NOTES FROM AUTHOR: Yo, whaddup? This is your author speaking. Again. Unfortunately, I just forgot what I planned to say. DAMN!

CHAPTER 3: What's going on around here?

"Cream! Over here!" shouted Amy over the buzz of the middle school kids. Cream, a cream-colored rabbit(could there be a connection?) wearing a white dress with a blue ribbon around her collar, looked over and saw her. Instead of getting on the bus like she had intended, Cream walked over to Amy's shiny red Corvette.

"Hi Amy," she greeted. "Come to pick me up on the first day, I see."

"Yeah," Amy replied. "Come on, let's get going. I've never seen so many crappy drivers on the road in one day. I nearly got rear-ended twice on the way here. I wanna get off the road pretty quick, before rush hour."

"Okay." Cream pulled off her backpack and set it in the back seat- right in Espio's lap. She noticed it was kinda floating there and blinked. "Amy, why is my backpack floating?"

"You set it on my lap," replied Espio's voice, causing Cream to jump.

"Who's that!?" she asked, startled.

"That's Espio," Amy stated. "Remember, I told you I was gonna see about getting someone to keep an eye on me?"

"Oh, that's right," Cream said, getting over her slight shock and getting into the car. As she pulled on her seat belt, she looked over her shoulder. "My name is Cream, Mr. Espio. Nice to meet you."

"You can drop the 'Mr.'," Espio replied. "It doesn't sound right."

"Alright, I will," Cream replied as the car began to pull away from Station Square Middle School. As the car reached the road, two Chao flew up out of nowhere and landed in Cream's lap: one brown, one blue.

"Oh, hi guys," Amy said. "Are you not allowed to take them to school anymore, Cream?"

"No," Cream replied glumly. "Not since they tackled a guy who was teasing me about my dress."

"Kids these days," Espio muttered. "Always finding some way to antagonize each other."

"So, how was your first day?" Amy asked, trying to change the subject.

"Nothing remarkable, really," Cream replied. "Just the usual things. Going over rules, getting supply lists, meeting our teachers, things like that. Lunch was good though. I had a garden salad. It was that or pizza, and our school cooks aren't very good. Last year, they burned down the school kitchen."

"I remember you telling me about that," Amy said, waving a pedestrian past. "You said the school was ordering fast food en masse for the next week, right?"

"Right," said Cream. At that moment, Amy's cell phone rang.

"Ah, shoot," Amy said. "Cream, could you take a message for me? There's a lot of cops out today."

"Alright." Cream picked up the cell phone and answered it. "Hello?"

"Is this Miss Rose?" asked a male voice on the other end.

"This is her number, but she's driving right now," answered Cream.

"Well, could you please tell her to drop by the restaurant?" asked the person on the other end. "We've got a major problem down here."

"Okay, I'll tell her."

"Thanks. Bye."

"Bye bye". Cream hit the off button on the phone and put it back on its portable charger. "The person on the other end said you need to drop by the restaurant. He said there was a big problem. He didn't say what it was."

"Ah, geez," groaned Amy. "So much for getting home before the idiots got out on the road... Do you mind getting home a little late, Cream?"

"No, I don't mind," Cream replied. "I need to start learning to start sorting these problems out anyway, right?"

"Well, when you put it that way, probably."

Even from down the road, Amy, Cream and Espio all recognized the blue lights in the parking lot of their destination, a restaurant by the name of Rose's Diner. Police were swarming the place.

"This can NOT be good," Amy stated.

"Judging from the amount of police there," Espio said, "it doesn't appear as though there was a robbery or any sort of theft."

"I guess I should probably stay in the car, huh?" said Cream.

"That would probably be a good idea," replied Amy as she pulled into the parking lot. A policeman immediately stopped the car and approached the driver's side door. He was a big, black dog with brown eyes.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but you need to leave the premises immediately," he said in a deep voice.

"I own this restaurant," Amy said. "One of my employees called me and told me there was a problem down here. What's going on?" The big cop just looked Amy over for a second, as though he were making a mental comparison.

"You probably shouldn't go in there," he finally said, "but if you own the place, I can't rightly stop you unless you get in the way of the investigation."

"Investigating what?" Amy asked.

"You'll find out soon enough," the cop replied. Amy parked the car next to the glass door and got out, followed by Espio, who walked right past the cops without any of them being the wiser. As soon as they entered the restaurant, an almost overpowering odor overtook them both- the aroma of death. Amy nearly gagged, and Espio shuddered. As if that wasn't enough, both of them approached the booth most of the cops were standing around. There didn't seem to be any employees still in the building. A medium-sized cop, a red fox with a bushy tail, turned and tried to stop Amy from coming any closer, but she got a look at the body in the booth. It was a pink hedgehog like herself, dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Their faces even looked a little bit alike, except that the girl in the booth had a bigger nose and her eyes were a bit smaller. The worst part was, the dead hedgehog's entire torso was blown out from what seemed like a miniature explosion. Her shoulders and above were laying on the table, while her waist and below were seated firmly in the booth, just as they'd been before the fatal explosion. Her blood and chunks of her torso were splattered everywhere, staining the white walls, the windows, and the black-and-white tiled floor. Espio took careful note of the window: it had a very small hole in it, about the size of a bullet. Amy didn't have time to take note of anything. She took one look, and a wave of nausea swept over her, worse than ever before. She immediately turned away and threw up on the floor.

This is not good, thought Espio. Either someone was after her, whoever she is, or they want Amy dead and made a slight mistake.

Guess who? That's right, this is your author speaking. I'm here to sum up events so far, in case you have a crappy memory or just haven't been actually reading. It stands thus: Amy hired Espio to watch over her, and that afternoon she went and picked up Cream from school. On the way to take her home, Amy got a call from the restaurant she owns, but the employee didn't say what kind of problem. Upon arriving on the scene, Amy and Espio went inside and discovered that a pink hedgehog similar in appearance to Amy had been murdered in a most messy fashion. On Tails's end, he's been stuffed in his locker. OUCH.