The Flight of the Swallow

[We have visual contact, boss!] said one of the subordinates of the reconnaissance team commanded by Wave.

The boys were quick and sharp. Wave could trust them to reach the target, take note of the important things according to her instructions, and withdraw from the site immediately, as they had done in countless previous missions. That's why she could afford to stay in the rear of her area and coordinate the situation. When she heard the warning, she felt slightly proud and wanted to brag about how well she had trained her boys.

[Identify the target], Jet replied. Wave also turned her full attention to the report.

[It appears to be... um... A-a sailing ship...?]

Suddenly, all of Wave's pride vanished and was replaced by embarrassment.

It just so happened that those clever boys were the ones most likely to not take things so seriously and joke around on missions. At first, Wave spent a lot of her energy scolding them; but in the end, she realized how futile it was, so she decided to try to appease Jet when it happened. She would say "They're children. Children do silly things. We did silly things at their age too. Don't let it get to you". Although deep down she felt like throwing them into the void, just like now.

["What do you mean, a ship, idiots?! This is no time for jokes!"], Jet's screams were so loud that Wave's ears started ringing, so she decided to take out her radio communicator to avoid ending up half deaf with what was sure to come next.

[I can confirm it! It looks like a sailing ship!], said another subordinate. They had agreed. Wave sighed resignedly.

[Wave, give me confirmation and please tell me this is a bad joke], Jet finally commanded.

There was no other choice. It was the boys under her command who were threatening the integrity of the mission, so it was her duty to take responsibility.

"I'm almost there," replied the swallow before increasing the power of her X-Gear and flying deeper into the storm.

After a while, she had the opportunity to glimpse something among the clouds.

"I think...," the swallow had to blink several times before she could make out what was in front of her.

The silhouette did not deceive her; she could clearly see the outline of a large three-masted Spagones galleon, without any floating balloons, wings, or other contraptions that would explain why such a gigantic ship was more than a thousand feet above the ground.

Wave was fascinated, so much so that she was speechless for a moment as she circled the ship. There was something about the ship's construction, its design, that seemed familiar to her, although she couldn't quite put her finger on why. She moved to where the stern of the ship would be, hoping to find at least some rear propellers. But a wet sensation quickly passed over her side and distracted her.

"Oh my...," she exclaimed as she lost her grip on her radio communicator in surprise. "NO!" she shouted before the device slipped from her hands and fell into the void. "Darn it! Just what I needed!"

Activating her holographic bracelet, Wave glanced at the position of her forces; they were about to arrive. She looked at where Jet and Storm were and cursed herself for not being able to convince them to wear a bracelet like hers, Jet because he didn't think it was cool, Storm because he didn't understand how to use it. She let out a long sigh and resigned herself to waiting for one of her own to arrive to warn Jet and the others.

However, she noticed something: the lights corresponding to her team were going out one by one, a sign that they had been intercepted. Wave turned to look at the ship. It looked so gloomy that it seemed abandoned, and she hadn't heard or sensed anyone leaving it. Were someone already in the storm chasing us? Impossible! I would have been able to detect them. But what could it be? That wet sensation returned, but this time it was around her ankles.

-When the swallow looked down, she noticed two watery clusters around her ankles. She held her breath and kept her composure so as not to panic. She looked closely at the clusters and noticed that they were connected to thin threads of water that came from somewhere in the distance and disappeared into the storm. This confirmed that there was something or someone controlling them, and if so, it had a limited range of action.

Wave quickly stomped on her X-Gear and summoned shackles that held her feet firmly to the board, then set the machine to full power and descended through the storm, moving as far away from the ship as possible, below the clouds.

She was traveling at breakneck speed, normal for someone like Jet, but difficult for her to endure. She had to cover her ears to avoid being deafened by the roar of the wind. Even so, she could feel the water running down her legs, which motivated her to go faster. On the holo-bracelet, she saw the lights going out one by one, this time it was Storm's squad, while Storm himself had already disappeared. Wave felt a twinge in her chest, she couldn't stop, she had to keep going, Storm was strong, this wasn't going to kill him, no, of course not, impossible...

The swallow emerged from the clouds like a meteorite entering orbit. She left the cold and damp of the storm behind to enter the arid and hot environment of the desert. She could see for herself that she was absolutely right: not a single drop of rain from the clouds was falling to the ground. But she also realized that the water that was trying to trap it was still clinging to her, now on her chest and reaching her arms. Despair almost drowned her judgment. She squeezed its own head tightly between her hands in an attempt to come up with a way out of this. Then she had her next idea.

