NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 23

Blue eyes widened and turned on the girl on the other side of the cage bars as their owner got up and moved closer, watching the girl on the other side of the bars like she was a puzzle. “S...Sonic?” She asked, tone so full of hope and fear it was painful.

“It’s alright, little bro. I’ll get you out of here.” Speedster promised, just barely keeping control of the raging power inside her that wanted to rip Sawyer into tiny pieces. “And it’s Speedster now.”

Before the kid could reply, Sawyer cackled slightly and something large and metallic shot out of the nearest door. It was fast, almost impossibly fast. It didn’t quite match up to Speedster though, who easily dodged the incoming attack.

The metallic silver humanoid didn’t stop, doubling back and forcing Speedster to go on the defensive, pushing her back as she tried to defend herself against the powerful, heavy blows. Speedster managed to knock it back, using her speed to give her the momentum to send the robot crashing to the ground on the opposite side of the room.

Speedster slid to a stop in front of the cage, shielding her little brother/sister while keeping her sharp gaze on the robot. It wasn’t just silver, she realised as it picked itself up. It wasn’t really silver at all, more like a steel grey and though she hadn’t been able to see properly at speed, she could see that the greater majority of its metal plating had in fact been painted blue. A cobalt blue that was eerily close to her natural hair colour.

“I couldn’t resist seeing if I could build something to match you in speed.” Sawyer gloated, “It’s superior to you in every other way, thinks faster, smarter, punches harder, even actually strategizes, unlike you.”

“Ah but it doesn’t look anywhere near as cool as me.” Speedster shot back, watching the robot carefully. “Needs to be at least twenty percent cooler for that.”

“Metal Speedster doesn’t need to be as cool as you in order to annihilate you.” Sawyer snorted, sounding offended.

“Well it ain’t as fast eith...ack!” Speedster yelped as the metallic version of her launched itself at her, the pair crashing through the electrified fencing and landing heavily on the other side. Metal Speedster bounced upon impact with the ground, his systems knocked offline by the electricity, and slammed into the prisoner who went crashing into the metal fencing.

Sawyer’s cameras couldn’t pick up what happened next, but he heard the girl scream in pain and then there was an explosion of light and heat and energy and the cry stopped.

A golden blur emerged from the damaged cage, both delighting and terrifying Sawyer in the same moment as it came to a stop to reveal Speedster, the prisoner in her arms, but not the same Speedster who had challenged him to start with.

This Speedster was golden blonde, her normally warm emerald green eyes a vicious, angry ruby red. As she glared up at him, all hints of humour and sassiness squashed, he took note of the golden spine like protrusions emerging from her back that seemed to be made up of the same energy that surrounded her in a fire like aura which seemed to do no harm to the girl she was carrying, but was merrily melting the nearby metal.

“So you can go Super.” Sawyer considered his options, wondering just how in control she was. He didn’t remember the form before him very well at all. It was never around for very long. All he remembered was that it was a threat. “I didn’t think you could, considering you’ve had no access to Chaos energy.”

Speedster carefully set the prisoner down, gesturing for her to get out of the way. The girl wasn’t stupid, she scurried to one side, getting away from the danger as Speedster darted forward, launching herself upwards and knocking the stupid little hovercar thing out of the air.

Sawyer tumbled out, hit the floor and bounced, twice before laying on the ground, groaning in pain. Speedster didn’t give him time to recover, launching another attack that sent him crashing into the wall the other side of the room.

“Get up.” She snarled at him as he collapsed into a heap at the bottom of the wall. “Get up so I can knock you back down. Just like you did to all the people whose lives you’ve ruined.”

Sawyer realised, as he pushed himself into a sitting position, only to see her preparing to attack again, that it might have been a rather bad idea to have pushed the other Fusion this far. “Speedster, let’s be reasonable about this...” He tried.

“Reasonable?” Speedster laughed, not a mirthful laugh, but a harsh, bitter one, “You want to be reasonable? After what you’ve done? I should destroy you for everything you’ve done.”

“But you’re Sonic!” Sawyer panicked slightly as she moved towards him, backing into the wall, almost trying to press himself into it, “You don’t kill! You’ve never killed!”

