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Espio's eye twitched as the burnt marshmallow shell slid from the glob of goop speared on a stick that hung limply in Ray's hand as he stared at Vector in horror. It splatched and hissed on the campfire in the quiet summer night.
"You didn't!" He squeaked.
"Sure did. Smuggled him in to the Resistance, sealed in take-out box. We were gonna do experiments on 'im."
"No, you said it was a ring box!" Charmy kicked Vector, and crunched the triple stack s'more he'd made with extra pieces of twigs and dirt from his grubby hands.
"W-what, the kind you give presents in? You fit in that?"
"No! The ones that have stacks in!"
"Were either of you there?" Vector asked the kids seriously, but his face was warm and they giggled.
"Yes I was!" Charmy cheered; "I was and I was like: 'Raaahhh!'"
He began shouting and screeching, scratching at Vector's big arms, giving him a sticky bite. Vector shook him off deftly, not a dent left in his tough hide, and took each of Charmy's hands in two fingers.
"More like; 'ughhhh-'" he imitated a dull, shuffling Zombie with Charmy's arms out before him, stumbling him purposely out of his seat and around the campfire pit.
"Careful." Espio said sternly: his tail deftly extending to bat Charmy back from the fire, but he didn't look at them. Vector tugged Charmy back in a zombie-walk to his seat.
"Right, back to the story: you were telling us how you brought a zombot into the resistance. Remind me how you guys are the heroes in this one?" Mighty yawned. He slid down the log he was perched on to slouch against it, feet warmed by the fire, a picture of lazy calm. He was sat opposite Espio, and tried to catch his eye, perhaps gauge by how indignant he looked just how much of this already twisty tale was true, but Espio just stared at the sugar carbonising in the heart of the flame, a dull sheen on his usually bright brow.
"Well, you could say we were stupid for that. But it didn't matter, 'cause somebugger came in infected, and then this bug broke out when it was all already chaos, so I just-" Vector clicked with his tongue, grabbing Charmy under the arm and squeezing him lightly, so he wriggled indignantly; "Caught him like a rugby ball, and we tagged out. Then I presume it was all just peachy from there, right Espio?" He chortled, bonking Charmy's helmet as all of Charmy wrestled and lost to Vector's one arm.
"Was it all peachy from there? How close was this to the Super Metal Slurp-up, Espio? Espio?" Mighty asked from faraway and right beside him in the quiet woodlands.
Espio jumped as Ray nudged him after a moment in the still air. His spikes flared and colour flashed, but he cleared his throat and sat up straight with a clicking spine.
"Hm. Yes. Hard to tell, we went to Angel Island so days became hard to track." He said firmly, eyes darting back and forth from the fire; "Nobody slept towards the end - there weren't enough of us to organise sleeping shifts."
"So, a couple days then, or longer? Otherwise you'd have gone loopy." Mighty hummed, leaning on his own hands behind his shell. Espio snorted.
"It felt like longer, but I couldn't say. 'Loopy' is one word for it."
The atmosphere crackled with the fire, but Charmy and Vector stayed idly wrestling, and soon Ray had been enlisted to try to pry Vector's arm open. Espio stood from his stump silently, his scales a murky purple that almost disappeared into the woods around them.
His steps were soft, and he kept his torch low on the undergrowth, skirting deftly around any piles of leaves. The night air was quieter than he thought it should have been, but it must have just been paranoia. Still, he ducked to one side as he heard thumping stomps over his shoulder, and his own shadow bounced in front of him as a torch-holder jogged to catch him up.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Somewhat. Bathroom trips are not a team sport." He sighed, as Mighty caught him up, kicking up the loose earth and moss he'd been preserving.
"Can be: you might need someone to watch your back. Never know what's lurking in the dark, waiting to pounce when you've got your pants around your ankles."
"Figuratively?"
"Yeah, figurative pants."
"Hm. Thank you for the concern, but I'm fine on my own."
"Sure?" Mighty said easily, but he flashed the torch in his hand straight into Espio's eyes, causing him to squint and cover his face.
"Obviously."
"You, err... eh. Doesn't matter. Just thought you looked a bit peaky back there, but I guess not."
"Too much sugar. I needed a walk."
"Uhuh."
Espio didn't feel like disturbing the air, so they listened to furtive animals and rustling leaves. Mighty walked almost in-step with him, but had to weave around the occasional trunk, making his a meandering path.
A shaft of moonlight broke through where a tree had fallen and blocked their desire path; easily jumpable, but Mighty put his arm out in front of Espio.
"Gimme a hand, would you?"
He certainly didn't need help, but Espio picked up one end anyway, taking less than a quarter of the weight in one hand and pointing the torch with the other, until they'd dragged it out of the way of the main path. Espio dropped it, leaves twirling up and around in the impact before they fell limply around him in the empty air. Mighty held his end, inspecting it.
"Do you have a saw?"
"Not something I usually carry. Would a knife do?"
"Nah, this has canker. It's like a fungus, spreads through the earth and from contact. We should really chop this one in bits and burn it so it doesn't infect the rest of them."
The trees around them shivered like they heard that. Espio closed his eyes and inclined his head.
"Fine. We can come back in the daylight for that."
"S'pose so... sorry. Spore spot?"
Mighty tripped on the s's and p's and cleared his throat like he meant to do that. Espio tossed him a haughty glance.
"Why would it be?"
"... well, it is for everyone a bit really. I mean those two, they're over-chill about it. But that wasn't a nice time."
"... it's intentional. We've decided we're fine, so we are. If we carry on, time will pass."
"Well it would anyway, but I get what you mean."
