They weren't quite sure how large of a fall they took, but one thing was for sure; they all smelled like shit.
"I'm almost impressed with how weak your stomach is," Loudred laughed, apparently so bemused by the situation that he had begun to playfully smack Cody's back while completely ignoring any possible consequences.
"I, I swear I didn't barf this time." He was telling the truth. A combination of the wafting raw smell and all the stray fluids mixing sloppily together during their collective tumble had caused the putrid stench to spread to everyone. And if Loudred kept up with the pelting, perhaps Cody really would make it worse soon.
"This is the worst!" Amy cried, her hands clasped against her head. "I just wanted to go on a nice date and now I'll probably have to spend the rest of the day in the shower."
"Hey," Sonic lightly tapped on her shoulder. "Don't look so down. That was amazing what you did back there! You took all those badniks down even faster than I would have."
She blinked. "R-really?"
"Yeah, you wiped them out like it was nothing," he grinned before waving one of his signature thumbs ups.
This was far from the first time she'd seen or heard him praise her. Yet each and every time, she was reminded why exactly she was so attached to him. He had an aura around him that exuded pure positivity; like just being around him made anyone feel things would be okay. Sure, she might've smelled like a toxic waste basket right now, but the only thing that mattered at the moment was that she was here with Sonic.
And well…
She'd really like to get that date eventually.
The complete opposite of tension was forming between the two hedgehogs. Growing increasingly flustered, Sonic stammered off, in a poor attempt to clear his head.
"So, where the heck are we?" He haphazardly asked.
Even if he just needed a cheap way to change the subject, it was a valid question based on their surroundings. Endless tiles of metal paved the walls and ground. They had the uneasy look and luster of rusted down ores despite clearly having been only recently erected. Two dimly lit tunnels were laid before them with curves that slid downwards like they were slides in a haunted playground. It was impossible to tell what laid beyond them, or rather, beneath them. Sonic and his usual company were used to mucking around in evil lairs, especially Eggman's, but there was something weirdly sinister about this place.
"This is one of Eggman's bases, isn't it?" Tails flew over beside his friend. "Judging by what happened earlier, it might even be where all those robots are being manufactured."
"Not just that." This time Knuckles trudged on, holding out a green gem that shined so brilliantly against the drab walls, it might as well have been their sole source of light. "I've been trying to track the other emeralds all day. This thing kept going crazy when I got to Green Hills. This might be where he's hiding the rest of them."
Sonic raised his eyebrow in an unimpressed fashion. "Didn't bother challenging me in person and he lied about having all the emeralds. Not a good day for the Doc here."
"Hey, take this seriously," Knuckles lightly shoved Sonic's shoulder. "This is the last one he needs. We gotta find the others, asap, or who knows what he might do with them."
"Well, you also happened to deliver the last one he needed right to his doorstep," Tails mumbled hesitantly.
Knuckles twitched.
Sonic once again glanced over at the twin tunnels; the peculiar underpasses that only darkened with each flickering glow against the metallic stains that rotted like dried blood. Sonic had a bad feeling about those new badniks for a while now, but now seeing the uneasy state of their homebase, he could only imagine what laid below..
"Hey," he turned around towards the Keyblade gang. Left to their own devices, they had once again devolved into their typical group bickering. "You guys are experts on those things, right?"
They collectively blinked.
"I know they're not just any ordinary bots."
"Who are you four anyway?" Knuckles eyed them suspiciously.
"Oh yeah, Knux," Sonic added. "These guys have been helping around with beating those things down. That's Cody, Mokona…"
"Hi, I'm Mokona."
"And you already met Al and Loudred, yeah?"
"Unfortunately."
"I said I was sorry," Alakazam silently whimpered.
"Anyways," Sonic gestured back at the ominous tunnels. "We're going to have to split up if we want to cover all our bases."
"It'd probably be best to split you four up again just so we can make sure we're prepared in case something that would fall more on your expertise pops up," Tails chimed in.
Alakazam shifted his eyes towards a certain someone who responded with a simple stink eye. Everyone braced themselves for yet another round of yelling and cussing, but it surprisingly never came. Alakazam simply stomped off on his own towards the right most tunnel. Each step heaved deep tempered breaths that threatened to break out and really start a fight. Even in his silence, the unspoken ire did more than enough to sour the air.
