Hop To It - Eclipse 11

[Humi]

Heyu was sleeping, and Humi was bored. She was bored, but not anymore!

Having spent most of her life in the city, Humi never spent a lot of time looking at the stars. There weren’t many stars to see in Station Square at night. And on the occasions she slept out in Mystic Ruin, well, the stars were pretty, but until recently she only went to her hideaway when she was in trouble or needed to get away from it all, and when she was in those mindsets, staring at the sky wasn’t a priority.

Recently, though, she’d gotten an appreciation for the night sky. Part of that was Iota, who found something beautiful to look at in everything, but mostly it was the fact that she was… relaxed.

Huh. Humi hadn’t really taken stock of it before now, but she was actually relaxed recently.

And because she didn’t have to spend so much time focusing on just making it through to the next day, she was able to look ahead, think about the future, look to the stars. It was still something she was getting used to.

Here, on the Space Colony ARK, she might as well have been at Casinopolis!

The Y-Nought trudged through the halls, looking for something fun. According to Heyu, people lived here once upon a time, and not everyone was weird like Heyu and satisfied with books and quiet nights alone. If there were children on this station, there needed to be a playground somewhere! But so far she’d only found more apartments. Still, if she kept walking, surely she’d find something interesting eventually. If there were entertainment spaces, it made sense that they’d be next to where people lived, right? No one wanted to walk past… power stations, or something, to get from their room to the tennis courts, would they?

Something clanged behind her, and Humi turned to see. The Gohla badnik she was using as a bomb launcher had fallen off. For a split second she was worried that it had come back online somehow, since she hadn’t been able to shut it down entirely without making it useless--but no, it just fell. Humi parked the Y-Nought and grabbed the badnik for inspection.

It looked like something inside it had seized up bad enough to wrench out the bolts she used to attach it. And as a consequence, it was ruined now. She hadn’t noticed it seizing because the Y-Nought shuddered so much by default.

Humi scowled. “Stupid scrap…” She tore the Gohla open to see if anything was worth salvaging, but it was burned out.

She tossed it over her shoulder with a clatter. It bounced and rolled until it tapped against the Y-Nought’s leg. Something groaned.

Humi’s ears flattened as the leg collapsed with a massive crash, and parts went flying.

“Ugh!” She kicked the downed mech in frustration, and something else snapped. “Sucks.” She started reconstructing it, but the machine was fighting her now. A lot of metal was put under a lot of stress, and some of it had given out.

“The Y-Nought’s falling apart faster and faster, I’m running low on ammo, and I can’t just go around tearing apart the walls for parts. Who knows what’s keeping the air working around here?” Humi tapped her foot, hands on hips, as she managed to get the Y-Nought standing again. “What I need… is more robot parts.”

She tapped, puzzling things over.

Something went clang, and she sighed. What broke now?

Inspection didn’t turn up anything, so Humi ended up confused, until she heard the sound of gunfire coming from a side tunnel.

“What’s that sound?”

Humi followed the noise. She didn’t have Heyu’s ears of course, but she didn’t need them; the ARK was so quiet that everything echoed.

After a few twists and turns, Humi entered a big room and blinked. Actually, it looked like several rooms had collapsed into each other; judging by some papers and corkboards high up on the walls of the floor up, and the tattered sofas poking out from the rubble, a lab had collapsed into a common room-type area. There were several entrances in; none of the outer walls were damaged, just the floor and ceiling between the rooms.

A trio of Eggman robots, the Gamma lookalikes, were lined up in front of the door she’d just entered in. A bunch of G.U.N. drones were hovering down from the lab’s doors, and the E-1000s were firing on them as they entered.

“Secure the area.”

“Yes.”

“Hold the line.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Humi made a face. These guys sounded like they weren’t all there.

It made sense why Eggman’s badniks were here. Eggman had been coming and going, so obviously there’d be some around. But how were the G.U.N. robots here? The military almost definitely didn’t have teleporters, right? Did they even know Eggman was up here?

…Humi eyed the E-1000s. They weren’t quite as big as the real Gamma, but they probably still represented a ton of weight. They looked spindly, though, so maybe some reinforcement could work…

The G.U.N. beetle drones carried a Rhino unit in. They dropped it in and the floor shook from its weight, throwing the E-1000s off their aim long enough for the Rhino to charge and take one out. The other two opened fire, but its armor withstood the bullets easily. It destroyed another one, but that opened it up to let the remaining badnik fire into its less-armored backside.

