A/N: This fic follows on from Sins of the Mothers (which follows on from Caves of the Ancients, sequel to Secrets of the Emeralds ;)) If you haven't read the last one, one or two things here might not make complete sense :) Just FYI

If you can find it in Sega games, it belongs to Sega. If you can't, it belongs to me :P

My Memoirs by Me

I am in, as Cream might say if she was feeling really angry, a great big pile of stinky doo-doos. To recap; I have just raced over half of Mobius. Not exactly unusual for me, I'll admit, but in this case I was looking for someone. A certain, ten-year-old, jackal-shaped someone named Bait (well, not really, but he doesn't remember his given name anymore) and his sick brother Raker (who renamed the kid in the first place). Sick as in psycho, not someone with a cold.

Long story short, I found Bait in Robotnik's Egg Carrier Three, where he'd been taken by Raker. Robotnik then blew my mind by saying he'd let me rescue Bait and leave unmolested, so long as I took Raker with me. Guess even a sadistic megalomaniac like Robotnik feels uneasy around that guy.

I rescued Bait, brought him back to the bridge with the intention of jumping – the EC3 was above Angel Island and I wanted to go see if Tails was okay – only to find that Robotnik wouldn't let me go. Big surprise.

It was an even bigger surprise when I found out that this was only because, while I'd distracted him, the EC3 had just flown straight into the Void which is now (apparently) sucking us along like a chocolate milkshake through a straw.

Robotnik and I have called a...well, not a truce exactly. More a kind of 'he doesn't send psychotic robots to beat me up and I don't turn his precious Egg Carrier Three into so much scrap metal' deal. I think he knows he may need me when we arrive at...wherever we're going.

Just for the record, this truce does not extend to Raker. That's about the only thing Robotnik and I have agreed on so far; neither of us want him near us.

So the doc's saying that the Egg Carrier's instruments are out, which basically means that he can't control our flight anymore. On the one hand, this is bad, on the other...no, on second thoughts, it's just bad. I can see me and Bait spending a long time here.

Which means that we need to get one or two vital things sorted out with Robotnik before either of us are very much older.

--Sonic the Hedgehog

"The full screen cinema with two hundred and forty seven movies?"

"Ours."

"The library?"

"Ours."

"The robotics factory?"

"Ours."

Robotnik lifted his head from the blueprints of the Egg Carrier Three, Level One to stare at Sonic. "You wouldn't know what to do with such a place, Sonic."

"Maybe not, but I don't want anyone who does – namely you – getting near it."

"We'll come back to that one." Robotnik scrolled across. "What about the kitchen?"

"Ours."

"The restaurant serving five star quality food?"

"Ours."

"The swimming pool?"

Robotnik could see the hedgehog battling with that one before glancing at Bait – whose ears had lifted hopefully – and saying, "Ours."

The doctor's look shifted into a glare. "Fine." Straightening up, he folded his arms. "Well, why don't we make this a little simpler, Sonic? Which parts of this fortress, that I designed myself and which has been my home ever since you and your friends trashed the old one, which parts of this fortress do I get?"

Sonic stared right back. "You can have one bedroom and one bathroom. I'll let you pick, since you'll be spending all your time there unless there's a mechanical emergency."

"Indeed." Robotnik's eyes, hidden behind his dark glasses, glittered ominously. "So pray tell me, Sonic, what are you planning to do with Raker? Because I'm not having him in my room, and if I agreed to this cracked suggestion of yours, I'm also having the most security measures."

"You're damn well not, doc."

Robotnik sighed now, the sigh of a martyr. "Would it be too much to ask for you to see this from my perspective? Bait has you to protect him from Raker, and frankly, you're better than any security measures – although in Raker's case I don't believe he could stand against either you or them – but I have a hard time believing you're going to extend that protection to include me."

Sonic glanced around. "Yeah, where is Raker, anyway?"

"Sulking," Robotnik said succinctly. "Oh, he dressed it up by saying he never intended to participate in such a biased exchange, but that's what it really boils down to."

"Good." Raker, Bait's sadistic and increasingly unstable older brother, had wanted to have a say in how the Egg Carrier was divided, but, in what was probably the first show of unity and solidarity in five years, Sonic and Robotnik had thrown him out.

"We gotta give him somethin', though." Bait spoke up for the first time. His voice was a little stronger than it had been before, largely thanks to Sonic having persuaded him to have some soup. "Mebbe jus' a bed."

