Greetings and welcome. While I was doing the last of the editing with this chapter, I made the descions to relax some restrictions of content and the chapter that follows from this will show more of that than here. This will possibly be the last time I dwell on Knuckle's history so I can mold Aleutian's history in with it. For me it works perfectly with the emotions that I strive to build on with this story. I can't help afterwards but step back and image what Locke is thinking about his son: seeing the scars, observing his training being somewhat put through the paces, and the emotional burden that is clearly on his face and body. I'll be bring more of those thoughts out in the oncoming chapters to follow. So sit tight and bare with some of the dry stuff.

Please review...so far this is becoming upsetting that no one has taken a the time out just to FLAME me for something. Well, observations of what I need to do to improve this is much appricated over the later.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Sonic and this friends and enemies. Other characters that are not in the arcs are of my own.

Enjoy..."And don't forget to bring a towel."

Swimming Lessons

By: Mauser

"Just a little more!"

Aleutian pushed himself further in his head to keep pace over his heavy feet. He was surprised he could even think at all between his sore muscles, his hard breathing, and now his weakened, burning legs. "Find way to start bonding, Dad. Next time, I'll take you on a cruise instead of my brother..." He scolded himself from his selfish comment at that instant, making him come to a dead, hard breathing stop.

Hunching over his knees, he took a long look at the ground as his lungs sucked in the warm air. "There isn't going to be a next time...remember?"

Locke had sent him running as soon as they had teleported to the foothills of somewhere he wasn't sure of yet. The rocky rolling hills made it very difficult for Aleutian to keep pace with himself, and the pack on his back didn't make it any easier. He swore with every tenth mile he put under his legs, his pack grew that much in weight. But as least Locke made him take his jacket off, and he was glad he did. His silk fur was wet with sweat from the blistering sun.

Aleutian looked up from his knees and took in his surroundings. Before him, a line of large trees that were scattered enough to form multiple paths into the forest. Breathing in one last gasp of easy air before he drove on, he honestly wondered if he was going to survive this next hurdle in his young life. With a painful step that made Aleutian realize that he stood still for too long, he trotted at first before resuming his pace into a moderate jog.

He didn't get far when his side began to cramp. Steadying his shaky hands on the bark passing trees as he walked around them, he tried to catch his breath over the pain from the stitch in his side. His breaths soon became grunts as he moved further into the forest, seemingly driving the pain further into his side. Aleutian was felling he was being punished for not keeping up with his physical training, or even his operative training at the very least. Every aching step he took impounded that realization across his body.

He passed a tree and was completely startled by his father's voice from up high. "If you think about something else, your pain will go away and your trek becomes easier."

Aleutian looked up at the tree and saw his father sitting cross legged comfortably on a large branch. Aleutian braced himself with his hands against the tree and tried to catch his breath once more before he spoke:

"And replace it with what...more pain?" he panted out.

"What about the future? Have you thought about that instead of the past?"

Aleutian looked back up to his father, his scarred face painted with worry and sweat. "I'm afraid of it at this point...especially after today."

Locke jumped out of the tree and glided down with the wind in his dreads, doing a circle in the air that traced the ground around Aleutian. When he landed on the soft ground, he opened his son's jacket up and looked at the back, studying the painted picture.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked as he looked over the Griffin on Aleutian's jacket once more. He then held it out to his son.

"I don't know!" Aleutian seethed as he snatched his jacket from his father's grasp, wrapping it between him and his pack.

"I think you do, Aleutian. You're just afraid of telling either me or your brother about your past. That is what the future holds for you. Why don't you tell us, son?"

Aleutian walked past his father. "I don't think you'd understand," he said as he hung his head slightly low that mimicked his voice. Shaking his stare loose from the ground, he slowly trudged away as his tail seemed to slump further across the leafy ground.

Locke watched his son disappear further into the woods, vanishing behind a few trees as he made his way east. "Try me, my young Guardian."

With a whiff of smoke, Archy appeared on his right shoulder.

"There you are. I was wondering where you went to?" Locke asked in a soft, swift voice.

"Retracing some of my footsteps around here," replied the deep red Fire Ant. "It's been awhile since I ventured this far."

"Where are we, anyways?"

"We're on the southeast edge of the Badlands."

"Why here of all places?" Locke asked with a flat voice.

