Chapter Fourteen

"Well look what we have here! Two sleepy l'il campers!"

"Hush, Vector. No need to wake Charmy up. You know how he gets."

Oh no. I fell asleep. You're not supposed to do that when you're babysitting. Crap. I force my eyes open and go to sit up straight, but Espio is leaning down, looking inside the tent, and he shakes his head. It's too dark to see his face and I'm glad. "It's late, Sonic. You may as well stay out the rest of the night."

"I… I'm sorry." My mouth is dry and it's hard to talk. Espio shakes his head again.

"It's alright. You're clearly quite exhausted. Go back to sleep, Sonic."

He stands up and I can hear Vector and Espio talking in low voices as they leave the room and head upstairs. In falling asleep I've slid down onto my back, and there's no way I'm going back to sleep in that position. I crawl out the other side and snag a pillow from the couch. May as well crash in comfort right?

I lie down and look over at Charmy. His finger is in his mouth again, but for a second I mistake him for Tails, and I… I feel kind of sad. I honestly can't remember the last time I just sat down and talked to Tails about absolutely nothing, and yet in the middle of an emergency I found time to do it with this random kid? I obviously can't have been a good brother lately.

No, Sonic, don't think about that. You can leave that in the past and move forward. That's the best thing to do, especially now that I'm so close.

I'm going to sleep and Tails is sitting next to me. He's not bouncing on me or pestering me today. I decided I want to see his light today. I wonder why he's not asking me to look at it. I sit up.

"Hey Tails, where's your light? I wanna see it."

Tails shakes his head sadly at me. "It doesn't work anymore. It only shows normal light."

"Normal light?"

He shows me his light. It's just a regular flashlight. I guess before it had coloured lenses or something that changed the light to different colours. I wonder how it broke.

"Sorry I didn't get to see it, Tails. I… I should've looked before, when you asked me." I lie back down. I hope he's not mad at me.

"It's alright, Sonic. At least you looked at all." He starts walking his fingers up my arm. For some reason his touch makes my fur stand up. I brush his hand off only for him to put it right back. I look over at him and… and he's not there.

It's Charmy, walking one of his toys up my arm. I'm curled up on my left side, with my head on my left arm and the right one lying on the floor. That is the one Charmy's playing with.

"Hey." My voice is thick and cracks even on that one word. "Don't do that."

"Whyyyyy?" He continues doing it.

"Because I don't like it. Stop."

He sticks his tongue out at me and does it anyway. I push his arm away and roll out from under the tent. Ow. My back hurts. I don't wanna sleep in a cramped space anytime soon.

I pull myself up onto the couch and stretch the kinks out of my back, yawning and sticking my legs out while I'm at it. They're still really sore and I don't know why. They should be better by now.

"Good morning."

I look around in a bit of a panic to see Espio sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper. "Uh… hey there, Espio. Um… how was your trip?"

"It was very good, thank you."

I rub at my left shoulder. It's kinda got pins and needles from my sleeping on it.

Charmy crawls out from under the tent and waves enthusiastically at Espio. Espio nods and waves back once. I wipe at my eyes a bit and reach for the sheet. Time to clean up and go I guess.

"You can leave it."

"Alright."

"Sonic Sonic Sonic c'mere huh I got somethin' to show ya!" Charmy flies over to my head and tugs on my ears. Instinctively I push him away. "Hey, what'd I say about that?"

Charmy starts to hum obnoxiously and I close my eyes and be silently thankful that Tails was not this annoying. I follow the kid upstairs, to his room. It's painted dark purple and he's got toys everywhere. Most of them are broken, or missing something.

"I got your surprise," he sings, and he goes up into his closet somewhere. I just stand there. My surprise? But didn't I lose?

He comes back out of the closet holding something behind his back. "Charmy… thanks, but I didn't win. You said I had to win to get the surprise."

He shrugs. "I changed my mind. You played good."

He hands me a Chaos Emerald.

I don't know what surprises me more, the fact that he has it or the fact that he knows the value it has to me. "Uh Charmy… you know what this is, don't you?"

"Yep! It's a shiny rock!"

"Where… where did you get this, Charmy?"

"Vector gave it to me!"

And what better place to hide a Chaos Emerald than in a kid's bedroom full of broken toys. No one would ever look there. "Thanks."

"Welcome!" He pats me on the head and then flies off. I look at the Chaos Emerald and feel hopeful for the first time in a long, long time. One more. One more, and I can finish this whole thing and be done with it. I leave the house as quickly as I can, saying some sort of garbled goodbye to Espio, and start running for Green Hill.