Tails the Mercenary

Tails took a swig of 140-proof whiskey as he cleaned his antimatter rifle in his workshop on Mobius. He took care of that thing as if it was his own son, making sure it was spotless and working perfectly. He loved its superior accuracy, professional look, cold, metallic feel, and destructive capabilities. It was essentially an advanced looking HK G11 with an extendable barrel, electronic modifications, and extra tactical mountings. He grabbed the magazine, filled it with the highly destructive ammunition, and snapped it into place. Each bullet contained a timed or impact-triggered nanocomputer and a minute amount of neptunium. When activated, the powerful nanocomputer would transmute the protons, neutrons, and electrons in the neptunium to their opposite subatomic counterparts, antiprotons, antineutrons, and positrons. The yield per bullet could be set between that of a firecracker and that of a small nuke. The energy could also be diverted to the end of the bullet and used as an accelerant. They were expensive, yes, but his fortune permitted him the ability to purchase many. After finishing the cleaning process, he placed it gently back in its case, locked it, and set it next to his desk for easy access. He never knew when he would get a call for a "job".

He stood up from his desk chair, and the servomotors in his mechanized right leg and arm buzzed with activity. He had lost his right arm to Mario's psychotic brother, Luigi, over two years ago, and lost most of his right leg and half of his right tail to a landmine less than two years ago. However unfortunate, it proved to be beneficial, as his arm and leg contained numerous weapons and added power, and his tail possessed a retractable stinger.

Tails stolidly walked over to his fridge to grab a prepackaged chili dog, when his cellphone rang. He dug around in his pocket, fished it out, and looked at the number on the caller ID. Fox. He answered it, and with a deep, matured voice, said, "Been a long time, old friend."

Fox answered, "Indeed it has. I come to you with information you requested a while ago, concerning former members of Mario's cabinet. Seems we found Bowser's son. I'm sending you the file now."

Tails' eyes widened slightly with interest, and a rush of anticipation surged through his body. "This is...good news," he said as he watched a file download onto his phone. "Many thanks, Fox. I shall...enjoy this."

They concluded their conversation, and Tails hung up. He spent the following ten minutes memorizing the information Fox sent him. It stated that Bowser Junior was hiding somewhere within the ruins of southern Chicago on Earth, possibly with sentries scattered about; hidden amongst the ghostly stumps of once imposing skyscrapers that were toppled by a superheated nuclear shockwave. The Cornerians had a bounty on his head worth over three-hundred-fifty million. Tails quickly began gathering a few essential items, grabbed his gun, and made his way into his spacecraft. The engines hummed to life, and he guided the ship out of the hangar, rocketed through the atmosphere, and escaped Mobius' gravity-well. The ship's navigational supercomputer aimed it in the direction of the Solar System. The warp drives initiated, and his three hour interstellar journey began.

Traveling through the frigid, black void was almost enough to put one in a trance, and the free time gave Tails plenty of time to think. Eyelids feeling heavier, he said within his mind, "After all this time, I finally get to take care of that elusive psychopath." Bowser's son had personally tortured members of the Mobius hierarchy. He tortured them for information for such a maliciously long time, that many of them almost completely lost their sanity. On occasion, he would take a civilian and do unspeakably cruel things to them, simply for enjoyment. He was a sadist, and deeply, deeply delighted in hearing their resounding screams.

Suddenly, sirens began to blare. The engines made a grinding noise, and the space ahead of him came into focus as his ship slowed down. A pulsar. Tails began to panic, and wondered how he could've gotten so far off course. The ship responded to none of his commands as it drew nearer to the path of one of the star's rapidly-spinning, hyper-radioactive polar beams. The radiation would penetrate the craft's shell even before it directly entered the lighthouse-like beacon of superintense energy, and he would first be roasted, then incinerated. He entered numerous commands into the console, but there was still no response. He felt his skin begin to heat up quickly as the luminous oscillations became ever brighter, and the radiation levels soared. The sirens blared again...

