"Surprises" by Adrian Tymes [Legal disclaimer: This story is based on characters created by SEGA and Archie Comic Publications, Inc., Commander Packbell and "Tails' Tale" by David Pistone, and "Postcards From Mobius" #2 by Richard Ray Roberts. Permission is granted by the author to freely distribute this story, so long as: a: no recompense of financial value is received or given by the person who distributes the story, and b: the distributed copy is identical to the story as originally authored. In other words, don't sell it, and don't alter it. The griffins in this story are my own creations. If you wish to write a story including or referring to the griffins as presented below, or the events in this story, please contact me in advance - I would like to know who uses them. Copyright (c) 1996, all rights reserved, et cetera.] ****** Time: Exactly two weeks after "Prank-stice Makes Perfect" ****** Home, for the griffins, was a far different place than it had been when it was first settled a thousand years ago. At first, it had merely been a place to hide from the dragons. A series of underground caves in the Great Unknown, their entrances surrounding and hidden by five steam vents, had seemed ideal: unobservable from the air, yet highly defensible should any dragon take a close enough look to spot them. In short order, it resembled an underground version of Knothole, although its occupants were not interested in fighting what they were hiding from. They had given up hope of winning their war. After a few years, the griffins realized that they were safe as long as they remained hidden. Dragons no longer scoured the land for any remaining griffins, hidden mirrors reflected sunlight into special caves where the inhabitants grew more than enough food for everyone inside, and the rock walls proved easy to reshape by claw to accomidate everyone's need for space. All of the caves except for the entrance were made large enough to allow flight. Flight was not a practical necessity, but it served to remind every griffin that one day, they would return to the open skies of their former Home in the Great Plains. More time passed, and Home continued to evolve. Concealed power plants were added, a hologram covered the outside for kilometers, and Home expanded to include the covered area. Inside the caves, factories were constructed deep beneath the surface. Unlike most of the factories on Mobius, these were designed for modularity and low emissions from the start. One of these factories had to be shut down before its smoke gave Home away. Instead of being repaired, it was converted for use by the griffins' surviving monarchy. The factory's center was made into a throne room, and it is here that this story begins. King Skyer sat in what had once been a the shell of a furnace. Being a griffin, "sat" entailed squatting with his rear legs while his front were locked straight, bearing the weight of his chest and head. King's golden circle of feathers reflected the throne room's indirect lights and the other griffins present, much like the golden crown of old that the feathers represented, which symbolized his position as the griffins' Monarch. King was larger than almost every living Mobian outside Home except for the dragons, yet he was the smallest griffin present. One of his advisors, a griffin with white feathers and red fur who was twice as large as King in all three dimensions, had to bow her head until her chin nearly scraped the floor in order to look up at King. Since custom required her to look up at her Monarch, she did so. "Oh, stop that. You know I what I think of silly traditions, Grisha." On King's order, his advisor sat up and assumed the same posture as King. "That's better. Now, what have you to report?" "Your highness, I have an idea how we can free the griffins that Snively roboticized." "Really? As workerbots, they will resist being freed until we can deroboticize them." "I know, sire. Our engineers have just come up with a device that we can plug into Snively's roboticizer to make it into a deroboticizer. We should have little trouble moving workerbots to his roboticizer as long as it remains within Robotropolis." "Interesting. Do you also know about Snively's and Packbell's robot guards, and that we have no experience fighting them?" "I do, but the only solution that I can see troubles me, your magesty. I do not like to suggest it, but we must work with those who do have experience: the Freedom Fighters." "Work with outsiders? I see why it would trouble you, but I think that we can work with the ones in Knothole. I've seen them before, and they won't suspect that we are just a trick by Snively or Packbell." "I understand that Kenal has already left a bad impression on them twice. Will this be a problem, m'lord?" "No. In fact, I'll make it work to our advantage. Kenal will apologize to them." ****** Somewhere in the Great Forest, Sonic was enjoying himself, running just for the thrill of it. Rotor had come up with a new coating for his sneakers that cut what little friction they had in half. While his acceleration was a bit slower than usual, Sonic's top speed had gone up noticeably. Without using a power ring, Sonic could feel the air build up in front of him as he neared the speed of sound - nearly as fast as he used to go with a power ring. Sonic decided to use a ring just to see how fast he could now go with one. He reached into his backpack, searched around, and... "LOOK OUT!" ..jammed on the brakes as something flew in front of him. Unfortunately, the coating's reduction in friction also reduced his braking power, and he slid out of control towards the airborne brown object. Thinking fast, Sonic leaned back, dug his quills into the ground, and came to a stop. Looking up, he saw that the flying object was Kenal, who gently landed on Sonic's chest. "Nice stop." "Thanks, I..." Sonic