Chapter 53: It's A Trap!
At around 11:00 next morning, Sonic was busying himself in the mirror, inspecting his now slim and clean frame, partially covered by a pair of swim trunks that matched his usual shoes.
"Man, I look so good, I'm gonna call out my own name during..." He said, "...sex..."
He suddenly remembered his predicament.
"Hey Sonic! You coming or what?!" Amy shouted from the hallway.
"Didn't we already establish that I can't...oh wait, that's a homophone. Yes! I'm coming!" Sonic replied.
Once at the beach, the group split up, with most of the household deciding to run off and engage in seaside activities, leaving just Sonic, Amy, and Sonic Jr. on their own as they looked for a spot to set up their beach chairs.
"Aren't you excited, Jr.?" Amy asked, "This is your first time coming here since you learned how to walk!"
"Yeah!" Jr. replied, though it was impossible to tell if he actually understood his mother's words.
"That's the spirit!" Sonic said, having already set up four of the beach chairs in a half-circle formation within a few seconds, "Ready to play some tag, Junior?"
"Yeah!" Jr. replied again.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Amy interrupted, "You can't just take him out there to play tag with a bunch of bigger and older people! He could get hurt!"
"Oh, don't be such a party-pooper! He'll be fine! I already taught him how to spin-dash, not to talk to strangers, and hell, I even gave him the sex-talk!" Sonic replied.
{A cutaway began, showing Sonic and Sonic Jr. sitting on the bed in the guest room. "It's...AWESOME!" Sonic said, leaning into Jr.'s face and panning his arm out dramatically as he said "awesome".}
"Wow. Surprised Knuckles wasn't the one to tell him that." Amy said with an unamused tone to her voice.
"Yeah. Well, I'm off!" Sonic sped off, unintentionally sending a spray of sand in Amy's face, along with a gust of wind strong enough to knock her over onto her back.
Just as she sat back up however, Sonic Jr. sped off too, knocking her back down once more.
"Ugh!" Amy groaned, now buried in a pile of sand, with the exception of her head, arms and feet.
Looking back up, she saw Blaze and Rouge walking up towards her. Without a word, they lifted her up.
"Thanks guys." Amy said, shaking sand out of her bikini top as the other girls helped dust off the rest of her body.
Soon enough, Rouge and Blaze promptly sat down in some of the beach chairs, adopting unamused facial expressions.
"Um, what's the matter?" Amy asked.
"Well, the water's too cold, and the boys are engaging in activities that - to put it delicately - we're not a fan of." Rouge replied.
{A cutaway began, showing the five men of the house all the way down the shoreline by the water, each of them spread out across a large, unoccupied space on the beach, and having taken a stance as if they were about to start sprinting. "Alright, ready to do this, son?" Sonic asked. "Yeah!" Junior replied. The two blue blurs then started to charge spin dashes, before letting loose and rolling around rapidly in circles, spraying up sand as they went. Before long, a tall, sandy tornado had formed from their combined efforts. "Time for some 'Beach Twister Tag'!" Sonic shouted from inside the cyclone. The twister then started moving all around the beach in an attempt to chase after and catch the other players. Everyone tried to flee, but being the fastest thing alive, Sonic had little to no trouble catching them. "Alright, I think we've won...again. But how the fuck do we stop this damn thing?" Sonic asked. "I thought you said you wouldn't use that kind of language around Junior!" Tails warned. "Okay, sorry, but can anyone help? ...Ow, something hit me!" Sonic replied. Due to the lack of ability to properly navigate the tornado, the group started to move around the beach uncontrollably. Meanwhile, Rouge and Blaze were hurriedly stepping out of the water due to how frigid it was, and as they walked along the shore trying to warm up, they suddenly noticed the large column of yellow sand roaming around aimlessly (due to having caught everyone else participating in the game) as it sprayed sand outwards in all directions. During its continuous rampage, the tornado soon headed straight in their direction. Despite their efforts to run away, they too were engulfed in it. Only by accidentally steering into the pole of an abandoned volleyball net did the chaos end, for Sonic had been caught on the pole and pulled out of the twister. He found himself uncontrollably spinning around the pole for a bit before being flung into a large pile of sand where everyone else was. Various heads popped up, spitting sand out of their mouths and laughing. "Hahaha! That was awesome!" Knuckles said. "Agreed!" Silver replied. After everyone else popped out and ran off to play again, Rouge and Blaze were the last two to pop out of the sand, annoyed looks on their faces. As they stood up and dusted themselves off, Blaze suddenly grabbed her chest. "What's wrong?" Rouge asked. "I dunno, but my top suddenly feels very loose!" Blaze replied. "Wait! That's mytop!" Rouge replied, looking down at herself too. The two suddenly looked at each other and screamed in shock, realizing that the tornado had tossed them around so hard that they had gotten their swimsuits swapped.}
Amy found herself laughing hysterically, before noticing her friends not laughing along.
