Yea… not too much interest from other authors on the site, but I don't exactly write for you guys (no offense). Yea… I got lazy with the last chapter. This chapter is… barely important. Expect this in the future.

Arieal looked at the guy on the moped with deep annoyance. She had been trying to get information from him for twenty minutes, if not more, and the dumbass didn't get it. The ignorance clearly inhabited by the mouse was a little too ignorant for our dearest. "I don't care what your name is, you dumb rodent! Have you seen an orange fox with two Tails, anywhere around this area!?" She about had enough. People these days weren't too bright. Then again… people were never too bright…

"An orange… fox…" the mouse looked at his handles, then back to Arieal. "My name is Greg, what's yours?" The fox got red in the face and started to breathe heavily, but no one really noticed. The rodent laughed. "Nope. Ain't seen the likes." He kicked up his kickstand and drove away. Amy and Arieal both knew he was lying, but they didn't like him anyways.

Amy frowned. "Ok… there's gotta be SOMEONE who knows him." Truth is, there's gotta be nothing. Nothing will show itself because one wants it to. That's not the way things were planned out. It's all in the mind. Arieal nodded and looked around.

--

QUE: Superhero Girl by Eve 6

--

The people were craggy, some of them ugly, and very... ghetto. The two had their own opinions, but Amy thought the hyena she had her eyes on was… fabulous. That and nothing less. If it proved to be less, she wouldn't have absent mindedly swished her hips as she walked up to him.

"Hey... have you um..." Amy looked at the hyena's body in complete trance. "Have you seen an orange fox with... two tails?" The look on her face as she studied him was blank. Just… blank. Kinda funny the way I see it in my head.

The hyena turned to look at her, and stood dead-eyed. He looked her up and down- sexy. Stunning. Simply fabulous. Amy caught this gaze and purposely shifted her weight to her right foot. After a few more moments of staring, he looked at her, in the eye.

Beautiful.

He let out what sounded like the beginning of a 'yeah', but stopped. He looked at her again, then continued.

"You mean Miles?"

The Arieal and Amy, who was immediately distracted from the heaven before her, stood straight up in knowing the guy had somewhat of a knowledge of Tails' whereabouts. Aerial was by Amy's side in about… immediately.

"Ye- yeah! That's him!"

The hyena laughed. They had Freedom Fighter suits on... and they were looking for a mercenary of sorts. "Yeah. He's part of our rival band."

"Rival band? Wait… You have a band?"

The hyena smiled. "Yeah. It's called Are In Debt. But that seems to be unimportant at the moment. But just in case…" he reached out and handed a small sheet of paper to Amy. She looked at it- it held a date, time, place, and a few bands. 'Thermos-Induced Indulgence', 'Are In Debt', 'Everblaze and the Trans-Global Intercourse', 'Another Know It All', and 'Numb Body, Closer', were the five names, in their own signature fonts. "Now, you want to see the mer-… fox?"

The two girls nodded. Amy snickered.

"Merfox?" The two looked at each other to show that inside, they were laughing their asses off, but weren't in real life to show politeness. The hyena turned around and rolled his eyes in a dreary fashion.

"Ok, follow me. By the way, name's Hyphen. Hyphen Aytid."

The women did as they were told and started to follow the hyena, which walked in a totally different direction than he was going upon the encounter. Amy moved a little closer to him. 'Hyphenated? Cool name, considering that's probably not what the parents meant to call him.'

He noticed Amy approaching him. He looked at her. "It appears you are single."

Amy was taken aback by the sudden, but true all in all, comment. "What- yeah… yes I am. How did you guess?" 'This guy is really fine right now… I could down him in a heartbeat. Unless… he didn't want to.' She smiled, as did Hyphen, but not before looking at her with a confused face. Arieal just listened and followed.

"I know these things. The way someone walks when they approach you, the look in their eyes…." There was a long pause, creating confusion in the two girls. "Uh… yea. You're friend is the same way."

Arieal looked up at him.

"You mean Tails?"

The hyena laughed. "Tails? That's what you call him?" The young animal laughed some more. This puzzled the two women. "Yeah, him. He tends to know too. But that's why he's still single… as I am." He shot a mildly seductive glance at Amy, making her lower her head and look a little to the right.

"So… you two have been single… on purpose? Why?"

"Long story. Not worth telling." The hyena's answer was quick, simple, and beautiful. Amy frowned as they turned the corner.

'Not worth telling? What in the hell is he talking about? He doesn't want a girlfriend? Hell, I could prove him wrong.' "Come on. Tell me."

The hyena looked at her with a frown as she looked ahead of her. "Well… most of the girls that seem to have something for me tend to want to… have sex… the first time they see me."

Arieal cringed. 'Oh my god, I think Amy just got owned by her own thoughts.'

