(Sorry for the short response, May edit later. )


He'd only moved halfway down the stairs prior speedy events leading to the lizards wipe out only to come to a halt upon noticing the two of them. He simply scratched the back of his head with his free hand, his left still clasped onto his newer generation xgear. By the time Tecks question was directed at him he simply shrugged in response, continuing to scratch the back of his head, mumbling a few words before speaking up response
“..Ergh..? Eh.. ... Not sure.. offhand..“ Not exactly the best response to the first few people he'd come in contact with since stumbling out of a restaurant and into a warzone this morning.. but, eh.. at least they seemed mellow, and hopefully trouble free enough.

"Y'know," Caz interjected, running a stray finger through her hair. She pouted her lips off to the side to a degree that it couldn't have been read as anything but jovial. "It didn't really seem like it at first, but it's startin' to feel more and more like this Eggman guy is just doin' this just because he thinks it makes everything more... I dunno, exciting. And try to break whatever record he set last for property damage, 'cause that's how he gets his kicks, I bet."

As she said this, her free hand held the plasma pistol she'd recently received, and ejected its energy cell with surprising expertise for her apparent absent-mindedness, her eyes still on the jukebox radio.

"So, shoot, I mean, I bet this is as good a time to go thrill seeking as any," she said, placing the cell on the dresser next to her. "I just think it'd be awesome if fatty just stayed... y'know, dead, for once, and left us non-adventuring-types alone."

*************

Ace's brow quite suddenly became so flat, one could potentially balance a level on them, even as he shifted glances between Rock, and the object he examined. This happened about three times before he finally found something to say.

"Wha-- what?"

Not that he didn't understand what he just said. Ace got the picture, yes. But...

"How the hell did you do that?" He inquired, gesturing his hands flatly towards the piece as if it would help explain. The guy just spit out a bunch of terminology that Tails, boy genius extraordinaire seemed to be tripping up on, and solved the mystery of the indestructible zombie robots in roughly less than six seconds.

Knuckles, however, rather than simply confused, looked like he'd just swallowed a particularly fat bug. He hardly understood any of the scientific mumbo-jumbo the simian just 'explained', and he didn't bother making it too subtle, but he got the gist: Magical life crystals make it so robots don't stay dead.

And that's bad.

"Well," he started, wasting no time. "What are these crystals, then? Where do they come from?"

Cross did not stir at her answer. It seemed that, though her evasiveness did not necessarily appease his appetite for facts, in the end he didn't care that much what the story was, since they were quite evidently on the same side. He saw no reason to pursue it further. He had more important things to concern himself with anyway, like the undead professor bent on bringing about the world's unending reverence through a force of undead zombie 'bots.

"She's right. There's always going to be some kind of problem that keeps the world in balance even if you didn't have this moron around," he added. "Some people are just going to grow up and become a crazy person, regardless of their genes, or their upbringing, or anything else." He shrugged his head a little. "But people plus crazy plus criminal acts equals job security to me."

"Gives us something more interesting to shoot than bulls-eyes and cardboard targets," Tally said.

"Of course, if we run out of bad guys, there's always each other."

Her reply was quick. "I'll make a note of that, sir."

*************

Despite the helping hand, it... kind of took Velo a while to get to his feet, and when he did, he made a clumsily poor effort to look like he had damage control in full swing.

"Ahah... heh... oogh."

He leaned against a fire hydrant and tried to will his pupils back to where they were supposed to be instead of being pointed in different directions. "I'm okay. I'm good. We're all good." He glanced in Juneau's direction, as if only just then realizing more than one individual had witnessed the trainwreck. "I'm okay, miss, thank you for your concern."

He'd be okay in a few seconds.

"I'm told crazy is the best way to go," Cross mentioned. He wondered where he'd picked that up from... Maybe one of his buddies still in the army, or his wonky new medic. That guy seemed like ten pounds of cuckoo in a four-pound clock. Speaking of whom, what the hell was taking him and that moron McBride so long?

"And when you're crazy," the aforementioned badass SWAT chick said with a jesting(?) smile to the bed-ridden (and, she guessed, easily-hoodwinked) mole, "you can tell someone you'll kill them and they might actually believe it. It's a lot of fun, you should try it sometime."

Oh, that's right, he'd picked it up from Tally. How could he forget. "Don't give her any ideas. There's enough crazy in this room to go around as it is."

"It's even better when you're sloshed," she added, ignoring the Major.

Elegant Joe watched his buddies scrub away at the walls of the kitchen. They had been grumbling and cussing ever since starting and he was sure they weren't going to stop any time soon, especially since Ooryl and McBride didn’t have to do it (though their punishment was conceivably worse, having to foot it outside for a needle in a haystack). At least the Major didn't think he had anything to do with that crap. He rummaged around cabinets and searched helplessly to no avail.

A couple feet away, Sparky held a cell phone next to his... ear? "And this guy was like, the Colonel Hawknose figure only had the camouflage clothing in its two-month issue during '87, nerd, you'd know that if you were any kind of real collector. And I was like, yeah, well, too bad they re-released the camouflaged version for a one-month span in '91 in a set with the Mobile Command Center. But you wouldn't know that unless you were any kind of real collector. In your face, loser! Haha, I know, right? It’s like these people only just started collecting before they hit up the conventions..."

