregs of the badnik horde.

"Eat plasma, freak!" shouted one of the Egg Robos, who cranked up their thrusters and appeared right in front of us! The badnik switched their blaster to automatic, abandoning any semblance of precision for the chance that one of the beams would hit its mark.

I crossed my arms around my chest to block the lasers, which only did so much to protect me when one of the stray beams hit its mark.

♦ 3

I let out a frenzied roar and drove my now much larger hands into the airborne badnik's torso, the sudden change in weight causing it to enter an uncontrolled spin!

Werehog made this look easy!

"GET OFF ME!" the badnik screeched, as it tried in vain to break my grapple hold.

"I'm gonna hurl!" Fiona yelped.

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!" I said as I failed to pry my fingers out of the Egg Robo's steel chassis. "AND LET ME WORK!"

If these things weren't going to let up, then neither would I. Lacking the ideal amount of leverage needed to get my hands loose, I opened wide and tore the badnik's faceplate open with my teeth! An electrifying flush of energy flew off my claws in a rain of sparks!

♦ 5

The Egg Robo's tinny hollers only got louder, until I spat out what looked like a voice box. I then went with the rip and split the Egg Robo in two, slamming both halves against the ground so that the hi-powered jets of this DIY rocket sled could carry us away from the squadron.

♦ 4

We skidded away from the open air where they'd have a much easier time of picking us off, passing through a purple tunnel into one of the yellow-brick forts that dotted the surface of the Launch Base. Once we were inside, I let go of the Egg Robo and it crashed into a wall. I knelt down to try and catch my breath, which Fiona used as a good excuse to hurriedly hop off my shoulders. She tossed the blaster, having expended the fuel cell while covering me.

"That should buy us a few seconds," I said tiredly. "You okay?"

"Okay?!" she echoed incredulously. "You went all freakshow and bit that bot's face off like a sundrop junkie!"

I was disappointed (but not terribly surprised) to hear they had hard drugs on Mobius. Plenty of reasons why people would want to get high and forget their problems for a while. Not like I had high ground on which to advocate for temperance, when it's been less than twenty four hours since I went on a binge and woke up on a different continent.

"Are you hurt?" I clarified.

"My head's spinning, but… no," Fiona answered hesitantly. "I'm fine."

I felt something fluid sliding down my chin. I wiped it off with a towel from Null Space, thankful that it was only oil from the robot I took a bite out of.

"Good. Any idea where all of these badniks came from? I could've swore this place was supposed to be abandoned."

"I thought these bases were cleaned out of any live badniks when Robotnik packed up and left!" Fiona said defensively. She gave the Egg Robo head an angry kick. "Ugh! Leave it to Sonic the Coward to leave a job unfinished!"

Definitely a story there that I won't prod.

I tried to think of the order of events surrounding Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Or at least, my understanding of them. Eggman crashed the Death Egg at the end of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, he needed time and resources to repair it--

"Did Robotnik make anything called a Death Egg?" I asked. "Big, egg-shaped ship? Anything like that ring a bell?"

"Never heard of it," Fiona said flatly. "Can we focus on getting out of here?"

Problem. For. Later.

The Death Egg may or may not exist yet. I had some ideas for dealing with it or the Egg Fleet… provided this Mobius had a specific level I needed from Shadow.

Or a Shadow.

Back on track. Knuckles had to be convinced by Eggman to let him build whatever he wanted on the island. When that relationship fell apart, Eggman left, and Sonic hadn't been back to check on things since to make sure the remaining robots were dealt with. Could that be it?

That might be the answer. When the hedgehog's away, the badniks will play.

"You're right. Do you know which way the plane is from here?"

Fiona took a shy glance out the open window, ducking under it when she heard the thrum of the Egg Robos' thrusters.

"We can follow the pipes back to the landing strip. Cut our losses."

I shook my head.

"We need to make sure that Bean and Bark weren't ambushed first. Help them if they need it."

She nodded. After a pause, Fiona asked a question I should've seen coming.

"Why did you save me?"

I was trying to focus the remaining energies of the Phantom Ruby into a thin, pre-loaded crystal beam. Without enough energy to warp us all off the island, I needed a spell I could fire off as a last-ditch attack. Or a signal flare.

I dropped all of that when she asked me that question.

"Excuse me?"

"It doesn't make any sense! You could've told Bean and Bark I didn't make it! Cut me out of the score, take the goods for yourself, and then hire them full time. I know Bark likes steady work and free food. He's easy to please. Bean is trickier to manage at the best of times, but--"

What the hell had this girl gone through?

I held up a hand. A now blessedly normal hand.

"Fiona. I'm mad at you for trying to trick me, and I might not be able to give you as much trust as I did until you earn it back, but I don't want you dead. Is that so hard to believe?"

Fiona opened her mouth to argue, but no words came out. She had nothing to say. My anger gave way to a more sympathetic perspective, which she unfortunately misidentified as pity.

"Are you pitying me!? Don't you dare pity--!!"

Fiona went quiet when we heard more Egg Robos approaching from the other end of the tunnel. I kicked the emptied blaster in the direction of the badnik scraps and wordlessly ushered her into a corner beside me. With a wave of my hand, we were cloaked. Invisible. An illusory copy of each of us was left in close proximity to the wreck.

The badniks rushed in and covered 'our' positions around the damaged robot. Nice and clustered, exactly where I wanted them.

"Hand where we can see them!" ordered one of the Egg Robos.

I decided that it was for the best to comply, seeing that 'we' were outgunned. I had the illusions raise their hands, while I rummaged through Null Space for one of the heavy weapons I purchased for low-power emergencies like this. One of them pointed at my double.

"You! Overlander! Hand over the source of the anomalous reading!"

I stopped. Did they mean the Phantom Ruby?

"I don't know what you're talking about!" my copy said.

"Don't play dumb, meatbag! We're built to detect exotic signatures!"

They could detect the Phantom Ruby's power?

"Final warning! Surrender the chaos energy power source! NOW!"

Not gonna happen.

My hands grasped on to one of my 'rainy day' weapons of choice: A six-shot grenade launcher. I dispensed with the illusions, removed the safety, and fired a 40 mm round at the mass of targets. The Egg Robos and the fortress wall exploded into so many loose chunks on impact.

It was safe to say that I've had easier days than this one. The sound of a frag grenade going off in close range was nearly deafening, but not as loud as the sudden cacophony that had sprung up past the now-exposed outside.

Dammit, what is it now?

Against my better judgment, I looked outside. From our vantage point, I could see a whole lot of bad news. Not only was the plane wrecked. Around the burning remains, I could see a heavily injured Bean and Bark were fighting a singular Egg Robo piloting what looked like a souped-up eggmobile. 'Fighting' was a bit generous; Bean was throwing bombs that had no effect on the red, spiked armor plating that covered the ovoid hovercraft, while Bark was struggling not to get crushed between the machine's set of massive, mechanical hands--

Oh.

Oh come on!

Fiona caught up to me.

"What the heck is that!?" she said to me.

"It's Big Arms!" I replied, before I slid down a pipe tube towards it.

"What's a Big Arms!?"

I didn't answer. I was too busy firing grenades.

"Let's go to Angel Island!" I said.

I fired on its back.

"It'll be fun!" I said.

I fired on its back.

"It'll be a one-day trip!"

I fired.

"See the sights!"

I fired!

"Meet the locals!"

I fired!

"Get mobbed by a FINAL BOSS AND A HORDE OF MOOKS!!"

I fired… and the grenade launcher went click. By which point, the Big Arms turned around, dropped Bark, and swung one its fists towards me! I only barely teleported out of the way!

♦ 2

"Should've aimed for the glass!" Bean contributed. "And people say I've got a screw--!"

Bark put his mitts on Bean's beak and quietly pulled him away from the fight. They were both too roughed-up to help. The ground was pulverized by the catastrophic impact of Big Arms' fist, the dent it left in the ground deep enough to lose a car in. Not having a specific destination in mind when I dodged the attack, I ended up a few feet back and still in the mech's line of sight.

"You!" the Egg Robo behind the yoke of the Big Arms boomed at me. The badnik's eyes glowed a furious red. "You are the source of the exotic energy reading that has eluded us for so long! Relinquish it immediately, so that we may return to our master and put an end to this ceaseless, demeaning assignment!"

I wrapped my hands around two minarets. They kept steady, holding my weight as I took several steps back.

"Come and get me!" I said when my arms became taut. "Unless you're planning to hatch into a chicken?"

The Big Arms put up its dukes.

"If. You. INSIST!"

Big Arms charged at the same time I let go of the pillars and slingshotted myself at the mech! Slipping between its malicious fingers, drove my arms forward and rammed Morglay straight at the Egg Robo behind the narrow strip of glass!

♦ 1

Everything went dark.

After a few seconds, I realized that, at the moment of the Hail Mary attack, I closed my eyes. Nothing else happened until I slowly opened them. When I did, I could see that my blade made its impact. The glass was shattered, the Egg Robo was impaled, and Big Arms was offline. The only light from the cockpit were those from behind the erratically flickering eyes of the badnik.

"I did it!" I said in genuine awe. "Guys, we did it! It's down! I WON!"

You break it, you buy it, and now I had a whole Big Arms in the bag. What would I do with it and the rest of my armored regiment, I wondered?

The idle thought was enough of a reprieve for me to mistakenly lower my guard.

"SCARLET!" Fiona shouted at me from the upper window of the fort. "GET OUT OF THERE!"

Those were the last words she got in before Big Arms turned back on and clasped its hands around me!

"HEY! Let go of me!" I cried in vain.

"How thoroughly organic!" the Egg Robo with a sword sticking out of it said with a sadistic glee. It flicked the cabin lights back on with its free hand and switched its eyes back to normal. "To claim victory while being crushed between the jaws of defeat!"

I pushed against the hands, but the mech's strength was much greater than mine. Big Arms lifted me even higher into the air, its crushing grip becoming even more suffocating. Before I could worry about not being able to breathe, Big Arms powerbombed me with all its might.

♦ !!

In an instant, what few dregs of strength I had were violently rattled out of my body. All of my remaining power evaporated, as I rapidly stretched and squashed on contact with the ground like a human accordion. Somebody screamed during all of that, but I wasn't in a great state to determine who it was. Without the Phantom Ruby moving the healing process along, I had to experience my bones and joints decompressing a few agonizing seconds at a time.

An unfavorable downside of my new body was that I didn't think I could die of shock anymore.

I was starting to miss that feature already.

"Any more pithy comments? Do you still think of yourself as clever as Priority One, for taking out the rest of my kin?" Nothing that came to mind. "No? I thought not."

The Egg Robo dropped my body into the pit that it made with that penultimate attack. As it reeled back its fist, I imagined the next punch would be our last. With the sun in my eyes and the rest of me not going anywhere any time soon, the only thing I could hope for was that the Egg Robo would stop monologuing and kill me already.

"Now to extract the gem and return to Robotropolis, where I shall be granted the laurels I deserve! What all badniks strive for!"

A guy could dream, right?

"SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, YOU POMPOUS EGG-NORAMUS!" shouted a loud baritone voice from the heavens.

As though the Ancient Walkers themselves were punishing the Egg Robo for making us listen to its rambling, the Big Arms was interrupted in its coup de grâce by a broad, angular figure landing atop it like a hammer on fine china.

"NO, NO!" the Egg Robo screeched in a panic. The external speakers on the Big Arms were broken. "NOT WHEN I'M THIS CLOSE!"

Big Arms fell to the ground. My mysterious rescuer leapt off of Big Arms with a loud thump, took aim, and tossed a round bomb into the opened cockpit, blowing the Egg Robo inside to bits.

It was over. Again. For real this time.

