Hello all. Here is chapter 7.


As Amy awoke, she yawned and stretched, feeling refreshed and energetic. After a night of rest, of her mind reorganizing the clutter and wreckage that the unbelievable events of the day before had caused, everything seemed both clearer, and more distant. Thinking of Sonic hurt a little less, and in her memory his words seemed to be somehow... padded, but the path before her was concrete and firm. Tails had opened a door for her, and she found herself being drawn through it inexorably. Her hot-headed and admittedly rash actions the day before were proof enough of that pull; normally she was staying away from trouble, not causing it. A part of her drew a perverse sense of satisfaction from that reversal, as any kind of control over her life was better than none, and she smiled as she climbed out of her bed.

Looking around the room she had chosen the night before, she saw her bags lined up in a corner, one of them open and trailing partially removed clothing like a kind of textile intestine. She opened up a different bag, looking for her exercise clothes, but then remembered she had left them in a different room.

She walked out the door and made her way to the room she had changed in the day before, navigating the complex hallways. When she had arrived with her baggage the night before, she had chosen a large room that was close to both the elevator and the medical section, and had convenient access to both washing machines and showers. The place where she had changed before heading out to meet Rouge was nothing as deliberately chosen, and she had to keep peaking in through doorways, hoping each one would contain her creations from the day before. It took her almost thirty minutes to find them, and a glance at her watch told her it was around 7:20; Tails would be getting impatient soon enough.

She took her clothes back to the room she had chosen and grabbed a towel, along with some toiletries, before heading for the showers. By the time she got there, it was already half past seven; she'd have to be fast with her shower. Luckily, the showers were, while completely void of any beauty, very efficient and industrially clean. Various helpful gizmos, like a shower head that seemed to anticipate where it would be needed and a blow dryer that proved her towel unnecessary, made her morning ritual record-fast, and as she jogged into the elevator her watch read 7:45.

She sent the elevator rocketing down to B5, and set out for where she had left off with Tails the day before. As she walked into the chamber that held the medical scanning machine he had used on her, she was surprised to see him chatting with Rouge, showing her the various devices.

"You'll like this," he continued, oblivious to Amy's presence as he showed Rouge some machine that Amy had steered away from the day before, due to its excess of sharp pointy bits. "It forces people to tell the truth via a complicated series of electric currents; I call it 'Tautology X-Plus'."

Rouge frowned in thought, but then came to an understanding. "Ah, I understand 'Tautology'. But, why 'X-Plus'?"

Tails sighed. "There were twenty three failures before the 'Tautology X', and since I made this one easier to tie people to, I added 'Plus' to the end. Finding a way to force people to tell the truth without using any serums was a lot more difficult than I thought."

Rouge smirked. "How honest. If you had claimed it was for 'stylistic purposes,' I would have believed you, you know."

"I'd rather be known as a scientist who fails twenty three times before getting it right, than a scientist who makes up silly names for his inventions. I have enough problems maintaining my dignity in front of the government officials already; I don't need to add childish obsessions to their list of reasons why I shouldn't be trusted with highly destructive weapons."

"I don't know," Amy said, taunting him cheerfully. "I think 'Naming Obsession' would blend in pretty well with the other obsessions on the list. Wasn't one of your excuses for needing a test site out in the wilderness, 'So I could see how much firepower it takes to permanently taint the earth'?"

Tails turned around, the gleeful expression on his face at Amy's appearance mismatched with his defensive body gestures. "It was a simple experiment, and one that needed to be done. How else am I supposed to find the limits within which I can work without going past them? Besides, it's good to have a place where I can test various methods to remove said taint."

Amy patted the fox on the head. "Right, right. You're going to become a mad scientist one day, I swear." She ruffled his hair for good measure, and then turned to Rouge as he tried to fix it with a pouting expression. "I see you came. Is Tails giving you some kind of tour?"

"Oh yes," Rouge said, smiling viciously, "and I can promise that you're life is going to be very interesting from now on! Like that ancient Avian curse; 'You will live in interesting times'!"

"That bad, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. Tails made up some new stuff yesterday, just for you. I especially loved the 'Boulder Flinger'."

Amy winced. "What, am I supposed to dodge flying hunks of rock now? That doesn't seem very safe!"

