StS - The Days After ch. 4

The entire ride was spent with Sally’s forehead pressed against the window, staring dejectedly at the canopy of the forest on either side of the dirt road; the drivers felt like neither trying to strike up a conversation nor turning on the radio, leaving just the sounds of the engines and tires. Eventually dirt would give way to gravel and then to actual concrete, and the trees would be spaced farther and farther apart, and the lights of Ansborough would become bright enough to make Sally finally lift her head off of the glass and try to shield her eyes.

However large a town Ansborough was, its central square didn’t seem to be very active at night, with the only people there to greet them when they arrived being a rather morose-looking crow in a suit a size too large for him, a bespectacled raccoon, and a human much taller than the both of them. And that human was the first one to grab Sally’s attention, with his garishly-colored jumpsuit and long dyed-blue hair. No matter the individual faction, Overlanders had a very distinct form of dress.

For the moment, he wasn’t openly displeased by their presence, so Sally did her best to focus her attention on the other two. “Are you Mayor Daniels and Ms. Addock?”

They both nodded. “Terribly sorry I couldn’t get to you earlier,” Daniels said as he shook her hand. “One of those days full of endless meetings.”

“Understood.”

“We’ve got some apartments set up for you,” Linda Addock said, and pointed to somewhere in the distance. “The building’s about two blocks away from here; shouldn’t be too long a walk. Tell the receptionist you’re from Knothole when you get there.”

With a few words of thanks, most of the group departed, leaving Sally, Bunnie, Antoine, Rotor, Rosie, Len, and Sonic. 

The Overlander attempted to step forward and address Sally, but Antoine and Len immediately blocked his path; Sally had to gently push the two out of the way. “Easy there, guys.”

“Princess Sally, this is Orrin,” Linda said. “He’s a high-ranking member of one of our neighboring Overlander settlements.”

With Antoine and Len directly behind her, Sally took Orrin’s outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Same,” he replied. “If you guys ever need support, we’re available, though…” 

“Though what?” Len snapped.

Orrin winced. “I, uh, don’t think you guys need to be told this, but don’t go near the bases to the east and west of this town without an escort. They don’t like to be disturbed; even my guys can’t pay them a visit without calling first.”

Tentatively, Sonic stepped out from behind Rosie, just enough that Orrin would see him. “But, I thought most Overlanders got along with each other…don’t they?”

“It depends,” Orrin said. “The Overlander philosophy has a lot of splinters, as does just about any large-enough group, I figure. My lot’s fairly easy-going, for the record.”

“Isn’t zhat ‘philosophy’ based entirely around ‘get off my l--” was a sentence Antoine would’ve finished if Sally hadn’t clamped a hand over his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she told Orrin. “The Kingdom of Acorn has had…unpleasant experiences with Overlanders in the past.”

“Eh, understood.” 

Now seemed like a good time to end the conversation; Sally bade the three of them farewell, and beckoned her friends to follow her to the hotel. Antoine and Len gave Orrin a wide berth, not reacting to his awkward apologetic shrug, and quickly caught up to Sally with the rest trailing behind.

Once they were out of earshot, Sally turned to face them without breaking stride. “Guys, all politics aside, I implore you not to do anything that could screw us over,” she told them, though she made a point of looking directly at Len and Antoine. “For now, this is the only real protection we have against the Empire.”

“What’s wrong with being cautious?” Antoine asked. “You don’t turn your back to a member of an organization with a history of violence unless you know for certain zhat zhey won’t stab you.”

“Didn’t I say earlier that one of the bases was non-aggressive?” she said. “Please, ‘Twan, at least give this one the benefit of the doubt…”

Antoine didn’t say anything in reply, and Len was keeping quiet; the rest of the walk to the hotel was made in silence. Nobody passed by them on the way, apart from the occasional car going at forty miles an hour. The few tall buildings loomed over them, unlit monoliths that looked as though they’d fall over at any minute; everything around them in a twenty-foot radius vanished into darkness, even with the street lamps lined up along the sidewalk. A few of those lamps sputtered intermitted, all of them with a cloud of cicadas fluttering around them and chirping incessantly. And just like at the crossroads, it was very, very cold; the hotel entrance couldn’t have come into view fast enough.

--

By the time they’d been given their room numbers, Sally was too tired to pay more attention to her surroundings than was required to avoid bumping into people. She drifted upstairs, entered her temporary two-room apartment, stripped off her clothes, and went to sleep.

Len and Sonic slowly trudged up the stairs that seemed to spiral upward into infinity; their destination was near the top floor, at the very back of the hall. The only positive thought going through Len’s mind, aside from lingering relief that her son and friends were still alive, was that maybe they could try sliding down the banister in the morning. She didn’t know why a grown-ass woman would even consider that; probably a feeble defense mechanism against all the other shit lingering in her head. The banister wasn’t even set far away enough from the wall for that to work.

