Belly of the Beast

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Giichi dashed ahead of Chadin, through the maze of servers. Laser blasts trailed them as they ducked in and out from behind the large computers. It almost felt like they were in a laser tag arena, with the low light level and all. In the meantime, they could hear laser fire outside. Apparently whoever was in the aircraft wasn't a friend of Robotnik's.

"You didn't call for the calvary, did you?" Giichi called back to Chadin.

Anyway, Giichi knew from past experience that server rooms required lots of ventilation. Servers generate a lot of heat and they will malfunction if they get too hot, so cold air is being piped in constantly. That meant lots and lots of air ducts. So it wasn't long before they came across a good-sized duct built into the outer wall of the building.

"Come on! Help me pull it off!" Giichi pulled out the crowbar again and thrust it into one of the cover slits, and started pulling back on it hard.

Then an explosion rocked the room. Giichi's eyes went wide and he shook back and forth on his feet...trying to reclaim his balance. An entire section of the wall fell away, giving a view outside. Giichi took a look through the hole, and saw a red and yellow plane buzzing around. Apparently the pilot was under fire and had just fired a volley back at the tower's defenses. Giichi squinted, trying to make out the finer details of the aircraft. He spoke aside to Chadin again.

"Hey...that plane looks familiar. Do you know it?"

But then a laser blast struck the floor next to Giichi's foot, making him hop upwards in fright. That put his mind back in their present situation. He quickly scurried into the vent without another word.

[Dr. Robotnik]

As the tower shook and Tails sent his mocking message, Robotnik merely chuckled as he spoke back. "Well...I've had your rockets. Now you can have mine."

The missile pods on the tower rotated to track the Tornado. All at the same time, the fox would see white plumes of smoke billowing out of them, as Robotnik's own missiles took flight. It wasn't long before they were homing in on the prop plane.

[Chadin]

Quote:"You didn't call for the calvary, did you?" Giichi called back

"Ha, me? Call for help? with what? I thought you might have called for help before your connection to Robotnik's systems was cut." I called back as I spun around and fired another shot into the horde of Swatbots chasing after us. By now they've cleared the smoke cloud and have begun firing at us with avengence. I didn't exactly know if I hit the Swatbot I was aiming at or the server bank beside him, but I wasn't kind of too busy running for it to pay much attention to that anyway.

Quote:"Come on! Help me pull it off!"

I ran over to the grate Giichi was pulling at and weaved my hands through the thin metal grating. I pulled for all I was worth. I think with our combined effort it was starting to give way. Then... the room exploded. I got knocked flat on my stomach; but that was the least of my worries.

"AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!" My hands pressed hard against my floppy large ears as I wailed and screamed in agony from the deafening, ear-splitting noise of the explosion. I couldn't hear what Giichi said next, I couldn't even hear my own screams. I was oblivious to even the blood seeping slowly down from the piece of shrapnel embedded in my right shoulder or the gash on the back of my skull from another chunk of debris. All I could think of was that ringing; it consumed my very consciousness. Even as Giichi made his break for the air duct I was still writhing on the ground clutching my head and screaming.

[Tails]

Tails notices the missiles coming his way, but doesn't react as of yet. He's still far enough away from the danger to come up with a plan.

Tails commands CT23. "I want you to reload the missiles."

CT23: How long?

Tails suggests quickly. "Maybe in a few minutes."

CT23: The missiles are in preparation. I suggest you launch downwards soon and dodge the missiles.

Tails agrees. "Don't worry. Just give me a few more seconds for the missiles to close in."

Once the missiles are close enough, Tails nose dives to the ground and the missiles give chase. The missiles follow very closely.

Tails flies in between the two buildings of Robotnik's base and manuevers through it with ease. The missiles explode as they try to fit into the tiny space with enough time to turn. Tails pulls and up and flies toward the moon.

Tails flies the tornado airplane and stops at the moon. The shadow looks errie and dark.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

[To be honest I was actually picturing the blast as just shaking the room, weakening a wall, then causing the wall to fall away. You know, to account for the durability of the walls. But okay, I'll work with what you posted, Chadin.]

Giichi scrambled through the air duct as fast as he could. For a moment or two he continued without stopping out of pure, unbridled terror. But as he started to calm down, he realized it was awful quiet for two people to be banging around in such a small space, so Giichi whirled around. The cat's blood ran cold when he realized he was alone.

"Chadin!"

He scrambled back the way he'd gone, as fast as he could. Funny to think that just a couple hours ago Chadin had been threatening him with a crosssbow.

