Chapter 1


     There was a thick fog that morning, and that was good news
as far as Bunnie was concerned.  While it made it harder for her
to spot any incoming SWAT-bots, it made it harder for them to
spot her as well.
     She reached the base of the tree where a lookout post had
been set up: little more than a platform that ringed the trunk of
the tree about 30 feet up off the ground.  Using a rope ladder,
she climbed to the top and began her several hours of sentry
duty.
     If the day had been clear, she could have seen, about a
hundred feet from where she was, the spot where the forest met
the Great Plain.  Far down along the southern horizon could be
seen a hazy spot.  This had once been Mobotropolis, the capitol
city of the planet Mobius.  Now it was called Robotropolis, a
dark testament to the evil genius of the planet's overlord, Dr.
Ivo Robotnik.
     Bunnie couldn't clearly remember the details of that day a
decade ago when the once-beautiful world had fallen into
Robotnik's hands.  She herself had only been a child at the time,
and the episode had the haziness of a half-remembered bad dream. 
That was why she enjoyed the fog: it was easy to pretend, if only
for a moment, that nothing had ever gone wrong.  That
Mobotropolis was not now a choking, blighted factory instead of a
garden city, or that most of its inhabitants hadn't been
roboticized, turned into living machines that live only to serve
at Robotnik's twisted pleasure.  To imagine that she could simply
toss aside her role as a member of the Knothole freedom fighters
and live a real life once more.
     But there was no forgetting for Bunnie.  She was reminded of
her life every time she looked at her left arm, or at either of
her legs.  For she had been partially roboticized herself.  Her
limbs were clad with metal and shot through with transistors and
relays and other hardware.  It had earned her the name "Bunnie
Rabbot," and although the other freedom fighters meant well when
they gave her the name, there were time she sincerely hated that
name.  Wondering when she'd ever be whole again, she reached into
her pack, took out a range finder, began scanning the horizon...
     ...and found herself looking at a SWAT-bot not three feet in
front of her.  Gasping, she lowered the range-finder, and could
barely make out in the fog one of Robotnik's hover units level
with the platform, silently hanging in the air.
     "HALT, FREEDOM FIGHTER!"  the bot ordered in its mechanical
monotone.  "YOU ARE UNDER..."
     The SWAT-bot never got a chance to finish the sentence, as
its head suddenly flew away from its body.  Someone or something
was standing behind it, holding a large tree branch in its right
hand.  The fog was still too dense for Bunnie to make it out
clearly, but in a moment, another SWAT-bot could be seen leaving
the hover unit and approaching the shadowy figure from behind.
     Sensing the SWAT-bot's presence, the figure spun around and
delivered a solid punch to the SWAT-bot's midsection.  Bunnie
could see the bot crumble to the platform.
     The platform!  Bunnie could sense other SWAT-bots leaving
the hover unit and stepping onto the platform, and it was more
weight than the platform was meant to hold.  The figure grabbed
Bunnie by the hand as the platform gave way beneath her.  A
second later, the two of them were dangling from a rope that had
apparently been tied to a branch higher up the tree.  But the
sudden stop caused the strange figure to lose its grip on Bunnie,
and she resumed falling.
     Bunnie made a grab for the rope ladder and missed.  There
was one chance now: sensing that a tree branch was just below
her, she tried righting herself so that her robotic legs would
bear the brunt of the impact.  They did, but they also snapped
the branch in two.  Her descent was slowed, but she continued to
fall to the ground with such force that she lost consciousness on
impact.

     "Are you all right?"
     As Bunnie slowly came to, the first thing she was aware of
was the voice.  It managed to cut through the pounding of her
head.  She was glad to recognize the voice as that of her friend
and fellow freedom fighter, Sally.
     "Yeah, Ah'm OK, Sal.  Or Ah will be as soon as they stop
playin' them drums."
     Her head was beginning to clear as she felt someone helping
her to her feet.  She opened her eyes.
     At first she thought that her landing was still affecting
her senses.  The figure before her didn't look like Sally at all.
It wore a long, tattered cape the color of a dead leaf. 
Clustered near the shoulders on either side were small metallic
buttons, badges and insignia of some sort; they appeared to have
been sprinkled on in random fashion.  The figure also wore a head
scarf of the same color, with a veil covering the rest of the
face and permitting room only for the eyes.
     "Sally, girl, what the hoo-ha you doin' in that get-up?"
     Then Bunnie looked at the right hand of the figure, the hand
that had helped her to her feet.  It gleamed with the same
sickening metallic gleam as her own left hand and arm and her two
legs.  It was a robot hand.
     "Oh mah stars, you're not...Mmmmmph!"
     Instantly the figure clamped her hand against Bunnie's mouth
to silence her, pinning her back to a tree at the same time. 
Bunnie could sense that her feet were no longer touching the
ground; whoever this creature was, she was incredibly strong. 
She could see the eyes of the stranger narrowing.
     "You called me 'Sally' just now, didn't you?"
     Bunnie nodded.  What was going on here?  The stranger's
voice sounded just like Sally's!
     "The next time you see this 'Sally' I want you to give her
this."  With her free hand, she reached up and pulled one of the
metal pins from her cloak.  "If this means anything to her, have
her meet me tomorrow night at the foot of Dragonsnest at
moonrise.  Alone."
     The cloaked figure dropped the pin to the ground, then took
her hand away from Bunnie's mouth.  In the second it took Bunnie
to look for the pin, pick it up and look up, the mysterious
figure had melted into the forest.
     Bunnie picked herself up off the forest floor.  The fog was
beginning to lift enough for her to survey the damage.  The
remnants of the platform, and of five SWAT-bots lay around her,
and there was no telling how many there might still be on what
was left of the lookout platform above her.  The heads were
missing from two of them, robot arms had been detatched from
their bodies and lay scattered on the ground.  The hover unit was
nowhere to be seen.  Bunnie walked over to one fallen bot and
studied the hole in its chest.  She clenched her own robotic hand
into a fist and inserted it into the hole; it was almost a
perfect fit.
     This was crazy, Bunnie thought.  She may have learned some
martial arts techniques but she'd never thought to try taking on
a SWAT-bot in hand-to-hand combat.  Whoever had done this was
either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.
     It was then that Bunnie remembered the strange figure, the
one who sounded so much like Sally but obviously wasn't.  But
then again...she looked at the pin the stranger had left with
her.  It looked like some sort of a brooch, and there was
something familiar about the design...
     "Yo, Bunnie!"
     "Over here, Sonic!"
     Before it occurred to Bunnie that things had gotten
interesting the last time she thought she recognized a voice,
Sonic the Hedgehog ran up to her.  "You OK, Bunnie?" he asked.
     "Ah guess so.  Had me a little trouble with some SWAT-bots,
but...."
     "Whoa, check it out!" he said as he picked up a SWAT-bot's
severed head.  "Man, you've been kickin' some serious bot butt!"
     "Thanks, Sugarhog, but it wasn't me."
     "Huh?"
     "Tell you later.  Right now we gotta get back to Knothole."