Yeah okay, it was sort of short.

But this will be much longer, promise.

*note, this takes place a couple days after the final chapter of part I.

Oh and an OC is in the story, check out my profile for info.

Crystals (Hearts of Love)

Chapter I

Tick, tick, tick, tick…

Was it only me, or did time seem to get progressively slower and slower?

Sonic persuaded me to depart and take a few days to myself, hoping it would help out with the damage already caused to my ailing heart. Initially I didn't believe that it would help but my cobalt friend promised that it would aid in the calming of my mind, so I went with his judgment and advice. I didn't know that something that seemed so easy to comprehend, could be so easier said than done. Oh, and I was really getting exasperated with people always promising things to me, I didn't need anymore of them.

I've be struggling with life itself over the past few days, thoughts of Tails were present in my mind relentlessly, and the more I attempted to get him out of my mind, the added thoughts that accumulated in my mind. He also mentioned that it didn't help that I was actually staying in Tails' home, but when I was at his home, I always felt a presence of him in it, though he wasn't there. And instead of making me miss him, it actually calmed me down relatively a deal.

But I had a lot more on my mind still, one was the fact that Eggman was still out there, and was progressing in his plan for world domination. Usually it was us who were always winning without much quandary or concern.

But what he seems to be doing is making it appear like he actually is in the winners seat, something that almost never happened, ever.

And now I might be in the most vital position in my entire life.

Sonic wanted me to lead the invasion of Eggman's army. Me… the girl he's advised before to stay behind while he and everybody else would go and fight Eggman and his latest scheme. Now, Sonic the hero himself, is asking me to lead the incursion.

I didn't answer him all too quickly, in fact, I hadn't given him a clear cut reply to his question yet. All I knew for sure now is that I would fight in it, not lead it!

Frustrated out of my mind I wandered out of his room, which is where I had been sleeping the past couple days, and made my way outside. Optimistically, maybe a bit of cool fresh air could settle myself down. I seriously swear that I was going to go insane if I didn't get that question out of my mind.

My head began to throb as I stepped out onto the patio behind the home, and the sudden pain resulted in me having to take a seat on a chair conveniently placed upon it. I could feel the sudden surge of cool, moist air fill my lungs, and it was so good, it felt like a rush of energy to the body.

The wind was quite strong today, I could tell by feeling and that a silver set of wind chimes hanging off the overhang of the roof was violently shaking in jumbled directions. Instead of the sweet and soothing sounds of a light breeze on them, they were smacking hard against one another, sending out uneven blasts of noise that echoed throughout the vicinity.

I held my head in my hands, ruffling my hair once again, like I could give a damn about my appearance right now. One quick look and easily you could notice the messy hair, bloodshot eyes, and the way I wandered about looked as if I was mixed with somebody tired and another half drunk. Insomnia could be blamed here, as I haven't gotten more than 2 hours of sleep since the incident, and I refused to use medication, it wasn't natural in my eyes.

I stared up into the sky, at least I had something admiring to view all by my lonesome. Fluffy white clouds dotted the canvas like blue, as if it was a painting. They were all different shapes, one of them happening to be five times larger than it's companion.

And in gazing through the sky, my mind drifted to the thoughts of what Eggman was really up to, and how many mobians were already either hurt or injured, or worse, killed. Sonic's already reasoned with me not to blame myself, although I did for the actuality that if I didn't take so long on deciding, maybe we could have been able to save a couple lives, people who deserved to live.

I let out a soft sigh, oh Tails I miss you so much, I can even begin to describe. Hey, maybe he'll meet that guy he always used to mention when he worked on, oh what was his name?... Oh yeah, Isaac Newton, he made all these theories of some sort. Sometime when I would stop by he'd would commence on chatting about him, I would stand in place and just roll my eyes.

I smiled lightly to myself, the cold air did wonders, no doubt why I always used organic stuff. Now determined on my decision to what I desired to do, I made my way back inside to give a certain cobalt hedgehog a much overdue call.

…

Full velocity I ran towards the machine, fists raised, and screaming as I made my charge to destroy the doctor's latest creations. With a swift strapping punch to the head of the machine, I admired my vigor as it's head shattered into bits ad pieces of wire and metal that got strewn across the ground beneath my feet.

"It's a little too silent here Knux, where did they all go?"

"Not sure, keep on your toes," I addressed my partner Ryan. We became acquaintances only a couple days ago as we were fighting side by side, and we enjoyed combating with one another. He himself was just as strong as me, very slick guy who can control ice, yeah I thought it was cool too. His agility is what got me though, he'd constantly move prior to me laying a hand down. Together, we created one hell of a team.

I continued trotting forward on the damp earth, anxious for whatever attempted to fly out at me. Still though I failed at hearing any movement other than my own, and Ryan's of course. He was mirroring my movements, thought heading in the opposite direction.

"… Oh Shit!"

I jerked around at the echo of his exclamation, only to be grabbed by another bot, and tossed like a toy. Hurdling through the air, the flesh on my back smashed against a study oak tree, sending waves of pain searing up my spine while a scurry of leaves showered across my face as I slumped to the ground. Slowly, I rose up to meet the machine eye to eye as it began hustling towards me, arms out ready to puncture me with it's jagged claws.

