AN: ACK! Oh man, I am so sorry for the long delay :( This should have been up around lunchtime, only I got zapped by Perfect Defender 2009, which rebooted my system, lost a chunk of this chapter and then caused me to spend an hour or so getting rid of that nice little virus. Ho hum. Plus the fact there's still eight inches of snow outside (makes a change from Monday when I woke up to two feet of the stuff) and I was a little, erm, distracted.

I've also been kinda busy from October onwards since I FINALLY managed to get published! (Full details on profile for anyone interested ;))

Anyway, for all those still with me, this is the final chapter of Gemini Project.

Milette Tails Prower: Well, I couldn't really leave the clones running around at the end of the story. Alright, maybe I could, but it would've made it harder to continue ;)

Awdures: Well...housemoving is sort of sorted and sort of not. Right now I'm trying to pick out a place to live and squatting with my grandparents on occasion and using a friend's house when he's not there (he goes away for literally months at a time, so it works out quite nicely ;)) I'm going back there on the tenth, so updates should become more frequent after that :)

Asher Tye: Ooh, Knux playing a trick...never occurred to me (This is why I love reviews so much XD)

Jarkes: Heh heh...glad to hear it :P

Frozen Nitrogen: No, this series and my game adaptations will never be abandoned, although a final ending is possible (not looking too probable at the moment; there's the sequel and sequel's sequel to go yet ;) Basically I'll keep writing the series all the time I can keep coming up with story ideas) I can't promise the same thing for other fics, but those two will always have an update sooner or later.

Chibi-Cougar: Thanks :D

Sara: Thanks :)

Sonic Chronicles Unleashed: Uh...well, it wasn't soon, but the next chapter's up ;)

Blazichu: You're pretty perceptive :O Yes, there was more than one pod :P As for whether or not they were used...hmm. Not sure...

DC111: Thanks :D Glad I managed to stun you (heh)

STaR Productions: Heh, you're good :P Read on and all (or at least, more) shall be revealed!

Taranea: Heh, thanks :D (hands out chocolate frog) Shadow's actions seemed like the only realistic outcome...this way neither Sonic nor Bait have to cross the line to become a killer ;)

amyfan4ever: Well, since you asked so nicely...one update :)

Fox2Tails: Okay, here ya go!

Ember Rock: (hides diploma from Cliffhanger School in secret drawer) Who told you? ;) And yeah, Shadow's been very useful throughout the story :P

Nintendo Mania: Now that's an interesting idea! I hadn't thought of that...hmm. Maybe they did.

Pyro Hedgehog: Heh, yeah. Looks that way ;)

Madhog Thy Master: Thanks...I think :P

JustHope: Thanks :D And you'll find out; read on :)

K.T.Z.: Wow, people are recommending me? :O The Guardian's Log...yeah, chances are Robotnik cloned it (or at least, got one of his robots to produce a forgery ;))

Angel Fantasy: You'll find out; read on ;)

the Ambassador: Heh, thanks :D I do my best

Sonic Christmas: The update...right now! (The sequel, on the other hand, may take a little longer...)

at pie: Thanks, glad you like it! Hopefully in the next story, updates should occur a little faster...

xKitsuna: Thanks, and a (very belated, or very early) Merry Christmas to you too! =P

tailsfan007: Um...no, I never said the clones would explode :S (Did I? *scurries back to check*)

Knuxies-girl: Maybe he is, maybe not ;)

Yuki: Okay, okay, one update! Are you happy? ;)

Sonic 09: Heh. No, I'm not dead =P The problem with anonymous reviews is that there's no way for me to reply to them except here. Anyway, here's the end of Gemini Project :)

Guardian's Log no. 11512

So, that other Sonic was telling the truth all along. I guess that means the other me's now dead. Poor guy. I hope it was quick.

