revivalproject | [Open] there goes the neighborhood

WHO: Sonic & ~~Knuckles~~ YOU
WHERE: Temba, The Warrens
WHAT: That Time a Volcano Happened
WHEN: All Over August
WARNINGS: None, will update if needed

1. Lava ~~Reef~~ City Zone Act 1: August 10th, early morning

With one guy giving kinda vague instructions and another guy TYPING AS LOUD AS HE COULD (???) on the network, and the alien lady hopping on the network giving equally vague and harder to understand instructions, all saying to get everyone underground (instead of evacuating which would have made more sense to Sonic but hey, not his clown, not his circus), the hedgehog springs into action pretty much immediately. Well actually, he was just woken up in the middle of the night by his communicator screeching at him, so he's less springing into action and more groaning and rolling his eyes at the clock and stumbling out of bed into action, but hey, he's still quick about it. Either way, he's up and hitting the streets, peeking into places he knows some people to hang out if he doesn't already see them up and about, knocking on doors and windows and stuff, y'know just being as annoying as he can be since this is kind of an emergency.

"Helloooo, you awake in there? It's kinda Doomsday, you might wanna get up."

He doesn't sound too urgent, but that's just because he has a pretty skewed sense of danger. They have ten whole hours! It's not even a big deal. (It's a pretty big deal.)

2. Lava ~~Reef~~ City Zone Act 2: August 10th, too close to explode time lol

Oookay actually, it turns out they don't have quite as much time to prepare and get to where they need to be as Sonic thought. Just because he doesn't own anything that he's attached to enough to want to move to the mines doesn't mean nobody else does, and as far as he can tell, that's what seems to be slowing people down the most. The earthquakes aren't really helping. As stupid as being out here is, Sonic's still out and about looking for stragglers, and he's not shy at all about running right up on anyone he finds.

"Hey, we're kind of about to die? Do you need help moving anything? I can carry a lot more than I look like I can, load me up!"

3. Sonic Underground (no not that one): The remainder of August, wooo hooo

3a: This is weird and cramped and it sucks and Sonic's always hungry and he hates it, but he tries not to complain too much. They are, after all, alive, and Sonic is of course grateful for the little fungus dudes and the creepy looking little berry guys. Since he's cut off from the outside and is thus pretty much incapable of moving around like he's used to, he spends a pretty significant amount of his time just watching them do their thing and trying to find ways to help them out. Which would be easier if he could, y'know, communicate with them? Maybe someone can try to help him figure out what these little dudes are saying so he can actually be helpful.

3b: The rest of the time he's on the look out for people to hang out with or drag into exploring with him, but a lot of the time he just vanishes and heads deeper into The Warrens to explore by himself. Which is probably not the smartest thing to do, seeing as this place is basically a maze. It's probably fine, though.

Except that he's completely lost. Not bothered by it, though. It's just an excuse to explore further in, right? (How has he survived LIFE for this long?) Anyone else that's out this way for whatever reason may run into Sonic following pipes, standing on machinery (why???), creeping around in dark rooms looking for anything he might be able to bring back with him, or checking out the big, mysterious blast doors. And by 'checking out', I mean spin dashing into and bouncing off of, to no avail. Weird that they're here, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well it's not, um--not technically by its...ah..."

All of that aggravated bluster from a minute ago, gone, the instant Sonic starts dashing around his legs and poking at his suit. As it turns out, Dustin does not handle having his personal space invaded especially gracefully, and having someone take particular interest in himself or his work just unnerves him more. He locks up like a statue, suddenly unsure where to stand or what to do with his arms.

The suit is a pretty interesting piece of technology. Dustin stands in it like the bare bones of a mech, but it doesn't have any visible power source or control surfaces, and all of its parts up to his forearms and feet encircle him closely like a series of overly complicated braces. There's a bit of mismatched metal welded to the back of one of the legs - an obvious patch.

After a few moments of just standing there in shock (oh fuck he moves as quick as Tommy), Dustin manages to regain a modicum of his composure. "--W-Well, it's mine," he stammers, like Sonic is scheming to lift the exoskeleton straight off of him somehow. "Don't touch it."

Crazy tech stuff! Oh my god Tails would be so into this right now.

He's just gonna ignore how homesick that thought makes him feel and stay focused on this nerd. He stops acting like an intrusive weirdo and hops up on what is probably an old computer console, sitting like he'd totally been there chilling the whole time. Okay, okay, he won't touch the suit.

"I mean, obviously it's yours. What else can it do? Did you build it yourself?"

Please entertain him he is SO BORED.

