Chapter Two—Meet Our…Heroes?

If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.—Ecclesiastes 10:10

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.—Proverbs 16:9

Say hey, it's a good day

Even if things aren't going my way

Jesus is Lord and I am saved

So hey, it's a good day

-It's a good day, FFH

"Oh, I'm a gummy bear, yes I'm a gummy bear! I'm a yummy, chummy, funny, lucky gummy bear. I'm a jelly bear, cuz I'm a gummy bear. Oh, I'm a movin', groovin', jammin', singin' gummy bear…."

Vector Crocodile, leader of the second-rate detective agency known as the Chaotix, rubbed his throbbing head and glared down at the young six-year-old bee who was currently singing the Gummy Bear Song to his little heart's content.

"Charmy," he hissed through clenched teeth. "I don't know if anyone's told you this yet, but when you are trailing a suspect, you should be quiet so that he doesn't spot you and blow your cover!" He took a deep breath to calm himself, then turned to the third member of their agency for confirmation. "Right, Espio?"

"The gummy bear song has to be the most annoying song in the history of the planet," Espio mused, a far-off look in his slightly glazed over eyes.

"Espio!"

"Huh? Oh, right," Espio snapped back to the present and nodded.

Vector glared at him. "You have no idea what I just said, do you?" he accused.

"Not really," Espio replied, shrugging to show that he really didn't care, either.

"Why are we here again?" Charmy asked rather loudly, so his voice echoed throughout the empty hallway they were in.

'Here' was a science facility in the middle of Station Square. Most of the major scientific breakthroughs in the past fifty years had been discovered in this building, and anyone interested in scientific studies dreamed of being hired by this firm.

The Chaotix were not interested in scientific studies, or science in general (although Charmy did enjoy watching science fiction) so it was, in fact, a pretty good question. Or it would have been, if Charmy hadn't been told the answer to said question nine times already.

Vector sighed and made it an even ten. "Charmy, for the last time, the guys we're after spotted us because you were singing the Gummy Bear Song after I told you not to sing it and they darted in here to loose us. So we came in after them."

"That was forty minutes ago," Espio reminded him. "We've been all over this building and we still haven't found them. They've evaded us, Vector, just admit it."

"I admit nothing!" Vector replied stubbornly.

Charmy started to bob his head to an imaginary tune that only he could hear. "Beba bi Duba duba yum yum, Beba bi Duba duba yum yum…"

"STOP SINGING THE GUMMY BEAR SONG!" Vector screamed.

"Shh, Vector, or the bad guys will hear you!" Charmy scolded.

For some inexplicable reason, Vector felt like crying. "Why do I even bother?" he wondered.

"Why are you so interested in these criminals anyway, Vector? We haven't been paid to take them to justice, and we're not exactly going to be on the next 'Top 10 richest men alive list'," Espio reminded their leader, although he shouldn't have had too. Vector was normally very thrifty with their budget and he was the one pressing them to find paying jobs so they could afford luxuries like food and a roof over their head. Since this new criminal group started, however, he had been, well, obsessed.

"You know why," Vector chided the chameleon. "We have a personal interest in these creeps."

Espio rolled his eyes. "For the last time, just because a group of criminals decide to call themselves the Destructix, it doesn't mean they're trying to rip off our name."

Vector merely set his jaw in what Espio liked to call his 'Don't you dare contradict me again' look, so the chameleon wisely decided to drop the point. Although he would never understand why his fearless leader wanted to hunt down a bunch of criminals for free and throw them in jail for copyright infringement, of all things.

The Ninja sighed and reminded himself it wasn't really important, only they'd better catch these criminals quickly and find a paying customer or they would deplete their already meager funds. Of course, that's assuming they didn't simply starve to death wandering these deserted, winding corridors that all looked the same and no one would ever find them. An image of a crocodile, chameleon, and bee's bleached white bones baking under the fluorescent hallway lights popped into his head and depressed him immensely.

He was spared any more depressing images of possible outcomes of this particular endeavor by Charmy's squeal. "Lookit, lookit!" he said, flying becoming erratic in his excitement. He pointed down the hall. "A person! We're saved!"

"We don't need saved, Charmy!" Vector snapped, looking annoyed with the bee's lack of faith in his directional skills. Espio decided that Vector needn't know about his own daytime nightmares and turned his attention on the person, a security guard who was slumped against a doorway, obviously unconscious.

"He looks injured, Vector," the ninja pointed out, instantly alert for any signs of attack.

Vector turned from where he was glaring at Charmy and knelt beside the guard, checking the unconscious armadillo for a pulse and quite relieved to see that there was a strong one. "Looks like he'll have a nasty bruise and a headache when he wakes up," he commented. "But he'll live. Seems that our bad guys have come this way."

