Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

66. Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 1.

Author's Note:

Reminder Shanty is being told of this hours after this happened.

Music: Sonic the Hedgehog series- White Jungle, any version, preferably Sonic Forces remix version.

Suggestion for musical fun: Sonic Unleashed, Result Level Fail.

I hear the Bermuda Triangle does similar to the instrumentation in airplanes with magnetic fields.

-Elhorn, Frosty Checkpoint, Nicole-

We needed this trade to go through so we could go find Pom and finish our mission up here.

These guys also had some decency as negotiators, my faith in living beings is somewhat restored even if all the damage the Wulfgar faction is doing with technology was dropping that significantly.

If I started seeing giant floating golden rings around here, it would be too soon.

-Gravity Gorge, southwestern edge region, Hunt-

“Okay, I did what I could for you guys, but you’re going to have to see to yourselves after this.” Patching up these bandits might not be the brightest idea, but I didn’t want them to die from their claw or bite wounds. I finished tying off the bandages around a guy’s chest from my kit. “Hope you guys survive long enough to return the favor to me some other day.”

They might be future friends or some people I can call in a favor from later, I’m sure they’ll recognize my smell if they ever see me again.

Now I just had to track down that terrified fluffy white being and somehow assure her that I would keep her safe, tall order considering how many people were after her. Including me… the one that made her go deeper into Gravity Gorge in the first place.

I walked away from them while settling my rifle on my shoulder and looked for a good floating rock to jump to.

There weren’t enough heroes for everyone on Elhorn, but if I see something happening right in front of me that I can do something about… then I’m going to help!

-Gravity Gorge Zone, Act 1, escape your pursuers Pom!-

Curled up in the hollow of a boulder, I was shivering in fright while nibbling slowly on what passed for bananas on this world.

I had just about finished the entire bunch quietly and without interruption.

Things were getting darker the further into this place I went, I also notice some weak arcs of lightning shooting between some boulders randomly.

Seriously hoped I could keep this food down, I needed the energy if all those wolves and dogs were as persistent as I thought they’d be.

I was still sickened to my stomach by what I did to those guys, even if they were threatening me. I didn’t know what happened to me for a minute there, up until I came to my senses and tasted the blood coating my teeth.

Why do I feel like I’ve tasted blood before? Did I mentally block myself from remembering the last time this happened? Oh gods and goddesses…

I finished the fruit and stayed still for a moment, I sighed as it settled in my stomach.

What was wrong with me? Aside from the usual obvious things, like being on the run for the last six hours or so without much of a break. All of this was wearing down my endurance with little rest, and that on top of spending the entirety of last night awake?

A red light shined outside the hole I stuffed myself into, I heard the mechanical sounds of a machine slamming into a boulder. It was close and the light was currently pointed at the boulder I was in, I could hear sniffing.

I peeked out and saw one of those lanky green machines being piloted by a wolf.

Oh no…

My heart started thudding in my chest as I ducked back while closing my eyes, I concentrated on that rapid beating. Once I got my breathing into rhythm with it, I carefully slowed it down.

Maybe… maybe I didn’t have to push my body so hard to get away. All this jumping and running was taking its toll on me. With the way gravity works around here…

I placed my front legs against my side and pulled them slowly away slowly forming my glide form webbing, I wasn’t going to do the same to my hind legs this time… I needed them free to stay mobile.

Okay, ready, steady… red, yellow… three… two… two and a half… oh just go already!

I leapt out took about ten quick galloping steps and jumped as hard as I currently could while spreading out my front legs.

The shockwave of a machine almost landing on top of me gave me a decent boost going into the air, I tried to steady myself being drawn towards another boulder as I wobbled slightly.

I shifted my gliding wings and managed to zip around the boulder so close that I could feel my ears drag painlessly against the surface. The machine that leapt for me slammed into the boulder, I was soon shooting off and away from it after picking up speed and exiting that particular boulder’s gravitational field.

Several lights shined on me and I could see various streaks of color passing by my form as I steered around boulders as tightly as I could to use their gravitational pulls to keep myself airborne.

I could hear the boulders I zipped by taking the shots meant for me and nearly slammed into one directly due to my inattention.

Wobbling in the air a bit and my speed slowing, I managed to avoid snapping my neck against the mass and bypass it and started to fall down into a thick field of boulders that seemed to be constantly slamming together.

Another shot whizzed by under my belly. I couldn’t really focus on them shooting at me, I had to keep my eyes on the way I was heading.