The "Sub-Nimbic" Probes are an invention with which the swallow sought to be able to perform a detailed analysis of the surface below the clouds. In order for the probes to pass through gaseous bodies without being affected in the slightest by moisture, she equipped them with a subsonic protection system that, by means of ultra-low sound waves, could repel water by 99.9997%, which was acceptable by her standards, but perfect for what she needed at that moment.

Wave quickly changed the display mode of her Holo-bracelets to show her the location of the probe, then loaded the trajectory to it into her X-Gear to go automatically, as it was now impossible for her to control the machine with the lower half of her body submerged. She shot off like a bullet in the indicated direction as the water continued to climb up her body.

A few meters from the probe, Wave tried to remotely reactivate the subsonic shield, but the water on her arms prevented her from doing so. She had no choice but to headbutt the Holo-bracelet to reactivate the system.

A strong sonic wave enveloped her as the swallow crashed into the probe and hung from it. She couldn't hear it, but her whole body felt it. Her bones shook violently and her brain seemed to bounce inside her skull. The water around her was completely pulverized into the air, freeing her. With difficulty, Wave deactivated the shield, and she was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. After catching her breath, Wave glanced at the holo-bracelet, which was slightly broken from the impact.

Her heart leapt into her throat; all the lights except one, Jet's, had disappeared.

Terror and guilt consumed her. They were just kids trying to help, and now she didn't know what had become of them. She should have returned immediately when she spotted the ship; she shouldn't have taken off her radio communicator and lost it. Would it have been better if she had flown toward Jet instead of going under the storm? Had she been a coward...?

All her worries vanished the moment she saw Jet's light flying at full speed toward the ship.

What the hell is that huge idiot doing?! Is he trying to be a kamikaze to be a hero?! Why the hell can't he stop and think for two seconds before doing something stupid?!. Wave clenched her jaw so hard in anger that it looked like her beak was going to break. She had to think fast, not to save herself, but to stop Jet from killing himself. But she couldn't just go back into the storm and let the water catch her again. She had to find a way to get into the water without being touched by it... She looked at the probe she was standing on, her eyes lighting up with an idea... and then she threw a childish tantrum, because it was an awful idea, but it was the only one she had.

On her holo-bracelet, she traced an approximate trajectory of where Jet would end up on his race, loaded that trajectory into her Gear, and set a countdown before traveling on its own. She positioned herself so that she had the necessary grip to not let go of the probe. Then she reactivated the subsonic shield and waited. Within seconds, she shot like a bullet to the center of the storm.

Her body vibrated so violently that she feared her brain was liquefying in her head and her guts were shifting positions. She could swear she felt her kidneys in her chest, her heart in her belly, and her stomach in her throat. And the extreme speed didn't help. It was already difficult to maintain her grip with the vibrations, and every second she felt that the probe was about to slip from her hands, hit her in the face, and cause her to collapse pathetically to the ground, all because she had to prevent Jet from doing something stupid once again.

Her bracelet beeped, signaling that the message she had sent before leaving the nest had been heard. Suddenly, some of her worries vanished, and she could now concentrate on what was important. She was seconds away from reaching her goal. Quickly, the swallow detached herself from the probe and moved aside, letting momentum do the rest.

The blue fox said it would take 40 seconds to drown, but only 20 had passed and Jet was at his limit. It was also true that the water had completely engulfed him, almost filling his lungs. It was painful and, worse still, humiliating for Jet. Apparently, water was also his weak point, just like that blue idiot...

A strange image pulled Jet out of his train of thought. He could barely make it out through the water, but it was moving very fast. It couldn't be him, it wasn't blue, but purple.

It crashed into the fox and the water he controlled was completely pulverized. Jet felt himself go into free fall before being intercepted. He fell on his stomach, a crude, painful but effective way to get all the liquid still in his system out. He didn't wait a second to recover before shouting:

"Storm, the kids...! We must...!" A little water still came out of Jet's mouth as he spoke.

"Did you think you could save them all by yourself, chicken brain?!" Wave scolded.

"He had them! They'll fall into the void if we don't go get them!"

"Don't worry about that! We have to get back to the nest and come up with another plan!"

