Hop To It - Adventure 11

[Big]

A lot of people thought Big was stupid. They looked at him and his big belly and beady eyes, and heard his dopey-sounding voice, and they made up their minds about him pretty quickly.

Big thought that most other people were the silly ones--silly, not stupid, because he'd never think something like that about anyone--because they spent all their time running around, worrying about money and jobs and appointments, while he, Big, whiled the days away in the wilds, fishing to his heart's content, eating everything he caught, and enjoying the company of nature in general and Froggy in specific. Big had life figured out.

And yes, maybe he could be a bit slow in the head, but he wasn't dumb. He got there eventually.

But even he was embarrassed over how long it took him to put the pieces together on this one. He didn't really have much stake in this whole robot invasion thing. They took Froggy away and Big went to get him back, simple as that. But after reflection and some talking with his new friends, it occurred to him that something more important was going on. The big water monster he helped the nice blue hedgehog fight was scary at the time, but it also tickled his brain. He remembered a weird daydream he had, not long before finding his way to the flying ship, about the orange girl talking to the giant gemstone, and how it seemed like the water was the one that answered.

Big was thinking there might be a connection.

What did any of that mean? Big had no idea, but he knew it was important. And now he finds out that the robots were stealing other peoples' animal friends too. Amy's Birdie was looking for his family, which Big could appreciate.

He didn't really know what was going on, but he was starting to understand that no one was really safe until this Eggman guy was stopped. And anyone who went around kidnapping innocent animals was no friend of Big's.

Amy led the way through the ship. Big had only been here briefly when it went down, but the pink hedgehog had more of an idea where they were going.

​Somewhat. "I don't understand it! Where are all the robots?!" Amy shouted, stomping angrily. "There had to be hundreds in this place, but they're all gone! And with no robots, how will we ever find the ones with Birdie's family?"

Big started counting on his fingers. He broke some robots on the ship, and Amy did, and the hedgehog, and the fox... would they have gotten them all? How many was hundreds again? He knew it was a lot, but he thought he only got dozens himself.

"Crrrrrroke."

"Froggy says dis place is bigger den it looks," Big translated. And it looked pretty big already…

"You can understand what he says?" Amy asked, surprised.

Big's ear twitched, amused. "You can understand Birdie."

"...True." She sighed. "I just don't get it. Why can't anything ever be simple? Gamma, you spent a lot of time here, where do you think we should go?"

...

Amy paused. "Gamma?" She looked around Big, who also turned around to look. The huge robot was nowhere to be found.

"Huh?"

"What! Where'd he go?" Amy asked, incredulous. "He clanks with every footstep, how didn't I hear him leave?!"

Big tapped his foot on the metal floor. It clanked. "Lotsa noise in dis place."

"Ugh! Let's go find him." Amy turned around, squeezing past Big and stomping away, Birdie following behind. Big hesitated. He didn't really think backtracking was likely to find any robots, since there weren't any the way they'd come. But, he was pretty sure Amy had more of an idea of what was going on than he did, so...

He took several moments to think around that thought, so he was still standing in the hall when he heard Amy scream. Big pivoted and ran towards the sound, not willing to let his new friends get hurt.

A big robot was standing over her, kinda hourglass-shaped and green. Birdie was on the ground.

"You... You...!" Amy was shaking. Not from fear, but from rage. "You idiot! How could you do this?!"

A hammer appeared in her hand, almost bigger than she was! Big was impressed. She held it in one hand, cradling Birdie to her chest with the other.

"Now you're gonna get it!"

The robot didn't seem intimidated. It raised both arms, and Big reacted. He lashed out with his fishing pole, hooking onto Amy's dress and pulling her towards him. The robot slammed its hands down like a hammer, right where she'd been standing.

Unfortunately, Big reeling her in so suddenly made Amy drop the bird, who landed on the floor with a pained chirp. "No!"

The robot didn't hesitate, grabbing Birdie with its extending arms. Then it jumped, straight up, through the ceiling up to the deck of the Carrier.