Tails wasn't around when it happened, thankfully. The Emeralds alone know how he'd react to his big brother 'dying' a second time. He saw the clone's body though; there was nothing I could do about that. Oddly enough, he didn't freak out. I guess he's seen a lot of dead bodies in his life – that's the downside to hanging with that hedgehog; even Sonic can't save them all – and once he knew the Sonic lying there wasn't his Sonic...well, I won't say he didn't mind, because that's not true. He just didn't freak like I'd expected.

-Knuckles the Echidna

My Memoirs by Me

...Oh man. Knux was the clone? I mean, the Knux with me was the clone? That's...whoa. I wasn't expecting that. I dunno...he didn't look like he died in pain. I mean, he wasn't screaming; he was just...well, if his eyes hadn't been open, he could have been asleep.

At least he was kind enough to smash the bots before he died and—oh man, I'm turning into Shadow! I didn't mean that, not really.

-Sonic the Hedgehog

Maria

The good news is that one of those blue hedgehogs is now dead (two blue hedgehogs on Mobius was just too much). The bad news is that - since I prevented him from doing the deed himself - that jackal is not going to be happy. This means I'll probably have to suffer another of his attempted assaults on my person. Yawn.

If I weren't such a compassionate, caring individual-no, wait, even I can't write that with a straight face. I suppose I could abandon him, except even the jackal doesn't deserve roboticisation.

-Shadow the Ultimate Life Form

Bait's Jurnal

SHADDOE YOU JURK! I CANT BELEEVE HE DID THAT!

Im gonna kill him!

-Bait the Jakkel

Shadow walked down to where he'd left Bait, mind turning things over idly. He still had no idea whether the echidna with Sonic had been the real one or not, but as far as he was concerned it didn't matter much. The clones were dead. Time to move on.

And speaking of moving on...

The black hedgehog paused outside an oval door – everything followed the popular egg-theme on board the fortress – and reached out towards the keypad. As soon as they'd landed on the Egg Carrier Three, he'd knocked Bait out with a single well-placed blow to the jaw and placed him in the first empty room that he found.

Well, alright then, the third. The first one had been securely locked (and Shadow had considered blasting it open just to satisfy his own curiosity about what was inside) and the second had the opposite problem as the door had literally fallen in as soon as Shadow pushed at it.

The third, while not as big as Bait probably would have liked, had a good ol' fashioned keypad entry system which had only taken Shadow a few minutes to crack but which would hopefully keep the jackal there until he got back. There was no way Shadow could see Bait escaping; he'd locked the door, changed the number combination just in case, and double and triple-checked the room for any conveniently placed airducts.

Shadow hesitated in the act of tapping in the combination, then drew his hand back again. He needed some time to think about things, and chances were he wasn't going to get that while Bait was hanging around. The jackal could wait.

The empty pods in the cloning machine which had been destroyed by that blue hedgehog concerned Shadow. Had they been empty because Robotnik hadn't finished their occupants yet, or had whatever was inside been released before he and Bait arrived? If so, had the self-destruct switch destroyed them as well, or had it only destroyed the hedgehog and echidna clones?

Actually, now that he thought about it, Shadow reflected rather sourly that he only had Robotnik's word that the switch had even done that much.

Wouldn't that be just like the doctor, to send that blue hedgehog here for a switch that didn't even work? There was a certain kind of cruel irony to that idea that even Shadow could appreciate.

Well, standing around here wasn't going to get him any answers, and the sooner he got the touching reunion with Bait over with the better. It was a pretty surefire bet that the jackal wasn't going to be happy to see him, not after Shadow had knocked him out and locked him up. Fair enough. If it had been him in that situation, Shadow would have been making plans to kill the one responsible, and it wouldn't be a quick, painless death either.

Reaching out, he entered the combination, slid the door open and stood there with a resigned expression on his face.

"I'm gonna kill you, Shads!"

Launching himself out of the corner, Bait hurled himself at Shadow, fists flying.