"If I see him again, I'll give him something alright," Sonic answered through clenched teeth, "but it won't be a bed."

Robotnik took a deep breath. "Pointless, melodramatic threats serve no purpose, Sonic."

"Yeah, you're right," Sonic said, smiling at him insincerely. "After all, they never do you any good, do they?" He shook his head. "Let's just get on with this. Which bedroom and which bathroom do you want?"

"I have a better idea, Sonic." Robotnik reached down to the blueprints and drew a line down the middle. "Why don't we say that everything on this half is yours and everything on that half is mine? Just as a benchmark; we can work out the specifics from there."

Sonic shook his head. Good ideas or not, he didn't trust Robotnik as far as he could throw him. "No, we'll take this side." He pointed to the side the doctor had chosen for himself. "Did you have to build something this size?"

"I've improved my design," Robotnik said.

"So I see," Sonic said very coldly. Next to him, Bait's eyes bugged out.

"Is that a jacuzzi?"

"Looks like it." Sonic looked up at Robotnik. "We'll take that, and the corridor leading from our half of the Egg Carrier as well."

Robotnik leaned back. "No. I think the main corridors here...here and...yes, and here as well—" he traced the map with a finger— "should be designated as neutral territory. Else you'll be cut off from most recreational facilities and I'll be cut off from most of the nutritional ones."

"You can live off your hump for a while," Sonic remarked caustically. "Seems to me putting all the fun stuff in one half and the business stuff in another is pretty damn stupid."

Robotnik's hand curled into a fist. "Pardon me, Sonic, but when I was designing this fortress, it never crossed my mind to build it with a view to you and I becoming roomies!"

It was a fair point. Sonic shrugged. "Whatever. Does that mean you're gonna try and convince us to share our cinema with you?"

"Your cinema!" Robotnik's voice shot up a full octave, and it was only with a supreme effort that he managed to stop himself from slamming his fist onto the desk. "Everything on this Egg Carrier is mine, Sonic! I built it, I designed it and I damn well own it!"

"That was then. This is now. Times change, doc." Sonic shrugged again. "And the cinema is mine and Bait's, at least until we get home again. Ditto the library and the jacuzzi."

"And the robot masseuse team?" Robotnik said sarcastically.

"No, you can have that. After what happened to me last time I was at the mercy of your sick creations, I don't want an encore. If they want to cripple and torture you almost to death, though, that's fine with me."

Robotnik took a long, deep breath. He'd heard that counting to ten was supposed to help calm a person down in tense situations. So far he'd reached two hundred and seventy nine, and he was no calmer than he'd been before he started.

"What about Raker? I don't want him having free rein in this place," he said, biting the words off at the end. "Can we at least agree on that, Sonic?"

"Agreed," Sonic said tersely. "And on the subject of that jerkal, if you want him kept alive, keep him as far away from me as physically possible. If you don't, then I guess it doesn't matter."

Robotnik shrugged. "I don't care what you do to him. I don't want him on the Egg Carrier and if it was up to me, I'd throw him out into the Void."

"Hmm." Sonic looked out the window. The inside of the Void was beautiful, like flying through the dancing lights in the northernmost parts of Mobius. "You might have something there."

Robotnik's jaw dropped before he could stop it. "What?"

"Hm? Oh. Nothing."

"Could it be that the oh-so-wonderful Sonic the hedgehog has a dark side after all?"

Sonic's hand clenched into a fist. "If I do, you're the one who put it there."

Robotnik chuckled. "Oh no, Sonic. Not me. I have never taken control of a Mobian's mind, hard as I've tried," he added, not quite under his breath. "Whatever you have was there before I came along...in fact, given how I came along, I'd say you were already in touch with your vindictiveness."

"What I did to you was not vindictive, Robotnik. Stupid, yes, immature, very likely, but not vindictive."

"Yes. Well, Sonic, you keep telling yourself that if it makes it easier to look at yourself in the mirror. As I was saying, I'd throw him out into the Void except I still don't know what would happen."

"That never bothered you before," Sonic said flatly.

"That's true, except for the little fact that I know nothing about the Void. At the moment we seem to be safe inside the Egg Carrier. If I open one of the exits, who's to say that whatever's out there won't come in here? I don't want rid of Raker badly enough to take myself out along with him."

Sonic snorted. "There's a first."

Robotnik smirked. "Oh, and there was me thinking you'd forgotten how things were before you—" He broke off with an exaggerated look at Bait. "Oops. So sorry, Sonic. These things just slip out from time to time."

