One

His weapon was loaded. Designated an R-17 sniper rifle, it would tear through the target like a knife through hot butter. His name was Alex Sands, and he worked for HITE, a top-secret squad, consisting of GUN's best. High-Influence-Target-Elimination had received orders that they'd been expecting for days now, to locate and eliminate Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, a certified genius, and madman. It had taken four days for Alex to find Eggman's base, hidden deep within Mystic Ruins, but he didn't expect it to take more than four minutes to land a killing shot. He lined up the target in the centre of his sights, his suit's cloaking system kicking in automatically, as a response to him staying still for more than six seconds, and he pulled the trigger. The mission was complete, Eggman was dead and … a shield of light appeared exactly where his reticule had aimed. An evil grin spread across the startlingly obese scientist's face, and Alex's enhanced sound system, picked up on the word's "nice try" before the door closed behind Ivo and heavy shielding formed a bubble around the entire complex. He didn't try again, the shield would keep him out, but that didn't matter, an orbital strike would take care of that shield after he reported his findings. His day only got properly messed up when his radar blared into his ear, confidently telling him that six targets were practically touching him, all well and good save for the fact that they would have to have appeared from nowhere, and be completely invisible, as they were no-where to be found. A moment's thought heralded the answer, and Alex looked up to see six air-to-ground rockets, burning from re-entry, and heading straight for him. "Hell" he cursed, immediately lining up the first shot. His panicked aim and the difficulty of hitting a speeding missile made his bullet burn through the flames from the missile's booster. He took a few more moments to line up his second shot, yielding the results of one bullet flying through the air on an accurate collision course with the missile, until, with a tiny burst of flame, the explosive danced to the side. Somehow it had detected his bullet and, even more amazingly, dodged it in the space of mere moments. He was screwed. Seconds until impact and no realistic chance of landing a single shot, Alex let the final shots fire out of frustration more than any misguided hope of surviving. His saviour came in the form of something deep red and excitingly mysterious. Knuckles grabbed the first missile, even while stepping across the second and third, each spinning off, wild, and eerily silent, before detonating with an ear-splitting explosion, muffled by emergency noise dampeners automatically triggered in his suit. Knuckles, seemingly oblivious to the sound, made his next move by throwing the missile he had in his hand, adding a dash of style with a front flip, as it took out two others. He then grabbed hold of the final one, pulling it off course, and dismounted moments before it touched down. The echidna was knocked back by the explosion, and grabbed onto a tree as he passed, tearing his momentum from him. After it had served its purpose he immediately let go and hit the ground without flinching. Alex was left speechless as Knuckles stood; only managing a few moments of pride at what he had just done, before falling to one knee, and then his side.

Alex stayed with Knuckles until he woke up again. Friendly as it sounds, there was nothing friendly about the rifle Knuckles found himself looking down.

"Who or what the hell are you?" were Alex's first words, his voiced tinged with a fear spawned from confusion.

"My name is Knuckles the Echidna, guardian of the"

"Shut up, just shut up. You really expect me to believe that "guardian of the Master Emerald" line. God damn it I've heard a lot but now you expect me to believe that you're some mythical creature, who doesn't exist, who lives on an island, which doesn't exist, guarding a jewel, which doesn't freaking well exist, do you see the problem here" Alex's voice was rising throughout this.

"Care to explain why a bi-pedal creature, who's quite clearly not human, can be found holding his own in an argument with a human"

"I don't know isn't that obvious I don't freaking well know what the hell am I supposed to say you're not supposed to exist there is no angel island or we'd have found it it's not there you're not human why are you not human I don't understand how you can talk and not be human you're not human you're not supposed to talk god damn it you're not supposed to talk you're supposed to be an animal not talking like a human you're not a human why the hell what the hell what in God's name is happening you're not human you're not" Alex was finally silenced by Knuckles' fist flooring him. He didn't get up. The pain of the punch was nothing compared to the impossibility screaming at him, the contradiction which went against his most basic beliefs, which were given him as a child, the fundamental knowledge that the thing standing above him should not be talking. His world crashed down in ways he had never imagined, and it took him a full half-hour before he gathered the resolve to search for truth. Slowly he climbed to his feet. When he got there, he didn't know which question to ask first, and silence continued until he found a place to start from. "Where is Angel Island, and why has no-one found it?"

Knuckles' response was not the one he was looking for, a calm explanation of how he could never tell that to anyone who he did not trust completely. Alex wasn't fazed, just disappointed and hit Knuckles with his next question "are there any other animals like you?"

"No"

Alex was relieved, one would do. "None like me, I'm unique, but there are other anthropomorphic creatures yes"

Now Alex wanted to punch the echidna for messing with his mind like that, but at least his next question was easy, who was a question he had been asking for years now.

"The few I know of live in a secret lab, close to here, Sonic and Tails. Then there's Amy Rose, not sure where she lives, but you can usually find her in Tails' lab. Apart from that, there's the Chaotix, they have a small house, also in the Mystic ruins, Cream and Vanilla, who live near the Chaotix, Shadow, another hedgehog, God knows where he is these days, Rouge the Bat, ditto, and Big the Cat, who lives in some hut in the forest. As far as I know that's it."

Alex took his time taking this in. If he'd been thinking straight he might have recognised Shadow's name from a file he flicked past once, but he wasn't so he didn't. "What do you know about Eggman?"

"We've been fighting him for a while now, if it wasn't for us, specifically myself, the world as you know it would have gone long ago, I know it's kinda dramatic, but what can I say, it's more importantly true."