Rotor and Rosie’s rooms weren’t as high up, but getting up there still took some effort. How the Roses got as far ahead of them as they did without running was a mystery; they’d both seemed equally as tired as their friends. At some point Rosie took a detour and bade Rotor goodnight; Rotor couldn’t remember reaching his own apartment.

Antoine and Bunnie remained in the lobby for a while. This was a mistake.

It hadn’t seemed like that at first; almost everyone in the lobby was staring at Bunnie’s mechanical limbs, but there was visible concern in their faces--no disgust, at least none that was aimed directly at her. One middle-aged woman timidly walked up to her, and pointed to Bunnie’s arm. “Is it…anything you’re willing to talk about?” she asked.

Was it? 

“Erm…” Bunnie shifted about uncomfortably in her seat.

“I-I can drop the subject if it bothers you,” the woman said quickly, but Bunnie raised a hand to stop her.

“It’s okay, it’s just…how to put it.” One of those things that didn’t seem so difficult until she actually tried to say it. “During the invasion, ah was put into the roboticizer--some tech that the Empire appropriated; it wasn‘t publically talked about much--and mah friend got me out of there before the process was finished.”

The woman nodded in understanding, and prepared to head over to her apartment or resume what she’d been doing prior--then some pre-evolved troglodyte roughly shoved his way past her and stuck his sneering face almost right into Bunnie’s, so closely that she had to lean back.

“Yeah, that’s an interesting story,” he said. “How long did it take you to make that up? A second?”

Bunnie stared him right in the eye. “Ah wasn‘t lying. That was exactly what happened; ah’ve got witnesses who can back me up.”

Antoine placed an arm between her and the stranger. “One of zhem is Sally Acorn,” he added. “You know--ze Princess? She was ze one who saved my friend.”

This did precisely nothing to convince the stranger. “And next you’ll tell me you all rode out of Mobotropolis in gold-plated hot rods or something.”

“No. We ran hysterically in complete darkness for an hour, praying that we didn’t get shot before we reached Knot--”

The stranger cut Bunnie off mid-sentence by reaching over and jostling her mechanical arm. “These are external augmentations, aren’t they?” he asked. “I see people walking out of the black market with these all the time.”

In response, Bunnie twisted around so that the bulging veins around the space where flesh and metal met were directly in the fluorescent light. “Does it look like ah’ve got external augmentations?!”

“Hey, accidents happen when suiting up. Shouldn’t have gone to an amateur for tho--”

And then the asshole went flying across the lobby, narrowly missing the other patrons as they cried out and dove for cover; he landed on a table that was miraculously only sent skidding across the linoleum instead of being broken in half on impact. Neither he nor Antoine had seen Bunnie shoot up and catch the guy on her fist.

“Lay off or I’ll rearrange yer face!”

The stranger took a moment to collect his bearings and scampered right out the front door before the dust settled.

With all eyes on her again, Bunnie sat back down and buried her face in her lap. “We’re gonna get thrown out for that, aren’t we?” she muttered, not really expecting an answer, but still peeking out when Antoine remained silent for almost an entire minute.

“I…don’t think we’ll have to worry about it,” he said finally.

--

Unsurprisingly, the thoroughfare was much more lively during the day. Len watched the moderately-sized crowds bustle from one end of the place to the other, stopping only to enter the buildings or wait for the cars to pass--and there were a lot of cars, all of varying builds and ages; there were a handful of chrome-rimmed, fake-wood-plated clunkers amongst the sea of newer, equally eye-searing vehicles, every other one driven by or carrying a yuppie with one arm hanging out of the window, clutching a cigarette in between their middle and pointer fingers.

Mobotropolis had plenty of its own obnoxiousness, but at least you didn’t have so many smoldering cigarette butts flicked onto the sides of the roads.

“Hey, kid, shouldn’t you be at the bus stop?”

Len barely turned to face the old guy who’d somehow walked up to her without her hearing him. “I graduated two years ago,” she said flatly, and received no response.

Actually, she’d been exempt from school for ages, but that guy didn’t need to know that. If there was one thing Len didn’t need right now, it was explaining her life story to someone who’d forget it as soon as he took off for work.

Eventually her son and their friends exited the hotel and spotted her sitting at the end of the steps.

“Nicole wants us to go to the library,” Sally said. “She thinks that if there’s any computers there with an Internet connection, she could hack into the Empire’s database from there.”

Len snorted. “Good luck with that.”

Nicole’s voice piped up from parts unknown. “Hey, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” After Len had hoisted herself up, the group began their walk to the library. “Whether you really are a sentient program or just some delusional hacker living in the middle of nowhere--sorry, Sally--the Empire’s likely got their network so heavily-protected that even looking at it will set off the alarms. And I really don’t want to find out what’ll happen if they trace the breach back here.”