"I wouldn't think up something so crude," Tails said, forcing himself back into the conversation. "You'll be catching them, and then throwing them at targets. Its strength, endurance, awareness, and accuracy training all rolled into one elegant exercise."

"Elegant!? In what way!? I'm not a cave-dwelling thug, Tails, give me a break!"

"It's elegant because you are one of the only creatures capable of doing it. It's elegant not in the sense of your movement, although I'm sure Rouge here would be capable of doing much of the exercise and make it look that way, but rather in an evolutionary sense."

Amy rolled her eyes. "You have the weirdest sense of beauty I've ever heard of, Tails."

Tails sniffed. "I understand. It's hard not to be jealous when my sense of aesthetics is on a higher plane than yours."

"Tails, Tails, you're quite mistaken. Living with your head in a hole is a stepdown, not up!"

Tails glared. "Insults aside, shall we get started today? While I have done a full physical exam, I'll need to see you in action to properly gauge your training. We'll start with running and sprinting!"

He walked off, beckoning for the two women to follow. Rouge skipped forward, as if she was looking forward to what was to come, while Amy followed with twin feelings of reluctance and excitement swirling in her breast. On one hand, it was finally starting. On the other, it was finally starting!

They all made their way to the running track, and as they entered Tails motioned for Amy to climb into the large ring that was built into the floor. Meanwhile, he and Rouge climbed onto a raised platform that overlooked the circular track.

Amy was standing on the inside, plastering herself to the inside wall, when Tails waved at her and called out, "I'm turning it on!" He pressed a large button, and the spire that was in the center of the ring started to hum, and emit a purplish-green light.

And then, with no transition whatsoever, Amy was no longer leaning against the wall. She was lying on the floor.

It was the oddest sensation. It was if someone has stopped time and moved her from a standing position to a horizontal one. Her insides, which she had unconsciously tensed up in preparation for the switch, moved all at once, making her feel slightly queasy. She slowly got to her feet, and looked around. Tails and Rouge, along with the platform the were standing on, were all tilted ninety degrees from her point of view. It was very strange to see someone defy the laws of gravity.

No, wait a sec.I'm the one defying gravity right now. No, that's not true. I'm still bound by gravity; it's just a different gravity than the one they are being bound by. What a strange feeling; it's like I'm in a different world...

"Amy," Tails called out, "are you alright?"

"Yes," Amy said, weakly, still uneasy about the sudden transition. "Yes, I'm fine. Let's get started."

Tails frowned, uncertain, but didn't press the matter. "Alright, then. I assume that you know your own limits well enough from your frequent runs around the city?"

"Yeah. I haven't been pushing them very much, but I know where they are."

"Good. I need you to run at a speed that you could comfortably maintain without strain for at least an hour."

Amy nodded, and then started off. While she could only maintain her max speed for only about a half hour, she could run at about half that speed, fifty mph, for a long, long time. Just like Sonic, she was banned from entering most foot races, something she was actually quite proud about.

Tails kept her at that speed for about fifteen minutes, and then asked her to stop. Meanwhile, Rouge was starting look bored, tapping her foot and crossing her arms.

As Tails kept his eyes on the controls, reading numbers and marking things down in the pad he held in his hands, Rouge looked increasingly cross. Finally, she stepped forward.

"This is soooooboring! Can't you make it more lethal!?"

Amy glared up (Or was it down? She couldn't really tell) at the bat. "Hey! Do you want me to be hurt or something?"

Rouge let her eyes wander. "I'm bored. I need you to be entertaining." She poked Tails, making him edge away as he tried to focus on his calculations. "C'mon, can't you put some traps in there? Like blades and spikes and explosions?"

Tails grunted as she poked him a second time, and turned to her, irritated. "Not yet. Those kind of things will come later, in a different room."

"How much later?"

"If you wish, we can go there after all these tests are done."

Rouge danced in glee, but Amy wasn't about to let that pass by. "Don't modify my training for her perverse glee!"

"Don't worry, it changes little."

"That's not what I'm worrying about!"

Rouge rested her arms on the railing and winked down (Left? Right?) at Amy. "Stop whining, dear. Your fate is inescapable. You should be thanking me; now you get to deal with it sooner, and have the bor- I mean, easy stuff all to yourself later."

