Suppression Squad: Now On Radar/Midnight Scourge, Part One

== Midnight Scourge, Part One ==
Museum of Eurish Antiquities, Acorn Kingdom…
“Aww, did that hurt? You need your mommy to kiss it better?”
Scourge swiftly dipped back, the swipe of the now thoroughly ticked off mastiff guard’s fist soaring over him. He flung his hands out, fingers touching the ground, and swung his legs up, leather boots slamming hard into the guard’s chest. The brute of a canine was sent flying through the air, and crashing into the brush a couple feet away. Scourge flipped back onto his feet, crossing his arms with a satisfied smirk.
“Are you done?” In the dim moonlight, Scourge could see the silver-furred husky standing over the unconscious body of another guard, taser in hand.
“Se incontriamo più guardie, no,” Scourge shoots back, pulling down on the sides of his jacket to fix them. “Try to keep up!” With a playful flick of the finger on Eclipse’s nose, to the latter’s more-than-mild annoyance, the snot green hedgehog zipped down the curved road, his legs and boots an indistinct blur.
He hurled himself through the air, one leg swung forward, the heel of his boot smashing through the glass window before him.
They were in.
Security cameras weren’t exactly a concern at this point. If anything, Scourge welcomed them. If there was one thing he enjoyed more than the actual theft itself, it was putting on a show while doing it. Speaking of cameras…
He spied one up in the corner, pointed directly at him, its tiny little red light blinking silently. His smirk morphed into a full-blown, toothy grin, and he offered the camera a wave before dashing through the lobby and smashing through the doors ahead, splintering wood everywhere.
Scourge skidded to a stop, crossing his arms and tapping one foot impatiently. Splintering another door in the process, his second-in-command Shard the Metal Sonic and technician Scarlette the Echidna burst into the room. Through the doorway Scourge had obliterated on his way in, Eclipse stepped, frowning silently at the mess and slowly shaking his head.
“Took ya long enough,” Scourge quipped, already smashing open a glass case and removing the relics inside, stuffing them into his bag. Coins… weird-looking bowl… pipe… more coins… lotta coins.
“Says you,” Scarlette snarked back, pulling out of eir own bag a laser pen and clicking it on. Ey point it at the glass case in front of em, quickly carving through the fragile material. A perfect circle is formed, and the cut away glass falls, shattering upon impact with the floor. “I’ll bet you wasted what? Five, ten minutes yammering off to the guards out at the front?” Scarlette reaches into the case, grabbing the nearest things to em— an old dagger, some ancient coins, and an old vase thing.
“It’s not wasted time if it worked,” Scourge retorted, tossing the old chalice in his hand into the air, watching as it spun midair for a second or two before beginning its descent, and catching it before it could hit the floor. He slid into his bag before flipping the top shut. He turned, watching his teammates as they finished up and closed their bags as well. “Alright, team, looks like we’ve got everything worth something in this room. Let’s sweep the rest—” He smirked, hands settling on his hips as his chest puffed up, “— and keep smashin’ and grabbin.’”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hours Later— Suppression Squad HQ, Mercia Forest~ aka Neutral Territory…
“Another night, another museum cleaned out.”
Scourge leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head and slotting them between his quills. He swung his legs up, setting his boots down on the wooden table in front of him with a loud thunk. The shades sitting on his muzzle slid down a centimeter. He grunted in slight annoyance, but did not move.
“We got some pretty good stuff,” Shard observed, slowly pilfering through the contents of all the bags cluttering up the rest of the table. As each member of the team already took a few select items to keep for themselves, it was time to go through everything one last time, for the purpose of calculating exact worth and what prices they should charge on the black market. He lifted up a dirty old chalice, frowning as he tilted it in the light. “I mean, some of it’s kinda ugly, but. I’m sure someone will buy it if it’s to their tastes.”
Scourge tugged the cooler on the floor closer, and flipped the lid open. Good, the ice hadn’t fully melted yet. Which meant the food was still cold. He pulled out a thick sandwich and started peeling away at the wrapper. He took a bite out of it and sighed in contentment.
“That’s some good mayo.” Shard looked up at him, a small smile on his silver muzzle and a softness in his digital green eyes. That smile quickly faded, however, and the softness slipping into an empty sadness that Scourge, when he looked at the badnik, could not place. “What’s up?”
