"Is this a good idea?" Andy whispered to me as we staked out our target.

"Um…define 'good idea'," I told him.

"Is it legal?" he defined for me.

"No, this is not a good idea," I said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"What are we doing at Rouge's house again?" Stevie Joe asked even though I'd told him what we were doing here five times already.

But, his frustrating forgetfulness and lack of attention span is part of the reason we like him.

"We are at Rouge's house because she has two Chaos emeralds, and we need them," I told him.

"Oh," Stevie Joe blinked. "How are we gonna get past the security alarm?"

"That is what we were trying to figure out," I explained.

"Oh," Stevie Joe said again. After a few seconds, he said, "I bet I could break it."

Andy snickered. "Oh, I'd love to see you try," he said.

"OK." Stevie Joe took off across Rouge's lawn at a flat-out run. About half way to the door he jumped up and put his hands out in front of him. He started to glide. That gave him enough height to reach the security alarm, which he smashed as easily as I could snap a toothpick.

He landed and gave us a cheeky grin.

"How did you…"

"What? All Echidnas can do that," Stevie Joe said proudly. "Knuckles showed me. And when I'm all grown up, I'll be able to fly higher and longer, and I'll be nearly three times as strong as I am now."

Well, this was an interesting tidbit of information, but we had a robbery to commit. Andy and I picked our jaws off of the ground and rushed over to where Stevie Joe was holding the door open.

"After you," he told us, waving us in.

"Show off," Andy muttered, walking into the darkened house.

We had to be quiet, because Rouge was sleeping upstairs. Now, it's been awhile since I was at Rouge's house, but she usually kept all her jewels in a large museum-like room on the first floor. We just had to sneak across the house, grab the emeralds, and leave before Rouge found out we were here.

That plan worked partially, as we did get to the Emeralds, collect them, and started back out the door. Then, things went haywire as I heard a horrendous crash and Stevie Joe yelp in agony, snarling some phrases that both sounded like something Knuckles would say and something that the Echidna really had no business repeating to his kid.

"Freaking, no good coffee table!" Stevie Joe snapped. "Why don't 'cha jump out in front of me and stub my doggone foot, you bull crap worth of a cruddy table!"

"Shh!" Andy whispered. "You're going to give us away!"

Too late, because the lights came on and Rouge the bat peered down at us from the top of her stairs. She extended her wings and glided down to us easily.

"Well, well, what have we here?" Rouge asked, grabbing Andy's shoulder and inspecting the emerald nestled in his hands. "Little boys like you have no business trying to play thief. I think I might have to teach you a few manners."

She probably meant she was going to call either the cops or our parents, or both. But one can never be too sure with Rouge. We were all slightly panicked, but Andy was panicked the worst, because he was the one she was actually holding.

"Help!" Andy shrieked. "She's gonna eat me! I wish Father was here to Chaos Control—"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the blue emerald he was holding flashed brightly and he disappeared.

"What the…"

That was as far as Rouge got as Andy reappeared next to me and Stevie Joe. His eyes were huge.

"I can…I just…this is SO COOL!" he said, still a little freaked by the whole ordeal. "Quick, grab me, guys."

Stevie Joe and I quickly grabbed is arms, and Andy put his hands on top of the Emerald.

"Chaos Control!" he yelled, and a flash of light surrounded us. I suddenly felt like I was moving, and then it was over.

And we were ten feet off the ground over the Westopolis public swimming pool.

"Oh, crud," I muttered as we fell. It was early spring, so the water was stale and cold.

"OH, GEEZ, I'M TURNING INTO AN ECHIDNA-SICKLE!" Stevie Joe yelped, grabbing the side of the pool and pushing himself out. Andy and I were right on his heels, scrambling out of the cold water and shivering in miserable little heaps by the side.

"W-w-well, at least we got two more emeralds," I said, looking on the bright side. "That means we now have four of them."

"Five," Stevie Joe corrected, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a cloth. He opened it to reveal the green emerald. "I found it on Angel Island," he explained, looking at it fondly. "I like to pretend it's a little Master Emerald for me to protect."

Andy and I gave each other stunned looks. We were both thinking the same thing. Stevie Joe is pretending to protect something? It didn't seem possible.

