"I'm out of options. I can't get in touch with Rekk, still haven't tracked down Nev..."

The hum of the enormous spacecraft's electronics, lights, and ventilation was drowned out by other, louder noises: bent-steel monorails curved through the room, carrying the occasional short train by, transporting robots and materials, while consoles at the command center tower itself blabbered quietly with news updates from TV and radio, the occasional blurb of communication from Chimera forces down planetside, and a little music for good measure.

"I'm assuming you've already called the other guy."

"... Who?"

The two voices conversing way up on the deck belonged to the two sole organic members of the entire organization. Rock was sitting in an office chair of sorts (more conservative and practical than the techno-throne a short distance away that the original designer had seen fit to include). Jam stood nearby. The whole scene had a surrealistic grandeur to it that didn't seem to suit the casual pair, with the stars and the moon shining through a glass honeycomb dome some thousand or more feet above, amid glowing lights, flying transports, and perpetual automated business.

"Are you serious? You know who."

That was the tone of escalation.

"Yeah, no, help me out here. If I knew, I would've already called. If you didn't notice, I'm already—""—balls-deep in friggin' real-life strategy games and— what, no no, I thought of him already—""What, no, I— no. I didn't call—""No, I don't wanna bother'im.""I'm just sayin', it's a lot to just call the guy up outta the blue and ask him to run an army and—""—and I'm just sayin', I've already dumped more on his shoulders—""—than I can deal with and I don't wanna add more now that—"





"I have no idea how to call him," Rock admitted at last after several long, stony-faced seconds.

"... Oh."

It wasn't much of any kind of helpful reply, and she clearly knew it, for hastily, stutteringly, she amended, "I don't guess there's like an Ogle for robots, huh?"

Rock just stood and started forward. He patted Jam on the shoulder as he passed by on his way to the transporter. "We'll find him," he reassured. "Capsule Troopers tend to kinda... network. I'm sure somebody'll know where to find him if we ask around."

He stepped up to a broad, circular protrusion in the floor. It was like a platform of sorts, raised about a foot off the ground, with a lot of very large cables running from it out across the floor. It looked like it didn't originally belong there, and had been moved from elsewhere in the ship. It had a small-sized volumetric display console standing at one side, which the primate promptly began fiddling with, pressing "buttons" in open air with his fingertips, and manipulating a wireframe globe representation of Earth. It had a number of dots scattered around it, most orange, but some red; he selected a red one in the south seas.

"Dressed for Spring City?" he asked, casting a glance over his shoulder.

The obnoxiously red primate, dressed for the draftiness so common to all those old space destroyers, mounted the platform with a lithe hop. In the same brisk motion, she tugged her yellow-and-black-striped teal pullover, up and over her head, wadding it up into a ball, and chucked it into an unoccupied task chair some six or seven yards away.

Her trademark black lycra number and a small pair of white shorts remained, along with her trusty boots, belt, and self-professed 'hax gloves', as she airily replied, "I am, now."

The white monkey, himself clad normally and summery for today with his navy and red-bloodstriped shorts and no shirt, gave the reddish one a leering, sideways kind of look as she stepped next to him. He tapped another couple buttons.

"Don't bother you that that thing belongs to a dead kid?" he asked (in reference to her sweatshirt).

"M'not th'one who killed'im," slurred Jam in indifferent response.

Rock shrugged his head once from side to side. "Makes you look kinda huge," he added quietly.

"I'm still not givin' you my trophy shirt," stated Jam, indignantly piercing straight to the heart of the matter.

Rock looked straight ahead again and puffed some air out of his nose at her haughty high-nosery. "Eh," he smiled, jovial, "was worth a shot."

*Beep.*

A pin-wide beam of light spread straight up from between the two, expanded to fully envelop them both along with a high, pitch-increasing warble, then vanished with a flash and a blaring, electronic discharge noise. They were gone.


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A large airship and a colorful, motley escort of about ten more roughly its size loitered very visibly over Spring City, hanging so low that they cast huge, lazily-drifting shadows across the city, like big, metal clouds. The fleet's design was only uniform in one way: they all had a big, bold C on the side.

"Aaaalright, here we are," mumbled Rock as he planted a hand, swung his legs up and vaulted to disembark from some sort of hovering vehicle—an Egg Mobile, from the looks of it, but a lesser-used variant, further altered and repainted a rich, metal-flake blue to look less conspicuous cruising around amidst other civilian VTOLs and flying cars (which, honestly, weren't that uncommon anymore).

