Chapter Text
Infinite the Jackal had been patient. It had been years since the end of the Eggman War, with every second of his existence since that final battle dedicated to planning his revenge against Eggman, who had betrayed him, Sonic, who had defeated him, but most importantly this upstart wolf, who had humiliated him. A cowardly, pathetic child who, purely by virtue of working together with Sonic and the Wisps and through no merit of his own, had won the glory of being ‘The Hero of the Resistance’. The one who everyone believed had toppled him, caused him to retreat, and become ‘consumed by the Phantom Ruby’. What a joke.
He’d been patient, and yet now that he had the wolf caged and vulnerable, he was almost unable to restrain his boiling fury at Quatre’s incompetence. His subordinate had been charged with a single task - to acquire the vehicle that the Neo Jackal Squad and their captive would use to leave this wretched hive of human greed and return to the Wastelands. Nearly an hour had passed since Quatre’s departure, but he hadn’t radioed in a single time since, and didn’t respond to any messages sent out for him. Uno and Sei wouldn’t have been this inept, but they were gone. He’d also found Cinq and Deux when rebuilding the squad, but they had refused to join him. He hadn’t tolerated their betrayals. Now they were gone, too.
Further testing his patience was the rabbit. He’d planned to dispose of it as soon as the wolf was captured, but its loyalty was strangely unshakeable, and its magic tricks defied logical explanation, especially with the Phantom Ruby out of the question. Unfortunately, the rabbit came with a juvenile, fey sense of humour that Infinite couldn’t stand. He wanted to shut it up permanently, but its power was a useful backup tool in case one of the other subordinates failed.
So it was that he’d been forced to spend the last hour listening to it converse with the prisoner, taking feeble insult after feeble insult and responding with total nonsequiturs. Echoing around the entire storm drain, there was nowhere he could go where he couldn’t hear every word they said to each other, and it was exhausting.
“You’re gonna regret this,” the wolf said for the hundredth time. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“So if you’re not with Loki any more, what are ya doin’ for your performances? Just the old monster-on-a-ball tricks? No offense, but those get old,” the rabbit mumbled.
“I can show you. Just not in this cage.”
Letters glanced over at Infinite, then back at the cage. “I really am curious, but somethin’ tells me I’m goin’ the way of a weddin’ cake if I letcha out.”
Infinite could see the wolf looking through the bars at him, then looking back at the rabbit and gesturing it to come closer. Infinite put a hand on his sword as Letters leaned forward, but even their hushed voices echoed enough for him to hear.
“Knock knock,” the wolf whispered. Infinite narrowed his eyes, while the rabbit widened its.
“Oh, who’s there?”
“Interrupting sword.”
“Interrupting sw-” the rabbit began, then was cut off by a whooshing zip as a steel cord shot out from the cage right toward Infinite, and before he could react, it had wrapped around the sword’s cross guard and pulled the sword right off his belt, making a slice along the side of his coat but missing his flesh. The sword flew through the air back toward the cage, only to clang into its side and press flat, too large to slip between the bars. A few of the wolf’s fingers slipped through the gaps to clamp around the hilt, but his full hand couldn’t fit through, and he eventually gave up with a sigh, letting the sword drop to the concrete floor with a clatter that rang around the drain like a sarcastic round of applause. The rabbit nodded. “Good joke.”
Infinite stormed over to the cage and picked up the sword, then pointed it at the wolf inside, who glared up at him, unfazed. “Hand over that grapple, or I’ll sever it from you.”
“How, genius?” the wolf spat. “You’d have to lift the cage to do that.”
Infinite looked over at the rabbit, who shrugged. “He’s got a point. But what’s he even gonna do with that in there?”
The wolf in the cage laughed. “You’re like Loki. Can’t think more than one step ahead. Why wouldn’t you just have the getaway vehicle ready from the start? Ridiculous...”
“Trois,” Infinite barked, and the woman jogged over beside him. “Pin the legs. Rabbit, lift the cage.”
The wolf looked surprised, but quickly adjusted to a defensive crouch, holding his left wrist and pointing it in Infinite’s direction. The jackal turned sideways and held his sword at his side, out of the wolf’s view, and the rabbit grabbed the bottom of the cage.