It was dead.

I hoped.

At least I could breathe again. When the dust and debris settled, the newcomer walked up to the pit and extended a gangly arm that ended with a red boxing glove.

"Let's get you back on your feet," he said.

"Bean? Bark?" I asked weakly as he helped me stay upright. "Some fusion of the two?"

"Afraid we haven't met before, chap. I imagine I'd remember a fellow with as striking an appearance as yours if we did!"

"We?"

"Allow us to introduce ourselves!" the stranger bellowed.

The sun reflected off the stranger's all-encompassing metal armor, making them even harder to see with my blurry vision. Then their cooking pot lid of a head popped open with a giant spring for a neck, disgorging a black and red bomb with arms and legs.

"Ping!" the bomb robot pinged as it rolled onto the gray robot's glove and towards my face.

"BOMB!" I said as I tumbled back into the hole in alarm. I let out another pained yelp when I hit the ground.

"Bomb, you'll give the man a heart attack!" the stout, kettle-shaped badnik chastised.

"Ping! Ping!"

"No, he didn't guess your name correctly! He thought you were a weapon!"

"PING!"

"Don't twist my words around!"

I gradually climbed back up the hole to see the two robots bickering.

"Hands where I can see them!" Fiona said as she pointed my empty grenade launcher at them. Bean and Bark had squared up right behind her. "Name, rank, and serial number!"

The robots saluted her.

"Heavy and Bomb!" Heavy the Robot said. "We're the Mechanix, at your service!"

"Ping!"

Heavy & Bomb!? From the Chaotix game!?

"Our serial numbers are as follows!"

Heavy began reading out a series of numbers.

"H-Hold fire!" I said as I tried and failed to stand on my own two feet. "I've heard of them!"

They were a pair of badniks that went straight. Or something like that. The first of Eggman's robots to go rogue, before Gamma or Omega.

Heavy's ambiguous head piece wobbled up and down from the recognition.

"No doubt you've heard of us from our efforts of rescuing the guests of the Happyland Amusement Park from our despised designer's clutches!"

That loosely sounded like the story brief in the American and European versions of the Knuckles' Chaotix manual.

"What he said," I said wearily. "They're on the level."

Bark slackened his combat stance. Bean was as difficult to read as ever. Fiona tossed the grenade launcher.

"Loan me a gun?" she asked me.

"Can I get a please?"

Instead of asking for a firearm nicely, Fiona pulled a small rod from her glove. With a swing, the rod extended into a metal baton she attached to the loose belt on her hip.

To each their own.

"Ping! Ping!" Bomb said. Bean then picked the good badnik up off the ground and began caressing him. "PING!?"

Bean then presented him to Fiona.

"Can I keep him?" the duck pleaded. "It's the most amazingest thing I've ever seen! Look, it even knows my name!"

"PING! PING! PING!"

"He didn't mean that!" Heavy said hastily.

Fiona rolled her eyes.

"We already have a team pet," she said dryly. "Put it down."

"Aww…"

Bean put Bomb down, and the walking explosive went back to sitting on Heavy's shoulder.

"Follow us, new friends! It's high time you received a proper welcome to the Floating Island!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

For me, this whole Angel Island segment has been a trip down memory lane. Big time. More than anything else in the fic. I can't wait to show you guys what I'm cooking with it.

Egg Robos (AKA EggRobos) were the elite mooks of Eggman's forces before he cooked up the E-Series. For Sonic and Tails, they'd float around and look tough in the Sky Sanctuary Zone part of S&K. For Knuckles, though, an Egg Robo was promoted to being Rad Red's nemesis! One of the Egg Robos (if not the same one each time) would show up to harass Knuckles at the end of each stage, taking Eggman's place and using different attacks than him.

Big Arms was the final boss of Sonic 3. A real doozy of a final boss, too! In the original game, it could grab Super Sonic and hit him so hard he spilled all of his rings! This was probably a glitch, seeing as it got patched in S&K/Origins, but still! Sonic Generations on the 3DS did the fight dirty, but the music that went with it was top notch.

Heavy & Bomb are two characters that I knew I liked and wanted to use, but I forgot how much fun I was having with them in my VeloSONIC campaign until I began writing them again for this fic. The chapter was just gonna keep going and going with them talking to the characters, at which point I realized it should probably be cut off where the chapter ends now. The rest of their introduction will be seen in the next chapter.

I'm on a roll. I don't know how, or why, but I'm on fire. Gonna roll with it.
[/spoilers]

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 23: Where the Boardwalk Ends

We relocated to the command center of the Launch Base, which was in the biggest of the yellow forts that doubled as the facility's powerhouse. Putting the lack of a Death Egg aside, this place functioned as Robotnik's temporary headquarters during his short-lived control of the island. The Mechanix made hot-fix renovations to the dictator's accommodations, until we ended up with a pleasant sitting room in which to chat. We boiled up tea and had snacks from the provisions that survived Big Arms smashing the biplane.

Oh, right. I don't think Le Duck's gonna like that we accidentally turned his plane into a total loss. Seeing how handy they were with machinery, I had to ask what Heavy & Bomb could do about that before we left.

Honestly, it would've been a bit hard to believe Robotnik made them without my outside-context knowledge. The badnik duo were built to make and maintain all sorts of things at Robotnik's behest. Instead of making weapons or war machines, they insisted on building me a wheelchair out of Egg Robo parts since I couldn't walk yet.

"You're with the Chaotix?" Fiona asked the badniks, still skeptical of them. She was approaching the odd paradox of their existence from a more cynical angle.

Bark was using a first aid kit to treat the injuries Bean got during the battle, while the latter stared wistfully at Bomb in a trance. It was the only time I'd seen Bean stand still, and Bark took the only chance he was going to get to clean and dress the wounds without his patient squirming. Bark got pretty banged up while fighting Big Arms, but the polar bear was moving around and holding himself as if he wasn't bothered by it. Fiona's boast that he was one of the strongest mobians around might not be too far off. He offered to patch me up, too, but the most he could do was straighten my legs back into shape.

I suggested it as a joke, but Bark took it at face value before I could stop him. Ow. I got the impression he'd done it before.

"Indeed! We couldn't have saved the Freedom Fighters from the funhouse mirror prison dimension and sent that malcontent Metal Sonic packing without the rest of the Floating Island's defenders at our sides!"

What'd that make the Chaotix here? A local superhero team for Angel Island? I was assuming their membership included at least Vector, Espio, and Charmy. If Knuckles, Heavy, and Bomb made the cut, then maybe Mighty did, too?

I let the mention of a 'funhouse mirror dimension' slide without further appraisal. It was better not to get lost in the weeds.

"Thanks again for the rescue," I said, extending my hand to the robots. "If I didn't say it before, I'm John Scarlet. With me are Bean, Bark, and Fiona. I'm with the Freedom Fighters in Mercia, and they're my backup."

"Think nothing of it, John!" Heavy replied. "But I must say, you seem to have taken a nasty beating from those no-good loyalist machines!"

While I'm relieved to be alive enough to complain, a sharp spike of pain in my spine ran down my legs and motivated me to bring up how I could make it go away.

"I just need power to, ah, recharge my batteries."

"My word! You wouldn't happen to be a rogue auto-automaton, would you?"

For a flash of a second, I saw Fiona freeze up. I was the only one that caught it.

"No, I'm not a robot. I'm an… overlander. Let's just say I'm a special one. Any chance you could wheel me over to the generator?"

Heavy rummaged around in his internals. It was where he stored all of their tools and accessories. Moments later, he pulled out an orange electrical cord and offered it to me.

"Help yourself to a charge-up!"

I warily took hold of the cord in my left hand.

"Are you sure?"

"It's the least we can do for showing up late once we heard the commotion. Our dynamic partnership is only as fast as its slowest member. And I am, as my name would imply, rather slow-going."

I stuck my thumb on the prongs and slowly, cautiously, drew power from Heavy's internal generator. As I did, I could feel a steady flow of power coursing through it.

✧=✧ ♦ 5

I stood out of the chair. The pain faded, and all of the mangled parts of my body were instantly healed. I was initially elated, only to realize I was once again taking advantage of a power I'd refused to share with Mercia's wounded.

I can't keep doing this. Maybe there's a way I can--

"Any compatibility issues?" Heavy asked, concern evident in his voice. "I should have a DC converter in here somewhere."

✧=✧ ♦ 10

"No, not at all," I answered quickly. Whatever these guys used to fuel themselves felt more like when I was absorbing rings, rather than draining pure electrical energy. "What exactly are you powered by?"

"Ping! Ping!" Bomb answered.

"As my compatriot said, we have a pair of premium-grade power gems stored in my reactor. One for him, and one for me."

✧=✧ ♦ 15

Power gems? I heard Weasley mention those, but these two seemed less likely to lie about or oversell what one of them could do.

"What's a power gem?"

"A highly-energized beryl," the robot exposited. "It's no match for the infinite output of a chaos emerald, but there's worse you can use for energy needs than a stable power gem."

"Ping!"

"Indeed. Seeing as Bomb goes through bodies as a matter of his duties, his power gem is connected to mine to save a backup of his blueprints and core personality."

✧=✧ ♦ 20

"Where do they come from?"

"Mines," Fiona said simply.

Was she still rattled by whatever Heavy said to set her off?

"The young lady is correct. Though, as far as we're aware, all of Robotnik's power gem mines have been exhausted. The gems without cracks or impurities that would make them dangerously unpredictable are vanishingly scarce."

✧=✧ ♦ 25

Lacking a chaos emerald, a power gem was sounding exactly like what I needed. I considered siphoning more power from Heavy and Bomb, but I refused to abuse their generosity. Silicon-based or not, they were really nice people.

Admittedly, I couldn't understand a single word Bomb was saying. I returned the cord.

"Is there anything we can do to repay you?" I asked.

"Think nothing of it!" Heavy said jovially.

"Ping!"

"How much will it set us back to fix the plane?" Fiona segued.

"We couldn't dare impose on a fellow Freedom Fighter! We'll fix your plane post haste, free of charge!"

Fiona brought her hands together and flashed the robots a winning smile. An expression that, with context, appeared alien on her normally jaded face.

"Thank you so much!" Her tail did a swish. "You're too kind!"

I shook my head. 'Too kind' was right.

"No, no. There has to be something we can do for you. You saved our lives, for Pete's sake."

Fiona's 'cute' face switched to a dirty look in my direction, which the robots didn't catch.

"Ping! Ping!"

Heavy rubbed the bottom rim of his metal cap; the place where a chin would be.

"Well… I don't have any Petes in my memory banks, but Bomb makes a fair point. Knuckles and the rest of our Chaotix compatriots have been unexpectedly out of contact all day."

"Do you want us to help search for them?"

Heavy waved off my concern.

"They're probably on an impromptu expedition to the old ruins in the Sandopolis Desert, or elsewhere on the island with spotty radio reception. Happens all the time! Our friends are certain to turn up again in a few hours, though we'd prefer to examine the remains of the island's theme park with the strength of numbers on our side."

"What, Happyland?" Fiona asked. "Hasn't it been abandoned since Metal Sonic tore it up?"

It made some sense that Metal Sonic would've been there, if that event was their version of the Chaotix game. On that note, who would put a theme park on Angel Island? Unless…

"Given the unexpected amount of activity that has kicked up around the island, Bomb and I agree it's better to be safe than sorry. We've even had to upgrade ourselves once or twice to keep pace with all of the Egg Robos piloting Robotnik's war mechs!"

"There's more of them?" Fiona said, blanching.

"We've spent months clearing out Robotnik's bases on the island, with varying levels of resistance. Now that the Launch Base has been rendered harmless, Happyland, otherwise known as the covert stronghold of 'Carnival Night', should be the last of our cretinous creator's blights on the Floating Island."

