Author Note

HEALTH WARNING: This is basically a chapter constructed entirely from dialogue. Even though that didn't go so well last time. Frozen Nitrogen Corp would like to apologize for the glaring absence of blood-splattered violence, and we hope to resume normal service shortly.

She had slept in less comfortable places. Not many, but they were there.
At least, that was what Amy tired to tell herself.

There had been weapons crates at the back of the room; orange cubes of synthwood, much harder and smoother than the real thing. Discarding the Doctor's clunky armaments in a heap on the ground, she and Cream had tugged out sheets of fluffy packaging, spreading the cottony stuff out on the ground as makeshift bedding.

But it was itchy, and it was cold, and it pulled at her fur whenever she moved. What was it, that Knuckles had said to her once? That it was as if some small part of Eggman always filtered down, infecting everything he created; everything, from this city itself, to something as simple as packaging material. Inanimate objects, but always designed with a certain cruelty, and a subtle malice towards living things.

A low rumble coursed its way through the walls. The fifth since she'd started counting. Even down here, the battle above still made itself heard.
The pink hedgehog uncurled, quietly so as not to wake Cream. Her friend was dozing shallowly nearby, little arms wrapped defensively around Cheese. Amy stared up at the ceiling, her eyes tracing the tangled maze of tubes and conduits that weaved above them.

This 'hazard vault' place was cold. And damp. Coarse splotches dirty lichen pocked the naked duracrete walls, grey on grey. The only light sputtered dimly from a single cracked neon strip, welded into one corner just below the pipe-riddled ceiling. A shallow puddle of black, stagnant liquid lurked next to the doorway; Amy hoped it was oil, because water shouldn't smell like that.

She had slept in less comfortable places. Not many, but...
…but Sonic had been there too.
And no-one ever wanted to go to sleep in Metropolis.

But at least she didn't have to live here.
Oh, maybe some had wanted to at the start, if you were foolish enough to listen to the city's oldest residents, spinning unbelievable fairy stories about how it had been different, back at the very beginning. But certainly not now. The smog, the noise, the metal ground that hurt your paws while you walked, the… the order of the place, gridded streets and coridoors that branched and divided and subdivided with pitiless mathematical regularity. Mobians weren't supposed to live in a place like this. Not even humans were supposed to live like this, and they could deal with urban landscapes far better than the Mobians' psychology would allow. Amy had lived in Station Square for a while herself… and that had been hard on the hedgehog, all the unnatural smells and rigid angles.
But human cities were nature preserves next to what the Doctor had built.
No-one, no-one wanted to live in Metropolis.
But they came here anyway, because there was nowhere else to go.

Sonic had told her that there used to be a forest on South Island. He used to go running there, to practice dodging between the trees instead of just tearing across the open fields of Green Hill Zone. The younger Amy had forgotten his exact words, too thrilled that he was actually talking to her to soak up the detail. ('Don't pretend you're any different now', a cheeky voice at the back of her head piped up.)

But Sonic had described the place, anyway, about how it was one of his favorite spots on the Island, because it made him think up whole new ways how to run. He had a far-away look in his eyes, while he talked, and the cutest smile on his peach muzzle. Unstoppably sly when it came to the object of her affections, the pink hedgehog had seen a chance, and dived for it. "It sound's wonderful, Sonic," she'd said, putting her glove on top of his. "Could you… could you show it to me, sometime?"

Her hero hadn't moved his hand away, which was unusual. He didn't even look at her, with the kind of surprised embarrassment that he really should have gotten over already, even back then. Sonic had just kept staring at the horizon, with an unreadable look in his beautiful green eyes.

"He burned it down, Amy. He burned it down."

And that was why they all came here, to the Eggman's Metropolis. He had torn down the forests, drained the rivers, leveled the hills and poisoned the seas, where in their place came the Oil Oceans and the Iron Jungles that were the fat man's twisted concept of utilitarian beauty. Even afterwards, after Sonic defeated him time and again, the Doctor's vast machine-scapes still blighted those ecologies which Mobians had once called home. How many years had it been, since Scrap Brain Zone? But even now, on South Island, the rivers ran red with rust.

So they came here, because there was no other place to go. The remaining wildlands – or even the human cities, despite their faults – were simply too far away, separated from the South Island Archipelago by hundreds of kilometers of open ocean. And living properly in the human regions required money, which was another concept that Mobian semi-feral psychologies were (for the most part) rather ill-equipped to handle.

Metropolis was different. The city required no currency from its inhabitants, no payment for the windowless rooms, or the flavourless gruel that the feeding bays churned out three times a day. Obey the badniks, and attend the autoschools. That was all you had to do. So, after every one of the Doctor's campaigns, the refugees would come. Just a trickle, at first, but then more, and more, flowing bitterly into the city of the very man who had displaced them all; mammals and birds and insects and yes, even humans, after Station Square. And again, after falling chunks of moon had decimated their lands in the east.