“Alright, countin’ down. 5... 4... uh... what comes ne-” it interrupted itself by standing up and launching the cage a dozen feet into the air. The wolf’s reactions were slow, dulled by the alcohol, but Infinite nonetheless allowed him to act first, shooting the grapple on his wrist directly to Infinite’s right while flicking his arm left, whipping the cable to try some kind of curving trickshot and wrap the cord around him. Too predictable. The sharp edge of Infinite’s sword was faced outward, a blade designed to slice through steel as cleanly as through air, and as the zip-cord lassoed around, it hit the sword and was cut clear through with no effort. The severed grapple crackled and sparked, and what was left of it retreated back into the wolf’s wrist apparatus. All in the span of a split second, the wolf’s face went from steadfast courage to sudden panic.
Infinite span a roundhouse kick into it, cracking the wolf’s glasses and knocking both them and him to the floor. Trois pounced onto the wolf’s outstretched legs and held them down, and Infinite walked over to the pathetic thing then put one of his boots on his face, crushing the wolf’s head against the concrete floor as he cried out in pain. “Rabbit. Take the grapple on his wrist and dispose of it. Somewhere far away from here,” Infinite ordered, hoping to get the rabbit out of the way for a while.
“Sure thing, boss,” it beamed, then leaned down and grabbed at the wolf’s flailing arms desperately trying to pull Infinite off his face, and slid the wrist apparatus off. It stood back up straight, held up a hand, then passed the device behind it, and it disappeared. Infinite scowled at the rabbit.
“Where is it?”
“Gone, boss, just like you asked.”
“Tricks like that don’t disappear things into nothing. Where is it?”
The rabbit raised its hands defensively. “Alright, alright, fine, it’s back at the casino,” it said, then winked down toward the wolf. “Gave it as a little apology gift to Barry.”
“Fine,” Infinite growled, then looked down at the wolf under his boot again and crushed harder, prompting another cry of pain. “You think this Loki is going to save you? You’re wrong.”
“Hey now, watch it, they just broke up today, he’s probably still feeling raw about it,” the rabbit said sincerely, and Infinite chuckled.
“Good. No-one’s going to save him now.”
“I don’t... need anyone...” the wolf sputtered. Infinite couldn’t stop himself laughing.
“Such misplaced arrogance. You almost remind me of myself - myself if I was weak.” He lifted his boot off of the wolf’s face only to swing it back into his snout, then turned away as the thing rolled over and whimpered, bleeding onto the concrete floor. “Rabbit, put him back in the cage, then go and make sure this Loki doesn’t interfere. Trois, find Quatre, find the vehicle, and stay in contact!”
The others saluted, then obliged. The wolf lay on the ground, barely able to move while the rabbit retrieved the cage from a small crater not far away and casually placed it back over the wolf as if it weighed nothing. Trois tested her walkie-talkie to confirm it worked, then headed to the storm drain’s ladder exit with the rabbit, climbing out and leaving Infinite and the wolf alone in the cavernous sewer.
Infinite was more than happy to gloat in silence at the wolf’s pain, sitting in the rabbit’s chair and watching him writhe on the floor, clutching his head and groaning. After 15 minutes, Trois radioed in to confirm she was still on the hunt, but had nothing to report. Infinite put his walkie-talkie back into his coat and leaned forward in the chair as the wolf sat up in the cage, resting against the bars.
“Why now?” the wolf grunted. “It’s been so long.”
Infinite didn’t dignify him with a response. This pathetic thing was beneath him. The only purpose he served now was bait for Sonic, and a toy to enjoy agonising meanwhile.
“I’ve had the worst day of my life today. If you let me out now, I won’t kill you.”
The jackal snorted a laugh. “Empty threats. You have nothing. No-one.”
“I have time.”
“Time which you will spend suffering.”
“Is that all you want? Torture? You think that’s gonna achieve anything?”
“You will bring Sonic to me, and together, you will both suffer eternally.”
The wolf let out a weak laugh. “Too scared to fight him face-to-face, huh? You know you’re not strong enough, so you have to play dirty.”
Infinite’s temper boiled over and he stood up, swinging his sword toward the cage and stabbing it through the iron bars, sliding it in until it almost pressed against the wolf’s face. “Still your tongue or I will remove it.”
“You’re pathetic,” the wolf snarled. “Hiding in a sewer, getting Letters to lure me in, covering yourself up with a big old coat so you don’t get recognised. How the mighty have fallen.”
