Cyber Amy, or CA as she preferred to be called, opened her eyes and stretched in her hammock. It had been an uneventful night. After Sonic had left, Tails had quickly set up a hammock in a spare room he had been using as a storage room and then run off to make some phone calls. CA had then gone right to bed and enjoyed a relaxing hibernation period.
Many hours later and after working out the kinks that had developed in her joints from sleeping in a less than perfect position, she sat up and walked out into the hallway. Judging by her internal chronometer, it was approximately 10 in the morning, it had never been set to 100% precision, which was confirmed by both the angle of the sun observed through the window and the clock hanging on the wall.
"9:54," she mused. "Sounds like a reasonable time."
She had a feeling that the fox in whose closet she had been borrowing had a habit of keeping his clocks up-to-date. After she had finished updating her systems, she walked down the hallway toward the living room, as she believed they called it, in the direction of sounds that indicated the presence of another conscience life-form. And she was correct; Tails was indeed up and about and was making breakfast, toast with jam and tea, and a strange canister set at the place on his kitchen table closest to the entry way.
"Oh, CA, you're up," he smiled as she entered the room. "I am almost finished making breakfast and was going to wake you up soon. I normally let people sleep in, but we have much to do today."
"Indeed I am most thankful that you allowed me to rest this long, but it was not necessary," she replied. "What is this cylinder, it does not appear to be nourishment, so the reason you would have it at a breakfast table does not come to me."
"Oh, that!" The kit explained, "I know sleeping probably allows your body to cool down and recover somewhat, but since you didn't have a charging station in your room, I decided to rig you up a battery here, since our breakfast is, umm, a little light in the calorie department." He mentioned motioning towards the fridge. "Sorry."
"Anyway, it has a built in charge meter on the side, as you can see," the fox continued, dishing out toast and tea, "And you should be able to find a way to hook up to it to take a quick charge up as necessary. . ." At this the fox trailed off. The meter had gone from full when he had last seen it to empty and CA was now chewing on a piece of toast with the same appetite as would be expected of most hungry people in the morning. "Oh, well," he thought. "She must have been hungry."
"So what is the plan for today, Mr. Prowler? I assume that you have come up with one as I do not have as much an idea as one could wish."
"Mr. Prowler?" Tails looked up in surprise.
"I assume as we have just met that certain formalities are in order, and any degree of familiarity would be taken as an insult. Was I wrong?" CA had a look of minor dismay on her face.
Tails just shook his head, "under certain circumstances you would be correct, but you are good friends with my big brother, and you are staying here, so just 'Tails' works fine."
". . . All right, Tails it is then."
"And yes I do have a plan. We take my Tornado out to where you and Sonic first met. From there, we determine the direction you came from. From your conversation last night, I assume that you simply wanted to get away from wherever it was you were, so you probably went in more or less a straight line, so we simply fly out at a reasonable altitude and keep our eyes peeled for anything that looks like it could be a compound with the topography you described."
"That sounds like a reasonable suggestion, and yes, I believe that my course was mostly in a straight line unless both my optics and compass are out of alignment."
"I find it unlikely that someone who would be capable of designing such an advanced piece of machinery as you would most likely not make the mistake of leaving two such critical components non-functional."
This seemed to satisfy CA until the reality struck her. "What about time?" It had taken her a good eight hours to reach the rocky area where she had encountered Sonic. Even though she had been traveling over sand at less than full speed, it could still take them the better part of a day to find this place.
"That's the entire reason behind taking the Tornado," he replied. "It can go much faster than you over desert area, and by flying high, we can get a good view of the landscape for miles. We could cover your journey in probably only an hour or so. I also will be keeping an eye on some sensors to see if we can spot it that way. Even if it takes a while, that's why we're getting such an early start."
At that moment, they heard a rap at the door. "Come in!" In entered the third member of their intrepid team, Sonic himself. "Hey little bro, hey CA, how'd you sleep last night? I hope I'm not too early."
"My rest was quite comfortable and without interruption, unpleasant or otherwise, so I assume that is what's known as 'all right.' And I believe we were just finishing up here, Tails?"