realized who he was talking to, and grabbed Kenal before he could take off. "Kenal! You've got some explaining to do. What you did to Sally was Way Past Uncool." Kenal avoided Sonic's gaze. "I know. King ordered me to apologize to her." "Good for him. The sooner, the better..." Sonic stood up, retaining his grip on Kenal as he rose. Something dragged on his quills as he stood, so Sonic looked at his back. His quills had been caked with irregular blotches of dirt and mud. Seeing this, Kenal started to giggle, but he stopped when Sonic abruptly took off, letting air friction peel most of the earth off en route to Knothole. ****** "WoahoahAAA!" *CRUNCH* Sonic was still having trouble braking. He'd curled into a disk just before hitting Sally's porch, just like he did during a Spin Attack. However, this time he didn't keep accelerating once he hit a solid object, but rather let the porch absorb his momentum. When he uncurled, Sonic found his quills embedded up to their roots in the porch. Sally watched from inside. "Sonic? Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm fine. I found Kenal; he has something to say to you." Sonic placed Kenal inside the doorway, then unsucessfully tried to pull himself out of the porch. Sally's face darkened as she stormed to the door and tried to slam it in Kenal's face. Kenal managed to leap inside just before the door swung shut. Sally barely controlled herself. "Whatever you have to say, save it. After what you did, I do not want to see you again. Ever!" "I'm sorry." Kenal quickly tried to remember the exact words his brother had said to use. "You're sorry? For what? For taking my emotions, and my body, away from my control? For practically roboticizing me for a whole day? Is that what you're sorry for?" Kenal's mental search paused. "A whole day? That dose was only supposed to last half an hour. I guess I used too much." "Any amount would have been too much. There is a good reason that Chemical Fear was banned. No person should ever have to go through what you put me through. I'd use it on you right now if I had any." "Hey, I only did that to let you know how I felt when you tried to have me killed." "You could have told me how you felt. As for having you killed, what was I supposed to do? You were spying on us, and you'd been interrupted while trying to send Knothole's location. As it turned out, you weren't sending to Snively, but since you forgot to tell us you were bringing reinforcements, what were we supposed to think?" A charged silence ensued, but only lasted twenty seconds before Sally began to cry. "The worst part wasn't what you did to me, but what that did to the others. All these years, I've tried to be brave when no one else could, to lend courage so we could keep fighting. But after that day..." Sally sank to her knees and broke down in tears. Kenal slowly approached, lifted Sally's chin with the backside of a paw, and looked her straight the eye. "Please, tell me." "After that day, no one could count on me as much as they had. Even Tails... something had scared him, but when he came to me for support, all I could do was run away from him. Even an apology can't undo that." Still looking into Sally's eyes, Kenal finally remembered the words and adopted the soft voice that King had said to use. "I now know what I did was wrong, Princess, and I promise never to do it again. If at all possible, please forgive me." Another silence ensued, eventually broken only by Sally's whisper, "You're forgiven." The two embraced. Kenal took a mental note to figure out what had just happened, and why he now felt sorry even though he hadn't when Sonic delivered him. This silence ended when Bunny cried out from just beyond the door. "Woah! Oh mah stars, woah!" Sally and Kenal exchanged looks of confusion, then Sally opened the door. Sonic appeared to be floating six meters in the air, slowly rising. Bunnie was hanging on to his ankles and nervously staring at the receding ground. "What happened?" Sally's confusion was obvious. "I was trying to get sugar-hog out o' the porch when he just popped free and rose into the air," Bunny replied, followed by a confirming "Mmm-mm-MMm" from Sonic's closed mouth. Kenal rolled his eyes as his annoyance showed in his voice. "Yes, Grisha, that's what they look like. Now put them down. Krkaw!" A large red griffin paw faded into view around Sonic, completely immobilizing his arms, legs, and mouth. The rest of King's advisor faded into view attached to that paw. Simultaneously, King and two other griffins a few centimeters shorter than Grisha also faded out of invisibility. Each one was wearing a hologram projector/personal cloaking device in a pendant which appeared after its wearer did. A strange collar and a cloak pendant around Kenal's neck were the last things to become visible. Dissapointed that she could no longer see the strange creatures through her paw, Grisha gently set Bunnie down, then opened her paw. Sonic exhaled and leapt down. "Man, you could use some paw deoderant. Phew! Why didn't we smell you approaching?" "Our paw bottoms put out a special cleaner while we're walking so they don't get dirt all over them. It breaks down immediately after secretion, so you won't smell it unless your nose is right up against one of our paws. Neither will the SWATbots, if they can smell." Grisha's voice was curt and to the point. Sonic coughed the last of the stench out of his mouth. "SWATbots? Don't tell me you're joining us." King quickly answered, "Not exactly, but that's the reason we're all here instead of just Kenal. We would like to ask your help in liberating our roboticized bretheren." "Our help? What do you need us for?" Sonic pointed to King's pendant. "With those gizmos, you could just sneak in and out of Robotropolis no problem." "We could, and we have since we developed these a month