Joe sighed and struggled to roll his eyes. He failed and was angry.

"Oh hang on, I've got another call. Yeah, I'll call you back. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. ... Okay. Okay, see ya." Beep. "Hello? Haaaaaaay baby, how you doin'? Yeeeah, I know, I was gonna come home last night but y'know we got a zombie robot apocalypse goin' down and the world needs someone like me to be out there fighting. I'm here at the president's place. Not sure when I'm gonna be back. I—what? No, that most certainly does not mean you can sell my collection! It's not like I'm gonna be gone forever—they are not toys! They're—they're MODELS. I love those things more than anything. Uh--well, er, I mean, in addition to you—"

"HE'S SEEING ANOTHER WOMAN," Joe blared.

"Hang on." Sparky put his hand over the speaker. "Go away," he hissed at Joe.

"Do you know what girls like to eat?" Joe stuck his whole upper body into a cabinet to search, leaving only his butt and legs out in the kitchen. "I know they like anything that's really expensive. Well, almost anything. Actually they don't like that either but they make you buy it anyway."

"N--what?" Sparky turned his head back to the phone and walked off. "Oh, that's just Joe. Yes, he's fine. Still waiting for him to pay back that twenty bucks I loaned him, so I'm not letting him get blown up until he does."

Joe crawled awkwardly out of the cabinet and looked around, nearly ready to give up the search. He looked up the somewhat... high kitchen walls, much of which still needed to get cleaned by the unfortunate SSD maids nearby.

There was a bag of cheese puffs high on a shelf above him. Joe reached up and stretched himself as far as he would go. No dice.

"Oh for the love of..." He stood on his tip-toes (how was he able to do that, anyway?) and tried again. His fingers wiggled just out of the bag's reach. "God. C'mon... Come on! Why the hell does half the stuff in here have to be up so damn high, do they think the guy is going to make his own food? Hey—hey! Hey Antlers. Help me out here, see that up there? I can't reach that. C'mon, just this once, help a brother out, I'll pay you that fifty bucks I owe you—"

Killey reached up and took the bag in his hand, then put it on a higher shelf and continued walking.

"You dirty sonofabitch I'm gonna kill you and eat your freakin' antlers, I friggin'—rrgh, this is stupid. Should've just gone to Burger Emperor or something. Huh?" Elegant Joe looked at a jar on the counter containing... something reachable. "Well, I guess this'll work. Not that I know what things taste like but hey she can get something herself if she doesn't like it."

The group's conversation had entered Crazy Land when he finally returned. The Capsule Trooper walked up to Jam and held out what he'd found. "Here." It was a stick of Born to be Sexy Beef Jerky with a picture of a blue coyote in a red cowboy hat on the plastic, smiling and winking at whoever was fortunate enough to be holding his salacious product. "I tried my best."

"That's all?" Tally asked, feigning an incredulous look.

"THE KITCHEN IS BIG OKAY."

(OOC: Eensy-teensy collab with John)

"Oh!" Caz called with wider eyes than a moment ago. She leaned against the railing of her gurney in admiration of the painfully sexy dried meat by-product. "Can I have some a' those? I love those things." Believe it or not, those things were her favorite brand, and likely enough to satisfy her appetite for food... as she proved by leaning over the railing and reaching out in mock desperation, as if she were reaching for the hand of somebody hanging off the edge of a cliff... making all the noise that went with it.

"haaaaaaaaaaawwwerrrrrgggh"

---

The gold-yellow cat merely scratched the back of his head in response to Rock, letting loose a quiet "hmn" and looking ever-so-slightly dissapointed. "Yeah, I guess so," he concluded. Unfortunately for Tails, it didn't seem like what he had to say would terribly derail his train of thought, either. "Yeah, well, no offense to the guy," he offered, obviously referring to his big blue buddy. "But this wouldn't be the first time I've gotten by without 'im."

Knuckles was mostly indifferent to the monkey's soliloquy until his quip about rock-watching. As much as he might have loved to give him a lecture on the importance of his position, the echidna simply crossed his arms and gave a snort. He didn't feel the need to justify himself to another punk with a leather jacket and a chip on his shoulder.

"Well, see ya later," he said, and cocked his neck to Rock in a subtle 'we-out' motion. Should the monkey follow, he'd have something to say out of ear-shot for the other two. "We should prolly head back and rally the troops," he said in a throaty half-whisper, rather contradictory to what he'd just told Tails. "Something tells me this ain't gonna be easy."


Meanwhile, Knuckles stood there, his head gradually descending as the volume of his growls gradually increased. He didn't quite flip his lid, but it was clear he'd had enough of the situation... as evidenced by his implacable stroll towards the water.

"They're right," he gnarled behind him. "We're wasting time."

Tails watched, dismayed, as the echidna strode imperviously off towards the banks of fog that were creeping off the still ocean.

"Hey, wait!" He shouted.

But lo and behold, fox child's words didn't seem to do much to move him... not back towards solid ground, anyway. He did start moving away at quite the considerable pace (maybe angry-showing-off), but that was all. With a quick crouch and a massive leap, the echidna dove off into the mist with a splash.

Then there was an awkward bit of silence.

And then there was a massive, horrible noise. A splash of water not unlike Knuckles', but around thirty damn times bigger. And the instant it died out, so did any indication of what monstrosity had caused it.