Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA, DiC and/or their respective creators.

Inescapable Past, Act 15: Big Lemur on Campus

"Sweet Solaris! Is that who it looks like?"

"Keep on your antlers, doc," said Dassie, opening the ambulance's rear doors to reveal Shadow.

"Sorry, it's just…well, my kids are never going to believe this," said the muntjac in the white coat. "Too bad I can't take any pictures."

"Yep. Too bad," muttered the hyrax as he unfastened the bolts that'd held the comatose hedgehog's gurney in place during transit.

"Doesn't Portia usually ride with you?" asked the doctor while the paramedic wrestled with a stubborn bolt.

"Yeah. She, uh, had to take a call," replied Dassie. Concerned the milksnake might say or do something to jeopardize her career, he'd kicked his colleague out back at the main entrance.

"Oh, ok. What's his condition?"

"Unresponsive but breathing. Gunshot wound beneath the bandages on his leg. A week old, apparently. It's been cleaned but the bullet's probably still inside."

"A week?!"

"That's what that kid told us."

The hyrax nodded at a pink hedgehog with her left arm in a sling, strapped into a seat alongside the gurney. She was asleep, just like the lemur whose shoulder her head was resting on. The muntjac puffed out her cheeks, deflating them with a sigh.

"I guess we better get him inside."

Dassie gritted his teeth as he pulled the gurney out of the ambulance, not because of the physical strain but the noise the frame made dragging against the crosshatched steel floor. The racket woke Amy. Through half-open eyelids, the groggy hedgehog saw the muntjac and hyrax rush Shadow through a set of sliding glass doors. Above them, 'Westopolis University Medical Center Emergency Department' was spelled out in large silver letters.

"Tangle?" she murmured, rubbing her eyes. "We're here."

"We are?" uttered the lemur, jolting awake like a gun had gone off. "Crap. We are!"

Tangle frenziedly unfastened both their seatbelts, seized Amy's right hand, and hauled her out of the ambulance. She made to head for the glass doors across the small parking lot, but something stopped her. Looked over her shoulder, she found her young companion digging her blue-booted heels into the asphalt.

"What gives?" asked the miffed lemur.

"Are we even allowed in that way?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?" said Tangle, eyeing the hedgehog's sling-bound arm.

"You mean that?" said Amy. "It's fine. Whisper did a good job."

The lemur cocked a brow. "Whisp said she only did like a 'basic field dressing', whatever that means. Come on."

Turning back towards the hospital, she tried to advance. However, Amy wouldn't be moved.

"What's your problem?" said Tangle, impatience seeping into her voice.

"I…don't want to go in there."

"What? Why not?"

The hedgehog dropped her gaze. "Because if I do, I'll cry."

"You'll cry?" echoed Tangle, tilting her head. "You do know your friend's going to be okay, right?"

"I know, I know. It's not about Shadow. I j-just-"

The faltering Amy paused, steadying her breathing.

"It's just so sad in there."

The lemur leaned in and drew back some of the bangs obscuring the kid's eyes.

"Well, the boss didn't exactly say where we had to wait," she said, venturing a smile.

"Thanks," said Amy quietly, managing a faint smile of her own. It turned to a frown as something appeared to catch Tangle's attention. "What's up?"

"Please tell me you didn't, boss," she heard the lemur whisper to herself as she straightened up.

Amy looked over her shoulder. She saw Whisper standing on an Extreme Gear, bobbing up and down in front of a row of parked ambulances. Before she could say anything, the hedgehog found herself being dragged behind Tangle as she marched towards the yellow wolf.

"What're you doing here?" the lemur demanded.

"Or-orders," stammered Whisper, hopping backwards off her hoverboard.

"I don't need a babysitter, Whisp," whined Tangle, stamping an amber high-top on the still-levitating Extreme Gear. "Not when I'm the one babysitting."

For a few seconds, the colleagues mutely held each other's gaze. Then, the lemur grumbled something under her breath and stalked off across the parking lot, Amy stumbling along behind her. The asphalt under their feet soon turned to grass. Only then did it strike Amy how quiet it was. She looked around the lawn. There was the conspicuous lack of a city beyond the hospital grounds.

"Wait, where are we?"

Tangle stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Huh?"

