"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. AAAAAAA--"

The Capsule Trooper crashed square into Killey's frame, which seemed to have the same kind of effect as running full-tilt into a stone wall would. Elegant Joe fell onto his ass with a thud and just kind of sat there.

Killey reached down, ripped the clankety-clanking arm from Joe's face, regarded it for a second, held it upright in his fist, put his thumb against the metallic limb's forearm, and snapped the whole thing in two like it were a pencil.

He tossed the wiggling remains into an adjacent tin garbage can while the Capsule Trooper rubbed his face. "I was... I was gonna do that," said Joe. "I was just getting ready."

"Right." The moose turned on a heel and started to continue on after the others.

"Hey, uh," Joe said, hauling himself from the ground (again), "I'm gonna--uh, hang out here for a bit."

A thoroughly suspicious Killey stopped in place and turned halfway to fix the robot with a leery look. "Why? Need to find someplace to cycle?"

"Well it's justNO it's not that you dork. It's just there was someone who needed help--" Joe held up his hands when he saw Killey's it's go time look start to form, that look soldiers and cops and firefighters always get when something needs doing right damn then, in the way they set their jaw and their eyes get hard. "Not like that, she's okay. She was just looking for somebody and she can't find them... him, whatever."

"Is he--" Killey looked at some distant rubble, and the message was clear enough.

"I don't think so. I think they just... didn't meet up where they were supposed to or something. I don't know. I'll meet up at the TCC with you guys later." Without waiting for a response the robot turned and left Killey to stand there (for his part, the other anti-terrorist glanced towards the person Joe was running back to, shrugged and shook his head with a "Should have seen that coming" sigh, and continued after the others).

Joe plodded along on the pavement. He wondered who she was looking for. Probably some dipstick boyfriend... Well, obviously he was a jerk, right? And he was missing. And a little search & rescue might give Joe a better opportunity to get to know her. She seemed nice, and she was kind of pretty, in a rough-ish way. He liked that. Maybe he'd get her phone number and he'd go to her birthday party and--

Joe stopped walking when he saw a scruffy-looking striped yellow cat outside a store... and then he looked at the girl who'd asked for his help... back at the cat...

"FFFFFFFFFFFF--"

Even with all the smoke and wreckage, there was a certain sunny levity to ground zero at the disaster. Property damage was high, but people were out and about, and there were far more fire trucks trying to get around than ambulances. The city had suffered a harsh blow, but things were "alright."

Too easy.

There came a stuffy wind, blowing in hot from sea. It whipped and curled through the city with a rising roar that stifled the murmurs of the crowds. Mixed in with the moist heat was a contrary dry grittiness—A nasty, sooty taste and smell, the source of which soon began to manifest visibly across the city skyline, where a smoky blanket unfurled itself across the sky. The morning light dimmed like shades had been drawn on the sun.

The radio hanging from Cross' hip began to blare, as did all the ones carried by the rest of his team, and all the other emergency crews in the area. It wasn't anything identifiable, though—Whistling, shrill tones, and crunching static filled the airwaves.

The next ominous sound needed no broadcast, however. Not too far across town, from (you guessed it) the harbor, a sound like a bomb going off thunderously split the sky along with the hideous ruckus of groaning, screaming metal against metal, or concrete, or something else similarly hard. Shudders could be felt through the street; whatever it was, it was big.

This was just ridiculous. Cross felt the subtle pounding in his head intensify. The whole damn city had gotten its ass kicked, they could barely navigate through the wreckage, these civilians were driving him crazy (especially the orange hedgehog guy; Cross had heard every stinking word the bigmouth had said within the last two minutes and he swore it was pushing him towards retirement faster), Zanetti was limping along like he'd just seperated the ligaments in his ankle or something, they were all tired, and where the hell was Joe. "What happened to--"

Kabooooooooom. "Oh, great," he said with a grimace. Now what?

He gazed upwards for a few seconds, at the sudden appearance of the material darkening the skies, and the wind was suddenly much less cool than it had been. Funny, it was almost like... Oh, hell, whatever. Just another pain in the ass to deal with through shooting something 'til it died, probably. He almost started to reach for his radio, but the noise glitching through it made him wonder why he should bother. "Sparky, get up on that building and see if you can find out what the hell just belched like a mofo."

Sparky's thrusters thoomed as he blasted up to the top of an adjacent multi-story building that overlooked a good portion of the city. Cross was content to wait at first, and then he saw a couple of said civilians hoofing it towards the source of the noise.

