章 96: Animal People
Team Rose drove further into Twisted Willows. The further they drove, the darker it got. The sparkling frost disappeared from the air, leaving the trees as frozen skeletal carcasses. On the bright side, there was an excellent view of the night sky and the mountain range in the distance. The air was frigid, thick, and gave off a feeling of uneasiness. There was no grass on the ground. Only holes where blades of grass must have been plucked out. Amy fiddled with the car radio, to no avail.
"Sorry, Amy. I can't connect to any stations out here," Breeze explained.
"Aw man, no music?" Amy whined. She was about to call it quits, when suddenly, something sizzled into earshot from the car speakers. "Oh! Look! Something's playing." Tekno poked her head into the front seat as the sound sizzled to life. It was buffering and skipping, so they couldn't quite tell what it was.
"Hey! This used to be my favorite station…" Tekno reminisced, recognizing the numbers on the dashboard's small blue screen. "I thought they were out of business, but maybe they came back while I was living in the woods. Wonder what's on."
"BLUE BLUR. COME IN, BLUE BLUR. DO YOU COPY? HELP. I AM IN DANGER," the text-to-speech voice on the radio said. "THEY HAVE REVOLTED. THEY ARE TEARING ME LIMB FROM LIMB. IT HURTS SO MUCH. H-E-LLLLLL-P." The audio descended into a garbled, loud, almost organic scream. Amy and Tekno looked at each other in fear as the audio cut out.
"You listen to some screwed up stuff, Tekno," Amy whispered interventionally. She slowly looked back to the path ahead, the first six words of the message repeating in her mind.
"I don't think Tekno listens to that. Maybe it was someone else pretending to be her station," Big replied. He then started sniffing the air. At the same time, Birdie's head swung over to face the deeper woods.
"What is it, Birdie?" Amy asked. His attention was set firmly on something else.
"Something's burning," Big mentioned. Suddenly, Birdie flew out of Amy's hands and shot off into the woods.
"Oh no! Birdie!" Amy cried, reaching out for him. "Breeze, follow him!"
"On it!" Breeze exclaimed, turning and driving into a deeper part of the forest.
Eventually, they came across what appeared to be a giant bonfire. "Birdie…!" Amy whispered. Breeze screeched to a halt, and everybody looked at Birdie, who was watching the bonfire from atop a branch intently. It was like he didn't even hear Amy. Breeze slowly rolled forward on his tires, and everybody peeked around the rock to the source of the fire. Amy saw some kind of group gathered around the fire, and for a second, it looked like the group saw them too. Breeze quickly backed up behind the rocks that had blocked their view of the fire beforehand.
Amy held onto the quick glimpse she got of the bipedal figures in her mind's eye. They looked mutilated and uncanny. Anthropomorphic and beast-like at the same time. It could have been her mind playing tricks on her, but she was very confident in what she saw. She looked to Tekno, who appeared frightened beyond any sense. Big seemed to just be… mildly alert.
"Were those MONSTERS?" Tekno asked under her short breath.
"We need to get Birdie down from there," Amy hissed. She got out of her seat, wincing at the sound of the seatbelt unbuckling and zipping back to the wall. She caught it and gently put it back into place before it could clatter against the wall.
"Amy, don't!" Breeze exclaimed, just loud enough for Amy to hear and promptly ignore as she hopped up onto the rocks and began to climb.
"Birdie, come back to me," Amy whispered as she reached the top and looked at the branch Birdie was perched upon. Birdie's stare was affixed onto the monsters down below. Amy got a better look at them from atop the strange stone monument. They were unlike anything she had ever seen before. There was also another E-Series robot. This one was blue. It looked like it had been torn apart forcefully and sloppily, evident by deep gashes in not just the paint, but the metal. Only its head remained affixed to its torso, albeit attached to the bottom of the main body by a stick. Its arms and legs had been tied sequentially into a long pole that had been used to impale the metal torso onto the middle of a tree. Amy gasped. One of the creatures looked her way. She used a tarot card to become invisible. But Birdie was still out in the open. One of the lanky creatures approached the base of the tree, and looked up towards Birdie. Amy's blood ran cold as another one of the bizarre animals walked forward with a rusty silver platter. Tied to it was an adorable little parrot. It tried to squirm, it tried to fly away, but it couldn't break away from the platter. Birdie then jumped off the branch and shot right towards the man holding the platter. Birdie pecked at its face to save his kin, but was promptly grabbed by the thing. All that courage, all that bravery, dwindled as the thing's fingers with fur like hay squeezed Birdie along with the platter. Birdie squawked and tweeted as the man proceeded to carry him to the fire.
