Too Much of a Good Thing

by Tailsisreal

What's the only thing worse than Amy's obsession for Sonic? Maybe if Sonic were just as obsessed about her! But when Amy Rose receives a perfume that does just that, her Soniku isn't the only one seeing hearts... Amy/all males? hilarious oneshot.

It's me again! OK, I've been warning people all weekend on my profile and in PM's with those of you I hear from a lot that this story was coming soon, and here it finally is! This thing turned out at least twice as long as I thought it would be! Still, it isn't really easy to divide into chapters, so I decided to keep it a oneshot, albeit an incredibly long one. (What's the record for the longest oneshot anyways? Anyone know?) Regardless, as you should have been warned already, this story is not for the faint of laughter! Jokes and humorous situations are my specialty, and here I intend to prove it with the funniest Son/Amy fanfic ever! So, put on your diaper Superman style, find a really comfortable position, and prepare to spend the next hour dieing from uncontrollable laughter! (Seriously, if anyone can make it through this whole story without even smiling, I'll give them a hundred bucks, cold hard cash! Of course, you'll have to pay postage, and a writer's union tax, and other federal taxes, and...)

Too Much of a Good Thing

It was that time-honored and unavoidable tradition at Amy's house. But, seeing as how Vanilla and Cream claimed to be busy today, her guest list was down to one as the extremely vain bat sat cross-legged on a comfortable plush cushion in Amy's expansive, yet humble, domed house. Amy didn't mind much the usually abrasive personality of the supposedly nocturnal jewel thief, especially during their once a week sessions like this one. Besides, Vanilla and Cream not being around meant that this time Amy and Rouge had no shame in discussing topics that would be considered very inappropriate to both rabbits. Indeed, Amy was even now in the middle of bearing her soul to Rouge in that irresistible pleasure of 'girl talk'.

"So then, right after he saves me and he's holding me right in his arms in the most romantic embrace, you know what he does?" Amy continued her conversation that had already lasted the better part of the last hour.

"Let me guess, gal," Rouge interrupted with her sarcastic answer, "He asks if you're OK, then he drops you and runs off to chase Eggman again."

"Yes! That's exactly what he did!" Amy spoke as if she was shocked that Rouge had read her mind just now. "How did you…"

"Look, gal, this is only about the twentieth time I've heard you tell this little story, and that's only if I just count today," Rouge snidely informed the obsessed pink hedgehog.

Amy's shoulders shrugged as she plopped down defeated on a cushion next to the painfully blunt bat. "I know, and I'm sorry, Rouge," Amy said while her head sank to face the wood-planked floor of her small home. "I just wish… I mean… I just want Sonic to show that he loves me, too, ya know?"

"Ha! That's men for ya! They don't know a good thing unless it whacks them upside the head!" Rouge joked.

"Is that why Knuckles likes you so much? Because you can beat him in a fight sometimes?" Amy asked in an effort to learn more about the strange ways of men from the bat who seemed to have more experience than her.

"Knuckie? No way! He wouldn't tell me he cared for me if I was dying in his lap!" Rouge quickly responded without a moment's hesitation. "Besides, that method wouldn't even work in your case, honey. I imagine it must be hard to hit the fastest boyfriend in the universe with your giant mallet there anyways, although you do have a great deal of practice…" Rouge taunted Amy playfully in her typical style of conversations.

"I guess you're right," Amy admitted while she felt a few tears growing in her eyes at the revelation that she would never get Sonic to love her no matter how much she tried or how long she waited. "I'll never get my Soniku!" Amy shouted as the tears began pouring from the pink hedgehog's eyes like a pair of lawn sprinklers.

Rouge, quickly moving to avoid the waterworks from the distraught woman next to her, realized that her playful attitude had once again gotten someone's feelings hurt. Normally, Rouge wouldn't care and would see the weeping figure of Amy as a source of amusement, but, after a long woman-to-woman gossip session like they had just had, Rouge was annoyed to feel herself instead becoming guilty for causing the pink hedgehog's breakdown. The female bat, which was not quite as heartless as she would have some believe, decided to let Amy in on her little secret as a way to apologize. "You know, Knuckie isn't a real walk in the park to date, either. That's why I came up with this," Rouge announced as Amy instantly ceased crying and gazed at the bottle in Rouge's hands.

"That looks like some kind of perfume," Amy observed as she stared intently at the clear liquid in the glass bottle that was topped with a small, bulbous balloon used to spray the contents on the user through the narrow nozzle on the opposite end of the jar's neck.

"That's right, gal, but this isn't just any kind of perfume you can buy in a store somewhere," Rouge explained. "This stuff has a special scent that will make any guy that smells it go completely ga-ga!"

Amy's eyes grew massively large as she stared at the jar of magical perfume with sparkling irises filled with renewed hope. "You mean, if I put some of this on me before my date with Sonic tonight, he'll actually be romantic towards me?!" Amy asked in an excited tone.

"Will he be romantic?! Ha! Gal, one spray of this, and you will need that hammer of yours to keep Sonic off of you!" Rouge exaggerated.

Amy suddenly leaped across the small space that had separated the two women and stared at Rouge in her most irresistible, shimmering puppy-dog eyes. "Please, Oh please, Rouge! I just have to try it! Let me borrow it just for tonight, please?!" Amy begged, practically on her knees in desperation.

"OK, OK! Geeess, get a hold of yourself, gal! I suppose I can let you use it for a while, but only for tonight!" Rouge gave in to the pleading hedgehog despite her personal policy of never lending her stuff to anyone else. "Oh, but one thing about this stuff that you really need to know," Rouge added the final instructions as she handed the fragile bottle over to the excited pink hedgehog, "Make sure not to use too much of it or else it can get too strong, and, believe me, you don't want that! Just one spray is enough to make even Knuckles blush and talk funny whenever I'm around, so any more than that is probably overkill if you just want to attract your speedy little boyfriend and not end up sleeping with him."

"Don't worry. I know how to put on perfume, Rouge," Amy stated in a voice of mock hurt at being insulted that the bat thought she couldn't apply her own cosmetics properly.

"OK, gal. Just don't say I didn't warn you," Rouge commented before showing herself out the front door to Amy's home and flying off into the mid-day sun. Though Rouge clearly didn't enjoy daytime flights, her reputation as such a tough creature meant that she never complained about being active in the daytime, despite her species being mostly nocturnal.

Amy checked her clock on the wall in the kitchen/dining room portion of the single-room, downstairs half of her home. Noticing the time, she ran upstairs to her small bedroom at once, as she realized that her date with Sonic was supposed to start in only half an hour. Appling the small amount of makeup that she used when she wanted to look extra-beautiful, Amy eventually picked up the small bottle of perfume she had borrowed from Rouge and gave the balloon-like attachment a gentle squeeze. Out the small nozzle on the expensive bottle came a fine mist of clear liquid that floated towards the pink hedgehog and landed evenly on her entire body in a perfect coating. Amy smiled to herself at the flawless application of the mysterious perfume as she dreamed of finally getting to have a date with Sonic in which he might actually profess his love for her as well. That's when she noticed something strange about the perfume she had just applied. It smelled wrong, or, rather, it seemed to have no scent at all!

"Hey! Oooooohhhh!! That bat tricked me! This stuff doesn't even have a scent!" Amy bellowed angrily to the empty room. Fuming mad, Amy contemplated smashing the fragile bottle of fake perfume with her Piko Piko Hammer until another thought crossed her mind that forced her to reconsider.

"Wait, what if this stuff is just really watered down, and I was supposed to shake it first in order to actually get it to work?" Amy wondered. She remembered Rouge's warning against using too much of the mysterious potion, but figured that one more small spray couldn't hurt just to make sure she had put on enough. Giving the small, glass jar a short shaking, Amy again squeezed the bulbous button as she pointed the concoction at herself. Unfortunately, the vigorous shaking had made the contents of the jar very pressurized, so that, instead of a tiny misting of the liquid coming out like she had intended, Amy found herself choking in a small fog of the volatile perfume. Opening her bedroom's second story window, Amy quickly vented the expensive smog into the air outside as she continued to cough uncontrollably from the accidental over-application.

Finally able to breathe again after a minute, Amy realized yet again that, even wearing such a heavy dosage of the love fragrance, she couldn't smell even a hint of sweet scent from the borrowed perfume. "Arrrggghh! She really did trick me! I bet this stuff is nothing more than water in a fancy jar!" Amy shouted in a rage at having been fooled by the lying bat. However, a quick glance at her bedside clock on its nightstand snapped her out of her plans to get even with Rouge as she realized she needed to leave now for her date with Sonic or risk arriving late. Hurriedly, Amy gathered up her small handbag that carried her personal items for a long afternoon on the town and dashed up the road from her house towards Tails' workshop and her waiting boyfriend.

---

She arrived a few minutes later at Tails' and Sonic's shared home on a cliff side in the Mystic Ruins. Wasting no time, she rushed right up to the only door to the small, two-story house and gave a loud knock. At first, no one answered as Amy's heart sank in the thought of Sonic having purposefully run off to avoid their date again. A minute later, however, the wooden door opened to reveal a yellow fox standing in the doorway with a look of surprise and annoyance on his face as the two-tailed vulpine learned who his mystery visitor was.

"(sniff) Oh, hiya, Amy," Tails greeted his guest in a voice that sounded somewhat odd to the pink hedgehog. "You look really pretty ribght now."

Amy ignored the unusual compliment and distorted sound of Tails' voice and got right down to the reason she had shown up in the first place, "Heya, Tails. Is Sonic ready yet for our date tonight?"

"Ummmb… (sniff) I'm nobt sure if he'll be comebing, Amy," Tails informed the anxious hedgehog as he tried his best to pronounce his words correctly despite something clearly impeding his ability to talk.

