Hop To It - Eclipse 4

[Humi]

Seeing Mecha Sonic again after their last encounter was a shock. Humi didn’t remember exactly how that fight ended, but she was told that Chaos knocked her and Amy out, so she’d assumed Mecha Sonic got destroyed. Not only was he not a pile of scrap, he seemed as good as new! That, plus the fact that they were in the middle of a public street really threw her for a loop.

It took her several seconds to get over the shock, and by the time she did Mecha had grabbed her and run five blocks. They dodged cars, jumped over pedestrians, and at one point Mecha took one arm off of her in order to grab a lamppost to make a hairpin turn--an act that bent the post nearly sixty degrees, by the way. 

Humi screamed. They were going so fast. They would be headed directly into a car, and by the time Humi recognized it for what it was they were already past it. Colors and details flew by faster than she was able to comprehend, and her head spun trying to keep up.

Then they reached the wharf and were flying across the strait, and the world smoothed out long enough for Humi to regain her senses. It was just blue sky above and blue water below, and the world no longer looked like it was moving in fast-forward. It still very much was, though, and the ocean spray beneath them stung when it reached high enough to hit her legs.

“Let go of me, you rustbucket! Didn’t we get enough water last time?!” She struggled, but Mecha was too strong and her arms were pinned to her sides. The wind was cutting.

Mecha beeped. The robot let loose a series whirs and clicks before its speaker hissed. A monotone voice droned, “Surrender the Emerald.”

Humi blinked, then started thrashing harder. There was no way she was letting him have her Emerald! Not after what happened last time! It was safer for everyone if she kept it away from everyone else except Tails and maybe Heyu sometimes! Maybe Sonic, but that was it. No one else!

The last time Eggman wanted the Chaos Emeralds he fed it to a water monster and destroyed the city she lived in! Who knew what he’d do with it now?

“Never!”

Mecha made a tsk-ing sound and his thrusters whined. They began ascending.

The water vanished beneath them as they reached the other side of the strait. Humi saw the Central City industrial sector underneath them, then desolate mountains, a swampy quarry, and then they were over the desert. The sand glistened in this light, and Humi startled momentarily when she saw black shapes moving below. She squinted. Were those… G.U.N. drones? Why were they in the middle of the desert?

She looked ahead. From this high up, she could see a huge pyramid in the distance, and they were flying right towards it. A spooky pyramid sounded just like the kind of place a crazy evil scientist like Eggman would set up shop!

Humi had to think. What could she do in this situation? Mecha was too strong for her to break free, and even if he wasn’t he was still too fast for her to run away. What did she have left? She couldn’t reach her pockets like this! If she could just get one hand in her pocket, she could pull out a wrench, or a screwdriver, heck, anything would be good right now!

Think, Humi, think! What would Tails do? He’d probably use his tails to do something. Humi’s tail was long and flexible, but it wasn’t very strong, and had no fur. Trying to grab Mecha Sonic’s thruster to throw him off course would just end up with her burning herself.

What would Heyu do? Maybe he’d be able to use those ring tricks of his to shock Mecha? Could Humi do that? Humi didn’t know how to do that, and it still didn’t matter because her rings were in her pocket that she couldn’t reach!

Gah! This was so unfair! She had everything she ever needed in her pockets, but she couldn’t use any of it!

…

Wait. She didn’t have everything in her pockets.

Humi had a crazy idea. She could wiggle her fingers enough to poke into her big front pocket, but not pull anything out… but what if she tried to put something in?

She grabbed one of the arms holding her, and followed the limb down to the hand. With all her might, she pushed and pushed, and managed… just barely… to get one of Mecha Sonic’s fingers in her pocket.

The robot made a confused sound, and then with a

-pop-

He was gone.

“Yes!” Humi started falling. “No!”

Her forward momentum bled away without any thrust to keep it going, and she arced down, flailing in midair. Images of bottomless pits and tail strain in the Final Egg passed in front of her eyes, and she opened her mouth in a soundless scream.

A wave of nausea emanated from her stomach, and she held her mouth to keep from throwing up. At this height, at this speed, it would probably just get all over her, and she was not going to die covered in vomit!

That thought roused her out of her panic, and Humi reached into her pockets to find a solution. Now that she could actually get her stuff, she had all kinds of ideas! Humi pulled out every pillow she could remember stashing away. Couch cushions, an old mattress from somewhere, loose blankets, memory foam pillows, anything to soften the blow.

The nausea came back, but she forced it down and kept throwing soft things between her and the ground, which was getting really close--

The sick feeling vanished, and then she hit the ground. And with about twenty springy pillows to break her fall, it only hurt instead of killing her instantly.

