DISCLAMER: I own not a single Sega character and most likely never will.

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WL: …and that is why we are in your Airplane.

Tails: That story had absolutely nothing to do with the Tornado II, you know that right?

Mal: Really? I thought my back-story explained everything. Oh well I guess we just have to keep telling the story

Tails:…

WL: I accept your stunned silence for the agreement I want it to be. ON WITH THE SHOW!

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Mystic jungle: Mal's POV

Well this isn't that bad. I had expected the rain forest surrounding the mystic ruins to be oppressively hot and humid. It wasn't. It was actually quite cool and well shaded down here under the leafs and branches of the towering trees. I looked up and could just make out the sky, patches of blue amid the ever present green. Here and there a beam or two of sunlight could be seen as the light played off the dust in the air, lighting up the Forrest floor. A few feet away from the path a clear stream flowed through the underbrush. This place is beautiful. I took another bite of hardened French bred. Up ahead the path crossed through the stream. If I remembered the map right that meant I only had two or three more hours of walking before I arrived at the train station that would take me into station square.

After wading through the waist deep water I set my bag on the ground and, dropping to all fours shook the water out of my fur, drops flying in all directions. Off the path, about a yard or two into the under brush something moved. It made me jump but it didn't worry me that much, it was probably just some animal that I had sprayed with water. Poor thing, I had probably woken it up. Ah well what's done is done. I picked up my bag and started walking. I hadn't gone more then a few feet when I heard a rustling and from the corner of my eye there was a flash of red and white. It's following me! I kept walking, ears at full perk to see if I could hear it again. I did, on the other side of the path this time, which meant there, had to be more then one. Now I was nervous, I was pretty sure I was getting stalked by ether a pack of animals or gang of bandits. There was another sound, this time the thud of metal on wood. That rules out wild animals. I slowed to a stop and tightened the strap on my pack. I stood turning slowly in a circle, this wasn't the first time someone had tried to mug me and wouldn't be the last. The trick is not to panic and run, they might have a guy or two laying in wait up the trail. Stay still, make them come to you, when there out in the open and you can see where all of them are then you take off like a bat out' a hell and hope they don't catch you.

Still turning I scanned the forest to either side of the trail. Silently I wished that whoever was following me would hurry up and show themselves, I hated the waiting. This had happened before and as always I was scared out of my mind. My legs are shaky and I can and I know it, I fight the urge to run. If I ran now I might run smack into the very people I was running from. I had learned that the hard way.

Wile I don't remember exactly what happened after that; the bruises, cuts, and distinct lack of personal items told me it was not something I wanted to go through again. So I stood my ground and waited. Finely after what seemed like an eternity of slowly turning in place there was movement behind me. It was just up the trail and to the left. Instinctively I turned to face the sound. All I could see was a slightly rounded shadow, large and missing. Its foot steps made thuds and crunching noises. Whoever, no whatever this was must weigh a ton.

It stepped out onto the trail and into the light. I felt my jaw drop and I stared, fear forgotten at the 5 foot red and white figure in front of me. It was a robot! I had a vague notion that I had seen it somewhere before but for the life of me I couldn't remember where. Not that I was trying that hard. I was much more interested in trying to figure out how it worked. I had almost a physical urge to pull it apart and take a look. I was in the middle of wondering if I would even understand how it worked if I did get the chance when it spoke.

"New subject acquired" I jumped startled out of my thoughts on how to get it to let me take a look inside. "Subject is a male mobius vulpi, 8 to 14 years of age. Subject is 2.73 feet in height and estimated 82 lb." My tails twitched in annoyance at being looked over like a display item.

"Presence of multiple tales confirmed. Target parameters matched. Subject identified as Miles 'Tails' Prower. Requesting orders." All I could think was, Tails? Who's Tails?

With out thinking I started to correct it. "uhh I'm not T..." but was cut off by the bot.

"Orders: detain" it raised an arm and for the first time I noticed that it ended in a sleek looking gun barrel.

Let's get this strait. I don't like guns. I'm not terrified of them but after what happened to Slide; well… let's just say I don't think all that straight when guns are involved.

"Submit for capture or I will be forced to take drastic measures."