"Oh no you don't!" Amy shouted. "Big, throw me!"

"Right!"

Big grabbed her, and Amy curled into a spiky ball. He chambered the pitch, calling on distant kittenhood memories of sports with friends long gone, and threw.

Amy rocketed through the hole in the ceiling, hitting the robot dead-on directly into its thruster, sending it falling back down.

"Ha! Got you!"

Big jumped up, using his fishing line to climb up to join her.

Birdie flew free and away, escaping to safety, while the robot stood on its treads and glared at them.

"---!" It didn't speak so much as beep angrily at them. It slammed its hands into the ground, and stakes rose up around the three of them in a rough circle. Electrical barriers arced between them.

​Big's fingers tensed around the handle of his pole, but Amy didn't flinch. She just pointed a hammer at the machine and smirked. "Alright, Zero, if that's the way you want to play it! Take THIS!"

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

[Heyu]

I tapped the screen. "Look, the security station is still online." I watched Amy and Big deal with ZERO, feeling a little nervous about their chances. When they jumped out of frame, I spent a minute searching through the screens for any sign of them, only to find them on the deck. The angle was unflattering, though, so I turned my attention to the big bridge window, where I could see them fighting.

I saw Big wrangle the badnik with his rod and toss it into the electric fence, and was satisfied. "They've got this."

"Of course they've got this, Heyu." Humi pulled a circuit board out of a cabinet and a couple of the security screens went out. "They're heroes!"

"Heroes. Yes, of course. That's a normal thing to be. I'm not worried, why should I be worried?" I shook my head, turning away from the window. "Stop taking things apart for a minute, I want to find Gamma--"

"Top-left!"

Oh, so he was. He was fighting a purple robot that looked like him, but bigger and bolted to the floor for some reason. I couldn't help but tilt my head. "...What purpose does that serve? It's in the bowels of the ship, and not in an area intruders are likely to go. Why would Robotnik take one of his elites and--you know what, nevermind." At any rate the fight was going well. 

While Humi continued stealing parts, I made my way to the big console in the center of the room. There was a great big round indentation behind it, and I wasn't sure what that was for, but while it took me a few seconds of searching to figure out how anything worked, I eventually got a keyboard to flip up from under the console, and a holographic screen lit up. It flickered, no doubt due to internal damages, but it worked.

"Here we go, this looks promising. I hope Robotnik is the kind of person to take notes."

Humi abandoned her attempts to pry up a steel floor panel and crawled up onto my shoulders again. You know, I was starting to get used to that. We both watched as the computer loaded up. It cycled through several screens, including four different variations of Robotnik's logo. One of them was animated to laugh. Cute. Disturbing.

Text appeared over a box.

Password?

Password. Of course it wanted a password. I leaned on my elbow, thinking. I didn't really know anything about Robotnik as a person. "What kind of password would this guy use..." If it was one of those random number and symbol strings, I didn't have a chance... Let me try something. Something obvious that no one would think of but it would be easy to remember, because genius or not he was still human.

"What would Robotnik use as a password..." I mused out loud.

"Eggman," Humi corrected, not really paying attention. She was focusing more on the screen itself. I was pretty sure she was trying to figure out where the display was being projected from.

"I know, I know," I said, getting tired of the correction. "Listen, everyone called him Robotnik when he first appeared, okay? It's what I'm used to."

"But no one calls him that anymore," Humi said, giving me a look. "Even someone like me knows that he's called Eggman now. No one uses Robotnik."

"Well, I... do..." I trailed off, staring at the keyboard. No, that would be too obvious, right? Surely he wouldn’t be that lazy.

ROBOTNIK_

Invalid Password

I was almost relieved that that didn't work. I'd have been enormously disappointed if it had. Obviously Dr. Robotnik was too smart to just use his name as--oh, a prompt appeared.

Hint: E-Series Prototype

I stared. Then I typed 'Robotnik' again, substituting the o's with zeroes.

