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.

NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 15

Speedster had come to the same realisation as she shot down the motorway, glad for the almost empty roads as she sped across the country at top speed, leaving a trail of scorched asphalt in her wake.

She heard the first sounds of gunfire as she shot down the nearest alleyway to the standoff, the constant hum of a machine gun being drowned out by the sounds of the sound of an artillery cannon. She didn’t stop as she emerged onto the street, instead building enough speed that she managed to create a twister of snow between the two groups that made both sides stop firing.

With nothing to fuel it, it stopped when she did, sending snow flying everywhere as she stopped in front of the man who looked like he was in charge of the military forces. “Hi.”

“Who the hell are you?” He demanded, anger obvious, “And get the hell out of our way.”

“They call me Speedster.” She replied, “And I think I can save them.” She gestured to the army of robosuits before her.

“You want to save the robots?” The man’s eyes gave away movement behind her and she shot up a lamp post, smirking slightly at the look on the face of the guy who had tried to grab her.

“No,” She corrected as if talking to small child, “I want to save the people inside them. Unless you want to be known as the Major who ordered the Christmas Massacre?”

“They opened fire first.” The Major pointed out.

“They had no choice.” Speedster retorted, “And you sound like you’re three. ‘He started it!’ Honestly.” She rolled her eyes, “Grow up and think.”

“Like we should listen to you, you think you’re a superhero.” The Major spat. “Go home. We don’t have time to humour your dressup games.”

“Give me half an hour.” Speedster tried to bargain, “Half an hour to get in, break the control console and ruin Sawyer’s plans. If I succeed, you won’t have to kill anyone. If I fail, you won’t have lost any men trying to get in.”

“You expect me to order my men to do nothing but sit on their thumbs and accept being under fire for half an hour?” The major looked disgusted.

“No.” Speedster admitted, “But if you actually look, you can see the difference between the robosuits and the normal robots, hell, on my way in I can tag a few in the front so you know which ones are fine to destroy without killing anyone inside. Just let me try and save them.”

“I can’t order my men to just get shot at for half an hour.” The major pointed out. “We have to fight back.”

“Fine. Whatever. I’m going in anyway.” Speedster snapped at him, “Just remember if the robosuits suddenly stop firing at you, stop firing at them. They’re not responsible for their actions and I’m damn well going to make sure Sawyer can’t control them anymore.”

With that she shot into the crowd of robots, doing as she had said she would and tagging the robots without people inside by using them to bounce amongst the crowd and into the warehouse complex.

She landed in front of the doors to the warehouse, mentally wincing as the sounds of gunfire restarted, only to shift to the side as the doors opened and a group of robots stomped out, led by a robosuit. She slipped in behind them before the doors could slam shut.

The corridor was dark, all the lights unlit except for the blinking red lights of security cameras and it took her eyes a moment to adjust, giving the robots in the corridor a chance to whine to life and open fire. Speedster moved on instinct, narrowly avoiding becoming swiss cheese as her Fusion’s reaction times saved her life.

She smashed her way through the robots, leaving a trail of metal and wreckage behind her. She would have worked her way through the rooms systematically but that same instinct that had saved her life drew her onwards, into the central hub of the building which was surprisingly empty considering the horde outside.

She glanced around, taking in the machines used to equip people with the robosuits, the teaching area for retraining people in how to walk once they had been treated and two small groups of robots and noting the lack of robosuits, suggesting that they were all outside, protecting the warehouse by being human shields and walking, unwilling, weapons.

“Who are you?” She jumped slightly and wheeled around to face the speaker, who was on the gantry above her. She glowered up at the huge, fat, egg shaped man with the ridiculous moustache as he continued, “And how the hell did you manage to wreck my robots without any weapons?”

“How do you think?” Speedster smirked at him before glancing around again, looking for a control panel and figuring it was probably in the office behind him, “Who do you think had the World Sphere before you? You’re not the only one who can got a power up you know.”

“World Sphere?” Sawyer asked, “Is that what it’s called?”

