Chapter Three

Tails

It had been two days since we last saw Amy. We were all getting nervous. The robot was about to dismiss us for bedtime, and no one was going to get any sleep. Then again, that's what I thought about the first days, and I always managed. The SR was taking his sweet time to finish. Eventually he told Knuckles to do one last chore, and we all trotted silently to the warp portals. Suddenly the robot said to me, "One last thing." He told me to load the bottles everyone worked to fill with oil into a box. The jugs were so heavy, and there were so many. By the time I was done, the lights had gone out. I stumbled around, trying to find my warp portal. I fell on one, but it didn't respond. I tried another one. Success! I arrived in room. But… wait. The bed was made, and there was no picture of me and Sonic on the table. Puzzled, I opened the drawer. What was this? Moonlight fell on it, making it glint silver. I gasped and nearly dropped the object.

A shuriken ninja star.

Charmy

As I sat down on the bench I noticed something weird. Tails and Cream had traded places. Did that mean Tails wanted to sit with me? I had no idea.

When I sat down, the fox passed me something. I was amazed. "How did you get this?" I whispered.

"From the un-labeled warp portal," He whispered back.

I made up my mind to go there as soon as we were dismissed. Who knew what was there?

Well, now I was here. In the room. First thing I searched in the drawer. I knew if Espio was here, he would kill me, but he wasn't, so I didn't care. I pulled out something flat. A photograph. It was real blurry. Wait. Something else. A tiny teddy bear with a red satin ribbon around his neck. Ha ha, I remembered him. It was that Christmas I first spent with the Chaotix. The first Christmas I celebrated. I will never forget the look on Espio's face when I handed him his (Ha) gift.

What do you take me for? He had asked. A little kid? A dunce? A GIRL!

Knuckles had responded, Calm down. He's just a kid.

What was Vector's reply? Ah, yes. Yeah, and we didn't give him much notice about Christmas, and you never tell anyone what you want anyway. Of course, he had stopped defending me when he discovered my gift to him was an alligator toothbrush. Ha ha, I would always remember that Christmas. I had no idea he had kept the bear though.

I slept in Espio's bed that night, as the warp portals were turned off. Tomorrow I planed to do more exploring. Naturally I couldn't guess at the time that I wouldn't be there.

Cream

Great. Oil duty again, this time with Charmy. Even worse, the fire wasn't working. No one knew why. Tails had gone to the control room to see if he could fix it, so, with nothing to do, me and Charmy began arguing. Right now I can't remember what it was about, only it was something pointless. At any rate, Charmy got mad and stamped on the button to adjust the heat. With no flames in the way, we could see clearly that the way the hole in the floor changed to hotter was by opening. Strange. The pit seemed to go on and on. Charmy and I stared for a couple seconds. Then the bee said, "I wonder what's down there." With that he leaned over to peep in. A little too far.

Next thing I knew we were both screaming as we plummeted down.