It was only a few feet when I made a vigilant decision to jump up using the tree, and land on it's head and beat it that way. Only however when I did jump, I landed back on the ground, and watched as Ryan boarded his merry way over, and performed one swift wave of his arm. Dozens of sharp knife-like ice crystals sped away from it's origin, and it only took mere seconds before I heard the sound of puncturing metal.

There stood the same machinery, only this time it's eyes blinked and flashed a few occasions, and it fell over, smashing it's usually powerful front armor into pieces that littered the ground. Ryan jumped off his board which transformed back into it's regular cell phone size, to which he stuck in his back pocket.

"He's all yours," He said with a chuckle, directing our attention towards our microscopic victory, but hey we were able to destroy a few of them.

I walked right over and with one effortless movement tore off the head of the once functioning robot. Vigilantly I used my brut strength to open up the inside metal cavity, which looked to contain many wires that went in all dissimilar directions. Brushing those aside, I finally discovered what I had been searching for. There laid a small but very valuable piece of technology, the hard drive.

"Here, this might help."

I looked up to see Ryan with his serious expression on now, and a knife like piece of ice in his palm.

"Thanks," I answered, and picked up the slice of ice. But only a minute after having the ice now palmed in my hand, I looked to use it finding out that it had melted just like that.

For a second we both stared at one another.

"Hot head."

The two of us burst out into laughter, it was sort of odd in Ryan's case, as I hadn't seen him be much more than serious since I met him.

Ryan gave me a little nudge, letting me know to move out of the way.

"I'll get this, it won't melt in my hands after all. Rouge must be pretty accurate with describing you as a hot head though."

We shared a few more chuckles while he proceeded in snipping the wires connected to the hard drive of the machine, making sure not to inflict any damage upon the drive itself. If that happened, we might lose precious information that we needed to help us learn more about the robots that Eggman was building in mass amounts.

It did help that Ryan decided to handle the ice, as he as an oddly cooler body temperature unlike most, but even more odd it that on the outside he relatively doesn't feel much cooler than the rest of us.

After a couple short and precise minutes, Ryan pulled out a silver box, it had a label attached to the side with jumbles of numbers on it. Like I was going to know what any of this meant, I was the polar opposite of technology savvy, for the fact that I ceased to use any of that kind of stuff anyway.

"I got it, now lets go."

With our item in toe, we progressed to see a feline who could help us with the analyze of the technology.

…

It was a straightforward, simple mission that he had to perform. All he required to do was get in to the main room of Eggman's base, pop the special coded portable driver, and copy all the info into it. For somebody with Sonic's capabilities, this was almost nothing to the cobalt colored hedgehog.

But the amount of emotional, as well as mental strain that Sonic was carrying along with his own body weight, was making every single move and act he did feel heavier, and more difficult. His will to do all his normal heroic duties took a nosedive, for with an assignment like so he would always have his buddy right by his side, ready to back him up if needed.

And here he was now on the outskirts of the base, the only companion to his lonely self was the computer driver that hung on a black rope from his neck. That and the chirping of a cluster of grasshoppers hidden within the wild foot tall grass on the ends of the forest. Well, you couldn't exactly say that it was the actual edge of the forest, rather that it was the edge to a secluded area of open land that was dotted with small shrubs.

Sonic was kneeling on a solitary knee, imprints of the grass was made onto his blue skin. He was checking the surroundings with awareness, making sure that it was abandon of the doctor, as well as most of the guard bots. As expected, there happened to be a few around the borders of the enormous building, but nothing he couldn't handle. In fact, he could just sneak right in without them even having a hint of his presence.

He didn't make a move quite yet, first he grabbed something out of his pocket and held it in his palm. It happened to be a picture of him an Tails the first day they flew the refurbished Tornado. The pair were both smiling brightly, each one wearing flying goggles as they wanted to take their foremost flight without the glass cover on top of the plane. Sonic palmed the picture gently, and from a stand point you can notice a droplet fall onto the kitsune's face, that coming from the blue blur himself.

"I miss you buddy…"

Slipping the cherished photo memoir of his what he would call little brother, Sonic trekked his way towards the door, moving at a rapid enough pace to clear all the robots before they were even able to make a 90 degree turns. Once inside the doors, he kept his back along the inside part of the double doors, for he feared all the little equipment that was hanging along the walls.

Yep, cameras, loads of them all diagonal from one another against the bland cardboard gray walls of the corridors. All different angles they moved, it seemed impossible to get by all of them without something happening that would set off alarms. Sonic knew this, and was going to make perfectly sure that this would cease to happen, the last thing he wanted on his mind was how to escape an Eggman created cell.

However, he had a pretty neat idea that could work out well. Glancing up at the cameras, he observed that there was quite a bit of room between them and the ceiling. Carefully, he made a huge leap with aid from the wall, and got a foot onto the top of the camera. He began hopping from camera to camera, balancing his weight cautiously so that he would put too much pressure onto the camera itself. It also helped that his speed made him have the ability to go to 4 cameras within 3 seconds.

But suddenly in leaping to the second to last one from another door, Sonic missed his step, and fell stiffly onto the tile floor, which was not unforgiving. And as soon as one of those cameras saw the familiar hedgehog, every single one focused their attention onto him.

And then came the alarms… those blazing, earsplitting, screeching alarms.

Sonic scrambled onto his two feet, and began to sprint towards his destination.

He knew he only had minutes now.

…

Not bad for a first chapter I suppose, I have a bunch of plot ideas coming about that I can't wait to use.

Please give me an honest review, and see you next chapter.