Ok, I'm updating on a weekday! OMG! That doesn't happen often anymore... lol... Well, the problems with my girlfriend, I've found, won't be over until the 16th... assuming I live that long, I ought to also have this story done CLOSE to then... no promises, of course, but still... I'm getting clsoe to the climax, can't you tell? Lol, oh yeah, and a few new characters may be coming in next chapter... not that you haven't seen them before, but still...

Nonetheless, someone gave me a few ideas that weren't originally in my plan for this story... I don't remember who, but it made me think, and OOH I feel good about it all right now...

Enjoy!

Stephen stood at attention, as if he was in the middle of boot camp. Also similar to boot camp, an angry fat man was yelling at him.

"ULv2.0! How could you fail me?! I told you to KILL the hedgehogs! NOT CAPTURE THEM!"

"Orders are: capture or destroy Sonic, Amy and Sarah Rose."

"NO THEY WEREN'T!" Damian roared vigorously.

"Yes they were." Stephen responded calmly, staring blankly into space.

"Bokkun! Take ULv2.0 to his cell! I will deal with his faulty mind later…" The doctor growled.

"Yes sir!" The little purple figure hovered off with Stephen following him unquestioningly through the base under the ocean.

"As for you… Sarah…" Damian sneered at the look alike chained to his table, unmoving.

"Stop… calling… me… that…" Quasar growled, unable to change back.

"Wh-what? That's not Sarah's voice."

"Bullet… in… neck… needs… out…" Quasar stuttered.

"What are you?"

Quasar didn't respond, but a few faint clicks could be heard from inside her neck, like the shifting of plates and gears. Damian walked over to her head, and had her flipped over quickly. Then, he watched as a small hole on the back of Quasar's fleshy neck grew in size with the rate of the clicking.

"Hmm… interesting…" Damian noticed the small little bullet, perfectly lodged between two strange green strings, pushing them apart. Reaching in, he was immediately zapped, and launched backwards about three feet with a bolt of lightning.

"IIIIYAA!" Quasar screeched, the bolt was a painful hit on her system.

"You little…" Damian growled, getting a rubber glove to try again.

This time, the little bullet fell out of the string perfectly. Then, slowly, the ripped wire began to mend itself. All over Quasar's body, her disguise of Sarah vanished.

"YOU'RE NOT SARAH!"

"I've been… trying to tell… you that…" Quasar's voice was slow and sluggish, like she was heavily drunk. A faint glow from her chest distracted Damian's anger.

"What's that?" Damian flipped her over again, and poked at her chest, where a gleaming red gem was housed. A moment later, the claws that held it in place in her stomach tightened over it.

"My pretty… rock." Quasar smiled, thinking she was in control of everything.

"A CHAOS EMERALD!" Damian exclaimed as he analyzed the gem from afar. His hands struck at her claws, ripping them away from the gem and for every two claws he ripped off of the eight, Quasar could replace only one, she was losing her gem.

A hand slowly rose from the stretcher and moved towards Damian. She was trying to hit him, but was too out of it to successfully get any power or speed into it.

"Ungghhh…" Quasar groaned, the wire not yet mended.

Damian held above her sluggish body the gem, laughing slightly.

"I should commend him! ULv2.0 retrieved a Chaos Emerald! Muhohohohoho!" The mad doctor cheerily spoke.

Placing the gem in his main reactor, the ship began to rumble, with a bit more power, the ship would be able to travel much faster. He gave orders to surface and the ship began to rise out of the cavern it was secluded in.

Then he turned his attention back to Quasar, who was becoming more alert.

"What are you?"

"My name is Quasar." She spoke quickly, trying to act more awake than she was.

"Hmm… wh-what's that glow?" Another glow, deeper in her chest, shone through to his glasses, gleaming a rich purple.

"My heart." Now Quasar was afraid; if the doctor knew how, he could kill her if he removed that crystal.

"What does it do?"