Accepted. Welcome, Doctor.​

I sighed heavily. Really?

"What? What happened? Are you in?" Humi asked, leaning in.

"Clearly." The desktop was cluttered as heck, but at least the folders were neatly labeled. Nothing jumped out at me, though, so I took a look at recently updated files. Immediately I saw a text file named 'Plan Checklist.' I opened it up, in the hopes that it could at least give me a clue where else to search. I wanted to know what all this was about.

The list opened up, and I scanned through it before pausing, and reading through it again quickly.

"...What?" No, that would be insane. I can't believe it.

​Humi frowned. "What's it say?"

"I mean... look at it!" I gestured helplessly at the list. My chest was hurting. I think I was upset. No, I think I was angry.

Humi fidgeted, wringing her tail. "...I can't read."

​The screen was mocking me. This had to be a fake list he made for someone doing exactly what I was doing. No way this all was over something so petty-- "What?" I asked, pulled out of my spiraling as what she said registered.

"I don't know how to read," Humi repeated, shrinking in on herself. Her cheeks colored.

"You--" Closing my eyes, I let out a breath. Given everything I'd figured out about her already, this made a lot of sense, but it was still upsetting. "Alright, add that to the list of things we'll take care of after all this is done."

She gave me an odd look I couldn't decipher, then turned her attention to the screen. "So what's it say that's got you bothered?"

"Robotnik's plan was to use a primordial water god empowered by the Chaos Emeralds to destroy Station Square..." I growled. "...all so he could build a giant theme park called Eggmanland over top of it." Unbelievable. Of all the petty, pointless, half-baked, idiotic, ridiculous reasons... This man built an army of robots, attacked the city, tried to tame a god, to build a theme park?! "He could build anywhere! Heck, look how big this airship is, he could have built a flying theme park and put it literally anywhere! Why?! It doesn't. Make. Sense!"

"He needed the Chaos Emeralds?" Humi asked, with emphasis.

"Huh?" I blinked, distracted from my temper again. "Yes." I looked over the checklist once more. "He wasn't able to find them all though. Says he successfully stole three from Sonic, and two from Amy and a frog, I assume that's Froggy, but there was supposed to be one in Casinopolis that he wasn't able to find, plus another he never got around to looking for." I looked closer, then typed Casinopolis into the search bar. "...Okay, what? Apparently the casino was boasting they had a Chaos Emerald, and were planning to award it to anyone who won a thousand rings from a specific machine. But when Eggman got there, it had been replaced with a glass replica." I leaned back. "Well, good."

"Good?"

She sounded small, but I was too caught up in the new information to pay it any mind yet. "Yeah, good. I admit I don't quite know what the deal with the Emeralds is, but I know enough to know I wouldn't feel good about one ending up with some rich gambler. Maybe whoever was in charge wised up and moved it elsewhere."

I turned away from the computer, disgusted and grumbling, and started pacing the room trying to walk my feelings out. Gosh, but I was agitated. My life was upended over a theme park. Unbelievable.

​Silence reigned for a long while. Long enough that it broke through the haze in my mind and I noticed a sense of gloom coming off of Humi. 

"...Heyu?" Humi began, before I could say anything.

"Yeah?" I frowned and swung the pack off my back with her still inside, so I could look at her properly. "Hey, don't worry. I'm upset, but I'll be fine. I just need a little time to digest all this. Hey, maybe we can go back to Final Egg and beat up some more badniks, huh? Blow off some steam?" I added, trying to sound lighthearted.

A smile crawled across her face briefly but died quickly. She looked up at me with a serious expression. "Can I tell you a secret?"

I blinked, but I crouched down to be closer to eye-level. "Of course." Wait. "Is this related to what you wanted to show me?"

"Mhm. I was gonna do it later, but..." She bent down into the bag and rummaged around. When she stood back up, she brought a box with her.

​"Your jewelry box?" What the? "I thought you left that at your place."

"I grabbed it while you were playing cards with Amy." She sat it on the floor between us and opened it up. "Heyu?"

