Chapter 1 of Kenal's Story, as promised. This was arguably the first
fanfic series I wrote (depending on one's definition of "fanfic
series"), so it's probably not the best in the world...but if you liked
Chaos Race, you may like this, too.
---cut on this line---
"On a Wing and a Tale"
by Adrian Tymes
[Legal disclaimer:
This story is based on characters created by SEGA and DiC Productions, and
refers to events from "Postcards From Mobius" #1 and 2 by Richard Ray Roberts.
Permission is granted by the author 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.
The griffins in this story are my own creations. If you wish to write a story
including or referring to the griffins as presented below, or the events in
this story, please contact me in advance - I would like to know who uses them.
Copyright (c) 1996, all rights reserved, et cetera.]
******
Time: a few months before Doomsday
******
All that could be heard was a primal scream.
"Dulcy? What the hoo-haw...oh, mah stars."
Bunnie Rabbot had heard the scream and come runnning. What she saw was
something she didn't think possible. Dulcy was glaring at what looked like a
light brown, unevolved feline, except that it had a bird's head and beak, folded
wings on its sides, and double-length, jointed fingers. Given its size, Bunnie
guessed that it was only a cub, but it was definitely a griffin - a race thought
to have been exterminated in a war with the dragons a millenia ago. In its
current pose, the cub looked like a larger version of a statue Bunnie had once
seen, just before Dulcy destroyed it in a fit of instinct-induced rage. And
Dulcy looked ready to do it again.
Dulcy filled her lungs, aimed, and...
"Dulcy! No!"
...was promptly diverted by Bunnie's running tackle. The blast of freezing cold
meant for the cub impacted a nearby tree instead.
"I know how your protector instincts make you feel, Dulcy. Fight 'em!"
Dulcy turned to face her new attacker, and froze as she recognized a friend.
The same inheritance that gave her powers beyond most dragons also controlled
her emotions at times. Utter hatred of all griffins was but one of the results,
albeit one that she thought that she would never have to face again. But the
anger faded as Dulcy asserted control to avoid harming Bunnie.
"He was probably looking for us." Bunnie turned from her friend to the
stranger. "What's your name, sugar?"
The cub didn't make a sound. It was cowering in fear, staring wide-eyed at
Dulcy in case she resumed attacking. When Bunnie approached from the side and
patted him on the head, he mistook her pat for the claw of another dragon, and
promptly collapsed.
"He's fainted. C'mon, let's get him back to Knothole."
******
Back at her hut, Sally was as surprised as Bunnie to see a living griffin.
"I thought they were all dead. Where'd you find him?"
"Dulcy found him near the power ring pool."
The princess quickly remembered Dulcy's reaction to griffins.
"How did he survive?"
"I snapped Dulcy out of it."
A low moan came from the cub.
"I think he's coming 'round." Bunnie looked to the griffin in her arms. "Hey,
sugar, you alright?"
As the cub made his way back to conciousness, memories flooded back. Wandering
in the forest, seeing a movement in the trees, stumbling upon the Wyrm...
The griffin let out a brief scream, jumped out of Bunnie's grip, landed on all
fours in a corner of the hut, and looked around for its attacker. Bunnie and
Sally exchanged looks of confusion, then approached the cub.
The cub noticed them and spoke before they could reach him. "Wha-what happened
to the Wyrm?"
"Wyrm?"
"I think he means Dulcy, Bunnie. I heard another dragon call her that once."
"Oh." Bunnie looked out the window briefly. "Dulcy's outside playing with
Tails. You want to talk to her?"
"AIIEE! It's here? Pleasedon'tletitfindme." The griffin's response could not
have been quicker.
"Alright. You mind telling me your name?"
"Kenal. Kenal Skyer."
"Nicole: access records on Kenal Skyer."
"ACCESSING...KENAL SKYER WAS A FORGED IDENTITY USED BY A CITIZEN OF
MOBITROPOLIS. THE MOBIAN POLICE ISSUED A WARRANT FOR KENAL'S ARREST, BUT KENAL
WAS NOT APPREHENDED. INFORMATION ON KENAL'S REAL IDENTITY IS NOT AVAILABLE.
