Hop To It - Advance 13

[Humi]

Chaos.

What the heck was Chaos?

When you really thought about it, Humi had come a long, long way in the past, what, five? Six months? It felt like a lifetime ago when she ran into that convenience store and met Heyu, and got pushed into situation after situation that required her to practice her inventiveness. Until that day when Eggman invaded, she’d only ever put things together that were broken, or finagled a few small pieces into a useful tool before breaking it back down. Once she was destroying Eggman’s robots, though, she could see how they fit together, and how to put them back together in new, different ways.

She really should talk to Tails about it. Did he see the world the same way? As a smorgasbord of potential components for the next big project?

But while she’d made use of Chaos in the form of the Emeralds, the artificial versions, the chaos drives, and even rings occasionally, she didn’t really know anything about it. Heyu was the one who was studying all that, Humi just wanted to make machines. She really wished she had paid more attention now.

“On the other hand,” she muttered darkly, “It might not have helped. After all, he thought this was a good idea… No, no, that’s not fair, I was excited too, grrrr…”

Cream and the fox boy watched her pace a circle around the small tunnel they’d fallen into.

“Do you think Miss Humi will figure this out?” Cream asked.

The fox rubbed his arm. “I don’t know… I’ve never seen her act like this. She’s usually so carefree.”

Cream squinted at him. “...Miss Humi made it sound like she didn’t know you. How do you know what she’s normally like?”

The fox flushed, hunching in on himself. “...I, well. I’ve… been around, I just haven’t--and they’re such loud personalities, you can’t help but pay attention when she’s around, er, and the village isn’t that big yet, so--”

Humi listened with one ear while he stammered, even as she kept pacing. She, also, was interested in how long he’d been hiding in bushes and watching people, but she couldn’t fault him for it. She used to hide behind trash cans. And anyway, it wasn’t the highest priority right now. “Cream.”

The little rabbit looked up. “Yes, Miss Humi?”

She scowled. “Please, just say Humi. Can you hear Heyu nearby?”

Cream lifted one of her ears up, then shook her head quickly. “Not from down here, I’m sorry. The dirt is in the way.”

“That means he probably can’t hear us either, at least… Cheese, you’re small and can fly, can you--”

Thunder struck, and suddenly the trickle of rain coming in through the hole became more of a sheet.

“...Great,” Humi groused. “And that hole in the roof of my shed…” She rested a hand over her eyes. “I don’t know what to do… I make things and I break things, Heyu, you’re the one who makes the plans…”

“Do we need to get him back in the machine to undo it?” Cream asked. “That’s how it works in cartoons.”

Humi tapped her foot. “It might. But I don’t know what caused the breakdown in the first place, and I don’t want to put him back in a machine that’s still on the fritz. Not to mention it’s raining right on top of it now--what, what did I say?”

The fox boy had flinched halfway through her sentence. “I-It’s nothing.” He tapped his fingers together. “Y-you just, said my name, and…”

She did? “What was it?”

He sighed. “Fritz… Fritz the Fennec.”

Humi nodded, filing that away. She turned back to pacing. “Anyway, it might work, Cream, but even if I could take care of all those problems, we’d have to get him into the chaos funneler, and I don’t think any of us can do that.”

Cream folded her arms. “I could too.”

Fritz raised his hand, and Humi sighed. “Yes, Fritz?”

“S-sorry. I know it’s a little off-topic, but… w-where did this cave come from?”

Humi stopped and looked around. “Now that you mention it, that is weird isn’t it?” They’d been too terrified to properly take notice of it before, but why was there a random cave tunnel mere feet below their driveway?

She turned the flashlight back on and swung it around. There wasn’t anything that interesting to see, but she could tell that the tunnel was made by hand; too rough to be a machine. I really need to get back to that digger goodnik. After a bit, the searchlight found a side tunnel that led further in.

The rain was starting to form puddles, and her socks were getting wet. “Come on, you three. Let’s see where this goes. At least it’ll get us away from the water.”

“I don’t mind the water,” Fritz murmured.

“Chao.”

“You should stay with us, Mister Fritz,” Cream cautioned. “What if the monster comes back?”

He looked up at the hole. Lightning flashed in the sky. It was probably just his eyes playing tricks, but he almost thought he saw a pair of long ears. “Let’s get going, then!” he squeaked.

