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quintessentialsonic · 1 year

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The Quintessential Sonic the Hedgehog - Act 0: Sonic and the Gizoid Menace! [PILOT]

GREAT FOREST EDGE, LATE AFTERNOON...

SLASH!! They cut through the trees like hot knives through butter, claws so sharp you'd swear they could split an atom. They were claws that belonged to a swift and deadly battle machine with half-decent stature and icy-blue, ovular eyes. Its metallic shell was primarily a pale yellow tone with orange defensive plating around specific sections. It was silent aside from a gentle hum.

At present, the machine was wandering through the forest searching for targets. It had just made its way to this island from the stratosphere, landing in a clearing southwest of its current location. Its sensors suddenly pick up on nearby activity, a rustling. Suddenly...

CLONK!! An act of aggression against the back of its head! Brief, bludgeoning, and...prickly? The machine turned quickly, accompanying its swivel with a swipe of its claws. It sets its eyes on two alien-like beings that called themselves hedgehogs. It knew their species from its databanks. Hedgehogs were always trouble.

"Hi! Welcome to Earth." One of the hedgehogs said with an oddly friendly demeanor. He had cobalt-blue fur, wearing red, white, and black shoes. He also sported white gloves with black, "lite-stick" adhesive palms. This being was chaotic, his speeds seemingly unmatched by man or machine. "Name's Sonic the Hedgehog. My friend here is named Robby Rose."

"We've lost the element of surprise thanks to you!" Robby grunted. This hedgehog was magenta-pink and wore brown gloves and boots, as well as a pure-white hood that wrapped around his upper torso. In his hands he held a bow and arrows. His sharpshooting skills were second to none, and he also possessed substantial physical strength.

"Whatever, Double-R. We got this." Sonic snickered. "Or at least I do. Your arrows'll probably suck against a robot."

"I'm not so sure your quips and unkempt quills will do much better."

"You wound me, which is more than the robot'll say about your methods." Sonic elbowed his compatriot, who simply groaned. The machine they had provoked stared at them as this exchange went on, attempting to analyze their capabilities. It was interrupted when Sonic suddenly ran around it in the blink of an eye with with use of his impressive speed. "I don't appreciate you messin' with my forest, Slash-Man! Buzz off, or this is gonna get uglier than me after a cold swim!"

Not heeding his warning, the machine swiped its claws towards the hedgehog! Sonic stepped back quickly, only for more swipes to come out. With every slash came a step back from Sonic. The movements were so well-timed, almost rhythmic. Robby began firing arrows towards the head of the robot, which was twice Sonic's size. Its head would have been an easy shot if not for Sonic goading it.

"Stop toying with it! You're getting in the way of my shots!" Robby shouted.

"Fine! No more toying! Let's scrap!" Sonic made a leap towards his aggressor. When his foe went in for a slice with its right hand, it was stopped by one of Robby's steel-tipped arrows. This allowed Sonic to get some kicks in on its torso before leaping away. "Thanks for the save, Robby!"

"Not a problem, reckless stooge." Robby spoke in an aggravated tone. The archer had hoped to investigate by himself, or at least to be alongside someone he viewed as competent. Instead he was stuck with what he considered to be the town fool, colloquially speaking. His arrows were not able to pierce this metallic menace, steel or no steel. "This mechanical machination is unlike anything I've seen!"

"Really?" Sonic circled the robot, which followed him almost religiously. The machine seemed fascinated with the blue creature before it, its attacks becoming less aggressive with every passing second. "You mean to tell me you haven't seen clawed, killer robots from space before?"

"Cut the sarcasm!" Robby fired several arrows, and while they all made impact they ultimately fell to the ground uselessly. Not even a dent was made. The robot didn't seem to care about his attacks, eventually halting his assault on the speedier hedgehog he was primarily occupied with. "Nothing!"

"I told you--Wait. Huh?" Sonic suddenly stopped in place, not moving.

