Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognized characters or gameplay patterns within this fanfiction. Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, Eggman, Blaze, and all related characters of such are owned by SEGA. All original character's are owned by me.

Expendable 6.3

Blaze stared down at the mouth of the cave with no hurry or sense of urgency to go down there. Katia hadn't yet caught up yet, still struggling with running up the hill.

The cave was small, if she had to be honest. Barely the size of a large room, it had markings and etchings and drawings on all sides of the grey stone. In the middle was a small dais with a ladder heading downwards, into the innards of the mountain, where the cat was currently staring with more than a deep-seated fear in her heart.

"You...are very...fast..." Katia breathed hard as she reached the top. "How...?" she asked as she rested her hands on her knees, trying to keep breath in her lungs.

Blaze didn't blame her for being as slow as she was. She wasn't, actually, all that slow. Slower than Tails, or even Cream when she was a kid. If she had to be honest, Marine was about the right speed, maybe a little faster than Katia. Also the air was thin up here, and normally that would affect her, but this was far from the only mountain she'd climbed.

She was a cat. She was supposed to like high places, and her parents, both sets of them, had taken her to the mountains whenever they had a chance. Then they learned that she was afraid of heights, and that quickly stopped. Blaze was quite thankful of that.

"Training, life," Blaze shrugged. "I am one of the fastest that I know. Only one faster is an...air manipulator. And even then, he's barely just."

"You know an air controller!?" Katia said, her eyes bright as she jumped up. An air controller? Who came up with these names? Controller, channeler, courier, caller, carrier...they must have really liked their 'c's.

"Is that what you call them? Then yes, but only the one," Blaze answered. She reached for the ladder, and felt the soft wood give under her light weight.

"Careful, this ladder is old and from ancient times. I think parts of it have already rotted out," Katia murmured.

Blaze could tell. Every portion she grabbed on the sides was already starting to collapse, let alone the rungs on each step. She grabbed the sides solidly, and tested her foot's grasp against them. They seemed more solid than the rungs did, a hard bamboo that seemed more than able to hold them both.

The sides of the dais went down, the etchings and carvings with it, creating a hollow stone pillar. "Put your hands and feet on the sides, and slide down," Blaze said, letting gravity follow her the rest of the way. The pillar was wide enough for her to be able to run down or up if she needed it, assuming she was fast enough. She just had to not look down.

And then she looked down, and realized just how high up she was. The pillar and ladder went down for ages, far past her own sight range. She looked up to see Katia trying to emulate her, and trying to keep her dress down at the same time.

The ladder shook from their sliding down, and more than once Blaze had to hold on with only one hand as the bamboo tried to bite at her with small cuts in it, as if whoever had designed it knew that someone would try it. She heard the creaking at first before she felt it, the ladder starting to creak and fall apart at the base. She had a sudden vision of falling, and she tightened her grip. She heard another creak from the ladder right below her, and felt it start to collapse.

"Only one thing for it. Grab on!" Blaze commanded as she jumped up, grabbing Katia by the stomach as the cat flung over her shoulder. In the same movement she jumped off the ladder just as the last bit of standing bamboo started to collapse, and she felt free-fall.

Her hands and feet tried to get a hold of the wall, of the etchings only to find that the stone was too smooth. "Hold on tight!" she said, turning around as fast as she could.

She called upon her fires, ignoring the shriek of Katia next to her ears as she created the vacuum in front of her, heading downwards. Her feet carried her swiftly, and she knew how many laws of physics she was trying to break. Succeeding at breaking, if anything was right. Trying to outrun gravity and maintain control was one thing, trying to do it on a smooth surface that one could barely get a grasp on was entirely another.

The stone was simple and hard beneath her feet though, and surprisingly warm, at least compared to the mountain outside. The flames around her must have looked like a giant ring of fire, she knew. Blaze carefully looked downwards, trying to see just when the passageway ended. She had an idea of how to survive this without rings, and she turned, gently.