Almost as if waiting for a cue, the guard moaned and started to move, his hand instinctively clutching his throbbing head as he opened his eyes. They widened in shock as he took in the three. His hand dropped to his side where his gun or taser or whatever weapon they had issued him was supposed to be, only it seemed that his assailants had thought fit to relieve him of it.

"W-who are you?" the guard, painfully aware of how defenseless he was and a bit disoriented, blurted out.

Vector flashed his detective's badge. "Relax, we're the good guys," he assured the guard. "Name's Vector, Chaotix Detective Agency. Did you see the guys who did this to you…" he glanced at the guard's nametag. "…Mighty?"

Mighty the Armadillo shook his head. "Sorry, they got me from behind, detective. I didn't see anything."

Vector sighed, frustrated that his potential lead had turned into a dead end. "Alright then. Can you stand? Need to call an ambulance?"

"I think I'm ok," Mighty said, standing up slowly and stumbling a bit. He shook his head to clear it and winced. "I'd take some extra strength Tylenol, though."

"Here," Vector took a packet with two extra strength Tylenols embedded within and handed it to Mighty. "Knock yourself out."

Mighty gave him an incredulous look as he took the packet. "You usually carry Tylenol around with you, detective?"

"Trust me, with partners like mine, it's a necessity," Vector assured the armadillo.

"Hi mister!" Charmy chirruped, right in the injured armadillo's ear in a painfully high voice. "I'm Charmy! Do you like the Gummy Bear Song? I know the whoooole thing!"

Mighty winced. "I see what you mean," He confided to Vector before popping the Tylenol into his mouth and swallowing.

"Vector," Espio called from a bit farther down the room. As usual, he had been looking for clues while his teammates slacked off and chatted with the locals. And he had found something quite intriguing.

"What've you got?" Vector asked, walking over to his partner. Espio nodded towards the door, which had been literally ripped off its hinges as tossed to the side. Vector inspected the twisted door and the gaping hole. "Subtle," he commented dryly. "Ok, let's go check it out. And be on your guard, they're obviously dangerous."

"You think?" Espio asked sarcastically, disappearing into the room. He was followed by Vector, Charmy, and, after a slight hesitation, Mighty.


The room was full of computers, with a strange looking machine in the middle. It was a complete dead end, with no doors or windows for the criminals to have used. But it was also completely empty, people-wise.

"Where'd they go?" Vector asked, looking around for clues, but careful not to disturb potential evidence. "Did they double back and go back out?"

"They must have," Espio replied. "There's no where else they could have gone."

"You really shouldn't be in here anyway," Mighty added, looking nervous. "This room is off-limits to non-personnel. They've got a really dangerous experiment here, it's supposed to make it possible to travel into other dimensions, but so far it just makes stuff explode."

"Explode?" Vector asked, looking around worriedly.

"Yeah," Mighty said. "Mostly they've tested it on watermelon and stuff like that, and the pieces splat all over the place. The janitor's threatening to quit."

Vector winced, already imagining himself taking the watermelon's place and the janitor making good on his threat. Leaving the room was starting to seem like a very good idea. "I don't think they're here, so there's really no point in staying," he said, eager to leave. "So let's just…where's Charmy?"

Espio whirled around, but Charmy was nowhere to be seen. "He was right behind me a second ago," he said, his eyes widening. "Why weren't you watching him?"

"I thought you were watching him!" Vector snapped, worried over the little bee's fate.

It was Mighty who spotted Charmy first, and the color drained out of his face when he did. Charmy was poking around under the firing range of the deadly machine, the controls to activate it in his hand, though where he'd found that was a mystery for the ages. "Hey, little boy? You really shouldn't be playing with that!" Mighty informed him shakily, instinctively moving towards him to take the controls away before he killed himself.

"Charmy!" Vector and Espio had also spotted him, and were equally as panicked. Rushing towards him, Espio cried, "Charmy, don't touch that!"

"Drop it Charmy!" Vector yelled as the three of them reached Charmy together and grabbed him simultaneously.

Startled, Charmy dropped the controls, which crashed to the floor, activating it. A bright light enveloped the four of them and the world went dark…


"I'm dead," Vector gasped, sitting up and blurting out the last thought that had been on his mind as the machine had powered on. "I'm dead, I'm dead, I died, and I'm dead."

He slowly began to realize that he was sitting inside of a valley amongst several beautiful wildflowers, surrounded by several majestic mountains looming in the distance. "That's weird," he mused. "Isn't Heaven supposed to have a big pearly gate, or something?"

"I don't think we're dead, Vector," Espio informed him matter-of-factly.

Vector started, having not realized that he wasn't alone before this. He turned and stared at Espio for a long moment. "We must be dead," he said, convinced. "You're dressed in white."