"I think this is where Aleutian found Emi-La, Locke. He spent several weeks out here with her to help her get back to the Lost Tribe."

Locke looked over at his long friend and mentor: "Was she lost or something?"

Archimedes looked around at the wooded surroundings and frowned. "I don't know? All I remember of her was that she was an orphan, and that she loved your son with every ounce of her strength that she had. She was one of the main reasons why he didn't come home the first time when you summoned him."

"How so?"

"He wasn't going to leave her. Something about her being through too much and a promise. But she almost made him come back on his own."

Locke started walking, crossing his arms as he made his way forward where his son had ventured off. "I still remember what Aleutian told you to tell me: 'If I wanted him...'"

"'...The you can come get him yourself,'" Archy finished. "She made him promise her that he would go back years after that, Locke," he added. "It was her dying wish."

Aleutian found his way through the forest, traversing through the gaps of trees and brushes as he lumbered his way eastward. When he traveled about half a mile from where he left his father to himself, Aleutian found a fallen tree that had rotted away from the rain, sun, and termites over the years. Black had replaced the grey bark and brown wood. Its topside was naturally carved out from the surrounding wildlife and elements, and patches of green moss had grown underneath it. But even as it was, somehow, the fallen decayed tree looked frightening and emotionally familiar. The outlying golden, brown leaves added to his memories.

Pushing his thoughts aside, he pressed on, trekking forward as he took in the late-afternoon day with all of his senses. When he approached two hills that cut a twenty foot wide valley between them, Aleutian stopped completely.

"No...we're not here...are we?" he gasped at himself.

He snapped his head back behind him for a moment, seeing his father and Archy closing in on him as they made their way through the woods. With a hard determined look, Aleutian powered up the ridge of the hill that rose up about thirty feet in elevation, dodging rocks and boulders that littered the hill side. When he reached the top, he started noticing familiar trees again, along with more boulders.

It hit him like a freight train.

"We are here."

He stepped past trees and rocks that seven years ago he used as cover against some very unfriendly Mobian dogs. The smell of ozone, scorched timber and fur, along with the sounds of screaming voices that went silent because of him, came back to Aleutian's senses. It was here that his innocence was truly purged from his existence. It was her that he first killed.

Knowing what probably laid ahead of him, he took off running. Every hard step shot discomfort from his sore muscles to his nervous system; but he pushed it all further back into his mind. After twenty paces he heard it. At first it sounded like the trees were waving in the wind, but their was no wind to speak of in the mid-summer's heat. Several more paces later, the rushing sound became more pronounced. He scrabbled down the hill and into the valley, swinging around a few trees and jumping over a large boulder that lay in his way. As he ran faster over the fallen leaves, the rushing sound became clearer...it was falling water.

The valley vanished into obscurity as the two hills flattened out into a beach that made up the shoreline of a river. It was fed by a hundred foot high water fall that marked the beginning of the Badlands to the west of it. The ground had turned from leaves, to green grass, to mud as Aleutian crept closer to the small pound that marked the second stage of the river's course. It spread about fifty yards across from where he was standing to the falls that dropped straight down. A lite mist floated on top of the crystal clear water, looking as if spirits were dancing on the surface.

When he stopped at the waters edge, he looked down at his reflection in the lapping water that played around his new shoes. What he saw was a far cry from over seven years ago.

His own voice was triggered by his reflection; "It's okay...your safe now," he remembered saying to Emi-La in a soothing, comforting voice.

"What were they going to do to me," she whimpered out as she sat in the water, leaning her head against Aleutian's chest as he caressed her shoulder.

"I don't know," he lied at the instant, "But I didn't want us to find out."

The gentle pattern of the lapping water was disturbed when a tear from Aleutian's scarred right eye fell to the water. He grimaced at himself as he shot his head back up and stared at the water fall.

Hearing the mud squishing under Locke's boots, Aleutian snapped his whole body around:

"Why did you bring me here!?" he demanded with an emotionally charged voice, his face asking the same question with his tears.

"For you..." Locke stated, but only to be cut off by his angered son:

"...For me...to what, give me the gift of pain!"

