The dull, grey, boxy-shaped hovering van hummed its way down the street. The vehicle had been checked out to them for that last assignment, and, Rock being himself, it had not been returned, and probably wouldn't be returned for as long as he could possibly get away with it.

What important business was it being used for now? Emergency taco run. As fun and irresponsible of an occasion as it was, though, Rock seemed rather sober about it all.

"So...," murmured the white primate between crunching bites as he unblinkingly ran a red light, "yeah. Not sure how to feel about all'a this."

The screeching tires behind their whooshing vehicle yielded little more than a blink from the passenger's seat. With an obnoxiously loud slurp of an emptied plastic vat of Cherry Hilltop Drop, Jam cast a troubled frown to her left, while fishing for taco number five in the bag between the front seats.

"Little late t'be gettin' cold feet," mused the monkey, unusually grim. "Might've wanted to do that like... before you handed over Agent Boobjob to the feds."

Rock blinked and looked at Jam sideways.

"What?"

...

"Oh, no," he said with the clear-cut relief of a sudden and clear realization. "I mean... this in-vitro lab-grown taco meat product."

Pause.

He took another bite.

"Oh."

There was a brief flurry of blinks filling a momentary pause wherein Jam, too, examined her own partially eaten manufactured-meat product.

"Meh."

And then promptly disregarded whatever hang-ups might have been troubling Rock with a shrug, charmingly shoving the remaining three quarters of tortilla, meat and cheese into her maw in one fell swoop.

With a nonchalance that troublingly inferred habit, she wadded up the felled wrapper, and tossed it over her shoulder (it may or may not have hit the large, paper sombrero-wearing robot behind her).

"Anifigh cnuh beh dishgufting issue sthink aboud i' too mush," she oh, so poignantly reflected.

Rock lulled his head as if to silently agree. Meanwhile, ahead of them, the raised freeway ran out of road and dropped about twenty stories straight into the crowded city streets below. The fine workmanship of Eggman Empire infrastructure in action!

This was either already becoming routine, or just well within Rock's comfort zone. As they drove off the end of the road, he throttled up the thrusters, stabilized the van, and found the time to play with the radio's volume knob on the way down, too. Apparently, a DJ's voice piqued his interest.

"Hello neighbor, and welcome back to W.E.G.G. station number one-hundred-and-twenty-two, where we play music, and you occasionally listen to it. That was 'My Robot Heart' by P. Shortino."

"That's— that's Caz, idn't it?" questioned Rock. Jam nodded fervently in agreement, but said nothing as she leaned forward to listen.

"Now, I'm sure all of you've all heard from the other some-four-hundred near-identical radio stations that the one and only Sonic the Hedgehog has reportedly been spotted in the Gigalopolis area. We are assured this is not yet another spiky-haired wannabe trying to make a name for himself and winding up probed on a lab table for his trouble. We've got the real deal here, folks. So just in case you've forgotten, he is officially described as... 'forest green, covered in... pants and diamonds, and standing at least, six feet tall.'"

"Hhhhhhgod."

"That's... Hawkins," sighed the redder of the primates, shaking her head. It wasn't a question; it was just immensely depressing to know that she was a part of it all~

"Of course, this 'Sonic the Hedgehog' is heavily armed and extremely dangerous. If you have any information whatsoever pertaining to this heinous individual," she started reading it as if checking off the more monotonous tasks on her daily to-do list and this was clearly not the first time, "Please inform the proper... ...Egg-thorities as quickly as possible."

The muted thump of what sounded like someone's forehead slamming upon a desk could be heard.

"Please avoid reporting to any known or unknown resistance forces. If you do, please present yourself to the nearest Eggman Immurement Center and await detainment."

Paper could be heard being rapidly crumpled in the microphone's vicinity.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," she said, pronouncing 'thank you' in the same way one might say 'please kill me.' "Now back to our regularly mandated entertainment. This next bunch of songs has abandonment issues. You don't have to listen to it, but could you really live with yourself if you didn't?"

And with that, the music took over once again.

With a punctuated *Click!*, the radio (but alas, not the DJ) was put out of its misery. Jam leaned back in her seat, allowing the broadcast to percolate for a half-beat before raising her brows in the driver's direction, and, laden with implication, asked, "I think Caz's more suited to field work, don't you?"

"Maybe," replied Rock as their van touched down (see: crunched down with a shower of sparks) on top of a bus, scorched its roof with its thrusters, then dropped the rest of the way to the pavement, only to wheel around in a wide, swooshing u-turn that ultimately sideswiped a parked Cop Speeder into a glass storefront.

"Oh, she will be happy to hear we didn't get Ace killed," he added about as cheerily as he ever said anything. "Yet."


searchindextag
chapter4search

Sometime later, in Starlight City...

Studio 7B.

The place was uncommonly... normal for an Eggman operation. In truth, it was just a straight-up, plain office building that had been taken over by Eggman's propaganda operations. Very little had been done to it besides plastering posters, insignias, and banners here and there. The actual place itself remained entirely, boringly normal, with bluish carpet, white walls, wood fixtures... Like every other office building. And, the sturdy door to Studio 7B within that building looked just as it always had, replete with little "ON-AIR" sign illuminated next to it.

That door swung open and couple familiar primate visitors, clad in crimson uniforms, poked in for a peek through the big, soundproof glass window to the DJ on the other side.

"Ough, you have no i-dea," she answered, lolling her head back into her seat. "This used to be a really fun gig! We'd choose our own music, put on our own radio shows, and have more than one person on the job at a time. Now it's like... I dunno. I'm a robot or something."

"ROSALES!" A gravelly roar put through an electric sounding filter tore through the room via loudspeaker. Caz cringed visibly.

"I'M NOT PAYING YOU TO LOLLYGAG WITH YOUR AMIGOS."

"It's a commercial break, sir," she shouted across the room. "We still have five minutes!"

"I DON'T GIVE TWO HALVES OF A HOOT AND HOLLAR! IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING YOURSELF USEFUL, WE'RE LOSING VALUABLE PROFITS!"

"Yes, sir."

It wasn't even all the way across the hall that the two unfamiliar primates could identify the source of the racket. The room nearest, built almost entirely out of windows, showed a full view of an angular, wiry looking humanoid robot, chomping menacingly on his electric cigar and wriggling his synthetic mustache in distaste at the three of them. Using the loudspeaker was entirely unnecessary-- he wasn't more than three yards away.

The mole girl glanced back at her friends with a seething sort of smile. "That's B.B.," she explained. "He's a new addition too." She stood up, and beckoned them a little further, out of sight of her micro-managing taskmaster. "Here, let's go pretend to rethread the projector, or something."