"Rotor..."

"This is my fight as much as it is yours, and you know it," Rotor said stubbornly. "One of my friends is in danger. I'm a pretty good mechanic; once we recover that blade, I can help you uninstall the nodule."

The hover car flew serenely over the Great Forest, its peacefulness a stark contrast to the tunnel chase of only minutes before. Unfortunately, a dark gray overcast of cumulus clouds had moved in while she and Rotor were underground. Bunnie wondered if she'd ever see the sun again.

It was as if time had rewound backwards to first cargo sled's clearing, just after Drizit had delivered to her the news of the nodule. "Let me help." Bunnie couldn't imagine why Rotor kept asking to travel with her. Before she didn't have the strength to leave him behind, but with all that had happened since, she didn't see much of a choice. That didn't mean it was going to be easy, though. Every word was a throbbing ache.

"Let me come too," Griff interjected. "It's been awhile since I've seen any kind of medical textbook, but I'm more familiar with the nodule's functioning than any person alive right now. Even if we find the blade, I'm also probably the only person who knows what it even looks like. It's the least I can do."

Why couldn't they understand that this wasn't just another raid, another adventure? Following her into the city would get them killed. Dead dead dead. Just like her.

The irritation at Griff's refusal to pilot his own vehicle had faded a long time ago, though. Her own guilt at Lower Mobius's destruction wasn't so fleeting. "The least you can do? Sugar, y'all don't owe me anything. Ah was the one who lost your city."

The hover car began to lose speed and altitude as Bunnie directed it downwards. Her eyes scanned across the treetops, looking for a clearing where she could drop off her two passengers. It was solo time.

Rotor would not give up. "Bunnie, we destroyed the two hover units in the tunnel together. We helped you there. And we can help you in Robotropolis, too."

"Ah don't know if you were payin' attention down in the tunnels, Rotor, but we almost got killed. What makes you think that ol' Lady Luck is gonna favor us again? Ah'm going to Robotropolis because it's the only thing Ah have left to do, even doin' it is probably gonna get me killed." Bunnie took her eyes away from the forest for just a moment, looking into Rotor's soft brown eyes. "Please. It's hard enough as it is. If you're really mah friend, do me a favor and keep livin' and fightin' Robotnik. Ah won't be able to for much longer."

Rotor opened his mouth to say something, and then reluctantly stopped. He sat in dejected silence for a moment before speaking again. "I don't think this is all quite as futile as your making it out to be."

What was the old rule about humor? Some of the funniest things in life were tragic, impossible situations. Bunnie couldn't squash the smirk that formed when she thought of the path that lay ahead of her.

"Yeah, sneakin' into a tyrant's heavily guarded city with a beacon stuck in mah leg, in open daylight in a non-combat-capable luxury hover speeder. All to break into the *roboticizer* chamber itself and steal a tool that for all we know doesn't even exist anymore. Even that does happen somehow, that'll still leave me paralyzed for the rest of mah life. Futile situation mah hinny."

The hover car kept skimming the treetops, waiting for a clearing that hadn't appeared yet. The vegetation in this part of the Great Forest was so thick as to be almost jungle-like. Bunnie gained altitude again, scanning a wider area.

Rotor hung his head in defeat, obviously not having anything left prepared to say. He looked back to Griff, searching for help of any kind. From the silence that followed it was clear that he couldn't think of much either.

"At least let me give you a basic overview of the car's piloting controls," Griff said at last. "You were complaining before about not knowing how to drive this thing."

Bunnie was at once relieved and annoyed that they had actually found a legitimate reason to remain with her for a few minutes. But Griff did have a point. Too many of the controls on the dashboard were foreign to her, and they might come in handy in the maelstrom that was sure to come. She sighed heavily.

"All right, Ah'm listening. But make it quick. Then Ah've got to get you two out of here."

He and Rotor exchanged a thankful glance, then Griff leaned forward. His arm passed over Bunnie's shoulder, occasionally indicating objects on the dashboard as he spoke.

"As far as I've gathered, this machine was manufactured on Nimbus Island around 3215, just before the Acorn Kingdom issued the first of its clean air emissions guidelines. That makes this one of the last few ever built with an internal combustion engine that runs on fossil fuels."

Come to think of it, the engine had sounded a little odd; not at all like the quiet humming of most electrical cells. Bunnie narrowed her eyes, and looked out the car's side windows, trying to see the white flames of the thruster exhaust.

Along the edges of the exhaust flicker, she could see small oily black streams of smoke forming along the edges. The telltale pollution of fossil fuels licked away and up into the atmosphere, joining the thousands of megatons of industrial contaminates released by Robotropolis's factories. When the power cell motor became available, the Acorn Kingdom had good reason to cease production of combustion engines. Disapproval joined the turmoil of emotions in Bunnie's mind.

