"Don't wait up. I love you."
Shade smiled at her boyfriend's words on her end of the phone. "I love you too."
She then hung the phone up, keeping it switched on to check the time on it. 4:30 AM. Super late for Shade, especially since her job was in three and a half hours, followed by her kickboxing class not long after her job was over.
She went to her bed, sleeping in a black tank top and some blue panties and curling up under the sheets. As she slept, she dreamed happily of cute little echidna babies, hoping to have a family of her own one day with Knuckles.
Her joyful sleep was spoiled just twenty minutes later as her phone buzzed. She didn't recognise the number, but she answered anyway, sleepily rubbing her eyes to clear her vision as she greeted the caller.
"Hello?" she asked.
"Hello, Shade? This is Ash of the Green Hill Police Department."
Shade was worried. The voice sounded hesitant. "What's wrong?"
"We... we found Knuckles and the others... they were in a car accident."
The orange echidna sat up instantly. "Is... is everything okay?"
Ash breathed a bit. "We don't know yet. We're just getting ready to take them to the hospital. Meet us there in twenty five minutes."
Shade nodded. "Thank you for telling me this..."
Ash rubbed his eyes and sighed. "I'm just sorry to be the one to tell you."
"No, don't be. It's fine." Shade shuddered a bit. "Could you send a car to pick me up? The only one we have is Knuckles' car."
"Sure thing," Ash said. "We'll see you there."
"Thank you."
They both hung up, and the orange echidna fought back her tears as she rushed out of her bed, searching for her clothes to put back on that she wore through the day, which were dark green skinny jeans and black sneakers. She grabbed her grey jumper on the way out of the house, making her way to the front as she waited.
Sooner than she had expected, a police car showed up. She recognised it as being one of Green Hill's own, so she went over as the driver opened the back door for her, She slid inside, closing the door before the car drove off again.
The trip to the hospital was silent, as Shade wasn't in the mood to talk, and the driver wasn't much of a conversationalist anyway. Soon enough, they reached the Green Hill Hospital parking lot, seeing a couple other cars also park outside.
Once Shade's car had found a parking space, she didn't waste any time. She thanked the driver, got out of the car, shut the door behind her, and walked over to the hospital's automatic doors. She was about to go to the front desk when a voice called her.
"Are you Shade?"
She turned to see a male mongoose with yellow fur. "Yes."
"I'm Ash," the mongoose replied. "We spoke on the phone earlier."
"Where are they?"
"All in the same room." Ash turned. "Follow me. I'll take you to them."
Shade sped up a bit to catch up as Ash started moving, and she was led through the hospital. She soon followed him to a room which had rows of hospital beds with miscellaneous equipment and IV stands attached to them.
They moved further forward, and Ash stopped them both as they reached near the far back of the room. "Well, here they are. They're behind the curtains."
Shade looked around her, seeing four beds that were closed off by curtains. They almost seemed to be in a perfect square, as there were two on the left of Shade, and then the last two to her right.
She went right first, pulling the curtain back and seeing the last person she wanted to see in the hospital bed. "Knuckles..." She knelt down and began weeping at the sight before her; there he lay, unconscious, with several cuts across the left side of his face. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, where she saw some bleeding.
He had more cuts and bruises over his body, but the worst of it was his hands; both had been broken, and were heavily wrapped up in layers of bandages, with a sling keeping them close together.
She bawled out more tears as she buried her head in his neck. "Please... please be okay..."
"He's fine..." Ash said from behind. "His condition is pretty bad, but they'll all be okay." He placed a hand on her shoulders. "Would you like to see the others?"
Shade nodded as she stood up, then chuckling through her tears as Ash handed her a tissue. The pair went to the bed next to Knuckles, opening it up to see Shadow, laying comatose on his bed, much like Knuckles was.
While there were several garish injuries for Shadow, much like with Knuckles, the most notable one was his chest. It had bandages wrapped around it, and they were pressuring down what seemed to be a constant bleeding from the area.
"What happened to Shadow?" Shade asked.
"The accident caused a piece of metal from Knuckles' car to cut his chest open," said Ash. "It wasn't enough to penetrate the bone or reach the heart, but it was a pretty deep cut. It's lucky we got there in time."
"Doesn't Shadow have someone who looks after him?" asked Shade.