"What do you mean he isn't coming?!" Amy shouted in a sudden rage at the familiar act of Sonic once again blowing off their date together.

"Well… I tink Sonic mentioned someb kind of (sniff) troubble in town and went to helb tem out," Tails attempted to make coherent sentences despite his great difficulty in speaking. Immediately following his last sentence, the yellow fox went into a short fit of sneezes that finally called Amy's attention to the fox's unusual behavior.

"Hey, Tails, are you all right?" Amy asked in concern that momentarily kept her rage in check. "You sound like you have a bad cold or something."

"Nobe, I'm fine, Amby," Tails massacred his words in his response to the pink hedgehog's concern. "My nobse is just all stobbed up because of my allerbgies."

"Hah! Some friend Sonic is! Here you are sick and me showing up for our date, and he isn't even here for either of us!" Amy immediately lost her concern and shifted back into her fury at the date-skipping, blue hedgehog. An almost visible red aura started to surround the pink hedgehog as her face contorted into a scowl made of pure malice in her rage towards the insensitive hedgehog. "You tell him whenever he gets back, Tails, that he's in deep trouble this time because tonight was supposed to be really special!!" Amy screamed at the alarmed fox before she turned on her heels and stormed off.

"Amy, waibt! (sniff) Don't go!" Tails tried to shout to the retreating and still incredibly angry hedgehog. Tails didn't have the slightest clue as to why he wanted the dangerously mad hedgehog to come back, but he felt like he was forgetting something important that had to do with him and her. Blowing his nose on a tissue from a rapidly diminishing box of them that he was carrying around today, Tails suddenly realized what it was he needed to do. He sighed as he noticed that he would now need to follow the already out of sight pink hedgehog. "Maybe if I can find Amby again, I can finably start to get feebing better…" Tails said to himself as he grabbed a gift for Amy that he had neglected earlier and started walking slowly down the path after her.

---

"I can't believe that Sonic!! Tonight was supposed to be the most romantic night of my life, and he runs off to help some random stranger instead!!" Amy shouted as she angrily stomped her feet on the dusty path on her way back home. She almost started wondering why she was so angry at being rejected again in the first place. It wasn't like this was the first time Sonic had ditched her on one of their dates, but what made it the most maddening was that Sonic always had a good excuse, too. Just once, Amy wished she could find a time in which there would be no emergencies and no excuses for the blue hedgehog to rush off. As she continued thinking about how wonderful it would be to have Sonic all to herself for once, a voice called out to her and got her attention.

"Whoa, you don't look too happy, Amy!" Knuckles spoke as he walked up to the still fuming hedgehog for his earlier position lying on a small hill beside the path that had obscured him from view until now. "Let me guess, Sonic ditch you again?" the red echidna teased while he crossed his arms and gave a playful smirk.

"None of you business, Knuckles!" Amy sharply retorted. She was not at all in the mood for the wise-cracking echidna right now.

"Whoa! Hold on there, Amy!" Knuckles quickly added as he noticed Amy's arm straighten to allow her Piko Piko Hammer to materialize in her hand and give the rude echidna a good beating. Suddenly, a strange look seemed to strike Knuckles' face for less than instant as he stopped a few steps away from Amy before continuing his greeting in a completely different tone of voice. "You know, Sonic may be a real jerk, but I'm actually a kinda nice guy if you get to know me," Knuckles unexpectedly said as he looked squarely in Amy's eyes with a handsome glare.

Amy was totally stunned by the strange actions and words from the normally reclusive guardian. "No way, Knuckles! I only love Sonic and that's final!" Amy quickly tried to stomp out the red echidna's growing passion.

"Why do you love him so much, anyways?" Knuckles responded, undaunted by Amy's flat out refusal. "It's not like he ever shows you that he loves you, too."

Amy was completely thrown off guard by the echidna's irrefutable argument. This whole conversation was starting to give her the creeps, so she decided to find out why Knuckles was acting so strange, "OK, Knuckles, now this is getting really weird! What's wrong with you today, anyways?"

Knuckles took a step closer to her as he delivered his cool and composed answer, "Nothing's wrong with me, except that I just found the girl of my dreams."

"You mean you and Rouge are finally…" Amy started to say before she was cut off.

"Rouge? Pah! The person I'm talking about is standing right here…" Knuckles spoke in a romantic tone as he advanced another couple of steps towards Amy.

"Hey! Stop right there, Romeo!" Amy shouted as she quickly backpedaled a few steps from the very strangely acting echidna. She immediately brandished her hammer as a deterrent to the advancing male and succeeded in making Knuckles step back about a foot to stay out of range of the giant hammer.

"Oh, come on, Amy! I'm not trying to do anything wrong!" Knuckles tried to get the pink hedgehog to drop her guard. "It's me, Knuckles, remember?"

"You sure aren't acting like Knuckles!" Amy shouted loudly to hopefully generate enough noise that Knuckles would be scared of someone else overhearing her yells.

"You want me to act more like myself? OK then, how about I fight with you and then, once I beat you, you might realize that I'm way better than some blue speed-junky who doesn't even care about you anyways!" Knuckles also shouted his challenge to the frightened Amy.

"I'm warning you, Knuckles! Don't try anything, or I'll put a lump on your head bigger than your pea sized brain!" Amy insulted the extremely suspicious echidna.

Knuckles smiled at the scalding remark as if it had been meant as a compliment. "That's great! I love a girl who can give me a challenge!" he shouted before rushing forward to disarm Amy before she could get her hammer in position for a swing. Knuckles only took a few steps before skidding to a halt, however, as the dirt form the path in front of him exploded into the air from a small blast. Stunned, Knuckles shifted his view from the small crater in the packed earth road to the figure that had launched the attack that had clearly caused the disturbance.

The still semi-obscured figure suddenly spoke up through the cloud of dust that was floating in the air past him. "If you're that desperate, how about a real challenge, Knuckles?"

Amy stared at the outline of her mysterious savior in the quickly dissipating cloud of dust. She couldn't make out much of the features, but she saw enough to know that it was definitely a hedgehog standing on another small hill near her and Knuckles that had come to her rescue. Her heart did a flip as she recognized the only hedgehog that always saved her from trouble as the one standing there right now. "Sonic!" she exclaimed happily as she ran over to the mysterious figure and hugged the hedgehog tightly.

"Grrrrr… Do you always have to mistake me for your blue boyfriend?" the strange figure spoke up in a voice of extreme annoyance at the unwanted physical contact.

"What?" Amy responded in a voice of puzzlement as she broke off her embrace and finally took a good look at the black and red hedgehog standing before her. "Shadow! What are you doing here?!" Amy called out in a voice of surprise mixed with a good deal of embarrassment.

Shadow leaned against a nearby tree as he crossed his arms and struck his classic pose of indifference in which he looked at the ground at his feet while his eyes remained closed before answering Amy's question, "If you must know, I was just out for a quick run when I heard your little quarrel with lover-boy here."

"Yeah, and you can just keep on running too, you girlfriend-stealing freak!" Knuckles angrily shouted from the path where he still stood in a fighting stance.

The blatant, but weak, insult caused Shadow to open one eye to stare at Knuckles in a look that conveyed that the dark hedgehog wasn't frightened in the least by the red echidna's threats. "Girlfriend-stealer? Since when did I give a care abou…" Shadow's last statement cut off prematurely as he suddenly opened both eyes fully and dropped his crossed arms to his sides as if he had just gotten electrocuted unexpectedly from behind. The strange look of shock ended half a moment later, though, as the black hedgehog quickly turned his head upwards again to meet eyes with a confused Amy still standing next to him. "On second thought," Shadow spoke towards the puzzled pink hedgehog, "I guess even an ultimate lifeform such as myself needs a little company every once and a while."

"Huh?!" Amy blurted out in a daze as she instinctively took a few steps back from the now strangely behaving Shadow as well. She noticed something very unsettling about Shadow as he slowly straightened up to his full height from leaning on the small tree behind him a second ago. Amy finally figured out what was out of place on the black hedgehog a second later; Shadow was smiling! The grin could easily be labeled as evil or disturbing, but Amy could tell that both of those descriptions didn't quite fit. No, the look uncharacteristic grin on Shadow's face now was decidedly… mischievous.

"Don't you go getting any ideas, Shadow! I saw her first!" Knuckles yelled from the road a few feet away.

"What are you two talking about?!" Amy screamed as the unreal scenario began to play out again. "I don't love either of you! I only love my Soniku!"

"Ha, you really love that loser? Come on, Amy, Sonic doesn't even compare to the Ultimate Lifeform himself!" Shadow gloated as he took a step closer to the unsettled pink hedgehog.

Amy instantly brought out her Piko Piko Hammer again for self-defense, but she knew that, even if she was lucky enough to defeat Knuckles, she was no match for Shadow if he decided to come after her. Luckily enough for her, however, Knuckles didn't seem to register the fact that no one except Sonic could even come close to defeating Shadow as the red echidna quickly dashed up from the road and struck the black hedgehog with a cheap shot to his exposed, white-furred chest.

Shadow went flying from the brutal and unexpected attack and managed to skid to a halt on his feet a good distance away as he clutched his bruised abdomen with one hand. "So, that's the way you want it to be, Knuckles? Well, that's fine by me!" Shadow shouted as he glared dangerously at the red echidna standing where he had been moments ago. No sooner had the last of his words escaped his mouth, then Shadow disappeared in an ebony blur that connected directly with the echidna's torso and launched the stunned Knuckles back down to crash on the dirt path below.

"Grrrrr…" Knuckles growled as he slowly picked himself back up off the dusty ground from his impact. "OK, Shadow, how about we settle this like real men! I challenge you to a good, old-fashioned brawl right here! Winner gets to keep Amy, agreed?"