ago. But our deroboticizer's hidden, and if we try to take any workerbots to it, they'd broadcast its location to Snively and Packbell before we could deroboticize them. So, instead, we're going to take over their roboticizers and throw them in reverse. We have never actually raided Robotropolis before, so we thought it wise to ask for assistance from those who have - namely, you." "Throw 'em in reverse? How? It's not like they have a 'reverse' switch you can just flip." "They do now. Here's one of them." With a flourish, King detached a roboticizer inverter cartridge from his pendant. Sally thought fast. "Um, King, can we borrow this after you're done with it? We've had troubles getting our own deroboticizer to work, even with the files you gave us." King smiled. "If you help us get all of the griffins deroboticized, you may keep this as payment. We'll even deliver a few others in case this one gets damaged." Grisha was not of the same mind. "Your magesty, might I ask why we are helping them so much? Surely one is enough for these...these...outsiders." King stared Grisha down. Which was an impressive task, given their relative sizes. "Are you questioning the judgement - nay, the ORDERS - of your Monarch?" Chin to the ground, Grisha's words almost collided with each other at the speed with which she replied. "No, your highness. Not at all. Nope. Not me. Uh-uh." "Good." King turned his head back towards Sally. "As one Monarch to another, I formally request assistance against our common foe." "We shall grant assistance." Sally blinked. "Wait...I'm not a Monarch, I'm a Princess." "While your father remains in the Void, you are the senior royal member of the royal House of Acorn on Mobius, are you not? Should your father be unable to return to Mobius alive, does that not technically make you Queen Sally, or as we would call it, Monarch Sally?" "I..." Sally pondered for a few seconds before remembering. "No! We will find a way to bring him back. I swear it!" King symbolically backed up a step. "Oh, sorry. But you will grant us assistance?" "Of course." Sally turned to Sonic. "Get the others. We have a mission to plan." ****** Most of the Freedom Fighters in Knothole had gathered in the War Room. At King's request, Dulcy was not present. Sally had assigned Tails to keep Dulcy from getting bored and listening in just to have something to do. She did not want to think about the possible trouble if Dulcy knew that griffins were present, especially since the griffins took up enough space that there was barely enough room left inside the War Room for the Freedom Fighters. The griffins had become noticeably uneasy when they came in, but King explained that that was because they were used to substantially larger rooms. Sonic was busy scrubbing off Rotor's coating as Sally laid out the mission. He hated to give up the extra speed, but Sonic knew that precision would be more useful on the upcoming mission. As Sally finished outlining the plan, she noticed Sonic's distraction. "Sonic! Are you listening?" "Yeah, sure, Sal. We divert the botbrains by smashing a refinery while the griffins find their workerbots, grab 'em, and haul 'em over to a roboticizer for deroboticization. I run interference once they start, to give the griffins time to escape. But what I don't get is, if we're supposed to be helping them, why didn't they bring some extra whatchamacallits for us to use during the raid?" Grisha was annoyed, and it showed. "Hologram cloak pendants. We can not take the risk that they will fall into anyone else's hands. The ones that we have will explode if its wearer dies." Grisha's voice dropped to a mutter. "Besides, we won't help outsiders." Although Grisha had intended to mumble under her voice, the shocked looks of everyone around showed her that she had not. Kenal was the first to recover his voice. "I shall stay behind and apologize for your words, Grisha. We will help them." He took off his pendant and handed it to Sonic. King frowned and stared deep into Grisha's eyes. "Kenal is right, Grisha. My orders are that we cooperate with them, helping them as they help us. If you disobey me again, I'll leave you in Robotropolis AS a robot." Grisha was taken aback, but managed to get out a hasty "Yes, m'lord" before King did anything else. Sonic tried to loop the pendant's chain around his neck. Since it was designed for Kenal, the chain was too small to fit, so Sonic put it on his left wrist just behind his glove. Bunny remembered how the pendant's chain had nearly choked her when she wore it as Sonic asked, "So how does this thing work?" "Put this on." Kenal took off the outer layers of his collar, which turned out to be a wraparound visor with a reflective surface on both sides. This drew surprised looks from the other griffins, but Kenal ignored them. Sonic complied. "Mirrorshades? Hey, I can't see anything through 'em." He began to take the visor off when Kenal interrupted with "Kckca!" Sonic was invisible in a second. "Now I can't see anything." "Put the visor on." "Ok...way past wierd. It's like the visor is the only light source around." "For you, it is. The pendant warps light around your body to make you invisible, so no light can get to your eyes. We usually set our pendants to copy the light that the wearer would see to the space just in front of their eyes, but since I didn't have your measurements, I set it to send light to the visor instead." King interrupted, "You planned to give your visor to Sonic all along? Why didn't you tell me that you didn't want to go on the mission?" Kenal looked back to King. "Not all of us have as high an opinion of non- griffins as you and I, brother." Grisha was about to agree, but remembered King's threat as Kenal continued. "I knew something like this would happen. You would've, too, if you hadn't locked yourself up in that throne room since you got