“Look,” Speedster interrupted, “We could do this all day. I could explain things, you could then ask more questions and we’d be back and forth till the cows come home, but I don’t got time for that. So how about we skip the chatting and you tell me how to switch off your control thingy and I prevent a massacre? Because seriously, your human shields aren’t going to be there much longer if you don’t turn off that damn machine.”

“Well I can tell who you’re not Fused with.” Sawyer smirked, “You don’t banter anywhere near enough to be Fused with a certain pest.”

“I figure I’m the upgrade.” She snorted, “Version 2.0, now with more kicking your ass and less pointless posturing.”

That made him chuckle, not that she got to see it as something nearly blindsided her and she only just avoided the metal arm swinging at her out of nowhere. She skidded across the floor, finding breaking difficult on the smooth surface, and got drawn into a brawl with the nearest group of robots, leaving a pile of wreckage strewn across the floor.

Then the robosuit that had attacked her from the shadows was on her again, forcing her to dodge repeatedly as she refused point blank to injure the poor person inside.

“Bloody hell, Doc.” She complained as she narrowly avoided a third and fourth swing, “This thing’s almost as fast as me.” She ran circles around it, recognising it as she did so as the robosuit containing Dr. J. Styler, and shot up the stairs behind it, bringing herself face to face with the wanna be tyrant. “Not. Now, control panel. Where is it?”

Sawyer took a swing at her himself, one which she dodged so easily that it was almost a joke.

“Okay,” She shrugged, “Don’t tell me. I bet it’s in here.” She darted around the fat man and into the office he had been stood in front of, wincing at the computer screens in front of her as she stopped to look around.

With no clue of how the computer she was working on actually functioned, she couldn’t help but wish she had brought Luna or Mako with her as she tried to work out how to shut down the control signal. She tried everything obvious she could think of and was just moving to try the much less subtle variant of stopping the computer when she was seized by the back of the catsuit and chucked across the room.

She slammed into the wall hard and before she could recover, she was pinned against it by a metal coated hand to her throat. She struggled against the robosuited Doctor’s grip, gasping in what little breath she could take past the metal digits, as Sawyer entered the room, looking pleased with himself.

“You honestly think that I’d have placed my control signal hub somewhere this obvious?” He asked the struggling girl, who could barely hear him over the roaring in her ears. “You disappoint me.”

“Screw. You.” She gasped out, trying a moment longer to pull the hand away from her throat before her eyes rolled back in her head, closed and she went limp in his grasp.

The moment she did so, the robosuit released its grip and she collapsed forward for a moment, before opening her eyes and ducking underneath the bot’s attempts to grab her, practically dancing out of his range. “Nice...try...” She smirked at him as she caught her breath.

“There’s still some faults.” Sawyer admitted, eyeing up the robosuit as he did so. “But nothing that won’t be worked out with time.”

“I don’t...plan on giving you any.” Speedster informed him before practically vanishing on the spot and attacking him, sending him tumbling into his computer system. The electronics started sparking dangerously as he pulled himself out of the smoking console.

“You little...” He trailed off as she smacked him back into it.

“Where’s the control hub?” She demanded, glowering at him, narrowly dodging the robosuit as she did so.

“Why would I tell you?” Sawyer asked, looking pleased with himself for some odd reason as he glanced at the damaged computer screen and reached for a switch.

“Because I’m going to keep kicking your butt if you don’t?” She asked, “And why are you so happy?”

“It’s on the roof, if you have to know.” He answered her, still smirking, “Not that it matters.”

“Why?” She asked warily.

“Because goodbye, that’s why.” He replied as he flipped the switch.

“Wha...ack!” Speedster yelped as the floor vanished underneath her and she tumbled to the floor below. She landed safely but the trapdoor closed behind her, leaving her stuck in a fenced off area of the ground floor that was made up of floor to ceiling metal fencing. Expecting to be able to crash through it easily, she went from zero to sixty in point two seconds, only to get a powerful electric shock that sent her crashing to the ground the moment the fencing fell.

