"On the wing," Rock echoed with a very brief, restrained, sputtering laugh. It faded as he quickly realized Ace was serious, though.

Could he really do that?

Rock must have thought so, because he said nothing more of it.

"... Help me push this thing out," the monkey finally requested as he stepped to the plane's side, grabbed a push-safe part of the lower wing near to the fuselage, and started rolling it out of the garage. It was time for them to get underway and get the job done. The street was still clear from the painstaking process they had to go through to get the plane to the shop in the first place, so Tails would be able to crank it up and hit the skies straight out from the curb. Nothing was left but to start it up and get outta there.

(OOC: Which is to say, John, feel free to move straight to the sky with this scene as quickly as you'd like. PLOT PROGRESSION POWER.)

Tails and his little flying circus buddies weren't the only ones on the move. Down on the ground, a slightly homely-looking convertible raced through cluttered yet unpopulated city streets, weaving between abandoned vehicles, fallen telephone poles and street lights, and hunks of building debris. Its engine let out a buzzy whine as its driver downshifted a little early going into a turn around a nearly 90-degree city street corner, and the whole vehicle lurched, gradually lost traction, and screeched at a shallow angle onto the sidewalk, and into a row of parking meters.

*PLANGPLANGPLANG.*

The car came to a halt just in time to not run into a tree.

"Sorry," apologized the driver to his bright red passenger, half amused, half spooked silly himself. He popped it into reverse, backed up enough to steer clear of the obstruction, then shifted back into first with a noisy grind from its gearbox and short-lived yelp from its tires.

"Freakin' tires. Totally bald."

Yeah, like that was the only thing wrong. Woe be to the owner of the vehicle; Rock had "borrowed" its keys from behind the counter at the auto shop. He had someplace to get to fast, and hoped to get back in time to meet Tails and the others when they landed, but at their present rate of progress, it might not have been possible.

"That would involve stealing," replied Rock with an air of correction—Only to add, "That'd take too much effort."

Fortunately, their path seemed to clear out and smooth out as they hit the open highway and made tracks past a big, green sign that read:

"SPRING CITY"

"The keys were just layin' out behind the counter for this one, so it was more like... borrowin'. And a lot easier."

So what was it that the passengers of the Tornado saw up there above the fog?

The radar image was hard to read thoroughly on a little screen, but one thing was clear: There was a whole island in the fog. Shaped vaguely like some big, jagged crown, the small landmass had sharp, rocky-looking peaks, and a lake, or hole, or reservoir of some sort at its center. There appeared to already be plant life on it, somehow, as well, even though the place couldn't have risen from the ocean any more than a matter of days ago. The most interesting find, however, was that small, sand-bar-like dots of land littered a long, nearly straight path from the island to the shore, like a barely-submerged land bridge.

A point of access? It could be, and it probably had been already for the robots that dragged into town earlier that day and the previous night.

Now, the screen Teck had been tasked with watching wasn't quite as sharp. It was the magnetic anomaly detector, and its readout was something more abstract than the monochromatic, photorealistic view Tails had. Instead, variations in color showed where metallic objects potentially were beneath the aircraft.

At first, there wasn't much but static, but soon, it seemed like something started interfering with the detector, or it started malfunctioning, because they soon flew over a single, bright, large dot just offshore the island, which then proceeded to expand until it filled the whole screen until it was improbably large and obscured everything else.

OOC: Special guest appearance by Matt.

"Tomato, tomahto," replied the reddish monkey in a tone that wasn't nearly as antagonistic as it may have likely come across. "Whatever helps y'sleep at night."

After checking the security of her lap belt under the guise of a fidgety shift, Jam set her elbow atop her open window, and deposited her cheek into its palm, wistfully eying a glossy jet black sports coupe rapidly shrinking into her rear view mirror.

"F'it was me," she pressed ineffectively, "an' it was, like... I dunno, hypothetically the robot-zombie-vampire apocalypse, or something crazy like that, I wouldn't care too much about m'car, y'know. I mean, if I left it at all, I prolly ain't even in town anymore anyway, right?"

Rock glanced from the road to Jam very briefly, but didn't answer. His eyelids slid tiredly half shut, and he just... frowned, and kept driving. It was his silent way of reinforcing no, I'm not going to stop and steal a better car.

And not only could Jam interpret it down to syllabic inflection and punctuation, but she had her own nonverbal means to communicate her concession that Rock probably knew just as well. Some kind of cross between a pout and grimace tugged the corners of her mouth downward in perfect synchronization with her subtly worsening posture, while her arms wove their way across her chest.

"No, I know; I like the Crapriolet... just, y'know, tires... unsafe... yeah."

But even she could hear the viscous lie coating her every word, and was more than ready to stick a fork in that conversation.

"So what's in Spring City?"

Ace leaned one foot on the wing next to him, his fingers wrapped around the side much more tightly than it appeared to be at a glance. The other foot rested on the body with... relative comfort. The plane was obviously designed for only two people, but go figure, Ace improvised with it. He was... adaptable. Or at least he kept telling himself that.

Truth be told, he couldn't adapt very well to the propeller blade falling the hell off and into the endless blue yonder. The best response available response for that was to express his concern and mutter something to the extent of "Well, that's not good." The following transformation was actually dealt with easily enough (although hardly easily), and Ace decided to count his blessings (they hadn't malfunctioned and exploded in a fiery blaze yet, after all) and enjoy the ride.

When the jets started off, so too did the cat.

"OoooooooHHHHHHWWWHOOOOOAAAA-HA-HA-HAA!"

---

Elsewhere, a certain ivory mole was quite content with all the excitement she was getting already... and maybe a little more than that. Unlike Jam, her kung-fu grip still hadn't quite been released from the edges of the back seat. And while she wasn't screaming her head off, her slightly widened eyes and tightly pressed lips easily gave away how she felt about it should anyone take a look. ...Not that that was terribly likely to happen, the two monkeys she was with sitting in front of her.

"Ooooohhh my goodness gracious." Cough. "Well, I'd totally be cool with something more... Uh, well-protected...?" Her head followed the sign she passed as she spoke. "Also, I forgot. Why are we goin' all the way out here, again? It wasn't important, was it? Oh, I just bet it was important."