I profusely apologize for the long wait for this chapter. I had three tests to study for last week and a paper that I had to write this weekend. I won't let the wait for any more chapters go longer than a week, I promise. As I explained last chapter the action is starting to pick up! Maybe this story will end sooner than I originally thought… Anyway, enjoy!

…

After a great many struggles, Knuckles repeatedly smashed Espio's head into the bathroom mirror so hard that Espio forgot everything that had happened since this morning and a few other choice memories. Rouge couldn't believe how relieved Knuckles was. And then to top it off, Knuckles was acting all chummy to Espio. With his arm around Espio's shoulders, Knuckles weaved a tale of why Espio was bleeding upside the head and couldn't remember anything.

"You don't need to worry about anything, Es. As soons I all saw those rainbow pooping flying llamas, I knew the perfect solution."

Espio, who obviously had a concussion, believed everything Knuckles said. "Were the llamas blue? I love the color blue. I really, really, I mean really hope there were blue."

"Uh… yeah! Of course, Espio. I mean who ever heard of rainbow pooping flying llamas that weren't blue?" Espio smiled. Rouge glared at Knuckles.

Espio asked Knuckles, "So when they kidnapped me, did they take me to the house of gumdrop candies in the sky?"

"Uh… no. I, uh… yeah."

Tears began to fill up in Espio's eyes. "Are you sure? Then *sniff* where did they take me?"

"I-It doesn't matter. What matters is that I found you and you're… 'alright'."

"Okay…"

Rouge shook her head. This day was just getting better and better. Charmy, who was examining a broken vase, exclaimed, "Hey! I know what we can do! We can go have fun in Tails' lab!"

Knuckles steered Espio to the stairs leading down into Tails' lab passing Cream, who sat in the corner rocking herself, softly crying. "Sounds good to me."

Espio clapped his hands and nodded, smiling. Vector joined the line grooving to the miraculously still playing stereo. Covered with splatters of milkshakes, Omega appeared behind Rouge and Shadow and muttered, "MILKSHAKES…" Rouge sighed and went downstairs with the rest of the gang.

There everyone stood shocked. The place was huge. Bigger than five football fields. And… all of it white. Machine of all sorts of sizes and functions were put on display.

Vector's jaw dropped open. "W-wow…"

Espio frowned. "I don't see any llamas or candy…"

Charmy flew forward all aglow. "This place is awesome! Look at all this fun stuff I can destroy!" Charmy began to poke and fiddle with everything in sight. Quickly he disappeared.

Rubbing his chin, Knuckles studied the inventions in turn. "Ooh! Shiny!" Knuckles skedaddled. Soon everyone else dispersed each one playing with a separate invention. Rouge, not particularly impressed by what she saw, decided to walk around aimlessly. Shouts of glee crashes of destruction were heard from all corners of the lab.

Soon Rouge bumped into Knuckles and Charmy. A sign in front of the machine they stood in front of read, "Time and Dimension Teleporter. Do Not Touch."

"Cool!" Charmy cried. He pressed the big red button.

"You stupid moron!" Knuckles said, angrily. "I wanted to press it!"

Sparks flew and gears moved as the machine crackled to life. After thirty seconds of an impressive fireworks display, the door hissed open. Steam poured out masking the identities of the shadows inside. Knuckles, Charmy, and Rouge gasped as they saw…

…Silver and Blaze kissing. Upon seeing they had an audience, Silver screamed and jumped in Blaze's arms. Then Silver chuckled and puckered up his lips at Blaze. Angry, Blaze dropped him.

"Ewwww!" Charmy made a face. "Disgusting!"

Knuckles' shoulders slumped. "Aww… I wanted a pet dinosaur."

Rubbing his butt, Silver asked, "Where am I?"

Knuckles answered, "We're in Tails' lab looking at stuff. Wanna join?"

"Sure," Silver replied. "I got nothing better to do. Right, Blaze?" Blaze rolled her eyes but accepted Silver's hand. The two followed Knuckles and Charmy deeper into the lab.

"So… where are we again?" Silver asked Knuckles.

Knuckles put his arm around Silver's shoulders as they continued walking. "You see this is a secret base built by Barack Obama and his 53rd girlfriend way, way, way back in 1023 AD."

"Awesome! Did they were togas?"

Knuckles grinned. "You know it. They used this base to create all sorts of magical, uh… blue flying unicorns so they could use them to fight the terrorists that blew up Hawaii in 1812."

"Dude, that's stinkin' awesome! I can't wait to see them!" said Silver squealing like a girl.

