DISCLAIMER: "Sonic the Hedgehog" and most other characters and situations in the following story are copyrighted trademarks of Sega Incorporated, Archie Comics and/or DIC Productions. Permission to reproduce this specific material may be granted by the author so long as you email first. (c)2007 native_pangean@fsmail.net.

The Mission: Part 1

The intense heat of the summer sun had gradually faded into a golden background warmth, and before it disappeared over the horizon, turned a fierce golden which hurt the eyes, and then finally to a sultry, strong red. Rotor and Velvet lazed in the porch section of the house, sipping drinks and saying little to eachother. Rotor, sitting with his back resting against the top step, checked the springs and cogs of a small machine he'd lately been working on. As he worked, Velvet occasionally glanced over to watch his work.

"What is that, anyway?" she asked at length.

"It's a multi-purpose adaptor," he replied. "It's for anything you wanna use at home that needs power. You just plug it in and it adapts to whatever your power source is. I'm just tweaking it so it's more efficient."

"Mmm," Velvet replied lazily and thought no more about it.

TWO DAYS LATER

Velvet was walking around Greenleaf. The town was grand in the summer sunlight: nowhere near as polluted as Robotropolis. The fountains were full of perfectly clear water and the walls of the buildings were tainted only with moss. She'd fancied a trip, so had walked there with the intention of getting lost in the various markets that opened and traded every morning. As she walked she passed a small square, with large pale flagstones underfoot and staunch halls and blocks of homes to each side. A small smile passed across her face as she remembered the fortune telling she had done in the past before she had settled in Knothole. This square was the kind of place she would have settled in for the day to do business.

Then, an idea came to her. She glanced over at the square again, and took a faltering step forward. Then she realised that if she was going to pull this off she'd need something. Thinking ahead, she turned about face and walked home, a purposeful spring in her step.

"Rotor!" she called, swinging by the house. Her landlord was home and he looked up.

"Yeah?" he asked, looking like he'd been pulled out of deep concentration.

"Where's that adaptor you made?" she asked. Rotor tilted his head, confused.

"Why?"

"I was talking to somebody in Greenleaf and they might find it useful. I'd like to show them what it does," she said. Rotor looked vaguely surprised but obligingly dug the gadget out for her. Velvet paused to pick up a stack of notepaper and a pen, and gave Rotor a companionable slap on the shoulder as she pranced off toward the town again.

Velvet stood in the square, a little way out from one of its impressive walls. She felt nervous; she had never sold anything before. Nonsense, she reminded herself. I've been selling fortune readings for a long time! This is hardly any different. Now get to it, girl! With that, she cleared her throat and announced:

"GOOD AFTERNOON TO ALL OF YOU!" At this, heads turned, but nobody stopped walking. "I'M HERE TODAY TO OFFER YOU THE CHANCE TO BUY A POWER ADAPTOR FOR YOUR HOMES." Ears twitched, faces turned toward her, but the busy flow of animal traffic carried on moving. Velvet lifted up the adaptor so the crowd could see it more easily. "THIS IS A MULTI-PURPOSE ADAPTOR FOR ANYTHING IN YOUR HOME. IT WILL REDUCE YOUR POWER USAGE..."

And so Velvet's patter developed. As the day wore on, animals stopped walking and gathered around. Three, five, four, sometimes there were more than others, but never very many.

But she was pleasantly surprised when, half way through the afternoon, a beaver took a genuine interest. Bantering with him, she eventually gained his interest enough to take down the details of where he lived. He passed over 10 Mobiums and went on his way, secure with the promise that Velvet would knock on his door in a couple of days with one of these adaptors ready for him.

Before the day was done, two more Greenleafers gave her their details and put down a deposit for an adaptor, and as the sun went down, Velvet happily packed up and sauntered home. Would Rotor be pleased about this!

Night had almost fallen and Antoine was watching Sonic puff on the mouldering pile of sticks in the middle of the gathering while Rotor arranged more wood on the pyre. To his side Sally and Bunnie gossiped, giggling over something to do with kissing, but he wasn't sure. He looked around, feeling a little lost.

A rustle behind him signalled that somebody else had joined the group. He looked around: it was his sister, Velvet. She grinned as he spotted her and sat down beside him.

"Hello," she greeted, buffeting him gently with her shoulder good-naturedly.

"Bonjour ma soeur," he replied. "'Ave you been busy today?"

"Yes, I have. I've been selling Rotor's gadgets! And I think I can do better if I work at it," she said. "And you?"

