Through the Looking Glass: Chapter 8-B
Achte Träume
Banjo woke up on top of the shrine where the Master Emerald was. However, he did not see anybody else there, and the emerald seemed to glow softly in the moonlight.
"So I see you got to the Master Emerald," said the voice of Rouge from behind him.
The bear turned, and he was greeted with the sight of Rouge, looking at the Master Emerald with a strange sense of hushed awe that Banjo was unaccustomed to seeing from the woman he loved.
"Yeah," said the bear. "Unfortunately, Eggman found us too."
Rouge's gaze tore itself from the emerald to Banjo. "What?" she said, kneeling down so she was next to the honey bear. "He arrived?"
"Yeah," replied Banjo. "Thankfully, we were ready for his army. Things still got out of hand... And then I had to use Chaos Control..."
Rouge opened her mouth to say something, but as soon as Banjo uttered 'Chaos Control' her mouth was shut again. Shock went wide in her eyes as she took this in, still unbelieving in this respect.
"You used Chaos Control?" asked the bat, her voice shaking slightly.
"Yeah," said the bear, turning around and finding that somehow his bones were no longer broken. "It was kind of--"
Before the bear could continue, he felt the harsh sting of a slap on his cheek, the bat's hand having gone across his face. Rouge then collected Banjo in her arms as she started sobbing.
"Damn it Banjo, you could've died!" exclaimed the bat. "You don't have any affinity with that energy!"
"I didn't exactly have a choice, you know," replied the bear. "The only guy who could have used it was out."
Rouge shook her head, pulling away from Banjo and placing her hands on his shoulders. "Banjo, you were moving an entire floating island with people on it in your first time using Chaos Control," she stated simply. "Not the way most people would want to experience Chaos Control for the first time, I tell you. You could've died if you didn't have that wrench that Kazooie carries around!"
Banjo shook his head. "I was pretty much beat up anyway," he said, shrugging. "Eggman really did a lot to my body..."
"Excluding rape?" asked the bat suddenly.
This question completely threw the oblivious honey bear off. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, you know Tails, right?" asked the bat. At Banjo's nod in confirmation, the bat continued. "Eggman has him under some strange kind of mind control. And lately he's been using it to punish Sonic for all of the years that he stopped Eggman from taking over the world. Apparently, the doctor isn't above taking somebody else's virginity... Especially not Sonic's..."
Banjo was utterly shocked to hear this, but all the same he realized also that somehow he had seen it coming. It also brought something else to his attention; in the rush that had accompanied Tooty's return home, she had not had a chance to say anything about what happened during the ten years that transpired before these events.
And then he also realized that the torture of Sonic and friends would only get worse if Eggman did not decide to pursue Banjo and instead decided to go back to the base.
"I don't know..." said the bear, squinting as he looked beyond the stars. "I'm worried about you. He might be coming back, and I don't think he'll be happy."
"And what makes you think that he'll throw me in there with Tails?" asked the bat.
At this, Banjo clasped the bat's arms and looked down at the ground. "Rouge, it was terrible!" he said, surprising the bat greatly. "He threatened to hurt you in so many ways... Rouge, I... It's terrible! I don't want you to get hurt!"
Instantly, Rouge broke out of the hold that Banjo had his arms in and lifted his face up. She left a quick kiss on the lips before hugging Banjo, rubbing his back reassuringly. "Oh, Banjo," she said. "I... I may be his prisoner... But I've got my ways of surviving. I'll pull through. For Tails. For everyone else. But most of all, for you."
Banjo nodded, pulling Rouge into that hug. "Rouge... I'm sorry it had to come to this," he said.
The bat rose one of her eyebrows in curiosity. "Why are you_apologizing?" ased the bat plaintively. "You had nothing to do with Eggman wanting to take over the world. Hell, you had nothing to do with him until all this happened."_
"Yeah, but I think I just led to you getting hurt more by making him mad," he said softly. "I... I don't want that Rouge. I'd hit myself if I let you get hurt..."
Rouge shook her head, tightening the hug a little more. "Banjo..." she said. "You... You've been in my thoughts a lot lately. And just thinking of your name... just thinking of you... It's somehow enough to make everything feel better, like we will be able to do this. Banjo... No matter how bad that gets, then I say 'it's okay' in advance. You've been such a force for me these past few days..."
Banjo nodded. "Something... something similar happened to me earlier..." he admitted. "When he said you were getting tortured... just thinking of you... I was mostly out when I tried the Chaos Control, but thinking of you..."
There was a very brief period where they were absolutely silent. When this moment had passed, their lips connected in a rather desperate lock again, and this small kiss turned quite passionate very quickly. Both of their eyes were closed as they engaged in this, and when they parted, they looked at each other longingly.
"I... I love you Rouge," said Banjo.
"I love you too, Banjo," replied Rouge, tears coming to her eyes.