Aha! Called it.

"Ping!"

I was beginning to get a better picture of things. Kinda.

"We'd be happy to help you clean the place out and make things even," I said.

Fiona frowned, setting her teacup on the checkered table.

"I don't know if we can commit to that with our poor friend in dire need of getting his head checked." She gestured to Bean, who had a single strip of gauze wrapped around his head like a bandana. I think he put that one there himself. "Who knows if he'll ever recover his mental faculties without immediate medical attention?"

Bean crossed his arms indignantly.

"I have faculties!" he protested. "The faculty has a CFO, a general secretary, and a horse I made consul!"

She lowered her hand.

"I rest my case."

Bark took a sip of his tea without further comment.

"Perhaps your friend does need a doctor," Heavy said worriedly. "We can fix many things, but broken mobians are out of our wheelhouse."

"Ping!" Bomb said. He made a swirling motion with his hand, an index finger pointed towards his body.

"Let's save those kinds of diagnoses for the professionals," Heavy said to Bomb dryly.

Fiona was embellishing to get us out of the obligation, though her point was a fair one. The chances of anything worse than a damn final boss coming down on us were very low, and they could probably still fight if it came to it, but was it a risk I needed to put on them?

"Bean, Bark? You guys okay with sitting this one out? I can make a portal back to Hideaway and let you two recover. You'll still be paid for your time."

Bark gave me a thumbs-up.

"But won't you miss my insightful zingers?" Bean asked.

"We'll survive."

"I'll be going with them," Fiona said. "I got hurt during the fighting, too."

She didn't seem that injured. A few scuffs at the most, since I put a barrier on her.

"Suit yourself." I turned to Heavy. "Say, what are the odds that we'd be able to find salvage that can be recycled for the public good? Machine parts, computer components, spare power gems, and the like."

"Practically guaranteed," Heavy replied earnestly.

"Change of plans," Fiona said without skipping a beat. "You two head back. Mister Scarlet will need my expertise."

"Hear that, Barkie? We're gonna fly over the Kukku's nest!"

Bark let out a neutral grunt and tossed his sandwich wrapper away.

Bomb shrugged, and Heavy raised a fist in the air.

"Capital! Shall we be off, then?"

"Need to make a call," I said. "Meet you outside."

I stepped away from the group and headed down to the massive generator that kept the Launch Base running. Not sure where to start drawing power, I just lifted up the Ruby and let it decide. One of the many pink tendrils that flew out of the magenta stone found purchase and began draining the facility's electrical output.

♦ 50

I brought out my crystal ball and sought out Hideaway. It only took a minute of skimming around to find who I was looking for. Rob was at a table drinking a cup of water, his hood brought up over his head and most of his face. He wasn't the only one around the village trying to shake off the aftereffects of the party.

"Hail and well met," I said through the glass. Long-distance calls were energy-intensive, which is why I hooked myself up to a generator first. Direct, focused application of ruby power cut through the emerald fog like a knife.

"Not too loud," Rob moaned morosely. "Royal decree."

"Sorry." I lowered my voice and modulated the connection. "That better?"

"Yes. My thanks… John?"

Rob turned around to face me, only to realize I wasn't there at all. He checked his glass again, just to make sure there wasn't anything untoward in it.

"Talking through the crystal ball."

"Aye," he said, letting the statement wash over him. "Where didst thou run off to last night? We hadn't been able to find ye, or any of thine elite myrmidons this morn."

He doesn't remember at all, does he?

"You ah, gave us a mission last night."

Rob blanched.

"I did? I mean, I didst? Wherever to?" I told him. "Ye what?"

I gave Rob the abridged version of what happened. Someone -- not mentioning who yet -- came up with the idea at the party, I wanted to see where it went, and he approved it.

"Ye should return to Hideaway with a magenta gateway post-haste," Rob suggested. Not quite an order, but he expected me to follow it, unless I had a really good reason not to.

"Afraid I can't yet. The local defenders of the island saved us from an ambush, and I gave my word I'd stick around to help them with a problem they had before I left."

"And you don't give your word often," Rob said resignedly. Even with a hangover, he remembered one of the first things I said to him when we met.

♦ 75

"It shouldn't take more than a day. The High Sheriff needs at least a week before he can mount another attack like the last one."

"Please have a care while you explore the Floating Island," Rob said more seriously. "The warnings of dangers hidden on such a fae land are not to be taken lightly. You've already stated you've been attacked once before."

"I understand. You should see two of them I'm dropping off back at home base shortly"

"Good man. And should ye feel like you're getting in over your head, leave. We still need ye here to help deliver the Sheriff his just desserts."

"Wouldn't miss it."

He smiled.

"May the Walkers guide your way."

"You too. I'll be back soon!"

The last thing I saw was him wincing. I put the crystal ball away as the generator shut down, exhausted of its energy.

♦ 100

I stepped out onto the landing strip of the Launch Base, where the Mechanix had cleared out the Big Arms and biplane debris. They fired up one of Robotnik's teal hover units as the new aircraft of choice for our day trip. My trio of mercs were waiting beside it.

Seeing that we were already burning daylight, I tore open a portal back to Hideaway.

♦ 95

Bark stepped through the gate without much fuss. Bean, however, was harder to convince to go away. Or stop crying. Or let go of my leg.

"Oh please, Mister Scarlet! Promise me you'll let me visit my spirit animal! We're meant to be together!"

"Ping! Ping!" Bomb said from the peanut gallery.

"Let him have the moment, Bomb."

"PLEASE! I'll even change my name to Ping!"

I detached Bean from my leg with as much grace I could muster. What could I say that would convince him to buzz off?

I took a shot in the dark, answering his nonsense with my own.

"Bean, what kind of music has no sound?"

"Sheet music!" He pranced through the vortex. "See you in the Author Notes!"

"In the what?"

The portal closed behind him.

That bird is only tolerable in small doses. No more than that.

I entered the back hatch of the hover unit with Fiona, where rows of seating were installed along the sides of the cabin area. It was reminiscent of a military helicopter. The two badniks were in the pilot and copilot seats up front, with the latter driving.

"Let's go to the carnival," I said with only a little mustered enthusiasm.

Going to Carnival Night Zone? Kinda cool. Going into another fight? Not cool. Unless we jump them first and I turn the badniks' inside out before they even know what hit them.

Bomb turned the key to the engine and the hover unit took off.

"Ping!"

"Welcome aboard!" Heavy said. "It'll be a brief flight over the scenic Mushroom Hills and the indigo bogs of the Isolated Island. Sit tight, and it shall be over before you know it!"

I listened to Heavy describe the various locales of the floating landmass, almost like we were on a guided tour, until we reached our destination.

- - -

Bomb landed the hover unit right outside the entrance to the Happyland Amusement Park, which was a tall, white gate with a metal sphere on top. An askew yellow band on the globe welcomed guests to the park in bold, red letters. If the park was open, I imagine it would've rotated. The decoration was reminiscent of the massive, spinning globe at Universal Studios, or the globe tower at the entrance of Disney's Hollywood Studios.

I felt a pang of sadness that I wouldn't ever be going on group trips with my friends to theme parks again. While I was distracted by memories of better times, Fiona did the honors and opened the gates to the walled-off Carnival Night with a pair of bolt cutters.

"Come on!" Fiona shouted at me. "It's not like there's lines!"

Heavy, Bomb, and I followed her in. We stood relatively close to each other, no one wanting a repeat of what happened with the Egg Robos.

At least I can take out the Egg Graviton much easier than Big Arms.

We canvassed the area slowly and methodically. The interior of the park reminded me of old photos from Coney Island's golden age, with striped tents and amusement rides chaotically scattered around the colorful fairgrounds. There was a carousel, a roller coaster, a ferris wheel, and other staple attractions in varying states of disrepair.

"This place is a dump," Fiona said bluntly.

On further analysis, I had to agree. This place was more like an old Coney Island park with one foot in the grave. Light bulbs and neon signs were broken and smashed. The metal rides were rusting, and the wooden ones had warped from the rain. Seeing the place in the late afternoon and in such a sorry state initially made it hard to recognize as being Carnival Night. At the end of the day, the fact that it was done up in striking red, white, and yellow meant that it was difficult to confuse for anything else. A non-insignificant chunk of the park was flooded, lending the place a foul odor that aggravated my migraine.

Shouldn't the pain have gone away with the recharge?

The spectral mists that clouded my ESP felt heavier and thicker than before. More oppressive, for lack of a better word to describe it.

Maybe that's what's getting to me?

"Steer clear of the stagnant water," Heavy warned. "I suspect our last visit caused a water main connected to the nearby Hydro City to rupture."

I hovered over the puddles and tore down parts of the Happyland park as needed to clear a path over it for the others. Heavy and Bomb cleared the rest of the way, blowing things up with remarkably more precision and restraint than Bean.

"I thought it was called Hydrocity," Fiona said. "Like 'velocity'."

"Hydrocity isn't a word," I replied irritably. I was hoping I wouldn't have to deal with those arguments again.

Once she took notice of my reaction, Fiona's lip quivered into a mischievous smile.

"No, I remember now! It's a word derived from the echidna style of aqueduct design, which used the lost technique of hydrocitic piping."

"You made that up."

"The Hydrocity was the high-speed aqueduct network that transported water to the capital. It's one of the Seven Wonders of the Floating Island! What kind of treasure hunter would I be if I didn't know that?"

"You're lying."

"It does sound plausible," Heavy admitted.

"Ping!"

"Still not a word!" I insisted. Seeing that this was a losing argument, I snagged one of the less moth-chewed maps of the place from the information booth and gave it a read. "Oh, forget that. Who in their right mind would put a boardwalk on a park in the sky?"

"Hard to say if Renfield ever had a right mind," Fiona said.

"Who?"

"Renfield Rodent," Fiona clarified, as she thumbed a poster of a brown rat in a suit with a grin that was a bit too white. "He used to be a frontman for other peoples' dirty laundry in the Mobius Underworld. We did a few 'security' gigs for him, and the guy just couldn't shut his trap about saving up his mobiums to make a theme park."

"Was it one of those obsession things, or was he trying to break into legitimacy?"

"Whatever it was, I didn't think he'd be willing to work with Robotnik," she said sourly. "I hope the rat rots in that tiny cell they stuck him in."

I let out a "hmm" in understanding.

In time, we reached a shattered house of mirrors that looked like it'd weathered heavy damage from a battle.

"Is this the place where Robotnik trapped the Freedom Fighters?" I asked Heavy. "It doesn't look like much."

"Ping!"

"Looks can be deceiving." Heavy turned to Fiona and I. "Do you two mind stepping back? We'd like to take the building down with a controlled demolition."

I nodded, and I began walking around it. There were scattered pings and booms behind me.

"You don't trust those badniks, do you?" Fiona whispered as she followed along. With Bark gone, I was the next effective living shield.

"If they're with the Chaotix--" I began.

"Don't be a sap!" she hissed. "We don't have any proof they're with the Guardian or his new backup dancers, except what they told us."

"Look. If they're evil or something, they'll be easy enough to get rid of. Heavy isn't exactly a fast runner, and he strikes me even less as a swimmer. We can verify they are who they say they are when we catch up to Knuckles. I imagine he'd be willing to hear us out, provided we don't take anything we aren't supposed… to…"

I trailed off, stunned by what had come into view.

"Mobius to Scarlet!" She snapped her fingers to get my attention. I put my hand on her head and tilted it in the direction of the mother lode. "What are you--!"

