FLAMBÉ the FOX

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

My first few days on Mobius were a blur of confusion and fire.

Seriously, way too much fire, not that any of the flames ever seemed to actually hurt me.

I mean, there I was, somehow a fox girl of indeterminate size and age, wandering around alone in the ruins of some abandoned village that only had running water because the damaged water tower somehow hadn't fallen over yet.

And I had to rely on that water to keep putting out the fires I somehow kept causing!

I mean, seriously, all I did was put some old firewood into that Franklin stove and had been trying to remember how to start campfires when the wood just spontaneously combusted with flames so hot the stove itself glowed cherry red for a bit!

That's not normal!

Of course, neither is waking up as some fox kid in an abandoned village, but the sudden fires were a bit much...

That wasn't the only such incident either.

Whenever I tried to start a fire - and by that, I mean legitimately set about preparing to start a fire with actual intent to follow through - the fire would just start all on its own.

Camp fires, stove fires, one candle that went from half melted to liquid wax with ashes for a wick in an instant...

The wax took forever to scrub out of my fur, by the way. Getting it splashed all over me as the candle exploded from the heat hadn't hurt at all, but it had splattered everywhere and felt weird until it was finally all out of my fur.

But that had pretty much settled it in my mind.

I was apparently either a pyromancer or a pyrokinetic.

I briefly considered calling myself Firefox, but ultimately settled on Flambé instead.

O o O o O​

The first attack came as a bit of a surprise, and I hadn't quite realized what was really going on right away.

Oh, I knew I was being attacked - that part was never in question.

It's just that my first thought upon hearing loud buzzing approaching rapidly more or less from behind me and turning around to see what appeared to be a small swarm of giant hornets wasn't "These are Buzzbombers!"

It was more: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! BEES!"

And fire.

So much fire.

By the time my panic attack subsided, half of the abandoned village was just gone and I was standing in a field of rapidly cooling molten glass.

The big scary bees were gone though, so I quickly left the still soft silicate before it hardened, and once I was off of the squishy material I made sure that none of it was sticking to my fur.

The wax disaster had been bad enough, I didn't need to try to figure out how to get glass off of me too.

As my breathing grew steadier and heartbeat slowed down to normal levels, I looked out over the glassy field and noted that there were, surprisingly, insectile husks half sunken into the cooling material.

Which honestly confused me because, given the other evidence, any chitinous carapace should have been reduced to ash and vapor by the temperatures I had inadvertently put out.

While I was waiting for the glass to cool down enough for me to not sink into it, I looked for a nice long stick or rod.

I was still poking at the half-melted, flashwelded remains of one of the destroyed Buzzbombers when a cyborg rabbit found me and called out to her friends who were also investigating the smoking ruins that were all that remained of my first home on Mobius…

O o O o O​

Bunnie Rabbot slowed her steps before she even reached the edge of the glassed-out field.

The air still carried heat - faint now, like a dying engine - but the ground told a louder story. What should have been broken earth and scattered rubble was instead a wide, smooth expanse of fused crystal rippling outward. It caught the light in dull, shifting colors, like the world had tried to become a mirror and given up halfway through.

Badnik parts were embedded in it. Half-melted Buzzbombers from the look of them.

Not intact. Not functional. Just… caught. Twisted metal silhouettes suspended in glass like insects in amber.

And a fox girl, younger than them but maybe a little older than Tails, was squatting near one and poking at it with a stick.

She wasn't wearing anything, but that didn't mean much these days. Clothes were hard to come by, and Bunnie herself had done without for years before Sonic had rescued her from that Bot-on-the-Spot and she ended up joining the Freedom Fighters in Knothole.

"Okay," she muttered under her breath. "That ain't normal."

Behind her, she could hear the others approaching—Rotor's careful, weighted steps; Antoine's more frantic pacing; Sally's steady rhythm that always meant she was already thinking three moves ahead. Sonic would be somewhere nearby too, checking the parameter for any remaining badnik forces.

Bunnie kept her eyes forward.

Because there was something else notable.

A set of footprints leading across the glass.

Sunk shallow, as if someone had been walking across thick mud or damp clay. An even pace, with no sign of hurrying or stumbling. Not staggered like a retreat under fire.

Just… walking. Casual. Almost wandering.

They led from the center of the destruction all the way out toward the edge of the glassy field.

Bunnie's eyes narrowed slightly. She rather strongly suspected that if she compared those footprints to the feet of the girl, they'd be an uncomfortably close match.

The girl hadn't noticed them yet. Or maybe she had and didn't care, but Bunnie was betting on the former rather than the later. No hostile posture. No weapons. No scanning for targets. No fear response that matched what the landscape suggested should be there.

Just confusion. And curiosity.

And something else Bunnie didn't like seeing in kids who looked that small in the middle of what looked like a battlefield:

The poor thing was shaking slightly.

Maybe a bit of it was part of an adrenalin crash, but Bunnie was pretty sure the girl had not eaten recently.

Those were hunger shakes.

The poor thing had not eaten recently. Not so long that her ribs were showing or anything, but long enough to matter.

The fox turned the stick slightly, scraping at the warped metal. It didn't move like a Badnik anymore. It barely moved like anything that had ever had a purpose.

Bunnie exhaled slowly.

"…Ain't no way she did this on purpose," she said quietly, mostly to herself.

Behind her, Antoine made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a protest. "Mon dieu—! Bunnie, zat is zhe epicenter of—of—"

"Not now, 'Toine" Bunnie cut in, still watching the fox. "Get some rations and a canteen."

The coyote glanced at Bunnie, then took a closer look at the girl. "Ah, yes. I zhe it as well. I will be returning immediately with zhe rations."

Rotor had gone silent. That was never a good sign.

Sally's voice finally came, measured. "Bunnie. Thoughts?"

Bunnie didn't take her eyes off the fox.

The footprints made sense now. Not escape. Not pursuit.

Just… movement. After.

Like whoever had made them had been walking away from something they didn't understand.

Or trying to figure out what came next.

The fox shifted again, tilting her head slightly as she examined the wreckage. Still not looking at them. Still not reacting to the group at all.

Bunnie's shoulders eased a fraction.

"…That's a kid," she said simply.

...

Sonic's voice, finally, from somewhere off to the side. "You sure?"

Bunnie didn't answer right away.

She watched the way the fox held the stick. No tension. No readiness. Just idle motion. The way she sat didn't belong to someone who had claimed victory.

It belonged to someone who had run out of answers and stopped moving for a second.

Bunnie stepped forward, slow and deliberate, making sure her footsteps rang out clearly over the glass.

The fox didn't flinch.

Just turned enough to look at them, then tilted her head as if confused.

That, more than anything, settled it.

Bunnie lowered her voice. "Yeah. I'm sure."

...

Then, softer—almost to herself:

"…Just a kid sittin' in the middle of a whole lotta wrong."

Spoiler: Flambé the Fox

Flambé the Fox - once she gets something really really fire resistant to wear...

And yes, made with AI tools. Still came out pretty good though, even with the errors.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

I…

Well, I honestly don't know what I was expecting at this point.

I mean, I was only just sort of coming to terms with my rather abrupt change in species and gender. Which, honestly, I didn't mind nearly as much as the fact that I had woken up in the ruins of a village that had apparently been abandoned years - or possibly even decades - ago. I was getting hungry, the water quality was questionable, any cans and jars I found had labels so simplified that they just said what was supposed to be in them without giving any sort of best by or expiration dates.

Well, I did find a whole case of Genuine Artificial Cheesefood Substitute that I had been desperate enough to get into.

Everything else, though?

Honestly, it horrified me.

I didn't dare even try to open any of it for fear of releasing Mum-Ra onto the land or something else equally absurd.

So there I was, still in the middle of the glassy field, poking at a half melted husk of a giant mechanical hornet that I had yet to correctly identify as being a Buzzbomber as giant mechanical wasps and hornets were too widely used for me to click on them as even coming from a game at all, let alone a specific cartoon or comic book.

Look, all I'm saying is that a motobug would have been far more iconic and identifiable to me. I only associated weaponized ladybugs with one game, while weaponized hornets could literally have had any number of sources!

Besides, my pyrokinetic panic attack had apparently melted off the big googly eyes that would otherwise have been a dead giveaway, leaving the mechanical husks as feeling more generic to me than they probably really were.

The point is, there I was, poking at a mechanical horror the size of one of my legs with a stick, when I heard slow steps like tapshoes approaching from somewhere behind and to the left of me. Slow enough and far enough away that I'm not immediately alarmed, even though I do turn to look out of a proper sense of caution.

Can anyone really blame me for my mind going blank when I see what looks like a version of some very familiar characters who all appear to have been reinterpreted through the lens of some very recent Jim Carrey movies?

…Okay.

So, either I had finally snapped, the questionable water had gotten to me, or I had just been isekai'd way harder than I thought.

Because standing there - just… standing there, like this was completely normal - were what looked like a group of very familiar characters.

Not cosplayers.

Not people in costumes.

Not "inspired by."

No, these were the real deal. Or at least, they looked close enough to the real deal that my brain had decided to stop supplying useful thoughts and instead loop on recognition error.

A chipmunk. In blue boots and absolutely nothing else.

A… coyote? In a uniform that looked like it had lost a fight with both fashion and practicality.

A walrus. Just - just a walrus.

And a rabbit.

A rabbit with a very noticeable amount of metal.

…

I stared at them.

They stared at me.

Nobody said anything.

Which was good, because if they had, I was pretty sure my response would have been something deeply articulate like:

"Uh."

Focus.

Okay.

Brain, do the thing!

…

Nothing?

Great.

Fantastic.

First impressions were going amazingly.

Do not panic.

Do not panic.

Panicking was how I got the glass field.

Panicking was how I turned "giant robot wasps" into "localized geological event."

Panicking again in front of what were very likely the closest thing to allies I was going to find seemed like a terrible idea.

So.

New plan.

Do nothing.

No sudden movements.

No fire.

Definitely no fire.

I very carefully did not drop the stick, because dropping things suddenly also felt like the kind of action that might escalate a situation for absolutely no reason.

Also, because it was currently the only thing between me and the lingering, deeply irrational fear that the half-melted mechanical hornet at my feet might suddenly decide it wasn't done being a problem yet.

Right.

Yes.

Priorities.

The rabbit - cybernetic, definitely cybernetic, okay, brain, we are just accepting that now - was closest.

I feel like I should know their names.

No, I know I should know their names, but my stupid brain was pulling the same stunt it has way back when I forgot my own sister's name in the middle of introducing her to one of my friends!

…

Really?

My brain called that up instead of their actual names?

Well, the cyborg bunny…

BUNNIE!

Her name was Bunnie, and that was Sally, Rotor, and Antoine!

Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah…

Bunnie didn't look aggressive.

Actually, none of them did.

Cautious, yes.

Concerned, definitely.

But not aggressive.

That was good.

That was very good.

Which meant I should probably say something.

Something normal.

Something that didn't immediately confirm that I had no idea what was going on, where I was, or how I had just accidentally committed what felt like a small-scale environmental disaster.

Words.

Use words.

I opened my mouth.

"…Hi?"

…Nailed it.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

The van was quieter on the return trip because none of them had agreed on what anything meant yet.

They had come to investigate the ruins of Grovedale not because it had refugees but because it had been abandoned for nearly a decade - too exposed, too vulnerable to badnik patrols, and long since written off as uninhabitable. However, badnik activity had been spotted in the region recently, and Grovedale was the only location of note anywhere nearby.

So, they had gone to confirm what, exactly, had stirred in what was supposed to be an abandoned village.

Buzzbomber debris had been confirmed. Melted, warped, and in some cases flashwelded structures fused with the surrounding ground.

But there had been no battlefield.

No pursuit signatures.

No evidence of sustained combat.

Just a single point of overwhelming force.

Rotor had stopped short of calling it anything definitive.

Sally had done the same.

Antoine had carefully said nothing at all, as a mere child was undeserving of wild inflammatory speculation, and he was well aware of how his worries sometimes got the better of him.

Bunnie had not offered a theory.

She had simply carried the fox girl out of the site and into the van as though that was the only part of the situation that required certainty.

Now, on the road back to Knothole, that same fox girl sat between Bunnie and the interior wall of the vehicle, wrapped loosely in a spare field blanket.

She had not spoken since departure, other than to give her name when coaxed.

Flambé.

It definitely suited her, if what they suspected was true.

She hadn't really said much. Didn't answer questions about her family or friends and barely spoke even when giving her name.

Just one name. No other identifier. Not even a "the Fox," although her Mobian subtype was self-evident anyway.

Fire related, but on the lighter, more whimsical side.

What they had seen back in Grovedale was anything but light and whimsical.

Earth and stone don't become a field of glass due to whimsy, and weathered ruins don't become burnt-out husks lightly.

Flambé had not resisted movement at any point.

She had eaten when food was offered.

Not quickly. Not eagerly. But steadily enough to suggest that hunger had been present long before anyone had thought to name it.

She had drunk from the canteen as if it had been the sweetest water ever and had to be reminded to take slow sips.

Rotor had observed both of those carefully.

Sally had also noted them without comment.

Antoine had tried twice to begin conversation and abandoned both attempts before completion, focussing instead on driving the van.

Sonic had said almost nothing at all.

The van's suspension shifted as it moved over uneven terrain. The Great Forest only had a few old roads running through it, and nobody maintained them - Robotnik through neglect, and the Freedom Fighters out of necessity to keep Knothole hidden.

Inside the van, the fox girl adjusted slightly with the motion, then settled again, leaning a fraction closer to Bunnie without conscious decision.

Bunnie noticed immediately but did not comment. She just adjusted her arm, so the contact remained stable.

At some point, the rations came out again.

No one objected.

The food was not remarkable. Standard field provisions - functional, engineered for caloric intake rather than comfort. Made from what they could raise and grow in Knothole. But it was consistent, warm enough, and real enough to matter in a way that distinction alone could not explain.

Flambé ate when prompted, then continued eating without prompting until she had her fill.

There were more rations left over from the portion than there should have been for a child her size, but nobody forced the issue - Flambé could finish the rest later at her own pace.

The girl's posture shifted subtly after that. A gradual relaxation of her stiff posture, as if the effort required to remain fully alert had exceeded available reserves. Her head tilted slightly toward Bunnie's shoulder, then rested there. There was no hesitation over Bunnie's cybernetic arm. No worry, concern, nor even any visible curiosity.

Just casual acceptance that the rabbit was a safe person.

Bunnie went still for half a second, then very carefully adjusted her position so the contact did not break.

Sally, who had been seated on the other side of the girl just looked at Bunnie and nodded. They hadn't really meant to board the van in the order that they had, but also hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of Bunnie's metal arm being presented towards Flambé either. Fortunately, the girl didn't seem to be the type to be put off by prosthetics or the implications behind them.

No one spoke for a while, letting the quiet rumbling of the engine and the subtle sound of tires rolling against the road fill the vehicle.

Antoine only turned on the headlights only after the van was much deeper into the Great Forest where the overhead canopy was thick enough that the shade made it more vital to see the irregular bumps and potholes.

Rotor was the first to speak after the long silence.

"She fell asleep," he said quietly.

"Yes," Sally replied, simply confirming what she and Bunnie already knew.

Rotor nodded once. "Not unexpected, given prior indicators of exhaustion, trauma load, and caloric shortage."

Antoine lowered his voice as he dared a brief glance back from the driver's seat. "She just… fell asleep?"