Humi rolled her eyes. “Calm down. There can’t be too much to these tunnels. The building crew would have found them if they were here the whole time…”

--------------------------

[Heyu?]

Where…

Where…

Something’s wrong.

Where is…

Hurts.

Ringing. Ringing. Rings.

Hands hurt. Ears hurt. Won’t stop ringing.

Where is… here?

Where is… she?

Something’s wrong.

Where is… me?

Wet. Loud. Bright. Dark.

Don’t know what’s going on.

Why does it hurt?

Wet. Thunder. Ears hurt.

Where is she?

--------------------------

[Humi]

“Maybe it was… the diamond? Was it too low quality? Too small? Or maybe…” Humi muttered as they followed the tunnel. 

Truth be told, they didn’t end up going all that far. Less than thirty feet into the tunnel they almost ended up running face-first into a wooden door, crudely set into the dirt wall.

“What the--” Humi shook her head. This was getting weirder and weirder.

Cream knocked twice. “Hello?”

Humi gave her a frustrated look and just pushed the door open. “Cream, we don’t have time to be polite, this is an emergency!”

“But that’s trespassing!”

“It’s under my yard,” Humi pointed out. “...Unless we’ve wandered under the Vespas’ house, but I’m pretty sure we’re still under the road--”

“Um, I think I found a lightswitch,” Fritz said, which was all the warning they got before floodlights illuminated the room.

Abruptly, the space got noticeably warmer, and after Humi’s eyes had finished watering and she could see again, she gave the cave a proper look.

Potatoes. It was a field of potatoes, underground, lit by floodlights.

“Wha…?”

Fritz’s ears perked up. “That’s different.” He looked around interestedly.

“A farm?”

“Chao chao?”

“Why,” Humi said with emphasis, “is there a potato farm under the road?”

Another door slammed open, or tried to. It swung open to hit loosely-packed dirt and didn’t really make a satisfying sound. They turned to look at the source of the pitiful whumph and saw an orange badger in a nightgown and holding a dented shovel.

“So that no one knows about it, dangit!” he declared angrily. “Just like a mouse and rabbit to get into a hardworking badger’s food! Git, git!”

He brandished the shovel at them, only to yelp in surprise when Cream wrenched it out of his grip with her ears. “Mama says it’s not polite to point.”

“Who even are you?” Humi demanded.

“His name is Spud. He moved in a few days ago,” Fritz supplied.

Humi gave him a look, but turned to… Spud, instead. “You dug all this out in just a few days by yourself?”

He scoffed. “Shows what you know! I’ve been here for weeks. And I wasn’t alone, I had my wife Jackie!”

Spud gestured to the center of the field, where a scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head stood, straw poking out of the blue polka dot dress it was wearing. Even from here, Humi could see that someone had inexpertly applied lipstick to it.

The question of what good a scarecrow did underground surfaced and was pushed down again; she didn’t think it would be well-received

Fritz hummed, looking over the plants. “Mr. Spud, your field isn’t properly irrigated. If you’re going to be tilling underground, you could probably tap into the water table and make it so your plants always have the water they need without you having to do anything.”

Spud blinked, rubbing his chin. “Really? Tell me more.”

Humi closed her eyes and took a moment to pretend that everything was normal and she wasn’t surrounded by people she barely knew. “This is fine. Everything is… fine.”

The cave shook, and dust fell from the ceiling. Things were not fine.

Spud looked up, shaking a fist. “Durn kids! Stomping about upstairs! People are trying to sleep down here,” he added, giving the kids a pointed look.

“Well maybe if you let anyone know you were down here we’d be able to--” Humi stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m… sorry, it’s been a long nigh--wait, no it hasn’t,” she suddenly realized. “It’s like two in the afternoon, why were you sleeping?”

“I live underground, I can work whatever hours I want!”

…Okay, yeah, that was fair enough.

“Mister Spud,” Cream said, clasping her hands together. “Can you help us? Mister Heyu’s turned into a monster, and we don’t know how to fix it.”

Humi rolled her eyes, not expecting much.