What the sh*t. He couldn't do anything these days without some bozos make-believing they were Sonic the Hedgehog. If it weren't such a widespread and rapidly-growing problem he wouldn't have let it piss him off, but he dealt with wannabes a lot more than one might assume. The sight made him mad. And when Cross got mad, he shot things. "Hell with standing here. Let's go, guys, double-time!"

The thud of combat boots suddenly increased to a quick rhythm, and the soldiers booked it down the road, content to go bashing their way over cars and civilians if necessary.

Sparky put his hands on his hips and looked out across the city towards the harbor, but it just so happened that a bigger building than the one he was on was conveniently placed between he and whatever was causing the disturbance. "Mm. Dangit. Hey, Major." He turned around and looked down at where the SSD... was? "I can't see anything, I think--huh?"

...

"HEY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS. WAIT FOR ME." Foom went his thrusters again. "Douchebags, goddang, yeah, it's not like you need your second-in-command around in case your superior officer gets taken out, really. Dicks."

(OOC: Big post. Sorry.)

"YyyooOUUW--ow!"

With the semi-sudden appearance of her apparently much sought after companion, the rest of the world suddenly screeched to a grinding halt as Caz dove after Ace like she was taking a bullet for him. And then she totally smacked her knee on a nearby parking meter, instead opting to hobble towards him.

"Ow, ow, ow! ACE."

For the comparatively pitiful rate of speed she reached him by, it was worth mentioning that she still managed to plow into him when they met, wrapping her arms around his waist and digging her nose in his chest like it was a tissue. "I was so worried abouchy-" she began. And then pulled herself away just as quickly, looking straight into his eyes.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I WAS."

Ace sighed. "I could hazard a g--"

"NO YOU COULDN'T EVEN know what a hazard I'mnnnurrrrrgh. I couldn't play any music on the radio, today! I had to give a report about the number of casualties they thought there were after all this! I know you can take care of yourself, but we were getting reports of some kinda goddammnnnnn robo-zombie apocalypse. And from what I can tell that doesn't seem too far from the truth."

"Well, were there any?"
"Any what?"
"Casualties."
"...N-no."
"Well then..." That look.

"But there was property damage! Like you wouldn't believe! As-tro-nomical figures!" she emphasized by throwing her hands in the air. "What if you were in one of those... those properties!? You could've...! annnd...! I... I..."

Kabooooooooom.

"...I hate Mondays." She didn't even bother looking at the catastrophe exploding behind her. She just gave a perturbed grimace, because she knew exactly what it meant would happen.

Ace breathed in deeply, and sighed strongly, a small O-shape on his mouth. He didn't say anything, because he knew she knew exactly what would happen. Instead, he held her by the shoulders, looked down, and gave her that familiar cheek-tugging, toothless half-grin.

"Listen, Caz, I'm fine. And I'm sorry for worrying you. But right now, I gotta go save the world. A'right?" he said, inching off. "You can hate me at supper time." And she just stood there, shoulders hunched with her head shrunk down, with a pouting lower lip that threatened to swallow her upper hole. Watching as he made off. But not for long.

"Oooohhh, no."

"Hm?"

"If I get to hate you, I'm going to do it right now. By-your-side hating you."

"...Alright," he agreed, grabbing her hand. "Just for you. Stay close." Wading through this sea of pedestrians was a good way to get lost... or trampled. That fellow in the white seemed to have a good ide--

...

Ace quickly squinted, but even he couldn't get a good look at him by now. Was it just his imagination...?

"C'mon, this way."

"W-wait, my knee!"

The group's view of the harbor area opened up as they passed from congested downtown to a trainyard. Beyond a couple of chain link fences, across the numerous tracks, and beyond the wide lot was the water's edge. Thousands of cargo containers were stacked in great piles, and innumerable loading cranes lined the piers, where any other day the cargo ships would have been busily loaded and unloaded.

Not much farther down through the dockyard was the source of the trouble: A mass of ships had run aground in unison. How many was hard to tell in the tangle of twisted steel and decimated concrete, but there were at least five or six, maybe more, most of them large cargo vessels, and at least one an oil tanker. They were pushed well inland, as if they had struck shore at top speed.

The dust and smoke of the wreckage mingled with the soot in the air, making that part of town all the darker. The source of the ashen skies was hard to determine, but it was definitely blowing in from the waterfront. It had become almost uncomfortable to breathe by that point, but if there was any good to be seen in it, at least one member of their party might have been able to take some solace in the fact that the wind had grown strong, and rather than being stuffy, it carried with it the bite of an unnatural chill.

The military was present at the scene; firetrucks had begun to pull up at the same time as the motley downtown crew, but the rescue vehicles were driven away just as quickly as they had arrived by a hail of gunfire and small explosions. Nestled in with the wreckage was one of the gunboats that the papers had mentioned vanishing earlier, and it was firing on anything that drew near to the mangled heap.