Bunnie glanced down briefly at the fox girl resting against her. "Yeah," she said softly. "She did."

Sonic, seated farther back, tilted his head slightly. "That's… fast."

Bunnie's voice stayed low. "Ain't been safe in a while."

That statement did not require expansion.

Sally did not challenge it.

Instead, she shifted her attention toward the sleeping child.

There was a long pause.

Then, more quietly:

"We should review what we know," she said.

Rotor adjusted his glasses. "That depends on when we consider her to have become capable of providing reliable testimony."

Antoine frowned. "She is a child."

"That does not resolve data integrity concerns," Rotor replied.

Sonic exhaled lightly. "You're both overthinking it."

Sally did not respond immediately as she looked over the sleeping figure for a moment longer than the others.

Then she spoke up: "We start with what we observed," she said. "Not what we assume."

Again, nobody said anything for a while as they gathered their thoughts.

Finally Bunnie spoke, still careful not to disturb the child leaning against her.

"She didn't run," she said. "Back there. Didn't fight. Didn't even hesitate when I touched her or picked her up."

Sonic gave a small shrug. "Could be shock."

"Could be," Bunnie agreed, but did not sound convinced.

The van continued its steady progression.

Outside, the forest thickened in places, thinning in others. The path was one known only to those who had learned how to remain unseen in a world that did not want them to be.

Inside, the group fell into quieter observation.

Because the sleeping fox girl had shifted the problem slightly.

Before, she had been an anomaly that required interpretation, but now she was an unknown variable that could not be questioned without risk of waking her.

Rotor eventually spoke again: "We still don't know who she is. Not really. Just her name alone doesn't tell us much."

"It tells us that her folks expected a firecracker," Bunnie noted.

"Or she changed her name like I did when I got my speed," Sonic pointed out.

Bunnie looked down at the sleeping child again. "I don't think she's refusing anything," she said. "I think she just… stopped having to hold herself together for a minute."

No one argued with that because it was consistent with what they were seeing.

"Ah… I know what I did not see," said Antoine D'Coolette after a moment, lifting a hand from the steering wheel as if to steady the thought. "Zere were no bodies. None. Only zose Buzzbombers - rien d'autre. No bones, no ash, not even ze scent of… of death." He drew himself up slightly, a touch of firmness entering his voice. "Whatever else 'as occurred at Grovedale, I do not believe zat is something we must be worrying about."

The van continued toward Knothole and for the first time since Grovedale, the silence inside it was not tense.

It was careful.

Because whatever they had brought back with them was no longer actively trying to survive the moment.

She was, for now, resting inside it.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

I was woken up when we got to Knothole.

Well, not Knothole proper as such, but more one of the presumably hidden access tunnels—this one attached to a garage cavern for various vehicles, like the van they had used.

Honestly, I was kind of excited about the prospect of what Knothole might be like. I only had vague memories of it from the cartoon and comic book, but still - a hidden rebel base in a forest sounded like it should come with at least a bit of dramatic flair.

I was a bit less excited when they brought out the tin tubs, brass kettles, and shampoo that was probably locally made…

"Oh, don't give us that look, darlin'," Bunnie chided gently, even as she guided me toward one of the tubs. Sally followed along behind us with brushes, combs, and towels already in hand like this was routine.

"Knothole's deep in the forest," Bunnie continued. "We gotta watch for ticks, lice, fleas—all the usual nasties. The boys are doin' their part too, over there with their own tub."

I glanced over.

Sure enough, the guys were already setting up a second bathing area a short distance away. Sonic looked relaxed as ever, Rotor was already half-focused on filling kettles to fill the tub with, and Antoine stood with his arms folded, watching the setup with the tired expression of someone who had been doing this for far too many years.

"Yes, yes," Antoine said, with the calm resignation of familiarity rather than complaint. "We are still doing zis, are we? After all zis time."

He exhaled lightly through his nose and gestured faintly toward the tubs.

"One would zink the matter of parasites in our environment would be less… persistent by now."

Sonic smirked as he passed. "Welcome to nature, dude."

Antoine didn't look at him. "Yes. Nature. Always so committed to its inconveniences."

"It's just part of the ecosystem," Rotor said as he adjusted the kettle setup.

"zat," Antoine replied after a beat, "is not comforting in ze way you intend it to be."

Bunnie gave a soft chuckle beside me. "You'll be fine, sugah."

Antoine gave a small, resigned nod, already moving toward the tubs with the posture of someone who had accepted this a regular insult to civilization.

"Of course," he said mildly. "As always."

I resigned myself to the prospect of taking a bath, actually being even more nervous about it apparently being a social event, although I wasn't looking forward to drying out my wet fur afterwards. Still, it made sense - pests and parasites were a serious issue deep in the woods, and nobody could check their own entire bodies by themselves.

I did wonder if the water was hot enough though. I mean, I could see what was either steam or mist coming off of it as Bunnie and Sally poured the water from the kettles into the tub, and I helped with that part too just to speed things up, but the kettles didn't feel hot to me.

Nothing did.

They didn't feel cold to me either, so I doubt it was going to be an ice bath.

Curious, I stuck my hand into the tub.

Ooh, tingly!

A spread of tiny bubbles formed around my fingers, clinging to my fur in a strange, fizzing sensation - like the water itself had decided to wake up and notice me.

Was the water carbonated?

That was… honestly kind of exciting.

Without thinking too hard about it, I climbed straight in, ready to experience the new sensation of sparkly bathwater!

O o O o O​

Sally paused mid-motion with a kettle still in her hands.

Bunnie didn't move either - but her attention sharpened instantly.

The water had been prepared carefully. Measured. Kettles heated to a comfortable bathing temperature, suitable for field conditions, and added to the bathwater.

No soap or other cleaning agent had been added yet, so there was no immediate explanation for the fizz of tiny bubbles that promptly surrounded Flambé. The water simply wasn't supposed to do that.

Then steam began to rise more heavily from the tub. An immediate, steady climb in heat, as if something within the water had decided their carefully curated heating had not been enough.

Sally slowly set the kettle down.

"…Okay," she said quietly as she considered what may be happening.

Bunnie exhaled through her nose. "Yeah," she murmured as her eyes stayed on the tub, steady and assessing. "That's… not normal."

"No, it isn't," Sally agreed.

Neither of them moved to intervene yet due to the simple fact that neither of them had enough information yet to justify action.

The steam continued to build slowly but steadily, and in that rising heat, the shape of the problem was becoming clearer even if its name still wasn't.

One thing was evident though - the girl would not have to worry about the usual forest parasites…

O o O o O​

After my bath, Sally dabbed my…

Hold on.

Why was my fur already dry?

And Bunnie was very carefully using her left arm—the cybernetic one—to brush and comb my fur.

I blinked.

Oh.

Oh no.

That wasn't carbonation.

That hadn't been carbonation at all, had it?

My brain tried to reconstruct what I had felt in the tub. The fizzing. The bubbles. The sudden "better" warmth that had settled in so naturally.

The bubbles weren't carbonation - they were heat cavitation from the water boiling.

I had been boiling the water.

Not in a way I could feel as heat, though. That was the problem.

It had just felt… wet. Tingly from the bubbles but otherwise neutral, and even the foggy vapor rising from the tub had felt more like cool mist than hot steam to me. Like temperature wasn't part of the equation unless I focused on it directly. I hadn't noticed the heat itself.

"…Ah," I said quietly.

Sally looked up from where she was finishing up the last bits of grooming. "Something wrong?"

I hesitated, then decided honesty was probably safer. "I think I may have boiled the bath water."

Nobody said anything for a moment, and even the guys over by the other tub were silent.

Bunnie didn't stop brushing.

Sally's hands paused for half a second - then resumed as if she had decided that stopping would not improve the situation. "…You were in it," She said carefully.

"Yes," I agreed.

After a few more moments of silence, Sally proceeded with a cautious tone. "And you're… fine?"

I considered that.

I felt fine.

Better than fine, actually.

"I think so?" I replied.

Bunnie let out a slow breath through her nose.

"Well," she said, matter-of-factly, "that's gonna take some gettin' used to."

Sally nodded faintly. "Yes. Although, if you can manage to refrain from heating the water any further, we can probably guarantee you a bathhouse spot right over one of the heating vents."

"More practice with tubs first, I would think," Bunnie added pragmatically - and I couldn't blame her for that cautious note.

I looked down at my hands.

So did they.

And for the first time since arriving in Knothole, I was very aware that "getting used to things" might not be something I get to do at my own pace.

This was going to be an issue, wasn't it?

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

My vague memories of the cartoon and the comic did not do the village of Knothole any justice at all. Picture Fern Gully combined with an Ewok tree village, only with some of the housing at ground level, and with caves, grottos, and side crevasses everywhere. At one end there is this enormous tree that just goes up and up and up, but it's not the only tree, just the biggest, and at ground level there's moss and ferns and a pink hedgehog staring at me and a stream running from high in a cliff wall on the other side of the huge tree all the way to going over the edge of a cliff at the other…

Wait…

Hold on…

I missed something important there.

Was it the big tree?

No, that wasn't it.

I mean, it's big and all, and I swear dome of the houses in the branches have multiple stories, and the hanging rope-and-plank bridges look like they'd be fun (and terrifying) to explore, but that wasn't it.

"Hi! I'm Amy Rose!"

That was it! The pink hedgehog in the yellow skirt and green blouse! A bit shorter than I am, so probably still her proper physical age?

And I just realized that I'm not even wearing shoes and gloves…

Nevermind - greeting now - die of embarrassment later!

"I'm Flambé," I replied far more shyly than I intended.

"Sonic! You're back!" another young voice called out, causing me to turn and look up at who could only be Tails as he rapidly flew over to where we were.


"That is so cool…" I could only say in awe.

O o O o O​

Sonic relaxed as a tension he hadn't quite been aware of released. When he had first met Tails, the young fox was being rather severely bullied by two other foxes barely any older than he was. On top of that, his parents had apparently recently gone missing, and he had no friends in that particular refugee camp.

So Sonic, who had recently separated from Mighty and Ray after the three failed to rescue Fiona, had taken Tails on as a sort of sidekick for a while.

Only for Tails to be sidelined due to his age when Sonic encountered Sally again and had been recruited into her Freedom Fighter cell.

It had been particularly hard on the young fox because, while nobody bullied him, he was literally the only preteen in the whole village until Amy Rose had been sent over from Mercia for reasons that Sonic still didn't fully understand.

Which would have been nice if they had seen each other as playmates rather than as rivals for his attention.

Flambé just accepting both Amy and Tails had been a small but pleasant surprise, and Sonic could only smile as the two dragged their new friend off to show her all of Knothole.

O o O o O​

I let myself be dragged along by Tails and Amy as they gave me the grand tour of Knothole.

Not that I'd remember much of it as they frequently pulled me along the moment one or the other thought of some other bit of the village that I simply had to see right that very moment.

At some point, I had somehow acquired a shabby second-hand set of boots and gloves from somebody as we crossed back and forth up, down, and across the village, but for the life of me i could not remember who gave them to me other than that they were some teenager who had outgrown them a while ago.

Well, at least they smelled clean, so there's that.

I put them on, of course, and my running around became a little more carefree as I no longer worried about stepping on rocks and twigs.

But the real highlight of the tour - at least for me - was when the two showed me a side crevasse off of the main gully that was apparently called Heat Row.

"It's pretty quiet now," Tails was explaining to both Amy and me. "Rotor does some metal casting at one of the workstations, and some of the elders who work these stations are passing on their skills, but… well… we can only bring in so much firewood, and a lot of it has to be stockpiled for winter each year. We have five kilns, but three of them haven't been used for years…"

"Really?" I had the beginnings of an idea. "Show me."

Sure enough, tucked away near the far end of the crevasse was a row of five kiln stations. Two of them looked like they were in use often enough to be cleaned regularly while the other three looked like they only saw occasional light maintenance.

I picked the one at the far end, not that it was really any different from the other four besides being near where some fresh water was coming out of the cliffside and into a trough that ran along the backside of several of the workstations. There were ladles, cups, buckets, and brushes hanging from pegs along the trough, so it was a good bet that the water was drinkable.

No latrine in the crevasse itself, but there was one nearby just outside of it, and no overbearing smell, so they obviously knew better than I how to set one up anyway.

I think…

"Tails, could you fetch Bunnie or Rotor or Sally or whoever I would need to talk to in order to move into one of the kilns?"

"I can do that," Tails nodded. "But why do you want to move into a kiln?"

"I'm a pyrokinetic," I said softly, looking away for a moment.

"A what?" Amy asked.

"It means she starts fires," Tails explained. "With her mind."

"Oh… Oh! That's so cool!"

"Not when I've only had these powers for a few days and am still getting used to them."

Tails saw the issue immediately. "I'll get Sally immediately. Rotor too, and maybe even Bunnie. They'll get you set up properly and maybe work out a way to train control."

"That would be appreciated, thanks," I replied softly.

As Tails flew off, I was relieved that neither of them had wanted immediate proof that I had fire powers.

"Show me!" Amy demanded excitedly.

"What?"

"You have fire magic! I want to see it!"

"That would be pyromancy, not pyrokinesis," I corrected, hoping to deflect her away from accidentally provoking whatever set off my powers. I mean, I'm fairly certain by this point that it's mostly intent based, with maybe a little subconscious use, but just because I was immune to my own powers didn't mean that it was something to play with.

"Potato tomato! Fire is fire! I wanna see you cast a… a… fire arrow!"

"Amy, I'm not going to call up a fire arrow just because you say so!"

"Then what do you call that?" Amy said smugly as she pointed over my head.

I looked up.

Sure enough, there was an arrow of pure flame floating in the air above my head.

I very carefully did not swear in front of Amy Rose, who seemed to be inordinately proud of what she made me do.

Spoiler: Flambé's (fire)starter set

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

Amy and I had managed to draw a small crowd of elders and teens from the active workstations in Heat Row, which I was finding to be a bit intimidating due to social anxiety.

Well, social anxiety and the fact that Amy was, much to my irritation, calling out new fire shapes for me to spontaneously form - usually directly over my head - as soon as I managed to dismiss the previous one.

Granted, on the one hand, she wasn't able to get me to spawn the same shape twice once I formed it at least once, so there's that. On the other, however, she quickly realized that just because I could apparently block the formation of anything I've formed at least once before didn't mean that she couldn't suggest entirely new shapes in order to see what would happen.

"Amy, stoppit, please!" I pleaded as I waved my hand through a flower crown made of fire, dismissing it.

"Fire melon!" Amy called out, cheerfully ignoring my request.

Nothing happened.

"Ha! That's just another ball shape!" I crowed. "Denied!"

"Aw… Oh, wait! Fire squash!"

To my annoyance, I could see the glow from above my head again.

"Yes!" Amy cheered again even as I waved my hands through the fiery image, disrupting it. "Not a ball shape!"

Quite frankly, the only reason I was only frustrated with Amy rather than angry with her, is that all the shapes so far had been forming safely above my head and not actually threatening to set anything else on fire. That didn't mean that I was particularly happy with her at the moment though, as I'd much rather be doing this somewhere safer, like actually inside the kiln.

"Fire frog!" Amy called out, and then frowned. "Aw… I know I didn't call out that shape before! Why didn't it form?"