"Yes?"

"...Is stealing always bad?"

Oh boy. "Um." This was a complex situation. Probably the responsible thing to do when a child asks that question is to say almost always, and impart a lesson about, I don't know, morality or something. But Humi's situation was not normal, and we'd been stealing from Robotnik and the archaeologists--when did I decide I wasn't going to pay them back? I should reassess that. No, focus, more important things are happening.

I took too long to respond, so she continued. "Cuz I know it's supposed to be wrong, but I've had to steal before to survive. Food, pocket change, parts and tools someone left sitting out. But I never steal jewelry!" she insisted suddenly. "I never stole anything anyone was already eating, or that looked too expensive to replace! Almost all my stuff came out of dumpsters or back alleys, or the sewer!" She was getting worked up.

I put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, I believe you." The sewer? This kid.

"I only steal when I need to!" she repeated. Then she kind of sagged. "...Except one time." Brushing my hand off, she dug into the chest. She stuck her entire arm into the mass of rings inside, and while the box looked big next to her there was no way it was as deep as her arm was long or more.

​She saw me looking and managed to smile. "I can put my pocket somewhere else, if I go back to it enough times," she said, by way of explanation.

She finally found what she was digging for, and with a chorus of clinks from the rings she pulled it up. The bag from before, with the Casinopolis logo on it.

Look. I'm not stupid. I was starting to figure out what was happening here, but I'd just been shaken up by Robotnik's stupid plan and now I was having to shift mental gears to deal with an upset child, so forgive me if I didn't quite realize what was in the bag until she opened it, okay? Cut me some slack.

"Three months ago," Humi said, closing the chest and setting the bag on top, "I was inside the casino when they brought in a special item. I saw it, and it was the prettiest thing I've ever seen. The owner came down himself to look at it and hold it in his hands, and all I could think, looking at it, was... they shouldn't have it. I should have it. I wanted it. So after they put it in this bag and left it on the cart while they opened the security door, I snatched a dice bag from the roulette table and swapped them out while no one was looking."

She opened the bag and grabbed my hand, upending it into my palm.

The white Chaos Emerald dropped into my hand.

"I knew what I did was wrong," Humi said. She sounded like she was about to start crying. "I knew it was bad! But it was so pretty, and holding it made me feel better. It made me be better. When I had it on me, my pockets got even deeper, and when they shrank again when I put it down they didn't shrink all the way, so they stayed a little bigger each time. And it was, it was warm, and comforting. It made me feel like I could put the whole world in my pocket, and I could imagine that I'd never lose anyo--anything ever again. It made me happy, just to have it. But... I didn't know it was a Chaos Emerald, but I knew it was p-powerful, so I put it in a box and hid it away."

She looked up, teary-eyed. "But it was a good thing I took it, right? B-Because it kept Eggman from getting it? Right? Heyu?"

...

"Heyu?"

Her voice sounded so very far away.

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

Chaos. Robots. Crawling, walking, flying, stalking. Yellow, eaten by a frog. Water, everywhere, flooding, everywhere. The train is late. Froggy? Birdie? Blue, in the valley of wind. Red eyes. What’s happening? Green, in the frozen peak. Snooping as usual. I don’t understand. Echidnas, greedy. Sky blue, among the birds. Do I know this? Echidnas, attacking. Violet, found by a child. Tikal? Tikal? Tikal? Chaos! I don’t know this.

My eyes hurt.

Red, in the flying machine. The jet? The jet? Do I know a jet? The Chao. The Chao. , White, in the den of vice, now in front of you. It hurts. I don’t understand. 

“Heyu?”

Chaos. What does it mean?

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

I blinked. My eyes felt so dry. I rubbed at them with a groan. My knees hurt. “What happened?”

“Heyu!”

I grunted when something impacted me. I couldn’t see what, I was still staring at the Emerald. I tore my eyes away from it--and it almost felt like I was literally tearing something to do that--to see Humi wrapping her arms around my waist. “Who, me?”