His boots crackled on the loose bits of neglected pavement. He and Jam were between a brick building (some apartments, it seemed) and a concrete building (a row of stores and offices) somewhere downtown, as good a place as any to start their search. The beaming-bright sun drew a stark line at the end of the alley, but left their parking spot nice and shady. While it wasn't the most concealed place in the world, it was good enough to tuck their ride away in for a walk around town.

The ride had been a necessity because the teleporter wasn't any kind of "gateway to anywhere." While Eggman had that technology at one point, it had been presumed lost along with the collapse of Mist Island's giant geode.[Ch. 1!] So, while beaming around was a convenient way to get back and forth between Earth and the destroyer, the best it could do was transport them to another, similar teleporter. The one Rock had chosen was inside an airship of the former Egg Fleet, currently patrolling around behind the northern mountains of South Island; from there, Spring City was just a quick flight away.

"Do we wanna split up, cover more ground?" Rock asked as he swaggered out of the alley, shielding his eyes with his hand as a visor. He lamented not owning any sunglasses.

Jam sauntered from the depths of the alley, thumbs hooked casually into her beltloops, and a cherry sucker dangling lopsidedly out the corner of her mouth. She seemed to observe the ground-level world as though she owned it (and really, it'd be difficult to not feel some sense of entitlement). Sparing a fleetingly irritated glance at some remaining decor from the previous landlord, one of which she briskly tore down as she strolled past, the smaller monkey came to a stop next to the larger, and shrugged, setting her hands on her hips.

"Might be useful, I guess. Looootta CTs around. You really think we'll be able to find 'im like this?"

"We'll see," answered Rock with a glance and a shrug.

He paused and reached down, patting the back pocket of his navy-blue shorts, before finding what he was looking for clipped to the side of his belt instead: his phone, which still had its Egg Mobile® sticker on it. After a quick battery check, he held the small, black cell up illustratively. "Call me if you find somethin'," he said. "Otherwise, I guess we meet back here in... les'say three hours."

"Aye, aye, Cap," acknowledged the pinker of the pair. With one hand, she illustratively shook a large rubber dish washing glove — a sad, but necessary stand-in for a real cellphone case — and offered a succinct mock salute with the other.

"Good luck!"

---

Rock wandered into the open garage door of a nearby fire department, where he spied a yellow-and-neon-green-painted capsule trooper decked out in reflective strips, wiping down a fire engine.

"Hey, buddy. Got a sec?"

"Oh. Hi, Rock," replied the Capsule Trooper. Did they know each other?

"You don't happen to know anything about the, uh, whereabouts of the General, do you?"

"General Green?" echoed the trooper quizzically, balling up the wash rag in his metal hands. "Yeesh. Nope. Not since... I can't even remember."

When a robot said he couldn't remember, it probably meant something. Rock shifted his footing and looked around, as if to search.

"Happen to know anybody else around I can ask?"

"Well, I've seen a couple CTs diggin' across the street, working on that building, but uh... I don't think you'll wanna..."

Rock gave the trooper an odd look.

"... weeell, maybe they'll know something," the CT murmured doubtfully.

"I'll... check," said the primate, suspicion thick in his voice as he turned to exit. "Thanks. I think."

---

A minute later, Rock was standing at a construction site, beneath the iron skeleton of a building under construction, where a quick greeting with two Capsule Troopers led to his next search query.

"... So, have you guys seen Green around anywhere?"

"I'm green!" replied the first.

"Aah— no, I mean—"

"You're not green, shut up," blurted the second.

Rock went silent.

"Am too shut up. And so are you."

"It's more a teal color."

"Your mom's more a teal color."

"I don't have a mom, ass-gasket."

"Yeah, well— shut up. Maybe if you did she'd have taught you your colors!"

"I'll teach you the color of my boot in your— hey wait he's walking away come back—"

---

"The General? Nope, nope. But the last time I saw him, he said he liked my helmet spinner. That made me pretty happy. Some days I worry he was being sarcastic, though."

---

"General Green? The General Green? All battle-scarred and epic and sword-swinging and badass with the secret army of deadly super-vigilant interdimensional Capsule Trooper space-time commando guardians? ... Nope, haven't seen'im."