"I thought we were going to Westopolis," said Amy. "Where is it?"

"Like five miles that way," said the lemur, pointing north with the tip of her tail.

The hedgehog automatically glanced in the same direction, as if expecting to see the Westopolitan skyline on the horizon. She swiftly looked back at Tangle who was about to start moving again.

"Why did you yell at Whisper just now?" she asked, eager to prolong this break in walking.

"Umm, because I'm a brat?" said Tangle sheepishly, scratching the back of her neck with her free hand.

"You sounded, like, genuinely angry."

"Yeah…I was kind of hoping the boss was going to let me do something by myself for once."

Amy furrowed her brow. "He doesn't trust you?"

The lemur shrugged. "He must do, I guess, but I just figured-"

"How hard can 'babysitting' be?" said the hedgehog pointedly.

The lemur flashed a crooked smile, prodding the youngster with her tail.

"No offence, but you're not that old. Just because you got to grow up doing Freedom Fighter things-"

"What? No, I didn't," Amy cut in.

Tangle blinked. "Huh? You lived in Knothole Village, right?"

"Yeah. So did loads of Mobians. That didn't automatically make us all Freedom Fighters. It's not like Sally ever let me go on actual missions."

Her chaperone looked at her in disbelief.

"Wait, didn't you sneak onto Prison Island that one time?"

"Well, sure, but it isn't like I asked permission-"

The lemur's purple eyes widened.

"You're shattering my illusions here, kid. I'm starting to think your princess friend wasn't as cool as I thought she was."

"Hey, that's my principal you're talking about," said Amy, reaching up to prod the unsuspecting Tangle's nose.

Narrowing her eyes, the teen seized the preteen in a jovial headlock. She was about to administer a noogie when Amy started gesticulating at something. She loosened her hold.

"I think your phone's ringing," the hedgehog spluttered.

Freeing the hedgehog, Tangle retrieved her vibrating cellphone from a pocket in her black leggings. Sonar's name and face were onscreen.

"Hey, Sonny. What's up?"

"How goes babysitting?" asked the fennec.

"Err…peaceful," said Tangle, trusting Whisper wouldn't say anything about her outburst if she didn't. She'd apologize later.

"Listen, I just spoke to someone at the kid's school. Someone's on their way to pick her up."

"Ok. Cool."

"They're coming from Station Square so you're going to be stuck there for a while. Sorry about that."

Tangle cast a glance at Amy. She'd sat down on the grass, gazing up at the passing clouds.

"Nah, that's fine."

"Attagirl. I'll call when I get an ETA-"

"Wait, is that ride for Shadow, too?"

Sonar chuckled.

"I said they're coming from Station Square, not Downunda. He'll probably still be in the surgery whenever the kid gets picked up. That's why Whisper's there."

"Oh…okay. Whisp didn't say."

"Heh. Does she ever? Later, kiddo."

"Bye, Sonny."

Slipping her cellphone back into her pocket, Tangle put aside any thoughts of making nice with Whisper for now and spun on her heel.

"Good news, ki…Amy. You're going home."

"I am?"

"Well, soonish. Someone's on their way to give you a ride."

"Who?" asked the hedgehog, getting to her feet.

"Err, Sonny didn't say. They're coming from Station Square, though."

Tangle watched intently as Amy's face cycle through a range of expressions as she processed the information. The lemur curled her toes inside her high-tops, dreading what might be coming.

"But wait, Shadow won't…you're sending me home without him?!"

Reluctant to protest her innocence or point out how she was just the messenger here, Tangle gnawed on her lower lip as she racked her brain for something to say.

"I guess the boss figured there was no sense in you missing any more school," she lied through gritted teeth.

"But I don't go to school!"

Tangle coolly looked Amy up and down in her pleated gray skirt, white dress shirt and red necktie.

"In fairness, it's an easy mistake to make."

The hedgehog pouted. "What're we supposed to do now, then?"

"You hungry?" asked Tangle with manufactured cheerfulness.

Amy looked at her aghast. The confused lemur cocked a brow, glanced back at the hospital building, and facepalmed.

"We're on a college campus, silly."

"We are?"

"What part of 'Westopolis University Medical Center' did you miss?"