“But they won’t trace it,” Nicole stated.

“Because in addition to being guarded, chances are the network will be closed. Can’t trace what can’t get in.”

“W-well--surely we can acquire some information on them through the ‘Net, can’t we?”

“Yes, after you wade through ze sea of disgusting pornography carefully framed as to never show ze dominant partner’s face,” Antoine replied, quietly enough that Sonic couldn’t discern what he was talking about.

“Let’s not discuss our plans in public,” Sally said. “Never know who could be listening.”

“Sal, if there were any Empire spies here, they wouldn’t need to be eavesdropping. Your appearance alone would be enough.”

That back-and-forth continued all the way to the library--an impressive multi-story establishment with stone columns lining the walkways--and before long Sonic just tried to tune it out; he had a feeling that, whatever they were planning, he wouldn’t be witnessing it; Rosie would take him over to the kids’ section, as she usually did whenever they took trips to the library in Mobotropolis and there was something that both his mom and Big Sis needed to look for.

Rosie had grasped the handles of the front doors when a voice called out for them to wait; everyone turned to see a familiar middle-aged raccoon hobbling up to them, closely followed by a much younger green turtle.

“I hope you don’t mind me joining in,” Bookshire Draftwood said, after taking a moment to rub his sore leg. “There’s not much else to do in this town, you know…”

Sally just gave him a blank stare. “W-we’re not here to check out books,” she said awkwardly.

“Oh?”

“Nicole wants to use the Internet, and this is the only place I can think of that would have public computers.”

“I see…” Bookshire adjusted his glasses. “Which one of you is Nicole?”

In response, Sally raised the handheld high enough for Bookshire to see. “Um--I’ll explain later. We’re blocking the doors.”

They went inside and were immediately bowled over by an invisible cloud of air freshener (that annoyingly nebulous kind whose scent was impossible to pin down); some time had to be spent acclimating before they could proceed. All the while, a handful of other patrons gave them odd looks, with one muttering to her friend, “Must be city folk.”

The urge to flip that lady off was a powerful one, but Antoine ultimately let her pass unoffended. Getting into a physical fight with a woman, especially in an enclosed space like this, was a death sentence.

With that out of the way, it was time to check the directory; the turtle used this opportunity to speak up.

“Funny thing is, Bookshire and I were just gonna kill some time in here before he spotted you,” he said. “Then he was all ‘Hey, it’s the Princess and those other folks from Knothole; let’s go talk to them and pretend that we planned to meet up with them from the start’.”

“That’s not what I said,” Bookshire chided.

“You might as well have. Name’s Tommy, by the way.”

“Hello, Tommy,” Sally said without looking away from the painfully-vague directory. “I don’t want to sound rude, but you two might be better off ditching us. We don’t know how long we’ll be here.”

“Neither do we, really.”

“We’ll also be hoping the library police won’t bludgeon us over what Nicole will be searching for.”

“I’m sure their machines will have filters set in place--”

“Not that.” She stepped away and gave her friends a half-hearted shrug. “Well, this thing is useless. Let’s just walk around.”

“Am I coming, too?” Sonic asked.

“Of course--unless you want one of us to take you over to the kids’ section?”

A passing blue jay called over to them, “The kids’ section starts with sixth-grade level stuff. You gotta go to the sub-branch by the elementary school for anything below that.”

“So you’ll be staying with us, then,” Len said.

Sonic would’ve protested that he could handle the sixth-grade stuff--he was very good at reading, after all, just like Amy--but his mother took his hand before he could raise his voice, and it didn’t really feel right to say anything now. Maybe after Nicole had finished her business.

Their little group walked through rows and rows of towering, fully-stocked bookshelves, Bookshire occasionally pausing to check their contents; the gaps between them were just barely wide enough for two people to walk through if they huddled together, and occasionally there’d be a stepstool lying in the path that was too short to be of much use to anyone but the average basketball player (and a few of those had random novels carelessly left on them, some from a completely different section of the library). Eventually Sonic stopped paying any real attention to his surroundings and just focused on keeping pace with Len; those computers were probably at the opposite end of the building.

At some point they came to a momentary stop, and Len let go of Sonic’s hand to talk with the others; Sonic used that opportunity to pull a book off a bottom shelf. “Hey, Antoine?” he asked, because Antoine was the only one who noticed what he was doing. “Which section are we in?”

“Earth imports, I think. Surprised zhat it’s as large as it is.”

“Did you ever read this one? ‘I Have No Mouth and I’--”

Antoine snatched it away and hastily put it back before he could finish. “You wouldn’t enjoy reading zhat, Needlemouse. Trust me.”

“How come?”

“It’s…scary. Very scary. You’d have nightmares for ze rest of ze month, if you could understand it.”

Sonic sighed. “What difference would it make?”