"I know what you're about to say," Griff said quickly, "so don't. I salvaged this vehicle for a good reason. Even though fossil fuel engines aren't as clean as power cells, they do provide a better acceleration rate. The combustion engine is what lets us outrun Robotnik's power celled hover units. I figured that the speed I'd get from this car made it a worthy tradeoff."

Bunnie didn't make an issue of it. "You said y'all installed the lasers on this car to fight the rat-bot infestation. Did you add anything else combat-wise?"

"Nothing else offensive. But I did install some things that would help protect the car from the rat-bots. A molecular-binding generator has augmented the hull strength of the car. The binding generator dramatically improves the hull's durability with virtually no increase in mass."

She had trouble sorting out Griff's words but understood enough of it. "Uh-huh."

"The generator's probably the only thing that kept us from being smashed to bits the that debris hit us back in the city cavern."

There was finally a break in the thick forest growth, a clearing large enough for the hover car to safely descend into. Bunnie could drop off Rotor and Griff there. They were near enough to Robotropolis; they could probably find their way back to Knothole. She began braking, and directly the hover car into a gentle curve towards the clearing.

"What about detection systems?" Rotor asked.

Griff tapped one of the monitors on the dashboard, and then flicked a nearby switch. The screen came alive, sparkling pinpricks of what looked like white static. "Motion sensor. It has a maximum range of about half a kilometer underground, but above ground I would only trust it to about two hundred or so meters. Wind, treetops, and small animals give it too much interference up here." The small amount of white static on the screen seemed to be the motion sensor picking up the gradual swaying of treetops. He was right, Bunnie saw. It was harder and harder to see through it the distance from the hover car increased. Griff scratched his head. "I'm not sure how much good it'll be to you up here. I've never needed it on the surface. Still, it ought to pick up any large, steady moving masses, like hover units."

Almost as soon as he spoke, a large white dot blinked into existence at the bottom of the screen. Whereas all the interference was randomly scattered and never in one place for long, this dot was bright and steady.

"...the hell is that?" Griff asked.

Without even checking the windows, Bunnie instinctively hit the accelerator. The clearing disappeared behind them, lost in the forest. They would have to wait for another one.

"I don't see anything," Rotor said uncertainly. "Griff?"

"Whatever it is, it's definitely airborne, moving at about the same speed we are. A hundred fifty or sixty meters away." The same aura of expectant determination that had accompanied them like a shadow through the tunnels settled over them once again, disagreements instantly forgotten. Rotor was scanning out the rear windows, while Griff remained fixed on the sensor monitor.

"Robotnik's command ship?" Bunnie asked anxiously. She had expected a little more breathing space since destroying the two hover units in the tunnel, but perhaps that had been a mistake.

Rotor shook his head. "No, Robotnik would never fly unescorted. A scoutship maybe, a lone hover unit... I'm still not seeing anything, Griff."

"It's not directly behind us, it's approaching from our left as well. Maybe a thirty-or-so degree portside inclination."

Keeping a solid grip of the hover car's accelerator and steering handlebars, Bunnie turned around in her seat, joining the visual search. The blip on the sensor monitor was still glowing as bright as ever, and creeping closer. Bunnie was going to have to gun the accelerator if it got any nearer.

Rotor's eyes stopped, and he squinted. His grimace lightened somewhat, almost turning into a smile. Bunnie followed his gaze.

"That's no hover unit," she said bitterly. "Ah almost forgot that this thing would pick up living objects if they're large enough. That's a dragon."

Camouflaged against the greenery of the Great Forest, Bunnie could just make out Dulcy's form. Her wings flapped mightily against the wind, struggling against fatigue to keep up with the speeding hover car. The distance was too great to see if she had any passengers, but Bunnie was sure she knew exactly who'd be with the dragon.

"Sonic and Sally," Rotor said happily. "They found us."

Misery and exhaustion were suddenly indomitable forces. Bunnie felt like laughing and weeping all at once. Not them, too! The more people that got mixed up in this only meant the more people who would be dead when this was all over.

"I don't see how," Griff said.

"They must've picked up the Laurentis beacon, just like Robotnik," Rotor replied. "It didn't take them long to put two and two together. Hey, slow down, Dulcy's having a hard time catching up."

"Wonderful," Bunnie said insincerely. She tapped the accelerator again, the kick of the g-forces solid and reassuring.

"Bunnie, hit the braking thrusters. Let them get in closer so we can hook up and do this together."

"No."

The look on Rotor's face as he worked out the cold equations must've hurt Bunnie at least as much as it did him.

"You're not gonna let them catch up, are you?" he asked quietly. "You're gonna leave them behind."

"Ah was being perfectly serious when Ah said that the fewer people involved in this the better. Now if they die because `a me... Ah can't let that happen."

