CHAPTER 31: Leisure Time
"Hey Knuckles, you down there?" Sonic called down to the huge hole in the ground he encountered outside the Master Emerald building.
"Yeah, I'm in here!" Knuckles called back up. "That you Sonic?"
"Yeah, it's me!" Sonic called back. "Thought I'd drop by and hang out for the day! Is this a bad time?"
"Nah, I'm just having some fun!" Knuckles called out from the bottom of the hole.
"You call digging graves fun?" Sonic called out as a joke.
"I do what I can!" Knuckles called up. His voice came from a little closer this time, and through the dim light of the morning sun on the sides of the hole, Sonic could see the figure of his red-haired friend climbing up.
"I suppose you WOULD need to find something to do when you've got nothing to do around here, huh?" Sonic asked when Knuckles was within reach. He reached down his hands to help Knuckles out of the hole.
"No kidding," Knuckles said as Sonic helped him out. "I just do that for fun. You know, see how deep I can go before the bedrock gets too tough."
"Do you ever think about the fact that this island is hundreds of feet in the air, and it's not exactly the thickest rock around?" Sonic asked as the two of them headed for the steps of the Master Emerald building.
"Well, there's a lot of air between here and the ground," Knuckles said with a grin. "Besides that, there's also a lot of water between here and the ocean bottom. If I ever dig out the bottom of the island, I'll at least have a nice dive going for me. Who knows, maybe I'll land in the Guinness Book if I survive it."
"Maybe you'll win a Darwin Award if you don't," Sonic joked. "I'd vote for you!"
"Oh gee, thanks," Knuckles said, sitting down on one of the steps. "Anyway, what's been up, anything?"
"Ah, not too much," Sonic said, grabbing a spot a few feet away on the same step. "Been wearing a huge rut in my usual running spots because I've been hanging around them too much. You know, the usual."
"I hear you," Knuckles said. "It's been the same around here too. Nothing to do but dig and punch things. Course then again, now that Rouge has finally come out and admitted that she's given up on the Master Emerald, I can kinda relax my watch on it and get out more."
"Nice," Sonic said with a nod. "Met anyone yet?"
"You mean girlfriend-wise?" Knuckles asked. Sonic nodded.
"If you have, do tell," he said.
"Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine," Knuckles said.
"Amy finally netted me," Sonic said. "Took her long enough, too. I see her for the first time in nearly two years, and she's already got a nice car, owns a restaurant, has her own house, then tops it all off by flashing her eyes and asking me out."
"She knows of the power in the eyes," Knuckles said. Then he jokingly added, "Say goodbye to your own free will."
"Little late for that," Sonic said. "The other night, she wouldn't let me go home because she didn't want me to catch a cold from the rain, and her car stalls when it gets wet. She forced me to spend the night at her house, otherwise she'd latch onto me with one of those... bearhugs, and wouldn't let go."
"Whoa," Knuckles said, astounded. "That's a little extreme. As if a cold wouldn't be bad enough, a spinal dislocation wouldn't have helped matters at all."
"Well, the night wasn't a TOTAL disaster," Sonic said. "We got to make out for a while, then she let me sleep with her. And before you ask, we stopped short of sex."
"Good," Knuckles said. "I couldn't see you running around with a stroller or something, and with Amy being only... what, eighteen now?"
"Yeah, that's right," Sonic said with a nod.
"Anyway, I couldn't see you running around with a stroller, and with Amy only being eighteen, I think the last thing she needs to deal with is pregnancy and children," Knuckles said. "But anyway, how long did you guys make out for?"
"About two hours," Sonic said. Knuckles jerked his head back a little and blinked, surprised.
"Holy hell," he said. "You made out for two hours, slept with her, and you managed not to break down, strip her and screw her? Dude, THAT is self-control beyond belief."
"That's what Tails said when I told him," Sonic said. "Now it's your turn. Who'd you pick up?"
"Rouge," Knuckles said. "Hey, aren't she and Amy good friends?"
"Yeah," Sonic said.
"Thought so," Knuckles said. "Anyway, Rouge and I have been going out a little bit lately, ever since she gave up on the Master Emerald."