The hyena looked back at Arieal and nodded. This confused, and created an assumption, in the pale fox's mind. Amy's face turned a velvety red. She looked at him, slightly terrified. Hyphen leaned over and whispered in her ear.

"It's ok… sounds like you are an exception." He lied. He continued forward as she slowed down. She quickly ran back up to him and got close to his ear.

"Wait, how did you know?" the hyena looked back at her as they turned another corner.

"The look in your eyes. The way you approached me. The way you talk. You're just screaming my name in your head. Guarantee if you feel the same way around Miles, he'll point it out to you. No big deal. Like I said, you seem to have a few other intentions."

Amy just stared at him, still blushing. No one said anything until they came up by a small door in the back of an alley, where nothing was to be seen but alleys cutting into other alleys- not actual streets, just like a maze. They could quite clearly hear music coming from the door. It sounded like alternative music- Amy's dislike. "Oh, and just to be safe... your friend... he doesn't like authorities. He has something... against Freedom Fighters."

--

QUE: Injection by Rise Against

--

The two girls looked at each other, totally surprised, but they both knew that in detail, they shouldn't be. What happened back when... well, there's a reason to not like their kind, huh?

Hyphen opened the door, letting the music get louder. He entered, with the two women following.

"The trail of crumbs you left somehow got lost along the way... if you never meant to leave, then you only had to stay..."

The three turned the corner and saw four people about twenty feet away, facing a little towards the three, but to their left. Tails was holding a microphone, singing, with a silver guitar hanging from his shoulders behind him; the previously seen echidna was playing a bass; another purple echidna with a red guitar; and a young-looking light grey fox on drums.

"And the memories that haunt us, are CHERISHED just the same... as the ones that lead us closer to the sky... no matter how grey... as I fall... through the clouds... reaching, SCREAMING!!"

Amy cringed at the nasty alternative-like scream-similar voice. Arieal just stared on. She was enjoying the song. Tails whipped the guitar around to his front side and hit a note with incredible precision. Hyphen leaned against the wall and nodded his head to the beat. He started singing with Tails.

"GIMME THE DRUG! KEEP ME ALIVE! GIVE ME WHAT'S LEFT OF MY LIFE... DON'T LET ME GO, WHOAWHOOOOAAAHOA... PULL THIS PLUG! LET ME BREATHE! ON MY OWN I'M FINALLY FREE! DON'T LET ME GOOOOO..."

Arieal looked at the echidna, which was head banging as he played. The other purple echidna was playing what seemed to be the main, high-pitched riff. She showed no signs of strain at all, and Arieal thought she was pretty compared to all the other people. She wasn't ugly, but Arieal didn't exactly have a lesbian side.

Amy wasn't as miserable as she let on to be. She hated that kind of music, but she seemed to be enjoying this. Probably because this was Tails- and that her crush liked it.

Aerial was the kind for measuring. She was skilled at this subject, too. That being said, she predicted the building they were in had about 46 feet to the ceiling, and was a predicted 16 meters wide and 21 meters long. It was perfect for a band to waste it's time in. In the middle of the right wall there was a sink filled with dishes, apparently washed using that sink. Upon inspection the female kitsune noticed there were various wrappers scattered in very few locations throughout the whole area and so little were there it barely mattered. On the other end of the building, next to where they were playing, was a large rack with a bass guitar and three electrics, and next to it was a tub or some worth which seemed to be holding a large amount of drum equipment.

"GUIDE ME, THROUGH UNCHARTERED WATERS! BEFORE WE LOSE OUR WAY AGAIN! WILL YOU, BE MY COMPASS! UNTIL FOREVER, UNTILL FOREVER ENDS-"

The red echidna interrupted the kitsune. "Knees are weak... hands are shaking... I can't breathe so-"

"GIMME THE DRUG! KEEP ME ALIVE! GIMME WHAT'S LEFT OF MY LIFE!"

He continued the chorus, until he started a new chorus. At the same time he was playing his guitar.

"DON'T LET ME GO!"

Miles stopped at the word 'Go' and started to sing with various, synchronizing tones that sounded melodic together, such and spaghetti and tomato sauce for an evening dinner at an Italian restaurant. Every member- the one which of is well known, the crimson echidna, the other nicely braided purple echidna, and the young-looking light-grey fox. They let their notes ring, and Arieal and Amy started to run to Tails, but were stopped by Hyphen's unexpected arm. He looked at them and shook his head. The four musicians put their stuff on their stands and what not, and the hyena put his arm down and nodded. The two girls ran straight at Tails. 'Jesus… this is gonna suck.'

Tails nodded at the other three while putting his guitar on the rack. "Alright. Where we going for food?"

Knuckles- or so the ladies thought was his name- looked up after placing his bass upon the rack. "Let's try the Bra... Miles?"

Upon mentioning his name, Miles was damn near tackled to the ground by Arieal.

"TAILS! OHMYGODHOWAREYOU!?"