I, on the other hand, was staring at a glowing frog made of fire sitting on the floor of the otherwise empty kiln that I had just been thinking of…

O o O o O​

"Okay, we've got Kiln Five set up like a small apartment for Flambé," Rotor Walrus stated, adjusting his glasses as he looked up from a hastily sketched layout.

The Freedom Fighters were gathered at one of the long tables in the community hall rather than their usual bunker. Around them, the low hum of village life continued - quiet conversations, the clatter of utensils, the distant rush of water through the carved channels that ran along the roots of Knothole's great trees.

The main reason they were having this conversation here rather than in their headquarters was due to their not wanting to make it seem like they were hiding anything about Knothole's latest resident from everyone else. This way, at least, they could be seen having this discussion in the open, and could be approached with any questions or concerns about the situation.

So far, at least this part seemed to be working.

It also helped that Amy Rose pulled her little stunt while the two were basically surrounded by the majority of Knothole's fire experts.

Sally Acorn rested her hands lightly on the table, eyes moving over the group. "Walk us through it."

Rotor nodded. "We cleared out the storage racks and reinforced the inner lining with additional stone. The ventilation flue is intact and functional - better than most of the other kilns, actually. We've redirected a small portion of the water line along the back wall for cooling if necessary."

"Necessary?" Sonic the Hedgehog echoed, leaning back in his chair. "You say that like we're expectin' her to turn the place into a volcano."

Bunnie, seated beside him, gave him a sideways look. "Sugah, after what we saw back in Grovedale, I ain't gonna pretend that ain't a possibility."

Sonic winced slightly. "...Yeah, okay, fair."

"This also gives her immediate access to running water via the faucet I installed," Rotor added. "She'll still need to use the latrines outside Heat Row, but she's got water for drinking and washing up on demand."

Antoine cleared his throat delicately, one hand resting near his chest. "If I may, Princess Sally - while I fully appreciate ze… practical advantages of housing zis young lady in a kiln-" he gestured faintly, as though indicating the concept itself offended his sensibilities "-I cannot help but observe zat we are, in effect, asking a child to reside in what is essentially an industrial furnace."

Bunnie's ears twitched. "Now hold on there, 'Toine. Ain't nobody askin' her to do anything. That was her idea."

Antoine blinked. "...It was?"

"It was," Sally confirmed calmly. "She requested to be placed in one of the spare kilns in Heat Row herself."

"Well now," Antoine said after a moment, visibly recalibrating, "zat does change ze framing somewhat."

"It means she's thinkin' ahead," Bunnie added. "Girl knows she's got somethin' dangerous goin' on and she's tryin' to put herself somewhere it won't hurt nobody."

Rotor nodded. "From a risk management standpoint, it's the optimal solution available with our current resources."

Sonic tipped his chair forward again, elbows on the table. "Plus, y'know… if she's gonna accidentally make stuff, better it happens somewhere built to handle heat instead of, like, someone's house."

"Zat is… difficult to argue," Antoine admitted, though he still looked faintly dissatisfied.

Sally's gaze shifted slightly. "What about comfort?"

Rotor hesitated. "It's… functional. We've added bedding, simple storage, basic furnishings - all as heat resistant and flame retardant as we could manage without using asbestos. It won't feel like a traditional living space, but-"

"It'll feel safe," Bunnie cut in gently. "That's what matters right now."

There was a brief pause at that.

Sonic glanced between them, then shrugged lightly. "She didn't exactly look like she needed luxury."

"No," Sally said quietly. "She didn't."

Another moment passed before Rotor spoke again.

"There is one additional consideration," he said. "We don't yet know how her abilities behave during various states of unconscious."

Antoine's expression tightened immediately. "You mean while she sleeps."

"Yes."

"We already know that if her sleep is being peaceful, zen she is fine," Antoine noted. "But if she 'as… 'ow do you say… a nightmare?" He asked, voice more subdued now.

Bunnie's hand rested flat against the table, fingers curling slightly. "Then we'd rather she be somewhere that can take it."

Sonic exhaled slowly. "Yeah… that tracks."

Sally nodded once, decision settling into place. "Then Kiln Five remains the best option."

She glanced toward the open hall, where a few villagers lingered just within earshot—not intruding, but clearly listening.

"That said," she continued, voice carrying just enough to be heard without becoming an announcement, "we are not isolating her."

Bunnie smiled faintly at that. "Darn right we ain't."

"She'll have full access to the village," Sally went on. "Supervised where appropriate, but not restricted without cause."

Rotor adjusted his glasses again. "We should also consider structured training intervals. Controlled exposure, limited variables—"

"Yeah, maybe with a little less 'Amy shoutin' random stuff' involved," Sonic added dryly.

Bunnie huffed a soft laugh. "Lord help us, that girl's gonna turn this into a game if we let her."

Antoine folded his arms, posture straightening. "Zen perhaps it would be wise if we did not let her."

"Careful," Sonic said with a grin. "You'll hurt her feelings."

"I am prepared to accept zat risk."

That earned a quiet chuckle from Bunnie.

Sally allowed herself the faintest hint of a smile before her expression settled again.

"Then we proceed as follows," she said. "Flambé moves into Kiln Five tonight. We establish observation protocols, begin controlled training tomorrow, and maintain open communication with the village."

Her gaze moved across each of them in turn.

"No assumptions. No panic. We work with what we know."

"And what we know," Sonic said lightly, "is that she's tryin' not to set anything on fire."

Bunnie nodded. "And so far? She's doin' a pretty good job of it."

Antoine inclined his head. "Zen we shall ensure she 'as every opportunity to continue doing so."

Sally gave a final nod.

"Exactly."

Around them, the quiet murmur of Knothole continued—less tense now, more curious than concerned.

And for the moment, that was enough.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

My first few days in Knothole were a mix of wonder, hectic activity, boredom, and frustration. Some of which occurring several times during the same hour, let alone the same day.

Part of that issue, I suspected, had to do with the fact that I was a child. And not just physically either. I may have had over half a century of living experience during my previous life, but I was now once again a preteen.

Well, at least on the plus side, I wouldn't have to worry about acne when my second puberty hit. It's not like pimples would actually be visible through the fur on my face. Assuming I could even get pimples.

And the realization that I'm a girl this time around and all that implied just hit - and was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed. Princess Sally got along fine without pants so I'd be fine too!

I looked down at the ashes of my homework and the charcoal stick that used to be my pencil, sighed, and got up to get replacements.

There was a reason the furniture I got to use tended to be stone, earthenware, or ceramic…

O o O o O​

Anyway, education in Knothole tended to be sporadic and informal, but definitely still a thing. One or more elders, or sometimes teenagers, would spend part of their day imparting whatever lessons, stories, or wisdom they had to offer. And not just to Amy, Tails, and me - some of the teens - including the Freedom Fighters themselves - sat in on lessons whenever they could.

Like I said, education was informal and sporadic - but still present and recognized by most as being valuable.

Tails was scary good at math and structural design, and I could easily see the early signs of the technological prodigy he would become in the not-too-distant future.

I might not have understood everything he showed me, but I was impressed all the same, and that alone seemed to please him for some reason.

Amy's talents tended to lean more towards the mystical and arcane, which Knothole did not currently have capable instructors for much to her frustration, but she was far from stupid and she was better at math than I was.

Excuse me for not actually having needed it much after graduation in my previous life.

Where I excelled, apparently, was logic, puzzles, and problem solving. Not to the point of always being right - I'm not that arrogant - but I had this tendency towards trying to see all seven sides of any three-sided problem.

Granted, I was also easily distracted and sometimes became monofocused on an issue, became extremely shy around anyone I didn't know, and sometimes had to literally isolate myself so I could socially decompress, but I actually had the advantage of living semi-isolated from the rest of the village as I was literally the only one who spent the night in Heat Row.

O o O o O​

"Sugah, what do you think you are doing?" Bunnie asked in a bemused tone.

"I'm showing Amy and Tails how to use hand crossbows?" Flambé responded in a confused tone, apparently uncertain about what the issue was.

"Why?"

"Well, I noticed that there was a lot of galvanized rubber from old worn-out tires that were just piled up by the vehicle bay not being used anymore, so I made a bunch of training bolts for the hand crossbow I made for myself. Then I got to thinking that it'd be fun if Amy and Tails had hand crossbows too, so I made two more for them to use, and a bunch more training bolts. Then I found a crate full of suction cups that nobody was using, and made a whole lot more bolts using those for heads. Anyway, after Amy and Tails get a bit more practice in, we're gonna run around and shoot at each other!"

Bunnie wondered where the girl had gotten all that air to say that in one go, then processed what Flambé had actually said.

"No."

"Aw…"

The disappointment was immediate and unanimous. Amy's shoulders dropped dramatically, and she hugged her crossbow a little closer as if that alone might preserve the possibility of future chaos. Tails looked down at his own device with a conflicted expression, like a part of him had already mentally begun diagramming improvements before remembering what the word no meant in this context.

Flambé, for her part, looked genuinely puzzled rather than rebellious. Not defiant - just caught in the gap between what had seemed like a practical extension of existing materials and what the others were clearly interpreting as something far more serious.

Bunnie didn't soften her stance, but she also didn't move to take anything away immediately. Instead, she stepped forward and carefully extended her hand.

"Gimme those."

A brief pause followed.

Tails handed his over first without protest, ears slightly lowered in thought more than disappointment. Amy hesitated a fraction longer before surrendering hers with visible reluctance. Flambé followed suit a moment later, still looking like she was trying to locate the specific point in her reasoning where everything had gone wrong.

Bunnie accepted all three and turned one over in her hands. Her expression shifted subtly as she inspected the craftsmanship - less surprise than quiet acknowledgment.

"These are well made," she said after a moment. And they were, for something a child had made. Slightly crude, but actually functional, and it was clear that Flambé had understood the principles involved and hadn't just made what looked right.

Flambé brightened slightly. "That's what I said."

"That ain't the point," Bunnie replied immediately, though her tone stayed even. "You just gotta learn the difference between 'can be made' and 'should be handed out.'"

Flambé opened her mouth as if to respond, then stopped, visibly recalibrating. There was no argument forming - only reprocessing.

Amy, meanwhile, leaned slightly forward, eyes still fixed on the confiscated crossbows.

"So… we can't try them at all?"

Bunnie looked at her first, then at Tails, then finally at Flambé.

"No," she said firmly. "Not like that. Not runnin' around. Not turnin' it into a game."

There was a long moment when nobody said anything.

Then she added, with a slight shift toward practicality rather than prohibition, "If Rotor clears it, we'll head over to the practice range, and you can train under supervision."

That landed differently. Amy's disappointment immediately reshaped into anticipation. Tails nodded once, already thinking in terms of structure rather than play. Flambé's expression eased as well—not because she had won, but because the idea itself had not been rejected outright, only redirected.

Bunnie exhaled softly through her nose, collecting the crossbows more securely under one arm.

"Now go on," she said, already turning slightly away. "Before Amy gets any more ideas."

"Hey!" Amy protested, though there was no real offense in it.

Flambé gave a small, sheepish sound that might have been agreement or apology, then stepped back as well. Tails lingered half a second longer, eyes still lingering on the devices in Bunnie's hands as if mentally filing away every detail for later reconstruction.

Bunnie noticed that look and arched an eyebrow at him.

"Don't even start," she warned.

Tails blinked. "…Start what?"

"That thinkin'."

Tails paused.

Then very carefully stopped thinking out loud.

Bunnie shook her head slightly as she adjusted her grip on the confiscated devices and turned away, already mentally filing the incident under needs Rotor approval before further discussion.

Behind her, the three children remained where she had left them—one disappointed, one curious, and one quietly recalibrating the boundaries between possibility and permission.

"So…" Flambé started as they headed towards the grotto Rotor's workshop was in, "Do you want the rubberband guns I made too?"

"Whut?" Bunnie almost stopped mid-step, but kept moving, trusting the kids to follow. "Flambé, what are we gonna do with you?"

"Find more rubber bands?" Flambé continued, as if this were an obvious next step in a resource chain. "I mean, they're a lot safer to play with, but I only found six so far, and that'd only give Amy, Tails, and me two shots each before we'd have to stop and gather them up again. That's why I made so many play bolts for the crossbows in the first place. Well, that and the bolts would be easier to find than rubber bands after being shot…"

Bunnie let out a long, quiet breath through her nose, not quite a sigh and not quite a laugh.

She wasn't sure if she actually regretted asking that question anymore, but she kept walking anyway.

And behind her, Flambé continued explaining her reasoning like it was the most normal thing in the world.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

"Blast it all!" Dr. Robotnik's mechanical fist came down on the console with a metallic thud that rattled several nearby instruments just enough to make them hum in protest.

"I hate having to do forensics investigations!"

The declaration echoed through the chamber, sharp and irritated, before being swallowed by the low, ever-present thrum of machinery that powered his fortress.

He stood there for a moment, breathing through his nose, mustache twitching slightly as he glared at the data display in front of him as though it had personally offended him.

Which, in a sense, it had.

He was brilliant - there was no question of that. Robotics, weapons engineering, large-scale systems design, programming - those were his domains, the arenas in which he did not merely excel, but dominated.

Forensics, however, required patience, reconstruction, and the careful assembly of incomplete, degraded, and often unreliable data into a coherent narrative of events that had already occurred. It was, in short, retroactive problem solving, and Robotnik despised retroactive problem solving.

"If I wanted to sift through debris and guess at causes," he muttered, folding his arms behind his back as he began pacing in a tight, agitated circle, "I would have become an archaeologist."

His gaze flicked back to the screen, to the reports of thermal blooms, vitrified terrain, and destroyed units. The affected Badniks were functionally irrecoverable—memory cores burnt out, no surviving telemetry, no usable visual data, nothing that could be meaningfully analyzed.

"Utterly unacceptable," he snapped.

Under different circumstances, he might have found the problem intellectually engaging, but he already had too many ongoing concerns demanding his attention.

The Great Forest remained chief among them.

Eliminating it had proven far more tedious than anticipated. Historical records suggested that the Great Ancestors had managed large-scale deforestation efforts - and good for them if they had - but replicating those results in the present had been inefficient, even with extensive mechanized support. The forest was simply too vast. It spread across much of Eastern Northamer, encompassing the Apple Mountain Range and presenting an overwhelming number of terrain variables.

No single offensive, no engineered catastrophe, no elegant solution - no matter how sophisticated - had proven sufficient. What remained was a slow campaign of attrition against an ecosystem that resisted eradication through sheer scale and resilience.

And he did want it gone.

A significant portion of the former Kingdom of Acorn had overlapped the forest, though that territory represented only a fraction of the biome as a whole. Every known settlement within it had been identified and processed accordingly. Villages had been emptied, populations converted or eliminated, resistance suppressed or repurposed.

And yet…

"Knothole," he said, the word carrying clear distaste.

The so-called Village of Knothole did not appear in any official archive, survey, or recovered map, and yet every captured refugee insisted that the Princess was there. Every single one, even after roboticization, when their Control Overlay Programs should have eliminated any capacity for defiance.

"Which means," Robotnik said slowly, coming to a stop as he considered the implications, "that either the entire population has been conditioned to repeat the same falsehood…"

He turned back toward the console.

"…or there exists an unregistered settlement within the Great Forest that has thus far evaded detection."

His eye twitched.

"I find both possibilities offensive."

He called up the Grovedale report again.

Grovedale had been insignificant - no resistance, no infrastructure, no strategic value. Its inhabitants had fled at the mere suggestion of his advance, abandoning the settlement with little more than what they could carry.

