There is not much I can say about this chapter except I can't help but not think of the holocost when I planed and wrote this out. I always question as to why the jewish community didn't fight back, but on the other hand, I can see the conditions and treatment they forced under that can almost break anyone's will to fight. So let it never happen again.

I have to thank Zychoe32 for helping me with a paragraphhis style became a great help for me and is greatly honored.

Disclamer: I own nothing of Sonic and his crew and observe the rights of those who do.

Enjoy and please review.

Grave of the Sunflowers

By: Mauser

"What is that smell?"

Sonic's face lathered with seemingly endless wrinkles as the stuffy, heavy air was laced with something that couldn't have been mistaken for rotten eggs for it was ten times as worse. It was bad enough that Sonic's eyes began to water.

"Sunflowerz don'z smell zhis bad," Antoine said in a low whisper. He had too. The camps's entrance loomed over the tops of the sunflowers.

"They're not supposed too, Twan." Knuckles eerily pointed out, putting his head on a swivel, checking for threats as he hovered low over his bended knees. He could see the end of the field through the narrow waving gaps of the tall sunflowers. Beyond that the double fence of the compound and the bots that walked the line, outside and in.

He rose up a few inches and skipped through the gaps between the sunflowers, only brushing his elbows on a few as he eased his way closer for a better look. Sonic and Twan soon followed, taking the exact same path as the echidna.

Knuckles stopped and hunched down to the ground, holding his breath as he scoured the field with his purple eyes. "Any ideas?" he asked with a disciplined voice.

"What--the smell or the smoke to the west?" Sonic put in, shooting his head over towards the late-afternoon sun. "I've got an idea about the smoke--the smell is beyond me."

"Yea'," breathed out Knuckles as he attuned his attention to the roving Eggbots, estimating the fence line was about hundred yards or more from the edge of the field. "That's something we need to check out after this place."

"Oui! But if zhat ze manufaczure facility way over zhere, zhan what'z zhis place?"

"I don't know, 'Twan," Knuckles grumbled.

"Well, let's take these snapshots and juice. This smell is making me want ta' hurl."

"Oui..."

A curt nod and a push gave Knuckles another low stride, traversing the obstacles of flowers with great attention to smoothness. Within a few yards, he caught sight of the trench that they were supposed to jump into. Something told him to just stay in the field, forgoing Sally's orders. "Man that's rank!"

The edge of the field saw a hastily made hump that seemed to mark as a border. Knuckles didn't really care what it was used for except cover from the patrolling machines. Across the hardened clay void was the fence line and the wooden constructed huts that never saw a stroke of water-sealant; three he counted, eyeing the furthest one pointing to the South. No movement from inside the fence except for two bots patrolling the line; one inside, the other out. Skulking around several of the tall flowers, Knuckles managed to leopard crawl to the clay knoll, concealing his upper torso, his eyes looming over the top. There, he watched the bots roving patrol patterns from his postion of safety. To his delight, he saw an opening when the Eggbot on the inside disappeared behind a hut, leaving its counterpart absence without a second set of sensors.

"I'm going for the trench," Knuckles quickly whispered, "it's only a few feet in front of us."

"Wantz ze camera?" Antoine asked in the same low whisper.

"I'll ask for it when I'm ready. This needs to be quick and smooth."

"Fair enough–got you covered, Red!" Sonic whispered with a thumbs up, concealing himself under the shallow hill.

Knuckles nodded and shifted his eyes back at the lone bot. Time seemed to lapse slower than it should as he attentively waited for the Eggbot to make a one-eighty turn towards the East. For Knuckles, it showed that they were guarding something from the inside instead of out.

"There–finally!" Putting training into practice --thanks to Espio– he crawled over the incline and rolled over his stomach, shoulder and back, catching a final glimpse of the bot with its back turned before Knuckles dropped down into the trench.

Bracing himself to fall on the hard clay ground, it felt like a eternity to land with his back ready to take the brunt of it. He watched the ground rise up on both sides of him when his back and tail landed on something soft and mushy. His senses jerked him into a swirl of confusion from the grotesque smell, and the feel of fur and skin touching his. It wasn't until he looked down at the ground beneath him that his heart began to tighten and his stomach urged him to vomit.

Bloated Mobian bodies, a dozen if he could only count, their faces fixed to their last horrified, helpless expression, filled what Knuckles' quivering mind could only perceive as a mass grave; his left arm outstretched over a saffron furred female fox, her glazed over chocolate eyes staring out into oblivion with the same wide-eyed gaze as the echidna's.

"Get me outta here!" he barely forced out over his shattered senses.

"Knux, keep your voice down, bro..."

"Get–me–outta–here, Sonic!" Knuckles barely shrilled.