Not much, just enough to start going at a diagonal. Then she turned a bit further, keeping the fires going, keeping the vacuum going, keeping the boost going. Katia had stopped shrieking, or at least her ear was immune to the sound now. Blaze wasn't sure which.

The pillar would end soon, she saw after a minute or so of running diagonal. She had already been close to the bottom, then. "Hold!" she shouted as she sped up, turning more horizontal and letting the excess vertical velocity drop.

Her momentum wouldn't just stop, though. She looked for an exit, and she hoped there wouldn't be any traps right away, and she aimed for that. She'd have exactly one chance for this, and to not let her feet drop out of the boost. Which would probably end rather painful for her as she smacked into the floor at nearly mach one.

She spun around and around the top, trying to gradually slow down before she jumped on the other side, twisting so her hands and feet touched the side of the opening, and she saw a long stretch of empty hallway. She ended the boost instantly, letting her natural speed win out as she slowed down gradually. Her heart was pounding, but that wasn't because of the exercise, that was from the drop.

"That was amazing!" Katia shouted as she jumped off Blaze's shoulders. "I've never seen anyone go that fast!"

"Hang out with me long enough, you'll see it again," Blaze warned, breathing deep. It had been a while since she was doing death defying stunts. She had been right though, earlier. The stone was much warmer than the path outside, and she realized why this place was as dangerous as it was. It wasn't just a mountain, but a volcano of all places.

"Come on," she said, waving her hand onwards. "Tell me about this idol that we need to find. I'm guessing it's not at the beginning?" she asked.

"No, it's not. No one is sure where it is, but legends say it's at the end with a massive treasure."

Blaze sighed. Of course there would be treasure involved. The heat of the walls was slow to warm up, but Blaze could feel it already, calling into her.

The hallways was pure stone, un-carved and slightly rocky at points, as if it was melted and hardened up again often. Knowing that it was volcano, now, it was likely it had. If there had been any carvings, they'd probably been erased as the rock heated up and cooled back down. Blaze walked forward calmly to the end. "You didn't happen to bring water, did you?" she asked after a moment.

"No, there's some water already here. The Thor'koans left some for those that try to get through their temple's maze."

"Here."

"Yes."

"In a volcano."

"Yes."

"Where there's lava," Blaze confirmed.

Katia nodded, and grinned brightly. "It'll be easy, especially after what you just did! That'll be the hardest...never mind," she said as she looked through the end of the hallway.

It wasn't just another hallway, Blaze knew then. She looked through and sighed. The room was a large one, with large swaths of cool lava on various rocks, and small pulsing rocks at the top of the roof. Every once in a while, one of them would fall and land on the only walking path left, a heightened rock structure whose supports were thin and starting to crack already. The path staggered around, as if someone had gotten drunk when they were making the path.

Blaze watched as one of the rocks fell, hitting another rock on the side. Both of them blew up a moment later, large swathes of flames emanating from the fallen stones.

"Because a temple just wasn't enough, it had to be one that was like this," Blaze complained. She stepped out onto the lava rocks on the bottom, and was surprised to find it wasn't as hot as she thought it would be, nor was it as sharp as she'd been led to believe. "We can just walk on the bottom,"she said.

"Maybe you can, fire caller," Katia said as she tried the same thing, only to retract her foot a moment later, small redness already visible on the pads. Blaze rolled her eyes and knelt down. It took Katia a few moments to realize what she wanted her to do. "Oh! Good idea, caller!"

"My name is Blaze. Please don't be like Spark, always calling us 'Exception'," Blaze pleaded as she ran on the bottom path. The rocks were much easier to dodge this way, as she could look up and head to the left or right whenever she needed to.

The rocks were surprisingly soft for her, despite their sharp edges that she thought for sure would cut up her feet, but weren't. Many of them were instead quite malleable, something that made Blaze wonder what was going on. While she did, as a pyrokinetic, have some innate resistance to fire, it certainly wasn't to this level, and she wasn't currently using any kinesis on anything. The lava should, by all rights, be killing both of them now.

