Chaos: Why not update within four days? Why not update all the time? Why not update? I just keep asking myself that… oh, and kudos to ffnet for the new login system; it rocks.

Spawn – A compliment wrapped up in an admonishment? Clever. And thank you!

Stryker – Hey, thanks! As for Tails… I'm not too sure about him yet. We'll have to see how it unfolds…

RockFox – Thanks, but I don't think the plot is that great if you take a second look; Sonic gets robotized, Sonic gets derobotized… or not! And so forth… (laugh)

Nammish – Good thing you can't nudge in reviews, or I'd be hiding in the closet right now… aaaaanyway yes, you haven't updating in ages! (prod) And what's Chaos Flower without cliffhangers? (grin)

Kemious – Thanks, but no, I was just lazy. And revising too much. (groan)

Kai – Thank you… I love being twisted! (grin) I don't even post half of my stories for that exact reason – far too twisted. Heh heh. And I'll always come back, I hope, even I do lose interest once in a while…

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Vanilla unlocked the door to her flat and looked in. It was silent and meticulously tidy, apparently uninhabited, but a pair of shoes tossed loosely onto the floor told otherwise. She moved quietly to the bedroom, where Cream was deep asleep in the bed.

Cheese zoomed into the room, squeaking quietly in excitement, and settled in one of her velvety ears, purring.

Vanilla smiled and withdrew, shutting the door and walking to the phone. She dialled Tails' number, but nobody picked up. Then she dialled Amy's number, and received an answer after several rings.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Amy," she said brightly, keeping her voice low so as not to wake her daughter.

"Oh, it's you, Vanilla. Didn't recognise you for a second there. How are you?" Amy's response sounded automatic; she had other thoughts in her mind.

"I'm fine," Vanilla responded quickly, "But I have to tell you that-" Suddenly the phone went dead, along with the lights. The rabbit was plunged into semi-darkness as the electricity cut out.

Alarmed, she raced to the window, and watched in amazed horror as a wave of darkness spread over the city.

.-.-.-.-

"Hello? Hello? Vanilla?" Amy asked, receiving no response.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Robo Knux was a far stronger robot than Mecha, who was built for stealth and speed, and he was down but far from out. The explosion had done nothing to his titanium shell, but hurled his offline body far over the city until he landed with a bump and a crash on a hard concrete floor.

Slowly his system repaired enough for him to come online, and his eyes flicked on brightly. He had not been in operation nearly long enough to format the complex programming of emotions, as Mecha had, but still...

The face of the armadillo emerged from his memory banks, marked as 'dangerous', and with it the taunt he had issued. About another with his name, 'the real him'... it was a paradox he didn't understand.

Computers hated paradoxes. He determined to find this creature and make it tell him who the other Knuckles was, in the only way he knew; pain.

But another mission was more important - repair. He would find a way to repair himself from the 44 he was running at, and then find this armadillo. In the absence of other orders, he could do what he chose.

All this processing took a number of seconds. Then he rose from the floor and scanned his surroundings efficiently.

The large, flat concrete top of a building. Scanners pierced the distance and read a sign on the other side;

Station Square Power Station.

Caution! High voltage. Danger of electrocution.

And with it a little picture of a lightening bolt. He recognised it as a warning signal, and a millisecond later his computer registered the significance of the building.

If he had understood luck, he would have praised it then.

But robots, even super-intelligent ones, believe in nothing as illogical as fate. He scraped his twisted dreadlocks back into place and away from his eyes, ripping long scratches in them from his knucclaws, and set off, sparks hissing from his damaged circuits.

Ten minutes later, he had prised away the control panel covering and was regarding the wiring with puzzlement. No program had been written for him to understand this. He knew that electricity would revive the tiny repair droids within his damaged circuits, helping him to repair five times as fast, but how to obtain this electricity?

His computer wasn't built for problem solving, only for fighting. He jammed both knucclaws into the panel. Energy immediately flowed into him in a surge of deadly electricity.

And all over the city the power went dead.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The power was dead for an hour. It was enough. When Vanilla arrived to check on Sonic at the hospital, the bed was empty.

The window was smashed.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Amy paced her flat nervously, waiting for the lights to come back on. Her mind raced over the possibilities, until eventually she decided to simply go round to Vanilla's and see what the trouble was.

She was just pulling on her coat when there was a knock at the door. Swallowing a growl of annoyance, she strode over to the door. It was a grey wolf in a white coat, panting and out of breath.

"You're...Amy Rose?" he gasped, and she nodded, waited for a response.

"It's your friend...Tails, you need to...come quickly." The doctor stopped, trying to regain his breath.

Amy was already gone.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Tails was having a relapse. All the torment, the weeks spent chained up without sunlight, the agony over what had happened to Sonic, had finally driven him over the edge.

He half-crouched, half-stood in the corner of his dark room, looking around with wild eyes. He had managed to wrench a hypodermic needle off one of the doctors and was brandishing it fiercely at anyone who tried to approach.

And not many did.

The bandage on his head had come loose, falling further over one of his eyes, as he muttered under his breath, eyes flicking around the doctors surrounding him. Then Amy suddenly pushed through the crowd, panting with the exertion of running, and held out a hand to him.

"Tails, come on... it's ok, I'm here..."

"No!" he cried fiercely, and she hastily stepped back, as he continued, quieter, "No, there's too many of them! I can't do anything! They'll lock me up again... I don't want to go back!"

He was hysterical. Amy immediately recognised the problem and motioned to the doctors to back off. She lowered her voice, hand still outstretched pleadingly.

"No, Tails, it's just me, it's ok. You're free, it's ok, everything's fine." She kept repeating it, voice soothing, until Tails began lowering the needle, fears abating. In a sudden rush of movement he threw it aside and ran towards her, flinging his arms round her neck and sobbing into her shoulder. She jerked back for a second, surprised, but then hugged him back.

"It's not fair!" he wailed incoherently, as she fought tears herself, stroking his shoulder.

"I know." She replied, trying not to think of Sonic.

If she had looked out of the window she would have seen a red glow lighting the dark alley below. The red glow of a robotic eye.