Charge

by TCTW

Summary:

Charmy falls in love with Sage.

Notes:

Inspired by this artwork right here: https://www.tumblr.com/candleangel3/786471244448055296/whateverrrr?source=share

Chapter 1: Intro

If only he had been more careful that night...

If only he'd chosen any other place. Just literally anywhere else at all!

That actually was the time that he was supposed to recklessly buzz around!

Just... if any one single thing had been different...

But now... Charmy is not sure whether he will, quite literally, make it through the night...

And all because of...

How could he have let this happen to him...?

---

Well, damn! Two of the seven Chaos Emeralds were once again in the nefarious doctor's possession! And it should have been no sweating, by this point, to find the remaining five as well!

Not to worry, though. Said doctor's greatest foe was already deeply inside his apparently-not-all-that-well-protected lair. And the "foe's" best buddy was there, too!

"You boys think you're two steps ahead of me, don't you..." Eggman spoke to himself, in a room which he had reserved for himself and absolutely nobody else at all, as he watched all of his security cameras, which he had of course made adamantly sure covered every last inch, step, wall, of his confined residence, showing a strangely pleasantly gullible event unfold right before his uncomfortably excited eyes, hidden by a pair of shiny blue glasses. "You must not have taken every last thing into account, if that's really the case."

As he quietly said that, he smirkingly looked for one and a half second towards a drawer by his right side, in which he had stored both of the shiny emeralds.

Because the "every last inch" that those security cameras covered did indeed also include the ventilation through which both Sonic and Tails had unexpected difficulty crawling! In that both of them did maybe a little better than barely moving through them. Both the hedgehog and the fox felt like they were glued against the pipes, not being able to move faster than maybe one meter per minute.

"This is - not supposed to be - so hard," Sonic exclaimed, visibly displeased by the situation both had gotten themselves into.

"Yeah, well," Tails responded, not feeling any better than his best friend, "it is that hard. And now we're stu-"

"REALLY?!" Sonic exclaimed, out of nowhere. Tails' initial thought was that it was the fox's commentary to which the blue blur was responding. Sort of sarcastically. It really was Sonic's thing. So it made rather plenty of sense.

But it wasn't that. Not even close.

The actual sight that made Sonic make that exclamation was that of a security camera.

Inside a goddamn vent!

Yes, really!

"The ventilations?! That's where you put security cameras?!" the hedgehog exclaimed, hoping - hmph, knowing - that Eggman could hear him.

And hear him Eggman very much did. For his amazingly simple answer was:

"Yes." And after two seconds of pause: "Problem?"

"Who did you think was gonna go through it?!" Sonic asked more flagrantly. Only to not just immediately realize the extreme, palpable irony of even considering asking that question, not just immediately realize what the actual answer was, but to even feel, moderately deeply inside his lungs, Tails' stare of disbelief towards him, without having to actually turn around to see the fix's facial expression. Not that he physically could do the latter right now, anyway.

And even though he couldn't (yet) see him before his eyes, Sonic could really even feel Eggman smirking in his own mind.

So he, Sonic, just shook his head in disbelief, towards himself, I guess.

"That's it," he uttered. Half of that voice reeked of disdain.

The other half - of determination.

The blue blur curled himself into a ball - clearly he and Tails had spent way too much time in these tiny tubes to realize any sooner that both of them might have been exaggerating just a tiny bit, and that those tubes were not quite that tiny after all - and sped up, in his ball form, exactly towards the camera he had seen. With seriously very little care or concern on wherever he was supposed to find himself after diminishing yet another wall or whatever.

Tails followed right through.

The nanosecond Eggman realized which direction it actually was in which the being whom he preferred calling his arch enemy and the being whom said arch enemy thought his friend for life - a concept that the astoundingly too knowledgeable human had abandoned decades ago - were headed, the doctor also realized that it was too late for him to admit to himself that such an action was cause for concern.

Because, maybe half a second after he worryingly turned his heavy head to face the ceiling directly above him - the animal duo effortlessly crashed inside that room of Eggman's. From below the floor, of course.

"Aaaagh!" Eggman shouted, barely managing to avoid landing on his head. His stomach did not take that so lightly.

Sonic and Tails, on the other hand, might not have looked like they were without a scratch, but they both sure felt that way.

"Alright, Eggface," the hedgehog finally gained the confidence to maintain a nonchalant tone of voice, knowing - or, well, having just that much certainty - that this whole thing would play out the exact same way it always does, "put up those shiny rocks right no-"

SLAM! Just as the extremely self-confident hedgehog was saying that, he fell down to the floor once again, for he was suddenly surrounded by... something? What could it even have been surrounding him? Well, apparently, after taking a half-decent look in literally any other direction, he saw himself being trapped with a rather strong... fishnet?

"One down," Eggman semi-proudly proclaimed while he faced the hedgehog - after shortly getting up from the floor. It wouldn't be too long before he turned around, just in time for one of the lights in that room to malfunction, and unexpectedly menacingly - oh, come on... expectedly menacingly - develop a millions upon millions of kilometers long stare, straight into Tails' debatably innocent eyes. "One to go."

It would've been weird if this hadn't sent lasting chills down the fox's uneasy spine.

The very next moment, Tails raised both of his hands in the pose that should have signaled his defeat. Emphasis, of course, on 'should'.

"Surrendering already?" Eggman said, actually being a little bit surprised that what seemingly just unraveled before him had actually really taken place. "You must be even more desperate than usual, by a long sho-"

Just in time for Tails to press some sort of button in his right ear.

"What was tha-" Eggman almost exclaimed as he heard the singular sound of clicking, "...I should have expected that. I am officially a genius, after a-"

In the middle of his frivolous attempt at a speech, he was once again tackled from behind, ending up lying on his stomach once again. He sighed in troubling frustration.

"Guess you're not that genius, now are you?" Espio could suddenly be heard attempting to whisper into the doctor's left ear, before the chameleon actually materialized. Espio didn't actually fully commit to the physical act, just in case Eggman tried to punch him.

This, needless to say, didn't sit right with Eggman. He wasn't even sitting, after all. "URGH, YOU LITTLE-" he tried to find a way to grab the chameleon by... some part of his body already, but Espio quickly pulled out one of his blades, while still standing on Eggman's back, and stabbed the human in his unclenched left fist. "AAAAAHHH!!!" Eggman, of course, shouted.

"Aright, then," Espio continued, in a rusty voice, "where are they?"

This caused Tails to look around the room - and it was so insultingly obvious. Genuinely, Eggman didn't try to properly hide the emeralds' location.

So he flew up to that drawer - but in the middle of opening said drawer:

"Oh, no, you don't!" Eggman lividly got back up, shaking the chameleon off his back, and pulled the blade out of himself. Next thing you know - the blade was flying towards Tails, as the fox was a third of the way through opening the drawer. Luckily, Tails caught the very last moment to notice the blade that was gonna hit his tiny nose. His only instinct was to run in the direction in which he was supposed to open the drawer - exorbitantly firmly holding the drawer's handle in both of his hands.

This exact motion caused the entire drawer to get out in the open, and both Chaos Emeralds to fall on the small carpet on the floor.

For just three quarters of a second, both Tails and Eggman looked at the emeralds, then at each other...

And they both suddenly rushed for the emera- Nope, Tails went straight for the doctor's stomach! Eggman almost lost balance, but he still kept standing. Still, it naturally came to him to take two steps back; that was the impact of Tails' most recent hit.

Which lasted just long enough for Espio to shout "Now!" into his own earbud!

Merely a moment later, Charmy flew into the room, from the same hole which two of the most famous heroes this side of Mobius had crawled out of. The bee was lucky enough that the direction in which he was looking while getting inside this room was exactly where the Chaos Emeralds were. Before long, Charmy was already holding both the gemstones in either hand, floating on the opposite side of the room from where Eggman was, right in front of the only actual door that led to that room.

In a matter of less than a second, Charmy figured he'd have to put both emeralds in one hand - he chose his right one - so as to open the door.

After he quickly flew outside that room, Eggman violently shouted: "Where do you of all people think you're go-" but Espio just shot a shuriken at him, which the human struggled, but succeeded, to dodge.

This distraction intended for the human gave Espio enough time to release Sonic from the tight fishnet, after which the blue blur immediately committed the same move as Tails had just moments prior. And what do you know - it worked wonders.

Espio, Sonic, and Tails also managed to escape from this odd room.

But something happened in front of Charmy, a little before those other three even found themselves in that same hallway. Something that made the bee nearly freeze with uncertainty. And a pinch of confusion.

Just as he kept flying in a straight direction - after he had turned left upon opening that door - somebody literally just appeared in front of him!

Somebody - or rather, something - that looked like a girl around the same age as the bee himself, with white hair that blocked the view of her right eye, and a dress that somehow kept glitching the entire time. She was floating at almost the same altitude as Charmy did. But most importantly - said "girl" had a certain expression on her face which didn't seem to change so easily. Yet, weirdly enough, Charmy was able to tell that she was not exactly the most satisfied by what she was seeing in front of herself.

"You have brought too much suffering upon Father," Sage finally spoke. "You will not diminish yet another attempt of his to create a lasting legacy."

At first - and even second - Charmy was seriously completely unimpressed by Sage's monologue.

"Oh, you bet we will," he responded all too confidently. "This happens, like, once a week! We're already used to it!"

As the bee said that - he threw the Chaos Emeralds in her direction! But not towards her - rather above her. Sage did not have enough time to properly react to this particular movement, because just half a moment later, the emeralds were in the hands of Vector, who was standing at least a meter behind the place where Sage had suddenly appeared.

"Also," Espio pointed out in mild discontent, just as he arrived beside his bee teammate, "you call Eggman 'Father'?!"

"Of course I do," Sage bluntly answered. And she didn't even have to make herself face Vector's direction - she was literally able to sense that the crocodile went heading for the giant gate that was behind all them. Complete with seeing the others - or least the bee and the chameleon - just go past her, she did the only sensible thing there was to do - she slammed said gate shut, just by thinking about it.

And Vector instantly became stationary.

"Uh-oh..." he spent two seconds extremely nervously staring at the suddenly closed gate, just as both of his teammates showed up on either side of him. Luckily, the entire space where they were was quite huge, so the crocodile very quickly noticed a few other gates and a single window which were located not too far, even if he was enormously sure those other gates wouldn't lead him anywhere useful.

Sage did not hesitate, nonetheless. The exact same action she had performed with that first gate, she also performed on all those other gates - those were all now closed on the Chaotix members.

And just to make absolutely sure that the trio had no means of escaping - Sage pointed her hand towards the handle of that window as well, and sealed that construction fairly tight.

In other words - the Chaotix, at least seemingly, had no means of escaping the vicious doctor's facility. All because he had clearly created this... program... to do some percentage of his work for him.

"Good job, Sage," Eggman proclaimed via a speaker located on the ceiling.

Naturally, Vector and Espio were, at least for a second, shocked, coming dangerously close to genuinely thinking they had just gotten themselves trapped for... a while.

And Charmy did, too. He really did share the same sentiment as his, much physically bigger, teammates. He too found the situation all three of them had gotten themselves into to be... unpleasant. More unpleasant than it probably should have been.

But that was not the only point of the bee's focus in that facility.

The moment that first gate closed, Charmy's first - and close to only - instinct was to turn around. Because there was just no way a gate that big could even close that fast. Something didn't feel right.

When he did turn around, what he saw was that Sage was pointing her open right hand towards that gate. The bee came to the logical conclusion that she must've done that with her mind or something - which, basically, really was the case.

The very next moment, Charmy saw her do the same motion, with her right hand, towards other gates and towards the window.

But during most of her performance, it wasn't those gates or the shiny walls or anything of the kind that Charmy kept staring at.

In fact, the bee could not help but notice that Sage's dress was still, constantly, doing that glitching thing, still constantly changing colours between black and white.

And sure, Charmy was nearly every bit as concerned that the entire detective team to which he belonged was still inside Eggman's base, rather than out of it ages ago.

But something about what this Sage girl had just done...

Out of nowhere, it was like something strange and heavy effortlessly made its way throbbing inside Charmy's small, buzzing body. More specifically, inside his chest. The bee himself thought, for whatever gullible reason, that just a little waiting would make that weirdly heavy feeling go away. But that weirdly heavy feeling didn't go away.

In fact, even an act such as staring at her, somehow still constantly stoic, face - even that did not make him feel any uncomfortable. Not in the slightest.

Sure, she might have been a bad guy...

"CHARMY!" a sudden shriek was heard, from the lungs of his crocodile teammate. It wasn't until that particular shout that Charmy even came to the sense that this whole moment - between the first gate's closure and that exclamation of Vector's - lasted for no more than two and a half seconds.

But that shout did cause him to turn in the direction of his own boss. What he saw was kind of expected of Vector - he was breaking the only window in that very room. Pretty easily, no less.

"NOW!" Vector shouted to the bee, literally in the midst of cracking that glass as he went straight through it.

And Charmy had no choice but to obey the singular-word order.

But even though the exact motions which the detective trio had been trained, in this very case - Charmy keeps holding the Chaos Emeralds in one hand, Espio grabs him by the other hand, Vector grabs Espio by the legs, and all three descend rather slowly in altitude - was executed beyond perfection... Something about getting out of there just... just didn't sit right with Charmy.

He even failed to notice that Sonic and Tails, who had been standing in the exact direction where the bee was actually facing when he looked at Eggman's 'daughter', gave the Chaotix members a thumbs up and just ran in the opposite direction.

But now it was too late.

"Wait a second," the bee thought to himself, not daring to make a single sound other than that of his wings tirelessly buzzing, "tired of what?"

But it would be fifteen more seconds until he landed his teammates completely safely on the ground, after which the focus could finally shift on what Vector considered really important.

