A/N: Oh my, so many guesses about the last chapter! Okay, so the crank caller was most likely Charmy, who was stuck bored at Chaotix headquarters. Could have been Bokkun down at Eggman's fortress, though.

And as to Silver! He was going to Wawel for the thing it's famous for: its dragon! Wawel is a real city, which was allegedly plagued by a dragon in the past. Silver figured he'd help out, since he's used to fighting fire creatures. But these days, the only trace of the dragon down in Wawel is its skeleton! They have it up for display, and it still breathes fire occasionally. So unfortunately, Silver didn't really get a chance to fight a dragon, but he did at least get a nice keepsake photo. ^_^

Don't believe me? Google "Wawel dragon"!

Disclaimer: I don't own Sonic and Co., or the game in question! Good game, though.

Shadow had always feared this day would come. Omega, with his firm devotion to logic, tried to reason that it wouldn't come. But nevertheless, it came. G.U.N. updated the standard-issue agent cellphones to smartphones, and Rouge discovered Bejeweled.

Well, more accurately, she discovered Bejeweled 3. But who's going to quibble over versions?

Her teammates were there to witness the event. The new smartphone was ceremoniously unpacked from its G.U.N. case, with Omega making derisive comments all the while. He did not appreciate this tiny but highly intelligent competitor; he was beginning to worry he couldn't dismiss it as another worthless consumer model.

"It probably knows more than you do, you know," remarked Shadow, tongue in cheek.

"It is specialized to the point of ineptitude in other areas," said Omega loftily. "Perhaps it contains information, but it does not process it for itself."

"I'm sure it could beat you at chess," countered Shadow.

"But it would fail utterly at regular combat," growled Omega. "It is incapable of battle."

"True, true," said Shadow. "Luckily, I hear the next upgrade is going to include an ionizer. Extremely efficient in combat."

"Hardly," grated Omega. "An ionizer is a device used in air purifiers."

Shadow shrugged. "So maybe I misheard the name. It could have been an atomizer."

"An atomizer is the device found atop spray bottles and perfume flasks."

Shadow said nothing, but his ears flopped sideways.

"Unless you intend to defeat your enemies by evenly moistening them?" continued Omega. He actually sounded innocent.

"Enough, you two," said Rouge, hiding a grin. "Let me see that thing."

Muttering something, Shadow handed the smartphone over.

"Wow," said Rouge, watching the large screen flicker to life. "Not bad!"

She began to tap curiously at the various apps on the touchscreen. Most of them were military in nature, but currently she was more interested in checking the thing for a Chaos Emerald tracker. Shadow watched over her shoulder, as Omega gritted his gears disdainfully.

"I still fail to understand what you meatbags see in that device."

"Plenty," said Shadow. "Small, efficient, silent, no attitude—"

"Give him a break, Shadow," scolded Rouge, still fiddling with the touchscreen.

"And also," continued Shadow, unfazed, "It has a built-in GPS. And email and texting. And games and statistical software and—"

"Jewels," interrupted Rouge, her eyes growing wide. "So. Many. Jewels!"

"What?" asked Shadow, getting a sinking feeling.

Sure enough, when he looked at the phone screen, Rouge had opened a game of "Bejeweled." The window was studded with sixty-four brightly-colored jewels, complete with shimmers and a lovely translucent effect. Rouge tapped the screen to swap one jewel with another, creating three in a row. As the matching trio disappeared, the jewels over it dropped in to take its place, dragging more jewels in from the top of the screen.

"Endless . . . supply . . . of jewels . . . " Rouge's ears were skewed oddly.

"You know, I don't think that's a good idea," said Shadow, taking the phone away quickly.

It did no good. By the end of the day, Rouge had commandeered the phone and was sunk deep into the marvelous jewel-swapping game.

"She'll get tired of it eventually," sighed Shadow, trying to block out the endless swish! clink! clinkclinkclink! of the jewels disappearing and falling in an endless cascade.

Omega snorted, which really shouldn't have been possible for a robot.

"You organics have exceedingly weak wills. Addiction and obsession seem to come much too easily to you."

"Oh, and I suppose you're immune to those things?" said Shadow drily.

"Affirmative. You would not see me behaving in such a fixated fashion."

"Then I guess I was imagining things last Fourth of July," remarked Shadow. "You remember, they had the fireworks show and you—"

"We had agreed not to bring that up," warned Omega. Shadow chuckled silently.

Rouge did not get tired of it, eventually or otherwise. She shook herself out of the trance for missions, just barely, but every moment she wasn't actively on-duty, she was poking intently away at that phone. Oh, and she did sleep too. Sometimes.