“Hmmmm, have you tried a stake through the heart? After that, you need to cut his head off and bury it at a crossroads. You want it to be a four-way intersection, but a three-way will work in a pinch, and I actually know where a six-way is if you really want to make sure--”

“We want him back to normal, not dead!” Humi snapped. She slapped herself, groaning. “I don’t know what to do…”

Chaos. What did she know about chaos?

“Mister Spud, why are you farming underground? Don’t they need sunlight to grow?” Cream asked.

“Less than you’d think, with these taters,” he said, happy to explain. As he spoke, he tore off his nightgown to reveal he was wearing faded overalls underneath. “The electric lights do the job just fine. Getting the lights set up was a big problem at first, but I tapped into the buried wires for them, which--”

Humi’s head snapped around. “Wait, are you the reason I had those brownouts a few nights ago? I lost two hours of coding because of you!”

Spud wagged a finger at her. “‘S whatcha get for playing with them devil boxes.”

Her eye twitched and she decided to just tune him out. All that could be fixed later, when things were back to normal.

…Heh. Normal. When did she start thinking of all this as normal? Honestly there was nothing normal about it, considering it all started with Chaos turning into a giant monster--

--after absorbing the negative energy from the Chaos Emeralds.

Humi froze as the thought occurred to her. Was there a connection? Did they somehow… only drain the positive energy from Heyu, and that’s what turned him into that… wererabbit thing?

Humi started pacing. If that was what happened, then to turn him back to normal, they’d need to bring him back to balance, but how to do that? The machine was broken and probably soaked through by now. And judging by the way the dirt kept falling from the cave roof, Heyu wasn’t going far from the clearing. If they tried to make a break for the lab, he'd see them and do… whatever he would do to them. Humi didn’t want to think too deeply about that.

She needed to fix this. She had to be able to fix this. Heyu couldn’t be stuck like this. It had to be fixable, and she was going to fix it, because that’s what she did, she fixed things and made them better. If Heyu was… broken because of something she did, then she’d--it didn’t matter what she’d do, because he wasn’t going to stay like this! She wasn’t going to lose someone again, she couldn’t--

Humi caught herself hyperventilating and forced herself to stop thinking for a second, slowly counting backwards from ten, repeating until she was able to focus again.

Right. She knew (suspected) what went wrong and had an idea (poorly thought out) of how to fix it. Everything was going to be fine (she hoped). Humi was going to fix it. She had to.

Humi turned to face the others, who were politely listening to Spud ramble about soil composition and its relation to satellite dishes or some nonsense she wasn’t paying attention to. She clapped. “I think I have a plan. Spud, how far do these tunnels go?”

He scowled. “Not as far as I’d like. I’m working with just a shovel here. I gotta be careful or the dirt’ll collapse on me.” He squinted at her. “Why?”

“I have the start of a plan, but we need some muscle,” Humi explained. She grinned. “What kind of equipment do you got? Let me put something together.”

----------------------------

[Big]

Big liked the rain. He liked rainy nights the best, the patter of the droplets on his roof lulling him to sleep as the world turned cool and a light mist settled on his home like a blanket, but rainy days were nice too. He didn’t mind getting wet all that much, and the rain on the pond made fishing more challenging; admittedly that was an ups and downs situation, since sometimes he wanted a challenge and sometimes he just wanted a meal, but it was fine. It was a little stormy right now, so Big just settled down to wait and zone out until the rain stopped.

Usually, he’d be watching Froggy, who loved the rain, frolic in the cleared space around his hut. Not right now, though, Froggy seemed a little upset by something. Just a little bit ago he’d been fine, but now he was acting like he was hurt. The way his back legs were moving, Big thought it looked like Froggy’s tailbone was the problem.

Maybe he was growing a tail again. That was a weird day.

There wasn’t anything he could do to help his friend right now, and feeling along his spine didn’t reveal any actual growth. Froggy was having… phantom pains, he supposed. He heard about those once in a book.

He wished he could read a book right now. Maybe he should invest in some walls for his hut.

But that was for when it wasn’t raining.

“Crrrrroke.”

Big looked down to where his friend was huddled up against his leg. “What is it Froggy?” Froggy wriggled off of him and hopped into the rain, fussing about a particular spot in the grass. Big stood up to take a look. “Is something there?”

“Ribbit.”