Miles gently pushed her off of him in attempt not to be rude, despite the fact he wanted to just throw her across the building.

"Miles. My name is Miles."

Or quite possibly simply smash her head in with his guitar.

He looked at Arieal with piercing eyes, scaring her and Amy a bit. "And I'm doing fine. Or, was until now."

Ignoring what he just said, Amy hugged him gently. She didn't hold on long after taking in the look he gave her a few seconds ago. He just stood there.

"Oh my god we haven't seen you in so long! How have you been?"

Tails glanced at them with a deathly look before turning back to his guitar rack. He grabbed a pick bag from on top of the thing. Hyphen cringed very slightly. He could sense this wasn't gonna be a long conversation, for the sake of her brain's throne being thrown across the room, along with what rested on top of it.

"I've been... getting by. I've learned from experience that nothing is easy in life. Especially finding a place to live."

Miles gave the two an almost deadly look. Arieal got the hint. There was something in him that still didn't seem to come out, as always. But she could sense it- he wasn't interested in the two, nor had it seemed like he had for an eternity.

"Miles!" Tails turned to see Hyphen, still standing by the door.

"Hyph!" He threw his pick bag down and ran over to the grey hyena. He met Hyphen with a high-five.

"How in the hell have you been? Ready for that show Thursday?"

Hyphen pretended to wipe sweat off of his forehead. "With all the practice we've had, we don't need to practice for a year or two. Hell I don't know why we practiced in the first place! Dumb bitches kept messing up, kinda figures that they were just trying to piss me off." They both laughed a little. "Then Jake takes his drumsticks when Grey isn't looking, puts distilled water and salt on it, and breaks it over Grey's head- and it sounded like a tin can hitting the ground!" they laughed really hard now. "CRAH!" The hyena screamed with a great voice. They seemed like they were gonna bust a gut.

Amy looked at them. 'One, that wasn't funny...' She quickly displaced the thought as an inside joke. 'Two, how can two people from separate bands get along like that?'

Hyphen looked at Tails intently. "You really don't like authorities do you?" he whispered.

"No... It's the ones that disown me that I can't stand the most." He looked towards the two women who were obviously straining to hear what he was saying. Amy was staring at Hyphen.

No shit?

Hyphen looked at them intently, with a hint of sadness. "They are the ones who threw you out?"

Tails frowned deeper. "No. They are the best friends in the world who did absolutely nothing to try and protest." He looked at Hyphen with serious eyes. "You should have seen their pitiful little faces when I ran out of that palace. Insensitive, confused, and lost. Barely a care in the world." He started to walk back towards his guitar, veering as far as possible from the two females he had been blessed with the chance to see. "Or at least not that I could see. I have NO desire to have anything to do with them."

He was walking and about to go out the back door when something hit him. He turned his head to look at the girls and stopped in his tracks. He stared at the door in front of him.

"Where is sis?"

He looked sideways at the wall over his shoulder. The two women looked at him, wondering if he was talking to them. Arieal soon saw that he was focused on her from the corner of his eyes.

"Oh Kari? We-"

"No. I'm talking about Thomas the Tank Engine." He looked at her with sarcastic and scorching eyes.

She cringed at his snapping sarcasm and continued.

"We... we can't find her."

Confusion.

Silence.

Anger.

Tails turned around, ran at her and picked her up by the collar. He showed no strain in lifting her just above his head.

"WHAT did you just say?"

Arieal choked to speak. But it wasn't all that hard, she soon found.

"She ran away looking for you! She just up and left with barely any food or clothing!"

Miles' eyes went from a burning stare to a sorrowful, sad look. He abruptly and carelessly dropped Arieal to her feet, whilst she stumbled for a split second to stay upright.

"She... she's gone? You haven't seen her?"

Arieal was trying to ignore how rude he had become and how close she felt to dying. "She... left four days after you ran off."

Tails whipped around and was in her face in almost a second and a half.

"I. Did. Not. Run. Off."

Amy just stared blankly in horror at Miles' attitude. Hyphen had somewhat of a sad expression on his face, and the rest of Tails' band simply didn't care, although watching with great amusement. Amy was the only one who wasn't expecting it.

Arieal was about to cry. "I'm... I'm sorry. Four days after you-"

"Got HACKEY-SACKED out of Knothole by the only people who were ever nice to me. The only ones who ever meant well." He turned around and started walking away. "The only ones who I don't feel sorry for in this world." He grabbed two small leather gloves and put them on, struggling slightly. They were barely big enough, and they were perfectly in sync with his skin. His hands were slender, about average size, and almost skinny. He looked in the echidnas' direction. The look told Knuckles that he wanted the two gone before he returned. "I'm gonna get some food. Be back in twenty." With that he swiftly moved towards the door and left.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Tails casually walked down the street with an aggressively annoyed look on his face. 'And if I wanted to see them I would have fought my way back into Knothole. It's that simple, people just don't compensate the details." He looked down the street for any gangsters he might disrupt. None in sight, but still the paranoia of being watched filled his every limb like that of kerosene in a Vietnam fire.

