Take back the city (1-2)

Mie · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 1:44 pm

Neither sass nor sarcasm even occurred to Jam as she leveled her dissecting stare at the other girl, twisting in her seat, and draping both folded arms over its back.

"Nothin' like that," she answered abruptly, her brows furrowing pensively. "Maybe I shouldn' say nothin' -- It sounds crazy, but I just get the strongest feeling like I ... really oughta dislike you."

"Not sayin' I do," amended the monkey quickly, raising both palms along with her eyebrows in a defensive kind of posturing. "S'just weird, 'cause it's so persistent, y'know? Ever had anything like that?"

Greens · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 6:02 pm

Needless to say, the mole was a bit taken aback by what Jam had to say. Her lowered guard had suddenly been shattered without her even having the chance to put it up first. A hand grabbed at her forearm and compulsively rubbed at it while her brows took a turn for the concerned. "Wh, I-- I'm sorry...(?)" No, she wasn't being sarcastic, either. She was actually apologizing without knowing what for.

"Uh... w'll no, I don't think so," she replied. "I mean-- I thought, I, knew you and Rock from somewhere, but... I know I don't. Like, it's right in the back of my mind," she indicated by pressing her palm to the back of her skull. "...But it won't get any closer than that. Y'know? I thought, maybe I just saw somebody that looked like you a long time ago? Or something? And, I, I thought it was a kind of sign!"

"That... we should be friends."

"I'm sorry."

Mie · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 10:28 pm

OOC: Collab between me and the Greensenator. Oh, geeze, Greens in congress, that's terrifying.

"Nah, no, no, no," dismissed the monkey with less guilt than her tone probably otherwise should have had, given the abrasiveness of her candor coupled with the fact that Caz hadn't done a thing to either her or Rock. She set the still mysterious trinket back atop its paper pile home, and spun in the chair to face her white-furred accompaniment. "Y'ain't got nothin' to apologize for, it's just weirdness."

"But that's like exactly what I'm sayin', right there. It feels... I dunno, not like I know you, but at the same time, it's like I do -- But I don't. But I do. An' usually, I've got a pretty good head fer rememberin' if I met someone before or not, but you: Nothin'. It's totally bat-s**t."

"I know, right?" she said, raising her arms into an enthusiastic shrug and suddenly shifting into a much more friendly frame of mind. "Oh, man. Well, hey! At least now we know we both aren't the only ones, right?" There was a brief pause while she looked like she was contemplating something.

"Heyyy, wait, I just thought of something," she added. "What if... in, like, another world, or... a previous life... we were totally best friends?" She reeled back with her hands on her hips and a satisfied (wide) smile. "Hahaha! That would be so cool! We should do that."

In a previous life, such talk might have made the strawberry-hued simian choke on air, if she believed in such ridiculous nonsense (she didn't!), but she at the very least liked to the think she had a decent poker face when it suited her. ...Not that she needed it.

"Heh! 'Other world,'" she repeated, wondering how close she'd come to actually audibly suggesting something so far off the green. "That's good."

With a brisk clear of her throat, Jam peeled herself out of the squeaky chair, and crossed the room, seizing Rock's axe by the neck, and twiddling her index and middle fingers against the lower E, if only for something to keep her hands busy.

"I ain' opposed, either way," she continued abruptly, as she plopped backwards onto the edge of the bed without looking (she could probably find it blindfolded -- make whatever you will of that). "Could be... interesting. Don' usually get along with chicks, but you're surprisingly tolerable for one."

Caz's smile from unsubdued to ear-to-ear as she crossed her arms in pride and triumph. "Yes," she declared in an authoritative tone. "I aammm the best."

"...Eheh heh heh."

Diluss · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 10:46 pm

Tails looked back again. The fish... It was still there. It was impressively still there. It was... He saw huge pieces of metal sliding inside the fish's mouth, in the dark. Doors opening. The fish was getting ready to bite.

"Hold on!!"