"Have you lost your mind?!" And then Jet proceeded to jump off Wave's Gear. The swallow didn't have time to react to catch him.

The falcon had lost his Gear in the impact, but he didn't care. With or without Gear, he was the Wind Master. He used his fans to maneuver as best he could while scanning the surroundings for Storm or any of the boys, but he saw no one. He was already well below the altitude of the ship, and it would be impossible for him to fly up. Once again, he found himself in a situation where he wished he had someone he could rely on.

Suddenly, he felt himself crash into an unknown force, like a bird hitting a window. The surface was smooth and firm, yet ethereal at the same time. When he was able to get back up, he noticed that he was inside a kind of bubble made of pink energy. When his neurons managed to make synapses, he rubbed his hands over his face in frustration.

"No... Not you..."

"Is that really how you're going to react after being saved?" an irritating voice grumbled behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, Jet could see Amy standing haughtily on her X-Gear, also surrounded by one of her bubbles, while the collar around her neck glowed brightly.

"Nobody asked for your help, pinky!"

"Wave did. Of course, she's clearly the smart one in the group."

"Wave!" the hawk shouted at the approaching swallow. "I explicitly told you not to bring them in!"

"And I explicitly tell you that I don't care! You suicidal maniac!" snapped the girl in return.

"Isn't it irritating when boys get all honor or death about things? Argh, I hate it when Sonic and Knux get like that!"

"You can say that again! It's like the little gray matter they have left melts away. I'm starting to feel like Storm and this idiot's babysitter."

"Instead of gossiping about me IN MY FACE, shouldn't you be doing something more useful, like, oh I don't know, preventing Storm and the rest from crashing into the ground?"

Amy made a slight movement with her hands and revealed three dozen bubbles around her, inside which were the boys. Some were still unconscious, others were recovering. Storm was in one of them trying to get Jet's attention, looking as if nothing had happened to him.

"Show-off..." Jet called out to the hedgehog, who responded by sticking her tongue out at him.

"Now, as I was saying before you interrupted me by jumping around like a madbird..." Wave continued. "We must return to the nest and come up with another plan."

"We won't take the enemy straight to our home," the hawk interrupted the swallow again, who almost let out a cry of exasperation. "Let Rose take the wounded to the nest, but we must end this here and now."

"I couldn't agree more," said another irritating and familiar voice.

Jet sighed in exasperation. He looked up and saw Sonic on his X-Gear, levitating above the bubble, holding the hawk's X-Gear and wearing his usual disgusting half-smile.

"Did you lose this, Jet? It doesn't have your name on it, but it does have your... particular sense of taste."

Jet had never felt such a strong urge to strangle that annoying rat as he did at that moment.

"That thing was able to neutralize thirty of our people all by itself..." Wave commented with some trepidation.

"I think I know what that thing is, and I've dealt with him before," clarified the blue hedgehog. "The flying ship is what worries me... it looks familiar."

"Jet is right about one thing, there's no point in staying here with the wounded," Amy interjected. "Wave and I will take them to the Nest while you, Jet, and Storm take care of the ship."

"Is that okay with you, boss?" the hedgehog asked the falcon sarcastically.

"You...!" Jet pointed at Sonic. "Shut your big mouth and give me back my Gear! You...!" he pointed at Amy. "Get me out of this damn thing once and for all! And you...!" he pointed at Wave, but when he saw how angry she was, the hawk's arrogance diminished a little. "P-prepare the defenses... and reinforce the generator chamber."

The three exchanged glances and shrugged. Amy flicked her fingers and made an opening in the bubble through which Sonic was able to hand Jet his Gear. She also freed Storm and reunited him with his machine, then withdrew along with Wave and the other bubbles with the wounded. Sonic, Jet, and Storm gathered together, watching their target intently.

"Ready for a rematch, big palooka?" the falcon asked the albatross.

"Bet on it, boss! This time I'm going to crush that dwarf and anyone who gets in my way with my own hands!" The large bird was furious, which made Jet smile.

"Is it just you?" Jet asked the hedgehog.

"Knux lost at rock, paper, scissors and got stuck babysitting with Sticks."

"Then what good are you to us? Or are you planning on doing that?"

Sonic glanced sideways at Jet for a moment and then let out a snort of amusement.

"There's no need today. Knuckles had several interesting things among his treasures," said the hedgehog as he showed off the bracelet with the quartz stone that sparkled on his right wrist.