What, me leave minor characters out to dry? Nahh...
---cut on this line---
Chaos Race
Part 6: Green
Written by: Adrian Tymes and Alessandro Sanasi
[Legal disclaimer:
This story is based on characters created by SEGA and Archie Comic Publications,
Inc., and Commander Packbell by David Pistone. Permission is granted to freely
distribute this story, so long as:
a: no recompense of financial value is received or given by the person who
distributes the story, and
b: the distributed copy is identical to the story as originally authored.
In other words, don't sell it, and don't alter it.
Copyright (c) 1996, all rights reserved, et cetera.]
******
In the long swath of jagged peaks known only as the Dark Mountains, one peak
seemed to be missing. Its corresponding mountain thrust up from the earth, only
to suddenly level off halfway up. A miniature mountain rose in the plateau's
center, as if whatever force had deprived the mountain of most of its top had
left the tip behind. The area was now devoid of life, although a road winding
up the peak to an observatory on its top indicated that someone had once lived
there. The many machines in the observatory, most rendered nonfunctional by
time, bore silent testimony to the resident's vile nature. A statue had once
identified this person, but the edifice had long since rusted and collapsed into
an unrecognizable pile. Only an inscription on the statue's pedestal still bore
its maker's name: Ivo Robotnik.
This observatory had once been Robotnik's favorite hideaway, where he plotted
his takeover of Mobius when he could not use Robotropolis, but it was now
deserted. The area might have been left to sleep forever, a forgotten footnote
in Mobian history, if not a certain green meteor had shattered its slumber.
******
Inside the observatory, a capsule large enough to hold a small Mobian hummed to
life, as did the building's main computer. The capsule opened with a hiss, to
reveal a robot that looked as if, at one time, it had been intended to resemble
a monkey. Most of its skin was metal, and a light bulb protruded from its
skull. The robot opened his eyes, which seemed to gleam with evil intelligence,
and looked around the dark room, confused.
"Good afternoon, Coconuts," a snivelling voice greeted him from the darkness.
Coco replied out of habit, in case whatever had activated his capsule was
listening. "Good afternoon. What does Robotnik want?" He looked around. "And
why are the lights out?"
"I'm afraid that Robotnik is not here anymore. He left this place long ago,"
the voice replied.
"He left?" Coco jumped to his feet and slowly paced arond, waving his arms in
the air desperately. "Oh, I *knew* that something like this would happen!
Robotnik never tells me anything. He only orders me to cleaning duty all the
time! No one bothers to tell me what's going on!" He ran a finger through the
inches of dust that had collected on the capsule's outside. "And look at this
mess! It will take days to clean it up again." He stopped, squinting into the
darkness. "Who are you, anyway?"
A cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows. "I am Robotnik's nephew, and first
in the line of command." He stretched his body, trying to appear taller than he
was. "My name is Snively - the Great!"
"So why did you activate me?"
"Robotnik sent me on a very important mission. He needs the green Chaos Emerald
that has crashed into this building a short while ago. Unfortunately, I lost
all my SWATbots in an earlier encounter with some Freedom Fighters, so I need
all the help I can get."
Coco pondered for a moment. "Ok, then let's get Scratch and Grounder. They can
help, too."
"Good. If we find the gem in time, I'm sure that Robotnik won't order you to do
cleaning duties ever again!"
"No cleaning duty anymore? That's great! Finally he will realize my true
value! Let's go!"
"In fact, Robotnik won't give orders to *anyone* ever again," Snively thought
to himself, grinning evilly, while following the robot monkey upstairs.
******
In a small attic near the building's top, a rat's nest of wires had been
arranged to look like a nest. Inside the nest was a large, metal egg, with a
prominent crack around its midline. A few of the wires had fallen apart over
time; one of the larger ones sparked at its severed end.
It was here that Coco headed first. Carefully avoiding the live wire, he
grabbed the egg's top and pulled. The egg popped open, revealing a robot that
looked like a giant chicken. Unlike Coco, it had been enlongated vertically,
almost as if it had been stretched like rubber.
The robochicken was sitting in a lotus position, blissfully unaware of its
surroundings. Seeing no hope of putting the wires back into place, Coco grabbed
the sparking wire and held it to the other robot's back.
"YE-HOW!" Scratch leapt to his feet in an instant. "I'm up! I'm up!" He
looked around for his master, but saw only Coco and Snively.
Coco dropped the wire. "Hello, Stretch. It's been a while."
"That's Scratch, CocoNUTS. And don't do that again, or I'll tell Robotnik!"