"Rouge, you've got to quit," growled Shadow one evening, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Mmm?" said Rouge, not looking up.

"The game is taking over your mind."

"Mmm."

"Are you even listening?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good, because we're under attack," said Shadow.

No response.

"They're coming in through the doors and windows."

"Mm, 'kay."

"And they're smashing all the computers and pouring Gatorade on Omega's head. And Omega's just trapped one of them under a laundry basket and is trying to poke him through the holes."

"Mmm-hm."

Shadow threw up his hands in defeat and stomped off.

About fifteen minutes later, Rouge finished a level and looked up, puzzled.

"Gatorade?"

The problem extended into Rouge's entire life. All her friends began to notice.

"How long has she been like that?" asked Knuckles, as Rouge sat at the table and tapped along obliviously. Most of the Mobians had gotten together for lunch, but Rouge didn't seem to be much into it.

"A long time," said Shadow resignedly. "You might as well eat her lunch. She won't be touching it."

"Is that so?" said Blaze. "Do you suppose we should attempt an intervention?"

"Be my guests," said Shadow, waving a hand.

Sonic tried first.

"Hey Rouge," he said, tapping her arm. "Mind if I put salt in your coffee?"

Rouge mumbled something highly incoherent in reply.

"Is that a yes?"

"Mmm."

"Okay then, I'm salting it!" announced Sonic, picking up a saltshaker. "For real, Rouge. I'm not kidding."

No reply.

"Seriously? Last call! Snap out of it, or I'll throw in the salt!"

Still no reply.

"You asked for it," sighed Sonic, and began to apply salt liberally to Rouge's coffee. Rouge still made no move to stop him.

"You're wasting your time," said Shadow. "She's not actually going to drink it."

"Unbelievable," said Sonic, shaking his head.

"I have an idea," said Blaze suddenly. The others glanced at her expectantly.

"I heard Marie Curie's sisters did this once," continued Blaze, picking up a chair.

The others were surprised that this kind of idea would come from Blaze, but they weren't about to object. Gathering up all the lightweight plastic chairs they could find, they stacked them into two tall towers on either side of Rouge.

"We're going to stack them over your head now, all right?" said Amy.

"Hhm."

"So don't lift your head, okay?" warned Amy, and grabbed more chairs.

They expertly stacked more and more chairs over Rouge, forming a sort of arch. When she still failed to react, they took to decorating the chairs with doilies and artificial flowers and ribbons and other things they hunted up in random places. It was very artistic.

When they ran out of decorating ideas, they sat and waited. Sonic took a swig of coffee and gagged—some wise guy had switched his coffee out for Rouge's salted cup. Meanwhile, Rouge kept tapping away, until the smartphone suddenly gave her a low-battery warning. Sighing resignedly, she closed the game, turned off the phone, rubbed her eyes—and lifted her head. She was met by an avalanche of chairs.

"Wh-what the—"

The others collapsed into laughter. Snorting, Rouge shook ribbons from her ears and got up.

"That's stupid," she remarked scornfully, and left.

It didn't help a whit. As soon as the phone was recharged, she was back at it.

At length, with some effort, the others managed to separate her from the phone for a little while. The girls tried to give her a homestyle talking-to.

"Enough is enough, Rouge," said Blaze firmly. "You cannot let that phone rule your life!"

"We miss you!" said Cream plaintively. "You never do anything with us anymore!"

"And it's just not healthy," agreed Amy. "Your eyes are all bloodshot, and your hair is a mess! You were always so careful about your appearance, and now just look at you!"

Rouge listened to all this with a sulky expression.

"Look here girls, are you finished?" she asked at length. "Give me a freakin' break, all right? I'm eighteen. I make my own choices. If I choose to play a phone game, that is none of your business, you dig?"

"But Rouge—"

Meanwhile, the guys were examining the anatomy of the phone.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Silver, as Shadow opened a game of Bejeweled.

"Know thy enemy," muttered Shadow. "We've got to figure out how to rig this thing."

"What if it takes over your brain too?"

"I'm not jewel-obsessed," retorted Shadow. He looked up. "But all the same, if I start getting all beady-eyed, hit me on the head and take the phone away from me, all right?"

"With pleasure," assured Omega, lifting one arm to be ready.

"You needn't be quite that eager," smirked Shadow. He fiddled with the main menu. "Shoot, no wonder this thing takes up all her time. There are eight different variations of the game!"

"We can't hack all of them," said Tails worriedly. "Does she have a favorite version?"

