One more real day to write this. I have the final battle to write, and anything that follows too. I also have a party that I am hosting tomorrow. Whew! This is getting tricky! Can I do it? Can I write 2 more chapters worth of material in less than 5 hours? Only time can tell!

School was out, and that meant it was time to swim.

The team gathered around as Jibbers sears through the parking lot in his truck, eager to make it to practice on time. In his zeal, he had managed to shut and lock the truck doors, while the vehicle was still running.

"Haha! This happens like every year!" Drake laughed. Mentally, he, and all of the swimmer, congratulated Jibbers for getting his Truck operational again.

"Yes, but this time!" Jibbers announced, climbing into the back of his truck, which was suspiciously covered by a tarp, "I have a way into the car to turn it off!" He climbed through the back window deftly and turned his vehicle off. Rather than exiting through the door, he went back out the window.

The swim team didn't bother asking. He would've come up with a clever response anyhow.

"Yes, this means that we have practice boys! Be careful about it though, not too difficult, just enough to get the blood running and the muscles moving! Too hard and you'll tire yourselves out. I want you all in peak condition tomorrow, we're taking those water bastards down!"

The confidence was overwhelming.

In a matter of minutes, the team was suited up and swimming diligently. Rocky noted the sound of thundering rapids had been reduced to a strong river. He focused to the best ability on his dives, his gymnastics helping him not smash onto his rear end, stomach, or side. But, alas, he was surrounded be external and internal distractions.

An internal was obvious, Cream the Rabbit. An external was even more obvious, Karsyn the Fox. She had curled herself into a ball, upset and seemingly alone. Tears flowed from her face gently as she mentally and partially verbally, recounted what Zach had said.

Zach, after coming to the faulty assumption that she was over-exaggerating, swam in the pool as if nothing was wrong.

Rocky noticed that, every so often, Zach would glance over to check up on her. To this, Karsyn seemed to overreact in that she would look away rather rapidly, as if she wanted a point known that she didn't want to look at him. This was rather childish, and only reinforced Zach initial assumption.

Karsyn continued to mutter how terrible Zach was, and how it shouldn't affect her ability to dive, and other self inflicting, wounding phrases that brought her esteem impossibly lower than it already was.

Rocky watched it all, and made mental notes for when he married Cream, what not to do. The first thing on his list was to never let her become upset.

Foolishly, he believed this was possible. As an audience, you should all know that it is an impossible goal to never let a woman or a man become upset. They are both stupid creatures.

Karsyn went up for a dive. Steadily, she walked to the edge and, just before she reached, she picked up speed and flipped a few times in the air. She landed on her face.

"No!" She sobbed, a female diver helped her out of the pool and into the hot tub. She rubbed her face in mild agony, she was used to this, only her pride was smashed. "I am not even a good enough diver for him..." She whined.

Instantly, the other girls in the diving area came to her side to cheer her up using classic fallacies that girls always use to cheer up their female friends. "You're too good for him," "It'll all be better with time," and, the bitter kicker, "he's just doing it because he likes you." That last one brought forth even more sobs.

Pitifully, Rocky had two hours more of it to withstand.

Joe looked at his work with wonder. Swimming had ended an hour ago, and he has decided to tamper with his creation a little bit more before bedtime. Next to his truck in his garage, the Chrismobile, equipped with a massive drill on the front, and a reinforced bumper, sat next to it.

It was beautiful, to him, at least. He weighed the pressing matters of his life, to continue his project for just a few minutes more, or go to bed like the rest of his team hypothetically was.

Vengeance and bloodlust drove him to drop his tools and scurry off to bed.

The light above the car was left on, glorifying his work for the night to awe at.

On this night, swimmers and divers prepared for the final battle, and villains prepared for sinister experiments. Both parties dreamt, and both parties dreamt of total victory.

The morning of the final battle, Damian stretched his ever fattening limbs and yawned.

Feeling the excess of skin and muscles around his body, he realized that that was one thing his father never really pursued: exercise.