"Well, boys," the lead detective proudly proclaimed, "this was swell. Now we just wait for our rent money. Which, this time, should be plentiful..." he continued, gradually sounding just a fraction more insecure with every word that followed.

"And which should arrive soon..." Espio felt like it was right to add to the crocodile's notion. "Any day now..."

Charmy, though, didn't feel like adding any snarky remark of his own to either of his teammates' words. Not just because he felt like there was not much more to add to it - a sentiment he, in fact, genuinely shared.

But also because, although it was partially the case, maybe even mostly; his mind was just short of completely being beside Vector and Espio.

"Come on, guys," Vector then said, more calmly. "We gotta go home before this egg freak launches another missile at us or something..."

And all three of them ran far away from the doctor's base, with immense speed, with a full moon on display, back towards their own office. Back towards safety. Back home.

And none of them even considered taking an ironic look back at this newly built segment of Eggman's lair, as it slowly became a small dot from what would have been their point of view.

Technically, even Charmy didn't. The look that the bee took towards that base, while neither Vector nor Espio were willing to do what would've made them see him do so, was completely lacking in irony.

It was a genuine one.

They got exactly what they'd been looking for - the two Chaos Emeralds that had gotten stolen from their rightful place; that being Tails' home address. They were ready to return it to said place. And most obviously, the pleasure of getting back to their office and have a nice amount of well-deserved rest was at the tips of their tongues. They could almost smell it.

All three Chaotix members would quickly enter their bedrooms and just drop themselves on those soft sheets, taking astoundingly little time to make their way towards their personal dreamlands.

Well, Charmy, before all that, would grab a bite of something already from the fridge; be it a package of yoghurt, a frozen ice-cream or something else - a thing he almost always did after really truly scary and intense missions. That's when those meals are at their tastiest.

And after finishing whichever meal picked, he too would quickly fall asleep without too many worries on his mind.

But something about her just felt... right...

Chapter 2: Spring breeze

By all means, this night should have gone the exact same way as nearly any other night did for the Chaotix. Within the comfort of their beds, wondering about receiving their well-deserved financial compensation, before the general tiredness overtook their thoughts as well as their eyelids.

That really was how that night played out for them. Even for Charmy.

For the most part.

Of course, the bee did fall asleep at the same pace as he always did. He had the same weird, colourful dreams as that he always did. He even snored, like he always did.

But then, at one moment, he just stopped! Dreaming, that is.

It was just that his eyelids were closed. Clearly, his brain did not feel like making up any more dreams. He could, nevertheless, sense that it was still obvious nighttime outside, even before he opened his eyes.

For almost 6 minutes after turning awake, Charmy kept staring at the ceiling right above himself. He was not feeling tired, like always would have felt at this time of night. There was something else that he was feeling, he could not deny himself that much. But tiredness it decidedly was not.

Why was he suddenly unable to get back to his comfortable sleep? This should have been just another successful attempt at stopping a scheme of Eggman's.

This was just another successful attempt at stopping a scheme of Eggman's!

Was it really, though? "Of course it was, Charms," the bee thought to himself, all in his head. Carefully avoiding making a single sound. "What even could be different this time?"

So he tried to remember as many details of this mission as possible. Getting into the same ventilations as Sonic and Tails? All normal. Busting into Eggman's personal room? Completely chill. "Stealing" the Chaos Emeralds back to yourself? Nothing out of the ordinary about that. Facing the closed gates? Not something they couldn't get out of. They did get out of that, after all. The weird computer program girl?

Um... uh... Now that was something new.

Escaping through the window? No proble- No, wait! His thoughts were still stuck on that programmed girl!

He remembered that particular moment. The moment when he looked at her face that made no changes in expression the entire time, and just kept looking that way while she did all her things. He even remember how Vector shouted at him to get him and Espio out of there.

That shout from Vector felt... wrong.

Well, more precisely, it was the fact of just how quickly the trio left that base. That was what the bee thought to himself felt wrong.

He remembered that specific heavy feeling he had in his chest, that appeared that very moment. It was strange, that was a given. It also felt like something unusually difficult for Charmy to handle, no doubt about that either; despite knowing that it was not something physical that he could simply just touch.

But for all those thoughts, that moment also felt...

Good.

It was a conclusion that took Charmy a somewhat large amount of time to reach. But it was also something he was finally willing to admit, at least to himself in his head.

As morbid as it might have sounded... Someone who was on the bad guy's side made him feel good.

Not just good... But a weirdly very special kind of good.

Like a warm spring breeze. Or like a soft dessert after lunchtime. Or like getting to the very bed he was in right now after a long and busy day.

"Wait a second," Charmy kept thinking. "She's the bad guy... This makes no sense..."

The bee kept staring at the ceiling for a few more minutes, almost attempting to find its shading amusing. But it was after those few minutes that he realized those thoughts still didn't go away.

In a way, he sort of wanted them to go away. It that were to happen, he would be able to feel much... easier.

So he tried, while still laying in his bed, still not having made a single sound that night, to... hm... force himself... to make those thoughts of the computer girl - "Sage! That's right..." he barely remembered her name - just disappear. However slowly and painfully that had to happen. However long such a process had to last.

But, after what might as well have been an eternity - but was really around an hour - nothing about what went on inside his head made any change.

Sage might as well still have been present there, roaming around his head. Just like she was currently roaming around his mind.

"Maybe it'll go away by the morning..." was the bee's final thought before closing his eyes again. "I should get back to sleep..."

---

Some unintelligible sounds could be heard from the office room. This was what awoke Charmy, and made him realize the Sun was already shining outside.

Before getting out of bed, the bee tried to decipher what exactly it was that was creating those sounds.

Heavy footsteps. "Vector," he correctly assumed.

Some sort of clanking. "Plates? Oh, right, it's breakfast time!"

Charmy quickly got out of his bed, and flew towards the office room. "Hey, 'morning, Vector," he greeted his boss.

"Good morning, Charmy," the crocodile said back, still having maintained a percentage of the enthusiasm from the previous night in his raspy voice. As he proceeded to pour milk into each of the three bowls on his workdesk, he also proceeded to speak: "Cereal for all three of us. I think we deserve it."

"Yay!" Charmy excitedly exclaimed, quickly flying towards his bowl. Only to discover it had no actual cereal in it yet; only the milk.

"Uh... you're supposed to put the cereal first," the bee said to Vector.

"What? No, I was taught the milk goes first," Vector inexplicably intensely insisted.

This situation maybe had some chance to escalate into something far more gnarly, especially since neither Vector nor Charmy would stop staring at each other's eyes for at least 7 seconds. Until:

"You're both wrong," to which both haphazardly turned their heads towards the door to Espio's bedroom, only to see the chameleon in the middle of exiting it. "The bowl goes first."

Of course, both Vector and Charmy sighed.

"Good morning to you too," the crocodile said.

After Vector finished pouring the cereals into each bowl as well, and Espio finished approaching the desk, there was just one more thing for the Chaotix's boss to say.

"Bone appetit. That's how it's pronounced, right?"

Charmy didn't respond. But Espio shook his head as answer.

But anyway, brekfast time was already underway. All three of them went on to taste their food in complete silence.

For Charmy, everything went normally about that breakfast; grabbing the spoon, grabbing a bite...

Until he started chewing.

It was at that very moment that he recalled the thoughts which were roaming around his mind during the night which had just ended. The thoughts of Eggman's newest ally, Sage. He even recalled that, now already familiar, feeling in his chest. And all of this made the bee realize a supposedly terrible truth.

Those thoughts were still there. Right now.

That strange feeling was still there, too.

The warm spring breeze was still there, as well.

And it wasn't at the far back of Charmy's mind, either. That - and by that, he meant Sage - was at the very center of his whirling mind, as he stared at the cereal that was just about to go soggy.

Countering Charmy's hopes, the thoughts did not go away.

Not only did the thoughts not go away... they still had the same amount of presence within the usually reckless bee - to whom it had just come naturally to maintain a poker face - that they'd had when outside was the Moon instead of the Sun.

And it seemed that those thoughts, which, despite their heaviness, Charmy eventually found himself finding comfort in, were here to stay.

In a way most simple for the bee to understand... it just happened.

And he was finally ready to admit this to himself.

"I'm in love with her." Still without so much as opening his mouth.

Under most other circumstances, Charmy would have gotten distracted by something entirely else already, and would have already starting mindlessly buzzing around the entire house, creating just another lost cause of an attempt to finish his breakfast for once.

But that morning, he sat perfectly still on one spot, and his bowl of cereal empty in mere minutes.

And both Vector and Espio were too busy with their own meals to notice this, um, change in Charmy's behaviour. At least for now.

"Now I know how Vector feels when he's around Ms. Vanilla," the bee wondered as he watched the crocodile calmly consume the content of his own bowl, whilst looking in a distance. He must've been in some thoughts of his own too.

"Do I tell him?" the bee wondered. But he immediately silently scolded himself for even considering it. "No, come on, Charms! You're not gonna tell your own boss you're in love with an enemy! Seriously...!" Still the poker face.

And Vector and Espio still didn't say a word about it.

But Vector then did say something, after getting up from his seat, and picking up both the Chaos Emeralds.

"Alright, boys," the team's lead detective proclaimed, as he headed towards the exit of the entire building. "I'm gonna go get these shinies back to Tails. Espio, make sure Charmy doesn't break anything."

Espio just made a thumbs up.

"Great," Vector happily continued, opening the door to the bright day outside. "See ya guys in about half an hour," after which he was going to put his right foot on the other side of the doorsill - but he stopped.

Espio's reaction seeing Vector do this was confusion, even if he was never particularly excessive in directly showing his emotions.

Charmy also refrained from showing any emotions - this time - but his reaction was not confusion. Not at all.

Did Vector somehow actually figure out, even though Charmy hadn't even said a single thing?! Vector is a professional detective, after all.

Vector himself looked at both of his teammates. He thought to himself that something felt... off... about that particular morning, as a whole. Like something was... missing.

But he couldn't yet figure out what that something really was.

"I gotta go," he thought anyway. Mere moments later, he was already on the sidewalk.

Charmy was relieved that Vector hadn't said anything. Or was he? For all the bee knew, this might have been enough for Vector to figure out that there was something that Charmy was "hiding", even if the crocodile didn't need to know what.

Charmy barely prevented himself from sighing. He was almost about to do so, but in a heartbeat, he remembered that Espio was still in the same room, and so he just swallowed his saliva.

After a few seconds of silence, during which both Charmy and Espio kept staring at the door:

"Very well, then," the chameleon exclaimed, startling the bee. Espio got up from his seat and continued: "I have to go meditate. Do you want to join me?"

And Charmy almost considered answering affirmatively, thinking to himself for a second that something like Espio's usual practice might be a decent distraction from the thoughts of Sage. But quickly afterwards, he decided he was really not at all in the mood for it. So instead of a nice polite decline, Charmy said, very straightforwardly:

"No."

Espio was actually kind of surprised by the bluntness of the answer his bee teammate had provided. But if this wasn't going to be Charmy's current preoccupation - then something else had to be.

"Then what are you going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know; I'll watch the TV or something," Charmy responded.

And that answer was... absolutely passable for Espio. Even if the notion of Charmy staying in one spot for the time being was a rather... odd one.

"Great," the chameleon nevertheless responded. "Just don't break anything, okay?"

"Sure."

Another blunt response from the bee. That was two in a row.

To avoid confusion - this was not something Espio thought seemed upside down, regardless of Charmy's usual behaviour. But something made the ninja detective think that that was the very impression he should have had with it.

But by the time Espio could think of something else to say to Charmy, the latter was already in the living room, searching for the remote control.

The chameleon sighed. "I must do this, anyway," he thought to himself as he began yet another meditating session.

---

Well, Charmy was pretending to search for the remote control. In reality, he had seen it on the couch the instant he came into the living room.

And he held it in his left hand for a few more seconds, while the television he stared at was still turned off.

Truly, Charmy wasn't even feeling like doing so much as turning off the television in front of him. At first.

"Maybe that'll be a good distraction," the bee came to a seemingly sensible conclusion, as he came to use the remote.

It took him about 10 channel switches, within no more than a minute, to make him realize that this, somehow, wasn't a good distraction from his intense thoughts, either. And that, most likely, not much else would be.

After turning the television back off, he laid on the couch - and didn't fall asleep. Nope, he absolutely did not feel like falling asleep. Not even closing his eyelids, as a matter of fact.

Instead, he was now staring at a different ceiling this time.

And for the entire time, since taking the first bite of the cereal until laying on the couch, Charmy felt like Sage was there, right in front of him. And he was not exactly closed off to the idea of embracing said feeling.

It was at that exact moment, a few minutes after laying on the couch, that the bee developed an out-of-left-field idea. He had no clue how he was going to turn that idea into reality, which exact steps he was supposed to perform within executing it, or especially how he should avoid letting his teammates discover that he ever had it. What he was aware of was that he'd have to wait for a staggeringly perfect chance. Wait for too long, or for not long enough - the chance might be gone.

"I have to find a way to impress her," was what that idea was. Still in utter silence.

Chapter 3: A chance?

But the phone rang just then!

And although Charmy still didn't move from his position on the couch, his eyes widened a little, mostly in negligible shock.

By the time he could sigh in near-boredom, Espio had already picked it up.

"Hello, this is the Chaotix Dete-"

"Espio, you gotta come to Tails' place!" a moderately angry voice of Vector could be heard on the other side of the phone.

"Vector?" Espio exclaimed, in more than mild confusion. "...What happened?"

"Just take Charmy with you and get here right now!" the crocodile came dangerously close to shouting.

