Fini's Base - World Wide What?

[Jamie Lee]

Thankfully there weren't anymore incidents as Dr. Finitevus lead his two unexpected guests, Sally and Shortfuse, toward his private study. Unlocking the door they stepped into a fairly large and ornately decorated room. One wall was completely occupied by a full library with a cushy easy chair beside it and a lamp behind it. To it's opposite wall was a large and equally comfortable looking sofa with an elongated coffee table in front of it. In the far corner of that wall was also a small kitchenette, just large enough to have a fridge, a sink and a counter top that had a microwave and coffeemaker sitting on top with enough space left over to allow a built-in cutting board that also doubled as additional counter space.

Against the door's wall was a very large big-screened television with a full entertainment system. In the back sat a large, meticulously and ornately carved cherry wood desk, on top of which sat a large flat screen computer monitor, its speakers, a microphone, and various other associated equipment. All over the top of the desk were various documents, hastily scribbled notes, various blueprints, and littered among them pencils, rulers, paperweights, a stapler and other tools of such nature. On the areas that weren't littered with papers were a large decorative desk lamp and a globe of the planet crafted from gold and various precious stones (each location made of various stones such as jade, mother of pearl, turquoise, etc.)

Behind the desk, spanning a large part of the wall behind it, was a fish tank full of various colorful and exotic fish. Filling the spaces between all of that were various decorative shelves and cases decorated with various statues and trinkets, along with the occasional plant. Decorating the walls were awards, certificates, and several large original paintings of gardens and high class houses. Accompanying the impressive sight of the room was a strong scent of coffee.

Looking at it it was quite clear the doctor must have spent a great deal of his time here - not to mention must have thought himself to be quite important and had to have had a lot of money to throw around.

As Finitevus stepped across the floor's room-length fancy rug. Reaching his desk he began to grab various notes and documents, rolling them up and stashing them way in one of the desk's drawers. Most of these documents were of the nature of his prosthesis technology, but a few in particular he didn't want the two nosing around at, and so removed their presence in a hasty attempt to look as though he was trying to tidy things up. He closed the drawer and made sure a lock on it clicked shut. Afterward he briefly turned his attention to the fish tank, grabbing a can out from a cabinet beneath it and tapping a few flakes in for the fish inside.

Finally, he turned toward his computer, pulling back a very cushy and comfortable looking seat. Tapping the mouse its screensaver (one of those types that appear as though you're traveling through space) flicked off and the pangolin pulled the keyboard closer to him. Beginning to type he logged himself out of it's current user account and then proceeded to log into a special account on it. The way this account worked was special, set up for exactly just those unlikely moments like this, when someone unexpected who was at risk of learning more than he cared them to suddenly turned up. On it access to his damaging files were hidden and restricted, as well as anything damaging to his reputation that may be found online.

He clicked up a fresh browser, typed in google, and turned toward the princess, adjusting his glasses and offering his seat to her.

"Unlike the computer in my lab, this one has internet access. Feel free to use it as you wish. As for you..." he glanced at Shortfuse. "Go... watch TV or something... I guess. Just don't touch anything."

He folded his arms, tapping a finger on his forearm. "Meanwhile, I need to be figuring out how I'm going to make manual contact with Mobius... By the way, is there anything I could offer you? Water? Coffee? Lemonade?"

[AnT]

Okay...now this place went from evil science lair, to rich-boy evil place. The room reminded Shorty of this police photo of a crime lord's den, Tekno found once. It belonged to one of the worse criminals, Sidewinder. Nobody knew what happened to him after Robotnik's takeover. Perhaps he was robotiziced? Who knows...

...but this place was starting to remind him of that.

"Ugh, please don't mention food, pal. Eatting is one of the things I can't do as a robot." In fact, that's one of the reasons why he liked to be both a robot and a fleshy guy; power and eatting.

[Leedzie]

The princess took a seat at the computer. "Lemonade would be wonderful, if it isn't too much trouble. ...." Sally paused for a moment, before laughing uncertainly. "I'm sorry, but I really do have to ask... What's 'internet'?"

[Jamie Lee]

The pangolin arched a brow as he was striding over toward his kitchenette and took to pouring a glass of lemonade for both himself and Sally. "I take it you don't have internet in your world?" he pondered that as he returned and set one of the glasses down before her and took to leaning against the side of the desk. "The internet is a vast worldwide network of computers. Just about anything you want can be found there. It's used for information, shopping, recreation, some people even use it for silly things like dating not to mention looking at porn. Just type whatever it is you want to look up in the search engine here and it'll present a list of websites you can look at. Though, do be aware that not everything online is accurate."