Capitalizing on the confusion, Tangle swooped for the kid's right hand and, meeting no resistance, resumed their walk across the grass. Before long, they came across a paved path. In the absence of any signposts, the lemur picked a direction and started along it. The meandering pathway led around the perimeter of some sprawling outbuilding, on the other side of which they found a campsite.

Well, not so much a campsite as a collection of scruffy tents pitched on a paved square. Two flags flapping limply in the breeze above the camp. Neither one suggested the occupants were there to roast marshmallows. The larger of the two bore the words '#Inhabit Westopolis' in yellow letters on a black background. Its smaller white counterpart read 'Babylon Enterprises #GTFO' in painted black letters.

"What does GTFO mean?" asked Amy as the duo halted at the edge of the square.

The question went unanswered as Tangle took stock of the scene. She was more interested in the other flag. She'd seen identical banners waved by raucous mobs outside Westopolis City Hall, pelting her and Infinite with decomposing rutabagas as they escorted Jet to and from his car. Mercifully, it didn't smell like these Inhabiters had any rotting vegetables to hurl.

All the same, the lemur tensed as a bleary-eyed mink draped in an unzipped sleeping bag emerged from the nearest tent and began walking. Not towards her and Amy, but off to the right. Turning her head in the same direction, they saw a black cat lumbering towards the square, lugging a canvas bag with both hands.

"Should we go help her with that?" murmured Amy.

Resisting the urge to turn and ruffle the preteen's quills, Tangle watched the mink joined a small group of disheveled-looking Mobians at the edge of the camp. Meanwhile, the cat set her canvas bag down and beckoned to the Inhabiters. One by one, they approached and came away hugging white paper parcels. Judging by their contented smiles, Tangle could only surmise they contained hot food.

"Tangle?" said Amy, tugging on her chaperone's arm.

"Hmm?"

"Isn't Babylon Enterprises your boss's company?" said the hedgehog.

She promptly found Tangle's hand covering her mouth. Ignoring Amy's muffled protests, she shot the camp another wary glance. The Inhabiters looked to be too busy gorging themselves to have heard anything. None even seemed to have noticed the duo.

"What was that for?" said Amy testily as the lemur removed her hand.

"Just playing it safe."

"Safe? From what?"

"Well, about that flag-"

"Have you girls lost your group?" a third voice cut in.

The hedgehog and lemur turned their heads find the black cat standing a few feet away, empty canvas bag in hand. She was wearing a purple dress with a green apron over the top. Her right ear sagged under the weight of two large silver hoops.

"Our group?" said Tangle.

The cat smiled. "You're here on a field trip, no?"

Tangle looked at Amy's school uniform, then her own tanktop and leggings. Was there a school on Mobius that allowed head-to-toe athleisurewear in its dress code?

"Actually, we were looking for somewhere to eat," Amy piped up.

"Really now?" said the cat. "In that case, follow me."

Tangle kept a firm hold of Amy's hand as she went to go with the stranger.

"Follow you where?" the lemur asked guardedly.

"My food truck," replied the cat, turning to leave. The wrongfooted Tangle quickly found herself being pulled behind the brisk-walking Amy.

"Hello," said the hedgehog as they drew level with the feline. "I'm Amy and this is Tangle."

"I'm Ebony," said the cat, favoring them with a wry smile.

"Are you friends with those tent people?" asked Amy.

"I suppose you could say that."

"Why're they camping there?"

The cat eyed the twelve-year-old quizzically. "Are you girls not from around here?"

Amy shook her head. "Nope. Station Square."

"Oh, Acorn country," said Ebony. "Well, how can I put it? Those kids have some…misgivings with some things that've been happening around here recently."

"Misgivings?" scoffed Tangle. "A guy's rebuilding their city with his own money and all they're doing is complaining about it. It's ungrateful."

"That's certainly a valid point of view, but what if the money the 'guy' is spending shouldn't be his to spend in the first place?"

"Does it matter? I mean, so long as it being used to help people, isn't that what really counts?"

"Maybe so, maybe so," said the cat sagely.

"Do you agree with the tent people, then?" asked Amy.

"Hmm, let's just say I like try help out anyone willing to stand up for what they believe in," said Ebony. "Also, they're very sweet about trying my new recipes."

