Greetings to all and a very warm welcome back to those who have been following this. I hope all you Sonic and Knuckles fans are ready for this!

I've been taking a bit of a break with writing...mostly by events and not me getting lax. The good news is, my voice has come back to me and much thanks goes to this chapter. Some new material and hopefully the full power drive to finish this one will come of it. I have the next chapter started, but by my work ethic and how I structure things out...I am very behind.

But, in so doing, this should occupy everyone for at least a month. Its close to 20,000 words and I never knew it was until I did the word count when I was done. Idea after idea after idea poured onto this chapter. I planned this one to be a filler of time but not the readers. I couldn't shorten it, and like heck I wanted to lengthen it. And in so being...I gave it a book title instead of a standard chapter title because its fitting. The one I had planned will come, but later.

Okay, the short preview for this: I kinda rejuvenated Sonic and Knuckles' old rivalry, and brought out more of Aleutian and possibly past family life for him, and then later, Knuckles. I hope I explained some of the fighting maneuvers in this clearly. I've noticed something in my writings as of late and that is I kinda jump to different main ideas in mid paragraph, so that is the latest thing I'm doing my best to work on. (Please, tell me other factors that I'm weak in and need to improve)

As for the length...kinda approach this a true book--through in cyberspace its a crap-shoot--and find places to stop and come back to. I know its rough on a website. Good ole cut-copy-and-paste works.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Sonic and his friends.

Again, but this time, I truly thank you for being my audience.

Tomorrow's Children, Today's Voices

By: Mauser

Locke's critical eyes scoured over every inch of Aleutian's body. It seemed no matter how steady the younger Guardian stride to keep himself: holding his stance with his knees bent and his heels raised just high enough to slide a thin sheet of paper under, while holding his fists out from his chest, Aleutian could tell from his father's cynical gaze his efforts weren't enough. It all begged himself to ask his soul again; how far has he strayed from what feels like a former self?...From the skills of what made him who he was from before? The realization of how much he was out of touch with his own life seemed like a crushing blow to his heart that could've at worse killed him.

Taking in a deep breath, he concentrated further on his efforts. Lowering himself, he began to feel satisfied with his renewed stance, until the pain emerged from muscles that he thought were still conditioned. They came from his legs the most; burning aches as the lactic acid was building in the tissues. Aleutian searched for a solution under the agitating pain to rid it from his body. "Breathe," he reminded himself. And so he did, with shallow intakes through his nose before exhaling them out through his mouth.

Weak shadows passed over the land as cirrus clouds from the heavens passed over them like a white sheet of silk. Their drifting movements seemed to bring on a thin breeze, wandering through the gaps of the trees and tickling at Aleutian's fur. The punishment from the heat was relenting, but still the pain was evident, and he knew it would stay with him.

Yet, his father's eyes looked over him in critical affirmation. A feeling washed over Aleutian, sensing it coming from Locke's gaze. Like a cool, clammy notion that he was doing something wrong, feeling embarrassed because of it, stiffening his face to the same degree. He let his eyes fall to the ground for not even a second, almost hoping a renewed sight of his father might come with it. None did. Only of Locke tucking his left hand under his right elbow while letting his right hand pensively stroke his beard.

"Well, there's nothing we can't fix," he said plainly, breaking the silence of the wind at last. Aleutian collapsed his stance to one of defeat. His head followed suit to the leaf littered ground. When he looked up, Locke was making his way to him. "Don't be ridiculed about it, Aleutian. I said it's fixable, not irreparable."

Aleutian fought within himself to speak louder than how he felt. "It's just–"

Locke's gentle hand on his scared cheek cut him off. "I know it's the pain, son. Believe me, I know. But sometimes you have to endure pain so you can replace it with strength." Locke watched his son nod on his words. He then let his hand trace the long gash on son's face, caressing it warmly, fugitively. "Sometimes remembering a pain helps us remember who we once were. Sometimes a long ago pain can replace the ones we endure now."

"Like my indifference to you?"

Locke shock his head slightly, closing his eyes before opening them to his son. "I see that pain fading from you. As for me?...it puts me in a place where I wish I could revisit physically. It pains me to remember when I thought you were dead. But that pain becomes overpowered with joy when I remember the day Athair told me you were alive and strong. What I wished was for you to come back then, so you and I could do what we are doing now. Yes, it hurt me when you said no, made me embittered more with you. And now, those pains are leaving me, too. They started to when I first saw you in the chamber. They truly began when I Archy told me you were in love. When his news brought reason why you didn't come home."

Aleutian's brows lowered with his head. "Even how I came back to you, dad? All that garb I wore."

A stout bow and a twist of Locke's face said something comforting about it, like he was trying to find his son's visage. "And the pain I felt from seeing you in it; the pain you felt because you wore it. The pain of your mother's hand across my face because she knew what it meant. But it all went away from me when I saw you burn those things, finding in the ashes a joy that came to me, knowing you are willing to suppress yours.

"All you were asking was for help. And I'm here." Sighing, Locke released his touch from Aleutian. "But where to begin. I'm sorry to say it, but you're a mess."

"Ah, gee, thanks, Pop!"

Locke chuckled. "Hey, I'm only saying what I see. But you still want it, right?"

Aleutian narrowed his eyes on the challenge. "Do cows fly?"

"I don't think so," Locke replied quizzically.

"Well, they do in my world."

Locke's laugh was heartfelt. Not because of the quip remark, but it had so far been the only humorous thing Aleutian had said to him. Things were indeed looking up for his son.

"Okay, get back into you stance," he said. As Aleutian found his footing again, and stuck his fists out close to his chest, Locke cut around him. First he observed his right side, grasping his hands on Aleutian's flanks and arms and finding they were rigid and solid in form. The way Aleutian was bladed off, an attack to his right would have had an uneasy time getting through to him. Coming behind, Locke slid his boot passed Aleutian's right shoe on the left. When he tried to kick his stance out from under him, Aleutian seemed to have a solid hold to the ground. If it were a real attack, a chance existed that his son could've been sent to the ground.

And as Locke approached Aleutian's left side, gauging his left fist was a little too far forward, and that his elbow wasn't tucked against his rib cage, his real test was about to come. With his right hand becoming flat like a knife, Locke didn't even cock his arm at the elbow to deliver his thrust. He instead let the rise from his right side become the inertia of the impact, hurling his strike at Aleutian's head with lightning quickness.

His knife hand never met his son's cheek.

It was more reflex than muscle memory. Or was it? All Aleutian could discern was out of the corner of his left eye, something ringed in his head that something was wrong, something out of the ordinary in his father's movements ordered his left arm to slam backwards. His forearm caught Locke's thrust and diverted it away. The sting from the impact was there, but a better feeling stung at Aleutian's senses.

An adrenalin surge!

"Good! Excellent, son! Now why didn't you follow up and--" Locke slammed his left fist under Aleutian's sternum and drove it onwards, "–attack me?"

He felt his father's spiked knuckles dig in to him. He felt the force of the drive push the wind out of him, and himself off balance and over toward the ground. He was on his side like lightning, the clap of thunder echoing from his body thudding on the ground and his umph of the rest of the air being expelled from his lungs.

A daze fell upon his senses. He didn't know where he was from a brief instant. Only that he needed to breathe. Lights flickered when he squinted his eyes from the pain. Colors of red, ever clear, blue–"and green!"

Black blotches dotted the white fur of a figure nestled in his mind. A charcoal gi clothed the figure to the waist, synched to him with a black, cloth belt. A white top looking like a size to big of a bath robe drapped his chest, but gapped open enough to expose his chest, showing black blotches on his fur. But it was the blue and green that flickered in Aleutian's sight, funneling a notion to stand and to do it fast that hammered at his straining mind. Why? Because a past pain that his father just spoke about lapsed everything that involved situational awareness, and adaptation of said situation and spoke to him as if it were his own voice, yelling at him to get up and get up now! Because he knew if he didn't, a sailing journey through the air was to come by a giant, three paw foot under his side.

At least in this one second period that was what his mind was relocating.

Aleutian rolled over completely as a fast getaway and used his left leg at the knee to propel him up to his feet with the inertia of his roll. His solid fighting stance was back under him, his breathing deeper that shook him with every intake, but his eyes were attuned to his father. He hardly noticed his hands were out in front of him; no more the fists, but like his father's initial strike, curved knives at the fingers.

For a moment, Locke gazed at Aleutian's bridled aggression in his stance. What struck his son to shoot up like he did, Locke could only fathom. Was it his reaction he had just seen from the block Aleutian executed just moments before? Had his inner warrior awakened from his dormancy? Did it take just that do to it? "No...noting is that easy," he concluded to himself. And he was correct with the sight that lay before him. Aleutian's stance had indeed become a little better, but not by much. And there was something else Aleutian wasn't grasping; something he was going to have to break.

Stepping forward, Locke closed the small void to his son. He watched Aleutian's eyes become fixed on his, from what Locke could surmise as his son attempting to discern whether he was going to strike again, or do something entirely different. When Locke's hands were in reach of his son's, he reached up to them and closed Aleutian's fingers into fists. His clasp radiated comfort through his son's gloves.

And Aleutian felt it.

"You fight with your weapons of who you are, Aleutian," Locke softly said, catching Aleutian's eyes wandering up to his. "Contrary to your grandfather Spectre's wishes, your fists, for you right now, is how you channel your resolve to our enemies." Locke could see the question rolling in his boy's eyes. Thus he rubbed the spiked knuckles under his fingers. "These are our weapons. What other's may use as a strike could never amount to the pain we deliver with these. Sometimes we need to fight dirty to win. Knuckles is the epitome of that thought."

Aleutian's stare grew stern. "I know, father."

And why did he? Because his teacher taught him the same belief through pain as well? Or was it because how Knuckles had brought him home? By force.

"Okay," Locke offered under a fresh wave of thought, "bring your right fist this time to where your rib cage meets you stomach." When Aleutian did as he was instructed, Locke beamed a smile. "Okay, when you strike the air, roll your fist out and let your knuckles drill at your target."

"And what is my target?" Aleutian asked.

"Me...deliver all your rage towards me. Ready? GO!"

It was amazing what could infuriate him. At a time, a certain blue hedgehog with a boisterous carefree smile, possess what seemed like an unlimited supply of snide, quip remarks was like pouring white gas to what was already a volatile mixture of rage, devotion to duty, and red-silk fur. But now that same hedgehog was lying on his back, his hands stroking his spines from what he knew was a coming triumph–if all went well. And at a time, an oppressive army from an extended bloodline of his family was like a primer to a cartridge, setting him off to pound the ever living daylights out of them. But as time became the contrast of the past and present, it seemed his family was coming together over a collective strife.

Still, Knuckles flung his right mitt over a tight fist through the air, taking great care and skill that he didn't over extend his elbow, and rolled his punch so that his inborn weapons could have a broader impact radius.

"Don't give your enemy your full arm, just enough to push him back with interest."

Locke's voice filtered over the one thing that was mustering his soul to combat. And it wasn't the heat. It wasn't Sonic loafing. It even wasn't the thought that Julie-Su was absent from his current frame in life.