Well, except for whatever Mokona breathed. Always one to march at his own beat, the strange rabbit creature gleefully bounced along to Alakazam's trail without a care in the world.
"Well that works out, I guess," Knuckles sighed. "Hey Amy, I'm probably gonna need another heavy hitter to make sure those two don't fall over themselves. Mind coming with?"
"Uh, I actually do." She took a quick glimpse at Sonic. If she had it her way, she'd happily shove her way into Sonic's group.
But duty called.
"Fine," she griped as she and Knuckles made their exit.
With the group now smaller and quieter than it was before, Sonic gave a slight smirk to his friend and his two new pals. "Alright, we're going left then."
"Hey, uh," Cody weakly raised his hand. "Remember when Mokona did that…thing to help us understand each other?"
"What about it?" Loudred tilted his head.
"I don't know. I feel like those effects would be wearing out by now. Isn't keeping us separate kinda bad?"
"Oh! I almost forgot," Tails exclaimed before handing a small star shaped keychain over to Cody.
He dangled the trinket like a toy pendulum. His eyes shifted towards the fox child in confusion. "Uh, what is this?"
"Remember when I asked to borrow your friend earlier? I found a way to compound his powers into mass. All you have to do is pop in any kind of food and it'll convert it into candy that'll have the same effect as his translation ability."
And just like that, Cody clicked the plastic star open. Out came a small shielded indent that popped out a pair of pastel colored gumballs from its flaps. Both Cody and Loudred went wild.
"Put a few starter candies in there too of course!"
"This is amazing!" Cody excitedly shoved the candy into his mouth.
"You made this in just a few hours? You're really something else, kid," Loudred ruffled this fox's fur with paternal glee.
Tails responded with a soft grin, both pleased and embarrassed with the attention he was getting. "Well, enough of that. We should really start heading off."
"You don't have to rush through compliments, you know." Sonic said this with an air of genuine encouragement. But despite that, he was the first to slip off towards the mysterious darkened tunnel that laid ahead.
The others wordlessly followed without complaint, and the newly equipped keychain dangled along in the rough and arid underground breeze alongside the sway of the Keyblade.
oOo
"Look out behind you!"
Amy slammed her hammer straight into the head of a Heartless-bot that was just moments away from sinking its metallic claws into Mokona. Just like before, a distinct stream of light floated in the atmosphere while the robot's crushed parts slowly crumpled onto the ground.
Knuckles looked around. The four had run into another small group of badniks just now and Amy was able to decimate them in what felt like seconds. She was giving Sonic, the "Fastest Thing Alive" himself, a run for his money.
"Man, that hammer of your's really packs a punch against these guys," he nodded in amazement. "Have you been working out or something?"
"Oh, you know." Amy rested the head of her hammer on to the ground as she began to lean on the handle and cheekily take in his words. "A girl's gotta make sure she stays in top shape."
She looked across from her. While Knuckles was left in astonishment at her sudden fighting prowess and Mokona was launching himself into a near incomprehensible string of compliments, Alakazam was the only one who remained silent at her accomplishment. She grinned and leaned forward as she coaxed him for a response.
Al's eyes were wide and his head was trickled in cold sweat. He made a terrible mistake. He was so transfixed on his petty hatred of a certain bratty Keyblade wielder that he took the first chance he got to get as far away from him as possible and wound up in an even worse situation; he was stuck with two people he barely knew. And one of them he had already pissed off much earlier. Sure, Mokona was here too, but the little guy was such a behavioral anomaly, his presence made absolutely no difference in breaking any ground between Al and the two other colorful mammals.
Amy stifled back a giggle. She could practically see how panicked Al was on the inside at his current situation, and she teasingly leaned even further just to freak him out some more.
"Um, uh," his eyes darted rapidly across the steep corridor. "You fight really…cool?"
"Why thank you!" Amy squealed in genuine appreciation.
Completely energized by her compliment fishing, Amy hopped back into a proper walking stance while she spun her hammer gracefully like a baton before letting the handle land gently on her shoulder. After their short little break, the four were back to their expedition.
"Today's turning out much better than I thought it'd be," she mused playfully to herself. "I've gotten so much stronger lately, even Sonic's noticed! He's going to have to take me out after this."
"What?" Knuckles's face morphed into a mix of concern and amusement. "You're still going on about that? It's gotta have been at least two months at this point. That date is not happening."