"Okay, okay... we're coming," the chameleon said, as he hung up. Of course, it was only natural for him to wonder what could've caused this sudden frustration in Vector. While the latter was still far from any supposed place of peril, no less. Eggman could not have staged another attack just, what, 12 hours after his most recent one? That would've been too much even for Eggman! ...No, of course it wouldn't. But anyway, Espio did what he had to do. "Come on, Charmy, we have to-"

"I heard it," Charmy bluntly cut him off, already having appeared in the office room. This time, he made a complete sigh. "Need a lift?" the bee added, as he put his arms forward, in case Espio wanted him to fly him there.

Espio, in a very rare occasion for him, smiled. "Took you long enough to ask on your own," he said as he grabbed Charmy's arms, failing to observe that the bee was not in his usual overly excited mood, and they both went up in the air. Not before getting outside and locking their office first, of course.

And yes, even Charmy himself did wonder if this sudden change in Vector's state of mind had anything to do with anything at all that the bee himself had done - or had failed to do - in recent days or weeks. But even in that case, that contemplation was sidelined in favour of a certain somebody who had inexplicably become someone really important to Charmy.

Maybe a minute after having themselves lifted from the ground, Espio sensed that the air that day had a specific freshness, to which he hadn't previously paid proper attention. Trying to smell it, he knew what felt right to say right there and then.

"Autumn is in the air."

---

Barely four minutes later, Charmy and Espio were in front of their fairly close fox friend's, very egotistically shaped, place of residence.

Vector must have heard the bee's wings buzzing from at least a kilometer away, because the timing of him kinda violently busting out through Tails' house's front door and his teammates landing on the ground was almost perfect.

"Get in!" the crocodile exclaimed towards both of them, before either could even, like, greet him or anything. Neither Charmy nor Espio even had time to actually reach the thought to ask him whatever was supposed to be happening, before he rushed outside - and back inside - the way he did. "Now!" he added.

With that second exclamation, Charmy and Espio realized there was apparently not even enough time to look at each other and shrug affirmatively - Tails and Vector clearly needed their help right now!

Ten seconds later, the bee and the chameleon found themselves in a dark room, below ground level - they had to come downstairs in order to reach it - and a large amount of blue light was being emitted from one single direction - from their right, where a giant screen was stationed.

Right in front of this giant blue screen sat Tails, staring at a few spots, that could even be seen from some distance away, on the digitalized version of the map of all of Mobius, which was what that giant screen consisted of.

On their left stood a perplexingly concerned Vector, not even considering moving the direction of his staring away from the blue screen. There might have been a very, very few times where either Charmy or Espio had seen Vector being just that out of a good mood, but they both still remembered all those times with very little ambiguity.

This was, without any doubt, another one of those very rare times.

"Alright, guys, what's going on?" Espio quickly asked, refusing to waste any time. He had not forgotten how urgent Vector had sounded over the phone.

"Hey, guys; thank you for coming so soon," Tails replied, uneasily, after which he pointed at the three specific points on the screen that, unlike the blue of the rest, shone brightly red, even emitting an ominous beeping. All of them were located in Eggman's lair - on the exact locations the team of five had visited the previous night. "See these?"

The moment Espio actually saw those lights, he knew exactly what that meant - and he wasn't the most pleased about it. So instead of letting the fox continue his speech, the chameleon himself jumped in to answer: "The trackers that Sonic, you, and I placed there. Eggman already discovered them?"

"Worse yet," Tails continued in the same tone of voice. "They got corrupted!"

"Corrupted?" Charmy inclined. "You mean, destroyed?"

"Nope," Tails answered that too. "That would've been a way too easy way out. And you guys know Eggman always makes things more malicious than they need to be!"

"So what happened, then?" Espio asked.

Tails was going to simply answer that question, but the very thought of what he had discovered the true answer was still kept making him sick. But he had to swallow that gut of his.

"He must have made it so that there's a chance... a very high chance..." he paused, still getting ticks just thinking of it, "...that he can use those trackers to... to track us back."

The entire house fell creepily silent. Truly, the only sound was the red beepings from the mesmerizingly blue screen. All three Chaotix members felt freezing cold chills rush down most of their bones. The bright gadgets in Tails' possession that surrounded them did not seem so wonderful and miraculous anymore. Was this really it? Is this indeed going to be the way Eggman made his path through each and every one of his "regular" nemeses' place of true, absolute privacy?! So that he could terrorize all of them some more than the far too much he already had by now?!

"What?! We can't let that happen!" was the opinion that Charmy held on this matter - at the moment - and made loud and clear to everybody surrounding him.

But even though both his teammates as well as the fox found such a notion incredibly obvious, they all felt the need to actually audibly acknowledge it. After a few more seconds of pure silence.

"I know!" Vector expressed himself.

A few more seconds still of pure silence went on. The entire room, once again, uncomfortably agreed with the last one who had spoken. But there was a sense, among all of them, that at least something more had to be said. More precisely, asked. But none of them knew what exactly to ask.

Except one.

"So what will we do about it?" Espio protested. And having already predicted just what Vector would say as a response, the chameleon continued, in the same tone of voice, effortlessly making it seem like the following thought was already previously on his mind: "We can't just wait until it gets serious!" to which, of course, Vector frowned even harder than he had already been frowning all this time. Onyl for Espio to still conclude: "It is already serious now!"

Once the ninja chameleon made his last remark, Vector could've sworn he felt his heart change its location inside his body, to a lower location. This was not too different from how Tails felt as well.

And this should have been how Charmy, too, felt about Espio's statement. Because, granted, especially the bee himself didn't want to go anywhere near Eggman's close proximity. On any location - let alone the Chaotix's very address or something!

And yet, Charmy's prevailing thought upon hearing about all these concerns was none of those. Rather, if the doctor were to take off any of the locations where his friends live, this meant... that she would be left alone in his base. And that that... might be a perfect time for him to sneak in there and do... hm... do something impressive already...

But the more kept thinking about just what he could even conjure as a means of impressing Sage, the more warily close he was coming to the thought that even attempting anything like that might not be the best idea. No matter how good a chance this might seem to be.

"...What?" he thought to himself. Because it was right then that he realized that this might be exactly that.

A chance to make his newest confession, to the one to whom he was actually supposed to make that confession, without Vector or Espio discovering that he had ever done it. A chance which he might not receive again in a very long time.

Maybe ever.

A chance which missing might make everything go wrong!

And so, kinda thoughtlessly, before anybody continued on Espio's most recent notions:

"I mean, we can set him a trap," the bee suggested. Tails' entire house once again fell silent, but this time it wasn't out of fear of an upcoming danger - this time, it was more so out of tangible confusion. Since no one else said anything for a second and a half, Charmy just continued: "...If... you say he can track us down..."

Vector and Espio kept staring at their youngest teammate in big shock nonetheless. Vector then broke the silence.

"Are you crazy, Charmy?! You know all too well Eggman will count on something being a trap if he so much as senses it!"

"No, hold on... I kinda like Charmy's idea," Tails then interrupted. The shock on the two oldest Chaotix members' faces once the fox uttered those words was even more palpable.

But Tails himself was, truthfully, unfazed by said shock. And he also had something to add to his own words.

"But if we do decide for that option, then we gotta create a very detailed and very... Eggman-proof plan. And we must stick to that plan firmly!"

The phrasing of that statement by Tails got Charmy reassured that this idea of his was at least being considered. But that didn't change the fact that either teammate of his kept visibly being in absolute disapproval of said idea.

"Alright, then," Vector said to Tails. Not sounding any pleased. "Then how do you suggest we entrap him? And more importantly," he almost paused, "once he inevitably escapes the trap, he's gonna become so much angrier at all of us altogether! Then what?"

But Tails' reaction to such a question was a confident, short smirk.

"Unless, you know... we make sure that he never... ever..." he said, overly stretching that 'ever' relentlessly, "...gets out." He blinked at Vector right after he finished answering.

It didn't take long for the crocodile to realize what the fox had actually meant. His eyes widened again.

"You mean, kill him? That's already a lost cause!" he insisted.

"We should have done that ages ago," Espio completely rightfully pointed out. Vector's silence upon that statement of the chameleon's turned out to be his way of agreeing with the statement.

"You're absolutely right," the crocodile said. But there was still just one more question which he felt needed to be asked. "But how are even supposed to set up such a trap?"

Espio and Charmy did not have a proper way of answering this difficult a question, neither out loud nor internally. Although, the latter desperately wished that at least some answer would be provided at the soonest possible moment.

But Tails' way of answering Vector's question was - smirking. And then looking around the room they were all in. In that room, he didn't see much that he would deem useful for such a cause. So he he went to the living room, right in front of the staircase. He first looked directly towards the staircase, and then downwards. He removed the rug that was just beneath him, pulled upwards a handle that was just revealed, and looked through the opening. Even though the basement he was now staring was unlit, the fox still had a perfect memory of every single item he had placed there. So he now wondered which of these items he was going to actually use for this trap of theirs.

Was it gonna be the rope? The giant elastic catapult? The taser? The laser? ...All of those at once?

Without explicitly stating it - he made his decision.

"I have an idea!"

---

"Ha... sometimes they make this way too easy..." were the exact thoughts carried out, just a few hours later, the sky having become starry, from the mouth of the still nefarious, way too resourceful doctor, who still wouldn't give up - or even so much as go a bit easier - attempting to make the lives of most of his acquaintances noticeably harder than they really needed to be, as he stared at a shiny screen of his own, which revealed a sight he found full of pleasure.

For the sight on that screen was the exact reading of the location of one of the two Chaos Emeralds, which had been taken violently from him barely 24 hours prior to this very moment.

Eggman's natural instinct to such a satisfying sight was to smirk widely, and rub his hands the same way a fly looks like it does when it lands.

"In fact..." he thought out loud, as just then, a banal idea clicked in his mind, "I might even take a stroll down there." He was just so very sure that none of the Mobians that saw him, whatever little of them would even do anything important this late at night, would be anything short of too terrified to even accidentally come moderately close to him.

This only meant that there was nothing stopping him from taking this peculiar "risk".

Before getting himself ready to do this, there was just one more thing. He went to a different room, two floors above the one from that personal room of his. This other room was one where there had to be an astoundingly special occasion for him to go to, because it was extremely rare that he even considered going there.

It was, videlicet, a room which, even before getting stranded on Starfall Island, he had repurposed so that it'd be the closest thing it could really get to a bedroom. Not his own bedroom - but that of Sage, whom the very purpose of creating was so that he could have at least somebody else to call his offspring. Even if said offspring was artificial.

After knocking three times, no response was heard. This was actually Eggman's way of knowing that he could enter.

The bedroom in question was, in fact, mostly empty. All the walls were blue, and so was the ceiling. The only thing in the room that took a plentiful amount of space was the "bed". The way he saw Sage in it, she was already in the state closest to a computer model's equivalent of getting to sleep.

"Sage..." the doctor spoke to her, softly, but firmly. He still considered whether he should explicitly reveal to her what it was he was about to do. But his last-moment decision was to refrain from such a short monologue. "Just go have a great sleep... Will that do?" he spoke again, way more softly.

And Sage's response was a straightforward one. "I will, Father."

The relief in which Ivo sighed was one he was already feeling beforehand.

---

Half an hour later, Eggman was already halfway to the desired location. His confidence in this decision had, so far, paid off - the pocket detector which he had brought in him, just in case, kept showing that the location of the Chaos Emerald he was currently seeking was still the same as it had been when the human had first seen the readings.

"They must have lost it..." he genuinely convinced himself that such an outcome was an option too; a very likely one, no less.

When he had gotten out of his base, the doctor prematurely assumed that the lengthy walk towards this location would be an extremely tedious one, and that the only thing ensuring he didn't get lost on his way was the confidence that nobody would dare interrupt him.

As it turned out, the sky above him, lit only by the enormous Moon, which had clearly repaired on its own after spending such a long time being split in two, looked oddly beautiful. Never once, in the nearly half a century that he had been breathing, had he ever stopped to observe just how fascinating the view straight above him, at all times, truly was.

"...Maybe I should do this more often..." he thought. For half a second. "Oh, who am I kidding?"

Another 40 minutes later, the reading on his detector said that he was... right next to the Chaos Emerald?

A piece of confusion, for sure. Eggman looked around. A straight street, with only a handful of not very dense trees on either side, and a somewhat dense bush on his left. Everybody else fast asleep.

Eggman kept watching that bush, then his detector, then the bush...

"Is that it...? It has to be..." he, correctly, concluded.

And indeed - it took the doctor just one turn around that bush - and the shiny emerald was right in front of him.

"How foolish of them," he whispered, quietly, as he already held the Chaos Emerald in his left ha-

And something began flashing inside his eyes. Not before his eyes - that was nowhere the state he was in - but it was like someone started pointing a laser all around his glasses-covered eyes.

Because that's exactly what was happening! Specifically, it was Charmy who made those laser movements from a balcony on the sixth floor of a nearby building, far enough to be well out of the doctor's sight.

"Why, you- Who's doing that?!" he inquired, way more loudly, in a sudden frustration, as these small, but intense flashes were enough to make him drop the Chaos Emerald from his hand.

Just in time to get tased!

"AAAAARGHHHH!!!" he mumbled, painstakingly, as he gradually lost his grip on balance just moment after having stood perfectly still, firmly ending up laying completely on the grass. Even starting to drool. Well, at least for three seconds.

After which he passed out.

It wasn't until that very moment that Espio materialized beside the human's unconscious body, threw the taser away, picked the emerald, and tried to pick the doctor up from the ground. But he was just far, far too heavy.

Espio tried to think of a solution to this problem - which really shouldn't have been even remotely that unexpected - which took him just one moment. "I know," he murmured, as he grabbed the doctor by his left hip - the one that wasn't facing the ground - and went on to... roll him over!