He continued on, now with more of a hop to his walk, in search of a nice taco restaurant, preferably Civil-Mex. This thought was interrupted when he thought back- Knuckles was about to say Banche's. He looked around at all the people.

--

QUE: Becoming Cold by Mushroomhead

--

They knew what was going on around them. They were aware of everything that could obstruct what they were doing. Nothing got past these thug-like civilians' eyes. But they all had one major flaw.

Lack of knowledge in important aspects of life- especially of the kind they live.

Doesn't make sense? Well… you jus' gotsa lotta thinking to do… if you truly care.

Common sense. No one had it.

Detail. They only focused in on it if it was, to their knowing, in spite or favor of themselves.

Truth. No one took the time to find it.

Conspiracy. Why waste time with one? This answer remains unknown, but people apparently got off on thinking them up.

Life. It's just a game, dammit.

No one appreciated why they were here, or so it seemed through Tails' eyes. No doubt these people were tough and very sharp-eyed to everything- 'but the thing that is reality seems to be an invisible wall that separates them from the ultimate path they could follow, but when the wall knocks them off their asses they have no fucking clue what the hell they keep bumping into.' That's the way the worn-down kitsune saw it, anyways.

Everyone was their own worst enemy- which proved to be amusing at some times. Every time a conflict, internal or external, showed itself, they would get confused. And this usually resulted in a social, mental, or overall breakdown. To put it into a more un-seemingly complex phrase, they would fuck themselves over. That's because thinking was an apparent burden/annoyance. This decision being made, their actions didn't live up to their IQ, which wasn't too much above or below average anyways.

But despite that, in favor of being fucked over, no one played their cards right. They make a wrong move; lose the game, and the Sorry! board snaps shut, right on them- crushing them like the little insects they are. But even Miles didn't know what cards to play- him, like some of the rest, were just lucky. Or else he was blindly kicking the game's ass.

To him, this city was more of a home than a hell. The anger he had kept plastic-bagged inside of him could slip seal when someone wanted a fight, which released some of the worldly problem cure substance they call 'anger' from his body. But still, and as always, to no avail. He was always faced with people who interfere with his band, or him, or anything that had remotely anything to do with him, and would from time to time be set to dispose of the targets.

He was a murderer.

This thought tore at him. He never, in his obscure early days, wanted to even do so much as TOUCH anyone in a malevolent way besides Robotnik. But now, he simply gave no fuck.

But the reasons he wasn't locked up for it were simple. One, he worked in the only decent mechanics shop in the city. And he was the top mechanic, due to his extensive, 'Kyle Bisping ego-sized' knowledge of machines. He kept that part of the city up and going. That was one major reason. Two, there were barely authorities around. The authorities that were around were the equivalent of everyone else in Flint, or to put it more simply, didn't care much. It had been like this since the mayor was murdered by the gang Miles and Knuckles disposed of earlier. No… wait, it had been like that for as long as Miles could remember. But when the mayor died, it just got worse. There was never really a government in or connected to the city, and the President didn't give two shits for the town- it was too far southwest to fuck with.

Other than that, Miles usually spent most of his time eating, sleeping, playing guitar, killing, working in the shop, and doing gigs throughout Flint. This, because getting from one city to another is time consuming. His life was boring, in his opinion. He didn't give a shit about anyone.

But, back then…

Within the first five years of his exile, he would constantly think about how much he missed his sister, and his friends. And most of all, his hero- Sonic. Oh, God how he missed them. It was a dying flame, vaguely fueled. But over the years, he thought more and more of how he was blamed for something he had no idea had happened, and how no one tried to stop it. After about seven years, he stopped caring what happened to his old life, or anything that had anything to do with it. Even Sonic.

He had also had something against Robotnik as well. If it wasn't for him, the exile would have been fine, better- but as he saw things now, less colorful. Robotnik made him what he was- his experiments and protests to normality, all focused on Miles. He was used for a weapon. Until, of course, he escaped. Or should we say… released. Since then, no one had heard of Robotnik, and barely any Swat-Bots had been detected- the ones that were looked abandoned. But still, Miles wasn't too pleased with the fat ass.

And now that the two Freedom Fighters showed up, he had developed somewhat of an ear-splitting headache, and a desperate need for someone to say 'it'd be nice to have them assassinated'. But Hyphen had showed them to him- they must have talked some- they must have known to watch out for Miles' hate for them. That was a small, plankton sized fucking step in part of the right direction.

That was good enough for Miles. He just hoped that by the time he got back, Knuckles had gotten rid of them. It would help his bowels to not get tangled after he ate.