Greetings to all...again. Hehe! Welcome to chapter 31! Wow. Afraid though that another month is upon to wait and see what happens next after this one.

Okay, to start off with, I'm again introducing a few new characters in this, but some we may not see for quite sometime, and others we might see only as names being mentioned. I promise you that we will...I've started on another project that curtails the blood and guts of the subject matter in here, but we won't see it until this book and the next is completed, (and then next won't be as long, I hope) So, for any of those who do have a hard time following this chapter, you might need to retrace a few steps with the Prowers and Darien. Other than that...

Disclaimer: I observer the rights of the Sonic and Sega Team, plus all other characters and their owners that are not mine, plus I stand to gain no profit from this.

Enjoy!

A Final Salute

By: Mauser

Thank his gears he wasn't sipping something when the upheaval of alarms roared too close for comfort near his ears. Snively was sure he would have covered the screen he was musing over. Calming himself from the fluttering of his heart and involuntary jerking of his arms and head in the jolting surprise, he gathered his cool conscious as quickly as a field mouse would scurry away from a predatorily threat, and closed his programs. He didn't have time to save. He knew he didn't have time to send out the last message for that matter. Unlike yesterday morning, his uncle was awake and in full prime of his lard and devious-self.

With a click from the keyboard, a fast flick at the cursor ball followed by an additional rummaging of keys, and the threat-display quickly became the curtain to cover his own dastardly doings. Mobius appeared observing its dark side. Staring with squinting eyes at the screen, Snively clicked to zoom in on the region where the satellite was centered. At first the same looming darkness. Then, passing the ionosphere on visual, the bulk cloud formations with rain hampered his view, causing him to click on the night vision. What appeared to be a star in a void of green caught his attention in a heartbeat. The last command to magnify came with it's own, inner reaction.

"Not again!" he slammed in his head. His ballooned shaped face and long nose were covered in a glow of white and green.

Reaching over to the comm-link, Snively pressed the small button. "Uncle you need to come up here–"

"I'M ALREADY HERE YOU BUFFOON!"

Snively about leaped out of his chair. Defecating on himself was a sure possibility. Eggman's voice had a very unpleasant similarity to the alarm. However, when Snively spoke this time, his voice reflected his shakiness:

"It seems Rob-O has reorganized and is launching a counter-offensives in Mercia."

The short silence told him Eggman wasn't tuned to that idea as of yet. "Zoom in further and get more observations before stating your ignorance first, Nephew!"

His hands were relatively working over his brain. It was as if Eggman was in full control of his body now and not himself.

Passing the clouds and fog, the two Overlanders bore witness to the individual flashes of white on the screen. "Residual explosions," Eggman observed rather hastily. "This didn't happen too long ago. Pan East to the woods. We might be able to get a glimpse at our fleeing insurgent vermin."

Again, it seemed his uncle was driving his fingers for him, never consciously recollecting how the image swept over the land by his own digits giving the commands. But sure enough, right on the screen was the forest, carved in the overhead shot of the landscape was a snaking road. However, without the heat signatures of fleeing bodies. Snively winced for the coming fit of rage and the possible beating.

To his reprieve at the moment, it didn't come.

"Expand...check the surrounding area. Hurry, lackey! Time's afoot."

Doing his best to keep his head from sulking, Snively, under the same insane pressure, made quick work of the program and sooner than he thought, a view of the eastern forest from the coast engrossed the screen. At first the ambient light of the afire port concealed the artificial green terrain. Snively fixed that without the bother of his uncle interjecting his grievance for not being prompt. Such mindless inaction could really be his physical undoing.

Diminishing the flare, though, proved to be fruitless. Not a warm, living soul could be seen making haste through the forest.

"Doing a diagnostic check, uncle," Snively allowed himself to say. To kill the unnerving silence, which had become all he could stand, was at the forefront of his preoccupied mind. Like it wasn't noisy enough with the clapping of the keyboard.

"It won't matter," Eggman waved off. "My theory is that our systems are doing fine, and our induced walking famine are enjoying their quick victory from their planted delayed charges." A snort from his noise riffled the thick hairs of his mustache. "Why the quietness until late?"

"I'm waiting for your–"

"NOT FROM YOU, SNIVELY! From Mercia? We've had them under such a hammer over their anvil that we should have heard a peep of surrender by now! How on Mobius could they manage this?"

Snively was too afraid to answer, sinking his head under the keyboard while his uncle dictated his hand towards the screen, as if it was all Snively's mess. Instead, his fingers sought to respond, pushing commands in, a lot slower, but still moving at a good pace.