Shard opened his mouth, silent for a second, and then shut it, shrugging his shoulders. He removed another relic from the closest bag, part of a broken spear, and as he examined it, finally spoke. “You remember what I used to do before, right?”
“Which thing?” Scourge asked, his words slightly incoherent as his mouth was full with a bite of sandwich. “The badnik thing or the Freedom Fighter thing?”
“Freedom Fighter thing,” Shard clarified.
Scourge hummed, tapping his free hand lightly against his knee. “Yeah? Why?”
“I just…” Shard trailed off. “I know that was years ago. People change, and people change again. Just wonder what Freedom Fighter me would’ve thought if he knew…”
Scourge gently nudged Shard’s arm with the toe of his boot. “Freedom Fighter you ain’t here.”
“I know that, but—”
“And even if he were, it’s not his place to tell you what to do,” Scourge cut in before the badnik could finish. “I have no idea what pre-No-Memory me was like, but if he had a problem with the way I’m living my life now, he could kiss my—”
Shard let out a shrill beep of warning, putting his finger to Scourge’s mouth. “You really want to test the swear jar now?”
Scourge snorted, pushing Shard’s hand away lightly. “Not really,” he answered, taking another bite of his sandwich. “But you get my point.”
“Yes. I do.” Shard’s amusement returned, as did his smile.
“Great!” Scourge swallowed, and resumed chowing down on his sandwich, not noticing the now better concealed void still lingering in the other’s eyes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
One week later— Suppression Squad HQ, Scarlette’s Lab…
“Hey, I don’t remember giving out invitations.”
These were the words that left Scarlette’s mouth as soon as Scourge, who was quickly followed by Shard and Eclipse, entered eir lab.
“I don’t remember needing one,” Scourge shot back, hands on his hips as he strode to the blackboard, flipping it over as the one side had calculations strewn all over it in multi-colored marker.
The other side was also coated with numbers and strange symbols that gave Scourge a headache just looking at them.
“Eraser?”
Scourge caught the eraser that was tossed to him, along with the annoyed expression on Scarlette’s face. He turned away, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes, and in a flash wiped clean the board. He tossed the eraser over his shoulder, and, after climbing on top of the blackboard because he preferred drawing upside-down, started scribbling across the blackboard in a blur. “Alright, gang— this is gonna be our biggest score since Enexia.”
“You want to clean out the Acorn Museum?!?” Scarlette’s hands flew to eir head and ey groaned loudly. “Look, I know we’re good, but we’re not that good! I mean, that place has all of the artifacts connected to the Acorn family— of course King Manik is gonna have all the latest and most effect defenses in there!”
“That’s why I’m counting on you,” Scourge countered, slowing his scribbling just slightly for the more minute and intricate details, “to fix us up with the gear we need to make it in and out without being caught, and with bag-fulls of priceless relic-things.”
“Scarlette kind of has a point,” Eclipse pipes up, arms crossed. “And even if we manage to pull this off, if King Manik didn’t like us before, he sure as hell—”
“Swear jar,” Shard cut in quickly.
Eclipse ignored him. “— is going to like us even less after this stunt.”
“Pfft, the ‘king’ can kiss my—” Scourge stopped before he said the word and gave Shard another excuse to shout swear jar. Why he ever agreed to that in the first place even he himself didn’t know. “— uhh, boots,” he finished, finally settling on his footwear instead of posterior. Scourge, upon finishing his impromptu sketch on the blackboard, slipped the cap back onto the marker and tossed it over his shoulder. He swung his body over the top of the blackboard and landed feet-first on the floor with a soft thunk. As he settled his hands on his hips, he continued, “Look. We’re the best of the best. We can do this. I know we can. Do you?”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, at least to Scourge, Scarlette plopped down in eir seat and looked over at the blackboard he’d drawn on. “Explain your plan to us, and then we’ll tell you.”
Scourge’s palms met with a soft clap as he strode back over to the blackboard. “Great. Okay. So here it is, folks…”
END OF PART ONE
Category:Fanfic
Category:Fanfiction
Category:Stark Sentral's Continuity