"Yeah, Zen," said Shadow. "Most of the other games have time limits, or at least require strategy and thought so you don't lose. But the Zen game is all about being relaxed and just swapping those darned jewels, forever and ever." He selected that game mode. "Let's see. There's the jewels, and there's an extra jewel necklace to the left. No wonder she likes it. There's also a lot of options here . . . " His eyes lit up suddenly. "Interesting. Here's something called 'subliminal messages'."

"Okay, that sounds scary," said Tails.

"It's optional," said Shadow, fiddling. "You can set it to send you messages like 'weight loss' or 'positive thinking'." He chuckled slightly. "Or also 'quit bad habits'. Too bad it doesn't work on itself."

"Why not make it work on itself?" said Tails eagerly. "I can reprogram it to send a 'stop playing this game!' message!"

"Can you?" asked Shadow. He handed the phone over. "Knock yourself out, kid."

Tails' fingers flew over the phone's touch surface, his tongue tucked into the corner of his mouth in concentration. He'd never worked with smartphone programming before, but luckily the game's programming was not too drastically different from the norm.

"Got it!" he piped at last. "I see how this works! The messages are sent via ghostly white text that flashes very briefly on the screen. You can't really tell what it says, but supposedly the message reaches you anyway."

"Hang the technicalities," grumbled Knuckles. "Let's get out of here before Rouge comes back."

After that, everyone waited a few days to see if the subliminal messages worked. Apparently, they did not. Rouge seemed just a little puzzled for a while, and occasionally squinted at the screen as if she had glimpsed something unusual. Eventually she turned off the "subliminal" option so she could see the messages plainly printed. She was not amused.

And yet, she kept playing. Her friends were starting to wonder if it wasn't just to spite them all for trying so hard to make her stop, but either way it didn't matter. She just kept on and on and on.

At length things reached the breaking point. Rouge had always clawed her way back into reality whenever she heard the word "mission," but today she didn't. Shadow came to tell her they were wanted in Station Square that night, and she didn't even respond.

"Omega?" said Shadow quietly, glancing back at the robot. "Hold her."

Things got somewhat violent. It said something about Rouge's moxie that it took the Ultimate Life Form and the self-proclaimed Ultimate Robot to wrangle a phone away from her without injury. But at last Omega clutched the struggling bat firmly but gently in both hands, and Shadow began to fiddle with the phone.

"Don't you dare delete the game!" growled Rouge, her heels digging into Omega's hull viciously. "I swear I'll damage someone."

"Not very Zen of you," remarked Shadow.

Rouge struggled harder, causing Omega to tighten his grip slightly.

"Ouch!" Rouge yelped. Concerned, Omega loosened his grip again—and Rouge sprang from his hands like a bar of wet soap.

"Gimme that!" she yowled, diving at Shadow's head.

"Catch!" cried Shadow, throwing the phone to Omega just as Rouge drove him into the ground. Omega caught the phone deftly.

"DESTROY!" he roared, and crushed it to smithereens in one hand.

"Omega!" cried his teammates, dismayed.

"You weren't supposed to kill it!" growled Shadow. "We still need a phone!"

Omega was unconcerned. He glared at the mass of shattered plastic and silicon in his fingers.

"Long have I waited for this day, varlet," he intoned.

Shadow dragged one hand down his face wearily.

"Oh, for the love of Mike."

G.U.N. was not happy. Team Dark was threatening to be a budget liability, at this rate.

"Well, we've got another phone," sighed Shadow, returning from the supply station. "But they didn't have any new ones, so they gave us an old one." He held out a cell phone identical to their old one from before the upgrade. "We'll be stuck with a sub-level phone until the next upgrade, which might not be for years. But there's no Bejeweled."

"Shut up," said Rouge sulkily. She was still mourning the loss of her game. "Anyway, it's your fault the smartphone got destroyed. If you didn't keep trying to scare Omega with it, he wouldn't have been so all-fired eager to smash it."

"You assume that I am apprehensive," scoffed Omega.

"Aren't you?"

"Negative. I am not unnerved by these inferior models. But in the event that I do become obsolete, I will step down."

Rouge gave Shadow a look. Shadow rolled his eyes resignedly.

"I never actually said you were going to be replaced, did I?" he sighed. "Obsolete or not, you're essentially stuck with us for life."

"And I am supposed to find this cheering?" said Omega drily, struggling not to visibly perk up.

"Whatever. Either way, you're not becoming obsolete until they develop a smartphone with sarcasm and severe temper problems," smirked Shadow, and ducked.

"Good grief." Rouge rubbed her temples. "I was hung up on that game for more than three weeks. In that amount of time, how did you two not kill each other?"