"Ah, yes, Maria," said Ash. "We haven't been able to contact her. We've tried, but we can't reach her."
"Did you try calling her from Shadow's phone?"
"Yes. It was one of the first things we tried, but it didn't work."
Shade shrugs. "Maybe she didn't want to fear for the worst when she saw the number?"
Ash shook his head. "I don't know..."
It was then that a door opened from behind them, and Shade and Ash both turned around at the same time to see Maria approaching them, wearing a blue jacket over a light grey t-shirt with a black floral design, with blue jeans and black short heels finishing the look. Following closely behind her was a female rabbit with some mechanical parts whom Shade hadn't met before.
"I'm sorry, Ash," the rabbit said in her Southern accent. "I couldn't stop her."
"It's okay, Bunnie," said Ash.
Maria walked past Shade and Ash, ignoring the two as she reached Shadow. "Is... is he..."
"He's alive," Ash assured the blonde woman. "Why weren't you answering our calls?"
Maria didn't look at Ash. "I was scared... I didn't want to come at first, but then I... I just had to see if he was okay..."
Shade then stops and turns to Bunnie. "Are there any other cops here?"
"Just Antoine and Lupe," the mechanical rabbit replied. "Everyone else went home, but they'll be here to check on them tomorrow."
"Do you want to check on the others?" Ash asked.
Shade nodded, walking over to the other side of the room and opening the nearest curtain. On the bed was Sonic, unconscious, hooked up to an IV, with several lacerations across his face, probably the most Shade had seen so far.
She then looked further down to see both of the hedgehog's legs raised up on slings. They appeared to be badly bruised and broken, and Shade turned to see Bunnie walk over to her.
"It's just early stages, but his legs suffered the worst of the crash," the rabbit said.
"Will he be okay?" Shade asked.
"His face might be better off than the rest of him..." Bunnie answered, hanging her head slightly.
"Let's hope it's not permanent," said Ash. "Only one more to go."
The orange echidna looked worried, and she nodded as she went to the last curtain. She peeled it back to reveal Tails, the last of the four, on the bed. Like the others, he had a breathing mask and an IV tied to him, as well as several cuts and bruises across his face and neck.
"He doesn't look as bad as the others do," Shade noted.
"Actually, the lower half of his spine was busted up pretty badly," Lupe said, walking in with Antoine.
"So, he could be like Sonic?" asked Shade.
"Only if the doctors don't take care of him," replied Antoine. "Which, I assure you, they will."
"So, you've been hurt before and wound up here?" asked Maria, finally turning away from Shadow.
"Actually, it's all down to my body itself," Bunnie said. "How do you think I got these metal parts? I make it a point to change whatever I can as I get older to support me better. The doctors here ain't never let little old me down."
Maria smiled briefly at that, enjoying the humour before she looked over at Shadow. "I just want him to be okay..."
Shade then turned to Ash. "What happened to the people driving the car that hit them?"
"They sadly died on impact," said Lupe. "We suspect that alcohol may have played a part in the accident."
It was then that a group of doctors walked in, with the leader of the group seeing Shade and Maria. "Are you two cops as well?"
"I'm Knuckles' girlfriend," Shade said to him.
"And I live with Shadow, and am kind of his guardian," Maria followed on.
The doctor smiled, but then sighed. "I'm afraid you'll still have to wait outside. We need to get them to surgery."
Another doctor, a female, added on to that. "We would have done it earlier, but there were others that we had to look after when they arrived. We used what equipment we had to stop their injuries from getting any worse."
Shade nods. "I understand." She then looks up at the doctors with pleading eyes. "Just promise that you'll help them, and that they'll be okay."
"We will," the head doctor replied. He then turned to the other doctors. "All right, let's get these beds to the surgery room."
Quickly and efficiently, the doctors moved to unhook any unnecessary things from the bodies of the four fallen officers as they managed to wheel their beds away, taking them out of their current room and heading to the far right of the hospital.
As Shade was about to go with them, Ash's hand held her back, and the mongoose spoke. "You should probably get back home now."
"But..." Shade trailed off, the tears from her eyes blocking her speech.
"Ash is right," Antoine said. "You'll just run yourself ragged if you stay here overnight. Go home and come back tomorrow morning."
"What about my job and my class?"
"We contacted them," said Lupe. "They understand, and everything will be okay. Just please get some rest."