"Robotnik is not here, but he sent his nephew." Coco pointed toward Snively.
"He needs us to find a missing Chaos Emerald. Come on, let's find Grounder."
Coco walked out of the room. Scratch followed, his face reflecting his mind's
blankness. "Chaos Emerald?"
******
A short mine shaft lead from the observatory's bottom to an underground cave.
The cave's only access to outside air was through the shaft, as evidenced by the
change in atmospheric composition Coco and Scratch registered as they travelled.
Had any living creatures accompanied them, they would have noticed a different
smell.
The cave seemed to be littered with inverse stalactites and stalagmites.
Everywhere Scratch and Coco looked, cone shaped holes had been drilled into the
walls. Only four green objects broke up this landscape, three of which looked
like they had probably caused the holes.
Coco picked up the smallest of the objects. It was a cylinder, with a face that
looked like it had been created out of spare parts: a drill bit for a nose,
gauge-shaped cameras for eyes, and a flexible metal mouth.
Coco grinned, held the robot head with both hands and started to shake. A hard
*clunk* was heard from inside the head.
"Hey, stop it. You're making me dizzy," the head spoke.
"'Lo, Grounder. Pull yourself together. We've got work to do."
"Oh, ok." One of the other parts, a rounded box on treads, started moving
towards the head. The other two, which looked like arms with drills instead of
hands, tunneled their way into the floor, shot up next to the box, and landed in
sockets designed for them.
The assembly retracted its arm drill bits, extended machanical hands where the
drills had been, and grabbed the head piece from Coco, placing it on a socket in
the body's top.
"Hey, something's wrong!" Grounder blinked at his behind for a moment, then
removed the head again, turned it for 180 degrees, and placed it back on its
socket. "There."
Snively made a face as if he had just bitten into a grapefruit. "Oh well. I
guess this will have to do," he sighed. "Now let's find that Chaos Emerald. We
will start upstairs."
"Uh...what's a Chaos Emerald, again?" Grounder looked to Scratch with a blank
expression on his face.
Scratch whispered something into Grounder's audio sensor.
******
The hoverbot Tails was piloting had taken him to the observatory faster than he
could fly. He had tried to get some rest during the trip after setting the
hoverbot to autopilot, but it seemed that he had just dozed off when the
proximity alarm woke him. Below him, he could see the building that had once
been Robotnik's base.
Tails smirked. "Piece of cake. I'll just land, find the emerald, and be off to
Knothole faster than Sonic can eat a chilidog." He landed the hoverbot, got
out, and entered the building.
Then everything went black.
******
Sinvely grinned as he rubbed his rifle where it had just hit the now-unconcious
fox on the head.
"What's Tails doing here? Sonic can't be far behind," Coco deduced. "I'd
better put him in the holding cell."
Snively motioned with his rifle. "No. Leave him in my custody. You go search
for that Chaos Emerald."
"Are you sure? Wherever Tails goes, Sonic is sure to follow."
"Find that emerald fast, then, so I can get out of here before he shows up.
Check out the area with the observatory's telescope, if you want to be sure no
one followed him." With that, Snively lifted Tails up, and walked off.
******
"Go away, it's my turn now!" Scratch pushed Grounder away from the large
telescope, then held his eye to the lense, trying to make something out.
"Hey, I wasn't finished yet," Grounder protested, pushing back.
"I can spot Sonic much faster than you. You looked through this thing for ten
minutes straight, without seeing anything." Scratch closed one eye, then put
his other up to the telescope's viewer. "Hmm...that's strange, everything looks
green."
Coco, who had just walked in, needed a few seconds to fully contemplate this.
"Green?"
******
Tails woke with a headache, to find himself tied up on a chair.
"Oh no, not again," he wailed. "I knew I should have stayed in bed this
morning. This is just not my day..."
"Ah, so you're awake!" Snively was holding a laser rifle, its buisiness end
aimed at Tails' nose.
"Snively? But you're dead."
"Almost, but not quite. Now, where is he?"
"Who?"
"Sonic. He'd never let you do this alone."
"He doesn't know I'm here. He's chasing down the other emeralds right now."
"Then who's your backup? Or did you sneak out of Knothole?"
"Antoine, but he chickened out."
Snively lowered his rifle. "Chickened out? Let me guess, he's safeguarding
the yellow emerald. I'd better recall that squad, then." He spoke a few
commands into a communicator, then turned back to Tails. "I am willing to make
a deal with you, little fox. I'm going to let you go, if you don't tell
Scratch, Grounder, or Coco what happened to Robotnik..."