"Ah," Antoine breezed, trying to look as if he had not a care in the world, "A leettle bit of ze reading, a leettle bit of walking, hah! Just a boring day!" he concluded, forcing a smile. He let the smile fade as she turned to Rotor.

Having learned from Velvet a few days ago that she was gay, Antoine had been angry at first. He considered it to be a disease, an illness of sorts. He wondered if she would ever be cured. But she didn't seem to care. He still felt that she should try to find her interest in males, but somehow she appeared happy to stay as she was. Antoine had no idea why. As far as he was concerned, it wasn't natural. I wasn't right.

At least the others hadn't objected. Rotor - he had learned to his horror - had already known. Sally had accepted it with her usual regal grace, Bunnie and Sonic seemed to think it was a good thing - although why he had no idea. Antoine dreaded to think what would happen if anybody else found out. But she didn't seem to be dating. That, he decided, was good.

"What? You're kidding!" Rotor's voice brought him out of his thoughts. He looked over to see Rotor fingering his way through a small bundle of paper money. "How much did you sell them for?"

As Velvet continued her conversation with the walrus, Sally joined in: "What happened?"

"Velvet sold 4 of my machines!"

"No kidding!"

Antoine watched the other Freedom Fighters babbling excitedly about this proposition. He supposed he should be happy, but he wasn't. Velvet - who was gay - had arrived into Knothole village and, without any experience of how to run a mission had been invited along. He'd been lumbered with her and somehow she had manipulated him into accepting her the way she was. Suddenly Antoine felt appalled, and decided not to add anything to the conversation.

Nobody seemed to notice.

She walked confidently, her gaze fixed resolutely ahead, Sonic to one side, Bunnie to the left and a little behind. To her rear right, she could hear the familiar scratch of Rotor's powerful claws on the ground and the D' Coolette siblings' staccatto footsteps. As agreed, they all walked as if strolling all the way through the city, no hint of the imminent mission in their movements.

Robotropolis' broad royal mall was grimy and littered with trash. Empty oil barrels lay on their sides, their contents long since used and their necks scabbed over with congealed fuel. A dead rat lay against the edge of the wall to the left, flies landing and taking off busily on its pelt. A half-hearted breeze swept a musty, polluted scent from up ahead. It looked nothing like it had done in the glorious days between the end of the war and the beginning of the coup. Then the buildings had been a gleaming stony yellow-beige, and plants had spilled out from spaces in the pavement and between bricks, and where they had been deliberately planted by the residents. And those residents? All gone; roboticised, killed or run away.

Sally closed her eyes and glanced down and to the right while she fought the sadness all this brought her. But this was not the time to feel down: she was on a mission. She turned to Bunnie, Antoine, Rotor and Velvet.

"Down there," she indicated, nodding subtly to a dark but wide street. There was little light down there. It looked dark and forsaken. She carried on walking and so did the others so as not to look interested in the alley. "That's the quarter we want to map out."

"Aha," Rotor signalled his understanding. It was going to be Rotor's job to sketch what was down there on a map. His backpack contained all the paper and pencil he'd need, a communication device and a remote alarm for which Sally had the other terminal.

"It sounds awful quiet down there, y'all," Bunnie commented. As Rotor sketched it would be her job to defend against attack. "Ah don't lahke it when it's too quiet, it gives me the shivers!"

"Ah, to not be worrying, Madamoiselle Bunnie," Antoine reassured her with confidence. "You 'ave moi to be protecting you!"

"Uh huh," she replied non-commitedly. Sally glanced at her and the pair gave eachother a doubting look, of which Antoine appeared to be totally oblivious.

Sally called back to Velvet: "Velvet, go with Rotor."

"Of course," Velvet replied, sounding tense.

The Freedom Fighters kept walking, out of sight of the dark alley and past Robotnik's main centre, waiting for the alarm to go up. Before too long it did: a red light flashed on a pole up ahead and a klaxon signalled that Snively had caught them on the security cameras. That was their signal. She turned to Rotor and his party. "We're going into the main building. Rendezvous at the gate end of the mall," and with that, Sonic picked her up and bolted off.

Velvet stood in the middle of all this, the alarm blaring, the dust swirling in Sonic's wake, and - oh no! - the sound of the others' feet pounding in the opposite direction. She hurled her body after them, her heart pounding in her chest almost as hard as Bunnie's heavy footsteps.