The first response to come to mind was that Sonic was too young to have to deal with intrusive pondering of existential terror, but then he‘d have to explain what “existential terror” was--and then it sunk in and Antoine completely forgot whatever it was he would’ve told the kid instead.

“We’re moving, you two.”

How the others had gotten so far ahead of them without either noticing was beyond Antoine. He picked up Sonic and caught up to them as quickly as he could, what with that leg wound still smarting.

“Why did you pick me up?” Sonic asked, his tone nearly flat.

“So…you don’t…get stepped on?” Antoine wasn’t even sure why he did that, himself, and put the kid down near Len, who gave him a puzzled look before taking Sonic’s hand in hers again.

“You gettin’ all discombobulated on us, Ant?” she chided, to which Antoine could only shrug.

--

After nearly a half-hour of searching with no payoff, Rotor finally spoke up. “Hey, guys?” he said, not even bothering to mask his exasperation. “I don’t wanna sound rude, but--I’m sure we could’ve wasted a lot less time if we’d just gone to the front desk first.”

Why hadn’t they just asked someone where the computers were? Sure, there was the obvious risk of coming across as complete morons who couldn’t be bothered to look for them on their own, but thinking about it…Sally just didn’t want to talk to anyone here, a sentiment that seemed to be shared amongst the entire group, save for Bookshire and Tommy--the latter of whom had already made a beeline for the front desk.

Funny, she was usually a lot more sociable than this--and that was the keyword: “usually”. How long was her subconscious going to distract her from the fact that these were not normal circumstances? Because if the result was the sort of bone-headed obliviousness she was displaying now, she could do without it.

Tommy came skidding back. “The computers are in a separate lab on the second floor, near the non-fiction section,” he reported.

“…Why?” was all Sally could think to ask.

“I dunno. So people can do their library computing in peace?”

With a heavy sigh, Sally led her friends over to the stairs in the center of the library floor. “I’m sorry that you’ll never get that half-hour back,” she muttered.

Bunnie shrugged. “Beats spending it at the hotel.”

Up the stairs they went, past a handful of people who’d seen them wandering around earlier and were probably wondering what they were still doing here if there wasn’t a single book between them. Or maybe they were trying to figure out the nature of Bunnie’s mechanical limbs, or why Antoine was bandaged up. Nobody was in the mood to verify.

The non-fiction section, it turned out, was near the very end of the second floor, and the computer lab was labeled with a faded sheet of paper nailed beside the entryway with text so small as to be nearly unreadable; even knowing where it was, overlooking it would’ve been pathetically easy. About the only reprieve was that nobody was in it.

The machines were divided into two groups: one reserved for looking up books, one for surfing the Internet using the most limited web portal the library could dredge up--but not limited enough to deter Nicole, it would seem, for she let out a high-pitched squeak the moment Sally opened up her handheld.

“They’re set to exactly the portal I had in mind!” she cried.

“Your bar must not be set too high,” Len muttered. 

“Hush, you. Rotor?”

On cue, Rotor dug the necessary cable out of his bag and set to work on connecting Nicole to the desired computer; meanwhile, Len took a seat at the far end of the tables and pulled Sonic up onto her lap. “I assume the only reason you need a remote device hooked up here if you’re a hacker is so that we can hang on to any info you download?”

Nicole sighed through grit teeth. “No, I need this not-remote device hooked up to a computer because I am an AI,” she said tersely. 

It was an awkward angle to face his mother from, but Sonic managed it. “She’s right, you know.”

“Eh. Any sites you want to visit, while we’re here?” Len asked Sonic, who gave her a half-hearted shrug.

Sally leaned over so that she and Nicole could make eye contact. “She’ll accept it eventually.”

“She better.” As soon as Rotor had everything hooked up, Nicole turned her attentions to the computer. “Alrighty, then; we’ll start with a search of all the available BBS archives, followed by a quick scan for anything relevant, and go on from there.” Her avatar blipped out and reappeared in a newly-opened window on the library computer screen. “I’ll let you know when I find it.”

What to do now? Sally didn’t feel like getting on the Internet herself, or leaning over Len’s shoulder for an indeterminate length of time; maybe she could go out and find a book, but after all that walking around…so she just sat with her back to the wall, well out of the way of the door, and rocked back and forth with her knees pulled up to her chest, watching Antoine and Bunnie eventually do the same; Bookshire and Tommy milled about for a while, occasionally peeking at the screen, before going outside to find something to read, as they’d originally intended. That left Rosie, who--unable to do much for her friends at the moment--followed them and detoured into the non-fiction section.

It must’ve been an amazing thing, to directly browse the Internet like that. What was it like, anyway? Was Nicole traipsing about pitch-black streets littered with haphazardly-placed digital constructs underneath a jittery, flickering mockery of the sky, like in that one sci-fi novel Sally could never remember the name of? Did travel from site to site require her to zip along intangible data lines, or could she literally walk from one to the other? How much physical effort did she have to expend? Or was it just interminable file-sorting?