Big crouched down, staring at the spot Froggy was preoccupied with. “Hullo?”

He heard a faint scraping sound, and a second later a metal spade burst out of the ground. Big backed away, ears peeling back in surprise.

The spade kept coming, and then another and another, and turned out to all be attached to a slightly dizzying array of gears, wheels and belts. The machine kept coming, and the hole widened to reveal Humi the Mouse, and some others, pedalling atop a bike seat to power the digger.

Big blinked. “Hullo.”

Humi sputtered, both at the rain and the dirt falling around her. “Hi, Big. You were right, Spud, this is the spot.”

“And you doubted me,” a middle-aged badger said, satisfied, as he and two children crawled out of the hole with her.

Humi stepped aside towards the treeline. “Excuse me, I’ve got to offload.” She opened a pocket, and a large mound of dirt and rocks appeared on the ground next to her and started turning to mud in the rain. “Ugh, cleaning this out is going to take forever… I hope I didn’t have too many electronics in here.”

Big blinked again, nonplussed, before turning to the tiny rabbit and the fox. He pulled out his fishing rod and popped open the umbrella for them both; Big didn’t mind the rain, but these kids would catch a cold like this.

The rabbit girl smiled and curtsied at him. “Thank you! Are you Mister Big?”

“Nice to meet you,” the fox said quietly.

Big smiled. “Doh, I’m happy to help. What brings you all out here?”

“Mister Heyu turned into a monster,” the rabbit said matter-of-factly.

“...Did he?”

Humi returned trying and failing to wipe mud off her hands. “Remember when Chaos turned into that huge water dragon?”

Big nodded. He looked off to the side, where Froggy was trying to socialize with a little Chao in a bowtie. He wondered if he should get Froggy a top hat.

“Well, I might have accidentally done something similar to Heyu,” Humi admitted. “I… have a plan, but we need your help.”

“I’ll always help my friends,” Big said, not even needing to think about it.

Humi’s relief was visibly palpable. “Thanks, Big. You’re the best.”

Big looked at her, not liking the tone of her voice. Her tail was twitchy, and her ears were laying lower than he’d ever seen on her. “...I dunno what’s going on,” he said slowly, “but we’ll make it right, okay?”

“Even if I’m the one who made it wrong?”

“Especially then,” Big said firmly. “Dat’s the only way to do it.” He pulled her into a loose hug. Then, for good measure, he pulled the rabbit and fox into it too, though the latter seemed uncomfortable with it. He looked at the badger.

The farmer backed away. “Don’t even think about it, whiskers.”

Big dropped them all back to the ground. “So what are we doing?”

Humi straightened. “You’re going to be grappling with the wererabbit. You’re the only one strong enough. Once we have him…” She groaned. “If my theory is right, he needs to be filled with positive energy to balance out the negative, just like how Super Sonic pacified Perfect Chaos.”

Is that how it worked? Big thought Sonic just beat the dragon up until it gave up. That was a weird day.

“We probably need an Emerald to do that, but… Iota’s battery would probably work, but it’s inert the same way the Emeralds were back then, for some reason. And I’m so low on drives, I don’t think they’d be enough…”

Cream raised a hand.

Humi made a face. “Stop doing that. Just say what you’ve got.”

Cream frowned, but said, “What about the emerald you made in the microwave?”

Humi stared at her.

“You know… the orange one? You told me to put it in and then pulled the lever.”

Humi’s face didn’t change, but she pointed it somewhere else. “Would that work? It must, right? It’s his energy, after all…” She nodded, palming a fist. “Okay. I think… I think I know what to do.” Humi turned to look at the rest of them. “This might be dangerous. Here, take these.”

She fished in her pocket and grimaced.

“Sorry about the dirt.”

----------------------------------

[Heyu?]

It hurts. It hurts to… thing. Think. Can’t.

How did I end up here? Can’t remember. Where is here? Home. Home? Yes. But wet.

But not home. Something missing.

Friend. Blue. Metal. Sleeping.

But where is she?

Hurts to think.

Can’t hear over the rain. Thunder hurts. Can’t find her. Have to find her.

Where is she?

Wait.

Hear something.

-----------------------------------

[Fritz]

Not very long ago--if he was being honest, a few hours ago at max--‘Fritz’ would have given anything to stop hiding and be a part of things. To actually talk to someone and have them listen, and be valued.