She slapped me, but there was barely any force in it. “Don’t joke right now! You were acting weird!”

“I was?” Wait, I remember now… or, no, I don’t? Huh. What was I doing?”

“Your eyes were glowing and everything.”

That! Was concerning! “Really?” I sounded much calmer than I felt, I hoped. “Wow. Did it look cool?”

“I said don’t joke!” Humi huffed. She reached out for the Emerald, and failed to take it out of my hand. “Let go!”

“I’m not holding onto--” I paused, and forcibly unclenched my hand. “I am in fact still holding onto it, sorry.”

She dropped it back in her pockets, and I took a moment to see that I was not in the same spot I remembered trancing out in. Her jewelry box was nowhere to be seen. “What happened? How long was I out?”

“What happened? I should be asking you that! That never happened to me!” Humi’s face screwed up in distress. “I shouldn’t have shown you, I’m sorry!”

“Hey, hey, you didn’t do anything wrong.” I grabbed her. She resisted, but only a little, and then let me pull her into a hug. “I’m fine. I’m fine, see.” I hesitated. “I’m a little shaky, but you didn’t know that would happen.”

What did happen? I couldn’t remember. Something about… “Tikal?”

Humi pulled away, confused. “What’s a Tikal?”

“Not a what, a who,” I corrected. How did I know that? “And… I don’t know. I think I saw things.” Wait. “Did I say anything?”

Humi shook her head.

…I frowned. “Let me see it again.”

She took a step back. “No!”

“Please?” I begged. “I think I saw something important, but I can’t remember--”

“I’m not doing that to you again!”

I ran a hand across my scalp. “Okay. Okay okay. What if you hold it, and I just touch it? That way if it happens again, you can pull it away?” The look on her face told me she didn’t like that idea any better. “Listen, it wasn’t fun, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important. Please.”

I had no idea why I thought it was important. But… something was niggling at me. It was like the sensation of searching for a word when you knew there was one that perfectly fit the situation at hand, but it just wasn’t coming to you. It was like walking through a doorway and forgetting why you’d gone downstairs to begin with. It was like having your phone in hand and freaking out because you couldn’t feel it in your pocket.

…Wait, I didn’t have a mobile phone. What was happening?

Humi pulled the white Emerald out of her pocket, reluctance all over her face, and held it out. I reached out with a single finger--

CRASH

The Carrier shook. Humi grabbed the Emerald with both hands to keep from dropping it, and I nearly fell over.

I stood, and my knee protested from how long I’d been putting weight on it. I ran to the window.

Amy and Big must have taken care of ZERO, based on the debris everywhere and lack of a trash can, and Gamma had rejoined them on the deck. But now a big, black robot was flying around and firing on them from above.

“Beta,” I said. I frowned, wondering where the name came from, but pushed that thought away. “Too much going on.”

The flying badnik was too fast for Big to hook. Gamma had a weapon, but he was caught up protecting Amy. All three of them, plus Froggy and Birdie, were running around the deck avoiding gunfire and lasers. I watched it charge at Amy, who tried to bat it aside with her hammer, only for it to pull up at the last second and get a big burst of exhaust in her face. She fell down, coughing.

“...” I turned to Humi and put a hand on both shoulders. “Humi, I promise you, you’ve done nothing wrong. A lot’s going on and we will go over it, but right now our friends are in trouble. Can you pull it together, just for a bit?”

She sniffed, standing up straighter. She looked determined, but I could still see the tear-tracks in her fur.

“It’s okay if you can’t,” I said.

She pushed my hands off and held the backpack up to me. “I can do it! I won’t let anyone down!”

I stared at her a moment longer, then nodded. I swung the pack on my back, and she jumped inside.

The Carrier shook again.

I faced the window. “Think I can break this?”

Humi made a face. She dove into the pack and returned with her potato gun and loaded it with something heavy and metal. She touched something and, to my incredible alarm, started ticking.

She aimed and smiled with far too many teeth. “Fire in the hole!”