When he heard a breath slice through the silent air, he stepped with his left foot to enforce his left uppercut. He grinned with bearing his teeth; the singing from outside had resumed.

It was this that had sparked him to stand and burn with his anger to rip the machines apart from the outside. "Kids!" Kids to cover his presence, their soft singing voices eroding their movements...and Knuckles was finding it hard to contain himself from erupting. But what pampered his calmness and discipline was none other than Antoine. The coyote was a model for keeping it cool. Sonic was just a model of how to be too cocky when fecal matter could hit the rotating cooling device. "Confidence–cockiness–crash, my son. Our land could never survive such ambiguous approaches to ourselves. Never lose sight of reality."

"Yes, father," Knuckles murmured as if Locke were beside him.

"What was that, Red?" Sonic said, twitching his emerald eyes to the poised echidna.

Knuckles swept his left leg as he turned completely around.If a bot or any other beings with diminutive intentions were behind him, their ankles would've been knocked from under them. "Nothing, just asking myself why you're being lazy and not stretching–" A lightning right fist crashed through the air, Knuckles propelling his whole body with it in a shove forward from his legs, "–yourself out."

Sonic rolled Knuckles' grunted remark in his head for a few moments. The children's singing helped to dissolve his conclusion. "Nah, I'm always primed for the action. The action just needs to get primed for me."

The Guardian could only picture Sonic now as if he were the air he just punched. The barb thought was amusing for a moment: Sonic through the wall, Antoine patting him on the back and perhaps saying, "Aboutz time you did zomething to zhat menace!" But Knuckles had to return his logic to practical means.

"It wouldn't hurt, Blue," he said promptly, "how slow you've been lately, I would feel safer if–"

"Oh, don't kid yourself, Knux. You just want me on–"

Antoine's voice was like a welcomed battering ram to Sonic's drone. "Zhut-up Zonic!" And before Knuckles could relax his stance, the coyote had marched himself over to the source of his rage. He stood over him like an imposing wall. "I've had juzt enough outz of you to...to...well, hurtz you very badly."

Sonic took a moment to examine Antoine's eyes deeper. His smile was all too bold. "Well, alright, 'Ant! Where did you find a spine? Under that wade of fake hair of your's?"

The Coyote was far from amused. He clicked his heels and pinched the collar of his shredded tunic. "I have you know, zwine, zhat Bunnie likes who I am, and I could give a tail less of what you zhink of moi!" And with that, the Royal Guard walked off back to his post by the wall. For a moment he glared at the room with what seemed like a scowl, but his face dissolved back into a semblance of reservation. Then Knuckles saw something that was really bothering him. He couldn't blame him. He knew how close Antoine and Bunnie were. It was as if he and Julie-Su were the mold in which all others were to follow: dedication, self-sacrifice for each other's needs, soul-equals in every sense of the word.

But it was what would come latter down the road of happiness that was more so of a question if that road would be paved for them to traverse. Knuckles could see the question roving in Antoine's head. Could she bear any children, or for that matter, make love thanks to her material deformities? For what he knew he would want further in life was singing behind the outside wall.

Knuckles gripped his fist. To have that much anger built up inside someone else, and that said person could keep it in under lock and key, troubled him why at times he couldn't. Maybe it was just his fortitude? Or maybe he has done it, but he still feels the same after all these years?

"Julie, I wish you were here to walk me through the question." He held his sigh short when a second thought hit him at his heart. "Aleutian, why did you let your's escape."

"Blah," he festered, turning back to his training and raised his arms higher to his face. He kept his fist, this time, at an even distance apart from each other. Elbows bent. Stance the same way. It was a high defensive block that he could in the same swipe of limbs, dispatch a lightning blow to his opponent. Lowering himself expertly even further–mostly learned through battles–he gave out a series of blocks before turning them into repeating strikes. His fists moved quickly, perforating the air, letting his boiling imagination picture Kragote in front of him. He so wanted a rematch with him, but his long lost grandfather Talbor saw to it that none would ever come again.

Stepping sideways as if he were in a small box, he dealt another fast right fist towards–

His assault was diverted with a forearm block from Sonic. A mirthful smirk under sly brows seemed to energize the blue furred hedgehog after a moment.

"Can't have you picking on your imaginary friends all the time."

Smiling eagerly, Knuckles said nothing in rebuttal. Instead, he matched Sonic's look and resumed his stance.

At first Aleutian thought it was all coming back to him. But a missed block and his father's right fist landing dead center at his chest gave him a second thought. Before he knew it he was backpedaling to stay upright. But even in that endeavor he failed. A large oak tree broke his fall, much less his back. He thought at first to get up, but his accidental sitting position had more comfort in it to cause Aleutian to rethink what he was doing wrong than to stand and face his dilemma with quite possibly more pain than correctiveness. And so, he sighed away a twinge from his chest and rested his right arm over his left knee.

"I'm not giving up, dad. I'm just thinking," he said. Locke was still standing but had relaxed his fighting stance. "I know I'm doing something wrong, but I just don't know what."

"Do you know?" Archimedes asked Locke, localized somewhere above them in the shading trees.

Letting the directed question slide, Locke faltered his pose and expression to match his son's disapproval within himself. He stepped backwards in his mind, placing himself in a different aspect, a different light where he could see if there was a hidden malice in play. Was Lopper still residing in Aleutian's mind with his teachings? Were they inferior to theirs, or was it vice versa?

He concentrated further, letting previous actions become the answers. He reflected the sudden block Aleutian jerked from the back of his mind. Locke could sense it coming. The last few punches they traded afterwards weren't real strikes at all but more to gauge his comfort zone. Apparently the last one was real enough for Aleutian. Now Locke was figuring out where he had missed it. Was it his? "No, his stance is already poor." Was it attitude? "I can't deny the present feelings of certitude within him."

"Are you trying to please me, Aleutian?"

His quaking face of surprise was more or less expected. "Come again?"

Locke refreshed his own question in his head again. "Are you trying too hard, is what I'm asking? Are you attempting to prove yourself to me?"

For the moment that lapsed, Locke was speculating whether he was going to regret what he just asked his son. To come to what felt to be close to a journey's end, only to see it be deviated thanks to an ill-thought out earmark question, rippled a tight feeling in his stomach. He hadn't felt it since Knuckles was killed. And before then when Lara-Le denounced her love for him hadn't he felt it. Perhaps the feeling he had when his son came back to life might've replaced it. An immeasurable urge to cry for joy.

The question was dissolving slowly like sugar in cold tea in Aleutian's psyche. A shiver Locke felt in hoping his guess was correct and could dispel it.

"And if I am?" Aleutian asked, Locke grateful his voice was without emotion of any kind.

"I won't be mad if you are. But I won't be pleased either."

"Then what is it that you're asking?" Aleutian returned, still bemused. Still at a loss. "I'm doing my best to remember things. If anyone I'm trying to please, it's me."

Archimedes' voice was like a distant clap of thunder; absent the threat, though present was the residual tremble. "It's not even yourself, lad. You felt a notion of your gut getting kicked in about ten minutes ago...tell us why, lad?"

A stern face engrossed him. He still had a hard time knowing his thoughts weren't safe. "Because..." The younger Guardian shut his blue eyes.

"It was him after all. It was him who made my son shoot up like a spring!"

Archimedes grunted a titter. "Easy, Locke. It's more than just Lopper."

"Because I didn't get up fast enough," Aleutian voiced confidently, however still remaining stern in tone.

"You asked the right questions, Locke." Archy said to the air. "And where does that lead us next, lad?" he asked in the corporeal world.

Aleutian searched out the ant's voice from above. He felt his courage leave when he swallowed. "Why I needed to get up?"

"To face you're opponent. To take the fight right back to him–am I not correct. Is that what Lopper taught you?"

"Yes," Aleutian reaffirmed, standing to put action to words; "that thy must not give the enemy any notion of an easy defeat." His eyes were now fiercely trained on his father, watching Locke taking it in with affection.

"But we still haven't answered the question, Guardian. Why did you feel what you felt? Why did you raise to block so suddenly from your father's strike?"

"Memory!" Locke chorused charitably.

"And we let him figure that out, shall we, Guardian?"

But he already did. Or had he? Aleutian's mind had ventured to where it needed to go with the quickness of a gale; back to the pain gnawing at his chest. Holding his stance towards his father, he closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly up, breathing in the rich oxygen his muscles were telling him would dispense the pain, touching him in more places throughout his body to relive his motions with every intake of breath of how he landed on the large tree. He was intent on his father's eyes, he remembered, his own now closed for the blackness to become a canvas to replay his movements, looking for something that he did that betrayed him. He recollected his father's hammer fist, coming down like a scorpions' tail at his head, absent the villainous knife–

His eyes opened abruptly, scared now from what the thought brought back which he swore he'd vanquished to a whole different part of himself, sending it far away from his tender soul. In his moment of fright, panic set in as Locke looked to him with curiosity and concern, no doubt wondering what the cause was for the change in the mood of Aleutian's eyes. Heat washed over Aleutian in the suddenness of what his new fear brought. Different eyes became focused in the forefront of his mind, their brows knitted with anger and pure lust. Chestnut fur that had seemed to have specks of black soil, became the boundary of flesh and irises of those malice eyes. And his teeth, those fangs that were natural to him...Aleutian crushed his hand into a fist tight enough to hold water inside it just on the mere thought of that psychotic grimace.

And the flickering gleam of the blade he held close to his chest, ready to jut out and drive at Aleutian's chest–

"Don't think about him...you're not him! You came close, but you're not HIM! Don't give his soul the pleasure of being remembered!"

He squinted his eyes, closing the world off in hopes of sealing another. Did it work? Blackness became his sight at long last. A new sheet of paper in his mind to sketch better portraits, better thoughts, conjuring a finer hand in pursuit to lure love and affectionate warmth to oppose the cold he felt was still struggling to survive in his heart.

The lesson from the stream just ten miles ago came to him like the gulp of fresh air when he fought his way to the surface of the ocean on the night he decided to runaway from his family. The bitter chill of both the ocean and the stream crawled their way under his silk fur, but the placid gaze of his father's eyes dispelled the shivers that could have come from the feeling. It was his father's eyes that he opened his own to, just to see if that same warmth, that same calling that said home isn't a mere dwelling or land mass floating in the sky, but standing beside him, talking with him about either trivial or important matters, embracing one another for the sake of feeling safe in one another's company. From the way Locke stood in front of him now, older but still in his wisdom perhaps the same as when he left, as his stance carried the glow of it, Aleutian could see where his defiance had hurt the one who helped in conceiving his very life.

But he could see it was also a two way street. Locke from all this time they've been back together wore his own self-inflicting scares on his fur, and most certainly in his heart. Aleutian could see this time between them was as much of a healing process for his dad as it was for him. He could feel it in his father's very stare that the years weren't really wasted but were misplaced and were coming back to be relived in such a short breath of time.

Emi-La had become his father's gift. Emi-La's dying breath had now become more than just a mere place to revisit and stay. Aleutian had returned home...to his father.