A return to the overhead image of the burning port glowed over their faces. Even with the dimmer applied, whiteout was all they saw. Between another eruption and the lingering fog over the water, nothing remotely showing the cause of the current calamity flourished. With this unspoken conclusion, Eggman saw no reason for his presence to be worth his time. Or at least that was how Snively saw it when he heard his uncle's footsteps signal his exit. His hopes of hearing them for the last time came to him under a faint smile. He felt he should turn and study his uncle's back, catching a final glimpse, and a cherished one at that. But he kept his eyes forward, rolling his fingers over the keyboard into a tight fist, leaving his expressionless face for the screen to know he was devising something–

"Uncle!"

Snively didn't hear the shuffle of Robotnick's reverse. But he did hear his quickened steps to the back of his chair. "What?..."

He pointed anyhow. There was hardly any need. From under the cloak of the fog and a stray cloud appeared a single glowing orb of white. Encrusted around it was a red point. In fact it looked like a slow moving knife.

"By sea they come," Eggman observed under an air that had this diminutive epiphany. And with it he leaned over, causing Snively to become tickled by his uncle's whiskers brushing his ear lobe. "My dear nephew, I have this feeling we've seen this ship before. Maybe not in full color, but a coincidence is hardly something I can fathom from what I see."

Swallowing, with a smile forming from it, Snively added to the reasoning, "I can do away with it."

The warm breath came out as whisper over his neck:

"Nothing would make me happier."

"Charles, I'm tracing a signal coming from Robotrololis!"

Nicole's rapid voice flung the white mustache hedgehog into action. "Keep at it, Nicole. I'm closing the programs now to give you a bandwidth to track it."

From a screen over his head and to the right, red letters of satellite codes and positions rolled across it. From the main screen, a global map of Mobius appeared with a shooting red line interconnecting said satellites. Uncle Chuck, though, was oblivious, exiting the last hyper-encrypted message before saving their current work. When he looked up, he about fell out of his chair in bewilderment.

"Merica!" Fixating himself to the current problem, he asked, "Is it encrypted?"

"Yes, but with the old cipher."

"What? Please tell me you have a virus."

"Be glad I don't. I'm deciphering it now..."

Flowing in a steady stream, Chuck's monitor became filled with line after line of perfectly legible letters, devoid of scantily legible symbols. However, the message was a mystery in itself.

"Launch immediately, break." Charles blinked with a daze as he read the rest of the message, "Engage fleeing target, break. One should do fine. End.

"Why write it like this and send it across with the old encryption?"

"It maybe possible that Eggman is wanting us to chase after this one," Nicole commented. "It's one of many calculations I have fathomed."

"What are the others?" Chuck asked, going over the message a second time with a hand under his nose.

"A glitch in his systems. Possibly sending this one out under the old when he intended it to go out with the new. The other possibility is just to see if we are listening."

"Then we do nothing with it, is that what you are suggesting?"

"At this moment, I'm not suggesting anything. Any action this soon could mean disaster. In a few hours, we'll have a satellite to pass over that part of the area. By then a decision could be made accurately."

Charles grabbed a few hairs under his nose and tugged at them to see if any would stray along with his grumbles. "Tell that to Sally when she walks in. You know how she is about sitting on things."

"I know," Nicole conceded. "Which is why I believe my first observation might ring true.

"Course..." Chuck looked up to the screen from Nicole's coming rebuttal. "Rob-O could be in trouble."

Sir Charles Hedgehog let a troubled sigh seep from between his mustached lips. "Now that is something I didn't want to hear."

Heather's fine voice floated on the breeze over the stirring tall grass.

"What is he doing?"

Amadeus breathed in gently, his tunic rising and falling like the tide under a new moon. He stood in the field at a relative attention, though his bearing was broken by his wandering eyes looking at his brother. Along with it, his bending lips of a comforting smile. "Giving peace," he said.

What sparked the question, the smile, and the ebbing reply was Merlin. From afar, presiding over the last defensive trench toward the north, the robed fox, under his hood with his back turned from the trio, had his hands clasped in front of him, but this time unsheltered from his sleeves. Amadeus couldn't see nor hear if his brother was praying or giving an eulogy, however, he knew what he was offering to the dead. He'd seen it the few times after pitched battles during the Great War. With both eyes at one point. But it was here, and now after his return to Mobius, that Amadeus Prower felt a thanks whisk across the shadow of the fallen tank to his brother for what he was doing. In a perfect world all fallen solders, no matter the state of the war or battle, no matter if the enemy was grotesque or alike, they needed to be granted such whispers. Such profound wishes from the living. From Amadeus' stand point–and that beside a former enemy–no medals could shower the praise on a fallen comrade.

