Robotropolis airspace

[Echo]

[from Stratosphere]

"lets hope our A.C. still works" Era remarked as she pressed some buttons on her control panel. The craft would suddenly disappear from view as far as any observers that happened to be looking to the skies at that moment, were concerned. However they would likely hear the sonic booms as the craft decelerated below the speed of sound. The ocean would give way to wilderness, the wilderness to Robotropolis beyond. But something was amiss, there was smoke rising from the city in various places, as though a battle had recently taken place.

"Guys, look out your windows if you can still see through them." Era said, as she and Amiroo stared in awe at the tremendous damage done to the city a ways off to their starboard side. Collapsed buildings, fires, people running madly about the streets, smoke.

" Are you guys seeing this?" Era asked in disbelief.
"They're not already here are they? Surely not!" Amero said fearfully. "We just had to cover like what, 11,000 miles. They had to cover millions!"
"would you relax, it's not them. You see any rebel ships floating about in the sky?" Amiroo reprimanded.

"Am's right, there appears to be some sort of uprising occurring. Which I believe, will work in our favor. We could land further into the city than we previously believed. If Chunky butt is distracted with them, maybe we can slip through on cloak alone." Era said, her eye narrowing in contemplation.

"yes, no? Take a chance on landing further into the city?" Amiroo asked the rest of the ship's crew members.

"I say go for it." Tybe said.

"Me to" Amero said, "lets do it!"

"This is gonna be really dangerous if we do, but I'm up for whatever the group wants to do." Rye said nervously, she wasn't the fighting type really, she was a scientist for goodness sake.

"I don't know Am, we loose the ship, our whole plan falls to pieces. We won't be able to get aboard that ship. I'll leave it to you guys, but I'm just saying." Rog chimed in.

Amiroo nodded, looking to their mobian friends to make their opinions known.

[Nail Strafer]

Nail gritted his teeth as the ship made re-entry into the atmosphere, holding on as his body lurched forward from the deceleration. It was a very uncomfortable sensation, but he thought he was dealing with it well. ...that is, until there was an explosion and the ship began to barrel roll while the cabin filled with smoke. Then they popped the rear hatch.

The normally calm and collected Nail went into a near on panic attack, as he had a flashback to an event much earlier in his lifetime.

"All right gentlemen..." Tom said, his shaggy hair flopping over his face and only showing his muzzle. "We got this plane under control. Good plan slipping us aboard as stowaways, Shepherd."

"No problem." Shepherd nodded. His nickname came from his breed, German Shepherd. They'd hidden in the floorboards of this cargo plane before it had taken off, with the plan of popping out of their hiding places and taking it over in transit. Husku was up front piloting the plane. Right now they were standing in the back cargo hold, with the rear cargo hatch behind them. It had taken some gunfire in the takeover, but Augustine didn't feel too bad about standing in front--

The hatch started to moan and groan. Augustine turned around...noticing that two of the clamps holding it together had been hit by bullets, and the metal was starting to crumple in those places, like paper. All three of them rushed for the cockpit, but it was too late. The hatch's clamps broke off completely, sending the cargo hatch flying away. Shepherd flew right out, and Augustine would have too if he hadn't reflexively reached out and snatched at a cargo net that just happened to be hooked to the wall nearby. Now he was hanging out above the big blue sky, with just this nylon net and his grip on it preventing him from falling to his death.

For several minutes, he simply bounced around in midair with the net jerking around with the movements of the plane. Meanwhile, Tom struggled to pull him back inside.

He had survived that incident, but for a while he couldn't get himself to fly on planes anymore. It was what made him so nervous about going into space when they'd done this the first time.

Augustine now had what amounted to a death grip on his restraints, as his heart started beating very rapidly and his breathing became very shallow. It sure didn't help things he was having to listen to those alarms and was struggling to breathe with all of the smoke. Mercifully though, the raptors were able to get it under control. Augustine didn't notice anything while though, considering he was still stuck in his flashback. He wasn't even paying attention while Amiroo was busy being operated on.

The trip down to Robotropolis gave him a little time to chill out though. The mention of trouble in Robotropolis, even before they had arrived there, definitely got his attention. He too looked out the window, and wondered what was going on. Whatever was happening, it wasn't Robotnik himself. He couldn't see any of Robotnik's forces mobilized...aside from the ones that were disabled already. Had the citizens really done a successful uprising?

It was then that Nail suddenly realized Amiroo was talking to him and Giichi about what they should do, in light of this new information.

