The sunlight here wasn't as bright as the Great Forest Bunnie had grown up in. The trees' bark was darker, more gnarled, and their leaves were stained a sickly yellow. It was an effect that Bunnie was too familiar with. Smog and chemical pollution had crept away from Robotropolis like a tumor for over a decade, so much so that the effects of industrial waste were visible several kilometers away from the factories that had produced it. The sun itself wore a halo of haze. Inside the city itself, the smog was so bad as to be completely opaque, shrouding its streets in a permanent night.

The change in coloration meant that Dulcy's bright green scaling was easier to pick out against the yellowing forest. A stricken Rotor watched her fall further and further back into distance.

"I can't believe I just heard that," he said.

"Doing the right thing isn't always easy," Griff leaned forward. "It doesn't always feel good, either."

"Doing the right -- the right thing? What the hell do you know about doing the right thing, Laurentis?" Rotor was close to shouting. Bunnie had never seen the quiet mechanic this angry before. She hadn't even thought him capable of raising his voice.

Griff fidgeted; obviously, the shot had hit home. "Bunnie was right," he insisted. "They couldn't have helped. They'd only be unnecessarily risking their lives."

"That doesn't mean we can just leave them behind," he protested. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Griff was supposed to be on his side.

The communications panel started blinking again. Sally was trying to call again. Bunnie made an effort to look away, and tried to ignore it. The light continued to sadly flash on and off, abandoned. "And why not?" she asked. "If Ah tried to cut mah wrists right now, Rotor, would you try and stop me?"

"Of course!"

"Good. So we're agreed that we're not in the business of assisted suicide."

"That's completely diff-"

"Rotor, think clearly for me here. What are our odds of getting through Robotropolis' defensive grid?"

Rotor took a deep, slow breath, unwilling to be drawn off into a tanget.

"Come on, Rotor."

"Not very high," he admitted. There was no question about who controlled Robotropolis's airspace. There were at least fifty hover units on standby at all times, with more available with advance warning -- and with the Laurentis nodule's beacon, they had that warning. That alone would be enough to extinguish them, and that was discounting the numerous anti-aircraft guns and guardian turrets. Robotnik's air superiority was one reason why the Freedom Fighters' missions were strictly limited to ground assaults.

"Now what are the odds of not one, but two high-profile targets making it intact through that same defensive grid?" she asked.

Rotor was understandably reluctant. "Smaller by an order of magnitude."

"So the fewer of us there are, the better our chances of actually pullin' this off are, right?" It was rule number one of covert fighting. Princess Sally herself had quoted this more than once.

Bunnie kept asking questions that Rotor didn't want to answer. Hell, Bunnie thought, she didn't even want to be asking them herself. But she had to keep leading him on to make him understand. "If Sonic, Sally, and Dulcy aren't around when the fireworks start, they'll live through this no matter what happens to us. Right?"

"Yeah."

"But they most likely won't if we try to breach Robotropolis security together." Bunnie waited until Rotor had acknowledged that before moving on to the most difficult question. Bunnie just wasn't used to talking about things like suicide so bluntly, but her ordinary sensitivities had been smashed to pieces ever since she had heard Drizit's message. "Just like if Ah were to cut mah wrists, the odds of me surviving if you didn't intervene wouldn't be very good."

Rotor just nodded a silent affirmative. He was unable to speak, his anger had disappeared, replaced by a concealing mask.

"The odds of our friends surviving if we wait up for them are going to be just as low, Rotor."

He opened his mouth again, but didn't say anything. He looked incredibly pathetic for a moment, like there was nothing he could think of to say to that. Instead, he just closed his mouth and folded his arms up on the dashboard. Phantom tears glistened in his eyes as he hid his head in his them.

Bunnie felt instantly sorry for him. She knew how pain like that felt. Two years ago, she had known what the right course of action was but hadn't taken it because she couldn't bear to do it. Rotor was confronting the same demon. Every gram of logic, every cold, hard formula Bunnie ran through her head told her that leaving her friends behind, to save their lives, was the right course of action.

If only logic didn't hurt so much.