Amy stopped in her tracks and pouted aggressively at her friend. "Says you!"
Alakazam scrunched his face. He recalled back to his brief time at Tails's workshop and during the brief moments he wasn't distracted by how much he hated that stupid Keyblade wielder, there was very very brief drama going on between her and Sonic. A missed date, excuses, obvious reluctance to reschedule; honestly, the whole situation seemed asinine.
"Does he even like her?" He meant to keep that thought in his head, but he assumed Amy was distracted enough by her friend's earlier statement to miss his quiet mumbling.
And boy he was wrong because she now pouted aggressively at him instead.
"Of course he likes me! What kind of question is that?!"
"Uh, um, uh." Back to sweating. "I…I don't know. It just kind of sounds like he hates you."
Alakazam winced. He perhaps anticipated some lengthy screaming from the pink hedgehog's end, but nothing ever came. Instead, she merely looked on to him in an almost understanding mind, even if she was frustrated.
"Of course he doesn't hate me. We've been friends for a long time now. He might do dumb insensitive stuff every now and then, but we wouldn't be around with each other all the time if he hated me. Who does that?" She pointed towards Knuckles. "Like, Sonic drives him crazier than he ever would with me, and he's still here."
"Boy do I know it," he rolled his eyes.
She continued to stare at Alakazam, this time with even more empathetic eyes. His body heated up when he realized where this conversation was heading.
"Maybe someone was doing a bit of projecting back there?"
Yup. There it was.
He could imagine how this conversation would've gone had Loudred been the one uttering those words. No doubt, there would've been a lot of yelling and manic fury, and perhaps a frightening show of telekinetic power like back up in Green Hills. That was someone he'd known for a while though. He couldn't just blow up in front of two people who were practically strangers to him. They shouldn't have even existed in the same realm as him.
She continued to stare, obviously awaiting a response. "People can have issues with each other and still be friends, y'know. Whatever's going on between you and Cody is probably dumb anyways."
He twitched. "We are not friends."
"But you travel together?"
"Not by choice."
"And?"
"Shut up!"
His cries that would usually be filled with spitefully haughty anger instead became increasingly frazzled. He was used to Loudred attempting to get the two of them to get along, but there was something deeply humiliating about a complete outsider trying to insist upon it.
"Come on, you gotta care about him even a little bit," she continued to egg him on.
"Absolutely not!"
He couldn't remember a single pleasant moment with the dude. There were all the moments Cody cowered around in battle, all the moments they broke into fights with one another, even in the middle of combat. When they were united in their determination to get into the Newcomers Tournament back in Smash Stadium, it was because they both happened to be hating on the same guy. There was nothing more to that. And when Cody was struck with a sudden four-legged handicap back at the Glistening Caverns, he shielded him from that nasty burn because he couldn't risk the Keybearer dying on him. There was nothing more to that too.
Nope, they could never be friends.
Not at all.
"Wow, you're more stubborn than the knucklehead here," Amy sighed sarcastically.
"...Wait, are you talking about me?"
Knuckles was just about to protest, but a far off cry forced them to halt their chatter altogether. While the three of them were busy conversing, Mokona had gone on way ahead and now jumped excitedly as he prompted the others to follow. Knuckles ran along and Amy giddily pulled Alakazam, still very disoriented with social awkwardness. She obviously wasn't done messing with him just yet.
As the four carried on along, Amy continued to yap as much as she pleased. Mokona would continuously flip-flop around between a brainless yes-man to her antics or an active assistant in her teasing. She somehow became the group leader, and Knuckles and Alakazam could do nothing but go along with it.
And through it all, Al couldn't decide if she was impossible or easy to talk to.
He turned his head away and uttered a mumble even he wasn't sure if he intended to be heard or not. "Friend or not, I still think he's treating you like garbage."
It was something to think about, but even then, Amy couldn't help but smile.
oOo
Unbeknownst to them, far in the deepest trenches of the trek to hell, a man chuckled sinisterly. The shines of his goggles and navy blue glasses gleamed against the light of the monitors that tracked all of his adversaries' moves.
"You're usually a lot faster than this, hedgehog," Eggman couldn't help but gloat to himself. "Hurry down quicker and you'll get to see exactly what I have in store for you all."