"No, lad!" barked Archimedes. "This is for you to remember the better days of your life. Do you really think your father wants to see you in more pain. This is for you Aleutian; for you to remember who you really are. Okay? You traveled for almost a month with a girl –who you never knew– to help her get back to her family. Why? Because that is the Guardian inside of you...the protector...the one who helps others in their time of dire need. "

"I killed out here, Archimedes!" Aleutian seethed out over his tears. "I killed live beings for the first time --right down in that valley!"

"And why, son?" asked Locke this time, his voice sincere amongst tension.

Aleutian took a long pause, seeing what the two were forcing upon him. He shunned away his feelings of hatred at himself for the brief moment of reflection and peered deep inside of his soul; and he saw:

"To save her from a pack of dogs who wanted to rape and murderer her!"

Locke nodded his head twice then said, "You're not the first Guardian who has killed, Aleutian. It is a last option with us, but we have had to use 'that' option before. It's nothing to be ashamed of...especially in this case." Skipping the history of Knuckles killing an Overlander named Hunter, Locke took a deep breath before he asked his next line of thoughts. "So, was this where you met your equal?"

Aleutian shifted his gaze back to the mud ridden ground. "No. I found her about a week prior to this."

An urge suddenly then came over him after a moment of silence, one that he hadn't felt in years. He took off his back pack and chucked it, along with his jacket, to his father. Locke caught them and placed them down to the ground. He watched his son slowly turn his back towards him and gently walk into the water, never caring about taking off his shoes.

He felt the jagged rocks under his feet through the soles, but they were the furthest thing from his mind as the cool water rinsed across his silk smooth fur. As he went deeper, immersing his thighs, he lowered himself further down in the water and turned over on his back, facing up at the cloudless blue sky. Of the trials he went through from the hot day, this was heaven for him. He floated for several minutes, letting the water soak through to his skin that slowly rinsed away the lingering diesel smell from his body. The thought of losing the sent made him want to cry at first. Besides the pictures that hung on his wall, the smell was all he had left to remember Mathias and the Plunger by.

The old Dingo's words floated back to him as he took in the azure sky and the weightlessness of his body:

"'Let go, Aleutian!'"

"But I can't, old man," he whispered to himself aloud as wakes from the falling water lapped around floating dread locks.

Aleutian looked back towards the bank and watched as his father made his way into the water as well. "Don't care if that robe of yours gets wet?" he asked as he floated with his arms out to his sides.

"It'll dry," Locke returned with a light smirk.

"Yea, but how long!?" Aleutian shouted out with almost a smile purging from his lips.

"Not long. Faster than you think."

"Okay...have fun with the head cold, then." Aleutian let his head float back on the water as he gazed at the sky again. Before long, he smiled and said; "Watch your next step, it's a nice..."

He shot his head up in time to see Locke get swallowed up by the large pond. He only went neck deep, but the picture of the whole act was worth it for Aleutian. He hadn't laughed that hard in over two years.

"Oh man, that was priceless!" he boasted with a hard laugh. "You've should've seen your face on that one."

Locke twitched his right eye as the initial shock of the cold water, that almost drove every ounce of air from his lungs, wore off. "You're going to pay for that, young Guardian," he told Aleutian over a deadpan face.

Aleutian's smile faded deliberately slow to seriousness. "I still owe for my debts," he retorted with a low gruff.

"Is that so?" spelled out Locke as he found it hard to tread water with his heavy boots. Pushing the annoyance aside, he flashed a grin and started swimming towards his son. "We'll see about that."

Aleutian smirked as Locke drew closer to him. "I'm the wrong pup to be messing with in the water."

"Is that so?" Locke smirked again, broadening his brows with the comment.

"Hope you can take a lesson better than I can," said Aleutian, and at the moment, he expelled a good portion of air out from his lungs and sank under the water without so much of a ripple.

Locke swam across the water and ducked down below the surface, spreading his arms out wide to hopefully grab his son; but he came up short. When he surfaced, he looked around him. The water was smooth, saved for the ripples from the waterfall. He looked right at first, but he saw nothing but the path of the river. Looking down at the somewhat clear water, he didn't see Aleutian there either. But when he looked left, he saw him. Aleutian reassembled Vector in a frightening way, his head halfway out of the water with his black nose on his broad snout breathing in the fresh air. With a wink from his scarred right eye, he expelled a little more air from his lungs as he slowly vanished back down. Locke noticed with surprise that Aleutian didn't make even a single ripple as he sank to the shallow depths.