"Ah, but there was a catch. They could only use them to fight on Saturdays."

"So what did they do?"

"On every other day of the week the magical unicorns ate everything in sight and pooped two of it. So now there are trillions of Barack Obamas and Barack Obama's 53rd girlfriends that watch people as they sleep. One of them is now the president."

Rouge turned around and walked the complete opposite direction. She had more than her fair share of Knuckles today.

…

Charmy, bored with listening to Knuckles talk about Obamas riding vomiting ogre dragons attacking Merlin's castle, left Knuckles and Silver. Blaze had left some time earlier when Knuckles told Silver of the time Obama the 2.34 x 1023456 and his trillionth 53rd girlfriend met a jaguar that could travel through time by chomping on its tail.

Combing through the racks of spare machine parts, Charmy found Vector talking to Blaze. Being who he was, Charmy decided to eavesdrop.

Vector, blushing, asked Blaze, "You…you know Cream, right?"

"Yeah… why? Is she here?"

"She's somewhere… I think. I, uh, thought I heard someone sobbing earlier, but that was shortly after I woke up from being unconscious and watched Knuckles and Espio beating the crap out of each other and there was blood and popcorn and something 'bout ponies so… I, uh could have been wrong …yeah."

Blaze's face was impossible to describe. After a long (and awkward) pause Blaze turned and called, "Silver…? We need to leave. …Silver? Come here!"

Quick as lightning, Vector moved to block Blaze's way with his body. "Not that it matters. I was… just lying. It was a joke. Ha, ha. Anyways I was wondering if you knew Cream's mom…"

Blaze screamed, "Silver!"

Vector panicked and shouted, "No, no, no! You don't need him! Just answer the question!" Blaze continued to scream. And so did Vector. "No! Shut up! I'm just asking a question!"

"Ssiiillllvvvvveeeeeerrrrrrr!"

Completely desperate, Vector grabbed Blaze, covered her mouth, and with ran off Blaze kicking the entire way and Vector yelling, "Just answer the d*** question!"

Charmy flew from out behind a shelf watching them go. "Cool. Vector kidnapped Blaze. Glad I didn't miss that."

With his soul light at the prospect of finding more adventure before the day was through, Charmy wafted up into the kitchen. And when one is in the kitchen, one eats. Duh. Never mind that Charmy ate enough food for five hippos in the space of ten minutes earlier that morning. When Charmy checked the fridge, all the food was mashed up all in one gigantic blob that like oozed out onto the floor. "Eww…" With that, Charmy slammed the door shut and food learned how to fly. Flying past the cupboards and the dishwasher searching for more food, Charmy stopped at the oven. A horrible smell was radiating from it. A quick look into the oven revealed more horrible mashed up stuff that once upon a time resembled food. Charmy again slammed it shut. Thinking that the only food in the house was either in the oven and the refrigerator and how he just couldn't not eat… Charmy set the oven to 500 degrees and left. Without a second thought.

…

The doctors, upon seeing the wound, were of course very shocked and insisted no walking, but as that would have been a major blow to pride, that is, sitting in a wheelchair, they escaped through a window. Of course, had the doctors known all of the wounds that they could have developed from doing such a stunt, they would have been very shocked and had a blow to their pride.

"Remind me never to go hospital," Sonic told Tails.

"Agreed," Tails replied. He pressed a button.

Amy shielded her eyes and squinted out into the horizon. "Do you feel better, Sonic?"

"Hmph." Sonic could have said a lot of things to that ridiculous question, but at that point he wasn't saying anything to anyone anymore. Other than his comment to Tails, of course. Clouds roared on by.

"When will we arrive?" Amy asked.

Tails checked a screen. "At this current pace… about 5 minutes." Amy stretched her legs and groaned.

After several minutes of silence had passed by, Tails voiced his concern, though it was shared by everyone. "I wonder what shape the house will be in…"

"Grr. Shut up, Tails." Sonic said, breaking his vow of silence for a second time.

"I'm not yelling or screaming about running into cliffs, am I?" Tails muttered to himself.

"What?"

"Never mind."

Another long pause. Sonic asked himself (or was it told himself?) "We're all crazy, aren't we…?" No one answered.

Five minutes flew by and the trio landed. Much to all of their amazement, the house was still standing. In fact, Sonic was stunned. "No… no way."