Mighty grumbled as he hopped over the tree, throwing the torchlight around him to get some barings, then he reached for the knifes tucked into Espio's glove-pockets. His sense of personal space had never regrown with the Chaotix, despite how long he'd been travelling just with Ray. Mighty marked the tree with Zigzags, and placed a branch as an arrow from their route. They wandered on in quiet, Mighty still spinning the borrowed knife, until he lost control and it spun almost into himself. Espio's hand darted in to take it by handle and lodge it back in its place in his brace.
"Me and Ray went down about the same time, did I tell you?"
"No, I don't think you did."
"We ended up holed up in Southpost. They'd built a kind of ditch that went into a dirt wall around the city, and everyone was staying inside. It was pretty solid, the zombots just kind of fell in the ditch, and we netted the ones that flew over. People were a bit useless, all panicked and bureaucraticked, but there was a couple of us up to keeping the metal guys back... and digging the hole bigger when it got full. That was risky, but it was all pretty good."
"I'm sure." Espio sucked a breath in as he spoke, held it, then sighed very hard and squeezed his fingertips; "And then it fell?"
"Yeah. We think we made it quite a long time, we were asking for the people with the airships to come get us, but then there was a breach. The zombots could climb over eachother, turns out, and we just couldn't push 'em all back. I remember I got myself grabbed and I was just shouting for Ray to fly away, but I saw him and he was already... well a bit sparkly in places too. So we just kept fighting... until we woke up in the outback somewhere. Right side by side. Like we'd been asleep. Got to watch the end of all the chrome being vacuumed up into the sky."
He stopped to inspect another tree, crumbling away some of the bark to inspect the inside, but found only beetles chewing this one.
"... I'm sorry we couldn't get to you with the ship. If only we'd been quicker, more efficient."
"Ah. It's fine. We were kinda in a jam, running out of food to ration anyway. At least Zombots don't eat, I wouldn't have liked to see people starve."
"Yes, that would have actually left more lasting damage. The virus, as it turns out, was... alright. Completely gone without a trace. No recovery time. Like a bad dream. Quite fine."
In the gloom Mighty glared at him. Espio cocked his head as their torches bounced in front of them.
"The cicadas didn't wake up. Didn't you notice?"
"Oh?" Espio stopped to listen to the night: true, it was warm, and usually this woods was roaring with them, but this time their usual campsite had instead been cloaked in the tinnitus that loud sound leaves in its wake. As soon as he identified it, it pierced his ears and made him shake his head.
"The virus got into the roots of the trees and the earth." Mighty began, shuffling leaves as they walked; "And none of the cicadas woke up: not the annual, not the 5-annual, not the 17-year ones we were due this year. They couldn't get through the ground, I think. For all we know there won't be any next year. Maybe they'll never recover."
Espio grunted, but it clearly wasn't the reaction Mighty expected, because he huffed, then gestured to the trees: "So many plants have a rhythm that's just been thrown out. You should see the rainforest - the floor is bare cause there weren't any leaves shedding, so all the small things are trying to climb trees to hide. And it's dry. It's so dry, everywhere, the earth is cracking right up to the marshes, and they're barely damp. And the water's too full of mineral, like a brine... yeah. I guess it would look like it's fine to you in your city."
Mighty had begun to stomp as he talked, disturbing twigs and mice with his boots. He knocked the knuckles of one hand on his hard shell, and with his head stooped low the moon shone off his back when the trees and clouds didn't smother it. He felt Espio's eyes through the thick carapace, and grimaced.
"Sorry." He said firmly, cracking his spine in the silence. Espio watched into the trees so Mighty couldn't see his expression, and let the wind whistle in the mourning silence for a few minutes.
"I... agree. Things will not be the same again. But life can always find a way, if it is still alive. The death toll of the incident was, all things considered, low. That's a modern day miracle."
"Doesn't mean we have to be okay with it. I'm not."
Espio tried to form some kind or commiseration, but everything he strung together sounded bitter and sarcastic, and he couldn't work out why.
It seemed such a redundant thing to say - how were people ever 'okay' with anything that changed them? They just... were changed. It would always feel wrong, and ache, and suffocate you while you tried to sleep. It was a permanant vertigo; as you looked back on the time before and the time after, seeing the difference like life had gone from colour to grey. It was constant practice to remember around the event, look at the details but never the whole thing. Never the whole thing. You don't think about the whole thing. Stop thinking about the whole thing.
"I'm not sure I am either," Espio surprised himself as he spoke. Something in his brain had overrode the internal narrative, desperate for any other occupation for his mind that wasn't this. Still, he didn't have a full thought to finish, so he just left it there and tried to focus on the wood, leaves, stars and breeze around him now and in the present. The presence beside him elbowed him gently.
"Thanks. Sometimes I feel crazy, like we're just meant to all go on."
"We are meant to go on, all the same."
Mighty grunted in disdain, then looked up suddenly as noise seared left to right: they had walked almost to the road - a highway violently bissecting the wilderness with tarmac and electric lights, creating a burial ground for animals who walked their ancestral paths in dwindling numbers. They stopped at the edge, observing a sign warning sapiens and sapiens alone what was beyond.
They watched the road, deep in thought, until they both jumped as another car rumbled by metres from them.
"Bloody metal... what's the good in it?" Mighty growled after the roaring engine.
"We should head back." Espio said firmly, and turned his torch into the woods again, placing a hand on Mighty's shoulder to force him to turn around.
"Sure. Do you know the way? No signal for maps on your phone..." Mighty shook him off and bumped him as he did so, and Espio tutted.
"You are not the only one who can enjoy - and navigate - the wilderness," he said testily, but Mighty laughed:
"Well, you wouldn't have the wealth of experience like an outdoorsman like me."
"An 'outdoorsman'! Spends one year on the road and thinks he's travelled his whole lifetime!"
"It's felt like a lifetime!"
"True. It's also felt like no time at all."