The fact she could still be doing it and simply not know had crossed her mind as potentially worrying, but she decided against thinking on it. She'd find some other way to test, much later. When their lives weren't on the line. She put Katia back down on the path a moment later as the room was now behind them. The walls here were warm all over, and filled with the etchings of a long lost land and culture. Katia brushed her hand over some of them as they walked.

The hallway opened up into a smaller room, and Blaze suddenly felt very cold. It didn't open up to the outside, not directly, but she could tell that the snow was right above them. There was a stone pool next to them, with crystal clear water in it. Occasional drips from the ceiling rang down on them as small droplets fell into the pool.

Blaze held out her hand to stop Katia from drinking. "We don't know if this water's good or dirty, yet."

"Other couriers have been through here to this point, and they'll have deemed this safe or not. There's no sign saying it's not," Katia argued. "Watch," she said, putting down her hand into the water.

She pulled it back instantly as the water clung on, as if frozen to her hand, and Blaze noticed that it was literally starting to climb up her hand. "Rhoan!" Katia shouted as she banged her slimed hand against the wall before she emanated a small charge of electricity, rushing straight into the slime thing.

There was a loud squeal as the water fell off, small sparks coming from it as Katia shook in place. Her hand was still sparking a bit, and Blaze could see a few burns on it, as if the slime had been acidic.

"That. That was why," Blaze murmured. She conjured a few fireballs and dunked them into the water. Several dozen more squeals of pain emanated from it as Blaze boiled the water using her fire.

"Right. I...were the couriers lying? To try to get us killed?"

"I doubt it. Those things were small. They could have been new. They get bigger, I don't doubt," Blaze said. Katia nodded and carefully unsheathed her spear, and Blaze could tell she had it exchanged for one made of metal instead of wood. She had known they were going into a hot place after all.

"There's going to be traps," Blaze said as she reached into the water. Katia rushed to stop her, but waited as Blaze's hand was fine, complete with warm water in her hand. "Water's fine, now. Next time we need it, let me go first," she said. Katia nodded and reluctantly drank her fill after Blaze did, letting the warm water cool down her burning fur. It was warm in this temple, and she had no doubt it was going to only get warmer the further down they went.

"You said that Lightning likes to use this place as a punishment?" Blaze asked. Katia nodded, water dripping from her muzzle.

"Yes. He...likes to use it as a warning, that none should go against him."

Blaze growled a bit under her breath. Civilization or not, she and Tails were doing fine on their own. Now if only they could leave and get out of here...they'd found their 'others'. And she decided she didn't want any bit of it.

-Side T-

Tails ducked as the giant swath of black cat pounced on right where he had been two seconds before. The cat was enormous, similar in style to that of a panther, minus two additional legs for a total of six coming from its abdomen. Each leg had a foot topped with nearly foot-long claws, each one sharp and jagged, and Tails could see the claws digging into the stone.

"Rosuvel!" Spark identified. Tails wasn't sure what that meant, but he knew what he was going to do about it.

He flew up in the air for a bare moment, just as one of its paws sliced right where he would have been a moment ago. It had four eyes on its head, and each pupil was staring straight at him with an intent he'd seen in sentient cats.

And sometimes Blaze.

One had went straight to his Charger, and he waited for only a moment as the giant cat thing leapt at him, all six of its legs and sets of claws aimed straight at him.

He pressed his charger not once, but three times as he tried to control the charge to only coat his skin and fur. The set of claws tried to connect, only to hit against the electric shield he had almost accidentally conjured.

With one claw bouncing off, the thing was off center, but had already fully committed to trying to kill him. He flew up as the thing stopped its claws halfway through and it calmly fell to the ground, staring at him with intense hatred in its four eyes.

He kept the shield up as best he could. He felt like a sledgehammer was being thrown into his skull, and he noticed that the longer he kept it up the worse it felt. It wasn't the first time or the last he wished for some rings. Or maybe an actual electric shield, that would be nice too. Or maybe he could actually design a full one using his electrokinetics-

No time for that.

The cat stared at him for a moment, before it turned to look at Spark who had been firing small bolts into it as fast as she could. A single jolt emanated from his shield into her body, and she fired an actual lightning bolt from her hand into the creature's hide.