…It had to be file-sorting. The Internet was many things, but a world unto itself it wasn’t. Not really.

“A-ha!” Nicole’s voice cut through her idle thoughts. “There’s a board dedicated to discussing the Empire! That didn’t take long.”

“I’m sure there’s lots of boards out there that talk about the Empire,” Len muttered, not taking her eyes off her own screen. “Does this one have anything actually useful, or is it just a bunch of thirteen-year-olds who are removed far enough from them to think the Empire’s full of heavy metal badasses or…something?”

Everyone blankly stared at her.

“Look, I ran into a bunch of those types during my mob-busting days. And I actually punched a few.”

No sooner had her friend spoken those words did Sally wonder just how in the hell anyone could admire the Eggman Empire; Robotnik could blather on all he wanted about the crime of passivity and wasting your potential as a world power, but no amount of pretentious drivel would change the fact that he and his Empire were ultimately looters--likely all they ever were, and all they ever would be. They kicked down the door and made off with everything that wasn’t welded in place, then they fired up the roboticizer and took some of the people, as well. If even Sonic, a five-year-old boy who had been looking forward to starting elementary school with his sister and joining their older friends there, could recognize the Empire for what it was, then these hypothetical adolescents had no goddamn excuse. Christ, Sally was fourteen, and she wasn’t fooled.

…then again, it was literally her kingdom that got ransacked…but still. That wasn’t the sort of thing you needed to be royalty to understand.

Nicole shook her head. “The syntax makes it unlikely that this one’s run by teenagers, among other things. But even then, you could potentially wring some information out of a place like that, even if you had to take into account things like biases and--”

“Just raid their archives,” Len snapped; Nicole fell silent and got to work on her search, but just before her avatar disappeared again, Sally swore she caught a glimpse of her poking her little tongue out at the hedgehog. Not that Len could actually notice it from this angle.

Minutes passed with no word from the AI. Trying to get comfortable against this wall was a real pain in the ass, in multiple senses of the word; if anyone here had been willing to try and strike up a conversation, it might’ve phased into the background. Sally resorted to leaning forward and doing stretches, something she was never all that good at--the tendons in her legs always felt like they’d snap at any moment even when she was reaching out just a little bit. But it beat putting up with the sensation of her spine bending out of place, centimeter by centimeter.

“Seems they’ve already settled in large portions of the Grand Kingdom,” Nicole reported. “Most of those places were previously uninhabited…”

The Kingdom of Acorn had already been aware that the Empire had a presence in their country, albeit too far away from them to be of much concern…ha. Hahahahaha.

“…spanning into the outlying islands, and the southern tip of Spagonia…”

Sally had always wanted to visit Spagonia, or maybe Apotos; the brochure photos always made them look so inviting.

“…and going further up, though most of their establishments are situated on the outer shores…”

Did Sally ever pass her swimming lessons? No one ever told her if she did or not, for some reason. She was never a very graceful swimmer, but she didn’t remember the instructor squawking at her too often, so--

“No, wait, they’ve got some bases inland. A lot of bases, it looks like…”

Well, scratch that trip to Spagonia. 

Nicole went quiet again, and they were left with little more than dead air and patrons shuffling about beyond the lab door for a while. About seven minutes, Sally counted, before Nicole spoke up again--not in the calm tone she had read off her findings in before, but a terrified whisper.

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, it’s not just Spagonia and the GK…”

In an instant, everyone was crowded around the computer, eyes as wide as Nicole’s. She continued, her voice growing ever quieter: “Multiple posts all around the western side of Mazuri, many of them dedicated to the manufacture of arms both short and long range, with strong political influence extending to most of the northern region--infiltrated Apotos’s government in the late ‘60s and have had a tight hold on it ever since--much of the habitable land in Holoska settled in, with expeditions frequently made into the snowy wastelands--the coasts of Chun-Nan almost completely taken over, with forces beginning to encroach on Abadat--” Nicole exchanged horrified glances with the others, as everything she had told them slowly sunk in. “Th-that’s--that’s over half the world, isn’t it?”

The first question that would have been on Sally’s mind was of how the Empire acquired that much ground without any one of the Acorns being aware of it, followed by the resistance against them that had to be going on and why neither she nor any of her family had ever heard of that. She would have dozens of questions, had her mind not gone completely blank; however long her friends desperately insisted that Nicole had misconstrued her discoveries and that the Empire didn’t actually have that much control over Mobius, she didn’t know. She’d completely lost track of everything, up to and including being led back to the hotel.

