A/N:Sniff :P! We didn't exactly make it to Child's Play :P. We're two short T.T!!... Thank you KanatheKyubigirl (anon). So we had four reviews on fifteen. Sniff :(! I know you guys can do better. And am I the only one who's been having FF issues? It's not cooperating too well for me at the moment…
Anonymous reviews:
KanatheKyubigirl: Thanks :D. If you hadn't noticed, Malam and Pella are getting their background story in this story :). It's been a loonngg time since I got a review on Child's Play. Thanks for that one too :)!
--LA
It is now 2008… Happy new years again. I have written 32… this is number 33… chapters in all of my… fanfic…ing. Do some research, my friends. Have I ever… once… claimed to own Sonic co.? No, I have not. And I'm not about to start now.
With a wide yawn, Tails leaned back in his chair until the two back legs slid and he toppled to the floor with a loud crash. He sat on the floor wearily for a moment, rubbing his head where it had made painful contact with the tiled floor. Perhaps it simply was due to his lack of sleep over the past days, but besides a throbbing knee and head, he found himself getting rather comfortable lying on the ground. He relaxed more, leaning his head back. Just as he was about to drop off to sleep in this most unorthodox position, he heard light footsteps entering the room.
"Mipro?" whispered Hina, pattering up to his side. "Are you okay?"
Tails squinted up at her, the bright overhead lights, making her appear blurry. He sat up and smiled at her.
"I'm fine, Hina." He said, pulling her onto his lap. She snuggled into the fur on his chest as she so often did. As far as she was concerned, Mipro's fuzzy body was more comfortable than any bed. "Why are you up so late? I put you in bed an hour ago."
Hina smiled sheepishly.
"I'm sorry." She said, snuggling deeper. "I was thinking about Felix and Leah."
"How did you like them?" Tails asked, deciding that there was no harm in letting her stay up with him for a few more minutes. He himself was utterly exhausted. He had been up late the past few nights tinkering with the time machine, on which he had made amazing progress. He was actually surprised how confusing the entire concept was. Never had any project he had set his mind to ever been this perplexing.
Before reading a thick volume on the topic of time travel, he had always thought of time as a sort of measure of… well, the time which had passed. He had thought that all it did was keep track of the length of a day, a month, a lifetime.
But he had been wrong. Incredibly wrong, actually. Yes, time was a way to measure how long the world had been, but it was much more physical than that. It was the fourth dimension. The first dimension was length. A one-dimensional object was a line. It could be nothing more. A two-dimensional object was a flat shape; it had length and height. For example, a square drawn on a page was two-dimensional. Something which was three-dimensional, though, had a depth. Had mass; took up space. It had length, height and depth.
The fourth dimension, however, took a large leap from the others. It was length, height, depth and time. To master time travel, you need to control the fourth dimension of the universe. Tails understood exactly how dangerous attempting this was. One slip-up; one small error, and the universe could come apart at the seams.
Tails had decided that he, by no means, planned on using the machine. Building It was simply something to keep his mind off of his troubles.
"Mipro?" Hina said loudly, waving a hand before his face. Tails blinked, and smiled at her.
"Sorry." He said, getting to his feet with Hina in his arms. "What did you say about Felix and Leah?"
"They were so nice!" She said, beaming up at him. "Felix looked just like me, too! He was really nice. And he tried to show me how he talked to the ants, but I couldn't do it. And he has a pet octopus named Lucy that he told me about and she changes colour, and he was w-"
"Yeah." Tails said with a weary smile as he placed her back in bed. He put a finger over her flailing lips. She closed her mouth and smiled.
"Good night!" she whispered, burying herself into the warm covers of the bed.
"Sleep tight." He replied, doing the usual switch of the two light sources, flicking the overhead light off and the nightlight on. He made his way to his own familiar bed and collapsed into it, thinking about their soon-to-be neighbors.
The glamorous Gabrielle had seemed nice enough, if not a bit snobby. The two children, Leah and Felix, seemed like prime little friends for Hina, who seemed to be quite taken by the latter.
Tails' eyes drooped, and he drifted into content dreams of time traveling salmon pink ants, and shattered glass roses.
Rouge tapped her foot impatiently, surveying a chicken-sized dinosaur skeleton without much interest. A few feet to her right, very obviously in her element, Grace was briskly ensuring that the window through which they planned on entering could not be locked.
"Try and learn some of the things I'm doing so we don't get caught." She said conversationally, stopping her business for a moment to gaze irritably at Rouge.
The bat rolled her eyes.
"You worry too much." she said, arms crossed.
