Chapter Text
I can answer where one of the Hooligans went, anyway.
Unknown Location, Unknown Time
Fang was fired like a shooting star through a giant crystal, leaving a 'scared jerboa' shaped hole in the crystal, before whizzing through several fields of the crystals. He crashed onto one and it spun around, with him not falling off... as if there was zero gravity here.
Where was here anyway?
Fang scratched his head and got up from the crater he made in the crystal and looked around. "Crikey!"
He was standing on a magenta crystal, which he already knew, but he didn't know basically anything else around him. A deep violet void stretched as far as the eye could see, getting darker to further down it went, with thousands more of the same magenta crystals. An infinite abyss, with seemingly no way out.
"...I'm cactus, aren't I?" he mumbled to himself, before he looked straight up, and saw a bright white light before him.
A few miles away from him, a large mass of light, surrounded by red, hexagonal geodes, stood above him, shining bright. Some of the magenta crystals were floating towards the light, almost like a blackhole... but more inviting.
"That's probably my ticket outta 'ere!" Fang smirked before he started hopping on his tail to some of the crystals that were being sucked in, which lead to the portal. Each crystal he stepped on was pushed down into the void slightly, so he had to act fast.
He hopped to one crystal, that was on its way to being sucked into the light. Fang crossed his arms and chuckled, happy to be hopefully going him. "Those mooks are never gonna find this place! All they do is nag and help slower than a crabmeat! Those drongos don't deserve freedom... if this takes me back," he said to himself as the crystal moved even closer towards the bright light.
It wasn't long before he was through the light, and was taken back home.
Not Home, Unknown Time
Unlike the lush meadows and pink sunsets of Emerald Hill, Fang was currently skydiving into dark, looming clouds with a dark, smog filled sky above him.
The jerboa flew through the clouds and what he saw scared him.
A harsh, and indrustialized stood below him, with tall skyscrapers and dark colours. Maroon and grey was a clear colour choice for every building, with several smokestacks in the distance. "Where am I?" the jerboa asked himself as he fell towards the city, before realising that he was about to crashland in an alleyway. "HOLY SH-"
Fang landed into an open dumpster, a sight he doesn't usually see since he's usually exploring away from cities. "That's gonna leave a mark in the morning..." he mumbled to himself before hopping out of the dumpster. Broken glass and rusty nails will do that to you. He brushed some glass shards from his chest before nearly tripping over a large cable as he walked out of the alleyway.
He walked out onto a sidewalk, another rare sight for the jerboa, before stopping to look up above him. Now that he was in the city, he could see how far the buildings stretched up, with barricaded windows for several buldings, and many posters. "What in Gaia's name?" he strolled over to a wall with the most posters, and looked at them in awe.
Eggman face logos... but each of them slightly different. One of the logos looked like a baby silhouette, and one had a beard. There were five unique ones, but Fang was mainly focused on what it said below.
Each of them had a different slogan, each of them worse than the last. Fang looked at the slogan for the baby poster. "'Your First Steps Against The Council Will Result In Robotization'... what in the world?" the jerboa read aloud. He looked to the poster of the bearded face and read the slogan aloud. "'Admire Your Elders, Since You Won't Live 'Til That Age!' what kinda sham is this? I gotta get outta 'ere!" Fang said to himself. He ran away from the sidewalk, across the main road, stopping when he heard it.
A loud, blaring horn, followed by a bright light, getting closer towards him. A giant truck, barrelling towards him, smoke rising from behind. Right before it hit Fang... it stopped in its tracks. The door to the truck opened, and out hopped... a very familiar face.
It was Trip the Sungazer... but it wasn't at the same time. It looked like the lizard that Fang saw all those years ago... but clearly different. Her scales were made of steel, she had some kind of latch on her torso, and she had a visor over her eyes. Her mouth was missing, same with her nose, her eyes being covered by the visor mentioned earlier. She was floating slightly off of the ground, and her limbs were reinforced with more metal, painted orange to contrast the rest of her metal body. She stared at Fang before speaking.
"BZZT. HALT, PROUD SERVER OF THE COUNCIL. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF CODE B, SUBSECTION 8.1 OF OUR NATION'S LAWS. YOU ARE ALSO IN VIOLATION OF CODE H, SUBSECTION 4.6 OF OUR NATION'S LAWS. STAY PUT UNTIL AN EGGFORCER UNIT ARRIVES TO TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM. BZZT," announced the Sungazer, although Fang was now entirely certain that she was a robot of some variety.
Fang chuckled a bit before looking back at the robo-lizard. "Oh please, helmet-mook! Just because you became a goody-two-shoes with fleet-feet doesn't mean you have any control over me, even if you are made of metal!" he wiped some tears of laughter from his eyes, almost falling over with laughter.
As the jerboa was laughing, the robo-lizard pressed a button on her visor and she did a visual scan of the jerboa. A little HUD popped up in front of the visor as she was scanning, with all of the info about the jerboa popping up.
NAME: Unknown
AGE: Unknown
SPECIES: Jerboa
HEIGHT: 4' 2''
RESISTANCE MEMBER: Unknown
The copy of Trip finished the scan and looked back at the laughing jerboa. "BZZT. UNREGISTERED CITIZEN DETECTED. POSSIBLE RESISTANCE ASSOCIATE. PROCEED WITH VIOLENCE," the robot copy of Trip pressed another button on her visor, and that's when Fang started paying attention.