"Sounds fair to me," Shadow confidently accepted as he looked down the small slope at the angry echidna.

"No cheap shots, though! The first person who cheats is the automatic loser!" Knuckles added to the terms of the fight to balance it more in his favor.

"I don't need to cheat to beat you," Shadow taunted the red echidna as he walked down the hill to assume a fighting stance right in front of the eager Knuckles.

"Hold on, you two! Don't I get a say in this?!" Amy shouted at the two combatants before they clashed in a battle for her hand.

"No!" both battlers spoke up in unison as they turned their heads to direct their answers towards the worried pink hedgehog who wisely decided to keep her distance from the soon to erupt fight. Turning to face each other again, both Knuckles and Shadow dashed straight at each other in a flurry of punches, jabs, blocks, and counters that would have put even the heavyweight boxing champion of the world to shame.

Amy watched the brutal duel for a little while before it occurred to her that this was her chance to escape. Quickly, she turned around and ran away from the fighting men as she made for her house in the most direct path possible via cross-country instead of using the winding path that she customarily followed. However, no sooner had she gotten to the bottom of the first hill that separated her from the brawling Knuckles and Shadow, then a rush of blue wind swept past her and stopped her in her tracks. Looking up at the source of the quick breeze, Amy burst into tears as she saw the welcome face of Sonic the Hedgehog standing directly in her path before her. "Sonic! Oh, Sonic, I knew you'd come rescue me!" Amy shouted happily.

"What's goin' on around here? I just came back from stoppin' Eggman from trashin' the city, and it sounds like he's already here with more bots tearin' up the place!" Sonic asked the clearly frazzled Amy.

"It's Shadow and Knuckles! I think they're fighting over who gets to marry me!" Amy told Sonic as she rushed over to him and squeezed him tightly in a comforting hug before she started shedding tears of joy at her boyfriend's timely appearance.

"They're what?!" Sonic exclaimed as he refused to believe what his ears had just heard. "Look, Amy, I don't know what's goin' on around here, but I doubt that…" Sonic's voice suddenly trailed off as Amy felt the blue hedgehog's body quickly stiffen and then relax again.

Amy was worried at the strange reaction from Sonic and quickly raised her head to look at the blue hedgehog's eyes for a sign of what was wrong. She was shocked, however, to find Sonic glancing down lovingly at her as well as their eyes met. "Sonic? Is something wrong?" Amy began to worry again.

Sonic didn't respond immediately as he instead stared into her eyes for the longest time. Then, Sonic's arms returned Amy's embrace as the blue hedgehog gently hugged the frightened Amy as he tried to comfort her with his words, "Don't worry, Amy. I can't blame them for lovin' someone as beautiful as you."

Amy's eyes lit up at the surprising compliment. "Do you really think I'm pretty, Sonic?" Amy asked as she half doubted that Sonic could have ever acted this romantic.

"Of course ya are, Amy. That's just one of the reasons why I love ya so much," Sonic answered in a soft, gentle voice that instantly melted the pink hedgehog's heart.

"Oh, Sonic! And all this time, I didn't even know if you cared!" Amy shouted happily as she hugged Sonic tighter. It was almost too good to be true for the pink female hedgehog. Sonic did love her back, and now he was showing his affection for her just like in all her constant daydreams of her and him together.

During this romantic scene, Knuckles and Shadow had continued their fighting on the other side of the hill, oblivious to Amy's disappearance and Sonic's return. Suddenly, a powerful, lightning fast uppercut from the dark hedgehog somehow made it through Knuckles' defenses in less than the blink of an eye and sent the red echidna sailing through the air over the small hill that separated the brawlers from Amy and Sonic. Shadow quickly pursued his airborne foe over the hill as well with the intention of finishing the outclassed Knuckles, when he noticed the scene of Amy in Sonic's arms. So shocked was he by the sight of the pink and blue hedgehogs in a tight embrace, that Knuckles actually landed on top of him in his distraction. The angry echidna now had Shadow trapped under his weight and was about to retaliate for his being launched by the ebony hedgehog's earlier attack with a vicious punch of his own when Knuckles also noticed Sonic and Amy hugging nearby. Both combatants froze in their positions as they realized that their presence had gone unnoticed by both other hedgehogs, and, in a temporary unspoken truce, Knuckles and Shadow slowly hid themselves behind a short bush as they eavesdropped on the couple a short distance away.

"I've always loved ya, Amy," they overheard Sonic say as he stared into Amy's eyes with his own crystal-clear green irises.

"Oh, Sonic! I've waited so long to hear you say that!" Amy joyously remarked as her own eyes sparkled as if reflecting all the stars in the night sky, even now in mid-afternoon.

Then, Knuckles and Shadow witnessed something so unnatural, so out of character, that both of them, even Shadow, almost lost their lunch in the bush they were hiding behind. While the blue and pink hedgehogs stood together in their embrace gazing lovingly in each other's eyes, slowly Sonic's head leaned over to Amy's until both of their small black noses were touching, and, with the gentlest and most subtle movement ever, he brought his lips down to meet Amy's in a passionate kiss. To their dismay, Knuckles and Shadow saw Amy's body go completely limp in Sonic's hands as he held his lips to hers in a long, incredibly sweet kiss which neither hedgehog seemed to want to ever end. But end it would, since this action was enough to send both Knuckles and Shadow into a frenzy at the blue hedgehog who was trying to steal their girl while they had been distracted fighting for her.

"Why that little…" Knuckles began to talk as his volume rose to yell at the lip-locked couple. He was stopped by a gloved hand covering his mouth as Shadow used his other one to give Knuckles the 'Shhh…' gesture. Knuckles grabbed Shadow's hand and forced it off his mouth angrily as he looked at the black and red hedgehog next to him to speak in a low whisper only audible to those two, "You got a plan, Shadow?"

Shadow gave a short nod in the affirmative before explaining in the lowest voice possible his proposed strategy, "We'll both team up on that blue date-snatcher and take him out of the picture first. Then, we can go back to our little contest once he's out of the way."

"Sounds good to me," Knuckles agreed in an equally low whisper. "Except, how are we gonna jump Sonic?"

"You'll do that like you did me," Shadow quickly replied with an evil smirk crossing his face, "from above!" Immediately after finishing his loudly whispered remark, Shadow picked up Knuckles with both hands, stood up from behind the low shrubbery that they had chosen to hide behind, and launched Knuckles into the air with a fierce toss so that he came down right on top of the two unsuspecting hedgehogs.

"Ha! Take this you date-stealer!" Knuckles shouted as he pried the stunned Sonic apart from Amy's embrace and punched the blue hedgehog square in the chin.

"Owww! Hey, what was that for, Knucklehead?!" Sonic angrily shouted at the rudely interrupting echidna. Before he got an answer, however, Sonic felt a quick couple of taps on his left shoulder and instinctively turned around to face whoever was behind him. He was rewarded for his curiosity by another swift punch to his face from a white glove attached to a black blur of motion.

"So nice of you to turn the other cheek, Sonic," Shadow taunted as the blue hedgehog took a couple dizzied steps back before regaining his balance.

"Shadow?! What's goin' on here?!" Sonic shouted as he wiped a small trickle of blood off his cheek from the second hit by the creature that seemed to be a dark version of himself.

"You know what's goin' on, pal!" Knuckles furiously bellowed from behind Sonic again. "You had your chance with Amy before now, so now it's our turn!"

"Ya really think that Amy would fall for you, Knucklehead?!" Sonic audibly burned the already enraged echidna. "And what about you, Shadow? I thought being the Ultimate Lifeform meant that no one else was good enough for ya!" Sonic directed his next insult towards the scowling, black-furred hedgehog still in front of him.

"No, Sonic," Shadow coolly countered the scalding remark, "As the Ultimate Lifeform, I can have anything that I want!"

"Over my dead body, Mr. Emo!" Sonic shot back with the childish, but effective, insult.

"That does it! I'll show you the true meaning of pain, Sonic!" Shadow yelled as he lost his volatile temper at Sonic's verbal attacks. Both he and Knuckles rushed at the blue hedgehog at the same time and collided in a huge cloud of kicks, punches, dust, and the occasional yelp of pain from one of the three fighters.

Amy stood back from the scene completely flabbergasted at the sight before her, and Sonic's kiss a second ago. Her mind finally began to piece together what was happening here, and the conclusion it reached shocked Amy even more. Only one thing could make Knuckles and Shadow fight over her, AND make Sonic act so romantic as to even kiss her on the lips. Amy realized now that Rouge's love perfume was indeed very strong and that the female bat's warning against using too much was also just as true as the potency of the fragrance itself. She was just starting to rack her brain for a way to stop the three men from killing each other over her when a mechanical arm came from nowhere and snatched her up off the ground. Instinctively, Amy immediately hollered out for help, "AAAAHHH! Sonic, help me!"

"Whoooo ho ho ho ho ho! Sonic's too busy fighting right now to save you, Amy!" Eggman's voice called out from his hovering chair to which the mechanical arm attachment now brought Amy alongside to talk with the evil genius face-to-face.

"What do you want from me, Eggman?!" Amy yelled as she struggled to free herself from the metal pincer's grip.

"Why, my dear Amy, I only want your cooperation as my hostage to force Sonic to fight my newest invention!" Dr. Eggman boasted as he looked straight at the dangling pink hedgehog as the other three men kept on fighting, oblivious to Amy's cries for help.

"This is a really bad time right now, Dr. Eggman!" Amy informed the meddling Doctor. "You'll have to kidnap me some other day!"

"Nonsense! Why wait until later when you're already… so…" Robotnik's voice faded away as his facial expression changed from that of an evil determination to sow chaos across the globe to that of a love-struck puppy seeing his true love for the first time. "So…, beautiful…" Eggman finished his sentence as he directed his crane to bring the pink hedgehog closer to his levitating chair and him.