"Perhaps I will swim around one day." Meandering around his captured school, he came to the miserable conclusion that there was no pool for the forest district. They were completely devoid of an aquatics center altogether.

This made Damian mad. When he discovered that they had a vast track program, outside this frustrated him further.

"This is not within conceivable logic. A forest, condensed flora and foliage, should have a running program, as compared to a swimming program, when swamps are easily included in some forests, undoubtedly this one? Gah! To hell with it! I'll forgo my exercising plans and focus on more pressing matters." He said the moment he walked back into his command station.

Immediately he was thrust into action. Red lights were flashing around.

"Sir, enemies have been encroaching on our position, what shall we do?" His top advisor asked.

"Set up a perimeter immediately! Send out all forces! We must hold this base at all costs!"

"They are already passing through our gates! It's GUN!" The advisor squeaked against the building wrath of Damian Robotnik.

"Arm all guards, they MUST be pushed out!"

Sitting back in his chair, he came to another conclusion: had he not been concerned with exercising, he wouldn't have to defend his base so stressfully.

"No good can come out of that wretched activity. I hate swimmers." He growled.

Rocky, alongside all of his swimmer buddies, were sitting together at lunch. All of them were discussing the upcoming battle. Jibbers was there too. He was rather exuberant in his ravings.

"Ok! Drake! You've got to swim like it today is your birthday. Because you remember what happened on your birthday, right?" Jibbers raised an eyebrow with a smirk on his face.

Drake remembered what he did on his birthday.

"Zac, I am not concerned with your performance, just do what you do best. But, Christoph, ich will dich schnell schwimmen, du verstehst?"

"Ja, ich werde schneller als dich schwimmen." Christoph responded.

"Well well well! I like the attitude! Save it for them! Zach, how's your emotional standpoint?"

Karsyn slapped him.

"Ok, that could use some work. You two, kiss and make up, we can't have emotions stand against us today! Chris, how are you today?"

"Give me my car back you asshole."

"Oh! That's right! I finished last night, we can go pick it up right after the meet, ok?"

Chris grumbled.

"I'm going to beat you tonight Capn'." Brett the Otter proclaimed. Jibbers and Brett swam the same stroke.

"You're on sophomore. Freshmen, you know what you're doing?"

As a unit, they responded, "We won't take sixth."

Sixth is the worst place you can take in a six lane pool. It awards no points.

"Excelent! Alex, how are the girls faring?"

"We're just as thirsty as you are Joe." She said with a sparkle in her fur. A few guys winced.

"And our divers?"

"Well, I'm fine." Rocky said.

"That's great news Rocky, glad to see you're up to par today."

Jibbers looked around.

"Oh yes, today's the day. Today is the day the Coast District School loses its crown!"

Cheers came as the group finished up their small feast before the bell rang.

In the last hour of his day, Rocky decided one final plot. Emboldened by his teammate's excitement and energy, he desired to see Cream one last time. I will dive for her. As if her life depended on it! Or, that was close enough to his thought process.

So, he wanted to tell her about the swim meet. Surely, had he been thinking properly, he would've realized that she most certainly would've heard the hundreds of announcements over the PA, or at the very least, one of them. But, he never thought clearly.

Unfortunately for Rocky, he was a little behind Cream's schedule.

Cream, was walking her bike home home. She was done with school, and very tired of it. She didn't feel like riding her bike, even though she had brought it. Ever since Tails chose Cosmo over her, she had always been mildly bitter. Tails was in love now. Cream had had suitors, boys who wanted to date her, but she turned more than most of them down. Rocky was no different, except that he couldn't take a hint.

"Chao chao..." Her companion, Cheese, mumbled. The Chao could tell she was distraught.

"He's creepy, and he's weird. End of story. Now... how am I going to get all of this homework done?" She asked allowed as she passed the tree she always passed on her route home.

"Chao!" The floating blue blob screeched as a machine lashed out and snatched it.

"CHEESE!" Cream screamed as her friend was kidnapped.

