ONE YEAR AGO...
Okay, self. What are we feeling? Vital signs?
Shoulders tight. Knees shaking. Spirit weak.
Heartbeat normal, though maybe a little speedy. Breath short and haggard, but not worrisome in any way. Stress levels… incredibly high. Off the charts. Worst they’ve ever been. Though perhaps that should be expected when your whole home planet was being consumed by darkness just a few leagues behind you.
The sounds of the escape pod beep, beep, beeped in Miles Prower’s little fox ears. It was pingy and loud, in all probability the sound of some bell they had recorded. Tails wondered if, when they fashioned it to be the warning signal for this craft, they had any idea it would be so annoying — and downright anxiety-inducing.
The antecedent of the ‘they’ was unclear, dear reader; this pod’s world of origin, Govermorne, was full of geniuses and inventors of all ilk, creating all sorts of super cool gadgets and vehicles. Which one of those many intellectuals was behind his saving grace was unclear. So, therefore, was their degree of paranoia about the hazards of space, but no matter what… that beep, beep, beep must be trying to warn him about something, right? Miles couldn’t imagine any danger it could be warning him about now that could be any worse than what he’d just escaped from.
Danger scan, then. What was in his orbit? The porthole window in front of him wasn’t exactly the optimal viewfinder to get himself abreast of the situation in any real way, and for all its state of the art tech, the sensors on this thing seemed to have been thoroughly messed up by whatever substance had infested Govermorne’s atmosphere. The two-tailed fox’s limited vantage point offered him a view of some lightly scattered asteroids, the edge of the Crossroads’ star — which he’d never seen so close up — and, unfortunately, not much else. That meant he had little in the way of information, and even less in the way of relevant information — so formulating a plan would be next to impossible, given the circumstances.
So there was nothing to do except fly. Fly, fly, fly.
He flipped a switch on the control panel in front of him, and that’s when he saw it.
The gigantic ship, twisted and dark, sleek red metal standing behind what remained of another vessel. The smaller one looked to have been stylish and aesthetically pleasing once, but it, too, had started to warp into something altogether different and… well, there was no unbiased way to put it: something terrifying.
The two spacecrafts drifted into his view slowly, situated right between himself and freedom. He felt his breath catch in his throat as he watched them float closer to one another, and as he felt his own escape pod soaring towards them at lightning speed.
Gotta be a way out of this, he gulped, then reached for the controls. He knew there was only one way that he was going to get out of this alive, and relying on the escape pod’s auto-pilot mechanism wasn’t it. So decisively, he flicked it off. He could barely see a path, and the gargantuan invading ship — along with the other Govermornian one, which seemed to be quite worse for wear — would undoubtedly pick him up on their sensors while he piloted this thing through it. So then… there was only one thing to do.
Gotta go fast.
***
The day hadn’t begun with a high-speed space chase as his planet collapsed behind him. It had, however, begun with a high-speed chase.
“Get ya azz back here, little Tails!!”
Miles “Tails” Prower whizzed through the air, twin fox tails spinning madly as he lifted himself up off the ground and sped away from the gang of juvenile trolls stampeding after him. The squad of bullies leapt and bounded through the streets of Tinkerdrift, hot on the seven-year-old’s trail. As much as the little guy tried to lose them in the web of cogs and gears that made up the city’s upper layers, he simply couldn’t. He might have a leg up on these tusk-faced dudes in book smarts, but when it came to the streets, the trolls had him beat. No matter how fast he could fly forward, these guys were nimble AF — and they stayed right on his tails.
He dodged and wove through a layer of clockwork archways, feeling the pressure rising within him as the gears all around him tick, tick, ticked the seconds away. With each passing click of one of Tinkerdrift’s many clocks, Tails knew the trolls inched closer and closer. He had to find a place to hide and slip out of view — and fast — if he had any chance of getting away.
Zzzzip, CLACK!
And just like that, that chance — however small it may have already been — dissolved as a grappling hook gripped his ankle. He felt a violent tug, and then started to fall.
“Whoa!”
BAM!
