You may have noticed the title has changed. The original title, 'The Commander and Hope', was just meant to be a placeholder title but because I suck at naming stories it just sorta became the ACTUAL title. Well over this past week this really bothered me so I decided to FINALLY get round to giving the story a proper title... Better late than never, eh? ^_^;;

"Sir, we have a craft leaving the South Dock." Turning to General Morgan, the agent reported, "It's Tails' plane, sir."

"Tails?" the President asked. "I thought he and Sonic had-"

"Hope," Morgan said, breathing a sigh, though whether it was a sigh of relief or exasperation, she wasn't sure. "That girl, what is she planning? I can't keep her safe if she runs away like that."

"You're going to leave her to fend for herself?" the President asked.

"It's not a matter of helping her or not. I can't send any troops to support her at the moment." Morgan closed her eyes, taking in a sharp breath. "All we can do is pray for her safe return."

"Sir, we're receiving a transmission from Commander Tower!"

After dodging the initial attacks by the Black Alien gunships, Hope was able to get out of range of their attacks and made her way to the craft's estimated landing site. After some searching, she eventually found one of the ARK's escape pods laying in the centre of a smouldering crater. It was open, and empty. Hope landed the plane and transformed it into its mech form.

"Which way did he go?" Hope looked around, but couldn't find any hints that would help her track the Commander. She didn't exactly know much about tracking, and there were no obvious signs like footprints around. "Okay, let's think. Where would the Commander go?" Hope gasped, looking back the way she had come from. "He's heading back to headquarters!"

Turning around, Hope moved as fast as she could. Since she was heading back to where the Black Aliens were, she anticipated a fight, and so she kept the Cyclone in its mech form. As expected, she encountered some of the Black Aliens as she reached the top of a hill. She locked-on to them and fired some missiles, taking them out before they could react to her presence.

In the distance, she could see more aliens advancing on GUN HQ, as well as the gunship that was dropping them off. "If I get too close, I'll be in trouble. But I need to keep going… I wonder if there are any other weapons I can use?" Searching through the mech's data, Hope found that there was one more attack, one that required a great deal of energy to perform.

Looking up, she decided that she had no choice. She had to find the Commander, and that meant the gunship had to go down. Bracing herself, she initiated the program and took aim. The mech roared and vibrated as energy was gathered at the nose, and then fired in a large, violet beam of light. It struck the gunship and caused a huge explosion, that caused the entire thing to start falling.

"Yes!" she cheered, but her celebration was short-lived as her attack attracted the attention of the Black Arms. They began firing, and with the mech still recovering from the attack, its shields were weakened. "Uh-oh! Gotta move!"

She began firing back as she moved to the side, but there were so many of them that she was struggling to lock-on to them all, and many shots were getting through before she could stop them. The mech began beeping, warning her that its shields were going down. Looking around for cover, Hope realised that she was out in a large, open field. She wondered if she should try to revert back to plane form and fly away. Would she have time? Perhaps a full-frontal would be better – catch them off-guard. But that would be dangerous for sure.

As she thought, another hit on the mech caused it to rumble and fall to the ground. "Oh no!" Panicking, Hope tried to reboot the systems. The Black Aliens charged towards her. "Come on! Start!"

Several bangs rang through the air, and Hope looked over to see the aliens falling one-by-one. They stopped and looked around for the ones firing at them, but found only one man, standing out in the open with a pistol. They retaliated, but most of their shots missed, and the ones that didn't were easily avoided.

Hope blinked, amazed by what she saw. The Commander was so far away that it was only natural the Black Aliens were unable to reach him, yet he had no problem nailing every single one of his own shots.

Eventually, the Black Aliens turned and ran away, realising the futility of this battle. After waiting for a few second, Tower ran over to where Hope was sitting in her fallen mech. "That was too close," he said as she approached. "Are you hurt?"

"No…" Hope looked down at the mech with a frown, "But the Cyclone…" Hope noticed that the Commander was breathing heavily, and that his arm was bleeding. "Commander, you're-"

"Don't worry about me. I've suffered worse injuries in the field." Tower briefly examined the mech. He saw dents and burn marks, but it didn't look like it was too badly damaged. "Can you repair it?"

"The issue isn't the damage," Hope told him. "The Cyclone's shields allow it to deflect almost anything, but doing that drains an enormous amount of power, and that's the mech's weakness. If it gets hit too much, you lose power and it becomes unable to function."

"So it needs more power," Tower surmised, reaching into his jacket. He pulled out a small, glowing vial. A Chaos Drive. "This was in the pod I used to return back to Earth. Can you use it?"

Hope jumped out and took the Drive. "Maybe…" Opening up a panel of the side of the Cyclone, she studied the inner workings to find how exactly it drew its power. "Yes! It looks like it was designed to harness the power of a Chaos Emerald, so this should work fine!"

Tower nodded. "Good. Then we can use this to return to the base." Clearing his throat, he added, "Though I cannot say I approve of you leaving on your own to come and retrieve me. I asked you to stay in the Command Centre, where you would be safe."