Yes, like he was a ball!

For a while, too! Well, more like 10-ish seconds. Until he stopped at one certain place. The Chaotix and Tails had debated, earlier, whether to highlight that exact location so as to make this whole task easier for themselves, but they arrived at the accurate conclusion that that would've been too big a risk.

"Here?" the chameleon said, not too loudly.

"Perfect," Vector answered, from two meters in front of Espio. "Now move aside," he added. Which Espio did.

After making the order which his teammate obeyed, Vector suddenly let go of the life-size elastic catapult which he was holding in a place that was entirely shadowed.

Instantly later - a fully unconscious egg-shaped human body could be seen flying across Emerald Town, and even a little further, even more so from the direction of the doctor's base.

Eight seconds later, a barely audible thumping noise was heard in the immeasurable distance. Nobody in this town seemed to have gotten awoken from it.

"Well, Espio," Vector proudly concluded, with a great smile on his face, "that went fantastic, don't you think?"

Espio nodded, without too much disagreement.

Charmy also quickly arrived besides both his teammates. But somehow, as he kept flying closer to them, he thought that maybe all this was not the best of ideas. Not because he was still mean and evil - nah, for all those stuff, nearly every last Mobian agreed he deserved nothing but pure suffering - but because it was him, after all, whom he remembered her refer to as her father.

"No; now is not the time for those thoughts, Charms," he thought.

"There you are, Charmy," Vector unknowingly snapped the bee out of the latter's thoughts. "That was way easier than expected, wasn't it?"

"Um... yeah..." Charmy almost barely answered.

And he was really hoping that neither Vector nor Espio would give him long-lasting stares or ask him something uncomfortable or anything like that.

"Told you guys it would be a piece of cake!" Tails then suddenly said, having been coming closer to the trio from his own place, which was just two turns away, without knowing he had just fulfilled Charmy's current wish.

It was at this moment that Vector and Espio turned in Tails' direction, because it came naturally to the fox to prolong this conversation a bit beyond that last statement of his. The finances had to be dealt with too, after all.

This gave Charmy just enough time to do something he had been contemplating doing for most of that day. He looked around, to check all the grass-filled area, for at least a few truly nice-looking flowers, or at least just one. Yeah, he decided he was gonna do that, now that Eggman was far enough away.

He needed a truly beautiful flower.

But all he could see there, at the moment, was a bunch of daisies and dandelions. That was not it. He needed some way, way more captivating flower.

"Charmy!" he was once again snapped out of his thoughts, only to see Vector point at Espio giving his hand, silently asking the bee for a ride. "Please?"

"Oh, of course," Charmy answered, eventually getting both of his teammates floating.

---

Of course, just four minutes later, all three detectives were back in front of their office.

And it was clearly a good call that Charmy pretend-hesitated with landing Vector and Espio. Not just because the two's choice of what to attribute this hesitation of the bee's was the time of day - they were both convinced Charmy must have been tired this late into the night...

But also because, while in mid-air, he noticed exactly what he had been looking for!

A handful of magnolias, just about 20 meters away from the Chaotix's office!

But he still avoided making any sudden moves! After all, he had to land his teammates safely first.

"Ah... finally..." Vector uttered. "I hope this whole thing doesn't continue tomorrow too," he added. For a nanosecond, Charmy genuinely thought it was specifically him whom that last sentence was directed at. That, somehow, Vector had figured out. Even if the bee had basically done nothing outlandish.

Luckily: "You know it will," Espio responded to the crocodile's words, sighing.

"Ugh, I guess you're right," Vector despondently said, sighing as well. This very plainly meant it was Eggman's plans, and not anything else, that Vector had meant.

So, on that matter, Charmy could relax.

"Come on, guys," Vector finished, as he approached their entrance door, "we need to rest."

---

Five minutes later, all three Chaotix members were in their beds.

The crocodile and the chameleon fell asleep instantly upon touching their own beds.

Charmy... not so much.

Contrary to his colleagues' assumptions, tired was not something he was even remotely close to.

"Everything is there, isn't it...?" he wondered, in nearly the same position as the previous night - with a rather large emphasis on "nearly" there. "Eggman is too far, so he can't interrupt... the magnolias are right outside... Vector and Espio should be asleep any moment now... and the window is wide open..."

For a few seconds there, he even wondered if this was really necessary. Maybe he could postpone this whole plan of his for another night.

"No, Charms... you have to do this now!"

The bee waited until he was certain he could no longer hear anything, any single sound at all, from either teammate's bedroom. That wait lasted for about 20 minutes.

He did get himself sitting on the bed, rather than laying on it, just so he wouldn't accidentally actually fall asleep.

Then... truly nothing was heard. Just the night.

Charmy looked at the window... or rather, outside it... and the heavy feeling came back. Again. Placing itself way inside his chest. Again.

It was time!

Chapter 4: Magnolias

Notes:

This chapter is in Charmy's POV.

Well, Vector and Espio are finally asleep. At least I think they are.

This is finally my chance.

You can do this, Charms... You have to do this!

Do I just fly out the window? No, Vector and Espio will hear my wings buzzing.

Alright, then. How am I gonna do it...? There's an empty shelf right next to the window. Maybe I can climb that shelf, and then just step on the sill. I shouldn't be too heavy for it, the shelf.

Yeah, that's what I'll do.

I just have to be really, really... really careful to not make any noise.

---

Yes! I'm outside! I just gotta get down from the sill to the grass.

Well, that went pretty easily.

Now I can inhale and exhale in peace.

The fresh air feels, uh... refreshing.

There are the magnolias! I almost forgot about them. Wait, no flying just yet, Charms, you're still too close. Well, I guess I'll just have to walk my way to the magnolias. Really, really quietly.

Wow, they smell so beautiful... It's genuinely such a beautiful smell.

Should I pick just one of them... or two? ...I'll take three, just in case. Maybe she'll think more flowers is prettier.

Alright... Time to head to Eggman's base. I just gotta go, like, a kilometer to the north, and I'll already see it from afar.

Okay... now the house is out of sight... Gonna be out of mind soon, eh? Okay, then...

Time to fly.

---

Yeah, just like I thought, I can already see the base from way over here.

And the sky is... just wow... I didn't even know there are that many stars up there... I should do this more often.

...I hope I will do this more often... but not because of the stars...

Just don't drop the magnolias, Charms... Hope you can hold them still all the way. They need to keep looking pretty when you get there...

Well, I might be seeing Eggman's base from here already, but this flight is still taking so long. I don't even know if I'm halfway there.

But I'm so high from the ground that everything down there seems tiny.

And I'm not sure I can actually hear anything from anywhere. Sure, I will be hearing a lot soon, but right now... nothing. Just my own wings.

I can only go forward.

Okay, now I can hear some factory noises. I'm gonna be close enough.

That's a lot of steam... That looks creepy.

Oh, that's more than one place where the steam is coming from. There's, like, almost twenty places.

That looks even more creepy.

But I'm finally here. In front of this giant building... which I have no idea how to enter.

Wait, the tunnel which I went through last night! I think I remember where it was... There it is!

Wait a second, that leads to Eggman's, uh, bedroom? No, wait, Eggman still has to walk all the way here from wherever he landed!

I'll still find some other place to go through... just in case...

That window we jumped through!

Where is that window wow...? There it is! Yes, it's still broken!

---

Okay... so I'm inside now... everything is pitch dark...

Okay, not pitch dark, I can see all those gates that got closed on us. Now they're opened again. Huh...

Which gate should I even go through? Hmm... tough choice...

I'll take that furthest one.

But get on the floor first, Charms. Yeah, no one can hear your wings buzzing anymore, but still.

Alright... now I'm in a completely different room I've never seen before. Still just pitch da- Ow!

...Oh, that's a staircase.

...Aaaand there's nowhere else to go, huh?

But how do I climb it without flying? I'm not tall enough.

Hmmm...

I guess I'll have to fly anyway.

---

That's a really long staircase.

I feel like I missed a floor.

Or maybe Eggman designed it that way on purpose? ...That actually sounds like something he would do.

Oh, a new floor already.

...Is that a wooden door? That's... weird. All these other rooms were completely metallic and everything, why would thi-

Oh... that's it, isn't? That's Sage's bedroom...

Sage...

Okay... the magnolias are still intact... somehow. Her room is right in front of me. This is it!

Just knock.

Come on, Charms... just knock!

Maybe I can still just walk away, right?

Knock-knock.

...I just made a big mistake, didn't I?

I can't hear anything from the other side of the door.

Do I get in?

...Yes. I'll get in.

Well, this room has some, um, cozy lights, for a change.

I just heard something moving! Uh-oh...

"Father?" I just heard someone say.

There she is... I blushed again.

And she saw me! ...I'll just make the shush gesture.

She didn't say anything. But she still has that poker face.

Okay, Charms... this is your time to shine.

"Hey... Sage, right? ...I know I'm not supposed to be talking to you... but I think you're really cool, even if you're a bad guy. If you ever wanna be a good guy, you can come to the Agency... If you want to."

Oof... I barely made it to the end of that sentence. Oh, I forgot to tell her something else.

"Also, I think you're kinda pretty, but don't tell anyone that."

Phew... almost forgot about that.

...But Sage is just staring at me.

I can feel my hands shaking.

She turned her eyes to the magnolias! What do I do now?!

"I will... consider your invitation, bee boy."

It's such a soft voice. I know it's robotic, but it's just so soft.

I put the magnolias closer to her. Please, Sage, I'd love it so much if you took them...

And she did take them! Oh, thank goodness.

She's still staring at the flowers...

Did she just blush too? I think I just saw her blush.

Uh-oh... she started glitching again.

"These actions of yours, the unconventional courage, the tenacity to go all this way... just to present me with flowers... it invokes an unfamiliar reaction inside myself. I am at a lack of explanation for this anomaly. This is not supposed to be happening."

Hold on for a second... Is she also feeling it?! No way! No way! This is the most beautiful thing ever!

Well, I do have to answer her.

"It's called love."

...That sounded so stupid! Why did you say that, Charms?

How is she gonna react to that? Please just don't get too angry, Sage...

...She smiled.

She actually smiled at me! She thinks that was so cute and everything!

Oh my... I can't think of anything else to tell her. I can just stare at her while I blush.

...And she's staring back at me... And also blushing.

Maybe it's best if I keep silent.

I wish it could stay this way...

But I'll be in so much trouble if Vector and Espio see my bed is empty.

"I'm really sorry... I have to go."

And I could even see her smile go away. That made me feel bad.

"I will see you again." I want to reassure her.

Yeah... I will do this again... There will be a next chance, right...?

I could see her smile again just before I closed the door.

---

Okay, Charms... just go back the same way you came here... the staircase, which is still too long... back through that gate... and there's the broken window.

Alright, I'm outside. I didn't fall for any of Eggman's traps. Alright... I'm still whole. Phew.

That went... actually sort of good.

It should've gone better.

I didn't even try to hold her hand! Gahhh!

I'll have to do that next time.

If I ever get a next time...

Ugh...

Better get home fast, Charms.

---

Okay... I hope Vector and Espio didn't suddenly wake up.

I can't hear anything from inside the house... I guess they're still sleeping.

Okay, I just have to get through my window carefully. And quietly...

Ah... there's my bed... But I still won't fly to it from the sill. Just in case.

The shelf, right!

There...

Aaand I'm back in bed.

Ahhh... so cozy...

This was such a great night...

Chapter 5: Relax... right?

A shorter amount of time than the usual - obviously - took between the bee falling asleep and the Sun rising again.

And Charmy could feel a few of those rays warm up the left side of his face, which made him instinctively smil-

And he suddenly rose from his lying position!

"Uh-oh..." he thought to himself. "...It's morning already?"

It wasn't until that very moment that it became clear to Charmy that the time he spent doing his deed the previous night was significantly longer than he had estimated for himself.

Which could mean one really important thing - and really concerning for the bee. His teammates might have noticed that he had been gone!

And a heavy feeling reappeared in his chest. But not one of a somewhat pleasant kind, like what had been manifesting within him for the past day and a half. No; this time, the feeling was a much more uneasy one. Put simply, the bee was not even sure of so much as whether the rest of this morning would go without any incident between him and his detective colleagues.

Still in his bed, Charmy refrained from making any sudden movements. Or making almost any movements at all. For a while more, he kept pretending barely being awake. Well, for at least some part, he didn't really have to pretend.

But very shortly after making such a simple decision, the bee heard a plentiful small noises coming from the direction of the office room. Be it footsteps, an unintelligible conversation, an audible "Yes!" from Vector, his squeaky chair, or a few other stuff.

Charmy deduced that some of those noises sounded... serious. Really very uncomfortably serious.

He decided it was time he actually woke up.

Once out of the bed, he saw more-or-less what he had been expecting he would see, based on all those sounds he had heard. A lively Vector sitting on his chair, casually spinning his left index finger to the rhythm of the music inside his headphones, seeming very happy. And a standardously moody Espio standing beside one of the lockers.

Nothing strange about those behaviours.

"Good morning, gu-" Charmy began saying, half-yawning, until he noticed the time. "It's noon already?! Why didn't you wake me up?"

It was at that very moment that the bee realized it might have been a mistake asking that.

Except it immediately turned out it wasn't.

"Oh, I was gonna," Vector answered, "but we didn't get any new cases today. On the contrary," he continued elatedly, as he smiled, "there's way better news."

The exact phrasing, the exact tone of voice in which the crocodile made that statement - it got Charmy nervous once again. And it felt so good being convinced they hadn't figured out...

"Yeah?" the bee uttered, still refusing to reveal a single thing.

"Vanilla invited us over for lunch," Vector simply continued.