Trembling with the side effects of the jolt, she pulled herself to her feet and looked up at the control room just in time to see something escaping through a newly opened hole in the roof.

“S...Shit.” She stammered, shooting up the stairs and bouncing off of the railing and the wall to get through the hole in time to find that the robosuit containing Dr. Styler was trying to move the control signal hub. “D...Don’t even think about i...it.” She managed, glowering at the pair.

“You? Again?”  Sawyer grumbled, examining her like she was a puzzle. “You’re human, that should have kept you long enough...”

“N...none of us are completely human anymore, S...Sawyer.” Speedster pointed out, pushing her tired and aching body into a strike on the robosuit, causing it to lose its grip on the control hub which went flying off of the roof and crashed to the floor, breaking into multiple pieces and causing the signal to cut off. “H...HA...argh!”

 Speedster’s triumphant crow as the robosuits stopped firing and starting panicking or freaking out or just standing still and the robots collapsed, was cut off as Sawyer drove his floating vehicle into her and she went crashing off of the roof herself, hitting the asphalt car park floor hard.

The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Sawyer getting away in his hovercar, despite Doctor Styler’s best attempts to stop him.

NaNo2013: Speedster's Secret: Part 12

“I’d love say say ‘sod it it’s Christmas,’” Speedster grumbled, “But we should at least check out the labs they’re being made in.”

“In that case, let’s go.” Mako pounded her right palm with her fist.

“When we know where, we’ll go.” Speedster nodded.

“In the mean time,” Luna sighed, “All we can do is practise and keep our skills sharp.”

“Which sucks.” Speedster complained, starting to pace again, “I hate waiting for anything.”

“Go for a run or something.” Luna shook her head in amusement, “If you take your phone, I’ll call you the moment we know anything.”

“Deal.” With that Speedster shot off, bored already by the meeting and unable to just stand still and wait. Instead she shot over to Bookworm’s flat, where the doctorate student was in fact delightedly pouring over every piece of information she could on the new ‘robosuits.’

It didn’t take her long to get the information she needed from the physiology enthusiast and she hesitated for just a moment, before shooting off to the lab in question. She hadn’t said how long she would wait when she had told Luna that she would and she didn’t plan on storming the building. She just wanted to go and have a look at it. As well as ensure she knew where it was and that the person she was looking for actually worked there.

When she actually planned on invading the labs, she would alert Luna and Mako to her plans, but for just scouting it was better she headed off alone.

The lab was a surprisingly ordinary looking building considering what was being built inside. Built on the outskirts of town, the plain, two storey concrete warehouse looking building didn’t look like the menacing headquarters of some evil villain, just a plain old storage place.

The only real outward signs that the building wasn’t just a storage facility were the official looking cars and military looking guards patrolling the parameter.

Zooming around the perimeter, which was surrounded by wire fencing with barbed wire around the top, she got a feel for the place’s defences. They didn’t look like much, a few guard dogs on chains led around by the guards, a few unconcealed weapons, plenty of security cameras and a few shed like buildings that she just knew probably housed a robot or two.

She wasn’t surprised. They weren’t expecting trouble. Not from anyone who could pass by the defences in the blink of an eye. Speedster would have thought that he would have insisted on stronger measures. She supposed that if he wasn’t in charge yet, he wouldn’t get much say in what security measures had been put in place and even if he was he wouldn’t expect his arch-nemesis to have been Fused with someone from this world too.

Still, she was wary as she slipped over the fence and examined the cameras at a much closer range, darting between their coverage at high speed and working out where she could take out the wiring if she needed to. Part of her wondered how she knew what to look for, the rest, the part that had firmly accepted the Fusion and melded with the memories and the skills that she had gained, just accepted it as something that had been necessary in their old world.