It was clear enough to her that she was a supernumary in this mission, but supposed that, like Antoine and Bunnie, she would be a lookout. Two people in an alley were perfectly capable of keeping watch by themselves, she supposed, but there was no harm in an extra pair of eyes. She sprinted faster, and angled after the others into the dark alleyway and hid in the shadows.

Sally followed Sonic through the corridors, allowing him to scan each area before they covered it. In her mind she rehearsed the computer commands she'd need to input to send the alley's security systems down. That would be her task.

"Here we are, Sal," Sonic's confident voice brought her out of her reverie. She hid behind the doorway edge as he gingerly glanced around the corner and passed through into the chamber. He turned back to her and gestured for her to join him: evidently nobody was in there.

Sonic and Sally walked in, looking around: Snively spent a lot of time in this room and they had accidentally walked in with him in here before.

But this time all was clear. Sally hopped up onto Snively's swivel-chair and logged in using an ID usually used by one of Robotnik's creations to gain access. As the main computer verified the ID Sonic edged up beside her and pulled a communication device out of his rucksack, sitting it on the surface beside Sally. She looked at him nervously, then sighed and forced her shoulders to relax as she looked up at the screen, fingers poised over the plethora of buttons in front of her.

Rotor crouched with the others behind an old cruiser shell, waiting for the signal from Sally. While they waited, he pulled out the alarm and tagged it to his bandolier, then handed torches to Bunnie, Velvet and Antoine.

As Velvet took the torch from him he wondered how she would cope on this mission. He was used to them, so was Bunnie. So, for that matter, was Antoine, but what would a layman make of all this? As he handed the last torch to Antoine he briefly locked eyes with him.

Yeah... Antoine had been glad when his sister had returned out of nowhere, so he guessed that he would be only too happy to watch over his sister on missions like this one. He looked back out into the alleyway and dug out his paper and pencil. The signal would come soon...

Antoine was fuming: Rotor had just handed a torch first of all to Bunnie, and then to Velvet - who didn't know what she was doing on a mission - and then to him. Why had he been last? He was sure it was favouritism. Rotor had looked him in the eye immediately after; was it a jibe? He had offered an icy glare back, but Rotor hadn't seemed to care. Silently he gritted his teeth. Rotor was winding him up, he was su-

A quiet beeping sound from the alarm which signalled that the cameras were down and Rotor and Bunnie launched themselves out into the alleyway. Antoine belatedly wrenched his body around the cruiser chassis after Bunnie, his sister hot on his heels.

Rotor was unscrewing the shade from his torch and set it on the ground, full-beam, its bulb shedding harsh light that lit up the local area. He then spread the sheet of paper and began to sketch this part of the alley.

Antoine glanced around: Bunnie had her back to him over the other side of Rotor. Velvet was beside him. He scowled: he didn't need her to help him watch an empty alleyway. He clamped his jaws with fury...

"Okay, move along a little!" Rotor called, and Bunnie, himself and Velvet jogged along, listening for Rotor's signal to stop again. Before long he did and they resumed their positions: Bunnie with her back to the coyotes, and Velvet, to Antoine's chagrin, by his side.

Antoine tucked his chin under and looked over his snout at Velvet in a gesture he hoped looked authoritative. "You do not need to be 'ere. You can be doing somezing else!"

Velvet seemed suprised. "What else can I do?"

"Anything!"

"Such as?" Velvet replied determindly. Don't start that with me, little brother. I'm only following orders. Antoine stared hard at her for a second, before flicking his eyelids and looking ahead, apparently affecting indifference.

"'Kay!" called Rotor again and the party moved on a little further. Again, Velvet settled more or less beside Antoine. Again she saw, out of the corner of her eye, his angry face, but she wasn't moving or looking back at him: she - they - had a job to do; this wasn't the time for sibling rivalry.

Not too long after that, Rotor completed his work and rallied the rest of his group, leading them via a better-known, and more brightly-lit pathway that the mysterious alley had opened up to. Rotor basked briefly in satisfaction that he'd strongly suspected that alleyway had opened up where he'd thought it would.

Sonic and Sally were already at the gates when his party arrived. Without a word, just a curt nod, they greeted and ran together further away from the entrance to Robotropolis. Briefly, Sonic paused and organised everybody into a line so that he could transport them quickly back home.

Antoine was second-to-last in line with his sister behind him. As the Freedom Fighters linked hands he looked vaguely reluctant to link with her, but whatever the problem was seemed to disappear and the entire group disappeared in a spray of dust.

TO BE CONTINUED...