Closing his eyes, Locke channeled his senses to the water around him. At first he was going to wait Aleutian out and possibly feel him come up close to dunk his head under. But after a moment, he didn't feel or sense anything. He quickly opened his eyes and rubbed the dripping water away from them and his nose. Glancing around, he didn't see his son's head at all. Pivoting himself from side to side for a brief moment, he still came up short with only the waterfall to entrance his sight and thoughts. He began to worry a few seconds later. Locke estimated that Aleutian had been down a whole minute by now and he didn't know if there were any dangerous creatures in this pound.

What he didn't realize was that Aleutian was eight inches behind him, slowly rising up without so much of a ripple from a pin drop of water. It was at the instant that Archimedes realized his worst fears at what he knew all along about Aleutian and what a certain lop eared rabbit did to him as the Fire Ant watched the whole act unfold from the banks:

"That rabbit made him into a trained killer."

He said nothing to Locke as Aleutian brought his chin up out of the water.

With a twisted smile and a hard thrust from both hands, Aleutian sank his father's head down into the water. When Locke popped back up and whipped the water from his face, he was met with a subtle laugh from behind him. He slowly paddled around to gaze upon his grinning son.

"Told y'ah I'm not nice in the water!" Aleutian gassed.

"Who taught you that?" Locke asked, almost shaking his head.

Aleutian's face went even. "Lopper. He taught me about half the stuff I know. Everything else either came from you or Mathias."

"Well that's nice to know that I still had a part in your upbringing," Locke nodded with a hint of smile. He stirred the water around him for a brief moment before a thought beckoned him. "You know your brother hates the water?"

Aleutian slowed his efforts to stay afloat as he looked up at his father with a now uneven face. "You think it has something to do with him and the bath from that night?"

"I'm pretty sure, Aleutian. Now, he does swim and he does tolerate it when he has too; but that doesn't mean he likes it." Locke perched lips and asked his next thought. "Do you still have your sight? After all, it did save your brother from drowning."

Aleutian remembered his vision well. He was scribing out his good-bye note to his parents and his brother when he heard a loud thump come from the bathroom that was a little ways down the hall from his room. He placed his hand on his desk and traced the floor with his gift of sight to the bathroom. What he saw made him bolt out of his chair in a heartbeat. When he got to the bathroom, he saw his mother on the tiled floor, knocked out cold after she'd slipped on one of Knuckles' toys and slammed her head against the wall. She had just placed Knuckles in the tub when it happened, and the commotion had startled him enough to make him slide under. Aleutian arrived just in time before Knuckles took in a fatal breath of water.

"Oh no you don't, there's too much at stake with you," he remembered saying as he dried off his crying brother, looking over to his mother at that same instant.

Three days later...Aleutian ran away. That life saving incident only saved him from leaving that night.

Then his memories flashed with the sight of his own stillborn child laying in the womb of Emi-La before her heart ceased to beat. She was five weeks pregnant and she never told him until it was too late. His chances of raising a family and his own Guardian were whisked away from him like a thief in the night. Locke saw his son's face turn to anguish as the thought of him saving his brother was replaced by something painful. But even though, Aleutian remembered his mother and the happier times that they all had together, even when he and his father didn't speak to each other hardly at all. And that thought triggered his next painful question:

"Why did you and mom divorce, Dad? It wasn't over me...was it?" he asked with a dreary look that beamed across the surface of the water.

Locke took in a deep breath and sighed. "No, it wasn't over you. It was about your brother, his duties, and me. Your mom didn't like the idea that I was going to take Knuckles and start his training when he was three. She had already lost you and she didn't want to loose your brother as well. She knew what was to become of either one of you, but..."

"...A mother is a mother," Aleutian softly added.

"Yes," Locke solemnly admitted. "Sometime later, we split and I took your brother to the Island where I started his training."

"And then you left him on his own when he was nine!?" Aleutian halfway seethed out.

"That's what happens in our bloodline. If you had stayed, son, you would have either gone through the same process or at least understood it. We leave for Haven so our sons can learn to fend for themselves on their own while we watch over the rest of the world."

Aleutian pushed his arms out to his sides and started swimming back to shore. "But you didn't find me for how long!?" he scoffed as he began to make his way back.