[Dr. Robotnik]

Alas, Giichi was too late. The swatbots were trooping over to stand over Chadin at that very moment. They did not fire. Rather, it seemed like they wanted him alive. Two swatbots lowered their hands to latch around his arms.

---

Robotnik groaned when he saw the missiles impact the buildings on his screen. There went those shiny new bot factories he'd been working on building for the last several months. It'd take ages to get them operational again.

"That's it fox boy. I've had enough of your flak, so you can have some of mine."

For the third time, the tower weapons rotated to track the Tornado...this time large bore cannons. Flashes and puffs of smoke appeared all over the tower, followed up by booms. It wasn't long before there were more explosions in the sky in the tower's area, filling the area with shrapnel. Approaching the tower now would be ill-advised.

[Chadin]

The screaming was dying down by now, but because I was so focused on it I never knew the Swatbots were so close to me. I didn't even know they were there until I felt them grab me roughly by the arms. My ears shot straight up as realization snapped me right out of my pain induced trauma and back to reality.

"NO!! LET ME GO!! LET ME GO!!!!" I screamed with all my might, but I still could hear nothing. I could feel the air rushing out of my lungs and the vibrations of my vocal cords, but I could only still hear a dull, muffled din at best. I struggled and thrashed around wildly within the unyielding grip of the Swatbots, but to no avail. I even tried bashing the Swatbots with my antlers but again without success. They held me at too great a distance from themselves for me to properly reach them.

So, there I was held right aloft in the powerful grip of two Swatbots as they turned around and began walking back to the express elevator from which they came. My heart began to race as I knew what was inevitably going to happen. When I told Giichi about the Robotizicer I never dreamed that I'd be showing him first hand.

"Cervine prisoner has been capture, oh Lord of the Lard." One of the Swatbots spoke out into its radio.

Of course, I still couldn't hear, but that is what he said anyways.

[Tails]

Tails' tornado changes course and screams down. He switches to autopilot and commands the CT23 computer to stay fifty yards away from the tower.

CT23: Copy that. How do you propose we get into range now?

Tails grabs a disc from his glove box and inserts it into the tornado. A keyboard appears. "I'll handle that, you just stay clear of the cannons and the shrapnel."

The computer on the tornado responds. "Glad of you to join me Tails."

Tails types in a command and a sattelite dish comes out of the plane.

Tails rotates the sattelite dish around until it lines up with Robotnik's base. With this complete, Tails may now prepare himself to hack into Robotnik's computers.

[Giichi Twinkieland]

****...I'm too late!

Giichi watched, paralyzed, as the robots took away Chadin.

What do I do? What do I do? WHAT DO I DO?

The thought repeated in his head over and over again. It took a moment before Giichi could get ahold of himself. He had to tell himself to not panic. Panic would not get him anywhere. If he wanted to save Chadin, he had to relax. He had to focus. Because right now was Giichi's best chance of saving his new friend.

So, with that in mind, Giichi set to work analyzing the situation. It looked like it was just the two robots dragging Chadin off. The rest had fanned out across the room or they too were heading for other elevators. Giichi supposed the elevator ones were heading for wherever his air duct ended, so they could cut him off. So...fewer bots to deal with.

The big problem will be getting them to let him go. I don't think I'm strong enough to break their grips. So I've got to create a situation where at least one of them has to let go of Chadin. Then he'll be free to run or fight back.

The cat drew his cloak over himself. With the dark brown fabric completely covering him, he'd be harder to spot in the dimly lit room. Giichi silently stalked after the bots...keeping a close eye on those hefty arms. The blasters they'd been firing with were attached to those arms.

Hey...there's an idea. Each one only has one blaster, built into his right arm. Which means the bot on the left will have to let go of Chadin if he wants to fire at anything. I think I have my idea now.

Giichi pulled out a sticky smoke grenade, and moved to throw it at the swatbot grabbing Chadin's right arm. His plan was to stick the smoke grenade on the right bot. In the confusion, it wouldn't be able to fire. Which means it would be up to the bot on the left to attack anything, which also meant it'd have to release its grip on its prisoner.

[Dr. Robotnik]

The flak cannons seemed to have held Tails at bay for the moment, so Robotnik started monitoring the progress on the two intruders again.

"Cervine prisoner has been capture, oh Lord of the Lard."

Robotnik narrowed his eyes. Some freedom fighter hacker had inserted that name in the part of the servers that controlled the swatbot's stock phrases and words. Robotnik kept meaning to delete it, but never got round to it. Oh well...at least he had his prisoner now.

He looked at a framegrab from the security camera of his new prisoner. The doctor leaned in, rubbing his chin.

Hmm...why does he look familiar? Maybe he was one of my test subjects?