In honor of a new episode of Sonic Boom (in the US, at least) this morning and the fact that I'm running a 5K in a few hours, I have a new chapter for you. Remember to read and review (and/or favorite and/or follow)!

Jan. 5, 2012

Dear diary:

Everything is getting so...so...I don't know. Sonic and Cosmo are really worried about this girl from the vision they shared, and Tails...Tails is completely messed up by it. I think all of us are.

Who is this girl, and why is she doing this to us?

Love,
Amy Rose

Amy stared down at the notebook open in her lap for a long moment. The words blurred away as her eyes unfocussed. How could this happen just as everything was getting good again?

She pressed her notebook closed without a sound. She stared at its violet cover, dragging her fingers across its coil binding. We're at war, she thought. Things getting 'good' is just some stupid illusion.

Rage built in her chest, and she chucked her notebook at the wall. The notebook hit the wall along the book's edge, producing a tiny, hollow sound, before falling open on the floor. The rage dissipated as quickly as it had come, and she just stared at the notebook on the floor, feeling less than satisfied.

Amy's face fell into her hands. She thought, How could I really think things are getting better? Things don't get better. This is our world now. We're just lucky we're not dead.

I think.

-(-)-

Amy came into the living room several minutes later and dropped down on an old couch under the one window in the room. Light cut into the room through the slits in the closed blinds. Cream already sat on the couch and didn't so much as look up when Amy collapsed, instead sticking her finger absentmindedly into a hole in the cloudy fabric. Knuckles sat in a chair nearby, eyes closed so that Amy wasn't sure if he was awake or drowsing. "You okay?" Cream asked her eventually.

Amy stared up at the ceiling, and her shoulders fell with an exagerrated sigh. "Definitely not."

"Can everyone just stop talking like that!" Knuckles shouted so suddenly that Amy jerked up in her seat and nearly fell face first off the sofa.

Once she managed to gather herself, Amy's eyes snapped to his face. "What should we act like? I'd love to know," Amy snapped. She sat forward on the edge of her seat, about ready to pull out her hammer and challenge Knuckles to a fight. She knew her anger was less than rational, but it was so much easier than the alternative.

"Maybe like the world wasn't ending every twenty seconds," Knuckles snapped back.

Amy pushed herself to her feet. "I'm allowed to be worried! We don't have the first idea what's going on right now!"

Knuckles remained sitting, his apparent calmness beyond infuriating to Amy. Knuckles was supposed to be the one to take the short-temper bait. She hated him being rational; she needed a fight. He said, "No, we don't. And I didn't say you weren't allowed to be worried. What I was saying was stop whining because that's not going to get anything solved. Get it?"

Her fingers itched for her hammer, her arms ached to swing, but Knuckles's rationality diffused the anger building in her chest. Her shoulders collapsed. She stared at the graying carpet beneath her feet instead of meeting Knuckles's eyes. "Got it," she sighed. She fell back down to the couch, which squeeked in protest.

"Good," Knuckles grunted, his eyes falling closed. "We have enough problems to solve. Let's not feel sorry for ourselves too."

"So what do we do now?" Cream whispered. Cheese stirred from where he slept on the middle cushion of the couch. He looked up drowsily at the sound of Cream's voice, blinking at her with his heavily lidded eyes. Slowly, he crawled into her lap, apparently doing what he could to comfort his friend despite being half asleep. Cream stroked his head absentmindedly, and Cheese drifted off again.

Amy smiled down at the chao, forgetting herself for a moment. His sleepy naivite slowed her rapid heartbeat for a few moments. But as Cheese fell back asleep and Amy watched his tiny chest rising and falling with each heavy breath, she remembered where she was. Her smile quickly faded, and she slumped against the back of the couch. She offered a tiny shrug to Cream. "I don't know. Right now we're sort of stuck."

Cream frowned down at Cheese. "And just when things were getting so good."

Amy chose not to respond. She knew it wouldn't be long before Cream reached the same conclusion as she had. She pulled up her legs beneath her and wrapped her arms around her knees. She saw Knuckles watching her and starting to open his mouth. Amy glared at him, and he immediately shut it. Whining wouldn't solve anything, no, but Amy needed to at least feel sorry for herself for a while.

"What we have to do is find out what we can about that girl Sonic and Cosmo saw."