"Shutz-UP, echidna! Zhere's zomeone coming..."

Antoine inched his saber from its scabbard but never exposed the full blade. Grabbing Sonic's shoulder, he eased him back behind the cover of the sunflowers, still keeping low under the knoll.

"Stay put Knux!" sonic whispered, "get ready to crush some bots!"

Their faces were long, ready to accept death over their forced labors as their withered strides resembled their tired posture and ragged clothes. With his unbuttoned, sage colored short sleeve shirt deprived of a breeze to sway upon, the ferret worked the shovel in his black furred hands as a cane, shifting his squinting eyes behind him at a brown and tan chipmunk. Nothing was said between the two, fearing the pair of Eggbots behind them would permanently silencing them if they did. Nodding eyes were exchanged instead before the ferret turned his mopping head back towards the west.

Antoine could only find sympathy for the black and white ferret in the blistering heat, but not for his inactions. "I don'z see why they can't uze zhem shovels to knock zem down?"

Knuckles heard Antoine's whisper and knew exactly what was going on. Taking great care as he moved across the bodies, he alined himself against the side of the trench, lowering his torso down at the knees and digging his knuckles in the dirt. If he was spotted by the bots, they were in for a nasty surprise.

"COVER THE TRENCH, FUR-BALLS!" ordered a bot, leveling its cybernetic hand at the trench.

The ferret bowed his head and continued towards the mass grave. The chipmunk was right behind him, his shoulders seemingly carrying the emotional burden of the chore with his shovel.

"What luck!" Sonic breathed out in his head, the two bots had hung back from the two Mobians –possibly threat assessing that the Furies might come back on them with their shovels.

The Ferret didn't have enough hands to hold his opened button shirt to shield his nostrils from the decaying bodies. Mustering all he could not to gag, he lead the chipmunk over to the edge and...

Two fierce violet eyes stared up at him from the grave, visibly shaken and ready to pounce with his anger leading the way. To their horror, it whispered to them:

"Don't say a freaken' word."

The chipmunk nodded, the ferret held his body rigid.

"Start covering the bodies, guys. Do it fast!" decried another whisper from the tall sunflowers.

The ferret expressed nothing in affirmation except taking his shovel and putting it to good use. Leaning over and piercing the ground, he slammed what little shoes he had left on top of the shovel and began digging while eyeing the bots behind them. "What's going on here–"

"–We're asking the same question. What the heck's going on here?" fired back Knuckles.

"This is a prison camp," answered the chipmunk, darting his eyes to the field and the surrounding wasteland. X-Ray heat shimmered in the distance. "Eggman has us working here to drill out and refine his oil."

"Keep working, dudes!" Sonic scolded. He was beginning to wonder if the Eggbots had heard them. "Are those the oil fields behind us?"

"Yes...they're having us work on something...it's like a dock of some sort."

"Why did they slaughter these people?" Knuckles asked with rage ever present in his whisper.

"Two guys from Knothole had a great idea to break out. Needles to say they failed and their actions got ten others killed just for show." The chipmunk shoveled a good portion of the tan dirk and sprinkled it on top of the girl along with his temper. The sight of her stiff, bloated body urged him to cover her up the quickest.

Knuckles peered over the edge of the grave and focused on the Eggbots. They stood deadpan without emotion, studying the progress of the burial detail. "Come on–turn away!" Knuckles lowered himself down a quarter inch and started back pedaling towards the other side of the grave. His stomach squirmed as his shoes fell on the decaying corpses, his hands hovering over them for balance as if he was giving out their last rights all the same.

"Okay, need you guys to close up a little," Knuckles finally whispered over his fragile self. He waited as the two Mobians worked their bodies as a closed shield, doing it smartly as they scattered more dirt across the petrified bodies.

When the bots seemed to pay no attention to their responsibilities after a gut wrenching second, Knuckles threw himself out of the grave in a heartbeat and rolled back across the ground to the emotional safety of the sunflower grove. Breathing in deep, he tried desperately to conjure thoughts of living souls to replace the rotting corpses that he could still see in his trembling mind. He lay flat on his back as white fluffy patches of clouds floated across his paralyzed sight. What little innocence that his vision had left was whisked away like candle being smothered out.

Knuckles somehow summoned the courage not to cry.

"Red, you okay?" Knuckles shook his head vividly at Sonic's question, his dazed sight never leaving the sky. Sonic's curiosity got the best of him when leaned out just enough to try to peer down the trench. Feet and a few faces was all he saw...and all he wanted to see. "This is not happening!"

