[Open] Dead flowers for the torn apart

[pricklybloom]

🧙 WHO: Amy Rose and YOU
⚔️️ WHAT: Catch-all for October. Recent events have brought up some bad memories for Amy, so she's keeping herself busy to try and keep her mind off things. It only kind of works.
🕒 WHEN: Throughout October
🗺️ WHERE: Ruins of Celliwig and Camelot
⚠️ WARNINGS: Possible mentions of death, war, and (robot) zombies. Because this is a children's franchise.

A. Task: Don’t Lose Your Head

[ She knows that she should be paying attention to her task, but Amy Rose can't keep her eyes from wandering over what's left of Celliwig. She could argue that she's keeping a look out for the Headless Horseman, to protect the volunteers in case he tries to attack again. Yet as she looks at the city's ruins - seeing the leftover destruction, watching as the survivors have to retrieve their dead - all she can think of is the diaster around them. How they failed.

She failed. It keeps happening.

Gripping the handle of her hammer, she shakes her head and releases a shaky breath. Can't focus on the past. Pick yourself up, and move on.

She's failed before. But she won't fail now. She'll keep these people safe.

What's left of them. ]

B. Not Quite a Puppy Parade

[ She'd hoped that the Pet Adoption Fair would be a little less intense, and it does help to a degree. It's hard not to smile when you're surrounded by cute animals, especially the capybaras that are so friendly.

Yet somehow it's the fae frogs that she finds herself drawn to. She isn't really much a frog person herself, honestly, and with her room at the inn already so cramped with her new roomate, she can't imagine having much room for any pet. But despite their attitude, she keeps coming back to the frogs and chatting with them a bit.

Because she can't help thinking back to a certain frog back home, wondering if he might sound like this if he could talk. Perhaps to others...but certainly not his best friend.

The friend always in constant search of him...traveling everywhere just to find him.

She hadn't known...she never even realized. She thought she'd seen him at HQ once, but she hadn't been paying attention. He was her friend too, but she hadn't even thought to think about him. She had no idea, until... ]

C. Training

[ Even with her busy schedule - taking on a quest, volunteer work, helping with the survivors, on top of her classes and her job - Amy still has time, makes time, for training.

She attacks the wooden dummies with some combination of using her hammer, hand-to-hand combat, and her dark magic. Her shadow seems to ripple with each strike against her immobile opponents, each hit somehow landing harder than the last, despite her strength obviously waning.

But she doesn't let up. She can't.

She strikes the dummy in front of her again, her hammer laying forgotten on the ground for the moment as her boxercising instincts kick in. She punches and kicks the training dummy, and her shadow moves out of sync from her, merging with the dummy's and choking it.

It's not enough. It's never enough!

Her shadow spikes through the dummy as she punches it, sending splintered wood flying everywhere. Stepping back, she takes a few ragged breaths as she looks at the destroyed object in front of her, then down at her hand. Some of the wood had ripped the material of her glove, revealing patches of the torn skin underneath.

She winces as she clenches her injured hand into a fist, but a moment later her hand is surrounded by light. It glows for a long moment, and when it fades she checks to make sure the injury is gone. Then she wipes her brow and reaches down to pick up her hammer. ]

D. Wildcard

((Feel free to catch Amy elsewhere! She'll be out around Camelot, or at the inn helping the survivors, or working her job at the Helleste Café. Or hit me up at usamichan13 to plot something else if you'd like!))

Comments

[sos_pilot]

[ An excellent question. Della sighs, then straightens up. ]

All right. Lay it on me. What's next?

[pricklybloom]

[ She pauses for a moment, thinking. There was something else that came before The Worst Thing, but how much of that did she need to explain. ]

Okay, so...after Eggman was defeated during the war, he ended up someplace called Windmill Village with amnesia, and was referred to by the villagers as Mr. Tinker. We left him there, because we thought it would be safe, but while we were dealing with an issue on Angel Island with one of Eggman's robots, Metal Sonic but with an upgrade and calling himself Neo Metal Sonic, another scientists named Dr. Starline hired these two goons to kidnap Mr. Tinker so he could jog Eggman's memories.

We dealt with the issue on Angel Island and took care of Neo Metal Sonic, but Knuckles decided to remain there to resume guarding the Master Emerald, and disbanded the Resistance. But there was just...so much work still left to do...places to rebuild, allocating resources, and I just couldn't...couldn't leave things like that. So I took the leftover Resistance and created a new organization called Reformation so that we could continue rebuilding the world.

But we weren't...we weren't prepared for Eggman's return.

[ Her fingers curled into tight fists for a moment, before she released a heavy sigh. ]

Thanks to Starline, Eggman did get his memories back, and he developed a chemical with microscopic robots that would...change living matter: Plants that were affected became metal, and animals and people that came in contact with it became...robots.

[ Closing her eyes, she shudders a little. ]

Eggman started dumping cities and towns with what we started calling the Metal Virus, infecting hundreds of people at once. Anything doused with the chemical would change pretty immediately, but anyone who was touched by an infected also became infected, and their transformation was more...gradual.