She stopped when she saw it, too. Right across the corner from the hall of mirrors laid the corpse of an iron giant. Built out of red and gray steel, the behemoth of a super badnik had to be at least two stories tall. Precise measurements were difficult, as the entity was broken up into jagged chunks that left deep indentations in the dirt where it fell. Its face was a mangled parody of the source material, designed to strike terror across Mobius in the way that the original brought hope.

I knew exactly what I was looking at: The remains of Metal Sonic Kai.

"Is it dead?" she asked after almost a minute of us looking over the mechanical kaiju without saying a word.

I wasn't taking any chances. I closed my eyes and raised the Phantom Ruby, tuning out the interference from the chaff of chaos energy surrounding the island as I extended my voice across the boardwalk.

"If you're alive, say something! I've had a long day!"

♦ 94

Metal Sonic Kai didn't move. The machine was, by all appearances, long gone. Then something from deep within responded to my summons. Something that tasted distinctly green, the texture not too far off from what powered the Mechanix.

⬧ !!

"I felt something!"

I felt something, and I had to have it!

I walked past the twisted debris of the massive Metal Sonic chassis, and towards the energy source. Climbing over it, and into the hollowed cylinder that stored its reactor.

I could feel it! This power gem was mine to take!

Or at least, that's what I thought, until a blob of viscous blue metal pounced out of the giant Metal Sonic's chest cavity and melted onto my hand!

♦ 74 ⬧ 20

In an instant, I felt the metal blob draining my energy away at a rapid rate!

Oh no no no! Please don't be the metal virus! Don't be metal virus!!

"H-Hey! Get off me!"

I tried to rip it off with my free claw, but it oozed through like putty! When that failed, I drew Morglay and attempted to pry whatever this was off the Phantom Ruby!

♦ 64 ⬧ 30

The slashes, while ineffective at killing this thing, caused it to retaliate. The blob became more cohesive. Several metallic pseudopods grew out of the mass. One of them shifted further, becoming a full arm in order to sock me in the jaw.

"Ow! FIONA! A little help here?!"

"With what?" Fiona said angrily. "You didn't give me a gun!"

"Does this look like something a gun can hurt? Just think of something!"

Fiona paused, studying the creature while I fought for my life.

♦ 54 ⬧ 40

"Lead it to the water!" Fiona said.

Now there was an idea. I shot straight up into the air, searching for the first pool of water I could find. When I did find one, near the roller coaster, I dove down to it, leaving a trail of pink energy to mark where I was headed.

♦ 49 ⬧ 45

The metal blob, growing increasingly restless, transformed its hand into an arm cannon. With only a split second to react, I shoved the cannon away from my head, causing the shot to blow a hole through the merry-go-round and hit something that turned it on!

"Watch where you're aiming!" I shouted at the metal mass as I wrestled it into the water.

The liquid metal, perhaps sending my intentions, tried to submerge me before I could submerge it. The blob stretched across the rest of my arms, legs, and face.

I let out a muffled chuckle. These days, suffocation was pedestrian. I launched the amorphous heap and myself into the pool of water. It only took Fiona a few seconds later to acrobatically vault across the ruins of the park, hit the switch on her metal baton, and plunge the sparking end of her electric prod into the puddle.

♦ !! ⬧ !!

The metal blob tore itself off my body with a robotic screech, the oozing mass coalescing into something far more recognizable. Roughly mobian in build, with a blue body, red feet, and gray arms. The remaining pseudopods atop the blob straightened up into a trio of swept-back quills. A red, diamond-shaped gem stood plainly on its chest, matching the glowing red pupils that stuck out of its pitch black eyes.

I blinked. How? When? Why?

♦ 44

"You aren't Sonic or the Knucklehead that smashed me to bits," Metal Sonic said snidely. Unlike the model I knew, this one had a mouth under its spike of a nose with which to give me an impish grin. "I should be thanking you for giving my automated recovery process a jumpstart, but the chatter on the local Robotnet is that you're a real pain in the--"

I didn't let him finish the sentence. I ran a massive portal over Metal Sonic, from top to bottom, and he was gone.

♦ 39

"Was that Metal Sonic?" Fiona asked, stunned. "Did you just take out Metal Sonic?"

In an instant, Metal Sonic was banished to Null Space. No longer my problem in the immediate future. I could check on him later, once his batteries had gone dry.

"Did you think I was gonna fight it?" I asked back. "After Big Arms? No way!"

I stomped away from the puddle, drying myself off with a flush of wind magic.

"Where are you going?"

I opened another portal, this one big enough for two people.

"You know what, Fiona? You're right! And so was Rob! We should've gotten off this rock while the getting was good!" I extended my voice. "HEAVY! BOMB! I SAW A METAL SONIC! WE'RE LEAVING!"

"What about the rest of the big robot?"

"Keep it! It's all yours! I don't care any--"

I looked away from the portal to shout, because the last thing I expected was that something would come through the other end. Suddenly, a blue and gray blur rammed me into the base of the ferris wheel!

♦ 37

"That was a pretty good trick!" Metal Sonic said excitedly. He had one hand on my neck, and another one morphed into a sledgehammer. "There's a whole maze in there, you know?" He pretended to wait for me to respond. "Anyways, how's about we take it from the top? Overlanders aren't exactly Priority One, but now? I wanna see what you can really do!"

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

With this chapter, we continue onto the next leg of the "I Angel Island" arc!

"So long, and thanks for all of the fish!"

Thank you, Bean.

Heavy & Bomb, as previously stated, are from Knuckles' Chaotix on the Sega 32x. Heavy is very slow, but indestructible. Bomb is fast, but blows up his allies whenever he takes damage. They're both pretty lame partners when the game is played normally, but if they were working together they'd make for a really good team.

Power gems were an invention of the comic, possibly inspired by the mention of a "power emerald" in the English manual for the game that grants Carnival Island all of its electricity. The comic ran with the concept, periodically using them as an alternative to giving everybody chaos emeralds.

Next Time: Magic versus machine! John Scarlet and Metal Sonic 2.5!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 24: Red Versus Blue

My rose-tinted memories of Angel Island were no longer smelling like roses. It's only been a few hours since those Egg Robos and Big Arms almost got me. Only a day or two since the Fire Breath. Now here I was, pinned to a ferris wheel by one of Eggman's most dangerous creations: Metal Sonic. It was a version I didn't recognize, but I doubted it'd be a pushover. Not if it could fly fast enough to escape Null Space.

I forgot speedsters could even do that!

My attempt to formulate a way out of Metal Sonic's grasp was hampered by my futile attempts to wrap my head around precisely why I pounced on that power gem like a starving dog on a bone. That was more than stupid, greedy, or reckless. It was like…

I felt a pit form in my stomach.

Was the Phantom Ruby affecting my mind again? It couldn't, right? Right? I should be focusing on the enemy, but how can I know it isn't affecting me right now?

Does it matter? If I don't act now, Metal Sonic will--

Yes! Yes it does matter!

I needed to find another ring. Badly. I couldn't risk spiraling out of control, or being strung along by intrusive thoughts. I pushed my energy senses past the thickening fog of spectral mist that flooded the evening air, trying to feel around for anything I could--

Metal Sonic roughly jostled me, clearly getting impatient.

"HEY! Don't tell me you're tapped out already!"

"Egads!" declared Heavy. He had finally trundled into hearing distance, the reformed badnik standing near the entrance of the attraction with Bomb at the ready. "It really is Metal Sonic! Our short-lived nemesis!"

"Ping!"

"No thanks to you!" Metal Sonic said, having turned his head around to do so. He morphed his hammer hand into a blaster and began shooting at the Mechanix. "You had your chance to take me on, roboto a roboto, so wait your turn!"

As this super badnik was about to find out, taking his eyes off me was a mistake. I used the distraction to drive my hand into the glowing red power gem mounted onto his chest!

♦ 45

"Hands off the merchandise!"

Metal Sonic shot his thrusters into reverse to get out of touch range, then curled up into a ball to rev up for a spindash! I warped away, and Metal Sonic blasted through the steel beams like a cannonball. The attraction on its last legs went tumbling down to the ground.

♦ 43

When the dust settled, I could see that Metal Sonic was back in the air, his eyes and gem flickering between red and green, before settling back on red. Those cold eyes locked onto mine when he found me standing next to Heavy and Bomb.

"You're full of tricks, aren't you?" Metal Sonic said in a goading manner. He beckoned me closer with a curling of his mechanical fingers. "Come a bit closer and show me some more!"

I went invisible and sent up a phantom copy to test what he could do. Metal Sonic went in for a high-speed assault, switching between rapid-fire blaster shots and mad dash attacks to try and injure it. The stalking horse dodged, but my reflexes were only barely able to follow what was going on enough to maintain the illusion. I fired off a couple of crystal beams to try and pin Metal Sonic down, managing only to paint the fairgrounds pink.

♦ 39

"I don't suppose Metal Sonic has a shut off code you'd know?" I inquired to the Mechanix.

"Not one we know," Heavy said humorlessly. "We'll have to shut him down the same way we did last time, before he replenishes enough power to achieve his titanic transformation."

If that happened, I'd be fine with plucking a planetoid out of orbit and dropping it on him.

"Do you have any spare rings?" I asked quickly. The alternative was searching for one elsewhere on the island, presumably while Metal Sonic was chasing me.

"Only two," Heavy said, as he pulled out a pair of rings. Clacking the rings together, a band of light made up of glistening white sparkles appeared between them. "This looks like a job for our Chaotix-original ring tether technique!"

The bound rings? I could only hope they worked better in person than in the game.

"How do these work?"

Heavy pulled the rings away from each other, causing the light field to stretch.

"Treat this chaos energy field as you would a large rubber band. Together, we can--"

"Ping!" Bomb said as he pointed up to Metal Sonic.

The super badnik went even faster, quicker than I could see, and drove a drill hand through my illusion's chest. It shattered into ruby dust.

"Come out and take me on for real, faker!"

"Best to get moving now while we buy you time to find your friend," Heavy said, as he handed me both rings on the tether.

A gray visor slid down over Metal Sonic's eyes. I had a bad feeling that his energy detection kit was better than mine, so I teleported to the top of a purple drop tower ride while he analyzed the fairgrounds below.

♦ 37

"We're not out of the fight yet, you lead-lined rapscallion!"

"PING!"

Heavy chucked Bomb at Metal Sonic, and then threw him a few more times, giving me a few seconds to pull together a plan of attack. The supernatural miasma around the island only got stronger as the sun sank under the horizon, sabotaging my attempts to think clearly.

I can't outrun a Metal Sonic. Can't hide forever. He'll kill Heavy, Bomb, and Fiona if I abandon them. If I take all of them and then leave, Metal Sonic will move on to the next available targets. Or take what he learned from the Egg Robos and rat me out to Eggman.

Angel Island was supposed to be isolated from the outside world, but that clearly wasn't the case here. People had planes, and a desire to hide out where Robotnik's grip on the planet was just a little bit weaker. I saw more than enough houses on the way here that could attest to that. I couldn't cut and run knowing Metal Sonic would hit them up next.

The fact of the matter was that I was directly responsible for letting this genie out of the bottle, and I wasn't going to stop until I beat it back in.

Another power drain might work, but he moves way too fast. Could I make another illusion and trick him into staying still?

I idly toyed around with the two connected rings as I pondered how I was going to outwit something that could act and think circles around me. I attached one of them to my wrist. I couldn't tell if it was doing its job as a mystical antipsychotic, but what I could feel was the attractive force that dutifully connected one end of the ring tether to the other.

A tremor reverberated through the drop tower, causing the far ring in the tether to slip out of my hands. My will to pull the other end up, like I would a singular ring from the lake of rings, caused both ends to snap back together.

Jackpot.