Fury coursed through Infinite’s veins, but he wasn’t going to let his years of patience get undone by such feeble provocations. He withdrew the sword, leaving a gash through a couple of the bars, and threw it onto the floor beside the chair. “You want to see why I wear this coat?”
He pulled the jacket off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground, revealing his scars, a web of dark maroon-coloured cracks along his arms, back, torso and legs that all converged in the center of his chest, where a triangle imprint of scorched burgundy flesh remained. The wolf was silent.
“Rumours said that the Phantom Ruby consumed me. They were wrong. I consumed the Ruby - the prototype - and it shattered me,” Infinite growled. “Eggman’s technology was built with a failsafe so that I could not turn against him, and after his defeat at Sonic’s hands and the Phantom Ruby’s disappearance, the prototype’s killswitch was automatically activated. It was detonated, shattering it into my body, and I should have died, but instead I found myself in Null Space.”
The wolf raised his head. “Null Space? But you can’t get out of there alone. It took all of both me and Sonic’s energies to escape.”
Infinite bared his teeth toward the brat. “You contributed nothing. It was Sonic’s power alone that freed you,” he snapped, then looked away, toward the shadows of the drain. “I spent... months in there, alone, trying every method to escape. Maybe years. You did that to me.”
He looked back down at the cage, where the wolf was glaring up at him. “You deserved it.”
“I don’t care what you think. All that I cared about was that when I escaped, you would be the one I would come for first. I planned everything, every contingency, overestimating and underestimating you. And then... you started appearing there.” He clenched his fists. “Hallucinations. Illusions. Ghosts. You said nothing, just running past me into the distance and vanishing. Eventually I realised the movements weren’t changing, they were the same every time. Echoes of your escape from that place. That was how I learned how to get out myself. And that was how I came here to capture you.”
The wolf shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. Even Sonic couldn’t have gotten out alone, Eggman himself said so.”
“Then my presence here proves him wrong,” Infinite said, reaching a hand into the air and squeezing it tight. “I am stronger than you. Than Sonic.”
“Not for long,” the wolf muttered, then looked up toward the shafts of light coming in from near the ceiling. The beams were slowly getting higher and higher, but they weren’t gone yet. Infinite picked up the coat and put it back on, wincing at the pain from the scars, but the soft wool interior cushioned them from rubbing on the cloth. He hated them, permanent reminders of his failure, but the constant pain kept him focused on his purpose. For everything Wyre the wolf had inflicted upon him, he’d return the punishment a hundredfold.
---
Loki didn’t know what was going on. He was riding in the back of a police car with handcuffs around his wrists, but all he’d done was get some food and drink. He also didn’t know what was going on with Wyre - the wolf had been acting unusually sour since leaving Spagonia, and despite Loki’s attempts to get talking about it, he’d never been able to get anything out of him other than “I’m just tired” or some other deflection. Then he’d blown up earlier that day, stormed off, and Loki had been left without a purpose. He wasn’t worried - Wyre could handle himself, and despite his dramatic proclamation, Loki didn’t believe they’d broken up. He knew Wyre would come and find him soon and apologise and beg to get back together, and Loki would be able to use that discussion to really find out what was happening with him.
Although Wyre finding him might be a problem if he was in jail. He didn’t want to get lectured on ‘trouble’ yet again - he’d need to find a way out of this situation before Wyre came looking. He jangled his handcuffs at the pair of cops in the front seats. “Excusing me. This is a mistaking, also I am needing to the bathroom.”
“We’re almost at the station, it’s just around the corner,” one of the cops said dismissively. Loki frowned.
“I am thinking you are arresting me just for being another country. Discriminalisation, and police beastiality.”
“You know you have a right to remain silent?” the other officer said, steering the car into a private parking lot. “Maybe you should exercise that right.”
Loki rolled his eyes and immediately opened his mouth to call them all manner of unfavourable things in his mother tongue. The car parked and the officers got out, then opened the door to the back seats and looked expectantly at him. He refused to move and continued yammering as one was forced to lean in and pull him out, then put him on the floor and walked him through the drab parking lot into an even more drab station building. Loki offered plenty of aesthetic criticisms in his mother tongue, but after a brief check-in with another officer in a booth who gave him a dirty look, he was led down a corridor to a large, heavy-looking metal door. One of the officers stepped up and peered through the viewing hole, then said “Away from the door,” while the other unlocked his handcuffs. Loki considered making a run for it right there, but knew there would probably be better times to try.