Her memory saw to it...

Her memory was the key...from that early fall afternoon when he followed the path of her crying voice in the woods, to helping her back to her tribe, to her decision to be with him, and to their night encounter of the one who saved them, and later who'd save them again without his presence, and subsequently many others by what he seeded in them. Aleutian could now only soak in the missing element into his very being. His very soul.

"Memory is our treasure, Aleutian. Only we can hide it where no others can find it. Only we can open it when its purposes are needed for the sake of our emotions to stay fit for ourselves. If thou can understand this, then thy can know the purpose of the key I'm going to teach thee's body. Emi-La will also know this, but as for thee, I have to ask thee to share thy's treasure with me." Aleutian, in the blackness of his vision, felt the same sincerity Lopper expressed in his blue and green eyes, in his firm but soft voice that conveyed the same idea now as it did then. He could still remember himself bowing his head slightly, not for being obedient in Lopper's house of rules and honor, and not being cordial just for the mere though he was in his house...but accepting the apology the lopped eared rabbit was posing. "It's for the sake that I need to know what thy knows in the pursuit of what habits I need to break, and what new ones I need to teach. Does thee understand?" Aleutian's voice resonated brighter than what his memory had triggered. "Yes, Lopper," he said aloud to the corporeal world. " I am honored, my pupil, as thou should be. But I might express my pains once more in order to satisfy a purpose. Thy has memories that are painful...poison. I understand this, Aleutian, but understand me, if thy can: thou may cherish these memories I am seeking to find. In the end I may cause thee to dwell on them. Thou's first instructions from me is don't. If thy dwells, then thy is basking in the very poison that can kill a being's heart, but can still walk the world dead from the inside out. And in the end, my pupil...it will kill thee as effectively as our own enemies that do seek our death.

"I will teach thee how memory can keep us alive; in the world at large and in our own."

Aleutian found out the reason much sooner than later why Lopper didn't want Emi-La present with them–Lopper about left him crippled just to test what fighting ability he knew. There, as Lopper left him on the floor of the lop eared rabbit's place of mental sanctuary, his dojo, Aleutian had gone against his first lesson. He dwelled on if his decision to leave home was wrong. He dwelled that if he'd stayed home, he might have won because he would have continued his training with his dad and he would've had the upper hand in the ways of the Guardians. The memory of the agonizing pain from his mouth, to his severely bruised arms, the splints his shins and thighs experienced, to seeing his own blood in a volume he'd never remembered descrying before coming from his lacerated lips. It all made him question his own self beliefs of why he ran away.

But if he hadn't run away, she would have never filled the gap that made his life flourish brighter than the sun and for him, realize that the gap was even there to be discovered. He could still feel the love from her eyes pierce deeply into his. She would show this open, however secret affection to him just before they tested Lopper's new teachings on each other. She learned it from their teacher; asking for forgiveness just before she put her soul-equal in any pain that she'd always regret putting him through.

The same apology always came from him but he could never manage to give it outwardly like the way she could. However it was always there...he never left her.

Again, it was his memory of the cherished things he did for her, because he loved her, that brought him to the here and now. That made him open his eyes to the coming evening, though the sun was still shining on him like a beacon. That made him remember when he saw Knuckles, older, filled with determination and purpose in everything he did; to remembering Commander St. John and his first encounter with him: the touch of the skunks hand on his shoulder, his body seemingly on autopilot, blinking his eyes after finding St. John's arm on the verge of snapping at the elbow.

And like Archimedes had pointed out, his sudden block of his father's fast strike.

"Memory!" he proclaimed, though his voice was soft as the rain. "Muscle memory."

"Which means?" Locke added, bringing out another equation to the full problem.

"I'm dwelling...I'm thinking too much," Aleutian answered solidly, like mortar had finally dried in the scarred crevasses of his heart.

Locke stepped to him with pride reigning from every furtive movement he made to get to him. Aleutian could see that his thoughts had flowed to his father. There was no mistaking it in those deeply atoned eyes of affection and boundless joy. And as he stopped close enough to extend his hand, a smile tugged at his lips with knowing eyes. "Come home, son. Please share your memories with us...and we will share ours."

He breathed deeply, staring intently in his father's calling eyes, matching the same loving, challenging face. "I'm gonna need so help. It's been awhile, dad, and it shows."

"Then take my hand, son. Know that I will guide you the rest of the way."

And he did...and for the life of him, his father twisted around with his hand locked firmly in his grasp, and threw him in the air with the aid of his father's back propelling him like a spring platform.

"Can you remember your rolls?" Locke strained to ask just before Aleutian was becoming one with the gravity.

"I'm about to find..."

"OW!"

Knuckles' right mitt went straight for his left arm just above the elbow. He held it for a moment like it was a baby before he took his mitt away, studying it for blood.

Thankfully there was none, his skin untouched, much less any fur shaved off. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Even if Sonic had managed to slash him, his wounds would have heeled fast enough that only a minuscule drop of violet blood would have soaked the surrounding fur. But it still didn't stave off the accusing stare toward the blue hedgehog.

"Watch it with those things, Sonic!"

It was no secret his quills were razor sharp. Just ask any hunk of slag he's shredded from the beginning when he was aware of his fast art of deconstruction talents. No bot of Robotnick's stood a chance between him and his seemingly natural born ability of speed, spin, and coolness.

His lustful smirk knowingly said so. "Sorry, Knux. Next time I'll remember to swop 'em out for training spines, just–for–you! How's that?"

Knuckles' reply was careful, reposed, but yet quick to his liking:

"Get bent."

"VWould you two, hush," festered Antoine from the wall closest to where the singing was just right outside of. "Eizher fights qvioitly, or don'z fighz at oll!"

Sonic turned to Knuckles as if looking for an ally. "He's just sour because he had to ditch his sword."

An assaulting tongue flew his way under crossed arms and closed eyes followed by a,"Hmpf!"

"Ahh, I don't know, Sonic," Knuckles said slyly but in defense, "Antoine does know a few things since your vacation out in space."

"Yeah, like ta search and retrieve a spine!"

Inching closer to one of Sonic's pointed ears, Knuckles let his next phrase come out like someone's whisper that his dear dog had died under the wheels of the short bus–which only Sonic would find degrading, "I've been teaching him a few things."

"Traitor," Sonic whispered back in the same seditious voice.

This time, it was Knuckles doing a buddy slap at the back. "Hey, I just can't turn down a gentlewoman like Bunnie. She's been asking me, too."

"Oui, and she'z been zeeing me more for who I am," Antoine added proudly.

"That doesn't matter, 'Ant," Knuckles said with a contemptuous voice, never looking at the coyote though. "Julie-Su loves me because I'm me. Bunnie is probably the same way."

"And how's zhaz, Echidna?"

Knuckles could hear the sincerity in Antoine's voice. Really it had now become the same old question that any guy has always wanted to know: what brings the love of their life to them. It was a shot at answering, but he thought it was sound.

"Because we have flaws, Antoine," he answered as if he were some noble prophet, still eyeing Sonic the whole time. "And what Sally sees in all of your's--"

"Dork..." Sonic's stare was amusing but threatening all the same, "you're treading on hollloooww ground, lead-foot."

"Oh yea, that's right," returned the Guardian, never missing a mark, as if he never left off from one, "you two are in limbo, or is it..." he leaned into the hedgehog's simmering face, "keeping a knowing distance."

Stepping back from what he thought was the coming explosion of blue cobalt–even in Sonic's red and white sneakers, he would have one himself–Knuckles watched Sonic's abstain brows break from their carefree rise, lower to fuel the fire in his emerald eyes projecting a whole world better to his once, and soon to be reinstated, friendly advisory, tilting his head over his right shoulder as if his neck lost it's muscle strength to hold it still, and pouring his rage out of his ear so he didn't have to use it to magnify his speed and throw a certain red Guardian into the next decade!

"What are you trying to do, Knuckle-brains?" Sonic sneered in a voice as plain as the region they were in.

There was nothing of defense in his voice. He just let it go as it came to him; knowing, and diverting, "Getting you all juiced up!"

Sonic held his tantrum stance for what seemed more than a pregnant pause. For more than a passing day. But as suddenly as himself entering into a room, as suddenly as the speed of dark, he straightened himself up, added water to his face it seemed, and all in a split second–like everything seemed to go in his life–he was back to being Sonic; carefree, boisterous...and a downright pain at times.

"Geez, stop trying, Red," he said, in a way, brightly. "Just say Eggman and I'm ready 'ta scoot to the 'bootin!"

Knuckles rolled his eyes. "Dear Aurora, help us."

"Well!" exclaimed Sonic, doing a fast two-step bounce and throwing his arms out like a performer, "here I am! Ta-da!"

Knuckles this time laughed. He had to, though it was muffled and disciplined. Sonic was doing what he seemed to be born to do; get people, no matter what despair they seemed to be living in, to laugh, to forget the world around them just long enough to make them happy, and in turn, to give them hope through the strength of humor. Knuckles always had hope no matter what his trails laid before him. But humor...he'd thought he knew, even when Victor and Julie-Su went at it. But again, he was wrong once more in his life when he finally got to know Sonic; after Sally had to sit him down and explain why Sonic was...well, Sonic.

And of who he looked thoughtfully to...

"Sleep...sleep, little one; we've had our day and loads of fun. Sleep...sleep, little one, tomorrow will come, and we'll have the sun to our own."

He tried to push a tear back. He tried to resume his fighting stance: left foot forward, his right pointed away from him and anchored to the rear, fists centered directly at his chest and out. It was all muscle memory.

But the singing–the next verse from the kids just outside boiled up his emotions and singed his heart.

"Wake..wake; my good best friend, lets share our time and find everyone..."

He blinked, releasing a lone tear from his embattled face. Sonic had one of the same, possibly being birthed from the same purpose. "No...maybe." Knuckles realized that Sonic's childhood was taken away from him because of a tyrant's greed, while his own was cast away because of who he was born to be.

But it still didn't stop the memories. It still didn't stop him from remembering his mother's voice when he was at the age to hear her and claim her as his. He could still remember the sweetness of it. He's never tasted wine, but one never had to for something so tender to be heard. Wine had to be gauged through her. Lara-Le had a voice that if it wasn't for past and present circumstances, she would have moved on to be a singer and not a mother in an occupied land that was her home.

It was her singing that he remembered the most. It was the very song he was hearing that forced his tears from his eyes and harden his face for the impending fight. He was so glad the next verse was coming, glad that one of his best friends was there to hear him sing it before he charged at him so that both fighters could ready themselves to do what their calling has always asked for them...

"Wake...wake; my good best friend, its time for us to go and..."

"...See our world."

One second.

Locke stuck first, sending his left fist like a lightning strike at Aleutian's chest.

But up came Aleutian's right arm, and what felt like pure instinct this time, bucking it sideways that caught his father's assault and sending it away from its intended target. But he couldn't spare a fraction of a second to give himself a pat on the back. Almost simultaneously from his block, his own left fist powered out towards his dad.