“Ow!” She bounced off the pile, and fell onto the sand, rolling end over end until she hit something hard and metal. Humi’s eyes widened and she scrambled away from the, whatever-it-was.

It was a broken G.U.N. drone. The humanoid kind. There was a beetle robot next to it, in three pieces. One of the hawk droids, too. And over there was a Kiki, one of Eggman’s monkey robots.

Humi frowned, puzzled. There was probably an obvious reason that all these broken robots were here, but she was frazzled and running on adrenaline so she was having trouble thinking rationally.

“...” Humi whirled around. There was nothing but sand and lots of broken robots for as far as that eye could see, and the very tippy top of Eggman’s pyramid (she assumed). “Hello?” she called out. “Anyone?”

She sat down with a grump. This was supposed to be a fun day out! Heyu’s mom let her buy stuff, and didn’t even notice the broken stuff she took from the sports store’s backroom while she was talking to the owner! It wasn’t stealing because it was labelled ‘trash - throw away,’ so it was okay to take. That was how it worked!

…Heyu was going to be worried.

The pile of pillows shifted, and Humi’s gaze snapped to lock onto it.

A giant stuffed dinosaur tumbled down and a metal claw dug out. Mecha Sonic, looking a little scratched up but otherwise fine, stood and glared at her. Maybe. He didn’t have proper eyes, just a visor, but he felt displeased.

Then he held up the white Emerald.

“What?!” Humi dug in her pocket, trying to find evidence that her eyes were wrong, but no--it wasn’t jumping to her hand the way it always did! How?

Did he… Did Mecha find it while he was in her pocket?! That wasn’t fair!

The robot whirred at her. Then he turned and fired up his jets.

“Wait!” Humi ran towards him, and all she got for her trouble was a faceful of exhaust as he took off. Carrying her treasure.

She stared after him as he vanished over the horizon, towards the pyramid.

“...What am I supposed to do now?” she asked the empty air. “He just left me here! How am I supposed to get h-home?” She sat down and curled up, hugging her legs. “All I’ve got… is a bunch of junk…”

She stared at the sand as the wind blew it about. The sun beat down on her through her white fur.

“...Just a bunch of junk.”

Slowly, Humi looked up. Dozens of broken robots surrounded her, in varying states of damage. Some were totalled completely, but a lot… were not.

“...And what a bunch of junk it is.” Humi had an idea. A wonderful idea.

She got her tools out and went to work. She was getting her Emerald back one way or another!

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

[???]

“Captain? Captain Punji, you should take a look at this.”

Two months ago, a massive sandstorm blanketed the area. The weather system that created it had sprung up out of nowhere, and meteorologists theorized that it was a delayed side effect of the Perfect Chaos Incident, where the weather was altered on a grand scale.

The winds blew strong for nearly a full week, and when it finally cleared, a massive pyramid complex was unearthed. No one had had any idea it was there, and archeologists were ecstatic. Central University was thrilled to have a potential dig site so close by, and a student expedition was planned and greenlit almost immediately.

But when they got there, they discovered that Doctor Eggman had been there already.

His face was plastered everywhere. Statues were defaced, if not outright replaced, his logo was engraved onto almost every flat surface, his banners flapped in the wind--and of course, his robots attacked anyone who got close.

No one was badly injured, thank goodness, but it had thoroughly ended any investigation before it began.

Questions arose. Was this even a real pyramid, or a fake Eggman built to match the desert surroundings? If it was real, how did he find it before anyone else, or get into it for that matter? If it wasn’t real, how did he build it without anyone noticing? How did he bury it, and why?

Captain Spike Punji didn’t care about any of this. He and his men had been besieging Eggman’s hidden base for five weeks, and they had made no progress. They’d utterly failed to penetrate the maniac’s defenses, and by all accounts he wasn’t even there.

Waves and waves of G.U.N. drone robots were sent to do battle with enemy badniks, and while at first the two robot armies had seemed equally matched, Eggman’s forces just didn’t stop coming. Every badnik destroyed was replaced immediately. And as time went on, it became apparent that his robots were just that little bit better than theirs. They were just a little smarter, just a little faster. G.U.N. still had the advantage in firepower, since the badniks seemed to each have exactly one thing they did well and nothing else while G.U.N. drones were more varied, but the gap was closing. As time went on, the badniks were improving. And their drones would run out eventually.

Punji hated that. It rankled him that a single lunatic was somehow able to match the world’s strongest military on his own, without even paying attention. Again, Eggman wasn’t even here as far as anyone knew! How was he doing this?!

If Punji had any hair left he’d be tearing it out over this.

“Sir?” the soldier said, trying to get his attention again.

Punji whirled on him. “What?!”