the crown, only coming out when you want to see what it's like away from Home." "Kenal, I..." "The griffins are waiting for you to free them, brother. Do it now, please, before Grisha can embarass us again." Kenal's comment infuriated Grisha, but she wisely decided not to say anything as King headed for the door. Sonic's voice echoed through the room. "Are you sure I'm invisible? I can see myself, but it's like I'm a ghost or something." "Another effect of the pendant: you can see anyone who's wearing one, but if the pendant's on, they'll appear translucent on your visor to signify that. Oh, and don't get any further away than Robotropolis. I'm wearing a transmitter," Kenal fingered the rest of his collar, "and I've set up a relay so the pendant can pick up its signal in Robotropolis or the Great Forest. If you go any further away from here, the pendant won't be able to detect my signal, think I'm dead, and explode." "Right. Sal, can you make sure he lives 'til I get back?" Sally chuckled in response, walked over to Kenal, and picked him up. Unseen by Sally, Grisha stared daggers at the two. "Ok, Sonic. Trash a 'bot for me, will you?" "Outta here!" Everyone inside was knocked off their feet by Sonic's exit. All but six of the Mobians in the room hit the ground running for the door. The four raiding griffins never hit the ground until they got to Robotropolis. ****** Robotropolis was getting worse every day. "If the Freedom Fighters keep this up," Snively thought, "there won't be enough left of Robotropolis for them to raid before long." Fortunately for him, Snively had noticed that all of their raids lately had been at night. During the day, he could let the city recharge and rebuild without bothering with security. Snively had long ago shifted to day sleeping so he could be awake no matter what time of night a raid started. He was right in the middle of a pleasant dream when the alarm when off in mid-afternoon. "Zzz - huh? Wha?" Snively bolted upright when he recognized the security alarm. He scrambled over to the control room, but Packbell was already there. "I told you it was only a matter of time before they tried another day raid. Good thing I saw this coming." Packbell pushed a button, and the SWATbots hidden near the refinery being hit marched into action. "Computer: locate hedgehog." "SONIC HEDGEHOG NOT DETECTED IN RAIDING FORCE." "Looks like he took a break this time. Strange, he usually..." Suddenly, the SWATbots started falling apart in a familiar pattern, except that no blue blur was visible streaking from 'bot to 'bot. Packbell was at a loss for words as he unsucessfully scanned his memory banks to try to find out what was happening. Snively smirked at Packbell's confusion. "It appears that the hedgehog has become invisible." "You're right. But how?" "Good question. An even better one is, what are the griffin workerbots on the other side of Robotropolis doing?" Packbell turned to another monitor to see the workerbots Snively had mentioned floating through the air backwards. "Their diagnostics don't show anything unusual. Maybe the Freedom Fighters have tinkered with them. Get over there and check it out while I deal with the raid, Snively." Glad to have an excuse to get away from Packbell, and genuinely curious as to what was wrong with the workerbots, Snively hurried to comply. ****** Back at Sally's hut, Sally was still carrying Kenal. "Don't bother apologizing, Kenal. I know she meant it, and I know you wish she hadn't." Kenal's mouth hung open, his comment stopped before it started. "Besides, you had another reason for staying behind. Otherwise you would have warned King before Grisha opened her mouth." "Yes. Besides the C-Fear, I also wanted to apologize for lying to you, to make sure you knew the truth." "Lying? You left out some facts, but that isn't lying." "When we first met, I said that I'd woken up in a lab after being roboticized. That wasn't true. I spent three years as a workerbot, scouting whatever needed to be searched. Eventually, Snively sent me to look for Home, but the griffins knocked me out of the air when they figured out what I was up to. The crash somehow freed my mind and shorted out my tracking beacon; we never found out how. Some of the griffins did not trust me - I was still a robot, after all - so after finding out what had happened, King had synthetic fur and feathers made, put them on me, and sent me to find you before the others could act on their distrust. That's how I first met you." "Synthetics? Made where?" "At Home. The war hasn't touched it, so we've still got the ability to make just about anything we want." "Where is your home?" "Not 'my home', Home. That's its name. Every griffin has taken a vow never to reveal where it is to anyone. That, and the fact that no one believes we still exist, helped us to remain hidden; first from the dragons, and now from Snively." "Couldn't Snively just ask the roboticized griffins where Home is?" "I don't know why he hasn't. Maybe he thought we didn't know, or maybe he just didn't think to ask." Silence fell again as the two stared out the window towards where they both knew Robotropolis was. Suddenly, Tails and Dulcy flew past in a game of air tag. Kenal's eyes widened. "Don't worry, Dulcy doesn't know you're in here." "It's not her - I know that fox from somewhere. I saw him about a month after I was roboticized. I thought he was dead." "Tails? Where did you see him?" "Packbell was destroying a bunch of villages one night, and at each village, he sent me out to make sure that the SWATbots hadn't missed anyone. That fox was hiding under a bed in one of the last villages. I could tell he was in shock, and that he'd starve to death before he could recover. It was the closest I'd ever come to free will under Snively's control when I skipped the details and just told Packbell that he was already