It wasn't fast enough, Locke swiping it away with his right while regrouping his diverted left and boring his knuckles into Aleutian's right side. His son flinched from the sudden sting, taking him off his guard then exposing enough time and body surface that Locke sent a strong, more deliberate upper-cut to his son's gut.

Besides the wind being kicked out of him, so did his body, flaying back again, but this time landing shy of the large tree that he was knocked back against not so long ago.

Two seconds.

On the bright side; at least his blocks were getting faster.

"I think singing isn't helping you, son," Locke observed, stepping towards Aleutian, who was having a hard time catching his breath. "What brought that song on, anyways. I haven't heard it since–"

Aleutian lifted his eyes up from the ground when his father caught himself. "Since when, dad?" he asked after a lapse of time. At first, he thought he knew the answer.

He was surprisingly wrong, watching his father's face become sullen.

"Since I last heard your mother sing it to your brother."

"Really?" Aleutian said emphatically, relinquishing a meaningful grin. "Does she still sing?"

"You remember?" Locke asked surprised, however, joy of the thought.

Aleutian's smile could warm the coldest of trenches. "How could I not. I still remember that she loved to sing, dad. She'd sing when she cooked, she'd sing when she was reading a book or something...she'd sing to me in the bath, or better yet..." Locke witnessed a sparkle of a faint star glow in his son's eyes. He knew why...nothing was more evident than seeing a father-to-be--and would sadly never become one with the one he loved–ready to return such gifts to his own.

"...She'd sing me to sleep. I remember that the most." He let his blue eyes drift down to the forest floor before coming up to reunite them with his father's. "Is Kneecapoen enjoying her voice?"

Locke felt his throat choke from the wetness of his emotions. Somehow he kept it all to himself. "I should hope so. Maybe she might sing to you again."

Aleutian watched his father's face speak something that he didn't voice; begging him to change the subject to stop the reopening of wounds to a once mended, broken heart.

And so he did out of charity. "I need a box!" he requested dryly, but musing all the while.

Locke could see the gears turning backwards in the clock that was Aleutian's thinking face. Moreover, he witnessed something else that could have been discarded by the mere, average thinking Mobian if it wasn't for his seasoned attention to the tiniest of detail eyes taking hold of his son's change in complexion. Aleutian was playing something in his mind. Perhaps his last, failed, counter-block, or perhaps rolling different motions that he needed to concentrate on due to his request. "A box?" Locke repeated to himself. Aside from an object that looked after one's photographic memories in a forgotten closet, he elder Guardian had to fathom, or in his case, to reach back to the time of his training under Archimedes and his own father to access what Aleutian was asking for.

He didn't have to touch the surface to see the meaning. Turning completely around where he stood, he gauged the clearing under his boots and determined the space was adequate enough. Lifting his right foot up slightly, he jabbed his big toe at the leaves and pierced the edge of his boot through them at the dirt underneath, and with the skill of an apprenticed drafter wielding a large, stubborn pencil, he traced a line in the dirt that was at least a foot and half long, pivoted, then traced another line roughly the same length. What came after two more of the repeated steps was what Aleutian had called for; a box.

"Do you want me in the middle of this?" Locke asked with a straight voice, though, his inner self wanted to express the immense saturation of feelings his body was trying to take in all at once. But he was afraid of doing harm to his son's character if he did.

"No," Aleutian answered after a short span of time, staring evenly at the box his father had drawn. "Just walk me through this."

Locke nodded his affirmation, then watched his son climb to his feet. At first he was expecting Aleutian to begin something, but when he stepped to the edge of the box, he looked down upon it as if looking for an instruction sheet to tell him where to begin. For that matter, Locke was trying to place his own self in Aleutian's shoes to remember where to start.

But he didn't have to wait long. Aleutian stepped on the line closest to him facing the north, locked himself down in a less than perfect defensive stance and began throwing a series of blocks, starting with his right fist making a quarter circle from his chest to his nose, then adding another piece of it as he let gravity direct his lower block towards abdomen. These first two moves were simple to the eye, however, Locke knew it was the baby steps that were needed from the start.

"You're over extending yourself," he observed evenly. "Try fitting yourself in a box."

Aleutian held his bent arm out, but stole a quizzical glance to his father. "How so?"

A quick step brought his wandering face over to Aleutian. "What do you want to start with?" he asked, finding his request was, perhaps, the real question that needed to be asked from the start. The next thought that seeped into his mind, he knew full well, would bring a fury from up above. "Would you feel comfortable with revisiting your Ninjutsu?"

Aleutian didn't have time to answer. With his fist still holding the block, it quickly became engulfed with a sudden waft of purple smoke that as fast as it came, dissipated, leaving one indifferent fire-ant in it's wake. Aleutian was about to discover Archimedes had a fierce bark.

"I FORBID THIS!"

Locke didn't flinch a hair of emotion, nor did he give the slightest indication that he was going to blink from his former mentor's roar of defiance. He just stood his ground as if he were an effigy of how a simple-minded echidna needed to be seen. He didn't even release a thought to the now stewing air. Inside him, though, he felt a faint spark of disobedience beat in his charging heart. But it was how it felt, faint, not even a candle strength to give a glow to the darkest of rooms. It was the best example to him of how things have changed. No more did he feel himself as the boy Aleutian and Knuckles were to him. No more did he have to listen to a living, breathing conscience to teach him about his duties. Those mistakes were already inflicted on the very person that was in front of him...and he was learning from them as he struggled for closure between the two of them. The notion to bow down to Archimedes and listen to him were out the window that had shattered over decades ago. The gift to do so wasn't of his grey beard, his residual pains of being tortured by the Dingoes that added more callouses to his heart, or of his age that resounded in his very being. No, his gift to send back the same defiant look Archimedes was firing at him like a fatal laser beam, stood in front of him, fostering a dismayed look that could've been construed as a fleeting thought to runaway.

Once a father, always a father. No one could take that pinnacle standing in life away from him. Not even his glowering mentor.

And most of all...before each of his son's had been born, he'd wished he could've made true to his own fostered premonition when it was he who was the Guardian...when it was he who was alone to fend for himself.

To let his son's choose their path of their lives.

"I'm sorry, Arche, but you have no say in this."

Aleutian watched Archimedes, much less felt him, tighten every muscles fiber of his four inch body. "It's not the way of the Guardians...those tactics are only meant to be used as a last resort–"

"Then, Arche," Locke said dryly with embedded force, "I implore you to turn around and look at my son."

But the fire-ant never said a word–nor did he put action in the place of them. He just stood in the furrows of Aleutian's tightened fingers, keeping a steady, burning stare at Locke while surmising what was to pass; what his former pupil was venturing to do.

Not pleased with his inactions, Locke voiced himself in his mind that only Archimedes would hear, lest he had his son hear his growl: "I said turn and LOOK at him!"

Aleutian, however, was very attuned to the bitter faces he was seeing leap across the three foot void. "Dad?" he stammered with feeling coming from his voice, his eyes albeit casting a frightened aura of unsettlement in his sea blue hues.

His father strayed a disarming gaze to him, but couldn't quite wrap his voice around the notion. "Please, be silent, Aleutian."

And there Locke waited for Archimedes to now do what he was told.

And the fire-ant did, slowly but surely, he pivoted around the middle finger of Aleutian's encrusted hand and brought his eyes up to the lad's...and waited.

"My son..." Locke's swelling throat cut him off from the question he was inflicting upon himself to ask. Never mind it was previously put forth to his son two days before by Ian St. John's son, Geoffrey, but he had to plunge the knife into both of their souls to ask again...to take the lives of their feelings, and the road they have traveled for so far and in such a short span of time, and risk all the accomplishments of bonding with one another just for the sake of the forsaken. For those whom were being murdered as they stared down one another. "...how many people have you killed, my son?"

What happened next, all the movements that took place, happened just as fast as his heart turned a beat, like a page, in a book of utter sorrow. Archy's sudden turn in shock. Aleutian's weaken legs driving him to step back, like the question had sailed at him like a blunt object.

"Dad!" he quivered in protest, taking an added step backwards and relaxing the tension in his hand. His mouth trembled as his next words seem to fall with it. "Why ask me that?"

Locke took in a lung full of air, listened to his head and released it through his nostrils, and took in another, releasing it as a pleading whisper, "Please, answer me."

"What's the point in this," voiced Archimedes in the harsh tone that Locke surely thought Aleutian would use.

"Not a point, dear friend, but a stance," returned the elder echidna in a reposed, but bloodless voice.

It was Aleutian's cry, however, that seemed to silence the world.

"Don't ask me this." Locke darted his eyes to see his son's glistening in the light of the faltering day. "Why do you want to know?"

Locke let his brows convey his sincerity. "It's not me now who needs to know, Aleutian, but Archimedes."

"And why, mate?" came the fire-ant's vivid response.

But Locke never let the answer slip from his lips. Instead, he crossed his arms around his chest and let his hands find shade inside the excess, sagging fabric of his sleeves, his eyes repeating the question to Aleutian.

A long moment passed with the slight breeze that curved its way through the open spaces of the surrounding trees. It was long enough for Aleutian to remember his previous answer.

"I've never counted, nor will I start to. I did what was asked of me, and I did what was needed to be done. Like I told Geoffrey the other day, father–it's what separates us from the others."

"And please tell me those three are now a forgotten memory," Locke prayed in his head, and silent from Archimedes. "Was it of last resort, son? Did you have to take lives because there was no other alternative?"

Aleutian's answer was quick and to the point, in hopes to chase another. "Yes!"

"It doesn't matter, Locke," Archy protested through the air. "He is with us, and he needs to change his ways to the scruples your family has lived by for countless generations."

"It ends with him, mentor," Locke decried in a cold voice. "It ends with both of my sons."

The silence that followed could have been killed by a drop of a molecule of water.

"From what I see, Archy, we have come to the last resort. My son is trying to find his way back and is struggling to do so, my people are being slaughtered with me feeling helpless to do anything, and much worse, your people are suffering as well." Locke bit down on his rage as he took a breath. "And you mean to tell me that the tools we have at our disposal disavows all we stood for, even when we, as ourselves, are being murdered?"

"But it's a dark art, Locke..."

"And our enemy isn't a ray of sunshine, either," Aleutian put forth, his midrange baritone voice being flexed to its fullest degree.

"We have other alternatives, Aleutian," hissed the fire-ant, turning completely around to address the young Guardian. "You don't have to snuff people out in their sleep to achieve victory, lad. We can teach you these alternatives. Your kind has shown they can learn a great many things in the shortest span of time."

Aleutian's eyes honed a vast belief in himself at his father's mentor. "But it comes with experience of things we do know, Archimedes."

Locke stepped forward to his son with affirming eyes. "Precisely, my son."

Caught between the two, Archimedes alined his shoulders, like putting a wedge against the sandwich of the two Guardians who were pressing on him. "I still don't approve," he murmured softly, cautiously so his words wouldn't get repealed and inflict serious harm in return. As soon as he felt safe–Locke's voice came at him like a dull dagger.

"And I could care less. Our people need us, and if he has to retouch a few old ways so he can learn ours–then so be it, Mentor."