"Do anything good?" Sonic asked.
"We went to the little mini-carnival," Knuckles said. "I kicked some dude's ass in a sideshow and scored 2,000 creds. The rest of the day went downhill. I sucked at all the games, I nearly flipped a go-cart, and this beats all. At the ring-the-bell game, Rouge actually kicked my ass. I got halfway to the bell, but she nearly broke the thing. Turns out I was using the wrong side of the mallet."
"You learned that trick the hard way too, huh?" Sonic said. "It was a five-year-old girl in my case."
"Kids these days," Knuckles said with a grin while shaking his head.
"She'd eaten her Wheaties that morning, for sure," Sonic joked.
"Speaking of kids, how's Tails been lately?" Knuckles asked.
"Been getting picked on a lot in school," Sonic said. "Seems some guys have this thing going on where they pool their money, they each pull something on him, and whoever gets him worst and gets away with it wins. They haven't all been successful though. Seems like they agreed to do it in teams, too. Last week, three guys dragged him into a game of footbal, then knocked the shit out of him. He apparently hit his head on the ground, and that knocked him out. Rouge was the only emergency contact of his they could get ahold of, but she wasn't in any shape to come after him, so she sent Amy."
"Damn," Knuckles said. "Sounds like those kids need to learn some manners."
"Yeah," Sonic agreed. "Still, on the bright side, when Amy came after him, she got to talk to him about the job he applied for at her restaurant. He got hired on the spot."
"Whoa, cool," Knuckles said. "How'd Amy get the money to have her own restaurant, though?"
"She said she helped Rouge hack Eggman's accounts a couple years back, and she got busy spending it," Sonic said. "She said that's why I suddenly stopped running into her everywhere."
"Oh, that's right!"Knuckles said. "I forgot, I asked Rouge thatsometime last week. But still, it's kinda bad that they did it illegally. If anyone finds out where it came from, they could get locked up!" Sonic shook his head.
"Who would care?" he asked. "Eggman was an asshole. I'm sure he probably got his money the same way. What goes around comes around, y'know."
"Good points, and well made," Knuckles said. "But anyway, back to talking about Tails. You said he got the job, right?"
"Yeah," Sonic said. "On the spot."
"What's she got him doing?" Knuckles asked.
"Register, I think he said," Sonic said. "He gets pretty good pay for it, too. Eight creds per hour, and twenty-four on Sundays because the workload is EXTREME."
"DAMN!" Knuckles exclaimed. "The kid's gonna be paying all his own bills before too long!"
"Probably," Sonic agreed. "And of course, I'm just now remembering what I'd meant to ask Amy the other night."
"Which is?" Knuckles asked.
"Of all the things she could've done with the money Rouge gave her for helping hack those accounts, why open a restaurant?" Sonic said.
"I can answer that," Rouge said, approaching Sonic and Knuckles from the direction Sonic had come when he first arrived.
"Hiya Rouge," both guys said at the same time.
"Been having a little guy chat?" Rouge asked.
"Something like that, yeah," Knuckles said. "But hey, plenty of room for more. Grab a spot. At the rate people are showing up, there might not be any left after too much longer."
"Must make you feel nice knowing everyone thinks of you all at the same time, huh?" Rouge joked, sitting down right next to Knuckles.
"You could say that," Knuckles said with a laugh. "But anyway, you said you could tell us why Amy picked a restaurant of all things, right?"
"Yeah," Rouge said. "I asked her the same thing when she first had the idea. She said she just figured it'd be a good job for her, since she's a pretty good cook. I don't think she was thinking of all the other things she'd have to take care of to keep the place going, but she learned quick enough."
"What other things?" Sonic asked.
"Accounting forms, for one thing," Rouge said. "She doesn't exactly have an accountant's degree or anything. Just do me a favor, and don't ask how she went about learning all this."
"That's on my list of things to ask her," Sonic said. "I still have ONE thing I've been meaning to ask her that I haven't been able to get out."
"What's that?" Knuckles asked.
"Where the hell does she keep that frickin' hammer of hers?" Sonic said. "When she needs it she just... suddenly has it!"