Well, this just meant that Charmy could relax. In fact:

"Yeah!" this notion of his boss' got him excited. Vanilla always made exquisite food, and all three members of the Chaotix always had a great time whenever visiting her and Cream. Not to mention how fresh and clean their place always smelt.

So, yeah, it's no wonder the team's youngest member was so incredibly excited to pay a visit to said place yet another of the many times.

"But we have to hurry," Vector then implied, just a little more seriously. "She says it'll be ready in half an hour."

"Then what are we waiting for?!" Charmy suddenly exclaimed.

"You're absolutely right, Charmy," Vector responded, already reaching for the entrance door before he even finished that last sentence of his.

"Copy that," was all Espio offered to add to this chat.

---

The trip over to the house in which lived Vanilla and Cream, the former of which, by then, was already the girlfriend of the Agency's lead detective, and the latter of which was her daughter, ended up taking a measly 10 minutes. All three detectives were rather excited to make themselves at home within the Rabbit family's house.

Both Charmy and Espio could sense that Vector was getting maybe even too excited about what was supposed to be just a simple old lunch. They looked at each other with slight annoyance. Well, Charmy would have, not too long ago.

But the door finally opened, and standing there was a lovely, smiling Vanilla. Needless to say, Vector's heart rate went steeply uphill.

"Well, hello, boys," the adult rabbit cheerfully greeted all three detectives simultaneously, immediately after which she kissed the crocodile on the lips mouth. Vector... Vector doesn't have "lips".

"Hi, Vanilla," he said back, keeping hugging her. The hug still felt incredibly comfortingly warm, just like it always had. "How are you today?"

"Oh, marvelous, thank you for asking," Vanilla happily responded. "Cream has just finished helping me in the garden, and I made leek soup for lunch."

Charmy was rather very pleased to hear this piece of information "Yes!" he exclaimed in mid-air. Even Espio cracked a smile at that very moment.

Right about then, Cream arrived near the doorstep too, right behind her mother, and after noticing that the Chaotix agents were already there:

"Hello, Mr. Vector," she nicely greeted the crocodile first. Then she, of course, continued with the other two: "Hello, Mr. Espio. Hi, Charmy!"

"Hey, Cream," the bee returned the favour.

"How was your day?" the child rabbit asked all three of them. She, unlike many other Mobians, had been raised to find it nice to ask how others' day went.

"Oh, it went swell," Vector immediately answered. "We ain't got any new cases, but that doesn't matter anymore; we're here now."

"Great!" was Cream's only response.

"Well, why are you still standing outside?" Vanilla inquired, having noticed that, out of politeness, none of the boys had made the chance to enter the Rabbits' household. "Come on in, you must be starving."

Which all three of them, very happily, did.

After all of them settled down for the dining table and already took a few spoonfuls of the soup, Vanilla remembered the reason why she had invited the Chaotix over - to ask them a few really important questions.

"So, did the case with Eggman and the Chaos Emeralds go well?"

"Oh, yeah, you bet it did," the lead detective proudly answered. "You should've been there. The way we just catapulted him so far away," he continued his speech as he made all kinds of wacky gestures with his arms, "was so incredible. It's too bad you couldn't hear him shouting at us as we sent him away."

"Catapulted?!" Cream suddenly exclaimed, to which her mother looked at her more strictly, which the younger rabbit recognized as a sign to lower her voice. "From his own base?"

It wasn't until that very moment that the Chaotix members realized that neither rabbit had even known that the mission of retrieving the Chaos Emeralds from the human doctor had received something of an aftermath.

"Ohhh, no, no, no," Vector jumped in to explain, "a few more things happened after that. Apparently, Eggman found a way to track the emeralds back again. Tails somehow figured it out with... all his devices and everything. So Charmy suggested that we use that tracking to lure Eggman into a trap, and Tails and Espio agreed," he carried on, as the chameleon looked at him strangely. Vector didn't see Espio do this - because he didn't have to. Espio could sort of feel Vector - who was his boss too, not just Charmy's - giving the chameleon the side eye in his mind; which, of course, Espio correctly understood as a sign to refrain from correcting the crocodile. Vector knew very well that the story he was telling was not completely accurate - it was for the most part, though - but he did most everything in his might to make it sound more impressive for his girlfriend to hear. So he continued: "And it worked wonders!"

But, contrary to the absolute amazement that the crocodile was expecting from Vanilla, her reaction was:

"Oh my..." which, of course, didn't sit right with him. "Where is he now, then?"

"...We don't know," Espio responded, Vector being too frozen from the, for him, unpleasant situation. "We launched him even further from his base than he already was when he trapped him. He might be lost, he might already be back," the chameleon continued. And that last statement made the bee feel uneasy and wrong and pressured once again. "There's only one to find out."

Charmy knew it should've been way sooner that he realized all this - particularly the part with Eggman eventually returning well inside his own lair. Unspeakable shivers were sent down his entire body, from the tip of his antlers through the bottom of his feet. It was already bad enough that the doctor's return to his preferred location - whenever that was gonna happen - would make it so much more difficult for him to perform the same sneaky act that he had performed the previous night. That, despite still being an enormous concern, might have actually been among the lesser of his concerns. Something much more dire was going to be at hand...

What if Eggman himself found out?

Charmy hadn't told Sage to do anything like hiding those memories from her "Father" or anything like that. Mainly because that was not at all on his mind the previous night - but in retrospect, maybe it's better he hadn't said anything of that sort. Such a thing might have ruined the atmosphere. That... amazing atmosphere... so warm... which he could even see her take pleasure in...

In fact, worse yet... What if Sage found out what the Chaotix had done to Eggman?!

The chances of the computer girl ever being willing, after obtaining that knowledge, to interact with any one of them ever again - at least on a not-entirely-animose basis - were going to take a pencil-sharp nosedive. And the bee was extremely certain of that.

Either way... Charmy knew that, if he didn't do something already about this whole situation, even though it had not yet taken place... it couldn't possibly end well.

"That can't be that good," Vanilla responded to Espio while Charmy was having all those thoughts, which took no more than two seconds. That statement from the adult rabbit was what snapped him out of those thoughts of his and back at the dining table. He barely even realized that he had been holding a spoon in his right hand this entire time.

"You're not just gonna sit here and wait, are you?" Cream then insisted, obviously being worried too. "He's just gonna make up an even more evil plan!"

This right here was Cream saying something both Vector nor Espio were not-so-subconsciously aware of, but neither was willing to admit to the other. Both felt too uncomfortable to even commit to sighing.

"I know," Vector then said, "but we have no clue what he'll do next, or how he'll do it. You know how unpredictable he is."

The closer the crocodile came to the end of those two sentences, the more he was unintentionally making them sound borderline reassuring. That's why the expressions on both Rabbit family members' faces were ones of a lack of amusement.

For another half a second, Charmy wondered if he should make the new suggestion which had just popped into his mind. But after thinking of the same of which he had thought recently - "Will I get another chance like this?" - he knew the answer.

"We should go visit Tails again," he suddenly suggested.

As he expected - or should have expected - both of his teammates gave him a weird look. The bee was among the last people either of them had anticipate would make, well, any sort of suggestion as to how to fight off anybody, let alone Eggman. Most of what their bee teammate always did just follow the crocodile and the chameleon around.

"I mean..." Charmy therefore carried on, "he might know how to handle... whatever Eggman might be up to..."

But the silence that ensued was just a few seconds longer and more uncomfortable than Charmy had wished it to be.

That is, until:

"You know what, Charmy? You're right," Vector suddenly livened up. "Maybe Tails does know how to deactivate that tracking thing from the Chaos Emeralds! Great thinking, Charmy..." he finished, with a confident smile on his face.

And while Vector's reaction to the bee's proposal might have been an upbeat one, that of Espio was one of mild confusion. Why would Charmy suggest something like that? How, in fact, would Charmy, of all people, even be able to make nearly this kind of suggestion? Espio was never even intending to dismiss the efforts either of his teammates ever put into anything... but this just rubbed him the wrong way.

"Yeah, that's a great idea," Cream, meanwhile, added to the bee's idea. "Mr. Tails is very smart. I'm sure he will know how to outsmart Eggman's next attack."

"Yeah... I hope so too..." Vanilla also continued, not in as optimistic a tone of voice. "I really don't want to fall victim to another one of his plans again..."

And it was this very statement - or, more precisely, the fact that it was Vanilla who made it - that made Vector realize he should probably start taking all of these attacks from the doctor just a little more seriously.

And so, out of nowhere:

"You got it, Vanilla," he suddenly spoke up. "We'll make sure you and Cream never get in trouble with that lunatic ever again!" He even proudly raised his fist in the air at the end of that last sentence... only to notice no one else had followed him up on his out-of-place excitement.

So he simply sat back down and:

"...As soon as we finish our lunch, he-he," he said, nervously.

"Thank you very much," Vanilla said anyway, finding it to be an act of immense courage that her boyfriend was willing to keep her and her daughter safe no matter what.

But more importantly, Charmy was very, very glad that Vector's agreement upon the plan that the bee had suggested was near-immediate. Even if he wasn't willing to explain to the crocodile why that was. Preferably ever.

---

"Oh, hi, guys; what's the matter?" Tails asked, as the times of the Chaotix arriving at Tails' house's entrance door and the fox opening said door from the inside were almost the exact same.

"Hey, Tails," Vector spoke back to him, significantly more firmly and decidedly than how he'd seemed to the fox the previous night. "You still got those Chaos Emeralds, right?"

"Uh... yes," Tails answered, visibly confused by this question. "They've been under my supervision for the whole day. You... you didn't think they got lost in one day, did you?"

"Oh, no, no," the crocodile continued, still firmly, "quite the opposite. You said Eggman used them to track you back. Can you deactivate that tracking?"

"Oh, I already did," Tails almost proudly answered, "10 minutes after you guys left last night."

The shock, within all three Chaotix members, that came immediately afterwards, was by all means supposed to be a fully pleasant one. It did not turn out that way almost at all.

All for three different reasons, of course.

"You mean, the trip here was just a waste of time?" Espio asked the fox, albeit they all knew it wasn't the fox at whom that question was directed.

Tails still answered, though. "...Sorry..."

Vector could do no much more than grunt. "Too bad. I was so ready to give that madman another piece of my mind."

"Don't worry," Tails continued, unenthusiastically, trying to pat the crocodile on his right hand. "There'll be plenty more chances..."

Charmy, on the other hand, didn't say anything. He didn't have anything to say there. This should have been amazing news for the Agency, and for all their friends. The chance Eggman had for tracking down all of the most famous Mobians' personal lives was pretty much gone. Awesome. Swell.

But Eggman must've been close to finishing his way back to the place he himself probably called home.

But much more importantly... both Eggman and Sage must have been worried sick about how the other had been doing, during this noticeably long time that they didn't see each other.

And if Eggman was already back in that base... he couldn't go back there again, the way he had the previous night...

...Could he?

---

These thoughts, contrary to absolutely none of the bee's own expectations, kept plaguing his mind even while he was back in the detective agency's building, hours later, trying his finest to fall asleep. And vehemently failing.

He was once again in the same position on his bed as he had been just about 24 hours prior.

He should have realized the implications of all of his deeds far sooner than when he was meant to let his body rest for the day.

"That was my only chance, wasn't it...?" the bee started thinking. "Did I fumble it...? I don't think I did... Sage accepted those flowers..." he again remembered how... warm he felt when that particular moment took place. But he was so sure that that wasn't impressive enough. "I should've held her hand! I should've taken her outside to see the stars! Why didn't I do a-"

That's when he stopped in his thoughts!

Taken her outside?

Charmy suddenly remembered a certain nightclub in downtown. A place where he, Vector, and Espio went exactly one time, fairly long ago, very late at night, looking for clues on one of their easiest cases. What he semi-vividly remembered from that nightclub was that some really good music was being played there that night.

...Surely Eggman couldn't already have returned, could he?

And even if he had... avoiding him should be a piece of cake for Charmy... right?

"What do you mean, that was your only chance, Charms?" the bee had a change of thoughts right then and there. "Don't be ridiculous!"

Who knows... maybe, against all odds, Sage would end up adoring that place.

"Yeah... I'll do it again."

The only question remaining, in the bee's head, was when to do it.

"...Right now already...?"

And after about five seconds of nothing else going through his head, Charmy easily answered that question to himself.

"Yes... right now already."

Notes:

In case you're wondering why the song "Doctor Doctor" is a tag on this story, the next chapter should clear things up.

Chapter 6: A situation for a nervous boy

Notes:

One very small part of this chapter is once again in Charmy's POV.

Also, I don't own the lyrics to UFO's "Doctor Doctor", just in case that's something I need to say.

Even the last attempt by the moth to avoid getting trapped by Vector, as an attempt to escape, ended up being futile.

"Oh, no, you won't-" the moth began again anyway, but the crocodile's grip was just that impeccably strong.

"Yes," Vector said, in an extremely menacing tone of voice, "yes, I absolutely will."

It was right then that the moth accepted his near-instant defeat.

Although, it did help Vector's case that Charmy had already stung the moth at least twice, and that one of Espio's shuriken had crossed paths with his left upper arm.

But by far the most helpful bit was that - the moth was caught red handed. In the midst of the attempt to slip something into some girl's drink, probably thinking that the sheer amount of the crowd in the nightclub would make it near-impossible for anybody to actually notice what he was doing.

Too bad.

"And you, young man," Vector proudly spoke, belittling the moth even further, "are going away for a long while," as he effortlessly carried the latter outside on the street, to hand over to the surprisingly alert police officers.

Just in case the moth wouldn't somehow get to him anyway, Charmy "hid" to stand right above a ventilation very close to the ceiling, in a position not visible from most of the rest of the nightclub.