"You're jus' a...you think you c'n jus' stand there an'..." Bait floundered. Articulation wasn't one of his talents, and his anger was only making it harder to get the right words out in the right order, and eventually he fell back on saying, "I'm gonna kill you!"

"Do," Shadow said in bored tones. "That worked out very well the last four hundred and seventy two times you tried, didn't it, jackal?" The black hedgehog could have stopped the assault with no more than a casual swipe of his fist, but instead chose to stand there in silence, waiting for the jackal to run out of energy while wondering if it was worth going back to Emerald Hill Zone. He'd have to at some point, if only for Omega, but it was likely to be too cold to stay there on a permanent basis.

When Bait started to slump towards the ground, Shadow caught hold of the jackal, supporting his weight, but offered no further comfort, his mind still turning over the various options. Scrap Brain was out – that blue hedgehog spent too much time there and the last thing Shadow wanted was to bump into him again – and half of Metropolis was still being rebuilt after Oil Ocean went up (and just how had that happened, anyway?). Maybe Hill Top? That was remote enough.

Glaring up at him as best he could, Bait blurted out, "I jus' wanted to help Sonic, Shads! Why'd you have to come bargin' in? You dint have to dump me here jus' 'cause you thought I wouldn't push that stupid button!"

Shadow's voice was calm, impassive. "I didn't do this because I thought you wouldn't push the button, jackal. I did it because I knew you would." No, Hill Top wouldn't be any good; it was so remote that any newcomers would stand out a mile. Maybe Casino Night...

Bait swallowed hard, body quivering slightly. This wasn't the first time Shadow had pulled the mental rug out from under him.

"But Sonic—"

Dragging his thoughts back to the current situation, Shadow said, "Do you seriously believe that blue hedgehog would have wanted you to do something like that for him? You're not a killer, jackal."

Bait swallowed again, staring up into Shadow's impassive expression.

"But I coulda bin, mister." It was barely audible.

"Yes, you could." A humourless smile touched Shadow's mouth. "In future, however, I suggest you leave such things to the experts."

The jackal hoisted himself onto the edge of the table, not looking at him. He'd hoped against hope that something would happen to stop him; like Sonic, he hadn't much relished the thought of becoming a murderer.

But there was no way he was going to admit that to Shadow.

"Why'd you stop me? I on'y wanted to do somethin' for Sonic. Really do somethin' for him, I mean."

"That blue hedgehog isn't worth killing for. How guilty do you think he'd have felt, knowing you'd done it because you thought it was what he wanted?"

Bait shot him a look. "D'you think it'd be more or less guilty than he'd feel if he'd had to do it himself?"

"Interesting moral point, jackal. Ask him yourself, if you two ever manage to catch up with each other."

Bait looked away again, ears flat. "Yeah. Where we gonna go, mister?"

Shadow briefly wondered whether it was worth protesting the we, then thought better of it. The jackal had an irritating tendency to ignore his subtle, delicate hints like, "Piss off."

"Back to Emerald Hill, at least for the minute. I'm not leaving Omega behind."

"An' then?"

"That's not your concern, jackal." Shadow pulled out his Chaos Emerald and fielded Bait neatly with his other hand as the jackal attempted to tackle him around the waist so as not to be left behind. "Chaos Control!"

There was a faint echo as Sonic, unaware of what was going on a few doors away, shouted the same phrase, then all was quiet. When Robotnik returned, the only signs of what had happened were the smashed robots and broken cloning tubes.

Sonic blinked and looked around, then swore as he realised that he was standing on a hill in Emerald Hill Zone and up to his waist in snow. Apart from being uncomfortable in itself, he was about two hundred miles away from where he'd been trying to get to: ie, Angel Island.

He was also still holding Knuckles' body in his arms, unable to shake off a strong sense of loss. Even if the Knuckles who had come with him hadn't been the real one, he'd still helped Sonic. They'd fought the Egg Whale together, gone head to head with Robotnik and the echidna had covered Sonic's back long enough for the hedgehog to destroy the clones.