Sonic shook his head. "Don't be more obvious than you are, doc." He glanced at Bait. "Bait, Knuckles and Tails know, so I guess it's only fair you do too; I used to be Robotnik's lab assistant and friend until I did something incredibly stupid and turned him into the megalomaniac he is now."

"What kinda somethin'?"

"Something involving a rotten egg," Sonic said flatly; he didn't fancy going into too much detail.

"Is that how come he looks like one?" Bait wanted to know.

"No, he looks like one because he spends his entire time pigging out on trash food," Sonic said bluntly, and not quite truthfully.

"Look who's talking," Robotnik drawled. "Do you ever eat or drink anything bar chilli dogs and soda?"

"Sure. Chocolate, milkshakes, pies, fruit…you name it." Sonic raised his eye ridges. "Unlike you, though, I spend most of my time running."

This time the look on the doctor's face was decidedly evil. "Yes, I know. I remember the last time you visited me and went for a little run, Sonic. Do you?"

Sonic went pale, almost sky blue. He swallowed, but couldn't find any words to answer.

"I must admit it was something of a shock to see you fully healed again," Robotnik went on. "I suppose you got that thick skulled echidna to use his little toy on you."

"I got an idea," Bait said suddenly.

"A noteworthy occasion," Robotnik drawled. "I'll have one of my minions bake you a cake."

"Hey, you leave him alone, Robuttnik!" Sonic ordered, then glanced down at Bait. "What's your idea?"

Bait, who had visibly wilted at Robotnik's words, shook his head. "Nuh uh. It dunt matter. 'S prob'ly crap anyway."

"No, c'mon kiddo, what is it?"

Glancing up at Sonic, seeming to draw courage from the hedgehog, Bait swallowed. "Well…he wants food an' we want fun, right, on'y he built all the fun stuff here—" he pointed with his good hand to the left hand side of the Egg Carrier— "an' all the food stuff here," pointing to the right. "So 'steada splittin' it down that way—" he drew an invisible line from top to bottom where Robotnik's had been before— "why don't we split it that way?" Bait drew another line, this one going from left to right and bisecting the Egg Carrier neatly in two. "'S jus'…mebbe that'd work 'cause then we'd all have a bit of ev'rythin'."

Sonic looked up at Robotnik. "Well?"

An enigmatic expression appeared on the doctor's face. "I'm willing to go along with that if you are, Sonic, on condition that I have unrestricted access to all mechanical parts on the Egg Carrier. If something malfunctions and is about to blow us all up, I don't plan to hold off on fixing it just because it's in your half of the ship."

"Fine," Sonic said curtly. "Then we'll take the top part, since that has the water in it for Bait." He reached down and ruffled the fur between the jackal's large ears. "Good thinking, kiddo." Glancing up at Robotnik, he said in a far less affectionate tone, "Alright. So start talking. You've been analysing that…that thing outside the Egg Carrier all morning. What is it?"

Robotnik leaned back. "To be honest, Sonic, I'm still not sure. If I had to make an informed guess right now, I'd say it might be a wormhole."

Sonic stared at him. "A wormhole? To where?"

Robotnik shrugged. "Since most wormholes don't come with signposts, there's no way of knowing that without following it through to its culmination. Isn't this like the Special Zone was for you?"

"No," Sonic said shortly.

The doctor chuckled. "It's alright, Sonic, I have no intentions of going there. It's much easier to let you do all the hard work and I just pick up the Chaos Emeralds once you come out."

"You should be so lucky."

"I already have been, on numerous occasions." Robotnik smiled slightly. "I don't blame you for not wanting to trust me, Sonic, but at the moment we need each other."

"Correction; you might need me to deal with whatever hell we arrive at when we arrive at it," Sonic retorted.

Robotnik's smile didn't waver, didn't falter. "Yes. And you need me because – unless you took lessons that I don't know about – I'm pretty sure you don't know how to fly an aerial fortress of doom, much less operate the finer machinery. You help me to survive, I give you houseroom. At least until we get back to Mobius. Deal?"

Sonic swallowed hard.

"Deal," he said, in a cracked, dusty voice he barely recognised as his own.

So, chapter one of story four is now up ;) For all of you who have been clamouring to know more about the Void, you'll be in luck; Sonic and Bait's parts deal almost exclusively with it…plus the trials and tribulations of living with your mortal enemies ;) More will be along soon and in the meantime, if you read this, please review!