"In war, only the dead have seen peace." the fox reflected on Mathias Drake's words; his last before King Max's orders sent the Dingo and the Plunger away to the Overlander's doorstep to the east.

And of which, he stole a glance to.

Darien, with his bandaged left hand tucked against his chest, and Heather holding the arm of his wounded hand, was leaning against the hull of the slain tank. Where does one begin in looking for the irony of what laid before Amadeus. Below his shined boots was a field where a great many lives were lost in the defense of people whom they didn't know, until the family of foxes arrived. Beside him, his former enemy–Darien, with his wife at his side and their daughter playing in the field below the hill with his son.

"Is this how the afterlife for soldiers is?...To be in the company of their enemy? Enjoying the splendor of a world so removed from reality that you are part of another world. Is this what Mathias is enjoying?...Dining with his son and wife; talking to other spirits about their lives, of their pleasures–leaving the discussion of war to the living.

"We are blessed, Darien," Amadeus said aloud, letting his last thoughts come to the open air. And here it felt so deservingly free. "We are blessed to share a gift that is only offered to our dead comrades."

Darien's head never left the bearing towards Merlin. "And what may that be?" he asked pensively.

"We both can look on at this. Experience this as we breathe."

"At what?...the doings of traitors?" Darien countered, still in a air of pondering.

"Look past it. Look at what it has done–brought me and you to this place. Finding understanding of what we should hold dear."

A titter came from the Overlander. Heather looked at him with a slight grimace.

"You speak as if you've trying to solve the stars, old fox."

"Am I?" Amadeus smiled. "I can tell you I have seen them, lived around them, but the stars share no meaning to what is here. You say you're not a soldier anymore?" A shallow nod from Darien, his attention wandering to Amadeus. "Do you honestly believe that now as you stand sentry to this forgotten field. The tank you're leaning on–what does the warrior in you feel about that?"

"I was a medic, Prower," Darien sounded off, turning his head to Merlin's back.

"Maybe so, but your inner calling says to tend to the wounded. Look where that calling has sent you...you're tending to the wounded now, preserving them if only in memory."

Amadeus watched the Overlander's head fall shy of a slump. "Then what does your calling say...why has it sent you here?"

The fox let a moment pass, letting Heather's eyes fall on him to ask for the reply.

"For my son to play in a field with my enemy's..." Amadeus stopped himself with a smile, "...with my friend's daughter."

"Hey, no fair!"

But fairness was the least of his needs. Tails was now "it" in the game of tag that Amber had initiated just out of boredom and a tad bit out of spite. But to her utter surprise and miscalculation, Tails was giving her the upper hand...literally. She dashed to the left, however, Miles just tilted his whipping tails and let the propulsion sweep him in her new direction. When she followed her break in travel with a zag, the flying fox was all too aware of her intended motion, adjusted, and turned into her as if she was a flying bot, and he, his Tornado letting its plasma bolts extend out as his hands and shot her down with:

"You'reit!"

But to Amber's credit, she tried to turn on Tails and leaped up to return the favor with a swinging hand. Tried, but failed, swatting the open air as the two-tailed fox increased his effort and thus, lifted further away.

"We had our own traitor, you know," Amadeus said, sounding as if he was confessing a sin, but hardly his own. "A Drago from the Wolf Pack. From what Commander Geoffrey St. John told me, after I and Rosemary returned, that his wife was duped by him to kill Sally, using a mask that looked like Jules' son, Sonic."

"I never heard the whole story behind that," Darien said after a slight pause, still taking in the sun with Heather. "In fact, up until now, there was no mention of a traitor in your midst. But that's the news for you."

Amadeus fully turned his posture to Darien. "You said yesterday you had sold us scrap? Where'd you get it?"

"Here...they–" Amadeus rose the brow from his good eye on the correction. "Aleutian dished out one damn good beat-down to the coming tide that awaited your son, Prower."

"But you weren't here to see it?" the General countered, sounding surprised.

"I know, Prower. C'mon, look around you. Put what you said to me in your own mind. Three fall-back ridges, a tank overlooking the first one and with it covering the second as a line of retreat, and the last one where your brother's presiding over–resistence fighters from the magnitude I saw couldn't possibly devise this up. And like hell Richfield was going to let his greed and embitterment towards you go to waste."

