For someone making the big bucks, Wave's apartment wasn't all that luxurious. It wasn't a high-end and elites-only apartment complex, nor did she live in the penthouse or another equally expensive arrangement. It wasn't like her apartment was as cramped as Jet's of course, it occupied one fourth of the whole floor it was in.

Getting the receptionist to let him in wasn't an issue at all – they knew who Wave used to be and also who Jet currently was. The connection between the two birds was still somewhat recognized even if they had "parted ways" a couple years was more of a career and location-wise departure than anything, really.

Wave already had dozens of extreme gear related business offers by the time their criminal record was wiped. She didn't need to pay a single cent to move to Grand Metropolis, and the people there received her with open arms. The city strived to be as eco-friendly as possible, and what better way to do so than making a vehicle that literally only consumes air as fuel the default individual transportation method?

Jet's case was… another story entirely. Young, inexperienced in mostly everything and with his only (barely) marketable skill being gear racing, there wasn't much he could have done in terms of job besides become a professional racer. Most competitions took part in Monopole, but the expense of living there was more than he could afford.

The second option was Station Square, a city that had its own very small extreme gear scene and desperately needed new heroes and public figures after Perfect Chaos' attack. They offered to pay his rent for a couple of months if he picked a cheap enough apartment, and the deal was made. He ended up staying in it as opposed to moving to a new house like he had originally planned, mostly out of convenience but also because he wasn't paid that much.

Despite the distance, they still kept contact. If anything, it made their friendship even stronger. Now that Wave could do something with her free time other than being forced to pretty much babysit Jet, she was able to solve some of her personal issues and be a better person and friend to those around her. She was able to see the bond between herself and Jet as what it was always supposed to be – two good friends that helped each other mutually.

Jet… didn't have the same luck, admittedly. But hey, it was Jet. Did he even have feelings anyways? To everyone besides Wave and Storm, it sounded unlikely.

The hawk waited not-so-patiently until the elevator doors opened and started walking towards Wave's apartment. It wasn't hard to find and he was soon knocking on her door. The large backpack full of the airship's stray loot was starting to weigh on his back, but luckily Wave soon answered the door for him – not before shouting "I'm coming babe!" from somewhere behind the door.

Wave's smile faded quickly as she noticed the person at the door was not, in fact, her babe.

She was wearing a white one shoulder crop top that matched with her white baseball cap and white and lilac striped sneakers. She also had black high waisted jeans and a black choker with her signature microcomputer fake jewel on it. Was that eyeliner? Jet made a mental note to ask her what brand that was so he could get himself some – it was rare to find one that was compatible with feathers.

"What are you doing here? It's date night and we're going to Station Square."

"Storm passed the scavenging job to me. I've got at least three stray toolb— wait you're going there? Why didn't you tell me?! Could have saved me the damn bus trip!"

"As if you're one to talk!"

Jet raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "What are you even talking about?"

"You know what's up. I've sent like, five different sponsorship deals to your agency? And then your staff replies saying you're not interested a whole week later! What kind of business strategy was that, genius? I've told you to consult me first before deciding on stuff like that. This could make or break both of our careers!"

"What." Jet thought for a moment, genuinely unaware of what she was talking about. Just then he remembered why he was so unaware. "Oh, they're making me take a break or whatever for the whole year. They didn't even run that by me, you know I'd have accepted it. You've made all my boards so far."

Wave's mild bout of anger subsided immediately after hearing that. "Are you serious? That's… wow. They're probably scheming to kick you out or something, I knew I should have invested in my own agency. Guess that's where my extra money is going this month. Why didn't you tell me that sooner?"

"Oh I was busy hanging out with Sonic."

"…Sonic?"

"The hedgehog." He nodded

"…Are you going to explain any of that or?"

"It's kind of a long story and you told me to be quick." He lauded, then shrugged."Wait no, it's not that long. Just sorta weird."