He walked through the open door into what he saw was a somewhat-roomy holding cell, barren of furniture beside a toilet, sink and bunk bed, and a barred window high on a wall letting in the dimming late afternoon light. Beneath the window, resting against the wall with his arms crossed, was a black-and-white-furred jackal in a green bandana. The metal door closed behind them, followed by the sound of a latch locking it shut, and Loki looked up to the viewing hole to stick his tongue out at the cop. “And I’m clocking out for the night. See you both in the morning,” he said, a hint of sadistic pleasure in his tone. Loki rolled his eyes, then turned back to the room and looked at the jackal.
“Evenin’,” the jackal said coolly. “What’d they nick you for?”
Loki screwed up his face. “They are not nicking me for nothings. They are so too unfairly arresting me for just having the foods and drinks. It is calling fast food, and there is ice cream and drinking machiners right there. What is so bad for using them?”
The jackal chuckled. “An arrest for that? Ridiculous. I reckon they’ve got a quota to hit. I was just perusin’ some vehicles, myself,” he said, then stepped forward and held out a hand. “Call me Quatre.”
Loki looked at the jackal’s glove, then reached out and took it, shaking more firmly than Quatre was clearly expecting, yanking his whole body up and down. “Loki. I am worrying that I am pursuing the vehicles too, there is so too many in this place. What are you needing the vehicles for?”
Quatre shook himself off and stepped back to lean on the wall again. “Cargo transport. My boss wants a shipment taken out west, out to the Wastelands. Man... he’s gonna be pissed.”
“I am having a vehicles that may be good for this,” Loki said, looking down onto the bunk bed, then jumping onto it. It was hard as a rock - it couldn’t compare to falling asleep in Wyre’s fluff every night. He sighed.
“That’s generous of ya, but unless we get busted out, I don’t think either of us has gotta worry about that stuff now,” Quatre mumbled. “And my boss has abandoned me before... he’s probably not coming to help.”
“Your boss is not sounding so too nice.”
“He’s... complicated. Been through a lot. Doesn’t really excuse him being so unforgiving, but... but I don’t feel like I can be someone without him, y’know?”
Loki looked up into the jackal’s distant eyes. “I am understanding.”
The jackal looked down, a smirk on his face as if to play off his sincere emotions. “Yeah? You got a boss like that too, huh?”
“He is so too clever and smart. He is cozy and funny and gently. Then he is dumb and stupid, and angry and grumpy and rudely,” Loki grumbled. “He is the hippo-crate of hippo-crates.”
“Sounds like a handful,” Quatre chuckled. “Back when there were six of us working for the boss, we had an agreement never to go near cities like this. These kinds of places are magnets for all kinds of trouble.”
Loki’s hands gripped the edges of the bed tightly. That’s right, these places were trouble. He was just doing what the place invited of him. He was trouble, and it was fine. Wyre was just too unforgiving, like Quatre’s boss.
“Now there’s only two of us under the boss... well, we added a temporary third, but that was just to help with this cargo delivery job...” Quatre continued idly. “I hope Trois is alright, now that it’s just her and the boss.”
Loki stood up and pointed at the wall next to Quatre. “Stepping to side.” The jackal blinked, then his eyes locked onto Loki’s curled tail, and he quickly slid out of the way. Loki released the punch, spinning his body into the swing and slamming the balled-up tail right into the center of the wall. It hurt, but there was a visible dent and crack in the brick - although there was still a long way to go with how thick the wall seemed to be. Quatre looked amazed.
“Not bad! I’d help, but I’m not much of a strong guy, I fight with knives...”
Loki grunted and curled up his tail again. “Hm. I am knowing another boy who is throwing the knives. He is too useless as well.”
Quatre laughed as Loki smashed the wall again. “Harsh. Would you like some words of encouragement instead?”
Loki paused. Wyre never encouraged him, it was always ‘stop that’ or ‘careful’. “Okay, but being sure to condiment the big-strong muscles,” he said, then reared up and slammed again, only for a buzz and tannoy voice to play in the cell.