[AnT]

"Oh goodie. It's like a mini library in a little computer. Betcha it'll explode in your face when you find the words 'I love you'." he muttered, crossing his arms in a pouty manner.

[Leedzie]

"Wow," Sally replied, clearly impressed. "We used to have something similar to that in Mobotropolis, before the coup. We had a universal computer network, but it wasn't for recreation. It was simply an information database, and each access point required the proper login information."

The princess typed "waterwheel" into the search engine at random, and as the results were presented, couldn't help but burst into laughter. "Man, what we wouldn't have given to have something like THIS when we needed it!!"

[Jamie Lee]

"Well, perhaps if the technology had had more time to develop it would have been no different,"

As the princess continued to search, the doctor took to pacing around, holding his chin as he thought out loud.

"Awhile back myself and an apprentice of mine collaborated to create a dimensional gate. You see, there are other dimensions besides mine and yours known to exist. This world is commonly known as the Chaos Dimension, and a neighboring dimension that has been known of for awhile is referred to as the Sol Dimension. Yours I suppose could be referred to as the Mobius Dimension? Hmmm... If I could get a stable power source and energy readings on these portals then I see no reason why I wouldn't be able to convert a Sol gate..."

He rubbed at his chin and frowned. The gate was powered by fake emeralds. The fake emeralds were the creation of Tails, so... he'd either have to contact the fox or somehow get his hands on a real emerald... The latter option just made him scrunch his mouth.

"Excuse me for a moment, I need to contact my apprentice," he pulled out a cellphone and dialed in a number. It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

The pangolin donned a look of agitation as he closed the cell "Augh. Tails isn't answering me, okay, plan B... May I see that computer for a moment?" he waited for Sally to move aside and pulled up a fresh browser. Just a few seconds later he had brought up the number of another contact. Closing the browser he stepped back and hit dial.

[AnT]

Shortfuse stood behind them with his metallic arms crossed. However, he was also curious to know what's going on, so he secretly used his zoom-in visuals to look over at the monitor.

[Leedzie]

"Tails??" A proud smile crept its way across the princess' face. Wow, so the Tails of this world has just as much potential as ours... He's even apprenticing the doctor. Sally scooted aside as requested, and waited patiently for Finitevus to finish his business.


Rouge, however, was not quite so pleasant. Grunting grumpily, the bat whipped out her cell phone and answered with a flat, "What?"

[Jamie Lee]

"Ah yes!" the doctor greeted pleasantly in spite of the bat's tone. "This is Ms. Rouge the Bat, I presume?"

He turned toward the squirrel at his desk. "A moment please, Sally, I'm going to step out of my office. Confidentiality and all," turning, he exited the room and stood a few feet away from the door in the hall.

"Haha, sorry about that! Anyway, my name is Dr. Zachary Acerbus, and I'm curious to know if you might have any information for a particular item I'm looking for?"

[Leedzie]

Rouge's tone didn't improve. "I don't know. Possibly. Got a bribe with my name on it?"

[Jamie Lee]

"Perhaps. It depends on what you know and if it's worth my income," he said in a slyly boisterous tone. "I'm looking for a chaos emerald, or, any possible known locations of them. You just seemed like a natural first person to ask."

[Leedzie]

Though he couldn't see it over the phone, the theif arched an eyebrow. "Well I make it a point to keep up on them as much as possible," she replied carefully. "I do know where a couple of them are... but I doubt you could afford them. You might be able to hire me to find a different one, though."

[Jamie Lee]

"Money isn't necessarily a concern for me, though obviously, no one wants to pay overprice, heh! Though in this circumstance, considering the power of one of those stones, their rarity, and what I intend to use for it, I'm willing to make a sacrifice to my paycheck," Besides, if I could later switch it for an alternate power source later I could definitely find other uses for it. "I want the quickest and preferably easiest route. Minimal hassle and all such."

[Leedzie]

"You'll have to settle for second-easiest," Rouge replied. Two Chaos Emeralds were in her possession already, but those jewels were definitely not for sale. "I'll find you an emerald for o500,000,000. Take it or leave it."

[Jamie Lee]

The pangolin's eye twitched slightly. It wasn't as though he couldn't easily afford it, and even if he couldn't he knew ways of obtaining it. Still, the thought of giving out so much for an item notoriously hard to keep possession of was simply... absurd.

He frowned and screwed his mouth to one side.