It wasn't until they stepped out from the water's edge when Locke gave his answer:

"We thought you had drowned, Aleutian. Me...the Brotherhood; we picked up the faint signal to my hand computer at the bottom of the ocean--"

"--You mean it worked!?" Aleutian blurted out, baffled to say the least.

"Yes and no. You didn't hit the distress beacon, but it turns on anyways once it gets dropped in water. We found didn't find any trace of you and we presumed that you were dead."

Aleutian looked past his father and out towards the setting sun that was somewhat blocked by the trees. "So what did you tell mom?"

"The truth."

"And how did she take it?" Aleutian asked over a guiltily frown.

"She didn't; literally. She held on for a long time that you were alive," Locke said evenly. "That is one thing that I still love about Lara; she has strength and courage. She never gave up on you. " Locke walked closer to his son and placed his hand across his shoulder. "She is the main reason why I am here with you now. She wants you back in her life Aleutian; but she wants the old Aleutian that was on that sub not too long ago, to be in her arms." He paused to let his words to sink for a moment. "It's why you have those shoes and those gloves. She believed in you when I didn't. And I'm sorry for that."

Aleutian gave an understanding nod and turned away. Locke watched as his son shook his dreads out and squeegeed most of the water from his fur. Seeing that his face was still long, he decided to give him some space for the rest of the evening.

Closing his eyes and clasping his hands together, Locke reached out across the sea and summoned the energy from the Master Emerald which began to warm his body up. Within a few seconds, steam bellowed from his fur and his tribal robe. Shortly after he began the cycle, he was dry.

"Dry, yet?" he asked his son who was putting on his jacket.

"Nope, how about you?"

"Never felt better."

"What!?" Aleutian shrilled as he did a double take at his father. "You can't be dry!" He then noticed the steam lifting off his father; including his grey, thin beard.

Locke saw the baffled look and smirked. "You sure you want give up your powers? You are born with them after all."

Aleutian thought hard, and the harsh expression of it was painted on his face. "No. I don't deserve them."

"And who are you to judge?" came back Locke, his brows slanted.

Aleutian looked up and gave his father an everlasting look:

"My actions, father. They are the judge of me" And he said nothing afterwards.

Aleutian fell to sleep as quickly as the night spread her cloak across the Mobian landscape. Locke was very pleased at that. He wanted nothing more than to see his son's day come to better close than how it began. He was also grateful for what Sonic, Elias, and Tails' father had given them for rations and supplies: two sleeping bags that could be packed in the smallest of spaces in both their bags, enough food to last them for a week if they worked on it, and a fire starter kit that was now being put to good use; drying his boots and Aleutian's shoes. Granted that they could have had Archimedes use his breath of fire to make one, however, Locke wanted to use his survival skills to keep the fresh.

But what he was hoping to be quick lesson for his son became an astounding observation of what Aleutian possessed in knowledge. Locke was flat-out amazed to say the least at how quickly his son got the fire going with the tiniest amount of moss and two rocks. Locke asked him how long it took him to learn to get one going that fast and all Aleutian would reply was:

"If you live out here for a month, father, you learn quickly."

With that shrewd comment, Locke realized how much that month really met to Aleutian. He had gained a lover, became a survivalist, and found that he wasn't alone being a Guardian who abandoned his duties. He could only image Aleutian's face when he met Anthair for the first time. But then Locke scratched that idea; Aleutian had never really gone back on his duties. Instead, he took a more indirect approach that still helped his brother and his people.

However, Locke did know something else that Aleutian probably didn't. Knuckles has done more for the Island and the world than what Aleutian probably had. That was something that he was going to have to explain to him tomorrow.

But for that moment of peace and tranquility, there was something else that needed to be addressed while he watched his boy sleep. Locke knew that the answers were going to be hard to get out of him.

"What happened two years ago, Archy?" Locke asked with a low voice, being mindful of Aleutian's dreams, no matter how bad they could get.

"A nightmare, my old friend," Archy replied with a matter-of-fact voice.

"To whom...it certainly wasn't for the Kingdom of Acorn?"

"Aye, and they gave Knuckles their thanks for helping them free Knothole Village, and securing overall victory from Robotnick the first time." Archy then leaned over from his high place on a branch and looked down at his old pupil from many years ago. "But they really need to thank Aleutian for what he did that helped to ensure that victory. The lad did what he sat out to do, Locke...he helped his brother out in more ways than one. In turn, he helped our allies as well when we didn't give them the time of day to fight."