The tide of G.U.N. drones stopped after that, and only one badnik was left. Humi brightened.

“Area secure. Yes,” the badnik said tonelessly. “Standing guard.”

“Hi!”

The badnik turned. “Intruder--”

“Would you like to make a donation to the Who, Me? Foundation?” she said cheerfully.

“What--”

“Hand over your knees!”

The Y-Nought fired on the badnik and deleted its head. The robot fell over.

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

[Mecha]

Mecha Sonic mk. III stared at the core of the ARK. A circle of catwalk surrounding an alien-looking device; a metal base supporting it, embedded into a house-sized focusing crystal aimed up (relative to the orientation of the room.)

Four Chaos Emeralds were slotted into the machine. The Doctor and the others would be returning soon with two more. The control console next to it was connected to the ARK’s intranet, but the Doctor had enabled a planetside connection as well; currently the screen was displaying the news.

It was chaos down there. The public was confused and frightened, and G.U.N. was not helping. The information the military was giving to the news seemed almost deliberately obfuscating; one source claimed that Eggman busted Sonic out of prison (unlikely) while another claimed that Sonic breaking out while Eggman was at the prison was a coincidence. Some were even realizing that Sonic was innocent, though those were being doubted heavily.

If Mecha were honest with itself, this seemed like a perfect storm for the Doctor. If it understood the plan, the next step would sow true panic, and the governments of the world would be too busy trying to control the public to mount a worthwhile defense. They would be forced to capitulate, and the Doctor would win.

And Mecha… 

Mecha was…

Mecha was ambivalent. It didn’t know what its place in the Doctor’s empire was now, how could it begin to contemplate what it would be in the future?

So it was here, guarding the Emeralds. As long as it didn’t move, it couldn’t do anything wrong.

What are you doing standing around for?! Do something useful!

Hopefully.

The badnik network pinged on the edge of Mecha’s processing. Two units--three units down. The antique defense system must have come in force. Mecha reviewed the E-1000’s camera footage to see what happened.

The mouse. The mouse? How was she here?

A harsh metallic buzz came from Mecha’s speaker, and it turned towards the residential district. It could at least do this much.

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

[Humi]

With the Rhino plating providing support, the E-1000 legs were more than enough to support a walker mech! She took the Rhino’s treads too, though she wasn’t certain if she would use them yet.

But the legs wouldn’t do much without something to support, so she held off on installing them. Before she started remaking the Y-Nought, her next step was finding a proper body for it.

Making the jump up the next floor from the ruined common room was really pushing the old Y-Nought’s abilities, but Humi wasn’t really that concerned with that anymore. She was making a new one, why would she worry about working the old one to destruction?

This place must be where the lab district met the residential spaces, or something… The corridors were less decorated on this level, but there were papers everywhere. There were other labs in addition to whatever that collapsed one was, but most of them were…

Humi was beginning to have suspicions regarding why the ARK was abandoned. Most of the labs she passed were destroyed. Like, destroyed, destroyed. Beakers broken, cabinets torn open, bits of stomped-on machinery too delicate to take it. A few of these labs looked like someone had thrown a grenade in there.

The Y-Nought’s foot brushed against something that clattered, and Humi looked over the side. It was a different style from the ones she saw before, but it was a black helmet with the G.U.N. logo on it.

Maybe a grenade did go off. But why?

Some labs were left alone, though. After climbing a ramp to the next level up, Humi found a really big door into what looked like a hangar. A vehicle bay!

“Wow! Tails would love this place,” Humi said to herself, eyeing the incomplete jet hanging from the ceiling. One of the chains holding it had broken off, and the wing it was attached to had fallen down as a result, but otherwise it was in good shape.

The most interesting thing was a partially-deconstructed car, and even in its current state it was a handsome one.

“How did they even get this stuff up here? Or, how were they planning on getting it back to Earth?”

The car was tempting… but it was too big. The chassis wasn’t terribly armored anyway. Still, Humi ended up looking at the engine. She’d seen car engines before, and none of them looked like this. In fact, she couldn’t find any kind of fuel intake, even though there was an exhaust pipe. The engine had the pistons, but… it almost looked like it accepted batteries. Really big ones.