Emphasis on mostly.

The bee waited until both Vector and Espio - as well as the moth, of course - were outside. It was only then that he was fully convinced it was safe to get back beside his teammates.

And his judgement was correct. The moth was already being stuffed in the backseat of the shiny police car.

"Yayyy!" the bee exclaimed in excitement. And he also realized something else. "Well, that was over pretty quickly."

That was just about the time both Vector and Espio were about to make the exact same notion.

"That is true," the chameleon pointed out, "even I didn't expect that this case would be solved this quickly."

"I guess so. Can't complain, though," Vector added. "Just gotta collect our pay, right, boys?"

Both Espio and Charmy nodded. Charmy even gave a thumbs-up.

---

That was, at least, how Charmy remembered that easiest case of theirs went, as he reminisced about it whilst getting halfway between the shelf and the sill.

He still had to be completely careful to avoid waking his teammates up. He still had to perform every last bit from the previous night as quietly and calmly as was possible. Just because he had, barely, succeeded the first time, did not mean it would go the same way the second time.

In other words, the bee had to go through all the same steps, all the same careful and quiet landing and walking and everything, all just in order to get far enough from his bedroom without anyone hearing him doing so.

That ended up being a bit more difficult than he had expected. But not a lot more.

Nevertheless, he was, at last, on the street. With the same starry sky above him.

"Uh-oh..." he immediately thought as he looked in a certain direction. "There are no more magnolias there... 'cuz... I already picked them all..."

Those magnolias, at least Charmy himself was sure, had ended up being more-or-less the only gateway to making Sage smile.

"Sage..."

But in fact, Charmy then thought, maybe it was even better that he kept finding more ways, instead of just one, to make her feel the same way she had felt that previous starry night.

Besides, the very reason he even felt so confident in doing all this all over again was exactly because he had figured out a different way, from the first one, of impressing her.

"I guess I'll have to go empty-handed this time..."

And he even kept walking the same path until the point where he had deemed it safe to fly off afterwards.

"I hope she'll like this anyway..."

On the other hand, the amount of time that it now took him to reach the same familiar sight of the human doctor's base seemed significantly shorter. At least, that was how that time seemed once the bee got to see that enormous base before his eyes, in the distance.

A very important question, which had already arisen in Charmy's mind at least once earlier that day, arose again, on that location, on that second night.

"...Is Eggman already back there?"

And, sure, he might answer to himself that there was only one way to discover the answer. But if that particular way made it turn out that the answer was affirmative...

Yeah, no, there had to be a different way.

"But which different way, Charms...?" the bee kept thinking, as he saw that all the sources of the steam emissions were still there. "If he is back... will I be able to sneak in? Did he even fix that window?"

Had it really taken him this long to remember that that window might have still been broken? Apparently so.

Well, this meant that the only remaining option was to take - yet another - leap of faith. Who knows - for all Charmy knew, the overly ambitious doctor might have installed a bunch of lasers or something right outside that broken glass, in case any other fly guy tried making that shortcut to this facility.

---

Turns out the laser theory was astoundingly misfired. The bee's arrival to the place in mid-air just outside that, now already familiar, room inside Eggman's base could not have been any safer.

And one look inside, from the outside, made it clear that everything - or at least that one room - had been in the exact same state as the previous night. Not a single switch upgraded or destroyed, not a single piece of metal displaced, nothing.

"Huh..." was Charmy's first reaction. "...Maybe he really isn't back yet...?"

But he knew it was so, so gullible to think that.

So, naturally, he flew inside.

Now, of course, the bee now "knew" he could just fly his way straight up to Sage's bedroom. He now knew there were no actual obstacles on that path.

But the way he had done it the first time - which included walking for some part, rather than flying the entire time - eventually worked wonders for him. Why should that same method fail now?

And since there was no one around to dissuade him from performing such an act once again, he made up his mind.

The staircase still seemed, looked, and felt unnaturally too long.

"Alright... here you are again, Charms..." the bee thought all over again, having found himself on the outer side of that wooden door. The only gate preventing her from once again seeing that poker face... that lovely face... "Now you've already done it... Now it should be easier... right?"

But all he had to do was knock on the door... again.

That too was something he had already done. He was not supposed to feel nearly as stressful as the first time; he had by now learned that such an amount of stress did not help. And yet...

"Come on, Charms!" he intensely thought. Maybe too intensely.

Knock-knock.

And yes, he once again thought that this might have been a mistake.

No response, again.

No sound at all, again.

He'd have to open it himself... again.

So when he finally opened it... there the cozy lights were. The bee once more felt the same warmth, the same sense of easiness. He again felt like everything was in right place.

And he blushed even before he could notice some movements in the bedroom. This time, it was because he knew whom those movements were coming from.

Just a few moments later, sitting in front of him, on her bed, having gotten not much more than her head off her own pillow, was Sage.

Both of them kept staring at each other for a few profusely long seconds.

Charmy was already smiling.

But Sage, quickly, also smiled.

"Bee boy..." she quietly greeted him.

"Hi, Sage..." Charmy said back. "I promised I'd be back... so here I am."

But that alone did not seem like enough for Charmy to say to the computer girl. He felt like he should've added at least something more.

He knew exactly what more.

"I wanted to see you again."

Sage kept smiling - it was really a smile of honesty - but she started glitching again. Charmy suddenly became concerned... Had he said something wrong?

That is, until:

"Likewise," Sage responded to the bee's words.

And stopped glitching.

For another few more seconds, which felt even longer, Charmy hardly had any idea what to say next. He was, as he had expected, too stunned by Sage's mere presence. And by the fact that she was clearly sharing the same feelings with him.

Luckily, Charmy quickly remembered the main goal of this second visit of his.

"I want to take you somewhere," he therefore said.

At just about the end of that sentence of the bee's, Sage's smile very slowly started fading away.

Charmy noticed this immediately. And he realized that he had virtually no time to decide between saying he would bring her back safely, mentioning the exact location he wanted her to visit, or the third thing. Somehow, saying all three - or even just saying any two of those - did not seem like an option.

He, because of course he did, went for the third option.

"No one has to know," he said. As he laid out his left hand; something he had forgotten to do on his first visit, or even earlier on this visit.

Sage kept staring towards the bee's eyes for close to 10 seconds. Then, her stare changed direction, towards his open hand. After staring in that direction, for another 8-or-so seconds, she looked Charmy in the eyes once again.

Her decision? To commit to sort of the same thing that the bee had - taking the leap of faith.

Put a lot more simply... she placed her own right hand on his open left hand. An action which Charmy followed by getting a more tight hold of her hand. But really just a little more tight.

Just enough for Sage to blush. For the first time that night.

"What do you say?" Charmy finally asked.

Sage's answer, complete with a returned smile, was, at least for her, unusually simple.

"Affirmative."

In his head, Charmy jumped way up in the air from sheer, nearly unfathomable excitement. On the outside, he just sighed in relief.

"Thank you," was all he whispered to her, as he went on to head outside. That particular decision was a calculated one, because now that Sage had taken the bee's hand, this first step that he took - in any direction, and what he had chosen, obviously, was outside that bedroom - would cause her to go in that direction as well.

But it wouldn't take very long - only until they were on top of the long staircase - that Sage suddenly stopped! Accidentally pulling Charmy a centimeter back, making him realize he was to stop too.

When he took a proper look at her, the look he could see on her face was one of great concern. One might think that Eggman would've been successful in programming his "daughter" in a way so she'd never feel any amount of any sort of concern for anything ever, no matter whatever crazy situation she got herself into.

Apparently not the case.

"I am not supposed to be doing this," the robotic, but still ever so soft, voice spoke. Sounding nothing like the way she had clearly felt just seconds prior. "You wish to "

This made the bee realize what was, ironically enough, so far the most unpleasant truth of all, in regards to this mission of his own. Getting Sage to feel the same way for him as he had for her was one thing; and that alone was difficult enough. But getting her to maintain both her trust towards Charmy and her adoration towards him, for the entire time, was going to be an even more exceptionally difficult task.

But Charmy was not even remotely willing to let this very first obstacle get even close to the way of him leaving an astounding, positive, mark on this mesmerizing computer girl's memory.

This attitude of his only meant that, in order to keep her going where he had wanted to take her, what he needed to do, right there on the spot, was come up with a reassurance.

And come up with one, a surprisingly confident one, he very much did.

"You can trust me."

After saying that, he kept smiling, as a way of showing to Sage that he really meant what he had just said. But what he also did was look - for really just a single moment - at their hands being held together.

Way more vitally, he was genuinely very lucky that all of his deeds up until that point were enough for Sage to develop a soft spot for him.

Because that exact state of mind within the programmed girl was successful in prompting her to indeed entrust him.

"I have chosen to trust you," she said out loud, just to make her stance clear.

Charmy's natural reaction to this was to continue going the way he was intending, prompting Sage to follow him.

---

In no time, both of them found themselves just outside the entire building, on the exact location just outside the broken window. Both floating at an amazingly high altitude.

It took Charmy until he looked once again at that room with the gates from outside, now that he had finally made that particular exit for the third time ever, to realize that his suspicions, albeit fully understandable, had made no difference.

"Huh... there are no new traps... maybe Eggman is still not back, after all..." the bee thought. All inside his head, obviously.

Sage, on the other hand, felt the need that her own sentiments were to be expressed explicitly.

"This is an unusual sight," she proclaimed. For a second there, Charmy was worried about what yet another problem had come at hand. But Sage continued: "Is this sighting exclusive to this night? Or is it standardous that the nocturnal view is this kind of..."

The correct word to express her own personal impression with the view she was facing, both of the ground and of the sky, should have been part of the code her "Father" had written as part of the process of creating her... right?

Even Charmy figured that it apparently wasn't the case.

"Beautiful," he therefore said it for her.

This caused Sage to switch her look towards the bee, keep it so for a little over three seconds, then look back at the starry sky. All the while maintaining a look of moderate shock on her digital face. But not an entirely negative kind of shock.

Charmy, simultaneously with that action of hers, realized he had just missed the chance to also add 'But not as beautiful as you'. One part of his heart felt warmer, in a not-completely-pleasant way.

What could have been the next thing he did was make her continue going along with him. He was, truly, just that determined on taking this opportunity. Besides, he had long since crossed all possible points of no return.

However, by that moment, he had become aware that trying doing just about anything by too hard a force might only dissuade Sage from wanting anything to do with him.

And that... that could lead to some really... really bad things...

He just let her stay this way. Being fascinated by the scenery all around her. For as long as she wished.

And hoped that this exact action would not unknowingly lead to too drastic a change of pla-

And Sage let out a tear.

She was still maintaining her poker face, but she simply just let out a tear. All the while still staring at the moonlit sky.

Charmy wanted to tell himself he didn't understand why Sage's reaction to all this would've been this exact one. But he did understand it. Far too well.

Still, he asked her:

"Sage... Is everything okay?"

Sage remained silent for a few more seconds, before she turned to face the bee an simply said:

"Affirmative."

Internally, Charmy once again sighed. The plan needed no drastic change.

And he was going to ask her if they should proceed; now he felt it was to ask that. But before he could...

Sage hugged him.

This was... not something that Charmy was expecting would happen... maybe ever. Or at least, not for a very long while. Something as intimate as a hug, the bee believed, was at the same time very delicate. If handled wrongfully, an attempt at such a thing could fall apart very quickly.

And all the same, the entire front part of his body was now intertwined with that of the girl whom he had fallen in love with barely two days before this very moment. This was happening. This was really actually happening! She was hugging him, at her own will!

It would've been a tough task for Charmy to remember any specific event that had made him happier than he was right then.

And just like with the observation of the sky, the bee let this one reach its natural end as well.

"Where were you intending to lead me to?" Sage asked Charmy, once she decided the hug was lasting exactly long enough and resorted to holding his hands.

Charmy confidently smiled.

"Follow me," he simply answered.

Sage obeyed, as both of them continued heading towards Charmy's hometown. But instead of coming back the same way as he had arrived to Eggman's base - which he obviously couldn't do anyway, if he wanted to arrive at that nightclub - he (and Sage) made a few turns here and there. Before long, their destination was already visible from a formidable distance, mainly because the lights around it were ones Charmy had recognized from that time he and his teammates solved that case there.

"There it is," was all the bee said, as he began descending, to which she kept following him.

Of course, just in order to prevent anybody from accidentally noticing them, the trip that both Charmy and Sage made from the base to the nightclub was done on a very high altitude.

High enough for both of them to miss the sight of a certain somebody typing, extremely frustratedly, the correct password for opening the main entrance to the giant steam-emitting facility...

---

Before actually entering the nightclub, what Charmy saw as a sensible decision was to get himself and Sage standing on top of a streetlamp. This method had actually proven very practical for the bee whenever he wanted to prevent himself from getting seen by potential enemies.

"Alright..." he finally felt confident enough to explain, to whom he now dared call his love, what was at hand, "see that door?" he said as he pointed to a pretty big door across the street.

"I do," Sage answered.

"There's a nightclub inside," Charmy continued. "I would like to take you inside there... so I can dance with you."

And he could immediately see on Sage's face that that kind of concept was foreign to her. She had never done that in her entire life - danced.

This caused her to blush once again.

"That sounds... charming," she responded to the bee's suggestion. To this exact phrasing, Charmy, of course, smiled confidently once again.

But he quickly remembered the more important part of the suggestion he was making.

"But there's something else. We can't go through that door, because everybody will see us. So my idea is," he then pointed to one of the small windows beside the entrance, which weren't reachable to anybody of around the average height, "let's go through that window. What do you say?"

Sage made four changes of the direction in which she watched; twice towards the entrance, and twice back towards the small window.

