Launch Base Zone - Infiltration

[Sonic]

As he looked at Nail, it was clear that Sonic was still looking impatient. Then again, with molten lava, was there a need to be patient.

“No deal’, and I second you on that motion!” Sonic replied hurriedly, before running off away from the incoming ship. They both would arrive safely on the edge of the carter that Launch Base Zone was set in. This gave them front row seats to see the carnage happen in the old zone. Waiting for the others to make it, Sonic would place his hands behind his head and look down on the crumbling structure below. He’d then look up to see the egg-fleet moving away…and was that small dot going to one of the ships who he thought he was?

“ Boy, oh, boy.” He let out in a sigh. “Something completely screwy’s going on around here…”

He wanted an explanation for all of this. He’d heard something about a dimensional merge. What –was- that anyways? It wasn’t much of an explanation to him since he had no idea what it meant. Whatever it was, it must have been something to explain why Robotnik was suddenly out of the grave, the aliens were gone, and why he could have sworn while being stuck in that lim-bo place he passed by what was unmistakably himself but younger.

[Gerald Robotnik]

[from Launch Base zone]

Everyone would soon find a SWATpod overhead and landing behind them. This may appear suspicious, as the vessel did not attempt to shot at them while it was still in the air.

[Chadin]

Before too long, the others might notice a SWAT-pod heading their way. From a distance it would be all but impossible to tell it's intent, but as it drew closer, Gail and Jii would probably be able to notice Gerald and I sitting inside.

"Okay, Gerald, ride's over. Time for question and answer period." Once we set down and the doors opened, I yanked on Gerald's coat to drag him outside with me. I didn't want to risk him trying to fly off without me. Once the two of us were outside, I made sure to keep my knife pointing straight at him since I couldn't keep it against his neck considering the size difference.

"Sonic?!?" I couldn't help do a double take when I spotted the iconic hedgehog. Of course, he definitely didn't look the way I remembered him. Then again, with all the wacky things the merge did, I shouldn't be surprised he looks differently. "Uh... sorry, but it looks like you missed all the big action."

As I was speaking, I started to feel light headed. Now safely out of danger, the adrenaline flow had stopped and by now, that was the only thing keeping me going. "Keep an eye on Gerald would you... I feel like taking a nap now..." I stuttered as I started to wobble back and forth trying to keep my balance. But by the time I finished my sentence, I passed right out entirely and collapsed to the ground.

[And this is where I shall bow out till I get back from my holiday. Have fun everyone!]

[Espio]

A cold wind blew by as the pair glided off with no need for his assistance. He shivered a little at that, his ego bruised. He quickly shook it off though as in the blink of an eye he was standing beside Sonic who had climbed the hill. As he turned back to the crumbling ship, he saw two ships escaping. The first he assumed was the doctor fleeing, but the lava flow was halting his pursuit for now. He stomped his right foot in frustration. "Another time...", he muttered to himself as he pointed to the ship with a shuriken.

Then a second ship emerged from the crumbling wreckage, another pair leaping out. The deers words puzzled him a bit, the roughness with his company even moreso. And then he fell flat. "Okay....can someone tell me EXACTLY whats been going on here?", he would ask rather annoyed from being out the loop.

[Edited, mah bad! XD]

[Jijeka-Te]

("Pair of reptiles"? Er... Anu's a beetle.)

Ji and Anu touched down right beside Espio. Seeing Chadin and Gerald again was a bit of a surprise, but they didn't say anything.

[Gail Strafer]

Gail's clenched his eyes shut as Sonic dragged him along. Even though the wolf was quite a bit taller than him, the hedgehog appeared to have absolutely no trouble moving along with his weight. In fact, when he opened his eye, he couldn't believe they were already almost to the top of the crater surrounding the entire Launch Base zone. Then Sonic came to a sudden stop at the crater's lip.

"WHOA!"

Since a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and Sonic had suddenly come to a halt from a couple hundred miles per hour, Gail found his body still being flung in the direction they were traveling. He just managed to release his hand from Sonic's grip as he flew into the air, before landing hard on his back. All the same, he wanted to get a good look at the destruction. So with one little grunt he was back on his feet and moving to the edge of the cliff.