Amy's head jerked up at the sound of Tails's voice. He stood in the doorway of the front room. He wore a sideways smirk on his face, looking more confident than he had in…months, really. Amy wondered if he knew how much he looked like his big brother. Tails turned to Amy and took in her shocked expression. But his smile refused to fade. "I can't be sad or worried or...whatever I've been doing. Sitting still and wallowing isn't fixing anything. To beat the Metarex, we gotta keep working."

"Finally, someone who gets it," Knuckles muttered. Amy eyed him out of the corner of her eye. She could still pull out her hammer if needed.

A high-pitched whistle outside broke Amy out of her thoughts. She saw Tails's ears noticibly perk up at the noise, proving the sound wasn't a figment of her imagination. She spun around in her seat and peeked out of the blinds covering the window. Her eyes combed the gray sky for the source as the noise deepened from a whistle to what sounded like a foghorn. "Amy?" Cream asked. The couch shifted beneath Amy as Cream moved to kneel beside her.

"I don't know," she replied tersely, refusing to remove her eyes from the window.

And then she saw it. A small aircraft rocketed through the sky, smoke billowing from where Amy expected its engine must be. And it was falling in what was most definitely not a controlled descent. "You might want to hold on to something!" she cried.

No sooner had she spoken did the craft crash to the ground within sight of their base. It shook the building, sending everything within its walls rattling. Cream cried out involuntarily from beside Amy. Cheese woke with a start, chattering away in a voice that could just only be heard above the sound of the aftershock. Amy wrapped her arms around the back of the couch and squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could keep her steady.

Only when their world stopped shaking did Amy open her eyes. "Is everyone okay?" she called out. She glanced around behind her. Cream clutched Cheese to her chest beside Amy. Tails shoved himself back to his feet, though Amy wasn't sure if he was on the ground after falling or as a measure to brace himself. Knuckles pushed himself out of the chair and crossed over to Amy to look out the window over her shoulder.

"Is that Metarex?" he asked in a low voice.

Amy turned back to the window and saw the aircraft smoking in a crater it left in the ground. Other than the gently waving smoke, nothing moved outside. "I don't think so," Amy replied. "It looks too…" Amy shook her head. "…white? I don't know. Not intimidating enough?" The scene looked too much like Cosmo's arrival on Mobius nearly six years before, complete with crater. Even the ship seemed distantly familiar. But Amy assumed that was her mind playing tricks.

Amy heard a rush of footsteps behind her and looked back over her shoulder. Sonic rushed into the room, quickly followed by Cosmo and Chris. "A ship crashed outside," Amy said before anyone could ask.

"Metarex?" Chris asked.

"It doesn't look like it," Amy replied.

"Unless they changed their ship designs," Knuckles added, ever the pessimist.

Sonic rushed over to the window and jumped up on to the couch between Cream and Amy. Amy watched his face rather than the ship out the window. Logic told her the immediate threat outside the window demanded her attention, but she knew from history that Sonic's face alone could tell her just how scared she needed to be. His narrowed eyes gradually brightened. "It's not Metarex," he confirmed.

Without another word of explanation, Sonic jumped off the couch and ran out the front door. Amy saw only a blue blur as he sprinted over to the craft. "Does he even think before he does things?" Knuckles muttered. He pushed himself off the couch and ran after him.

Amy only watched at the window for a moment more before she couldn't sit still. She shook from waiting, expecting an explosion to wake her up from her dreaming. Or a murderous creature to erupt from the wreck and slay Sonic, taking him away for good. Every one of a dozen nightmarish scenarios ran through her head, all of them ending in Sonic's death. She needed to be by his side in case he needed a fighting partner. "They're not about to have all the fun," she muttered as explanation before racing out the front door.

Amy slowed to a stop at the edge of the crater. Sonic and Knuckles climbed over the wreckage of the craft, heavily damaged but at least still resembling a ship. "Find anything?" she called.

Neither of the guys responded for a moment. Amy heard footsteps behind her and turned to see everyone else heading their way. All of them were too much adventurer to allow fear to overwhelm curiousity. "Amy, mind giving us a hand?" Sonic called out.