"Um..." Nail paused. He wasn't quite thinking straight after his panic episode. "Maybe we should observe a little bit from up here first and find out more about what's happening. Let's find out if this is really a civilian uprising or... wait, what was that?"

Nail was suddenly glued to his window. He could have sworn he saw something fly past his window.

Era however would have gotten a perfect view of what Nail just saw before. Robotnik's HQ could be seen straight ahead. It was hard to miss, since it was a big skyscraper in an elongated egg shape. However, a peculiar black mist that didn't look like ordinary smoke swirled up from the street in front of building. The mist appeared to be condensing itself into small blob-like shapes. Eventually these blobs formed into demonic bird- or bat-like shapes, that squawked and then flew past their invisible ship to an unknown destination.

One of them happened to go by Nail's window just before.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Giichi took the reentry process much better than Nail, considering he had no such hidden fear of heights or flying. However, he couldn't help but notice what his seat-made was going through. The stone-cold Nail hardly ever showed his emotions, so seeing him in a full on meltdown mode was truly a sight to behold. He wanted to offer some words of comfort to Nail, but doubted that it would help much. Nail's terrified mind looked like it was somewhere far away, and not in this place. Maybe it was a self-defense mechanism.

In any case, they were soon safely back in the planet's airspace. However, this also gave him a full look at what was going on with Amiroo.

"Jeez!" Giichi looked away, as he couldn't bear seeing all of that glass embedded in his friend. "What happened Amiroo? You gonna be okay?"

However, it looked like he WAS going to be okay, considering Tybe immediately got to work using their advanced medical technology to bring him back up to snuff almost immediately. In short order they were discussing what they should do now.

"I think I agree with Nail. Let's see what's happening on the ground first, and-- Wait...what'd you see Nail?"

"Some kind of black flash. Any of you see it?"

[SOLIS]

[Skipping.]

[Terrador Bellator]

Throughout the entire trip, Terrador remained in the back of the ship alone and secluded from his shipmates. His mind had become in an overwhelming state of worry. The events that had unfolded were just too much for the echidna to handle. While fighting for the greater good, making the amount of alliances he had was troubling as he preffered to do things alone. The fact he was once again in this vessel so far from the earth only strengthened his uncertainty.

He showed little interest in the chaos ensuing below. He was lost within his own thoughts and had become oblivious of his surroundings. The only thing he can think of was making his way back to the surface. Perhaps being on his home planet and not confined in some space station would ease his troubled mind and remove the numerous negative thoughts circling his mind. For now, all he did was wait somewhat pateinly.

[Echo]

[welcome back ]

Era snapped her head back in surprise as the objects flew past her cockpit window.

"Stars, we're not alone up here!" Era yelled, pushing forward on the controls putting the craft into a sharp dive towards the ground to avoid hitting any of them. She dove them right down between buildings, just mere meters from the street below before leveling out. Their jet blast possibly blowing trash and debris about in the street in a manner someone might notice.

"what was that?" Era asked.

Amiroo shook his head, "I have no idea"

Era gradually climbed the craft back above the buildings and began banking to starboard, forming a holding pattern over whatever was going on below them.

"Look! What's that down there? Look look look!" Amero said glued to his window, looking at what appeared to be a machine, machine..person...thing? Slaughtering people down on the street below.

"What is that?" Rye said looking out her window as well.

"I don't know, but something down there is running a fusion reactor. I'm picking up faint free neutrons striking the sensors." Era said eying a warning that had suddenly emerged on one of her screens warning her about the neutron radiation. "Nothing to worry about, it's very weak."

"I didn't know the Mobians had nuclear fusion yet." Amiroo said straining his neck to see what was happening beyond Era's window.

"Let me see here" Era said tapping the screen sending the message away. She went through a few menus and sub menus until the screen suddenly replaced itself with a camera image of the space in front of the craft. She worked a small joystick to her left and worked the camera around until it was viewing the battle below.

"The signature is coming from that guy holding the gun....that things nuclear" Era said in disbelief. "Who in their right mind would put a nuclear reactor in a gun. seriously? That thing overheats and boom, mushroom cloud. Not to mention if we're picking up some free neutrons this far away, I can only imagine what the radiation levels must be like with it strapped to yourself."

"I don't see many swatbots, in fact, I only see destroyed swatbots. Where are they? Surely Robotnik isn't taking this sitting down. Where's his legion of nasties to come swat these people down?" Amero asked.

"Anyone think those things that flew past us could have anything to do with that? Like they could be a new weapon of Robotniks."

The raptors fell silent.

"Alright, what do we do?" Era asked.

