Somewhere in the warm summer night, the stars twinkled, and a pleasant breeze drifted on a predestined path and blew through the quills of hedgehogs and foxes, echidnas and humans. On Mobius, it first touched the quills of an orange hedgehog and his midnight-colored mate. It drew a smile from the pair, who sat on a swinging porch chair as they watched the stars appear one by one. In their laps lay twin hedgehog pups; the boy was a deep gray with orange highlights and the girl was gray with sky blue, and though their eyes were closed they were both the color of rubies.

The midnight hedgehog leaned against the orange one lightly, shoulder to shoulder, smiling. "I love you, Chase."

He nuzzled against her ear and whispered softly, "I love you too, Maria." He put an arm across her shoulder while his free hand lightly stroked the fine fur of their daughter's head. "How'd I get so lucky?"

Maria smiled dreamily down at their children, then into his soft gold eyes. "I wouldn't call it luck."

"No…." He paused and wrinkled his nose a bit. "More like a miracle, knowing your father." He chuckled a bit, even disregarding a small jab to his ribs.

Maria smiled. "He's not that bad."

"No...he's just..." Chase trailed off.

"He's Shadow."

The orange hedgehog nodded. "Yeah...heh...what've I gotten myself into?" He smiled and nestled against his mate.


The warm air rose into the sky and curved around the edge of the Floating Island. It darted across the lush jungles, and though it cooled with the night, an artificial or other-worldly influence generated a warmth that nudged the little breeze along. It fluttered through the main streets of Echidnopolis and brushed the curtains to the Guardian's apartment.

"Should I close the window?" Julie-su asked and flicked aside her metal dread.

"If you want." Knuckles shrugged indifferently. He set his grandfather's hat down on the coffee table, then went over to the window and his mate, a small smile forming because of her.

"Well, you shivered," the pink echidna with lavender bangs continued. "Usually you don't do that unless you're…cold, or something's bothering you."

"Now what would bother me, huh? I'm just the Guardian." The red echidna grinned with a slightly fanged expression.

"Lots of things," she replied simply, a coy smile on her own lips. "Let's see, where do we start?" Sarcasm laced her sugary sweet tone, "Suspected legion activities, dingo uprisings, the whole Brotherhood is against you, especially condoning your daughter's--"

Knuckles finally cut her off at that. "Julie..."

"Well, you know it's true." She shrugged. "Anyway, I support you." She attempted to put an arm around him, but he was determined to be as stiff as ever. She knew quite a few tricks for disarming him and lowering his defenses, both in a literal and figurative sense. She'd use them only if he persisted in putting on his typical guardian front. The ex-legionnaire knew him to be a very sensitive character, and his inexperience with women had once upon a time led him to be quite easily distracted.

"Of course you do." He loosened up a bit and slipped his arm around her in turn. "Blitz isn't getting half the flack I do every day, though...I mean, every day I'm being yelled at by Spectre and Locke about allowing her to mate outside the species..." He heaved a sigh and glanced out their apartment window. Even now, he felt like the city shouldn't exist and that his problems would be severely reduced if that were true. Through all the shimmering haze of the city's failed twilight, it was still his home, and as long as it held anyone or anything he loved, he'd go on protecting it.

"Not like you could have prevented it." Julie shrugged.

"I know." He smiled a bit recalling the beginning of their union. "They're just sour because there wasn't a ceremony," Knuckles replied, though he was actually rather proud of their daughter. There were a number of "echidna traditions" he didn't adhere to, and if his daughter was going against the grain, so be it. The Guardian was one of the few individuals on Mobius expected to have a wedding ceremony, and he'd ducked out on it by using a life and death situation as an excuse to solidify their bonds. Of course, he was pleased to have survived the ordeal with her new mate, but the Brotherhood and his father were upset both at missing out on Knuckles' becoming a "man" and, of course, his choice in a mate.

"Probably…speaking of..."

Knuckles winced. "No."

Julie frowned a bit. "You didn't even let me say it."

"You want a ceremony, don't you?" The red echidna sighed in resignation.