"Huh?! Oh, no! Not you, too!" Amy screamed as the mechanical arm swung her nearer to the google-eyed Eggman who now took a small spray bottle and squirted some of its contents into his mouth as a quick way to help him seem more appealing to the kidnapped Amy by eliminating any bad breath he might have.

Before the capture crane could deposit Amy into Eggman's floating chair, however, a Chaos Spear blasted through a joint in the deployable arm which destroyed the machine and sent Amy plummeting towards the ground where she was caught by Sonic. As the heroic hedgehog placed Amy back on her own two feet again safely, a jealous Knuckles came over and shoved Sonic out of the way and began dusting her dress off with his palms.

"No fair! I kidnapped that pink brat fair and square! She belongs to me!" Eggman furiously yelled as his chair descended to meet the other three men that had teamed up to save Amy from him a second ago.

"Ya gotta be kindin' me, guys! Amy's been my girlfriend for who knows how long now! She's mine!" Sonic spoke up as the four men circled around in a loose huddle.

"Not anymore, Sonic!" Knuckles broke in, "You ditched her, and I was there for her when she needed me! That means that I'm the only one who deserves Amy!"

"I think everyone is forgetting who the Ultimate Lifeform here is!" Shadow blurted out in an aggravated tone.

"I've had about enough of you and your 'Ultimate Lifeform' crap!" Knuckles shouted in a louder volume.

"Besides," Eggman burst in, "If it wasn't for my grandfather, then you wouldn't even exist! That means that I'm the only one here who is superior to Shadow, and so I get to keep Amy!" the devious Doctor tried to use his twisted logic to get his way.

"Forget it, Egghead! Amy's mine, and it's gonna stay that way!" Sonic hollered in the loudest voice yet.

"Like you could even stop me!" Shadow remarked to Sonic and the other two men as well.

Amy stood horrified as the four men kept on bickering and trading insults to one another in an all-out verbal war. Like most situations in which angry men collide, this one also quickly disintegrated into a huge battle royal with Sonic and Shadow speeding around at supersonic speeds to deliver lightning fast blows to the other two combatants as well as each other, Eggman quickly dodging with his chair and firing a great variety of explosive ordinance from his well armed mechanical pod, and Knuckles launching vicious punches at anything that moved into arm's length. Not knowing what to do to stop the love-crazed men from fighting, Amy remained rooted to her spot safely on the perimeter of the battlefield as she watched the brawl unfold. That's just when she noticed a presence right next to her and turned to see Tails just landing behind her as his twin tails quit their flight-sustaining rotation. Amy's eyes suddenly widened to the size of saucers as she also observed the single item Tails now held in his hands, a bouquet of almost a dozen, pristine red roses.

"Hi again, Amby," Tails spoke while his allergy-tormented nose still caused the fox to mispronounce his words. "(sniff) I brought thebse for ya."

Amy stared in disbelief at the two-tailed fox in front of her as he proceeded to go into another short sneezing fit. She made no attempt to take the beautiful bouquet of flowers from the suffering fox as Amy realized that the perfume had probably already gotten to Tails as well.

Tails finally stopped his rapid sneezing and again tried to clear his nose by blowing into a fresh Kleenex. "I tink I'bm allergic to robses," Tails muttered as he extended the flowers to give them to the mortified Amy.

Amy didn't take the flowers from Tails. Instead, she tilted her head back towards the sky and screamed her lungs out. All the surrounding men froze it the middle of whatever they were doing as the completely overwhelmed pink hedgehog ran full speed towards her house to escape the convention of love-crazed men that were chasing her.

Upon seeing Amy run off, Sonic, Knuckles, Eggman, and Shadow all stopped fighting immediately and dashed off in pursuit of the pink hedgehog, making slow progress, however, because they continued to focus more on attacking each other instead of catching up to the quickly disappearing Amy. Tails found himself suddenly all alone in just the space of less than a minute where he had been in the most active part of Mobius that same time ago. "Did I say somebting wrong?" Tails asked the deserted area around him in a very confused tone as he tried to figure out what had been going on here and why Amy had screamed and run off like that.

---

Amy kept running as fast as she could and managed to reach the front door of her house before any of the men chasing her could intercept and stop her from escaping. Quickly, she unlocked the heavy wooden door and dashed inside, slamming and re-locking the front door behind her. As she leaned against the solid oak door panting heavily from her mad scramble to safety, Amy heard the sounds of the mob of men approaching her home in pursuit. She prudently backed away from the door to her home just as a loud scuffle was heard breaking out on her doorstep with occasional sporadic, loud knocking on her door from a brawler who had a momentary free fist to use on something other than another person.

Amy stood terrified in the center of her one-room downstairs living room combo kitchen/dining room. She covered her ears and tucked her head against her chest as the overwhelmed hedgehog attempted to shut out the noises from the fighting outside. Surprisingly, Amy discovered a minute later that her pointless action actually did seem to help as she uncovered her ears at the welcome sound of silence. The inviting peace, however, scared Amy even more as she wondered if all the boys outside had really managed to kill each other. Hesitantly, Amy opened her front door to check on the unusually quiet group of men. She half expected to find all of them passed out and bruised from head-to-toe on her lawn, but Amy instead saw no one except for a bruised blue hedgehog that noticed the open door and staggered towards her.

"Amy, ya gotta help me," Sonic weakly spoke as he clutched his injured shoulder and continued to walk closer to the shocked pink hedgehog. "They got me good that last time, Amy. Please, I need ya to help me."

Amy instinctively reached out to pull the injured Sonic inside with her, when a laser blast aimed right at the blue hedgehog caused Sonic to drop the wounded act and immediately dodge the searing beam of light. Witnessing her boyfriend's flawless reaction to the threat, Amy realized at once that Sonic really hadn't been injured at all and was only trying to deceive her so he could get inside.

"Whooooo ho ho ho ho! Nice try, hedgehog! That trick was so evil that even I was impressed!" Eggman shouted as his chair carried him down and into sight between Sonic and Amy at the open door. "Now, let me handle the rest!" the maniacal Doctor said as he turned his chair around and started floating towards Amy with a large toothy grin across his face.

"Ewww! Not in your dreams, Eggman!" Amy composed herself to retaliate with the verbal refusal before again slamming her front door shut and locking it securely behind her. No sooner had she accomplished sealing off the entrance, then the door began violently pounding at the force of someone trying to break it down to get to the pink hedgehog. Realizing that the door wouldn't hold forever, Amy immediately ran to the other end of the ground floor level in her home and unclasped the ancient lock on her rarely used back door from her kitchen to her backyard. Amy threw the door open with the intention of escaping unnoticed from her house, but, no sooner had the backup door opened, then a figure standing a few feet away stopped Amy in her tracks.

"Come on now, Amy," Shadow coolly addressed the stunned Amy as he simply stood a couple feet off in a stance that belied no concern whatsoever from him about anyone interfering with his chance to impress the pink hedgehog he was so suddenly smitten by, "Why don't you let me in, and I'll protect you."

"Not a chance, Shadow!" Amy angrily replied as she proceeded to slam this door closed as well. Barely had the latch for the door clicked shut then Amy heard a painful slam coming from the other side. Hazarding a glance out her kitchen window, Amy saw Shadow's body, which had been plastered to the doorway, slowly peel itself off the wooden surface it had impacted in his failed dash to get inside before Amy could shut the door.

Amy was almost panicked by now. She realized that any second now the desperate men would tear her house apart in order to get to her. Scared of what would happen when they did break through, Amy ran upstairs into her small bedroom to hide. But, to her dismay, as she frantically glanced about to identify a suitable spot to conceal herself, Amy came face-to-face with Tails who had flown in the open window to her room she had used to ventilate the perfume out earlier.

"Hiyahh…aahh… Aaaah-Chooo…, (sniff) Amby," Tails greeted the terrified pink hedgehog as he landed in the middle of her room during his loud sneeze. "You forgot your robses when ya ran away a second ago," the allergy tormented fox explained as he again held out the flowers to the stunned Amy.

Realizing that she would never get the two-tailed fox to leave now that he had made it inside, Amy quickly developed a plan of action to quarantine the runny-nosed kitsune. "Oh, you're so right, Tails! Where are my manners?" Amy tried her best to sound convincing, even though she could still hear some sarcasm in her weak imitation of a pleasant voice. "My, but flowers this pretty need to go in a vase."

"A base?" Tails failed to accurately pronounce the word as his temperamental nose continued to slaughter his spoken English.

"Yes, could you please get my special vase from my closet for me, Tails?" Amy asked as she pointed to the small door across the hall upstairs from her own room.

"I suppobse I could," Tails reluctantly volunteered as he opened the door to the walk-in closet filled with clothes, cleaning supplies, and other random household items. "(sniff) Whab's it look like?" Tails asked as he stepped into the small, dark room.

"Oh, it's probably in the verrrry back," Amy answered him as she slowly walked up to the open closet door.

Tails rummaged through a couple items on the rear shelves with his back turned to the scheming female hedgehog. A small cloud of dust he accidentally kicked up from the long untouched boxes in the rear of the closet further aggravated his sinuses as the poor kit launched into a long fit of rapid sneezes during his search for the vase. "Amby…, Aaaahhh-Chooo! (sniff) Are you sure tat the base is in here somebwhere?" Tails asked over his shoulder when he suddenly heard the closet door slam shut and lock from the outside. "Hey, Amby! Let me oubt of here!" Tails frantically shouted as he rushed back to the outline of the door in the now pitch-black closet, tripping about halfway there and falling in a heap on a pile of old, unused clothes.