Amy glared, but just like Tails said, it probably changed little. It just bugged her that Rouge seemed to be treating this like some sort of amusement. She'd probably laugh every time Amy fell in that room with the electrified water.

Tails put his pad down and look at Amy. "All right, I need you to sprint as fast as you can for as long as you can, Amy. How long do you think that will be?"

"If I press myself," Amy said as she began stretching, "I can probably go a little faster than a hundred mph for a ten, fifteen minutes."

"GOD," Rouge said loudly to herself, "I'm SO BORED."

"Shut it," Amy said, gritting her teeth. Rouge just sighed and started peering at the control panel in a way that made Tails profoundly nervous.

"If you touch anything," he said worriedly, "I'll... have to do... something."

Rouge laughed, and started putting her hands over everything, without actually pressing a button.

At least she's amusing herself. Jeez, she's like a small child!

"Amy," Tails said as he attempted to put his body between the console and Rouge with little success, "start running, please."

Amy complied, gently accelerating and breathing as deeply and evenly as possible. She did this instinctively, but Tails had once explained to her that it was a method of saturating the blood stream with oxygen before it became more difficult to breath at higher speeds. It was like holding your breath, only it went past holding air in your lungs. At the speeds Amy ran at she didn't run into any problems, but Sonic couldn't breathe when he was at top speed; 'pre-saturation' helped him keep running for a longer period of time. He'd be a wonderful diver, Tails often said, if his hydrophobia didn't keep him from learning to swim.

She took a minute to get to her full speed, and then began to push herself beyond it. 'Pushing herself', however, wasn't as simple as it sounded. If she was a car, it would be far different from reaching max speed, and then hitting the boosters. It was more like lighting the engine on fire, if such a thing could help a car reach greater speeds. She had spoken to Sonic about it once before; they had both agreed that there was a sort of 'switch' inside them that, once pressed, put their bodies into 'overdrive' (as Sonic fondly called it) and made them work much harder than normal, at the expense of hurting her body. It was a painful process, and one she had only used once before, in an attempt to escape from Metal Sonic.

Using it now hadn't been a simple decision. That one time she had spoken to Sonic about it, he had commented on how it was, for him, something he used all the time. When she had asked why, he had said it was because he had practiced with it, pushing his body to its limits and then breaking those limits. He had never elaborated, but if Sonic was anything like Amy it had to have been an extremely painful process, and definitely a great contributor to his current success as the 'Fastest Thing Alive'.

She wanted to catch up to Sonic, so she would have to get used to this ability. It was as simple as that. That didn't stopped her from worrying about how much it would hurt, of course. Being naturally tough, she wasn't used to pain. In any case, she had decided to push her body and become stronger; now was the time to step up to the plate and take a swing.

She had 'flicked the switch', now, and she could feel her body heating up. An ache spread throughout her body, and not just her muscles were affected. Her bones felt strained, like they were being bent under a great force, and it was if her blood was beginning to boil. Even the roots of hair were in pain.

But she continued running, and things began to blur as she went faster than she ever had before. She pushed further, determined to go farther and farther. Her feet moved at a speed that seemed impossible, so fast that it was no longer possible to separate the movement of one foot from the other. She was just running, her legs moving in a pattern that was instilled into her very genes. It became harder to breathe, and despite the pain, Amy smiled; never before had that happened.

And then, her heart stopped.

At least, that was what it felt like. Where before her pulse had been going through her body like hammer striking iron, everything was still. Strangely, it didn't hurt; she knew that heart attacks were supposed to hurt, and this did not. Somehow, she knew her blood was still moving through her veins, but it was moving at a steady pace that had nothing to do with a pulse, or her heart. Instinct told her nothing, but a different part of her, something more primal than instinct, even, told her that her heart was no longer moving because something better had taken over.

Her reverie was broken by Tails' frantic yells, and she skidded to a stop. The 'overdrive' came to a halt, her body slowed down, and her heart resumed control. Oddly enough, she felt herself on the verge of panic; using her heart seemed inefficient and wasteful, and she found herself wishing she could go back.