Jet finally made his way into the apartment. Having been there quite a few times in the past, he knew exactly where to go. He knew the guest bedroom would be the perfect place to put the stuff down since nobody ever went there, but he chose to go to her room instead. It was farther away, and he felt like spending some time with Wave. Whether she liked it or not.

He crouched beside her bed and started emptying the contents of his ridiculously overfilled bag onto the floor. He wasn't kidding about the three toolboxes! Also a bunch of her old clothes, robotics experiments and some miscellaneous spare parts from here and there he thought she might still have some use for.

"I was going over to the airship but I saw Sonic on the street. I challenged him to a race but he chickened out and convinced me to sleep over at his place. We had a race that night and I dropped my board off a building, but it's not dented enough for you to worry about it."

If Jet was in the same room as Wave, he'd see that she had stopped applying the rest of her makeup to stare at nothing for a brief moment, trying to process everything Jet had just told her.

"Since when are you that friendly with Sonic the Hedgehog? I mean, I know you're his self-proclaimed rival and all that but this is a bit…weird."

"What, rivals can't hang out with each other now? I want to be better than Sonic, not kill him."

"Good point but you're avoiding the question."

"I'd answer it if I knew."

Jet shrugged and walked to the living room, plopping down on one of her big soft couches. Wave was checking herself out on the living room mirror. She then sat on the couch opposite to Jet and took out her phone impatiently. He took out his own, checking out the notification from Sonic's message he hadn't gotten to replying yet.

[Fastest Thing In The Universe]: already started making the plans for our lil road trip u better b prepared to have tons of fun n for me to beat u 2 all the treasures

Wave could practically hear him rolling his eyes. Sonic had probably changed his name in the messaging app just to tease him.

[HAWK]: can you change your name so I can actually see what your message says from my notifs

[HEDGEHOG]: like this~?

[HAWK]: I'm cancelling the trip

[BlueBlur]: okay okay jeez flicky back 2 the usual

"Jet you've been smirking at your phone for like a full minute now."

Said smirk quickly faded as he looked up at Wave, who was staring at him with a hint of curiosity on her otherwise bored expression. At least she had forgotten about him having to get out of her apartment quickly. Jet readjusted himself, back straightening against the cushions with the faintest sound. He didn't even notice himself smirking, what was wrong with him?

Maybe… maybe Wave could tell him! He'd usually not talk about this sort of stuff with the few friends he had, but he trusted Wave would take him seriously enough.

"Hey Wave can you help me with something related to my feelings? Y'know, since you're a girl and girls are always talking about their feelings and all that."

Wave shot him a mild glare before she went back to trying to figure out just what was taking her girlfriend so long. "Jet you're a sexist prick, you know that?"

He took a deep breath. "Sorry, let me rephrase that. Hey Wave, can you help me with something related to my feelings since you have a girlfriend and you probably talked to her about your feelings at least once?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"Wait, really? That easy?"

"You're probably going to end up killing someone if I say no and you go ask for Storm's advice. So yeah, go ahead."

Jet had to admit he did plan on asking Storm if Wave ended up turning him down. It couldn't be that bad of an idea though, right? The guy was married and had a child. He probably had some bits of wisdom not even Wave had. And as much as both of them liked to endlessly tease Storm, he had to admit the albatross had helped him a lot with his supportive nature and go-getter attitude.

But Storm wasn't what he needed to think about right now. Jet took a minute to himself try to figure out how and what exactly he was going to bring up to Wave. The mystery feeling was a prime candidate, but he had absolutely no idea how to describe it to her. It just made him feel… weird.

"Wave, what do you do when someone makes you feel…weird?"

"What are you, eight years old? You can tell me what you're feeling, I won't make fun of you for it or anything."

"I don't know what it is, that's why I'm saying it like this!" He huffed and crossed his arms, looking at nowhere in particular while he tried to find the right words.

