The spent day was followed by the night, which was followed by the day again. On the cusp of the next day—just as the sun was creeping out over the horizon to bring the surface of the desert canyons around pumpkin hill out of their typical bone-shattering night chill, and into the balmy 110° Fahrenheit of the day ahead—any early risers might have awoken to the eerie and intensely unsettling smell of brewing coffee.

Not that the smell of coffee was in and of itself something so strange, merely the fact that said smell was wafting through the air slightly less than 40 miles away from the nearest city was enough. It could not have been a supernatural smell, fortunately; the leering rictus of the nearest jack-o-lantern–topped rock spire was very rapidly losing its glow. The sun moved across it, and it stopped being the terrifying nightmare face it was, and rapidly became just another peculiar sandstone hoodoo out in the middle of no-where.

The coffee smell, on the other hand, lingered on, and got only stronger as the sun moved slowly into the sky.

Anyone who stepped out of their makeshift shelter around the oasis of the dry lagoon they had camped out in—be it tent, lean-to, shattered metres-tall stone foot, or empty sarcophagus—would find by the spring a large collection of strapped-shut, featureless metal crates, strung together on a thin steel cable, which looked as if they had been lowered down through the yawning sink-hole that served as the camp-ground’s skylight.

One of these crates had been cracked open, and sitting on the ground nearby was a small generator. It was silent, and as people approached, they might’ve seen the tell-tale coloured glow from within that hinted at a chaos drive inside. On one of the un-opened crates was a hot-plate, on top of which sat a stocky metal cylinder, outfitted with two recessed ceramic handles—one on the top, and one on the side.

The cylinder hissed and spat and creaked, and made a variety of sinister and unpleasant noises while sending forth the tantalizing odor of fresh coffee. It was some eldritch bodum idol sitting on the sacred hearth; it offered vitality and relief from the world’s cares at the minor price of the partaker’s soul. To anyone who had been stranded out in the desert with a caffeine craving, it was incredible-smelling.


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Midian glared at the coffee pot.

The jackal stood like a cowboy some fifteen feet from the delectable, but mysterious, nay, disreputable brew. His steely blue gaze watched it, regarded it distrustfully, and monitored it for foul play. His eyes darted from the bottom of the crate to the top of the metal canister that contained the alluring trap. It had to be a trap. Coffee and crates and generators and hotplates did not just appear.

He inhaled slowly; his eyes softened at the bitter, but homey smell.

He fidgeted his fingers at his side, as if ready to draw a gun that wasn't there, and glanced quickly back and forth. No one else was awake.

...

He took a step forward.

...

Nothing exploded.

He slithered quickly up to the coffee, and, with hands raised as if prepared to seize an artifact from a stone pedestal (and feet postured as if prepared to run from the ensuing rolling boulder of death), stared it down, then... grabbed the handle, and lifted it.

He had claimed the coffee. But something was wrong.

" . . . "




"No cups...?"

“Oh hi!” said a voice, loudly, behind him.

Tails sprang up from behind one of the nearby crates like a jack-in-the-box, waving an unidentifiable object wrapped in foil and grinning through a mouthful of something.

Behind him was another open box, full of similarly foil-wrapped items.

On the outside, Midian inhaled sharply but continued to stand like a statue, only widening his eyes a few barely-perceptible millimeters. On the inside, Midian jumped 30 feet vertically and vomited his heart out his mouth at ballistically-dangerous velocities into the nearest Pumpkin Hill hoodoo.

"G'morning — Tails," he said rigidly, willing the hair of his head to stop trying to stand straight.

Tails turned his gaze to the stainless steel cylinder in the jackal’s hands.

“Oh, did you want some coffee?” he added.

“I don’t really know how to open the coffee pot, but I can probably find the cups, and Rouge should be back any second, so:”

He dove behind one of the crates and pulled up a stainless steel clipboard with a several laminated sheets of paper attached to it.

He peered at it.

“One of these is supposed to have a whole bunch of plates and knives and forks and things... in it...”

“...”

“Aha!”

He ran with boundless enthusiasm to one of the bevelled crates, and, after a minor examination, pressed his fingers against a hairline fracture set into the crate, which ran along the equator of the box just below a faint, jet-printed label written onto the metal: EGGpack RSN12984-0039440-01219; this was followed by a barcode and the iconic grin of Eggman’s face.

“Here it is!"

The box made a metal clicking noise. Finger-sized impressions that were apparently part of the box’s surface sank down into the metal. The box cracked around the middle, revealing a tightly packed arrangement of plastic-wrapped tin camp gear. The pile gently expanded as air rushed into the container. A tower of stacked metal cups fell over and rolled a few inches across the ground.

Perhaps owing to his tiredness, Midian did not say much, but only turned his attention to the specifics of the coffee pot's design after Tails mentioned not knowing how to open it.

Midian squinted. It was too early to figure out how to open a strange contraption. This made the coffee pot a particularly diabolical piece of workmanship, as it was a coffee pot, and should have been, by its very nature, intuitive to use while in a groggy stupor. Groggy stupor lends itself to clumsy fiddling, however, and clumsy fiddling seemed to be enough to get the job done, for after a few seconds, the spout extended (in a completely unnecessary, mechanical-whirring motion) and opened, and the jackal tilted the device to fill the cups Geoff held out. He then set it aside and took his.

"Well... thank you," he finally found the conscientiousness to say, but only after a sip of the black, roof-of-the-mouth-scalding beverage. "Where did all of this...?"

He vaguely motioned with a craning tilt and sweep of his head toward the scattered supplies.

Midian looked troubled by something—not troubled enough to refuse the free beverage or anything else that may have come of the supplies, but troubled enough to raise questions. Specifically, it was what Tabitha had said that made him uneasy.

"So, you're saying... these Eggman Empire care packages were brought to us by someone Rock Lochert just captured? That being the same tsotsi what roughed us up just last night?"

He looked around for any kind of recognizable support, gesturing with his free hand open, palm upturned.

"This doesn't seem a lil' askew to anybody?"

"It's all just one big mystery, isn't it? Oh, and don't worry, I don't think Eggman would poison anyone unless there was a chance he could wave the bottle in their face afterward."

There was Rouge.

She wore, contrary to normal expectation, a largely featureless sandy-taupe zippered body-suit with a silver eggman badge stitched into the shoulders, faded leather boots and gloves, mirrored goggles resting across her forehead and a loose-woven beige scarf wrapped around her neck. Exactly in line with normal expectation, however, she managed to dodge wearing her uniform to regulation by at least three inches of undone zipper.

"Aww," she added, "why the long face? Cheer up sad-sack," she chucked Mako under the chin, "a lot worse things than an early-morning wake up will happen to you before this is over."

"But it looks like most everyone's here," she went on, "so I guess I'll introduce myself! Agent Rouge."

She bowed with a sweeping, theatrical bow—one arm behind her back, the other dragging against the dust of the ground—and straightened up to rest her hands on her hips.

"Breakfast's ready, by the way, from yours truly! As ready as you can get out of a foil package."