She said nothing, petrified of losing her only battery. Her father hadn't yet given her a second battery, not seeing that a catastrophe could happen to her.

"Hmm… I see that it is releasing a lot of energy. May I see?"

Quasar's internal hooks clamped tightly onto the heart in her chest and she glared at him.

"Give me that gem… I need to test it!" He pulled out a few mechanical arms from the ceiling and began to probe at her chest. (A/N: Oh dear...)

The moment Quasar broke one of her bonds to swat them away, dozens more appeared, nailing her to the ground, and ripping at her chest. The plates that guarded the one possession she had were ripped off and scattered about the ground in chunks. Her legs shot up and she tried to throw the claws off, knocking a few down, but then even more were summoned, pinning her down further.

So this is what those girls feel like that I hear get raped all of the time? Scary… fear… I'm not used to it… This guy, he's going to rip out my heart… what the hell am I going to do?! I-I can't die… I wonder if I'll go to heaven like dad says doesn't exist? No… I have no soul… so this is what it's like to die…

The claws ripped further into her chest, which kept trying to collapse onto itself to protect the one gem that made everything in Quasar function. A single claw reached it, and touched the purple crystal of Arcanium, and the entire ship lurched and surged with energy. That same claw fell off of its hinges a second later.

Damian placed a rubber sheath on one of them, and controlled that one to take the gem out. Grasping firmly on the heart of Quasar, it waited for further instructions while other claws ripped off the wires hooked up to that gem.

So this is what it is like to die… so nice that I only had a few weeks to live it… if only I could do it all over again… I wish I had that… a second-!

The sheathed arm pulled upwards and Quasar shrieked her last sound.

"KAAAAII-!" Her mouth froze instantly, and the green coloring in her eyes slowly faded back to a dull grey. The lines of energy, once covering and coloring her body with tints of green, were all gone, changed into a dark, dim grey color, just like the metal the surrounded her.

Damian looked at that gem, and the dead robot that was killed in the process of obtaining it, and instantly began to work on an energy port so that it could power the switch.

"This is much stronger than a Chaos emerald… or at least, when it is charged… interesting..." Damian went wild with ideas to use the Arcanium including ways to synthesize it.

Quasar's dead body loomed in the background, forgotten already; after all, she was just a robot, and didn't matter anyways.

Richard was pissed to say the least. Daisy was gone. Brunis had kidnapped her from his own home. He had been beaten up. And to make it all official, Daisy was getting married this weekend. The cops were after Brunis, that was good, and he was skipping school. But, Daisy was supposed to be a good girl, and come to school, even if Brunis wouldn't out of fear for his freedom. He needed to do something to break them up, once and for all.

He sat on the docks near his mansion, facing the ocean that he lived on the shore of. Contemplating every move, nothing came to mind.

"I need to talk to that fat idiot doctor. He'll figure something out…" Richard stood up to go back inside when a massive splash disrupted his thoughts.

A wave swept him off of his feet and he landed in the sand a few feet away from the dock. Standing up, he noticed a massive ship, less than a mile away from shore. Even from here, the huge round logo of Damian was strikingly obvious.

"Perfect!" Richard ran off and hopped onto one of the fifty jet skis that his family owned at that house. He'd be there in a minute.

Sarah's sleep was fraught with more nightmares, all of which horrifying. A week ago, she dreamt up a man, not a boy, a man, big, strong, handsome yet cute, muscular, and totally in love with her. Now, that same man had become a monster. Stronger, eviler, crueler and vile, this creature thrashed her, yelling kill as he did it. And in the animate world, Sarah shook violently, being thrashed.

A small shift, and the dream changed.

Sarah was now walking towards Stephen, the grey beast now chained to a wall. She still loved him, and she wanted to be with him, no matter what that meant. Stephen glared at her, and ripped and tore at his bindings.

Sarah absently walked closer, knowing what it meant, and hoping that he would return to normal from her act of kindness. She grabbed the key, and odd looking thing, shaped like a face in some ways, pure silver, and inserted it into the main lock on Stephen.

