Circuits, Crossed: Social Jacking Rewrite
by Xabin Doyarchu
Chapter 1
The hustle and bustle of Echidnan society in Albion was broken by the sudden thwommm of a warp ring opening, cutting through distances to allow safe travel to the ravaged location. Through the portal emerged a familiar blue hedgehog, followed by a portly purple pinniped wearing a green bandoleer behind him. As the ring shut down behind them, the two Freedom Fighters took stock of their situation.
“I dunno about this, Sonic,” Rotor said, nervously scanning the scenery. “Remind me again why we're here?”
Sonic glanced back at his compatriot with a slightly cocky smirk. “There's a cease-fire going on here between the Echidnas of Albion and Lien-Da's Dark Egg Legion. Only reason that cease-fire is in place is because we promised to help them disarm their cybernetics' bombs and free them from Eggman's control. Since you got that figured out, after tinkering with Bunnie's new limbs, it's time we made good on that promise.”
Rotor winced and frowned, unsuredly. “No offense, Son, but whose cockamamie idea was that...” He sputtered to a stop as he saw Sonic's expression sour a little. “Oh, right, of course.” He sighed, resignedly. “Well, we're not much use to anyone standing around here. Let's get this over with...”
Sonic's face brightened in a small chuckle as he slapped Rotor's back, leading him forward into the city. As they approached, a young echidna female, along with a cloaked figure, greeted them with open arms.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice, Sonic.”
The hedgehog tipped an invisible cap to the echidnas, gesturing toward Rotor. “Hey, we promised, and we always make good on our promise, right Rotor?”
Rotor grimaced, but nodded without a word. The female, Gae-Na, nodded back and returned the gesture toward her companion. “Nice to meet you, Rotor. You're quite a celebrity in our ranks. I'm Kommissar Gae-Na, and will be overseeing your progress with the bombs. You'll be working closely with the Legion's head cyberneticist, Cobar.” On cue, the hooded figure removed his covering, exposing his face to the newcomers.
Rotor's grimace turned into a near full-on snarl. “I remember you... you were present when the Legion invaded New Mobotropolis for the Iron Dominion. You were overseeing the Legionization process there, when I was dragged in to undergo it.”
Cobar shirked back a little at the accusation, but recomposed himself, taking off his glasses to clean them. “As head cyberneticist, I'm always present for the Legionizations. From what I heard of you, it could've done wonders for your... condition.”
Rotor scowled at the comment, a realization that they knew of his back injury irritating him more. “I prefer my own method of taking care of it, thank you very much.”
“Yes,” Cobar responded, sagely, replacing his glasses on his muzzle. “We've heard of your 'Iron Rotor' suit. Interesting technology. Nanites, I presume?” Rotor's deepening scowl was all the confirmation he needed. “Very interesting. Microcybernetics is a specialty of mine, but I don't believe I or any of my team has ever dabbled in nanotech. I'll be very eager to see what you've come up with for our own plight.”
Rotor harrumphed at that. “Just as long as you don't try to experiment on me or my suit. I am very capable of defending myself with it.”
“Of course,” the cloaked echidna agreed, then motioned the walrus toward a nearby building. “Shall we get started, then?”
As he and Rotor left, Gae-Na gave a sad smirk and a shake of her head. “Didn't think there'd be such bad blood between those two... Hopefully they can get over it enough to make some progress on this bomb thing.”
“Yeah... I need to get back to New Mobotropolis, to help defend it while Rotor's here, but I'll be checking in every now and then to see how he's doing.” With that, Sonic picked up the Warp Ring and activated it, creating a portal between Albion and the Acorn Republic's main city. “I'll be back in a few days. Try to make sure those two don't tear into each other, while I'm gone, okay?”
Gae-Na smirk grew more genuine as she watched the hedgehog disappear in the ring. “Don't worry, I have faith in them.”
