----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 17
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Cancer? My Uncle? Oh, no!"

"I'm afraid so, Sonic. All over."

Uncle Chuck coughs in his infirmary bed as Sonia and Sasha feed their healing magic into him while the bobcat that used to be Sally's portable computer, Nicole, did a diagnostic check. "It was all that waste from my former mechanical body," he speaks weakly. "The poison from this design flaw almost got me. This is one of the reasons who almost half of all who have been roboticized are dead now <a pause> including Mutski . . . He just died five hours before you showed up. I'm <cough> sorry, Sonic."

Sonic hid his head in his hands. "Aw no. . . not Mutski . . . first him, now <sob> . . . you?"

Chuck held his nephew's head back up. "Now, now, sonny. <cough> I wasn't given this new life just so I can throw it back in your face. I'll beat this cancer! <coughs and hacks>"

"And it looks like you will, Sir Charles." Nicole completed her diagnostics. "Thanks to your new biogenetic body given you by Davey Crockett, alias David Kintobor, <Everybody's eyes turned to the bobcat> and the combined spells of Suni and Sasha, you will be cancer free in three weeks. You will pull through, my friend."

"Really," Charles raises one of his now-soft-again eyebrows, "er, Nicole? Hypothetically, whatwould happen if I were just . . . deroboticized, straight?"

"I'm afraid that my best educated guess will predict you dead in six days."

A long and ominous pause from the planet again. Tonight was by far one of the quietest.

Charles sighs as he nestles back into his pillow. "So, this is the key, isn't it Freedom Fighters. Clever to use a Roboticizer to undo a Roboticizer. I should've seen his Father's influence in him sooner. Still, he just might be what this planet needs to be healed and whole again. By the way,Princess, where is he?"

"David? Oh, he's . . . oh . . . my . . . gosh . . . SONIC!! HE'S STILL IN ROBOTROPLIS!!!"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sally and Sonic was just as stunned as even the Swats that were chasing them when they saw from Nicole--in pocket computer form--Davey accidentally unlocking the DNA Lock that proved that he was Robotnik's son, but Sonic snapped out of it when he saw Uncle Chuck collapse from an apparent heart attack in a far corner. They dropped everything and headed to Main Roboticizer #2 in a flash. They scooped up Chuck and grabbed Tails, then they were shouting for Davey to snap out of it.

The details of the next five minutes were very fuzzy. They only comprised of a cry that came from the deepest depths of David Kintobor's anguished soul, and the sight of Main Roboticizer #2 descending to Hell as they all streaked to Knothole, fearing that an errant Power Rifle blast would hit them. . .

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"YOU LEFT HIM IN ROBOTROPLIS?!?" Sonia had her up against the wall. "How could you, Sally Acorn? Did you leave him to die?!?!"

Sally couldn't answer. The shock of the revelation over Davey has yet to sink in her.

"Dammit!" Sonia dropped the Princess and booked toward the smoldering ruins at 300mph. All others just stood there stunned, some shaking it off to join in the search party.

"Oh my stars, Sally girl. This hear's somthin' to wake you up in th' mornin', nothing like a good shock plot twist."

"Man, I can't believe it. Davey Crockett is Robuttnik's . . . son?"

"I'm afraid so, Sonic. <cough> Only a person with a DNA pattern close enough to match Robotnik's DNA pattern can open up that lock."

"Damn, first King Acorn almost became a crystalline figure, now this." This is the first time Tails ever used a cuss word. No one bothered to get out the soap.

Elizabeth Racoon, who didn't get that Meeko joke Davey said about his hat the first day he arrived at Knothole, was the only one to raise her voice, which was normal for her. "You mean that somebody was desperate enough to become Ms. Robotnik?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bear found him first. He started as soon as he knew about David Kintobor, so he had a head start. He saw the grief-stricken cyborg fox amongst smoldering rubble, robot parts, oil flowing like rivers, and a broken glass tube. Packbell, Snivley, and the beheaded body of the A-A Robotnik were nowhere to be found.

"Still alive," Davey swore out loud. "Damn you, Dad. Damn you to hell. Guess I can't be killed outright. Too much bad karma, I guess. Wished it was *mine*, tho'." He got up to start the long walk back to Knothole--he no longer regrets giving Antoine his hoverbike--not noticing the old grey fox nearby.

"I heard. All on Knothole heard."

No answer.

"David? We . . . We don't blame you for what your father did. It appears that he screwed us *all* over."

No answer.

"Son . . . I don't know what to say to you. You just came here, and in a matter of weeks, you did what we were unable to do in over a decade. You just successfully deroboticized someone--Sir Charles of all people--and he's going to live."

Davey turned his head to the fatherly figure with red glowing eyes. He tossed the Power Rifle toward him. "You wanna shoot off a leg this time?"

Bear looked as if Davey went up and slapped him dead in the face. "Young man, I don't know what hell hole mudball of a planet you and your father came from, but I hate to disappoint you; we do not thank our heros by lining them up against the wall and shooting them dead, no matter *what* their parents have done!"

Davey gave him a very distrusting look, "I am very disapointed in you," then he turned around, and continued walking.

As the solitary figure left the scene, a shadow of a robot monkey--it looked like Coconuts, but the shadow looked bulkier somehow--rose from the far end of the rubble and aimed a plasma rifle at the figure.

"No," came a voice from behind, it sounded like Scratch's. "Not tonight. He's had enough for one day. We'll kill him next time."