"Aleutian's grenadiers?" General Prower remembered aloud.

Darien gave a fisted knock on the slain tank behind him. "His hammer! First time I saw a Mobian willingly working beside an Overlander, and an Overlander letting Mobians operate in his tank."

A strange look fell upon Amadeus' face. "Berdan?"

The Overlander shook his head slightly, watching the fox's ears become pointedly alert. "You wouldn't know his name if I said it–"

"And I might if you did."

"Hardly, he was still in school when you lost your eye, and when Colin Kintobor was killed. Brad Kalmuso; never saw a lick of action until coming here...with his tank!" Darien saw every question roll through Prower's eye. "The dark man–not by nature but color–didn't know lice from dandruff about tank warfare. He knew how to operate it, but he was shy of knowing where to stick it to Robotnick. But General Berdan did."

Amadeus shuddered on the different meaning of the phrase. "You can say that again."

"Oh, yeah, but you'd think ole Iron Fist would teach Brad the fundamentals." Amadeus' look was almost priceless: a cocked head with gawking, questing eyes. Darien smirked, knowing that the fox had guessed right in his surprise. "He saw what you and your son sees in Aleutian. Flippin leadership." And a greedy, broad smile touched at the Overlander's lips. "This became the echidna's tank."

"And this Brad?"

"Couldn't care less. I never saw a smile so broad on any being's face after they returned. Why? He got to see something go Boom! He got to see his tank be put into action. And I did too."

The fox stepped forward, letting his eye study the tank further, turning his head some to view the turret to his left. "You went with?" he asked, as if he were shy to say it.

"Only twice before they assigned me to the rear. A former Commander from my old brigade named Thompson asked me to tend any possible front line injuries when Richfield gave the order to thrust forward. So, Aleutian had his own medic from the Plunger. Kyle I think his name was, but he was more skilled about machines and girls than to fix someone. Truthfully, now that I look at it, my reassignment was from Commander Thompson was for Marcus and Richfield to kill the lot of them. Remember I had said about shoddy runs." Amadeus nodded firmly, quizzically. "After Berdan was killed with his Mobian counterpart, Jerihmia, they sent Aleutian and his grenadiers–which Emi-La and part of the crew that Mathias sent were 'abunch of–on these raids to either get them out of the way, or get them killed."

Prower squeezed his face into a troubled expression. "Why?" His voice was like a dull spear being weakly flung.

"He was trained. The people they were trying to slaughter weren't. When Richfield tried to teach them some bad tactics–heck I saw them as bad tactics–Aleutian would try to correct it.

"And Emi-La was catching on. She was the danger to them, and something tells me what Marcus and Richfield did next, with Thompson's help, was to separate the two echidna's."

"And did they?" came the fox, soundly angry, but also sounding afraid of what the outcome may have been.

"I don't know. I'd put my own two and two together, and with Emi-La's help. The conversation I listened in on was about the two love-birds, but I didn't hear the whole damn thing, only that they needed to do something about them and soon. It was Thompson who said it."

"And that's when you left?" Amadeus added.

"Why I had to run...Marcus opened the damn door with me dumbstruck in the middle of it."

But none of it still made sense to General Amadeus Prower. Not of what Darien went through, but Aleutian. Amadeus still felt the Guardian had nothing to be ashamed about. A betrayal of trust only comes to light at the bitter end. One can't see it coming because one usually doesn't want to believe that it is coming. For a young boy, like Aleutian, and one Amadeus could see as himself at one point during his youth, trust is everything, and denial is always at the forefront. No one could blame him...but himself. And he kept everything from everyone. This place. Names of his friends. Names of the dead. He kept them all to himself, and for Amadeus it didn't make any sense why someone like Aleutian would hold them from needing ears to–

"...Oh, my..."

It hit him harder than the shot that took his eye. It stung his heart fiercer than watching his sight fade from Rosemary when he was robotosized. His very word he stopped himself from saying in his mind bore all of this into him as the conclusion came with it. "Aleutian didn't listen to his lover."

He let his betraying face turn away from the Overlander couple and let it fall to the shelter of his brother's back. But even with his psyche dwelling with the plight of whether or not to speak, he overcame the chills and the heart gripping pains to speak.

"For the love of Aurora...what must be going on in that boy's head."