Griff was silent as he watched the exchange. He wished himself very, very small.

"Well, Ah always try to be the one who looks on the bright side," Bunnie said after a quiet moment. "Ah can't slow down and drop you off, now, not with Dulcy following behind us. They're keepin' me from parking. You get your wish after all, Rotor. Looks like you and Griff are comin' with me to Robotropolis."

Neither she, Griff, or Rotor spoke much during the next few minutes.

Bunnie watched Robotropolis's skyscrapers grow larger on the horizon. Their slim strands widened as the distance between them narrowed, and the smog became worse. The sun was no longer a distinct ball in the sky, but rather only a patch of yellow light amidst the pollution. She wondered if she had seen the sun for the last time in her life. The land was falling into a pallid shadow, now. There were only a few fully grown trees here, now, the majority of the forest had been reduced to scraggly bushes. The proud old-growth trees that had so characterized Mobotropolis in ages past had been either been destroyed by industrial contaminates, or by Robotnik's massive warship during the coup.

Bunnie kept herself busy by monitoring the air ahead, and the motion detector screen on the dashboard below. Aside from the static surrounding the edges of the screen, there were no detectable blips. Several times Bunnie had turned to investigate phantoms appearing on the sensor, but they were just treetops throwing off the detector. At least the interference was leveling out as the trees themselves reduced in number.

Thankfully, it was smooth sailing as they closed on the city. Bunnie was determined to enjoy it while she could. It might be the last quiet moment of her life.

She was somewhat disappointed when a second light on the communication panel despoiled the silence. She stared at it. "Griff, what's that?

"It's not your friends signaling us this time. Someone else wants to talk."

"But who?" An answer came to Bunnie almost as soon as she had asked the question -- Robotnik.

"I'm not sure. Pick it up and check."

She reached down and activated the communications panel, half- expecting to hear Robotnik’s sonorous voice grate out of the speakers. A tremble of relief rippled down her shoulders when she heard the cautious, “You there, Griff?” on the other end. She wasn’t the only one.

“Dirk!” Griff exclaimed, immediately leaning forward until his head poked through the gap between the two front seats. “You made it!”

“Yes, we made it. I’m sitting here at the rendezvous point with the rest of the convoy now. The sunlight up here’s really something - it’s been too long since I’ve seen the Great Forest.”

“You shouldn’t even be calling me now. Not even on a scramble channel. You might be traced.”

“It’s a risk I had to take,” the boar answered. Bunnie found herself wishing she could see his expression. The metal grid of the speakers was just too dead to look at. “The convoy’s just finishing flight prepping for another trip out to our safe zone in the Great Unknown right now, so if we are being traced, we’ll be long gone before any hover units actually get out here. I just… had to check and see if you were all right.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. What about you? Is everything okay?”

“I’ve got some good news on that end, Griff. Everybody in the city made it. Everybody. All one hundred and fifty heads are accounted for, including the militia soldiers and the newcomers group I lead this morning. We didn’t lose anybody when we left the city.”

Bunnie stared at the panel, wide-eyed. “E-Everybody?” she stuttered. That couldn’t be right, could it? It would be too good to be true. There were so many people there, some of them had to have been too far away from the convoy. After all, it was only just blind luck that she managed to find-

“Yes, Bunnie, everybody,” Dirk said. “That reminds me: Gail told me to thank you. Thaddeus regained consciousness a little while ago. It looks like he’s going to recover quite nicely.

The words couldn’t come to her lips. Ever since seeing - feeling - the city’s energy crystal explode behind her she’d been chased by the sinking of knowing that your nightmare is not just about to come true, but had come true. Past, immutable, and unchangeable. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that people down below hadn’t died in the blast.

One aspect of her nightmare would never come true now. Robotnik had used the nodule to find one of the Freedom Fighters’ hideaways, that much was true. But nobody had died because of her. Nobody.

Knowing that was even a greater boost to her morale than seeing the flaming wreckage of the two hover units in the tunnel behind her. The nightmare could be defeated. A wide grin cracked across her face, feeling foreign and alien, but there nonetheless.

“Who’s Gail?” Griff asked.