When people or animals became robots, they completely lost all sense of what or who they are. They couldn't be talked to or reasoned with, and were super aggressive and prone to attack anyone still not affected. They were like...zombie, but robots. [ She folded her arms again, hugging herself as she smiled faintly, though it didn't reach her eyes. ] Sonic called them Zombots.

[ It would've been funny if the events hadn't been so stressful. ]

[sos_pilot]

Huh...! That actually happened with one of my Uncle's enemies - the amnesia deal, and him being way nicer without his memories. But he got them back too, and he also just got worse than before. Though, uh, not your level of bad.

[ TBF, Glomgold would probably want to do robot sharks. or zombie sharks. dude loves his sharks.

She shakes her head, then nods at Amy. ]

What happened next?

[pricklybloom]

To be honest, I never thought he could get to this level of bad until the war.

[ Eggman had never seemed like that much of a threat before, even with all the close calls they've had over the years. But ever since the war, he'd really been stepping up his game.

She's silent for another moment, running a hand down her face as the memories of the event jumble through her mind. Then she sighs, and actually starts to backtrack a bit. ]

When we'd first gotten word of Eggman coming back, Sonic and I went to an abandoned Eggman base to see if we could hack into his system and figure out what he was up to. We didn't get a chance to find out much before we were interrupted by the goons Starline had hired. These two guys named Rough and Tumble.

They weren't really much of a threat. They weren't too bright, and Sonic was literally running circles around them. [ She laughs faintly, though her expression still remained troubled. ] But they had these packs that Eggman had given them, called them their secret weapons...I don't think even they realized what it was exactly. Because when the tried to activate them, the packs broke and spilled the Metal Virus all over them. Of course, Sonic and I had no idea what it was at the time. All we could do was watch as the stuff spread over them, turning them into robots.

We kept fighting after that, but it was a lot different. Before, we could rile them up and get them to lose their cool, but after they changed they wouldn't say anything. They just kept coming at us. And I was okay, because I had my hammer, but Sonic... [ She squeezes her eyes shut. ] Sonic doesn't fight with any kind of weapons, and he...we didn't know until...

[ She swallows the lump in her throat, before forcing herself to continue. ]

Besides Rough and Tumble...Sonic was one of the first people to get infected with the Metal Virus.

[sos_pilot]

[ Della's always been a hand-to-hand fighter herself - comes with the family territory. Sure, Scrooge often uses his cane, but most of the McDuck clan is proud of their fists.

Maybe she ought to rethink that strategy... at least if Metal Viruses ever get involved. ]

... Do you need a break? This... sounds like things got the worst they've ever been.

[pricklybloom]

Honestly? Somehow it feels worse than the time Eggman had torn the world apart.

[ That...is probably a story for another time.

She doesn't continue on with this story yet, though, indicating that she could probably use a moment or two. ]

[sos_pilot]

[ Yup, it's break time. ]

... Y'know, my roommies are probably out of the house by now. Drake does volunteer work, and Fenton's probably hitting up his sort-of-girlfriend, so we can chill there, grab some lunch, cry, whatever.

[pricklybloom]

[ She glances up at Della for a moment uncertainly. ] I don't...wanna take up too much of your time.

[ It's bad enough that she's already said as much as she had. She should've been stronger than this...none of the others would have let it eat at them this way. ]

[sos_pilot]

[ She offers a friendly smile. ]

I'm a mom. If someone younger than me needs to vent, then I have all the time in the world. C'mon, follow me.

[pricklybloom]

[ A mom. She hasn't had one of those in...it feels like it's been forever. The closest thing she has now is Vanilla, but as much as she liked her friend's mother, she wasn't always around the older rabbit.

So, with a little smile, she nods and follows after Della. ]

[sos_pilot]

[ At the house, Della swings the door open, stretching a bit. ]

Make yourself at home! Atom might be around... Fenton's dog, he's a good "pupper", as the kids say.

[pricklybloom]

[ As if being summoned, Atom comes charging into the room, barking excitedly as he beelines for the two of them. Amy is a bit surprised when the dog jumps at her, but manages a laugh as he tries to lick her face. ]

Aww...he's so cute!

[sos_pilot]

[ Della chuckles, giving Atom a scritch between the ears before gently trying to pull him off. ]

All right, buddy, down, down... give her some space to breathe!

[pricklybloom]

[ Atom gives a bit of a whine as Della drags him off, but it's only briefly as Amy reaches down to scratch his head. So he doesn't try to jump on her again, but he does stick around. ]

He's so sweet. What'd you say his name was?

[sos_pilot]

Atom! Fenton named him. If he was my dog, I probably would've named him something cooler like Cujo or... well, doesn't matter, people never like my names.

[ Still a little huffy that Donald changed her babies' names. Turbo was cool, dammit. ]

[pricklybloom]

[ She laughs a little. ] Tails would probably give a dog a similar name. Although it'd be more like Sprocket or Ratchet or something.

[ Something more mechanical maybe. ]