...And he woke up, panting, and in a cold sweat. It was only a dream. The sirens were alerting him of his proximity to Earth, and his ship slowed to sub-light speeds. The blue globe loomed in front of him, and he let out a sigh of relief. He guided the spacecraft down through the atmosphere and over the scorched land. Nuclear blast craters dotted the surface of the former United States of America, bearing testament to the late Super Mario's grave atrocities. He soared across the land, and the charred skeleton of Chicago showed itself. To avoid detection, he slowed to subsonic speed and flew as close to the ground as his flight prowess would allow. He navigated the streets of numerous suburbs, scanning the area for life. As he got closer to the heart of the city, his sensors detected small yet sizeable organisms in the remaining stub of a former high-rise, apparently Koopas. Flying around them would give away his presence, so he put the ship down in a garage just outside of the city's main corporate sector. The side door opened, and he exited his craft after grabbing his rifle. He extended his weapon's barrel to act as a sniper rifle, peeked around the building's corner, and looked up. His scope acted as a powerful heat-sensing monocular, and he spotted three Koopas, each with a long-range rifle. However, they seemed to be enjoying a conveniently distracting discussion amongst themselves. He set his bullets to act as miniature cruise missiles, allowing him to fire them at a subsonic level to avoid noise, but giving them enough power to travel the needed distance. He took aim and capped each of his targets. After scanning the surrounding area for other lifeforms, he proceeded down the street and into the heart of the city.

Tails was not alone, though. Within a different skyscraper stub were two sentient robots, which formerly worked for Mario, and Doctor Ivo Robotnik before that. As Tails jogged past the building's ruins, the robots leapt from their positions. One aimed to land in front of Tails, and the other behind him. The dive wasn't completely silent, and Tails heard a small scrape above him. He dove into an open room and behind a desk before they landed. One of them, which was shorter and propelled by a tracked wheel system, hid behind an exterior wall while the other robot, which was taller and sported two legs, tossed a smoke grenade, obstructing Tails' aim. The machine sprinted, ripped the desk apart, and threw Tails out onto the street. Tails leapt back up and fired, but both robots deflected the bullets. He then recognized them to be Scratch and Grounder.

"So surprised to see us?" asked Scratch.

"I do believe he is, Scratch," said Grounder. "It's been far too long."

"Indeed it has. My my, Tails, you certainly have gotten taller over the years. What's this I see? A cybernetic arm and leg? You must be quite battle-hardened by now. Oh, and you might as well drop the gun. We're practically bulletproof," replied Scratch.

Grounder rolled over to his counterpart and added, "I shall enjoy turning him into Swiss cheese with my drills."

"I'm sure you will, little brother," finished Scratch. He looked at Tails, smirked, and the two attacked. Tails fired a bullet set to explode like a large grenade at Grounder, blowing the machine into the building he was just thrown out of. Before he could shoot Scratch, the menace swatted his gun from his hands and punched him into a brick wall. He regained his posture and moved out of the way as Scratch plowed his fist through the wall. Tails took the brief opportunity of Scratch's arm being in the wall to grab it and crush it with his mechanical fist. Before he could rip it off, Scratch used his free hand to punch him into the street.

As Tails lay on the pavement for a few moments, Scratch looked at his damaged arm and said, "Interesting. More powerful than I expected." He approached Tails with a malevolent glimmer in his eye-sensors. Tails hopped back to his feet, but did so just in time to avoid being run-over by Grounder. He noticed that the little robot was missing part of the arm he used to try and deflect the last bullet.

"You're going to pay for that," he said as he and Scratch went at Tails, full speed. Tails used micro-rockets in his right foot to aid him in a high jump. He then used a small napalm-thrower in his right arm to set the two machines ablaze. Grounder immediately put the flames out on both of them with a highly efficient fire retardant, but while they were distracted, Tails grabbed his gun and fired another round at Grounder, this time blowing him apart. The force of the blast, coupled with the breach of Grounder's internal reactor, sent Scratch sailing through a phone booth and into a car. The impact caused the anthropomorphic avian android to lose coherence for a few seconds. Scratch quickly got back up, looked at the small crater that was once Grounder, then looked at Tails and scowled.

"You will regret that," he said.

"You mean like I regretted shooting him the first time?" Tails answered, "I doubt it. I should've done this long ago." Tails aimed and fired, in an attempt to blow Scratch apart with another bullet. Scratch grabbed a car door and used it to cushion the blast, and then dove behind the car itself. Tails increased the next bullet's destructive yield to that of a stinger missile, and blew the car apart. Scratch used the blast as a distraction to allow him to rocket into the air, as Tails had done before, land behind his adversary, and give him a bear-hug. Tails dropped the gun as Scratch's powerful grip tightened. He felt numerous joints pop, and it became increasingly difficult to breathe, as though there was a metallic boa constrictor around him. He used all his energy to maneuver his right hand toward Scratch's abdomen, where he used a plasma torch within his hand to bore a hole and fry some of his enemy's circuitry. Scratch's grip loosened just enough for Tails to break free, turn around, rip off one of the robot's arms, and use it to impale him numerous times. Scratch sputtered as vital connections were severed, and he collapsed to the pavement, dead. Tails expressed a faint smile, and he continued his search.