Something about that felt familiar.

Humi heard the sound of hoverjets a second before a bullet whizzed between her ears. “Eep!”

She ducked into her cockpit just as a second bullet ripped through the air. Peeking over, she saw more G.U.N. drones entering the room, readying to fire.

“...Hey, wait a minute.”

She fired a missile, and the one in front exploded, letting the next one enter the room. It was even more obvious on this one, which was missing a faceplate.

These weren’t sent by G.U.N., or at least not recently. They were dinged and scratched and rusty and dusty. The lighting in this room was better than the last one, so she could actually see the small dust cloud that poofed up when she destroyed one.

Interesting. But not helpful.

She readied a missile, but the device bleeped at her. “Empty?”

Something pinged off of the Y-Nought, and an armored plate fell off. “Scrap!”

This wasn’t good. There were still more G.U.N. drones trying to force their way through the doorway, and she was running low. Humi looked around for an escape.

There was a lever on the floor, next to the car. And the floor was a slightly different shade compared to the surrounding metal.

Humi pulled something heavy from her pocket--a bowling ball? She didn’t even remember where she got that--and hit the lever dead-on. It clanked into the other position, and the room shook.

The G.U.N. drones paused in firing as they reassessed the situation, and the section of floor containing the car and Humi started to lower into the ground. She blinked, then grinned. “Ha! So long, suckers!”

They started hovering over to follow her, keeping her in their line of sight, but a hatch slid into place overhead as she descended. A couple managed to slip through before it closed, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle.

-----

The elevator descended slowly. Slowly enough that Humi got a little worried it would stop and she’d get stuck in the shaft, but after a few minutes of descent, she was lowered into what looked like another garage. Smaller, just big enough for the car and for the Y-Nought to comfortably move around it. A sliding shutter door led out somewhere else. It looked like they expected to be able to drive the car out.

Which made sense, she guessed. If this was a mad science lab that made vehicles, they probably needed a place to test drive them. Humi raised the shutter door, and stepped out into a truly cavernous room.

The space was shaped like a football stadium, with bleachers and everything. Except instead of the football field, the center of the room was half one big swimming pool, with a running track around it separating it from the stands. The other half was turf, and some of the equipment lying around told her that it was meant as a general-purpose sort of thing.

There was a boat in the pool for some reason.

“Whoa, look at this place…”

The Y-Nought shuddered, something went sproing, and the machine finally stopped moving.

“Tsk.” Humi climbed out of the cockpit and let the thing fall apart without her. That boat in the center was weird enough that she felt compelled to give it a closer look.

The pool was a big one, but the boat inside it was actually pretty small. Just a single-person motorboat, really. If it were any larger it wouldn’t have been able to do much in there. It was tethered to a metal ladder leading into the pool, but Humi wasn’t really dressed for swimming. “And I don’t have a swimsuit in my pockets…” She paused, patting her sides. “...I don’t think.”

It’d been a while since she was able to empty them. She couldn’t exactly leave a bunch of junk in Heyu’s parents’ garage; Iota was sleeping in there.

The boat itself had drifted into the center of the pool, but it was still tethered, so she grabbed the boat and pulled. When that failed, she pulled something heavy out and used it to brace herself, and then she was able to pull much better.

The boat floated back to her, and thunked gently against the edge.

“Wow, it’s really small,” she noted, now that she could get a good look. She gave it a kick, and it pinged metallically. She stepped out onto the boat, and it wobbled a little before she sat down in the chair. The key was still in it, but it didn’t turn over when she tried to turn it. “Must be dead after all this time. That makes sense.”

She grabbed the steering wheel and just sat there a moment. “Huh. I’ve got to stretch a little, but… I can reach everything.” She’d snuck into vehicles before, but she’d never been on one that wasn’t built with adults in mind. It was just a speedboat, made miniature.

“...Hm.” She tapped her hands against the wheel. “I’ve got a small boat, a bunch of car parts and a weird engine, and some robot legs.” She smiled. “I can work with this.”

Humi chanced a look behind her and saw that there was a hatch in the boat’s hull. Curiously, she opened it up.