"Why can't I use the Ninjutsu to begin with?" Aleutian shot in, frowning a scowling look at the still fire-ant standing on his fist.

"It's not for you to judge, but do," Archimedes replied, doing his best to recover from Locke's assaulting words.

"Archy." The fire-ant turned to face the drawn eyes of his former pupil. "The time for that principle has died with the thousands we've failed. My patience to stay true to who we are has fallen by the wayside to stop the travesty that should've been stopped a long time ago. If we need to resort to unscrupulous acts to stop those who lack 'em, then I'm all for it. We use what we have, and then we can foster what we need to achieve." Locke lifted his gaze to his son, letting his disdain dissolve to caring. "Do you believe in this, Aleutian?"

He didn't let a moment slip by, matching his father's expression, "I've always have."

"Then it's settled," came Locke's charged, bass voice, returning his instilled eyes to Archimedes, and who he saw was about to make his final objection. He wouldn't let it spill into the air. "And if you can't bear this, and try to come between me and my sons, in anyway from what I want for them–" his eyes narrowed, bracing himself for what could be the spark of a third war he quite possibly could never win, "–then you will no longer be the guiding ear to each of my sons, and if so be it, their own children."

He stood stiff but inward, he was beside himself in a void of emptiness, his mind approaching a total lapse of all logic as he tried with great effort to recollect himself. Why Aleutian felt this way was beyond him; watching his very father tell the one being who has trained and guided him, his father before him, and his sons after him tell, him he had no future in their upbringing because of a fear that had already existed. That had already come true, but not in the dark-light his own kind had feared would come. Instead, how Locke saw his son, the nightmare was a lesson in balance...a lesson who stood before them looking for a way back to the better light he had caused to bloom with his actions. Aleutian knew of the harrowing vision the fire-ants had feared with such training. He had seen it. He had done it. But the difference between staying in the light, or succumbing to the darkness was ultimately the real test in all of life. Character. Character, and how to hold on to it when Life delivers the worst blows to one's own soul. He could've stayed in the shadows of his despair, himself on the brink of becoming the one thing his friends would have hunted for. But there had been an unforeseeable aid–like a hidden note to cheat the test–that Life had all but forgotten but seemed to allow. A little girl to stroke his heartstrings. A little girl he was afraid for in the split second it took him to relax his finger off the trigger that would have made him the very demon that would take her father away from her. A father Aleutian was deprived of becoming.

If misery loves company, then compassion must thrive for loneliness. That was how he saw his seclusion for the over two years. He had compassion for others because he didn't want to spread his misery on them. With what friends he has left, luckily misery wasn't contagious.

But today, of all days, he was gladly giving the company to a certain fire-ant who was much like him; beside himself in bewilderment. Archimedes was just like him in the pose of solid stone, only Aleutian's drifting hand giving animation to his instillment. He could feel Aleutian's warming sympathy touch him, thawing his muscles and relaxing his eyes and tensioned mouth beyond his clipping jaws to help send the only thought he could conceive to his once pupil...and hopefully, now still, friend.

"I'm sorry, Locke," he said in the faintest of whispers in his head. "In my quest to lead by example, I was standing by my duties...and not by my friends and allies."

As his words touched Locke's part of the brain that echoed them into sound, another part of him told him to smile with guilt that he had to do so much harm to the people he cared for just to set a tone of reason and renewed principles. "I know, Archy...tis why I had to be so forceful. Life comes over duty...and duty comes over life. It was something you taught me."

A renewed surge boiled through his tiny veins, twisting the fire-ant around to address his now affirming eyes to someone he had failed so long ago. "Is all still forgiven, Aleutian? Is all forgiven that I held my voice because of my bond to duty and principle?"

With welling eyes, Aleutian let a single nod convey his absolution to the one who was the soul reason why he was still alive to give it. "It always has," he said with his glistening voice.

Under an emotional, cringing face–one that neither Guardian had seen–Archimedes returned the nod. "Very well." Then he turned his attention to the box.

"Don't look at it as what it is," he explained, his voice struggling to come back to one of a teacher. "Think of it as a diamond. Can you see it?"

"I do," Aleutian affirmed solidly, finidng his eyes dotting at the corners, feeling a lost memory reoccurring to him as he did.

"Good, then put yourself on a point. Locke?" The elder echidna looked on to the fire-ant, "start with his blocks, then his strikes, then his kicks...then back again."

A shallow nod, his face molding into that of a fighter...yes, his son needed to retouch that visage as well.

"Very well..."

"Goodnight, he's getting–"

The reason why Sonic couldn't complete his thought was due to a driving fist he hadn't felt since he went seeking sanctuary on the Floating Island with Ducy, and finding it was a bad idea when Knuckles came out fighting. Or for that matter, when they had duked it out in their super forms.

He swore he felt his spit eject from his crushed lips when the echidna's fist smashed dead-center between his upper and lower jaw. He literally swore when he couldn't keep his balance from the sudden throbbing pain and change in inertia that sent him to the dusty floor, the puff of air he spent from his lungs sent a good hand throw of the discarded particles in the space between the floor and the rafters.

Face down he laid, contemplating how much more time he would let Knuckles savor this one shot victory before rolling over to spring up and give his coup de grace surprise of revenge. He didn't have to when he heard the echidna's tittering voice over him.

"Hey Sonic, you're not gonna take that, are ya'?"

He rolled over and let his emerald eyes dictate his answer to a pair of gloating, purple hues, feeling a smirk overtake his face. He had the line to say. It was so close to the tip of his tongue. To bad it had died stillborn when a clarinet voice chirped over his thoughts.

"Mio, zhinkz hiz taking it lying down, Knuckles."

The Guardian tried his best not to expel all the air in his lungs to laugh when Sonic patiently, eyes wide in fury, rolled his head over to Antoine, who was still leaning against the wall, one pupil looking through the minuscule space between two boards, the other winking victory with his smug face. "Chuckles," came Sonic's harping, however low voice–mostly for the situation, the other for dramatics. He didn't have to stray an eye an incredible distance to see Knuckles' expression fall to one of total disdain. "You're nothing but a three foot-seven, bad example." And like the lightning he was known to duplicate just for mere amusement, he throttled his right leg to Knuckles' left, and swiped the echidna off his feet.

It was a gracious thing the children were still singing a full line of la-la-la's, for their sweet voices covered the Guardian's gasp of surprise. The strike was forcefully enough to make him tilt over to the direction of gravity, giving his right hand the slightest angle it needed to shoot for the wooden floor. Flexing every molecule of muscle fiber, and adding the chaos energies that spread so abundantly through his body and blood since birth, Knuckles propelled himself further over into a one-handed cartwheel, pushed himself up when his feet, body, and eyes were aligned with the straightness of his arm, and flew a short distance to the row of benches beside him.

His feet tattered the decaying wood when they landed with his full weight. With an even spread to his stance, Knuckles lifted his arms up, mittens into fists, and narrowed his whole face it seemed to Sonic. "Nice try, Swine."

Shrugging the barb off with a snuff, Sonic climbed to his feet the only way he does things, fast, and stood directly in front of Knuckles. "Either you're getting faster, or I'm getting slower."

A brow-full of enlightenment brightened the echidna's already extremely mirthful face. "Try both and you might get somewhere, for once."

Sonic bobbled his head with an under-bite of chatter, "Maybe you might get somewhere–maybe you might get somewhere." Then he let a snook, minus his hand-placement to his nose to complete it, fly off to the unmoved echidna.

A harsher sigh filled the already boiling schoolhouse. It came from a certain coyote across the way. "When weez getz back, I'm filing moi requezt to Zally zhatz I never work with you two a'gain."

Sonic helped a mischievous look along. "Geez, Ant. Why all the saber rattling?"

"Maybe cause we told him to ditch the real one," Knuckles chimed in under a fierce smile. The return look from Antoine was more than scathing, but with a degree of absolute malice that trickled a small notion of guilt through Knuckles' bloodstream that said he should have shut his mouth and let Sonic take the full credit. But it was small, never hampering his mocking countenance.

And here he let his eyes seek out Sonic's, sparking a hard, snickering gigged laugh between them when their two expressions met.

Seriousness finally came back into the fray. The laughter was replaced by their silence...by the children's singing on the other side. The song had changed, nothing upbeat, nor should there be, but a gentle night song. That period wouldn't approach for at least another five or so hours, however, Knuckles let the current strafe of events call his eyes to Sonic, tracing a box around him. The tips of the hedgehog's red and white shoes were like the compass points to a northen-border. But where Knuckles' concerns lye were the points that turned the box into a diamond. Those were his marks that he needed to be on, changing his fight from a straight-on endeavor to a ballet of angles that was designed to throw off his opponent and denied them the comfort zone to deliver full-force punches and strikes. It delayed their reaction time and had them cross their bodies to make swings, thus making them partial sitting ducks. But in all reality, the fastest swine alive with spines would be out of the box that was, in his case, constructed more like glass to throw the whole concept out the window, with him as well.

Nevertheless, it was a good starting point.

Knuckles leaped off the bench and landed flat footed close to Sonic's left side. At the same time, he sent his right mitt hurdling towards the hedgehog's head.

Aleutian blocked his father's incoming fist faster than he could realize his forearm had connected to it. A moment was not spared, not even the twinge feeling of Locke's protruding knuckles striking his muscle diverted him, when he swung his free fist into an uppercut that landed somewhere between his father's rib cage and abdomen. He felt his assailing blow push in the soft, meaty portion of his dad's stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and his body backwards.

Through it all, Locke wondered how he kept his balance, skirting away some but keeping his eyes glued to his son. "Better," he said, working hard to catch his breath, however smiling. "It's working for you."

And it was; not of it being a standard technique, but rather that the box was starting to excavate past skills while the fracas continued on. No more did Aleutian seem to possess uncertainty within himself of what he was trying to reacquire, or of the idea to please Locke. He was becoming sure of himself, letting his brain rely on his reaction and sharpening it in the same fold. And thus, so were his maneuvers. It was the most evident thing throughout most of the day where Locke didn't have to scratch the surface so harshly to see.

But there was one thing that still wasn't coming out, and he needed to show this to Aleutian.

He hopped straight on at his son, sending a zipping fist towards his birthright. Even with picking out Aleutian's thoughts, his son's counter still came as a surprise. Possibly it was the pain when the younger Guardian pounced just to the left, grabbing his father's assailing fist in mid-flight with his left hand, backing the maneuver with his right by grabbing the thumb from the top, rolled the now halted fist over, extending his dad's arm straight at the elbow and nudging off balance enough to set up the next shot.

Locke didn't have to pick out Aleutian's thoughts to see what was coming; he already saw his son's left hand release his overturned fist while decrying bared teeth. His reaction was about as lightning as his son's barreling elbow, the protruding bone like a dull spear aiming at his throat, his free hand thrusting up, catching Aleutian's strike. Letting the movement become the weighted pendulum, Locke griped the now betraying limb that pushed him backwards, returning him to his stronger stance, slide out from underneath Aleutian's range and conquered strike, tightened his right forearm, and lightly smashed his left first straight into his intended target.

