A/N: Yep, it's your friendly (not in that way!) neighbor author. After drafting a few more chapters of this story, I figure the story was getting a little bogged down. So, I combined the next two chapters into one! So enjoy, and for references, here are the ages.
Sonic: 20 ½. Will be 21 January 27.
Knuckles: 21
Amy: 19
Tails: 13
Rouge: 20
And here we go!
Miami, Florida, U.S.A. Sonic's apartment. January 24, 2003. 2:43 P.M. EDT.
It was Friday, and nothing was on TV, even with 700 odd channels of Dish-on-Demand. Sonic flipped through the channels. 300-block, nothing. 400-block, nothing. For some reason beyond belief, he opted not to pay for the Playboy Channel, so nothing on the 500-block. The Heat don't play until later, and the Toonami block doesn't run till later as well. Nothing good will be on for a few hours. Yawning, Sonic stood up stretching. What was there to do?
He casually strode across the living room to his balcony door, opening it with little problems, stepping outside, and closing it behind him. Sonic felt the temperature was a little on the cool side; about 70 degrees, but then again, he was shaded by the balcony above him. "Damn," Sonic started, looking 12 stories down at the traffic of downtown Miami. "What is there to do?"
He just happened to look up a little, and saw Amy, who just happened to be in the apartment complex across the street from him, waving at him, apparently trying to yell over the Miami traffic. "What the hell?" He murmured.
Amy stood on her balcony, cordless phone in hand, about seven stories down, screaming. "PICK UP YOUR PHONE!!"
"WHAT?!" Sonic yelled. The traffic on the ground was too loud to clearly make out her words. This went on for a few more seconds, until Amy pointed to the cordless phone in her hand. "The phone?" Sonic said to himself. He went inside, and sure enough, his phone in the kitchen was ringing like crazy. He didn't even need to check the caller I.D. to know who it was. He snatched it off the base. "Yeah, what do you want?!" He said, a little annoyed.
On the other end, Amy rolled her eyes, giggling. "You know, you could sound a little nicer to me on the phone."
The blue hedgehog rolled his eyes. "State your business, or I'm hanging up."
"Fine, turn the TV on CNN. There's something you should know about there."
That caught Sonic off guard. "CNN? Since when do you watch anything that spouts off bad news?" He walked over to the remote, and flipped the TV on. "What could possibly be the big news? Saddam saying he'll cut the bullshit? A big terrorist capture?"
"You'll see."
Sonic didn't really care for CNN. Instead, he just flipped it to MSNBC, channel 209. The scrolling headline at the bottom of the screen shocked him: "Russian KGB Head, and U.S. Secretary of Defense kidnapped from Kremlin. 12 Russian soldiers dead, several more wounded. Survivors say Dr. Robotnik was behind it." He was so much in shock, he almost dropped the phone. "What the hell?!" He murmured, inaudibly. Only Amy's calling on the other end recalled him to himself. "Oh, my bad, Ames."
"So, what's gonna happen now?"
Sonic sighed. "Okay, everyone else is probably in the dark about this. We'll meet up at 'The Strip' ASAP to brief the rest on the situation. You'd better leave now. Tails should already be there. Don't know where Knuckles is. He left out to get some pop. If you see him, tell him to get to 'The Strip.'"
"Right. See you there. Love you."
Sonic rolled his eyes. "Pshhhhh. Whatever." Click, and he put the phone back on the base. "Well, that's one way to break the boredom." He went to his room to get changed, and came out wearing green fatigue pants with a matching jacket over a white T-shirt, grabbed his keys, and was out the door.
Sonic always thought that taking the steps was faster than the elevator. With his speed, it was even more so. He took the steps two at a time, skipping the last four. He got down ten flights when he saw Knuckles coming up the steps, carrying a couple of 2-liters of Coke. "Yo, stop! Other way!"
Knuckles stopped at the bottom of his flight. "What? What's up?" Then he looked over his gear. "And why are you in camos (camouflage)?"
Sonic shrugged. "Look, we have a situation here. Get to 'The Strip', and I'll brief everyone there."
Knuckles blinked. 'The Strip?' Why there? This must be serious. "Did you already tell Amy?"
"She's the one who brought this to my attention."
"So, we're all riding with Amy, right?" Knuckles asked.
Sonic looked at him like he'd gone mad. "Man, hell naw! If anything, I'm taking my bike." Of course, since he was the fastest thing alive, he didn't have to get one. But, the second he saw that 2003 Yamaha YZF-R6 at the dealer, he was hell-bent on getting it, if anything, just to floss it.
"Whatever. Let's move."
The two descended the last two flights of steps, and were shocked to see Amy waiting for them in the lobby. "Hey guys, I thought that since we're going to the same place, we'd might as well go together."
Sonic and Knuckles looked at each other. They knew Amy's driving record wasn't the cleanest in Dade County, and they knew better than to attempt to refuse her offer for a ride. "Damn."
Key Largo, Florida, U.S.A. 'The Strip' abandoned Air Force Base. January 24, 2003. 3:44 P.M. EDT.
Homestead Air Force Base was first built on the north part of Key Largo, as a forward air base, and as an anti-ballistic missile site during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Some years later, the Air Force relocated the base back on the Florida Peninsula, a little south of Miami. Over the years, the hangars and runway became a proverbial punching bag to hurricanes and tropical storms. The site was used occasionally for air shows and the hangars and runway reconditioned during the 80's, but then the costs of maintaining the airstrip became more than getting a lease on the facilities at Homestead, and the facility became a derelict.