"Are you willing to show me where any of the others live, or are they all as secretive as you."

"I would have said protective, but that's irrelevant. The fact is that you now know, and if you're going to tell anyone you can, more importantly you have a radio, and you easily could, so why don't we go see if Tails is about, he'll know what to do"

So that's what happened. Alex went to a cliff at the edge of the mystic ruins, where an apparently empty building revealed a massive underground complex. If you know Sonic and Tails like I do, you'll have guessed by now that they were gone, and Alex had to wait. He wasn't predicting their first meeting going well, Knuckles had left him to return to the master emerald. So when Sonic the Hedgehog opened the door, he was expecting a bit more than the half-hearted greeting he received as Sonic passed, with Tails following behind, excitedly telling him about some insignificant upgrade to something called the Tornado. Whatever Alex said fell on deaf ears, as Sonic asked about the actual implications that the upgrade would provide. His interest piqued a little when he heard that it would make whatever the Tornado was have greater acceleration, but apart from that his reactions stayed relatively disinterested. Their conversation went on some more, with other mundane talk of something that had gone missing, various devices that hadn't worked, and a few which had been huge successes. When Tails finished his descriptions, Sonic finally turned to Alex.

"Who are you, why are you here and how did you find out about this place." His voice was calm, but he was hardly being subtle. Alex's next words would be important, and the first thing to do was to answer the questions. He had to match Sonic's calmness if he was to have any respect.

"My name is Alex Sands, I am here to find out more about you and I was brought here by Knuckles the Echidna"

Tails relaxed visibly at Alex's last remark, which meant that they trusted Knuckles. "Well then, if you want to know more about me, you can start by telling me what you know"

"Your name is Sonic the Hedgehog and that is presumably Tails"

"Nice to meet you"

"and you live here, where you are frequently visited by Amy Rose, and you have been helping Knuckles fight Eggman for a good time now"

Sonic laughed "You have been talking to Knuckles haven't you. You got most of that right except for the fact that during our fight with Eggman Knuckles has been a supporting player, but he'll be damned before he tells anyone that he spends most of the time chasing after the Master Emerald after it's been inevitably stolen or smashed, so he can put it back and go back to sitting on his island half-heartedly defending it until someone makes some feeble attempt on it and he has to chase them around again. Hardly the big hero."

Silence ensued. Nothing was left to say, he'd come across Sonic at an uneventful time, and Sonic doesn't do uneventful. It would have been easier if he'd been scared or grown protective or anything like that, but it seemed that he truly wasn't worried about someone getting into his secret home. Of course everything has a reason, and the reason Sonic doesn't know much about what to do in uneventful situations was because he hadn't been in many. The roof of the building flew off without warning, and instinctively looking up granted the unusual view of fire blasting above head, which fit with the noise, and the sudden lack of a roof. Robotnik doesn't stay out of the story for long. As the building burned Alex realised that he was watching it from outside. This was just once more that logic had been defied today, as he hadn't moved out of the building. Sonic was already in action, moving at speeds difficult to even register up onto the roof of the building. For anyone else this would have been a stupid move as the unstable building collapsed underneath his feet, but Sonic was already off. It had taken Alex this long to register what was attacking. The machine was an unfortunately un-aerodynamic box with massive boosters on the bottom and one side, the one on the side serving as the weapon that had taken the lab's roof off. The force of the attack was almost equivalent to that holding it in the air, so even as Sonic leaped at it, the deep red cube was moving backwards, and Sonic's split second attack fell short by mere centimetres. But the 'bot hadn't stopped, and Sonic's eyes widened as he flew through the flames of the attack, taking the brunt of the attack. He returned to the ground still burning and screaming, a quick roll quelled the worst of the flames, but Sonic was still determined to win, and took off again, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. The hedgehog did not fall short this time, but he then found out the reason for the design, and for the machine going for the house first. It was almost perfectly smooth, and Sonic had nothing to grip to on the side, leaving him falling once more. Then the machine took off, reacting to a sound Alex hadn't even heard yet. A mechanical whirring from beneath the cliff. What Alex didn't see was a section of the cliff's wall opening beneath his feet. Tails, who had not fled the burning building, but gone deeper into the complex below, was preparing for the Tornado's next flight. He took off, and went in an arc across the sky, even as the robot released more fire in the direction of the fragile biplane. Tails brought the ship around, releasing missiles, forcing Eggman's machine to turn towards them, so Tails was allowed an opening beneath it, where he flew, Sonic leaping off the edge of the cliff to land on the wing of the plane, grabbing a handle pre-emptively located on the side, they'd done this before. Tails tried to get in close again, but couldn't get through the wall of fire permanently aimed at his ship. Alex saw the predicament, and decided to get in on the action, pulling a small grenade launcher and firing slightly above the robot. It took the hit and spun to burn Alex, but he was already moving, pumping his legs as fast as he can, before leaping of the edge of the workshop's raised platform, and painfully rolling down the side. He wasn't going to rely on Tails to finish the job, and made for the stairs leading back up to the top of the hill, cocking the last gun that had ammo in it, his side-arm was loaded with expensive armour piercing rounds, one snapping into the chamber as he took the stairs three at a time. He reached the top in time to see Sonic leap from the side of the plane, and pull himself into a ball, spinning at massive speeds, both RPM and MPH. It was as if the robot wasn't there for him. At those kinds of speeds, going straight through it barely slowed him. The robot did what any sane person would expect it to. It fell, hitting the cliff edge on its way down, causing it to fall into a spin which it kept up until hitting the water far below.