Eggman continued laughing to himself like a madman as he found entertainment in mocking their movements. And meanwhile, right in the center of the hallowed lab he was situated in, a large egg-like structure lay dormant while surrounded by the shines of six emeralds.
oOo
The going-ons in Cody and Sonic's team were no different than Al and Amy's, save for the almost ridiculous quick successions of killer robots. The further down the spiraling slide path they went, the more badniks they ran into. The more badniks they encountered, the more bot bashing that ensued.
"Nice!" Sonic high fived Cody after their round. "When you've got your head in the game, you guys are unstoppable."
"Yeah," Tails nodded happily in agreement. "How long have you been fighting these guys? You're like experts."
"Well," Cody grinned slyly, slicking back his hair. "I don't know. This is like our third, fourth worl—"
Loudred loudly slapped his back, forcing him to keel over and realize what he almost did. The two proceeded to give each other confused looks, hoping that one of them could come up with a good bluff.
…
…
…
…Nothing but awkward silence.
Sonic and Tails gave each other cringed glances before they continued on their ways.
…
…
…
"...You didn't have a cover story ready when you shut me up?"
"I'm sorry," Loudred sighed. "I'm not usually the one handling things like this."
The two also began to carry on, albeit from a noticeable distance between them and their two furry companions. If they had any better tact, they probably would've realized just how much more suspicious this made them.
"Should we like…rehearse this kind of stuff?" Cody scratched his head. "Come up with premade excuses?"
"Man, if only Al were here. He probably would've stopped you before you even opened your mouth."
Like many times before, Loudred laughed at his own statement despite how far from amused the other party was. Cody was at a point that just the mention of his name was enough to sour his mood. Despite only one half of the equation present, the feeling was now almost the exact same as the oppressive setting of the Gummi Ship.
Loudred took a deep breath. Unlike Al, Cody was probably less likely to blow up in his face about this topic.
"Hey, uh, when we wrap this up…do you think you and Al could maybe try talking things out?"
Cody scoffed. "As if. You think he's going to want that?"
"I've known him for a while. I can try to talk him into it."
"And why do you think I'd agree to it?" Cody eyed him with an unimpressed stare.
Loudred took another deep breath. "Look, I'm gonna be honest with you. He's literally just a kid having constant tantrums. If you just try to talk to him, he'll calm down eventually."
"Well maybe he should act his age."
"No, um," he scratched his head. How should he put this? "So first of all, in our world, life spans probably work a lot more differently than yours."
…
…Wait.
Cody quickly swung his head in confusion. "What are you getting at here?"
"How old are you?"
"15?"
"Okay, so if we proportionally scale down his lifespan, he is most definitely younger than you."
You've gotta be shitting me.
"But he's so big!"
"Yeah, force feeding yourself Rare Candies will do that to you."
"What does that even mean?!"
"You know, he's considered pretty small for his species. Guess even forced evolutions can't speed that up."
"What are you even talking about?!" Cody, eyes wide, slapped his forehead in disbelief. "Are you telling me I've been arguing with a ten-year-old this entire time?"
"I wouldn't say he's that young," Loudred snickered. "But yeah, he's the very definition of a scared child trying to act twice his age."
Cody eyed his companion suspiciously. "How old are you then?"
"Don't push it, kid."
Loudred was earnest in his attempt to convince Cody, but the conversation was soon lost in a puzzling interrogation over their differences in living functions. No matter how hard he tried to nudge things back on track, Cody went back to asking questions that he knew he'd get mind bogglingly incomprehensible responses for. This was how the group carried on for a while. The two of them continued to trail in the back, deeply entrenched in their own conversation, while Sonic and Tails led the way, growing more curious of their friends' true natures the further along they went.
…?
Cody's ears perked. Beyond the echoes of their feet clangs on to the metal and the incessant idle chatter, he could hear a soft buzz fading in and out in the distance.
"Do you guys hear that?"
Silence fell upon them, and the strange buzz grew louder now. No; a buzz wasn't quite right. Perhaps a fissure or screech? They readied themselves as if anticipating an attack, but no matter how much noise changed its pattern or increased in intensity, it never once felt like something was about to approach.
"Do you guys think they're fighting something further down ahead?" Tails inquired.
"They were quicker than me?" Sonic responded.
"We were stopped by a lot of bots. Maybe they were a lot luckier."