---

"General Green! Aw man, no, I haven't seen him, but this one time me an' my buddy E.J. (that's short for Elegant Joe) were gonna go meet'im, see, Joe told me he was gonna introduce me at some concert the General was gonna show up at but I thought that was strange 'cause nobody ever said anything about the General likin' music or nothin' but he said he'd totally be there and that I just needed to buy our tickets but then we got pulled over on the way an' this COP, man, she was like, I dunno, some kind'a bird-lion-girl-thing I guess? and she was all, 'y'all ought not be drivin' so fast on that there lawnmower' but it wasn't really a lawnmower, she was just makin' fun of our four-wheeler, but it turned out we weren't supposed to be ridin' doubles on it anyway so we got a ticket and I couldn't pay for the concert anymore so we didn't go."

---

"Green? That guy owes me twenty bucks!"



The above was all Rock had to show for his search two hours later. He sat on a park bench with a thousand-yard stare, quietly massaging one temple as he contemplated his next move.

Things hadn't been going much better for Jam.

---

Any orange text (or orange elipses [". . ."]) you see in this post are actually links. Click click!Maybe she was just impatient, but it seemed much too long, and far too far to walk before Jam found anything that might even be a potential lead. Even that was pushing her luck, though, and she could tell at a glance; these were not the kinds of CTs that were of Red and Green's ilk: Two conspicuous CapTroops, sat at a sun-bleached plastic patio set outside a hole-in-the-wall hot dog stand. Drinking beer. Or, holding beer bottles, at the very least.


She rearranged her grimace of foreboding, and approached.


"If I were looking for General Green," she asked lowly, "Where could I find 'im?"


"Green? You know that old wafflestomper?!"

"Sure do," agreed the other, dipping his head lethargically.

"Him and us, we go way back!"

"Way back."

"My only regret in life is never havin' met him..."




". . ."




"And then, I think... if you turn llllleft? Or maybe right, and then go another several blocks, you'll see a Kangaroo Yum Yum Spot, and keep going past it..."




". . ."




"Well, to answer that question, one might say we should first, most likely, define what one speaks of when inquiring about 'general' green, that most likely being the green most median, or, maybe mode, if you will, averagely speaking, which on the spectrum would probably be somewhere whereabouts the middle-areas of..."




". . ."




"Beans? You're looking for beans?! Why're you looking for beans?!"

"'GREEN.' GENERAL GREEN. HE WEARS A CAPE THAT IS GREEN."




"Streakin' across the minefield, buck-ass-nekkid as the day he were built,"

"Buck-ass-nekkid,"

"Guns a-blazin', an' Green, 'e goes, 'Soldier, where is your warrior's dignity?!' To which I took to explainin' the finer points of psychological warfare, as they say in the bible,"

"Straight from God,"


". . ."




"And then make another left, and go another block, and then make another left, and go another block, my favorite video store where this really cute girl works is like, right there..."



". . ."




"And then I said to him, 'Don't go there, girlfriend!'"



". . ."




"And, and I know another teal guy... and... another teal guy (wow, I know lots of teal guys!) and another teal guy..."



". . ."




"... really not all he's cracked up to be, and I would know. See these guns? They're not factory, I'll tell you that. Seriously, if you're lookin' for the real deal, it's right here. Legit. What're you doin' later?"


". . ."

---

Rock sat on that park bench for quite a while. Actually, that's a lie; he got up, got a Wild Tango Razberry Explosion Suckee from the corner store (without bothering to ask the Capsule Trooper who helped him at the counter), and then sat back down, slurping quietly at his frozen consolation treat.

...

*sluurrrrp.*

...

*clonk-cl-clonk clonk clonk...*

Clonk clonk? Rock snapped back to focus and shot his gaze toward the source of the noise. A squad of Capsule Troopers, scuffed, charred with old battle damage, and speckled with bullet dings, were having a jolly-looking time chattering and blabbing and shoving each other as they plodded down the sidewalk toward where some sort of monstrous, jet-engine-equipped, post-apocalyptic Humvee-looking thing was parked (on top of what used to be a parking meter but was now sidewalk art).

Rock's mouth twisted in disbelief that he had not questioned the vehicle sooner. His eyes narrowed as he noticed that these particular CTs were armed to the teeth. One of them had a minigun on his back. He was also playing with a yo-yo.

"..."

Rock jogged off after them.

As Rock got closer to the CTs, these were the manner of things he would hear:

". . . 'cause you shot it in the face, y'dork, that's why."

(First impressions are overrated.)

"Well, you're the one who stabbed it in the eyeball and it almost fell on me."

(Maybe.)

"I only did that 'cause Rambo over there thought it'd be really smart and creative to set it on fire. He was gonna burn down the entire freakin' block if--"

"Did you guys see the part where I shook my ass at it?"

"I thought that might help. I'm not lugging this damn flamethrower around and never getting to use it. Where's the fun in that?"