"It's been happening, but this part is new," the ferret explained, "We've got women here who are pregnant and they're forced to work in this heat." Swallowing hard, he dropped his voice down to a level that he hoped would drive his next point home. "So far...there have been seven stillborns in the camp in the past three months. And the babies that make it are taken from their mothers upon birth. We think the bots are killing them right off."

"Zhink?" Twan bitterly whispered.

The ferret took a quick glance behind his back as he scooped up another load of dirt. "We haven't seen any disposal methods here or at the Refinery-of-Death down the road."

"We had three die two days ago from exhaustion," the chipmunk added, "they have us working there almost day and night over there."

A short pause lathered the air, Knuckles swearing he could hear the voices of the dead speaking to him. Calling upon his heart over his chaos powers, his will power found a leverage in his devastated mind to roll over and focus on the real mission. "Have you heard any code word lingual going around...something like Chameleon?"

The ferret lowered his shovel to the newly made hole he was digging into. "No, but..." Sonic held his breath during the short pause. He hated buts! "...they did happen to drag two Chameleon's out of here yesterday."

"What, why?" inquired Antoine.

"We don't know. They weren't part of our hut commune. All I know is that they were brother and sister. One was married. The poor husband happens to be out in the fields today from what I've heard."

"Lower your voices, guys...one of those bots just turned his attention towards you," Knuckles warned sharply.

The ferret, and quite possibly the chipmunk, felt every hair on his concealed skin stand on end. He didn't have to look but he still felt the eyes of the bots were firmly glued to his back. He motioned for his partner to work a little harder, keeping silent for a long while.

"The guy is an echidna, by the way. Just like you." The ferret finally explained, holding a longer pause than what was needed. "Speaking of which, who the hell are you guys anyways?"

"Sonic the Hedgehog," came the quip response. "Just don't spread it around too much."

"Will do Sonic," the ferret affirmed quickly, then added, "please tell me you're here to free us? I wouldn't stand for anything less coming from you!"

Sonic brought his gaze around to Twan. The Coyote squarely shook his head deliberately slow over his blue tunic. "Our orderz, Sonic. We can'z jeopardize anymore assetz. We have to follow our orderz."

Musing for nothing short of a second, Sonic shook his head. Knuckles' trembling face had already sealed his decision. "What's the bot force around here besides the two goons behind you?"

"Sacre bleu!" Twan cursed under his breath.

The ferret darted his eyes behind for a quick check of prying sensors. "Fifteen: three are airborne, the rest are posted in the towers and fence line."

"And the oil field?" Sonic quickly inquired.

"It's sporadic. A division size I think I overheard last–I really can't say for certain."

"Lemean's might know," the chipmunk remarked, still shoveling the clay on the corpses. Progress could be seen as the girl's terrified face was finally put to rest.

"Yea, that guy is always up to something."

"Lemean's?" asked Sonic.

The ferret swallowed hard. "He's not alone. I keep hearing rumors at night of that leopard keeping a tightknit group. What they do–I haven't the foggiest."

"Guys...keep working," Knuckles urged.

"You bet!" curtly replied the ferret, digging his shovel into the ground again. "So you guys have a plan? Where's your army?"

"We're it!" Sonic festered.

Eyes widened on both Mobians, especially on the chipmunk when he spoke; "Wha...! You mean you came here to..."

"...We came here zo findz outz why Eggman sentz a message here," 'Twan hissed out.

"And then what?" growled the ferret under a low voice.

"...leave," Knuckles replied with a snide tone over his half rolling eyes.

The Chipmunk practically jumped out of his fur, throwing more dirt into the grave instead. "Please tell me you have a contingency for this?"

Sonic did his best not to sound degrading when he replied. He kicked himself when he defaulted back to his blunt voice instead. "We're working on it."

"Sacre bleu!"

Knuckles burned his raging eyes at the seething coyote. "Shut-up, 'Twan!"

An eery silence fell on the free and the imprisoned for a moment. The ferret had all he could stand of it. "What if we get you in?"

Knuckles shot his brows to the sky. "What...break into prison? What about headcounts? What happens of they come up with more than they started out with."

"It's just an idea..."

"Shut-up, now!" Sonic snapped, "the bucket of bolts are coming towards us!"

It wasn't a moment too soon when Knuckles raised his head up just enough to see the Eggbots step with long strides towards their general direction. Pulling on Sonic's shoulder, he thrusted his right hand towards the west while only facing his request with a bold expression. Sonic crawled on his belly as fast as caution would allow with Knuckles and Antoine following closely behind. They stopped dead when the dreadful voice box of one of the bots pierced the air:

"WHO ARE YOU TALKING TOO, FUR-BALLS!?"

The ferret gave a cold stare to the chipmunk, hopefully urging him to be silent.

