Chaos Within

[Chadin]

As came down the ladder to join up with the others I saw a Hound Dog coming my way.

"Are you Chadin? Your friend said you might be able to help me."

He explained his plan to blow up the HQ building, so that Robotnik wouldn't be able to track the civilians with the tracker chips any more.

While the idea of busting into Robotnik's HQ sounded like a golden opportunity just begging to be seized, I could help feeling as though we were all living on borrowed time now. Robotnik wouldn't sit idle for long. He'd be feverishly trying to rally any and all forces available for his inevitable counter attack. I distinctly remembered what a maze his HQ was the last time I had infiltrated it with Giichi. Without someone know the internal layout, or is capable of gleaming it from Robotnik's computers, we could easily waste what time we might have left to escape by becoming fruitlessly lost inside the belly of the beast; and that's assuming the last rocket I have is capable of breaking us through the front door. We've already achieved our objectives. The chaos emeralds we were here to retrieve were just lying on the ground waiting for us to grab them. The job we came here to do was all but accomplished.

No, every part of me was screaming that we had to get out of here now, while we have the chance. Maybe it was the pain from the injuries to my face and leg; maybe it was my intuition from all my years of fighting Robotnik; maybe I'm just a big fat coward. It didn't matter. This plan was asking too much, stretching our luck far, far too thin.

"Too risky!" I shouted over the cheering crowds. "No one here knows the layout of Robotnik's base. By the time we find the servers, he could be back with a legion of Swat-bots. I think our best chance now is for you to head to the Swat-pod complex back that way. There's no guards anywhere inside. The aircraft in there don't seem too hard to fly; we came in that way and none of us are pilots. Get as many people to head that way as you can and get them on board those ships. Head towards Solenna. You'll be safe there!"

[Jijeka-Te]

Ji dove for her crook, but the crowd's victory shots caught her off guard. One clipped her frills, throwing her off balance with a yell and sending her crashing to the ground. Anu's eyes widened.

(Anu) "Your Highness! ...oh dear..."

[Alpha Omega]

Omega watched the cat and racoon duck behind a wall, where the cat began tennding to the wounds of his comrad. He stopped, looking between the pair here, and the mad cyborg firing wildly into the crowd. His own anger start to boil over, and he dashed behind the wall where the pair was. He bent down and picked up the racoon's discarded weapon, and looked to them. "I need to borrow this. I've already got a bone to pick with that guy, and there's no better time. If you can manage, try and get someplace safer after I draw his attention."

He stepped out from behind the wall, and started walking toward Rampage again. He waited until he was a good distance from the duo he'd gotten the blaster from, and took careful aim. When he thought he had a clean shot on Rampage, he started firing.

[Gail Strafer]

Gail frantically stuffed the shards into his vest pockets, making sure to zip them up very tightly so that none of the shards got loose.

"Excuse me! Move! I need to see!"

Feet stamped the pavement all around him as he continued to search places where he thought he'd seen the shards. One crazy celebrator accidentally stomped on his hand while he thought he saw a sparkle on the ground. His hand burned from the pain, as he let out a howl of pain that startled a few of the revelers away. Growling in anger, he stood up and snarled at the crowd, standing much taller than most of the other Mobians in the crowd.

"Would ya'll please hoot and holler somewhere else?!"

Everyone around him obeyed and backed away. Gail resumed his search, but he didn't think he'd find that many more shards, assuming there were any left. In any case, he saw a weird cane on the ground that he thought looked familiar. Didn't Jii have something like--

Something thumped on the ground between him and the crook. One quick look showed that it was Jii herself, with a little burn mark in her frill. She must've been flying over to get it. Anu was quickly at her side as well. Gail quickly waved his hands to move people out of the way.

"Jii...are you okay? One o' these idiots firin' into the air clipped you?"

Gail's ears suddenly perked up, as they rotated backwards. He picked up laser blasts in the distance. And it wasn't just the crowd firing in celebration. These shots were aimed with violent purpose, and he could hear the screams and yells every time whoever had the gun fired. Was it SWATBots incoming?

"Jii...do you mind if I carry you? We best be on our way out of here."

---

Hound Dog's face could be visibly seen falling into a frown, as he listened to Chadin's idea.

"So, that's it? Just go run to this place, jump into one of Robotnik's ships, fly off, and hope for the best? You don't have anything better?" He sounded disappointed rather than angry. "Because I think it'd be hard enough getting this rabble organized to go to the hangars, let alone finding enough SWATpods to fit everyone inside. You think you could help direct people to the hangars or to leave the city? They'd probably listen to you better than me, since you're the freedom fighter."


Meanwhile, Chadin might see Gail in the middle of the crowd with Jii and Anu, in addition to the fight that appeared to be brewing off in the distance with Rampage.

---

"Go get 'em!" The cat yelled encouragingly, before he picked up his friend and hurried off as fast as he could. It was just what he needed after all.

