FicWad

Sally sat in the hovercraft, floating beside the cell block and swaying slightly with the toxic wind. She counted six floors, opened the hatch door all the way up, and leaned out, laser gun in one hand, hanging over thin air. She aimed.

The shot burned slowly through the metal, melting it in a straight line. Adjusting her grip, she paused in time to notice the shriek from inside.

She braced herself and continued, ripping a square hole out of the metal wall. It was very thick.

"You're through!" Tails yelled, and she broke off immediately. The block of metal grated and shuddered from an inside hit - once, twice, thrice, and then it slid right out, falling the rest of the way and hitting the distant floor with a thud.

Tails' head appeared through the hole. "I can't crawl through that," he said. "It's smouldering hot!"

Sally carefully drew the craft closer, manipulating the controls awkwardly with her inside hand. "I know," she said. "Here, catch!" And she tossed her laser gun through the gap. Tails picked it up.

"Sally," he said. "Don't go! I can't get Nintex to move!"

That caught her off-guard. "What's wrong with him?"

And without warning, Tails was thrown to the side, disappearing from view. Nintex looked in, cross-eyed, mouth in a manic grin. "Hi, Sally!" he called. "Look at me, I've been poisoned!"

Tails shoved him back and reappeared. "He ate some food of Robotnik's," he called desperately. "Now he's... well, he's gone crazy. He keeps laughing and talking about dying and other stuff, and he can't stand up properly."

Sally began, "Get -", but she had no sooner said that than Nintex had shoved his way back into her view. Tails caught the floor with an "oof!"

"Hi!" Nintex called again. "Tails was brooding, and I got bored and joined in! Look!" He posed dramatically, took a deep breath, and said: "Woe -"

And Tails shoved him down again.

"Stay there!" he yelled with startling force. "Don't you dare move!" He turned to Sally, floating outside. When nothing happened, he offered a prompt: "Sally?"

"Um, get him out if you can," Sally said distractedly - the experience had thrown her completely off-guard. "Try getting his mind to work properly."

Nintex appeared alongside Tails, fighting for view of Sally, and Tails couldn't help an incensed cry of "Nintex!"

Nintex froze and cocked his ears, listening. After a long pause, he turned to Tails, looking confused. "Someone said my name," he said. "Did you hear it?"

"You know what, Tails?" Sally yelled, irritated - Tails looked back at her. "If you have to, hit him with his crutches. No, I'm serious," she added, for even now, Tails was looking horrified at the suggestion. "Just mind his leg. Really, we haven't got time for this. Robotnik knows I'm here."

"Right," Tails said, suddenly realising the danger. "Which way is out?"

By now, Sally was now drifting so close to the building wall that she could brace her free arm on its surface. She could feel the heat of the melted metal, too, and she tried not to wince. "There's a landing on the roof," she said. "Shoot your way out of the cell, then take the ramp as high as it goes, and I'll meet you there."

Tails nodded and withdrew from the gap. Sally could hear him struggling with Nintex, but she pulled herself back into her craft and - hatch door still wide open - rose the craft up to the roof level.

For a long time there was nothing. The craft touched home and its engine ground to a halt. And then there was silence.

Minutes passed, Sally's pulse racing... waiting for Tails...

"Come on!" came his voice, some distance inside, below her. "No - no - come on, this way!"

"Tails, hurry!" Sally yelled. She had spotted, in the sky, a bright yellow light: Metal Sonic's jet, partially obscured by his body. He was aimed right for them.

Tails didn't acknowledge her, but she heard him yell, "MOVE!" He was having difficulties. Sally looked up at the dot and found that it was a lot brighter - Metal Sonic was moving alarmingly fast. "Tails! Metal Sonic is coming!"

Tails froze, the noises he made ceasing immediately. "What do we do?" he asked.

He had not expected a sensible reply, but all of a sudden Nintex seemed stronger, different somehow. "Listen," he said.

But Tails' eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. That was far too quick a recovery.

"Hurry," Nintex said. "Take the gun..."