"Fool! What are you doing?!" Robby began to rapid-fire arrows into his enemy, which at the moment had its back facing the archer. It was ignoring him entirely, still staring at Sonic. Sonic was disturbed by this sudden motionlessness. "It's going to skewer you!"

"Yo, what's up with you?" Sonic folded his arms, staring up at the relatively large robot. Its eyes glowed red for a moment, and then it took a step forward. Sonic seized up, prepared for an attack if it were to happen. "Did I drain your batteries?"

"UNABLE TO REPLICATE." It suddenly spoke in a low-pitched, monotone voice. Its tone was matter-of-fact, its clawed appendages falling to its sides as it leaned its upper body down to observe Sonic closer. Sonic in turn leaned his body upward, attempting to mask any inkling of fear he may have been feeling in that moment.

"Sonic?" Robby murmured. He had run out of arrows at this point and felt tempted to retreat, but he couldn't just leave someone alone with that thing, even if that someone was Sonic.

"UNABLE TO REPLICATE." The machine spoke again.

"Yeah, you said that before, pal." Sonic leaned back after a moment. "Were you trying to replicate me?"

"AFFIRMATIVE." It stood motionless as it spoke.

"What part of me were you trying to replicate? All of me? You some kind of fancy shape-shifter?"

"NEGATIVE. IT IS THE AMBITION OF THE GIZOID TO REPLICATE THE CAPABILITIES OF INDIVIDUALS, NOT THEIR IDENTITIES."

"And you can't replicate me why?"

"UNKNOWN. THIS IS AN UNPRECEDENTED VARIABLE. YOU ARE CLEARLY--"

"Special? The chosen one? A figment of your imagination?"

"A THREAT THAT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO LIVE." The Gizoid thrashed its claws out at Sonic wildly, which Sonic reacted to by running backwards at an intense speed, nearly tripping over himself in the process. The maddened machine gave up on using claws, instead shifting its arms into what looked to be futuristic firearms. It began to blast energy beams at Sonic while rushing towards him.

"Typically the fourth option is 'all of the above'!" Sonic panicked as he narrowly dodged the oncoming fire. He didn't know how harmful the lasers were, but he could feel their heat against his fur as they zoomed by. Needless to say, he wasn't going to find out if he could help it. "Robby, get the heck outta dodge!"

Sonic quickly made his way away from the Great Forest, deciding this kind of battle would be best fit for someplace more open. It also kept the forest and its people out of harm's way. He would have been shocked at just how well the robot was keeping up with him, but he was holding back so he didn't lose it. There was no way he was going to leave this thing to its own devices, especially given those devices were super deadly. He was confident he'd eventually come up with a way to take this thing down.

The combatants left a less-than-confident Robby behind and at a loss of what to do. The archer decided the best solution would be to go to the place where he learned of the Gizoid's appearance in the first place: The home of the island's royal family, Acorn Castle.

ACORN CASTLE, SEVENTEEN MINUTES LATER...

Within the confines of Acorn Castle, there is a very, very special room. It is a large and spacious area, circular in circumference. At one point in time it was the throne room of the Acorn family monarchy. Once upon a time the fate of a whole archipelago would have been decided by the South Island king's sole discretion, but that was no longer true. Instead, a council was formed a decade ago, with trustworthy King Nigel Maximillian Acorn presiding over it.

The council typically met in this room twice every month to discuss current happenings, but there were rare instances where emergency meetings would be called. Four of over two-dozen members were chosen at random for each convening, each representing one of four major islands in the archipelago: South Island, West Side Island, Miracle Island, and Flicky's Island.

At the moment, an emergency meeting was being held to discuss an unusual object that fell from the stratosphere two hours ago and how best to handle it once Robby, the one they sent to investigate, returned. There were currently six people present, including the king himself. It had been thirty two minutes since he was sent out, and they were still waiting patiently.

At least, most of them were waiting patiently...

"I can't believe we sent that boy out on his own!" A kindly fox with brown hair suddenly spoke out. She wore an orange dress with white sequins, and she was always concerned about the well-being of children...and people who were slightly older than children.