"Things tend to get ragingly pissed to hell when you set them on fire, dude."

"Did you guys see the part where I shook my ass at it"

"It deserved it!"

"Your face deserves my fist."

"Your fist deserves my ass."

"What?"

"did you guys see the part where I shook my ass at it"

"HEY LOOK THIS PLACE HAS ICE CREAM." The impossibly obnoxious group of impossibly brazen . . . whatever-they-weres stopped a short distance from their interestingly-parked VTOL and stared at an adjacent Dairy King. "I have wanted ice cream all weeeeeek," the one who'd stopped first whined. "None of the other dimensions had it."

The CT (it was the one whose current choice of backpack was a minigun) pressed his dusty, circular face up against the glass, yo-yo hanging by a finger and spinning about in mid-air as it was almost completely forgotten for the moment. "ARE YOU GUYS OPEN?"

Everyone inside, those dining and the employees taking orders, stopped and, quite simply, stared, nobody so much as twitching a finger. By now, if Rock thought the group was battle-scarred before, he'd get an even better look now. The six or seven CTs looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie's climactic battle. All of them were dusty, some were wearing ragged full-length or shoulder capes, most carried some sort of firearm (or multiple firearms) strapped to their hips, a few carried falchions or maces, one had an enormous warhammer, several had Capsule Trooper-green-and-gray-colored kite shields strapped to their backs, most of them had burn- or scorch-marks across their faded green armor...

All of these very unique-looking individuals were pressed up to the glass, staring in, longing for ice cream.

One, sensing movement, turned and saw Rock.

"Do you know if this place is open?"

"C'moooon I just wanna hold it."

Every one of them turned in one big, unified movement and froze (again in unison with one another) to stare at the arctic-furred primate.

There was a really long, awkward silence, one of those moments that can't help but become increasingly uncomfortable with every second the awkward-o-meter steadily rises. Unless you're an audacious monkey, anyway. Then it probably doesn't have much effect.

One of them (the one with the flamethrower, the one who was currently holding the flamethrower in his flamethrower-holding hands) edged closer, just a wee bit too far into Rock's personal space for that to be entirely comfortable, paused for the briefest second, and--

"HEY YOU GUYS THIS IS THAT ONE GUY."

"Wait what WAIT HEY IT IS."

"HEY WOW MAN IT'S THAT DUDE."

"WOOOOW."

"DUDE IT'S TOTALLY HIM HOLY COW."

So it went (increasingly loudly), as they all quite literally consumed the space around Rock and began jovially giving him good-hearted slaps on the shoulder, good-natured shoves, and . . . all those things that don't really seem like they'd be good-hearted or good-natured and probably just served to piss him off.

"HELL YEAH we can take you to see the big man, HEY GUYS LET'S TAKE THIS GUY TO SEE GREEN!"

"ALRIGHT LET'S DO IT."

"HELL YEAH LET'S GO FOR A RIDE."

"C'MON MAN! LET'S DO THIS!"

"DUDE YOU ARE AWESOME MAN. WE HAVE HEARD OF YOU."

"LET'S DO IIIIT."

And like a bunch of highschool jocks who'd just won homecoming, they began cajoling him along towards their battle-scarred joyride, boasting and bragging and... generally just being way too loud for any kind of civilized quarter.

And so the moment went from "really probably not good" to "hey I guess this is sort of what I was looking for" in a back-pat flat. Despite the brotastic good will, Rock still found it hard to relax, maybe owing to being swatted relentlessly by well-meaning but utterly-painful robot hands. A few surely-gonna-bruise-later hits in and the primate began to wonder precisely when it was they'd all had their palms lined with tungsten carbide.

At some point in the spectacle, he lost his slush drink; he was pretty sure he saw the minigun CT with it before he got ushered off to the APC.

Grin and bear it.



Jam soon received a trio of texts on her phone.

A short while later, if one looked to the sky, they might see a VTOL craft thundering above, a craft that seemed to take great delight in punching a hole through each cumulus cloud it came across (and if their ears were particularly sharp they might have been able to hear a "NNGH yeah take that" from, most likely, the pilot). Such was the sort of mindset inside the aircraft, as one would find if they were to take a peek in it, or they happened to be sitting in it and seeing the hijinks up close and a little too personal.

The journey more or less consisted of noisy, aggrandizing banter where the squad of CTs boasted about their recent accomplishments (they didn't seem interested in getting into details, but there were things in there about a griffon, an arena fight, skirmishes with ugly barbarians...?), singing along to songs cranked so loud they probably heard them back in the first days of the Eggman Empire, and showing off weapons, of which there were so many they didn't have enough time to finish before they arrived at their destination. (One of them also kept trying to talk to Jam a lot more than was probably appropriate or desired.)