"The dead, sir!" he replied, supporting his tired body with his hands clasped over the handle of his shovel.

"Not an excuse when you were chatting to the open field. Who's back there?" proclaimed the bot again, moving it's mechanical feet for a closer inspection of the field.

The ferret felt panic shoot through his body, causing him to step directly in front of the bot. "We want our friends to be at peace from the likes of you!"

Knuckles could see the bot that the ferret was talking to through the slits of the thick sunflower steams. "Come on...don't push him, man. Just let em' come to us." Taking a quick glance at Sonic, he observed the hedgehog was ready to rock-and-roll as well. Antoine just kept himself low to the ground, murmuring something in french that was possibly a prayer from the quickness of his mouth.

"Watch your tongue, creature. You might be wearing it soon," growled the bot, taking a long pause as it took note of its counterpart to its left. "Now, who were you two talking too?"

The ferret grabbed every emotion deep down in his soul and brought them all to the forefront of his face. "The dead you mobile garbage can! Now let us give them their last rights so we can be done with this!"

"If you say so..." the bot trailed off, turning its backside away to march off.

The ferret breathed a quick sigh of relief upon seeing that his verbal judo could out smart a machine. With another breath, he clutched his hands further down on the shovel, gaining the confidence he needed to go back to his forced detail.

It would be his last breath of free air in his existence.

Sonic nearly bolted towards the bot, ready to use his quills to the fullest extent of his ability if it wasn't for Knuckles. The echidna saw the blind side coming and jumped right on top of Sonic in a flash before he could attempt to rise up. What they witnessed made them both cringe with rage, fighting their temptation all the same to stay low and not pulverize the Eggbots. In the end, they both knew everyone and everything would be compromised if they did.

All they could do was watch.

The bot snapped its torso around with blinding speed, throttling its arm straight out across the right side of the ferret's face. The chipmunk heard the crushing sound of the jaw separating its muscles and tendons from the mouth. But what really made his soul cower to his toes was seeing his partner's head fatally snap to the left further than it was meant to go, severing his spinal cord from the medulla region of his brain. The ferret never felt the pain or witness the spark of light fade from his sight. His body twisted lifelessly around from the driving inertia of the machine's punch, falling to the ground like a stiff rag doll that rolled off into the mass grave of his comrades and friends; joining them in peace.

The bot released a series of beeps across the blistering air, the chipmunk wondering if it was the machine's way of making a rally cry for victory even when there wasn't so much as a struggle to honor the definition of the word.

"Keep working," it said to him, pointing straight at the trench line for a cruel reference, "or you'll be rotting with them."

"As you wish," the chipmunk mustered to say. Anxiety fell on his heart at that moment, seemingly trying to put him in cardiac arrest with a deathly grip. He waited as the bots turned away again, but this time he held his shovel tightly in his hands, preparing himself for the same fate but honoring a fighting chance this time.

The wind started to waft finally, drying the tear that traversed his furry face. A curt gasp of air forced his urge to weep back down to the pit of his stomach. With that he turned back to his grieving duty as an undertaker for the slaughtered, and continued on despite his emotional upheaval.

"You still there?" he finally whispered after a long minute, hearing the ruffling of the sunflowers in front of him.

Knuckles frowned in sympathy at the lowered eyes of the chipmunk. "Yea..."

"...Good." He waited as he forced a quivering breath into his lungs. "Just before last light, they send all the workers back from the oilfields. It's a thirteen and one-eighth mile march from here. We have a wheat field about half way there..."

"I see where you going, man. Just keep doing what you're doing. We'll figure it out from here," Sonic whispered in a disarming tone.

"I hope so! We can't take anymore sacrifices."

Sonic glanced over to Knuckles. Seeing the resolved filled nod, he turned his attention to Twan. The coyote had mix feelings painted on his face.

The three Freedom Fighters stood guard in a passive sense for the few hours it took the chipmunk to cover the dead. For Knuckles it was like an unspoken promise. The guy didn't look no more than his age but his malnourished body possibly meant that he was older than he looked. When he walked away, though, Knuckles along with Sonic smiled at the light wave he skulked out from behind his back.

"Whatz are we gonna zu tell ze Princess? We just can't do zhis on our own?" festered Antoine after a long silence.

Sonic nodded in agreement for once with Antoine. "It's just the prisoners, Twan. When we get close, definitely take some candid camera snaps of the oilfields. I want to be back for those. Is that cool with you, Red?"

Knuckles stared hard at the fence line, bowing his head under a resolved filled smug. "It's always been cool, Sonic. Just don't go off on your own with this...I want a cut in this party."

Yea, I know...finally our guys see this place for what it is. So now what...?

Ever woundered where Aleutian got those scars from?