"Sorry, Tails!" Amy's voice came through the locked door in front of the frightened fox, "But this is for your own good!"

"Wait, Amy!" Tails shouted as he struggled to get to his feet and run to the door less than a foot in front of him. "Dobn't leave me in here with all this dubst and these robses! They'll dribe my allebgies crazy!" The pleading kit managed to stand up again and rushed towards the light coming in through the cracks around the closet door, but he accidentally stubbed his toe on a heavy, wooden chest that he couldn't avoid in the darkness and fell into a bookshelf filled with random trinkets that proceeded to rain down on top of the dazed kitsune.

Amy heard Tails' cries of distress and the loud yelp he made upon his foot's forceful contact on the large chest as she cringed at the resulting crashes and shattering noises that followed immediately afterwards. More than anything, Amy wanted to open the door and check to see if Tails had been hurt, but she had already made that mistake twice before with the other men still outside and wasn't about to risk letting Tails get loose from that improvised closet prison cell. Listening closely to with her ear up to the door, Amy heard the relentless sneezing of the captive fox as the closet air was no doubt now full of dust from his careless disturbance a second ago. Feeling incredibly guilty for keeping the fox locked up in there despite his already bad allergies today, Amy found some comfort in the sounds of Tails endless sneezing. At least it meant that the fox hadn't been seriously hurt in his fall.

Not wanting to stand by the closet door and feel guilty anymore, however, Amy quietly made her way back downstairs to her living room again. The pink hedgehog was incredibly relieved to see that, although still being hammered mercilessly by brutal attacks from the men outside, both doors to her small home were still miraculously holding. Her momentary false sense of security was shattered seconds later as the wooden-planking that made up her home's floor suddenly bulged upwards from a powerful impact from below. Before the frightened pink hedgehog could begin to wonder what was going on, however, another blow burst open a giant hole in the floorboards as a dirt-encrusted Knuckles suddenly emerged from the opening into Amy's living room directly in front of her.

"Ha! See, Amy?! I'm the smart one for once! I burrowed through the ground and came up right under your house with an escape tunnel!" Knuckles gloated as he crossed his shovel-claw clad arms in pride at his accomplishment. "Now we can both escape together!"

"Knuckles?! Why did you… I mean, how did you… Oh, never mind!" Amy was at a loss for words at the unprecedented appearance of the red, lovesick echidna from underground. That's when a slightly repulsive odor started wafting up into the room from the gaping hole in the floor from which Knuckles had emerged. "Phee-yew! Knuckles, what is that smell?!" Amy's curiosity momentarily overweighed her impulse to flee.

"Huh? Oh, that! I might have accidentally dug through a few pipes while I was under your house, but it's not too bad," Knuckles mentioned with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Gross!" Amy squealed as she recognized at least one of the pipes which Knuckles must have accidentally broken that would produce such a vile smell. Before the conversation could go any farther, however, both doors to Amy's house finally gave way simultaneously to admit the rest of the men into Amy's living room as the pink hedgehog backed up into the stairway to her upper floor. Without so much as a word to each other or to her, Sonic, Shadow, Eggman, and Knuckles slowly advanced on the terrified Amy.

"Ooohhh…" Amy moaned in fright as the mob of love-stricken men came ever closer, each with longing eyes all staring right at her own. Even the expression on Sonic's face seemed to unsettle Amy as, for the only time in her life, the pink hedgehog wished that her boyfriend would leave her alone instead of being romantic. The heels of her feet struck the first step in the stairwell as Amy froze in terror. She knew that she would never make it up the stairs fast enough without turning around, and the last thing she wanted to do was to look away so that one of the lovesick males could grab her. As the circle of men silently closed in around her, Amy could take it no more and dissolved into tears where she stood as she silently wailed for someone to miraculously show up and save her, except it would have to be someone other than Sonic this time.

Providence, as it would have it, seemed to hear the panicked hedgehog's pleas and took pity on poor Amy. Hearing a noise behind her right as the four guys into front of her got within arm's length, Amy quickly felt herself being yanked up the stairs by a powerful grip on her shirt's collar. Before the pink hedgehog could react to her sudden capture from behind, the ground where she had stood moments ago erupted into a cloud of thick smoke that poured from a small, cylindrical device that hadn't been there moments ago. The ensuing smokescreen sent the gathered mob of love-struck males into a disarray of coughing, then yelling, and finally a blind free-for-all in the pink hedgehog's first floor living room.

"Care to tell me what's going on here, gal?" a familiar voice snapped Amy back to her senses as she noticed that her unexpected savior had once again set her down on her own two feet at the top of the stairwell leading to her noisy and smoke filled living room. Amy quickly turned her head to look at the ivory-furred bat standing with arms crossed in annoyance next to her as the pink hedgehog burst into a fresh outpouring of tears in her gratitude for the timely appearance of Rouge.

"Rouge! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Amy shouted as she suddenly grabbed the bat in a tight hug that could have broken the spine of most other Mobians.

"Hey! Take it easy, girl, or else next time I'll just let them capture you!" Rouge complained loudly as her angry voice served to snap the emotional hedgehog back to normal. "Which reminds me," Rouge continued once Amy immediately released her and the bat proceeded to straighten the heart shaped emblem on her chest, "Why are all of those guys chasing you in the first place? You didn't use too much of that perfume I gave you like I warned you not to, did you?"

Amy couldn't voice a response right away and instead nodded her head once slowly. Then, upon seeing the enraged look on the female bat's face, Amy quickly launched into a frantic explanation of everything that had happened. "It's not my fault, Rouge! I put that perfume on just like you said, but I figured that it didn't work because I couldn't smell anything so I tried shaking the bottle and then…"

"Hold up, gal!" Rouge interrupted Amy's impossibly fast explanation, "Since when did I say that you had to be able to smell the perfume for it to be working?!"

"Huh?" Amy spoke in a puzzled tone as her face made a matching expression of non-understanding. "But, I though all perfumes have to have a scent because that's how they wo…"

Rouge stopped Amy's sentence at the ending with a loud slap from one of her gloved hands hitting herself in the head at Amy's tragic misunderstanding. "I swear, girl, you must be blond underneath all that pink fur of yours!" Rouge made her usual insults before getting to the truth of the matter. "That perfume I gave you does have a scent, and it's a really strong one, too!"

"But I don't…" Amy started to disagree before Rouge interrupted her again.

"Of course you don't smell anything, gal! That perfume is actually a pheromone that only guys can detect, and it makes them go completely berserk if you use too much of it!" Rouge finally stated the truth to the confused hedgehog.

Amy suddenly went completely quiet as her mind registered the meaning of Rouge's final statement. Slowly, her expression changed from that of bewilderment to pure embarrassment as the obvious answer to her questions became painfully clear. Completely humiliated by the late revelation, Amy found herself blushing profusely as she clasped both hands behind her back comically. "Oooooooh," was the only word to escape Amy's mouth as the pink hedgehog wished that she could somehow just melt away into the floor at her feet to escape the ridicule of the present bat.

Luckily, although she would have surely embarrassed Amy to no end had it been in a slightly different situation, Rouge forewent the pink hedgehog's humiliation to instead deal with the problem at hand. "OK, gal. I guess we're in this together now, so I need you to tell me just how much of that stuff you used on yourself so I can…" Rouge began to interrogate Amy before she in turn was interrupted by a loud banging coming from the closet door right next to the chatting women in the upstairs hallway. "What the…?" Rouge exclaimed at the sudden noise.

From over the banging of the door, both women started to hear a voice calling out in a loud yell from someone obviously just on the other side of the closet doorway. "Hey! Is thabt you, Amby?! Sobbody let me out obf here!" Tails could be heard shouting through the wooden entrance to his pitch black, and not very allergy friendly, prison. His voice cut off a moment later in a loud cluster of sneezes as Rouge glanced away from the door and back at Amy in a look that betrayed a mix of shock and amusement.

"Don't tell me that you even used enough to make little foxy here go all foxy?!" Rouge half-rebuked, half-inquired.

"Actually, I think that Tails has got it the worst of them all," Amy stated in remorse at having to confess yet another mistake to the bat who would no doubt already never let her live this down. "He's the one I saw first today, and now he keeps chasing me around with a bouquet of roses!"

Rouge didn't make a quick wisecrack at this new information like Amy had expected. Instead, the white-furred bat just lowered her head into her palms and shook it back and forth with a loud, drawn-out groan. "Oooohhh… How do you always manage to get yourself into these messes, gal?" Rouge posed the rhetorical question as she began to think about a plan of action.

Amy finally had enough of Rouge's snide remarks and quickly took her opportunity to insult the unsympathetic bat right back. "Hey! At least I'm not always getting locked up in some high-security vault when a bomb is about to blow up the whole place!" Amy vehemently replied.

"Cool it, gal," Rouge blew off Amy's scalding insult with a quick, emotionless vocal command to the enraged hedgehog. "Besides, that's only happened to me twice!"

"Actually, it's three times if you count Space Colony Ark!" Amy unhelpfully reminded the annoyed bat.

"Do you want my help or not, gal?" Rouge silenced the pink hedgehog who was beginning to aggravate her with a taste of her own bitter medicine. "OK, as far as I see it, the only person who can help us now is the same person that I got that perfume from in the first place," Rouge brought the catfight to an end by returning to the subject at hand.

"And who was that?" Amy asked in a voice that was mostly genuinely curious, but a slight hint of venom still traveled in her words.

"There's only one gal who's been around more than me and has more experience with men than I do, honey," Rouge offered the quick riddle for Amy to figure out rather than giving a straight response.