"Kind of. It might...well, distract the Brotherhood from hating you, at least." The pink and lavender echidna smiled and took a seat on a nice modern couch, Knuckles soon following her.

He gave a tired smile at her, his purple eyes glinting proudly. "Distracting, huh? Well, I think the only way they'd really be pleased is if we had another egg and it turned out to be male and actually wanted the damn job as Guardian." He laughed a bit at that thought. While his eyes settled on his mate, however, he now noticed a slightly nervous edge to her. 'It was a joke.' "That's ridiculous, though. I mean, it's been..."

Julie wrapped her arms around Knuckles and guided one of his gloved hands to her belly; he could feel the impression of a pouch. Echidnas were like marsupials in that they carried their young in a pouch, but the pouch itself was created by contracting muscles, which only activated close to delivery. Suddenly, her weight gain and mood swings made a lot more sense. "I don't know if it will be a girl."

Knuckles laughed a bit, feeling like a complete idiot, though he held Julie close to him and nuzzled her neck affectionately. "You're terrible…hiding things from me."

She laughed a bit in reply, "Hide? Oh honey, you're just as naive as the day I met you." Julie-su smiled and soaked up his affections. "But I've always liked that..."

"I'd like to think I'm a little better than I was," Knuckles replied, his tone having softened noticeably.

"A little," Julie said and kissed the tip of his nose.


The summer breeze flittered on in its course down the streets of Echidnopolis. It roamed past tall skyscrapers and stirred up pollen in the night blooms. It fluttered across parks where it swirled about the ankles of a pair, but only one was an echidna.

In the pale casting of the moon, the purple hedgehog appeared as though he were as dark a blue as his father, with the light projecting a pale aura on one side. His gemlike eyes were unmistakable, though, as he gazed into the eyes of his lover. Lara-su was very much like her mother, having her lavender bangs, though her fur was more red than pink. Aside some stylistic tendencies she could, in some cases, pass for her mom, but she had her father's signature knuckles and his purple eyes.

The purple hedgehog kept his hands gently on Lara's hips and spoke to her softly as well, "You've never used the air skates, have you?" he inquired.

"No…." Lara replied, a bit shaky on the Extreme Gears he'd given her.

"Relax," Blitz insisted with a smile.

"I'm trying," she said stiffly, frowning a bit even though they were on nearly level ground.

"I'll catch ya, I'm fast," the hedgehog replied confidently. He was very much like his father that way. Nothing seemed to phase him. He was optimistic, cocky, a show off, disrespectful in many ways, yet endearing. For the girl that had captured his heart, he would slow down, and tonight he did so to show her the art of shoe-type Extreme Gears. "It's like rollerblades, but no blades."

The girl took a breath. "I just..."

"A leap of faith, start walking, take a step...make a move...I'm here." He nuzzled her neck gently.

The echidna smiled a bit and sprinted forward. Within a few feet, she felt the spring in her step increase until the Gears floated her above the earth below. Blitz strolled along behind her, watching her gait and giving gentle instruction.

"Whoa...easy...side to side...I'm here…." His voice carried to her in a way that let her know everything she would ever need to know--a voice that said "I am here. I will always be here. It's only special if we're together." With someone like that at her side, she wondered how her family could ever doubt him.


The wind blew a long way indeed as dawn approached. It kissed the wind chimes that hung by an open window in Kiyo, NiNihon (sometimes called 2nd Japan). The simple chime (shaped to look like Chimecho, a pokémon) alerted at least one guest in the tanuki house.

A white hedgehog with sakura color eyes strode across a tatami mat to the open window. She smiled at the tinkling chime ringing in the dawn. Her footprints were hard to hear by a normal person, though somehow her subtle vibrations rang a chord in the orchid hedgehog, who was awakened simply by her absence at his side. He put an arm around her, rather than a full hug, and the two watched the sunrise in silence for a while.

"Ohayou gozaimasu," the female hedgehog, the color of snow, said quietly after a while.