"Uh, I mean, 'yikes'!" She quickly said, "Well, every woman needs time without her man, right?"
Rouge and Blaze nodded.
"So let's just kill time until either lunchtime comes or they decide to stop playing that stupid game!" Amy continued.
"...Or until the water warms up, so we can swim and avoid the rush." Rouge added.
The three girls agreed to sit in the circle of beach chairs. Within the next 30 minutes, they had already engaged in conversation.
"Sooo, Sonic's been thinking of making a new change for the household, and..." Amy started, only to be cut off.
"Another change?!" Blaze asked, setting her empty martini glass on top of the cooler, "First there was having a baby, then there was the new gaming room, then the weekend chores list! What could he possibly want to do next?!"
Rouge cleared her throat, prompting Blaze to look at her, before pointing to her stomach, which still had yet to form a bump.
"...Oh, yes. And we have another kid on the way too! Oh, I know! Maybe he'll want to add more bedrooms!" Blaze continued.
"Oh, please! We've all seen much more outrageous things on our adventures! And it's not like those changes are disrupting your lives to a significant degree!" Amy replied, "Besides, Sonic said that this time, he won't follow through if the idea doesn't get enough support."
"Alright, then. Spit it out." Rouge said.
"Okay, so Sonic was thinking about getting a household pet." Amy said.
"PFFFTTT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" Rouge laughed.
"What's so funny?" Amy asked.
"Oh, nothing. It's just that he technically already got a pet, what with Blaze moving in with us!" Rouge replied.
"I resent that." Blaze replied.
"No, seriously! To seal the deal, she falls asleep in the laundry basket and hates baths! What's so un-pet-like about that?" Rouge continued.
"That's because I can't get in water for too long without losing my pyrokinesis for a few hours." Blaze countered.
"Break it up, you two!" Amy said, "I'm serious. And in case you haven't noticed, yes, there are animals in this world who don't talk or act like people!"
"Okay, okay. In all seriousness, you mean something like a non-anthropomorphic dog, fish, bird, etcetera?" Rouge asked.
Amy nodded.
"Well then count me out." Rouge replied.
"The very idea!" Blaze added, "Besides, don't we already have a Chao garden in the backyard?"
"Well, not exactly. Right around the time we moved in, a bunch of Chao suddenly made their home back there." Amy replied, "But back to the subject, to be honest, I'm not too thrilled on the idea either."
"Yeah, who would want some animal soiling the carpets?" Rouge asked.
"Or chasing the cat around the house?" Blaze added.
"Or sticking its nose in all your nooks and crannies?" Amy added.
"Or eating your tampons out of the trash?" The three said in unison.
"Look!" Amy abruptly dropped the current topic.
She pointed out an ominous figure with a black overcoat and bowler hat, and a short stature who was creeping along the back edge of the beach, occasionally ducking behind palm trees before continuing to fast-walk through the shade. She started to follow it.