dead." The memories flooded back. Sally felt Kenal shiver from fear. "After that night, Snively told Packbell not to use me again, and not to tell Robotnik about me or any of the other griffins. Snively kept most of us working in his labs, but anytime he went on a mission without Robotnik or Packbell, he'd take me along, have me watch, and make me record the entire thing for playback. When I got my free will back, the first thing I tried was to erase those memories. I didn't suceed; I just locked them away." A bright flash from Robotropolis preceded a rumbling boom that could be heard even in Knothole. ****** The refinery was a smoldering crater. Also part of the crater were the fuel dump that had kept the refinery running, the whole city block that the buildings had stood on, all of the surrounding blocks, and a large portion of the blocks that had surrounded those blocks. Not that anyone could see the smoke rising from the crater, since it blended very nicely with the rest of the smog over Robotropolis. A cheer rose from the Freedom Fighters assembled as they surveyed the damage. They did not even bother to hide, since no robots were left in the area. The workerbots had been withdrawn to safer portions of Robotropolis, and all other robots in sight were now scrap. Better still, no one alive had been hurt. One vixen was not cheering, but crying. Antoine approached her. "What is wrong, mon cherie?" "Nothing. It's just...it's so beautiful..." Antoine led her away as most of the other Freedom Fighters present, knowing that more robots were en route from other parts of the city, headed for the forest. One invisible hedgehog went the other way. Sonic dashed around Robotropolis, searching for anything unusual. There was an unusual robot walking around, but when Sonic tried to slice through it, he just bounced off its armor. Since the robot didn't even seem to notice his attack, Sonic decided to deal with it later and checked out the roboticizer that the griffins had planned on using. When he arrived, Sonic was treated to a first-hand look at mass deroboticization as the griffins wrestled a workerbot into the roboticizer, hit a button on the cartridge plugged into the roboticizer's side, watched as the roboticizer undid its curse, then ushered the deroboticized griffin towards a growing crowd of former workerbots. The show did not last long since only four workerbots remained by the time Sonic arrived. He knew what was involved, but Sonic could still barely believe his eyes when the last workerbot was enveloped by the roboticizer's yellow beam, which faded to reveal a griffin with his body and his free will restored. Grisha was the first to notice Sonic's entrance. "So you finally got here. What kept you? Couldn't run fast enough? Too concerned about your friends to..." "GRISHA! That's enough out of you!" King reared up on his legs to stare down at his defiant advisor. "Everyone else, get out of here. I'll deal with Grisha myself." The other griffins complied, forming an airborne swarm that overwhelmed the few SWATbots too slow to get out of its way. A hoverbot tried to follow it, but the swarm reversed course just long enough to envelop the 'bot. Fifteen seconds later, the hoverbot's pieces made nice pinging sounds as they were dropped on the outskirts of Robotropolis. Nothing else bothered the swarm as it soared back to Home. ****** "They'll be bragging about that one tonight." At times, Sally could predict the actions of the other Freedom Fighters like clockwork. This was one of those times. "That was supposed to happen?" "Well, that wasn't the way we planned it, but they probably found a fuel dump or something. I just hope they're ok. Why?" "I was worried that it might be one of the pendants, or the crown's curse." "Oh, right, the pendants. Don't worry, you can tell it wasn't the right size explosion." An object as small as the pendants, Sally thought, would not make a blast audible from this far away. "Yeah, it was too small." Sally glanced quizically at Kenal, but let her question die unasked as she switched to another. "What's this about the crown? It's explosive as well?" "Not directly. You see, after our ancestors nearly died fighting the dragons, the last of our sorcerers used their power to create the crown. Most of the crown's powers are what you'd call mind control and telepathy. The crown only has two powers over matter directly. "First, when its wearer retires, or is retired by death, the crown passes itself to whoever is next in line. Appointed heirs are possible, but we haven't needed any for a long time. Whoever gets the crown changes their name to reflect that. My brother's name was Kishar at birth, but it changed to King after got the crown when our father was roboticized - it's close enough to death to count. If he loses the crown without children, I'm next." "You're next?" A problem appeared in Sally's mind. "And if you lose it?" "I have no heirs, so the crown's other power would turn on. If the crown's wearer retires and the crown has no one to go to, the sorcerers rigged it so that Home would turn into a volcano." "You can evacuate if that happens, right?" Kenal's head drooped. "We could, but we'd be better off staying at Home. The volcano was enchanted to put enough smoke and dirt in the air that all sunlight would be blocked from Mobius for at least a year. And without sunlight, all life on Mobius would die: first the plants, then anything that feeds on the plants, then anything that feeds on those." Sally's eyes glazed over as she imagined the catastrophe. "Why would anyone want that to happen?" "The sorcerers wanted to make sure that griffins, and the griffin monarchy, lasted at least as long as the rest of life on Mobius. We've tried to find ways to get rid of the crown without setting off the volcano, but it seems that we need to use the sorcery that