The 39 Mobian Clues:

The Maze of Bones

By

Dim Moon Insanity

You Have Been Chosen As

The Most Likely To Succeed

In The Greatest, Most Perilous

Undertaking Of All Time-

A Quest Of Vital Imporatance

To The Cahill Family

And The World At Large...

Chapter 1

Five minutes before she died, Grace Cahill changed her will.

Her lawyer brought out the alternate version, which had been her most guarded secret for seven years. Whether or not she would actually be crazy enough to use it, William McUnity had never been certain.

"Madam," He asked,"Are you sure?"

Grace gazed out the window, across the sunlit meadows of her estate. Her chao, Terry, snuggled beside her as he had throughout her illness, but her presence was not enough to comfort her today. She was about to set in motion events that might cause the end of civilization.

"Yes, William," Her every breath was painful."I'm sure."

William broke the seal on the brown leather folder. He was a tall craggy mouse. His nose was pointed like a sundial so it always cast a shadow over one side of his face. He had been Grace's adviser, her closest confidant, for half her life. They'd shared many secrets over the years, but none as perilous as this.

He held the document for her to review. A fit of coughing wracked her body. Terry chao'd with concern. Once the coughing passed, William helped her take the pen. She scrawled her weak signature across the paper.

"They're so young," William lamented. "If only their parents-"

"But their parents didn't," Grace said bitterly. "And now the children must be old enough. They are our only chance."

"If they don't succeed-"

"Then five hundred years of work have been for nothing," Grace said. "Everything collapses. The family, the world,-all of it."

William nodded grimly. He took the folder from her hands.

Grace sat back, using small claws to scratch Terry behind her bat ears. The scene outside the window made her sad. It was to gorgeous a day to die. She wanted to have one last picnic with the childeren. She wanted to be young and strong and travel the world again.

But her eyesight was failing. Her lungs labored. She clutched her jade neckalce-a good luck talisman she'd found in China years ago. It had seen her through many close calls with death, many lucky misses. But the talisman couldn't help her anymore.

She'd worked hard to prepare for this day. Still, there was so much she'd left undone...so much she had never told the children.

"It will have to be enough," she whispered.

And with that, Grace Cahill closed her eyes for the last time.

_/ ******* /

When he was sure Grace had passed away, William McUnity went to the window and closed the curtains. William prefered darkness. It seemed more proper for the business at hand.

The door opened behind him. Grace's chao hissed and disapeared under the bed.

William didn't look back. He was staring at Grace Cahill's signature on her new will, which had just become the most important document in the Cahill family's history.

"Well?" a brusque voice said.

William turned. A man stood in the doorway, his face obscured by shadows, his suit as black as oil.

"It's time," William said. "Make sure they suspect nothing."

Wiliam couldn't tell for sure, but he thought the man in black smiled.

"Don't worry," the man promised. "They'll never have a clue."

Chapter 2

Sonic Cahill thought he had the most annoying big sister on the planet. And that was before she set fire to two million dollars.

It all started when they went to their grandmother's funeral. Secretly, Sonic was excited, because he was hoping to make a rubbing of the tombstone after everyone was gone. He figured Grace wouldn't care. She'd been a cool grandomther.

Sonic loved collecting things. He collected Rings, Chaos Emeralds, baseball cards, autographs of famous outlaws, Civil War weapons, rare coins, and every cast he'd ever had since kindergarten (all twelve of them). At the moment, what he liked collecting best were charcoal rubbings of tombstones. He had some awsome ones back at the apartment. His favorite read:

PRUELLA GOODE

1891-1929

I'M DEAD. LET'S HAVE A PARTY.

He figured if he had a rubbing of Grace's tombstone in his collection, maybe it wouldn't feel quite so much like she was gone forever.

Anyway, the whole way from Boston to the funeral in Worchester County, his great aunt Beatrice was driving like a very slow lunatic. She went twenty-five miles an hour on the highway and kept drifting across lanes so other cars honked and swerved and ran into guardrails and stuff. Aunt Beatrice just kept clutching the wheel with her jewled fingers. Her wrinkly bat face was made up with Night-Glo red lipstick and rouge, which made her blue fur look even bluer. Sonic wondered if she gave the other drivers nightmares about old clowns.(A/N: TWISTED METAL REFERENCE! WEEZA GONNA DIE!)

"Blaze!" she snapped, as another SUV careened down the exit ramp because Beatrice had just pulled in front of it. "Stop reading in the car! It's not safe!"

"But, Aunt Beatrice-"

"Young lady, close that book!"

Blaze did, which was typical. She never put up a fight with adults. Blaze had a light laveder fur, unlike Sonic's which was a deep blue. This helped Sonic pretend his sister was an alien imposter, but unfortunatly they had the same eyes-green like jade, their grandmother used to say.

Blaze was three years older and siz inches taller than Sonic, and she never let him forget it-like being fourteen was such a big deal. Usually, she wore jeans and some old T-shirt because she didn't like people noticing her, but today she was wearing a black dress so she looked like a vampire's

bride.