The moment she did, he jumped from his wall and screamed.

"DIE!"

With an arm turning into a razor sharp whip, he sliced off her arm that was holding the key, so close and in range. She wailed in utter torture, and Stephen pinned her against the wall. She should've, had it been the normal Stephen that she learned to love, been in euphoria, however, she was truly frightened; horrified even.

Stephen's head then lunged at her, and her eyes closed as she felt her guts be ripped to shreds before bleeding to death.

She woke up immediately, and was sweating and panting like she'd just won a race against her father. The tears somehow returned to her, and she sobbed again. She now knew what she was going to do that morning; she was going to find Stephen, whether it killed her or not. She'd search everywhere, from the forest to the ocean to the desert to the city; no place would be unchecked. And when she found him, if it meant her last words, she'd tell him she loved him. That much was a given.

And just maybe, she'd get to taste his lips before anything bad happened to her.

Richard was scaling the side of the ship now floating in the water. The ship was trying to lift off, but lacked the energy, or so it felt. The moment he got to the top of the juggernaut, he struggled to open the hatch.

A second after opening the door and dropping in, the walls turned red, and a voice began to wail over the speakers, "Intruder Alert!"

Richard growled, and walked on as if it wasn't talking to him. However, he couldn't keep walking forwards when the drones got him.

"Let me go, you mechanical imbeciles!" Richard complained as he was manhandled off to the jail.

Damian walked through his halls to the jail, annoyed that some intruder was caught. Bokkun wouldn't shut up about it, and that did nothing but irritate him.

Much to his surprise, Richard the Cat, his best paying client, stood in the cell, tapping his foot.

"I was wondering why it took you so long! Jeez! Get me out of here! I NEED YOUR HELP!" Richard whined like wuss he was.

"Shut up! I don't need another thing hovering over my shoulder and complaining! Now what do you need?"

"Daisy's marrying Brunis, I don't know where they are, and I want to kidnap her."

"Again?"

"Again."

"If Daisy IS Tails daughter, then I can use her as ransom, and then not give her back… hmm…" Damian mumbled partially to himself, "I agree, we should go off and find them, but in the mean time, I've got an old vendetta to settle between Sonic and I, and I must find his daughter…" Damian unlocked Richard's cell and the two hopped on a platform and were whirred off to the laboratory, where Damian could rig the Arcanium to finally launch his ship, which could easily hover on the power of the Chaos Emeralds but not launch off at such a low altitude.

"When can we get to her?" Richard questioned, glancing at Stephen, locked up against a wall with a probe waiting to tamper with his mind.

"When I build this conductor that will not blow up when exposed to this gem…" Damian started working on a few pieces of metal, linking them together in strange ways.

"Whatever…" Richard mumbled, looking at Stephen again. He got up, and walked towards the bound creature.

There was something odd with him, other than being in the doctor's possession. Stephen had a small lock of golden on his silver body. It wasn't hair though, it was fur; fox fur.

"Doctor! Tails' fur! It's on him!"

"What?!"" The metal dropped, and Damian analyzed the piece of fur on Stephen's shoulder, all possible extremities latched tightly in place, and pulled it off.

Dropping it into a machine, DNA readings came out in a few seconds. It was in fact Miles 'Tails' Prower.

"And now… huh… if this robot girl faked being Sarah, she must have been protecting something, and if she was protecting something by being Sarah that must have meant that Sarah was in the vicinity, and if she was in the vicinity, then if we read ULv2.0's mind, then we can find out where they are all hiding, and then also capture them quickly. Imagine it, all of them in our grasp. Sonic's family, AND the Prower family! Muhohohohoho!"

"So let's go!" Richard urged eagerly.

"Not so fast…" Damian stopped his movement, "we need to get this glorious ship into the air."

"Fine…" Richard sat back down in the chair, reveling in the memories of his time with Daisy.

Yes, Quasar's death was a necessary sacrifice for the continuation of this story...

More coming soon...