Right, she was an electrokinetic. He'd almost forgotten that fact. The cat thing hissed as it batted Spark away into the wall before jumping away into the swamp. Tails didn't watch where it landed, but it was probably somewhere in the trees seeing as he didn't hear a splash. He was too concerned with dropping down to see if Spark was alright.

She had been batted around, but she glared at him as he helped her up. His shield fell immediately as soon as he landed, the charge running down into the earth. Her left side would be bruised, he knew from watching Blaze's experience. And his own. And Sonic's.

"I'm fine," she slapped his hand away a moment later as she forced herself up. "A rosuvel. No wonder the team here didn't have time to check in."

The thing had a name already. In the back of Tails' head, he was almost saddened by that news. He had been enjoying coming up with names for things, despite Blaze's insistence he wasn't very good at it.

"How did you do that? I know you didn't pull the energy from me," Spark said as she narrowed her eyes at him. Tails grinned and pulled out his Charger from his fur pocket.

"This thing. It holds a charge. Many of them, actually. I had to use three to get that effect, and it was hard to keep up, but I think it worked out well," Tails grinned. "There's seven more on there I think," he said, giving it a quick look through. There was no screen, but he'd given it a small light that told how many charges it had left.

"And it's...permanent? Can never get them back?"

"No, no, it can recharge. I charged it not too long ago. Remember the Miles Electric thing I showed you? It connects to that, and charges from that."

"But how does that get energy? Energy doesn't come from nothing."

Tails grinned. He knew physics like the back of his hand, and he knew exactly how much he and Sonic enjoyed breaking those laws. "It doesn't come from nothing. It comes from the sun. I'll show you when we get back, after we get that thing. Rosuvel, was it?"

"The sun gives energy? Your ways are strange," Spark muttered as she grabbed her crossbow and dusted it off. When she had been batted away like a play toy it had slipped out of her hand, crashing into the floor. It still seemed to be in decent condition.

"What do you know about them? The rosuvel, I mean?" Tails asked. He kept his eyes open as he he stared and looked above the water line, but saw nothing. His nose was telling him something had been there, but it was near impossible to get a good tracking scent due to the swamp water nearby. And the decomposing bodies, which he didn't want to consider.

"Tree dwellers. Large, with six legs and four eyes. There's another mouth of the bottom of its abdomen that it can use to eat leaves and trees. Its main head it uses for meat, and it doesn't care if its prey is dead or alive," Spark explained.

"Do you think it's going to come back? Or else we'll have to go out there to get to it," Tails said, carefully avoiding the words 'hunt' or 'kill'. He didn't like the thought they were going to have to kill something, and he especially didn't like the way it hissed at Spark before it ran away.

"It knows to avoid us, now. When it realized it couldn't hurt you without hurting itself and I scored a decent hit on it, it chose to run. Seek safer prey."

"What do they normally eat? I'm going to guess they're fairly rare."

"This is the first I've seen one in the swamp. They're usually much farther north, near the Lost Jungle. I'm surprised you haven't seen one."

"Admittedly, we were kind of busy lighting everything on fire," Tails muttered in admittance. "And we did come across a giant fox creature in one of those forests."

"Oh!" Spark's eyes lit up, "An ewing! They hunt the rosuvel's. The fact you didn't see any was because of that. Did it help you?"

"It did try to help, yes. After it tried to eat us, too."

"They do tend to do that. Majestic creatures though," Spark said, her blue eyes lit up. "Rumors say that they're morally very righteous creatures, and will help out anyone who helps it first. This can be in any way. One of our pilgrims once said one of them helped them out after they had taken a splinter out of its paw, and they faced a deadly gorge by having it take them across!"

Tails blinked as Spark rattled on. She was smiling, and deep into the story she was telling. As she finished she grinned at him before her eyes widened as she realized where she was, and her face and eyes dropped back to a forced neutral. "Sorry,"she said, huddling inwards.