"Well… there was no other way for us to reach you, so I…"

"The ends don't justify the means! If I was even a second later, you could have died just now." Hope stopped working, and her head fell. Sighing, Tower continued. "But, you have saved my life. So I thank you, Hope. Just… try not to do something so reckless again in the future. If you were to get hurt on account of me…"

"… Yes, sir," Hope said, her voice low. She resumed working, not saying anything further.

Tower saw this, and he wanted to say something more, but he wasn't sure what. Normally, a GUN operative acting on their own authority would be grounds for immediately dismissal, so he was right to scold her like that. At the same time, he couldn't deny that she had made a good call. He wasn't sure if anybody else could have piloted a mech designed by Tails, and it was the only way for anybody to leave the base.

Turning around, Tower kept a watch, making sure the Black Aliens didn't try to come back. "… When I was a boy, there was a girl who I saw as like an older sister," he began. He heard the sounds of Hope tinkering stop as she listened. "I wasn't particularly close to my parents, and I had no other family to speak of, so it was almost like she was all I had. She died. I was unable to do anything about it and it's haunted me ever since."

"… Commander?"

Tower sighed. "It's been fifty years, but I still remember her clearly. You are the spitting image of that girl. I suppose… some part of me is trying to make up for my past failings, by keeping you safe."

There was a moment of silence between them. "I'm a GUN operative," Hope said, and she continued working on the mech. "I'm happy that you care about me, but I have to do all I can, just like you, Topaz, Rouge, and everybody."

"I know that, just…"

"I'll be more careful from now on. Promise."

Tower turned around, and found Hope smiling at him. He smiled back. "And I promise I'll treat you more like the accomplished engineer that you are."

After a few minutes of working with the Cyclone, Hope was able to install the Chaos Drive. She hopped into the cockpit and was delighted to see it had power. She reactivated it and turned it back to its plane form. Commander Tower climbed into the passenger seat behind her, and they took off, heading back towards the South Dock.

"This is Commander Tower," Tower spoke into his radio. "I've met up with Hope and am en route to the South Dock. Confirm status, over."

"Commander, this is General Morgan," Morgan replied from the other side. "A team is waiting for you, but I lost contact two minutes ago. Please use another entrance, over."

Hope clutched the controls and slowed down. "The South Dock was the only place we could get out from," she said.

"We'll check it out, but keep your distance," Tower told her. "If the enemy has seized the South Dock, we'll have to find another way."

As the two flew over the entrance to the South Dock, they found a shoot-out between the forces there and the Black Aliens. Though there weren't many enemies, they were being led by a large, flying creature that took up most of the dock's space.

"That's Black Bull!" Hope couldn't believe what she was seeing. She was sure it had died back in Death Ruins. "That was the creature I told you about before. Are there more of those things?"

"It's possible, but we shouldn't focus on what-ifs. Let's just defeat the one that's here now."

"We're gonna fight it?"

Tower nodded, checking his guns. "The Cyclone has weapons, and we still have men down there. If that thing gets into the facility, it would be catastrophic. Let's capture it from two sides now and take it down."

Hope grinned. "Okay, here we go!" Hope circled around, allowing the Cyclone to approach the dock from a better angle, and she readied the weapons, locking-on to the smaller Black Aliens that were with Black Bull. "Its body is too strong for most attacks. Aim for the eye."

"Got it." Tower readied himself and, as Hope unleashed her assault, he jumped out of the side of the plane, rolling as he landed on one of the piers. The missiles took out the bulk of the alien forces, and as Black Bull turned to face her, Tower wasted no time firing at its eye with his pistol.

Hope turned the Cyclone back to its mech form and rushed to Black Bull's other side, aiming for the rest of the smaller Black Arm soldiers. The GUN troops defending the dock rushed out to help, taking advantage of the opening to push back their advance.

"Commander, stay away from the water!" Admiral Lee shouted.

Tower looked behind himself, and just caught shadows under the surface of the water before several large worm creatures shot up, roaring at him as they fired smaller worms from their mouths.

"Watch out!" Hope locked-on to the smaller worms and fired, intercepting most of them as Tower rolled to avoid the rest. He quickly began to run along the dock as more attacks were fired, and Hope intercepted as many as she could.

Black Bull roared and spat flames out beneath itself, forcing the GUN troops to retreat as they quickly spread. Hope gasped and turned the mech as fast as she could, but was barely able to get away before the flames reached her and damaged its shields.

Tower, seeing the flames approaching, moved to the side and grabbed a nearby ladder, climbing up to a catwalk above him. Black Bull kept its eye on him and roared again, summoning some of the bat-like creatures to go after him.

"Protect the Commander!" Lee shouted, and he and his troops fired on the flying creatures, taking them down as tower hurried up the ladder.

Once he was safely on the catwalk, Tower ran along to get closer to Black Bull. The beast charged him, ramming its body into the catwalk and causing it to collapse behind him. He took the chance to jump over the side and onto Black Bull's back.

Black Bull started to crash itself against a wall, attempting to throw the human off of its back. "Hey!" Hope yelled, firing a salvo to draw its attention. As it focussed on her, Tower ran down its body and pulled out his shotgun, unloading into Black Bull's eye.