There was another set of clanking foot steps and robot came out on the left side of the path just behind the first. The bot that was pointing a gun at me turned slightly to look, and I did what was probably the stupidest thing I could have. I ducked under the gun and blew past both egg shaped robots and ran as fast as I could toward the mystic ruins and station square. About three seconds later a blast of red-yellow light flew past, just to the left of my head and burned its way into a tree trunk 20 feet away, and was immediately followed by more.

"HOLY CARP!" that was about the time I decided that running in a straight line was NOT in my best interest. I started jukeing to one side or the other at random. Suddenly the shooting stopped and a dull roar filled the air. Risking a look back I saw why. The machines had pulled there legs up in front of them and where barreling along just above ground level, propelled forward by rockets on there backs. They where gaining and fast. OK, so I couldn't out run them but maybe I could out maneuver them. I looked desperately for anything that could help me out of the fix I was in. there! A low hanging branch just above head height, I could use that. I made a b-line for the branch. It seemed to take forever, the scream of engines got louder, by the time I was almost to the branch it sounded like they where right behind me. Before I could think about it I looked back too see the first bot less than three feet from me. I looked back around in time to see. Yet another robot emerges from the forest to stand directly in front of me. It seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see it. I looked, saw the branch was less than a foot away, and as the bot in front of me raised its gun I leaped. I caught hold of the branch and let my momentum carry me around and up into the tree. The first bot zoomed past me and tried to turn. Its momentum was much less helpful, causing it to slide into the newly arrived bot number 3. Number 3's chassis crumpled like tin foil and both robos went down with a crunch and shower of sparks. The remaining robot made the turn and came back at me.

Thinking of its inability to turn fast I took off into the jungle, jumping from tree to tree. My mechanical shadow followed. Moving along underneath me it couldn't quite catch up to me. The trees where preventing it from reaching top speed. In an attempt to lose it I changed directions at random, looking back every minute or so to see if it was still behind me. After one such glance I turned back around ready to leap to another tree, and realized there wasn't one. I hit the ground hard and tucked into a roll to absorb the impact. I rolled over hard dirt and rocks and into something solid that made a clang. Quickly I climbed to my feet and looked around, trying to figure out what I had run into and where I was now. Then I stopped and stared, I was back on the path, the wreckage of the robots that had run into each other had been what stopped my roll. I was back where I started.

Some how I had managed to go around in a complete circle. Then wile I was still trying to figure out how I got turned around the robot that had been chasing me through the jungle burst from the trees 50 yards down the path near the stream. It stopped and looked around, and immediately saw me still standing there like an idiot. It turned towards me and I remembered that I should be running. I took off, aiming for a vine covered gap between two trees. Engines humming to life, the bot speed after me.

Reaching the vines I pushed through them… and slammed into the rock wall behind them at a run. I stumbled back through the vines and recovered my feet in time to see the robot coming straight at me. I was backed into a corner the only way out was to some how get past the charging robo. It was close now, maybe 20 feet away, my lead having been eaten up by my encounter with the rock.

The rock! That was it! As the robot neared me, raising its arms in anticipation for the catch, I went limp. I fell to the ground (in a vary uncomfortable position) and a second later I felt the heat of the bots rockets pass over me, and then suddenly following a crunch and grown of metal and rock another scorching blast and a shower of small screws and shards of steel as the bot exploded. One piece of metal sliced its way into my shoulder and I yelped in pain. After the ringing in my ears died down I slowly climbed to my feet, left hand pressed tight to the hole in my right shoulder. I turned to look at the damage; most of the vines had been ripped out when the bot flew through them. The bot its self was now little more then a pile of burnt circuits and scrap metal at the foot of the rock wall. And in those bushes… and over by that tree. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was over and suddenly, the adrenalin rush leaving me, I was very, VERY tired

I took one last look at what was left of the bot and, hand still pressed to my shoulder I turned to resume my slow trek toward the city and froze. There behind me was another bot. This one was bright orange and both taller and thinner than the others. But what caught my attention was the long, thin pole extending from its wrist. It had small sparks and arcs of electricity dancing along it, and it was humming. Never a good sign. The robot drew back its arm to swing the pole. I didn't even think of running I was too tired. I flattened my ears and all I had time to do as the bot swung was let out a exasperated "awww, son of a bi-"

The rod connected with my chest, the wind was knocked out of me and there was this crackling noise. When I could breath again I realized I had been thrown back into the rock wall and was sprawled in the wreckage of the smaller bot. The next thing I realized was that I hurt. I felt as if my whole body was cramping up, every muscle in it twitching from the force of the shock. I saw the robot move over me and look down. The world went black.