He let Aleutian fall, watching him attempt to roll out of it, but through it all, he settled to the leafy ground instead.

Aleutian seized his white crest with his hand, like trying to force the pain back into him. The protruding knuckles Locke had dug into him still resonated their presence when the blow was long gone. His eyes drifted up as far as they could go while keeping his head low to breathe away the throbbing ache.

"Our enemies have changed, son," Locke said, almost like he was trying to reiterate something. "There are more steel skinned opponents than soft skin and fur."

"I know," Aleutian struggled to say, more out of misunderstanding than the continuing pain.

Locke shook his head. "I'm afraid you don't. That pain you feel, if I'd gone all the way, you would have been bleeding, much less suffering a few broken bones." He pumped a clutched hand straight out to Aleutian, delivering his next point with it. "These are our weapons," he explained forcefully, stroking a finger over the twin spikes at the end of his fist. "There is a green hedgehog running around this world by the name of Scourge. He has two long scars running down his chest under his black leather jacket." Locke saw right off this got Aleutian's attention. "You're loving father put them there with these."

Aleutian took his hand away from his chest and examined it. A new light seemed to shine on his mother's gifts. He felt around the protruding knuckles, this time, however, touching them with a different feeling expunging from his body. "Okay?..."

Locke could feel it within his son: a form of realization, but on the same token, lost.

"Stand-up, boy" he instructed softly.

Aleutian got to his feet, Locke meeting him with his hands taking both of his son's. He crushed the fingers into fists. Then, he pushed the knuckles of Aleutian's fingers down, dragging the spikes forward in a scraping motion. "This is where you need to come away from the Ninjutsu and focus on something you might find belittling."

"What's that?" Aleutian asked, studying his father's hands teaching his own.

"The art of brawling."

Aleutian drifted a sincere smile to his father. "Shouldn't Knuckles be teaching me that instead of you?"

"Yeah, but he isn't here," chuckled Locke before turning Aleutian around with a guiding arm across his shoulder.

He lead him to the same tree his back had met, it seemed, countless times in the course of the current lessons. "Remember how you punched the face of the mountain yesterday to climb up it?" he asked under quizzical eyes. Aleutian only nodded, taking a longing bead at the bark. "It's the same principle, but you want to follow through in your strike."

"Hit-and-stick," Aleutian commented dryly; the stabbing wound from the SWATbot armor that albeit was gone–thanks to Doctor Quack–still ruptured under his skin and fur when the thought of his hammer fist at the marble counter top shot the pieces back to his ravaged life and made the old wounds worse.

"Correct, but you need to add another phrase to that thought: drive-and-scrape."

Locke centered himself in front of the tree and sped his fist towards it, driving his twin spiked knuckles deep into the bark while following through with a down stroke that tore through the flank of the tree. Chips of bark and wood speckled the ground with Aleutian taking in all of it. Stepping back, Locke looked to Aleutian and said, "Hit–stick–drive–and–scrape."

"Don't count out strength, dad."

A raised, waving finger–actually two from his three fingered gloves. "Not so." Again, he took Aleutian's right fist as his teaching tool. "I know I, and quite possibly Lopper, had taught you to strike with the flatness of your fingers. Right?" Aleutian nodded, Locke running his thumb over the top of his fingers. "This is where it changes. Your knuckles are now the placement of your strike. Don't worry about breaking your hand, because our weapons will take the full brunt of it, and our hands, as we're from the Bloodline of Edmund, are strengthen as we are born and matured. We can take a lot compared to some of the average Mobians, or even humans."

Aleutian noted the slight distaste in his father's voice, but choose to ignore the subject matter. In fact, it hurt him just from the impression he felt come from his father. "And our strength?" he asked coyly. Locke looked on at him for a moment, inserting his eyes as an insisting drive to bring out more of the meaning of the question. Aleutian didn't like the feeling and almost abandoned the whole thought all together. But things were changing...and they have always needed to be changed. "I started to become aware of my hidden strength when I turned seventeen." His head sagged some, Locke looking on somberly. "I couldn't explain it, dad. I was lifting things that three days earlier I was struggling to drag across the ground. You know those bookshelves?" Locke nodded under an increasing smile. "They were along both walls of our basement when Lopper gave us the place. Emi-La wanted me to tighty the house up and I needed a workbench..."

A hard swallow showed Locke the past was starting to take their toll on his son. The drifting off of his voice was evidence to that equation. "You don't have to go on, son. I know what you're getting at."

Aleutian shook his head, his eyes reading the ground. Like he was ready his memories from it. "I thought me and Emi-La were going to have to take all those flippin books off the shelves, move them, then reorganize everything," he continued, his voice welling in wetness, but his eyes conveying a smile that soon infected his lips. "A day later I figured for craps-and-giggles I'd give it another try." Aleutian held his breath for a second, his eyes suddenly widening. "I moved them all to where I wanted them–where I thought they were best–when Emi-La came down to grab me for dinner that she made for me to celebrate."

"Celebrate what?" Locke asked warmly.

"Oh," Aleutian stammered, "our anniversary of us in the house and the hard work we put into it. I had yet to make the power-ring generator to replace the small nuclear power unit that kept us up all night.

"But you know what she said to me, dad?" Locke felt flattered from Aleutian's smile; the pain within him about her was starting to heal. Memories held that kind of elixir. "'Aleutian, can you move them in rows and not stacks,' she said to me. I just gawked at her, dad. It was all I could do."

A moment passed with a squinched smile ebbing at Locke's lips. "What did you do after dinner."

It was like he had no choice in the matter and had accepted it. That was what his tone reflected:

"Oh, I moved them. But dad!...my arms, my upper-body; nothing changed in muscle tone. When I trained I would–noticeable–but the power that I had didn't reflect what my body was showing I was capable of." Then he squinted his eyes in curiosity. "Come to think of it, Knuckles looks the same way I had at one time."

With this notion Aleutian scoured his body with his emotionless eyes. "What would Emi-La say about me now? What would she say about all this?" he seemed to mutter under his breath. And for awhile he stood there, his muscles and visage slowing encrusting themselves in a stone of dwelling.

When Locke stepped closer to him, the mortar had somewhat hardened. "Son?" he spoke softly.

It didn't break his fossilized eyes, slowly bleeding out tears.

"I want her back, dad," he cried in a whisper, his stare hardening for the worst of him.

"And she wants you," Locke pressed home, rubbing Aleutian's face, tracing the long scare with his thumb. "What I saw in your dream was that she wants you back."

"I know, dad." A tear traced the other side of his face. "And she does...and so do you.

"But I still want--"

"Don't dwell, Aleutian," Locke said gently, taking a hand at Aleutian's shoulder. "C'mon,."

Turning him around, he urged him towards the tree under a caring push. "Strike the tree," he said, "strong hand first."

"What did the tree ever do to me?" Aleutian begged.

Locke was taken aback with the comment, holding in a scolding comment, deciding it best that he think it over. Shacking his head, he placed his hand at his son's back and guided his other at the tree. "Think of it as what it is going to do for you. Now STRIKE!"

On command, Aleutian shot his right fist at the tree, landing his knuckles the first time on the bark...but forgetting to scrape.

Locke walked around to the other side of him. "Do you know what you did wrong?"

"I didn't scrape."

"And you didn't keep your other arm up for defense. Do these as if you were engaged in a fight."

Aleutian didn't have to level his left arm, Locke doing it for him, but placing it in a different stance, a different style: leveled at his throat, his elbow cocked down, his fingers balled in resolve. He punched again, driving his hand dead on at the tree, thrusting the spikes down into the tree before recoiling it back.

"Better! Again!"

And he did, firing it out and back, hitting the tree and holding the strike not even a half a second, but long enough that if it were a living, breathing person made of flesh and bone, they would just as likely tumble.

Another punch, another dig into the park. Pieces of the tree started falling to the ground as he continued. Grunts soon dispersed from his mouth.

"Now jab with your left and strike harder with your right. Make blocks out of the left when you bring it back."

And so Aleutian did. It started slow, a left punch, drawing it back to work on technique rather than speed, bringing it closer to his face, sending his right fist out as a follow up. After three sets of this he progressed in speed; his arms flowing better like a whipping wind.

"Okay, double tap with your jab and deliver your right punch as a hook."

His father's voice was feeding him now, almost joining him in the hollow anger they both had for this nonthreatening tree. He worked the jabs, placing them in different parts of the tree's bark before throwing his right arm around and shooting his fist at the flanks, making sure he pulled his hand back, taking some bark with him. It was a rib-cage shot. And if it felt anything of pain, Aleutian was sure that his opponent would have been balling over from it.

The more he progressed, Locke instructing him, and in some cases showing him a different way to block and strike, Aleutian could see more and more of the yellow fibers that made up the tree. He stopped for an instant to caress his now aching hands. His gloves were sticky, the amber color of sap staining the heavy, white fabric.

"Does it hurt?" Locke observed.

"Yeah..."

"Imagine if you didn't have them on. They are heavy for a reason. You enemy will still feel the full force of your anger, but the layers of cushioning that were put into the gloves protect our hands from scrapes and, Aurora forbid, breaking our fingers."

"Really could have used these when I killed that SWATbot that took my lock."

"I'm not going to address that, son," Locke frowned. "Now, keep striking. Much faster this time!"

What was a period of burning time in the already stifling schoolhouse and of warming ligaments and muscles had now become a full fledged fight. Antoine watched on, unmoved, and quite honestly to his own soul, irritated that at such a time like it was, an old rivalry of ego had become rekindled. He should be laughing. But no, the kids outside singing held him to his silence. He should've by now put things to a stop, not looking through the tops of his eyes, his snout to the floor, arms tightly crossed over his chest. But no. The last deck he saw came from Sonic, smashing Knuckles' muzzle to the other end of next year, crashing him to the floor.

It was a wonder he didn't make a thud when he rolled on his chest.

"Good one, Blue," Knuckles gingerly remarked over his working lungs. He pushed down on the floor with his hands, arching his back to squeeze out the nitrogen bubbles in his spine.

"Hey, at least you're getting the workout. Not enough room for me here to shake out all my coming pains."

Knuckles brought his head around to see Sonic's mocking sneer. Knowing him it was a meaningful smile. "Oh, c'mon. A sap like you to take a walk around the track to get stretched out?"

"If Echidna's can have trade secret's–why can't I?" Sonic jeered, just a little too proud of himself.

On this, Knuckles climbed back to his green, tan and yellow shoes. "Give me a break, Sonic!"

The hedgehog never broke from his snide posture. Neither did his face. "Arm or leg."

Knuckles had to smirk, stiffening his left leg on the wooden floor as he readied every muscle fiber in his torso to spin on his command. "If you can catch it!" he tittered before launching his right shoe at Sonic's rib-cage.

Here it was that the blue hedgehog's face finally changed into one of expecting great pain.

