"What...?" The monkey's stare did not go unnoticed by the mole, even though she continued following regardless. She shrugged her arms defensively as she made her way out. "Wha'd I do? I'm just tryin' to make this as painless as possible, y'know, I mean I saw what Rock can do behind the wheel, heh, an', and we don't-- ...whaddya lookin' at?."

Sure enough, just as Jam's gaze followed Rock's, so too did Caz's follow Jam's... and, it...

"Whaddyyyyyyaauuaahhhooohhh my, God."

...stayed there, for a while.

"Arew-arew-are we gonna... fight that?"

---

Elsewhere, Ace the Alley Cat was indeed out there, indeed, fighting that. Or at least, giving it his best shot. Or throw. Whatever. He stopped throwing for the moment.

He knew tossing his cards at something so outrageously huge would have little to no effect, but goddamnit if he wasn't going to try it anyway. Still, even with this knowledge, he couldn't help but swear under his breath didn't so much as scratch their paint job. He swore a little louder, though, when he realized the sudden threat of incoming goddamn missiles.

“Oh, SH**!” he said specifically, too busy facing death to think of anything more clever. If Teck was still leaning on his shoulders when Ace started up again, it was unlikely he'd stay on him unless the porcupine was hiding a kung fu grip all along. The fire on the fish was an experiment. This was an act of concentrated desperation.

His arms went into a flurry that looked rather brutal, despite him not actually punching anything. His jaw, brows tightened in the way they only do when you're too focused on something else to stop it, as a shotgun-like volley of cards were suddenly flung in between the missile and the plane. He prayed to himself-- one of them had to stop it.

Despite the mounting odds against them, the crew of the Tornado was still staying aloft, and that was saying something, given what they were up against. Ace's efforts were actually successful; the bursts of energized cards he flung at the incoming missiles stopped them in their tracks, detonating them too prematurely to cause any damage beyond a harsh, concussive bump or two to the aircraft.

With all the giant ships roaring through the fog, it seemed that it was beginning to dissipate and thin. The murky, ashy cover over the island had boiled around and expanded so much that it was just a thin, misty curtain, allowing the Tornado and its occupants to better see their closing pursuers. The nearest small "puffer" revealed itself to be truer to its nature than they might have previously thought, as the large, metal panels of its fuselage expanded out from its body, making it seem to swell as it revealed crevices full of missile pods.

Missiles swarmed thickly through the air, from numerous directions behind and flanking the biplane. Yet, not all of them were directed at Tails and company.

There were other aircraft on the scene. Steely-grey fighter jets roared in from above the city, launching ordnance of their own at the big, green, fish-like airships. No one in a right state of mind could possibly see the exchange ending well, but at least they seemed to take some small amount of the heat off.

OOC: Mini-collab with John

"Er, wha...?"

Caz's eyes merely trailed Jam's circle in mild, yet poorly-hidden confusion before the realization finally dawned on her.

"Oh, wait-wait-waitwaitWAAIIT--UUUUUUH...!?"

At first she started to bolt after them, like a kid chasing down a school bus, but sprinting was not her strong spot, especially when the chase-ees were riding away on Extreme Gear. Predictably, she stopped short, hands-on-knees panting, (not terribly far from the house, actually) and looking up in disdain at the two getaway simians.

"Fuh, FINE!," she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. "I hope you like your MILK WITH EXTRA URINE!"

Huff. Wheeze.

"...Nooo, okay," she admitted. "Okay, I kinda had that coming..." She stood herself straight, scratched her head/played with her hair, and semi-moped her way back to the house from whence she was dropped off. That other guy seemed nice enough company, anyway. What was his name? Jared? Jacob?

---

Ace felt his balance wane upon the first missile's embryonic explosion as he stumbled, but ultimately keep his feet where they needed to be, even if he needed to shield his eyes from the blast. From there, all the events and explosions and general sh** goin' down just started to blur together.

But whatever. He saw enough of the fighter jet to realize they'd serve as the world's most welcome distractions, shook his head in disbelief of the general situation, moved the rest of his body out of Teck's seat (making sure he still had a good hold), and mumbled out loud:

"Okay. Okay, now what?"



One of the missiles clipped a wave, nosed into the water, and blew its twin off course fair enough that it over-corrected into another wave. There was a boooom behind them that thumped their bodies like a heartbeat, and a brilliant glare as the now-vaporized missile casings expanded around the bubble of super-heated gas that had been where the tornado was only seconds before.

Tails instinctively dodged down in the cockpit, and then peered back again at Ace for a second before diverting his attention thoroughly, once again, to the control panel.

"You alright?" he yelled back to the two of them, "I'm going to try and hide behind the island! If Eggman doesn't have any super-low defenses we can probably evade all this by staying near the cliffs!"

Tails' opponents had been "plinking" at him at first—Trying to take the Tornado down with relatively little firepower, as if just to disable it rather than obliterate it. But, the arrival of the air force, combined with the little fox's own persistence in being evasive, drove them to let it all rip, and soon enough, there was no angle from which the over-ten-giant-bogeys weren't unleashing swarms of missiles, and in just about every imaginable direction, too. Explosions rang out from virtually everywhere in the sky, including all over the airships as they were bombarded by the fighter jets' missiles, and vice-versa, leaving wreckage to rain down from above in coarse chunks and fine sprinkles.

Yet, it probably wasn't going to be a missile that put an end to the flight of the Tornado; instead, it was most likely a wave.

Water certainly had it in for Tails. Directly in front of the low-flying aircraft, just a hundred meters or so from the island itself, a tremendous wave was blasted up by one of the "mini" puffers, which had somehow managed to get ahead, and massively belly-flop its way into the Tornado's path with the force of a typhoon.

The biplane's passengers had wanted to get out of the air... They were probably about to get their wish, for better or worse!

(OOC: Something short and collaborative with Mie.)

Rock glanced at her repeatedly out of the corner of his eye as he kept speeding along, the bike jerking and lurching as it popped over waves, and skimmed across sandbars.

"You're not actually worried, are you?"

"Worried!" scoffed the grapefruit-hued monkey in reply, deliberately avoiding eye contact with her unyielding steely gaze straight ahead.

"Psh," she sputtered in vague dismissal, through the constant bobbing of her gear, which was quickly followed up with a brisk cough. "... 'worried,' nah."

Translation: Petrified.

He looked ahead again. Things were pretty chaotic, to the point where he couldn't hear her muttered denials, nor could he even tell the Tornado had crashed. Maybe it was on the other side of the island altogether.

"This is 'the Eggman'. He won't give us a second glance or spare us time of day if we're not hedgehogs. Problem is, ain't no hedgehog showin' up yet. You know as well as I do what happens when people like this go unchecked, especially with emeralds, so,..."

They were actually already closing in, and still without significant hazard. Then again, the sun hadn't set yet, either.

"Way I see it, we either blindside his sorry ass now, or have a bigger mess later. Don't you think it's better this way?"

"Aw, damnit all," she moaned loudly, hunching lower against her handlebars. "I hate it when y'appeal t'reason like that -- Now f'Isay no, I'll look like a big douche."

She spared a glance up towards the white rider, baring the briefest of grins, if only to reassure that despite her complaining, she was inextricably on-board.

"You got any plans t'how we're gonna do this thing, or what?"

He shrugged his shoulders and kept facing toward the island. It was finally taking clear, visible shape in the fog.

"Not really."

How comforting!

"We can try to stay incognito, see what we can find. With Tails around, and the 'guardian' somewhere around here, we hopefully won't catch much attention."