“Hey, stop that,” came a bored-sounding voice. “Only warning, or we’ll throw you in high-sec and you’ll get more charges.”
Loki turned to the source of the voice, a speaker in a ceiling corner near the door, and screamed foreign profanities at it, then looked back to the wall and slammed his tail into it again. Quatre made a clicking noise with his mouth and Loki looked over. “Keep it up. Get them in here and we’ll bust out together,” he whispered, and Loki nodded. Quatre took a position next to the door while Loki continued to smash his tail against the wall.
About a minute later, the sounds of heavy boots outside the door interrupted Loki’s attacks, and he turned around, sweating from the hard work. Through the viewing hole in the door, he could see a pair of humans wearing helmets with visors. “Hands on the wall!” one shouted, then peered more closely into the room. “Jackal, that goes for you too.”
“They’re on the wall,” Quatre said, next to the door, arms crossed.
“Where we can see them,” the voice ordered, and Quatre sighed, then walked over next to Loki and put his hands on the cracked wall.
“Are you not having the backdown plans?” Loki whispered. The sound of the door opening came, and Quatre shrugged.
“Plan A always falls through. Plan B is always to improvise,” he said. Loki furrowed his brows as the two armored cops approached, but then he saw Quatre was holding onto a chipped piece of the wall in one hand. He curled his tail between his legs and nodded at Quatre, who looked back at the wall. “Trois... Deux... Uno...”
Both of them attacked in sync, Loki releasing his curled tail like a mouse trap and flicking one of the cops right in the groin, while Quatre spun around fast as lightning and tossed the chunk of rock right at the other cops’ groin. Both of them collapsed to the floor, groaning, and Loki and Quatre looked at each other in surprise, then toward the open door.
They both jumped into a run, colliding as they both tried to squeeze through at once, but Quatre relented and let Loki stagger into the police station hallway while the jackal pressed himself against a wall. Loki looked both directions, but nobody was coming, and the tannoy from before wasn’t sounding any alarm either. He gave the thumbs up to Quatre, then both of them dashed down the corridor and froze in front of the booth that Loki had passed before. The officer who had given him a dirty look was still sat there, and looked down at the escapees with a frown, but didn’t say anything.
“...You’re not gonna stop us?” Quatre asked.
“Escapees give us leverage for more funding from the council,” the cop said, sounding bored. “Basically, you’re worth more to us breaking out than staying in. You’re only petty criminals anyway; you’re not worth the effort.”
Not worth the effort. Loki clenched his fists. In one of his meaner moments, Wyre had said something similar a couple of days ago. He’d spent the rest of the day apologising, but the wound was still fresh. “And you are as worth as the turd in the toilet!” he snapped at the human, then stuck his tongue out and stomped away. The automatic doors ahead slid open and he stormed through, followed shortly by Quatre, who jogged up beside him.
“Humans, right?” he chuckled. “They don’t care about anythin’ but money. I’d never even heard of it before starting work with the boss, yet they run their whole lives around it.”
‘Not all humans’, Loki wanted to say. Since the incident in Spagonia, Wyre had hammered it into him that Fiore hadn’t actually been an Eggman spy and that humans weren’t all like the Doctor. But everything he’d seen today contradicted that - taking soda and ice cream from openly accessible machines was ‘stealing’, and arguing about it was ‘harassing the minimum wage workers’. “You are correctly,” Loki stated firmly, continuing to head out of the police station car park. Wyre could be wrong about things. Wyre was wrong about a lot of things lately.
“So true, brother. You and I are gonna get along great,” Quatre chuckled, swinging an arm around the lemur’s shoulder. “So, that offer to borrow your vehicle still valid? Cops took my walkie-talkie, but my boss won’t mind you comin’ to meet him, I’m sure.”
“Please to letting me go, I am already having the knifey boyfriend, I am not needing another,” Loki mumbled, and Quatre withdrew his arm.
“Sorry, sorry, meant nothin’ by it.”
Loki glanced over. “You are not thinking things through so much, prawda?”
Quatre shrugged and smirked. “You got me. I let the boss do the thinkin’.”
Finally out of the police station block, and with the sun almost fully set over the nearby sea, Loki folded his arms. He didn’t know where Wyre was, and he wasn’t in any kind of rush to find him. “Yes. I and you are getting along very goodly.”