From the top of her visor, the top of a helmet sprouted from it, now covering her entire head, looking like an upgraded version of the helmet she wore back on the Northstar Islands. One of her metallic hands sunk back into her forearm and out popped a replica of her spear from the Northstar Islands, but the tip of the spear was now evidently made of some kind of plasmic substance. She went from standing up perfectly straight to immediately shifting to a more battle ready pose.
Fang saw this and got up immediately, also getting into a battle ready pose. "If ya want to be cactus, then so be it," Fang smirked, wiping his nose with his thumb, ready to brawl.
They charged towards eachother, Fang running towards her while the Trip double was floating towards him fast. Fang was about to start punching her, but she... leaped over him? She jumped into the air and roundhouse kicked his hat off of his head, catching him off guard as he slid to a stop, turning around. "SUBJECT APPEARED TO HAVE KEPT A FIREARM UNDER A HAT. NOT A VERY SMART TACTIC FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN SCAN PEOP-" "Shut it, tin-mook!" the robot was interrupted when Fang dived feetfirst at the robot's face, knocking it over. She wasn't down for long due to the helmet not taking too much damage, but by the time she got up, Fang was already gone, same with his hat and popgun.
He hid in an alleyway, out of sight from the robot's scanning. The gun under the hat trick usually worked on robots built by Eggman... he had to get out of here. He looked to his left and saw a ladder. "Bingo... just gotta make sure that tin-mook doesn't hear me..." he hopped onto the ladder, which made a loud clattering noise. He heard the robot get closer, and he hurried up the ladder, going as fast as his can as he reached the top of the ladder, now on top of the building that the ladder led to. It was a relatively average building for the city, so he was able to see most things, including one huge skyscraper a couple blocks away.
He looked closer at the skyscraper and saw a giant neon sign on it, and read it. "'Welcome to New Yoke City'?... I wonder who came up with THAT blunder..." he walked across the roof of the building and sat down, resting after what had happened.
Rooftops of New Yoke City, Unknown Time
"At least the other mooks aren't here to ruin this for me... although, there isn't much to ruin..." he muttered to himself, looking at the distant skyscraper.
"SUBJECT APPEARS TO BE ENJOYING THE VIEW. PROCEED WITH PREVIOUS PROTOCOL," the robot appeared to have been standing right behind the jerboa, already catching up. "Can't Gaia just keep you down, already?!" Fang hopped up as the robot struck ground beneath him, burning a hole in the rooftop.
Fang hopped to another rooftop and looked back. The robot slowly walked through the fire that was caused by the strike, not being affected at all. They stared eachother down, not saying a word for what felt like forever. That was until a glider sprung out from the robot's back, with several jets attached, giving the appearance of wings.
The robot flew up into the air and began to chase the jerboa from the sky. The plasma spear from before changing into a blaster, now firing several shots at Fang. "When ya think this day can't get any worse!" the jerboa took the popgun from his hat and fired a single cork at one of the bullets that the robot sent.
The bullets collided and they fell from the sky onto the ground. "SUBJECT APPEARS TO BE ABOVE AVERAGE WITH FIREARMS. PROCEEDING WITH NEW PROTOCOL," the robot called out, before turning her other hand into a blaster too, firing a barrage of bullets down at the jerboa.
"CRIKEY!" he started running away immediately, leaping to another rooftop before sliding down a ladder in a different alleyway, sprinting away as fast as he could away from the alleyway. The robot slammed her fist down onto where the ladder ended, swiftly turning her head to Fang as he ran to the road.
Fang sidestepped a lamppost before dashing onto the road, hearing another horn blaring. This time though, he wasn't going to be the one stopped by the truck. It would be the robot. He saw the robot Trip leap after him, being too quick to see that the truck was already on its way.
Fang looked back and smirked, before reaching the other side of the road, with no robot after him anymore. In the robot's place was the truck passing by, before the remains of the robot landed into the middle of the road. He tipped his fedora before running to another alleyway, and up another ladder.
He was lying down on the rooftop, trying his best to rest after this whole ordeal. "Alright... so let me get this straight. I'm stuck in a dirty city with a robot double of the helmet-mook, no clear way out, and I'm buggered out on a rooftop like a coward. Good news is, the other mooks ain't 'ere, and the place is ruled by Eggman, so I'm sure he'll take me in and help me out!" he stood up and looked towards the skyscraper he saw before. "Just gotta figure out a way to get over there..." Fang said to himself, before looking at the road.
There was another truck, horns blaring, and it was heading towards the skyscraper!
"Bingo!" Fang stepped back before running to the edge of the rooftop. The truck passed by... with the jerboa in the back. It was a cargo truck, transporting a lot of metal scrap, so Fang had another painful landing. "If I had a ring for every time I've landed on metal in this place..."
The truck was barrelling towards the skyscraper, but at the speed it was going at, it would've taken a few minutes to actually reach the skyscraper. Fang decided to get a better look at the city while the truck was on its way to the building.
He peered over the edge of the large container he was in, kneeling on some scrap to get a better look. He saw... other Mobians? He was too busy to look at civilians before, but now he just saw how miserable they all looked. They were all wearing overralls, and a dirty cap, probably some form of factory or mining uniform. None of them were smiling. No tears were shed either, probably because the tears would be collected to power some kind of device.
"Eh, at least Eggman will treat be better than those hoons," Fang reassured himself, looking away from them and going farther down into the container.
The truck was almost at the tower, Fang was glad that Eggman would be there to help, and the other hooligans were nowhere to be seen! What could possibly go wrong for him?