"What are you doing? Can't we leave that one to the police?" Rouge asked.
"Well, I don't care. There's nobody who poses a serious threat to the world anymore, so I'm taking stabs at crime fighting whenever possible." Amy replied, tiptoeing after the mysterious person.
Rouge and Blaze shrugged and followed suit. After a bit, the trio had followed the person to an unoccupied part of the beach, being sunlit unlike the area surrounding it, and not having a single plant or animal within its edges.
The unknown figure entered this clearing and pulled a remote out of his pocket. Pressing the single button on it, he enabled a bland-looking, yet tall metallic fortress topped with an opaque, white dome and a steeple on top to appear out of thin air.
"What?!" Blaze questioned, the girls now in crawling position as they spied on him from behind a palm tree.
"A criminal organization!" Amy said, stepping out.
The figure heard her, and quickly made the fortress invisible, before pulling out a shotgun. Using a combination of cartwheels and flips, Amy managed to dodge all of its shots with ease, but just as she was backflipping over one of the darts, she was hit in the shoulder by another one and fell to the ground, immediately sedated. Rouge and Blaze came after her, and tried to fight too, but soon three other cloaked figures appeared, and started to fire from identical guns.
While Blaze immediately dashed into the fray, Rouge pulled a pink heart-shaped bomb out of her bikini top and tossed it. However, all four enemies collapsed into smaller forms, and were able to withstand the explosion. Instead, Blaze took the knockback and was sent reeling into the palm tree they had been hiding behind, losing consciousness upon impact. Rouge then continued to fight, and managed to hit two of the figures with one screw kick, before being knocked into the tree herself, due to the third figure throwing a collapsed version of his partner into her. As she was getting back up, the leader of the soldiers had already cornered her, his dart gun just millimeters away from one of her half-exposed breasts.
"Heh heh heh. Looks like you've been...busted, bitches." He said.
Before she was put to sleep with the dart, Rouge managed to see the lower part of the figure's face. It was metallic, and had a mouth resembling the grill of a car, which was glowing blue on the inside.
Once all the girls had been knocked out, the men took off their disguises, revealing themselves to be Orbot, Cubot, Hexbot, and Tribot.
"Well? Mission accomplished!" Orbot said proudly.
"Hahahaha! 'Busted'! Hah! Classic!" Cubot chuckled.
"Eh, not really his best joke." Hexbot replied.
"Enough about that, guys!" Tribot said, "Let's bring these whores to the boss and then we can discuss this."
After Orbot turned the fortress visible once more, the four robots then proceeded to haul all three girls towards it.
Back on the beach, Sonic and all the other men of the house had finally stopped their game and came up to the circle of beach chairs.
"Hey! Where are the girls?" Sonic asked.
"I dunno. Any of you see 'em leave?" Knuckles replied.
"Nope." Silver, Shadow, Junior, and Tails said in unison.
"Well I'm gonna pray to God they're just off getting ice cream or something." Sonic said.
"Nah, praying is useless. I tried praying to God that I'd get a sequel to my own game, but years later? Pssh!" Shadow replied, folding his arms.
Suddenly, the gang heard some sirens wailing from down the street. The noise caused Sonic Jr. to start whimpering in fear and cling to his father's leg. A pair of police cars pulled off to the side of the street, right behind a brown mini-van. The Chaotix had already arrived on the scene to investigate.
"I wonder what the rush is all about." Sonic pondered.
"Hey! I'm supposed to say that!This game's going to be about me, since it's always you who gets games based off all his adventures!" Shadow complained.
"Not now, Shadow! Maybe once we're done we can sort that out, but for now we have work to do!" Sonic sighed.
The group ran after them, until they stopped at the same spot the girls had gone to earlier. The sand in this area was charred from Rouge's bomb, and there were a few scattered darts and fragments of a pink bombshell all over the clearing. Additionally, one of the trees nearby had been badly bent due to the chaos.