Do I go down to the ground or do I go higher?

I narrowly avoided being clawed out of the air by the left arm of a leaping fifteen foot tall robot. Just guessing the size, didn’t actually have much time to think.

Sitting duck on the ground with those machines, higher!

Sending a glance behind myself to see the machine land and start prepping for another jump, I tried to veer upwards.

Surprisingly, I started going straight up and started actively trying to mimic a manta ray in motion by waving my wool wings with my front legs in a pattern. I think this would work better in actual water than in the air.

At least seven other of those green machines had to land on the nearest landmasses, a few of them had bad impacts and one was totaled leaving a few wolves temporarily stranded among the floating rock field.

Other wolves, the ones that had been shooting at me, flew from the machines they were holding onto when they made too jarring an impact against the landmasses below me and were drawn to multiple separate boulders in a rather painful manner.

I felt my momentum was starting to bleed off as I was being dragged towards another large mass of rock back first, didn’t help that another boulder was about to… idea!

I rolled to present my left side towards the planet and my right to the sky to angle myself towards going between the two boulders about to collide.

I winced as I heard something whizz my right ear, I closed my front legs to my side and felt the pull strengthening on my whole body exponentially.

Before I knew it, I was between the two boulders. The gravitational forces threatened to rip me apart, only to be ejected on the other side of them like I was shot out of a cannon.

My body was shooting upwards at a forty five degree angle now and the stress I just put on it made me feel like one nasty bruise.

I started spiraling through the air, twisting around various boulders going above, below and around to the left and right as I tried to figure out how to bleed off my speed.

Thinking quickly, I dragged one of the wingtips near a boulder and used the gravitational pull to send me into wild spin. It took me a bit, but I managed to get myself right side up to look down at the barely visible ground below.

Okay, that experience was exceptional painful, but my maneuver put some distance between me and them so I could plan a little more as I slowed to start falling sideways towards another massive stone.

This was almost kind of fun, I was flying and I didn’t need thermals. In better circumstances, I would love to live in the outer edges of a place like this with Tianhuo. If I got back to Huoshan alive, I will want to go gliding as this is going well so far.

It didn’t take long before I noticed that I was quickly losing sight of which way was up or down in this place. Knowing probably wouldn’t matter either way soon enough, as it was already quickly getting darker due to the thick masses of floating islands near the center of this place and the sky was blotted out by the sea of floating rocks all around me.

I was going to have to land somewhere or suffer painfully by blindly slamming into something in the… something flashed in the darkness nearby and I blinked.

Looking around, it didn’t seem like there was a good place to land. Several whizzing noises were heard by me and I felt something graze my right shoulder.

They already caught up to me, was I really seriously worth all this trouble to them?! No... wait.. I knew the answer to that one already. I was apparently always worth the trouble.

Okay, think fast Pom, like your life depends on it, it probably did anyway even if they likely wanted to take me alive!

I saw a flash again and then I focused on it, in darkness I could see flashing and didn’t hear anything remotely like thunder going off. It didn’t stop energy from leaping coming off boulders in large noiseless flashes or explosions of raw energy.

Something that I couldn’t hear and was deadly if I didn’t see it in time? This world in a nutshell thus far, par for the course.

Wait, what the…?!

Suddenly being slung around and almost falling twenty feet in… I don’t even know what directions are anymore as I twisted about in the air out of control. The gravity suddenly changed into what I could hope was sideways or was I going upside down now? I flipped about and was… falling backwards now?

I shook my head and angled towards one of the boulders that was practically bursting with energy as I felt something zip past my forehead from my left.

Boulder was on the right, going to chance it! For one I wanted a closer look, for another to see what happens when those machines made contact with one.

When I neared one of these boulders building up with a glow, I noted that the boulder seemed to be made out of metallic materials. I recognized masses of copper and silver well enough when I saw it, both of which were highly conducive materials for lightning.

All my wool started sparking and I felt a massive amount of energy in the air coming right for me, I quickly veered away to the leftwards moving barrel roll. The sparks running along my body died down as I got further away and avoided the boulder by a wide margin.

One of the machines still in the chase that leapt to that particular boulder wasn’t as lucky, lightning danced all over its surface and the several wolves were convulsing as the boulder lightly blew apart and sent a small pulse of harmless energy out.

It left the scattered bunch of them groaning in the debris field, yet that small explosion had still been disturbingly soundless.

Is something wrong with my ears?