Banjo's glance hardened as he looked beyond Rouge to the Master Emerald. "I'm gonna find a way to get you out of there, Rouge," he said. "If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to save you and Sonic and everybody else. And I don't care what Knuckles says. If I have to, I'll use Chaos Control again..."
"I'd rather not you have to stoop to that," replied Rouge as she hugged Banjo. "But, I... I don't know what to say... Otherwise...
There was a brief silence as Rouge pressed her head against Banjo's chest. The bear's heartbeat was wild against her head, and she could not help but feel the rhythm in her mind.
"Your heart sounds like... like a drummer if he was hitting his drum as quickly as he could..." she said.
Banjo chuckled, being able to see how sappy that sentence really was. "Like you would know..." he replied, shaking his head.
"Oh, I dunno," replied the bat. "I own a nightclub in one corner of my home city..."
The bear looked down at Rouge quizzically. "Nightclub?" he asked.
"What, you don't have any nightclubs in Showdown Town?" asked Rouge, just as confused.
"No," replied Banjo. "Just places to eat."
The bat nodded. "Well, it's sort of like that, only, there's also music, and dancing, and... well, there's a stronger emphasis on drinks..."
The honey bear nodded, holding Rouge closer as he seemed to understand what Rouge was telling him. "I see..." he said. "Rouge... If I do manage to get you out of this mess alive... Would you mind... well... showing me where you're from?"
Rouge nodded, smiling as she took her head away from Banjo's body to look up into the sapphire eyes she loved so much. "I'd love to!" she said. "But you better promise me to show me your end of the world!" She pushed him playfully in the chest with one finger to emphasize her point, giggling slightly as she did.
The bear nodded as Rouge looked at him with a playful light in her eyes. "Sure," he said. "I'm sure you'll love it."
And they simply held each other for the rest of the dream, saying sweet nothings to each other the entire night.
Banjo woke up to see the sun high above the heavens. He would have cursed himself for oversleeping again before he remembered that it was in a similar position as it was when he had lost consciousness after using Chaos Control.
"Hey, he's waking up!"
Trophy Thomas' voice rang out above a small murmur of voices, and when Banjo turned his head he found the heads of the entire group turning to look at him. Kazooie jumped up in joy, and almost instantly the tears came rolling down her face as she jumped on top of the bear.
And like Rouge before her, Kazooie slapped Banjo across his muzzle rather hard.
"Damn it, Banjo, don't ever do that to us again!" cried the breegull as Tooty joined Kazooie on top of the honey bear.
"Yeah, please don't," added Silver, who Banjo realized was up and quite well by this time despite the small speckles of blood that marred the fur on his face.
The guardian of the Master Emerald was silent as he walked over to the honey bear, Shade, Mumbo, and Humba staying in place where they were seated around the Master Emerald. Noticing his approach, Kazooie and Tooty both parted from the honey bear they cared about deeply as Knuckles knelt down and nodded.
"It seems Chaos really likes you for some reason," began the echidna. "Your bones healed themselves while you were out..."
Banjo had sat up by this point, and feeling his legs the bear saw what the echidna meant. "And what else happened?"
"Well, it seems like the only reason you didn't die was because that wrench got some of its energy absorbed by the Master Emerald when you pulled your little... stunt... there," replied the echidna. "It still has some of its power left that we can lift things around, but we couldn't get it to do some of the things Kazooie said it could."
The bear nodded, and then his eyes hardened as he looked into Knuckles' purple eyes. "And I also think there's something else..."
"Oh, yes..." replied Knuckles, bowing his head down to the honey bear. "Kazooie told me everyting that happened to you with the dreams and all that. And... I'm sorry. I... I just didn't want to get tricked again... I guess I took it a bit far... And I didn't really think Rouge actually had a crush on me... I... I was such an idiot to you back there. I'm sorry for everything, Banjo."
The echidna was silent, nodding slightly. Feeling a hand patting his shoulder, the echidna was surprised to see the bear looking at him with a soft smile on his face. "It's not that big a deal, when you think about it Mr. Knuckles," replied the honey bear. "It's okay."
The guardian nodded, standing up and helping Banjo up. "Thanks," said the echidna.
Banjo nodded before moving on from this conversation. "Listen," he said. "I... I think we should attack Eggman's base..."
"Yeah, we were going to do that anyways," replied Shade, turning from her stance from where she sat in front of the Master Emerald. "Eggman knows where we are now and he will not hesitate to follow us. If we strike first, we will have the upper hand."
Banjo nodded. "But how do we plan on doing that?" he asked, shrugging.
"Actually, we were waiting for you to wake up to figure that out," said Tooty. "I know the layout of the base, so I can help, but we'll need your input too."
The honey bear nodded, somehow quite happy they had waited for him to wake up before plotting their break-in strategy. The small group walked over to where the Master Emerald was. There, Banjo noticed a map of Eggman's base that Tooty had drawn with chalk while he was out. The group then huddled around the drawing, and then deliberations began as they looked at the map.