Rotor grumbled all the way to the building Cobar led him to, still not liking what he was tasked to do with the echidna. His attitude changed, slightly, however, as he entered the domicile, revealing a vast and high-tech cybernetics laboratory. Cobar smiled proudly as he ushered the walrus in. “Behold the place where the Legion magic happens. Think of it as sort of a cross between a cybernetics lab and a hospital; this is where all Legionnaires get their upgrades installed and maintained. As you can see, here...” he pointed out a few monitors showing crude displays of the bombs implanted in a few cybernetics, as well as a few other Legionnaires working dutifully at stations, “...we've been working tirelessly to try and penetrate the signal Eggman uses to keep the bombs in check, even using the chips Lien-Da distributed to us that were meant to neutralize them as a basis, but we've been making little progress.”
The walrus stood impressed at the scene, feeling awashed with familiar and melancholy memories. “Reminds me of the old Brain Trust labs back in Knothole...”
Cobar smiled as he gave Rotor the tour of the building, stopping to introduce him to the other scientists working on their problem. After the show-around, the bespectacled Echidna sat the pinniped down at a desk, ready to get down to business. “So, how were you able to bypass the connection between Eggman's computers and his bombs for removal, without setting them off? I wasn't aware that you even had access to the Legion's tech, to do so.”
Rotor frowned and dug out a syringe from his bandoleer's pouches. “It wasn't easy; you might remember Bunnie Rabbot from our team?” Cobar nodded. “Ever since Antoine got hurt in the last assault on New Mobotropolis, she went to get Legionized by her uncle Beauregard. Not a smart idea, if it were me, given the bombs, but we've kept Eggman busy enough to not have him notice her return to the fold. From there, I was able to study and analyze her cybernetics with Nicole, and ended up brute-forcing a solution.” He gestured toward the syringe, filled with a silvery liquid. “Reprogramming some nanites from the city, we were able to have them infiltrate the bomb network and decay its connections in such a way that Eggman never knew she was part of the Legion, briefly, until the bombs simply dissolved into its component elements.”
“Fascinating!” Cobar gasped, entranced by Rotor's explanation. “To think that you were able to achieve all that in such a short amount of time...”
Rotor nodded, but sighed tiredly. “Like I said, though, I had to brute-force a lot of the programming, so it won't work well with your group's bombs, since they've been entrenched in your cybernetics for far longer.”
Cobar nodded and hummed to himself, deep in thought. “Perhaps... if you could apply some of our efforts with the microchip inhibitors Dimitri developed, we might be able to apply your solution to not only us, but to other Legion factions.”
Rotor thought about it for a moment, glancing around the room at the monitors. “It's worth a shot. I would need to study one of those inhibitor chips directly, though, to get an idea of what we're working with.”
“Of course,” Cobar hummed more, thinking for a few seconds on how to proceed. “Let's get started, shall we?”
It took the duo and their team numerous days of non-stop, tireless work to get the nanites in Rotor's syringe reprogrammed for a proper test, but in the end, they felt confident that it would work. Cobar, to Rotor's amazement, offered himself as guinea pig in two ways: first, by surrendering his own inhibitor chip for Rotor to analyze, and second, by offering to be the first test subject for the reprogrammed nanites. When asked if he was sure of this, the echidna simply shrugged. “Trust goes both ways, my friend; if I can't have you trust in my efforts to help you out, how can I trust you to do the same?” That seemed to put the walrus' mind at ease, a little, and with a nod from the echidna, proceeded to inject the nanites into his systems.
The process was surprisingly painless, with Cobar barely feeling anything while Rotor monitored his reactions and the signal pathways in the bomb. As the nanites did their work, up on the Death Egg, Cobar's signal started to fade and degrade from its systems, silently dimming until finally, mercifully, it was neutralized completely, the bombs starting to decompose into their proper constituent pieces. The process in whole wouldn't have been noticed, unless someone was closely monitoring the situation. Or, as chances had it, some bumbling badnik managed to stumble in to see it wink out.
Cubot, messing around with a trinket he had found on the oblong ship, had passed by the monitoring station just long enough to witness the signal's strength waning. Unable to comprehend what he was seeing, the cubic robot pressed down on the call button on the station's panel, evoking an annoyed grunt from his master and creator.
“Grrrr, didn't I tell you not to bother me, right now?!” Eggman growled from over the comm system.