He crashed to the ground with an “oof” and barely any time to try and scramble away before not one but three trolls were upon him. A pair of tusks whizzed towards his face, and he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid getting slashed by them. The tusks scraped against the ground hard as the offending troll geared up for another headbutt. Before he could follow through, however, one of his comrades stepped in front of him and held up an arm.
“Calm-izzle dizz-own,” the lead troll bully scowled, glaring down at Tails sprawled across the ground. “This lil’ pup ain’t worth our time, ‘specially since we ain’t worth hiz.”
“He be thinkin’ he better than us!” the pissed off troll who’d attacked him shouted, bucking so hard his friend had to hold him back again. “Jus’ cause he off to college!”
“I don’t think I’m better than you!” the little fox protested, climbing to his feet.
“Then why’s you goin’ off to college instead of staying’ with us?” the leader crossed his arms.
“‘Steada stayin’ with ya friends,” the third, female troll finally piped up, stepping out from behind her comrades. For a second, Tails’ gaze fell fully on her, the only one of this group that had ever really afforded him any kindness.
Truth was, reader, Miles “Tails” Prower had never exactly had an ‘in’ with the ‘in crowd.’ If asked, he would relay what he knew to be true, objective fact, with no intent of bragging: he was simply smarter than all of them. His IQ was higher, his interests more varied, his intelligence improving a mile a minute while they all lingered at grade level, much more gradual, and much more — most importantly — normal.
And wasn’t that just a curse? He took in the three troll bullies and blinked back some tears, trying his best not to betray his emotional weakness after they’d just exploited his physical ones. But it was true — it brought him to tears quite often, how just unlike the rest of his peers he was. Contrary to what these dudes might believe, it was not lit to be way ahead of everyone else in the curriculum, so far ahead that his parents had pushed him to go ahead and graduate and start his time at one of Tinkerdrift’s premiere universities. Sure, in the scope of problems people had, it was far from the biggest, but…
He felt weird. He felt alone.
And the girl troll knew it. He felt a little bit of resentment start to bubble up inside of him as he came to that conclusion, as he reached that realization. She knew he felt alone, that was why she’d reached out to him that one time at lunch a few months back. That was why she’d made some sort of effort to, if not entirely be his friend, to be friendly. And yet here she was, ganged up with the rest of these vultures, picking at his scabs.
The ground rocked before Tails had time to gather his thoughts and respond to her question. The little fox steadied himself as the dumb troll who’d tried to slash him fell over, barely caught by the leader of their little squad.
“What the eff?” the girl said, looking at Tails. The foxboy genius shrugged, glancing around and trying to find some sort of source for the tremor.
He went over what he knew about Govermorne’s geological makeup. It wasn’t a far stretch to say that the slag was pretty volatile, as far as natural substances go, but he hadn’t ever really know for it to cause quakes like this one, the aftereffects of which still lingered. He knelt down, placing a hand on the ground and trying his best to see if he could at least guesstimate the direction it was coming from, the location of the source.
Imagine the shock on his face, reader — and on the faces of the troll squad — when a weird black and blue liquid burst from the ground and wrapped around little Miles Prower’s gloved hand.
The weird goop snatched him downwards, pulling his hand into a new, slag-filled crack in Tinkerdrift’s cobblestone streets. The girl troll leapt into action, rolling forward and grabbing onto Tails’ ankle before his fingers could be submerged in the hot, bubbling liquid. The fox’s eyes went wide — wasn’t this stuff hella closer to the surface than it should be? It wasn’t supposed to be this far up, right? The slag usually remained way down below the streets of Tinkerdrift… and what the hell was this black and blue mess, anyway?!
The girl troll yanked him back up, and the liquidy-goopy-tentacle, or whatever it was, released him. Tails turned towards his troll savior.
“Thank you — ” he started to say. Before he could finish, though, another crack opened in the ground right underneath the troll girl. Tails reached out with one of his gloved hands, frantically reaching for her, but it was too late; the slag had swallowed her up before he could even get a grip on her.
No.
He turned back to the other two to find them gone. He looked up into the sky to see it had gone completely black. His breath caught in his throat.
Something was hella wrong here.
Quest: The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black (Govermorne Unmaking Quest)
Miles “Tails” Prower
Post WC: 1727 (according to Google Docs)
Quest WC: 1727/2500 (according to GDocs)