"Then why does he hide it from everyone, Archimedes? That is something that I don't understand about him. If he helped, then why doesn't he honor his feats?"

Archy swallowed hard as he gathered his thoughts. "It's because of what he did afterwards, Locke. And it's the reason why he doesn't want his powers back. They're still there, mate, but he has them locked down and he plans to never open them back up."

"And the reason?" Locke asked with a gruff voice.

"It's what he did, and how I helped him do it."

"WHAT!?" Locke seethed but still keeping his voice disciplined.

Archy just shook his head for a moment and turned his attention to the sleeping boy.

"I asked Lopper about the traitors," stated Locke, hopefully changing the subject for a bit, "he said something about, 'dust in the wind.'"

Archy took in a heavy sigh. "There is more truth to that than you know, mate. I wish to this day that I had never witnessed of what he did."

Locke just stared at his old friend. He tried to solve the underlying message but the answer was too bizarre to fathom. So he totally changed the subject:

"So, where're we going tomorrow?"

"Someplace that could possibly really hurt him this time. I still think this is a bad idea."

"Not from the little of what I saw, Archy," Locke politely protested. "I saw shades of better memories coming back to him. We continue with this tomorrow. It's for the better for all of us."

Archimedes just nodded his head as he watched the black and yellow shadows of the fire dance over Aleutian's sleeping body.

"When are you all going to bed?" Sally asked promptly as she navigated around the Command Center.

"As soon as we can put a dent in this new code!" Uncle Chuck grumbled back, staring up at the large screen of Nicole. The new cipher that was sent over the airways was an impressive one, and it had him, Tails, Rotor, and Nicole working feverishly and tirelessly to crack it.

It was a cruel combination of trigonometry, statistics, and worse, a jumbled binary code that actually sported numbers other than ones and zeros. Just the sight of it would make the best mathematician want to commit suicide. But nevertheless, the four pressed on. Tails punching in the numbers, Nicole deciphering the binary code plus plugging the numbers in, Rotor tracing where the signal was sent to, and Uncle Chuck figuring out the harsh math out before he would slide the answers over to the orange twin tailed fox. But for four hours with hardly any breaks, the one word that they started out with kept changing with every solution.

"When was this sent?" asked Sally from behind them, her arms crossed as she watched Nicole compute the numbers over the message.

"Four and half hours ago, Princess," replied Rotor as he looked at a map on the screen beside him.

"And to where?"

Rotor rotated his swivel chair around and let Sally have a quick glance at the screen. "Someplace in the Mobian Plains," he replied as he pointed to the texture less map, save for colors and boundary lines. "It's a rough guess. We'll have a satellite overhead in the morning, and by then, we should be able to take snap shots and get a better look."

"Make it so," Sally affirmed as she noticed the area that Rotor had pointed to was pretty close to the Mobian desert. "Any other messages that we caught today?"

"That's the odd part, Your Highness!" flustered Uncle Chuck as he looked away from his work. "We intercepted several messages after this one, and all were using the old encryptions."

A raised brow. "That is odd...and scary! You think Eggman is revving up for another big attack?" Sally asked coldly.

Chuck just eerily nodded his head and went back to his work. "This has the tell-tale signs of it –unless he has figured out our secret. Who knows what Snively has told Robotnick about us since he defected back to him."

A curt nod. "Okay, we'll figure out something about this tomorrow," Sally tiredly said. She then walked over to Tails and leaned towards his pointed ear; "Don't stay up too late, Miles. We have a little quest for you tomorrow."

Tails just nodded while he kept his fixed attention on the screen in front of him. "I won't, Aunt Sally."

The stars twinkled in the black sky as Sally made her way back to Castle Acorn. Everyday seemed not to be without incident, especially since a certain echidna came to town. But even that thought made her sigh:

"Hope he is doing better."

Sonic watched Sally cross into the last line of huts, leaning beside another with his arms crossed. "Yo, Sal!" he called out to her. When she looked over at him, he dashed to her side.

"What do you want Sonic?" she asked, showing a hint of agitation in her voice.