Her decision was rather quick.

"I comply with your plan," she said.

Charmy let his hand out again, so she'd take it. But of course, they didn't immediately fly towards that little window; they waited until everybody that was on the actual street ended up looking in way different directions.

After a minute, which, to both, felt like at least three, both Charmy and Sage started to worry about whether such an exact moment would ever actually appear.

After another minute, which, to Charmy at least, felt like another seven, the bee gave up on waiting.

"Let's go," he said. Sage had no time to get surprised by this decision of his, before he went flying in the direction of the small window, taking his love by the hand.

---

The instant both the bee and the computer girl found themselves on the opposite side of that window, the first thing they both felt was - warmer!

As in, physically warmer. The weather outside, although relatively breezing on its own merits, might as well have been freezing, in comparison to what the nightclub had to offer for them.

The place where they were standing was the same place, above the ventilation, where Charmy was hiding from the moth during the solving of that case here.

But by far the most important thing about the situation in which both Charmy and Sage were was the latter's reaction to something that she was seeing for the first time.

An incredibly energetic crowd, moving their bodies in one place, in a very lively and reckless way, complete with a weird sense of rhythm conjoined with the equally energetic music - and particularly loud - being played from a handful of different sources.

Sage's reaction? It was one thing to have an entire world's worth of data on a generally agreed-upon idea of a typical experience in a nightclub. Seeing it for herself, on the other hand... being able to judge such an experience on your own terms... an entirely different hemisphere.

Charmy saw her crack a wide, astonishing smile; the most beautiful one he had seen on her so far.

"...Do you like it?" he asked her, being convinced he already knew the answer. He was right.

"I do," Sage answered, in a tone of voice he had never heard from her before. This tone of voice, even though it still was robotic, did not feel robotic. The answer she had just provided felt like something she had genuinely really meant, rather than something she had been programmed to say an answer. Or worse yet, programmed to believe.

Charmy's heart became warm once again.

"I'm glad you do," was all he could think of saying while still keeping the positive mood between the two.

Then, a certain tune started playing across the nightclub. One which Charmy, thankfully, knew by heart, having already been exposed to some of Vector's musical preferences. He knew this song by heart. This was his chance.

"Well, Sage," he turned to face her, again lending out his right hand, "do you wanna dance?"

In the same tone of voice as moments prior, Sage answered:

"Of course."

And so they went on to recklessly move their own bodies, just as a nice masculine voice could be heard from the loudspeakers, singing:

Doctor, doctor, please,
oh, the mess I'm in.
Doctor, doctor, please,
oh, the mess I'm in.

She walked up to me
and really stole my heart,
and then she started
to take my body apart.

Needless to say, Charmy was helping Sage to make her dancing movements look and feel... easier. More... free. More... fearless.

And during the course of the song, Sage got a perfect hold of it.

"This action is... fulfilling..." she wanted to point out to him.

Charmy was incredibly glad about that remark of hers. "Told you you'd like it," he responded.

Livin', lovin', I'm on the run,
far away from you.
Livin', lovin', I'm on the run,
so far away from you.

They even tried a few tricks, like spinning. Sage adored that movement as well.

At one moment, while the song was still lasting, Sage suddenly stopped dancing. Charmy continued for half a second more, until he noticed what Sage had done.

The bee suddenly hesitated to ask anything, especially if there was something wrong.

But Sage, as she kept looking him in the eye and smiling, visibly feeling heartwarmed, took both of his hands, kept holding them, and continued to fixate on the bee's eyes.

Charmy wanted to ask what was suddenly happening, but was somehow unable to let it out.

And that was something that Sage saw as the perfect moment, so that she could lean significantly closer to him, and-

---

Did she just kiss me?

Chapter 7: Lack of official permission

It really was happening. Charmy wasn't imagining things. The thing that he was, even maybe just subconsciously, trying to accomplish - was actually happening.

Sage shared a kiss with him!

And it lasted for a while, too!

The instant Sage took her lips away from him, Charmy first had to wait for a few more moments... To process all this... this particular moment.

It was not just mesmerizing.

It was otherworldly.

At first, Charmy could not do much more than gasp. He continued breathing a little heavily, while he stared straight into Sage's blue eyes. All she was doing was smiling.

Needless to say, both of them were blushing.

"That was..." Charmy was so, so desperately trying to think of just the right adjective. But none he thought of seemed right. So, all he said was: "You're wonderful..."

Sage, for two more seconds, let no sound out, and just kept blushing. Then:

"I am grateful for this experience..." she quietly uttered.

And the bee had enough decency to softly respond with:

"You're welcome."

At that moment, Charmy realized this might be his only chance - okay, maybe not his only chance, but definitely the best one - to say that sentence he always heard in movies. Yes, this was such a good time to do that!

But what if it was too soon? What if choosing this very moment to say it had a chance of ruining... everything? All the things up to, and including, this moment?

Now this meant that there were two options. Of which neither seemed to promise a sense of fortune and serenity in the long ru-

"I love you."

...It just came out of his mouth. Close to on its own. He just recklessly spat it out. It was almost like it came naturally to him. With another big emphasis on almost.

The very moment after he so thoughtlessly made those words come out of his mouth, he instantaneously, like at a finger's snap, became borderline embarrassed.

"How could you say that, Charms?!" was a very visceral thought inside his head. "You were doing everything so well until now... What is she even gonna say now...?"

Upon that last thought, the bee saw what exactly Sage did. Or rather, what she didn't do.

She didn't suddenly back a few centimeters away from him in slight displeasure or disgust. She didn't inexplicably exclaim that maybe this wasn't for them. She didn't storm off. She didn't even turn around to hide the expression on her face or anything like that.

Instead of all of those... she kept blushing. She kept staring deeply into the bee's eyes. And she kept being completely silent. At least for a few more seconds.

After which she, still completely softly, uttered:

"I love you as well, bee boy."

Charmy, of course, sighed. In biggest relief yet. Out loud this time.

"You can call me Charmy," he simply told her.

After a few dozen more seconds of saying absolutely nothing to each other, while the music from the speakers still kept playing, and everybody below them still kept dancing... Charmy spread his arms away from him, hoping that Sage would understand it as the means of him offering her a hug that it was.

But just in case, the bee said it out loud, too.

"Hug?"

Sage didn't answer. Because she was already locked in that hug.

This was the most comfortable silence, by a very long shot, that either of them had ever experienced in their entire lives. There was something so... warm... comforting... exactly right... about that hug. Both of them wished that this very moment would last forever. Or even longer than that. Neither of them had any intention of letting go. Both Charmy and Sage were completely... happy.

Charmy may have remembered, right then, that this night would not actually last forever, and that he'd have to get back to the Chaotix's headquarters before either teammate of his notice that he was again gone - nothing guaranteed that would work again. But, at least for another while, he did not care about it. He was hugging the girl he loved. That was all that matte-

But she started glitching again!

Noticeably more intensely than all previous times!

Charmy widened his eyes in shock. He had no idea what he was supposed to do! Something about this sudden situation felt so wrong! So crucially wrong! And she still didn't stop glitching! The pace at which Sage's dress changed colours between black and white was consistent. This was so confusing for the bee!

"Sage... is everything okay?" was all Charmy could ask.

Just a few moments later - the glitching stopped. Altogether.

But the look, shape, expression that had overtaken Sage's face in no time did in no way complement this return to a "normal" shape.

For a few more seconds, she panted, very slowly. Instead of looking like she was on the verge on tears, she rather looked like she had just discovered a scathingly shocking piece of information.

Because she had.

"Father has returned," was Sage's answer to the bee's question.

Another few moments passed before Charmy realized what she was talking about. And, also, who she was talking about.

It took him no time to become astoundingly nervous all over again.

"You mean, to the base?" he worryingly asked.

"Affirmative."

"Then I gotta get you back there before he notices you're gone!" he immediately panicked.

Sage contemplated interrupting him - simply so as to reassure him that that part of this entire plan was of no issue - but her condemnation towards interruptions in general outweighed said contemplation. Thus, after the bee was finished:

"Worry not about it," she calmly said. "I am able to perform teleportation."

After that exact statement was made, Charmy fully expected that his love would just disappear at a moment's notice, and leave him stranded. But that didn't happen. Because even Sage herself was aware that not only would such an action have been inherently cruel on her end, something like that would have also been no way for the two to part ways.

And Charmy barely realized that that was Sage's exact line of thinking.

The bee didn't ask "So what do I do now?" - at least not audibly - but he didn't have to. The way they both looked at each other - better yet, the way they both saw each other - made them both feel the same way as though he had said it clearly.

Somehow, Charmy wanted to believe - rightfully so - that Sage understood his concern.

The bee even opened his mouth, so as to appear like he wanted to try to say something else... but he couldn't.

But Sage was there to look him deeply into his eyes, which had started to become watery. To spread a most reassuring smile. And to hold both of his hands, incredibly softly.

As Charmy looked back, Sage said no more than:

"We shall meet again."

And the bee desperately hoped that this statement would end up ringing amazingly true, or that he would, at the very least, hear her voice again... soon...

Right when she disappeared right in front of him.

Charmy still kept staring at the exact spot where she was... just moments ago... He could not have called for her... it would not make her come back...

A tear rolled down at last.

And he dropped on his knees.

He didn't even have the will to observe the rest of the crowd. He just shook his own head in disapproval.

There was not much reason for him to do anything but stare at that point above the ventilation, in overwhelming disbelief.

Until a reason did show up! A very legitimate one, at that!

A fist fight broke out on the nightclub's dancefloor. Not just between a few of its attendants, but around two thirds of all the attendants! All against each other!

Apparently, one of them accidentally pushed another attendant the wrong way, that other guy got really angry, and things escalated from there.

Charmy did not even jokingly think about looking in the direction of where said fight was currently taking place. Not just because he didn't have to...

But because he was not even supposed to be there, in the first place! He was supposed to be tucked deeply into his own bed, back in the Chaotix's residence!

So, he didn't even think about what to do! He immediately flew out that small window, finding himself on the street again, and instantly, instinctively flew himself on top of the same street lamp where he and Sage were. But he quickly realized that not even there could he stay for any longer! The night sky was no longer the darkest possible shade of blue; it had become a little bit brighter. Morning was gonna come soon!

Without any thought put behind it, the bee took the shortest possible route to his bedroom - which he had no trouble remembering from the time of the detective agency's easiest case.

Luckily, no one in that entire area was able to notice Charmy, and thus put his presence then and there on record.

Except, of course, for one security camera on the far end of that ventilation...

---

Even Charmy himself found it amazing just how quickly he managed to arrive just next to the place where there were no more magnolias. Even though he had suddenly become very stressed about this whole plan of his - which he only now thought he should've realized would be much more dangerous than he had initially thought, and that nothing more than sheer luck prevented this whole idea of his from falling apart at any given moment - he still felt he should take at least a few seconds' time to check out the field which contained just a few flowers fewer than just a few days prior.

The memories of that first time visiting Sage came flooding back into his mind. How she glowed in the dark. With only a few cozy lights surrounding them. How she actually accepted those flowers. How she actually smiled at him.

How dishearteningly little chance there was, now that Sage's "Father" was clearly back in their lair, of anything remotely close to that ever happening again. With just them two.

"Sage..."

He sighed. In no relief.

But he also noticed that there was an even brighter shade of blue on the sky. He had to get to his bedroom quickly!

This time, on the other hand, he didn't have the will - and even less time - to be so meticulously careful with the entire process of getting on the sill and on the shelf inside his bedroom. Unlike the previous night, he just flew through the open window of his own room, and landed exactly on his pillow.

Equally quickly, he fell asleep.

Would he continue being nearly as lucky as he had been these past few days...?

He highly doubted it.

---

Sage, contrary to the "bee boy" who had shown her more affection than she was able to hope for, stayed awake long after she finished teleporting on her own bed. Even though she was lying down on it, what she chose to do was retrace all the events she had experienced with him. She had all of those saved as footage inside the program that she literally was.

There were a few files she had saved, all containing footage of her interactions with Charmy.

The choice of which file to play first was difficult. Just the sight of each of those files awoke a certain warm feeling inside her.

A feeling which she remembered "bee boy" call love.

It was during their first encounter, in this very room, that he told her about it.

She remembered that the feeling was not just unusual... that it was also not a calculated one. That it was not a rational one. Not a feeling which to cling to.

And that it was a wonderful feeling.

After all, it made the most sense that the first video, in this compilation of hers, that she replayed - would be the very first one in said compilation.

But just as she was about to open that footage-

Knock-knock.

She stored it all back into her memory, so nothing could be seen floating in front of her.

Somebody was knocking again? It couldn't have been Charmy; there was no chance of him flying all the way from the nightclub at that high a speed.

It was, of course...

"Father..." she whispered the moment she saw him enter her bedroom.

She firstly wondered if her "Father" had discovered what the creation he saw as his daughter had been up to during this very short time.

Alas, the doctor did not seem like anything of the sort was even on his mind. He did not look frustrated, not in the slightest. He looked... tired. Worn down. Even his clothes had picked up some amount of dirt.

After more clearly seeing the state in which "Father" was, Sage's reaction changed into that of concern.

"...Are you feeling well?" she asked him.

Nobody other than Eggman himself knew just how tedious the path from where he had landed back to this exact location - all on foot, with no way around it - had truly been. So all he even had the energy to do right there was... sigh.

"I am now," he answered Sage's question. "Just sleep well, okay?" he added, as he kissed her forehead.

"I will, Father," Sage whispered.

Without another word uttered, Eggman closed the wooden door from the outside. And walked away.

After what she estimated was the time it took "Father" to get to the bottom of the staircase - Sage didn't continue to do anything else. Including opening any of the footage.