The small machine squeezed the chao into a ball and kept it locked in place with an energy field. A small chaos drive could be seen in a canister powering it. It scurried away with a small jet, flying across the plains towards the forest district in the distance.

Tossing her bike and books down, Cream flew up to its height, afraid it may fly off into the clouds. She grabbed at the machine, wrenching parts from it. Poorly constructed, the machine slowly lost its wings, limbs, and other concealing armor plates as Cream yanked at it.

Cheese, however, was not free, and the machine, too small to mount, was gaining speed, and Cream was beginning to lose her grip and energy.

A trail of parts littered the ground from the place they began their fight. Cream, with her ears, her primary limb for flight, exhausted, she fell to the ground, weeping.

"Cheese! Cheese!" Her best friend for more than ten years, had just been taken away.

She wasn't going to give up that easily. Her ears fatigued, she set off chsing it from the ground. Now hundreds of feet from her stuff and bike, she realized, none of that mattered. Cheese was real, and that Chao meant everything to her. She pursued the machine as it flew across the skies towards her old school.

Rocky followed Cream's path up until the tree. Splinters were everywhere, and evidence of a fight was omnipotent. Rocky panicked. What if Cream is in danger?

What a dreary thought indeed. Rocky saw the bike, the dented bike that Cream must've been thrown off in her flight from the pedophilic rapist that must've assaulted her. He got on the bike, and saw a trail of mechanical parts on the ground. From this, Rocky concluded that the pedophile drove a crappy car, and Cream's fighting gradually broke it to pieces.

He just hoped that he was fast enough to save her from being raped, for there was no other conceivable reason she would go missing.

Gallantly, he pedaled onwards to save the girl of his dreams for utter annihilation. His goal was most certainly not to save a pet that did not like him. And that pet most certainly could not be a Chao.

"Where is he?" Jibbers growled. No one was ever late for a swim meet.

Punctuality was something Jibbers always strove to teach the team.

He counted heads again, to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. The meet was at home, so the enemy team from the Coast District would be there shortly to begin warm-up.

"Has anyone seen Rocky?" Jibbers growled, he wanted the team at full fighting capacity. Rocky was actually a fairly good diver. So long as he showed up and didn't miss a dive, he would actually help the team.

"I heard him say he needed to do something." A freshman spoke up.

"If he's not here in the next 10 minutes, we have to begin the warm-up and the meet without him." Jibbers checked his pocket watch and marked the time.

Rocky had been pedaling for about seven minutes, and he was exhausted. He thought only about how miserable Cream would feel when that pedophile finally got to her.

As his speed gradually reduced, he started to see a building in the distance. He'd never really been this far from the plain district, so he wasn't sure exactly what it was. He sped closer. It was a school.

So, this pedophile wants to rape her in a school. Rocky shuddered. No place was safe.

Rocky pedaled up to the side of the building to find a hole in a window. Obviously, because the school was closed, and the pedophile couldn't get in through any doors, he must have taken her through the window. To verify Rocky's ravings, a torn piece, barely a scratch, of Cream's red sweater was found attached to a shard of glass. This infuriated the little rabbit, and he hopped through the building.

"Cream?" Rocky whispered, hoping for an answer, he was going to be stealthy first.

Damian looked at his catch with pride. He had caught a Chao. His devices kept the chao in place as they extracted DNA and began synthesizing it for experimentation and cataloging.

The chao writhed in pain. Damian could see tears in its eyes as it wailed its one word. "Chao!"

It didn't matter. This was vengeance. It was personal. This Chao's DNA would give rise to the most powerful creation in all Mobian history.

Besides, it was only a mindless creature, a stupid critter. Nothing more, right?

The sound of Damian's machines made a loud hum through the air, it masked most other noises. Damian kept watching his machine, however, making sure that everything went according to plan.

It only brushed his mind to be careful. His defensive capabilities were at a minimum. GUN cut them into shred, but he did manage to repel the invaders. Their bodies lay on the ground, dirtying the place.

But, he thought, they wouldn't dare be ready for another assault yet. By the time they come around, I'll be long gone.