The other one's ears twitched and caught every vibration of sound, though her lovely voice more often melted like ice cubes in the desert to his impaired hearing. "O...ohayou," he replied after a while. Teaching him Japanese was probably no harder than her learning English. What would be a problem for him was how quiet she was. She moved so gracefully and was so lovely, he'd sworn she was an illusion but that he could hold her. Whether his hearing improved or not, he was learning to hear with his other senses and was now more certain of his own volume. "Lovely morning, isn't it?"

"Bi...beau...beautiful," she replied timidly, her cheeks pink as her eyes. She was like that, Yukiko. She blushed whenever she was afraid of making a mistake, or when she'd actually made one, and because of her own fears, she blushed a lot. She was more, well...everything...than she thought she was, so Rift was determined to give her the confidence her lovely frame sorely needed.

"You said it right." He nodded lightly. The sakura (cherry blossoms) had already fallen, but there were other flowers yet to bloom, and the green after a cold and damp winter was good for the heart.

Soon, the silence was interrupted. It wasn't the birds singing that stole the couple's attention; it was the yelling coming from the kitchen. 'Not again...' Rift thought, feeling the thumps and booms shiver through his bones. He held Yukiko close and sighed a bit. "Gohan at Rising Sun Caffé?" he inquired idly.

Yukiko laughed. "They fighting above okonomiyaki," she replied as the two headed for the chaos.

'Above?' Rift thought, trying to break down her half-complete English. 'Oh!' "You mean they are fighting over okonomiyaki."

"Hai," she replied in her feather-soft tones.

He kept an eye and an ear to her at all times, and no matter how softly she spoke, he seemed to have heard it. He nodded lightly and smiled for her before they entered the half-destroyed kitchen. "I would like my okonomiyaki with mushrooms and hot sauce please," he said and took a seat, rather, he sat on the floor kneeling by the low table.

An older tanuki wearing a blue robe with white muzzle and darker brown markings stared at him quizzically. "Kinoko to wasabi?"

"He can't understand you, Pops!" A bright yellow tanuki replied, tossing vegetables and rice into a wok. She was wearing more modern clothes, a boombox on the back of her shirt that said "Do the party!" in big bold print.

"Nihongo, Akiko-chan...! Nihongo!" he grunted in reply.

The girl rolled her eyes. "I'll have him speaking Eigo before he knows it." The yellow tanuki laughed a bit. "Sleep well?" She smiled at her friends.

"Yes…uh…hai," Rift added quickly, noting the beady glare from Natto-san. "Ano...uh...ohayou, Natto-sama..."

The old tanuki's expression shifted to something not quite accepting but more amiable. "Un. Ohayou, Lift-kun."

The girl tanuki grimaced a bit at the mispronunciation; she knew it to be intentional to the foreign guest. She just shook her head, though, and continued taking the morning's breakfast orders. "You want some veggie rice with the okonomiyaki?" Akiko asked.

"A little," Rift said. Akiko and her father Natto were certainly loud, a necessity when talking to the half-deaf hedgehog. Still, that wasn't always a blessing.

Yukiko knelt next to Rift by the table and slipped her arm through his. "Tamago to ika to kinoko to ichigo kudasai." Both Akiko and Natto gave the girl an odd look; egg, squid, mushrooms, and strawberries on her Japanese pizza? Weird...

"Hen daiyou...." the yellow tanuki found herself saying, then laughed. As an English major and teacher, she was used to speaking English as much as Japanese. She'd been trying to speak as much English as possible to help Yukiko bridge the gap to her new mate, but it seemed they were good at reading each other with just the barest bits of help. 'I guess love at first sight does exist.' "Okay, coming up. Breakfast okonomiyaki for me, heavy on the onions and cheese for Dad, and strawberries on the little snowflakes, and hot sauce for the orchid. Gotcha." She nodded to herself and flipped the rice a last time before pouring the basic okonomiyaki batter on the hot grill at her side.

"Arigatou!" Rift offered and leaned a bit against Yukiko. There were problems, of course, in choosing a love and life miles from his original home, but somehow, he'd make it work. 'Yukiko….' his mind said clearly, fully and truly in love.