"You certainly know how to drive a hard bargain into a man's wallet, don't you?" he said in a wounded voice. "Very well then. I take it from your tone I'll get no good from trying to haggle anyway,"

[Leedzie]

"Hey, it's what I do best," the bat snerked. "Fine then, Mr. Acerbus, you've got yourself a deal. I'll call this number back when I've gotten ahold of one for you, and then we can make our transaction." Before he could lay any additional terms or conditions onto the deal, Rouge flipped her cell phone shut.

[Jamie Lee]

Finitevus closed the phone and placed it away, then buried his face into his palm with a grimace. "It's a common occurrence. Or appears to be. It better be. I'll go public with it when it's finished. I'll make it back easily."

He pulled his hand down his face and shook his head, then went to step back into the room.

[Leedzie]

And when the good doctor returned, he would find Sally recoiling slightly from the computer monitor, her eyes wide with shock and her face frozen in a mixture of surprise, horror, and intrigue. "O-Oh my..."

[AnT]

Now what's eatting the broad? Shortfuse zoomed in his visuals closer for the monitor, while still looking like he was just standing around like a bodyguard. Huh?...Whoa, Shadow would probably love to see that. Heh heh...

[Jamie Lee]

Finitevus arched his brow over the princess' frozen expression. A smile cracked his face. "Find something you didn't want to see, did you? The internet's full of that too."

[Leedzie]

Dr. Finitevus was witnessing a rare sight: Sally's professional composure had actually crumbled for a moment. When the doctor spoke to her, the ground squirrel snapped out of her shock and quickly clicked the browser window shut, letting out a breath. "Perhaps it's better that my world didn't get to this point..."

[AnT]

Silently, Shortfuse chuckled while mantaining his bodyguard / bouncer stance. He made a mental note to download that, so he can plant that in the FF/Area 27 computer to scare off Tekno the next time she uses the thing. Though he better not show that to Shadow. Maria does have a VERRRRY nasty side.

[Jamie Lee]

"Heh, well, it was practically made for that kind of stuff, so..." he trailed off, covering his mouth and just chuckling for a moment. "Ah, excuse me," he said after a moment, then his expression hardened a bit. "Well. I don't know how long it's going to take to arrive unfortunately, but I should have the necessary power source on its way... In the meantime, I suppose I should begin working on the gate and gathering information on abnormal energy readings..."

He turned away from the two and took a few steps away so they wouldn't be able to see his expression, folding his arms and giving an irritated scowl. This was turning out to be far more trouble than it was probably worth in the longrun, and for a moment he was seriously considering just having them both done away with. But no, there was serious potential in this idea... And with three people having appeared in his base, it was like the Sol incident again on a far worse scale. Oh, he was going to be praised for being on top of this...

He turned back around. "If you both are comfortable in here, I'm going to head back toward the lab and get started on that. I'll send someone else in here for in case you need anything, alright?"

[Leedzie]

Pulling up a new browser, Sally nodded once, back to her usual professional manner. "Thank you, doctor. If you'd like any help, I'd be glad to see if I can be useful." As she spoke, the princess cleared the browser's web history, and let out a misfortuned sigh. I wish there was a 'clear cache' option for my BRAIN.

[Jamie Lee]

"I'll keep that in mind then for later, but for now I should be fine on my own. Take care! I'll check back in later,"

With that, the pangolin strode toward the door and exited.

A few minutes later, a familiar looking teal wolf trudged in and glanced at the two, except this time he didn't have his hologram on.

"Yo," he said, giving a half-assed wave as he made a beeline for the couch and practically threw himself onto it. "Whatever the doc told you to do and what not to do, uh... keep following that."

[AnT]

"Whatever..." he growled.

[Leedzie]

"Hello again, Lance," Sally distractedly greeted as she braved the depths of the internet once again. Then after a moment, the princess did a double take over at the wolf lounging on the couch. "L-Lance?! But you were.... And now you're... But... You... I thought..."

After a while Sally just leaned her forehead against her folded arms on the desk. I wanna go hoooooome...

[Jamie Lee]

And after a moment the wolf turned his head and glanced up halfway toward her. "Um, have we met before or something? Cuz I'm sure my reputation isn't THAT bad."

[Leedzie]

".....No, I'm sorry, we actually haven't," Sally said as she sat back up. "There's another version of you in my world, and that's the Lance I know. You and I haven't actually met before..." The princess couldn't keep herself from staring at the wolf's cyborg appendages. I KNOW he wasn't like that when I got here... The doctor said that he worked with prosthetics, but... how could he change so FAST??