And yet he was, and seemed quite adamant about it, too. The echidna gently rewrapped the emerald in his cloth and carefully put it back in his pocket. I had never seen him be so careful and thorough with anything ever before, not even when he'd just been created and didn't have all those personality glitches.

Once he was reasonably sure that the green Chaos Emerald was safe and well protected in his pocket, he looked up at us with a big, cheesy grin. "How now, brown cow?" he asked.

Andy and I breathed a sigh of relief; seeing Stevie Joe behave so…responsibly was rather disturbing. We were both glad to see him acting more or less like his regular, immature self.

"We still have to find two more Chaos emeralds," I said. "We're missing the purple and light blue gems."

"I know where the purple one is," Any said. We all knew, and we were not looking forward to this. It was a well-known fact that Miles Prower kept the purple emerald to study and also to power equipment.

Right now, Uncle Tails was out of the state testing a new engine he'd put on the Tornado III. That meant we'd have to break in to his house and take his emerald.

We were going to have to steal from the first living creature who had ever shown us kindness. And we were not looking forward to it.

"We'll give it right back, right?" Andy asked me as we stared at Uncle Tails' house.

I nodded. "The instant we get our parents back. Maybe he won't even know we took it."

"We'll know," Stevie Joe said sadly. Andy and I gave each other worried looks. Here was another instance of Stevie Joe's new sense of maturity and purpose. Just what was Knuckles teaching him on that Island, anyway? How was Knuckles teaching him, period?

Not that I'm complaining. I'd been trying to get Stevie Joe to act mature for my entire life. I admit, I am a touch jealous that Knuckles managed to accomplish a life time goal for me in four short years, but I digress.

We carefully sneaked to the door, thankful that Uncle Tails didn't invest in security alarms or locks. He had no reason to; the only person who ever broke in was Big the Cat, and Big didn't worry about the alarms and simply broke down locked doors. So it was pretty much a waste of time and money, as far as Uncle Tails was concerned.

I gently opened the unlocked doors and walked over to Uncle Tails' workstation. The purple emerald was on it, hooked up to a power meter by a good many wires. I carefully disconnected the wires, making sure I didn't break any, and gently picked up the emerald. I'm really a very considerate burglar.

Then, prize in hand, I took the purple emerald and the three of us left Uncle Tails' house, all of us feeling lower than dirt and silently vowing to return the Emerald the instant we had our parents back.

It wasn't so bad for me, personally, taking the white Emerald, because Dad had given it to Zombie and Zombie had given it to me. And the Green Emerald belonged to Stevie Joe. Andy had eased his conscience over taking the Red Emerald by thinking that he was simply returning it to Shadow, the rightful owner. And since Rouge had probably stolen her two emeralds and none of us liked her much anyway, none of us were going to lose much sleep over taking hers.

But even though we all thought Uncle Tails would be more than willing to give us the purple emerald had he known the situation, he hadn't given it to us. We had broken into his house and simply took it.

And no amount of explaining it away to necessity could convince my conscience that I had not done something horribly wrong.

The light blue emerald was all that was left. And it didn't belong to anyone as of yet; we would have to find it.

I was using the white emerald as a tracker. We had determined that it was somewhere in Green Hill Zone: Andy had Chaos Controlled us there. And luckily, this time we landed on solid ground.

I saw the white Emerald glowing wildly; the last emerald was near here. "Look!" I said, seeing a flash of light atop a large mountain.

"I see it," Andy said. There was a whoosh of wind and in a second, Andy had the light blue emerald in his hands. "What?" he asked at our stunned looks.

"You realize you just ran up a mountain and back in a few seconds?" I asked.

Andy's eyes widened, then he grinned. "I guess I did," he said, sounding pleased. "I've never ran anywhere near that fast before!"

"We have all seven emeralds," I said. "Now let's go give them to our parents."

With that, Andy Chaos Controlled us to the rendezvous point.

"Eggman!" I called when we appeared at his base. "We've got the emeralds! Now let our parents go!"

The doors to his base opened, but there was nobody there. We gave each other worried looks and nervously stepped inside. The doors slammed shut with a bang behind us.

A large TV turned on above our heads, and Eggman's face appeared on it.

"So, you've gotten my emeralds, have you?" he asked.