I doubted this idea was what Heavy had in mind. The mental gears churning, I scoped out the ruins of the park for Fiona Fox. Searching around, I saw that she'd taken cover behind one of the crystalized tents. It was good protection from the explosive badnik brawl, which seemed to be causing quakes to knock over everything in its vicinity.

I switched back to stealth and approached her quietly from the air.

"Fiona." She swiveled around and jabbed her shock prod at the source of the noise. I reappeared and caught the baton in my hand. "On your side, remember?"

"Excuse me for being paranoid! Now open the portal so we can get out of here!"

"Not yet. I have a plan to take it out before it attacks any civilians on the island."

"Why do you care? They aren't overlanders, or Mercians like your friends in Eurish!"

"That never mattered to me. Why would I start caring about that now?"

"You don't make any sense!" she spat back. "Are you a goody two-shoes like Sonic? Is that it? Caught the hero bug so bad that you're desperate to please those wimps?"

"Excuse me?"

"I've seen what your power can do! When I--" She cut off whatever she was going to say next and started over. "I know that if I had that kind of power, I'd be the one telling them what to do! And all you've been doing with it is cleaning up other peoples' messes, acting like their overlander errand boy!"

Another quake shook the park, causing her to stumble. I grabbed Fiona's hand to stop her from falling. I affixed her a glare.

"Fiona. Do you need me to pull the 'I didn't report you to the Crazy Kritters for trying to pull a fast one on me' card for you to cooperate? Or will the 'I saved your life' card do it?"

"I--" she stammered, flustered by my words, my actions, or the chaos happening around us. It could've been any one of them on their own, or because all three were happening at once.

"We need to stop this thing now, before it gets someone killed! Will you help me or not?"

Fiona looked away, back towards the entrance of the roller coaster, where Heavy and Bomb were still keeping Metal Sonic busy.

"What do you need me to do?" she asked reluctantly.

I handed her a Javelin-esque missile launcher from Null Space.

"Can you lift this?"

She hefted it up on her shoulder.

"I-I've got it. This thing have IR guidance?"

"It's fire-and-forget. I'm going to lure Metal Sonic out into the open. When I give the signal, you're going to lock on and shoot him."

"That's your plan?"

I warped us to the onboarding area of the ride. The end of the line.

♦ 34

"I like to keep things simple."

I made Fiona invisible, and covered her in another barrier. I doubled down on both, making sure she wouldn't get noticed early or hurt by debris.

♦ 30

"And what'll you be doing?"

"The hard part," I replied curtly. Instead of elaborating further, I hovered towards where Metal Sonic had Heavy and Bomb on the ropes.

I saw now that I'd overestimated how durable Heavy was. Metal Sonic had redecorated Heavy's chassis with several deep dents and tears. His remaining arm was twisted the wrong way, and yet, he had one more toss of Bomb in him. Bomb was put together in a slapdash manner, not all of the joints welded together perfectly.

"We both knew that a life spent in defiance of Robotnik's mad orders would be a short one," Heavy said raggedly. "Only enjoyed a few months of freedom, at the most. But I can't say that it wasn't a life worth living."

"Ping!"

"Well put, old friend."

Metal Sonic powered up his laser cannon. I was charging up a crystal beam to stop him, but I didn't want to shoot until I was sure I could stop him from firing.

"Can we move this along? Got places to go, hedgehogs to strike off my hit list. I hope he didn't forget how he melted my engines the last time we raced. Because I sure didn't."

"Ping!" Bomb said, shrugging. "Ping. Ping."

At this point, they had to have seen me. Were they buying time?

Metal Sonic lowered his weapon slightly.

"What'd he say?" asked Metal Sonic.

"Bomb? Oh, nothing important. Carry on with destroying us, as per your directives."

"Ping."

"Come on, out with it!" Metal Sonic insisted, once again pointing his blaster at them.

"It's merely that Bomb observed that, in addition to your new appearance and weaponry, you're much more talkative than your last iteration. We'd like to congratulate you on your upgraded personality and increased show of independence!"

"Ping!" Bomb added.

"It's more than the personality that's upgraded. I'm Metal Sonic 2.5. Bigger, badder, and faster than ever before. I'm the Doctor's greatest creation. Hands down."

I don't know what exactly clued him into the fact I was behind him. Perhaps his sensor suite could detect the Phantom Ruby through the interference. Or his audio receptors picked up the disturbances in the air from my presence. Whatever the case, when I came at him at an angle to disable his blaster arm with a crystal beam, Metal Sonic hovered away at the last possible second so that the banked shot struck Heavy and Bomb instead.

♦ 27

"Heavy! Bomb!"

The two badniks were trapped in a crystalline shell. They didn't look like they were in danger, but I had to be exceptionally careful when I let them out so as not to break them.

"So that's what you were up to!" Metal Sonic said eagerly. "But it's like I said. I'm the fastest thing Robotnik ever made! And now, I'm faster than Sonic will ever be!"

I was starting to hate that smug grin of his. More than if I was fighting another dumb machine. This one talked back enough that he was getting under my skin, like the red-hot brand that was scarring new shapes into the back of my hand. Something about the chaos-tinged atmosphere went from agitating it to driving it into a frenzy.

It was time to demonstrate that this was a dialogue, and not a monologue.

"Is that why I found you in a carnival scrap heap? Because you were so useful?"

Metal Sonic's red pupil twitched, like a glitch on a digital display.

"What was that, meatbag?"

Left to his own devices, Metal Sonic was too fast to predict which way he'd move. Unless, of course, I coaxed him into moving towards a specific target.

"Robotnik left you to rust after the whole Happyland scheme didn't pan out. I mean, can you blame him? Your last performance wasn't exactly a showstopper."

"You don't know anything about me," Metal Sonic growled.

He wasn't wrong. While I didn't know what exactly happened between him and Sonic or Knuckles, that didn't matter as long as I implied that I did.

"What's there to know? You were left behind. Thrown out for recycling. The only thing Robotnik cares to remember you by is the battle data that went into the next draft. He'd be at, what, Metal Sonic 3.0 by now?"

"You take that back!"

I raised my feet off the ground, hands glowing to prepare for when he moved.

"The only thing I'm taking is the garbage out."

"SHUT UP!" Metal Sonic screamed as he charged me at full tilt!

I went into reverse, flying as fast as I could while he chased me down the track! I shot a few crystal bullets his way, but he darted around them and kept his heading.

The Phantom Ruby, on paper, could do anything. Even go faster than Sonic.

How the hell is he still keeping up with me?

♦ 25

Metal Sonic tore up the track as he rocketed after me, firing plasma blasts to stop me. I was making extra illusions and copies of myself to keep him busy, but those too were taken out by the enraged super badnik. The shields and barriers I set up in his warpath were removed with extreme prejudice.

♦ 20

Metal Sonic boosted forward, bulldozing past all of my traps in a wrecking ball of destruction. He tackled me to the ground, knocking the wind of my chest before I could juke away. Metal Sonic turned his hand into a power drill and shoved it down, attempting to rearrange my face!

"I. AM. NOT. GARBAGE!"

I put all of my strength into pushing the drill away, but I was only strong enough to prevent it from going further. With my back to the ride, I could see that I was facing the full moon from the peak of the roller coaster.

Seeing the full moon caused something deep and primal to stir within me. A roaring engine in my chest, akin to the last time I pushed the Phantom Ruby into overdrive. Only this time, I didn't have any rings to hold the changes back. I wanted to resist it, but on the other hand, did I have a choice?

Yes! I have a choice! The Phantom Ruby wants to make me into a monster? Fine! Make me into a monster, and I'll sort out the rest!

♦ !!

I felt a rush of energy surge through my arms, until I could overpower Metal Sonic's motors and shove the drill into the white metal of the track!

I let out a wild roar and lunged, devolving this battle between technology and wizardry into a brutal street brawl. There were punches, kicks, scratches, and hair pulling. In close quarters, where Metal Sonic couldn't zip around wherever he wanted, the advantage had shifted slightly back into my favor.

That didn't mean he made it easy while I transformed into something distinctly inhuman. Weary bones shattered, elongated, and hardened into sturdier shapes. Muscles ballooned under the skin, the seams of my outfit shredding under the strain. Parts where my flesh broke open scabbed over with ruddy, magenta plates, until the whole of my body was covered in reptilian scales. Obsidian daggers stabbed out of my head, hands, and feet, which stood in place as a new set of horns and claws.

The Phantom Ruby sunk beneath the skin, leaving a rippling scar in its wake.

In my new form, Metal Sonic was accumulating more bumps and scrapes than his systems could auto-repair. He fired a burst of energy from his chest, knocking me back. It felt like I was on fire, but the only burns I felt were from the internal furnace raging inside me.

♦ 10

"Is that all you've got, freakshow?" I rose to my full height, and suddenly Metal Sonic was looking much easier to break down into bite-sized chunks. "A new set of-- HEY I WAS TALKING!"

Metal Sonic aerobatically dodged claw swipes, a snapping chomp, and a sweeping strike from the serrated thagomizer on the end of my muscular tail. All the while, his gem and eyes shifted between red and green. He was still faster than I'd ever be, but that last dodge was noticeably slower than the others.

He's running low on power! Time to finish this!

I revealed my trump card, pulling back my fist and yanking on my end of the ring tether! With the other ring being forced onto his hand during the struggle, Metal Sonic was pulled along by the attracting force of the tether and went hurtling straight into my arms!

"FIONA! FIRE NOW!"

Looking down, I could see she clearly had Metal Sonic and I in her sights. I held the super badnik in place so that he wouldn't go anywhere while she delivered the killshot.

"LET GO OF ME!" Metal Sonic shouted, and the ground trembled once again, shaking the framework of the rollercoaster. "I thought you were doing the quakes!"

I wrapped my tail around the track to keep myself steady. The new appendage was surprisingly prehensible.

I was only now realizing that I had a tail. What the hell was I?

"Why would I be doing the quakes?" I asked in a low grumble.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because you're a big, fat mobosaur!"

I squeezed Metal Sonic a bit harder to stop him from squirming. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like she was in a hurry. I could see her crouched down, with the launcher on her shoulder, but her finger wasn't pressing the trigger. Metal Sonic only got more difficult to hold on to as she hesitated.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! SHOOT! IT!"

The track beneath us shook for a final time, and the earthquake that rippled through the whole park was more than the damaged ride could bear. The missile striking the side was icing on the unstable cake. Foundations snapped beneath us, as a wicked, sulfurous burst of green smoke and flame erupted from a mountain on the opposite side of the island. My spectral senses were utterly overloaded by the ethereal shockwaves of whatever caused it, and the malevolent presence blocked out the rest of my senses until they recovered.

Get. UP! I need to survive!

Who said that!? Was that… me?

Focus!

♦ !!

"…kill you to lose some weight?"

The next thing I heard and saw when my senses returned was the now airborne, green-eyed Metal Sonic complaining. I was still attached to the super badnik via the ring tether. The magic prevented him from simply taking it off, forcing the super badnik to apply a blowtorch to the power ring.

"That missile might've taken me offline if it wasn't for that earthquake," Metal Sonic said with an unexpected amount of trepidation. Then he resumed his prior cheekiness. "But now, I've gotta jet! I wanna check out what that explosion was all about."

Before I could grab him again, the blowtorch broke the ring. The tether instantly disintegrated, dropping me loose. I was helpless to watch as he made his escape.

"GET BACK HERE!" I roared at him. Licks of pink sparks danced past my lips in lieu of spittle, clear as day in the moonlight.

In the far distance, I could see he turned around for a split second to give me the finger, before he resumed his heading.

That tears it! I'm gonna crush him into a metal cube!