But no-one ever wanted to come to Metropolis.
So why…

The chameleon sat, cross-legged, atop one of the synthwood boxes; palms together, eyes closed. He was meditating or something, she guessed. The hedgehog hoisted herself up to sit on one of the crates across from him. Behind them, a half-buzzing, half-snoring Charmy turned over in his sleep.
"Your watch isn't for another hour yet, Rose," Espio remarked, without opening his eyes. He didn't move at all, while Amy just sat there, looking at her boots. The fact that he'd known it was her was… weird.

It wasn't that she thought she stood much of a chance of getting a straight answer out of the chameleon; but it was more likely than asking the crocodile, or Charmy. And she had to try, otherwise it would just keep spinning around in her head, wrecking whatever slim chance of rest she might have down here.

"Why are you here, Espio?" the hedgehog asked. "You, and Charmy, and Vector. Why were you in Metropolis, in the first place?"

Now he opened his eyes. The chameleon didn't look at her; he merely stared ahead, fixated. Espio's scales seemed to turn just a touch lighter. But maybe it was just the lamp.
"Client confidentiality," he said, quietly.
It was what she'd thought he would say.

Amy tapped her heels against the box's unyielding sides. She didn't want to ask the next question. But she had to know. "You've taken a job from Eggman again, haven't you?" the hedgehog whispered.

Espio's eyes flickered to Vector's sleeping bulk, just momentarily. And then focused on Amy. He didn't speak, for what seemed like a long time. The only noise was the muted whirr of ventilator fans, spinning somewhere along the tunnel outside. The chameleon was usually so hard to read; but right now, the look in his golden eyes told her everything.

'We never turn down work that pays'.
That was the Chaotix's motto.

"It's already finished." Espio admitted, when look on Amy's face left no question that she'd already figured it out.
The hedgehog lowered her head, pink quills hanging dejectedly in the murky lamplight.

"How can you do that, Espio?"
There wasn't much anger in the hedgehog's voice. If anything, she sounded… more than anything, she sounded sorry for him.
"When you… last time, back on the Egg Ray. I didn't understand how you could… how you could stand to set him free. After everything he's done! Don't you know? Don't you know about South Island? About the Little Planet? About Chaos? Don't you remember? About everyone he's killed and… I… I don't understand how, when you could help us fight against -"

"Don't do this." Espio said. His voice was taut; his purple scales were definitely getting lighter.

"I mean, it's not just something that affects everyone else," Amy continued, fixing her emerald eyes to his. "He locked you up. Knuckles told us about the Combi-Com-thing, and… you might think you can hide, because you're a chameleon, but… the people and the places you care about… You had a zone you lived in once, right? Before you met Vector? Eggman wants to change it all, Espio. Everywhere. He'll cover it in metal and poison everything that's left, if he hasn't already. It'll be just like… just like… Sonic's forest…"

Her voice got very small, as she came to those final words. Somewhere Sonic had loved; and somewhere that she'd never, ever get to share with him, no matter what happened between them in the future.
It was just one more beautiful thing that the Doctor had taken from the world, and from her. There were far, far too many to count.

Espio had turned lighter. In fact, by now he was closer to white than purple. But he just sat there, meeting Amy's dejected gaze without blinking. Another muted explosion, more powerful than the previous ones, coursed through the room, rattling the pipes in the roof.
Abrubtly, the chameleon leapt off his box. Espio's geckohold boots make a faint sticking noise against the duracrete, as the lizard wordlessly strode out of the door.

It took Amy a moment to realise what had just happened.
"E- Espio?" the hedgehog stammered. He'd just… left?
Clambering rather less elegantly down from her synthwood perch, Amy followed him out into the bleak linearity of the Hazard Vault tunnel.

"Espio! Where are you going!" she cried. But she couldn't even see him. Straining her eyes, peering up and down the unnervingly straight expanses of walkway; there was no-one, ghost-white or magenta. The only movement was the fans, lazily cycling sterile air through the underground labyrinth. Particles of grit and debris drifted in the currents; something like a sweet wrapper sailed noiselessly towards the ventilator grilles.

What was she supposed to do? Try to find him? But that'd leave the others without a watch, so she'd have to wake up Vector, and spend time explaining… Oh, Espio! He'd asked her, he'd asked her not to do it! But she'd kept talking, and now...

Amy turned back through the doorway. And he was there.
Espio was sat back on his box, painted the most eye-searing shade of snow-white she'd ever seen. The neon lamplight blazed off him, almost making him seem brighter than the very source of the illumination. A kunai knife twirled menacingly between the fingers of one hand. He was looking straight at her, a severe expression on his face.

"Where…? How…?"

"It has nothing to do with being a chameleon!" he snarled at her, harshly. The hedgehog had never heard him use such a tone before. "This stuff, these scales, they're not camouflage, like all you mammals assume. It's emotion! They make us whatever colour we feel."

The lizard closed his eyes, and, slowly at first, the purple began to bleed back into him. When he reopened them tense seconds later, Espio's voice, and appearance, was as normal as always.
"You didn't see me come back in, did you? Even though I looked like that. Being invisible is nothing to do with what species you are, Rose. It's all a matter of agility, and discipline."