******
Coco whistled a merry tune as he strode away from the telescope. The emerald
had fallen down the telescope's shaft, breaking most of its lenses. Coco now
held the emerald, and was polishing it with a rag as he walked.
Scratch and Grounder were whispering as he approached.
Coco held up the emerald. "When I bring this to Snively, he will make ME the
leader of the Super Sonic Search and Squash Squad, so then you'll have to obey
MY orders!"
"Well, then let us lead the way, great Coco." Scratch made an inviting gesture
towards a door.
Coco proudly marched toward it.
"Uh, a person with such a high rank shouldn't carry things himself," Grounder
objected. "I'll take that emerald for you."
"Oh, right." Coco handed over the emerald and walked through the door.
No sooner had he passed through than Scratch slammed it shut behind him.
"Hey, this isn't the way to Snively. It's a storage compartment," Coco's voice
yelled from inside. "Let me out! Help!"
"Now WE will bring the emerald to Snively," Scratch yelled back. "And then WE
will command YOU around!" He laughed his trademark laugh.
"Yeah," Grounder affirmed as he put the emerald in a large storage compartment
in his chest. "Now let's go find him."
******
"I don't make deals with evil people like you," Tails stated firmly. "You'd
just trick me anyway."
"No, honestly," Snively replied. "All I want is the green Chaos Emerald. Once
I have it, I'll leave. Just don't tell anyone here what happened to Robotnik."
"Why?" Scratch preceeded Grounder through a door opposite from where Tails
was ready to exit. "What happened?"
"He's dead." Tails turned his body to face the robots. "Didn't you hear?"
Scratch's lower jaw fell off and hit the floor. He bent over to pick it up, and
snapped it back into place.
"D...dead?" Grounder slowly vibrated in place, then pointed a drill-tipped arm
at Snively. "But you said Robotnik sent you!"
"So I lied." Snively shrugged, then pointed his laser at the robots. "But I
was first in command after Robotnik."
"Oh, yeah?" Tails smirked. "Then how come Packbell's running Robotropolis?"
"Packbell?" Grounder kept his drill pointed at Snively.
"Your replacement."
Scratch looked from Snively to Tails. "Shouldn't we be taking orders from him,
then? It sounds like Packbell was Robotnik's second, not Snively."
Grounder opened his compartment, and brought out the gem. "Let's give it to
Packbell. He'll know what to do with it."
"No, I was his second! Packbell was subservient to me!" Snively was livid with
rage. "You will give the emerald to ME!" He grabbed for the gem, but Grounder
rolled out of reach.
"Packbell will probably make us commanders when he gets the emerald," Scratch
continued with glee.
Tails shook his head. "He wouldn't. Robotnik dumped you here because you
always failed to capture Sonic, and now you think Packbell would act different?
You don't have the brains for commanding anything. You probably don't even know
your own shutoff codes."
"Sure we do," Grounder stated. "Sigma Octo Nova Ire Crisis..."
"No, wa-" Scratch's interruption was itself interrupted, as both robots
deactivated.
"Well done." Snively stepped toward Grounder's still open compartment and took
the emerald. "Finally! It's mine! But, where's Coco?"
******
Coco banged against the room's walls, but was unable to even dent them. The
sealed compartment had been designed like an airlock, in order to store vapors
and liquids whose capacity to escape far exceeded Coco's. The substances
had long since been removed, as had the interior controls. Resigning himself
to his fate, Coco plugged himself into a power outlet, and proceeded to wait
for someone to free him.
******
Snively looked around, but saw no active robots. "Never mind. All that counts
is the emerald."
Tails struggled. "Ok, looks like you have what you wanted. Now let me go."
Snively just grinned. "No. I'm sure you will be quite useful later." With
that, he grabbed the tied fox by the scruff of his neck and carried him away.
"Hey, no fair!" Tails protested. "Help! Leggo! HELP!" Snively could barely
keep a grip on the twisting kitsune.
"Don't struggle. You're only making things worse for yourself."
"Worse for you, you mean."
"I don't think you understand." Snively held his rifle up to Tails, so that the
fox's nose almost entered the weapon's barrel. "Whether or not your body lives
is your choice. Either way, it will come with me."
Tails growled in reply.
******
When Snively piloted the only remaining functional hoverbot away, with a laser
rifle, a Chaos Emerald, and Tails as his cargo, the observatory once again had
nothing but time. A sudden blizzard mercifully covered the edifice's scars,
leaving only the outline of a monument to a lost cause.