"Test time Lea." A voice called out form the darkness. Slash slowly walked forward into the light, holding an odd looking remote in his hand. "You think you can handle it?

Lea looked at him warily, then at the thousands of doors looming around her; she felt surrounded.

Slash held the remote in his hand, smirking triumphantly; and he hadn't even won yet! Lea was looking worriedly around her, as if she was about to back off and quit. Slash was waiting for it too, Lea could sense it. But instead of a plea for mercy, she simply smiled coolly and replied, "Let's go."

"Very well!" Slash yelled; his arm shooting up as he pressed the remote. With a deafening rumble, the entire room was flooded with robots and battle machines. Any and every style there was; Eggman's, Slash's, even a few scrap parts melded together and given a weapon. "Let's see her try and get through that…" As far as Slash was concerned, he had won. Lea had never beaten him before, and she sure as heck wasn't gonna do it now.

The robots started pouring out in millions, and Lea had no way to counter them. The first threw a punch at her; she ducked at round-house kicked it into three other robots. "Ok," she though "they're easy, but there are way too many of 'em to handle…" As she thought this, ten robots suddenly were on top of her. She was in the middle of a mosh, and there was no real way for her to escape. She felt their pinchers and prods stab her; the cool feel of metal was practically all around her now. She looked frantically around; she could see no light now, she guessed that maybe fifty plus robots were on her now. As she began to panic, a feeling of hope came into her. "Maybe…." She thought… her mind was wrapping around an idea that she'd never thought of before, and hopefully on that Slash hadn't thought of either. She wretched her arms from the robots grasp, and pushed a glowing square on her finger gloves. She pushed it three times, causing the square to transform into a small sphere. She lifted her arms out, and suddenly she was inside the plasma bubble. Opening her arms wide, she expanded the bubble violently; flinging all the robots off of her, smashing them against the wall.

When she thought she was victorious, twice the number of robots there were before were now standing before her. She rapidly expanded the shield, causing her arms to spread out even further. Even that wasn't enough! Even in the now ten foot shield around her, she was being bombarded with robots and explosions. She didn't know what to do! She couldn't expand the field anymore, and her arms were starting to give way from the huge sea of robots on top of her…. There was one chance……

She began to slowly crouch to the floor, causing the barrier that she had so skillfully put up to shrink. As she did, the robots began to crowd her even more! Only a few inches separated her and the robots that, if both she and Slash weren't careful, would kill her. She crouched lower and lower to the ground, now she was at the point of kneeling. Suddenly she felt huge surges of energy go through her body. "Focus...focus!" She yelled fiercely at herself. She was going to use not only the raw energy of the Chaos Emerald she had tucked away in her belt's pocket, but she was going to bubble as a medium. She could feel the power growing; her entire body ached from holding back such an enormous power. She couldn't hold it anymore; with all her energy, she let go.

Vector slammed again and again on the door of Lea and Slash's chimney-shaped house; there was still no answer. Although Vector was extremely even tempered for a crocodile, now even he was starting to get irritated at the total lack of communication going on here.

"VECTOR," An annoying little voice rang out "why isn't Ms. Lea and Slash answering?" Charmy was, as usual, flying around trying to occupy himself, and it wasn't working very well.

"They're probably busy training." A voice said, out of nowhere. "Oy…doesn't that guy ever think about anything other than training?" Vector thought, getting more than a bit agitated.

"Naah, that's just what yoooooou do Espio! " The little bumble bee laughed; was that supposed to be some sorta insult? Both Vector and Espioput their hands over their faces, in total exasperation. How the heck could a kid be that stupid? Vector thought about it, and changed his mind… No, Charmy wasn't stupid per say….just…….

"Look at meeeeee! I'm a plane!" Charmy was swerving around erratically, as if he had just downed a pint of coffee and half a dozen pounds of sugar. "No", Vector thought "I'm pretty sure at that point Charmy would be passing through time and space." Vector put his hand on his head, "Whoa. I sounded like Slash for a sec there…." Vector thought of the idea of being like the spiky haired wolf, and shook his head. That was not a place he wanted to be.

Espio was defiantly not amused by all this banter. He was a ninja for crying out loud! Not a babysitter and defiantly not someone to be trifled with. Espio slowly revealed himself, mainly to show his total and complete aggravation at his two "partners."

While contemplating this, Espio's ears were suddenly filled with the sound of some sort of explosion. But it didn't sound like a normal explosion….if sounded…almost muffled… as if it were under the ground… He arched his head slightly toward the sound, looking at Vector and Charmy in worry; both of which were sharing the exact same expression.

"Wh-What was that...?" Charmy asked softly, his eyes widening in worry.

"It sounded like an explosion."

"EXPOSION? A-Are they ok? Are they gonna be alright? Oh my God, what if something happened to them Vector? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna-

"Charmy, calm down," Espio said slowly, trying his best to slow Charmy's rambling. "We don't know if that was a bad thing. Slash might be working on something and it just blew up on him…." (Again...)

"Still, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a good look." Vector broke in.

"But how do we get in? It's locked."

With a fierce swing, Vector slammed his enormous tail against the door, causing it to shatter into a thousand pieces.

"C'mon fellas, let's go!" Vector said with a wink.

"Weeeeeeeeee!" Charmy began to sing and hum in-fluently.

Espio, completely dumb-stuck at the fact that Vector just broke into someone else's house, was still staring at the door Vector plowed down even as Charmy and Vector entered the house. Even in the total awe that Espio was in, he was jolted out of it when Charmy yelled from the living room,

"Espio! You coming or not?"

"Yeah Es move it or loose it!" He heard Vector snort.

Espio slapped his hand on his face; those two really amazed him sometimes…

Slash stumbled weakly over the wreckage of mecha-rubble and robot parts. Trying to re-gain his memory of what the heck had just happened… He held onto his head, it was pounding terribly, but he still managed to remember the previous events…

Lea was had a mountain of robots on top of her, even though she had managed to push them away from her only a few seconds before. Slash was getting worried; he was about to go to the control panel and turn off the robots, when suddenly a bright light began to shine. It was coming from...Lea? Slash began to fly toward her, when a huge dome of light swept over the robots and Slash himself. He was blinded by the light; being jolted twenty feet away from the explosion.

All he really could remember of the impact was the light...and Lea shouting as she released the energy she apparently had been storing while the robots were piling on her. "Lea……Lea!" Slash shouted in his mind, automatically panicking. He began to desperately search and scrape through all the rubble in the arena. She wasn't anywhere! Where was she? Was she ok? Was the energy too much for her to handle! He began to frantically run through the course, not caring whether he made all the marks, as long as he got there. Lea might be hurt! She might have pushed herself too hard! As he thought this, scrabbled over to the end-stretch of the race; it was gonna be easier now, all he had to do was run. Slash imagined seeing Lea face down on the floor, still trying to get finished. "Please Lord let her be alright, God just let her be ok!" But as he made his way to the winner's circle, Lea was standing there, head held up high, huge smile, and on one of the many screens that adorned the beams of the ceilings, it read Lea is the Winner! Slash sighed; yeah, she was fine.

Lea was all smiles as the elevator began to ascend to the house. Slash was cool with that; she had obviously earned bragging rights for beating him… "Yeah, for the first time...!" He thought sarcastically... Slash noticed his heart was still beating rapidly because of his little "scare;" he could have kicked himself for worrying so much. Lea was fine, she was ok...But still….he couldn't help but worry for his baby sister.