CHAPTER 19: Bad Start Getting Better

Rouge yawned widely as she finished her fifth coffee in fifteen minutes. Knuckles was sitting right across from her, not even wondering why she needed so much caffeine just to stay awake this long. He was still regretting having to force her to sniff the mind drug, but he hadn't had a choice. He couldn't let Rouge remember where the Master Emerald was. Now that she'd rediscovered it, though, he was torn between letting her remember or readministering the drug. On the one hand, she had made no move to get to it, and had said she didn't want it(besides Knuckles liking her). On the other hand, she could have been lying and could have planned to snatch it at the first opportunity she got. Knuckles was torn from his thoughts a moment later.

"I need another coffee over here!" Rouge was calling to a waiter nearby. "Could you make it a triple this time?" The waiter nodded, and walked back to get another coffee. He couldn't help but wonder who in God's name needed so much coffee. Rouge, on the other hand, had one happy thought going through her mind: the drug would be wearing off in the next two or three days, unless the doctor hadn't been entirely correct.

"Just so you know," Knuckles said, "when you get to that point, the bathroom's right over there." He pointed. Rouge laughed.

"That was actually the first thing I looked at on the way in," she said. "I'm gonna need to know where it is when this coffee catches up with me."

"Sorry I had to make you sniff that crap," Knuckles apologized, "but I had to."

"I know why you did," Rouge replied. "I just wish you would've just whacked me in the head with a tree branch and ended it quicker. I mean, I'd have the headache of a lifetime, sure, but I wouldn't have to spend a week sleeping it off and trying to remember what foods I like and don't like."

"Sorry," Knuckles repeated. He and Rouge were sitting in a booth in the same 24-hour diner that Rouge had eaten at the morning she'd gone to see Dr. Briggs(the guy who looked like Bruce Willis). The imitation leather they were leaning against was colored red, and was one of the hardest things they'd ever felt, besides stone. The seats were a plain white plastic, with a particle board table between them. Rouge's five coffee cups sat off to one side, all of which had some sugar left in the bottom. Knuckles had a glass of water sitting in front of him, but nothing else, besides his fork, knife, and spoon, still wrapped in a napkin. Rouge hadn't touched her fork or knife, but her spoon had already seen some serious use. It had some bits of sugar stuck to it, mixed with a little coffee.

"Don't worry too much about it," Rouge said. "I'll learn it all back."

"Well, once you've done that, what are you gonna do?" Knuckles asked. "I mean, you spent a lot of your time looking for the Master Emerald, right?"

"Yeah," Rouge replied. "I was thinking about that myself. I've found the thing, so now what? I haven't figured it out yet. I mean, I COULD go on and get my hands on every other gem in the world, but not having one is as good as not having any of them, the way I look at it. Granted, I COULD try and steal it from under your nose again, but look how much success I've had. I may as well just get a job somewhere and deal with it..." Her voice trailed off, and she shuddered at the thought.

"Well, much as I see it as a comfort that I probably won't be having problems from you anymore," Knuckles said, "I'm kind of surprised you'd give up so easily."

"I've been hunting for the thing a lot longer than you think, you know. It's not like it only took six years of failure to stop me. Took me closer to ten."

"I... didn't know that. But, I guess even if you can't have it, you've FOUND it, right? I mean, not many people have. The other ones who did, I kinda had to hurt them. A lot."

"Well, like I said, I think I would've preferred a tree branch to the head. It would've hurt, but still, would've been better for me in the long run."

"So, what else do you do, anyway?"

"Ah, not much, really. Did a bit of spying for a while, but that went sour. Nearly got a knife through my throat at one point, so I gave it a rest. Did you know I hacked a ton of Eggman's accounts and stole a load of his money before he kicked the bucket?"

"I heard someone did, but I wasn't sure who. Did you do it alone, or did you have help?"

"Well, I did the actual hacking myself, but I had Amy find the account numbers for me once I actually hacked into his database."

"Maybe that's why she stopped chasing Sonic around everywhere."

"From what I heard, yeah. She owns a restaurant now. Dunno why she went that route, but hey, better than nothing, I guess. Imagine my surprise when she asked me to help her learn to drive, and she showed up in a Corvette."

"Well, I guess you gotta expect her to have at least one really expensive personal thing, huh?"

"From what she said, it was the cheapest on the lot. The cheapest car, not the cheapest Corvette."

"Whoa. Wonder where she went to buy it."

"Just this place, is all she said. I haven't talked to her for about two or three weeks, so I'm probably gonna do that in the next day or so." Rouge yawned widely as her coffee came. She immediately dumped a load of sugar in it and chugged it right there. She then went on, saying, "I told her I live right near Sonic, and on more than one occasion she asked me to see if I couldn't set them up, but I'm no good at that. Kinda makes me feel a little guilty that I couldn't help her out, but what can I say?"

"How's he been, anyway? I haven't talked to him in a while. Or Tails, or just about anyone, for that matter."

"Well, Sonic's been his usual self. Goes out for a run in the morning, laps the countryside a dozen times, comes back around dinnertime. Tails is in the eleventh grade, having skipped two grades. I talked to him during the summer, which is how I know. Haven't seen him lately, so I dunno how he likes it. Like I said, I haven't talked to Amy for a few weeks, but I know enough to tell you that she's been busy running her restaurant, so she hasn't really had time to chase Sonic around since she was like sixteen."

"Well, bet he's enjoying the break from all the chasing. And the hugs of death. And the marriage proposals. And the begging for a date. And God knows what else."

"I kept telling her, that wasn't gonna be how she bagged him, if she ever did. I told her, the best thing to do would be to just find some way to wipe the slate clean, and start over. Speaking of which, we aren't gonna need to do any slate wiping, are we?"

"Eh, I don't think so." Knuckles put his hands behind his head and leaned his head back on them. "Look where we are without doing so."

"Good point. I'll be back in a minute, I think the coffee's catching up with me." Rouge got up at this moment and headed for the bathroom, in a bit of a hurry. Knuckles sighed.

"I KNEW I should've gone with the tree branch, but do I listen to my gut instinct? Shit no!"

Well, that's another one down. Chapter, that is. I had a bit of trouble thinking up dialogue for this. Dunno why, but writer's block tries to set in whenever I do a Knux/Rouge chapter. Well, I know one thing for sure: by the time it's done, I'll be bitchslapping myself for not putting in minor details. Can't imagine what details those are, but I'll figure it out. Anywho, R&R please. On a completely unrelated note, my feet really hurt. I just had a doctor cut my toenails on my big toes, rip out the ingrown parts, then burn them with a soldering iron. The problem? The numbing crap didn't do its job. It STILL hurts.