I rose out of the rubble with a pained, furious grunt. The heavy debris gave way with ease, confirming that I'd become even stronger than before. I slammed my hands down into the ground, tossing myself airborne. I tried to take off with the Ruby, but it didn't respond. Instead, I felt a second pair of limbs extend out of my back and catch the wind. They flapped up, then down, propelling me upwards and onwards towards the mountains.

Towards the source of the green lights on the other side of the island.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Here continues the "I Angel Island" arc, with a battle against Metal Sonic 2.5! Since the SI can't fight Metal Sonic in the same way Flesh Sonic would, I had to get creative with how to stage things so it felt on brand. Having the brawl take place at Carnival Night was the best way I could set up the send-up to Sonic 4: Episode 2.

From a certain point of view, a Javelin has "lock-on" technology. Like Sonic & Knuckles! Like with the Egg Robo battle, I was split between using the grenade/missile launcher or a gatling gun. The missiles felt more right here. While it may seem strange that I've leaned on all of these realistic weapons and vehicles, all of them have been plucked from Sonic media. So really, you'd have to take it up with Shadow the Hedgehog.

As for our SI's transformation? There should be enough evidence to guess what he is now. If not, then I'll post a picture later.

 

[weredrago2]

New art for the new chapter! Put in spoiler bars for image size and to build suspense.

Spoiler

This art is brought to you by NoniTheArtist!

 

[weredrago2]

All Along the Space Colony
Non-Canon Bonus

"What island is that, Maria?"

My younger brother and I were planetgazing, through the long windows of the austere observation deck of the ARK. I liked coming out here to relax, though I was less enthused about the fact that Shadow had to drag me out of my experiments now because he was enforcing one of my mandated breaks from the junior lab. Grandfather's heart melted like a chocolate bar whenever I pulled out the old Shirley Temple doe-eyes shtick, but the magic went away when he noticed the red veins percolating around them. So me taking a break went from being Grandpa Gerald's request to Professor Robotnik's orders.

Okay, fine. I have to take breaks. Can't burn myself out yet.

Not when I'm so close.

Planetgazing was a new word and a new hobby Shadow picked up, once I introduced him to the concept of having a hobby. A harmless ploy to help the little guy might come out of his spiny shell more. It was really just geography under a different name, because I knew Shadow had more than a passing interest in that wild green-and-blue yonder we were suspended above. As one of the more talkative fruits of the Space Colony ARK's labor, everything Shadow knew about Mobius was gathered second-hand, and he wanted to know what to expect when I was healthy enough to give him the live tour.

Mobius. No one's called it Earth since the Q-M extinction event some three millennia ago. "Earth" was about as academic to today's humans as Pangea was to me, before I was reborn into this ailing body. A body that could've begun treatment much sooner if the doctors in Megacentral hadn't misdiagnosed the seizures from my old memories kicking in as epilepsy and called it a day. They stopped short of checking me for Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome until I was old enough to force them to take my "attention-seeking" complaints about my symptoms seriously. By then, my only options from there were radiation or chemotherapy in the United Federation, which my parents, bless their hearts, knew wouldn't have any guarantees of success. That was when Grandpa in the United Federation took me under his wing, sweeping me high above the clouds, where my immunocompromised body was no longer at risk from being ravaged by foreign contaminants.

Almost funny how Professor Gerald won't be able to help me, either.

"Maria?"

I blinked.

"Hmm?"

"Are you okay?" Shadow asked, concern showing clear across his face.

At less than a year old, my brother had an innocent heart. His hybrid body was at full maturity thanks to his accelerated development, leaving his mind a blank slate to be filled with new info. Shadow and I made a bonding experience out of me teaching him about stuff when Grandpa wasn't available, or when I got grounded for using Grandpa's computer to "play games" after he left it "unlocked". Ever since Shadow came out of the nutrient tank, I made it my new life goal to help him hold on to that innocence for as long as I could.

My name was Maria Robotnik, and yet, I wasn't pure and innocent like Maria Robotnik should be. I loved Shadow like he was family, because he was a member of our mussed-up family, but I didn't think I had it in me to ask him to forgive the humans down there if I got double tapped by a trigger-happy jarhead.

"Do you need to sit down?" he offered gently. Shadow knew I could be kinda prickly about that, but he couldn't help but be concerned about me.

I gave my brother a shaky nod, letting him assist me onto a bench that one of Grandpa's colleges installed by the window for me during their free time. In some ways, I was worse off than the original Maria. She didn't use a cane to get around, at least not before she…

Before she got gunned down like a mobini mutt.

Anyways, that kid let the specter of death wash over her like a spring breeze. Not a care in the world. She didn't insist on engaging in more rigorous procedures to purge the rogue white blood cells trying to enlist the rest of them in a civil war against my nervous system. The kinds of treatments that had yet to be approved for use on United Federation citizens, and I didn't have time for them to catch up with my disease.

Anything to buy a little more time.

Alas, I felt that I was one more dead end away from yanking my cute blonde curls out.

"I'm fine, Shadow. Just… thinking. Did you say something?"

I broke myself out of my dark thoughts, registering that Shadow was pointing at one of the many oddities that dotted the world below.

"What is that strange island near Eurish? I don't think I've seen it there before."

"Which one?" I asked, squinting. My eyes weren't the best, either. I could tell I was overdue for a stronger glasses prescription. "Actually, could you grab my--" Shadow became a streak of black, red, and yellow light, using his rocket skates to blast from one end of the station to another before the rest of the words could leave my mouth.

"--Telescope?" He returned with the small hand telescope I kept in my room before I could fully register that he left. "Oh! Thank you, Shadow."

I gingerly accepted the telescope into my hands, and he sat down next to me on the bench. Always wanting to indulge in his curiosity, I took a minute away from my morose musings to figure out what he was gesturing towards. Not all of the landmarks and other geographic features of the globe could be seen from Low Mobius Orbit. During the day, we could see the Dragon Road that snaked across Yurashia, the Great Pyramids of Mobigypt, and the massive mountain enclosures concealing the humans from the mobians. At night, we could see the brilliant lights shining over the urban megaregion of the Overland, in Northamer.

Couldn't say that I missed the Overland. The smog was awful for my lungs. I wish I could've stayed a teensy bit longer in Station Square, but the rockets they send up and down to Mobius run on a strict schedule. Grandpa says they've been using his clean, chaos-based energy to keep the lights on for years now, same as the ARK.

"Now, where's that island of yours…?"

Once I saw what Shadow was trying to show me, I realized which island he was talking about. After all, there was only one landmass on Mobius that was totally detached from the firmament. The levitating, mountainous terrain was closer than the rest, which made it easier to make out. Though out here past the atmosphere, closeness was a relative thing.

"Oh wow, that's Angel Island!" I said jovially.

I had to make it sound like whatever was bothering me had been swiftly forgotten, while Shadow was still naive enough to buy it.

"Angel… Island?" he said in confusion. "What is that?

"It's also called the Floating Island," I explained. The reason why people called it that should be fairly self-evident. "The place is always on the move, just like the ARK!"

Shadow's red eyes opened in unvarnished wonder.

"How does it fly? And… How come I've never seen it before?"

"No one's a hundred percent sure why it flies," I fibbed. "The reason we haven't seen it yet is because it's closer to Mobius than us, so it moves across the surface at a faster rate than the ARK. I've been trying to spot it for months, so good job, Shadow!"

Shadow smiled. It was a rare thing, and I cherished it whenever he smiled. I'd take a picture, like the one Grandfather had the two of us do when I first arrived on the ARK, but the little brat wouldn't stay still enough to get anything more than a blur.

"What is Angel Island like?"

I took a closer look. The Floating Island had a variety of biomes. Tropical jungles, sandy deserts, mountains with volcanic activity, and mountains with ice caps!

I'd love to go down and see it some time.

If I could.

"Well, it's hard to tell from up here, but if you ask me? It doesn't look very grounded."

Shadow the Hedgehog groaned.

"Maria…"

I let out a playful giggle, handing the telescope to Shadow so he could look for himself.

"Okay, okay! I don't know a lot about the place myself, but I heard it has a lot of ruins."

"What are ruins?"

"They're buildings left behind from old civilizations, like the ones around the Shazamazon!"

Or the temple ships left behind by the Black Arms, who even knows how long ago?

"I see," Shadow said pensively, staring down at the mysterious land through the scope.

We spent nearly an hour looking at Angel Island. It was an appreciated distraction from my failed attempts to reverse-engineer CRISPR from first principles. We were starting to run out of lab rats from stock, and I was told they were on backorder.

Maybe I could get Shadow his own telescope for his first birthday?

I think he'd like that. Me making his first birthday a really special one.

While I wasn't surprised when Grandfather informed me in private that he'd be going on a "research trip" to Angel Island months back, he'd been uncharacteristically cagey about what happened down there that made him change course at the last second. He ended up going for a scaled-down expedition to the echidna archeological sites on the outskirts of Station Square instead. Being the littlest NIDS patient, I wasn't allowed to go with him into the Soumerican boonies that were under stalked and patrolled by the native Felidan hunting parties. Grandfather was able to share photographs of the ancient altar and mural he saw, but I knew he would've been a lot more disappointed if he didn't stumble on an artifact from the "Fourth Great Civilization" while he was out there.

The Gizoid. What a machine that was! It was downright tragic that I was forbidden to access the Gizoid myself. G.U.N. had been watching the ARK like a hawk since the incident with the Artificial Chaos, and Grandfather was watching me like a hawk after Shadow let slip that I'd remilitarized an old Dom walker to help my brother deal with them.

I wasn't even going to pretend I thought he was right to punish me for helping save as many lives as the researchers on the colony as I did. What, did he really think I'd keep out of the way while half the station was on fire? When we were one misaimed tentacle strike away from losing the other half in a mass depressurization incident? I needed the data on how the mech's inbuilt heal unit would be able to make up for the strain that piloting put on my body, and then he confiscated it!

I thought he was joking, but no! He actually did it! Grandpa took my Plan A for survival away from me for being too dangerous, when nothing else he'd siphoned out of the millions in research money that G.U.N was throwing at Project Shadow fire was actually working!

Did he think I wouldn't be making backup plans for when he failed to save me?

Did he think it was an error when he saw the amount of green blood in the vials Doom left behind were smaller than last time he checked? He has to know I'm trying my best!

I'm this close to begging Shadow to cooperate with the transfusion process so I can put this waking nightmare to bed--!

"Maria?" Shadow asked me, once again worrying about me. He'd put down the telescope and was looking at me again, having noticed that something else had made me upset.

"I-It's nothing, really--"

"Is that a newspaper?"

I froze, having taken note of the crumpled paper that slipped out of my big lab coat. It was the wrong size, but it wasn't like I'd have the time to grow into one.

"Yeah," I answered reluctantly.

There was no way I could hide it from him now. Shadow had his gullible moments, but he wasn't stupid. If I tried to hide it, then he'd know for certain that I was trying to hide the bad news away from him. Geraldo and Meredith tried to do the same thing to me, and I hated it. I couldn't hate them, because they were trying their best to be the most supportive parents they could be under these trying circumstances, but I hated when they wanted to keep me in the dark. They couldn't help but treat me like the child they thought they'd brought into the world. Not an adult suffocating in the failing tissues of one.

If one of them hadn't absentmindedly wrapped my Christmas present -- a clockwork music box that somehow slipped past the Overland's embargo with the Kingdom of Acorn -- in last week's copy of the Station Square Times, then I might've stayed totally clueless.

I let out a weary sigh and uncrumpled the newspaper so that he could read the headline.

"Calls for audits on the Heritage Project?" Shadow read out, dumbstruck. I could only mutely nod, confirming what he was reading. "What is the Heritage Project?"