"Like… when you hate someone, but like… In reverse? He makes me feel so… weird. It's just weird! I don't know what else I need to say!"

"Who are we talking about again?"

"Sonic the Hedgehog. I thought you'd caught on to that already."

Now that caught Wave's attention. She quickly finished typing a message on her phone and put it down, now focusing on Jet. She was leaning forwards, elbows resting on her legs and head in between her hands. Her expression was pure curiosity and a tiny hint of a smile was also creeping onto her face.

"I was distracted, sorry. I'm all ears now. Maybe you're still mad about one of the times he beat you? It'd help a lot if you could describe what you're feeling. Don't worry about making sense, just let the words out."

"I don't know, it's… warm?"

"Go on…?"

"I guess it's warm. And… it makes me feel like hanging out with Sonic. But it also kind of mad at him? Like when he does something stupid, I get angry at him for real instead of just teasing him for it. But not in a bad way, I think? It doesn't feel like I'm mad at him for being stupid, it's more like I want to see him doing better than that. Because I know he can do better than that. Does this make sense? I feel like I'm not making sense."

"Oh no, don't worry, it makes perfect sense! You're not going to like what I'm about to say, though."

"What? Spit it out, it can't be that bad."

"I'm just saying, what you're describing sounds kind of similar to a cr—"

Before Wave could finish the word and make Jet let out a "what?!" loud enough to shatter the eardrums and windows of everyone in the building, the doorbell rang. Wave practically bolted to open the door.

"Hey babe, sorry for the wait. Boss didn't want me to borrow the private jet for our date so I had to do some bribing. You made a good call telling me to swipe the chaos emerald off them last week, you're going to get extra smooches for that."

Jet waved awkwardly at Rouge once she was done kissing the top of Wave's beak. The bat was wearing a somewhat matching outfit to her girlfriend – a frilly white crop top with a gray fitted skirt and navy-blue heels. She was also wearing golden bracelets much like Wave used to, but they looked like they were made of actual gold rather than yellow-painted scrap metal.

Jet felt a little self-conscious being the only one there not wearing a shirt nor pants. Though he did get a fancy new hair clip in the shape of a bird's head he found on a Hot Topic-like store's display. He was pretty sure it was an eagle and not a hawk, but it looked cool regardless.

"Hey."

"Oh, I didn't expect you to have company! Though I don't blame you, I did take an awful while to get here."

Wave shrugged, stepping aside to let Rouge in. The bat waited for her to sit down so she could sit besides her. "I was about to kick him out, I just had to finish telling him that he probably has a crush on Sonic."

Wave immediately sacrificed herself to cover Rouge's ears instead of her own. Though surprisingly, Jet didn't scream. He just sat there for a while looking like he was thinking really, really hard. It was a full minute of silence before his expression morphed into… terror? Excruciating pain? Gay panic? Something in between.

"…For real?" Jet's voice was almost a whisper. That startled Wave more than if he was to scream.

"I mean, don't ask me! You're the one feeling all warm and bothered when you think about Sonic. You have to ask yourself why that is." She raised her hands defensively. "Uh… babe, help me out? You went to college for psychology, right?"

"Eh. We just talked about how much Freud sucked most of the time," Rouge shrugged, "but I did start looking into becoming a therapist before joining G.U.N. yeah. I can give you my own two cents if you w—"

"Cool, how do I get rid of it? I don't want to have a crush on Sonic anymore." Jet said that with a completely serious face, which made Rouge let out a little chuckle.

"Hey there, let's not be hasty. You don't even know if it is a crush yet." She waved her hands dismissively. "It could be something else. Like envy, for example."

"Envy? I mean, I did use to get pretty envious of how fast Sonic is. But it's never made me feel like this before. We just raced and that was it."

"I'm just throwing stuff out there, I'm not sure either. Is there something else you might be envious of Sonic for?"