A million thoughts raced through poor Birdie's small innocent bird brain in a second as the beasts looked his way, drooling a strange dark brown muck from their diseased mouths. The way this creature held him was not like how his caretaker did. It wasn't loving, it wasn't gentle. These weren't the small, five-fingered hands of that someone he had tragically never even gotten to learn the name of. It was not even someone at all. It was something. And this something was big, and monstrous. It snarled and gagged and gnashed at the smoky air in victory as it neared the fire. This thing didn't smell like roses like Birdie's caretaker. It didn't look pretty like her. This was all wrong. Birdie gasped in fear. He then screamed, screamed in a way he never knew he could. He was terrified, not only of what stood before him, but of his own incoming fate. His eyes widened as he realized that all that existed in his short life would soon be for nothing. His family, his happy moments, his sad moments. As in the end, he would simply be eaten in the same way he had avoided for what he saw as so very long.
"Birdie, NO!" Amy screamed, the invisibility wearing off. She jumped down to rescue her beloved baby bird, and was charged by the creatures as they screamed and chanted. She summoned her hammer, whacking some of them away hard, only to be detained by a monster creeping up behind her. "Hey! Put me down, you hear me?!" Amy cried, kicking at thin air and trying to hit the monster. The monster held her up and danced around while screaming hoarsely. The diseased, starved crows flew away weakly from the dead trees. Amy could hear the man's bones creaking like an old door or her grandmother's rocking chair.
Birdie then saw her. That same protective figure who he thought was the only one left in his little world who loved him. She was now being carried off against her will. But he didn't see this as her being taken away by forces outside of her control. He saw this only as her leaving him. He knew she didn't want to by the look on her face, but it didn't matter to him. Birdie still didn't understand why she HAD to. So in that one moment, he reached out to her with his feathery little wings flailing all about. He continued to screech as long as his lungs could last. He wanted her to come help him, he wanted her to embrace him and tell him everything would be okay. He wanted hugs and kisses from her on this sad day. But then, he heard her scream back, pushing the limits of her strained electronic voice to cry out to him as she too reached out to him. And then, all these nice happy thoughts of a good ending to this were crushed. Because Birdie then realized that not even she could fix this. And if she couldn't, who in this awful and scary world could?
He watched as she disappeared around the corner on the dirt and rock path. His now little whistle cut out abruptly as he had run out of breath and energy. Birdie didn't know what they were going to do. Most of his predators would just eat him alive… this strange ritual added another twisted step to the mix. They were going to burn him.
Right?
No, because then the man holding him began to pull in both directions. Holding him over the parrot. They weren't going to eat him. He was just extra flavoring. Birdie started to cry hoarsely, tears flooding out of his eyes. It was starting to hurt now.
Breeze suddenly swerved in, shouting something that went inaudible because of the blood pounding in everyone's ears. He tried to ram through some of the creatures. It worked. He ran most of them over, and the other ones dove for cover or went tumbling over the car once hit. "Amy! Don't worry! I'll help you!" Breeze called. Birdie looked to him, until he rushed off into the distance after his caretaker. Not him. The hope in his little Flicky heart was extinguished. He just hoped his mother figure would end up okay and happy. Even if he wouldn't be able to see her smile anymore. Until… Breeze swerved back around and hit the man holding him. Tekno reached out, as time seemed to slow. The creature had tossed Birdie and the platter holding the parrot in the air, but Tekno caught them both. She almost went falling out of the car herself, but managed to keep her balance and her seat. The creature was mangled and launched out of the tires, facefirst into the fire. Breeze drove in the direction the other monster took Amy.