"Do you think they need help?" Cody asked.
Sonic nodded. "Probably. We gotta get further down and try to reach them fast."
He'd just begun to mount a sprint when something else forced him into a pause.
It was Amy's scream.
Whatever happened down there, it did not sound good.
Sonic resumed in a panic and blasted through without even a word to his companions. The wind that resulted from his force slapped on to them and nearly forced the three to stumble sloppily to the ground. They shared worried expressions amongst one another and followed helplessly through the path, unsure if they'd even be able to catch up to Sonic in time to lend their hands too.
oOo
Al, Amy, Mokona, and Knuckles had arrived right at the footsteps of an ominous sealed entrance. Perhaps it was accidental arrogance from Amy's various victories along the way, but after fight after fight of cracking scrap metal and robotic limbs, they were now surrounded.
Knuckles gawked at the strange creatures before him. To Al and Mokona, they were an annoyingly familiar face, but to him and Amy, they were like moving nightmares. The gangly figures of the Shadow masses twisted and contorted in unnatural angles, avoiding every single smack to the face the echidna attempted to slug on to them.
"What the heck are these things?!" He eyed Al and Mokona incredulously. These were most definitely not the badniks he was used to maiming.
Alakazam stammered while he haphazardly unleashed his psychic abilities on the enemies. As accustomed as he was to fighting them at this point, it was clear even he was caught off guard by their sudden appearance.
"I…uh…um…" Even now he desperately tried to keep the two in the dark about everything.
"They're Heartless!" Mokona squeaked.
The little guy flopped his rabbit feet across a Shadow's face, but was immediately sent flying from a retaliating swipe behind him. He was just inches away from being ripped apart by the deformed hands of a Shadow, but was saved right in the nick of time by a familiar large hammer. Like all the times before with the robots, the impact of Amy's swing to the creature emitted a surreal blink of light. She caught Mokona by the ears and cleared a safe path for him before letting him free.
"Will these things stay still?" She cringed. Her attacks packed just as much of a punch as they did before, but the new foes proved to be even more annoyingly flexible than their mechanical counterparts. She was lucky to land a quick hit on any of these things, and even when she did, they fidgeted just fast enough to move less painful positions..
Alakazam gulped. As he and Mokona were the only ones with real experience against these guys, a strange sense of guilt and responsibility had built upon him. He revved up his telekinetic abilities and tried his best to freeze the enemies up enough to give his teammates room to attack. Despite everything however, it was a familiar situation as before when they were way above their current location. The Heartless just kept going and going and going. There was no doubt that something was beyond that closed entranceway.
"Amy," Al called out above all the chaos. "They're trying to protect whatever's up ahead. Smack that hatch down!"
"Got it!"
That was a mistake.
With Amy's hammer up in the air and ready to bring the house down, a strange and bizarre hissing fissure crackled from beyond. There wasn't any time to register or even realize what exactly was beyond that door. Because the hatch burst right open all on its own, and a flurry of mechanical tendrils with streams of electrical currents that circulated throughout their slender lengths spread throughout the cramped corridors.
The immense crackling of sparks encircled them and flailed around, allowing the currents to surround and overwhelm them in makeshift electrical cages. With their prey trapped, the wriggling arms coiled and forced Al, Knuckles, and Mokona flat on the ground.
Ever quick on her impulses, Amy swung her hammer frantically; half as a counterattack to the metal tendrils, and half as a flimsy shield. The currents buzzed violently in her ears as if they were looking to intimidate and take her down specifically. Her face dropped the more she fought. What prowess she had against the badniks and Shadows did absolutely nothing on these things. She put up a valiant if futile fight, but even she found herself tied up and defenseless against their clutches.
A cartoonish fit of laughter boomed. On the opposite ends of the tendrils, a small circular vehicle floated through the entranceway and revealed a certain man who was all too familiar to two of the fighters.
"You!" Knuckles snarled as he writhed on the ground.
"Splitting your lot up worked out even better than I thought," Eggman mocked. "I didn't even have to face that wretched hedgehog."
"Why you…" Amy winced.
Eggman twitched. He was so taken into the moment, it didn't occur to him just how foul and hellish the corridors reeked. His face crumpled up and he quickly pinched up his large nose. "What in the world is that stench?! You all smell disgusting!"