As Amy quizzed the cat about her experimental fillings, Tangle zoned out. Before she knew it, they'd stopped on a sidewalk. Just over the road, Westopolis University's palatial library loomed large. With saying goodbye, Ebony disappeared through a door in a trailer parked beside them. It was painted in a swirl of overlapping greens and purples.

"Here you go, girls," said the cat, reappearing with a white paper parcel in each hand.

Tangle eyed them warily. "Are those…?"

"Experiments?" Ebony laughed. "No, no. I went with plain and simple today."

"Thank you," said Amy, letting go of Tangle's hand to accept hers. The lemur tentatively followed suit. "Are you eating too?"

The cat looked over at the library. A growing group of Mobians had congregated at the foot of its broad stone steps. Most had clearly showered more recently than the Inhabiters, but many looked just as tired. Those not carrying notebooks clutched energy drinks with both hands. All were gazing hopefully at the green-and-purple trailer.

"That'd be lovely, but it's cram season I'm afraid," said Ebony. "My public awaits."

With that, she vanished back inside the trailer. The door slammed behind her.

"So, uh, where now?" said Amy.

A quick scan of their surroundings turned up nothing more inviting than the curbside at their feet.

"How's here?" asked Tangle, pointing at the sidewalk. The hedgehog looked down and shrugged.

"I was scared you were going to argue with Ebony just now," said Amy as they sat down.

"Is that how it sounded?" said the lemur, grabbing the temporarily one-armed youngster's parcel to open it for her. "I don't care about it that much, but the way they talk about it, you'd think the boss was doing something wrong. "

"How did you, like, get your job?" asked Amy, retaking custody of her meal.

As she turned her attention to opening her own parcel, Tangle stopped herself from telling the hedgehog "It's a long story" just in time. What else were they going to talk about for four hours?

"Seriously, Jewel?" whined Tangle, watching her insectoid friend fly up for a better look at the top shelf of a towering display cabinet. "We're supposed to be heading back already."

Seeing her words practically ricochet off the beetle's pearly carapace, the lemur couldn't help smiling at the irony. Traditionally, Jewel was the one doing the nagging, be it about laundry, homework, or getting up for class on time. Such was the Spiral Hill Mineral Museum's power over her dormmate.

At present, they were in the museum's Crystals Room. When Tangle had first seen its contents - enough to fill two rows of ten waist-high display cases, with about as many cabinets lining the walls - she couldn't believe there so many different crystals on Mobius. Umpteen termly field trips later, she couldn't believe how psyched Jewel still got about this particular exhibit.

The lemur was about to give in and ask what was on the top shelf when the sound of approaching voices reached her ears. She dropped down onto her butt behind the nearest display case, coiled her tail around the oblivious Jewel's dangling ankles and pulled her to the floor. Placing a hand over the startled beetle's mouth, Tangle peered out from behind the case as the voices drew nearer.

One was female and kind of familiar. The other was male and anything but. Soon enough, she saw a bespectacled, khaki-clad blue pika pass by their hiding place, chattering away to a red-booted green hawk. A black jackal followed silently behind them. Tangle waited for the voices to fade before she removed her hand.

"It was only Director Relic," said Jewel. "She might've asked us to join her."

"I dunno. She seemed kind of busy," said Tangle, stifling a snicker at her friend's insistence on using the pika's title. The two were very much on first-name terms. "Who d'you suppose the other guy was?"

"The extra-special guest maybe?"

The lemur looked blankly at the beetle. "The extra-special what?"

"The guy Dr. Jeep was talking about before we, y'know, snuck off?"

"I, uh, may've been listening to something," said Tangle, slipping a wireless earphone out of her ear and into a pocket of her blush-pink blazer. She winced as Jewel let out one of her long-suffering sighs. She usually only heard them in the midst of late-night homework crises.

"Time to go," said the beetle, grabbing the lemur's gold-and-black-striped necktie like a leash.

Stumbling forward, Tangle swatted away her dormmate's hand. As they headed for the door Relic had gone through, the lemur tended to her uniform. While she was almost certain this little detour hadn't technically broken any school rules, she could trust their geology teacher Dr. Jeep to try and pin something on her, if not his star pupil Jewel. Best not make it easy for him.