Amber drifted her keen eyes up and down the Hover-bot's hull from the inside. Why the perplexity when all she had to do was stray from the confides of her home and venture to the dilapidated nest of the same lineage of Robotnick Prime's mode of transportation and terror from the skies? Darien's ultimatum of being grounded for life. It possibly wouldn't have mattered anyhow, she thought to herself at one stage of a rebellion; the batteries were probably dead that they couldn't even open the rear door to one of the machines.

But with another exploratory venture with her wide eyes, the risk she was burdened with could've been worth the taking. Her imagination was limitless with the fun she might have had. Watching Tails at the control console, giving his fingers a good working at the control panel, hearing his efforts hum to life, watching the joy on his efforts echo the satisfaction of the reward they both were hearing, Amber felt a surge of incredible aspiration to start one of the lame bots around them on her own just to be like Tails.

Little did she know the price Miles had to pay and endure to get where he is now in his young life. To have no childhood.

However still, the young boy's voice never reflected such regrets when he at last spoke, "That just about does it." Turning to Amber, he let a smile consume his muzzle. "The onboard ultra-magnetos should keep this hunk-of-junk running and charged for the trip home."

Amber's keen eyes developed into a sheepish envy. "How do you know so much of this?"

Tails couldn't quite tell if she was mocking him or being sincere. But he went for it anyway. "I just do, Amber. When we were just us few and nobody around after Robotnick took over, some of us had to take charge, you can say, and do what we needed to do."

"But how come you seem to like it?...Did you ever feel forced to do learn it? I mean, c'mon–have you ever gone to school and had to learn somthin' you didn't like?" Amber's waiting pause was picturesque: hands on her hips, and a trying look to boot.

Tails response to her was weird. Strange he would shrug with dwelling questions and thoughts about who he was.

"I don't know to be honest. Rotor–my friend back in Knothole and as Sonic would say, 'a way past cool walrus'–was like my teacher. He is the real brains for mechanics and devices. I just learned from his mistakes and troubleshooting, I guess, when I even knew how to kick a ball. Turned out that kicking machines sometimes made them work, too."

"But d'ya see what I mean?" Tails gazed at Amber with a quizzical look upon his brow. "You were forced to learn it. Do you enjoy it? Will you ever give it up when you're older?"

At a loss for words, Miles shrugged. A search for an answer didn't seem that hard. Even the answer seemed plain.

"The way I figure it, Amber, I think I would have gotten into the stuff anyways." He let a silence consume him at first, figuring out what Amber was really fishing for. "Will I ever give it up?" he asked himself, as if Amber's question was his own. "Gee...really I haven't thought of it. Maybe–perhaps. It depends on what my interests are when I get older. But at any rate, gears, wires, and nuts and bolts are sure looking promising."

Amber's eyes strayed from Tails and over his shoulder. The fox turned to see the panel lighting up like one of Robotnick's factories he, Sonic, Sally, and the rest of the young gang had once destroyed. Walking toward the blinking console, his pupils sought the message comm where a disturbing red light was fiercely blinking. Touching a button beside it, Sally's surly voice registered through the speaker:

"General Prower–please send a situation report on your whereabouts, ASAP! Knothole out!"

"Is it that quick?" Amber asked from behind Tails.

"What?"

"Her saying the message so fast?"

A shallow bow from the fox's head wasn't moving. "We have to, now. Eggman can just as easily track our messages back and forth from each other just about as fast as I can dash with my tails at full speed. I had to shut down the bot before supper last night so his bots couldn't track us by the onboard electronics."

"Is it that bad?"

Tails again nodded gently. "All we're doing now is hoping that things will turn around."

Darien stepped away from the tank and approached Amadeus. Both locked their posture and eyes to Merlin after observing each other's presence.

"So, will you build another Plunger?" asked the Overlander.

A sigh from Amadeus stirred from his lips after awhile. "It's not for me to say. More for Elias. I'm afraid another weapon such as the Plunger, or for that matter, even another Mathias, couldn't help. We produced the sub to combat you resupplying operations. Not to stop machines. Mostly, Eggman is sending his logistics through the air, and he has that controlled with a fleet we don't even have the means to take down."

"I thought you had an airbase?" Darien asked.

"We do, but it seems my son is the only qualified pilot."

Darien nodded for what Amadeus conjured to be his own business. From the way the Overlander pursed his lips, he felt a correction ease through his mind. "How–"

Amber's laugh interrupted his thoughts and his gaze at Amadeus. Both Mobian and Overlander turned to the south. Amadeus saw Heather smiling as she leaned against the tank. Smiling before he or Darien did. Amber was being hoisted through the air by her wrists under Tails' deformed power.