I tried to pick my words carefully.

"The Heritage Project is… the joint mission between the United Federation and the Overland. To link both peoples together."

"I don't understand."

I stood up, so I could wave to the whole world.

"You know how I said not everyone on Mobius looks like Grandpa or me, right? Or anyone else on the surface? They look more like you do, Like the pictures of other mobians."

"I remember," Shadow said, in such a way that he didn't comprehend where I was going with this line of thought.

"The Overland and the United Federation… they're scared. They feel outnumbered, because the rest of the world is so different from them."

"That doesn't make any sense," he said back, confused. "Why would they be scared of what's different?"

"I don't know," I said simply. "But when the humans and the overlanders met each other, they weren't so scared anymore. They decided to be friends."

It was a lot more tenuous than the fairy tale that was sold to me, that I was now selling to Shadow. The only reason the overlanders weren't able to play nice with their neighbors in the south was that the Magistrates in charge of the individual states that made up the Overland were a bunch of insane xenophobes. They found the United Federation, or the UF made contact first when the Overland figured out radios, and the UF has spent decades trying to warm them up to a less wasteful, less self-destructive, more democratic-inclined society. The shining cities under the hills, as they put it.

They still haven't changed, only magnifying the amount of monuments they were building to pronounce their "inherent superiority" over the mobians. All the while, their remaining resources and standards of living went down the drain. We gave them a damn copy of the Statue of Liberty to stick on the coast of Megaopolis, and they still didn't get the hint!

It was so idiotic. All of them.

Shadow looked at the front-page article again. I didn't regret teaching him how to read, but I wished at this moment that he'd conveniently forgotten how. For a while longer.

"So… the humans are upset that the ARK is costing too much?"

"Not just that," I said earnestly. If somewhat forcedly. "The ARK is only one of, like, a hundred satellites the Overland shot into space."

Honestly, I had no idea how much Aunt Bertha and her husband knew about the mounting costs of keeping all of this space junk in orbit. It was doubtful that the Overland had a free press to complain about the ballooning budgets of their space programs.

"But this is something that's making you upset," Shadow said directly.

"A little," I conceded.

"Why?"

"You know that if G.U.N. doesn't like what they see…" My eyes flickered to one of the cameras on the observation deck. "We might have budget cuts. Less resources. Less staff. Anything not directly related to Project Shadow could get… sent back home."

By this point, it had to be an open secret amongst the research staff that the black hedgehog wasn't the biggest financial leech on the project he was named after: It was me. Professor Gerald was hitting brick wall after brick wall in trying to cure my NIDS.

Shadow picked up on my implication right away, frowning at the mere suggestion.

"Do you think they'll make you go back? Without… me?"

I wished I could lie to him, tell him that it would turn out okay if I had to go back for a while, but I was so tired of lying.

I was so tired of lying that I told Shadow the truth.

"I won't let them separate us," I said resolutely.

Before he could argue, I pulled my little brother into a tight hug.

"M-Maria?" Shadow squeaked out, startled. So much for his perfect reflexes.

"I won't ever abandon you. You know that, right?"

"Maria, what are you--"

I only hugged him tighter.

"You know I promised I'd protect you, right?"

Once he realized that I was serious, and I wasn't letting go, he gently hugged me back.

"Yes. It was one of the first things you said to me. That you'd keep me safe."

"That's right. So don't worry, okay?"

"Okay," Shadow replied, after a moment of us holding on to each other. "I won't."

I knew he wasn't completely convinced. Shadow was one of the fastest, most powerful things in the universe. If he wasn't careful, he could accidentally snap me like a twig.

The timer on my watch went off, and my mandatory break was over.

"Good! I'm, uhm, going to be going to bed early."

I slowly disentangled myself from the stunned Shadow's embrace. I'd usually head right back to work when the timer went off, and this was downright uncharacteristic.

"Maria? Do you need help--?"

I tossed him the telescope again and walked away, back to the cabins.

"Nope! Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog! I'll see you in the morning."

In the reflective windows, I could see him giving me a funny look.

"Okay? Say… o… nara."

I went back to my room, with more pep in my step than I've had in a long while. I almost couldn't tell why. Setting down my cane and coat by the door, I locked the cabin and pulled my secret project out from underneath my bunk. Normally, it would've been cruel to stow a normal pet away like that for most of the day, but this was a special exception.

My pet was anaerobic and more than a little photosensitive.

"Good morning, Orfeu!"

My tiny, baby spark of hope gave out a squeak of delight as he scratched at the confines of its wire cage to greet me.

"I bet you missed me, huh?"

My lab rat let out another squeak of excitement, as I slipped him a dried slice of processed biomass and refilled his water tube. He could take solid foods just fine, being a couple of months old now, but these red fruits I'd been harvesting were special treats!

Orfeu retained his standard body plan of his host species: Four limbs, a long tail, and a big cute head with round ears! He never developed the white fur that his peers did, instead growing a velvety black skin that tapered off into red growths of flesh at his paws, feet, ears, and tail. Orfeu's solid yellow eyes popped open for the first time exactly two weeks in, with seemingly no deviations from standard micky behavior. He wasn't that much bigger than a normal mobini, and I took his red blood as a sign that the process went off without a hitch.

I did it. I brought my own kind of life into the world.

My pet was the second successful Earthling/Black Arms hybrid, after Shadow. Or, now that I thought about it, would that make him the second Mobiusling?

Whatever.

He was the first successful mobini/Black Arms hybrid, which I imagine was a lot easier than the wizardry that needed to happen for Shadow to work. What my Grandfather did with the full cooperation of Black Doom, I was going to have to do with a lot less.

I'm done with my parents and my Grandfather making all of these sacrifices for me. I'm not gonna make Shadow make them for me, next.

No. We were all getting out of this alive. As many people on the ARK as I could save, regardless of what G.U.N. had planned once they decided that we needed to go. When they decided that a loaded gun was the fastest way to cover up for their sins.

I gave Orfeu another treat, and once again took stock of how far along I was into Plan B.

I was going to be making the next sacrifice for us all.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

Kept ya'll waiting on this one, huh? Sorry for the delays! I wanted more experience under the belt when I tackled this one, due to the more intense subject matter. That meant a break of sorts while I trained up my writing prowess with NaNoWriMo, but now I'm ready and raring to go for a brand new year!

Thanks to everyone who's reading for following along with my journey through the strange twists and turns of this fic. Enjoy the chapter!

 

[weredrago2]

Ruby Haze
Chapter 25: Chaos Coming Out (of a Pumpkin's Head)

I am a dragon now.

It was one of the more coherent thoughts I'd been able to string together since I started chasing that Metal Sonic to whatever topological fixture was spewing green lights and smoke on the far side of Angel Island. My mind was racing furiously. I was determined to stop that thing before it could cause any more damage, but Metal Sonic had a head start and a rocket attached to his back. The island was large enough that, even going at a fair clip, I had to travel for a while without any more sightings of the badnik that struck my ire. Or any other signs or life, not counting all the birds headed in the opposite direction. It gave me a moment of respite, with which I didn't know where to start.

"I'm a dragon now," I slowly repeated to myself. Just to make sure it fully sank in.

This wasn't a disguise or illusion. Nor a parlor trick from the Ars Ixia book, which only hinted at dragons in the margins. My human form was gone, replaced by the Phantom Ruby with the shape of a monster. Rather than human skin, I was draped in neon scales. Not only flying with a pair of wings on my back, I could feel the wind resistance from a smaller pair of wings stuck to my feet. Those two winglets worked as rudders, complementing the heavy counterweight on my tail so I could navigate. Riding the wind currents felt all too natural, once I had gotten into a rhythm. Like riding a bicycle, only in three dimensions.

I soared through a noxious cloud of ash and dust, which was shot up into the sky by a rush of volcanic activity across the island's Red Mountain range. A fresh outflow of lava bled from the exposed veins and pores atop the rocks, threatening to burn down the rough grasslands and vaguely Grecian ruins of the Marble Gardens further down the hills.

I've been having a bad feeling about the island all day, and now this?

Nothing was adding up here in regards to what I would've planned to deal with on Angel Island. I couldn't pin this on one of the traps Eggman left behind; Metal Sonic seemed unaware of what caused the explosion, and only used the distraction to escape. Did it have something to do with my sixth sense being on the fritz? Or the Phantom Ruby messing with my head again? All I had been receiving from it now was a grave sense of forbearance, which only got worse since I began flying in the direction of the disturbance.

At the bare minimum, I knew the Master Emerald had to be in its normal place. Which also meant Chaos had to remain sealed within it. If it broke, or was stolen, then the island would've begun falling out of the sky.

Could it be something I'd never seen before? Another blind spot I couldn't see coming?

My only other major 'blind spot', besides the specific details of Mobius and the countries therein, had been whoever was behind the Fearsome Foursome. The name and face of the entity guiding that powered goon squad, watching their progress through those green diamond sigils marking their heads, remained an open question.

Why is everyone trying to test me? Test my patience?

A spurt of lava erupted out of a fresh outcropping, forcing me to kick up my legs and use the winglets as emergency brakes for a sharp turn away from the air hazard!

"STOP! STOP!"

It wasn't enough. For a terrifying second, I was splashed by what felt like warm soda left out of the fridge for too long… until the molten rock slicked harmlessly off my body. I examined my scales further, as they repulsed the lava away with no lingering damage.

"I-I'm fireproof?"

Upon further reflection, the bike metaphor didn't hold any more water than a t-shirt would stop a bullet. I needed to figure out how this new transformation worked before anyone else did. I took a deep breath, feeling my lungs expand and well up with a nebulous pressure that swirled between hot, cold, wet, and dry. Aiming at a dead tree, I exhaled a magenta fireball that burned it to a crisp.

Dragons breathe fire. That tracks. Sensing a theme here.

Not willing to take the plunge into the Lava Reef in the hopes that I might find the Hidden Palace, I kept going towards the green glow. Eventually, the scorching mounds gave way to a bone-dry valley littered with perilous spires and canyons. These barren wastes were eerily derelict, with the skeletons of abandoned settlements dotting the terrain.

There was something implacably wrong about this place. My sense of woe reached its zenith. Surrounded by a suffocating aura of dark emanations, part of me wanted to turn and run back the way I came.

I squashed that impulse. Metal Sonic was still on the loose, and now there was a new threat. Knuckles was sleeping on the job, so his problem became my problem.

I landed down on a solid cliff that looked like it would support my increased weight, from which I could take a better stock of the badlands. My center of balance in this new body felt off-kilter, a sensation I hoped I could shake before it became a life-threatening concern. The haunted hoodoos of this new region looked as inviting as the rest, with capstones carved like jack-o'-lanterns grinning at me in every direction.

"Pumpkin Hill, too?"

Now that I was seeing more places that resonated with my memories, I could safely say that it was phenomenally grating. Like this was another joke at my expense. This whole world was a sick joke being played on me. Presenting me with all of these familiar things so they could twist the damn knife. Making me get my hopes up, and then turning those hopes into more problems for me to solve!

"What's so funny?" I called out to the mocking pumpkins. "You got something to say?"

I looked around at the faces, their smiles betraying that they knew something I didn't. I could see it in their glowing eyes.

"Answer me!"

They gave no answer but the laughter carrying on the graveyard wind.

Stop laughing at me!

I dove down and jabbed one of the pumpkin pillars with my reptilian arm, smashing it. I then moved on to the next one, thrashing it with my tail. My limbs, both old and new, retailed their prior elasticity. Strikes with my extremities were now punctuated by punctures from ebony, shear-like claws.