"Cowards," he muttered, though without particular interest.

There had been nothing worth reclaiming, nothing worth salvaging. If anything, the town represented a net negative in terms of resource value.

Which was precisely why the anomaly there was so irritating.

"A thermal bloom detected by a Buzzbomber squad," he recited, reviewing the report. "Swarm deployed. A massive thermal event occurred, followed by total loss of contact."

He advanced the report.

"A secondary squad confirmed large-scale vitrification. Approximately twenty-five percent of the affected area was converted to glass."

Another input highlighted the most problematic detail.

"The primary swarm remains unrecoverable."

His lip curled.

"Not destroyed. Not damaged. Unrecoverable."

That distinction mattered. Destroyed units still provided data - memory cores, combat logs, environmental readings. There was always something to extract if he deemed retrieving the remains of a badnik worth the effort.

Except in Grovedale.

There was evidence of the event, but almost nothing regarding its cause.

"Whatever occurred," Robotnik said, his tone sharpening, "operated at a temperature sufficient to compromise hardened memory substrates."

That was not incidental.

He overlaid the thermal bloom with the last known positions of the deployed units. The Buzzbombers had converged on the target, subdividing into attack formations, and then…

Nothing.

"Localized, but extremely intense," he murmured.

Additional data appeared: footprints.

They were deeper near the center of the event and grew progressively shallower toward the perimeter, avoiding the remains of destroyed units as though they might still pose a threat.

Caution, then. Residual fear.

A useful detail.

He made a note to revisit Buzzbomber design parameters, shifting them back into consideration for future refinement.

His attention returned to the footprints. They were too degraded for precise identification, though analysis suggested a high probability of a Mobian origin. No reliable weight distribution could be established.

Who would walk across molten glass?

And yet someone had.

Someone had stood at the epicenter and left on foot.

"An organic actor," Robotnik said, the phrase carrying clear distaste. "Capable of generating extreme thermal output on demand. Comparable, in its own way, to that hedgehog's anomalous speed."

He exhaled slowly.

"Enough of this."

He pulled up another report.

The display shifted to the Auto-Fiona Active Deployment Log.

The unit was designed as a younger, more approachable variant of the Auto-Fiona infiltration line, modeled after the captured dissident Fiona the Fox. Its behavioral matrices emphasized empathy, curiosity, and subtle emotional mirroring, while its physical design minimized perceived threat.

A lure.

Specifically calibrated for a child who had expressed loneliness within range of a surveillance device.

"Tails is isolated," Robotnik said, his focus sharpening. "Separated from primary allies, operating within a predictable range. An ideal acquisition target."

The plan had been straightforward and efficient. Minimal force required. Minimal risk of interference.

"And yet…" His expression tightened as the tracking logs continued. "There was no contact." He scrolled further. "No trace of him."

The Auto-Fiona unit had performed within expected parameters. There were no deviations significant enough to account for the failure.

That left two possibilities: Either Tails had altered his behavior, or an external factor had done so.

Robotnik's gaze shifted back to the Grovedale data: Thermal bloom. Vitrification. Total data loss.

"Correlation is not causation," he said, dismissing the connection for now. Even so, he did not discard the possibility entirely.

The console chimed.

"Snively," he said, activating the channel.

The screen shifted to reveal his nephew. "Uncle, I have a status update on the western campaign."

"You have a problem," Robotnik corrected. "State it."

Snively swallowed.

"The Sandblasters of Sandblast City have proven more resilient than anticipated."

Robotnik remained expressionless. "They are a desert insurgency," he said. "Terrain familiarity, mobility advantages, and entrenched infrastructure. None of this is unexpected."

"They are adapting faster than projected," Snively continued. "Ambushes, traps, environmental manipulation-"

"Primitive," Robotnik said. "Effective only insofar as they are permitted to be."

"But, sir, the city itself has a force field..."

Robotnik turned slightly, his attention drifting back to the Grovedale data.

"The Sandblasters are a known variable, Snively. They resist. You suppress them. That is routine. The force field is an annoyance, yes, but it also ties them to a single location that they must operate out of."

"Yes, sir."

"They do not concern me," Robotnik said. "They are in a desert biome - simple siege tactics will eventually starve them out if nothing else will."

That was the distinction: the Sandblasters were already a solved problem. The only requirement there was patience and somebody else to manage the tedious part of managing those operations. He looked again at the vitrified terrain. Clean. Total. Absent of useful data.

"Have you encountered anything resembling this?" he asked, transmitting the imagery.

Snively examined it.

"No, sir. Nothing of that scale."

"Of course not," Robotnik muttered.

If it were common, it would already be classified, cataloged, and controlled.

"The Sandblasters will continue to resist until they are broken," he said. "Adjust your tactics accordingly. Increase surveillance, disrupt mobility, and deny terrain advantage."

"Yes, sir."

"And Snively?"

"Yes, Uncle?"

"Do not allow a manageable problem to distract you from an unidentified one."

"…No, sir."

"Good."

He terminated the transmission.

The display returned to the Grovedale data: Thermal bloom. Vitrification. Lost units. Unknown origin.

Somewhere within the Great Forest, something had generated enough heat to erase itself from his systems entirely.

There was no pattern, no classification, no control.

His lip curled slightly - not in anger this time, but in something sharper. Interest.

It was a problem, certainly, but not an immediate one, and he had many other more vital issues on his plate. He made a note, but until there were additional incidents to form a pattern or the unknown Mobian made an actual appearance, it remained a low priority for now. Not even worth pulling his nephew away from a task he could easily reassign to a Robian with an adjusted Control Overlay Program that let it actually use its actual cognitive abilities while remaining loyal to him.

Hmmm…

Now that was an idea worth pursuing. Perhaps it was time to actually check the conversion archive to see if he had any Robians with actual command experience…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

All in all, I think I was settling into my second childhood fairly well. Sure, there wasn't any internet, but Knothole actually did have plenty of books…

…that I only got to read with supervision, even after proving that I wouldn't just randomly cause them to combust.

I have not yet set fire to even one book while in Knothole.

No! I hadn't set fire to any books while I was in Grovedale either!

Well, maybe there were some books in the houses that were too close when those Buzzbombers attacked, but those would have been incidental due to being in those houses when they became cinders, ash, and glass.

I have not specifically, purposely, nor even accidentally set any books on fire. That I know of. Period.

Anyway, to blatantly change the topic, after Bunnie handed over the hand crossbows I had made for Amy, Tails and myself to Rotor and then proceeded to give us all what felt like a rather pointless weapons safety lecture while he examined my work…

I mean seriously, I had made, well, probably way too many play bolts with soft heads that were either galvanized rubber or suction cups - how much more child-safe could they be?

Where was I?

Oh, yeah!

Anyway, Tails had made better versions of both the crossbows I had made as well as improved versions of the rubberband guns. The latter of which, after careful examination and some demonstration shots, were actually deemed safe enough for Amy, Tails, and I to play with. We still only had the six rubberbands to share between us though so we mutually decided that rubberband-tag would be an indoor game for us so we wouldn't have to look too hard for our "ammo" after we used it.

I tried not to think too hard about the three hand crossbows I had made. Sure, Bunnie had said that they were well made. She just left off the "for something made by a kid" part. Don't get me wrong, the three I built were pretty solid, and they worked. It's just…

The three Tails made afterwards were so much better, it wasn't even funny. I understood the principles involved, but he understood them better. The ones I had made were functional, but low powered - enough so that my idea of soft play-heads actually made them more or less safe to play with. The ones Tails made though, using a better understanding of the same principles? Actually weapon grade - suitable for hunting or even combat.

And not child-safe at all, even with softer heads. I could see why Bunnie had been worried, even if mine proved to be more toys than tools.

Toys…

The realization hit me like…

Well, like a crossbow bolt, I suppose.

I had been making toys, and on some conceptual level, that's all I had been making. All I had intended to make. To me, it was obvious, the same way that Nerf weapons weren't really the weapons they represented.

Except that Bunnie hadn't seen it that way. Like, at all.

And the improved versions Tails had made weren't toys at all, only I wasn't sure if he was aware of the fact that mine were supposed to be just toys.

Even so, it kinda still hurt that he had taken one look at what I had made, and then at the first opportunity had made something better.

However, despite my envy, I was honestly happy for Tails. He was discovering that he liked making things and figuring them out. Which, at least from my perspective, was a big deal because this was a bit early for him.

I was a bit worried that Amy was growing a little too attached to the hand crossbow Tails had made for her though.

Maybe I shouldn't have used pyrographics to apply the name "Thorn of the Rose" to both sides of the stock?

O o O o O​

Amy Rose finished cleaning and maintaining the hand crossbow that Tails and Flambé had made for her, then carefully put it on the shelf by her writing desk. Sure, she had seen better quality ones back in Mercia, but this one had been made especially for her by her friends. And the name Flambé had given it, "Thorn of the Rose…"

Named weapons were special, even if the only thing special about them was the fact that they were named.

And Amy fully understood that the hand crossbow Tails had made was a weapon. Even the ones Flambé had made before then were still weapons, albeit ones calibrated for training and safe play shooting against willing targets. She was a child of the aristocracy, and her family had made sure she understood such things.

Back in Mercia, there had been other kids, but she was the King's cousin, and even living as outlaws in the woods hadn't changed the fact that her peers were her peers and more associates of the same age rather than actual friends. Maybe if Cousin Rob hadn't sent her away to Knothole for her safety after the baddies had figured out that she was related to the King-in-hiding, things might have progressed on that front.

For a while, life in Knothole had been just as lonely as it had been all the way back in Mercia. Tails was the only kid her age, with everyone else being so much older than either of them.

And Tails wasn't interested in being her friend, nor she in being friends with him. At least not at first. They had been too different in some ways, and too alike in others. It wasn't until Flambé, a girl only a little older than either of them, had shown up that she and Tails had started getting along.

Now that they were friends though, Amy could not imagine it any other way.

Thorn of the Rose was special.

Truly special.

Because her friends had made it just for her.

O o O o O​

Tails had spread the hand crossbows out across a workbench in Rotor's workshop that he was being allowed to use, though he'd ended up sitting instead of standing. It made it easier to lean in and look at the smaller details without having to hold everything up.

The three Flambé had made were on one side, while two of the three he had made were on the other

The one he had made for Amy, the one Flambé had used her pyrokinesis to burn the name Thorn of the Rose into both sides of the stock, had been taken by the pink hedgehog as she had refused to leave Rotor's workshop without it.

It was… nice to have something he had made be appreciated by the person he had made it for. Not that Flambé hadn't liked hers too, but given that she lived in a kiln, she had decided that it was probably for the best that anything made even partly out of flammable materials would probably be safer stored somewhere else. She even kept her boots and gloves on a shelf outside of her actual apartment.

Not that Flambé had accidentally ignited anything in her apartment yet as far as he was aware.

Tails looked over at the three crossbows that Flambé had made again, then selected the one he was fairly certain that she had made first.

It was a little uneven in places. The front end pulled slightly off-center, and the way the pieces had been fitted together looked more practical than careful. He could see where it would flex under tension, and where it might wear down if it was used too often.

But it worked.

He turned it over in his hands, studying it a little longer than he meant to.

She hadn't had any examples nearby when she made it. No tools meant for this kind of work, either. Just scrap and whatever she could find.

Tails set it down and picked up one of his own.

This one felt better balanced. He'd spent time adjusting that - moving things a little at a time, testing it, then adjusting again until it behaved the way he wanted. When he pulled the string back slightly, it held steady.

That part made sense to him: Try something. See what changed. Fix it.

He set it back down and glanced again at the one Flambé had made.

It still bothered him a little that it was underpowered. Apparently deliberately so, as he didn't think that Flambé was stupid. She had made something for fun. To play with. To share with friends. He could see that now.

When he had made his own versions, he had not been fixing flaws as he had initially thought. Flambé had made toys, but he had made tools…

No…

He had made weapons.

Without even thinking about the difference between the two design philosophies.

No wonder Bunnie had been upset with Flambé. His friend might have been able to tell the difference between a toy and a weapon, but he had not.

Tails rested his hands on the edge of the workbench and looked over the five hand crossbows again. The two sets of what were functionally the same but philosophically so different.

Tails could tell that Flambé had been a little upset that the set he had made had turned out to be better than hers on his first try, and he had half expected their friendship to end, but instead she was actually happy for him. She wasn't at all like the bullies from his hometown. If he or Amy were good at something, Flambé was there, cheering them on. And if they failed, she didn't make fun of either of them.

Flambé was… nice. She just accepted Tails for who he was from the word go. She thought his ability to fly was cool, never made fun of his extra tail (hadn't even ever mentioned it, really).

And she was really pretty.

Tails wanted to do something nice for Flambé. She didn't really need a weapon though, and Aunty Bunnie wasn't likely to let her keep one anyway (how Amy Rose got away with keeping Thorn of the Rose was currently beyond his understanding). She could also make all sorts of earthenware, ceramics, and glassworks herself - better than he could manage even - so… what did she really need?

…

Flambé really enjoyed reading.

Flambé needed a way to be able to read books without supervision. Maybe even a way to read while inside an active Kiln or while in the bathhouse.

There. Now he had a goal he could work towards.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to reach that goal.

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

Sally paused near the entrance to Heat Row and took a moment to observe before stepping fully inside.

The area was active in a way she had not seen since before the war had begun to strain their resources. Multiple workstations were in operation at once—kilns, furnaces, and forges all in use simultaneously. Under normal circumstances, that level of activity would have required careful rationing of fuel and strict scheduling to avoid waste.

Today, there was no fuel being used at all. There were no quench barrels in use. No oil, no water, no prepared mediums at all. The processes remained, but the materials had quietly become unnecessary.

"That's still a strange sight," Bunnie said quietly as she came to stand beside her.

Sally nodded once. "Yes. It is."

Her attention shifted toward the center of the workspace.

Flambé sat on a ceramic bench that had been positioned with clear sightlines to the surrounding stations. She held a book open in one hand, her posture relaxed, though not inattentive. Her gaze moved between the page and the craftsmen at irregular intervals, tracking requests as they came.

"Ready to quench!"

Flambé looked up. "Which type?"

"Water!"

She nodded. "All right."

The smith lowered the heated metal-

-and the temperature dropped sharply, the glow fading in a rapid, controlled decline consistent with a water quench. Just without the water. The change occurred in open air, driven solely by Flambé's control over the rate of heat loss.

Not that there wasn't water present, of course, but the quenching bucket was just present, the water inside remaining unused.

The smith examined the result briefly, then moved on without comment.

Sally watched the transition carefully, then shifted her focus to another station.

"I need a slower draw - oil rate!"

Flambé hesitated for a fraction of a second before responding. "Okay. Give me a moment."

This time, the cooling proceeded more gradually. The metal retained its internal heat longer, the temperature decreasing along a smoother curve. It was not identical to a traditional oil quench, but it was close enough to produce the intended effect.

"Good," the craftsman said, adjusting his grip. "Hold that."

Flambé kept her attention on the piece for a second longer than before, then glanced back down at her book once the process stabilized.

Bunnie crossed her arms. "She ain't just heatin' things up."

"No," Sally said. "She's controlling how heat leaves the material."

At a third workstation, a more precise request came in.

"Edge only - leave the spine hot!"

Flambé looked up again, this time focusing more fully. "Hold it steady."