[Nail Strafer]

It was a lucky thing that Era pulled up on the stick, because she almost took a few of the civilians' heads off as they flew past. Many people got blasted to their feet by the exhaust of the engines and the wind. They looked around confused, but since the ship was invisible no one knew what to make of it.

Augustine didn't take dive well himself, gritting his teeth and feeling like he was going to throw up from the sudden lurching around. He was already deeply unsettled from the hatch popping open and the ship spinning out of control just before.

Jeez...I can only take so much more of this.

While he felt sick, he did drag himself to the window and look out to see what everyone was talking about. Some kind of badger...wielding the nuclear gun that everyone was talking about. For some reason, Nail thought he looked familiar. He went back into the recesses of his memory, as he tried to recall it. Then it struck him.

"Wait...I know that guy with the nuke gun!" Augustine waved his finger out the window, as he looked back at the others. "His name is Trigger. Last time I saw him he was a part of F4. And it wasn't because he hated humans. He just loves killing and violence no matter who or what he does it to. He's the reason I ended up leaving F4 all those years ago. I saw him...I saw him..."

He needed to pause to close his eyes, as he turned to face the floor. This was a very painful memory to drag back up. His ears already heard the screams again, while the odor of burning flesh on still living people tinged his nostrils. Finally though, he managed to spit it out.

"I saw him blow up an entire bus of innocent people with a rocket launcher. I'm never going to forget that for as long as I live."

Nail normally only looked out for number one, but something about this memory caused him to feel like he should intervene. Maybe it was because he NEVER wanted to see anything like that burning bus ever again.

"Please, let me go down there and stop him. He's going to massacre those civilians if I don't. Maybe I can find out what's going on while I'm at it. You guys can focus on planting the beacon."

He didn't even wait for the others to voice their approval, as he jumped out of his seat and rapidly started gathering up his weapons, both the dinosaur-provided ones and his own.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

While Trigger sounded like one rabid dog that needed to be put down, Giichi's eyebrows raised at Nail's sudden insistence to jump right into the action. He always got the impression that the hybrid carefully weighed his options before making a decision. Trigger, whoever he was, must have made a real deep impression on Nail for him to suddenly get this fired up about stopping him.

Giichi himself felt torn on what to do. They'd just encountered a host of new variables that changed their missions. Civilians rioting in the streets, swatbots down, Robotnik nowhere to be seen, and those odd black creatures. What did it all mean? What happened before they got here? They just didn't have any information on what was going on.

But that enemy dinosaur fleet was inbound and could show up at any time. That was one thing he knew for sure. They still needed to get these civilians out of harm's way as quickly as possible, while setting up the transmitter. If Robotnik's army appeared to be down aside from that badger guy, then maybe...

"Why don't we just fly the ship to Robotnik's HQ and plant the beacon, like we talked about doing earlier? We might have decided it was too risky before, but I don't think that's a problem now. It looks like Robotnik's too busy with the rioting to pay attention to us anyway. That would give us more time to help the civilians escape on the ground, like Nail wants to do. Since they're all out in the streets it'll be easier to do than it would have been otherwise. We don't know what those black things were before, but the enemy fleet in space is still going to show up regardless of what's happening down here. Best we just get to work."

He whirled around to look at Terrador, who appeared to finally be waking up from his stupor. Giichi heard him squirming around back there.

"So...SOLIS, Terrador, everyone, what do you think of that?"

[By the way, glad you could join us again Terrador ]

[SOLIS]

SOLIS tried to chime in through Nail's pocket, "should we be placing a beacon here if it's filled with those you want to keep safe? It seems a very counter-productive strategy given the current situation."

[Terrador Bellator]

(I'm glad as well. Although after reading the posts before this, I realized my character isn't reacting as much as he should *shrugs* Simple fix though lol.)


Hearing his name, Terrador seemed to be shaken out of his trance. It was at this moment he realized just how much of a toll this voyage took on his body. The constant shifting of pressure left a nausiating feeling deep within his gut. His lungs had filled with smoke from the earlier incident and the echidna was quite surprised he had allowed all these events to slip by him unoticed. He also came to a conclusion he should cease his current mindset of uncertainty. If he didn't step up his game, there was the likely chance there wouldn't be much of a home to go back to. He was among allies and this was something he needed to admit to himself here and now. He stared at Giichi for a few blank moments as his newfound confidence kicked in.

"Whatever must be done, you can count on me to accomplish it. Any of Robotnik's forces that impede on our goal will tremble under the might of eatth." He explained,almost sounding excited. What he really needed was to escape this infernal contraption the others called a ship and smash some 'bots with his spiked fists.