Overhead, in the boiling smoke and vapor, a strange light began to swell; amidst a flurry of figures and swirling specters, there appeared the... giant, disembodied, ghostly head of Dr. Eggman. —With spider-webs caked in his mustache. And dark, oily circles beneath his bespectacled eyes.

He spoke from the tenebrous abyss in a wavering, reverb-laden, echoey voice.

"You thought you could get rid of meee! The great and powerful and awesome and great—" Didn't he already say that one? "—Dr. Eggman is not fazed by the GRAVE!"

Insert raucous laughter. (He sounded like he was making a bad impersonation of Vincent Price, for lack of a better illustration.)

"But you will be if you don't listen closely to my demands! My COMmands! But I know you people are the type to need convincing, so I..."

He was probably going to go on and ham it up for a while if uninterrupted.

When the group of gun-happys arrived on scene (only a moment or two after the monkeys and their new buddy(?) arrived), they were reduced to doing the same thing the civilians did: stand and watch in a sort of... dismayed awe while regaining their breath, which would have been hard enough without the ash.

"Either I accidentally took some of Shane's pills," the Major said, "or we're being mocked by the ugliest bat-signal I've ever seen."

"This reeks of adventure and excitement," said Sparky. "Or maybe that's the yellow homeless guy over there."

Cross didn't know what was more annoying: Eggman and this Night of the Living Egg crap, or the air trying to turn his lungs into a smoker's. He put his hand over his beak as if to make it a kind of filter but it didn't help. Shame they weren't equipped with oxygen masks.

Joe had arrived just after them, only by virtue of being nosy enough to follow the pretty mole girl and her stupid dumbass boyfriend. He watched the show for a spell, admittedly much more entertained than he rightfully should have been, until he looked at the others and their angry (well, more annoyed than angry) states. "You guys look like you're friggin' dying. It's nice not having to breathe. I'll bet it gets old having to suck in air all the time. Just breeeaaathin' in... and breeeaaathin' out." He started making long, overemphasized breathing noises, until McBride hit him in the back of the head hard enough to very nearly knock him off his feet.

"Maybe if we laugh at him, he'll go away," suggested Sparky.

"He'll just think we're laughing with him," McBride said.

"What's he talking about?" Tally asked. "Is anyone listening?"

To be quite honest, none of them were really listening to anything Eggman was going on about... like, at all. There were bits and pieces of the usual kind of Eggman monologue (Cross swore he heard "egg-centric genius" in there somewhere), but other than that... They kind of looked at each other sheepishly, thoroughly perplexed as to what to do and trying to figure out if they should be worried, unnerved, agitated, or bored.

"LISTEN!!"

Perhaps Egg-Ghost-Man or whatever you want to call him noticed that he didn't have everyone's full attention. (Eerily enough, the giant, wispy, floating head seemed to glare at the SSD troops directly, and even spared a nasty look for the porcupine and monkeys.)

"In life, I was destined to be your ruler! But you pathetic hedgehog-worshippers can't rob me of that right, even now! So! Until this pitiful, helpless, defenseless little thing you call a government surrenders full control, none of you in this city will see the light of day again! Bring me all your leaders and politicians! Put them on a boat and ship them out to sea, where I'll take care of them! Don't pretend you didn't want to do that with all the politicians, anyway. Lawyers! Ugh! And if you don't, I'll dismantle this whole island one brick, one block, one city and town at a time until all that's left is a ghost town!"

Yeah, he actually made that pun.

And then he proceeded to laugh about it for about a minute straight.

"OOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO. OOOOOOHHHHHOHOHOHO..."

... and so on. For a while. Meanwhile, beneath the grating, gritty noise of Eggman's unceasing cackling, a clanking and skittering noise could be heard; soon enough, robots of all shapes and sizes, all rusted, seaweed-covered, and barely functional-looking, began shambling their way out of every single orifice of every ship that had crashed into the harbor, like ants out of an anthill. And as for the patrol boat? In an utterly surrealistic fashion, it stood up out of the wreckage of the other ships, hoisted upon six awkward looking, chicken-like legs, and began walking out onto dry land, guns firing every which way.

The numbers they were up against were truly immense—Hopelessly so. GUN air support was coming in the form of a few large choppers (jets couldn't possibly intervene with visibility as it was), but it seemed Eggman had already thought of that, too; not only did the anti-air cannons on the ambling, marching gunboat let them have it, but a swarm of bat-like robots blanketed the sky and started kamikazeing into anything that took to the air.

Not a good situation.