Now, holding a modified T-shirt cannon loaded with potatoes in his hands and waiting to ambush a monster, he wondered if ‘being a part of things’ was all it was cracked up to be.

“Remind me again what I’m supposed to do?” he asked, in the vain hope that the answer might have changed in the last five minutes.

Humi groaned and pointed. “I’m going to stand in the middle of the clearing and shout until Heyu shows up, and then me, you, and Cream are going to pelt him with things to keep his attention hopping around while kiting him towards the lab, where Big and Spud are going to hold him down while I figure out how to fix him.”

“But what if I don’t want his attention?” Fritz asked, almost pleading.

The mouse looked at him, and he flinched. She softened slightly and said, “Listen, you won’t ever be in danger, okay? Just shoot him with the potato and run closer to the lab until you hear Cream’s tomatoes hit him, then shoot him again. I’ll make sure he never looks at you for more than a second.” She smiled weakly. “If there’s one thing about this situation I’m confident about, it’s that I can get Heyu’s attention when I need it.”

Fritz wasn’t remotely assured, and not for the first time considered cutting and running for his hideout. But the only thing worse than facing down the wererabbit with these guys would be getting caught by it alone in the jungle, so he was stuck.

“Okay,” he finally said, glumly.

Humi patted him on the shoulder and went off to check on the others, leaving Fritz to sit and fret by himself. At least she’d taken the time to make him one of those raincoats she and Cream had. Fritz never minded being wet, but soaked was another thing.

Humi walked out into the center of the street, avoiding the hole that was still there, and cupped her hands around her mouth.

“Hey, yooooooooou! It’s meeeeeee! Standing out in the open waaaaaaaiting!”

Fritz rolled his eyes. Why did he want to be friends with her again? Honestly, he was probably better off being alone. He’d been doing just fine skulking about and stealing food when the alligator wasn’t looking. So what if he was lonely?

Watching the mouse girl prancing about, doing cartwheels in the rain and making a fool of herself, Fritz thought that after this was over, he’d be best suited to going back to his cave and forgetting this ever happened, where it was nice and dry… dry… huh. Did the rain stop? He suddenly realized he wasn’t getting rained on anymore. But no, it was definitely still coming down…

Fritz had a sudden, dreadful premonition of what was about to happen an instant before he felt hot breath against his neck.

He looked up. Looming over him were a pair of wild, electric blue eyes.

“Hhh… hhh…”

The wererabbit reached out to grab him, and Friz screamed, firing the potato gun and beaning the overgrown hare in the nose.

The monster whined, grabbing its snout, before growling and reaching out for him again, but Fritz scrambled back out of its reach. “Help!”

---------------------------------------

[Humi]

Humi ran as fast as she could back to where Fritz was hiding. Stupid stupid stupid! What’s the first thing you never ever do in monster movies? Split up! She should have done a buddy system and put Fritz and Cream together!

No, stop that. Beating herself up wouldn’t help. Help. Help Fritz!

The blue fox ran out of the bush, dropping his cannon in a panic. Humi dove for it, rolling onto her back and aiming it just as Heyu jumped up to chase after him, and fired. She winced when it hit, because she fired a little… late, and Heyu sort of crumpled up in midair and hit the ground with a crash, wheezing.

“Big!”

Big stuck his head out of the hole and his eyes widened as he took in Heyu’s form. “Oh.” He climbed out to assist, but Heyu recovered faster than Humi thought he should, and he looked angry.

The sound that came from the wererabbit was better described as a bleat than a roar, and he kicked the ground hard enough to cave in another section of tunnel before jumping high into the sky, vanishing into the rainy mist.

Cream emerged from her hiding place. “What happened?”

Humi scowled. “Bad luck.”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy!” Spud declared, clambering up after Big. “Consarn it, would you look at this mess? Fixing the road is going to take ages…”

“Well maybe if you didn’t go digging tunnels under other peoples’ property--look out!” Humi pushed him out of the way just as Heyu landed where he’d been standing.

She choked down a scream. He landed on her tail. Despite her best efforts, a high-pitched whine leaked past her lips, and Heyu’s ears swiveled to face the sound, and those horrible eyes met hers again.