“This time I have no qualms about making an exception.” She growled at him, still moving towards him, steps slow, steady and measured. She wanted him panicking, he realised, she wanted him frightened and aware of every last second he had. This wasn’t the same girl he had been dealing with before, this wasn’t even the Fusion of the girl. This was something new, something vicious.

Something dangerous.

“Sp...Speedster, think about this.” He babbled, scrambling to one side and darting for his hovercar, only to get cut off by a blur of golden light which knocked him back against the wall. “You...You’re not a killer. You finish me, you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life. Can you live with that?”

“If I don’t, you’ll never stop.” Speedster retorted, “You’ll just keep wrecking lives. I can stop you, here and now. So I should.” Sawyer’s eyes closed and he threw his hands up to defend himself, only to pause the blow never came.

The prisoner had stepped between Speedster and her target, arms spread wide, shielding him from her ‘brother’ despite his actions.

“Son...Speedster?” The girl’s voice was trembling, fear etched in her posture, “No. You can’t.”

“Move, Tails.” Speedster demanded, anger obvious.

“No.” The girl emphasised with a shake of her head, “He might deserve it, but you shouldn’t.”

“Tails...” Speedster took a step forward, ‘Tails’ didn’t move.

“You won’t hurt me, no matter what we look like or what form you’re in, I know you.” She told the threatening figure before her, “And I know you’re better than this. Don’t kill him. Hand him over, let the authorities deal with him, wreck his robots, destroy his base, I don’t care, but don’t kill him.”

Sawyer almost didn’t dare breathe and draw attention to himself as Speedster seemed to consider the other girl’s words. He didn’t know why ‘Tails’ was standing up for him, but he wasn’t going to question it when it could save his life.

He had just about made up his mind to make a break for it when something silver and blue erupted from the former holding cell, launching an attack on the golden girl that caused her to lose her intent focus on him.

He spared only a millisecond to wince at the sounds of metal being bent out of shape as Speedster went to town on her metallic counterpart, making a dash for the hovercar and managing to get it airborne before she was done turning it into scrap metal.

Ruby red eyes glowered after him for a heartbeat, before their owner was bouncing off of the nearest crates, then off of the wall, tucking in the middle of her bounce towards him, the golden energy spines taking a chunk out of the bottom of his hovercraft.

Then he was away, out through a hole in the ceiling, while Speedster came to a screeching halt down below, tumbling for a moment, leaving gouges in the floor behind her.

The main doors slammed open, startling Tails and causing Speedster to drop into an offensive pose, in case they were under attack again, only for Rowena and Luna to dart through the door, both hesitating for a moment, though Luna’s was more obvious.

“Where’s Sawyer?” Rowena asked, looking the pair over.

Speedster didn’t answer, instead she took another leap, this time managing to get through the hole in the roof and would have gone after the barely visible speck in the sky, except she got three steps, stumbled as it felt like she took an invisible blow that drained her of all the energy she had had at her disposal just moments ago, and collapsed to her knees as the aura vanished, taking all of the changes with it.

It didn’t take Luna long to scramble up the fire escape and join her, darting over and trying not to show her shock at the fact her friend’s hair was its natural cobalt blue colour. “You’re not supposed to go do these sorts of things without me, remember?” Luna scolded as she helped her friend to her feet.

“The robosuits...” Speedster mumbled, beginning to fall asleep and trying to stay awake to deal with what needed to be dealt with, “There’s a control hub around here somewhere.”

“We’ll find it.” Luna promised her friend. “Come on. Rowena’s gunna want a debrief before you can sleep.” With that she helped Speedster off of the roof.

She had gone through tired and back out the other side into awake again by the time Rowena was done lecturing her about ‘giving proper locations’ and ‘not running off without back up’ or ‘hiding abilities that we should know about.’ This was good as it allowed her to hover around the facility until Tails was cleared for being in the outside world, though the robosuited people required more time in order to ensure there were no other control systems Sawyer had left in place.

Luna didn’t like to tell her friend that she was pretty sure the only reason they were letting Tails go with them, was because they knew exactly where they could pick her up from if it was necessary later.