“Somebody who’s safe,” Bunnie said. “That’s all that matters.”

“Then never mind, I guess,” he gave up. “Dirk, get out to the Great Unknown right now. I’ll try and join you later, but no promises.”

“Right. What about you? Where are you headed?”

“Robotnik’s city. Please, do all of us a favor and just don’t ask.”

“Sure. I trust you, Griff. I’ll see you out at our safe zone. The people of Lower Mobius need you.”

“Goodbye, Dirk.”

The comm panel clicked off.

“Now the only problem is gettin’ to Robotropolis,” Bunnie said.

“That’s not going to be easy,” Rotor said. “Robotnik’s had plenty of warning, and the city’s pretty heavily guarded.”

“Anyone ever tell ya you have a gift for understatement, Rote?”

“Never. Griff, how long do you think we have until we get there?”

“I’d say only five minutes.”

The severity of the attack being prepared would have shocked even Bunnie, who thought that she was prepared for anything.

Sensor stations had detected the hover car emerging from the pipeline tunnel in an instant, their observations added by orders from Robotnik’s command ship to focus all of the supremely sensitive measuring equipment on that area. It was almost unnecessary; even without the aid of the Laurentis nodule’s beacon, the city’s radar would’ve been able to pinpoint the car’s location as soon as it gained over twenty-five meters in altitude.

As she spoke her last words, all twelve radar stations in the city itself were beaming active radar pulses off the car, as were countless dozens of other more remote stations scattered across the Great Forest and Robotropolis’s suburbs. The hover car’s location was pinpointed to within a square centimeter for every second of its journey. Heat sensors not blinded by the car’s two burning thruster exhaust ports had detected three furries inside, and had charted their species. Mass sensors constantly pulsed against the hull, measuring density, fuel remaining, general ship layout, and the weight of those inside. The electromagnetic spectrum around the car had been analyzed, finding two small laser barrels and a motion scanning system inside the car. Had Robotnik asked, the city’s AI could’ve guesstimated the color of Bunnie’s eyes, or what tools Rotor carried in his utility belt.

As soon as Robotnik gave the word, local AI routines scrambled the city’s defense force.

SWATbots all around the city had their duties rotated prematurely as hundreds at a time were ordered to the hover unit hangar. The AI played a game of three-dimensional chess with the duty rosters and layouts that would’ve overwhelmed an organic mind, rotating SWATbots with ordinary worker bots as more and more were pulled to defensive duties.

The hangar bays had been depleted when Robotnik’s assault force left, eliminating the overcrowding problem and making getting the remaining hover units up into the air was less of a hassle than usual. Ten hover units, pilot-copilot SWATbot pairs in place, launched at time until the air was buzzing with them, and they swarmed like insects. The sound of laser turrets charging became an audible, inescapable whine. Half of them assumed static defensive formations, while the other half followed the local AI’s plotted intercept points, converging at once on the hover car’s flight path. They spread outward like a barely controlled explosion, and still more continued to launch as the AI ordered more SWATbot pilots ready.

Klaxons rang shrilly throughout smaller, more clandestine hangar bays dug below rock shelves underneath Robotropolis itself. The alarms themselves were loud enough to severely irritate organic eardrums, had any been around to hear them. Doors on the surface slid quietly open as the wedge-shaped Stealthbots were raised to launching platforms. Missiles were stocked in their bays, and they were given target profiles. There weren’t as many Stealthbots in the air as there were ordinary hover units, but the Stealthbots were supremely powerful. Only they could actually match the speed of the hover car, and their deadly missiles were capable of accelerating to over three times the car’s speed. Each Stealthbot was given only one order: destroy the hover car by any means necessary.

Gun turrets and anti-air defenses charged, and ammunition was delivered and restocked. AA batteries were positioned strategically around the city, and local AI routines even had time to set up more along the hover car’s anticipated flight path. Massive barrels rotated and warmed as they prepared to spew out kilogram after kilogram of lead pellets into the air. The turrets were only a complement to the real ground defenses, however: the flak guns. At a moment’s notice, explosive metal shards would fill the air.