"By the way, your boss is a nice person," Ash added, hoping to cheer Shade up. "She knows how hard you've been working at the store."
"Eh, retail's not the most exciting, but I like the atmosphere, and the people I work with are nice," said Shade.
Ash smiled. "The same care that brought you here will take you back home, and it'll come back tomorrow morning for you."
Shade nodded, shaking hands with the mongoose. "Thank you for all of your help."
"No problem," Ash replied, then turning to Maria. "What are you going to do?"
Maria shook her head. "I don't know... I wasn't able to sleep when Shadow didn't come back home. Now with the accident... I'm not sure what to do."
"Don't you have a job to get to?" asked Shade.
The blonde shook her head again. "No. I've tried, but... it's hard..."
"Regardless, you should probably get home yourself," Lupe suggested. "Like with Shade, there's no reason to keep yourself awake overnight. We'll pick you up in the morning."
"Th-Thank you... I appreciate it..." Maria said, looking down at her feet.
"We'll be here to make sure everything's okay," said Ash with a reassuring smile. "I haven't known Shadow long, but I know that he's one tough dude. The training at Green Hill Academy can attest to that."
Maria nodded once more. "Thank you again..."
She then walked past them all to make her leave. Shade, looking after the blonde, turned to say one last vow of thanks to the officers before finding her own way to the front parking lot of the hospital, seeing a car waiting for her.
Maria had gotten in a different car which was just now leaving, so Shade went over to the one she arrived in, the driver soon hopping into the vehicle and starting it up for the drive back to her house.
Much like with the drive to the hospital, the drive back home was also silent and uneventful, save for her once again thanking the driver as she left the car, who nodded and smiled in reply before driving off.
Shade sighed and entered her house once more, taking off her jumper as she entered. She went straight for her room, chucking her jumper in the laundry basket before it was joined with her jeans and shoes, leaving her once more in her underwear.
She went under her covers once more, her eyes still welling up with some tears as she tried not to cry herself to sleep. She silently prayed to whatever deity would listen that Knuckles and the others would be okay, and then she closed her eyes and got some rest.
Back at the hospital, the four officers that helped Shade and Maria out waited in the front hall of the hospital. Ash scratched the back of his head nervously. "Should we be staying here, too?" he asked his fellow officers. "It just doesn't seem fair to send Shade and Maria home, then we stay here."
"I get what you mean," Bunnie said. "But Avery wanted us to watch over them."
Antoine smirked. "I guess because we're younger, he thinks we can stay up later." He looked at Ash. "You're essentially his right hand man. Can't you give us orders to go and get some shuteye?"
Ash shrugged. "I don't think it works that way. Also, I'm pretty sure that Simian is Avery's second in command. I just make the presentations."
They all shared a brief laugh at that before Lupe spoke up, her voice sounding worried. "How do you think the doctors are doing?"
"I can only hope that they're doing all that they can," Antoine shrugged.
Ash nodded. "It's a good thing that you called Maria here when you did."
"Yeah," Antoine nodded. "Well, it was technically Lupe who called her, but."
"How come you guys didn't get into the room until after Maria?" asked Bunnie.
"We tried, but she moved pretty quickly. She was really worried about Shadow, it seems," Lupe said.
"Yeah..." Ash replied. "I noticed that she didn't even seem tired when she got here. She must have been really worried."
"Well, we'd best get to the main waiting room," said Lupe. "There's no need to wait here any longer than we have to."
The others nodded in agreement with the female wolf, and they all turned to exit out of the room, making their way through out of the recovery room until they found a waiting room in the main hall, finding some seats.
As they waited, the surgeons inside the rooms were busy at work. They had each of the four newbie officers in separate rooms, choosing to work on all four of them at once instead of risking it with one at a time.
They worked on Tails first, as he had suffered the most damage with his spine. They had the fox turned over onto his front, having to move his tails either side of his body to access his spine easier.
They didn't waste any time, carefully cutting open the young fox's back to expose the flesh underneath. After more careful cutting, they eventually exposed his spine, seeing the damage that had been done to it.
Whilst the brace that he was using did enough to keep it under repairs, several segments of the spine were still severely damaged. Regardless, the surgeons went to work as hard as they could, using a newly developed medicinal paste to help repair and heal the spine.