Except you didn't, did you?

Sonic barely registered this, dismissing it as unimportant. The clones were destroyed; that was all that mattered, although now he thought about it, he wished he'd remembered to ask Shadow about Bait.

So what am I going to do with a dead echidna clone?

Sonic didn't know, except that he hadn't wanted to leave the double's body on the Egg Carrier Three for Robotnik to either toss out or recycle. The echidna deserved better than that. His original plan had been to take the body up to Angel Island for a proper burial, but the failed Chaos Control had put something of a dent in that idea. He supposed he could try it again, but there was no telling where he'd end up. For all he knew, he'd materialise some two hundred feet above an ocean or an active volcano.

Eventually he settled for taking the clone's body into the mountains and spindashing a hole in one of them, then placing the clone's body inside and packing smaller rocks around it, building up an internal cairn.

He thought he ought to do something, say something, but found the words wouldn't come.

"Sonic?"

The hedgehog turned to see Knuckles standing on a rock, eyeing him warily.

"I thought I saw you heading up here. Is that..." He broke off and nodded towards the cairn.

"Yeah. Pretty convincing, huh?" Sonic coughed. "Uh...Knux, am I—"

"Yeah. The other you just collapsed. It was pretty quick. Tails and I buried him."

"Tails?" Sonic's pulse quickened. "Oh man, is he—"

"Fine. Well, as fine as can be expected. I left him behind in the hotel."

Sonic blinked. "Where'd you get money to pay for a hotel?"

"I don't pay, Sonic. I walk in and offer to save them a few thousand mobiums in repairs in exchange for a room."

There was a short pause while the hedgehog worked this out, then he said, "You mean you walk in and say 'gimme a room or I'll smash the place up'?"

"More or less." Knuckles' voice was matter-of-fact. It wasn't dishonourable unless he did it to another echidna. "I promised him I wouldn't be long."

Sonic coughed. "Uh...where'd you bury the...um..."

"The other you? Tails picked out a spot in the forest, under a certain coconut palm."

The hedgehog blinked at him. Knuckles had attached an oddly meaningful tone to that last statement.

"Any particular certain coconut palm, or did you just pick one that looked sure of itself?"

Knuckles groaned. "How the hell can you laugh after what's just happened?"

Sonic looked at him steadily and with no trace of levity as he answered, "Because if I couldn't laugh, I think I'd have to start screaming, and if I started screaming I'm not sure I'd ever be able to stop."

There was a short pause. Something told Knuckles that Sonic hadn't just been talking about the cloning incident.

"So which tree?" Sonic said. The normal lightness was back in his tone as he cocked his head on one side, and for a moment the echidna wondered if he'd imagined the last few seconds.

"Tails said it's where you first met. He also said-"

What Tails said, Sonic never found out, because at that moment the fox caught sight of them and decided to reenact his and Sonic's first real meeting by divebombing him in a tackle hug so hard that both of them rolled over in a tangle of arms and legs.

"SONIC!"

The hedgehog pushed himself up on his elbows, spat snow out of his mouth and grinned at him. "Hey lil bro. Miss me?"

Tails nodded, beaming too much to speak.

"That's good." Sonic winked. "I'd hate to think you'd forgotten me."

Getting to his feet, Tails still gazing up at him with an expression that said he couldn't believe his luck, Sonic added, "Whaddaya say we go grab a coupla chili dogs?"

"Some things never change, do that?" Knuckles remarked, apparently to the snowflakes that were drifting down from the sky. He knew Sonic well enough to know that this carefree act was partially just that - an act - but it wasn't entirely contrived.

"Sonic? Sonic, did you kill the clone?"

Sonic glanced down at Tails, serious again. "No, lil buddy. Shadow did."

"Shadow?" Knuckles and Tails echoed in perfect unison. Knuckles continued. "How much did you have to pay him?"