The cooling slowed across most of the blade while the edge remained at a higher temperature. The balance was uneven at first—there was a slight fluctuation before she corrected it—but the separation held long enough for the smith to complete the step.

"That'll do," he said.

Flambé exhaled quietly and returned her attention to her book.

Sally noted the delay in her response time, the small adjustments required to maintain each process, and the way Flambé's attention shifted between tasks rather than remaining fixed on any one of them.

"She's not maintaining these states automatically," Sally said. "She's managing them."

"Juggling," Bunnie replied.

"Yes."

Another call came, sharper than the others.

"Faster than water - can you do it?"

Flambé looked up immediately, her expression tightening slightly. "I can try."

This time, she did not divide her attention. Her focus stayed on the piece as the temperature dropped more aggressively than before.

Too aggressively.

"Too much," the craftsman said, pulling the piece back. "You overshot it."

Flambé nodded, a brief frown crossing her face. "Yeah. I see it."

She did not attempt to argue or correct after the fact. Instead, she let the process end and returned to a more neutral posture, her attention shifting back to the broader field of activity.

Sally watched that reaction closely.

"She understands when she makes a mistake," she said.

"And doesn't double down," Bunnie added. "That's good."

Two more requests overlapped.

"Hold temperature steady here!"

"Start a slow cool on this one!"

Flambé glanced between them, then answered without hesitation.

"Hold first."

The first piece stabilized, its temperature remaining within a narrow margin. Only after that was secured did she turn her attention to the second, easing the heat away gradually.

The second craftsman waited without complaint.

Sally noted that as well.

"She's prioritizing based on process sensitivity," Sally said. "Not just responding in order."

Bunnie gave a small nod. "Means she's payin' attention to what matters." After a moment, she continued a little more quietly, "Only just found out they'd been workin' with her like this myself. They've been testin' what she can do down here."

"They?" Sally asked.

"The smiths," Bunnie said. "Figures though - if anyone's gonna help Flambé learn her limits, it'd be the folks most used to workin' with fire themselves."

"Then we'll want to make sure those limits are understood properly," Sally replied.

Bunnie nodded once. "Already started. They did find out early on that there's a limit to how cold she can make somethin' though. She can maybe manage cool, but not cold—an' freezin' is right out. But she can get something down to safe to handle easily enough, an' snuff fires as easily as she starts them."

"Good to know," Sally nodded, taking in the information.

At the center of the Row, Flambé reached for her tea and took a sip.

One of the furnaces dipped slightly.

She noticed within a second and corrected it.

"Sorry - got it."

The temperature returned to its previous level.

Sally exhaled quietly.

"This is useful," she said. "As training."

Bunnie glanced at her. "But not sustainable."

"No," Sally agreed. "And not something we allow to become exploited." She shifted her stance slightly, her tone firming. "I'll address it in the Community Hall tonight. No one is to structure their work around her presence. These processes need to remain independent of her involvement."

"Already told 'em," Bunnie said. "But it'll carry more weight comin' from you."

Sally nodded.

"She can assist when she chooses to," she continued. "But it must remain optional. If this becomes routine, we risk creating a dependency we cannot afford."

Bunnie's expression settled into agreement. "And puttin' pressure on her besides."

"Yes."

Sally's gaze returned to Flambé.

The girl had resumed reading, her attention divided but engaged, adjusting temperatures as needed with small, deliberate corrections rather than sweeping changes.

It wasn't effortless. It was more intuitive than not, but not fully instinctive. It was manageable - and becoming more reliable.

"That is what concerns me," Sally said quietly.

Bunnie followed her gaze. "That she's gettin' good at it?"

"That others will begin to assume she already is."

O o O o O​

I was aware that some people in Knothole worried about me living alone at the far end of Heat Row, but honestly I didn't mind living in Kiln 5. Which is what everyone was still calling my apartment as it was still functionally a kiln, even with the added water utilities. No toilet though, but the local latrines weren't too far from the open end of Heat Row. And - much to my shock - were virtually scentless.

I'm honestly not sure how they pulled that one off.

I mean, if it were me, I'd be using flash-incineration into sterile ash, but nobody will let me try that idea for some reason.

I should probably note that down as one of those flame-related concepts that apparently did not spontaneously happen anyway just because I thought about it.

Then again, I had already figured out how to flash-incinerate similar materials, so maybe that didn't count for some reason?

Where was I going with this train of thought again?

Oh, right. Nowhere. I was just on my way to actually use the latrines and nobody else was currently in Heat Row because it was dark out and their work was done.

Random useless thoughts for the win.

Yay…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!
O o O o O​

The Community Hall was quieter than usual, even for the midafternoon about as far between two of the three major meals of the day as it was possible to get. The dishes had been done in record time, as always seemed to be the case when it was Flambé's turn at the dish sink - which the young fox girl always ended up doing alone, despite the rule that she was supposed to have help. The basic problem with that idea, no matter how well intentioned, was that the moment Flambé started actually washing anything that required serious scrubbing, the water became hot enough to make soap redundant. At that point, staying near her and the dish sink became unbearable. On the other hand, as long as the clean dishes were taken away from the counter to her right, Flambé would merrily keep going until she ran out of dirty dishes from the counter on the left.

And then, once all the dishes were done, all the kitchen windows, already opened wide to let the steam out and cool air in, would be left open and the kitchen would be abandoned for a few hours to give the room time to become tolerable again. But hey, nobody could deny that the dishes and utensils ended up so clean that they were effectively sterile.

Sweet kid, but sometimes a bit much when she got enthusiastic about something her powers could do well.

Which didn't really explain why the Community Hall was nearly empty today, but it was, and even the long table had been completely clear when Amy and Tails had come to see if Flambé was done with her posted chore yet.

Amy Rose had claimed one end of it.

She had a small cloth laid out in front of her, carefully smoothed flat, with a worn deck of tarot cards resting on top. The deck itself looked well-used, edges softened from handling rather than neglect. Amy treated it with a kind of quiet care that made it clear it mattered to her in a way most things did not.

Tails sat on one side of the table, feet not quite reaching the floor, leaning forward with his elbows near the edge. His expression was polite, but skeptical in the way of someone trying not to be rude while still reserving judgment.

Flambé sat on the other side. She was relaxed, hands folded loosely near her cup of tea, watching more out of interest than expectation.

Amy glanced between them.

"Okay," she said, shuffling the cards with practiced ease. "This is a simple three-card reading. Past, present, future. Upright and inverted positions matter because they change how the meaning expresses itself."

Tails nodded once. "Right. But the meaning is assigned by interpretation."

"It's structured interpretation," Amy corrected, cutting the deck cleanly and setting it down. "There's a difference."

Flambé tilted her head slightly. "Magic is a thing on Mobius," she said, matter-of-fact rather than argumentative.

Tails gave her a look. "There are unexplained phenomena on Mobius."

" And that's what a lot of magic is," Flambé replied.

Amy held up a hand before the discussion could drift. "We can debate definitions later. For now, I'm reading the cards."

She looked at Tails first. "Cut the deck."

He hesitated only a moment before doing so, splitting it into two neat piles and letting Amy recombine them. She drew the first card and placed it face-up.

"The past," Amy said. "The Tower. Upright."

Tails leaned in slightly despite himself.

"That usually means sudden upheaval," Amy continued. "Something built on unstable foundations collapsing. Not always bad in the long term, but disruptive."

Tails sat back a little. "That's… vague enough to apply to a lot of things."

Amy didn't argue. She simply moved to the second card. "The present. Page of Swords. Upright."

She tapped it lightly. "Curiosity. Analysis. Learning through observation. It's about someone trying to understand something they don't fully trust yet."

Tails blinked once, then looked away slightly as if that might reduce how directly it applied.

Flambé glanced between them with a slight smile. "That sounds like him."

"I am sitting right here," Tails said.

"Yes," Flambé agreed. "That is why I said it."

Amy drew the final card and set it down without ceremony. "The future. Nine of Wands. Inverted."

She studied it for a moment before speaking. "Normally that would mean resilience and persistence under strain. Inverted, it can mean exhaustion, lowered defenses, or being reluctant to continue after setbacks."

Tails frowned slightly. "So either I keep going, or I get tired and stop."

"In very general terms," Amy said, carefully neutral. "Yes."

Tails leaned back in his chair. "That's… still broad enough to fit most people."

Amy nodded once, not defensive. "That's part of why it works better when you know the person being read."

She turned toward Flambé. "Your turn."

Flambé blinked. "I am not sure what I am supposed to do."

"Same thing," Amy said. "Cut the deck."

Flambé glanced at Tails briefly, as if checking for confirmation that this was not some kind of test. When he gave a small shrug, she reached out and split the deck into two piles with careful precision, then pushed them back together.

Amy drew the first card. "The past," she said. "Strength. Upright."

She paused slightly before continuing. "That's control over instinct. Not suppression. Integration. Power guided rather than resisted."

Flambé looked at the card for a moment. "That sounds like learning not to break things by accident."

Tails raised an eyebrow at that but did not interrupt.

Amy drew the second card. "The present. The Magician. Upright."

She set it down a little more carefully than the others. "Skill. Will. The ability to take what you have and turn it into something new."

Flambé nodded slowly. "That is what I am trying to do most of the time."

Tails looked between them. "That one actually is pretty on the nose."

Amy did not respond to that directly. She drew the final card. "The future. The Star. Upright." She hesitated a fraction longer before speaking. "Hope. Recovery. Something difficult becoming stable over time. Not immediate, but improving directionally."

Flambé looked at it for a while without speaking.

Tails did not either.

Finally, Flambé said, "That is… acceptable."

Amy smiled faintly, then leaned back in her chair and began gathering the cards again. "That's all it is meant to be," she said. "A way of looking at things. Not a command."

Tails exhaled lightly. "Still feels like pattern-matching with symbolism layered on top."

Amy shrugged. "Sometimes that's all understanding is."

Flambé picked up her tea again, thoughtful but not unsettled. "I think I like it," she said. "It is structured guessing."

"That is not helping your case," Tails said.

Flambé considered this. "It is not meant to."

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

It took me a bit to become aware of the fact that the Freedom Fighters were beginning to be away from the village for longer periods of time, but once I did notice, it was easy for me to guess why: This was when Sally had started to make a serious effort of actually connecting and organizing all the scattered resistance cells. Well, if things went the same way they had in the comics anyway, which I did not take as a given.

Quite frankly, I had more faith in Amy's Tarot deck than I did in the idea that my memories of a cartoon and comic book would remain reliable as a predictor of future events.

For one thing, if they were, Tails would be what - about halfway to Downunda by now after encountering that little robot Fiona?

In any event, with Sonic and the others gone for so long, I was a bit surprised that Tails hadn't wandered off already. Still, if he wanted to stick around and hang out with Amy and me, I wasn't about to complain.

Anyway, for something fun to do that neither the teens nor elders who remained in the village would complain about, Amy, Tails, and I decided to build a two-part play fort across one of the smaller streams feeding into the big pond near the center of Knothole.

No, it wasn't the Ring Lake, or Ring Pool, or whatever water feature the village collected a Power Ring from each day. I'd been in the village long enough to note that nothing ever appeared above the pond no matter what time of day it was.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah, our play forts!

Anyway, Amy, Tails, and I had decided to just go ahead and build a couple of play forts, one on each side of a small stream, and connected by a short rope bridge. Tails did up the plans, with suggestions of cool things to include by Amy and me, and the three of us set about procuring the materials we would need.

How Hamlin got involved was beyond me but, much to my surprise, he didn't try to stop us.

In fact, he looked over the plans Tails drew up, helped us gather some of the heavier and more awkward materials, and even did some of the work that would have been really hard for us to do on our own.

It was really odd to me, as it went against my vague memories about him from the comics.

Which just showed me how unreliable they were as a source of setting information even if several other things were more or less on point.

O o O o O​

Hamlin could admit to himself that he occasionally felt like he was being sidelined a lot of the time, especially with Princess Sally's decision to restrict the team size for the Freedom Fighters' cell. Sure, he sort of understood the reasoning: Knothole had never been a real village prior to the coup - it had been a fallback position staffed by retired guards and craftsmen just in case the worst happened.

Which it had.

The point being that, until very recently when the younger generation had become old enough to step up, there just hadn't been enough able-bodied adults around to be able to field even one team without weakening the village. Oh, there had been a previous team of Freedom Fighters during the early years.

A team that had gone out one day and had never returned - their fate unknown until Dr. Robotnik had bragged about their defeat at the hands of his forces.

So Hamlin understood why Princess Sally wanted to keep a full team in reserve back here in the village.

That didn't mean that he didn't feel frustrated about the lack of meaningful action though. Like what he and the others did here in the village didn't matter…

Except…

He hadn't really been feeling the resentment as much lately. And he wasn't fully sure why.

Oh, the kids were part of that - he knew that much.

Before, having to watch over just Tails or Amy had felt like being treated like a glorified babysitter. The two didn't really get along and had a way of getting underfoot trying to find something to do. Or one or both would disappear for hours on end, only to show up later with no good explanation for where they had been or what they had been doing.

The introduction of a third kid, even as mindbogglingly dangerous as Flambé's powers were, had apparently stabilized them into something closer to being an actual social unit. One that was now more prone towards finding things to do inside the village instead of wandering off to who knew where.

Hamlin was downright thrilled that the three had decided to build themselves an actual play area. Enough so that he decided to help them out with setting it up.

The steady rhythm of work settled around him - wood knocking against wood, the creak of rope pulled taut, the soft splash of someone misjudging a step near the stream. Fresh-cut branches carried a sharp, green scent that lingered in the air, mixing with the damp earth by the water's edge. Sawdust clung to his gloves as he steadied a support beam, the weight of it solid and familiar in his hands. Behind him, the kids argued over something trivial, voices rising and falling without heat, and for once, no one was wandering off, no one was underfoot. Just noise. Just work. Just… order.

He also set up some benches near and around the pond, just close enough for anyone to keep an eye on the kids without being super obvious about it.

O o O o O​

Once the play forts were finished, Amy named the overall structure as Château de l'Eau, with the fort on one side of the stream being Bastion Amont, the opposing fort being Bastion Aval, and the swaying rope-and-plank bridge connecting them as Le Grand Saut.

Whereupon I had Amy spell those out for me so I could apply appropriate pyrography, because I was never going to remember which fort was Amont and which was Aval.

Look, I don't speak Mercian - which, given that I think I'm speaking English, is probably French. Which I don't speak either.

…

I should probably ask Amy to teach me how to speak French - I mean Mercian. It would probably do her a world of good to have a friend who could speak her native language. Maybe Tails would be interested too?

And I bet Antoine would get a kick out of us pulling out some survey play and mercy bucket when he and the other Freedom Fighters return!

What do you mean that's not how those phrases are pronounced!?

Look, I already said I don't actually speak Mercian! Give me a break!

O o O o O​

"Um… Amy?" Flambé asked shyly as the three sat on the swaying bridge between the two play forts, facing the pond as they relaxed.

"Yes, Flambé?" Amy prompted when the fox girl failed to continue with her thought.

Flambé hesitated, fingers fidgeting slightly in her lap. "Could you… teach me Mercian?" she finally managed, voice small but earnest. "I mean… properly. Not just the names of things."

Amy blinked, clearly surprised.

"It's just…" Flambé rambled on, a little more quickly now that she had started. "You and Antoine are from Mercia, right? Although you don't seem to have an accent?"