"So you're the famous captain Jibbers, eh?" A sly voice uttered from behind him.

Jibbers turned to see his nemesis. James. It was as if he wasn't even an animal, but a mutation of many. He had skin sleeker than a dolphin's, a body a ripped as a bear, and agility, though not obvious, to match a cat. Jibbers glared.

"It's been a long time James."

"That it has. As you can see, I and my team are ready to crush some more termites."

Jibbers eyes glared. "Yes, I can see that. Too bad we're not bugs."

Dalton winced, his brother was always lame when he shouldn't be.

James laughed, and turned. "Here that guys? They aren't bugs."

More laughter ensued.

Angrily, Jibbers conducted everyone to the locker rooms to get dressed and ready to swim.

"Cream! Cream!" Rocky shouted, hoping desperately for a response. The dead bodies on the floor, men and women alike, made Rocky realize the force of the serial rapist he and Cream were dealing with. If he wasn't fast enough, Cream could perish.

"Cream! Cream! Cre-DOP" Rocky was turned quickly as a hand reached over his mouth, smothering him. Rocky closed his eyes, this is the end.

"Keep it down you worthless moron!" A lovely voice spat at him.

"Cream!" Rocky shouted as his eyes got really big.

BAM

"OW!" Before Rocky could continue, Cream was smothering him again.

"Listen, this is my school. A crazy lunatic has captured my Chao and I'm trying to get him back. You are blowing my cover. Go home."

"But I came to rescue you."

"Rescue me? Hell with it, ok, you can help me. But what the hell are you going to do? When I was a little kid, I did stuff like this all the time. You better not slow me down."

"I'm a gymnast... and a pretty good diver." Rocky explained weakily, defenseless from the raging Cream.

His alternate reality had crashed and burned. Cream wasn't really in any danger.

"I guess I can try to help..." Rocky whispered.

Cream heaved a sigh.

Glancing back and forth, she dove through the hallways silently. Rocky followed, equally as quiet, with just as much grace. Cream motioned for Rocky to stop and pointed up at the ceiling. Mounted cameras with guns attached swiveled menacingly.

Rocky's eyes bulged. "I've got it," he picked up a piece of metal from the ground.

In his mind, he saw himself using his profound physical prowess to knowck out the gun and disable the turret.

In reality, the metal stick fell short, unable to be hurled with enough accuracy or power.

Cream let loose another heavy sigh. She turned back, grabbed a gun, pointed and shot. The desired result was obtained.

The two crept through the halls until Cream could hear a loud, humming noise. Above it, she heard the screeching of ultimate pain.

Her pupils dilated, and she charged into the room.

At this point, Rocky panicked. Should he stay where he knew it was moderately safe, or should he chase after the girl of his dreams into near certain death?

He flipped out his phone and called the first person that came to mind.

"Hello?" Jibbers growled, he had just put on his swimsuit.

"Captain this is Rocky!" The sound of loud machines could be heard in the background.

Jibber's fangs barred and he responded, "Rocky, where the hell-"

"There's no time! I'm going to die! Cream's here, we're in the Forest Distric School! There is something wrong- AAUGGH! Wh-who is that?"

"Get out of my school," a snappy voice cut in, "Both of you!"

"Don't you TOUCH HER!" The sound of the phone dropping was heard.

*BANG*

SISSSSSSSSSSSSS

BOOM

"C'mon! Rocky! Let's GET OUT OF HERE!"

"FULL LOCKDOWN! MAKE SURE THEY DON'T ESCAPE! ALL TURRETS ON! SHOOT TO KILL! Now I probably should remove that DNA and store it safely on my ship... better save my data than risk a full crash... What is this? A phone? Bah!"

The connection died with the sound of stomping.

Jibbers dropped his phone, ears perked in high alert.

"Who was that?" Drake asked.

Jibbers just stared off into the distance, formulating.

DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Ok, wish me luck, speed writing ftw.

OH YES! Date and stuff.

06/07/2011

~Joe