Amy and Tails glanced at each other worried. Sonic walked toward the house slowly as though hypnotized. Tails and Amy followed close behind, out of fear of the unknown. They both wanted to run, but they knew they couldn't. Their curiosity of how in the world that the house was still standing and what they might find inside prevented Amy and Tails from leaving. Curiosity killed the cat after all. They might all die too. A small part of Sonic, Tails, and Amy hoped so.

Sonic stepped onto the door step first. The door, of course, and part of the surrounding wall were long gone. The house beyond was quiet. So… quiet… quiet as the grave. In fact if one strained their ears they might have been able to hear the sound of a girl crying… crying over the dead. Despite this, Sonic smiled a huge smile. A quiet house meant death. And death meant no friends. And no crazy friends meant… who knows? Dreams that seemed impossible to Sonic, such as even the tiny, small, microscopic dream of relaxing, might become true. Sonic laughed gleefully at the thought. Like that'll happen. But he wanted it so, so badly…

Sonic walked inside with Tails and Amy behind him. Tails and Amy silently surveyed all the destruction of… of everything but Sonic seemed to barely see it. His eyes just skipped on past it. A seemingly impossible task to Tails and Amy. The destruction was omnipresent and omnipotent… a constant reminder… Sweating from fear, Tails and Amy just pleaded and begged inside their heads that this was the worse that was inside the house. The quiet… and dead house…

…

"Bbbuuuuurrrrrpppppp!

That was a good cheeseburger." Vector smiled. Charmy agreed. They had found the half eaten cheeseburger in the dumpster right below a window in Tails' personal and underground room. It looked bored and sad to Charmy as it just sat there on top of the trash pile. It looked like it was there for ages and ages just waiting for some people to set it free from its green and purple and whiteness of itself onto the next world. So Charmy pointed it out to Vector and the two spilt it between them. They chowed down on the so called feast.

The two of them had seen (and broke-"accidently" of course) all that was worth it in Tails' lab. The two were on their way upstairs together.

SMASH!

Vector and Charmy screamed and turned around. There on the ground was Knuckles. Unmoving.

Vector prodded him with his foot. Knuckles still didn't move. Tentatively, Charmy flew toward Knuckles and hovered over him. They both paused waiting.

"He smells of rotting fish," Charmy commented. Vector nodded.

With a sudden jerk, Knuckles moved. "Aahhh! Charmy cried and flew behind Vector. Knuckles stood up, but not on his own accord. His arms, legs, and head hung uselessly. A purple glow surrounded Knuckles as he floated.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Vector screamed. He crossed his knees.

After a creak and a sickening groan, Knuckles' head spun a full 360, a fact made more interesting by watching Knuckles' dreadlocks spin. Slowly the purple glow faded and Knuckles stood on his feet. "Whooo… I should stop drinking weird stuff." Knuckles rolled his head. He put his hands on his back and pushed his hips forward, stretching. "That was an adventure, that's for sure…" Knuckles muttered. He shook his head. "Never again…"

Vector and Charmy's eyes were as big as saucers as they watched Knuckles come back from the dead. Terrified, Vector asked, "N-n-n-never a-again w-what... at?"

Knuckles frowned and shrugged in a nonchalant way. "Never again I'm gonna kiss her, that's for sure. Ya know?"

Vector shook his head slightly then nodded vigorously. "Uh huh uh huh uh huh."

Charmy asked, "Kissed who?"

"Who do you think? And then guess what she had the nerve to do?" Knuckles demanded.

"She started getting all pissy and left," Knuckles continued without waiting for the others to respond. "Then she went a-crying to Shadow and started to kiss him and then Shadow started getting pissy…" Knuckles shook his head again. "Never again, I'll tell ya…" Knuckles picked his ear.

Vector frowned at the ground trying to hide his guilt. Vector muttered, "You… you shouldn't have messed with the love potion, Charmy."

"Why? Besides you were the one to point it out and said it would be a good idea to dump it all on everyone even when the instructions said to only use a drop-"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up."

Knuckles turned to face them. "He pointed at them and asked, "So what were yas gonna do?"

Vector shrugged. "I don't know. We were heading upstairs to get some food."

Knuckles walked up to Vector and Charmy and put his arms around them. "Sounds great to me. Let's go. Oh, but I justed remembered. I put all the food in the oven."

Charmy nodded. "Yeah. I know." Knuckles and Vector stared at him.

"How do you know?" Knuckles asked.

"I know because the food's cooking."

"Ah." Knuckles and Vector nodded approvingly all smiles. "Let's go, then. Food is a-waiting!"

…

"I can't remember what I was just doing… Can you Shadow?"