Jet thought for a moment. What did Sonic have that he didn't? The friends, the carefree life, a seemingly infinite amount of hobbies and things to do, a proper relationship with his (found) family, a handsome face and charming smile, perfect legs…

"I guess I want to be that tall too."

"We can get you some heels for that, problem solved! Didn't even need a degree for that."

"I mean… so what if it is a crush," Wave interjected, "there's nothing wrong with that. You might have to go to actual therapy if you have some internalized homophobia or something to work out, but otherwise it shouldn't be that big of an issue."

"Oh no, I'm not upset about crushing on another guy, it's because it's Sonic specifically." Jet lowered his face onto his palms, almost stabbing himself with his beak in the process. "I mean, Sonic? Sonic the Hedgehog? He's… y'know. He's Sonic!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, like… He's… you know what I mean, stop teasing me! I'm going home have a nice date or whatever!" Jet suddenly got up and headed out through the door.

Wave and Rouge stared at each other for a while. Neither of them knew what he meant.

"I knew I shouldn't have gotten the private jet with the DVD player, you're gonna talk about this forever now."

"You know damn well I'm right, Rouge. The Chao from Chao in Space 3 are part of a hivemind led by Space Chaos, the Nega Wisp army were only trying to liberate them! I mean, just look at all the hints they dropped for us!"

Rouge couldn't help but laugh and clutch her girlfriend's hand tighter, resting her head on her shoulder as they walked through the streets of Station Square. Wave had been there before to visit Jet, but she had never stopped to admire just how nice the atmosphere was. They had already been to Twinkle Park and dined in a fancy restaurant. They were headed off to Rouge's apartment to finish the day off with a good night of rest.

"Babe."

"I mean sure they were killing the Chao, but that's only because they sucked all the energy from the Mother Wisp and corrupted their whole fleet. It's not like they could do much at that point besides spare them from their cursed existence."

"Babe."

"If they had let Angel Chao and his squad carry out the civilian rescuing operation, they'd have realized they were the bad guys all along! And the movie doesn't even frame them as wrong in the slightest for killing all of the Wisps? How messed up is that?"

"Wave."

"WHAT?!"

"I love to hear you talking about movies like that, did you know?"

Wave closed her beak, flushing under her purple feathers. Rouge snickered and leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm right and you know it." Wave pouted.

"You're almost always right."

"I'm right this time too."

"If I confirm it then you're going to stop being cute."

"Hmph."

It didn't take long before they reached Rouge's apartment. Walking from the streets and into the parking lot, the bat raised an eyebrow as she saw that one of her lights was on, if she was looking up at the right window.

She wasn't too worried about it – Shadow often hung out by her apartment when he had nothing better to do – but she thought she had made it pretty clear that she was bringing Wave over and didn't want any disturbances. Maybe he just wanted to have a chat with the two of them for some reason? Sounded unlikely, but the ultimate lifeform was a walking mystery most of the time anyways.

Her doubts were confirmed after they went up the elevator to her apartment on the second floor. Not only were the lights on but the front door was also open. That wasn't something Shadow would do, he was more careful than that. Sure enough, when she peeked into the living room she saw not one but two hedgehogs!

"—and he looked like, super depressed too! I can't just let something like that go, you understand right? Come on Shadow, you have to help me out on this one!"

"Now what do we have here?" Rouge released Wave's hand so she could cross her arms and strike a semi-convincing annoyed facial expression. "So? Who's going to explain themselves first?"

"I was planning to borrow your eyeshadow and leave as quickly as possible. Sonic kept me here because he's desperate."

"I'm not desperate! Okay, maybe a little, but— hey Wave! Maybe a little, but it's important. Rouge, help me out on this one!"

Sonic did look very desperate. He was currently holding a sheet of paper awfully close to Shadow's face – and the other looked like he was trying his best not to swat it out of his hands.

He then turned around in a blur and stood in front Rouge. His smile looked a little bit forced. Wave stood awkwardly in the corner as both girls finally made their way inside.