--

When that thick membrane of shock finally lifted and she could respond to others with anything besides a vacant stare, most of the day had been completely wasted. Sally could sort of remember eating lunch some time ago, if a single plain peanut-butter sandwich counted as lunch, but that was the most significant thing she did after departing from the library; she must’ve slurred out the okay for Bunnie to hang out in her apartment at some point, because there the rabbit was when Sally got it together enough to hold a conversation.

“Ah gotta be honest with ya, Sally-girl,” Bunnie said, fidgeting with the blanket that was concealing her mechanical limbs. “Ah’m startin’ to doubt how competent yer old man was.”

“That’s nice,” Sally mumbled.

“No, really. The Empire takes over two-thirds of the world and King Max didn’t do anything to prevent us from gettin’ steamrollered. Nor did Queen Alicia, thinkin’ about it.”

“We won’t know if they were aware of the threat the Empire posed unless we find them, will we?” Still laying on her bed in an undignified heap, Sally tried to stretch out a bit. “I really wish I knew where to start…”

Robotnik more than likely had them and Elias and any other unfortunate high-ranking officials executed, Bunnie wanted to point out, but immediately banished the thought. No, that was absolutely the last thing she wanted to tell Sally right now, as unlikely Bunnie found the prospect of any of the other Acorns or Council escaping with their lives to be. 

“So, um. Rotor did some scouting around earlier, and he found this restaurant that makes these really nice fries, and he suggested we go there for dinner tonight. Between him and Rosie, there’s enough money to order us all some of those. And a burger; they make those, too.”

“Alright. Do they offer kids’ meals, by any chance?”

“Not that Rotor could tell. Ah don’t think it’s anything Sonic couldn’t handle, though.” Bunnie drummed her fingers on the back of her chair. “He doesn’t like those anyway, does he?”

“Only when Len was getting a chili dog and he wasn’t.” Tristian and Amy had always been indifferent towards chili dogs, Sally recalled.

Of all things, after Bunnie went silent, Sally found herself going back to Robotnik’s over-wrought speech. He’d been wrong about most of it, to be certain, but…passivity was one of the things that got them all into this mess, wasn’t it? Or if not that, then something close to it. Apathy, perhaps?

…no, it couldn’t be apathy. The King’s loyalty to and love of his own kingdom was second to none--he’d never let it fall out of negligence; it had to be something he couldn’t have reasonably detected…

“Cloaking devices.”

“What?”

“You think the Empire’s got cloaking devices?” Sally asked. “That’s the only way I can think of for them to get such a large force into Mobotropolis without anyone noticing…”

The expression on Bunnie’s face was…interesting, to say the least. “Now that’s just straight-up sci-fi bullshit, Sally-girl.”

“Bunnie, that handheld on my nightstand contains an AI millions of times too advanced for it. If we have the level of tech necessary for such a being, then I’ll gladly believe that the Empire has that area of stealth figured out.”

“Whatever you say…”

“And I think that’s how the Empire got past us,” Sally went on. “Probably how they got past a lot of people. On top of that, they seemed to already know what the roboticizer was, how it functioned, and where it was stored; you reckon that appropriation of enemy technology is a frequent goal of theirs? They could’ve gotten cloaking tech from a previous conquest.”

“Robotnik mentioned something about spies, didn’t he? Ah’ll bet you anything, those bastards rigged things so that anyone who could have seen the invasion coming was preoccupied.”

“But they couldn’t distract everyone, could they? There had to be another factor; in theory, the bombs could’ve served as a further diversion, but it still would’ve taken a while for those gigantic tanks to roll in.”

It was this or go back downstairs and risk getting accosted by another jackass who couldn’t tell armour from roboticized limbs, huh? Doing her best to hold in an agitated sigh, Bunnie tried to make herself comfortable in the hardwood chair she’d pulled up; it creaked underneath her weight.

“It had to be cloaking devices. You saw that tank in the courtyard that we ran past, right? How the hell could the Empire have gotten that clunker anywhere near Mobotropolis if it wasn’t stealthed?”

“Enter through a section of the city that isn’t as heavily-monitored as the others.”

“But where would they hide the uber-tank before that? The forest is a ways away from Mobotropolis--and too dense to safely get a tank through, by the way.”

Bunnie groaned. “Sally-girl--why does it matter? What’s done is done. We’re never getting Mobotropolis back--not unless we join the Empire, and that’s not gonna happen.”

…how defeatist.

Sally fell silent, and Bunnie had nothing else to add, so eventually Bunnie bid her farewell and went out to pay the others a visit and arrange their meeting at that restaurant that she never got around to identifying. With Nicole not saying a word, that left the bereaved princess without much to do, except think--and plan.

--

Come nightfall, everyone was sitting on the edge of Carson’s completely vacant parking lot and trying to finish their food before it went cold. As good as their fries were, the joint was cursed with the world’s least ergonomic chairs, and it was unanimously agreed that sitting out in the dead of night with tiny Mobini-moths fluttering around everywhere was preferable to putting up with those damned seats.