"You worry far too much, Rosemary. We need to trust the youth and not hover over them." A fellow female councilmember responded calmly. The wise owl known as Longclaw had been a friend of the Acorn family for many years. She wore the crest of her people on her chest, and it shone brightly. "Whatever danger could present itself can be handled by Robby, you know that."

"That's just it, Longclaw: I don't know that. I should have gone with him. I'll go check on him." The fox said in slightly panicked tone.

"Mrs. Prower!" The gruff, stern voice of a purple, well-built walrus bellowed out with a lacking amount of sympathy. His thick, well-kempt, face-obscuring moustache and long tusks made him standout in any room. Rosemary was about to get out of her chair, but his voice had stopped such actions. "That 'boy' is nineteen years old. He is also a member of the Rose family, who may I remind you--"

"Yes, yes, Tundra. 'The archipelago's natural-born hell-raisers', as your father so eloquently put it." Rosemary folded her arms, scowling. "I, for one, don't want our children to be known as 'hell-raisers'."

"He is not a child! He is a man, and men should be given the opportunity to prove their worth. Why, if my son weren't wasting away in that tinkering shack of his I'd send him out with Robert!" Tundra raised his hand high, shaking it briefly.

"Tundra!" Rosemary leaned forward, placing her palms on her podium and gritting her teeth briefly. She eyes were full of disgust. "I will not allow the demeaning of our youth in this room!"

"Oh, that's rich! All you ever do when we invite you to these meetings is complain about--" Tundra was about to continue when the door suddenly came off its hinges. A breathless Robby Rose had pushed the doors open so violently that they just popped off the wall!

"Sonic's in trouble!!" He shouted at the top of his lungs. King Acorn, the Archipelago Council, and a red and white lemur who served as moderator of the council all startled at this and stared at Robby intently. Rosemary in particular seemed mildly perturbed, but quickly adjusted herself once Tundra gave her a knowing glance for her silent hypocrisy.

"Well, Young Rose? What's happened?" The king asked with urgency in his voice. He didn't seem to mind the damage to the doors. Robby attempted to answer, but panic had been slowly overtaking him as he made his way to the castle. He was mentally disturbed, even if he was fine physically. "Robert?"

"If I may, Nigel?" The king felt a hand against his shoulder, and he turned to acknowledge the voice of Sir Charles the Hedgehog, royal scientist and lifelong friend of the Acorn family. Charles had faded-blue fur and a pure-white moustache. The king nodded and Charles moved from his podium, walking over to the frazzled archer and looking up at him. Charles was short compared to Robby, or maybe Robby was just very tall on account of his more burly build. "Take a breath, son. You've run very far, I imagine. Do you need water?"

"The run was nothing, Chuck. Sonic's in trouble. He insisted on following me to the landing site. What we saw, it--It's just--It's unbelievable--"

"Robby, please." Charles interrupted softly. "Take a breath and tell me what happened. Where's my nephew?"

MARBLE RUINS, AT THAT SAME MOMENT...

On the far side of Green Hill rested a mysterious set of ruins. No one knew how deep they went. All that was really known was that they were old, but that's pretty obvious looking at them. They were also partially submerged in lava.

Sonic was luring his new "friend" to these ruins in order to enact a plan he had devised with little thought, not that he had much time to think of what to do in the first place. He was far from exhausted, but his annoyance towards the Gizoid had been steadily increasing; with great annoyance comes little patience.

"You know, maybe I should have approached this differently." Sonic spoke to himself aloud, jumping out of the way of yet more laser fire. He'd been doing this for fifteen or so minutes, but they'd finally reached his destination. "In a perfect world, I wouldn't have attacked you first. I would have made an appeal, given this nice speech... Oh, who am I kidding? That ain't me at all!"

"CEASE MOVEMENT." The Gizoid commanded.

"No." Sonic began to leap toward several large, cube-shaped stones that were partially submerged in lava, risking it all to attract the machine to him. He balanced precariously on them while making his way towards a larger section of ruins on the other side. The smell of heated marble was potent. Once he arrived at the other side, Sonic taunted his opponent. "Come and get me! Or don't! I'm apathetic to your existence!"