Metal Sonic landed like a raptor on the metal rooftop, head lowered, arms withdrawing, ready to attack. Sally kneeled at the landing, between him and the craft, and Tails somewhere underneath. But she had forgotten him - she was staring at the robot.

"Princess," Metal Sonic said.

"Mecha," she replied. "What do you want?"

"The hedgehog failed," he said. "M34 missed by many seconds, and the hedgehog was strapped to it at the time. He will not be posing a threat right now."

Sally merely gaped stupidly. Then, almost accidentally, she glanced to her other side and received a second shock.

Tails was striding right past her, face drawn together in absolute anger. He held the gun in both hands, lowered, but as she watched, Tails found a spot where he made a triangle with Sally and Metal Sonic. That expression of fury looked horrific coming from him, but that was nothing compared to what he did next. Tails raised the gun.

At her.

"What -?" she asked. But Tails' eyes flashed a brief smile, and Sally suddenly understood, holding her face on its former expression of shock. Tails was bluffing. And it had worked - Metal Sonic had frozen in confusion.

"What were you thinking?" Tails asked scornfully - his acting was wonderful. "You know you can't get this right. I'm taking over the mission."

Nintex stepped to his side, and Sally, too, noticed his bizarre return to reality. He was not looking particularly angry or scornful - merely serious. "We're taking over the mission," he corrected. "Get in the hovercraft, Tails, and raise the forcefield."

Tails glanced back once and then slowly, without wavering his aim at Sally, stepped back, across the metal roof and into the craft, whose door slid shut. Through the window, Sally saw him glance down at the control panel and tap one of the buttons.

It was a slow realization, but Sally finally spotted the incongruity: Tails might have the gun, but his threat was useless from inside the craft. Nintex had basically disarmed himself. What in the world did he plan to do?

"Metal Sonic," he said. "Such a marvel of engineering..."

Sally's jaw dropped. He was trying to flatter a /robot/?

"A very strange robot, to be sure." His voice was calm, almost conversational. "Not a robot driven by simple instructions, but one that works by principles of a single emotion - actual emotion, the ability to hate, the ability to want to destroy, and the ability to understand what actions lead, by consequence, to that destruction..."

But, just as Sally had known, Metal Sonic did not appear to take any praise from these words. Praise was not an emotion he recognized - his fists were clenching and unclenching in almost musical timing with Nintex's words. Sally's mouth quivered. Any Freedom Fighter would have known better...

And she found she was fearing for Nintex's life...

"What I love about the design is the humanity," Nintex continued flippantly, apparently ignorant to his own danger. "The hatred comes through in ways we recognize. You can see it. He is filled with the hatred, the livid desire to kill and destroy... You can see it, inside him; what he wants. What he would love to try...

"To take his claws and rip us all apart... To tear the flesh and spill the -"

And the most unusual scene met Sally's eyes.

Metal Sonic - who must have saw Nintex's words as nothing less than provocation - roared and leapt forward, claws aimed for Nintex's throat. Sally screamed. But Nintex raised one of his metal crutches at lightning-fast speed, and with impossible power, simply swiped the robot's claws right out of the way. Metal Sonic, undeterred, slashed again, this time at the chest - but Nintex dodged and the crutch gave a clang as the claws were thrown back.

Sally watched, mesmerized, as Nintex threw back attack after attack, with power that he simply shouldn't have had, and Metal Sonic grew more and more furious, and Nintex seemed to grow more and more at ease at his control. He was almost waiting for something to happen.

And happen it did. Metal Sonic knew it shouldn't have - couldn't have. But in one moment the hovercraft was listed as inactive, sitting there to one side. In the next: he was looking right at it from very close range.

His memory banks would remember nothing more for several hours.

...and Sally groaned, coughing from the dust and horribly dizzy, trying to pick herself up. What in the world had that been? She raised her head.