"My tutor was from the Kingdom of Acorn," Amy offered. "So I speak Northamerish with an Acorn accent."

"That makes sense, I guess," Flambé nodded, then continued. "Anyway, after you named our fort, it occurred to me that you might be missing your home, and I thought that maybe having somebody to speak your native language with would help. And, well, it might be fun to learn if I actually had a friend I could speak it with. I think I'd like to understand it. Really understand it."

"Oh!" Tails exclaimed brightly, sitting up a little straighter. "That's a good idea! Could I learn too? If you're willing to teach us, that is?" He glanced at Amy, ears flicking slightly. "It'd be useful. And… I think it'd be fun."

Flambé nodded quickly. "Yeah. Fun," she echoed, then added, a bit more quietly, "And… important."

Amy looked at her two friends, eyes wide in surprise at their request.

"You… you want to learn Mercian?" she asked, as if making sure she had heard correctly.

"From you," Tails said, smiling.

Flambé gave a small, slightly awkward nod. "If you're okay with that."

For a moment, Amy didn't say anything.

Then her expression crumpled - not in distress, but in something much brighter - and the next thing either of the two fox kids knew, the pink hedgehog had gathered them up in a tight embrace.

"Of course I will!" Amy said, voice thick with emotion. "I would love to teach you! Oh, this is - this is wonderful!"

The bridge swayed slightly with the sudden movement, the ropes creaking as Amy held them both close, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

"We can start tomorrow!" she continued, words rushing out between happy breaths. "No - tonight! I can show you the basics, and then we can - oh, we can practice every day!"

Tails laughed a little, caught up in her enthusiasm despite the tight squeeze. "Tomorrow might be better," he said. "So we can take notes."

Flambé, slightly squished but smiling, managed a small, "Yeah… tomorrow sounds good."

Amy pulled back just enough to look at them both, still holding on. "Tomorrow," she agreed, beaming. "But we are absolutely starting tomorrow."

Flambé thought for a moment. "So… that accent of Antoine's?"

Amy nodded. "It's because Mercian is his second language, and he has trouble with the Northamerish dialect."

Then her expression brightened, a hint of mischief slipping in. "If you want, I could teach you Gwailish too. It'd make for a nice surprise for him."

Tails' ears perked. "Oh! Yeah, let's do that!"

Flambé nodded, just as quickly as she tried to hide her embarrassment. "We can do that, yes."

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

Time, of course, marched on. And while the three of us spent a lot of time playing in, on, and around Château de l'Eau (which, by the context we were using, meant Castle of the Water rather than simply Water Tower), we made sure that all our chores and lessons were either done or mostly done first.

Ironically, Amy Rose was proving to be a better teacher of Gwailish than she was for Mercian. Mostly due to her tutor also being her primary social contact for much of her life and said tutor being from the Kingdom of Acorn - which spoke one of several Northamer dialects of Mercian. Meaning that Amy, who grew up in Mercia, sounded more like she grew up here in the Kingdom of Acorn instead. Whereas, for Gwailish, she actually remembered her lessons and how she learned, so was actually able to pass those on to Tails and me.

But Amy didn't really know how to teach Mercian because she grew up with the wrong dialect.

By silent agreement, neither Tails nor I teased Amy about any of that - we simply accepted it and learned Gwailish from her instead.

We were sitting on the bridge during another lesson when Tails began to glow.

At first, it was subtle. A faint outline around him, like light catching dust in the air.

Amy noticed it immediately. "Tails?"

He didn't answer.

The glow intensified, but it didn't behave like normal light. It didn't spill onto the bridge or reflect off the water. It stayed fixed to him, as if it belonged only to his outline.

Tails turned slightly, like he was about to speak.

Then he was gone.

No sound. No flash. No impact. Just absence where he had been standing.

Amy and I went still.

"Tails?" I also called out, my voice sounding small and distant against the blood pounding in my ears.

The bridge, the stream below, the air around us - none of it changed. Everything else remained exactly as it had been a moment earlier.

I don't know how long Amy and I stood there, neither of us able to process what had just happened.

Then I saw movement in the distance out of the corner of my eye - Hamlin!

"HAMLIN!" I yelled out as I jumped off of the bridge of the play fort, not caring that my only pair of boots immediately got soaked in the small stream as I ran off towards the pig.

"HAMLIN! HAMLIN!" Amy and I called out again, the pink hedgehog following me as we ran towards the only help we saw.

O o O o O​

Hamlin the Pig examined the play forts and the bridge connecting them as thoroughly as he could after sending the girls off to fetch the rest of the substitute Freedom Fighters. The abrupt disappearance of one of the kids from the middle of Knothole was a serious matter, and both girls were scared enough that he did not believe that they were playing some kind of prank. So he took what they had told him at face value and investigated the location seriously.

Almost the entire reserve team had shown up, minus Larry the Lynx, who felt that his bad luck powers would be detrimental to the investigation.

Hamlin could find no fault with that argument, although it still felt wrong for their supposed leader to be absent from a mission like this when there was a missing kid involved. But that was an argument for another time.

"There's definitely some sort of weird energy reading," Penelope the Platypus said as she took readings from the scanning tools she had brought. "Ambient Chaos Energies are a bit high, and there's something else as well."

"You don't think…" Arlo Armadillo pondered quietly, glancing surreptitiously over to where Dylan the Porcupine was looking over the girls.

"Not a chance," Hamlin snorted derisively, not believing it for a moment and a bit angry with Arlo for even suggesting such a thing.

"Hamlin's right," Penelope affirmed. "I checked against Flambé's energy signatures first thing - to eliminate the possibility," she clarified. "The last thing Flambé needs is wild accusations when one of her friends is missing."

Arlo shifted his weight and looked back at the bridge again, then down at the ground near Hamlin's boots.

"That still doesn't explain how he just… vanishes," he said.

Penelope didn't look up from the scanner. "It explains what didn't happen," she replied. "That's not the same thing."

Arlo frowned, as if that distinction wasn't helping him much. "Yeah. I got that. I'm just saying—this doesn't feel like something you can rule out that easily."

Hamlin glanced at him once, then back toward the empty span of bridge.

"Nothing's ruled out," Hamlin said. "Not yet."

"Sorry, sorry!" Arlo apologized hastily. "I didn't think…"

"That's right," Hamlin interjected even as he continued to search for any signs that some intruder had gotten close to the play area. "You didn't think. We'll do this investigation properly, but we don't need it turning into a witch hunt! And what if Flambé heard you?"

Hamlin paused, then drew a deep calming breath. One of the kids was missing, and he needed to keep a clear head or his own temper would get in the way.

Dammit, this was hard…

He caught a glow beginning to form out of the corner of his eye - "The Bridge!"

The Substitute Freedom Fighters readied themselves for anything, Dylan making sure that the kids were behind him…

When Tails popped back into existence, Amy and Flambé still somehow beat them all to him, hugging their returned friend tightly.

That did not stop Hamlin from embracing the three himself as he reached them.

The kids were safe - that was all that mattered in the moment.

O o O o O​

That…

That was one of the scariest moments of my new life.

It wasn't like Grovedale. That fear made sense to me. It had shape. Cause and effect. A childhood phobia from my previous life given monstrous form and triggering an extreme response. Fear I could comprehend...

This fear - this sense of dread - didn't make sense to me. Tails was back and he hadn't been hurt, so why was I still feeling it?

One moment Tails was there. The next, he wasn't, and I hadn't been able to do anything about it.

Nothing.

Just running and yelling for help. Like that was all I could manage when it mattered.

That was the part I hated the most.

Arlo's voice came back to me after that. I had heard him. I had heard every word. He apologized afterward, at least to Hamlin and Penelope if not to me. I don't think he realized I could hear him at the time. Or maybe he did and just didn't feel the need to say it to me directly. Either way, it didn't matter. I didn't need it.

And when Tails told us what had happened - way too many versions of himself, all fighting something impossible, something huge, some elephant guy bigger than anyone Tails had ever seen - I started pulling pieces together from the vague memories of comic books I had read in my previous life.

Mammoth Mogul.

But not here on this Mobius. The encounter happened on some other Mobius. A place where Tails had been pulled in alongside many other versions of himself.

That detail stayed with me longer than the rest.

Because if that was true, then this wasn't Mobius Prime, and never had been.

This meant that everything that I thought I knew about this world - every event that I had subconsciously been expecting to somehow remain the same, carried by the weight of history leading up to those events unless I changed something - which, yeah, in hindsight that was dumb of me, because free will is a thing and I can't expect a real, functioning world to follow the script of a cartoon and comicbook no matter how well things had lined up so far.

I should be feeling relief that I don't have to worry about breaking or maintaining continuity, right? I should be experiencing this great rush of liberation - a sense of freedom from just knowing that the future was not set in stone or recorded on cells or ink and paper…

So why was I feeling this looming sense of dread and the knowledge that I was forgetting something very important…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

I didn't really know what to think anymore.

While previously I wasn't too worried about the vague memories from my previous life not quite matching up with the local reality, I was at least subconsciously assuming that I was somehow isekai'd onto Mobius Prime and at least the major bits with a lot of historical momentum behind them would remain more or less the same as long as I didn't do anything to butterfly them away.

Such as with Tails not wandering off on his own and encountering that robot honey trap, which honestly should have happened by now if this were the supposed canonical timeline.

I'm guessing that either this Mobius' version of Dr. Robotnik either never initiated that plot or there's an under-aged Auto-Fiona wandering aimlessly near the edge of the Great Forest somewhere to the east of the Village of Knothole.

Anyway, the changes that I knew the root cause of didn't bother me as much as realizing that a lot of what I had assumed to be that baseline history of the Mobius I had been isekai'd to might not actually be the case after all. The Archie Sonic Multiverse was weird. Like, capitol W weird even. Heck, there was a Mobius where Sally Acorn was effectively Sailor Moon, with Knuckles as Tuxedo Mask!

Right now, all I really knew about the Mobius I was on was…

Actually very little, really.

Dr. Robotnik was evil and had badniks. The Freedom Fighters that I knew of pretty much lined up with what I vaguely remembered from the cartoon and comics, only given the Jim Carrey movie glow-up. Which, while I'm sure I would have gotten used to it eventually, at least meant I didn't have to deal with certain characters having highly stylized eyes.

And the village of Knothole was a thing.

Which I happened to live in now.

But that was basically it - I really knew nothing else for certain about this Mobius other than the assumptions I had been making ever since I met Bunnie and the others in Grovedale.

Speaking of which, I didn't even have any guarantee that the core Freedom Fighters would ever make it back to Knothole. As I had nothing to do with that, I had previously felt some assurance that things would turn out well for Princess Sally and the others and that they would eventually return in due time when their big mission was done.

Not that I specifically knew what the mission was, as I never asked and nobody mentioned whatever it might have been whenever I was in earshot. I just assumed that it was Princess Sally's big push to unite all the various Freedom Fighter cells under a single overall communications, logistics, and command structure as that's what I sort of remembered as having happened at about this time in the comics.

…

No, I did not think that anyone was deliberately hiding anything from me. It's just that I'm a kid, so there is no real legitimate reason to keep me in the loop for this sort of thing. They didn't tell Amy or Tails either, so it's not like I felt singled out or anything.

I just now had this bit of additional anxiety that came and went in the back of my mind and occasionally incinerated my math homework.

…

Excuse me, I need to clean up these ashes, toss this stick of charcoal, and get a replacement worksheet and pencil.

Again.

O o O o O​

"Are… Are you feeling alright?" Tails asked as he sat down next to Flambé, Amy Rose immediately taking the spot on the bench on the other side of their friend as she stared at her chilidog and chili-cheese fries (a regular Saturday lunch special in the Community Hall for as long as Tails had lived in Knothole).

"Yeah, you haven't even touched your food," Amy added as she carefully ate some of her own loaded fries - they were best hot, sorta okay warm, and fairly horrible if they got any cooler than that even with all the extra toppings. Not that Flambé usually had to worry about her food going cold.

"Sorry…" Flambé said softly. "I didn't mean to… I'm just a bit lost in my head."

"It's okay," Amy reassured her. "We're here for you."

"Yeah," Tails nodded, barely picking at his own fries. The chillidogs were okay, but the fries never quite came out the same as when Sonic cooked them, no matter how many times the blue hedgehog explained how to do them right. He figured that it had to be something Sonic couldn't articulate well enough to pass on, which happened sometimes, or somebody was making substitutions in the recipe.

But that was beside the point right now.

Flambé, their friend, was feeling down, so right now Tails and Amy just sat next to her to be there for her.

Which would be a lot easier if the cooling fries didn't taste like flavorless misery that even the chili-cheese toppings couldn't salvage.

Flambé finally picked up a fry, making sure that it had a nice scoop of toppings on it, then popped it into her mouth.

…

Moments later, her fries were on fire while she ate her chilidogs first instead.

"Mine too, please," Amy requested fervently as she pushed her plate towards their offended friend.

"Same," Tails added, as he pushed his plate as well.

Oddly enough, the fries did end up tasting a lot better once some flavor was literally charred into them.

O o O o O​

As much as I love Amy and Tails and appreciated their efforts to bring me out of my funk, I needed some time to myself to decompress. And, while I like my kiln apartment in Heat Row, it isn't really very quiet during prime daylight hours, and I wanted my isolation now, not several hours from now when everyone went home for the evening.

So I did something I used to do as a kid during my previous life - I went for a walk in the woods.

Okay, okay, thinking back on it, I probably should have told somebody that I was going to do so, but then I'd either be told no or would have to have a buddy along or something, so I just went off on my own. It's not like I didn't know how to navigate woodlands after all. Just pick a path, stay on it, and be sure to note landmarks that I'd be more likely to remember.

I had literally done this hundreds of times as both a kid and a teen back in my previous life, so I wasn't worried about getting lost.

I'm not really sure how long I wandered through the Great Forest. I was just out walking among the trees, listening to the flickies sing as sunlight filtered through the canopy above forming dappled patterns on the moss covered rocks and roots of the forest floor, with patches of ferns and clusters of briers and this young fox girl about my age, only with redder fur, yellow boots, and a yellow ribbon in her hair…

Who was looking right at me.

As I looked right back at her.

Okay, the ability to communicate had apparently escaped both of us for the time being, but I'm pretty sure that I had just stumbled across Fiona Fox.

The fake one, built to look like she's Tails' current age, for the purpose of leading him into a trap.

Also the Auto-Fiona who, totally against her initial programming, actually fell in love with Tails.

Supposedly.

At least in the comic, although given that the two had yet to meet, none of that had actually happened yet.

Okay, let's not get ahead of yourselves here - I could easily be wrong. This might be some other fox girl in boots wandering around the Great Forest. I mean, I'm a fox girl in boots doing the same thing, so maybe it's just something that…

Okay, derailing that train of thought before I think of something even dumber than that.

Now what?

I guess I should at least say something before things get more awkward than they already are.

"Um… Hi?"

Really, brain? You led with that?

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

"Hello! My name is Fiona!" the other fox girl said. Which could still be coincidence, but was highly suspicious nevertheless. The problem being that her resemblance to a two-dimensional comic book character image was basically superficial at best in a real world setting and, name aside, she could still be a real Mobian and not an Auto-Autobahn or whatever Dr. Robotnik was calling them in this world.

Oh, wait - it's Auto-Automaton.

Probably.

"Are you alright?" Fiona asked, tilting her head a little.