"Where's our parents?"

"Why, they're right there with you," Eggman replied, pushing a button. A light on the far end of the wall turned on, and we gasped as we saw Mom, Dad, Shadow, and Knuckles, still lying unconscious inside large metal cages.

Stevie Joe leaned close to me and whispered, "Um, if they're unconscious, how are they gonna use the emeralds to go super?"

I didn't answer him. It was obvious that my previous plan had hit a large snag.

"Let them go, Eggman!" I yelled.

"Why would I do that?" Eggman asked. "This way, I get rid of those annoying pests, I get all seven Chaos Emeralds, and I finally get to study you three and figure out how to build a machine that will turn organics into my robotic slaves!"

With that, he snapped his fingers, and hundreds of SWATbots appeared out of nowhere.

"Kill Sonic the Hedgehog and his annoying friends," Eggman ordered. "But bring the children and the emeralds to me."

"Affirmative, Doctor," said a SWATbot across the room, and his arm turned into an Ion cannon which he pointed at Dad.

I felt the most terrific anger I'd ever known flare up in me. "YOU LEAVE MY PARENTS ALONE!" I screamed.

The next thing I knew, I was right next to a smoldering heap of SWATbot ruins.

I blinked, confused, and looked at my friends. Andy looked shocked, but Stevie Joe was grinning ear to ear.

"COOL!" he yelled. "Nick, you just ran across the base at like, mach 2, pulled out your Piko Piko hammer out of nowhere, and totally smashed that SWATbot to bits!"

I looked down. Sure enough, I was holding my blue Piko Piko hammer. Then I grinned. "Let's trash these bots!" I yelled.

Andy cheered. "Chaos Spears!" he cried, and two energy beams appeared. They were much like Shadow's only Andy's were a yellowish/orange color and were much smaller. But the damage they did to a SWATbot after you impaled them with it was exactly the same.

I took off across the room. I found that if I held my Piko Piko hammer out and went into a spin dash, it made for some totally awesome SWATbot smashing.

Stevie Joe glided over to a SWATbot and punched his arm right through the machine's mid torso.

Soon enough, all the SWATbots were scrap metal. I was out of breath, Andy and Stevie Joe looked tired too. But what surprised me was Eggman clapping with amusement from his TV thing.

"Not bad, Metal Sonic," he said approvingly. "But you didn't think I spent four years sitting on my butt and moping, did you?"

A door on the far end of the room opened and something that I couldn't quite make out walked out. It looked like a twisted, deformed version of Tails. Its eyes were large and black, and its head, arms, and legs seemed to be stuffed too big for its body. It slouched limply, as if it was struggling just to hold up its own weight. It was about as tall as I was. There was a large, red crystal on its forehead.

"What is that thing?" Andy asked.

"Boys, allow me to introduce you to my newest creation," Eggman said, practically purring. "Meet Tails Doll."

Suddenly, the thing's head shot up and it looked right at us. The crystal on top of its head started to glow and suddenly I found it very hard to focus.

"Give me your emeralds," Tails Doll said in a deep, mellow voice. I quickly reached for the emeralds in my possession, almost against my will. It was like I had to do what it asked. I saw Andy do the same with his own emeralds out of the corner of my eye.

Stevie Joe seemed to hesitate. Tails Doll looked directly at him and hissed, "GIVE ME YOUR EMERALDS!"

Slowly, Stevie Joe took out his Green Emerald. He couldn't fight it, either. I felt so tired; I wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep.

When all seven emeralds came together, they started to float.

"What the…" Eggman gasped from his TV. "How are the Emeralds reacting? There's no one here who's capable of activating them! Never mind," he seemed to reassure himself. "The crystal I put on Tails Doll's head will even control those in Super form. No organic life form can possibly resist its power."

The Emeralds sparked and I felt a tremendous surge of energy. All of a sudden I was wide awake. And is Tails Doll shorter?

Confused, I looked at my friends. Instead of seeing Andy and Stevie Joe, I came face to face with Shadow Android and Robo Knuckles!

Now extremely lost, I glanced at my own hands. Metallic. Apparently, instead of going into Super form, my friends and I became robots again. I am, once again, Metal Sonic.

And I am going to need some serious therapy when this is over.