With a slow descent, the aircraft settled onto a field of long grass, engines thrumming down until silent. Adjacent to one side lay the sea, accompanied by its gentle smell, as they had landed not too far from distant cliffs. Doors slid open and the CTs poured out, gesturing to their guests to follow along toward the distant, definitely-in-the-twilight-of-its-life facility.

"When was the last time you saw the general?" the one with the minigun and empty slushee cup asked... Just how had it eaten it, anyway?

It probably wasn't hard to notice, but as a whole, they had become much quieter since exiting the craft, their postures were ramrod straight, and they seemed to walk as a unit. Evidently, to dally on these grounds was, in comparison to the city, a staggeringly different affair.

"Just curious. He's mentioned you repeatedly and I suppose you could say you two are something of legends. We love good war stories, and all that. So, uh, is that guy your brother, or...?"

Before any kind of horrendously awkward explanation had a chance to surface, the CT got a good slap on the back of the helmet from one of his buddies, along with a shushed "not here dumbass" to boot.

Ahead lay the only apparent entrance, a dark gray, steely-looking door. Aside it, several windows had been boarded up, but in many cases, interestingly enough, some windows had glass that looked new, and protective bars covered many if not all potential openings.

As the group approached, several noises came from behind the door: the sound of many, many locks being undone. At one point it sounded much like a bank's safe taking down its defenses. Finally it lurched open with a heavy, steely yawn, and a Capsule Trooper waved them in.

Well, almost. It jolted in front of them, standing in the doorway and sort of not realizing it was in the way. "Hi guys whadja bring me did you do anything fun can I go next time hi Rock hi Jam"

"Dizzy, move."

"No wait, wait. Check this out. Check out what I learned while you were away." The robot revealed it was holding a yo-yo, string tied to a finger. Dizzy swung the yo-yo down to the ground, as one might normally do when they've encountered a yo-yo, and... he completely botched the part where you raise it back up. "Wait, wait."

The nearest adjacent CT, the one with the warhammer, held up his hand like he was holding a ball. Dizzy's attention shot up to it, and the CT juked his hand around, too fast for the other 'bot to tell he wasn't holding anything. The CT "threw" the "ball" and Dizzy tore off into another room after it.

It stepped forward, gesturing to the two primates as the group more or less went their separate ways. The initial room was wholly not terribly impressive. It was dusty and barren, seeming to serve only as a hub to the outside world or the other rooms of the building. A glance through a doorway would reveal a staircase, and next to that doorway they might have viewed a room filled to the brim with various equipment ranging from weapons to computers to weapons to techo-gizmos to weapons to yo-yos to weapons to so on.

Up a second flight of stairs they went and down a rather dark corridor. Along the way they passed a makeshift "cafe" of sorts, or lounge room, complete with obnoxiously-neon jukebox easing out great, old school blues, several CTs decked out much like the others lounging, relaxing, and otherwise BSing. Another room contained a couple of beds, though they looked mostly unused (probably only being there for decoration purposes or simply as a traditional place they might shut down for a while). Finally they arrived at a closed door at the end of the corridor.

The CT knocked in a manner that indicated it was a password of sorts, then slowly swung it open, stepping to one side to allow them to enter. It was a voluminous study, dimly lit, with rows of filled bookshelves lining two sides of the room. On another side, several different kinds of swords had been ceremoniously positioned along the wall; below them were shelves lined with different "trinkets", including a large jewel of some kind, a CT-E visor, a baseball signed by Velo Wilder (who had apparently misspelled it "Wylder"), some kind of prehistoric sculpture of a small, four-legged animal, and so on. Toward the back of the room was a sizable wooden desk that, while old, seemed well cared for now at this time of its life. On it sat a stack of paper, a notebook computer, a small music player, and a chess set. And a yo-yo.

Standing by the desk was a Capsule Trooper that radiated command from every veritable pore. Its armor had faded and was scarred with burn marks and the grime of battle, and the visor was absent and an eye had seemingly been replaced with a kind of techno-patch, and a tattered brown cape lined its length. At the same time it was unlike the others in that it was currently not armed, and it was actually absorbed in some passage of a book it held aloft. Yet despite this before-implausible sight, there was no mistaking this CT for any other.

"Yes?" General Green looked up from the page, and, seeing the guests, seemed to freeze where he was.