The hovercraft came down jerkily - Tails, flying it, had no instinct for the controls, he only knew them for what they technically did, from seeing Robotnik pilot them. With difficulty he landed it and clambered out. Sally and Nintex were getting to their feet, both looking hard-worn. Metal Sonic was sparking and motionless, and no wonder - Tails had flown the hovercraft right into him.

The fox's first question was for Nintex: "What did you do?"

"I'd like to know that, too," Sally added. Nintex merely laughed at that.

"What?" she asked, indignantly. "Listen, you can't do something like that without explaining it to us."

"I'm not going to explain," Nintex said. He was finding something very funny.

"But you were completely in control," Tails complained. "How did you do it? Maybe you can -"

"I'm not going to explain," Nintex repeated firmly. "Someone told me not to, and I'm doing what he said."

"Who?" Sally asked.

"Doctor Shepherd," was the reply. "Listen, my friends are down there. I got them out of the cell but we left them in the corridor when you said Metal Sonic was about." And his voice was suddenly desperate again. "I need to get them out. It's the reason I'm here." He stared at Sally, switching weight on his crutches. "Are you going to help me?"

For a long moment, Sally considered refusing to help at all without an explanation. But he was drilling into her eyes, and that expression spoke volumes.

Without any words, she suddenly understood what Tails had needed to be told - that these were his closest souls, and robots or not, losing them again would destroy him.

"Tails," she said. "Get the hovercraft going and see if you can figure out where Sonic is. All right, Nintex, I'll help you."


When they were out of Tails' earshot, Nintex spoke up. "I've just had an idea," he said. "Does Robotnik know about the three-years-old thing?"

Sally looked at him in surprise, and then groaned in embarrassment. "Oh, for heaven's sake, he hasn't gone and vented that on you?"

Nintex nodded, and Sally sighed, looking rather disappointed.

"I thought he might have got past that, at least. Yikes, how do I say this?" She looked irritated, but Nintex had successfully distracted her. "Well, Tails... Let me clear something first. Tails is fourteen. Tails is absolutely dead-clear fourteen. It was a joke. An insult."

"What?"

"Robotnik," she said. "For the most part, we go by the laws of Mobitropolis, which is what this city was before Robotnik overthrew it. In those days my father was in command, but even then, Robotnik was in control of the war ministry, as well as parts of the rest of the monarchy. We didn't even think about it. We didn't know...

"Anyway, a little before he took over, he started making these awful threats to do loads of damage. Subtle at first, but he came into the open fairly quickly, because all the major families were coming out, trying to scare him into shutting down. The Prowers were in there. Tails' parents.

"Robotnik saw that they had had a son that was on the twenty-ninth of February, and so what he did - it was one of his last commands under the old monarchy - was pass an Act that redefined 'age'. It became the number of birthdays, instead of the number of years, which left everyone else alone but messed Tails' numbering up completely. That was his last insult to them, before he killed them. Oh yes, he killed them," she added. "Or maybe one of his robots did it, I can't say that for sure. But he deliberately left Tails alive with that insult still hanging."

"So..." Nintex said slowly, "technically/, Tails /is three."

"The Freedom Fighters are rebels," Sally countered. "To the current legal system. I don't deny it. We make our own laws. Everyone in Knothole accepts that Tails should be considered fourteen, so everyone goes with that. Except him," she finished. "He wasn't even at the last party."

"He said it was a flop," Nintex said, then checked himself: Sally had been the one to put it together. "I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. He was upset, I'm sure it wasn't..."

He trailed off.

"The Prowers had a great humour," Sally continued abruptly. "That was who they were. That's why they felt free to resist; simply, because everyone enjoyed what they did, they got loads of support. It's a real shame that Tails didn't inherit that."

"Yeah," Nintex agreed rather distantly, eyes suddenly watering, because they had got to the place where his friends had been deposited. They were still standing there, blankly. They hadn't moved an inch since they had been left there. Cohae was looking at him vacantly, but the others were staring straight ahead at nothing.

Nintex gritted his teeth, stepping forward and putting a hand on the metal plate that was Cohae's shoulder.

"Help me move them."