The paste itself was a lime green colour, and inside it were several stem cell compounds that had helped numerous times before. After they put together the right pars of Tails' backbone, they used the paste to glue it together and heal it. For good measure, they put some on Tails' other, less serious wounds to help them heal faster as well.
"Do you think this'll be enough?" asked one surgeon.
"Actually... I might have an idea," said the head surgeon, turning to another surgeon next to him. "Do we have any cybernetic implants?"
The surgeon nodded. "We have quite a few. Got any ideas?"
"Yeah. But get some out for the others, as well."
The surgeon nodded, and in another room, Shadow was being worked on. In contrast to Tails, Shadow wasn't as damaged, but the large cut in his chest was a worry that the surgeons knew wouldn't go away any time soon.
They opened it back up as carefully as they could, seeing just how deep the cut was as one of them spoke. "It's amazing how it didn't get to his heart. This is one of the deepest wounds I've ever seen in my life..."
"Then let's put it back together again," the head surgeon said, using the same paste he used for Tails. "This will keep it healed for a little while before we need to put in the implant."
"How do the implants work again?" asked another surgeon.
The leader smiled. "Well, in a similar manner to the paste," he said, grabbing an implant. He held it up, showing a small, metallic circle with a teal blue tinge glowing around it. "The implants have little nanomachines inside of them, and whatever they connect to they connect to forever. They don't take anything away from the person with the implant, and they keep whatever body part they're connected to in check."
"Don't they also give the user some kind of abilities?"
"They do, but the effects are often completely random. It often depends on how the people themselves act, and the nanomachines will automatically change to give them that ability," replied the head surgeon. "But, in the case of Espio, those were abilities already chosen as they'd been testing them for quite a long time. They had just developed his implant to give somebody the power to become invisible, and Espio was the lucky one who was able to fully connect with his implant."
"So, maybe the implants choose the right people. Or in this case, Mobians..." said another surgeon.
"Perhaps," replied the leader. "Anyway, we've talked long enough. Let's get back to work, shall we?"
The others agreed, and went to sort Knuckles out next. In the accident, his hands had bore the brunt of it, and were severely damaged as the surgeons saw when they dug through the skin on his hands. They were both broken up to the wrist, and the doctors went about fixing them up as best as they could before adding the medical paste to keep them held together.
Lastly, there was Sonic. His legs were the worst for wear in comparison to the rest of his body. But, like his friends, he received some medical paste on the other wounds around his face and neck to help heal them.
The surgeons were quick to work, moving fast to cut through to the bones in Sonic's legs and mending what they could before using the paste to help the process to speed up a little bit. After they were done, the head surgeon moved in.
He started on Tails first, as he was the first to have been operated on. He went about the process carefully, and when he found the right spot, he held the implant there until it connected fully to Tails' spine.
"Easy does it..." the surgeon told himself, grabbing the medical paste and smoothing it over Tails' spine to ease the implant in. "There we are..."
"That could have been bad..." said another surgeon.
"Good thing I'm the head of this little team, then," the leader replied, moving on to Shadow. "His might be the hardest. Sure, his wound was deep, but it never reached his internal organs. I still have to be careful..."
With almost sniper-like precision, he inserted the implant into Shadow's chest, holding it still until it had locked in before adding more medical paste to help soothe the wound, like he did for Tails.
"Let's sort out the red echidna next," the surgeon said, walking over to Knuckles.
Carefully, he placed the implants around Knuckles' wrists. He had to hold them a little bit longer, as having an implant wrap around something was harder than having it stick to a much flatter surface. Nevertheless, they stuck, and more paste was applied.
"That's got to be a pain," said a surgeon. "Having to hold an implant for longer if they're surrounding something rather than just being place upon it."
"Yeah, it is kind of a pain," the head agreed with a nod. "All right, that's three down. One more to go."
He soon found himself working on Sonic, the last of the four that needed operating on. Like with Knuckles, the implants had to wrap themselves around the injured areas of Sonic's legs, so the surgeon held them there for a while. Things seemed to be going well, until the heart monitor connected to Sonic started to go a bit faster.
"We need to sedate him," a surgeon said quickly.
"I can't move from here; the implants are almost locked in!" the head said.
Another surgeon moved around quickly, searching through a nearby metal drawer for the right needle. He soon found it, moving forward and pressing the tip of the needle against Sonic's wrist where the veins were, injecting the sedative into the blue hedgehog's bloodstream.