Exiting the Crystals Room, the friends walked down a narrow corridor that took them to a gallery overlooking the Mineral Museum's foyer. The echoey hall was eerily quiet. A red carpet had been rolled out across the tiled floor with plenty of Mobians standing either side of it. Their fellow field trippers were hard to miss: a gaggle of sixteen-year-olds in blush-pink uniforms, clustered around a certain wizened old kiang.

In spite of their gaudy schoolwear, they didn't need to worry about being noticed. As with most of their classmates, Dr. Jeep's gaze was firmly fixed on a pedestal at the back of the foyer, just in front of the museum's grand staircase. Upon it rested a large indigo gemstone. Relic and the green hawk were standing on the steps behind it, together with a who's who of Spiral Hill dignitaries: Mayor Cerro, Sheriff Galen, and all the village councilors. The black jackal looked on from the landing between the staircase's upper flights.

"I guess we're watching from up here," murmured Tangle, drawing Jewel's attention to the velvet ropes that'd been drawn across the stairs they'd planned on using. The beetle shrugged and went back to ogling the indigo gem.

"Say, is that a Chaos Emerald?" whispered the lemur, slightly unnerved by the silence.

"Nuh-uh," uttered Jewel. "Wrong color. Wrong shape, too."

Down on the foyer floor, Relic raised a hand as if calling for calm. Realizing it couldn't get much quieter, she hastily lowered it and smiled nervously.

"Err, thank you all for coming today. It's not often we see so many visitors in here on a weekday."

There was a murmur of polite laughter from the audience. The pika screwed up the scrap of paper in her hands and tossed it over her shoulder.

"Who came to hear boring old me talk, anyway? Before my good friend Jet here tells us a little about the Kupacius Gem, Mayor Cerro would like to say a few words-"

"I bet she would," interjected someone across the foyer.

Everyone's eyes went from the indigo gemstone to a purple weasel standing atop the huge amethyst geode that welcomed all the museum's visitors. They wore a wide-brimmed brown hat, a matching crop-top and denim shorts. In their hands was a pump-action shotgun. It was pointed towards the stairs.

"Hey, Feathers, tell your doggie to keep his hands off that butter knife and we'll all leave here happier," said the gate-crasher, eyeing the jackal.

Jet glanced over his shoulder and nodded at his bodyguard. The sneering Infinite let go of his sword's hilt.

"Is this what's it come to, Nic?" said the hawk, looking back round. "Taking schoolkids hostage?"

The weasel looked sideways at Dr. Jeep and his students. Like everyone else in foyer besides Jet and Infinite, they'd hit the deck. Several of the teens were already in tears.

"Who said anything about hostages?" she retorted. "Just give me what's rightfully mine and I'll be off."

"Rightfully yours? Ha! Did Bean tell you to say that?"

Nic narrowed her glassy blue eyes.

"I don't appreciate having my digs hijacked-"

"Dig?" Jet scoffed. "You were graverobbing!"

"You and me both, Feathers."

"Shanazar was a Babylonian city. We're the heirs to-"

The hawk flinched bodily as the weasel racked her shotgun's slide. More schoolkids started bawling. Sheriff Galen lunged sidewards to catch one of the councilors, an elderly alpaca, as they fainted.

"You'll have to talk me through your family tree another time, Feathers," said Nic levelly. "Kupacius Gem. Over here. Now."

"Umm, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but our museum will still have a perfectly good collection of specimens, even without your very generous gift. So, before you get one of these poor children killed, could you possibly just do what this crazy bitch is asking?" hissed Relic in Jet's ear.

Glancing sideways at the khaki-clad pika, the Babylon Rogue failed to mask his disappointment. Turning back to face the weasel, he suddenly found no weasel to face. All he saw was a jet of water. His eyes followed the thin torrent up to the second-floor gallery to his right. There, a lemur in a blush-pink uniform stood atop the balustrade, battling to keep control of a firehose's nozzle.

"Turn it off already!" she shouted off to the side, letting go of the bucking hose as she jumped.

Jet's beak sagged as she wrapped her stripey tail round one of the stone balusters and used the appendage like a bungee cord, flipping in midair and landing on her feet. The fact she was wearing a pencil skirt made the feat all the more impressive. Next, the lemur scrambled over to the amethyst geode and hurdled it. In the ensuing seconds, sounds of struggle and a stream of grunted profanities echoed around the foyer.