Same place, 20min. later: knuckles POV

"are you sure they where talking about me?" tails called over his shoulder to me"

"Yes, yes, A THOUSEND TIMES YES!" ever since our encounter with the E-1000s, tails hadn't stopped asking me questions about what I had heard. It was getting annoying. We were walking in the direction the Es had gone in hopes of trying to figure out how they had supposedly 'captured' when he was obviously right there in front of me. We had been walking for maybe half an hour, and hadn't seen a badnick in at least 10 minuets. Whatever they had been doing they where done now, but maybe fox boy and I could figure out what the doctor was up to.

"Hey Knux?" I groaned he it came, another question. "What do you think they wan…" he pushed his way past an odd fern like plant. "they wan… want…" he trailed off. finally some quiet. I immediately regretted thinking it, if it wasn't for tails I probably wouldn't have been there and my island would be gone as sure as the Lava Reef was hot. Tails hadn't moved since he had stopped talking, he was just standing there starring at something.

"You find something?" I called up to him. He just nodded. I hurried forward to see what was up, and saw the oddest thing. Two destroyed E-1000s, now that's not very unusual in and of it, but these seemed to have tried to fly THROUGH each other.

"What in the world?" Tails nodded and pointed up the trail.

"There's another one up there."

I turned to look and saw what looked like a kamikaze attempt at starting a forest fire. The E-1000 had passed through a clump of low hanging vines, ripping out most and setting fire to the rest, and smashed headlong into a rock wall. The area around where it had hit was blackened and charred.

There was a clank of metal on metal from behind me and I turned to see Tails digging through what was left of the robots that had run into each other. "What are you doing?" Tails looked up.

"I'm going to see if I can get at its electronically erasable programmable read only memory." I just stared at the kit.

"Its what?" Tails didn't even look up as he answered.

"If you want memory that will not be changed or cant be written to that often, use EEPROM. Its much faster than a hard drive, designed to be read from, not written to, as opposed to just ROM, which you have to get pre-made with the software built into it,

and can't change it if you need to." He gave a grunt as he ripped open a dented panel, then continued.

"Use it for bios and low level data like our friend here's memory." He held up the head of a badnick.

"Soooo… that means what exactly?" every time Tails started in on an explanation my head started to hurt.

The young fox sighed. "I'm going to take this." He hefted the head. "Back to my shop, and find out what egg head was up to here." Tails cocked his head to the side and said: "you know we should really get all of them. He gestured behind me with a robotic arm. Go see if you can find that ones head wile I get this one off." I started to argue but Tails was already hard at work prying the head off of the other E-1000. Muttering I walked up the small incline to the wreckage of the last badnick. As I got closer I could see that this one was a lot worse off from the others. I don't think it had more than 3 parts still together in any one place.

After about a minuet of looking I found the head. I picked it up and stopped dead, there next to the head was a reddish brown stain. Blood. And just beyond it, in the charred circle of ground from the explosion, there was I silhouette of a person. It looked like they had gotten hit by the blast. For the first time I started to look around the area at the ground. In no time at all I had found what I was looking for: foot prints. There where two sets of them.

One was the thick steel grip deck of a badnick. (For those of you that don't know steel grip deck is that metal pattern that has the alternating diagonal demand shapes) the other was lighter and looked like an ordinary kid's sneaker. Where they met the sneakers disappeared and then a few feet away there was a scuff mark on the ash covering the rock wall. Below it there was a trail in the debris and dirt where something had been dragged. Three or four yards later both the drag-trail and the eggbot's foot prints disappeared.

"HEY, KNUCKELS!" Tails voice made me jump. "Are you going to stare at the ground all day or do you wanna to see what these fine metallic fellows where up to?"

I looked at him and then back at the outline in the ash. "yeah, I'm coming" Tails moved off and I started to follow him still looking back at that odd reverse shadow. Now I really wanted to see what those robots had to show for them selves. That outline had been of a fox. A fox with two tails.

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heh I haven't updated in forever but as no ones reviewed yelling at me to do so yet I figure I'm ok. I beg you all an bended knee to review annnd… yeah that's about it see ya!