KENAL'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE LISTS HIM AS A MALE GRIFFIN, CURRENTLY 10 YEARS OLD.
IMPOSSIBLE SPECIES LISTING LEAD TO IDENTIFICATION OF FORGED IDENTITY."
"Kenal really is my name."
Sally turned a suspicious gaze to Kenal. "If you're a griffin, one of your
parents must have been, too. So why aren't there any other records of griffins
in Mobotropolis?"
"All of the griffins who visited Mobitropolis had forged records, wore masks,
and did everything they could not to be recognized as griffins, to keep the
dragons from finding us."
"For a thousand years?"
"We had help."
"From who?"
"I won't say."
After briefly glaring at Kenal, Sally smiled. "Ok. You can tell the Wyrm."
Kenal's eyes grew wide, and as Sally turned to the window, Kenal replied, "NO!
O-Okay, I-I'll tell...the House of Acorn."
Sally's head snapped back to face Kenal, completely expressionless.
"Ever since most of my kind died fighting the dragons, the Acorns hid us and
helped us to survive. King Acorn was going to formally reveal our existence to
the world...but for my birth, he betrayed us. He sent my family a medical robot
that alerted the police when it saw me without a disguise. We couldn't stop it
before they came."
Sally pondered this. Something was not quite right.
"How did you avoid the police?"
"We were prepared to flee if someone found out. Fleeing the robots was no
different. My whole family escaped."
"Just robots? The police always sent a living overseer for arrests. Nicole,
was there anything unusual about the warrant for Kenal's arrest?"
"WARRANT WAS ISSUED FIVE MINUTES BEFORE ROBOTNIK STARTED ATTACKING
MOBOTROPOLIS."
Sally's eyes briefly widened as the identity of Kenal's would-be arresters
became clear.
"My father did not betray you. The robots were Robotnik's."
"They weren't Acorn's? I came to forgive him, and to ask for his aid against
Snively; I guess the first part's off. I heard that Acorn was here..." Kenal's
voice trailed off as he realized what Sally had just revealed.
Bunnie broke the ensuing silence. "Sally's father isn't on Mobius anymore, but
if y'all wanna help us against Robotnik, we'd be glad for the help, right, Sal?"
"Umm, right. Kenal, you said that your whole family escaped. Are they still
free? Can you take us to them?"
"No. They're..."
Kenal paused, looked at the floor, and fought back a tear.
Sally hissed to herself, "One day, Robotnik, one day..."
Kenal looked up. "Who's this Robotnik you keep talking about? Snively captured
them."
"Snively? He works for Robotnik."
"That's not what Snively said. He said that he was planning to take over
Mobius, and was going to 'roboticize' us to work on his projects. He mentioned
a 'bumbling fool' who ordered him around and kept him from taking over
Mobius...was he talking about Robotnik?"
Sally giggled at Kenal's last comment. "Yep, that's Robotnik, all right."
Bunnie turned to Sally. "I swear, you're sounding more like sugarhog every
day."
"I must be rubbing off." Bunnie turned again, to find Sonic in the doorway. "I
heard a scream, and you weren't answering the door. Are you..."
Sonic's jaw dropped too much to finish the sentence. He looked, stunned, at the
griffin.
"I thought they were dead?"
"Not all of them, it seems. But this might be the last one left. Snively
captured its family."
"Snidely? By himself?" Sonic turned a surprised face to Kenal. "How'd you
escape?"
"He put me in a clear chamber, then there was a flash of yellow light. Next
thing I knew, I was all alone in a lab. I just walked out and no one stopped
me. I tried to get the others, but I couldn't find them. There were some
robots that looked kinda like them, but they wouldn't talk to me. My brother
had come looking for us; he asked me to find you."
"Looks like the roboticizer somehow reversed itself in his case. Lucky him.