"Amy, Amy, are you all- ahh!" Tails had, in his haste, jumped down into the ring while the gravity was still modified, and he ended up slamming into the wall/floor awkwardly. He got back to his feet as quickly as possible and came rushing over to Amy. Rouge, learning from his fall, jumped and managed to gracefully land on her feet.

Tails grabbed Amy by the shoulders and almost began shaking her in his worry. "Are you all right, Amy? The readings said your heart stopped!"

"It did," Amy said in a daze, "but I was fine. Something better took over."

"Something better?" Tails seemed mystified by her response. "How is that possible? You have the exact same organs that I do. You don't have anything capable of taking over like that."

"I don't know how to explain it," Amy said, strength returning to her body and her words as she slowly recovered from the shock. "It was like, instead of my heart contracting to move my blood, the blood was just moving on its own."

"On it's own?" Tails scratched his head, and then widened his eyes. "I, I may have an idea about what happened. I assume that you were trying to go beyond your normal limits using that trick that Sonic calls 'overdrive,' right?"

"Yeah," Amy said in surprise. "How'd you know?"

"Well, I can't think of anything else that could suddenly double your max speed."

"Double?" Amy blinked her eyes. "You mean, I was going at almost two hundred miles per hour?"

Rouge stepped forward. "Right at the end for about a second, yeah. In fact, it was right after we got the reading that your heart had stopped."

"Anyway," Tails said impatiently, "Sonic once tried to describe this 'overdrive' by saying, 'Everything just works perfectly by itself.' He could have possibly been referring to his blood moving on its own."

"That's..." Amy said, feeling a thread of annoyance enter into her heart, "that's just like him, to phrase something so amazing in such a stupid way."

"Yeah, well," Tails said, looking defensive, "No one's ever claimed he has a way with words. His heroics are solely centered in the doing, not the telling."

"Unlike you," Rouge said with a smile. "You've been talking circles around government inspectors for years now."

"I'm as patriotic as anyone else," Tails said loftily, switching into a different mode. "Why would I try and trick the people who give me money? Are you calling me a deceitful person?"

"See, see!" Rouge was pointing at the fox and trying to hold in her laughter. "Listen to that! He denied nothing, admitted nothing, brought attention to his services to the nation, brought up an argument against him doing such a thing, and then turned it into an assault on his honor in two sentences. He's good!"

Amy sighed. "Hey, weren't you guys worried about me having a heart attack just a few seconds ago?"

Rouge waved away Amy's complaint. "You seem fine. I say we restart the exercises!"

"Wait just a second," Tails said, climbing out the ring – this time carefully aware of the gravity differences. "I need to check something. Entertain each other for a minute." He walked off and Amy heard the door open and close, leaving her with an off-duty government agent who's thirst for entertainment had been, for the moment, temporarily sated.

"So," Rouge whispered to Amy despite that fact that Tails had walked out the door already, "Tell me what happened!"

Amy crossed her arms, thinking deeply. "Well, are you familiar with what Sonic calls, 'overdrive'?"

"Yeah, I've read a government file about it once. It's just pushing your body really hard, but it's a built in feature for your guys, right?"

"Pretty much, but I'd say the biggest difference is that it puts the strain on your whole body. Everything hurts, not just the muscles you're using. Anyway, I was trying that – for the second time in my life, I might add – when suddenly my heart stopped beating."

"Really!" Rouge said conspiratorially, in a tone that made Amy think of gossiping housewives. "Did it hurt?"

"No, it didn't. In fact, where before my blood had been hurting, it suddenly stopped, so I felt better." Amy thought about it for a second. "The best way I can sum it up is that my heart was no longer up to the task, so something better took control."

"What do you think this 'something better' is?"

"No idea, but I bet Tails does from the way he's acting."

"You're right," Rouge said in a strange voice, and suddenly the conversation turned. "I'm worried about him, Amy. He's been dodging criticism for years, but his experiments are getting wilder and wilder. He's been folding to the repeated demands for weapons that would make the standing army actually useful against Eggman, and those robotic soldiers he's been planning up have got a lot of the nastier people in the government interested."