created it. We dare not try that." "If it's the only way, then why not?" Kenal looked up at Sally in mild surprise. "You haven't heard the legends of our sorcerers? We thought the dragons loved to retell those tales." "They did, but I thought those were just exaggerations. I didn't think such evil could exist until Robotnik took over." "Our sorcerers would have made Robotnik look like a saint. Anyone who gains their power becomes evil. It's the reason the dragons tried to exterminate us. We can't prevent the evil, so if anyone were to try to use their sorcery, the result could be worse than the crown's curse." ****** Back at the deroboticizer, King's "crown" was starting to glow. Sonic wondered what King was doing when the armored robot marched through the door. "Darn it! They're gone!" Snively's voice could be heard from inside the robot, which on closer examination looked like a suit of power armor - which it was. With Freedom Fighters present, even if they were on the other side of Robotropolis, Snively had decided to try out the armor that he'd built after the FFs had almost killed him for a third time. He'd made it out of what was left of the roboticizer that Robotnik had built to contain Sonic, but not before something about the alloys it was made of had fried every robot brain that had gotten near it. Something had almost knocked Snively off balance en route to the workerbots, but Snively couldn't see what it was. "A non-event," he thought, "since it didn't even scratch the armour." King's crown faded to its usual golden color as he turned towards the distraction. Snively raised an arm, revealing a built-in laser rifle. As if shaking off a trance, Grisha blinked, took in the situation, and shoved King into the laser's line of fire as Snively let off a blast out of frustration. The blast hit the chain holding King's pendant around his neck. As it fell off, the pendant faded into visibility, then slowly blinked between glowing and not glowing. King became visible, but did not blink. "Ah ha! So you're the one who's been causing trouble back here. I don't know where the other workerbots went, but soon there will be one more." Snively cackled as he put his armor into overdrive and snatched King off the floor before he could react. Sonic pounced at Snively's armor, but was plucked out of the air by Grisha as she flew out the door. Sonic would have protested, but Grisha's beak was around Sonic's neck just tight enough to make breathing difficult without breaking his skin. Without any SWATbots in the area, Snively had to tie up King by bending some leftover pipes around his paws and wings. Once King was suitably immobilized, Snively placed him on the roboticizer's pedestal. Snively's armor made typing difficult, but he did manage to hit the "lower cylinder" button before King could slide off. Snively pulled King's cartridge out of the roboticizer, looked at it to try to figure it out, then put it aside for later while he typed in the roboticization command. All the while, King's pendant blinked faster and faster. "You'll never get away with this. If you don't let me go right now, even that armor won't protect you." "Hmm...you know, I think that's the first new taunt you Freedom Fighters have come up with in years. Ahahahahahaha..." King's pendant was now a solid glow, growing in intensity, but only King noticed it. "Kenal..." Snively activated the roboticizer just before the pendant detonated. King's world went yellow, then white. ****** The second bright flash was ignored by Sally and Kenal, who were concentrating on something more important. "Kenal, did you know that your head is glowing?" "What?!? Quick, do you have a mirror?" Sally pointed to a mirror on her desk as the explosion's rumble shook the village. "What did they hit?" "NOOOooooo..." Sally snapped out of her musing to see Kenal in tears. "What's wrong? You..." The glow faded as a familiar circle of golden feathers appeared on Kenal's head. "What's the crown doing here?" "King's been retired." "Been retired? You mean, Packbell...?" Kenal (now King) nodded as his tears slowed to a trickle. Sally quickly deduced the second explosion's source. "But how could that happen? Unless...Dulcy! Tails! Sonic's in trouble; we've got to get him out." King looked up as Sally ran to the door still carrying him. "Unless what?" "Your brother said you've been going in and out of Robotropolis for a while. Packbell's probably come up with some way of seeing through your cloak, and set a trap." ****** Packbell wished that he had set a trap after reviewing the final surveillance video from the roboticizer's camera. How Snively had managed to hit the griffin he'd never know. Packbell would just ask or torture, probably torture, Snively until he told, but even Snively's armor wasn't designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. It was a small blast, as nuclear ones went. Merely a tenth of Robotropolis had been leveled, and most of that was rubble before the blast anyway. The left over radiation was minimal, not enough to cause radiation poisoning even if he'd confined a Freedom Fighter to the blasted area's center for a whole day. His train of thought was interrupted by another security alert. The whelp dragoness, the two-tailed kit fox, and a small griffin had just been spotted over the Great Forest, apparently headed for Robotropolis. Air distortions underneath the trio were consistent with Sonic's usual mode of travel, although similar distortions had been detected just before the blast, heading for Snively's destination. Someone else, it seemed, had gained Sonic's speed. Packbell examined his list of 'bots, and quickly saw that very few were left. He decided to leave them guarding critical areas in case the FFs struck again, and set off to deal with matters personally. Before leaving, Packbell quickly uploaded his memory to a