One day, a little more than a year and a half ago; a couple of months before the ARK incident, Sonic and Tails were flying over the key when they stumbled upon the site, and with several low flying passes over the site, deemed it a good place for a base of operations. Buying the land from the state, and replacing the tarmac was a no-factor, as the governor generously granted them the state's services for saving the planet a handful of times. The only cons about the site were it was prone to hurricanes, and flying sorties were a bit of a hassle since 'The Strip' was still within Homestead's airspace, and Tails would have to radio to the control tower there for permission to takeoff and land. Still, they got a good deal out of it.
Amy's red 1997 Dodge Neon crept up the winding gravel path leading to their base. Sonic had commandeered the CD player, and had Lil' Jon with Mystikal, and Krazie Bone "I Don't Give A Fuck" blaring from a burnt CD Knuckles left in her car. When Amy objected, Sonic reasoned. "Well, if you would've let us go on our own, we wouldn't have this problem, now would we?" Knuckles backed him up eagerly from the back seat. Another three minutes of meandering, and a track from Tupac's Better Days album later, the car reached the end of the path, and Amy cut off the car.
"Everyone pile out." Sonic muttered.
Knuckles shook his head as he got out of the 2-door car. "He would tell us to pile out."
"Shut up!"
Suddenly, a sustained rumbling came out of on of the hangars. "What was that?" Amy asked.
Sonic and Knuckles paused for a moment. "It sounded like…" Sonic started.
"A jet engine?" Knuckles finished. "Where the hell does this kid get a jet engine from?"
Sonic shrugged. "I don't know, but let's go see what he's up to." With that, Sonic and Knuckles ran toward the hangar, leaving Amy to attempt to keep up and pleading to wait for her.
"Okay, thrust vectoring nozzles are working fine," A greasy, somewhat charred, and otherwise dirty Tails said. Thank God he wasn't sporting his FUBU gear. Instead, he was decked out in a sturdy worker's shirt, blue jeans, protective gloves, and protective goggles. "Okay, all I need to do is run a test on the engines at 70,000 pounds of thrust, then I can take this bird for a test flight." He went over to his workstation computer, and typed a few commands into it. "Okay, start!" He hit enter, and the two Pratt & Whitney F119-100 afterburning turbofans roared back to life.
Sonic had just reached the opening of the hangar when the engines started up again, blowing hot jet exhaust outside. "Oh, shit!" And he stopped a good ways away. Knuckles wasn't so quick to stop and he slammed in back of Sonic, propelling him into the exhaust. "FUCK!!!"
Tails saw Sonic stumbling into the path of the exhaust, and frantically hit the Esc key to shut off the engines, saving Sonic from a painful experience.
Sonic managed to stop stumbling, and stomped over to Knuckles. "You trying to kill me?! I should beat your ass!"
Knuckles held out his hands in apology. "My fault, man. But, if you wanna make something of it," he held his arms out, as if to challenge him. "Be my guest."
Sonic got into his face. "Don't forget that I did you before. I damn sure can do you again!"
Before the festivities could get out of hand, Amy parted the two. "Now, children. Let's play nice. I'm just glad both of you are all right. I don't wanna have to send both of you to your rooms."
Reluctantly, both guys backed off. "You better sleep with one eye open." Sonic muttered.
Before Knuckles could counter, Tails emerged from the hangar. "Hey, guys! What's up?"
"Tails, I wish we could be over here under better circumstances, but we have a situation. We're here to brief you on it." Sonic said.
"What is it now?" Tails asked.
Damn, he forgot the details. "I think it'd be better if we show you. Come on." With that, Sonic led Tails and the others to a room in the back of the hangar, where an Internet-capable machine was on idle. After logging on to Roadrunner, which was insanely quick because of the fiber-optic cable connection, Sonic took the browser to msnbc.com. A blink of an eye later, the situation was on the main page.
"What the hell?!" Knuckles gasped.
"What could he possibly accomplish?" Tails asked.
Sonic shrugged. "Beats me. What I want to know is what were they doing there, and how were Eggman's forces able to get that deep into Russia undetected?"
Tails shrugged. "Beats me. If my sources are right, then Russia developed a radar powerful enough to detect stealth aircraft, so that's ruled out."
Sonic and Tails looked to Knuckles and Amy for suggestions, but got nothing. All four sat thinking, until Sonic came up with an idea. "I think I know someone who knows."
"Who?" Knuckles asked.
With a sly smirk, Sonic replied. "Your girl, Rouge."
Knuckles got red in the face, which is pretty hard because he's already red. "Know this, blue boy. She is NOT my girl. Just one time, I save her life, then ask her what she was doing after the ARK, and you think we're in chat rooms cybering each other?!"
Amy immediately covered Tails ears, and Sonic made a face. "I don't wanna know that, ever." He shuddered.
Tails wiggled away from Amy. "Too late, Sonic already told me about the birds and the bees years ago… the unabridged version!"
Amy then whacked Sonic in the back of the head. "Shame on you! The kid's barely in his teens!"
"Well, he had to learn someday. The sooner the better! Alright, back to the task at hand." Sonic checked the time on the XP-run computer. 3:54 P.M. "She's still at work. The offices don't close 'till five. I'll just leave her an e-mail." With that, he typed in her e-mail address on his navigation-bar, rougebat@cia.gov, and typed in the message on the e-mail body: WE GOTTA CHAT. BE AT WEB-CAM @ 6.
A/N: Yep, I have Rouge in the CIA. Remember in SA2 when Shadow exposed Rouge as a government spy? Anyways, R/R, or e-mail me, and let me know I still have an audience here. Next chapter, playing Halo, Tails' brainchild, and intelligence from Rouge. Peace!