Does he know...?"
Sonic's unfinished question was answered by Sally's head shaking side-to-side.
Kenal piped up, "Know what?"
Sally replied in her gentlest voice. "Those robots, Kenal, were your family
after Snively roboticized them."
Kenal closed his eyes and lowered his voice. "I thought so, but I didn't want
to believe it..."
*******
After another half hour of interrogation, it was decided to let Kenal live in
Knothole. One week later, almost everyone had accepted him, but Dulcy was being
obstinate.
"But, Dulce, why don't you like him?" Sonic and Dulcy were returning from a
mission in the Great Forest on foot to avoid Robotnik's hoverbots, and Sonic
needed something to break the monotony of walking at Dulcy's slow foot speed.
"He's a griffin. I'm a dragon."
"So?"
"So, griffins EAT dragons. That's why we had to get rid of them."
"That was over one thousand years ago! How do you know they still do?"
Dulcy herself was wondering that. Her instincts screamed at her to race back to
Knothole and give Kenal a slow, painful death, just for being a griffin. It was
all she could do to keep her instincts in check.
"Dulce? Dulce! Snap out of it."
"Huh? OOF..." In her mental state, she had walked right into a tree.
"Quiet down, or we'll be..."
"HALT FREEDOM FIGHTERS!"
"...spotted."
"HEDGEHOG PRIORITY ONE! HEDGEHOG PRIORITY ONE!"
Normally, Dulcy would have just frozen some of the robots while Sonic trashed
the rest. But normally, four hoverbots hadn't suddenly landed on Dulcy upside
down, using their lift engines to pin her, and a nearby SWATBot normally hadn't
aimed its laser at her head.
Robotnik's voice crackled from a speaker on the SWATbot. "You might be able to
destroy my robots, hedgehog, but even you aren't fast enough to stop me from
killing your friend. Of course, if you stay still while I send more 'bots to
get you, I might consider letting her live...long enough to be roboticized, that
is." His familiar evil cackle sounded as the speaker's volume faded.
The fade was not supposed to happen. Neither was the SWATbot supposed to
collapse. But both did, revealing Kenal quickly disembowling the SWATbot from a
hole he'd clawed in its back.
Before Robotnik could react, Sonic disabled three of the hoverbots. The fourth
got one wild shot off before it, too, fell apart, courtesy of Sonic. But that
one shot hit Kenal in the forehead. He immediately went limp.
After sending Dulcy up to see if any more 'bots were in the immediate area,
Sonic checked up Kenal. "Oh, man..."
******
Fortunately, Knothole was only a few seconds away for Sonic. But he didn't
bring Kenal to the village. Instead, he brought Rotor and Sally to Kenal.
Rotor had grabbed a few medical supplies when he heard that Kenal had been shot,
but quickly dropped them upon seeing Kenal. "This is bad."
Sally moved to get a look at Kenal's wound. "Is he..." Sally gasped upon
seeing where the laser had hit Kenal, exposing a metallic skull.
After a quick examination, Rotor lead Sonic and Sally a short distance from the
body, and whispered, "He's been roboticized. The fur and feathers are all fake.
His tracking beacon and mind control were turned off at least a month ago, but
he's definitely a spy."
"Kenal? No way. He just trashed a SWATbot and saved my hide. No way would
Robotnik pass up a chance like that."
"When he first came here, he said that Snively had captured him. He's probably
Snively's spy."
"How do you know?"
"The only factories still running on Mobius that can produce anything of his
fur's quality are in Robotropolis. Robotnik destroyed the others' power plants
years ago. So he must have had his disguise manufactured in Robotropolis, which
means someone reconfigured a factory for long enough to make it, and even we
can't hold a building in Robotropolis for that long. Besides, he's still in
radio contact with someone. I'll patch it through his voice synthesizer."
After some quick rewiring, Kenal's voice started relaying, even though Kenal
was still unconcious.
"KENAL? COME IN, KENAL. KNOTHOLE VILLAGE IS WHERE?"