duplicate of his body, then set the duplicate to turn itself on if he lost contact with Robotropolis's main computer. With both Robotnik and Snively gone, Packbell knew that he'd have to take care of his own revivals from now on. "This has been a very bad day," Packbell concluded. ****** "This has been a very good day," Snively concluded. Snively laid among the wreckage of his armor. It had been destroyed by whatever had happened, but the armor had saved his life. The roboticizer was a total loss, along with the prisoner, and the workerbots were history. Packbell would not be pleased. But Snively did not care any more. The explosion had taken out every security camera in sight, so Packbell couldn't see Snively. When Packbell investigated and saw the pieces of his armor, Snively knew that Packbell would have to assume that Snively had not survived unless Snively proved otherwise. Since playing dead meant never having to take Packbell's orders - and more importantly, Packbell's abuse - any more, Snively was not about to disillusion Packbell. Snively crawled into the sewers and pondered his options. He could leave Robotropolis, but then the Freedom Fighters would find him. He could return to his quarters, but then Packbell would find him. Neither choice seemed good. Snively headed for the one area where he thought neither side would find him: the command tower's basement. ****** Grisha let Sonic drop just outside the city limits. "What did you do that for? We could have saved him." "Kishar died saving our lives. At least, that's what I'll say. No griffin will take your word over mine. And whoever is the next Monarch will be more persuadable than he was." "You mean you wanted him to die? Why, you..." Sonic leapt at Grisha, but she flew out of reach. "Better he die than have that outsider-friend on the throne. Anyone else would be better. Anyone but Kenal, that is." Grisha probably would have continued her tirade if four familiar figures hadn't zoomed into view at that moment. "Yo, Sal! Over here." Sonic tried waving, then remembered that he was still invisible. "How do you turn this off, anyway?" "Krkaw!" King's caw turned Grisha's and Sonic's pendants off. Sonic took his visor off as Sally ran up, Tails and Dulcy landed nearby, and King leapt off of Dulcy. He'd hidden on her back just before she "cracked the whip". King wasn't sure what that meant, but in a second, Dulcy was flying faster than he had ever flown before. "Are you ok? We know what happened to King, but what about the others?" "You know that Grisha killed him?" All present turned towards Grisha, who merely smirked. "He had it coming. And you're next, King." With a sudden change in her flapping, Grisha hurtled towards King, who cowered in fear. "Leave him alone!" Dulcy took off and tried to intercept Grisha, but the grifoness giant swatted the relatively smaller dragoness out of the sky with both front paws. As Dulcy abruptly landed, something repeatedly slammed Grisha's head from behind. "Yeah!" Tails grabbed Grisha's neck for purchase, then spun his namesakes so they would hit Grisha's skull on each twirl. Grisha swung a paw at Tails, but he jumped away and landed on Grisha's beak. "How did you get up here? No matter, you little - YOW!" Grisha jolted to the side as Dulcy shot flames from the ground. Tails fell off, hovered for a bit, then dropped to cover as a laser beam passed between his tails. Everyone else quickly dashed for cover when they saw that Packbell had fired the beam. Both of Packbell's hands carried laser rifles. He peppered the scene with laser shots, slowly eating away at his enemies' cover. "So, this is how it ends? Cowering as death creeps closer..." The rock in front of Sonic and King crumbled. Sonic leapt between Packbell's beams to Sally's cover, while King ducked lower and fumbled with the pendant he'd taken from Sonic. "...and closer? Not a very heroic death, if you ask me. Honestly, I expected something more flamboyant for your final moments." "Like this?" The only rock large enough to hide Grisha had also hid Dulcy. The griffin picked Dulcy up and hurled her at Packbell. He stepped aside as Dulcy landed, then pressed one rifle into the base of her head as he continued spraying fire from the other. "Not bad, but..." "BACK OFF!" King's voice echoed from a thousand locations, temporarily deafening everyone present. Sonic looked to where King had been, but saw no one there as the sky darkened. Looking up, he saw a flock of small griffins appear out of nowhere, blotting out the sun and most of Robotropolis's artificial lights. King stepped forward. "The crowned griffin? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Say goodbye to the planet..." Packbell shot at King, but before he could see the result, another small crowned griffin stepped forward. Packbell shot it, and another appeared. After several repetitions of this, Packbell made a mistake: he took his other rifle away from Dulcy when his back was to her. The result was too gruesome to describe, even though Packbell was its only victim. ****** As the last molten scraps of Packbell rained down, the flock of griffins shrunk. Parts of griffins passed through parts of other griffins, revealing the flock to be just a massive hologram. All of the images coalesced into the one griffin that they had been copies of: King Skyer. "Cool trick, Kenal!" "Thanks, but the name's King as long as I've got this." King pointed to his crown, then looked around. "Where's Grisha?" "Right here." Grisha smirked from some distance away. Another circle of golden feathers could be seen on her head. "Grisha, no one's going to buy a painted-on circle like that." "They'll believe the one who can use the crown's powers." "Right." King paused, then concentrated. Both crowns glowed. Grisha waved a paw, and King flew backwards into a chunk of rubble. The crowns stopped