Abruptly he pushed forward on the control stick. The tornado's nose pitched down like it had been kicked out of the sky and the tornado whipped around and down and arced into the fog. Any rollercoaster any of them had ever been on would've been small potatoes compared to stomach-sinking, knuckle-whitening air-time they experienced as the tornado dove towards the waves.

As they sank into the impenetrable fog, Tails stared at the altimeter, watching as the numbers on the old spinning-wheel display spun further and further towards zero.

psikeout · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 11:24 pm

The water in the next room from Jam and Caz turned off with a squeak of the valve, and Rock returned in what seemed like seconds. Maybe a few minutes had elapsed overall, but not long at all. Again, blame the military—Prisoners were probably allotted more bathing time. Anyway, he had rushed so much that he was still almost shiny wet, and his head's white spikes pointed every which direction, but he looked (and smelled) infinitely better.

"Alright, like I was saying," he started as he quickly dumped the box of shotgun shells (all of the cartridges slugs, none buckshot) out on the bed and jabbed as many as he could into his bandolier. "We've only got two gears, so..."

He trailed off for lack of a solution. Meanwhile, he flung the bandolier on over his head, pulled his jacket on over it, stuck the very short shotgun in its sling-held holster and put it on over his jacket, clipped the radio to his belt, then, in a very well practiced motion, began rapidly wrapping up his hands from the knuckles to wrists with the rolls of fabric he'd pulled out earlier.

"... Guess you're either ridin' with one of us, or takin' the car," he concluded unenthusiastically as he finished up his wraps. Yes, he was counting on punching things—Very hard, potentially metal things—and figured he could use all the reinforcement he could get. His lead-loaded "driving" gloves went on last, and with that, he was ready to go.

Admin · Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 11:33 pm

What Tails saw was true enough; the doors were opening, and it certainly looked like the fish was about to try to swallow them up... but perhaps it (or its operator) had thought farther ahead than that.

Even as fast as the bloated airship was, there was no way it could outmaneuver up with such an agile little plane. So, from its mouth emerged the answer; a small school of duplicates, identical to the "mothership" (or "mother fish" in this case), which shot out into the open air in a whirling, piranha-like frenzy, and began to rapidly dive after the Tornado.

Weren't they cute? The fifteen or twenty plump little aircraft looked just like the big one. Yet, each one was actually still massive enough on its own to fully devour the Tornado, and with jaws agape, that seemed to be the swarm's single-minded intent.

They were probably reduced to nothing but radar blips just seconds after they appeared, since Tails dove down into the zero-visibility fog, but the deafening, almost "buzzy" sounds of their thrusters made sure there was no doubt of their continued swirling, erratic pursuit.

Greens · Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 1:33 am

Needless to say, Ace was in for something quite resembling the ride of his life hunched up in that little red bi-plane. It was a good thing he had such a strong stomach, as any other random shmoe would probably be taking the "down time" they had in the fog to lean over and eject the contents of their stomach over the side. As it was, Ace's greatest lament was the fact that no matter how hard he wished it, the Tornado stubbornly refused to magically grow a third seat.

But beyond that, there still lay the looming threat of being consumed whole by a school of flying robot fish. Sadly for them, that wasn't even on Ace's list of ways to die.

"TAILS!" He shouted over the bedlam, swallowing his pants (that is to say his panting, of the throat,) and trying to make his seat a little more comfortable for both its occupants. "ARE THERE... ANY KIND OF TURRETS ON THIS THING?"

nUcLeArEnVoY · Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 12:50 pm

Things couldn't have gotten any worse once Teck got an eyeful of the miniature-but-not-as-miniature-as-he-wished duplicates spewing like hornets from that wide open chasm of a mouth. At this point, he rolled his eyes in a languid despondency, the kind that warrants a good ole' fashion, "Awww, f*ck it all," kinda remark (not that he said it).

While Ace scooted and jerked about like a banshee in fright yet also in an attempt to make his seat more comfortable, it thereby tossed out any remote shred of comfort Teck salvaged in this awkward predicament, so there the porcupine was; leaned to the side with his chin on his wrist and coming off as frustrated. The good thing is, Ace's suggestion certainly didn't fall on deaf ears since Teck was there to back the alley cat up in his strident request, "Good point, mate, this thing MUST have some sort of firepower - you didn't seem to forget anything else when building this thing, Tails! BAH! Why, oh why did I use up my spines on those stupid robots earlier today!?"