She peaked at the paper now in Rouge's hands. It looked like… a schedule of sorts? There was a table with dates and locations, and simplistic drawings of Sonic's friends inside some of the cells. It looked rushed and barely readable, just like what Jet used to make her decipher.

"This is in crayon." That managed to break Rouge's façade, a smile creeping onto her face before she burst into a fit of giggles.

"I know, don't mention it! I was already half way here when I realized the first version was bad and the closest place was Cream's house and she only had crayons. But that's not the point! The point is—"

"Slow down, big blue! Take a breath first, then explain to me what's going on. But don't drag it for too long, okay? Me and my lovely girlfriend need to go to bed soon."

Sonic rolled his eyes but ultimately took her advice, breathing in and out extra loudly just for the dramatic effect.

"Okay so… uh, I met with Jet recently and he was kind of weird, and I'm kind of organizing a road trip to cheer him up. He found some old treasure hunt list from his dad so we're using that as our travel guide."

"Weird how?" Wave chimed in.

"Like… not there at all? Not Jet? He only taunted me for like five minutes in total instead of hours!"

She had to admit, that was pretty weird. Both her and Rouge now knew why he might have been acting weird, but of course they wouldn't tell Sonic about it.

Besides, that's not really how a crush is supposed to work. Wave was pretty sure there were some other issues Jet wasn't telling her about, intentionally or not. She'd have to question him about it… eventually.

"So you're going to cramp everyone into a car just to cheer up Jet?" Rouge raised an eyebrow, unamused.

"Not in a car, in the Babylon Rogues' airship! I mean, uh… I was going to ask for Wave's permission first, of course. We might have to modify it a tiny bit." Sonic nodded. "And so, not everyone at a time. I know there's not that many bedrooms in there, so I made a schedule! And then remade it with Cream's crayons!"

"Blue, I'm going to say this in the nicest way possible," Rouge put a hand on his shoulder, "why do we have to go too? I'm sure you can cheer up Jet on your own. You have a talent for that kind of thing."

"I mean, yeah! But this isn't like… cheering up, this is more like… I don't know! Jet feels like he needs to get out there and meet new people and—"

"Did he tell you that?" Everyone turned to face Shadow, who somehow kept silent this whole time.

"No, but…"

"We've talked about this before, Sonic. You're a hero, you can do good in many ways. But you're not a therapist. You don't even know what the issue is. Jet could just have a cold for all you know."

"I know, but… but…!"

"Since when do you care about Jet so much anyways? I remember you telling me you found him quite annoying."

"That was years ago, dude! Jet is different now, he's… well, he hasn't changed a lot since then actually, but you have to believe me that he's a nice guy! I just… I think Jet deserves better than this, you know? He just has a different vibe to him now, you know?"

"I don't, actually. I've never talked to him."

Sonic groaned and brought a palm up to his face in frustration. "I just… feel like staying next to him, even if that doesn't help a lot with his issues. It's the least I can do. I haven't been able to stop thinking about him ever since he slept over and I think I'm gonna go crazy if I don't have this trip. It's stupid, I know, but…"

Rouge and Wave turned to look at each other, and both of them immediately knew they were onto something they probably shouldn't be. Shadow wasn't in on the gossip, but he could at least tell Rouge was and that she was about to pull him out of the room to talk about it.

"Sounds like you're just trying to do a nice thing, that's innocent enough." Rouge finally said, pointing at Shadow. "I need to have a word with Hot Topic outside for a moment. You go ahead and tell Wave how you're going to destroy her airship."

"Will do! I mean, I'll try not to!" He let out a nervous chuckle. Rouge and Shadow quickly left the room and went deep into the hallway. Sonic and Wave looked at each other with a fair bit of awkwardness in their eyes.

Neither of them knew the other very well, but both had spent enough time with Jet to know that this was probably a bad idea.