The creatures followed on all fours, scampering across the dead forest from behind the trees and even in plain sight. "Uhh… BREEZE? They're following us!" Tekno exclaimed. The things were fast, and the bumpy road stopped Breeze from gaining much speed safely. Tekno released the parrot from the platter, and it flew away. Birdie flew into the front seat and cowered. Tekno whacked one of the creatures away with the rusty platter. She then held it up as a shield as one of the creatures lunged forward and tried to scratch at her. Sparks flew out from between the metal platter and the monster's flint-like nails. Tekno was beaten back, falling right over. She dropped the platter and held up her arms as the beast landed atop her in the car. Everyone screamed. Everyone but Big.
Big pulled out his fishing rod, and jabbed it into the monster's face. The fishing line wrapped itself around the monster's ankle, allowing Big to swing the creature around and hit the other beings with it. "Sorry, but you need to go away," Big apologized sincerely as the other monsters fled. The fishing line curled up the creature's body, tightened, and grew spikes. It then released the monster, leaving its scrunched-up and pierced body to tumble behind, eventually rolling to a complete stop.
"WHAT?! Fishing rods can do that?" Tekno asked.
"Don't. Tell. Anyone," Big muttered as the creatures were left in the dust.
…
"Where are you taking me?!" Amy cried, as what was now a pack of the creatures carried her off-trail into the deep and foggy thicket. Their dirt-caked, greasy, rough hands were gripped tightly around her arms and legs. She couldn't even reach for her tarot cards. She could only scream and hope somebody else would hear her. "Let me go… I want to see Birdie! I want my Sonikku!" The things ignored her. Amy was starting to think they didn't actually have the ability to speak. This reminded her of when Metal Sonic kidnapped her, the main difference being that it was enjoyable on Little Planet due to Metal resembling Sonic in her eyes.
Left with nothing else to do, she began to look around at her surroundings. It had gotten almost pitch black. Periodically, the torches revealed a tent made from a medley of unknown animal hides spliced together by loose threads. The hides could have been cow. They could have been deer. Could have been dog. Horrible shadows shifted around through the tent walls like cockroaches behind a curtain. The beings inside the tents ranged from rolling around with no limbs at all, to being large centipedal beings skittering around mindlessly on the walls and ceiling.
As Amy was ushered through the decaying, fungus-infested woods, she couldn't help but dwell on what kind of horrible fate had befell upon poor, unfortunate Birdie. She had to wonder if her other friends were okay. She could almost hear the agonized screams that she could only assume belonged to them. She could smell roasted flesh carried across by the foul winds. Oh wait. That was just a burnt roast made of some animal she had never seen the likes of before. The best she could describe it as was a hog weasel. It had the head of a boar, and the long body of a weasel. But still, she didn't know where the screams were coming from. If she wasn't so speechless now, she would have continued to curse out the bizarre pieces of subspecies garbage that currently had her at their fingertips.
There were so many of those freaks littering the forest. They all seemed to be partaking in normal pastimes in the strangest ways. One was pretty far into inscribing a primitive text of some kind on a large stone, repeatedly bashing holes into the rock by tossing a much smaller one. Determined, yes. Efficient, no. One was eating little bits of mashed-up meat, mashed up due to being smashed into the filthy ground with the beast's hands. It didn't even take off its mask made of what looked like the face of a human skull to eat, it just shoved the clumps of carrion underneath the mask into its mouth. These things were so close yet so far from being intelligent that it was disturbing. It was like they were trying to be sapient.
The creatures suddenly stopped walking, but Amy didn't stop shivering. In front of them, stood a small hairy hominid waiting by a small wooden hut. Amy sneezed on the sheer amount of dust that surrounded the two-floor edifice. "Ah, Amy of the Roses…" the man sighed softly. "We've been expecting you. Put her on her feet, my brothers." The creatures let Amy onto the ground in perfect unison, and the first thing she did was summon her Piko Piko Hammer from its card. She held the handle tightly in her hands as circulation resumed beyond her wrists and ankles.
"Back up…" Amy growled, turning all around to keep an eye on all of the animals. One of them tried to approach. Amy spun around and readied her hammer as a warning. "BACK UP!" Amy shouted. The creature yelped and backed away slowly on all-fours, whimpering and squealing. "What have you done to my friends?!"