Sonic hoped her outfit was as uncomfortable as his stupid suit and tie. Aunt Beatrice had thrown a fit when he tried to go to the funeral in his ninja clothes. It wasn't as if Grace would care if he was comfortable and deadly, the way he felt when he pretended to be a ninja, but of course Aunt Beatrice didn't understand. Sometimes it was hard to believe she and Grace were sisters.

"Remind me to fire your au pair as soon as we return to Boston," Beatrice grumbled. "You two have been entirely to spoiled."

"Fiona's nice!" Sonic protested.

"This Fiona almost let you burn down the neigbor's apartment building!"

"Exactly!"

Every couple of weeks, Beatrice fired their au pair and hired a new one. The only good thing was that Aunt Beatrice didn't live with him personally. She lived across town in a building that didn't allow kids, so sometimes it took her a few days to hear about Sonic's latest exploits.

Fiona had lasted longer than most. Sonic liked her because she made amazing waffles and she usually cranked her Ipod up to brain-damage level. She didn't even hear when Sonic's bottle rocket collection went off and strafed the building across the alley. Sonic would miss Fiona when she got fired.

Aunt Beatrice kept driving and muttering about spoiled children. Blaze secretly went back to her huge book. The last two days, since they got the news about Grace's death, Blaze had been reading even more than usual. Sonic knew it was her way of hiding, but he kind of resented it because it shut him out, too.

"What are you reading this time?" He asked. "Medeval European Doorknobs? Bath Towels Through The Ages?"

Blaze gave him an ugly face-or an uglier-than-usual face. "None of your buisness, dweeb."

"You can't call a ninja lord dweeb. You have disgraced the family. You must commit seppuku."

Blaze rolled her eyes.

After a few more miles, the city melted into farmland. It started to look like Grace country, and even though Sonic had promised herself he wouldn't get sappy, he began to feel sad. Grace had been the coolest ever. She'd treated him and Blaze like real people, not kids. That's why she'd insisted they call her Grace, not Grandmother or Gran or Nana or any silly name like that. She'd been one of the only people who'd ever cared about them. Now she was dead, and they had to go to the funeral and see a bunch of relatives who had never been nice to them...

_/ ******* /

The family cemetery sat at the bottom of the hill from the mansion. Sonic thought it was kind of stupid they'd hired a hearse to carry Grace a hundred yards down the driveway. They could've put wheels on the coffin like they have on suitcases and that would've worked just as well.

Summer storm clouds rumbled overhead. The family mansion looked dark and gloomy on its hill, like a lord's castle. Sonic loved the place, with its billion rooms and chimneys and stained glass windows.

He loved the family graveyard even more. A dozen crumbling tombstones spread out across a green meadow ringed in trees, right next to a little creek. Some of the stones were so old the writing had faded away. Grace used to take Blaze and him down to the meadow on their weekend visits. Grace and Blaze would spend the afternoon on the picnic blanket, reading and talking, while Sonic explored the graves and the woods and the creek.

Stop that, Sonic told himself. You're getting sentimental.

"So many people," Blaze murmured, as they walked down the driveway.

"You're not going to freak out, are you?"

Blaze fiddled with the collar of her dress. "I'm-I'm not freaking out. I just-"

"You hate crowds," he finished. "But you knew there'd be a crowd. They come every year."

Each winter, as long as Sonic could remember, Grace had invited relatives from all over the world for a weeklong holiday. The mansion filled up with Chinese Cahills and British Cahills and South African Cahills and Venezuelan Cahills. Most of them didn't even go by the name Cahill, but Grace assured him they were all related. She'd explain about cousins and second cousins and cousins three times removed until Sonic's brain started to hurt. Blaze would usally go and hide in the library with the chao.

"I know," she said. "But...I mean, look at them all."

She had a point. About four hundred people were gathering at the grave site.

"They just want her fourtune," Sonic decided.

"Sonic!"

"Well? It's true."

They had just joined the procession when Sonic got flipped upside down.

"Hey!" he yelled.

"Look, guys," a girl said. "We caught a rat!"

Sonic wasn't in a good position to see, but he could make out the Holt sisters-Madison and Regan-standing on either side of him, holding him by his ankles. The twins had matching red track suits, blond dreadlocks, and crooked smiles. They were only eleven, same as Sonic, but they had no trouble holding him. Sonic saw more red running suits behind them-the rest of the Holt family. Their american bulldog, Bernie, raced around their legs and barked.

"Let's fling him into the creek," Madison said.

"I wanna fling him into the bushes!" Regan said. "We never do my ideas!"

Thier older brother, Knuckles, laughed like an idiot. Next to him, their dad, Eisenhower Holt and their mom, Julie-Su, grinned like this was all good fun.

"Now, girls," Eisenhower said. "We can't go flinging people around at a funeral. This is a happy occasion!"

"Blaze!" Sonic called. "A little help here?"

Her face ahd gone pale. She mumbled, "Dr-dr-drop..."

Sonic sighed in exasperation. "She's trying to say 'DROP ME!'"

Madison and Regan did-on his head.