When the guards came around the corner, Speedster took that as a sign to bolt, zipping across the grounds and hopping the fence, landing on the other side easily before shooting off. She had no intention of alerting them to the fact she was watching if she could help it. The element of surprise had always been a key factor in the success of their plans and giving away her presence now would ruin it.

She shot further away from the fence, up onto the roof of a nearby building and enjoyed the sunshine until the scientists left the building for the day. There were quite a few in the building, most of whom looked pretty normal and were chatting with each other, though she couldn’t hear about what from her vantage point.

The last few to leave the building were a group of three. One military looking, armed man in a smart suit with medals pinned to it and symbols on his shoulder. One robosuited individual, whose metal plating was red, gold and black and whose body language looked completely relaxed despite the suit that they were wearing. And finally the individual she had been looking for.

He was unmistakeable. A huge, rotund, almost egg shaped man with a ridiculous moustache and a set of sunglasses that covered his eyes.

“Robotnik.” Speedster hissed, anger rising despite the fact that the man before her had done nothing to her or to her world.

The egomaniac had no idea she was watching as he walked across the carpark, talking to the two men though he took furtive glances around. He didn’t look too pleased to be pulled away from his work. Speedster on the other hand was all too pleased for any delay to his plans. Not that she knew what he was up to, but there was very little he had gotten up to in the original world that could be considered ‘good’ so she didn’t doubt that he was up to something here too.

The Robotnik fusion and the robosuited man entered one vehicle while the military man entered another. Once both cars had pulled out of the heavily guarded gates she followed the one with the Doctor and the robosuited man, wanting to know where he was going and what he was up to.

Frustration had seeped in by the time the car had stopped, as she had stuck to the roofs and tried to keep to its speed rather than risk losing it in the traffic. As she watched the pair exit the car, she paced the nearby rooftop, keeping a close eye on them as the Doctor pulled some keys out of his back pocket and let them into a house.

“That’s enough.” Juliet told herself with a huff as the car pulled away and she waited to see if anything else would happen, glancing at her watch as she did so, “It’s been an hour. Time to...”

She trailed off as the door opened again and the robotic man exited the building again, watching as he shut the door behind him and headed down the road. She followed, smiling as he popped into a shop and slipped down into an alleyway before emerging onto the street and entering the shop behind him.

As she picked out a bunch of snacks, having not eaten for a while, she listened to the conversation between the cashier and the robotic man.

“So you went through with it then?” The cashier asked a little nervously, “That thing we saw on the T.V.”

“It was worth it.” The man replied, his voice modulated slightly so it sounded less human and more robotic, “I’m finally out of that wheelchair. And it’s all thanks to Paul.”

“You two worked together on this.” The cashier reminded him with a slight smile, “Don’t put yourself down, Doc.”

“I might have been working with him on this project, but he had a break through a couple of weeks back that not only made it viable in our lifetime, but meant it could be put into effect immediately.” The Doctor replied, “It’s just a shame it’s my name that has to be used. He might have been my assistant, but he had no doctorate, so they insist it has to be my name that’s used to promote it.”

“It’s a shame, but I wouldn’t complain if I were you.” The cashier chuckled, taking the payment for his items, “Just share the profits with him.”

“Maybe one day we’ll be able to afford not to charge for the process.” Dr. Styler replied, sounding wistful, “Have a good shift, Kayley.”

“Have a good evening yourself, Doc.” Kayley waved him off before turning to Speedster who had been next in line, “Hiya, can I help?”

Once she had paid for her goods, Speedster got the hell out of there as fast as possible, so much on her mind that she wasn’t sure where to start on working through it all.

She let her feet take her where they willed as she tried to think everything through. It was Robotnik. She knew he was bad. She knew it like she knew the Earth was round and chocolate was tasty.

But ‘Paul’ had built the robosuits to help his friend and co-worker. He really had been trying to help for a change instead of creating them for evil.

She was the one in the wrong. Not him.

It was that realisation that caused her to come to a sudden stop as she lost her footing and went tumbling, crashing into a wall and coming to a sliding stop on the other side of the rubble left behind.