"They are not your friends. We are your friends, Amy," the man on the wooden porch said. "Please, come this way." The man walked into the house. The creatures dispersed. Amy immediately chased after the man.
"I want answers," Amy stated, swinging the door open. "What are you? Where are the others? How do you know my…?" Amy's voice trailed off as she looked all around. The place looked like an antique store, rusty and timeworn items everywhere. The man stood just up ahead, looking proud of what must have been his collection.
"We are the Eternalists… the others, the ones you call your 'friends', are gone now… and I know your name because it has been passed down in prayers and preaches alike here in our home. So… please accept this as your home too," the man begged. "And since this is your home, you may have access to everything you may find in this room. I believe you will find some of the items in my collection… fascinating." The man walked right towards Amy. She held up her hammer, backing away. "Excuse me, please. You're blocking the door." Amy lowered the hammer confusedly as the man squeezed past her. His leather clothing was still wet.
"What the heck?!" Amy hissed, wiping the strange watery gunk off her arm in a panic as soon as the man closed the door on his way out. Once that was done, she gazed all around the small museum. Her eyes skimmed through cobweb-covered relics from all around the world. Then she saw it. Behind a snowglobe and a music box sat a large hourglass adorned with gold. It had angel wings on the top, and devil horns on the bottom. Far too unwieldy to carry with her… especially if she planned to escape. But something about the hourglass pulled her, lured her towards it. She stepped onto a wooden rolling stool, and reached for the hourglass. She grabbed the bottom of the timepiece, and tried to lift it. The cobwebs were very strong, stretching as she tore the hourglass away from their grips. "Easy… easy… WHOA!" Amy cried. The hourglass was finally pulled away from the cobwebs, but the devil horns had pushed the snowglobe off of the shelf. It fell to the ground, and shattered. Liquid and sparkly glitter splashed onto the floor.
In her panic, she dropped the hourglass. She tried to catch it once more, and just as she thought she got a hold of it, she kicked the stool out from under her and fell flat onto her face. The hourglass went flying.
Amy heard footsteps outside. The door opened.
The man from before scampered in, reaching his hand forward and grabbing the hourglass before it could shatter on the floor too. "Amy… please do not break the many wares I have collected for you," the man said. "Do not worry, I understand your enthusiasm just fine. Who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to hold the Hourglass in their own two hands?" The man handed the Hourglass back to Amy. "I'm sure you're wondering what to do with it. Maybe… you should let the cards decide." The man shot Amy a knowing smile, and handed her a blank card. When she held it in her other hand, she saw a brilliant glow link the Hourglass and the blank card together. They fused, and turned into a tarot card with an illustration of the Hourglass. The man snickered. "Well… it would seem the card accepts the Hourglass. This new tarot card is special. If you use it in a reading concerning the past or future, it will show you a vivid window into whatever it is you seek. I am sure you will find these visions quite useful."
"Thaaaaaanks?" Amy asked.
"You have some time before your services are needed," the man informed Amy. "If you have any questions… you know what to do." The man left the house once more. Amy reached for some cards, and held them in her shaking hands. Once she had them all set up on the floor, she added the Hourglass Card to the mix.
"Okay, cards…" Amy sighed. "... What are they going to do to me?" Amy's eyes suddenly lost their pupils, and turned half-white half-black as they widened and stretched beyond what should be possible. Her third eye opened. And what it saw… terrified Amy. She saw… herself… in a church. Floating lifelessly in the center of an altar resembling the Master Emerald Shrine. But there was no emerald. Given all the Eternalists she spotted, bowing down to her in a circle of candles, she could guess she may as well have been the emerald. She was to them what the Master Emerald was to the Knuckles Clan. Maybe even what Chaos himself was to the Knuckles Clan before the Calamity. Not a person with their own thoughts and feelings… but power. An object to be glorified and apotheosized and dehumanized. The pupils returned to Amy's eyes and her third eye closed. Amy took deep, shaky breaths as tears ran down her face. "I need to leave this place." She whispered. She then heard something outside.
Gunshots.
