Mazuri was beautiful. That much went without saying. Knuckles had always preferred natural scenery to cityscapes, so that wasn't a big surprise for him. If he had one complaint, however, it would be that it was too damn hot. Knuckles was barely keeping it together, and he didn't even wear any clothes. Rouge seemed completely fine, somehow.

"Hurry up knucklehead you're lagging behind." Rouge practically dragged him by the arm through the village. "I couldn't get a hotel in a place this remote, so we need to find somewhere we can camp" Rouge complained, but Knuckles wasn't really listening.

Knuckles noticed a young girl who seemed to be by herself, she certainly seemed to be looking around for someone, of course he wasn't the type of person to ignore something like that so naturally he went over to see if he could help. "Are you alright? Do you need help finding someone?" Knuckles asked in as friendly a tone as he could muster.

The girl looked up to him, and for a moment, it seemed like she'd say something, but she turned and ran away towards the edge of the village. "Hey, wait -" she was gone before he even finished his sentence.

"You've certainly got a way with Kids Knuckie." Rouge playfully tapped him on the head. "You shouldn't be too surprised. You're really quite scary, you know that?"

"I am not!" Knuckles protested a little louder than he'd meant to before covering his own mouth when people turned to look at him. "We should find her. It's not safe out there for a kid."

"Agreed, but maybe let me do the talking when we find her." Rouge took off in the direction the girl had run, followed swiftly by Knuckles. Hopefully, they'd find her before she got herself in any trouble.

Knuckles was sure he'd feel differently if he lived here himself, but to him, everything out here looked the same he had no idea if he was actually making any progress. After about half an hour of searching, the pair finally found her huddled behind a rock.

Rouge covered Knuckles' mouth before he could even say anything leaning down to the girls' level. "Hi there, sorry about him he can be scary looking, can't he? But he's really a sweetheart." As Rouge gestured to Knuckles, he did his best to appear, none threatening, which would have been a lot easier if he knew why she was afraid of him to begin with. "Could you come back to the village with us? We'll help you find your parents." Rouge offered, holding a hand out to her.

The girl was quiet for a second before once again, turning to run away, leaving Rouge quite confused. "Aha! So I'm not scary looking. She's just shy." Knuckles thought outloud before shutting up as Rouge glared at him. "Sorry you're right, let's go after her."

The pair ran after her, and while they didn't want to scare her, they knew they had to prioritise keeping her safe. "Kid, wait, it's dangerous!" Rouge yelled after her. As the girl came to a stream, she hesitated before trying to hop across using a few rocks as stepping stones.

Knuckles could tell what was going to happen before it did and as he had feared the kid slipped on one of the rocks, Knuckles rushed forward to help her before he even realised what he was doing and caught her pulling her back to the bank of the stream, before losing his footing and falling in himself.

Without even a moment of hesitation, Rouge burst out laughing. "You should really be more careful, Knuckles." He would have said something, but the girl was also laughing at him, and he didn't want to scare her again.

"Don't know what you mean. This was completely intentional. I needed to cool down." Knuckles claimed as he dragged himself out of the water. "Nice to see you're feeling a little more relaxed now. Have you got a name?"

"Yaya'' the girl replied in a quiet voice. Still a little too shy to look at them.

"Well, can we take you back to the village, Yaya?" Rouge suggested, once again kneeling down to eye level. Yaya nodded before taking a hold of Knuckles's hand. "Guess it's hard to find him scary after seeing that." Rouge joked as Yaya took a hold of her hand as well.

"Does this kind of thing happen a lot, Yaya?" Knuckles asked, trying to avoid walking back to town in an awkward silence.

"Mm-hmm, I get shy around new people." Yaya answered in a small voice. She seemed a little embarrassed by it. "I do want to talk to the people who travel here, but I just get so nervous that I'll say the wrong thing, and then I run away."

"I understand that better than you might think, before I met a few friends of mine I'd spent my entire life alone, I didn't know how to talk to anyone at first, but little by little I got more confident around new people, I still wouldn't say I'm perfect but I'm a lot better than I used to be." Knuckles explained calmly, as the three of them approached the village, Rouge couldn't help but smile at how softly he was speaking to the girl.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, these things take time, and you're still just a kid, so what if you get nervous around new people? that's normal, but I've got no doubt in my mind you'll get better at that if you keep working at it." Knuckles wasn't really the best at motivation, but he didn't think he did too badly.

"I'm sure there are plenty of people you know who could help you with that, I had to drag Knuckles out of his shell kicking and screaming." Rouge added as they arrived at the village, making sure to take a dig at Knuckles as she did so. "Well, we're here. Do you see your parents anywhere?"

Yaya looked around for a moment before spotting someone she knew and dragging Knuckles and Rouge over to the boy. "This is my brother Kwod." Yaya introduced happily, letting go of Knuckles and Rouge's hands.

"Yaya, where have you been? You've had mom worried sick." The young man lectured his sister, though it was clear it was out of concern rather than anger, before turning to the pair. "Thank you for helping her find her way back."

"Oh, not at all. It was our fault she ran away in the first place." Rouge assured him it was fine. Though Kwod didn't seem convinced, obviously, he knew about his sister's tendency to run away when she met anyone new.

"Even so, thank you." Kwod took Yaya's hand and turned to leave, but the girl pulled away from her brother Hugging Rouge and then Knuckles before waving goodbye to the pair.

"Cute kid, huh?" Rouge asked as the pair waved back at Yaya.

"Huh? Oh yeah, she was sweet once she stopped running from us." Knuckles agreed as she disappeared from view.

"Never knew you could be so wise though Knuckie you might have a paternal side tucked away under all that temper after all." The bat teased as she poked his cheek.

He gently swatted her hand away before laughing to himself softly. "I'm surprised as you, I never had anyone growing up, so it's not like I've ever been taught how to act around kids. It just came naturally to me. Sorry, I didn't mean to spoil the mood."

Rouge put one arm around Knuckles before sighing. "It's alright Knuckles, you don't need to worry about that."

By now, it was late, and they never did find a place to camp, but for the time being, that wasn't on their mind. They were ust happy to take it easy and watch the sunset.

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Hi, I know this chapter is a little shorter than the others, but I think it's sweet, and I didn't want to drag it out longer just to meet a word count. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Any and all reviews are appreciated as always.