The riddle wasn't too hard to decipher for the pink hedgehog, however, seeing as how only one other female that she knew even came close to possibly fitting the bill. "No, you can't mean…" Amy tried to provide the answer to the clue, but her voice failed her at the mention of the individual's name. In Amy's mind it just couldn't be true. There was no way that she, of all people, could be responsible for manufacturing such a potent love potion. Yet, at every denial Amy tried to raise in defense of the impossibility, the stunned female hedgehog realized that it had to be true, since it was the only answer that made any sense at all, no matter how improbable.

Amy was suddenly snapped out of her stupor just then by a call from Rouge standing in the open window of Amy's upstairs bedroom. "Hey, gal! Mind if we get out of here before those boys stop attacking each other and come looking for us?!" Rouge advocated the prudent hasty retreat. Amy, still in shock at the revelation of the creator of the pheromone laced perfume, obediently grabbed hold of the ivory bat's waist as Rouge flew both of them safely out the upstairs window down to the dirt road below. Without wasting a moment, both women dashed down the path away from Amy's house in which the noises from the fight downstairs and trapped kit in the upstairs closet could still be heard almost halfway to their destination, a little, one-story hut that was only occupied by two individuals, one of which Amy desperately hoped could help her break the perfume's spell on the crazed men.

---

They arrived minutes later at the quaint, humble dome which served as the home for the rabbit family. In a clear hurry, they ran up to the front door of the small hovel and both knocked on the door furiously to be let in by the house's occupants. The door was quickly answered by a small bunny who looked a little frightened at the desperate knocking from both women on the run.

"Amy? Rouge? Is something wrong?" Cream asked worriedly in her usual high-pitched voice.

Both visitors quickly shoved their way inside through the partially open door without a single word in response until they got safely inside the small, one-room house. "Hurry, Cream! Shut and lock the door before they get here!" Amy shouted the urgent command to the now frightened young bunny.

"Before who gets here? Is something bad about to happen?" Cream continued to hound the couple of guests with questions as the easily frightened young rabbit immediately began to envision an army of Eggman's robots coming to destroy her home.

"Maybe, that is if your mother can't help out little Miss Overdose here," Rouge unhelpfully commented as she gave a quick, annoyed glance at Amy who had already sat down on the small sofa in the center of the carpeted common area at the front of the rabbit family's tiny house. Just as Rouge finished speaking, a noise came from the small, walled off kitchen as a much older rabbit came around the corner to see what the sudden commotion was all about.

"Cream, honey, who was at the… Oh, why hello Amy! And it's so nice to see you too, Rouge!" Vanilla greeted her guests with a friendly smile as she finally left the kitchen and saw the two uninvited guests with her own eyes. "Why, whatever brings you two all the way out here? I'm terribly sorry that Cream and I couldn't attend our little meeting today, but we've been busy taking care of things around the house, so…"

"Arrgghh! There's no time for this!" Rouge interrupted the polite host as she decided to get straight to the point of their important visit. "Our hopeless romantic here just got herself into a big mess, and we need your help to get her out of it," Rouge calmed down slightly as she vaguely explained the situation to the mother rabbit.

Vanilla had been naturally stunned at Rouge's rude interruption, but, upon hearing what the bat had to say, she immediately dismissed any negative feelings towards the rude guest as she realized that whatever brought those two here to her house, together no less, must be a serious matter indeed. "Amy, honey, what happened?!" Vanilla asked in a noticeably frightened tone now as well.

"Well, Rouge showed me this perfume she said would make Sonic love me, and I begged her to let me borrow it for my date with him tonight," Amy began the long explanation. "So, she let me use it just this once and…" the pink hedgehog suddenly found herself cut off by a comment from the person standing next to her.

"That's a mistake I won't ever make again," Rouge matter-of-factly burst in with annoyance clearly present in every word of her last sentence.

"Hey! That's not helping anything, you know!" Amy again lost her temper at the aggravating interruptions from the rude bat.

"Sorry, gal. I didn't know you were so sensitive," Rouge mocked Amy further.

"I'll show you sensitive, you flying, jewel-obsessed, b…" Amy started yelling at Rouge. The stresses from being chased by every man she knew all day, as well as the female bat's constant teasing, had pushed Amy to her breaking point as she prepared to wallop Rouge over the head with her hammer that suddenly appeared in her hands like magic.

"Amy, please, calm down!" Cream shouted across the room to the enraged pink hedgehog. The poor bunny seemed about ready to cry from Amy's yelling a second ago as the sight of the scared little bunny froze Amy's blazing fury in an instant.

Rouge also felt her own growing anger subside quite a bit as well, but she still felt resolved to find out how Amy had meant to finish her final sentence. "I'm a jewel-obsessed what, gal? Go ahead, say it! I dare you to finish that last word of yours right now in front of Cream and everyone!" Rouge tempted the seemingly paralyzed hedgehog.

"Now, Rouge, I don't think that Amy needs to tell us what she was about to say. She probably didn't mean it anyw…" Vanilla tried to stop the unstable hedgehog from revealing the horrible word in front of her innocent daughter.

"Bat. I was going to say bat," Amy calmly spoke up. Rouge rolled her eyes at the obvious lie as Vanilla breathed a huge sigh of relief at the close call. Cream, noticing the wide difference in reactions to what seemed like just an ordinary word that she used all the time, stared at everyone with a supremely confused expression on her face before wisely deciding not to ask any questions about it at that time.

"OK, now let's just get back to the story, sweetie," Vanilla broke the awkward silence at last as she addressed Amy again. "What happened after Rouge gave you the perfume?"

"Well…, I may have… maybe just used a little too much?" Amy answered while a large, sheepish grin grew on her embarrassed face.

"A little too much?! Judging by the way those guys were chasing after you, I wouldn't be surprised if you used the whole bottle!" Rouge again chimed in.

"Someone is chasing Amy?!" Cream shouted out in surprise as she eagerly followed the current conversation.

"Not just someone," Rouge again broke in before Amy could answer, "More like someones!"

"Oh, dear," Vanilla sympathetically remarked as she sat down on the sofa next to the downcast hedgehog. "How bad is it, sweetie?" the much more sensitive mother inquired delicately from the almost crying Amy.

"Well, so far Sonic, Shadow, Knuckles, and even Dr. Eggman are all trying to fight for my hand in marriage right now in my living room," Amy replied in a sad voice. Normally, hearing herself say something so ridiculous would have sent her and everyone else in the room into a laughing riot, but, seeing as how the event was actually happening right now, no one so much as snickered once at the impossible scenario. "Oh, and I had to lock Tails in my upstairs closet, too," Amy almost forgot about the slightly unwell fox.

"You mean even Tails is chasing you, Amy?!" Cream broke in again in a voice of utter disbelief. She knew that Tails was a few years older than her still, but he had never once shown an interest in girls before.

"I'm afraid so, Cream," Amy spoke up as she raised her eyes to meet those of the small bunny. "He keeps following me around with a bunch of roses that he says are for me!"

"Oh my, this is a bad situation," Vanilla assessed as she heard the description of the five different men that were determined to get to Amy no matter what. "But, what made you come here for help?" the motherly rabbit quickly asked both visitors.

"Well, since you're the one who gave me this perfume in the first place, I figured you might know how to reverse its effects," Rouge was quick to explain the purpose of their visit.

This last statement caused Cream to blink her large, oval eyes multiple times in amazement as the meaning of it registered to the young bunny. "Mommy?! You are the one who made the perfume that makes guys act all funny?!" Cream managed to squeak out her words as her own sense of disbelief almost rendered the tiny rabbit unable to talk at all.

"I know it may be hard to believe, honey, but I was once a little girl like you, too, a long time ago," Vanilla gave the short story to her bewildered daughter. "Only, when I was a little older, I wanted to meet some nice guys just like you will someday, so I made that perfume to get those men to notice me better. Actually, that's how I met your father and got married so that I could have you, sweetie!" Vanilla gave her warmest smile to the dumbfounded bunny standing frozen solid in front of everyone.

The explanation seemed to do the trick, as Cream happily bounded over to her mother and gave her a tight hug as Vanilla returned the cute gesture by gently stroking Cream's short-furred head and long ears. Breaking off the young bunny's embrace by standing up a minute later, Vanilla disappeared into the back of the small domed house where her and Cream's beds were laid out side-by-side and returned with another jar of perfume that looked identical to that which Rouge had let Amy borrow just earlier that same day. "I'm afraid I'll need you to step outside with me for a second, Amy dear," Vanilla instructed the pink hedgehog as she opened the front door to her small hut and motioned for everyone else to follow.

"But, wait!" Amy objected as she gazed at the bottle in the older rabbit's hands, "Wouldn't getting sprayed with that stuff again just make the pheromones stronger?"

"Yes, it would, deary," Vanilla truthfully answered, "But this isn't the same perfume that you put on earlier today. This is a special scent that drives men away from you instead of making them attracted to you."

"Ha! Now there's a perfume that was made for Pinky over here!" the unusually quiet until now Rouge burst in with her most brutal insult yet.

"Humph!" Amy made the aggravated comment at the insensitive bat's joke as she ignored the short laughter from Rouge and made her way back outside with Vanilla on the rabbit's front lawn. Cream quickly followed the pink hedgehog, trailed closely thereafter by the still snickering Rouge.

Both bystanders observed as Vanilla raised the identical bottle of perfume in her hands and gave Amy a liberal coating of the anti-male pheromones. "I don't want to give you too much, honey, but since you put on so much of the other perfume, I'm afraid too much is better than too little," Vanilla informed Amy as she finished her extensive coverage of every part of Amy's body with the repulsive perfume. "There, all finished. How's that, sweetie?"

"I still don't smell anything," Amy replied as she again checked for any signs of odor from the new fragrance she was wearing to counteract the old one.

"This perfume is just like the other one you used earlier in that only men can smell it," Vanilla informed the confused Amy.