Aleutian rolled what seemed like forever, but in reality, it was two turns from the time his right arm hit the leafy forest floor, to the time he stopped dead on his back. The blue sky for a split second vanished into an array of colors that he would have felt spellbound in their splendor of textures if the pain racking at the walls of his ribs weren't causing them to leap at his eyes. The aches were like pinpoints of cities on a map. Six in all, his hand wrapping around their collective spots where the heavy bolt-laces of his father's boots had marked them. His back didn't fair far better. His father's toes still managed to find their marks as well.

"W-what was...that!?" he coarsely breathed. He was still looking to the sky for answers while trying to hold the pain in.

"That was a kick you did not see coming," Locke said under a deep tone. He stepped over his son, casting a long shadow over a longer face.

"Yea, one that about broke my ribs all over again!"

Locke stood quiet, drawing his eyes on his son. Aleutian didn't move either, only moaning from the pain he couldn't get over.

"Come on," Locke said after a moment, reaching his hand down. "I know it hurts."

"Don't, dad," retorted Aleutian, receiving his father's offered hand and picking himself off the ground. For the seconds he had his feet feeling the ground, he wobbled timidly, almost numb to his surroundings just before he started walking, his hands clutched at his left side. Walking away.

"Don't give up, Aleutian," Locke calmly said.

"I'm not," came Aleutians subtle response. "I'm trying to walk this off." A pace or two later he stopped and said over his shoulder:

"How did you deliver that, dad?"

Locke let his stride show determination as he walked to his son. When he approached, he kneeled down to Aleutian's shoes and placed his hand over the tops. "It's not the delivery but the placement. Our laces do more than just hold are shoes tightly to our feet." He saw Aleutian's eyes become wide in understanding, though he was still forcing down air. "Come here, I'll show you."

Following his father back to the small clearing and back to the same, however, now brutally chipped away tree, Aleutian watched him snap his right leg out with a hard pivot and collided the top of his boot to the side of the tree. His ankles where his metal laces were also impacted it, leaving six noticeable impression in the bark when his foot came back down. And just for good measure, Locke did it once more for Aleutian.

"Can you still kick?" Locke asked after turning around. Like the question ever hit Aleutian's mind from the word go, much less anything else he was taking from his father.

"Geez, let me think on that, dad," he grunted, eyeing the tree for where he hoped he could land his foot. Anchoring his left foot, he pivoted his torso around in the hardest slingshot he could manage and propelled his right foot in the air. Something in his thigh tightened. Like a soaked rope it felt, halting the elevation of his leg to lower than he really wished to go, smashing the tree hardly half his height with not the top of his foot, but straining with his toes.

"Nope, that's not going to work, son," said Locke under a half mirthful, half foreboding voice. When Aleutian turned, his face about dissolved all of that work on his.

"You're telling me, pop. That junk hurts...second thought, what doesn't?"

No matter how much glower Aleutian had on his expression, no matter how much there was between them both, it was on a slight of hand to make them smile at each other in the end. There was some sincerity in it that made Locke fall back to something they both needed. "Time we give it up."

Aleutian shook his head, his visage changing like a cloud floating over the sun. "I'm not ready to quit."

"We're not, Aleutian," Locke offered. "Think of it as...as a time to reflect how far we need to go tomorrow. We learned the way of the path, now we need to find our way to conquer it without suffering tiredness."

"And when defeat is necessary?" Aleutian added, bowing his head with it.

Locke wavered his eyes, much less his truer smile. "For it will make us stronger to turn down the next."

Aleutian felt something echo in his father's stare at him. Something he now realized he had wished to have felt a long time ago. He couldn't describe it, nor did he want to. To add science to the meaning would kill it, not understanding instead was the comfort he felt with it, hoping he never would for the rest of his days. He closed his eyes to the vacancy of his mind at last. Defeat...the hardest lesson for him to accept, and yet, the easiest choice he has faced. When one has tasted victory for so long that he has forgotten about what it felt to lose, the price, the bitter taste of it was more than a crushing blow, it was a period of losing one's self.

The way he did.

"Okay," he said, softly from his heart. "We give up for today." Tensing his shoulders, he stood up straighter, leveling a sincere look of confidence at his father. "What about tomorrow?"

Locke let a sigh purge from his lips. "Tomorrow brings on my worries. I need to get back to Angel Island. Who knows what Kommissar has done since I've been away, much less what I need to undo. But I can happily stay with you for tomorrow, and the next day if so be it." An affirming nod sealed the deal from Aleutian. "Then it is settled. Now, my question for you Aleutian is: can you still build a fire at the same rate as yesterday?"

Aleutian's smile was eager. "You bet."

"Very well," Locke returned, "let us journey a few more steps, perhaps a better clearing for the stars. By then we might be just a bit more hungry to chase away our soreness."

Nodding once more, the younger Guardian turned to the northwest and gazed at the coming twilight on the horizon. "This way will be fine...it always has."

Knuckles came around, his tight left fist bearing for the head of Sonic. But he stopped dead from his half moon circle in the dust. Sonic had done so as well, saving the echidna from a bawling blow to the kidneys with a knife hand. It was now a standoff with narrowed eyes. Breaths were exchanged. But still they did not engage each other.

The singing had stopped.

But they could hear knocks from the outside, shuffling of feet on the dirt ground, small, tiny voices coming through the cracks:

"Thank-you...oh, thank you so much..."

Sonic brought his hand up and cupped it inside Knuckles' mitt, squeezing it hard under his determined green eyes. The echidna only smiled with glee.

"Ready to make that phone call, Rad?"

"Let's hope they accept collect," Knuckles returned with a emotionless drive in is tone.

A lasting nod with a face full of mirth. "Hey, Ant...fire-up ole binary-curves there, and put the mondo speed to it. Let's get some friends to shake up this place!"

He could go to sleep with the gentle rocking. But it was so hard not to for Ell-Tee. Was it the cold floor? The impatient pacing of Vickers? Or was it even duty? To fall asleep on watch was the worst dereliction a soldier could commit. To sleep meant that no one was protected from an intruder, an ambush, or even from themselves. He knew that all too well. Once he caught a watchmen chasing a dream. He found him slumped on his rifle, body in place and arms tucked under him to keep warm from the frigid night air. What a picturesque sight he found. A camera could have kept that symbol of pushing on for the fight. That one photo that a mother could weep over and call up courage with to keep the fight going on the home-front. It was just a shame that the home-front was the main front.

It was a shame that Ell-Tee had to make the poor trouper an everlasting symbol to everyone else. It was a shame orders had to see the poor boy die.

"I have a request, Ell-Tee," chimed Petty Officer Trent, happily breaking the Legionnaires' train of thought.

Ell-Tee rose his head, his locks uncoiling from the floor some as he leaned his back further on the bulkhead. "Make it quick."

"We get chairs for the crew on the bridge, sir. Unlike you muscle inclined Echidnian, my feet and back start bringing on the pain after about, oh, six hours of standing."

"Noted," Ell-Tee said dryly. "You know that means Field Marshal Stenson gets first dibbs of what we can find? You also know that means a mission for me to go out and hunt for it too, right?"

Trent Shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

Looking at his robotic hand, Ell-Tee let a smirk slide across his face to the other side of the bridge were Trent was standing, peeking over the small console that hid him. "Tell me, Petty Officer...ever held a rifle before?"

"Wait a nautical minute here," chirped Trent.

"Hey, if you want a chair to rest your tail, you have to go get it."

"But I'm not up to your kind of combat," came the brown furred echidna in the peacoat.

Vickers' voice was more on the lines of a snicker. "Guess who's gonna stand for the rest of his life."

The frown Trent laced the room with was the end all of the request he offered. Ell-Tee rolled his head as he smiled, stretching his neck with an invisible strain only he would know about. "Did you have fun Vickers?" he asked after a short time. The wind had kicked up some, blowing fresh salty air inside the bridge through the open hatch-door.

"If you call what we did on Albion work, than yeah, sure," replied the Corporal in earnest. "I just can't imagine living there, though."

"Oh?" came El-Tee rather hastily.

Finding a spot on the back of his head, Vickers cringed his face in thought. "I–I don't like the idea of living in a place where I can't be apart of something that can save my own skin or even others."

"Others?" huffed Trent as he glided over to the radar station. "Since when did you start caring about others?"

"Since he's been saving his own kind, Petty Officer," said Ell-Tee from what seemed like afar. "He's always cared. I've always cared."

"But we aren't your people, Lieutenant," said Trent balefully. "For that matter, I can't associate your people with mine."

The words hurt him, his face showed at least that much. "Petty Officer, do we not have dreads, such as you?" Ell-Tee asked, his voice surprisingly disarming.

"If they're not replaced, then yes."

"Okay," waved on Ell-Tee, "then do we have fur? Do we have tails? Do we feel?"

A slight frown, like he ate something grotesque. "All in retrospect, Ell-Tee."

"And how do you come up with that?" Ell-Tee festered, tilting his head, mostly to see Trent by the other echidna crewman, who was now watching them and not his station. For that matter most eyes were on them.

"Simple, it's how our outlooks on life are different. You people see that technology can greatly improve our lives, but how we see you and your pursuit shows us torment, torture. Shoot, down right misery. For us, we share the world as how we see it, sir."

"But excuse me, Mr. Hypocrite, but how does a T.V., lightning fast cars, and plasma rifles of your own, show harmony with the world and a weapon against us?"

The effect Ell-Tee was wanting came harder than he figured. Trent was dumbstruck, baffled as his mouth met the floor.

"If you really want my opinion, Trent," continued Ell-Tee, letting formalities slide, "Echidna to Echidna and not some technological pursuing zealot, as you see me as, but I really think all of this will come to a head when the war is over–"

"Do you really think that?" the Petty Officer asked unmoved.

Ell-Tee shook his head, "I do. You see, Petty Officer, this will show our people–and they are our people–that we can flourish through technology, and that our past mistakes could have been avoided by misunderstanding of the things we possess, and from ourselves. We do care, Trent. We are the light from the darkness you all plunged yourselves into when you asked the Guardians to round up all your stuff, and in essence, lowered our people from the greatest civilization on Mobius to a second rate race. Look how Albion has turned out. We could have been on their pace of things, but hopefully not at their level of pacifism."

"You know that wouldn't have happened," interjected Trent scornfully.

"What? The war, or the flourish of our kind?"

Again, Trent was stumped, but this time he was trying to reason with his outburst.

"Trent, if we didn't care, we would've had Eggman destroy ever last bit of you. He follows in lock-step like us for technology. But where we fail to see eye-to-eye with him is when he started slaughtering our own people. We know where we come from. The question is, do you?"

Silence spread through the air finely.

"And her?" Trent questioned, his head locking forward like his arms had unwatched across his chest.

Ell-Tee let his thoughts come carefully. There was still no way around it. "Kommissar will be Kommissar. I can't deal with her, and neither can Stenson."

His reply was to the window. "Then we will still be at war once we're done with this one. I'm sorry Ell-Tee," Trent said, eerily calm, "but even though our relationship at this stage has been great, and even promising, she will always be there as the fork in the road, and I cannot look at you with the comfort of friendship...knowing that it will eventually be the death of me."