The blue hedgehog rolled his eyes. "That's not how it was! I was just...I couldn't bring myself to push the button, so Shadow did it for me. Guess that guy's useful for something other than being the angst poster child." He smirked, the expression not unlike Shadow himself, although he couldn't hide a slight quiver inside. If Shadow hadn't been there...

"Are you going to stand there brooding all day, or are you going to take this poor fox cub to get some food?" Knuckles said sharply, after Sonic had stood there in silence for a few minutes.

"I'm not a cub, Knucklehead!"

Sonic blinked. Something in Knuckles' choice of words jerked him onto a higher level of awareness and he glanced at the echidna.

"What, you're not coming with us?"

Even as he said it, he saw the answer in Knuckles' eyes.

The echidna shook his head. "I have some unfinished business to take care of. You – well, the other you – got the replacement Master Emerald out of Scrap Brain, so I plan to restore to its rightful place and get Angel Island into the sky again, where it belongs." He glanced at Tails. "Take care, kid. Don't let that blue hedgehog get too full of himself."

Sonic grinned. "Yeah, and if you get your head wedged too far up your ass, me and Tails'll be only to happy to dig it out again."

The fox wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Eww! Speak for yourself!"

Sonic ruffled Tails' fur, then glanced up at Knuckles. "You sure you don't wanna stick around?"

"The Master Emerald won't guard itself, Sonic. There's no way I'm leaving it lying around, not now those scumbags in the tunnels know about it." Knuckles conveniently left out the fact that it was one of the scumbags in question who had kept it safe from looters until Espio had had time to collect it. The chameleon Scarface never did anything without a very, very good reason, and the echidna wasn't about to hang around and risk losing the Master Emerald just to find out what that reason was.

"Jeez, Knucklehead, some things never change, do they?" Sonic grinned at the echidna's glare, then became a little more serious. "Well, as the human singer whose name I can't remember put it-" (Knuckles groaned; despite his protests, sighs and threats of bodily harm, the cloned Sonic had still persisted in singing every human song he could remember until the echidna knew them by heart)- "we may as well go home. If you ever get bored, you know where to find me."

"No I don't." Knuckles bit back the other retort that Sonic would probably drag him away from the Master Emerald on another hare-brained adventure long before Knuckles himself got bored with guarding it. "And you don't have a home, remember?"

The hedgehog waved a hand. "Okay, sure, but all you gotta do is land in a non-aquatic Zone and I'll turn up sometime."

Knuckles didn't bother answering this; instead he glanced over at Tails. "See you."

To his and Sonic's surprise, Tails bounded over to him and wrapped the echidna in a hug that threatened to crush his ribs.

"Bye Knux. You're the coolest."

A loud, "A-HEM!" from an indignant looking Sonic prompted Tails to add, "Well...second coolest."

"And don't you forget it, lil bro."

It was that awkward stage, the stage of not wanting to be seen to be the first to leave usually only seen after a dinner party at a restaurant. The silence stretched out for a few seconds before Sonic, in typical Sonic fashion, grinned and waggled his fingers.

"Well, see ya!"

Turning, he raced off, Tails following close behind.

Knuckles didn't leave immediately; he stood on the crest of the hill watching as Sonic and Tails raced off together, pausing rather frequently to hurl snowballs at each other and didn't move until the two had vanished from view.

Back to Angel Island. At the very least, it would probably be warmer there. Knuckles took a deep breath, then turned and walked towards the place where he'd buried the Master Emerald, the last refrain of the song Sonic had quoted beating over and over again in his head.

Alone again...naturally.

So, Sonic, Tails and Knux all wander off into the sunset together (or in Knuckles' case, back to Angel Island) and Shadow's landed with Bait ;) Everything's back to normal. And it only took...what? Five stories to accomplish? XD

For those of you who want to find out what happens next, the story continues in Endless Winter.