Down below, the factory ship had completely fallen over on its side and it was drowning in a small lake of molten metal. Explosions here and there tore through the hull (possibly when the hot liquid metal met something explosive), sending debris into the air. However, the metal appeared to be cooling off now that it was separated from the heating elements inside. The orange-white color was now darkening to red, and then to black.

Above, the fleet fled from the destruction. Gail smiled for a moment...until he remembered that technically Robotnik was still the winner here. He'd made off with the shards like he'd wanted to. So who knew what might be waiting for them in the future after this?

A ship broke off from the fleet though and appeared to be flying towards them. But was it the wolf's imagination or did that SWATbot look like it had antlers? Was that...

"Chadin?"

The ship landed next to them, confirming his theory. As they stepped out, the wolf beamed a smile as he saw Gerald with the deer...but that quickly turned to horror when he saw the deer now had a knife to the dear doctor's throat. Chadin's burnt fur gave him a rather crazed look, all things considered. Come to think of it, hadn't Chadin mentioned something about Gerald turning on them before, when that water creature tried to drown him?

But before Gail could ask him any questions, the deer collapsed to his side. With his eyes dark, Gail immediately rushed over, again brandishing the arm blaster he'd nicked off a SWATbot earlier.

"You...Gerald. Don't move. Chadin told me about what you did to him earlier. You tried to kill him. Why? Why did you do it? And what happened inside that ship?"

His golden eyes focused on Gerald with a rather deadly intensity, to say nothing of his eyebrows furrowing as he made very sure to put his many sharp teeth on full display.

Rather irritatingly, this lizard guy was asking a stupid question about this whole ordeal. As much as he wanted to get answers from Gerald right now, he thought he should at least give an answer to Espio's inquiry.

"Tha short version would be Robotnik is looking for emerald shards, and he's done gotten away with a few. Probably due to Gerald here's help..." Again, Gail tried to turn up the traditionally scary canine features. "We thought he was our friend. But he's related to Robotnik. He tried to kill Chadin there. I guess the whole clan's rotten to the core, huh Gerald?"

[Sonic]

As the craft started to land, Sonic had automatically gone into an offense position, ready to strike any enemy that came out of the craft. That was until a deer, dragging along a tall human with blonde hair came out. The deer looked pretty damn beat; and the human that he dragged looked equally messed up. But the human looked a lot more emotional traumatized as he didn’t seem to move and he appeared to have a very, disturbed, blank expression.

Quote: "Sonic?!?" I couldn't help do a double take when I spotted the iconic hedgehog. Of course, he definitely didn't look the way I remembered him. Then again, with all the wacky things the merge did, I shouldn't be surprised he looks differently. "Uh... sorry, but it looks like you missed all the big action."

"Keep an eye on Gerald would you... I feel like taking a nap now..."

Sonic blinked, scratching behind his ear. Well, that was strange. Almost sounded like the guy knew him on a personal level. But before he could even reply, the deer collapsed over exhaustion and Epsio was saying a question he wanted to know.

Quote: "Okay....can someone tell me EXACTLY what’s been going on here?"

"Tha short version would be Robotnik is looking for emerald shards, and he's done gotten away with a few. Probably due to Gerald here's help..." Again, Gail tried to turn up the traditionally scary canine features. "We thought he was our friend. But he's related to Robotnik. He tried to kill Chadin there. I guess the whole clan's rotten to the core, huh Gerald?"

“ PFf, I got a friend that would disagree with you, saying that all of us are complete monsters on drugs.” Sonic began, thinking about the whole situation ironicly. He looked up and shrugged his shoulders as he finished his sentence in a higher pitch. “BBbuuuttt, what does he know? He comes from a crazy family anyways…”

As he finished it finally hit him who they were talking about. Perhaps it spiled by, because it just wasn’t a piece of dilouge he’d expected. But when it did finally smack him in the face, his eyes grew wide.