Amy turned back to see Sonic looking at her from his spot on top of the craft. Amy nodded once and lowered herself into the crater. She treaded over the clay and dirt uneven beneath her feet. Knuckles offered her his hand and pulled her up the side of the craft. Once she climbed on top of the metal, Sonic offered her his own hand to pull her up the rest of the way. Scraps of metal jutted out sharply in all directions, forcing Amy to watch where she placed her hands and feet. "There's someone inside," Sonic told her quickly, pointing downward.

Amy looked where he pointed. Beneath their feet was the blast shield of the craft and through its warped surface, Amy saw a blonde young woman sitting in the cockpit, unmoving. "Knuckles and I are going to pull open the blast shield," Sonic explained. "We need you to reach in and get her out while we hold it open."

Amy nodded. She stepped carefully around the blast shield so that she stood at its front. Sonic and Knuckles set themselves up on either side. "Ready?" Sonic asked, glancing between her and Knuckles.

"On three," Amy muttered.

Sonic counted up and on three, he and Knuckles yanked upward on the blast shield. It screamed in protest as it inched upward under their force. Sonic grunted and adjusted his feet to get better leverage. The hinges screeched. As soon as there was enough space, Amy squeezed through and climbed into the cockpit. She fumbled with the latches locking the girl into her seat. They came free after a few seconds and clanked dully as Amy threw them aside. She reached to pull the girl out of her seat but stopped short. Wings protruded from her back, glinting pale blue in the twisted light. "A fairy?" she breathed.

Amy looked up at the fairy's face. Her eyes were closed above her sharp cheekbones. Amy could barely hear her breathing. "This isn't exactly light, Amy!" Knuckles growled.

Amy shook her head to clear her thoughts. Careful to avoid crushing the girl's wings, Amy reached under her arms and pulled her from the cockpit. As soon as they were clear, Sonic and Knuckles dropped the blast shield, and it crashed down. A crack splintered through it, but the shield didn't shatter. "You good?" Sonic asked.

"Fine," Amy said quickly. Knuckles took the girl from Amy's arms and leaped from the wreckage back down to solid ground. Amy glanced over her shoulder at Sonic. His eyes held fixed to the girl Knuckles now lowered to the ground. "You said the girl from your vision was a fairy," Amy said.

"I did," Sonic agreed.

When he didn't elaborate, Amy asked, "Is that her?"

Sonic nodded slowly, but he stayed silent, his focus entirely on the stranger. Amy followed his gaze to stare at her as well. She didn't stir, but even from the distance, Amy could see her chest rise and fall with each quiet breath.

Without a word, Sonic came up behind Amy to lift her off the ground and into his arms. She blushed, more out of surprise than embarrasment, but Sonic didn't look down at her. He dropped to the ground and set Amy down again. The others wandered over and formed a loose circle around the fairy.

"Sonic?" Cosmo whispered.

"I know," he replied.

"What is she?" Knuckles asked.

"A fairy," Amy explained. "She must be from Majyk."

Amy wrapped her arms around herself as if cold and looked up. Chris stared at Amy, eyes narrowed. "Majyk? Like…magical, that kind of magic?"

Amy shrugged, looking back down. She watched the girl's face, strangely serene for having been knocked unconscious. "Not spelled the same way but basically. It's a planet. The species that lives there is fairy. Well, the women of the species are fairy. The men are called magicians, I think."

"Fairies actually exist?" Chris said. Amy looked at him out of the top of his eyes and saw how Chris's face lit up. A grin stretched out beneath bright eyes. "When I was a kid, I read all these stories about fairies, but…for one, they weren't real. But also, they were palm-sized."

Amy stared at him, just shaking her head. "I think we can all agree Earth is a weird place, but seriously? Fairies are not palm-sized."

"But why is she here?" Tails whispered.

Amy turned to Tails. He stared fixedly on the girl at her feet. Amy knew he must be thinking about Sonic and Cosmo's shared vision as much as she was. It had to mean something, them seeing her before she came. "I want to know just as much as you do," she replied.

"What should we do?" Cream asked.

"She needs us," Sonic said suddenly, and all eyes snapped to him. Meanwhile, he kept his eyes on the ground. "I don't think she really wants help, but she needs it. She told us that much in our vision. We can't just leave her here."

Amy sighed and nodded, though it was hardly her decision alone. "She must have come here for some reason; it's not like Majyk's exactly close to here," Amy said. "And Sonic and Cosmo must have had a vision of her for some reason. It's time we figure out what that reason is."