"That's the one thing she always refuses to tell me," Rouge said. "I don't think you'll have much more success." The three of them shared a hearty laugh. Hiding in a rather large shrub nearby, a small robot armed with a 40-millimeter grenade launcher and a mounted(on one arm) shotgun watched them.
"Primary target and two secondary targets acquired," it said into a small one-way radio mounted to its head. "Now would be a perfect time to eliminate them all. Initializing combative systems." The robot held up the grenade launcher and very slowly pulled it open to insert a grenade round. When the round was inserted, the robot tried to click the weapon shut as quietly as possible, but the weapon clicked a little more loudly than its holder preferred. Rouge's large ears picked up the sound easily, and she immediately recognized it as a weapon.
"DUCK!" she cried out, grabbing Knuckles and diving off the steps. Sonic, who was a few feet out of her reach, dove off as well, figuring if nothing happened he'd ask what happened in a moment. He didn't need to, though, as a rather large round flew past him just after he dove.
"What in the hell!?" Knuckles yelled. "What was that!?"
"It sounded like a grenade launcher!" Rouge exclaimed. The sound of the shotgun pumping wasn't exactly reassuring, either. Rouge, Knuckles, and Sonic all jumped to their feet and scattered.
"I think our assassins are back!" Sonic called out from behind a tree he was using for cover.
"Assassins!?" Knuckles yelled. "What's this shit about!?"
"MOVE IT!" Rouge shouted, diving out of the bush she and Knuckles had been hiding in. It exploded a second after Knuckles got himself out, another of the grenade rounds tearing it apart. Sonic took the opportunity to run out, right at the robot. Before it could raise its shotgun to blow his head off, he jumped up and slammed his bodyright into its head, knocking it off-balance. Rouge grabbed Knuckles, flew up a bit, and hurled him at the robot. It regained its balance just in time for Knuckles to smash its torso with a powerful punch. He withdrew his fist as soon as his feet touched the ground, jumped up, pulled a flip in midair, and used his momentum to plant another devastating punch right in the top of its head. It was crushed flat, and both weapons fell to its sides, sticking straight out in either direction.
"God damn, that was close," Knuckles said.
"Get away from it!" Sonic yelled, putting some distance between himself and the robot. Knuckles followed suit, just in time for chunks of the robot to go flying past him as an internal bomb exploded and decimated the robot's remains.
"Whoa!" Rouge exclaimed, already far enough from the robot to be out of danger. "Talk about hardcore! How'd you know the thing would explode?"
"One of these things attacked me and Amy in the park one night!" Sonic called to her as they all began to approach the miniature crater. When they all got to the robot, he went on, saying, "When we took it to Tails to check it out, it blew up and nearly sent a screwdriver through his head. If he hadn't been tossed back, he'd be six feet under."
"Wow," Rouge said. "That was lucky." She knelt down to the robot's crushed head, which hadn't flown as far away as it had flown up. "What's with this skull marking?"
"There was one on the robot that attacked me and Amy, too!" Sonic exclaimed.
"Guess the same person sent them both," Rouge said. She examined the radio device. "This thing was talking to someone, but they weren't talking back. This radio is one-way. Ideal for recon missions. I had to use them a little bit when I was working for the feds."
"If it was just recon, why'd it try to blow us away?" Sonic asked.
"Dunno," Rouge said. "Maybe one of us was just too tempting a target to pass up. Or all of us." She and Sonic exchanged glances, and Knuckles finally cut in.
"What the hell is going on here!?" he demanded.
"Get comfortable," Sonic told him. "This is gonna take a little while to explain."
And so, in the middle of a little catching up between Sonic and Knuckles, Rouge appears on the scene, having also decided to pay Knuckles a surprise visit. Before too long, the three of them find themselves under attack by a robot with a familiar skull marking on it. After dispatching it, Rouge makes a couple of observations about it, deducing several things based purely off what she learned while working for the government. Finally, Knuckles cut in and asked what the hell was going on. It's easy to guess what Sonic told him from there. Review it plz. I'm not complaining, but I've noticed the reviews have kinda slowed a bit. Please bear in mind what I said in the very first chapter: if they stop completely, so will I. I like to know people are still following.