Meanwhile, the more macho guys who decided to stand their ground took some lasers in the chest, sending them toppling over. Outside of Alpha and the people who ran away, the only ones really left were all hiding behind cover, being careful not to expose themselves to Rampage's shots as they returned fire.

[Again, skip Robo this round. Assuming he's making preparations at his air field.]

[Rampage]

As Rampage fired into the crowd, dispersing the cowards and killing the fools too stupid to take cover, Rampage noticed a strange gust of wind appear seemingly out of no-where, like a helicopter had suddenly just fallen from the sky, revved up it's engine and took off back into the sky. Only there was no helicopter, or... anything else for that matter in the area that could have done such a thing.

But after working with Robotnik for so long and seeing some of his niftier tricks, Rampage wasn't completely unfamiliar with the idea of a cloaking device. In literally the blink of the eye; the time it took for his cybernetic eye to switch over to it's thermal vision mode, Rampage sparingly glanced up into the sky between shots, looking for any abnormal signatures. With most of the street lights out, he didn't have to worry about mistaking anything in the air with those. But all the same, it took a few seconds of glancing around before he spotted something weird up there.

It looked like a roiling, bubbling mass of hot gas or... liquid. He couldn't make out any kind of clear of definitive shape. Whatever it was, there is definitely something up there.

Rampage switched on his radio, but made the mistake of focusing too long on the strange thing. "Hey, Doc, is that you up there? I- AGH!!" Alpha's shot struck Rampage square in the chest, sending a searing lance of pain through his chest. Rampage fell to his knees, clutching his now bleeding chest. Rampage ground his jagged teeth together as he summoned up his blood lust to fight through the pain.

Rampage looked up to see Alpha approaching with a smoking Swat-bot laser. Lucky me, Swat-bot laser's are pretty weak compared some of Robotnik's other toys.

"Well, well, well. Look who's back for round two. Rampage called out as he stood back up, holding his laser rifle low, but at the ready.

[Chadin]

"What makes you think organizing this crowd to attack a fortress will be any easier?" I growled back, my ears folding flat against my skull irritably. To be fair, this was all well beyond me at this point. I wasn't used to dealing with civilians when I went on missions when I was a part of the Mountain Freedom Fighter group. Still, if I wanted to have any hope of getting these people off the streets and out of the line of fire, I suppose someone would have to take charge. "Alright, fine, I'll do what I can to lead everyone out of here. Just start the word along to head to Swat-pod hangars."

"HEY! EVERYONE! FOLLOW ME! WE MIGHT HAVE A WAY TO GET ALL OF YOU OUT OF THE CITY!!" I shouted as loudly as I could to draw the crowds attention. Hopefully, the promise of an escape from Robotropolis would be enough to galvanize people into moving. I could only hope a frantic stampede wouldn't erupt too.

Regardless, my role was somehow cast now as I began directing people back through the street we'd just recently come down and back towards what I hoped would be a means of escape. To be honest, I didn't know for certain if there would be enough ships for this many people to escape, but maybe, just maybe there was a few larger transport vessels we could use.

[Jijeka-Te]

(Ji) "I... I'm okay..."

"Jii...do you mind if I carry you? We best be on our way out of here."

(Anu) "If you think it'll be faster, then I don't see why not."

[Alpha Omega]

Omega lowered his laser a bit, keeping it generally aimed at Rampage. The hedgehog stopped a few feet away, remembering all too well what that cyborg arm could do. He met the badger's one real eye, glaring at him. "Picking on the innocent, hm? Well, why not fight someone who will fight back? I've got a bone to pick with you, and now seems like a good enough time."

He took one hand off the laser, and dipped it into his jeans pocket, sliding it into one of his rings, and shrinking it down into a set of makeshift brass knuckles. The silvery glow this created briefly illuminated the pocket.

[Gail Strafer]

"Okay Jii, upsy daisy!"

Gail carefully lifted Jii off of the ground. Since he was much larger than her, he held her about like he was holding a baby. It was about that time that Chadin made his announcement about guiding people out of the city. Gail involuntarily gulped at the sound of that. Saving all of these people wasn't part of their plan. He hoped Chadin knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, the people immediately in front of Chadin turned around to listen to him. Word quickly spread through the crowd about an escape route, and all of them started facing the deer. They waited anxiously for him to start running so that they could follow. Chadin would probably get the feeling he should start giving more directions fast, before the people started rushing him.

---

Behind Alpha, the remaining civilians continued to take potshots at Rampage. However, some of them stopped to watch Alpha once they observed him getting into a stand-down with the psychotic badger.

[Dr. Robotnik]

Far away from the action, everyone might begin to notice a low humming sound gradually growing in intensity. Off at Robotropolis's airbase, the Egg Carrier's massive VTOL engines started to push it up and away from the ground. It wouldn't be much longer before she was on her way over.

"I may have lost those shards today, but no way am I going to let this rebellion go unpunished!" Robotnik declared, sitting in the captain's chair in the Egg Carrier's bridge. "Get us to the center of town quickly!"