“OH MY GOSH!” Something small but fast flew out and started buzzing around.

“Aah!” Humi fell over, and narrowly avoided falling in the water. Catching herself, she looked up and saw a dented, scratched-up Omochao. “What?”

“I knew they’d find me! Please don’t use me for parts! I can be good!”

“What?” she repeated. “An Omochao? What are you doing here?”

“Hiding!”

“No, I mean--” Humi stood up and stepped back onto solid ground. “What are you doing here?”

The Omochao touched down on the boat trying to keep as much distance between her and it as it could. It was off-model, since almost all of its paint had worn away and one of its eyes was cracked. Its mouth was set in a permanent frown. “I already told you, I’m hiding! This seemed like the best place for it. But I got found anyway. Please don’t hurt me!”

“Why would I hurt you?” Humi asked. She shook her head. “Listen, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got work to do.” She looked at the boat and started brainstorming ways to get it back to the garage. “...Can you hold tools?”

“...Maybe?”

“Then give me a hand, would you?”

The little robot gasped and took off again, hiding its hands behind its back. “I knew it! You’re going to break me down for parts!”

“No!” Humi groaned in frustration. “Look, just grab that rope, would you?”

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

[Mecha]

Mecha Sonic walked into the room that local maps labelled Common Room C. It looked at the mound of destroyed G.U.N. drones, which seemed normal, then at the trio of E-1000s. It assumed, based on the limited evidence, that the mouse snuck up on them while they were occupied with the colony’s defense systems. Much of the E-1000s were missing, most notably their heads and legs. This was concerning.

What did Mecha know about the mouse? It had not interacted with her for very long, all told. During the Chaos Incident, it had briefly struggled with her; she was slippery, had a habit of collecting random things, and had somehow turned a box of rings into a bomb through a means Mecha had spent many nights trying to figure out, to no avail.

More recently, she displayed an ability to pull things out of thin air, and to make things disappear.

…Mecha’s time inside that… space, was confusing and illogical. It tried not to dwell on it.

What else did it know about her? She was often around rabbit Mobians. The tall male, and the older female. Mecha believed them to be related, but had no confirmation.

Mecha paused that thought, and turned to look back the way it came. Was there another intruder?

…

Irrelevant. If there was another, they hadn’t currently presented a problem, while the mouse was breaking badniks.

Now, which way did she go? Mecha scanned the room. Four points of entry; the way towards Residential Block C, the way Mecha had come, leading into Maintenance Central, and a door to the north, which was blocked off by the mound of G.U.N. drones. The lab had a single exit, elevated from this position, that led to Research Block B--mostly chemical labs designated for materials development, but also included a low-level weapons development lab and a transport research bay.

Mecha analyzed those options. It concluded that the labs were the likely destination, as anything still worthwhile on this rock would be there. But which lab? A child was unlikely to be interested in vials of long-expired substances, so either the weapons lab or the vehicle bay. Mecha would check one, then the other.

It hoped she wasn’t in the weapons lab. She was annoying to deal with even when she was unarmed.

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

[Humi]

As it turned out, this great big swimming pool was heated; Humi found a system of water heaters in a side closet nearby. Whatever backup power grid the space colony was currently operating on seemed to deem the public waterpark as unimportant. Humi was able to take one.

After sawing the boat in half, cannibalizing the motor and combining it with the car’s experimental engine, she got to work. The boat provided the main body and a convenient built-in cockpit with a very comfy seat, the car provides plenty of framework to be repurposed in attaching the legs, the water heater held the engine--which had been expanded, since destroying those robots reminded Humi about chaos drives; that’s what the engine ran on, it used drives as batteries. The boiler now contained a rotating array of drives, giving her a lot more to work with. She even future-proofed it a little bit by adding an empty space where she would eventually put a slot for a Chaos Emerald; she wouldn’t be able to build it now, but the idea was that it would give the Y-Nought a big boost while the Emerald was in place, while also recharging all the drives.

Tails was going to flip when he saw this!

Exhaust pipe, mostly for the look of it but it was functional; it was mostly a vent to funnel heat out of the engine. Some more E-1000 parts to form a turret or two; Humi wasn’t sure about these. Whether she kept them or not would depend on whether Iota was bothered by it once he saw it.