Jet snapped out of his reverie and looked to Infinite. "Help her then!"

Seemingly jolted out of his own daydream, the jackal drew his ruby cutlass and darted down the red carpet. He wasn't quite halfway there when a pump-action shotgun slid out from behind the geode. Mounting the concave hunk of sparkly rock, he found Nic lying prostrate with the lemur's tail coiled around her torso. The kid herself was kneeling on the weasel's lower back, holding her wrists fast with a yellow-and-black-striped necktie.

"Uh, hey," said Tangle, glancing up at the gawking Infinite.

"And then he just, like, gave you a job?" asked Amy.

"Pretty much, yeah," replied Tangle.

"Pretty much?"

"The boss told me where his airship was parked and what time it'd be leaving. He said the rest was up to me."

"So, you didn't actually know what he was offering?"

"Technically speaking, no."

"And you still went?"

"Anywhere was more interesting than Spiral Hill."

"What did your teacher say?"

"Who said I told him?"

"Did you tell anyone?"

"I, uh, left Jewel a letter. Well, kind of."

The hedgehog frowned. "Kind of?"

"It was more of a longish note. It was tough figuring out what to say."

"I'll bet," said Amy, taking a drink from one of the shakes Ebony had come and given them a while ago. "Have you thought about, like, going back at all?"

"You kidding?" said Tangle. "I like my work. I mean, it'd be even better if Infinite would lighten up, but it sure beats another two years of high school."

"Infinite's mean to you, too?" asked the hedgehog, vividly remembering her own brush with the jackal aboard Jet's airship.

"Not mean, exactly. More like mega-harsh when's he teaching me, like, bodyguard things. He probably still hasn't forgiven me for."

"Forgiven you? What for?"

"Making him look bad, I guess. The boss teases him about that museum fight all the time."

The lemur's jolly tone made Amy frown. Since when was bullying funny?

"Don't you miss Jewel at all?" she asked hopefully.

Tangle set her shake down on the curb, leant back on her hands and threw her head back. Gazing at the cloudy sky for a few moments, she sighed.

"Sure I do. She's my best friend. But, like, besides our dorm and school, she practically lives at the Mineral Museum. Spiral Hill is basically perfect for her," said the lemur thoughtfully. "Me? I'm just not that into rocks."

The ensuing silence was soon broken by the violent buzzing of Tangle's cellphone. Once Amy heard it was Sonar calling, she tuned out, keen to avoid thinking about her impending return home. Not that she didn't want to see Sally and everyone, but she was mostly worried about Shadow waking up and being told Omega was dead.

Although E-123 Omega was no more, she'd seen the plucky little Flicky that'd powered the killer robot flying for its life through the smoke over GUN's headquarters. She suddenly wished she'd been clearer with Shadow about who Birdie was and his connection to Gamma and the other E-100s. Maybe knowing part of his friend was still alive would make Shadow less sad.

"Yeah, okay. Bye Sonny," said Tangle, hanging up. She returned the device to the pocket in her leggings and looked to Amy. "Alright you. Your ride's nearly here."

"Already?!"

"According to Sonny, yeah. She says we need to get to the top of the Medical Centre asap."

"The Medical Center? So that means-"

"Afraid so, but there's probably a fire escape we can use," said the lemur, getting up off the curbside. "Did you want to say bye to Ebony?"

"Let's just go," said Amy, standing up and Tangle's left hand.

The duo retraced their steps across campus in a morose silence. Alas, there was no convenient fire escape up to rooftop, but stepping inside a hospital didn't reduce Amy to tears like she'd feared. IN She gave partial credit for that to the cardboard cutouts of Jet that greeted them on every landing as they climbed the Medical Center's stairs. All of them included the same speech bubble: "Your friends at Babylon Enterprises wish you the best of health."

"You too, boss, you too," Tangle murmured as they passed the final one on the top floor.

At the end of a cinderblock passageway, they came to a red door. The lemur swiped a card she'd picked up at reception and led them out onto the hospital's roof. Amy's braided quills swayed in the breeze as they beheld a raised octagonal helipad, surrounded by glowing red lights. Upon it sat a white helicopter plastered with Red Ring decals.