"Well, I sure hope it works," Rouge suddenly broke in with a loud voice, "'Cause here comes the lover-boys now!" Everyone followed the white bat's upraised hand and pointing finger as they saw the cloud of dust being kicked up from the quartet of love-crazed men barreling towards the small house at lightning speed in a race to see who could get to Amy first. They witnessed Shadow on the far right bump into Sonic on purpose and send the blue hedgehog sprawling into the air as Sonic's body then collided with Eggman's chair immediately behind him, knocking both racers out of the running as Knuckles came up from behind and easily cleared the two-person pile up with a swift leap over Eggman's crashed and tipped over chair.

Now the undisputed winner, Shadow poured on the speed to leave Knuckles behind in his dust as the black hedgehog appeared in front of Amy half a second later. Upon screeching to a picture perfect halt mere inches from the surprised pink hedgehog, Shadow did his best impression of a bow to show off his victory to all the women present before turning back to look at Amy in a very close, and equally passionate, gaze. "You see Amy! I'm even stronger than Sonic! You'd be a fool not to take your chance at being the wife of the Ultimate Lifeform! I can offer you so much more than any of these other losers could ever…" Shadow's egotistical ranting suddenly cut short as the black hedgehog quickly raised a gloved hand to steady his spiraling head as he felt the most unusual mixture of a headache and spontaneous nausea for the space of half a second before snapping back to reality.

"Are you OK, Mr. Shadow?" Cream asked as she observed the dark hedgehog's odd reaction.

"Of course I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" Shadow again spoke, only this time in his usual gruff voice that suggested that he didn't care what anyone thought of him and his actions.

"Well, it certainly looks like he's back to his usual cheery self," Rouge commented at Shadow's less than polite response to Cream's concern.

"What are you talking about? I've always been my usual self," Shadow defended himself as though he had somehow developed amnesia about chasing Amy around all day so far.

"Riiiiight," Amy smartly replied. "You seem to lose your memory a lot, don't cha?"

"Whatever, I don't need to be around here anyways," Shadow commented mostly to himself before disappearing in a black blur as he raced off further down the path past Vanilla's home and out of sight entirely.

"Well, that's one down," Rouge kept the tally on her fingertips.

"Oh, dear," Vanilla quickly interjected, "Amy, honey, here comes Knuckles!"

Sure enough, no sooner than Shadow had come to his senses and run off, did Knuckles run up to Amy, panting heavily from his footrace with the other, much speedier men. The red echidna doubled over with his hands on his knees for a second as he caught his breath, then stood upright again to greet Amy and the rest of the women as he took the pink hedgehog's hand in his own. "Huff…. huff… some Ulitimate Lifeform… he turned out to be! How anyone could claim to be that powerful and smart and still pass up on you, Amy, I'll never…" Knuckles immediately stopped his incomplete sentence as his face registered a momentary instant of shock as if he had been stung across the face by a quick slap. Looking around again in a bewildered state, Knuckles finally took in his surroundings and realized the grip he still kept on Amy's gloved hand. "Aaahh! Amy!" Knuckles shouted in his own surprise as he quickly dropped the pink hedgehog's hand and backed off a couple of steps.

"What's the matter, Knuckles? You don't love me anymore?" Amy playfully teased as she put her hands on her hips and glared at the red echidna whose cheeks were now becoming even redder.

"It's not that I… What I mean to say is… How did…?" Knuckles tried to say too many things at the same time and began blabbering incoherently in his embarrassment. That's when Rouge decided to get in on the fun as well.

"Oh, I see how it is, Knuckie! You would rather date anyone other than me, isn't that right?!" Rouge spoke up in a voice filled with mock anger.

"Rouge! I didn't try to… I mean, I just don't know what came over me!" Knuckles shouted out the quick response in his own defense.

"So that means that you really do care about Rouge, then, Knuckles!" Cream blurted out happily as the young bunny giggled at the comical expression on Knuckles face from the revelation that he had been caught by his own mouth again.

"WHAT?! No way!! I'd rather crawl through a sewer than go out with that batty woman!" Knuckles instantly denied his unintentional confession as he crossed his arms in defiance at the laughing women. Then one of the women sniffed a rather pungent odor coming from the moody echidna which caused her to wonder if Knuckles hadn't already done just that.

"Oh dear! Knuckles, what is that horrible stench?!" Vanilla tried to say politely as she was forced to hold her sensitive nose closed with one hand.

"Romeo here tried to break into my house from underground earlier," Amy explained while she and the other two females present joined Vanilla in pinching their own noses shut. "And, in the process, he dug right through my plumbing!"

"Geee, guy! That's putting a whole new meaning to being 'fresh'!" Rouge made the well-timed pun as Knuckles glared at her angrily.

"You know what?! I'm not even sure what I'm doing here, so I'm just gonna leave!" Knuckles announced as he stormed off angrily in his surrounding cloud of stink.

"I hope that Knuckles goes to take a bath," Cream softly added once the red echidna was already out of earshot.

"Hey, not bad there, little gal," Rouge complimented Cream's final comment. "Keep working on it, and you might get as good at insulting people as me!"

"Rouge! I don't want you teaching my daughter any of your vulgar jokes!" Vanilla immediately called out in a forceful voice. The best, and really the only, way to get the adult rabbit angry easily was to threaten the innocence of her little girl. A confrontation was avoided, however, by the sounds of two more males racing towards the group of women, both still embroiled in a one-on-one fight to the death.

Sonic was running ahead with his characteristic speed while Eggman, lagging slowly behind the supersonic hedgehog in his chair, continuously launched laser blasts at the ground directly in front of the evasive speed demon. Finally, as both of them approached the small home where the women now stood in the front yard, Eggman managed to get a lucky shot off that missed Sonic entirely but caused a small cloud of dust from the road to blind the blue hedgehog and cause him to trip on the uneven ground. Only hitting the ground hard for a moment, Sonic immediately stood back up to chase down the cheating Dr. Eggman, but he was too late as he noticed the custom levitating chair now hovering in front of Amy.

"This must be the luckiest day of my life!" Eggman gloated happily as he gazed longingly at the pink hedgehog before him. "Not only did I just single-handedly defeat that hedgehog, but I've also won the love of my life! Come with me, now, Amy! You will be my queen once I finally set up my long awaited Eggman Empire! Whoooo ho ho ho ho ho…HUH?!" the monologuing Dr. Robotnik suddenly interrupted his own laughter with his grunt of extreme confusion as his clouded mind suddenly cleared entirely. "Wait, what am I doing here?" Eggman started to question himself as the anti-men pheromones began to work their charms.

"You were just about to take Amy as your queen when you conquered the world, Dr. Eggman," Cream reminded the confused scientist in a voice that showed that the bunny was just trying to be helpful.

"WHAAAT?! That's preposterous!" Eggman screamed as he tried to deny any knowledge of his last words which he still fully remembered saying.

"I don't know," Amy spoke up unexpectedly, "Being a queen sounds pretty good to me!"

"Amy!" Vanilla shouted in shocked amazement at the pink hedgehog's traitorous confession.

"Don't even bother!" Eggman called out from his hovering chair before Amy could tell Vanilla that she had only been kidding. "You are the last female on this or any other planet that I would ever marry! The only reason I don't eliminate you right now is because you keep torturing Sonic with your incessant girly lust for romance, and anything that annoys Sonic is good for me!"

"Then, I guess that means your turn is over, Egghead!" Sonic angrily shouted from directly behind the levitating machine carrying the obese Doctor. Before Eggman could even turn his chair around to face the threatening hedgehog, Sonic spun into a spiny, blue orb and spin dashed the hovering contraption from below. The impact failed to penetrate the heavily armored pod, but the force from the hit did send it sailing high into the atmosphere in a sickening series of back-flips and barrel-rolls.

"Aaaahhhhrrrrggg! I hate those hedgehogs!!" Eggman yelled before flying too far away to be heard as his airborne chair hurtled up and away from the front yard of the rabbit's home.

The final competitor for his love now taken care of, Sonic immediately turned around to face the pink hedgehog. "Now, Amy, where were we?" the blue hedgehog romantically spoke as he covered the distance between himself and the pink hedgehog in an instant and swept her off her feet in a loving carry like a professional couples dancer.

"Oh, Sonic! I…" Amy started to feel herself practically melt in his arms again as his face hovered dangerously close to hers.

"Shhhh... No need for words, Ames. We both know that I love ya, too," Sonic softly whispered in a voice just loud enough for the shocked Rouge, Cream, and Vanilla to overhear. The blue hedgehog leaned in closer to Amy's face as Amy let go of her grip on her romantic boyfriend and closed her eyes in anticipation of another long kiss. What she got a half of a second later was instead a nasty bump on her head as Sonic completely dropped her, and the unsupported pink hedgehog fell the remaining foot to the ground hard.

"OUCH!! Hey, what was that all about, Sonic?!" Amy furiously shouted as she sat up and opened her eyes to glare wrathfully at the blue hedgehog. She stood slowly while putting one hand over a developing lump on the back of her skull, all the while still shooting diamonds at the stunned Sonic from her blazing, emerald eyes.

"Amy! What do ya think you were doin'?!" Sonic made the mistake of blaming her fall on the pink hedgehog.

"What do I think that I was doing?! You were just about to kiss me, Sonic the Hedgehog!!" Amy screamed furiously at her suddenly unromantic boyfriend.

"Kiss you?! Awww, gross! I did, didn't I?! Girl Cooties!!" Sonic shouted in a disgusted tone as he pretended to wipe his lips off with his white-gloved hands. After finishing his show of trying to cleanse himself of his earlier contact with Amy, Sonic quickly dashed off scared, without another word to the group of women present.