Sally pondered. "Can we tell who's sending this?"
"Nope, sorry. I can't even tell where the broadcast's coming from, but I've
got a good guess."
After a minute of uncomfortable silence, Sally reached a decision. "We have to
keep Knothole's location a secret. I don't want to do this..."
"Hey, don't worry. Anyone that would voluntarily work for Robotnik might as
well be a SWATbot."
"You're right. Sonic?"
Sonic whistled. A few seconds later, Dulcy was hovering overhead. "There's two
more hoverbots incoming. What should I do?"
Sally's face clearly showed her reluctance, but her voice held firm. "Kenal's a
robot, apparently a spy. Make sure that there's not enough of him for Snively
to get our location from."
Dulcy's expression went from concern to surprise to a sly grin in ten seconds.
"It will be my pleasure."
She turned to face Kenal as Sonic juiced the others, and Rotor's dropped
supplies, back to Knothole.
******
Kenal woke with a headache, and opened his eyes to see Dulcy less than a
decimeter away from him.
Dulcy frowned as she spoke. "I might not like you, but you saved my life, and I
like being in your debt even less. Sally thinks that you're a spy, and ordered
me to kill you. But I think that you were telling the truth. I'll give you a
second chance."
Kenal was paralyzed stiff with fear, and held his pose when Dulcy picked him up
by his neck.
"If you get away from Robotnik, you'll live. But I don't want to see you
again, EVER."
As Dulcy cocked one arm back to throw Kenal, her other arm plucked a feather
from Kenal's wing. She then hurled Kenal into an oncoming hoverbot, melted the
other with her fire breath, and headed back to Knothole. No one in Knothole
said a word when she arrived with Kenal's feather sticking out of her mouth, or
when she carefully placed the feather in her backpack, next to the fragment of
her egg shell that was her only memento of home.
******
Several minutes later, Robotnik was staring down a SWATbot pilot in a damaged
hoverbot.
"Where. Is. That. Hedgehog."
"DAMAGE TO NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS NECESSITATED RETURN-"
*BLAM*
"Shut up."
The SWATbot's pieces could do naught but obey as Robotnik holstered a laser
pistol.
"I think that I have found something, sir."
"Well, Snively? What is it?"
Snively cut away the control panel as he replied, "Whatever hit the hoverbot
lodged itself underneath this panel, sir."
The panel fell away to reveal Kenal embedded in the hoverbot's sensor control
systems. Snively lifted him out, puzzled at the remnants of Kenal's psuedo-
natural fur and feathers.
"It appears that someone threw what used to be a workerbot very hard, sir, but I
have never seen a workerbot quite like this one."
"Computer: access records on missing workerbots that look like the one in front
of me."
"ACCESSING...ONE ENTRY FOUND. GRIFFIN WORKERBOT REPORTED MISSING FROM
ROBOTROPOLIS LABORATORY S ONE 239 DAYS AGO. REASON FOR DISSAPEARANCE UNKNOWN."
"Griffin workerbot? But they died...oh, wait. S1 is your lab, Snively. You
were trying to create a griffin workerbot, I take it?"
"No..." Snively quickly remembered the griffins that he had captured and added
to his private stash, hidden even from Robotnik so Snively could try his own
plans. "I mean yes, sir. Yes, sir. You guessed my plans-er, I was trying to
surprise you."
"Ah. Don't try to surprise me again." Robotnik lifted Snively by his collar.
"Is that clear?"
"Y-Yes, sir!"
"Good." Robotnik dropped Snively onto Kenal. "Now get that workerbot repaired
and working by tonight." Robotnik turned to leave.
"No."
"WHAT?" Robotnik turned around and glared at Snively, who was grinning and
pointing at Kenal.
"I said no." Kenal stood and returned Robotnik's gaze.
"I did not give you permission to refuse, robot."
"I don't need your permission."
"How did you...nevermind. Security!"