Once again they were joined by Bookshire and Tommy, the former doing his best to keep his fries and tea away from the novel he’d brought along. Meanwhile, Tommy unsuccessfully tried to strike up a conversation with Sonic, who responded to his chosen topics and points of interest with little more than indistinct grunts.

“Tommy, I appreciate that you want to talk with my son,” Len said after finishing off her burger, “but five-year-olds don’t care about meme theory.”

It didn’t seem to fully register; while that subject was quickly dropped, Tommy kept going on about things a young child could not reasonably be expected to be knowledgeable about. At some point, the others completely tuned him out.

Antoine had barely touched his food, spending most of that time staring out into the middle distance and occasionally swatting away a moth. Next to him, Bunnie and Rosie pondered how to replicate Carson’s burgers and fries at home--or wherever their new place of residence would be. Rotor finished his meal first and didn’t say a word to anyone.

Some time later the entire group was done eating, but nobody moved an inch from where they sat.

“We’re really going to spend the rest of our lives here,” Rotor mumbled.

“There’s always the option of moving out later,” Rosie pointed out. “Maybe to a nice secluded place in the country.”

“Where we’ll eventually be found and kicked out by the Empire,” Bunnie grumbled. “At best.”

With some effort, Sally got up to deposit her trash in the nearest bin. “But they won’t find us.”

“Yes, they will. Lots of land out there to set up radio stations and things like that, you know?”

“No. I mean that they won’t be around to find us.”

There was a quick exchange of perplexed glances. 

“You mean someone else will rise up and wipe zhem out?” Antoine asked. “I don’t think zhat’s likely to--”

Sally looked him square in the eye. “Exactly--we’ll be the ones to rise up.”

“What?” He could’ve sworn that that statement made him physically reel; his shoulder brushed against Bunnie’s, who was too surprised to help set him back upright. “Sally, we’re only--what--nine people? Ten with Nicole. How in ze hell are we supposed to--”

In an instant, the neutral non-expression that had been on Sally’s face for the entire night was replaced with one of barely-contained fury. “Antoine, the Empire has taken damn near everything from us,” she growled, “and no doubt they’ve robbed everyone else they’ve subjugated. And even if those Overlander settlements never become a complete non-factor to them, the lands around Ansborough are still up for grabs--do you want to spend the rest of your days praying that you don’t take a stray artillery shell to the head? Or languishing here because all the safe routes were indefinitely blocked off?”

Antoine tried to answer that, but Sally cut him off before he could utter a single word.

“I don’t care how small our group is. Tomorrow, we’re going back to Knothole, and from there, we’re taking down the Empire. I don’t yet know exactly how, or how long we’ll be fighting, but if we let them finish setting up shop in the city, then it’ll be too late--we have to act now!”

“Sally--zhey outnumber us at least ten thousand to one!” Antoine yelled; he’d shot up to bring himself to eye level without even realizing it. “Len and I held onto our weapons, but we’re both nearly out of ammo and I can’t think of any way to--”

“Then we’ll swipe weapons off of the Empire‘s soldiers.”

Len hesitantly raised a hand to catch Sally’s attention. “Would you even be able to get in close enough to do that? Ant and I are the only ones with combat training--”

“So the rest of us will learn how to fight!”

“Again, zhere’s only nine of us! What chance do we st--”

“Nicole can hack into their systems and hose them up, and then we bomb them while they try to sort things out. Create chaos, make it impossible for them to repair the damage and deal with us at the same time. One way or another, we’re going to grind them into the dirt!” Sally paused to look over her friends and their increasingly-confused faces, and for a moment her own expression softened. “Please, guys. I can’t do this alone.”

Silence rang out over the empty lot.

Was…was this even really happening? All of the counter-arguments Antoine had in mind just slowly emptied out as he stared blankly at the Princess--his childhood friend, standing resolute underneath the artificial lights, beside a bottom-of-the-barrel restaurant--and eventually broke eye contact. This was where she chose to rally them into taking back what they’d lost, with a force so underpowered as to be non-existent. 

And yet…

Timidly, Sonic spoke up. “Big Sis--shouldn’t we be asking other people’s militaries for help with this?”

“I figure that if no one’s done anything about the Empire’s presence in the Grand Kingdom by now, then they either don’t care or don’t have the manpower to take them on,” Sally replied. “I think the most we can do right now is warn them if the Empire ever looks their way.”

“What good will zhat do?” Antoine asked. “We’ve seen what zhey’re capable of. No…” He took a few steps away as if to leave, but stopped just in front of the nearest parking chock, and turned back around to face Sally again. “One way or another, we’ll have to prevent ze Empire from attacking zhem in ze first place.”

