Hi, person who is reading this!

Sorry for the wait! Life has been busy lately. I just graduated high school last week and now currently running around trying to find a college to go into by fall. I also got my first job ever. In retail. Where I have to interact with people. I'm scared to order a pizza over the phone let alone coming face to face with people and taking their money. I'm scared that I am going to get fired soon...

I also have way too many story ideas on my mind. People who follow me may have gotten a notification that I started a new story in the Harvest Moon category. Why did I do that? Half my stories on here are not even a quarter finished and I keep starting new ones! What's wrong with me?

Anyways, thank you for reading this note. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Chapter 4

The sounds of machinery woke him up.

Sonic had learned from experience to not move during his first minutes of alertness. He could lose the chance of finding out valuable information about his surroundings and about major plans until it was almost too late.

So he pretends to still be asleep. The only thing that would give him away was if he was connected to a heart monitor, which he wasn't to his relief.

Before he could figure out if something knocked him out, the whirring of the machine stopped. Sonic then heard a growl. From that, he concluded that the noises were coming from another room.

All this took less than a minute.

Sonic then transferred his air from his mouth to his nose to gather his bearings. Only when he recognized the scents he opened his eyes.

That confirmed that he was not in danger.

He had merely fell asleep on Amy's couch.

"Look who's awake."

Sonic sat up, wiping a bit of drool off his cheek. His gaze focused on Tails, who sat across the living room.

"What's wrong with you?" Sonic took in the fox's pouty expression.

"Amy kicked me out of the kitchen."

"She always does that because you always try to eat whatever she's making before she finishes whatever she's making."

"Hmph. She didn't have to growl at me."

So that was what I heard.

Sonic stretched and sniffed the air again.

"Wonder what's she cooking now."

"Chocolate brownies mixed with chocolate cookies topped off with chocolate chips." Tails licked his lips.

A series of flashbacks went through the hedgehog's mind then. Trekking through a forest during a camping trip after a three year old overdosed on marshmallows. A trip to Holoska for Christmas two years later had the same fox stranded on a glacier from a sugar crash due from the sweets that the villagers gave him. And the many, many one-sided games of "Let's eat a whole bag of cereal before the sun comes up and proceed to wake up Sonic by jumping up and down on him.".

These hybrid brownies would be the death of both of them.

The sweet smell intensified when Amy floated out of her kitchen and into the red dominated living room. She set down the tin in front of them.

"I hope this makes you feel better."

"Amy..." Sonic shook his head. "You didn't have to do this."

"Yes, I did!" The female glared at him. "You have been running yourself ragged for the past two months looking for clues. You need someone to commend you for your efforts." She pushed the brownie tin closer to him. "Now are you going to eat or do I have to force-feed you?"

"Do whatever you have to to get him to eat." Tails whined. "I can't get one until he does without feeling bad."

Smiling at the antics of his friends, Sonic reached out to cut a chunk off. As he chewed the delicious square, he thought about the event that occurred two months ago at the festival.

Something was very wrong.

The countdown finished. People were celebrating all around him. But he couldn't join them. He could only stand there in a daze as his mind tried to figure out what to do now.

"Hey! Sonic!"

The familiar voice brought his sense of awareness back. The hand that grabbed him made him move again.

"Knuckles!"

"It's officially spring!" The echidna was smiling, a rare expression on him.

"Yeah..." Sonic couldn't think about anything else to say."

"Where's Amy and Tails?"

"Wasn't Amy with you?"

"I walked away after the store owner started to put stuff up."

"Tails went to go see a float."

"We should go find them." Knuckles yawned. "I'm kinda tired."

Sonic nodded, taking in the words. Maybe what he felt had to do something with being sleepy. Looking around at the cheery crowd, he assured himself that that was the reason.

They did eventually find the other two and all four of them debated to go to their separate ways or crash together at Amy's because her house was the closest. Eventually it seemed like sleeping in their own beds,with the exception of Knuckles because his house was too far for him to go at that hour, and the boys started to say their goodbyes to Amy.

"I hear sirens." Tails frowned.

The older kids strained to hear what the fox was talking about. As soon as he got the faint sound of the sirens, Sonic took off in the general direction. It didn't take long to run into a couple of alleys, the lights from the emergency response vehicles were the only things illuminating the walls.

"What happened?" He asked the first cop he saw.

"Someone called in a murder."

"I wonder why the caller didn't stay around." Sonic mumbled, cutting another piece.

"Would you have stayed around a scene like that? In a pretty dark alley with a dead body and a killer that could have been still around?" Tails took another bite of the piece he had in his hand. The fox had found a home design magazine and was balancing it in his cleaner hand.

"Maybe the caller was the killer."

"Or maybe the caller was an innocent person who came across the body, informed the police, and left the scene before they were questioned for something they had no part of." Amy countered. "I heard witnesses never get left alone."

Sonic sighed.

"I just don't know what's going to come next."