"Sonic still believes in Cooties?" Cream wondered out loud as everyone watched the blue streak disappear down the path again as quickly as he had appeared.

"Looks like you just got dumped, gal, and I mean that literally!" Rouge broke herself into a laughing riot with yet another perfect joke to annoy the flustered Amy.

"OOOooooohhh…! It's not fair! Why did Sonic have to go back to normal, too?!" Amy whined as she shook her fists and raised her head to the sky in agony of the highly ironic situation.

"I'm sorry, honey, but we had to get those other men to stop chasing you," Vanilla reasoned with the crestfallen pink hedgehog.

Amy stood in place for a few seconds, looking like she would burst into tears at any moment, until suddenly her head snapped back up at a brilliant idea she had just come up with. "That's it!" she exclaimed. "I'll just go back and put on more of that love fragrance to make Sonic want me again!"

"Do you really think that that's such a good idea, Amy?" Cream asked the determined hedgehog in a voice that was half-curious and half-worried.

"Why not?" Amy turned to face the small bunny before answering. "This time I'll just make sure not to use too much, and everything will be fine!"

"Oh great, here we go again…" Rouge mumbled to herself as she held her head in her hands at what she saw as an endless cycle of events beginning all over again now.

"Rouge is right, Amy," Vanilla stopped the pink hedgehog before she could run back home and reapply the guy-attracting perfume. "I'm afraid that I'm going to need to take that perfume back from both of you."

"Hey!" Rouge instantly retorted in a hurt voice, "Why should I get punished for Miss Hopeless Romantic over here's mistake?!"

"You're not being punished for anything, Rouge," Vanilla quickly calmed down the irritated bat. "I never should have let you borrow that perfume in the first place. Sure it helps guys notice you more, but that's not the way true love works anyways. True love is something you can't just get from a bottle; it's something that's earned over time. I learned that lesson when I used this perfume when I was your age, and now I hope you both have, too," Vanilla ended her gentle lecture of both teenage women and also hoped that Cream understood what she had said as well.

Amy let her shoulders droop again as she let out a heavy sigh of defeat. "OK, I understand, Mrs. Vanilla," the pink hedgehog wisely agreed.

"Phhff! True love?! Come on!" Rouge skeptically remarked. "True love is a myth. The only good love is the kind you get from a guy who thinks you're sexy," she shared her beliefs with the gathered women.

"I don't believe that, Rouge!" Cream broke in using a rarely heard angry tone of voice. "I know that if my mommy says true love exists, then it has to be real!"

Rouge starred dumbfounded at the young bunny that had just spoken up to her like Cream had been her mother. For a moment only, the female bat's face retained its look of pure shock before Rouge caught the sign of weakness and quickly cleared the incriminating expression off her face. "Humph! Fine, believe whatever you want; see if I care," Rouge huffily replied in a weak attempt to cover up her surprise.

"Well, I believe that that's the end of that," Vanilla hazarded to speak a few tense seconds later as everyone remained silent and perfectly still. "It sounds to me like we should all go over and help Amy clean up her house now, right Rouge?" the older bunny press-ganged the bat into helping.

"Why should I help her any more than I have already?" Rouge temperamentally objected.

"Because you are the one who gave me the perfume in the first place, and you're the one who set off a smoke bomb in my living room!" Amy shouted back at the uncooperative bat.

"Hey, that smoke bomb is the only reason you weren't torn to pieces by those four guys!" Rouge immediately countered.

"Wait a second!" Cream abruptly interrupted the two women before the fighting from earlier could start again, "How many guys were following you, Amy?"

"Well, all I can remember is that Knuckles started it, then Shadow showed up and those two started fighting over me. Right then, Sonic came along, but they jumped him, too. And finally, Eggman tried to kidnap me, so that makes four," Amy rattled off the days' events as she kept tally of the earlier love-crazed men on her fingers.

"But, Amy, honey," Vanilla gently reminded the forgetful pink hedgehog, "You said that five men were chasing you earlier."

Amy's face twisted into a confused expression at the effort of trying to remember who she was forgetting, when a distorted voice called out to her from above that revealed the missing male's identity.

"There you are, Amby!" Tails shouted as he flew gently down to land in front of the pink hedgehog. He looked like he was covered in dust from the closet he must have somehow managed to escape as the two-tailed fox still held on to the crumpled, and somewhat wilted bouquet of roses he had been trying to give to her all day. "Why'b ya lock me in your clobset?" the yellow kit asked as he stared at the pink hedgehog from less than a foot away.

"Oh no! I forgot about Tails!" Amy shouted as both rabbits and Rouge laughed at Amy's comical expression. "Look, Tails, I'm sorry, but I did it because…" the embarrassed hedgehog tried to explain before a loud sneeze from the fox cut her short.

"Sorry, Amby," Tails muttered as he wiped his aching nose with his gloved hand, having run out of tissues long ago. "It's just my nobse is so stobbed up that I can't eben talk righbt."

"Tails, sweetie, are you feeling all right?" Vanilla instinctively asked the suffering fox as motherly instincts kicked in at the sight of a sick child.

"Yeah, I'b fine, Mrs. Vanillba," Tails replied in a less than convincing tone. "It's just, these robses make my nobse hurt," the fox finished his statement as he made several loud sniffs to clear his congested nasal passages.

"Why do you need to give those roses to Amy if you're allergic to them, Tails?" Cream asked the question that seemed rather dumb to the other women standing around at the time. Clearly the fox was under the same perfume induced spell as the other men had been, although, for some unknown reason, Tails also didn't seem to be reacting to the male-repelling scent that had broken the effect of the love fragrance on the other four earlier.

Tails looked at Cream with a look of puzzlement on his face at the perfectly normal and reasonable question that he thought the answer to was obvious. "I amb supposed to give Amy these robses," the fox answered in his tortured voice.

"Well, too bad for you, gal!" Rouge said as she walked up closer to Amy and Tails and put a hand on each of their shoulders. "Looks like foxy over here got too good of a whiff from that perfume, and you're gonna be stuck together for life!" the bat taunted.

"Perfubme? What perfubme? (sniffle) I canb't smell anything!" Tails broke in before sneezing once more.

"OK, look, Tails," Amy stared right at the yellow fox still holding the flowers out for Amy to take. "You and I are NOT a couple, got that?! I only love Sonic, Not You!" the pink hedgehog decided to forget letting the fox down easy and went straight for the brutal truth.

Tails didn't start crying or look hurt at all from these words, however, as everyone expected to see the fox break down from Amy's stern refusal. Instead, the fox began a strange mix of laughter and sneezes as he fought to keep his composure and failed. "You… Ha ha ha… You thoubght… Ha ha… that I was in lobve… Ha ha ha haaa Ahh-choo! …wbith you?!" Tails managed to say between his constant laughing and sneezes.

"Hold on, you mean you're NOT in love with me?!" Amy questioned the laughing kit for confirmation.

"Of course nobt!" Tails harshly replied in a voice that would have gotten him pummeled if he were her Soniku.

"But, what about the flowers?" a very confused Amy quickly added.

"Oh, thebse?" Tails spoke with a great deal of effort while finally placing the troublesome bouquet into Amy's arms. "The robses are from Sonic because he felbt bad for missing your date tobay," the tragically misunderstood truth came out.

At this revelation, Amy's whole body froze stiff. She had thought the whole time that Tails had been driven mad by the overdose of pheromones she had put on, just like all the other boys today. Now she realized that all the two-tailed kitsune was following her around for all day was simply to deliver a gift to her from her real boyfriend. One question still remained to be answered, however, as Amy's mouth slowly freed itself from her temporary paralysis to utter the single word, "How…?"

"Oh, Tails, sweetie! You poor little thing! Carrying around a bunch of flowers and being locked in a dusty closet, your little nose must be a complete mess!" Vanilla interrupted as she walked over to the yellow fox with a much needed handkerchief for him to blown on.

"I'bm fine, Mrs. Vanillba," Tails resorted to his usual nature of not admitting truly how miserable he felt. "I just habbent been able to smell anbything all day." The runny-nosed kit eagerly took the offered hanky and proceeded to blow his irritated nostrils into it loudly as Cream was instructed by her mother to take the poor fox inside to lay down on the comfortable sofa to rest.

"Hmmm… Well, I guess that's the last mystery solved," Rouge spoke up once the young bunny and kit had gone inside. "Little foxy's nose has been too stopped up for him to smell either of the perfumes today! Lucky you, right, gal?"

Amy still stayed standing with her back turned to Vanilla and Rouge as both other girls heard the soft sound of the pink hedgehog crying as she held the flowers in her hands.

"Amy, dear, what's wrong now?" Vanilla asked before going inside to tend to Tails' overactive nose.

"It's just… these flowers (sniff)… and Sonic…" Amy said softly as she continued weeping in place.

Deciding that it was about time for her to take it easy on the poor heartbroken hedgehog, Rouge stepped up to Amy and put a comforting arm on her shoulder. "Look, gal. Sonic may not have meant anything he said or did earlier because of the pheromones, but that doesn't mean he'll never talk to you again," Rouge tried her best to console the crying hedgehog.

"No, Rouge," Amy said as she wiped her tears from her own eyes and her voice changed to that of unimaginable happiness, "It's not that. Sonic told Tails to give me these flowers before he saw me today, which means he wasn't affected by the perfume yet when he bought them for me! Don't you see?! My Soniku really does care about me!" Amy shouted joyously as she practically began hovering off the ground in her moment of ecstasy.

"OK, that does it; I'm outta here!" Rouge said as she withdrew her hand upon witnessing Amy's love-sparkling eyes. "There's just too much love goin' around in this joint," the bat commented as she took to the skies and flew far away from rabbit family's small home while she simultaneously vowed to herself never to come back for another session of Amy's 'girl talk' ever again.