Anger flared on Rotor's face for the first time. "You can't just do that to-"

A short, clipped beep coming from the dashboard cut him off. A light arrayed near a series of buttons and a speaker grid blinked on and off, suddenly desperate for attention. Bunnie was grateful for the interruption, but not for long. She eyed it cautiously. It was obvious based on its positioning what the light represented, but she asked Griff anyway.

"That's the comm panel," he said at last. "Someone's trying to signal us. My bet's on your friends back there."

Bunnie gave the light a miserable glare.

***

"COMM MODE READY," Nicole reported, "SCRAMBLE CHANNEL OPEN."

Sonic had been the first one to see that airship they were chasing was actually Griff's hover sled. Their relief had lasted only up to the point where they saw that the large-engine speeder was purposely accelerating away from them. The car was slowly gaining more distance on them, and Dulcy had begun complaining of crippling exhaustion.

Maybe whoever was flying the plane just hadn't seen them yet, Sally reasoned to herself. It seemed unlikely, but it there were only two other viable alternatives: Bunnie didn't want them to catch up, or Bunnie wasn't even in control of the vehicle. Neither sat well with her.

Sally quickly checked the display readout on Nicole's monitor. "Lower Mobius hover car LV-426, please pick up."

One of the possibilities vanished as soon as she heard the voice that answered. It was Bunnie's. "Hello, Sally," she said sullenly, voice distorted by ordinary radio cackle but otherwise perfectly clear even through the rushing howl of the wind and the irregular flapping of Dulcy's wings. Nicole's state-of-the-art audio made it sound like Bunnie was sitting right next to her.

"Thank goodness it's you, Bunnie! You have a lot of us worried."

"Y'all aren't the only ones, believe me."

The speed of Dulcy's travel made it dangerous if not impossible to try and turn around, so Sonic was left in the awkward position of facing away from Nicole as he tried to talk to her. He craned his neck back as far as he could. "Yo, Bunnie, you feelin' all right?"

"Not really, sugarhog. Ah really wish Ah didn't have to say this, but it'd be for the best if you'd just turn around right now."

"Huh? Say that again - I don't think I heard you right."

"Bunnie," Sally said, "what's going on over there?"

"What's goin' on is Ah have Ah have a beacon in mah leg screaming my current position to everyone on the planet. Y'all followed me here, you must have detected it. Right?"

"Right. The Laurentis nodule."

There was a pause.

"You know that bit, too," Bunnie's voice said dejectedly.

Sally and Sonic exchanged a quick glance. "Yeah, we know," was all Sally could think of to say.

"Look, then Ah don't have to tell why Ah need to do what's goin' to happen next."

"Hold on, I think there's a couple clearings coming up ahead. Slow down and park in one of them. We can talk more about the nodule on the ground."

"That's just it, Ah can't. Ah'm not slowin' down."

Sally blinked, a task made somewhat difficult by the fact that her eyes were nearly fully closed against the blustering wind. But the expression was instinctive. "What?"

"Ah'm not stoppin'. Y'all can't help me now, nobody but me can help me now. Go back to Knothole. Please."

"Don't blame yourself for not saying anything," Sally said quickly, "We haven't come to arrest you. We're your friends, you know that. Let us help."

"You don't understand. You can't help. Ah'm not trying to leave you behind because Ah'm afraid of you. If you follow me, the odds of you comin' out alive aren't going to be very high. Ah'm doing this as a friend... and that just makes it hurt all the more, Ah guess. But it doesn't mean it's not true."

"And how do you know we can't help? Bunnie, we can try together to remove the nodule. Get rid of it once and for all."

"Sally, sittin' behind me is the inventor of the Laurentis nodule itself. He says that there's no way to uninstall the nodule, except to take it back to the roboticizer chamber. Now if he can't help me, why should you?"

Sally didn't have an answer.

"Like Ah said, Robotnik is trackin' me even now. If Ah stop, he'll just be that much closer to getting. And if you're there when he comes... Sally, Ah couldn't bear to let that happen to you just because of me. Ah'm tryin' to save your life, here. Ah can't stop."

Dulcy was gasping for air now. Even though she hadn't complained yet, the sight of a dragon of her mass wheezing with exhaustion was not something easily ignored. The speed was just too much for her to keep up with for much longer; her wings were already trembling under the effort of the exertion. She couldn't keep up with the hover car for much longer.

Sally held Nicole desperately up to her face, as if holding the speaker closer would somehow make Bunnie understand. "And we can't stop trying to help."

For a long moment, Dulcy's labored breathing and the tremulous rush of the high-altitude winds were the only sounds on the dragon's back. Sonic was staring at Nicole, a horrified expression on his face. Sally guessed that hers must've matched it.

"Ah really, really don't want it to end this way," Bunnie said at last.

"So don't let it. Please slow down, let us catch up. *Please*."

Another pause.

"Goodbye, Sally."

"COMM CHANNEL CLOSED," Nicole reported somberly.