"Anyway, you might want to hurry! The little ones are a lot swifter! Were we a little closer to the ground, I'd take at least a couple out mehself but sod off with that idea! Ace, do YOU have anything up your sleeve? Because right now I'm about as useful as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest!"

Greens · Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 3:35 pm

Caz didn't say anything, herself. And did she really need to? She took a breath at first, like she was about to speak, but ultimately kept her air-filled chest puffed up as the finger she raised drooped limp. Slowly, she exhaled, and her mouth closed, and her head graaadually tilted its way towards Jam's direction. Her expression was blank, at first. Subtle, unremarkable.

And then she split a smile to rival the Cheshire cat to her new bestest friend, her pleading eyebrows hiding nothing regarding her humble request.

Mie · Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 10:40 pm

Jam was by now well past the consideration of their latest addition to the party as any kind of couple-turned-crowd-making third wheel, and though she had every intention to be as amicable as she would be to any hypothetical female consort she actually liked (which apparently, was the illustrious title Caroline had won for herself) , the monkey wasn't really the "YAYFRENDZ" type either, so the mole's implicit plea raised some brows.

"What, you wanna ride doubles, or somethin'?" sputtered the simian incredulously, upon decoding the vague intimations. "'R were you suggesting I throw my gear in the trunk and drive our jacked ride? 'Cause -- fair warning -- I make Rock's driving look like a parking lot tram."

psikeout · Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 11:01 pm

Rock was already heading out the door.

"No time to talk it over, girls, we gotta go if we're goin'."

Seconds later, he was trundling out the back door. Keys jingled as he unlocked the shed (which was actually more like a small, standalone garage), then, with the thin, sheet-metal door raised, he proceeded to haphazardly knock the assorted junk leaning on his gear out of the way. Brooms, a mop, rake, shovel, pickaxe, buckets, and everything else clattered to the floor, then a sharp yank pulled the dusty, grungy looking, heavy, bike-style X-Gear out of its hiding spot. Rock sat astraddle it, and, with a hopeful turn of the key, the once-black (now greyish, speckled, nicked, and generally messed up) machine hummed to life.

"Battery's good. Compressor still works... Score."

Dust and dirt blew everywhere as the jets kicked in, and the machine hovered just barely up off the ground and scooted its way out into the open. Time to go.

Before setting into motion, though, Rock took a moment to pull his radio out and tune it to the local air traffic channel.

"Tornado, you got'cha ears on this channel? Rock here on the ground, over."

No, he had no idea what was going on out there in that fog; he'd just missed seeing the behemoth in the sky by a matter of seconds.

Diluss · Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 12:11 am

Tails pulled back on the control stick as the Tornado entered within 400-meters of the ground plane. The radar, much as it had failed him, at least gave him a rough estimate of where the ground was, although, as a wholeTails' instruments were not on his side. The photographic front-projecting radar had stopped displaying anything useful the moment Tails began his suicidal dive towards the sea below--the rapidly approaching ground plane combined with the heaving movement of the sea meant that the screen now displayed a series of utterly disjointed images--and the more general-purpose, all-around radar was apparently suffering some kind of terminal problem, because it appeared to be displaying around a dozen or so other massive objects in pursuit of them.

Unless of course the equipment was not malfunctioning, which might might all-together be worse.

"What?" Tails shouted back, possibly unnecessarily loudly, although between the roar of the machines behind them, the rushing of the wind in their faces, the whine of the tornado's jet, it was hard to tell if the edge to his voice was from the stress of shouting or the stress of being heckled at while he was trying to pilot a plane at ridiculous speeds with certain death below them and extremely uncertain horror behind them.

"No I don't think so the Tornado wasn't really designed for a lot of YEEK."