After a few moments, Sonic had finally calmed down, and the head surgeon panted. "Phew... all right, let's carry on."
He held the implants against Sonic's legs again before they finally locked in, having loosened somewhat from the panic attack of Sonic. After the implants were locked, more paste was added to help ease the pain of it.
The head surgeon panted as he moved back from Sonic. "Man... there were some close calls there..." He looked around. "All right, let's stitch them back up and take them back to the recovery room."
The others nod, quickly stitching the injuries back up before adding more of the paste to the stitches. Not only did they dull the pain, but they also reduced scar tissue that would be left behind.
After this was done, the surgeons carefully moved the beds out of the surgery room, soon getting out of the wing and making their way to the recovery rooms. As they moved, Ash looked up and noticed that the beds were moving.
"Come on," he said to his fellow officers.
They all sat up with him and followed him, stopping short just as they saw the surgeons placing the beds in the recovery room. The four walked up just as the doctors were finished hooking Sonic and the others up to some machines.
"How did it go?" Bunnie asked.
"Well, there was a fair share of close calls, but everything turned out all right," said the head surgeon.
Lupe then stepped in. "I heard that there's this new medical paste that's been helping recently."
The surgeon nodded. "That's true. It helps the blood cells to work faster, dulls scar tissue after stitching a wound back up, and any pain thereafter is almost nonexistent."
Ash chuckled. "Well, thank you for helping them out."
"Anything to assist the force," the surgeon said. "We all should help each other out from time to time."
Bunnie smiled. "I don't know if this'll numb the celebration a little, but the force you just helped have barely been cops for a day."
The surgeon smiled. "They're made of some pretty tough stuff for a bunch of rookies." He then rubbed the back of his head. "Well, you should all get home now. I'm sure you'll all arrive in the morning to check up on them again, anyway."
Ash nodded and shrugged. "Eh, most of our guys already up and left. It's pretty much just us four now." He then shook the surgeon's hand. "Thank you again."
"No problem."
The yellow mongoose smiled once more before turning away, walking out the doors of the recovery room with his friends. They made their way out of the wing and soon exited the building itself as they all hopped into the car that they arrived in.
Lupe was the one driving, and she pulled out of the parking lot before soon reaching the main road. Bunnie took up the passenger seat next to her, and opened the window some to let the cool night air flow.
"So, just where do y'all think Nack could have run off to, anyway?" asked Bunnie.
"No clue," replied Ash. "I mean, according to Sonic, they were speeding off across the water with both drugs and cash. They could be anywhere by now."
Antoine then spoke up. "Isn't Aqua Lake City somewhere in the water?"
Lupe then smiled. "That's a good point. It is its own continent, after all. It's completely separate from the rest of Mobius."
"That would be a start, but we should wait until we've got all of our ducks in a row," Ash replied. "And besides, Aqua Lake is really far away in the water. If Nack wants to traffic something big in a new city, that wouldn't be the best place."
"Unless he got his hands on some shipping containers really quickly," Bunnie suggested.
"I wouldn't put it past him," said Antoine. "Considering how fast he's worked before, anything could happen. I mean, he wasn't in Green Hill long before he started raising trouble."
"It wasn't even all that much," Lupe said. "He was starting off small. If Sonic and the others hadn't gotten in Nack's way, then who knows what could have happened? Like, what if the deal did go through? How much Fokus would Nack be pushing here right now?"
"That's a good point..." said Ash. "And that's not to mention what would have happened if he managed to push girls around with his drugs."
"And that might not be all, either," said Bunnie. "If he got his way, I bet he'd try to sell guns all around Green Hill."
"Well, there's no point worrying about it until tomorrow," said Antoine. "It could be worth bringing up with Avery."
The others all agreed, and the drive the rest of the way back to the Department was silent. They soon parked the car, entered the building, and went up to the third floor to find their rooms.
"Goodnight, everybody," said Ash as he entered his room.
"See you tomorrow," Lupe said, heading into her own room.
"Goodnight," Antoine added, going to his own room, which he shared with Bunnie.
As they got into their room, the coyote and rabbit combo got into their bed, stripping out of their uniform and sticking to their underwear, with a t-shirt and some lounge pants for Antoine, and a nightie with some shorts for Bunnie.