The two had a stare-off for a few long moments. The machine was well in range to fire at Sonic, but it assessed that such attempts would be fruitless, especially at such a long distance. At the same time, it calculated the likelihood it could balance on those stones Sonic had so cleverly used and determined it was too hefty for them to stay afloat.

"So, it seems we're at an stalemate! Go home, man!" Sonic shouted from across the lava.

"I AM NO MAN. I AM GIZOID, MASTER OF REPLICATION!" The machine responded with conviction. It then began to glow, and all of a sudden its body was being encased in gray metal. It was like iron if iron was really, really, really shiny. "ACTIVATING ADAMANTIUM SHELL."

"That's definitely immune to lava, isn't it?" Sonic nervously speculated.

"GOOD GUESS."

"Thanks!" Sonic sarcastically responded. The Gizoid entered the lava slowly, the effects of its new alloy shell apparent. Entirely unharmed, it pushed itself through the thick, hot liquid towards the hedgehog. Its head was all that was visible in the marble-encased pool.

Sonic would have felt cornered, but a humorous idea came to mind. As it slowly made its way to the speedster, Sonic waited. He simply waited there, which is something he so rarely did. He eventually started to tap his foot to the floor, yawning. The slow-moving machine didn't seem to care about Sonic playing around, thinking it to simply be a product of ego.

Once the Gizoid had nearly made its way to Sonic, it attempted to climb up the marble, but its body was too heavy and the marble was too slippery. It couldn't even raise its arms out. It was stuck there.

Realizing the Gizoid was in a bit of a tough spot, the hedgehog winked at it and made his way back where he came, along the same stones he'd leapt from moments prior. The robot started to slowly turn around within the lava, though it took several dozens of seconds for it to accomplish this.

"Wow, you are slow. Heavy, too!" Sonic taunted.

"I WILL PERSIST."

"Yeah, persist long enough to regret your life choices, bud." Sonic chuckled. He was planning on getting the Gizoid into the lava anyway, but he had no clue this would be how he did it. The machine didn't respond, calculating any potential escape routes. There were none. "You know, I didn't even have to be particularly clever to get you in there. You thought you were the clever one, using that fancy metal you probably replicated from someone way cooler than you. Now look at you! Just a blockhead surrounded by blocks of marble. Sayonara! I need to check on Robby."

"WAIT." It spoke oncemore.

"What is it, claws 'n' lasers?" Sonic glared at it.

"I BESEACH YOU, LISTEN TO THE TALE OF MY PEOPLE AT LEAST. I DO NOT DESIRE...THIS FATE TO BE MY PEOPLE'S LEGACY ON YOUR WORLD."

"Hard pass. You made your lava bath, and now you can lie in it...or stand in it. It is your lava bath. Point is, I don't want my time wasted. Save the spiel for the spirits of the ruins."

"YES, I SUPPOSE THAT IS UNDERSTANDABLE. YOU ARE A PROTECTOR OF YOURSELF AND YOUR WORLD. YOU ARE, PERHAPS, A HERO TO THIS PRIMITIVE SPECK OF THE UNIVERSE?"

"'Hero'? Me? You got the wrong number, buddy." Sonic waved his hand at the lava-swamped being he'd bested, then smiling widely and turning away. "I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, and that's all I ever want to be. You said so yourself: I can't be replicated, so why be something I'm not?"

The Gizoid didn't respond to Sonic's question, left alone to boil in the lava as the blue speedster ran away. It's not like Sonic would be able to help it anyway. He wasn't the one with the lava-proof shell. With no means of exit, the Gizoid would simply be left to its thoughts.

Without the need to lure the machine, Sonic's dash through Green Hill was effortless and much speedier. He took a brief stop at his house, which resided near a strange, loop-de-loop-like structure that was commonplace as a part of the natural terrain of the archipelago he called home. He made a chili dog, as he'd gotten peckish thanks to all the excitement.