"How are you heading back to Knothole?" Darien continued.

"I suppose the same way we came; over the foot hills of the Great Forest. My son said the mountains were sure to give him a bad ride."

"May I make a suggestion?" Darien offered.

"As long as it doesn't involve losing my other eye, sure."

With his face melting in repose, Darien still kept an even gaze at Amber and Tails when he spoke:

"Take the direct way...northeast across the Great River."

"Why," Amadeus asked, facing Darien with his hands tucking into his pocket. His right finding the hole-laden object from yesterday.

"If you find it, then you'll know why. And if you do know after that...ask Aleutian for the other reason."

Amadeus' mouth fell the slightest towards gravity. A moment passed when his will to speak came trickling back. "Why can't you tell me now?"

Watching the Overlander swallow indicated to Amadeus his question had struck a chord. A feeling washed over him just as quickly when Tails set Amber down then himself; Darien possibly would have whispered his reply even when the two didn't come.

"Because I don't know what happened myself."

Amber was greeted by her mother with arms open, however, Tails greeted his father with a grim face. "Dad, Sally wants us to check in! She didn't sound too happy."

Amadeus waved his left hand gently to his son while his right came out from his pocket with the oblong device. "We'll talk to her when we are clear away from here."

Darien smiled, almost sarcastically. "Thanks, Prower, maybe there is hope for you after all."

A nod was all Amadeus would give. His right hand rose to the Overlander's face. "Can you tell what this is that my son found yesterday?"

Darien took the object slowly from Amadeus' hand as if it were going to sting him if he grabbed it the wrong way, and brought it further up to his eyes. The way he studied it, the way he held it might have made one think Darien had never seen such a small contraption before. But Amadeus was all the wiser. He could see an old nightmare return freshly to the man's eyes.

Darien studied the object further for a second more until he mustered his voice to his throat. "It's an ion-grenade, Amadeus. Something us 'stranded' Overlanders made in case Robotnick came calling again to the Territory." Cupping the edge of the device firmly around his thumb and forefingers with his right hand, he smashed the top down with his open left and whirled it over the mound towards the foremost trench. It fell just shy of it.

Nothing transpired.

"Dead...only could be used once," Darien elaborated. "The 'smack' was to activated the battery and you had to get rid of the thing before it gave you a harsh sunburn. It shot a barrage of protons through those holes. I swear you could read a newspaper at night when one was touched off."

Tails chimed in, "I thought so. But Merlin said it was raining here when the fight happened, so how can the grenades work?"

The hooded fox to everyone's backs became the focal point for Darien's eyes. "I don't know. How does he even know that it rained?"

Amadeus cued in to the question. He too looked to his brother. "He just does. I noticed the trees that were blown apart down at the edge of the forest didn't have any scorch marks. It was that what indicationed to me that it did."

"Plus it rained during the invasion of Knothole," Tails added mournfully. He saw his father's eyes fall upon him as his left hand shuddered. Miles knew the image he fed into his father's mind. Miles, however, still felt the utter hopelessness of seeing Robotnick march into the Freedom Fighters' hut.

"Why all this?" Amadeus said with a breath. "Why did Robotnick work up all of this to attack Knothole? Just to have the last coup de grace? He just could have attacked outright." His face aligned with Darien's. "Snively...he wanted all resistance dead, didn't he?"

Darien didn't nod, nor did he fester any semblance of an emotion that could have been construed as an answer. From what Amadeus gathered from the total silence; he was right, but was disturbingly sure Darien didn't know why himself.

Their walk to the edge of the forest was like a gliding wind. Their cumbersome trek to the powered hover-bot was like a exercise in which species could get the most amusement out of the situation. But with all laughs aside, the open door to the hover-bot with the three foxes standing just at the foot of it, brought a somber silence to Darien's family. Only smiles were the language at the moment for the offering fair wells.

It wasn't until Darien extended his good hand out for Amadeus to grasp that a seemingly undestroyable barrier was smashed to the four winds. For Mobian and Overlander to find some sort of an accord.

"General Prower, I wish we could have met under better circumstances. Under better wishes."

Amadeus took the leap and met Darien's hand with a firm squeeze. "I will rely everything you've told me to King Elias Acorn. You have my word as a fellow soldier, Wallace...as a friend."

Taking his hand away with a smile, Darien returned, "Really, I don't care what you tell the current King, Amadeus." The fox's quizzical expression was expected. "It's my patient I worry about, sir. I did everything I could to save him from the brink of the death and like hell I want him to throw it all away just by killing himself."