“Hhh… hhh… hhhuuu…”

He reached out for her, and Humi froze.

“...hhhuuu…?”

She looked up at him. “...Heyu?”

“Hhhuuu… mm--”

Big grabbed him from behind. “I got him!”

“No, wai--” Humi shook her head. “Whatever, take him out back to the lab!”

Heyu struggled in Big’s grip, but despite the transformation he still wasn’t quite as strong as the cat; Big was definitely having to work to keep him held, though, and they were roughly the same size now.

“Okey,” Big said calmly. “Let’s go, Heyu, and make you all better.”

The wererabbit snarled. He whipped his head back and forth, smacking Big in the face with his ear. The cat sputtered, but kept walking mostly unperturbed.

Spud let out a breath. “Whew. Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

Humi felt a bubbling feeling of dread.

Spud planted his shovel in the dirt to lean on it, and Big took another step. A muddy fissure opened up in the ground between them, and Big stumbled as his foot sank.

The instant Heyu’s feet were able to reach the ground, he leapt, pushing Big off of him and flying directly into Iota’s vine garden. Carefully placed vines were shoved off their posts, and a scream from inside signalled that Heyu had fallen into Fritz’s hiding place. He growled, raised a fist to knock the annoyingly loud kid away, and then Cream got between them faster than Humi could blink.

Cheese bopped Heyu between the eyes, startling him, and Cream grabbed his descending arm with her ears and flipped him over her head, splatting him in the mud. “Bad bunny!”

Heyu turned to her, glaring, but before he could move after her again Big yowled, “Don’t hurt the kids!” and he turned to face him instead.

He was going after whoever was making the most noise.

“Of course!” Humi yelled out. “Make sound! As loud as you can! He’ll go after whoever’s making the loudest racket!”

“Really? Let me try.” Spud took his shovel and a trowel off his belt, and banged them together in an awful din. 

Heyu covered his ears and leapt after him, Spud narrowly avoiding an angry kick.

Froggy hopped onto Big’s head and croaked, piercing through the sounds of rain. Heyu spun to face them, tearing up grass as he pivoted. Cream flew into the air (she could fly?!) and shouted at him, prompting the wererabbit to jump up to meet her. Fritz, shockingly, found some garden tools amidst the vines and scraped the metal parts together, and Heyu tried to change direction in midair, ending up landing upside down before Spud started the whole cycle over again.

Like that, they kept the wererabbit in a state of confusion, while Humi ran for her lab. She slammed the door open, hitting Iota (“Sorry!”) and running to the capsule that was still glowing such a sickly orange from the emerald inside. She opened it up.

It was hot. The fake emerald floated in the middle of the container, heat radiating off of it. The chaos energy was dripping off it visibly, and sizzling where it hit the floor before fading away. Humi tried to grab it, but it burned her through her gloves.

“...How did I mess up this badly?” she asked herself.

Humi looked up at the hole in the ceiling. There was a thin layer of water covering the floor of the lab from the rain. The sky lit up, and a second later thunder echoed in the distance.

She looked at the emerald again. She had a hunch, but she’d been wrong a lot today.

But she didn’t know what else to do. With a pair of tongs she pulled the emerald out of the capsule and placed it gently on the ground. It bobbed and floated an inch above, and the water on the floor around it started to steam.

Then she pointed her mouth at the hole and screamed as long and loud as her little mouse lungs would allow.

When she ran out of breath and stood there, gasping, it felt like the entire world had gone quiet. Then, in the distance, a faint grunt of exertion and quiet gasps.

The sky flashed. A dark, shaggy silhouette was falling towards her.

Humi pulled a pipe wrench out of her pocket and raised it overhead.

The wererabbit fell into the shed.

Humi swung.

The gemstone shattered…

--------------------------------

[Heyu]

“Ugh…” I sat up slowly, rubbing my head. Everything hurt. Why did everything hurt? My head was pounding so hard that it actually took me a second before I was able to open my eyes. I was glad it was dark, too much light might have made it worse.

I took stock. I was in the lab; man, it was a mess. What happened to the Device? It was in pieces.

I tried to stand and slipped on something, that turned out to be a yellow rock… I picked it up. It actually looked like a shard of gemstone… Something about it was weird. It tingled, in the back of my brain, though that might have just been the headache.