Robotnik wanted the rabbit dead, dead, dead. The controlling AI, a near-sentient array of computer networks, didn’t doubt that for a second. He had raised overkill to almost an art form.

The overall security set-up of the defensive coordination subroutines had the exact same flair for overindulgence as the rest of Robotropolis’ aerial defenses. The AI itself was encased in military-grade hardware capable of withstanding an EMP blast, and located decentrally throughout the city. Its programming was triple-encrypted and then triple-encrypted again, just for good measure, while its actual transmissions had even more protection. The stringent security measures even reached the point where they slowed down the AI’s thought processes, but it hardly seemed to matter when the AI was capable of scrambling the entire city in less than a hundredth of a second anyway.

Snively had told Robotnik on several occasions that the security locks on their defensive systems were completely unbreakable, and absolutely foolproof. It would have distressed them both a great deal had they learned that a hedgehog Freedom Fighter was right now busy disassembling the AI’s core thought processes.

Unearthly green light from the lone computer monitor glinted off Uncle Chuck’s metallic skin in the poor lighting of his trash heap hideout. He resisted the temptation to blink against the lack of light. His pupils were metallic, and couldn’t dilate, but he still retained a great many instincts from his days as an organic being. Artificial Intelligence theory wasn’t typically his specialty, but in the course of his work as the Freedom Fighters’ spy he’d picked up more than enough experience to be considered an expert. Just by looking at the code he could picture how the defensive computer’s various subroutines interacted with each other. More importantly, he knew how to control them.

He picked up the small radio, eyes still on the text scrolling across his screen. “Okay, Sally, I’m in. What do you what?”

“Well, what can you do?”

“I can do anything except disable Robotnik’s defense network entirely. I won’t be able to stay in the system for long without being detected if I do something drastic, though. Name it.”

“Okay, two things,” Sally answered after a pause. “There are two objects approaching Robotropolis right now. One is a Lower Mobius hover car, and it should be the focus of Robotnik’s defensive coordination. I want you to make it easier for them to get in.”

“I’m on it, Sal.” He was still angry with himself for missing Robotnik’s recent search for the Laurentis nodule. Charles’s spy sensor coverage of the city was no where near complete, and when the fat tyrant really wanted to, he could even avoid them long enough to keep such an endeavor hidden. But he was determined to make up for his earlier failure by providing all the help he was worth right now. His fingers hit the keyboard in such a flurry that they threatened to damage the sensitive keys. “I won’t be able to call off the attackers completely, not without Robotnik noticing, but I can at least keep a lot of the buggers confused.”

“Good. The second object is Dulcy, and she’s carrying Sonic and myself. Does Robotnik seem to be preparing for us?”

Charles checked his displays, barely allowing his typing to slow. “No, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t even noticed Dulcy.”

“See to it that he doesn’t.”

That didn’t require as much effort as the first task. Five seconds later, he said, “Okay. The defense network now thinks that Dulcy is an ordinary hover unit. You have a threat profile of zero in their databanks. You’re in the clear. I can’t say the same thing about Bunnie or Rotor, since Robotnik would definitely notice if I did that for them, but at least you’ll be able to follow them in safely.”

“Thank you, Sir Charles. Truly.”

I should’ve been there to warn you about the transmitter Charles thought sourly. But he didn’t say it, only typed faster and faster.

“What’s Bunnie’s ETA?” Sally asked.

“Looks like they’ll be on the city in exactly five minutes. Good luck.”

Snively watched as Robotropolis's defensive grid solidified on the master tactical display. It was like watching water freeze into ice, or - he thought as Robotnik stepped up behind him - grease congeal. Dozens upon dozens of hover units attained stationary coordinates and began waiting for the rabbit to approach. Still more were racing out to meet her, and the command ship itself was coming up towards the rabbit's hover car from behind.

Snively's shoulders still ached from the impact against the bridge's wall, when Robotnik slammed him against it. Still more metaphors came to mind as he watched the display, all of them uncomplimentary to Robotnik. Like an egg forming a shell, he thought.