"Yes, I believe you are right. I rose earlier and have already filled up the Tornado, so it's all ready to go. All we were waiting for was you, Sonic, so let's go!"
The three friends strode off towards the hangar where Tails kept his prized plane. As they walked, CA made a mental note to ask Tails later whether it was usual, she thought not, that refrigerators were bound with thick gauge chain and padlocks.
CA must not have been running fast at all. Either that or the desert had a far greater slowing effect than either Tails or CA had estimated. The place they were looking for was not only in a straight shot from their starting point, but it only took them about an hour to spot it from the air. In another half hour, they were right over it and landed the Tornado.
"Sheesh CA, you were right about this place. It's a real dump," Sonic noted as soon as they were out of the plane on the ground.
And indeed it was. It looked like it had once been a covert science complex, but now it was little more than a heap of broken down walls and other debris strewn around a crater in the ground.
"You okay CA? You said last time you were here you were kinda scared?"
"I'm okay Sonic, I have you two with me now, and I can see there's nothing to be scared about. Let's just see what we can find around here."
"If you're okay, then let's split up to investigate. You two start at the other side of the base, and I'll start looking around here, and we can all work toward the middle. If you see anything computer-related that might be salvageable or important, let me know," Tails directed. And with a series of nods, the three friends headed off to look for anything of value.
Sonic was the first one to trip on something out of place. He was inspecting a piece of machinery that looked something like a tank melted out of shape when he heard movement nearby. He knew that CA or Tails would announce their presence, so it had to be someone else. Who could it be?
He stood up, slowly so as not to attract any more attention than he might already have, then crept quietly towards the door. Just as he left the room he saw a flash at the corner of his eye. In the dim light, he didn't recognize the figure. It lunged at him. Out of instinct finely-honed from his many battles with Robotnik, he spin-dashed it. It dodged. Right as he landed, he stood up and dashed at it himself, catching himself in time to deflect an energy dagger thrust at him. Wait a minute – energy dagger? As he grabbed his assailant's arm, he got a good look at his face. With a shock of surprise, he exclaimed, "Shade!"
Indeed it was Knuckles partner, Shade the Echidna.
The short fight had raised a small ruckus , and CA and Tails came rushing over to see what all the commotion was about.
CA observed the newcomer. She had no prior reference and was content to pick up on that through the others. Tails on the other hand, was slightly more vocal, "Shade, what are you doing here? I thought you were on Angel Island with Knuckles, guarding the Master Emerald."
"I was, but about two nights ago, we saw a huge flash of light on the horizon, and I decided to come and investigate while Knuckles and Steven stayed behind."
At this point CA spoke up, "Two nights ago, that was right before I woke up. Could that have something to do with how I woke up and the state of the base?"
"Most likely, this entire area appears to have been subject to a massive explosion, that's why most of the buildings are in pieces," Tails opined.
"But lil' bro, if there was a huge explosion, why didn't anyone else see it? I can see Angel Island having the best view being airborne and all but, why no one else?" Sonic asked.
"Because of a barrier system. From what I can tell, until recently, this entire base was shielded under a massive barrier. It could have contained the blast and minimized its impact," Tails responded.
"Barrier system? How'd you make that out? Most of the computers were fried over where I was, and they couldn't have been better where you were."
"Same here," interjected Shade. "I think I got here before you did, and I haven't found any working ones either." "Same here," added CA.
"Because of all the emitters lying around, like for instance the one you are standing on."
At this Sonic, for it was he who Tails had been addressing, quickly sidestepped and looked down at his feet, "How about that?" he said with some surprise. For indeed, he had been standing on a long metal pole that looked more like it should be up in the air than on the ground. "But, do you have any clue as to what could cause such an explosion?"
"I do," said the fox, now looking like he had a lump the size of Alaska in his throat. "I discovered the cause from one semi-intact computer. This was caused by the destruction of a chaos emerald."
Well how about that? Thank you for reading RR please and give me some feedback, most importantly, if I have another chapter this long should I split it up into two parts?
