Robe

Chapter 30

Shah's intuition was right about one thing. Rusty had made his way to the underwall. How this happened, though, is a tale of its own, and we need to rewind a little, beginning Rusty's story soon after Sonic turned into a surfboard before his very eyes. We know what happened next: a Gol'ur-Klem brute swung its large club down onto the boy, who held the surfboard up as a shield. And we know he was not squashed like a bug or crushed beneath the blow. In fact, we saw, as Shah did, the cracked depression in the cobblestone road, and Shah's assumption that the cavity was created by a difficult-to-kill Australian teenager was very much correct.

The first thing Rusty experienced when he regained consciousness was... darkness. This was because his face, as well as the crater he was in, was covered by the surfboard. He had a moment to think about his circumstances when an almighty headache hit him like a freight train, little red-black flowers of pain blooming in front of his eyes. Being thwacked by a Gol'ur-Klem wielding half a tree trunk mightn't've killed him, but it didn't mean he wasn't subject to some hurt. He will soon discover that this pain was entirely psychosomatic. The brain does some not-so-wonderful things to the body when death is on the line, and headaches happen to be the expected result of being thumped by a giant.

Rusty pushed the surfboard aside and blinked. Although the day had been dimmed by smoke and dust, the contrast was still painful. His eyeballs felt like they wanted to crawl into his skull and never come out. Fortunately, the sensation passed after a few more blinks, and he could see that the air had turned ominously dark, filling with thick, heavy plumes of smoke. He had no idea how long he'd been out, but, judging by the change in scenery, it had been a while.

He sat up, head momentarily throbbing like a bongo. The cobblestone was cold beneath his hands, and his butt was numb from being compressed into the ground. Then he slowly got to his feet, wobbling haphazardly as he did. The huge monster-things that had been here earlier were nowhere to be seen...

Wait... no.

One of the ugly giants was lying face-down some distance along the road. It was not moving.

Once more, Rusty considered the idea that this had to be some elaborate dream. It had to be! I mean, it absolutely had to be, right? Regardless of how often that crazy (and crazy-hot) chick Sonic told him it wasn't a dream. More than that, he had to get home, for Pete's sake! Mid-term exams were, like, three weeks away... (although, come to think of it, as of when did he give a rat's about the mid-terms). Still... he had, like, stuff to do!

"I gotta get home, hah," he said. "Gotta get a taxi. Find someone with a phone, get me a ride." He paused for a moment, thinking hard, his headache fading rapidly (a blessing!). The absurdity, the paradox of this idea – catching a cab home from a 'dream' – had yet to sink in.

He stepped out of the crater and looked around. His feet were immediately wet, and freezing. The chunks of ice on the road were melting, forming chilly rivulets that streamed over his mostly-exposed appendages (the sandals were a good fit, but his toes still copped the cold the worst). Fortunately, water had flowed around the edges of the crater, the uplift enough to prevent it filling within. He should have been glad, although if a thumping hadn't killed him, could a cold little puddle have drowned him? It was not worth thinking about.

He bent over, picked the surfboard up, and stood it on its tail. "If you're Sonic in disguise, my monkey's a nephew," he said, not noticing the word order. Remarkably, the board was totally unscathed. Even the fins at the end hadn't broken. He tucked the board under one arm, then looked down the road in the direction of the (hopefully) dead giant. The streetscape was a mess. Buildings on either side were either crushed or partially so, broken walls and doors leaning drunkenly, melting boulders of ice everywhere. Something nearby was on fire, too.

"Holy hector," he said. He rubbed his face with his free hand, then sighed deeply. Regardless of his sense of dislocation, it was time to think about practicalities. Well, as much as was possible, anyhow. And what this boiled down to, right now, was the fact that his surfboard was going to be an encumbrance. At six-foot-eight, it was technically only a 'thruster' and not a 'gun', but that didn't mean hauling the wretched thing around wasn't going to be an inconvenient pain in the bum.

He grabbed the leash and began wrapping it around the tail-end of the board, threading it through the fins. Then he looked around for a place he could stash the entire item, someplace that was discrete and hopefully safe (he couldn't quite eliminate the niggling thought that perhaps the board was Sonic in disguise). As fortune would have it, there was a narrow gap between the buildings directly opposite, so he proceeded to do what we already know he would do.

He marched over to the gap, jammed the board in, and said: "I will be back, mate, so don't you do anything funny, comprendes?"

And did he just say 'comprendes'?

His put one hand on the building wall to steady himself. It really was all too much. Just what the heck was going on?

A snippet of an old song, one he'd heard and loved as a kid, occurred to him as he leaned against the stone:

Cold night, strange dreams,

Memory stuck like glue,

Her face, her voice,

"... something, sooomething, with you," he finished, and chortled. Remembering lyrics was never his strong point. But the memory was cathartic anyhow, and he kept his hand firmly against the wall, feet sloshing in the cold water (the sensation was quite pleasant now), thoughts racing. A phrase Sonic had said to him, way back when they first met, began to tick over in his mind like a metronome: 'One thing at a time. One thing at a time.' He started whispering this out loud: "One thing at a time. One thing at a – "

In a flash, the answer came to him. There was a boy he and Sonic were with earlier, a boy who was separated from them by his supermodel (and super-angry) mom, whose sword Sonic, er, broke... Sonic had taught Rusty the kid's name, but the memory eluded him. The boy's mom, on the other hand... what did Sonic say about the boy and his Queen-mom...?

Ah, that was it: 'Dresden's mom is probably alright,' and the kid's name – Dresden! – came to him.

Kind of.

"Dresdong," Rusty said. "Drasden, I gotta find Dresdang." He lifted his head from the wall. "That's it. I gotta find Dresdong and his mom."

A dull vibration beneath his feet.

He looked to his right, and saw an alive-giant standing next to the dead one. The alive-giant rested its huge club over one shoulder, bulging eyes staring at the corpse of its fellow on the ground. Then it turned to look at Rusty, the expression on its butt-ugly visage becoming one of dumb malevolence, and a sense of dread filled Rusty's stomach like a sickly balloon.

"Ger-haar?" the giant asked.

"Gragrar to you too, mate," Rusty said, absolutely puckered out. But the fear running through him was bright and electric. Sure, the previous thumping hadn't killed him, but he didn't want to find out if he was just lucky. So he turned and ran, not giving any thought as to where to go or what to do next. In his disorientation, he was oblivious to the fact that he was headed toward the former wall of the Custodian.

In other words, he was heading right into the thick of battle.

The solitary Gol'ur-Klem brute watched Rusty go with interest, but did not move. Instead, it looked once more at the dead creature on the ground, then back over its shoulder, toward the Common. The smoke was intensifying, there wasn't much to see. Somehow, this brute had become separated from its Klem-Core, so it was torn as to what to do: regroup, or chase the human that was running away?

It made its mind up. Puny-running-human had obviously killed its brother here.

"Gra-har," it said, and lifted its club into the air. Then it too started to run, clumsily and inelegantly, down the street after Rusty.