"Um…"

Gah! Why isn't my brain working right!?

Okay, I get it - I'm too hung up on the possibility that I could be wrong - that this might actually just be some poor girl and not a fur covered robotic honey trap aimed at one of my friends. The last thing I want to do is accidentally incinerate some innocent girl whose only error was to somehow vaguely match the image of a badnik that might not have even been made on this version of Mobius.

"Oh, you poor thing," Fiona said, taking my hand and guiding me along somewhere while my mind raced in useless circles. I got no clues from her body temperature, because while I might be able to control heat to an extent, that was from practice rather than any ability to actually sense it.

Ooh… Let's see - how would I go about training how to sense heat via alternative senses anyway? Definitely something to ask Penelope and Tails when I get back. Maybe Rotor too once the Freedom Fighters are back from whatever their big mission is.

"Here, why don't you rest up in my place for a bit?" Fiona offered politely, guiding me ahead of her as we entered a literal hole in the side of a hill…

I mean, as I entered the hole.

By myself.

Like a distracted idiot.

I sighed as I reached back to grab onto the bars that slammed shut behind me, trapping me in the entrance of what I now strongly suspected to be a buried roboticizer.

"Oh, Dr. Robotnik will be so pleased when I bring him a roboticized Tails!" Fiona exclaimed gleefully as she went over to a suspiciously dense cluster of ferns and cleared them away to reveal a console with a big lever.

Yeah, not doing that.

The console grew cherry red, shorting out immediately before it visibly caught fire and started to melt.

And while I still couldn't feel the heat now radiating from somewhere deeper in the hill behind me, I could see the visible distortion in the air around me as presumably superheated air started to flow past me through the bars I was still holding onto.

"What's going on!?" Fiona asked - quite probably rhetorically.

"So," I asked drily through half lidded eyes. "Are you a traitor or a badnik?"

"I'm an Auto-Automat-"

"That's all I wanted to know," I commented flatly even as she burst into flames. I had to do this quickly - I had to take full advantage of the rage I felt for what she just tried to do to me - what she was planning to do to Tails - before my temper cooled down. I had to rage and burn and let out a literal inferno of fury!

Before letting it all go and drawing the heat away from the immediate environment, snuffing out the fires before they spread any further.

Once again, I found myself walking away from the center of vitrified terrain. Dirt, stone, and plants rendered into glass, ash, and ceramics, with the husks of now dead trees now much thinner charcoal monuments to the lush greenery they had just been moments ago.

I did not feel any pride in this.

This could have been avoided.

Instead, I felt empty as I searched diligently, finding the molten remains of what had no doubt once been spy cameras and other surveillance devices.

All of which had been well within the full radius of the zone of utter destruction I had unleashed.

A zone that - to my eyes - looked to be much bigger than what I had done back in Grovedale.

The badnik was gone…

The buried roboticizer was gone…

All the spyware was gone…

But so were all the flickies, mobinis, and regular wildlife that never had a chance to escape my fury.

I left to the northeast, not quite directly away from the direction of Knothole, continued along that heading until I had several hills between me and the utter devastation my thoughtlessness had caused.

Then I sat down on a rock and cried.

I was a monster…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

"Over this way!" Tails called out as he flew back to make sure that the Substitute Freedom Fighters - and Amy Rose - were still on the proper heading towards where the massive pillar of flame had been seen off to the east of Knothole.

Not that the reserve crew had really wanted to bring the kids along, but the teens couldn't really think of a reliable way to keep the two in Knothole with their friend missing and a truly massive clue as to her most probable recent location. Not without permanently alienating them anyway.

Flambé had always been a little self-isolating and had seemed to need to spend at least part of each day alone, so nobody but Amy and Tails had really noticed when she had become even more withdrawn than usual after Tails' brief disappearance. And now the kids were practically beside themselves for not having brought this to anyone else's attention ahead of time, now that there had apparently been another major fire event and Flambé nowhere to be found.

"Don't fly too far ahead of us, Tails," Larry the Lynx called out as he ran along - straight into a patch of brambles, letting the others know where it was so that they could divert around it as he fought his way out. It was frustrating how much his bad luck was proving to be a detriment to his leadership role. One he had gotten solely due to being the first founding member of the reserve force based on Sonic's encouragement that he turn his bad luck into something good.

Fat lot of good he was doing for a lost little girl wandering out on her own in the Great Forest. Larry's bad luck was continuously getting in the way and he could tell that the others were growing increasingly frustrated with him. He hadn't even been able to attend any of the training missions Princess Sally had taken his team on. Not even the one that had gotten his team their commissions as full-fledged Freedom Fighters.

Larry was seriously wondering if his bad luck - and lack of his own commission - was holding his team back.

"How did she get so far from the village anyway?" Arlo huffed, silently cursing his own short legs. He was, unfortunately in this instance, one of those Mobians who more closely resembled the proportions of the animal their subtype resembled, meaning relatively short limbs in his case. Of course, the tradeoff was that his natural armor covered those same short arms and legs, but still…

"Kids have a lot of energy, Arlo," Dylan the porcupine replied easily from up ahead.

"It can't be too much further," Larry stated as he dashed past the others, having cleared the brambles he had been caught in. "We're closing in on where the smoke and flames had bee~eeeeeeeeeeen!"

"And Larry found a cliff, because of course… he… did…" Hamlin's voice trailed off as he stepped up to the edge of the cliff and looked out over a devastated patch of previously forested hills basically the size of the village of Knothole.

O o O o O​

The half-baked bunker that had been pretending to be a hill was all too easy to find, what with the fake bark burnt off the fused metal husks of the fake trees sticking out of it.

The kid-sized metallic husk of a fake Mobian by the melted remains of a control console near the entrance was more worrisome.

"This…" Penelope hesitated for a moment as she examined the still standing remains. "This wasn't a Robian. I've seen this tech before while out on a training mission with Sally. This was an Auto-Automaton."

"A what now?" Larry asked, staying carefully away from anything that might cause trouble if he touched it.

"A fake Mobian that looks like a real person," the purple platypus explained. "We encountered one that looked like Princess Sally during our field training missions with her. I can't tell the subtype it was supposed to look like from these remains, but the size suggests that it was supposed to look like a kid to us."

This wasn't good. When they managed to foil that plot, with the help of Agent St. John of the Rebel Underground, it was hoped that Dr. Robotnik would think that his Auto-Automatons were a failure and that he would discard it as a useless project. Still, that mission hadn't been that long ago, so maybe this child-bot had been a side project that had been left undiscovered, only to run into Flambé?

"Uh, Penelope?" Dylan called out from inside the artificial hill. "Please come here and tell me I'm wrong."

Penelope went in, noting the melted metal bars and the small bare footprints leading out from the tunnel entrance. And just the tunnel entrance as it looked like they started from just inside where the bars had been. It didn't take her too long to reach Dylan and reach the same conclusion he had: They were inside a large roboticizer.

And from the looks of it, even with fused and half-melted parts, this had been one of the more cruel models.

The level of devastation outside now made perfect sense to Penelope. Which, all told, wasn't really much wider across than what had apparently happened in the town of Grovedale, but the hills and lack of buildings probably made it feel much bigger than it really was.

Flambé must have been terrified out of her mind if she had been about to be subjected to this horrific nightmare contraption…

O o O o O​

"Hold on," Amy Rose stated as the Substitute Freedom Fighters were about to head off int he direction Flambé's footprints lead off towards. "Stay behind me for a moment - We can't leave a trail for badniks to follow."

"And what do you expect to-" Hamlin started, only to be interrupted with the pink hedgehog summoned her Piko Piko Hammer from basically nowhere and brought it down with a mighty blow, shattering the hardened ground and leaving rubble where the trail of footprints had been.

"Cute," Hamlin stated, although he was quietly impressed with the power he had just seen from the young girl. "But that's still a trail."

"I'm not done yet," Amy huffed, as she turned slightly and prepared for another heavy ground stike. "Now stay behind me, everyone! I've only done this a couple of other times back in Mercia, and most of the loose bits will fly forward and away!"

Before too long, Amy brought her Piko Piko Hammer down again and again, carving out several trails of rubble radiating outward and away from the entrance of the artificial hill. Enough so to hopefully confuse any badniks Dr. Robotnik would no doubt be sending to investigate why this base had gone silent.

O o O o O​

"That was a lot of devastation," Arlo commented quietly out of earshot of the kids as the group headed northeast, following the game trail that Flambé most likely used.

"Maybe so," Hamlin nodded grimly as he checked for tracks, noting the occasional small bare footprint confirming that they were on the right trail. "But you know what I didn't smell back there?" he asked, tapping his snout.

"No burnt fur, no burnt flesh," Penelope answered a little more loudly than required, but the other Substitute Freedom Fighters realized why almost immediately when Amy and Tails visibly relaxed. "The local wildlife had time to vacate." Left unsaid, for the kids' sake, was that the Auto-Automaton and the artificial hill were the more likely reason the wildlife had already left before Flambé incinerated the area. It wasn't that Flambé wasn't going to be in trouble for the devastation, but at least the loss of life had been restricted to plants.

And maybe the Auto-Automaton too. Penelope wasn't sure. They were supposed to be smart enough to pass for Mobians, but from what she had seen on that fiasco of a training mission Princess Sally had taken her on, their AIs had still been in the hit-or-miss range of being self-aware. And while the Freedom Fighters, both active and reserve, had long since steeled themselves towards the possibility that some of the badniks they destroyed were essentially people, it was another thing entirely to burden the kids with that knowledge just yet.

Hell, Flambé probably felt bad enough as it was if the Auto-Automaton she destroyed had been realistic enough to fool her.

"Could you guys not go so fast?" Dylan complained. "It's hard enough sweeping our tracks clear behind us without upping the frequency of Sir Trips-a-lot doing full body face-plants on the trail."

"Hey!" Larry objected. "It's not like I mean to stumble so often!"

O o O o O​

When the team finally found Flambé, it was fairly obvious from the tearstained fur on her face that she had cried herself to sleep on the moss-covered rock she was laying on.

Waking her up had been somewhat difficult, and they had almost regretted doing so as once the girl had fully woken up and truly looked at them all, she had started bawling her eyes out again.

It had taken several minutes of Amy and Tails hugging her before Flambé had calmed down enough for everyone to start heading home, and the trip back was somber. During which very little was said, as it was clear that the girl was feeling bad enough as it was.

Consequences could wait for another day.

For now, they had to get back to Knothole, get the kids to bed, and then gather everyone else and decide what to do about the fact that Dr. Robotnik having had a mobile outpost and surveillance equipment so close to Knothole.

Really, the new burnt out clearing where that base used to be paled in the face of how close the enemy had managed to get without anyone knowing before now…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

"Bit of a bumpy ride," Tekno the Canary commented as the van swerved and occasionally bounced as it hit a rock, branch, or pothole along one of the poorly maintained roads in the Great Forest. She and a few others that Princess Sally's Freedom Fighters had gradually accumulated during their extended mission were now finally on the last leg of their trip back to the village of Knothole.

At the very least, most of the resistance cells across Mobius were willing to at least try to maintain regular communications and logistics with each other in order to better pool resources and coordinate anti-Robotnik operations.

And, along the way, had managed to pick up a few strays in untenable positions that simply could not be left where they had been found for various reasons.

"Many pardons, Madamazelle," Antoine d'Coolette apologized. "Ze road conditions are deplorable, yes, but we have not been able to maintain them to a satisfactory standard over the years."

"Security, right?" another such found individual, Fiona Fox, guessed as she watched the trees through the window. Tekno did not know her story. And, quite honestly, had not asked. It could not possibly be any worse than her own. That of a Mobian scientist so caught up in her research that she had not considered the nature of her employer even as she developed advanced materials for the Robotnik Empire.

"Pretty much," Bunnie Rabbot confirmed. "Every now an' then, we go out and try to clear up the worst of it, but there's only so much we can do an' not have it look like the roads are bein' cared for. Just a heads up when we get there - there will be some tubs and kettles waitin' fer us. Knothole's kinda deep into the Great Forest, so everyone comin' in has to wash up and check for pests before enterin' the village proper."

"Yeah yeah, standard decom stuff," Surge the Tenrec waved it off. "I just zap any pests that manage to get on me, but I could use a good bath."

"Do I have to?" Cassia the Pronghorn asked. "I'm a Robian. It's not like pests even bother with me anymore."

"You still get dirty," Cassia's older sister stated firmly. "And you're waterproof. We'll just have to be careful to not knock your Liberation Module loose." Clove was absolutely not going to call that precious device by the horrid name that Rotor had suggested for it. Why he had thought that Neural Override Chip was an acceptable name for a device designed to free someone's mind was beyond her.

"I can keep any water free of the module," Kitsunami the Fennec offered quietly. He and Surge had been rescued from Dr. Starline's lab in Downunda. Some sort of cybernetic super-Mobian project to serve as a sort of resume to present to Dr. Robotnik, had the Freedom Fighters not stumbled on the lab the mad platypus had been holding them in.

"That would be appreciated, Kit. Thank you," Clove replied.

The van drove on under the canopy-shaded roads of the Great Forest…

O o O o O​

The Freedom Fighters weren't surprised to see the reserve team waiting for them when the van finally exited the hidden entrance tunnel into the small cavern that served as one of Knothole's vehicle bays. They'd been gone for months this time. Far past long enough to warrant some caution on the part of the Substitute Freedom Fighters.

Sally made a mental note that the other team desperately needed a name change, especially since they were going to be field deployable soon if everything went well. She wondered why she had even let their current name stand as long as it had given that she was aware that some of its members had not been fond of the label from the start. Decision inertia most likely. That and too many other projects on her plate.

That, and Director Who hadn't said anything for or against the name whenever she discussed mission plans with him. The elder owl was a brilliant spy, but as much as he might advise Sally on strategy and tactics, or suggest missions, once she made a decision he stepped fully out of the way and let her do her thing. And, as much as she appreciated that trait, it was also a bit infuriating because he would not correct her blunders. He'd just quietly work around them until she realized her mistake and came back to him for advice again.

Bad and poorly coordinated team name choices being among the choices Who chose not to interfere with.

So many independent cells had named themselves after the original Freedom Fighters team…

"They have sensor wands out," Rotor noted.

"Well, evaluation missions I took them on did uncover Robotnik's Auto-Automaton plot last year," Sally replied. "Still, I better go out first and let them know that three of our new people might set off false positives."

"Hey, I'll let you know that I'm genuinely positive-ly charged!" Surge snarked with a grin, eliciting a chuckle from Sonic, a grin from Cassia, a shy smile from a mostly withdrawn Kitsunami, and a low groan from everybody else.

"Please, Surge," Antoine requested, "do not, as they say, be giving up your day job."

"What?" the green tenrec tilted her head in confusion. "What does that mean? I don't have a job yet. Still gotta see if the team Foxy and I are supposed to join will accept us or not."

Sally left them to discuss what sayings were and what Antoine actually meant, stepping out of the van and calmly approaching Penelope with her arms carefully held out to the side in a nonthreatening manner so she could be scanned.

"Welcome home, Sally," Penelope greeted her even as she passed the sensor wand over and around her body.

"Did something happen?" Sally asked, as she noted that the entire reserve team had seemed to be tense, which she had only noticed when they had relaxed a bit after Penelope cleared her.