I angled my body towards one of the landmasses, unsure of which way I was going. Up and down had no meaning out here, except by personal perspective.

I was quite lost and I only knew that the darker portions of sky that I could still visibly see was further inward, so the light would be leading out of this place.

Glancing behind me, I still saw at least three of those machines leaping from boulder to boulder after me.

Turning to look forward I immediately slammed face first into a boulder that had floated into my path and heard several more floating rocks colliding around me. So it wasn’t my ears, there was something about those energy boulders that made them silent.

Also, why the pain?!

Scrambling up and around the boulder, I was about to leap when I looked at my hooves.

I hopped and then bark blasted the boulder beneath me.

It rocketed away and slammed into one of the machines and the other two had to quickly grab boulders to pivot off to the side.

I was pushed away and being tugged in various directions until I righted and spread my legs, as I did I saw a fairly large island in the distance with a lot of heavy vegetation on it.

There, that looked good enough!

There was still enough light shining through for me to still see down there and it was large enough for me to find a hiding spot long enough to get some rest.

Now if only I wasn’t being pulled in the wrong direction, I spun and slapped all my hooves against a boulder to change direction and then found myself being going towards an empty air pocket in the floating rock field.

That wasn’t what I wanted, I also didn’t want more shots to be fired my way by my pursuers.

Wait, when did the number of machines following me change back to four?! I lashed out my hoof and latched onto a small rock and pivoted around on it and quickly kicked out my hind legs wildly to force it to spin the way I wanted it to.

When I released my grip, I curled up as small as possible and launched myself towards something above my position, or was it below at this point? Was I upside down? Using the islands orientation as I see it now! Above me.

I grabbed onto the rock and used my momentum to pivot around like I had on the previous one, avoiding the shots that were coming at me from two different directions.

Letting go, I closed my front legs up against my side and shot like an arrow straight for another rock. I kicked off of it and it was blown up by a rocket a second later.

I grimaced at the fact that they were willing to fire explosives at me and that the shrapnel from the rock just embedded itself roughly into the wool around my spine.

I reached out to latch onto another small rock and hastily lashed out my hind legs to kick at another one to change my pivot rotation before releasing.

Now I was flying to the left of the island, they were shooting where I would have been if I hadn’t changed my direction mid pivot.

I kept my front legs at my side and then spread them out as I came up to an elongated rocky platform. It was relatively cylindrical with a single flat side and I was dropping in on that flat portion, square and with jagged edges on both ends. Some kind of shale maybe?

My momentum almost stopped and I touched down gently, I quickly started running as their shots started landing all around me coming from above my head.

I didn’t have time to really watch where they were going or what they were doing, I just needed to reach that island and find a hiding spot!

I felt like I was running along a wall and said wall was about to end into sparse air with barely any rocks or boulders to latch on to nearby to get me headed in the right direction.

To my right, below me and forward is the island I needed like yesterday.

Narrowing my eyes, I ran for the edge while inhaling.

As time was slowing to a crawl, I looked around for an exit plan.

Mentally nodding to myself, I exhaled and let my reflexes kick into high gear. I gripped the edge of the elongated floating rock with my right hoof as I reached it, I kicked out and flung myself around to the other side instead of off the end of the floating pillar.

I stood perfectly still and heard the machines hopping through the field and were getting closer while still firing upon where I was hiding.

My chest was hurting and I felt like I was dying, I might either be having a panic attack or a heart attack right now. Maybe both? Not important!

I didn’t have time to stop and contemplate this, as I looked down towards the floating island where I could see something shimmering… water?!

I was really thirsty, out of breath and in need of a good news right about now. Like how I was keeping down those Elhorn bananas quite well despite the utterly nauseating effects this place was having on me.

I looked to my down at something and prepared myself for a long leap. I leaned back until there was tension in all four of my legs. I felt something land on the other side of my platform and the added mass started making it rotate, it wasn’t enough to throw of my aim as I flung myself downwards.

Several rockets passed by me and blew up several of the surrounding boulders, but those weren’t my target. I held out my right hoof as I continued down nearer to the island on a slowly curving arc.

Come on... please...

I looked up and wished I hadn’t, they were all quickly descending on me from above… just like I wanted actually.

I dropped the webbing on my right leg as I held it out and passed by the island, I felt something slap right into my hoof and sighed in relief as I hadn’t missed it.

It was a barely visible against the minimal light, but the flashes of the energy boulders let me see a long snake like structure wobbling around aimlessly.