A few minutes later, he came within the vicinity of the remains of the Sears Tower. He got behind the blackened corpse of a bus and scanned the building, just as he had done to many others. He saw around twenty lifeforms and even more heat signatures within the tower's gaunt base (the scanner could only penetrate so far). They seemed...attentive, which pointed the probability that they heard the battle with Scratch and Grounder. This was certainly the most likely place for Bowser Jr.'s hideout. He wondered if it would be better for him to surreptitiously infiltrate the complex, or just shoot every living thing in a furious blitzkrieg. Deciding against the latter, he set his bullets to subsonic and began to plot his course of action in more detail.

As Tails strategized, a lone Goomba came around the corner of an adjacent building to his right and spotted him. Tails noticed the fungal creature in his peripheral vision, looked at it, and saw that it was aiming a weapon. He ran as the bullets began to fly. Both actions alerted the sentries, and he went with his latter idea. He set his bullets to mimic thirty pounds of C4, and went ballistic.

Within the basement of the former Sears Tower was Bowser Jr. and a handful of his subordinates. The walls and ceiling rattled with each explosion, and he said, "We have been discovered. Ready my ship."

Tails left nothing alive, and the destruction resulted in numerous craters on the building's face. He puffed the smoke away from the hot gun barrel and glanced at the tower stump. All was silent. He sprinted inside and headed for the most likely area of hiding, the basement. He raced down a hallway leading to a flight of stairs, when four Koopas peeked around the corner and began firing. Tails hid inside a nearby room and shot a grenade-yield bullet at the attackers, clearing the way. He cautiously ran down the steps and came upon a locked door, which he kicked-down easily using his metal foot. The room was found to be...empty. However, he did notice a barely-open door in the far wall, and he hurried through it after scanning for booby-traps. He navigated three more hallways before coming upon an open doorway which led into a large room. Sounds of activity emanated from it. Circumspectly, he approached it, weapon ready. He quickly glanced inside and saw the tail-end of a spacecraft exiting what he then knew to be a makeshift hangar. A bullet was set to the proper explosive yield, and he fired it at the ship's engines. The blast damaged it heavily, and it lost altitude and came down in the street. Koopas flooded out of it and took defensive positions. Tails pressed his back against the hallway wall, and exhaled while closing his eyes briefly. He jumped into the hangar and opened fire, annihilating each remaining Koopa with a well-placed bullet. All that was left was his quarry. Slowly, he approached the smoking hulk of metal, with his gun and nerves more ready than ever. He scanned the surrounding buildings quickly to make sure there weren't any snipers nearby. Unexpectedly, Bowser Jr. leisurely exited the ship with his hands up.

"I must say, I am both surprised and impressed that you made it this far. I thought for sure Scratch and Grounder would take care of any possible intruders," said the short, shelled reptilian.

"Grounder met the business end of my gun; he had a blast, so to speak, and Scratch's resilience was full of holes," retorted Tails. "Now I'm here to take you in."

With a curiously smug countenance, Bowser Jr. said, "Ah yes, the bounty. Corneria must want me pretty badly for aiding my Führer in leveling most of the planet. Not only did I kill billions there, I killed billions on your world, too, even torturing some. That was some fine entertainment right there."

Tails struggled to keep from pulling the trigger, and replied, "If there was nothing good to come of my capturing you, I'd blow you apart right now, leaving nothing more than a large red starburst on the pavement."

Sensing Tails' unparalleled frustration, Bowser Jr. continued, "A funny thing about those Mobians. They seem so kind and cuddly, and that makes them even more fun to torment. Seeing something so innocent looking, in so much pain...misery...the screaming...made me want to howl with unbridled delight. I felt a wave of satisfaction with every cut I made, every bruise I left, every bone I broke."

"ENOUGH," shouted Tails while shaking slightly, "Cease your babbling of your twisted sadist atrocities. You just want me to kill you so you can make sure I don't get the whole bounty, and so millions would not get to see justice carried-out on global television. You will not get your wish."

Bowser Jr. smiled and responded, "Oh really?" He quickly pulled out a pistol.

Tails shot the monster's gun out of his hands, approached him, beat him to the ground, and hogtied him. He pressed a button on his belt that activated an autopilot program in his ship, which in turn guided it to him and allowed them to board. He took off with Corneria as his next destination.

Sonic the Hedgehog characters and places are copyright of Sonic Team/Sega

StarFox/Super Mario characters and places are copyright of Nintendo

Story/etc is copyright of NuclearCookout