BACK WHERE IT BEGAN...

Eventually, Sonic made his way back to the site where the Gizoid menace was first spotted, only for Robby and Charles to appear not thirty seconds later through the trees. Robby looked dumbfounded, while Charles seemed almost unsurprised.

"Hi Unc! Hi Robby!" Sonic waved.

"Sonic!" Robby shouted and tackled the younger hedgehog into a hug, his more burly figure nearly suffocating Sonic.

"R-Robby... Why--Why must you bring m-me pain and suffering?!" Sonic gasped out and tried to push him away. Robby eventually let him go, only to grip him by the arms and shake him frantically.

"What were you thinking?! You could have died! You could have been sliced or disintegrated or dislicetegrated!" Robby roared in Sonic's face, only to let him go and take a single, long breath. "OK, I got it out of my system. Chuck, take over. I'm gonna go home and vent to my sister."

"You do that, Robby, my boy." Charles patted him on the back and nodded, only to slowly approach his nephew and fold his arms. "I expect you to apologize to Robby once you've sobered from your action high."

"Apologize?! Unc, I just--" Sonic blurted out with confusion.

"And I want you to apologize to the the King and the Archipelago Council."

"What do the council care?" The daredevil retorted.

"Robby had to interrupt a meeting to inform us of your galivanting."

"'Us'? Oh... You were... Ohh..."

"Yes. Longclaw and Rosemary were there as well."

"O-Oh." All of a sudden, the unapologetic hedgehog became remorseful. "Uncle Chuck, I didn't mean for this to turn into a whole adventure, I swear. I was just tagging along on some recon. I didn't expect, well...alien death robots."

"I know, but you know how worried those two in particular can get. Even Nigel--Ahem, the King was very concerned. We all know how capable you are, every single one of us...but you're still just a boy, Sonic."

"The more I learn about myself, the less that seems to be true."

"What do you mean? Did something happen?"

"Well... Nah, nah. It's nothin'. We can talk more about the specifics of that Gizoid later. I really should get to apologizing." Sonic started to turn in the direction of the castle.

"Oh, I don't think you need to do it right now." Chuck placed a hand on Sonic's shoulder.

"Nah, Chuck. There's no time like the present. You know how much I hate not getting things done." Sonic then ran off, leaving the elder blue hedgehog by himself. He waved to his nephew as he ran into teh forest, sighing.

"Yes, I know it all too well, Sonic... Hm. 'Gizoid'?"

Sometimes I wonder if I really have taken this whole "teen with 'tude" thing too far. I worry everybody so much, and for what? For kicks? That Gizoid called me a protector, a hero...but that's not what I am and I know it. I'm a thrill-seeker, a risk-taker, and I do it all because that's just who I am! But I wonder if I could be more...

Ha! Nearly made myself laugh out loud with the thought...

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic fanfiction #sonic au

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tb5-heavenward · 7 years

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flight hours

continuing from part 4, everything is fine and dandy. in better news, i’ve finally written up to the 53 words that I had in mind when I started this thing. they’ll be the start of chapter 6.

Shields are right at thirty-percent, and he can take maybe three or four more hits before electrical interference starts to damage flight-critical systems—but Scott isn’t about to mention this to his brother, in case it prompts John to do something incredibly stupid. Again.

In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have collared John into this job. He probably should’ve let John fly back to Tracy Island. He’d feel much, much better about this whole situation if John were managing it from afar instead of right in the middle of it, with his exosuit and his misplaced confidence and his highly, highly illegal weaponized EMF generator. Beyond that, if John weren’t here, Scott could just push his engines to full throttle, leave the cluster of drones behind, and hightail it back to the island. If he leaves now, he risks the swarm scanning the skies and retargeting his brother, who won’t be able to handle a dozen drones actively on the attack, no matter what he thinks. It’s taking all of Scott’s attention to keep himself flying, and he doesn’t know how the hell they’re going to get out of this mess.