They curled up, and Antoine spoke first. "Do you think we'll be able to catch up to Nack?"
"We will, sugar," Bunnie smiled. "Don't worry about him."
"I'm more worried about Sonic and the others," Antoine admitted. "I worry about what would have happened if we hadn't left when we did..."
"Well, there's no need to worry, cutie," Bunnie winked, kissing her coyote boyfriend on the lips. "Sonic and his friends will be fine, I'm sure. We just need to focus on tomorrow, okay?"
Antoine chuckled. "When you're right, you're right."
"I know I'm right," the rabbit smiled, kissing Antoine on the lips again. "Night, baby."
"Night."
After that, they slept as the other officers went to their own beds and went to sleep almost immediately after hitting their mattresses, feeling tired from both the day's events and from the worry of their friends after the crash.
Elsewhere, Nack and his humans were just getting off the boat that they'd taken. To be on the safe side, they tied it to the pier to keep it close as they walked past the docks, walking to their next destination.
"So, this is the next place that we're going to start, eh?" asked one of the humans.
"Yeah..." Nack replied. "We probably won't find the most business savvy people here, but it's a decent enough start."
"Yeah, but... this is Westopolis. There's crime almost literally everywhere," said the other human.
"And it's also one of the farthest places from the main cities," said Nack as they began walking.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to come here in the first place?"
"It would have been too easy to come here in the first place," the purple weasel said. "Think about how badly those cops would have flushed this place out if they followed us all the way here."
"So, where do we go?" asked one of the humans as they made it to the main city.
"There's an abandoned prison close to the centre," said Nack. "Knowing this place, it shouldn't be too hard to find a car to steal."
"Over there," said one of the humans.
Nack smiled, and walked over to the vehicle in question. One of the humans cocked an elbow back and smashed the window open, reaching in to unlock the car. He then got in and looked around before seeing some keys under the driver's seat.
"Whoever owned this thing is obviously too stupid to look after their own car," he said as he plugged the keys into the ignition.
The others got in, and the second human spoke. "Like Nack said, the people of Westopolis aren't the most intelligent group." He then turned to Nack. "How far is the prison?"
"Like I said, close to the centre of the city," Nack said.
The human driving nodded as he took off, his driving to the centre of the city. Nack gave him the directions to where the prison was, and the human followed them to a tee, soon reaching the abandoned prison in question.
"Well, here's the Westopolis prison," said Nack.
"How are we going to get a good start here?" asked one of the humans. "It looks completely wrecked."
Nack grinned. "The garage has got some old cars in it."
"How do you know all this?" asked the other human.
"I used to work as a janitor here," replied Nack. "In fact, I grew up in the prison. It's where I got my start."
"You were in and out of here as a kid?"
"Eh, on occasion. I'm from Westopolis, after all," the purple weasel said. "But after I saw just how corrupt that life could be, well... I wanted in. Things became so much more fun after I found out how good being bad could be."
"So, what happened? Did you hand in your resignation and just leave?"
"Actually, I killed the cops in the security area and started a prison break," said Nack. "I freed a lot of people who owe me some favours."
"That explains how you're able to sell people out whenever you need to," said one of the humans.
Nack shrugged. "Survival of the fittest. I just do what I need to do. There's no friends in crime; there's only some people that you hate just a little bit less than you hate others."
The others nodded, walking into the prison, the briefcases still with them. They entered through the front door, which was easy since there wasn't any cops to open it for them, and the electrics that would open it or keep it locked were long since gone.
One of the humans wrenched the doors open, and they all walked through. Nack led the humans through the prison, and up onto the second floor where the head office was. He dusted off the old desk and chair that were both still there, smiling as he moved to sit down.
"So, what's next?" one of the humans asked.
"Just give me a cellphone, and I'll sort out what's next."
The human nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulled out a phone before handing it over to Nack. Without missing a moment, Nack began typing in a number. After a few rings, the person on the other end answered the phone, and Nack smiled.
"Who is it?" the other voice, a gruff sounding one, asked.
"Hello there, old friend," Nack said. "How would you like to make a deal?"
Sorry if this one is a little smaller than the others. Hopefully, the surgery scenes didn't disturb you all too much. Anyway, the next chapter should be a little longer. I'll see you all in the next one, so take care and stay tuned.