He scanned the faces of his friends as they turned their attention to him; if they hadn’t been utterly lost before, they were now, as they looked back and forth between him and a relieved Sally.

“Hey, Ant,” Len said. “What made you change your mind?”

Had he really done that? It seemed so.

Antoine raised a hand. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “If we go into this without any long-term planning, we’re dead. But I don’t want to hide away and hope zhat ze next superpower to come along doesn‘t think zhat Robotnik might have been on to something.”

This had to be the first time today that any of them had seen Sally with a genuine smile on her face. “So--does this mean you’re in?”

“I guess I am.” In turn, Antoine did his best to flash Sally a grin, as well. “Friends stick together, don’t zhey?”

For a moment, everything went silent as the grave again, and in that brief span of time, the two felt a twinge of disappointment; they really were going to embark on this mission alone--

“Ah dunno how long ah’ll last,” Bunnie told them, “but ah gotta at least try to pay them back, right?”

Rotor chimed in. “You guys are gonna need tech support, I can tell you that much.”

“I’m not much of a fighter,” Rosie said, “but I’d like to go back home, regardless.”

“Same here,” Tommy added. “Well--my home was in Mobotropolis, but I don’t really feel safe here…”

“And you’ll require a medic,” Bookshire said, “so I suppose I’ll come along as well.”

It was quite a sight to behold, this group of nine people whose hopelessness, a moment before, was almost tangible; now they stood resolute and determined, however heavily stacked the odds were against them. The only ones still sitting were Len and Sonic, not as confused as before, but not in any hurry to join, either.

It didn’t go unnoticed; Antoine gestured for Len to rise up. “Well? Are you at least going to go back home?”

“Of course I am,” she muttered. “It’s just…” With some effort, she got on her feet; Sonic remained as he was, watching his friends intently.

“Just what?” Sally asked, to which Len gave her a half-hearted, awkward smile.

“I was never good at cheesy one-liners, you know?”

That earned her a collective groan, but the moment soon passed, for now wasn’t the time to chide each other over remarks. Sally was certain that even she had some distant lingering doubts about her own plan, but she could dwell on them later; that thick fog of helplessness and despair that had plagued her and her friends for the entire day had finally lifted, and damned if they would ever let it settle back in.

Even in better times, Sally had always found nighttime at Knothole to be disquieting. It didn’t matter where in the village you stood, or if one of the neighbors still had their lights on; the silhouettes of the columnar oaks would always loom over you, leaves swaying so subtly that the movement only registered on a subconscious level, and the sky was only a shade lighter. For what it was worth, though, Sally had a new appreciation for its relative calm.

She and Len were the only ones outside, the latter illuminated by the dim strip of light shining from the tiny gap in Rosie’s curtains; if not for that, Sally might have forgotten where the hedgehog had chosen to sit after Sonic finally went to sleep and it was permissible to leave the hut.

“…Hey, Sal.”

Sally cocked an ear in Len’s direction. “Yeah?”

“Do you think I should run over to Mercia tomorrow and pick up Amy? Or is she safer where she is?”

“That remains to be seen. It’s up to you, really.”

Len shifted her weight forward, twigs bending underfoot. “You know, when I let her know what happened earlier, via the one person in Mercia with a working phone, she just hanged up on me…I’m not even sure if she’d let me take her home.”

“She was probably just in shock. I don’t think she’d hold any of it against you--Amy’s always been fairly level-headed.”

“Even so.” With some effort, Len stood up, and brushed away the dirt and blades of grass clinging to her pants. “I have to make this up to the kids, somehow. And to Tristian.”

Sally sighed. “You still think it’s your fault, don’t you.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. What I’m certain of is when the Empire finds the corpse of the son of a bitch who shot him, there won’t be enough left of them to determine their species.”

Whether it was the cold outside or the tone of Len’s voice that caused Sally to shiver, she wasn’t sure.

“So…what’s our first course of action? Just gonna go in and lob some bombs, after we acquire some? Or is this gonna be more precise, like Ant and I will take some headshots?”

Back at the hotel, Sally had discussed that subject with Nicole for longer than she could keep track, going over a holographic display of the city map countless times and picking out the weak spots that just a short while ago Sally would never have even known were there.

“Nicole suggested we take out the main power plant first,” Sally replied, “and hit some of the nearby auxiliaries if we have time. That should slow them down considerably, if we can do enough damage. I suppose you and Antoine could use the provided distraction to do some sniping, but we can’t be in Mobotropolis for long.”

“Alright--is Nicole coming with us?”

“She insisted.”

Len gave her a look that Sally couldn’t read in the darkness, and turned to face the forest line. “Assuming we can drive them out, what are we gonna do after that?”

It took longer to come up with an answer than either of them would’ve liked.

“I’m not sure,” Sally said finally, “but whatever may occur, we’ll be there. And we’ll be ready.”

end.