Amy blinked. She was more than a little frightened of him, right now. He had been angry, when he was white. And that couldn't be true - that he could only change shade depending on what he was feeling… no-one could have locked their emotions down that well, to be able to switch between them like Espio switched between colours. The amount of self-control…

"That's what ninjutsu is about, Rose," the chameleon told her calmly, as if he was following her thoughts. "Self-control. You don't have to be able to change colour to sneak past someone. You just have to make sure you're never stood in the places they look."

"Espio, I… what I said before…" Amy began. She still wasn't sure he could have cooled down that quickly, regardless of what he, and his scales, were saying.

"No, just… let me show you something, please," Espio interrupted, sliding off the crate and raising his arm towards her. "If you don't believe me about the camouflage, I'll prove it to you another way. See this? The kunai knife? You can do exactly the same thing with weapons as you can do with your own body. It's misdirection. You have to make sure your opponent can only see the things you want them to see. Watch the knife carefully. Watch what I do with it."

Amy did what she was told. As Espio moved closer, she looked carefully at the dull steel, as Espio slid the hilt backwards in his palm, hiding pretty much all of the blade behind his gloved fingers, and –

Something tapped her lightly on the side of the head. Surprised, Amy swivelled her pupils to see: a clunky bundle of machinery, attached to a long, iron staff, attached to – held by – Espio's other hand.
It was her own badnik mallet.
Although the chameleon remained his stoic purple, an undisguisable grin crinkled at the corner of his mouth.

"How did you… where were you hiding that?!" the hedgehog squeaked, disbelief plastered all over her face. Espio's grin broadened into a smile; the chameleon allowed a sliver of amused yellow to creep along his scales.

"Agility, and deception, Amy Rose. You were looking at the knife, even when I'd just told you that hiding weapons was all about misdirection. You didn't pay any attention to my other hand, did you? Or to what I was hiding behind me, ever since I came back in here?"

"But… there's no way you could have hidden that from someone who's looking for it!" the hedgehog protested. "It's big, and heavy, and it's…"

"Misconceptions like that are what a ninja exploits," Espio informed her, wagging his finger a little like Sonic did. "Besides, you weren't looking for it, were you? And that's the whole point. If your enemy knows you're there, all the ninjutsu in the world won't save you. Don't let them look anywhere important. Distract them. That's how you hide weapons; and that's how you hide yourself."

Amy shook her head, not quite able to believe, or follow, what the chameleon was claiming. First he'd been; angry? Guilty? And then he'd left, and somehow got back in, and now… this had to be some sort of magic. With weapons?
"Why are you telling me all this?" the pink hedgehog asked.

"Back on the Egg Ray. When we freed the Doctor. It was…" he groped for words, helplessly. "We had to do it, Rose. He was our client. Even though he didn't pay us in the end. We took the job, so we had to finish the job. Because that's what Chaotix IS. We're a detective agency. It's not very often we like the people who hire us."

They were standing really close, right now. She could even make out the ever-shifting hues of tinted magenta and violet, constantly rippling through Espio's scales. It was strange… that no warmth came off of him, none at all. Reptiles were cold-blooded, she remembered.
Espio suddenly seemed to realise how close they were, as well. He stepped back, almost apologetically, before continuing.

"You're right about him, though, Rose. Robotnik is…" he gestured all around them, at the soulless walls of the vault. "… he's something else. He's more than just a psychopath or a murderer; he's more than just evil. But if we break our code for him, then he's beaten us. Can you understand that? If he makes us give up on our motto, he's defeated Chaotix. He's defeated me, Charmy, Vector, and even…"

"Espio, you don't have to -"
The ninja held up a hand, silencing her. He was still remarkably composed, given the content of his exposition.

"But we're not working for him now. Which means we're under no obligation to Eggman. Make no mistake, Rose; we hate him. Vector, and Charmy, and even me. We know what he's done to Mobius, even before he brought the other humans here. And that's why I'm telling you this. Like you said; I can help you. I will help you."

He smiled cautiously at her. Amy processed it for a moment; and she broke out with the kind of heartfelt, beaming expression that she only ever bettered when Sonic was around.

"We've still got almost an hour until my watch is over," the chameleon declared, handing the makeshift hammer over. "So… shall I teach you some ninjutsu?"

Another boring Author Note

Amy's learning ninjutsu? Lolwut? It's almost as if I'm expecting her to gain some uncanny hammer-concealment and invisibility abilities that are never adequately explained in future games! And that'd be just crazy.

Post-emptively, for people not well-versed in the minutae of Sonic Heroes; the 'Egg Ray', or 'Egg Stingray' was, if Gigazubyte recalls correctly, the 'Egg Carrier' of that game, and the location of Sonic Heroes' Final Story, where Eggman had been held prisoner by Metal Sonic. If anyone can confirm what that craft's name was, plz to be telling me plz.

Additionally, appropriate thanks must go to Taranea and STaR Productions, for brainstorming assistance.
And the reviewers. I loev U aLL.