“Woah, woah, woah, hand on a second!” Sonic exclaimed, as he looked over towards Gail. “ Are we talkin’ about Professor Robotnik? THE Professor, Gerald, Robotnik!?! You mean the crazy guy, who almost destroyed all of humanity because the government killed his granddaughter, Professor Gerald Robotnik?!?!!? I’m just makin’ sure we’re on the same level, ‘cause that seems just a –tad- bit strange that you’d trust the MENTALLY UNSTABLE GUY.”

[Gerald Robotnik]

As he was dragged out looking absolutely broken, he felt like it too. He even appeared to be that way as he had an absolute blank expression and was quivering; whether it was from shock or fear he didn’t know the difference between the two anymore. He’d been hit with a lot of heavy subjects over the few hours of the Island attack. The first thing he’d found out was that he was far more insane than he’d ever been before. Now not only did he have to worry about sleep, but now he was hallucinating his own nightmares into day-time. The second heavy thing had to be this; as Gail snarled at him, saying that he had almost killed Chadin. Of course he had no idea of what Gail was taking about, but he was far too gone to really react.

The third thing had to be the fact that it had been Dr. Robotnik’s fault for the dimensional merge, and why his wife was still no where to be seen. The fourth was the fact that the mad-man’s city was the exact –reason- he had ever wanted to dedicate himself to the sciences. And last, but not least, the said mad-man was –related- to him. There was something ironic about it. Gerald always wanted a family, one day. Well, he had it, and it wasn’t what he was expecting. Suddenly, the guilt and depression he felt when his brother died paled in comparison to what he was feeling now.

But, he’d show some kind of emotion other than being completely shattered. He was listening to Sonic, without looking at him as he just seemed to stare into space (like he had been the entire time). And then, suddenly as he got to finally recognizing him, he began to exclaim loudly in surprise. And just as he got to the part about being “The crazy guy”, Gerald’s head seemed to explode on him, causing a severe look of pain on his face as he went straight to holding his head and causing his knees to collapse to the ground. Being bent over, he gritted his teeth and his eyes winced, as it felt like radio static was ringing in his ears with either the sound of a high, violent note being played badly or someone scratching his nails over the chalk board.

[Espio]

During the heated moment, all Espio seemed to care about was listening as carefully as possible to take in everything he heard. His eyes were closed, arms crossed as he nodded slowly. "So the doctor was here gathering emerald shards. Thats never a good thing...", he thought to himself.

For being a few feet away from someone with a blaster pointed at someone, he was rather calm. Then that last bit about the guys identity though threw even Espio for a loop, immediatly pulling out one of his lengths of wire out from his invisipack as he gave Gerald a deathglare. Not that he could see it anyway. He was standing beside the doctor's grandfather? Usually he would ask for facts but the mention of the R word time to time propted immediate action and he looked somewhat similar too. "You mean this guy is...?", he said with a rather shocked expression as he looked to the crumpled mass off to the side of him. "...for now lets just tie him up to make sure he doesnt try anything funny....", he said as he approached Gerald. "Anything that lead to the spawning of that monstrosity can't be too right in the mind to begin with...", he said agreeing with Sonic as he would begin to attempt to bind Gerald's arms behind his back, focusing on a tight yet not too constricting grip.

"Hold still and I'll try to ensure that you at least have a chance to explain your case later....", he muttered to Gerald who he figured wouldn't hear him in the middle of his breakdown anyway. The supposed Gerald had gone through attempting to fly himself and the deer out of a crumbling ship with a knife held to him after all from what he saw from what Chadin was holding and his aggression. A rather tramautic experiance.

[Jijeka-Te]

A bunch of bizarre facts were being dumped into Ji and Anu's hands now. Apparently this Gerald guy was someone important. And what was this about grandchildren? He certainly didn't look old enough to have any...

Ji stepped forwards. "Okay, what in the name of Isis is going on here? (It happened to be the second time in five minutes that question had been asked.) What did this Gerald guy do that we don't know about? ...And how does he have grandchildren at his age?"