This place would quickly devoid anyone of their sense of direction.

Getting an iron grip onto the vine with my right hoof I continued downwards until the vine pulled taught and I started to swing downwards towards the underside, or was it the top, of the large island.

The shots blurred by like rain as I kept holding on for dear life and all the machines had nothing with which to jump off of to give chase, especially after going to the trouble of blowing apart all the nearby boulders I could have feasibly been jumping to.

I felt a little heady at managing to use their enthusiasm to get me against them, up until the vine was burst by a few random shots.

My good feelings dropped off a cliff into a bottomless pit as I went flailing out of control.

My momentum was centering to the bottom point of the island… or was it the top of its mountain?

I really didn’t like that my current momentum was taking me right into a particularly large field of energy boulders arcing with a massive net of energy that I wanted no part in even being near.

Whatever strong gravitational force the island had suddenly kicked in on me.

I found myself falling head first, straight into mass of vines and went spiraling dizzily through them until I fell out of them and felt myself going into shock upon impact with some water.

I started look around for a surface and saw a bubble and swam for it while forcing my body to listen to me despite the current situation.

Gasping as I pulled myself from the fresh water, I looked about at the large hollow log I found myself in. I turned back to the water, dunked my head in and took a few big gulps of it.

I sat back and sighed afterwards, that was nice, cool and refreshing.

A hole erupted through the wood above my head and leading to another right between my hind legs where I sat.

Could I just hope that that was an absurdly lucky shot and that they didn’t actually manage to see me swimming into this large log?

Several more holes punctured the end of the log where I had crawled out of the water.

“Right, going!” I leapt up and charged for the upper end of the log as chips and splinter of wood rained down all around me as I tripped several times in my scramble.

I reached the end of the log and leapt as hard as I could to clear the projectiles spewing forth behind me and then promptly got sucked into a nearby cave as gravity was suddenly went odd.

Being drawn into a circular tube filled with moss, I slammed into one side of the tunnel and started sliding, eventually the tunnel bent around and was now… going back towards the top of the island?

I saw an opening and a flash showed me the dark forest beyond the tunnel I was desperately trying to get a grip on with my wool.

To no avail, I flew free of the tunnel, chopped down half a moderate sized tree with my body with the requisite agonizing amount of pain that followed by ramming straight through a bush with my butt.

With my teeth clenched I began screaming into my mouth without letting said scream pass my lips. I didn’t feel like screaming out loud and drawing my pursuers to where I was going now.

The tree didn’t stop my momentum and neither did the bush, I skipped twice across a river and then slammed into a thick pile of mud and kept skidding until I eventually came to a stop at the base of what looked like a fly trap. Said plant was the size of a small bear and snapped at me with row of tooth green thorns, lucky this thing wasn’t actually close enough to get me in its mouth.

I actually felt like throwing myself into it to complete my suffering.

“Can I stop hurting now?” I stated as I carefully picked myself up and started to slowly trot away from the most imminent threat in my vicinity and towards a cave.

Wet, dripping with mud, a bit cold and badly battered, I triumphantly flopped onto my face. Only for a shadow the size of a grizzly bear to fall over me in the barely lit shade of the many surrounding trees.

I felt my mind drift away as I immediately got up and growled defensively, ready to attack a moment’s notice.

A large white paw, a dog’s paw, reached for my head and I flinched. The paw, undeterred by my aggression or fear, It gently rubbed my head calmly and my sense came back almost immediately.

Why was I starting to act like a wolf for a moment?

“I don’t want to be captured…” I mumbled sadly in canine, I felt myself be pulled into a warm embrace and lifted from the cave floor. The large white dog had long hair that covered everything, but his muzzle gave away his gender. “Are you… are you going to eat me? Please… no…”

I weakly struggled and couldn’t fight like this. The massive dog, at least twelve feet tall, just simply frowned at the insinuation as he cradled me and started to carry me somewhere further into the darkness of the cave.

Act 1 clear! *Insert Fanfare*.

-Hunt-

Okay, so I might have lost her, I have to head back to report what I know.

As little as that truly is with all this insanity going on.

Comments

[Shadowshame]

Well I was right on the money

[Herald of Opera]

Really leaning into the backdoor Sonic fanfiction angle here, aren't you? Of course, this terminology is from the games while Nicole is from the comics, but when has that ever stopped fans. (Obligatory reminder that the most reasonable means of letting Cosmo exist in the games universe inherently undoes her death!)