BLIP!

Ell-Tee relaxed his head on the wall. "One day, Trent, I hope that can be dispelled. I really do. Until then, I have to side with you're point of view. I too can't look at you either as a friend... that even as an Echidnian. It's a shame we have to be afraid of cutting each other's throats."

"Sir, radar contact," reported Trent, his tone reflecting duty of a suddenness that seemed to crush Ell-Tee. He wondered if the Petty Officer actually heard his last plea.

Climbing to his feet, dreads and all, he made his way through the gentle rocking of the ship to the console Trent was hovering around with the other brown echidna. When he peered over Trent's left shoulder and let his hand find a place on the mantle to steady himself over, his face was washed in the sallow green the round screen projected. The sweeping bar was just approaching the aft the ship. To the left of the dot that signified the center of the Hawking, a lone green blotch marked the edge of the circumference of the screen. It was far off; two kilometers at best from Ell-Tee's judgement. But anything in this world was never far off.

"Vickers, get on the port side with a set of binoculars," Ell-Tee advised evenly. There was no need to shout out orders just yet. Everything still needed to be played to the coolest degree.

The line passed over the same spot the contact blotch was over...nothing echoed back.

Ell-Tee was now holding his breath. What could he do? What could he order? A run through battle-stations was a very sincere option, but one he was reluctant to exercise. Lar-Na was on his mind. And so was her slumber with Stenson.

"Anything, Vickers?" he asked, turning his head to the door.

"It's a soup out here, sir!"

He growled at the screen, shoving off of it before making his way to the outside, beside Vickers. With a snatch, he grabbed the binoculars and peered through them. The stunned expression Vickers had was whipped away when he saw Ell-Tee's serious look scour upon his face, his arms sweeping with every turn of his head at the sky. It was more than pitch-black, it was a suffocating vale of fog and darkness. One that now tightened both of their chests. Even the night vision wasn't cutting through it.

Another sweep, another bolt through his chest. Ell-Tee was cursing the silent air, saved from the engines thundering away down below, and the churning water of the sea. "I'm not falling for ghost echoes this time, Corporal, so don't say it."

"Me either–"

A scream ripped through the air. Not of organic but of shrieking engines shooting over their heads. Ell-Tee for the moment he moved with the sound caught the heat signature of the twin afterburners leaping out the back of something the blur orbs hid from the night vision, following them as they disappeared over the bow of the ship and what he could tell, turning back from the direction it came from.

"BATTLE-STATIONS! Tell the gunners to go in radar targeting mods."

"Will it matter?" shouted Vickers, "the thing's going to be flying below it!"

Ell-Tee snapped his head from the binoculars with teeth bearing his outburst of rage. "Don't question me just yet, Corporal. Just do it now!"

Vickers nodded his head with a tightened face and bolted down the steps.

Putting the binoculars back at his eyes, Ell-Tee seemed to reach back with his head: "Petty Officer, pass down the order, and start pouring on the speed. Right full rudder!"

"Roger that! Helmsman, right full rudder! Engines to all ahead full. Gunners to their stations."

Another sweep turned up nothing in the phantom sky. "Any radar contact?"

"Yes, sir...but its moving away still–almost out of range," shouted back the now breathless Petty Officer.

Grunting at the top of his lungs, Ell-Tee stepped away from the railing and brought it to himself to step back inside. He almost hit the radar station at a running pace. What his eyes descried when his hands fell by the operator's wasn't comforting to an echidna who liked seeing his prey rather than searching for it. However hard he tried he couldn't be on the sending end of an ambush all the time. Looking back behind him, he witnessed the telegraphs ringing their message that the engine room was ahead of their game. Trent was still barking orders through the sound-powered telephone around his neck, and the helmsman was now leaning on the wheel, the ever push of the sea fighting against as from what Ell-Tee could see, the red echidna putting every ounce of strength into his body. Now he had to wait just a little while, maybe a minute or two, maybe not even that before he gave the order to swing the Hawing wide to the port.

He swallowed as hard as he could, the radar had circled its entire viewing area, leaving nothing in its wake.

In the excitement and the now roaring engines of the ship he managed to hear the ship's intercom squawk. It was Stenson.

"Ell-Tee, report."

Venturing to the back wall as fast as haste could carry him, he snagged the mike off its nook. "Field Marshal–Captain, we've had a flyby–unknown enemy–presuming hostile at the moment!"

"I heard the call to battle-stations, do you need me up there, Ell-Tee?" came the surprising question. Enough so it took awhile for Ell-Tee to answer it.

"Sir, it would be nice if you could," he shyly replied, trying hard to fight the timid shake in his voice. Why was he scared? Maybe it was the feeling that something was really hunting him.

"I'm on my way...just hold tight, Ell-Tee."

And the speaker went dead.

But his head didn't. "Left full rudder!"

"Aye-sir, left rudder helmsma–"

The way Trent had cut himself off jolted Ell-Tee's eyes to meet his. He could see the bewilderment in his complexion as a hand slammed up against his ear to push the telephone's ear piece closer to his lobe to hear. "Repeat!" he shouted into the mike. A moment passed, his breath intensifying as his eyes raked back and forth, like he was reading the information rather than hearing it. Then his whole concentration broke to the radar station. "Turn on the intercom from the sonar-room."

"Contact?" hollered Ell-Tee.

"Sonar has something and they're tracking it towards us!"

"Distance?"

Trent shouted the orders through the microphone on his chest.

The reply came through the intercom:

"Eight-hundred meters and closing–"

BWIIINNG!!...PWIING!!

"Active sonar, sir. High pitched motor behind it!"

Ell-Tee couldn't have been slower to identify what it was. "Torpedo in the water!" he shouted above the ranging engines.

"Rudder at the stops, sir!" relayed the helmsman.

"Straighten us out! Petty Officer, tell engine room to slow us down!"

Trent's eyes were brisk with fright. "Sir, that's active sonar–"

BWIIINNG!!...PWIING!!

"Okay, so what do I need to do?" Ell-Tee asked feverishly. He felt his eyes wallow to fear.

"I don't know, we're not outfitted for countermeasures–"

"Sonar–bridge; contact closing at six-hundred meters, no deviation!"

"Right full rudder!" Ell-Tee blurted out.

"Aye, sir!"

BWIINNG!!...PWIING!!

"What are you doing?" Trent thrashed.

Ell-Tee took a breath that he needed. "Trying for an over shoot. It's the best possible way for this. We keep the speed on, let it trail us and before impact we swing left and let it slide to the right."

Trent couldn't calm his breathing, staring at Ell-Tee and running his words through his head.

BWIIINNG!! PWIING!!

"If we do this, we'll loose contact with it once it goes into our baffles," observed Trent, calmness however already leaving him.

"Sonar–Bridge; four-hundred meters and closing–still no deviation. It's homing on us!"

Ell-Tee's tone came as a snap, his eyes hard and cold. "Rudder at mid-ships, Petty Officer! Tell sonar to keep tracking this–call out the damn distance."

"AYE–SIR!" replied Trent with his teeth bearing his opinion. It wasn't a moment until he relayed the order through the sound-powered telephone at his chest with revulsion.

BWIINNG!!...PWIING!!

"Three-hundred meters! Its still homing!"

Ell-Tee felt pushed now, straying his eyes to the floor, and when he couldn't find comfort anywhere on the metal plating, he growled within himself and marched to the outside deck. His hands found the railing almost instantly, bracing himself against the rushing air and pitching motions of the Hawking fighting the sea.

BWIING!!...PWIIING!!

His heart was far from racing, it was succumbing to his adrenalin, punching at his chest walls with a force to cripple him if his strength wasn't what made him. His neck felt tired, though finding himself looking down at the rushing water below his feet, his long dreads lifting up from the graded deck and adding more weight to the strain.

"Two hundred meters and–"

BWIING!!...PWIIING!!

He was shouting at himself. What more could he do? Turning back inside the bridge, he eyed Trent before looking at the helmsman. "Call it out at a hundred. Stand by to throw that sucker all the way to the left!"

BWIING!!...PWIIING!!

"Aye, sir," replied Trent.

BWIING!! PWING!!

There was nothing more he could do. Just wait. Just wait and hope his gamble could pay off with everyone's lives still on Mobius.

"Hundred meters!"

"LEFT FULL RUDDER!" And with his venomous voice bouncing all over the interior, he bounced on the wheel with the helmsman and rocketed his robotic and natural arm into action rotating down on the wheel as the helmsman pushed it over. The joy of progress seemed to outweigh his fright through it all. It was coming over him like a euphoric drug, like he reached a whole different plane of existence.

Then the wheel slammed to a hard stop, almost ricocheting back but stopping when Ell-Tee applied force to it.

The turn was slow. The harsh pinging sound was now to the point where he couldn't differentiate between the sending tone and the echo. His ears began to hurt, wondering if they were going to bleed from the abusive pounding that screamed through the speaker.

"Eighty meters...sonar confirms–its following us!"

Trent's voice was more than an uproar, it was tense with fear, tense with his own indecision. Ell-Tee didn't have to look far but to the outside for air. His legs pumped him to the foredeck before he could think that he was outside, his eyes transfixed on the stern of the ship, trailing the rails where his vision didn't see the open deck, but people riding on it, partaking in the night air. They weren't there physically but somehow he could see them.

"Prepare all hands for collision!" he shouted, never turning over his shoulder to make the order.

And still, the pinging intensified. His heart pounded the rhythm with it, keeping in time with every decibel that grew louder, faster. His biometric hand squeezed the railing tighter. His eyes focused more than they should have on the water. He knew he couldn't see the coming death under the waves, but he longed to try.

"Forty-meters!"

On the last call, he turned himself around to see if the faces inside the bridge matched his. They were all charged with fear, just like his. Their hands were bracing for something, just like his. Their heads were lowered from the pounding hammer that was the sonar of the torpedo coming for them...just like his.

But his eyes didn't look to theirs. Somehow they became locked on Stenson, the Field Marshal just shy of coming in through the adjacent passageway into the bridge, out of breath, riddled with fear in his very stance that was much the same as Ell-Tee's. He was glad that he saw him...Stenson brought with him comfort, knowing he wasn't the only one of his stature to feel the way he did. It would be the numbing of the pain he wouldn't feel. The air that moved his thick dreads, pushing them farther than any girl he had ever met who could move them with such intensity on her own. His muzzle grew warm. His ears with a suddenness of a blink filled with a heavy pressure that he never knew could exist.

And the darkness was suffocating.

WOW! This sucker took me a month to write out. And from here on it's a running affair. My salivating wonders though are: how was the sincere moments, how did I do for Knuckles and Sonic egging each other, the kids behind the wall on the outside singing, how were the words to the little song I wrote (note: not much of a lyric writer) and the ending? How did the split scene work. Course it's not the ending of the story itself, but it is getting close. Oh yes, how was the sonar spacing? Little spur of the moment idea I had. Also, how did this chapter flow? That is my biggest concern.

Other than that, Sonic fans get ready...our favorite characters will be taking the spotlight from some of my OC's. And action to be had by all.