Espio was, in fact, dressed in a white-and-gold ninja outfit. Vector hadn't really thought of a white ninja outfit whenever he thought about Heavenly dress codes, but he supposed that, after all, Heaven was supposed to be where you were happy, and dressing like a ninja had always made Espio happy, so it sort of made sense. The big thick belt he wore kind of threw the ninja-ness off a bit, but it also seemed to work anyway.

Vector looked down at himself. He was also in white, though he was relieved to see he wasn't in a ninja suit. Instead, he wore a thick leather vest and some slacks that seemed to suit him, with the same type of belt Espio was wearing. His sneakers were white too, he realized, although they were the same type of sneakers he'd always enjoyed wearing. Something on his head was heavy, and he reached up and felt a small, round helmet covering the top of his noggin. It was a comfortable weight, though, almost as if he was used to it, and he wasn't too keen to take it off, so he let it be.

He looked around again, and soon spotted Charmy stirring from the grass nearby, and noticed that he was wearing a cute little plastic armor kit. (Also white.) Huh, the strangest things made that bee happy, he guessed.

Somehow knowing that Vector was still under the assumption that they were dead and this was Heaven, sighed loudly. "Vector we are not dead. Trust me, I know!"

"And just how do you know?" Vector asked.

Espio pointed down to Vector's feet. "He told me so."

Vector looked down, and noticed a snow white dove sitting calmly on the ground. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the Dove, and he felt utterly contented. "We're not dead?" he asked.

The Dove chuckled. "No, Vector, you are not."

Vector gasped, his hand flying to his mouth. The voice, he knew that voice. He couldn't say just how, as he had never audibly heard it before, and he was making no sense, but he just knew… "I know You," he whispered, his eyes tearing up. "I know You!"

The Dove nodded, looking pleased. "You do," he confirmed. "You have known Me for several years now, Vector."

Vector's mind was whirling as he tried to take this all in. "You're…and I'm…not dead…how?"

"It's an alternate dimension with medieval and monarchy based themes," Espio explained. "Everything He has explained to me seems to have some sort of symbolic meaning."

Vector found himself rolling his eyes. "You think everything has some sort of symbolic meaning, even what we had for supper last night."

Espio didn't press the point, knowing how stubborn Vector could be. "God is known as the King here, and Christians are King's Citizens. They're all dressed in white variations of King's Armor, which is basically symbolizing the Armor of God—"

"Pastor Tony preached about that once," Vector remembered.

"Yes, now please let me finish," Espio waited, but seeing that Vector was honoring his request, he continued. "Basically, the job we have is the same, serve God and tell others about Him. And this dove here is how the Holy Spirit reveals Himself in this dimension."

The King's Holy Spirit nodded again. "There is something that I wish for the Chaotix to do," he said by way of explanation.

"We'll do it," Vector answered without the slightest bit of hesitation.

"That was fast," Espio chuckled. Vector would usually demand every slightest detail of a potential job out of a prospective customer to make sure it was something worth doing.

"I'm not telling Him no!" Vector explained defensively.

Charmy had been awake for the majority of the conversation, but had been uncharacteristically silent, staring at the Holy Spirit intently. The Dove turned to him and seemed to smile. "Hello, Charmy," he said kindly.

Charmy grinned and giggled. "Hi," he said. "I still read my Storybook Bible and pray every day."

"And a wonderful job you do of it, too," the Spirit complimented him.

Charmy's grin got even bigger. "Thanks," he said. "I can read it all by myself now."

"Hey," Vector started, suddenly remembering something. "What happened to that security guard that was with us? What was his name? Marty?"

"Mighty," Espio reminded him.

"Right. Where's he?" Vector looked around and finally spotted Mighty. It was harder to do than with the others, as their white outfits had clashed with the ground and caused them to stand out. Mighty, though, was sort of wearing armor, though it was a dirty, rusty color, and he was not wearing any type of helmet or belt. He was still out cold.

"Poor guy, he's been knocked unconscious so often recently," Vector said sympathetically, silently wondering at the difference in armor.

The Spirit looked at Mighty with a wistful, longing expression. "He is so important to Me," He said. "He once knew Me as you do, but he has fallen away. How I long for him to come back! Though his sins are many, I would make Him white as newly fallen snow. I would have you take him with you, Vector."

Vector nodded quickly. "Sure, I won't let him outta my sight then. Uh…where're we going?"

"Follow this path here until you come to the house where this place's Amy Rose is staying, then accompany her on her journey," the Spirit replied. "Remember, I AM always with you, and I AM able to help you with all your trials."

"Got it, we'll remember," Vector nodded. A loud groan from Mighty caused the Chaotix to look towards him. "So anyway, are You..." when Vector turned back, the Spirit had vanished.

But the Chaotix could feel Him near.