Tails pulled up as a massive wave--backwash from the huge ripples that had been created by the egg-fish's departure from the ocean, no doubt--slopped into a wave coming the opposite direction and splashed a massive sheet of water up into the air.

Suddenly, at all odds with the expected, Rock's voice came across the radio.

"What! Yes!" Tails shouted quickly into the microphone.

"Rock! Rock rock! Did you see it? Can you see what it's doing? My radar isn't working! Are the military scrambling anything? They shouldn't scramble anything--it's Doctor Eggman's, one-hundred percent!"

Greens · Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:11 pm

"How do I get myself into this crap...!?"

Ace continued to maintain a shaky balance at best. Jostling around in such ridiculous circumstances, it was only made shakier when his pilot denied the existence of any kind of WEAPONS that reeaally could've come in handy right then. Oh, sure, he had his shiny chaos cards, but the one reason he hadn't whipped them out already was because he was so sure he'd look like a doofus when they had no effect. But, again, desperate times...

The cat struggled for a better foundation, one foot still in the seat, another on top of the body, hands at the ready to grab at something should things go wrong (and he had no doubt they would). Facing the plane's rear, he looked down to the porcupine, but didn't give his question unnecessary thought. "Yeah, you could say that," he replied.

And... rolled up his sleeves.

He flicked his hand, and out from the pouches on his wrist whipped out Clubs 2 to 7, already glowing a ghostly blue. His eyes sharpened, his body instinctually tensed. And he hated himself for flinching when the seawater sprinkled his face-- he had to be focused. For anyone else in the world who wasn't called Fang the Sniper, a shot like this would've been absolutely impossible. But for him?

Only slightly impossible.

"FOR FUTURE REFERENCE," he hollered, hurling his arms about. "IF YOU'RE REGULARLY FIGHTING EGGMAN, SOME KIND OF DEFENSE MECHANISM, MIGHT BE COOL."

---

Caz mumbled to herself at the former of Jam's proposals in mock deep-thought. A fist on her chin and an elbow in her hand. "Ah, I guess that wouldn't really work on a gear, huh... Well, gosh-darnit!" she cried, slapping her balled fist into her palm. "No way I'm staying cooped up in here while th'rest of you guys save the world. Iiii'll grin an' bear it!"

Her face snapped to one of determination as she thrust a finger skyward. "To the Car-Mobile!"

psikeout · Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:51 pm

Rock, baffled, stared at the radio for several seconds after the transmission finished. His eyes occasionally flickered up to the wall of fog in the distant offshore sky, but they saw nothing yet. He did hear an incredibly loud rumble, though...

Wait. There it was. A giant, gleaming, green pufferfish the size of innumerable aircraft carriers warped into a sphere pushed through the fog, executing a big, wide turn that couldn't help but blow all the mist away from itself. The thing was gigantic.

"... Yeah, I don't know about the military, but, uh, is that all that's out there? ... —Over?"

Meanwhile, he puttered the gently floating bike around to the front of the house, where Jam's scooter and the car were parked. He no longer looked like he was in such a big rush...

Admin · Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 9:57 pm

What on Earth did Ace think he was going to throw his cards at? The fifteen or so huge steel fish following them were easily the size of reasonably large houses, and barely even visible through the pea-soup-thick fog; he merely had an array of blurry, half-open red eyes and blazes of thrusters to aim at.

But suddenly, his actions didn't seem so superfluous; suddenly, there were crazy alarm sounds coming from the console of the Tornado, indicating a missile lock. Streaks of rocketry blazed through the air at incomprehensible speeds toward the airplane; a pair of missiles closed in faster than the blink of an eye. The projectiles weren't particularly huge examples of munition, and given the number of puffers in pursuit that weren't firing, it seemed that their aggressors intended to just disable their aircraft, and not completely obliterate it. Good news,... kind of.

As distracting as it all was, though, there was yet more disturbance coming from the console. Beyond all the beeping and bonking and honking of the missile alerts, and the crazy radar readouts, and everything else, the Chaos Emerald radar also began to go berserk—And just as they neared the island at the middle of the mist, too.

Take back the city (1-2)

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