Dustin flushes with equal parts pride and embarrassment. At least the extra distance helps, letting him release a breath and relax, if only slightly. It also lets him regain some perspective.

The immediate impulse is to answer Sonic's questions earnestly. However, that little voice in his head that tells him to be suspicious of literally everyone butts in at the last second, stifling Dustin's words before they can leave his mouth. His eyes suddenly narrow.

"--Why do you want to know?" he asks, folding his arms.

Sonic also folds his arms, not offended really since he realizes that he's just a strange weirdo to this guy and is bombarding him with questions.

"Well, I'm excruciatingly bored. I wanna go for a run, but I can't. I wanna go explore something, but I've been everywhere I can fit down here already. I'm so antsy about being trapped in here that I feel like I'm vibrating out of my own skin, so I'm trying to find ways to distract myself from how much this sucks. I've chosen you to be my distraction, congratulations, half because you were already standing there and it was convenient, but also half because your get up is genuinely cool and I've been tryna meet more people anyway."

He does a little shrug, that's basically the long and short of it.

Of the multitude of possible excuses Dustin had been expecting, 'I'm bored and you're my preferred distraction' was not among them. He's not sure if he should be annoyed or flattered. At the end of it all, Dustin ends up somewhere in between, face twisted in a scowl on a backdrop of light blush.

"...Well." He looks like he might argue for a moment but eventually relents, huffs a sigh and lets his arms drop back at his sides. "Question for question, then. We can make a game out of it or whatever. Deal?"

Because, frankly, Dustin is getting kind of bored of this wing of the Warrens too. And if Sonic really has explored all of it already, there's a good opportunity that he could actually learn something useful from him.

"Sure, I can work with that! Hit me!"

A boring game is way better than doing absolutely nothing! Sonic is super ready for this!

Good enough. Dustin nods and folds his arms again, narrowing his eyes.

"Most interesting place you've found so far?" he asks. "While we've been stuck underground, I mean."

"Whoof, leading with the hard ones right off the bat, huh? Nothing really screams interesting since we can't use any of the stuff down here thanks to all the forcefields, but I did find a big door that I can't open. I guess that's kind of remarkable?"

Remarkable enough that he spent several hours trying to break his way through out of boredom, anyway.

Dustin's head tilts slightly. "Not the front door, right?" he asks, and almost instantly psyches himself out with the thought that it could be and Sonic is just trolling the shit out of him. His expression flattens in anticipation of the worst. "Show me."

There's a time and a place to troll the shit out of someone, and 'stuck in an underground bunker after a not-so-natural disaster' isn't it. Still, if it were this right time and place for it, this guy would probably make Sonic's list of Dweebs To Fuck With.

For now he just rolls his eyes a bit and hops down off the console he's been sitting on, heading for the door.

"Someone's bossy. Follow me, it's this way."

As much as he wants to be a little shit and just take off, he won't. He'll be nice and walk. Like some kinda normal person.

Dustin huffs a little and rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue against Sonic's assessment - 'bossy' isn't the worst name in the world, nor is it totally inaccurate, nor is Dustin even really thinking about it ten seconds after they walk out of the room. His attention is fixed on the path they're taking and Sonic's methods of navigating through it.

They walk in silence for half a minute, the only noises from their footsteps and the gentle, rhythmic whir-hiss of the pneumatics in Dustin's exosuit, before he speaks up again.

"I don't know," he says abruptly. Then a moment later, "--If I built the suit, I mean. It looks like my work, but I can't--I don't remember making it."

Oh thank god Dustin spoke up, the silence was about to drive Sonic crazy. On top of walking, it was just unbearable.

"No kidding? How do you forget building something this cool? Maybe you have amnesia, I could hit you in the head real hard and see what happens!"

That's how you cure amnesia, right?

Dustin gives Sonic a flat look (which is pretty impressive - he's basically been totally deadpan since they started walking).

"I'll bite you." There will be no head-hitting on Dustin's watch. "Also, that's way more than one question. I answered, now it's my turn."

"I don't recommend biting." Have you seen the quills on this thing? He's totally kidding though, he wouldn't knock this dude's brain in.

"You're right, I went overboard on the questions. Go on, hit me!"

It's an empty threat, and Dustin doesn't follow up on it. At least, not directly - the question he has lined up is related.

"...What are you, exactly?" Dustin asks. Not for the first time he looks over the hedgehog with a very intense, curious and somewhat befuddled stare. "Species classification, at least?"

"Oh, I'm a hedgehog," he says with a shrug, as though it's the most normal thing in the world. "Far as I've heard, we aren't normally blue where most people are from?"

[Open] there goes the neighborhood

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