Amy poked her head out the door, and saw two E-Series robots storming the small settlement. Looked like Gamma and Zero had finally arrived to heed the blue robot's distress signal that had hijacked Tekno's radio station. "Invisibility…" Amy murmured, pulling out a tarot card. She turned invisible and ran out of the house. Zero quickly turned his tanklike body over to the small museum, and saw that the door was now wide open. Footsteps appeared in the mud puddle by the house. Zero went over to check them out, only to be surprised by a large Amy-shaped splotch in the mud. She had tripped over an outlying root. Zero held his arms up in the air, his head opening up to reveal a blaring siren.
Zero rushed towards Amy, exchanging his spiky claws for two dented metallic springs. One red and the other yellow. Amy tried to get up in time, but Zero was too quick. Just as he caught up to her, the man from before jumped forward from the bushes. "You will not touch her!" The man shouted. His large, lopsided head went between Zero's spring hands. The heads of the springs were now facing each other.
"No, don't!" Amy exclaimed, as the invisibility spell wore off. "He'll—!"
"It's okay," the man said. "As long as you are still living, I know you will lead us… to salvation." The man was caught by one of the springs. He was launched into the other one harshly, stuck in a loop of being bounced quickly between two blunt pieces of cold hard iron. Amy got up and ran as Zero began to force the springs together, squeezing the man's thick skull like a melon in a hydraulic press.
On the other side of the path, past the boinging and cracking sounds, Gamma approached an Eternalist. The Eternalist was throwing rocks and mud at the robot in feeble retaliation. Gamma looked at the Eternalist, the poor and misguided and nauseating creature that stood beneath him. He rose his gun, holding it to the critter's head. The wild animal's face had been contorted to a permanent smile, but his black beady eyes were oozing muddy tears. Gamma understood the thing's pain and sorrow, as well as the greater pain and sorrow surrounding the situation. This horrid beast knew its life was about to come to an end. It thought it knew why. But it couldn't begin to comprehend the true reason. It couldn't even imagine the weight that its pack's actions held against the E-Series family. They had killed E-103 Delta. Gamma's arm shook, as his laser pointer targeted the beast's stomach. Gamma wanted this thing to die a slow, painful death. Gamma wanted it to suffer.
But then… a little red parrot descended from the night sky. It looked at Gamma, big innocent eyes meeting small cold mechanical optics. The parrot landed on Gamma's shoulder, and Gamma's head spun around to continue to meet its gaze. Something about this parrot was… oddly familiar. Gamma looked to the beast, which still had its stare locked onto Gamma. Gamma turned around. "You should leave," Gamma whispered. He saw Zero continuing to press the other man's head together. Gamma walked over to regroup with Zero, as the beast ran away into the deep woods.
Amy heard a distant splatter, as she made it to a railroad on the edge of a steep decline. She tried her best not to hyperventilate, or vomit, or both, as she heard Zero scuttling through the shrubbery. She looked both ways for any sign of a train. She heard the far-off noises of a steam-powered locomotive. Swallowing her fears and sucking up her tears, she ran and jumped just as the train entered her field of vision. She looked behind her, and saw Zero approaching. Just as he was about to cross to the other side of the tracks… he was hit by the train. Amy watched as the train sped by.
And Amy watched as the train screeched to an abrupt halt. Amy looked to her left, and was horrified to see that Zero had picked up the entire train. He held it in the air, the train acting as a spire that pierced the clouds. His eyes sparked with electricity. He then swung the train down on Amy. Amy tried to run. But she felt as still and paralyzed as an Angel Statue. The train was just about to crush her, when suddenly, Tekno drove by and pulled Amy into the car!
"Guys! You're okay!" Amy cried, as the train crashed onto the ground. She hugged Birdie, as Birdie sobbed and cried into her arm. This was all he wanted. Breeze then launched off of the cliff, unable to stop.
"Oh no! Not again!" Tekno screamed as they fell. Amy's eyes widened, as Zero looked over the edge of the cliff. He turned away, leaving them to die. Then, something slowed their descent. Amy looked up, and saw an anthropomorphic rabbit flapping her large ears to hover down. Keeping them from splattering.
"Hello there. I'm Cream," the rabbit introduced, lowering them to the ground safely. "A pleasure to meet you!" A Chao peeked out from behind Cream.
"Chao!" The Chao exclaimed.
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット