An old door opened while making a rusty "creak!" sound. A chameleon entered upon the dark room as he looked around it. It was an old abandoned basketball court. The rusty wooden floor was bleached over the time, covered in dust and broken wooden planks. Even the walls, ceiling and benches pretty much followed its fate. The damp and musty odor filled the inside, as if they were locked away until someone could be able to free from their prison. However, the chameleon didn't seem to mind it (in fact, he enjoyed the smell). With a paper bag in his right hand, he walked inside the room and sat on a nearby dusty bench. He buried his hand inside the bag and took out what seemed to be the content inside it. It was a delicious-looking blueberry muffin. Espio looked at it, eager to take a bite on the rich crispy golden-brownish texture of the baked dough. He moved the muffin toward his open mouth and-
*Crack!*
Espio immediately stopped thinking about his treat and was distracted by the sound of something broken.
"What the-?"
He rose up from his old wooden sit and tried to find the source of the noise. After a while of searching through the gym, he finally got to find what he wanted behind the other side of the room, behind the unstable-looking bleachers... And he wished not to. Behind those was a familiar green crocodile who seemed to kneel down the floor doing something. He turned around as fast as possible, about to take his leave.
"Oh hey you."
Espio stopped taking one more step. Damn it! So much for leaving unnoticed.
"Oh hey, Vector, I didn't think you were bright enough to catch me from behind like that. What are you doing here anyway?"
"Oh, I was just trying to repair my broken walkman. (He shows him the said walkman) But I accidentally dropped my favorite CD in the process and it broke in two. (He shows him the said broken in half CD next to the said walkman). This thing is now beyond repair."
"Can you just buy another one?" he asked.
"I would love to, but I'm too busy repairing my walkman. I say, you go buy it for me. Luckily, there's a music shop across the street. Go in there and come back with a new CD of this (he gives him the split CD)."
"Huh, as much as I want to help, I'm sort of busy as well right now; I'm trying to eat my snack peacefully."
He explained as he took out the treat out of the paper bag, as if he wanted to show it to the crocodile. But then, without warning, a giant hand snatched it from his clutch.
"Hey!"
Vector examined every coin of the muffin.
"So, that's your snack? It looks yummy", he complimented, mouth watering from the sigh of it.
"Give it back!" Espio ordered, out of anger.
"Why do you get mad over a muffin? Can you just buy another one for like 4 rings or so?", he wondered.
"It's a gift from a new friend of mine", he sighed, "it is especially special to him due to the fact that it was the last dessert of his almost bankrupt orphanage. Ultimately, he decided to give it to me as a reward for helping him buy a jacket while helping him learn how to make decisions."
"Whatever, your snack looks delicious", he kept complimenting.
Espio's amber eyes slithered, his expression turned stone cold. He grabbed his golden chain necklace and tugged it hard so both of their reptilian eyes could meet.
His snout was now touching his cold yellow horn.
"If you dare take a bit, I'll punch you in the face, and then I'll cut your tongue out of your jaws! Trust me, when I said something, I usually keep my promise."
He tightened his grip as his stare became more and more vicious, to the point it could pierce through a solid vase. For the first time, Vector felt and looked a bit fearful at the sight of the small yet mighty chameleon (which seems unlike him), which happened to be his previous victim as well. Despite this, he regained his posture and said:
"Fine, but I'll have to keep yer sweet anyway. Tell you what, let's make an exchange: ya go buy the disk, and I'll give it back. What do you think?"
"What if you broke your promise and eat it anyway?", he snapped while crossing both his arms, "I'll have you know that I refuse to trust someone who has tried to devour me in their first meeting!"
"I won't eat it, I promise!" he protested.
He made an "X" across his chest with his claw, signifying his promise. Espio sighed as he reluctantly had to trust this dubious crocodile. Not having a choice he decided to head toward the exit and buy a new CD. Before he went outside, he turned around and addressed to the bigger reptile:
"By the way, if you break your promise, I'll break your CD on the spot!"
He left.
Vector resumed fixing his slightly broken machine. However, he stopped a bit, realizing something.
"Uh, what was I supposed to warn him about again?"
_
Just after he bought the CD, Espio was rushing back to the old basket court. He was holding a colorful plastic CD case while he was sweating and breathing from aching lungs as he ran so fast.
"I hope he didn't eat the muffin", he said to himself, "if so, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Oh, forget it, why should I care, he'll do it anyway. There's no way for me to become friend with this so-called fearsome gang leader who terrorized this city. I wouldn't even touch him with a ten foot pole. "
When he finally arrived to his destination (the backdoor from an alleyway that lead inside an abandoned basketball court), he opened the backdoor, sighing. There goes nothing.
Once inside, he checked around, like trying to find him. He checked every single corner and behind the benches, and for some reason, he wasn't present.
"Vector?"
No answer.
"VECTOR!"
His speech got louder and slowly more frantic than usual. Despite this, his franticness suddenly turned into anger and frustration.
"VECTOR! WHERE ARE YOU, YOU BLASTED OVERGROWN LIZARD! YOU BETTER NOT LEAVE THIS PLACE ON PURPOSE SO YOU CAN BREAK YOUR PROMISE AND EAT MY MUFFIN IN THE PROCESS, I'M WARNING YOU. YOU ARE DEATH! DEATH!"
His unusual loud scream resounded through the old gym, causing a small and extremely brief quake, which caused the old ceiling to crumble some dust.
A suspicious faint sound similar to metal can be heard through Espio's not visible ears. This somehow caught him by surprise. He looked around, not making a sound, trying to find the source of this noise.
"Well, this is pointless. I must have imagined something."
*````!**````!**````!**````!**````!**````!*
This time, he could actually hear it loud and clear. Espio's turned around, and his eyes widened as he saw what he thought could be the source of the sound, or rather "sources", since not one thing made it, but rather manymany (emphasized on "many") of it.
Before his eyes, he saw thousand and thousand of mechanical toxic spider crawling from holes that plagues specific places of the ancient gym before they infested almost the entire place and munched on everything they saw (old bench, dust, plarget) as they burn it with their own toxic acid. Even though Espio had no idea what those things were, he knew that he wouldn't mess with those things, especially when there was only one of him and thousand of them. His heart now racing like adrenaline, he had only one thought in his mind: to exit this place. Luckily for him, there was a door near him that wasn't infested or anything. He rushed toward it and proceeded to open it. To his shock and terror, it didn't open. Despite this, he did his best to force it, kicked it, punched it, alas, the door seemed like it was made with tough material such as titanium. Because he was distracted, the spiders slowly coming toward him, about to spray him with acid and then prey on him like a bunch of piranhas preying someone in their lake.
They're nearing…
*SWOOSH!*
Sounds of a flamethrower could be heard. And the heat. (Espio sniffed the air a little) And the smell of combustion.
The spiders seemed to take notice and crawled away as fast as they could. This situation has a good new and bad new however. The good new is that the room almost completely cleaned up of those pests, the bad new is…
Flames appeared and grew bigger in the chameleon's POV, who backed up against the indestructible locked door, now trapped inside a burning building. He saw the responsible for it. It was Vector, who was breathing fire from his protruding jaws, like a dragon. It appeared that he was chasing off those hazardous things, which by itself is nice, but doing so caused the court to singe from the flame. Realizing he was stuck with him, he quickly turned around and tried to open the door behind him once more.
"Please, please, don't leave me with this maniac!"
He begged as he uselessly struggle against the door. During his distraction, the crocodile saw him and, now all of his attentions are toward him, he walked slowly toward the distressed reptile.
"Come on, come ON!"
He yelped in surprise as he felt being lifted up in the air. Then, a powerful punch destroyed the door like it was nothing. They walked outside. Meanwhile, the chameleon looked at his "savior". It was the same crocodile who had tried to eat him, threatened him to death, stole his muffin in exchange of forcing him to buy a CD, leaving him behind inside an old infested basketball court and even almost caused him to burn alive inside said old building. He did all those horrible things to him ever since they met, and now, he wanted to save him?
Vector looked at him with a spiky toothy grin, but the look made Espio want to punch his face even more. Despite this, he kept his cool while he asked him (albeit he was still dumbfounded):
"W-why did you do this to me?"
Vector put him down.
"Well first, if I let ya get killed, I will lose mah CD. You did bought mah CD, right?"
Espio subtle hopeful expression turned into an obvious blunt one. So much for this guy of having a heart. But he took out the CD from his back nonetheless.
"Yeah, I think this is the one you wanted."
"Gasp, mah fav CD!"
"But!" Espio hid the CD behind his back, "I won't give it to you until I have my muffin back. You promise."
Vector sighed.
"Fine", he took out the muffin from his back and handed it to Espio."There ya go. Happy?"
"Thank you."
He took his precious sweet and checked on it. Something's wrong with it.
"Vector, where's the other half."
He showed the crocodile his seemly half eaten food. Vector realized something.
"Please chameleon, let me explain."
"I don't need any explanation; you couldn't resist and ate a bit of my snack. You dirty liar. Not only you've tried to kill me but now you showed me how much of a deceiving person you are."
In his anger, he pulled his golden necklace toward him and punched him on the square of his jaws. Vector roared in pain and, becoming provoked, he charged toward our chameleon like a bull. Out of reflex, he jumped out of the way, landing on top of his green head. He covered his eyes, causing the croc to run into a brick wall (leavin a hole in it), Espio landed on the floor elegantly, only to get tripped by Vector when his huge tail swept under his feet. Espio fell hard on the ground in the process. Before he could get up, he choked as felt something heavy landing on him. Two giant hands held him down as a rough and intimidating face was looming over his. He could tell that he wasn't happy at all from the look of the injured face from the recent violent tussle and the heavy breathing from a foaming mouth. He looked like a feral beast now. His hot smelly breath hit his face and his saliva was dripping on him as well, and no matter how much he tried, he was unable to move. He was pinned down.
"Give up already", Vector's tried to reason to him, despite his feral expression.
"I will never give up. You are despicable, and I'll never trust the likes of you", he yelled at him, still angry.
"You never give up don't ya, chameleon. You are small yet the most stubborn little guy I've ever stumble across."
"My name is Espio and I'll NEVER GIVE UP."
With only his head being able to move, he tried to charge his horn toward the jaw, but he barely avoided it as he clamped it down with his sharp teeth. Now, the chameleon can't move at all.
"Let me go, you pig!" he yelled at him, feeling hot saliva dripping from his mouth into his yellow horn.
"Nut unhil ye' calm yershelf." He commanded, his teeth still biting the yellow horn.
"How can I calm myself when you're holding me down like that? You're crushing me under your weight and you're forcing me near your jaw. Did you even brush your teeth?"
"Trush me, I can do 'tat all day."
Despite being strong-willed, he knew that he couldn't do much against this colossal reptile as he was held down by his weight, not to mention that he couldn't hold the content from his stomach any longer as he was drooling and breathing on him at the same time. There is one thing to do.
"Alright, I give up", he sighed in defeat," but please, let me go."
"Apologize to me first."
"What?"
"I'll let you go once you apologize to me", he promised to him.
Espio groaned, but knew it was for the best."
"I'm sorry for being a jerk to you, I didn't trust you, but I'm willing to give you a second chance. Now, will you please let me go? It's getting downright unbearable in this position."
"Apologize accepted", he smiled as he let his horn free and stood up from thim. Espio was relieved as he can breathe fresh air again and can move his limb again. He wiped the sticky liquid off his face, horn and neck.
"By the way, you forget this."
Espio turned around and, to his surprise, he was holding the other half of his muffin. Espio took out his own half and concluded:
"So, you never ate it."
He shook.
"How come you tore it in half to begin with?"
Vector began to explain.
"Well, while you were gone, I was looking at your muffin and I couldn't resist taking a bite on it."
Espio's expression turned blunt again. Of course he would do that.
"However", he added. "I just couldn't do it. The idea of eating someone else's food I just stole pained me so much. It reminded me of the horrible time before I moved here."
This statement caught the chameleon's attention.
"But I really REALLY wanted to eat your sweet. What can I do?"
Espio stepped forward a bit and put his hand on Vector's and, to the latter's surprise, he pushed it away, despite the fact that he demanded for it in the first place.
"You can keep it."
Vector was dumbstruck. Why didn't he want it anymore?
"Trust me, you can have the other half. Think of it as a share."
To his happiness, he quickly threw it inside his ravenous jaws, chewed it and swallowed it in the process.
"Thank you, chameleon. It was the best thing I've ever eat ", he thanked him rubbing his belly in pleasure.
"Please, call me Espio."
"Ok."
"Can we sit on that bench over here?", he pointed the said bench on the other side of the alleyway.
He obliged.
As they walked toward the old seat, Espio took back the CD and gave it to Vector.
"You forgot about this."
Vector took it as he took out his inseparable headphone and Walkman and showed it to him.
"Say, now that my Walkman is fixed, do you want to listen to my favorite music?"
"Huh, maybe later."
They eventually sat on the old stony bench. Espio looked at the bigger reptile, so did he, somewhat curious. It took him a while before he was able to break the ice.
"Tell me more about yourself", he demanded.