Then I blinked and looked past the rock. “What happened to my gloves? Where are my rings?”

My hands were bare, except for a shred of white cloth around one wrist. And my middle fingers… I wasn’t hurting any worse there than I was everywhere else, but the rings I usually wore were gone and the fur underneath where they should have been was singed black. “What in the world could have caused that?”

More shards. Quite a few, maybe a dozen or so.

“Mm… Heyu?”

I looked down and stepped back; I’d almost stepped on Humi without realizing it. “Hey yourself. “What are you doing lying on the floor? And why’s it so wet?” She stood up, looking a little shaky, and I forgot some of my own pain for a bit. “Whoa, are you okay?”

“Am I okay?” she asked, incredulous. She looked me up and down. “Forget me--”

“Never.”

“--what about you?”

Me? I considered the question. I was sore, yes, but aside from that. “I feel a little woozy. What happened to the experiment?”

“It,” she said, and then stopped.

My ears twitched, and I turned to see Iota slumped against the wall by the door, slowly powering on. “Humi, why was Iota off?” I looked through the door, and saw Big, Cream, that crazy badger, and some new kid I didn’t know making their way around the house. “What are they doing here? Humi--”

She grabbed my hand and pulled gently. Confused, I obligingly crouched down onto my knees, and she wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug.

I returned it immediately. “Hey, it’s okay. I don’t know what happened, but we can try again--”

“NO!” she barked, and I flinched. She repeated, quieter, “No, no, I want to take a break from inventing for a little bit…”

I rubbed her back. “Alright.” 

I didn’t need to know what happened to know something had her spooked.

Iota finished turning on behind us. “This unit has experienced an unexpected shutdown. Some data may be lost.” He shook his head, looking around as Big poked his head in the doorway. “Oh, hello Big.” A pause. “I am missing approximately two hours of time. Did something happen?”

Humi shook her head, still hugging me. “I’ll tell you guys later. I don’t wanna think right now.”

I snorted, despite the serious air. “I know the feeling…”

--------------------------------

[Vanilla]

A little later

The trip from the Square to Mystic Station really wasn’t that long at all, especially with such interesting company. The bee couple were excited at the prospect of helping develop a Chao Garden, so Vanilla had a really good feeling about this.

…Right up until she actually got to the village, and saw what a wreck it was.

Fry gasped. “What happened to the road?!”

“The vine garden!” Waxer flew off, Honey right behind.

Shelldon ran to a pile of wooden boards. “My shack!”

“Goodness.” Vanilla put a hand to her cheek. “Do you think that storm we rode through hit this place hard?”

Fry scratched his chin. “S’pose it must’ve. Guess it’s a good thing I got some more cement mix… Shelldon needed a better place anyway,” he finished with a sigh.

Such optimism.

Vanilla looked around, her face lighting up when she saw Cream near one of the holes, and standing next to other children, too. A large cat and a tall hare were nearby. Cream and the hare both turned to look at her as she approached.

“Mama! Mama!”

“Chao!”

Vanilla laughed as Cream threw herself at her, and Cheese and Chocola did similar. “There you are, dear. Did you have a good time today?”

“Mm-hm! I made new friends, got to see one of them do mad science, and helped fight a giant monster!”

Vanilla blinked, but her smile never faltered. “My! That sounds exciting.”

“Mhm!”

A badger poked his head out of the largest hole in the road and spoke lowly to the mouse girl. Vanilla didn’t try to listen in, since that would be rude, but she assumed it was about the repairs.

“I promise it’s not usually like this.”

Vanilla looked to see the hare approaching her, and now that she got a good look, she smiled. “Hayden Fiver. It really is you.”

Hayden grinned apologetically. “I know, I don’t believe it half the time myself.”

Vanilla’s smile slipped as she took him in. “...You look a little under the weather. Are you sure you should be out and about?”

He scratched his neck. “Probably not, but I need to find where my vest got off to… it’s been a weird day. Again, I promise it’s not usually this crazy around here.”

“He was the monster!” Cream chirped, and Heyu cringed.

“...Was he now.” Vanilla raised an eyebrow.

“...” Hayden clapped, smiling awkwardly. “So! Chao Garden, huh?”