This was news to Amy. She had heard about the soldiers, but she had no idea which people in the government were interested in what. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that he's getting involved in a bad crowd, and making worse enemies, just to keep his funding going. While his success has kept him going so far, most of his inventions have, at best, been defensive in nature, and that doesn't satisfy most people. You can't blame them; with the kind of resources Eggman has at his disposal, a war of attrition is exactly what he wants."

"What are they complaining about? Sonic's been doing fine so far."

Rouge shook her head. "There are a couple of reasons why the government doesn't like that. First of all, while the Elem officials generally have a deep appreciation of Sonic's efforts, other countries don't, and Elem is far from having a majority control over this alliance.

"Second of all, a good portion of Sonic's success has relied on Eggman's personality. Eggman isn't interested in destruction; he wants to conquer us as unharmed as possible. In addition, while his obsessive nature is a great contributor to his success as a scientist, it doesn't make him a great general; he focuses on Sonic way too much. If he suddenly decided to launch a large scale assault against the alliance, Sonic would be hard pressed to stop it by himself. The members of this alliance want a way to protect their people that doesn't rely on a single person who, while far more capable of being everywhere than most people, is still mortal.

"Finally, you have the weapon merchants, or 'merchants of death,' as they are fondly called. Tails' inventions haven't been profiting them at all; in fact, even though we're in the middle of the biggest war this planet has ever seen, they're barely making any money. But if Tails suddenly starts making weapons and releasing the plans to those manufacturers, their profit will skyrocket, and they'll do anything to get that to happen.

"What worries me is that he's mixing with some of them, and giving the rest the cold shoulder. I supposed he's just trying to minimize the damage his weapons cause, but it's a very, very dangerous game he's playing. The weapon merchants he's not favoring will want to take control of him, and the one's he does will protect their 'asset' with all their strength – meaning that, in a worse case scenario, he could find himself in the middle of an urban war."

By the time Rouge had finished, Amy was clenching her fists together. "I see. I understand your worries. But what is he supposed to do? What would be the best thing for him to do?"

Rouge shrugged. "I'm not really sure. He's kinda screwed any way he goes, but the way he's going now is probably one of the worst ways he be doing it."

Amy slammed her fist into the wall, putting a dent there and causing Rouge to squeak in surprise. "Don't screw with me, Rouge! You wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't have a better idea of what to do! You may think it's 'entertaining' to watch me squirm as I try to come up with an answer, but I take Tails safety very seriously!"

Rouge was starting to sweat. "Um, well, you... you're right. I do have an idea of what to do, but I don't think you'll like it."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "Explain."

"Well, there are a couple of solutions. First of all, he could give the weapons to everybody. That's still a nasty idea, as the war with Eggman isn't the only conflict right now, just the biggest one. There's several small countries that, if the weapons were sold to them, would use them to wipe their rivals off the face of the planet. But, it isbetter than getting himself involved in a fight between weapon merchants."

"And? What else have you thought of?"

"Well," Rouge said in a strained voice, "there are several other choices, but they all hurt somebody. He could not give them to anybody, but at best that'll put all the pressure on Tails, and at worst make him the target of a concerted kidnapping effort. He could make sure that everything he puts out is under close government scrutiny, but that won't last for long."

Amy kept staring. "There's something you're holding back."

"There's one other way, but it's the one I knew you wouldn't want to hear."

"Spill it."

Rouge looked at Amy crossly. "Fine, have it your way. Just don't get angry at me for suggesting it."

Amy smiled a little. "I will have it my way, when it comes to Tails."

"Hmph. Well, to sum it up, it basically calls for Tails to be in charge of all the weapons himself."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the main problem lies with the fact that, once the weapons leave Tails' hands, they'll be used by others without his supervision. So, the solution is to never let them leave his hands."

"But, I thought you said that if he didn't use the weapons, that wouldn't solve anything because people would still be asking for them, stronger than ever."

"That's true, but much of those people are simply worried about their safety. The weapon merchants are a remarkably small faction, but they tend to incite other countries into agreeing with them. So the solution lies in providing them their safety, but keeping the weapon merchants out of it."

Amy suddenly realized what Rouge meant. "You mean Tails should use the weapons himself, form his own standing army?"

"Exactly. After all, his robotic soldiers are what have really gotten everybody interested – and he's perfectly capable of controlling those by himself."