"Saturation grid ready," he reported, snapping himself out of it as the last dot fell into place. "Sir, need I point out, that with the SWATbot AI set to more aggressive, the buildings below will suffer damage…"

"I know, Snively," Robotnik snapped. "Keep them ready for a laser saturation regardless."

"Yes, sir."

Robotnik continued to pace up and down the length of the command ship’s bridge. He wasn’t stopping to gloat. He wasn’t stopping to reassure himself with shallow egotism, no, “She doesn’t stand a chance!” this time. Defeat had hardened him, set his resolve even more than the largest victory could. He was committed to see the rabbit either die, or be roboticized. Snively would hate to be her right now. “What kind of tricks could she try? What would elude my defensive grid? They always find a way.”

Snively considered it for a moment, thinking of every tactical lesson he had ever had the computer give him. Statistics and wild opportunities raced through his mind. “The hover car can outrace the hover units themselves, sir, that’s why we’re keeping them on stationary standby. The Stealthbots should be able to match her speed... but we don’t have enough time to reprogram their weapons systems to lock their missiles onto the Laurentis beacon itself. The Stealthbots will have to rely on ordinary radar detectors for the time being, and it’s possible that the hover car could scramble that.”

“How?” Robotnik asked quickly.

“The rabbit could reduce her altitude to less than twenty meters. Radar would have a difficult time locking on that close to the ground. They could maybe evade our missiles.”

“I don’t like that, Snively.”

“But, with the rabbit closer to the ground, they’ll just be that much more vulnerable to the command ship’s mortar cannons, sir. It’s the debris and shrapnel from nearby impacts, it’ll catch them twice as hard. They can’t possibly know about the mortar cannons, so it’ll catch them completely by surprise.” Snively kept working it out in his head. “If they raise altitude to evade the mortar cannons, they’ll be vulnerable to the Steathbot’s missiles.”

“Get ready for it, then. Snively, back in the tunnel system, you reported that it looked like the hover car was using some kind of motion tracking sensors, correct?”

Snively would’ve hated to correct Robotnik, not while he was in this mood. Fortunately, he was dead right this time. “She is, yes, sir. And we can take advantage of that.”

“Prepare a... suitable ambush.”

A slight smile crossed Snively’s lips. “Yes, sir.”

“What about the mortar cannons themselves? Are they ready?”

"Charged and ready. Fire control standing by."

"Excellent. When will we be in range to use them?"

Snively checked a nearby chronometer, and quickly compared it to the master tactical display. "Almost as soon as the rabbit hits the hover unit defensive grid, sir. In exactly five minutes -- mark."

Ever since they had first seen it, when they were seven, the Freedom Fighters called it the firebreak. It was where Robotropolis hadn’t quite begun, the suburbs were nowhere in sight, and the Great Forest had already ended. It was a stretch of dead, barren, scorched brown dirt. Nothing could ever grow there again.

Robotnik had grown tired of various guerilla groups using the thick forest as cover when they approached his city. No matter how hard he tried, his sensors couldn’t penetrate the growth. It was the perfect shelter from airborne hover units and low-flying camera orbs. Visibility was rarely more then twenty meters, and even infrared was useless. His enemies, even the Freedom Fighters at that young age, had taken full advantage of it.

So Robotnik did what only Robotnik could do. With laser blast after laser blast, he razed a full kilometer of the forest, in a ring around Robotropolis. He burned it until it was nothing more than smoldering wood and dead wildlife. Then he irradiated the soil itself, poisoning it to prevent any future plant growth. Years and years of erosion had reduced it to little more than a barren waste.

It was where Robotnik’s defense forces had all the advantage, where there were no forest to hide obstacles on the ground, or, more significantly, to provide cover for hover sleds approaching by air.

It was coming up far too fast.

“Well, Griff, wut do you suggest we do?”

Griff leaned forward to examine the motion sensor display. There wasn’t as much static crackle from treetops now that they were approaching the firebreak, but there was still some interference. The motion tracker would be good up to three hundred meters now, he estimated. They would have a better chance of spotting something by eye, and Rotor had that angle covered. But neither sensor nor naked eye gave them any overt sign of anything approaching them.