"You don't worry at all!" Grace replied venomously.
"I" Rouge said flatly, "worry about how much I can get for the treasure."
"You are the most immature-"
"And," The bat continued, "how good it'll look on a ring."
"The most immature child I've ever met."
Rouge didn't answer, but turned her head and surveyed her finger nails. Grace glared at her for a moment, before returning to checking that the next day's heist would be flawless. She finished in silence as Rouge took to flicking little pebbles from the bottom of the exhibits into the mouth of a huge tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.
"I'm going to go to the little girl's room." She announced as one of her little missiles landed in the huge beast's eye socket. "If I'm still allowed to do that, of course."
"Be fast." Grace said, her voice expressionless. "We have to see if we can disable any of the security cameras over by the-"
Rouge didn't hear the rest of what they were to do, however, because she turned a sharp corner and marched towards the bathroom. She felt lucky that Grace had forced her to memorize the museum, as she doubted she would have made it otherwise. Back in the dinosaur exhibit, her stomach had given another painful lurch which she had become quite accustomed to over the past few days.
She sprinted into the washroom and threw herself before a toilet.
Several unpleasant moments later, the bat stood before the sink, wiping her face with a damp piece of brown paper towel.
"What's your problem?" She muttered to her pale reflection. She took a calming breath and shook her limbs. Feeling fairly better, she turned, planning on making her way back to the dinosaur exhibit. However, before she could even take a step, she heard a bathroom stall open from her right.
"You're sick." Came Grace's voice with a tone of concern which Rouge had never heard there before.
"I'm fine." The bat said hastily, snatching a dry paper towel and wiping her face.
"No," Grace said, her voice almost motherly "You're sick. You've been sick all week."
"How did you-"
"I'm going to notice if my partner goes to the washroom to throw up every ten minutes."
"Have you got a habit of hiding in bathroom stalls or something?" Rouge asked impatiently, turning her back to Grace.
"I'm taking you to the hospital." The fox said sternly, jogging to block the doorway.
"I'm fine." Rouge said flatly.
"No." Grace insisted, crossing her arms, "You can't come tonight if you're going to get sick and set off the lasers."
Rouge raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth, but Grace continued.
"We're just going to see if it's a flu, or food poisoning… or if there's something really wrong."
Rouge rolled her eyes, but accepted defeat. She sullenly followed Grace out of the room.
"Couldn't we just wait until after you do your stuff here?" Rouge asked.
"No."
"But-"
"No."
They marched back to the parking lot at a brisk pace. Rouge took a seat in the back, like a sulky child. After an uncomfortably silent drive, they pulled up beside a little hospital. Ever wordless, they made their way inside to the walk-in clinic.
There was a long line before a harassed-looking magenta, female porcupine sitting behind a desk. With a sigh, the two women took their places in the back of the queue.
"Can't we just-" Rouge began, willing to take to Grace calmly.
"No." The fox answered for the umpteenth time. Rouge glared at her, feeling, one again, like a child. Unfortunately, she was now a child with a rather arrogant, self-proclaimed adult.
They stood in silence, taking only a few steps every five minutes or so, each strongly disliking the other.
When it was finally their turn to explain their situation to the flustered porcupine, Grace stepped forward and spoke confidently.
"My friend," she said, gesturing to Rouge, "has been nauseous over the past week or so."
"Has she been experiencing stomach pain?" the magenta porcupine asked dully, chewing on a finger nail.
"Yes."
Rouge sighed and tapped her foot impatiently. She was under the impression, as she so often was when with Grace, that the fox had taken to being the adult of the two. Which, evidentially, gave Rouge the position of the child.
"Doctor Hinduli will see you." The secretary said, gesturing for them to go through a door on her right.
Grace marched in, and Rouge followed irritably in her wake.
A/N:Well, there we are :)! You got a nice physics lesson in there as well. I hope I didn't make any slip ups in explaining that whole business. What do I have to say right now… Well, I went to see Sweeny Todd yesterday. So amazing… go see it. After you review, of course. Gah… there was another thing I wanted to tell you guys too :p… thiinnkkk. Oh yes! Another one of my Dr. Pepper induced dreams :)! I dreamt that there was this whole religion worshiping Hina XD! So I went in to tell them that I invented Hina… but they come after me because Hina had put a bounty on my left hand :/… so they all went after me with silver barber razors (there's Sweeny Todd, I suppose), but they couldn't catch me because I was riding on a magic carpet with Jafar 0.o… Man, I should lay off that Dr. Pepper. Please review :)!
--LA