Darien then darted his eyes to Tails, who was standing between his father and Uncle. "Please give the ring to him with my sincere apology, Tails. It's all I ask from you all."

Miles heard the choke in the man's voice. "Sir, I will," he promised.

Heather found her arms around Amadeus. "Thank you, sir, for coming on your majesty's request."

"Ma'am," Amadeus said, returning the embrace, "I wouldn't be holding to my duties if I didn't." Releasing his hold, he faced a smile at her's. "And on that thought, a king couldn't be granted the hospitality you have given us. Thank you for letting His rest under your roof."

Amber met Tails with a handshake and a hug, saying, "Good-bye," and, "you're a cool pal." Miles only smiled in return.

Merlin on the other hand, figured he was noble enough to bow his head for everything. Heather saw it as unfitting from the emotions he expressed yesterday afternoon. She–like for Amadeus–gave him a warm embrace, of which, Merlin gladly returned.

"You have a fine family, my dear. I shall pray to Aurora that she looks after you all. Your charge, to me, has met the qualifications to have her guarding eyes on all of you."

Turning away, Merlin saw a tear glimmering from Heather's eye. "Thank you, sir."

Darien stepped forward to the royal magician and offered his hand. "I'm sorry for the things I've said, Merlin."

"He's too hard on himself..."

What came to Merlin was a male voice not of his own. The attributes he was about to express to Darien wasn't that of what came through on the wind. His right ear pivoted slightly to the north where the voice had come from. Then his eyes shied away from Darien's just by chance he could catch a glimpse of the origin of the voice. Through the cuts of light through the forest, Merlin didn't see anything save the trees and the decapitated tank.

His shake almost ceased. Darien looked on to Merlin strangely. "Everything alright?"

Merlin found himself back in the corporeal life with a sheepish smile protruding from his lips. "Why, yes. Just my imagination is all...Again, sir, thank you, and I shall have my thoughts on you and your family. What you are doing sir for the preservation of this place is unmatched by all the good deeds done before us."

When Darien released the magician's hand, a coming peace seemed to have finally arrived. When Tails and Merlin walked inside the hover-bot, an unseen pen had capped itself from the elements. Amadeus could feel this. So much so that as he stepped inside the weapon that at one time was used against his son, as he turned around to Darien and his family, he felt the ink settle on the paper of an atone that existed between him, and only him and Darien.

"I will seek for Aleutian to be knighted, Darien," he said, raising his voice over the excited engine of the hover-bot. "Maybe it might open him up?"

"Maybe..." Darien shouted, "if you give him a chance at some duties, the soldier in him might come out. His friends need it to be remembered."

Amadeus gave a sharp affirming nod. "I know it!" he said, and turned back inside–

But he stopped halfway from reaching over to the door control switch and closing it. Instead he pivoted around as if he forgot something. In fact he did, and he had to shout out to Darien so he could retrieve it.

"Darien Wallace!"

The Overlander stopped midway from turning around himself, being the rear guard to his family's retreat to the open field, then to home. When his eyes fell upon Amadeus, a force that he hadn't felt come over him for many years past, surged through his veins and into his heart locked his legs down, and straightened his back.

The fox had that much of an instilled pride in his own bearing to make a forgotten soldier, like Darien, do the same.

And with it, his arm rose up from his side, straight and true. It bent at the elbow and creased a perfected forty-five degree angle, allowing his knifed hand to center right over his right brow.

Darien returned the salute...just as crisp...just as neat with pride, however holding it as his eyes took to him Amadeus.

"Thank you, Darien," Amadeus proclaimed with his eyes, thrusting his arm back to his side under a firm, sincere expression of pride.

Across the void, it was thanked in the same matter in thought, "Thank you, Amadeus...thank you."

The last Darien saw when his right hand fell to his side like a machine slowly becoming crippled with the lose of hydriodic fluid, was Amadeus fishing for the control panel for the door, for he had too, because he never let his eyes leave the him...only when the door closed between them.

Along the field as the hover-bot pulled sharply up and began it's journey to the northeast, Darien and his family arrived out of the edge of the forest to give their last waving good-bye. When the dot of the hover-bot vanished over the horizon, their journey to their home began; Darien having his hands over his wife's shoulders and of his daughter's. The coming winds were the only sounds now. The grass becoming the only standard waving as a flag.

For the eyes that presided over this, it was close to the afterlife that he has come to waiting for.