"Hey, I liked the story. We did lead the one we found to food, admittedly it had to kill it first. Not sure if that means anything," Tails said. He honestly preferred 'giant vulpine', but if it's actual name was an ewing then he guessed that's what he was going to call it. He'd probably forget at some point. If only he had his Miles Electric here to take some notes.

"Then it probably brought you great luck."

"We ran into the Lost Jungle a day later and had to fight the nymphs for control of our bodies. We did end up burning the forest down."

"...Maybe later it brought you luck?"

"After that was the desert. And the sand worm."

"...After that?"

"The earthquake. Then the river, where I almost drowned."

"...And then found by us. Maybe it didn't help you."

"No, I don't think it did," Tails agreed. It might've attempted it, but Tails didn't think it really had anything to do with what happened. He knew plenty of mythological creatures that were intended to help, and he knew that most of them, when they were found, wouldn't really help.

The others were Chaos, the Zeti, Light and Dark Gaia...either they didn't help, or were a hindrance. Or was named Chip.

"What's the easiest way to track the rosuvel down?" Tails asked after a moment. His eyes scanned the trees, but didn't see any sign of a black cat, let alone a giant one. It had probably already gone a long ways.

"There isn't one. That's what makes them dangerous. We either need an ewing or for it to come to us. And even then, rosuvel's are nearly impossible to kill. No wonder Lightning sent us here."

"Because you were one of the greatest hunters Ikan'Thoa had and so one of the ones he could trust with this?"

"No. I am nowhere near one of the greatest hunters. I am one of the youngest hunters, and with the strongest elemental affinity. Lightning sees me as a threat to his power."

Tails sighed. Just once he wished that someone would believe in them. He spun his tails around, getting a quick fly in to check the surrounding area. He didn't see anything from above either, and as he landed he shook his head. "I don't suppose they'll come near the water?"

"They don't like water, no. Especially this water. Four days isn't enough time," Spark muttered.

Tails grabbed her wrist. "Hold on, can I see something?" he asked before he whirled his tails and lifted her up. She stared at him in awe as she grasped his wrist with her other hand too. He tried to ignore the spark of energy that jumped out onto him. She almost felt like a live battery. She didn't weigh a lot, and Blaze with all of the water had been nearly double Spark's weight. And a wet Sonic was worse. "I can carry you pretty easily. Hold on," Tails said as he pulled up.

Spark's eyes widened as they went up. "This is..." she muttered under her breath. He couldn't fly too high, and every once in a while he had to let them fall for a moment while his tails rested. He hadn't actually flown for a good long while since the plains, hadn't he? His tails were usually too injured since then. "Over there! Aim over there," Spark announced as she pointed. Tails followed it with his eyes. A large black dot was moving in the foliage, the brush just barely moving aside for it as it slipped through. He grinned, and bolted over for it.

Of course, he hadn't yet figured out how he was supposed to actually hurt the thing. Spark had done something, when she hurled a full on lightning bolt at it, but admittedly that had been with the electricity from his makeshift lightning shield.

"You said you were one of the youngest hunters with the strongest affinity. How old are you?" Tails asked as they slowly followed the large rosuvel.

"Fourteen winters this year."

She was fourteen? And Katia couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen. No wonder Lightning was already trying to kill them off, if she was powerful enough to hurl lightning bolts around. Assuming, of course, there was a power source nearby. Unless she drew it from herself? He'd have to ask about that, at some point. She was firing smaller jolts at first even without his makeshift electric shield around.

An idea came to mind. He'd have to test it a bit, but given what he knew of electricity and how it worked, it might be able to save them. But first, they had to get to the rosuvel, and as it stopped in the trees a half a mile away, there was some time before then. "I can't fly that far, we'll have to land in one of the trees," Tails admitted.

"At least we know where it is. That's one of the hardest steps of killing a rosuvel!"

"What's the harder step?"

"Actually killing it."

This one was surprisingly hard to edit. If anyone catches any errors, let me know. I'm still debating on the rating thing, so far I'm leaning towards upping it just in case. On the other hand, these kinds of sarcastic remarks are exactly the reason I like this arc!

Until Next Time!