"But that's terrible! You're asking Tails to make his own mercenary army, and to fight against Eggman all by himself!"

"Certainly, it'll be stressful, but thankfully Eggman doesn't use living people in his army – it's entirely robotic. It's the only solution I can see that does the least damage."

"There are a host of problems with that! First of all, challenging Eggman's robot army with another robot army is just asking for Tails to forget the reason he's fighting. When it comes to challenging his intellect against Robotnik's, Tails almost always gets as obsessed as Robotnik himself. And as much as I hate to admit it, Tails has a tendency to come short in those encounters."

"He wouldn't be taking the fight to Eggman – remember, Sonic's perfectly capable to doing that by himself. No, all he'd have to do would have a few platoons spread out to protect the countries in case Eggman decides to invade."

Amy crossed her arms. "You know, it's entirely possible that that very act could incite Eggman to invade."

"True, but can you really say he won't do it anyway, sooner or later? Better to have it happen on our terms than his, right?"

"You sound just like those war mongers."

"That's because they're not stupid. They know how to use proper arguments, and it's not like they don't have a point."

Amy opened her mouth to retort, but the door opening cut her off. Tails walked onto the control platform, wearing a very strange expression.

"Well," he said, "I've figured out what happened to you Amy. Kind of."

What do you mean, 'kind of''," Amy said crossly. "This is my body we're talking about! Be more exact!"

"To put it simply, I've figured out how you did what you did, but I don't know for certain exactly what you did."

Rouge looked quizzical "How is that possible? Isn't it usually the other way around?"

"Let me explain. I checked my more advanced sensors, and just as I expected, Chaos energy was released in this room in small amounts."

"Chaos Energy!?" Amy took a step back. "Are you saying that's what caused... whatever happened?"

"Yes. That's why I can't say exactly what happened – since Chaos energy can do anything, I'd need to more accurately test what happened. The simplest answer is that you used Chaos Energy to subconsciously move your blood around your body without the use of your heart, which would be much simpler and easier on your body. However, it would be just as feasible for you to have been, for example, teleporting nutrients where they were needed, thereby bypassing not just your heart, but your blood as well."

"But that's impossible," Amy exclaimed. "I can't manipulate Chaos Energy, only Shadow can! We'll, Sonic too, but only with a Chaos Emerald."

"That's true, but Shadow's ability could simply be a feature that hedgehogs could generally be capable of, brought to the forefront and enhanced via genetic manipulation. The energy you were using is a tiny fraction of the energy Shadow usually uses. In addition, judging from what he said, Sonic has experienced the same thing. I didn't have anything capable of detecting Chaos Energy back when I tested him here, so it's entirely possible that he's been using it this entire time. Finally, I happen to have a Chaos Emerald stored here in this facility – it's proximity could be allowing, or possibly encouraging, you to use Chaos Energy."

Amy didn't know what to think. "What does this mean, then?"

"It means-"

"More tests!" Rouge interrupted Tails dramatically

"Exactly," Tails said, and Amy winced. "But those will come later. For now, we'll continue with what I was planning to do today."

"I was afraid of that," Amy said tiredly. Her whole body ached.

Tails was heading back to the console when he turned around suddenly. "That reminds me. Don't use that ability again, Amy, at least for now. It appears that something like that will turn out to be vital, but I'm worried about the effect it has on your body. Remember that Sonic is in far better shape than you are – not that you're out of shape, of course," he said nervously as Amy turned her glare on him, "it's all relative. You're not in the least bit fat."

"What exactly did you mean by that? That was highly suspicious!" Amy's glare increased.

"No, no, not at all! Please, I wasn't trying to imply anything!" Tails was practically begging.

Amy glared for a moment longer, and then sighed as she began stretching. As she was doing this she stared at Rouge, who wasn't making any movement to leave the ring. "You need to leave if I'm going to get started."

Rouge grinned, and pulled out what looked like a knife attached to a long chain. Jumping, she landed on the spire in the center of the ring, and sat down casually. "I thought I'd give you a little 'incentive'."

As Rouge began twirling the long piece of metal, Amy groaned. Her stay here at Tails' lab was looking to be very, very long indeed.