One minute later, Kenal had charged past Robotnik and was flying away, with a
SWATbot arm literally on his tail. The rest of Robotnik's pursuit force was not
far behind, and had chased him into a small warehouse. Kenal leapt, twirled in
midair, and flew upside down over his pursuers, back through the doorway.
Before they could follow, Kenal curved his flight onto the roof, landed, and
removed the errant arm. Keeping it in his paws, he soared off the far side of
the roof, and was out of sight before his chasers thought to check the roof.
Kenal glided unobserved along Robotropolis's alleys until he found a power plant
near the edge of the city. The griffin hovered upwards along its smokestack
until he reached the top, where he dropped the arm. The stack's filters,
designed to keep rain and snow from entering, gave way under the arm's weight.
Debris from the filter, as well as the arm itself, landed on and jammed the
turbines at the base of the smokestack. Kenal headed for the Great Unknown as
the power plant ground to a halt, temporarily shutting down part of
Robotropolis.
The only sound remaining was a primal scream.
******
A pattern of five steam vents jutted out of the wasteland that was the Great
Unknown. To anyone who did not look closely, they were merely the only real
landmark for kilometers. With nothing of interest nearby, almost no one had
ever bothered to look closely. The first griffins that had had seen a cave
system hidden by the vents just over a thousand years ago. Those who had looked
afterwards had seen evidence of habitation, recently including geothermal power
plants far enough inside the steam vents that even satellites couldn't see it.
Not that any satellites could peer that deeply, since a kilometers-wide hologram
made an equally wide, three meter deep depression appear to be flat terrain,
level with the ground outside the hologram. The depression's edge was ringed
with a steep drop onto spikes under the hologram for those who tried to walk in,
but despite the trap's age, no one had yet stumbled in.
Kenal Skyer dove into the hologram at the chasm, making it look like Mobius had
just swallowed him without a trace. He quickly straightened out and glided
under the hologram's shield. As he reached the steam vents, Kenal saw Home.
After a ritual check to make sure that no one was watching, he scampered into
the cave and struck a pose. A hidden camera, recognizing the griffins'
passpose, opened a door to let Kenal pass.
The room beyond was as dark as a moonless night. Kenal's eyes quickly adjusted
as he entered, revealing a security checkpoint with enough automated weaponry to
hold off a small army. Kenal nonchalantly passed through as the door behind him
closed, but stopped when a paw the size of his head stepped in front of him,
attached to a proportionately larger griffin.
"I'm sorry. I failed."
"Tell me everything." The larger griffin's voice was much deeper, and carried
a hint of displeasure.
******
"Hey, don't worry, lil' bro. You did your best. They're fighting Snivley and
Robotnik, even if you had nothing to do with it. You found Knothole, got some
good info on the outside world, and you even took one of Sniv's power plants
off-line for a while. That's not too bad for your second trip away from Home."
The displeasure had vanished from the larger griffin's voice.
"Yeah, but now they won't trust me if I go back. And they've got a dragon..."
"Don't worry about that, Kenal. From what you discovered, I'd say that they'll
take Sniv and Nikky out, probably soon. When that happens, I'll go to Knothole.
And I can handle any dragon that young, even if she is a Wyrm."
"I suppose. But what about the other griffins? Shouldn't we rescue them?"
"Let's find a way to reverse what Sniv did to you first. My rewiring you was a
fluke; I don't think any of us can revive the others' minds. And if they come
here while under Sniv's control, they'd be worse than dragons. Not to mention
that breaking into Robotropolis again would be suicide right now."
Kenal brought his head up to meet his brother's eyes. "You're right. It would.
But it still hurts, knowing that they're..."
"I know. I don't feel any better; it was my impulsiveness that sent you, and
them, out while Snivley's patrols were still nearby. But as long as any of us
are left, we will survive. C'mon, the others are waiting."
With that, King Skyer lead his brother through the place that the only griffins
remaining only referred to as Home. As he walked, he vowed to return all of the
roboticized griffins to their families, and to thank Dulcy for her act of honor,
even if she had meant it dishonorably.