His pointed ears fidgeted with the wind. His nose sniffed the smell of late summer air. The charred skin on his chest began to fuse, heal. Orange-red fur soon grew from where the pale naked skin had been. But the pain wasn't there from burns...Only regret.

"Kyle!...Kyle!"

The female voice from behind him never did get his response. He just stayed his eyes to the approaching family. Only when her heard scampering footsteps from behind him did he even acknowledge her presence with the turn of his head.

"Hey, are you coming? She's waiting for us!"

From his kneeling position, Kyle eyed over his shoulder a female squirrel he felt the fostered fondness for since the day he laid his brown eyes on her exhume from his ceased-beating heart. Her beauty was materializing back to when he remembered her: whole, her body seemingly healing from the explosion that had ravaged her apart.

"Just give me a sec, Ashley," he said to her before turning his attention back to the Wallace's. They were at the foot of the first trench. "I just want to see him one last time."

"Darien?...He can't be thanked enough. I just can't see why he is so hard on himself?...or even yourself, Kyle?"

A sigh floated along the wind from the fox. The sun's rays pierced through his body, leaving no shadow of his presence. "My reasons are my own, Ashley."

"He's been carrying the burden more than you have. And I don't mean Darien."

"I know," he sighed, standing and turning to the squirrel. "And look, it's easing for him. His pains are healing as are ours...he's coming back, Ashley."

The sun forced it's rays upon them. Like a road being formed, Kyle and Ashley ventured for each others hands while they turned towards the calling path. It was finally here...their time. Their last retreat...

"Dad, LOOK!"

Tails' shrill jolted Amadeus to the left window, almost toppling over his brother to get there. When all he saw was the shore of the Great River moving fast over them, he turned his attention to his son and said, "Go for another pass."

Tails executed a hard sweeping turn and brought the center of his alarm to the windscreen. He brought the bot into a hover as he and his father stared on.

Like tombstones, the pillars of a oncestanding bridge rose from the water. At the shores were sandy beaches to either side, but bordered by cliffs at each end. The spans themselves were crumbled on top of each other, lapping water beating upon them as their carcases were stained with brown mud and dirt. But it was the pillars themselves that got Amadeus' attention. What was left of the white, square concrete structures, five in all, had an assortment of holes, burn marks, and several large chunks eaten out of the columns. Only the center span stood up from the water, raised about three hundred and seventy feet from the river.

"My goddess, what happened here?" Amadeus gasped.

A silence followed as eyes looked on.

"Dad, look...I can see a barrel of something."

And Tails was right! Amadeus peered to where his son had pointed and could see a long, large tube trickling into view from the ebbing river.

"Amadeus?"

Merlin's voice became the knife to rip his brother's attention from the windscreen. The sorcerer looked perplex and hypnotized.

"Brother, I'm hearing explosions and gun fire."

"What else?" Amadeus pressed. "Any voices? Any screams?"

"No...wait!"

Tails was now intently focused on his uncle.

The silence could have become a black hole on the hover-bot.

"There's nothing now," Merlin confessed, almost saddened about it.

"What...what d'ya mean?" Tails harped.

"Son, just wait, give him some breathing room," Amadeus said, still looking at his brother. "Merlin?"

Again, another pause in silence.

"I'm al...alright. But it was strange, Amadeus?"

"What...please, Merlin."

"Well, I swore I heard angry buzzing...like large bees high above all of this."

Amadeus took two steps back and fell into his chair. For a moment, he was at a loss. "Tails, let's get home. We need to find a lost soul and speak with him. I have this feeling the invasion force Robotnick sent in was just a mere sideshow to what, I think, was stopped."

"Ashley?"

"Yes, Kyle..."

"He is coming back...and they better stay out of his way."

Well, what did you all think? Was it good? Bad? To be honest I felt a little energy leave from this one, and even coming back to it and editing it, I couldn't find any energy to possibly make it stronger in certain areas. But the outlook on this was spectactular when I was writing this...Two soliders meeting on a field of battle not their own, and coming together to give the slain peace. Why I titled this chapter "A Final Salute." In my opinion, all wars should end like this.

But alas, the world has become cruel and honor goes by the wayside. Such a shame. I for one in my wonderings in life practice the code of Bushido. It's a very honor-bound code, and one that has prospered with me, as I have with it, in my life.

For now, we now a little more about Aleutian...next chapter, I promise you will be filled to the brink about him, and a family life he had runaway from and is seeking to run back to it. A bit of a split scene from Brother to Brother...but, until next month.

Please review...and Sara...it's okay!!