Sonic threw his hands up in a plea. "I just wanna' talk, Sal! That's all."

"About what, Hedgehog?" she snuffed.

Sonic swallowed hard as he kept up with Sally's quickened pace; "Us, maybe."

His words grinded Sally to a dead halt. Her long auburn hair floated in the night breeze as she softened her gaze at Sonic's. He was being sincere for once.

"Being gone for a year in space put a cramp between us..."

"You can say that again, Sonic!"

Sonic stared deeper with his jaded eyes. "But things have changed, Sal. I mean...can we fix things, now!?" Sonic whole-heartily asked.

"I don't know...is Fiona totally out of the picture with you?" Sally snorted.

"See, things have changed!" the hedgehog pointed out with a crooked smile. "Scourge has her, and Scourge can keep her."

Sally suppressed her smile at the thought. She hated the green hedgehog as well as Sonic, and was exceptionally glad that Fiona left with him. Even Sally was beginning to hate the fox's full-body suit.

But then something else came up from Sally's heart:

"What's got you like this? You're never this sentimental."

With a comforting but stern stare, Sonic took in a deep breath. "Aleutian."

"What!? You've got to be kidding me. How does he make you think of us?"

"Cause he was in love just like the two of you were!" Sally floated her gaze around to Tails, hearing his childish voice that was built on frustration. He was on his way back to his hut to grab some shut-eye when he overheard some of the conversation. He missed his best friends being together and when he saw Sonic trying to mend things, he couldn't help himself but to give aid.

"Lil' bro, can you give us ah few shakes..."

Tails cut him off as he walked steadfast towards Sally. "Mathias told us how Aleutian was in love. We saw her picture..."

Sally instantly remembered what Archimedes had said to them back at the Command Center; that Aleutian's love for Emi-La was stronger than what Knuckles and Julie-Su shared. "Tell me more, Tails?" she calmly asked the sobbing fox.

Sonic quickly saw Tails emotions, somehow, get the better of him as he tried to muster his thoughts up. So, Sonic elaborated for him instead. "The Drake said something to the tune that they were betrayed and she died in his arms because of it."

"Okay, that's what Archimedes had said this morning," Sally bluntly added.

"But," Tails slowly began, "Emi-La made him promise to return home to help Knuckles. That was her last dying breath."

Sally shrugged her eyebrows with an ironic thought. "Looks liked we helped her in that respect."

"What do you mean her? What about him? We helped him honor that promise Sal...well, courtesy of Rad Red and all," Sonic shrugged.

"Sonic," Sally said in a soft, shrewd voice, "sometimes a promise needs to be helped along by the reciever. That's something you boys woudn't understand."

The floor was cold, and so was the borderline rotten food that she didn't touch. Even with the light that came through the half inch crack from the door, she could see the flies buzzing around the wilted grapes and dried bananas. The bots had tossed the plate in as if they were kings giving their peasants what was left of their half-eaten meal. And that was how Kripta felt. She wanted to vanish from all sight of the dark room, but she kept hearing the high pitched groans of a servo above her horned head. It must have been a camera, and she knew it was probably capable of infrared.

Then another groan came from behind her. It was her brother, Anzio, finally coming around from the hard stun that he received back at the work camp, which all seemed a blur now. She remembered her husband holding onto her before they were pulled apart by the emotionless robots that Eggman had for an army. Then she remembered them being hustled into an old hoverbot before they were whisked away to where, she didn't know. Before they landed, two of the bots that accompanied them as their captors, shackled their hands and blindfolded them. All she could sense was the cold building that echoed the moans and groans of heavy machinery, slaving over components of some kind as the bots escorted her and carried Anzio to their new nightmare.

Shaking his arm Kripta, tried to jostle her brother awake. "Anzio...are you okay." All she got was another groan as she traced the dark figure of her brother rolling over onto his back. "Anzio..." she whispered again with a shrill, tears raining down her face.

"Where–where are we, Kripta?" he moaned out over his aching head. "It's dark in here."

She hunched closer to him on her knees, clutching his hand with hers as if she could find sanctuary with it. "I don't know Anzy...I'm scarred, Anzy!"

"Keep quiet little sister," Anzio droned through his aches. "These walls have ears."

"You think I don't know that!?" Kripta protested. "What are they going to do to us?"

"I don't know. They wanted us for something..."