"Hey guys! Long time no...GACK!" Tails said, only to be lifted off the ground by the scuff of his neck in a green, scaly hand.
"DON'T...SAY...THE LINE!" Tails' captor said, turning out to be Vector the Crocodile as he cut him off, "Seriously, it's been said to death!"
He dropped Tails to the ground, who immediately began rubbing his neck.
"Anyways, what seems to be the problem here?" Sonic asked.
"Oh, just another case of domestic violence." Espio replied nonchalantly.
"Uh, I wouldn't call it domestic violence, given the guns and bombs all over the place. Besides, you of all people can't even judge domestic violence properly anyway, seeing how wrapped up you are in all those ninja weapons and shit." A familiar being replied.
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Silver, Junior, and Shadow all looked for the source, and realized that it was none other than Mighty the Armadillo.
"Hey! It's Mighty!" Sonic cheered.
"Long time no..." Knuckles started, only to receive a glare from Vector, "Um, well it's been a while. Why haven't you been with the others lately?"
"That's better." Vector replied.
"Oh, just some...personal stuff!" Mighty replied, only to receive dissatisfied facial expressions from everyone else, "What?! Does every character in this fanfic need a fleshed-out backstory?!"
"Yeah, of course it's not domestic violence! Because 'domestic' would imply that there were dogs and cats involved!" Charmy replied, returning to the matter at hand.
"And I think that might have been the case!" Silver said, kneeling down and picking up a ball of damp, purple fur off the ground, "Blaze was definitely here. Maybe she was involved in the fight, and got hit so hard she coughed up a hairball!"
"Atta' boy, Charmy!" Vector said, fist-bumping the bee so hard that he was sent reeling into the bent palm tree.
"Gee, I feel pretty bad for that tree." Mighty remarked, "The destruction of nature just makes me sick!"
"And if you take a moment to smell the scene, it seems that the bomb not only exploded, but also released perfume. And given the scent, it can only be the kind that Rouge uses." Shadow added.
"But no sign of Amy here?" Sonic sighed.
"Look!" Tails called, grabbing a half-buried remote out of the sand.
"Dammit! They're doing all the solving for us!" Vector said.
"Well, it's not like we didn't need the assistance! We still have to investigate the robbery of the Sonic The Hedgehog Museum, the scandal at the supermarket (no wait, that one's done) the murder of Big the Cat, and..." Espio replied.
"GUYS!" Tails barked, cutting him off, and prompting everyone else to pay attention to him, "Anyway, someone must have dropped it during the battle. But...there's no way it could have been one of the girls!"
"Of course not!" Knuckles replied, snatching it from him and pressing the single button on it. Instantly, the same metal fortress became visible.
"So that's where they went!" Silver said.
"No shit, Silver!" Shadow replied, "Now let my sequel begin! You ready to help, Sonic?"
Sonic said nothing, simply standing in place and wincing in anger. Inside, he felt hot rage building up, wondering what this new threat could be doing to Amy and his friends. Empowered by his passion and euphoria for his wife, he got into a stance that made it look like he was about to sprint. Seconds later, a determined smile spread across his face.
"Alright! You guys sit this one out! Maybe go for some coffee and donuts or something!" He said.
"Hey! We're not cops, we're detectives!" Vector complained.
"Well then go and eat whatever detectives eat!" Sonic replied irritably.
"Alright, let's get those girls back!" Knuckles said, punching his fist into his open hand.
"Um, what are you talking about?" Sonic asked.
"What? Tails and I can help too, can't we?" Knuckles asked.
"Oh hell no! You two are going to babysit Junior! The three of us can save our ladies by ourselves!" Sonic said cockily.
Tails and Knuckles sighed in unison as Junior ran up and grabbed one of each of their hands, chanting "Yay! Uncle Tails! Uncle Knuckles!"
"Let's go!" Sonic ordered.
The three hedgehogs then hurried towards the mysterious fortress, beginning yet another adventure.