glowing. "My crown may be fake, but they won't care. I'll just tell them that you were the one who killed Kishar. If you ever come home..." Grisha finished her sentence by drawing a finger across her neck. She visibly chuckled, then dissapeared in a flash of light. Dulcy looked at King, then back at where Grisha had been, then back at King. "What just happened?" "Grisha's revived the old sorcery. She used it to make a fake crown. And she'll get everyone to think my crown is fake before I can get back." "So? Go back and prove that your crown is the real one." "I can't. Her powers mimic mine. Even if I can get around that, death on sight is the only punishment we have for traitors. I'd need a sucessor before I could return, and only griffins can take the crown." "In that case, you can stay with us while you figure out a way to return." Sonic removed King's pendant. "We'll just borrow this while you're here." "Don't bother. I landed on it when Grisha threw me. I think it's broken." Sally did a double-take, then snatched the pendant out of Sonic's hand and hurled it away. "What'd you do that for, Sal? So it's broken..." "Sonic, those things are nuclear bombs!" Sonic did not think he could get any more surprised. He was wrong. "Not that one. I made up the story about a transmitter so the others wouldn't get suspicious. Actually, I removed the explosive before I left Home. It 'self-destructed' when I handed it to Sonic, but with nothing to destruct, nothing happened." Sonic relaxed on hearing King's words, then raced Sally to get the broken pendant back. ****** Back at Knothole, everybody was celebrating except for King. Bunny noticed and walked over to him. "Hey, what are you doing so glum? Sure, your brother's dead, but we got all your other relatives out. Snively's as much of a threat as Robotnik now, and Packbell's minus another body. At this rate, Robotropolis'll be shut down in no time." "I know. It's just..." King pawed the ground, then looked up at Bunny. "That's your battle. Mine is at Home, and I think I just lost. Forever." "Sugah, you know we'd help y'all if you'd let us." "Thanks. You've already helped, just by letting me stay here for a while." "Speaking of which, King, you need to find a place to sleep. The nights can be very cold in Knothole, and I don't want you freezing to death," Sally said as she approached with Rosie. "And no more dissapearing into the forest every night like you did last time you were here." King looked around. "Where do you sleep?" "In the huts. And you?" King replied in an incredulous tone. "You're kidding. How do you get comfortable in a place that small? At Home, my bedroom was about three times as large as any of these huts, and it was smaller than most." "Well, they're our only shelter right now." "I don't think I could get to sleep inside any of them." He pointed to a tree. "There. I'll sleep in the branches." "There? But that's..." Rosie smiled. "He's made his choice, dear. Let him sleep there. And come by my hut tonight. There's something you'll want to see." Sally turned to Rosie and recognized her look. Something was up. ****** The night was indeed cold. King shivered, but tried to get to sleep. Shifting positions, he accidentally broke the branches he lay on, and fell to some thicker ones near the tree bottom. He thought the tree didn't have branches this low, but King didn't bother to open his eyes as he felt a fire's warmth nearby. "Probably a leftover campfire," King thought as he crawled along the branch. He felt a soft surface near the tree trunk and a sheet of some kind. After feeling around for a few seconds, King concluded that someone must have stood a bed on end near the tree. He settled into it, and was asleep in a minute. Alarm bells were ringing in Sally's head as she watched from Rosie's hut, but she said nothing. Rosie noticed and walked over to her. "Don't worry, dearie. When you told me what Dulcy did at Robotropolis, I knew something like this would happen." "This? All she did was attack another griffin." "Yes, but why?" "She was protecting...Kenal?" Realization spread across Sally's face. "Mmm-hm. You were worried about her protector instincts, the ones that make her hate griffins? The same instincts make her protect the ones she cares about - and love is stronger than hate. All those years fighting Robotnik, I'd thought you woulda figured that out by now." Sally blankly returned Rosie's look. "Think, Sally. How did you win against Robotnik? Power couldn't do it - even now, Packbell's SWATbots outnumber you, what, ten to one? As for tactics and strategy, you were going against the War Minister. He had to know more about that than you. No, the reason you won was because you cared about each other. You fought together while Robotnik didn't care about losing his 'bots. And that," finished Rosie, "decided the whole war. Now get your sleep, dearie." Zombie-like, Sally walked back to her own hut as she pondered Rosie's words. As she reached her bed, Sally set her alarm to play a final prank on King. ****** Next morning, King woke up remembering the strange bed that he'd found. Feeling around, he noted that it was still there, but when he opened his eyes Dulcy was the only thing he saw. "Hi there." King ducked under the sheet, then felt around. Both the bed and the sheet were covered with rows of green scales... King's head popped out of Dulcy's pouch. "Nicole: record snapshot." As it turned out, Sally didn't need to take a picture of the scene. The look on King's face stayed in Sally's memory for the rest of her life. After figuring out what had happened and why, King was not so afraid of Dulcy any more. Rosie knitted him a heavy blanket so he wouldn't have to sleep in Dulcy's pouch, but for the rest of his stay in Knothole, King slept in Dulcy's tree. Even his nightmares were chased away by the presence of a protector.