She wanted to add the Rhino treads as an alternative transport mode, maybe for high speed, but she needed her Emerald to put a pocket somewhere else; the transforming vehicle mode would have to wait, no matter how cool it would be. She needed the space for more ammunition. Humi did add a hoverjet from the Beetles to each leg, though. The Y-Nought was too heavy for them to give any lift, but they could slow a descent enough that a fall from any height was possible now.

With Omochao helping her, she got it done in no time at all. The only thing it needed now was paint; the boat was black with a white bottom, which was fine but not her choice. Sadly, she couldn’t find any paint. It would have to be a patchwork for now.

Patchwork, hm. Humi took out a notebook and flipped through it until she found a blank page. Eggman had a logo, and Tails had one too. Maybe Humi needed one, too…

“It’s weird-looking,” the Omochao complained. “My poor boat…”

“It looks fine, shut up,” Humi said. “Besides, it wasn’t your boat, you were just hiding in it. You can hide anywhere.” Humi pulled out a can of spray paint. She only had pink and black, but that was fine, she could fix it up later.

“I liked the sound of the water against the hull from in there.”

Humi sprayed a pink circle, hummed contemplatively, then added two smaller ones, and a silly face. When she was done, she had a little caricature of her own face, winking and sticking its tongue out. She stepped back, satisfied. “I’ll build you a little submarine once we get back to Earth, how about that?”

“...Hm.” The Omochao hovered a little closer. “Maybe if you--What was that?”

“What was what?” Humi asked, turning. She blinked because the elevator in the garage was rising back into the lab above. “Huh.”

“Someone is coming!” Omochao said, hiding behind her. “We gotta get out of here!”

“It might not be a bad thing,” Humi said, worriedly. “It might be my--be Heyu, coming to look for me?”

Possible, but not likely. Humi jumped up into the cockpit and started the Y-Nought V.2’s engine. It shuddered for a second, and Humi glared, but after a second it smoothed out. She took a step forward, and it responded without a fight. In fact, she barely bobbed in her seat as it walked, a massive improvement.

A gruesome noise echoed from the garage, the sound of tearing metal. Through the open shutter door, Humi could see bits of the elevator falling down the shaft, along with what was left of the car. She took a step back, onto the turf.

Something small dropped down into the garage. A yellow visor looked out at her through the darkness.

Humi’s eyes narrowed. “You.”

“Who? Who is it?”

Humi pulled a lever, and more weapons unfolded. Guns from beetles, guns from badniks. A grenade launcher. A spear gun Humi found in a closet otherwise filled with sporting goods, that was still weird.

Mecha Sonic walked out of the garage and noticed her immediately, since she wasn’t trying to hide. It took her mech in, expression unreadable.

“Hey, Mecha!” Humi shouted. “You kidnapped me, ruined my day, stole my Emerald, and you’re probably helping Eggman take over the world.”

“He’s what? What’s going on since I’ve been up here?” Omochao hissed.

“Quiet.” She grinned. “But don’t worry, I’m not mad.”

Mecha Sonic tilted his head. Its hand swapped out for a gun that he pointed at her.

“No, I’m not. In fact, I feel like thanking you.” Humi’s grin turned vicious. “Wanna know why?”

It was probably wishful thinking, but Humi liked to think it looked worried.

“Y-Nought!”

She opened fire, and for a few seconds the air between her and Mecha was 40% bullet by volume. Humi cackled madly.

After ten seconds of concentrated fire, Humi let go of the trigger, breathing a little heavily. Mecha Sonic was nowhere to be seen, and the running track had been reduced to gravel.

“Hah… Hoo…” She leaned back in her chair. “Well, that was fun.”

Omochao looked over the carnage, then at her. “Can my submarine have torpedoes?”

“As many as you want, hehehe.” Humi waited a moment longer, just in case Mecha survived and wanted to try again. When it didn’t reappear, she turned and made her way to the exit. “Okay, I think it’s time to get back to Heyu. I hope I can find my way back…”

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

[Mecha]

Inside the garage, Mecha hugged the interior wall, shaking. It raised one arm--or, it tried to. Mecha was fast, but he couldn’t quite outrun that many bullets; its left arm was more hole than not and wasn’t responding properly.

Maybe the direct approach wasn’t the best one in this scenario. Mecha needed backup.