{AN/Dedication: This story goes out to a close friend of mine, who is its co-author. I call him Twi (though here on he's known as DarkSuperTails), and our friendship is something like the relation between Sonic and Tails, Twi being the former and myself the latter. We are in the story, as you'll probably notice...and our brotherly relationship carries over. You might notice that despite the story being listed as about Sonic and Tails, they don't appear in the first chapter. However, all things will come clear in due time. Enough from me; please, read and (hopefully) enjoy.}

Disclaimer: Sonic the Hedgehog and all associated trademarks and rights belong to SEGA. Twilight the Fox belongs to DarkSuperTails.

Rent Space, Enduring Bonds

Chapter I

In a clearing on the well-known Floating Island, also called Angel Island, there are two vulpines, spread-eagled. The one who appears younger is a bright silver, the one who looks older is mostly black, but has some red stripes running across several sections of his body and his chest and stomach fur is white. The silver fox...well, more of a kitsune, given his three tails...opens his ice-blue eyes blearily. He looks confused, and starts trying to get up. The black-red fox - also three-tailed - struggles to his feet and rubs his head, then looks (with crimson eyes) at his hands and arms, appearing quite shocked.

"What the...what happened?" Those are the first words from the older vulpine's mouth. The younger one looks towards him and squints, beginning to walk towards him before falling back onto the ground.

The silver kitsune then looks at himself and twists to see his own tails, appearing shocked, before turning to the other fox and asking, "Who...and/or what, are you?" The black-red vulpine, meanwhile, is examining himself; his tails, arms, chest and stomach...

...and it is at that point that he seems to notice, with wide crimson eyes, a ring piercing his navel, from which he draws much shock, exclaiming somewhat loudly, "I have a belly button ring!" It's right after that that the voice he heard registers in his mind, as he turns, ears twitching, to face the younger, smaller, silver fox. He blushes briefly before replying. "Ummm...hi. I'm kinda trying to figure stuff out, I think I'm dreaming, cause, I'm not usually like this, I mean-I...I think I'm a made up character of mine. Sounds ridiculous huh?" The silver fox seems to consider this for a few moments, reaching up behind one of his cuneate ears and scratching, only to briefly lose consciousness, as most vulpines will when the backs of their ears are scratched.

Then he looks at the taller fox intently with his ice-blue eyes. "Somewhat...who are you?" The older one chuckles, first at the purring of the briefly unconscious kitsune and then at the question.

This question waits for a moment as sits - and shifts to laying - on the sun-warmed grass, before choosing to answer, "Well, right now...I'm Twilight the Fox, the character of a boy, me, who visits a lot of Sonic forums and stuff. I doubt you'd know the real me though." He also begins to look as if he might drift off to sleep in the warm field. The younger kitsune, though, seemed to have other ideas.

"...Twilight...? That means...it is you!" He jumps on top of the other vulpine, taking him by surprise, but the older fox, while shocked, hears him out. "Do you remember, by chance, a certain character by the name of Jaye? Yours truly...and if you doubt any of this, just the fact that I even know about what you're talking means that I'm not from here." Twilight seems to recognize this and tightly embraces the younger fox, laughing and rubbing his back, almost as if to tickle Jaye.

A silence afterward prevails, and Twilight lets Jaye go and backs up a bit, before saying, "Wow! Dude, this is awesome, how'd we end up here though?" Jaye scrambles back over and hugs him again for a few moments, before considering this, as his tails sway subconsciously.

"...well...there are spacial and temporal warps, which appear occasionally in the fabric of our Universe...and there's technically such an entity as Fate, who is somewhere, commanding the ways of destiny..." Twilight just smiles and shrugs, not seeming to understand exactly what Jaye just said. He gets up, brushes grass off his legs and torn red shorts, and helps the silver kitsune up.

It's then that for the first time the pair look at their surroundings in the field, surrounded by trees along the four main sides and a river running through the forest on one side. Twilight says, "...So, now to figure out where we are then."

Jaye replies: "...that, I don't know on intuition..." He looks around and runs a paw through the fur on his head, careful to avoid his ears. "One way of looking at it states that logically, given that the two of us are anthropomorphic animals drawing inspiration from the Sonic series, we are on Mobius. That could put us in...er...Green Hill and Emerald Hill don't have enough trees, and they're not this flat...same goes for Palmtree Panic...wait, what if we're in a clearing on Floating Island?"

Twilight's ears perked up evidently as he smiles. He grabs a hold on Jaye's right arm and tears off in the direction opposite of the river. "That's it! Bro, we're on Angel Island!" He says, grinning and looking excited. "You know who that means we get to meet, right?" He winks at the other fox.

"Knuckles, e pluribus unum. Still fluent in Latin...I was saying that yes, Knuckles is almost certainly on this island, but there are others, not to be forgotten." Jaye looks around the Zone. "Same place we've seem from the outside, hundreds to thousands of times...and now we're here. Still, if the games are anything to go by, there's a lot between us and the Hidden Palace...no, there has to be a faster way."

Twilight stops as he reaches a straightaway that goes through a few loop-da-loops, and from there he looks up and stares off at the faint view of a pyramid shaped structure in the distance. "Hidden Palace nothin', if we're on Mobius, then the Master Emerald is at the center of the island on the altar. Hidden Palace was just Sonic 3, the altar was far more." Looking rather proud of his quick thinking, he again takes off through the foliage with the younger fox following, towards the altar and towards the hot-tempered echidna who resides there.

Jaye, meanwhile, is thinking to himself vocally. "The take which we have on this isn't reliable enough. That was two-dimensional, occasionally somewhat three-dimensional. Can't confirm where most of the Zones are, but at least when we know where we are we have a better idea of where we're going..." He begins lagging behind Twilight, perhaps because the latter is older and has more stamina...so the silver vulpine does something he learned from the doings of another kitsune. He starts spinning his tails to provide extra forward momentum, and starts catching up to the fox who is the closest he has to family on the island.

By the altar, Knuckles is just resting, looking a bit bored but rather content, as if he's been able to nap and lay around while guarding the Master Emerald - which, in all likelihood, he has. However, as he lay there, he opened his eyes and spat the blade of grass which he had been chewing out and got to his feet as quickly as he heard the sound. At the edge of the clearing...voices, and they were hardly far off, just out of sight in the foliage at the edge of the altar's field. The echidna sighs to himself and frowns, cracking his namesakes and crossing his arms as he stares off in the general direction of the sound. "Who's there?...come on out! No use in hiding."

Twilight mutters under his breath, "Crap!" He falls to his stomach and tries to better hide himself from view, even though it's more likely than not pointless - the guardian already heard he and Jaye, so there was no turning back. He grabs the younger fox boy and pulls him down as well, very likely feeling and hearing his own heart beating from the tension.

To be Continued...