It roared one more time and shot more fire down, which spready quickly to Hope. "Hope, get out of there!" he yelled.

Seeing the flames approaching, Hope jumped out of the mech and ran as fast as she could, taking cover behind some steel containers. Watching the mech become engulfed in flames, she frowned. "I hope Tails won't be too mad… Huh?" As the flames died, Hope noticed that the mech was still standing. When Black Bull turned its attention back to throwing the Commander off of its head, she ran over to it and found that it was still functional. "Amazing…"

Tower tried to keep his balance as Black Bull thrashed about. Admiral Lee wanted to help but more Black Aliens began to enter from the water, forcing him and his troops to focus on keeping them at bay. After one final crash against the wall, Tower lost his footing and fell off of Black Bull, falling to the floor below. "Damn!" Picking himself up, Tower noticed a sealed door beside him that required certain clearance to open. "Wait, this is…"

Black Bull turned its attention back to the troops and hovered over to them, ready to lay waste to them. Hope climbed back into the Cyclone and rushed out to intercept it. "This time, I have a Chaos Drive. Let's see you shake-off this!" Hope charged the Cyclone's energy cannon and fired. Black Bull stopped and backed-up as it took the full force of the blast. It turned away, attempting to retreat.

"You're not getting away!" Tower ran out and intercepted Black Bull, armed with a Tank Cannon from the sealed room. He aimed it and fired, stopping the creature in its tracks. He fired again, and its roars echoed through the dock. One final blast, and Black Bull started to fall, crashing to the ground and causing a tremor.

Everybody simply watched in silence, not lowering their guards as they waited for Black Bull's body to move again. When nothing had happened for several seconds, the first cheers erupted from Admiral Lee's troops. Tower threw the cannon and aside and breath a heavy sigh, his arms trembling.

"Men, we're not finish yet!" Lee shouted, bringing order to his troops. "We need to push the Black Creatures out of our waters and secure the South Dock!"

The soldiers saluted. "Yes, sir!" They ran ahead, firing at the worm creatures and forcing them to retreat. Some ran to ready the battleships that were still floating, whilst a couple ran over to the Commander to ensure he was okay.

"I'm fine," Tower assured them as Hope also approached. "I need to get to the Command Centre, right away."

"Shall we escort you, sir?" one soldier asked.

Tower shook his head, climbing into the Cyclone. "No, you continue securing the dock. We should be just fine. Make sure you restore communications. I'll let the General know you're all alright."

"Yes, sir!"

As the two left, Tower reached for his radio. "General Morgan, do you read me? The South Dock has been secured, we are-"

"Commander," Morgan began, her voice shaking, "The situation has turned dire… Please hurry."

The Commander and Hope exchanged uneasy looks, and then hurried through the facility.

Rushing into the Command Centre, Tower relieved Morgan and allowed her to re-join the fray as he returned back to his post. The situation inside was chaotic as people rushed everywhere relaying information. "Everyone," he began, "I'm sorry I left you all so suddenly, and at such a critical time. What's the latest development?"

"Sir, the Black Comet has warped down to the planet, and has attached itself into the ground!"

A visual of the comet anchoring itself in the heart of Central City showed on the monitors. Black Aliens were swarming the streets, capturing GUN soldiers who were simply standing there, not fighting back. "What's happened to our soldiers?"

"Probably the same thing that's happened to us," Rouge said through the radio. "We're inside the comet. We found their leader, but we're unable to move because of a gas that the Black Comet emits."

"A paralysing gas? Do we have any soldiers ready to mobilize?"

"Spider Troop's second division are currently on standby," an agent reported.

"Order them to regroup and head to Central City! There should be gas masks at the outpost near their location!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Shadow's the only one not affected by it," Rouge said.

"Shadow?" Tower closed his eyes, hesitating before he asked, "And… what is his current status?"

"He's going after their leader, Black Doom." There was a pause. "To finish him."

Tower exhaled. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or concerned, but what mattered was that Shadow was helping them. With the situation so grim, he needed all the support he could find. "If only I'd seen that sooner…" he mumbled.

"I've given him the fake Chaos Emerald," Tails said, "So he should at least be able to use Chaos Control, but…"

"Black Doom has the real ones!" Amy continued. "I know that Shadow's strong, but I'm still worried."

"You guys are thinking too much!" It was Sonic's voice. "It's Shadow we're talking about! He'll pull through!"

"He's right," Knuckles said. "What we should be worrying about is how we're gonna get out of this!"

Before Tower could say anything further, the monitors started acting strange. The images were turning to static, and some distorted audio started playing. "What's happening?!"

"It looks like an outside signal is hijacking our feed!" a technician reported.

"The Black Aliens?"

"N-No, it's coming from the ARK." The technician turned to look up at the Commander. "I've seen this signal before! It's-"

Hope's sharp gasp filled the room, startling everyone. As they looked to see what was wrong, they saw her face pale as she stared at the monitors. Following her gaze, they found that the screens were now showing an image of a man long-dead. A balding man with grey facial hair, wearing a white lab coat.

Professor Gerald Robotnik.