The private quailed, holding out a pair of binoculars. “T-The situation has changed, sir. Look! Over by the wrecked front.”

Punji took them, scowling and scanned the area pointed out to him. The pyramid was surrounded by pits of quicksand, so there were only a few places where they could properly wage war. Quicksand formed in the desert only in unusual circumstances, so Punji assumed Eggman was creating it somehow, because what else couldn’t he do at this point? Unfortunately, because it was so unusual, they didn’t realize the pits were there until they lost an entire forward unit of Rhinos. Those drones had then formed a floor for the rest of their forces, but it hadn’t mattered. Nothing did. So many of their robots were lying in wrecks over the buried bodies of their comrades; if nothing else, Punji felt validated in his decision not to send human soldiers out against badniks. Who knew how many men they’d have lost.

Right now, they were holding the line. But the slightest upset could ruin everything.

“What am I looking for, Private… House, was it?”

“Yes sir. And keep looking, something was moving out there. It was…” He swallowed. “Y-you really need to see it for yourself.”

Punji scowled, and kept looking. “There’s nothing out that way, House, why--wait.”

A jet of flame appeared over a pile of scrap. 

Punji lowered the binoculars and frowned. He climbed a nearby dune and looked again from a higher vantage. “What in the hell…”

It was bipedal, and ugly as sin. It looked almost like a Big Foot unit, but smaller. It was a brutal patchwork, and every step it took it shuddered like it was barely holding together. Mostly black, G.U.N. iconography covered most of it in nonsense patterns, but there were a few pieces from badniks as well.

And sitting in the cockpit was one of them animal folk, with white fur. “What am I looking at, Private?”

“A mouse, I think,” House supplied unhelpfully. “Looks like she cobbled together a mech out of scrap, sir.”

“I’m not blind, boy! Where’d it come from?”

“She, sir, and I don’t know. I heard an engine start over that way while I was--” He coughed. “--and when I looked, that mech was wandering around.”

Punji tracked her movement for a few minutes. She climbed up a hill of metal, and a panel on the leg fell off. He watched her make quick repairs, and when she finally crested the slope, the mech showed off how well it could move despite the shoddy construction by charging right into a wall of Eggman units.

Weapons unfolded from unseen places. Bullets went flying, flamethrowers spat, and Punji would swear there was some sort of Tesla coil going off. And while he couldn't hear her from here, he could tell that she was laughing.

Punji swore. “That lunatic! She’s going to ruin everything!”

“Sir?” House asked, confused. “She’s heading towards the pyramid and carving a path, isn’t this a good thing?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? We’re at a stalemate, but the badnik forces keep replenishing themselves! That means they’ve been holding back to just keep us away! That rodent is kicking the anthill!” He shoved the binoculars into House’s hands. “Fire!”

“Sir!” House protested. “I’m like 80% sure that’s a child!”

Punji worked his jaw angrily. “Fire to disable then,” he amended. “Just get the wreck out of here!”

Beetle drones descended to meet the mech head on, and got shot down for their troubles.

G.U.N. soldiers moved forward to intercept, but badniks surged out of the sand to meet them, and they got tied down with their own battles. The mouse’s mech kept stomping away, for all the world apparently not even aware of them.

Damn vigilantes. He was going to have to report this.

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

[Humi]

This was incredible!

“Hahahah! Take that!” She squeezed the trigger and fired a tiny missile, and the weird flappy thing exploded. “Yes!”

Look out, Eggman! You and your stupid mustache’s days were numbered! Watch out Mecha, because Humi was coming for your servos!

Humi had no idea what Eggface’s stupid plan was this time, but he had to be doing something or else why would there be so many badniks around? Well, he wasn’t going to get far with Humi on the case! The idea for a fighting mech wasn’t entirely her own, Tails had come up with it as an upgrade to the Tornado. But even if she’d been excited by the idea before, she never imagined it would be this much fun!

The sand started trying to suck her down, but Humi was close enough to jump onto a stone platform, and she took a moment to take stock. There were a lot of G.U.N. robots around, too. They were fighting the badniks, but they’d fire at her too. They must not be very smart.

Oh well. Parts were parts!

“Hehehehehe! Bang bang bang!”

This was just great! She wished Heyu was here to see her kicking butt! But then again, he’d probably try to get her to run away, even though she was winning.

She didn’t exactly have a plan of what to do once she got in, but she would come up with something. It was time for Humi to save the day!

Why?

“Y-Nought!”

Yes. The perfect name. Nothing could stop her now!

A G.U.N. fighter plane flew overhead and dropped a bomb. It destroyed a group of badniks in a fiery explosion, and Humi felt the heat from it wash over her face.

Nothing could stop her now, as long as she kept moving, she amended.