"Where're they gonna land?" the hedgehog wondered aloud.

"Over there, I guess," said Tangle, pointing over her shoulder.

Amy turned her head accordingly. Behind them, a second smaller helipad stood empty.

"Oh," she muttered, giving up any hope of her departure being postponed.

"Yeah, the boss paid for that for one himself. Kind of lucky he did, huh?"

"Yeah…lucky."

While they waited, Amy's thoughts circled back to Shadow and the truth about Omega's 'death'. On the walk over, she'd agonized over asking Tangle to tell him. The main put-off was how much explaining it would take to bring the lemur up to speed on Birdie and everything else. She wasn't sure she had the energy, much less the time.

Indeed, they soon heard the chop-chop-chop of rotor blades slicing the air. Watching the helicopter approach, Amy squinted at the lettering on its tail boom. KSAT AM939. Probably the most popular radio station in the Acorn Kingdom. Just who had Sally sent to pick her up?

As it came into land, the downwash from the rotor blades made Amy's pleated gray skirt billow. The aircraft set down with the cockpit facing away from the duo, denying them a look at the pilot. Tangle felt the grip on her hand tighten as the chopper's main door slid open.

"Mighty?" Amy squeaked as a black armadillo with red carapace stepped out.

"Hello, Amy," said the newcomer, sauntering down the helipad's shallow ramp while a black cat in a red bodywarmer emerged from the helicopter. "No way were you this tall last time. What happened?"

"I…I was nine."

"So you were," said Mighty, looking to Tangle. "And you would be…?"

"Tangle," said the lemur, almost flinching at the speed with which the armadillo extended a hand for her to shake. She tentatively did so.

"My friends call me Mighty. So can you."

"Uh…hi."

"So, where might I find Espio?" he asked, glancing around the rooftop. "He still inside?"

"He didn't make it," Amy murmured.

"Out of Metropolis, she means!" Tangle blurted. "He didn't leave Metropolis with the rest of us."

"I see," said Mighty. "Is he still there?"

"Err, maybe?" the lemur admitted. "We don't know."

"Well, that changes things," said the armadillo, looking towards the helipad. "Hershey. Change of plan."

The cat abandoned whatever she was doing inside the helicopter and ran down to join them.

"Problem?"

"Indeed. Purple guy's not here."

"Really? Where is he?"

Mighty shot a glance at Tangle. "Undetermined."

"Ok, umm, what did you want to do?"

"No sense in you and Amy sticking around here. I'll see what I find out."

"What about S-"

"That freeloader can drive himself back. I'll call him."

Hershey smirked, bumped fists with the armadillo and looked to Amy.

"You ready to go?" she asked.

Freeing her right hand from Tangle's grip, the hedgehog turned and threw her good arm around the lemur. Once she realized this was meant to be more than a simple hug, she reciprocated the embrace, resting her chin on the kid's head, and coiling her tail around them both.

"Thanks for being so nice to me," said Amy, eventually pulling away.

"Don't mention it," said Tangle, giving the preteen one last squeeze for good measure.

"See you soon, kiddo," said Mighty as the hedgehog walked away.

She stopped abruptly and span on her heel. "Please don't call me that. I'm in seventh grade."

"Yes, ma'am," murmured the armadillo.

Hershey gave him and Tangle a cursory wave and escorted Amy up to the helicopter. They both raised their hands in farewell as the aircraft's door slid shut and its rotor blades started to turn, only lowering them once the chopper's skids had left the helipad.

"So, uh, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you exactly?" said Tangle, turning to Mighty.

The armadillo grinned.

"It's a fair question. I'm not really sure what you'd call me. A drifter, maybe?"

"Right,", said the lemur, cocking an eyebrow. "How do you know Amy?"

"Friend of a friend. I stopped by Knothole Village a couple times back in the day. She didn't like me calling her 'kiddo' then, either."

Tangle gasped as it occurred her who said friend might be. "You know Sonic too?"

"Know him? I was in jail with him."

Suppressing her inner fangirl, the lemur fought to keep her train of thought on track.

"What about Espio? How do you know him?"

"We worked together for a couple years," said Mighty. "And he's my ex."