"...They pulled me away from my Christian, Anzy!" she blurted out in whimpered shrill.

"Kripta!" Anzio seethed out to calm his rattled sister. "Whatever happens, we must stay strong. It could be the only thing that might get us through this somehow."

Kripta took a deep breath and sniffed her nose to clear it from her crying. She turned with her back against the wall and sat beside her brother, who was rearing the pain of his overworked muscles.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps of robots coming down the corridor. It was faint at first, but the metal clanging sound that their legs and feet produced became eerily louder. Every step they took made her heart quicken in pace as the bots came closer. She could feel the surge from her adrenalin glands exploding as her fear triumphed over her will to stay calm. When they were a mere pace away, she grabbed her brother with an iron clutch. When the door snapped as it was unlocked and opened...she was petrified, saved for her shivering limbs as her adrenalin pumped faster through her purple bloodstream.

The harsh florescent light rained in her eyes, blinding her as her pupils constricted at a painful pace. She struggled to open them, but the burning pain nailed them shut.

"Get up!" one of the bots shouted. Its distorted voice box made Kripta freeze even more in terror.

"We said, GET UP!" came the other.

She looked up and forced her eyes open, seeing the burning picture of the round shape of the bots, who were silhouetted behind the wall of white light. The image made her quiver uncontrollably in a striking second.

With the mechanical limbs creating the groans that the machines couldn't duplicate as grunts from the lack of lungs in their metal shells, they trudged forward and grabbed Kripta off the cold damp floor. While one handcuffed her, the other violently picked Anzio up and slammed him against the grey wall of the makeshift holding room. Manipulating his right arm behind him, Anzio saw no reason to resist the bot as his joints protested his actions with the searing pain. When the bot was done cuffing him, it violently pushed Anzio out the door. He tried to stop himself, but with his arms behind him, he lost his balance as he slammed against the wall outside of the room, slumping to the ground, dazed. Kripta was grabbed underneath her right arm and thrusted towards the door. As the bot guided her, the other droid picked her stunned brother off the ground and shoved him forward.

They made their way outside briefly. Kripta only caught a small glimpse of a hill that had trees scattered all around it to her right. But the peaceful scenery changed when they were hustled through two metal double doors as they made their forced way into a one-story compound.

It was dark inside. What little light that the compound had only exposed the long, narrow corridors and the overhead piping. Loud, terrible groaning noises rained in her ears as they passed the signs that generated them. Most were over doors that marked where certain tooling were located, others noting experimental labs.

Kripta felt terror bolt through her like freezing water when they stopped in front of door, stenciled letters reading: "BIOMETRIC LAB."

The door slide open with a hiss as the two bots jabbed their captors inside.

"Where do you want them?" asked the bot that was hovering over Kripta.

A thin metal chassis of a crudely designed tech-bot turned around to study his next two experiments. Its face looked like the skull of an Overlander, but in place of its nose was one giant cybernetic ocular, glowing crimson. Twitching its mechanical pupil as it moved closer to its specimens, its permanent stainless steel smile struck fear into both of the Chameleons.

"Over here," it said. Its voice box sounded how it looked; demonic.

Kripta and Anzio were manhandled towards the tech-bot. It had no metal shielding around its arms, exposing its hydraulic parts and wires with a glimmering glare from the few overhead surgical lights in the blackened room. Kripta watched as it picked up a metal gun with a vial that stuck out from the top. As the Eggbot moved her closer to the tech-bot, she saw a needle protruding out from it. Anzio was the first to get stuck with it. With a sharp hiss from the pull of the trigger, he fell to the ground without so much of a protest from his lungs. When the silver bot moved closer to Kripta, she saw it wore a white apron that was covered with purple blood stains. This made her start to cry in a heartbeat as she tried to fight the steadfast grip of the bot with her screams, fearing that she was never going to wake up as the tech-bot drew closer and...

How'd I do on the ending? Well, next I get to show you all my crazy side. Do you remember Stenson from the first book. I had a request from a friend that I should bring him back, bring out his history of why he's in the Dark Legion compared to "who" he is. One of those bad troopers gone good. I'm glad I did...I ended up getting a bit of relief from the doom and gloom and brought some comedy to the story.

So...lets have fun some with the Dark Legion...as they sail to of all places, Albion.