"I'M GOING TO CAVE IN YOUR TEETH!"
Fueled by her aner, Amy wriggled around and tried her damndest to break free. All her efforts however were met with even more electric tendrils snaking out of the bottom hatch of Eggman's Eggmobile. They viciously crushed and twisted around her body, forcing out a bloodcurdling scream as the newly added currents shook her up.
All the guys could do was watch helplessly.
"What the heck are you doing to her?!" Knuckles fumed. If he wasn't tied down by his own spring of rough currents, he would've ran right up there and beat the shit out of him.
"There's no need to worry," Eggman smirked almost tauntingly."We need her for much bigger plans, so I don't plan to end her."
"Shut up!"
"You meanie!" Mokona added on his own ills. "I'm going to bite your face off and leave one eye on you so you can watch me slowly chew and digest your flesh while you writhe in unimaginable pain only known to mortals meeting their slow untimely deaths!"
The doctor genuinely winced.
"Well with that, perhaps it's time to leave."
The electrical currents around her weakened as Amy's body grew limp. Her hammer landed on the ground in a dull thud. The Eggmobile quickly backed away into the darkness of the mysterious lab beyond, taking both Amy and copious robotic tendrils along with it. Now free from their clutches, the boys made a mad dash to save their friend, but were stopped by the Heartless; the monsters that laid so creepily dormant during that ordeal, they nearly forgot they were even there.
A Shadow crawled around, flattened on the metal plates of the ground. When it materialized just close enough to Knuckles to trip him, it nabbed the Chaos Emerald he carelessly brought along to his trek and fled away to the lab.
"Hey, you can't just—" Knuckles's upset outburst was interrupted by Mokona's body flung hard into his face.
Alakazam, who had remained silent from both literal and metaphorical shock during this entire ordeal, stared wide eyed and aghast at the dark room where Eggman and Amy made their exit.
He screwed up.
He really screwed up.
He kept harping on and on about responsibility and keeping a low profile this entire time, and now she was captured because of him.
He reached out his hands and concentrated as hard as he could in the small glimmer of hope that he could maybe pull her back. But with the Heartless and the chaos of the moment surrounding him…
…This was all his fault.
…
The ground slowly started to shake.
oOo
Sonic skid to a halt.
He had reached the very end of the tunnel and was met with a ledge that led to a nearly pitch black room.
He carefully peered around. They were lucky to have had any kind of light at all in the pathway that led him here. He could barely make out even the wall. It might as well have been a pathway to the edge of the world.
Suddenly, a fierce shroud of light came from below.
Sonic's eyes quickly darted downward.
All seven Chaos Emeralds were placed neatly around a large and mysterious mechanized egg.
…Wait.
He had all seven now?
"Oh crap."
He was faster than anything known to man, yet even he was too slow to stop the turbulent power of the gems that powered up whatever the hell that thing was.
The room that once resembled endless dark was lit up in a glorious blaze. The mechanical menace cracked out of its dormant posture, almost tripling in size. It had the same bloody purple hue and aesthetic as its much smaller counterparts that they'd been smacking around all day, but this one had a much more slender build than any of Eggman's past inventions; as if it were the undead skeleton of a mecha long destroyed and rebuilt. It was so unlike anything Eggman had previously made, it gave Sonic doubts that its current look and form was even built as intended.
This wasn't Eggman's handiwork.
He didn't know it, but the Egg Ghoul was much more Heartless than mech.
A lone digital eye sprang up like a projection on its round dome-like head; the only indication that this thing ever originated from the Doc's messed up mind. It shuffled around its thick and gangly clawed arms like it'd just woken up to limbs all numbed up from slumber.
This was his chance. Ever the go-getter, Sonic already rared himself up to fight this new foe.
But then he tumbled over.
The ground shook violently.
Cracks formed in the brass and metal walls and fixtures. Even the eye of the mech hesitated. Dust and debris clouded the area, yet not in the way Sonic would have imagined. Everything was pulled upward into the air.
And everything started to develop a faint telekinetic glow.
All of a sudden, the climax of the pull erupted. Everything shot upwards; Sonic, the mech, the emeralds. The entire facility became undone.
And soon enough, Cody, Sonic, Al, Loudred, Mokona, Tails, and Knuckles all laid flat on the familiar grounds of Green Hill.
This was their next battlefield.