In between everything else he’s got to worry about, Scott manages to find a few spare moments to be furious about the fact that they’re in this mess in the first place.

There’s probably a lesson they should’ve learned by now about walking (flying/diving) into traps. They should all probably be taking steps to be more careful, to look at situations like this with a baseline of suspicion, prudence. It’s terrifying and unfair to think that there’s someone in the world who would use their profession against them; would turn their desire to save lives into a way to lure them into harm. In retrospect, so many aspects of the whole scenario seem like red flags, and they’re exactly the sort of red flags that John usually looks out for.

But this is hardly the time for hindsight. Scott just has to hope that his brother is as good at thinking on the fly as he is at thinking on his feet. He’s given John a solid half a minute to think, and he’s about to bark over the open channel for his brother to give him some options, when he hears a faint huff of breath, a frustrated sigh. And then John says something Scott doesn’t want to hear.

“…Scott, I really don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t require disabling that swarm. You’re gonna need to bring them to me, or break off and let them find me themselves.”

That’s not happening. Another shot lands against his hull, the dampening shield flickers and his display drops it to twenty-six percent. “Negative. You shouldn’t even be here—”

“You’d be dead if I wasn’t. There weren’t supposed to be two of us. We weren’t supposed to be armed. Clearly you were expected to get aboard that cargo jet and get caught in the cockpit while it dive bombed, and then without you actively flying it, Thunderbird One was supposed to go down. It would’ve gone down. We can get out of this, but you have to work with me. I can do this.”

There’s irony in the fact that Scott had thought a rescue would be a good way to stop having a stupid argument with his brother. They’re still arguing about whether John’s a good enough pilot, only now the stakes have changed. Now the stakes may actually be life and death. And Scott shakes his head, though John can’t see him. “Your shielding—”

“Will be in a better state than yours, in a minute here.”

“Only takes one to kill you.”

“There are twelve trying to kill you.”

“I can—”

“You can’t handle this alone!” John’s voice cuts him off sharply, gains an edge of sternness it hasn’t had before now, the same that Scott’s been trying to use to bring his brother up short. Desperation bleeds over into the warning, as he continues, “This was a trap, meant to kill you and take down TB1. If you go down, they’ll head for me anyway. You have to let me help, or—”

Scott doesn’t hear the rest of it, or maybe the blinding flash of plasmic blue in the skies overhead cuts John off. A particularly well timed strike brings twenty-six percent down to a bare twenty. Alarms start to blare, bathing the interior of Scott’s cockpit in bloody red emergency lighting.

And it just reinforces the fact that John’s right.

Scott exhales, hard, and his hands tighten slightly on the controls. He accelerates, trailing the swarm along behind him, as he starts to prepare to bring his ship back around, towards his brother. The sweat on his palms is wicked away immediately by the fabric of his gloves, but the clammy, anxious feeling remains. “…Okay, John. Coming to you. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Basically, John needs his brother to thread a needle with his Thunderbird at about three hundred miles an hour.

“I need you to make a pass at your lowest possible speed, while I channel an EM field for you to fly through.”

It’s a little known fact about Thunderbird One—not that there are any widely known facts about Thunderbird One—that it’s actually harder on its engines to go slow than it is to go fast. Of course, this references a scale at which “slow” is anything under Mach 1, and “fast” is sustained flight at Mach 20, fast enough to circumnavigate the globe in two hours flat. TB1 is, after all, designed to push that upper limit, not to linger at the lower border of what’s achievable by commercial aircraft. If Scott goes too slow, his engines risk stalling. If Scott wants to leave TB1 hovering stationary in midair, he has to turn his engines off entirely, and rely on a suite of thrusters designed to keep the ship in the air.

There’s an inverse relationship between the size of the field that John’s EMF device can generate, versus its duration. It leaves them with two options. “I can give you a hundred meter field for three seconds, or a thirty meter field for ten. You’ll burn the last of your shielding on the way through, but if they stay in formation on your tail, it’ll take the swarm out with it.”