Only when I broke a couple of them did all of their eyes stop glowing. The mocking laughter was replaced with a dead silence, because, from what I could tell, there was no one else out here in the first place.

"Why did I…?"

I stopped, and looked down to my shaking hands. My final ring, which was the remaining piece of Heavy's broken tether, was gone.

There was no one there.

"No."

There was no one there. Lacking a threat to lash out against, I'd hallucinated one.

"That couldn't've…"

Was it a ghost?

Was I seeing things?

Was I finally well and truly losing it? I was trying very hard to stay calm, because even with the scattershot amount of information I had to work with, I couldn't imagine a delusional weredragon would make things better.

I had to survive until morning. Then I might become human again at daybreak. If I couldn't find another ring around here, then waiting out the dusk hours was my only option.

More cautiously analyzing my environment for peculiarities, at least in regards to how I thought this zone should look, it wasn't long until I located the odd landmark out. One of the largest hills had been shattered open with tremendous force, rocky debris spilling out from the center onto the surrounding ravines and gullies. Out of the pit was a fading emanation of sheer, caustic malevolence, thick enough that it could be seen as an emerald smog. The Phantom Ruby gave me a peculiar range of emotional awareness, and the half-life of this decaying hatred was so strong that I could practically taste it.

It was almost like what I'd expect out of Dark Gaia, which was supposed to be beneath the surface of the planet. The kind of energies that would turn me into this. Worst of all, I was drawing a blank on what else could've caused it.

Was it a meteor strike? An alien invader like the Black Arms?

No, that wouldn't add up. For the blast pattern to look the way it did, the source of the impact had to be from inside the smoking crater where a mountain once stood.

So something came out?

I raised one of my clawed hands to summon my communicator from my pocket zone. In my haste, I didn't stop to tell Fiona Fox where I'd been going. I also could have stopped to free Heavy and Bomb from the crystal beam I stuck them in, but I didn't.

At this point, I couldn't tell how much of my short-sightedness was the Phantom Ruby driving me mad versus me authentically being an idiot. When I got my communicator, I had half a mind to warn them to stay away from me until I was back to normal.

I continued to hold out my hand, waiting for my comm to appear sooner or later. It didn't. Attempts to make portals or other Phantom Ruby-based spells were also fruitless. I then realized that, in the same way Sonic the Werehog exchanged his speed for strength, my change must've caused my magic to get bent out of shape.

"Oh, come on!" I roared in frustration.

The wind changed again, whipping up a dust devil that wouldn't be out of place in the nearby Egyptian desert. I raised my defense, well aware that a sudden whirlwind would be the most suitably dramatic way for this snide version of Metal Sonic to make himself known again. However, instead of one blurry figure in the storm, I saw four. Two normal-sized mobians, a taller one, and a more slight figure hovering midair.

There was a touch of green to their auras, confirming what I already knew on sight.

They've come all the way up here to screw with me?

I'm gonna make them regret this.

"You again?" I snarled at the Fearsome Foursome. "Back off! Final warning!"

Sergeant Simian stepped up to me with a braggadocious swagger.

"Back off? You're on the Big Man's turf, man! So step off or get stepped on!"

That was an odd turn of phrase to hear out of him, from what scant interactions we've had, but he said the man behind the green diamond was here, on the island!

"Take me to him. Now."

Simian chuckled. He didn't look nearly as formidable now that I was roughly a foot taller than him.

"Don't be a drag, dragon! You're hardly worth our master's--!"

I slugged him in the chest with all of my strength, launching the ape into the air and through the doors of an old church. If the Foursome were so eager to jump the queue, then Metal Sonic could wait until I was done pounding them into the dirt!

"I'm not asking for permission!"

The other three circled around me. I forced them to keep their distance with a broad tail swipe, which took Flying Frog off his feet. Predator Hawk came at me from above, attempting a dive kick, and I nearly singed his feathers off with a stream of fire breath.

"Yipe!" Hawk cried. "Anyone remember what we did to tick this guy off?"

"Flying, grab his tail!" Lightning Lynx exclaimed, performing a ukemi to recover after I pulverized the hollow tree where he once stood.

"Don't act like you don't remember!" I shouted back.

As I approached, the Lynx batted me in the eye with his elongated tongue!

I stumbled back, taken by surprise. That was Flying Frog's move!

Wait, how'd he--?!

I felt a tug on my tail, and my whole body being lifted into the air by Flying Frog!

"You're a big one, ain't ya?" he said coarsely. "Well, the bigger they are…!"

I didn't hear the second half of that, as he tossed me into the direction of the church. Whereas Simian went through the door, I was sent headfirst through the stone wall. I shook off the old cobwebs and masonry, all too raring to get back into the fray.

"I'm not done with you yet!" I growled, getting back to my feet.

That was when I heard faint, tinny rock music, coming out of a broken cassette player that didn't look too far off from an old Walkman.

"What is that doing… here?"

Looking around, growing increasingly wary, I followed the personal stereo to a large pair of headphones that were illuminated by the cracks in the roof. The headphones were being worn by a long and thin green reptile with a broad chest and narrow arms.

I recognized him right away, and my boiling blood felt as though it turned to ice.

No, no, no!

"Anybody get the number of that ute?" Vector the Crocodile slurred, a large goose egg on his head and more severe bruising on his torso where I struck him.

That wasn't Sergeant Simian. Which meant the others weren't the Fearsome Foursome.

I was trying to kill the Chaotix!

Aghast, I scrambled to get Vector back on his feet, ramming down the blinding rage that'd nearly caused me to end the life of an innocent man.

"I-I'm sorry! I-I thought you were someone else!"

It was easily the dumbest thing I could've blurted out, but I didn't care.

"Brother, right now I feel like a sack of potatoes," Vector said numbly. "But whatever you did, you snapped me out of that bad mamma jamma's mojo!"

I could barely understand what he was saying. I was worried that my attack gave him brain damage, until I tumbled the words over in my head to uncover what he meant.

"You mean you were under a spell?" I asked.

Vector shook himself off, picking up what remained of his headphones.

"Got it in one, daddy-o!" It was too early to call if he sustained a concussion. "I'd say thanks for knocking some sense into me, but the job ain't done yet!"

The rest of the Chaotix poured into the opening. The purple, horned chameleon with green shoes had to be Espio. The small bee in all black and yellow was Charmy. That left the red-shelled, blue-eyed armadillo lugging around a huge cudgel of rusty rebar as Mighty.

Oh my god, I almost incinerated Charmy!

"Look, I don't want to fight anymore!" I shouted to the three.

"That's not gonna work!" Vector said. "That whacked-out warlock's got them in a trance!"

Mighty slammed his bludgeon of scrap metal down on the ground.

"Too late for saying sorry, Hot Breath! You've made an enemy of Lord Enerjak by stomping around his island without giving him tribute!"

"I don't even know what an Enerjak is!"

I tried to focus my own mesmerism effect, to try and break up the spell that has them under its sway, but it wasn't working! I was out of magic, and out of luck.

"Then allow us to hand-deliver you to him!" Espio said.

I took another deep breath, this time trying to emanate an effect that was less intense than a fireball through my nostrils. The internal energies got jumbled up in my throat, and while I was predicting smoke, what came out of my nose were two chilling rays of frost!

"Look out!" shouted Charmy, as the trio were surrounded in a thick cage of ice!

"If you aren't gonna fight, then we've gotta jet!" Vector shouted.

I nodded, running out of there with Vector in tow. I slid down one of the less steep hills, while Vector rolled down it as a living wheel. It wasn't exactly advisable with a head injury.

"Where are we going?" I said to Vector.

"We've gotta search for Knuckles and that Archy guy! Enerjak sent them away to who knows where and had the rest of us homies acting as his cronies!"

I didn't know who Archie was, either.

Another blind spot?

We kept running, passing the pumpkin-shaped part of the island entirely. Soon, we stopped at a region with more sedate peaks and plateaus, broken up by the occasional windmill.

"Do the Chaotix have a fallback place where you meet up?" I asked.

"Knuckles' lookout is crawling with Enerjak's 'bots right now, but we ain't too far from Rock Hill. That's where Mighty shares a place with Heavy and Bomb."

"Then let's head there and see if we can regroup."

Awkwardly, I picked up Vector and flew us towards where he was directing. After a few minutes of silence, Vector stared at me curiously, a glint coming over his yellow eyes.

"What's wrong?"

"You know, in all of that ruckus, I didn't stop to ask what a dragon was doin' all the way out here on the Floating Island. A long way from home, huh?"

I frowned. It seemed like, retro look or not, this Vector remained a detective at heart.

"You could say that," I replied warily. "Sorry again for going overboard."

"It's all water under the bridge. Enerjak's magic was messing with all of us, right?"

"Right," I answered slightly too fast.

The crocodile didn't comment for another minute.

"By the way, the name's Vector."

"John Scarlet. I'm with the freedom fighters in Mercia."

"No kidding," Vector said as he rubbed his jaw. "You've got a real mean southpaw, you know that? Could've given Rad Red a run for his money with that one."

"Thanks?"

I landed down atop a rugged hill with a tunnel sticking out of it.

"This the place?"

Vector nodded.

We cautiously entered the spacious abode that'd been carved into the rock, which already had lights on before Vector could flip the switch. The place had two major rooms that I could see past the common area, with the first being a studio/gym hybrid and the second looking like a sci-fi auto shop. I was surprised to see Fiona Fox had gotten there before us, alongside a Heavy and Bomb that were covered in pink crystal flakes.

"Our friends have returned!" Heavy said in joy.

"Ping!" added Bomb.

"What the--!" Fiona started, when she turned around and locked eyes with me. "Where'd you fly off to, you numbskull?"

"I was trying to find the Metal Sonic," I said apologetically. "Lost track of myself. It's hard to… control my impulses like this. Trying to stay level."

Vector crossed his skinny arms. It was surreal to remember how thin he was in his 'Classic' incarnation versus his later one.

"Hey, who let a chick inside Mighty's crash pad?"

Fiona shot a withering glare at Vector that made him wince.

"Shut up, croc! Mighty owes me big time!"

She already knew Mighty?

"And that would have been us who invited them in," Heavy interjected. "The situation out there has been deteriorating rapidly since the entity was unleashed from Mt. Fate."

The entity? Wait, who's 'them'?

"What exactly is going on?" I asked.

"Haven't you heard there's a crazy chaos god out there?" Fiona said.

"There's a what?"

"Oh, he hasn't heard!" drawled a half-disassembled and vulnerable Metal Sonic, partway through a rushed repair job on one of the workshop tables. "After I left your fat tail eating my dust, I doubled back and--"

I walked over to the table and prepared to finish what I started.

"PARLAY!" Metal Sonic squeaked out. "PARLAY!"

Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it -- the others were able to force me stay my hand and listen to what he had to say. At the least, his story was able to help me wait out the clock until sunrise.

It turned out that, as of that night, the Floating Island was under new management.

- - -

Spoiler: Author Notes

With Bonus Chapter 2 out of the way, we're back on track with the Angel Island Tour!

Angel Island's size is never given hard numbers within the story. At least, we aren't given real numbers. We're presented with made up units with no real-world comparisons, which are worthless. Toss 'em in the trash. I've been using the maps of Angel Island from both the Complete Sonic Encyclopedia and Super Sonic Digest #2 as points of reference for where the different locations lie, with the latter serving as an effective update of the former. I'll use the names of places used on either map as I deem appropriate.

The Chaotix here, like their introduction in the comics, are modeled on their appearances in Knuckles' Chaotix. Vector has yet to work out, Espio wasn't officially a ninja, Mighty was there, and Charmy is about the same age as the rest of them. Strange, isn't it?

Who is Enerjak? For those of you who don't already know, you'll soon find out.