Cubot winced at the harsh tone of his leader, but surprisingly mustered up the courage to continue. “But boss,” he droned in a weird 30's gangster drawl, “I just saw a blip that blooped off the screen, up here.”
Eggman grumbled at that. “What in the world do you mean by that? Where are you?”
“Down in Legion control, boss. Was passing by the monitoring station, and saw one of the blips on it blip, bleep, bloop out of sight.”
“Hmph, probably nothing of importance, but check in on it, just to be sure. Eggman out.”
Cubot hrmmed to himself, before pressing the call button again, this time to another part of the station. “Hey, Orb? Could ya' come down here and check on some weird blip that blooped out of here? Boss' orders.”
Later that evening, Eggman was once again interrupted by a call from Legion Control, though this time it was from Orbot, the more competent of his two robotic lackeys. “Doctor, sorry to interrupt, but we have confirmation that one of the Legionnaire signals has ceased functioning.”
Eggman glared at his desktop computer, fuming. “One of those echidna dolts do themselves in by accident, maybe?”
“No, sir,” Orbot confirmed, dourly. “The life signs of the Legionnaire in question was very much at peak performance, up until the signal died. It just... seemed to degrade to the point where the signal is lost, now.”
Eggman was about to go on a rant about this, but stopped himself, musing on the oddity of such a thing happening. “Hrmmm. Strange.”
“What's more, a similar signal degradation was discovered in New Mobotropolis not 5 days prior. It could be a pattern, sir...”
That caught the scientist off-guard. “New Mobotropolis, you say? Could it be...?” He grinned to himself in revelation, typing in some code to his terminal. “Oh, my dear Rotor, you are full of tricks, aren't you? Well, let's see if you can handle this! Computer, activate override protocols. Passcode: Panic Puppet.”
Back in Albion, deep in seclusion, Lien-Da was wracking her brain, trying to think of a way to regain her control over the Legion, and failing miserably, to boot. As she sulked, she felt a strange power slowly assert control over her body and mind, eventually settling in and forcing her to stand upright like a marionette. Panicking, she darted her eyes around the room, wondering what the heck was going on.
“Don't be alarmed, my dear Lien-Da,” Eggman's voice echoed in her mind. “You'll just be riding shotgun in your own pretty little head, from now on... and, unless you want to worry about your pretty little head, you'll have no choice but to do as I say.”
“Eggman?! But how...!”
“You really didn't think I would rebuild you without taking a look at that control chip of yours, now did you? Fascinating little device, you should give more credit to Dimitri for its construction. Anyway, I was going to let you use it to your own heart's desire, but since it seems, from my analysis, that you no longer have said chip installed...” He forced the Grandmaster to spin around in a pirouette, demonstrating his full control over her. “I decided to take matters into my own hands. The brain circuitry that makes up your cybernetics has a failsafe that allows me to use it as a router to control you and every other Legionnaire in the area with a control chip. Someone there has been interfering with that control, and I want you and your Legion to go and hunt them and their accomplices down. My Panic Puppet protocols will take care of things for you, don't worry... but rest assured that neither your saviors nor you will come out of this alive...”
Cutting his announcement mid-cackle, Eggman pressed a few buttons on his terminal, causing a surge of a migraine to build up in Lien-Da's head. With all her might, she fought against the control of the protocol enough to grasp her head in a shriek, as radio frequencies pulsed out of her forehead and across the entirety of Albion, affecting nearly every other Legionnaire in the area. Almost immediately, the cyberized echidnas succumbed to the headache-inducing control of the protocols, before slumping into a puppet-like daze, catching the non-Legionized members of the population off-guard.
In Cobar's lab, he had just recovered from the experiment, feeling the bombs quickly dissolve from his systems. Opening his eyes, he went to tell Rotor the good news. “By Aurora, I believe that did it! Congratu...” He sputtered to a stop as he saw Rotor's expression of horror, before following his gaze to the other scientists in the lab, all in a trance and at the ready to get the jump on them. “Oh. Oh, dear...”
“Destroy the Legion,” the scientists droned, slowly creeping toward the duo. “Destroy Albion. Destroy the traitors to the Eggman Empire!”
To Be Continued...