There’s math to be done here, but not the sort of math that’s done with numbers. It’s the sort of math that’s done by feel, pure instinct. Scott doesn’t need to do the math to know how close he can safely fly his ship, and he makes that call almost immediately, “Gotta be a hundred. I’m not flying within fifteen meters of you, the turbulence will be more than you can handle”

John’s less worried about that than he is about the timing. Three seconds isn’t much time. “It’s not much of a window.”

“Not your problem. You just open it when I tell you to. I’m coming back around, get ready.”

“FAB.”

So that’s that, decided. They’re doing it, and now John needs to get himself in position. He’s just thankful that Scott trusts him enough to help.

Whether he realizes it or not, it’s lucky he’s had eight hours of practice. John hasn’t had time since they first deployed from island airspace to switch out of thinking like he’s flying, the muscle memory of the suit’s controls remains fresh. He’s thinking too hard and concentrating too closely on what needs to happen next to second-guess himself, as far as the positioning of his ailerons or whatever else. In the briefest possible moment of distraction, John remembers the cargo plane and glances earthward towards where he remembers seeing it last. It’s still falling, trailing a corkscrew spiral of smoke downward towards the tops of the clouds below. It’s only been a few minutes since this whole ordeal started. Less than a quarter of an hour ago, Scott was nagging him to get back in the air and back to training. Kayo’s probably about seven minutes distant, but up here that may as well be an eternity. If John’s learned anything today (and if he’s honest, he’s learned plenty), it’s that time passes strangely in the sky.

And that the world is surreal, hovering at seventy thousand feet.

They’re high enough that the curve of the Earth is apparent, and far below are the fleecy, undulating clouds of a mackerel sky, marred only by the helix of smoke from the back of the cargo jet. At this height, the divisions of the atmosphere are visible, the aura of sunlight throught the stratosphere like a halo around the Earth, stretching up into the darkness of the mesosphere, then the thermosphere beyond. It’s strange and otherworldly, even by John’s standards, and for living his life well outside the Earth’s atmosphere, there’s something about the presence of gravity that changes absolutely everything.

It seems obvious, in hindsight. He probably owes Scott an apology.

Later, though.

Static hisses in his ear, and then Scott’s voice, firm and decisive, “Coming around for final approach now. Fire on my mark.”

“FAB.”

It’s a simple plan, which are the best kind, in John’s experience. He dials in the appropriate calibration for the EMF generator, and the pad of his thumb ghosts the trigger, waiting.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Mark.”

John immediately squeezes the trigger for the EMF generator, and the field radiates out from the source. He feels the peculiar, untranslatable sensation of his exosuit’s extant shields, as they cancel it out. It’s going to work, there’s no reason it wouldn’t. There’s nothing in the skies against which he can gauge relative speed or distance, and time seems to slow as he watches TB1 on approach. Even at his lowest speed, Scott’s moving fast enough that John feels him pass overhead rather than sees him, the disturbance of his passage enough to buffet him downward through the air, but not before he compensates with his thrusters, and stays level.

The swarm of drones has stayed tight to Scott’s tail, exactly according to plan, and even as the three seconds pass and the EMF field peters out, John can see they’re already falling, tumbling uselessly out of the sky around him; eight, nine, ten, eleven—the sudden spark of triumph ignites another giddy rush of adrenaline, and it’s impossible to suppress a slightly hysterical laugh over the comm channel, at the closeness of the call, even as he turns in midair, watching his brother coming back around.

It’s come off almost without a hitch.

But the hitch in question is one single drone, slightly different to the others, not a part of the AI hivemind. Configured for direct, remote control, and piloted by someone clever enough to have seen the shape of a trap, and to have known how to turn it back to his own advantage.

When the last mech comes careening out of the sky, John doesn’t know what’s hit him. But it tears an entire wing off his suit, and discharges the last of its energy into a bright, plasma blue bolt.

And like Scott said, it only takes one.

don’t worry, it continues >>

#tag fanfic #scott tracy #john tracy #flight hours #some kind of creative doubt

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