"There was an incident last month," Larry the Lynx explained uncomfortably. "There's a full report waiting in your inbox, but the gist of it is that Robotnik had a semi-mobile roboticizer inside of a fake hill within hiking distance to the east of Knothole, and it was apparently being run by a child-sized Auto-Automaton."

"That's not good," Sally became instantly alert. "Was Knothole discovered?"

"Not that we know of," Larry reported with a shake of his head. "But we've shut down Heat Row for a while."

"Why?" Sally asked, perplexed. The side crevasse that Heat Row occupied had been purposely set up to baffle thermal and acoustic sensors.

"Because Flambé pulled a Grovedale after almost being roboticized," Larry blurted out.

"Tell me everything," Princess Sally ordered, then paused. "Wait, tell me everything after the rest of us are cleared." She then turned towards Penelope. "Besides Bunnie, there are three other individuals in the van who will register as false positives: One is a young pronghorn type Robian, and the other two are a tenrec and fennec with nonobvious cybernetic enhancements."

"Got it," Penelope nodded, then moved towards the van.

In short order, everyone was cleared and Larry caught them up to speed on the events of the previous month.

O o O o O​

"...And that's the long and the short of it," Larry finished, getting up from where he had been sitting, carefully out of the way and speaking as his team helped the core Freedom Fighters and the new people wash up.

"Whoa," Surge commented. "Lotta literal firepower in that Flambé kid. I'm an electorkinetic myself, and Kit here is a hydrokinetic. I don't know if what we know about our powers and how to use them will help her, but we could give it a try."

"Yes, Ma'am!" Kitsunami nodded enthusiastically, albeit more due to the fact that the idea came from Surge than for the idea itself.

"I am familiar with several meditation techniques," Clove offered. "Perhaps this Flambé will find one of them suitable for soothing whatever is troubling her."

"Thank you for offering to help," Sally stated as everyone dried themselves off.

"Now that that's all done, who wants some tea~eeeeeeeeyeek!?" Larry started to say as he brought over a tray, only to trip on a rock, sending several steaming cups flying though the air.

"GAH!" Surge cried out as hot tea splashed into her face, causing her to stumble back into Sonic, who had tried to catch and steady her, but the two managed to knock their heads together instead, leaving them dazed.

Kitsumami managed to catch the rest of the hot tea in the air, but that did nothing for the tea set itself, and one of the cups managed to strike a small device that looked sort of like a hair clip off of Cassia's head, knocking it to the floor.

Where Cassia promptly stomped on it and ground it to tiny fragments!

"Cassia, NO!" Clove cried out.

"Aw, don't worry, Big Sis!" Cassia grinned maliciously as the Control Overlay Program directed her actions. "I'm just gonna go find my new playmate!"

Then her grin turned truly malevolent.

"After all, it sounds like one good scare is all it's gonna take to wipe Knothole right off the map!"

And, with that, the roboticized pronghorn zoomed past the still recovering Sonic and Surge and out into Knothole itself…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

It had taken a while, but I was basically out of the spiraling funk I had fallen into after discovering that this Mobius wasn't Mobius Prime. Oh, it wasn't completely gone, but I had a better handle on it now.

Even if I still couldn't figure out what I was forgetting and why this Mobius not being Mobius Prime was causing me to feel a sense of dread.

All I knew was that overfocussing on trying to remember it had caused me so much stress I had done something really stupid in order to self-isolate and decompress. Leading to me being banned from leaving the village by myself due to almost being roboticized and incinerating part of the Great Forest.

Everyone keeps telling me that I didn't cause as much destruction as I thought I had, and that no actual wildlife had died because the robot and mobile bunker thing pretending to be a hill had already scared all the wildlife out of that area before I immolated the area. I'm not sure that I believe them though - the area I destroyed seemed to be pretty damn big to me.

Then again, that may be my personal self-recriminating bias affecting my perception of events.

Anyway, it had been a couple of weeks since my period of being grounded ended, so I was once again regularly hanging out at Château de l'Eau with Amy and Tails. Sometimes we played, sometimes we practiced the Gwailish Amy was teaching us, and sometimes we just sat on the rope-and-plank bridge between the two play forts and quietly enjoyed each other's company.

Today, we were at the mouth of the small stream out play castle straddled, and I was showing Amy and Tails how to identify and toss good stones for skipping across the pond.

"So, flat on both sides, palm-sized or smaller, but not too small…" Tails repeated to himself as he started sorting through the rocks and pebbles near his feat.

"That's the idea, yes," I affirmed as I picked up a suitable stone in my blue-gloved hand. I had to get a new set of boots and gloves after incinerating my first set, so Penelope had literally made me a couple of sets out of this weird fire-resistant material that apparently came in a few colors. So I now had a blue set and a purple set. They were also resistant to water damage, and I could write on them with permanent marker and still wash them completely clean as if they had never been written on at all.

They were really nice, and I truly hoped that Penelope didn't get in trouble for using the material to make boots and gloves for me.

"Hah! Seven skips!" Amy cheered as she sent her stone across the pond.

I paused as I heard an unfamiliar sound. An almost-but-not-quite-whistling of displaced air.

"That sounds like Sonic when he's moving really fast," Tails noted as Amy looked back at both of us curiously, apparently not having heard the sound yet.

"Want to go wait for him at the Community Hall or by his house?" I asked. While I barely knew Sonic, he was a good guy and both Amy and Tails looked up to him.

Okay, I did too, but I was more willing to give the guy his space. It had been a while though, so going over to welcome him back in person seemed to be in order.

"Community Hall," Amy said right as Tails suggested "His place!"

The two looked at each other for a moment before Tails conceded. "The Community Hall. If Sonic is back, the others are likely back as well.'

"It'd be really nice to see Bunnie again," I agreed immediately.

What? Bunnie is kinda like the big sister I never had. I missed her!

Huh… "That's odd, it almost sounds like there's more than one?"

"Three, I think," Tails replied after focusing on listening for a moment. "And moving really fast."

"We better hurry to the Community Hall then," I concluded as all three of us broke into a run. If there was trouble in Knothole, we didn't need to cause more trouble by being hard for the others to find.

O o O o O​

Yeah, the sound was definitely multiple things displacing air at high speed.

And there was a definite crowd gathering at the Community Hall, both inside and out, with the more able-bodied and combat trained teens on the outside helping everyone else, elder and teen alike, inside.

Oh! And the Freedom Fighters were back! There was Sally and Bunnie!

"Bunnie!" I called out, trusting her to hear us even over the noise of the crowd and whatever high speed Archie nonsense was going on. Probably Metal Sonic, maybe?

Bunnie spun to look at us directly, then her eyes widened "Kids! Up!"

Neither Amy nor I wasted any time, each of us grabbing one of Tails' hands as he shot up into the air towards the branches and walkways of the Great Oak above.

And not a moment too soon, as a figure blurred right through where we had just been, closely chased by streaks of blue and green.

Wasn't it way too early for Scourge to be a thing yet?

Ooh! Maybe the green streak is Jet the Hawk!

Sure, Jet and the Babylon Rogues are basically morally grey thieves on Mobius Prime, but they weren't Evil evil - more just selfish and self-centered. So maybe they are more good oriented on this Mobius?

Huh - this high up, it's easier to tell that the blur that Sonic and Jet are chasing is fast but has trouble with tighter turns, having to bank off of trees and buildings to keep from being captured.

Sonic and Jet are also managing to head off any attempts to get onto the ramps leading up to the canopy walkways…

Right - Amy's the target then. Makes sense, since she was sent here for her own safety. Tails and I will have to defend her.

"Make for a twisty branch with no direct walkways," I suggested.

"On it," Tails nodded, adjusting his course slightly.

Once the three of us were on a suitable branch, Tails and I took up positions on either side of Amy Rose and readied ourselves for any other potential attackers…

O o O o O​

"Argh…" Sonic heard Surge growl as she was once again racing alongside him. "How are we supposed to catch Cassia without hurting her!?"

"I… don't know," Sonic admitted reluctantly. Up until today, any high-speed challenge had basically just been a timed event, a race against a fast rival, or high-speed combat where neither party was too worried about hurting the other party.

Cassia was just a kid not really in control of herself, and that damned Control Overlay Program didn't even care if she hurt herself trying to keep away from them while also trying to get up to where Flambé was.

At the speeds the three of them were going, either he or Surge just grabbing Cassia the wrong way might accidentally tear a limb off or break her spine. And while Rotor, Tekno, and Clove might be able to put her back together again afterwards, the experience would be traumatic for everyone involved, and would potentially alienate both Pronghorn sisters.

Sonic tried to see the best in his friends and allies, he really did. But right now he was deeply frustrated with both Larry and himself. Larry for the bad luck aura that caused this situation, and himself for quietly endorsing the lynx's continued leadership role on the Substitute Freedom Fighters team.

If Larry had remained off of any team, maybe this situation would never have happened.

"What really sucks is that I know we're both faster and more maneuverable than the kid is, but we can't really do anything with it without hurting her at these speeds!" Surge complained.

"Tell me about it!" Sonic replied. "What's worse is that we may be faster now, but Cassia's a Robian. She won't tire out - she'll just keep running until her joints overheat and seize up!"

"We need a way to catch her safely," the green tenrec pointed out. Again.

"I know, I know, but I haven't seen anything we can use yet," Sonic stated bluntly, then thought of something. "We need to be able to secure all of her limbs at once, so she can neither attack us nor harm herself. I know where some stuff we could use is stored, but that would leave you chasing her alone for a bit and it'd be harder to herd her away from the access ramps for the canopy walkways."

"Just go - I'll deal with it," Surge stated. "The kids got themselves to a hard-to-reach branch anyway."

"Okay then - see you shortly!"

And, with that, Sonic broke away from the chase…

 

[Tangent]

FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!

O o O o O​

And once again I am confronted with a situation in which, sadly, fire is not a solution.

Wait, that makes me sound like a pyromaniac.

But the point is, I was isekai'd into this world with pyrokinetic powers, so presumably some Archie nonsense will cause me to either be a hero or a villain at some point regardless of what version of Mobius I was on. But for all the fun utilitarian things I could do with fire and heat, it was basically useless in combat.

What?

Don't look at me like that! I meant that literally anything I could think of to help Jet the Hawk down there herd or capture the other speedster would risk harming or even killing one or both of them! I never practiced with controlling a living being's heat to make them feel either refreshed or sluggish, and trying to do so with a speedster sounded like a good way to induce either heat stroke or spontaneous combustion!

And while I might eventually be able to somehow sense temperature as temperature, even if only through my pyrokinetic powers, right now that particular ability was barely trained and more useful at very high temperatures such as what's required to be useful… in… Heat… Row…

I am such an idiot.

I've been a pyrokinetic fox girl for months, and it only just now occurs to me that I should be focusing on controlling lower levels of heat!?

Blegh!

Whatever. While I'll keep half an eye on the speed chase below, I'm going back to actively looking for other threats against Amy, trusting that Tails and Amy are doing the same.

O o O o O​

Clove tried to keep her head clear as she tried to follow the high-speed chase between Surge and Cassia, Sonic having broken off a moment ago for unknown reasons. She and Cassia had only joined up with Princess Sally's group a few weeks ago, after Snively had tried to bribe her into cooperation by "curing" Cassia's Neural Immune Deficiency Syndrome via treatment in a roboticizer. He had even supposedly left Cassia her free will.

And it had worked for a while. While Clove hadn't exactly turned a blind eye to what the Robotnik Empire was doing, she had taken up a role as a scientist under General Beauregard Rabbot, a Robian with a surprisingly kind demeanor for somebody working for Dr. Robotnik.

For the first time in literally years of limited movement, Cassia got to run and play outside under her own power. And Clove got to pretend that she and her little sister had normal lives again. Sure, working with Snively was unpleasant, but General Beauregard himself was professional and treated everyone under him with respect.

When Cassia's long dormant speed powers reawakened for the first time in years, Clove had urged her sister to keep them secret, lest Snively absorb her into the war effort. Or worse, take her apart to find out how her Chaos gifted abilities might be replicated in other machines. And to her little sister's credit, Cassia had listened.

For a while, at least.

Except that Cassia had snuck out for secret runs that weren't nearly as secret as her little sister had thought. Snively had somehow noticed at some point, had gained access to Cassia via a "routine" checkup, and slipped a code update for the dormant Control Overlay Program that effectively turned Clove's sister into a sleeper agent.

The man had his uncle's arrogance though and had not bothered to even try hiding what he had done from Clove, instead using the threat of activating Cassia's C.O.P. to push for more compliance out of Clove and less concern for the environment or the welfare of the residents in the Norest region of Northammer.

Honestly, the Freedom Fighters returning to Northammer from the west had been both aggravating and a miracle all in one. And Clove would forever be in Bunnie's debt for choosing to let Cassia be the recipient of that horribly misnamed chip designed by Rotor.

Clove absolutely refused to call it a Neural Override Chip - it freed suppressed minds, so even semantically it was a Neural Liberation Module. The walrus was just bad with naming things, that was all.

Although they all, she, Rotor, and Tekno, had dropped the ball when it had come to redesigning how to better secure the Liberation Module to Cassia's head. Adding the hair clip was supposed to have increased the surface area of the attachment mechanism for a more secure mounting that could still be removed in the event that an actual cure for N.I.D.S. was ever discovered and Cassia could safely be deroboticized.

Even now, Tekno and Rotor were still back at the van, working furiously to finish up the upgraded models that were to replace the prototype that Cassia had been wearing.

The prototype that had somehow been knocked off of a supposedly secure mounting, by an almost impossible coincidence that had caused a teacup of all things to hit the hairclip at just the right force and angle to cause the attachment to pop loose!

Truly, the Chaos Touched were normally a marvel to behold, but that lynx was a menace!

O o O o O​

Surge raised a brow as Sonic rejoined the chase beside her instead of trying to intercept the kid. "What happened to the plan?"

"The plan's still the same," the blue hedgehog assured her. "But Cassia and I are both gonna go for a tumble if I try to do this alone. I mean, we should be fine, 'cause speedsters are built tough, but I thought we should maybe try to mitigate as much as we…"

Both Surge and Sonic stopped in their tracks as water rushed up from the stream Cassia was passing over to trap the pronghorn like a fly in amber.

"...and I suddenly feel like I was overcomplicating everything," Sonic commented.

"Get over it," Surge snarked with a grin. "YO, KIT! GOOD JOB!" she called out, giving the light blue fennec a thumbs up.

O o O o O​

What?

I mean, seriously, what?

That wasn't Jet the Hawk at all!

Wait, no, I'm focusing on the wrong thing again…

What the fuck were Surge and Kit doing in the Archie version of the Sonicverse!?

And why is Surge only wearing boots, gloves, and way too many belts!?

What is going on here!?

I forced myself to calm down before I did something unfortunate.

Such as falling off of this branch when I can't fly (yet - I tried a little fire boost once, but so far all I've gotten was a sore head by pulling a Tony Stark inside my kiln apartment).

Argh! Bad brain! I'm distracting myself again!

Okay, who's the other speedster?

The figure thrashing in the blob of water floating in midair was a bit hard to see, but the other one approaching with Bunnie, Sally, and the other Freedom Fighters was instantly recognizable.

Clove the Pronghorn.

What?

I mean, seriously…

Wait, I already did this bit.

No wonder I've been feeling a sense of dread ever since I found out this wasn't Mobius Prime!

But come on, how the Hell did i manage to forget all about the fucking Super Genesis Wave!?