Shadow turned the complete opposite direction. It was a long time before he said, "…Hmph."

"Okay then, Shadow. Be that way," Rouge muttered.

Omega came plopping his feet and his head spinning. "I'M BORED. UNLIKE OTHER PEOPLE HERE I HAVE A RESPECT FOR MACHINES AND WOULDN'T DESTROY THEM UNLESS THEY ARE ATTACKING ME OR BELONG TO EGGMAN. LET'S GET OUT OF HERE OR AT LEAST UPSTAIRS WHERE I CAN DESTROY WHAT IS STILL LEFT."

"…Hmph. I agree. Let's get out of here-"

"SHADOW… YOUR CHEEKS ARE RED. ARE YOU EMBRASSED?"

Shadow frowned severely at Omega. "You are mistaken."

"NEGATIVE. YOUR CHEEKS ARE DEFINITELY RED. THAT'S TO BE EXPECTED I SUPPOSED AFTER KISSING R-"

"W-what?!" Rouge gasped.

"Omega, shut the h*ll up!"

Silence. "… LET'S GO UPSTAIRS." Omega clomped the way to the stairs. After hesitating a bit, Shadow followed after. Rouge just stood there trying to understand, but soon gave up and headed toward the stairs as well.

…

The stairs that Knuckles, Vector, and Charmy used led directly to the kitchen. To them, they won't have it any other way, but only if they knew…

The kitchen was on fire.

The three of them just stood there in shock with open jaws, bugged out eyes, and twitching limbs. Knuckles was the first to collect his wits. He wheeled on Charmy and yelled, "You stinking moron! How the heck did this happen?!"

Charmy pushed the tips of his two index fingers together looking guilty. "I, uh… just wanted some food… I don't know how to use the oven…"

"You butthead! Go put it out now!"

Vector looked up at the ceiling. "Speaking of which why didn't the fire alarm go off?" The fire alarm fell from the ceiling broken. With smoke coming out of it.

"That answered my question."

"Fix this!"

"Geez, Knuckles! Okay!" Charmy flew off.

Vector and Knuckles stood there waiting. The fire in the kitchen only spread more and more and grew hotter. Vector and Knuckles were both sweating profusely when Knuckles asked, "Is there anything of value that we should salvage?"

Vector paused thinking. "Anything that was worth it we broke."

Knuckles watched the leaping flames that consumed the table, the cabinets, and whatever food that was left inside. "That's what I thought."

After a pause Vector asked, "Are we going to die?"

Knuckles frowned. They might. In all fairness they should have already been dead. "If we don't die tonight, this will haunt us for the rest of our lives."

Vector watched the flames. "That's what I thought."

…

The house is on fire! Ahh! I realize that this may seem a little cliché, but I wrote this when I was younger and I had never heard that at parties people do stupid things and catch the house on fire. Since there was some confusing parts in the chapter, let me explain. In case you didn't realize who the black and blue and purple shadow standing over Knuckles was, it was Espio. That's why this chapter starts out with Knuckles and Espio fighting. How Knuckles was able to win this round against Espio is something that I, a friend of the narrator, has no idea. The paragraph about doctors was about Sonic and the doctor's suggestion that Sonic should be in a wheelchair (Again, medically this story follows Knuckles' sense. :) ). As that would have been a major blow to Sonic's pride, he jumps out of the window. Tails, Amy, and Sonic are flying in the Tornado on the way home. And Sonic telling Tails to shut up and Tails' reply, "I'm not yelling or screaming about running into cliffs, am I" is a reference to the Sonic OVA movie, in which Sonic tells Tails to shut up while Tails is about to run into a cliff. The scene is pretty funny so I suggest you watch it. Kudos and chocolate chip cookies if you understood the reference without having to be told. There are some times when I read the story on Thanksgiving year after year to my brother and I forget what Tails is referring to.

Next chapter: So the house is on fire! How will Sonic react? How will Tails react to his lab being blown up? What happened to Blaze? How will everyone escape the burning building? All this and more craziness in the next chapter!

WHAOH, thank you for your review. I'm so glad you are enjoying reading this (though the narrator isn't happy :) ). I'm afraid, that I don't know what SMG4 is, so if you want to know if I have watched it, either private message me or leave another review explaining what it is and how I can watch it in the event that I haven't watched it. I would have PM you myself, except that I am new to and don't know how to or if PM is actually done around here…

Please review! I don't care at all what you say, all I ask is that you are polite. Thank you so much for reading!