“Well, it’s still going to be a difficult battle no matter what we do,” he said cautiously, “but I think there’s some things we can do to force the odds in our favor. Rotor, correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the Stealthbots have hard-wired ROM programming, to reduce computer core weight.”

“That’s right,” Rotor said, eyes scanning back and forth across the firebreak.

“So Robotnik won’t be able to reprogram their missiles to target the Lau...“ Griff stumbled on the name, “...the nodule’s beacon. They’ll have to rely on standard radar to fire on us. And firebreak or no firebreak, we can still make it hard on them if we keep a low altitude.”

“Gotcha,” Bunnie said.

“Low altitude is key. Stealthbot missiles will still be a problem, and so will anti-aircraft batteries, but their effectiveness will be drastically reduced if we’re low enough. The fact is,” Griff said confidently, “Robotnik doesn’t really have a weapon that’s very efficient that close to the ground.”

"That's good. Will it be good enough to protect us for over a kilometer of the firebreak?"

"Probably not. But the difficult part won't even be getting past the firebreak. We still have to slow down to a landing near the castle, since that's where Robotnik keeps the roboticizer. We're going to be really vulnerable there. Not to mention breaking into the room itself. Our only advantage then is that'll be the last place that Robotnik expects to go. Maybe if we caught them by surprise… but, too late for that now."

"Let's worry 'bout gettin' past the firebreak, first," Bunnie said. "If we're still alive then, we'll see wut happens next."

The forest, already yellow and scraggly this close to the city, lost whatever questionable vitality it had left to decade-old laser scars and radiation burns. The firebreak loomed less than a minute's worth of travel ahead.

This was it.

The stakes weren't quite as high as they had been at the beginning of this endeavor. There were no civilian lives left at stake. Though Sonic, Sally, and Dulcy were still behind them they were arrive too late to be caught in the battle. The only thing left up to ante was Griff, Rotor, and herself.

And if need be, she thought, carefully not making an expression as she looked at the dashboard controls, just herself.

She could handle that.

"Rotor, if you get through this and Ah don't - just tell everyone that Ah'm sorry. Ah'm sorry for what almost happened, and it was one of the biggest mistakes of mah life not to tell them. None of them deserved wut almost happened. Tell them that they're the best people Ah've ever known."

Rotor took his mournful eyes away from the firebreak. "Bunnie, either both of us make it or none of us. You know that."

"Right."

Silence.

"Firebreak's coming up," Griff pointed out. "The motion tracker isn't picking anything up yet, but now would be a good time to start losing that altitude. We're going to hit them any instant."

"We get through fast and hard, Bunnie. We're going to make it." He held out his fist, holding it steady in the middle of the passenger compartment. Griff, an inadvertent part of the mission, but a part of it all the same, held his own hand underneath Rotor's. It had been a long time since he had been taught the handshake, and he had only ever gotten a few chances to use it, but it was solidly rooted in his memory all the same.

"Yep," Bunnie said sadly, staring at the egg-shaped silhouette of Robotnik's castle. "One way or another, we're going to make it there." Nonetheless, she put her own organic fist on top of Rotor's.

Their fingers danced as they performed the Freedom Fighter's sacred ritual.

"Let's do it to it."

Bunnie pushed the steering column downward, and felt gravity decline in response as the car dipped down lower to the ground. The reminder of the forest grew closer, and sped by faster. When the firebreak actually began, they were only thirty meters above the racing valleys of blackened dirt and mud.

"Sir," Snively said instinctively the moment the tactical display began to change. "I was right. The rabbit's reducing altitude."

"Excellent."

"Keep in mind, sir," he said as respectfully as possible, "that will foul the Stealthbots' missile guidance."

"And leave her all the more vulnerable to the mortar cannons."

"Aye, sir. We're approaching firing range momentarily. All hover units and Stealthbots in position for the ambush. The rabbit's motion sensor has picked up nothing so far, I guarantee it. We're ready to launch our attack… as soon as you give the word, sir."

Dots on the tactical display continued to track forward in the anticipatory silence of the command center.