What she did keep thinking about, and was glad that it wasn't any worse way that this moment had played out, as she began to rest for the night, was how she hid these exact few memories from him, as a means of preventing him from starting to think lowly of her.

Oblivious to the fact that that very action went both ways...

---

What had awoken Charmy the previous night - after his first visit to Sage - was the loud sounds of plates and everything from the office room.

What awoke him now - after the second visit - was exactly the complete absence of any such sound. At the time of him becoming awake that next morning, he was expecting that the other two Chaotix members' routine would be the same as the previous day - had they been assigned a new case, one of them would have snapped the bee out of his sleep ages ago. But he didn't hear the same plate sounds or something like that.

And that was cause for concern.

"Oh, no... Now they figured it out... didn't they?" was the newest distressing thought inside Charmy's head.

The most logical thing to do, he immediately concluded, was to quickly storm out of bed and into the office room.

But there, both of his teammates were fully chilling. Vector at his desk, with music blasting out of his headphones. And Espio standing in front of a locker, leaning against it. Not yet having gone meditating, but clearly on his way there.

Neither of them made any wacky reaction to Charmy's unnecessarily abrupt entrance. Guess the answer to Charmy's currently most worrying thought was, once again, negative.

"'Morning, Vector," he said, way too shyly. The music inside the crocodile's headphones prevented him from hearing his youngest teammate. "'Morning, Espio," Charmy continued, way less shyly, now that he knew he could.

"Good morning to you too, Charmy," the chameleon said back. And that was the entirety of what Espio said to him upon the bee's sudden entrance. There was no other way the chameleon reacted.

This absence of some large set of reactions, both on Vector's end and on Espio's end, made Charmy think he was still "safe". By that point, that assumption was still, miraculously, correct.

"Um... alright then..." he said - mainly to Espio - before he could let the next thought about all this consume a major part of his mind, "...I'm gonna go make myself cereal..."

All Espio did to that was nod.

"Yeah..." Charmy sighed, insecurely again. Naturally, the process of him actually making those cereals went as "smoothly" as anyone who knew him might have expected - he made a bigger mess in the kitchen than really necessary.

Espio was able to hear that mess, and was already annoyed. But his own personal decency prevented him from just standing there and being inactive about what Charmy had just done in the kitchen. So he went there to help him to clean it up.

What he saw instead - was that Charmy was already two thirds of the way through finishing cleaning.

On his own?! Espio was immeasurably more perplexed than he was probably meant to be. But clearly there's a first time for everything.

Just about then, a certain piece of news went on to get emitted in Vector's headphones - he had made them so that they were connected to the radio. And if the crocodile's sudden change of posture - he quickly came sitting upright - was anything to go by, the news were not the brightest ones. But not for the reasons that the news themselves might make most people think.

"We interrupt this music broadcast to bring you a terrible piece of news we have just received," the familiar voice of Nite spoke, obviously not sounding happy having found out about this piece of news himself. "Night Jams, a nightclub in Seaside City, was home to a terrible tragedy last night between midnight and 1:00 AM, when a major physical fight broke out on the main dancefloor. Two people were found dead. Three culprits, all young adults, have been arrested and taken to custody. The Night Jams nightclub will be closed indefinitely. Thank you for listening."

The most natural reaction Vector mustered to this was vivid shock. Without even dramatically opening his mouth! His eyes did widen a bit, though.

"Guys," the Chaotix's boss spoke to both Espio and Charmy, as he turned off the radio within his headphones, "really bad news. You know the nightclub where we solved our only really easy case?"

Charmy, on the other hand, did not just stop with his cleaning. He froze. He even felt like his wings too had come still, despite the fact that he was still in mid-air.

"Yes; what about it?" Espio, on the other hand, answered Vector's question.

"It's been closed. There was a big fight there last night," the crocodile kept explaining.

Even before Vector continued explaining what he had just heard on the radio, Charmy just wished the crocodile would stop! Right now! But stop, Vector did not!

"Two were killed. But three got arrested, for some reason."

Before Vector said that last sentence, Espio had spent the whole listening time having assumed this was supposed to be a new case for the Agency. After all, even the chameleon himself had fond memories of the easiness of their only case there. But after the lead detective was finished, Espio was kind of disappointed.

"Your point is," the ninja detective said, "they already solved all that without calling us for help?"

"Yup," Vector grumbled.

Charmy noticed that, so far, nothing had been said about, ahem, anything else that might have taken place at that exact location and in that exact time. Was Vector gonna try to investigate this further? Despite the lack of official permission? ...Nah, Vector wasn't the kind of guy who'd do that... no matter how tempted... right?

"Well, that seems like a missed opportunity, I guess..." the crocodile sighed in defeat.

That was... apparently it.

But just to make sure that his suspicions might have still been leaking out of proportion, Charmy pretend-commented:

"Oh... that's just... such a bummer..."

All that Vector said to that was:

"I know, Charmy..." and sighed again. His attitude unchanged.

Well, that seemed like pretty much enough confirmation for Charmy. Vector did not yet discover what Charmy had done.

And, by all accounts, Espio shouldn't have, either. This announcement of their boss' was the first time the chameleon too heard about all that.

So the real reason Vector was now so frustrated, Charmy again accurately deduced, was because the Chaotix was not going to receive any payment for solving this new case in the nightclub, seeing as they never even got called up for it.

An understandable source of frustration.

Charmy made a few switches of direction in which he looked; switching between staring at Vector and staring at Espio; trying to see if either would make a single twitch or smirk or just something that would possibly give away that one of them, somehow, did find out, after all.

Nada.

So, the bee really could finally rela-

"That reminds me, though," Vector then suddenly said, "maybe we should go visit Tails. See if his security camera takeover of Eggman's place has improved."

"That... is a marvelous idea," Espio responded.

Security cameras?! ...Of course! What else was Charmy possibly expecting?! Of course Eggman had cameras literally all around his base! The one thing Charmy did not at all account for! In either of his trips!

"Oh, no... No, no, no, no..." he even started sweati-

"Charmy?" Vector suddenly said. To which Charmy... just looked at his boss. Who, along with Espio already outside, was clearly just waiting for the bee to get going. "Let's go?" Vector made it seem like a question, but both knew it wasn't.

But the bee just stared at Vector for... at least six more seconds...

"What?" he suddenly said.

More confused than he had to be, Vector repeated: "To Tails' place."

Charmy's only thought was, of course:

"Just say no, Charms! Just say no! Just open your mouth and-"

"Okay," the bee answered. Vector didn't add anything to it. But he did notice that his youngest teammate was being... even more unlike how he usually was. And the crocodile still couldn't decipher why.

To make matters just a little bit more difficult for the Chaotix's lead detective, one of the first few things he saw once all three got out to catch some fresh air was something he saw in the direction opposite of where they would head for the fox's house. Or rather, a lack of something in that direction.

"Weren't there a few magnolias just over there?" he asked, pointing at the exact location.

Espio looked there too.

Charmy... didn't have to.

"What does it matter?" the chameleon almost begrudgingly answered.

"...I guess you're right," Vector simply murmured. Then, he turned around and started walking away from their residence.

Now Espio was the confused one. "Can't Charmy fly us there?"

"Espio, please," Vector surprisingly immediately made a response. "Even if we don't have a new case, that just means we don't have to run around all the time for once. And a nice walk will suit you. I know it has suited me," he finished in an uplifting tone of voice.

"I agree with Vector," Charmy let out fast, before Espio could make a counterargument to the crocodile's words, in hopes that this would make it two to one; making the decision to turn the trip to Tails' place into a walk a definite one.

It was exactly that way.

"So, it's settled," Vector lastly said.

And... even if Charmy could feel that he was, all too quickly and all too thoughtlessly, going to run out of both his luck and of the lasting time for which his secret remained unrevealed... the choice to walk there, instead of flying, would make for at least some delay on that reveal... even if only by mere minutes...

Chapter 8: On a mere screen

Notes:

I had to make a few grammar corrections in the previous chapter, so there.

"Oh, hello, guys," Tails said right after he got out of his house. His desire to take a simple, short walk was ruined at its very beginning, as his first sight upon exiting his own house was the detective trio... once again. "Wonder how long it's been, eh..." he attempted to sound sarcastic.

None of the Chaotix members found the fox's attempt at sarcasm to be an insistent one.

"Hey, Tails," Vector spoke, still ever-so-confidently, "is it gonna be too much to ask you to let us see how your tracking of Eggman's security cams has been working out?"

In an instant, the mood Tails had gained from narrowly missing his chance for strolling had vanished.

"Not at all," he answered very excitedly. "Get inside," he said, as he got back inside his himself-shaped house, and the detective trio followed him along.

Very shortly afterwards, before Charmy could even begin worrying how exactly the display of all his secret deeds even looked from a few other perspectives, all four of them were once again in that same room where they had already been, with the giant blue screen overtaking one entire side of the room. Tails was quick to happily get back on his seat, show the Chaotix just what he had accomplished.

And it wasn't very little.

"So... I'm glad you asked me this, Vector," Tails began. "I was able to hack into some of the security cameras in his base, and..." he did a bit more typing in there - and more importantly, a lot of computer mouse movements - and the result? "Voilà!"

The next thing the Chaotix agents saw on the huge screen was nine different pieces footage. All showing the hallways which, to all four of them, were now already familiar.

"Oh, look," Vector immediately noticed a very familiar sight. "The window we jumped through!" And he found that sight swell until:

"But he repaired it," Espio pointed it out.

After the chameleon said that, Charmy also noticed it. That, for a moment, made him feel more sad than concerned. This just meant that, in he were to ever again try to go sneak in there to just see the sight of his favourite computer girl, going through that window that he himself had taken part in breaking was no longer even close to an option. Notwithstanding there now being at least two more reasons why making such an attempt was no longer a very good idea.

There was one really important question to which the bee wanted to know a clear-cut answer. But even so much as asking said question, he was sure, might give at least something away.

He tried to think of some way around the question, think to ask Tails something tangentially related to it, so maybe he'd indirectly get an answer. But he came up with nothing.

Luckily, Vector asked the exact question, so far unaware that his youngest teammate also wanted to.

"Can you rewind that footage?"

"Unfortunately," Tails sadly answered, "Eggman's security system is tight. And I mean," he felt the need to hammer his point home, "reeeally tight. So far, all I could break into was the current footage. None of the past footage, sadly."

Vector and Espio were, of course, not particularly pleased by that discovery.

And Charmy also had to show on the outside that he wasn't either. But on the inside, he made the heaviest sigh of relief yet.

Well, he had to deeply enjoy those few seconds that the relief lasted. There was something else that Vector noticed on one of the cameras, which wasn't placed just anywhere.

"Why would that one door be wooden?" the crocodile pointed out, inadvertently making the bee's heart rate go through the roof.

"Maybe it's just a stylistic choice?" Espio offered an answer, while Vector still stared at that particular camera - which would help him to notice something else on that exact current footage - but the latter didn't buy it.

"That doesn't sound like the ki-" Tails went on to say, but:

"Wait a second," Vector exclaimed a little louder, in seemingly light confusion, "is that a magnolia? Can you zoom it in?"

And Charmy's heart only pumped even harder still. He had dropped one of the magnolias, and hadn't even noticed it, until this very moment?!

Zoom in, without question, Tails did.

"It is!" the lead detective exclaimed after seeing a certain flower on the floor. "It's one of those magnolias from that field!"

Even Espio could not help but take a closer look at that very camera's footage. Indeed, the one magnolia lying on the floor was of the exact shape as the one of the many of its kind they both knew had been stationed in that field near their headquarters.

"That's... strange..." the ninja said. "Eggman doesn't seem like the type to pick flowers... for any reason."

"Yeah. His 'daughter' even less," Vector said.

And this very remark of Vector's made Charmy feel... angry. He wanted, so incredibly badly, to tell his boss that he doesn't know anything about Sage, that there's more to her than just that cold stare of hers, that she's really nice and everything if given a chance... But the bee also knew that saying any of that would out him. And all that altogether made him even more angry. None of which, of course, he was gonna risk showing for anybody else in that room to see.

"Speaking of Eggman's 'daughter'..." Tails suddenly said, as he too saw something happening with that wooden door. It was being opened!

And it wasn't hard to guess who was gonna come out of it - well, at least not for the youngest Chaotix detective, who had, at that very moment, basically accepted that his secret would get spilled, and even started feeling ashamed.

But both his teammates' reaction was genuine surprise. At least for a moment.

"Oh, that's her..." Vector whimpered. Then, he wondered about something. "So, what is behind that wooden door...?"

Espio quickly thought of a logical answer, making Charmy feel even more defeated.

"Her 'bedroom'?"

Vector looked at the chameleon, first in a mixture of confusion and disdain... then in a way clearer sense of understanding.

"Maybe it is a stylistic choice after all," Vector added.

Unaware of how Eggman's personal life looked, but aware that this particular part of his base looked nothing like its rest, the crocodile was accidentally right.

One more thing they all saw on that camera was that Sage picked up that magnolia from the floor - didn't smell it - and just smiled.

Three people in Tails' house found this very behaviour by this computer model... weird. Yes, exactly weird. Nothing else.

The fourth one, well, didn't. Aside from still feeling concerned about the possibility of all this coming out, as well as ashamed because he, in retrospect, definitely shouldn't even have tried this, another emotion that manifested in Charmy's mind was, once again... joy. Simply just the pure joy of seeing her mostly poker face again, even if it was on a mere screen.

But after she picked up that flower, Sage kept heading away from her bedroom.

"Well," Vector, once again, correctly concluded, "she must be getting to Eggman... or should I say, 'Father'..." to which he rolled hi eyes, much to his youngest teammate's dismay, "for some new plans of theirs. Alright then," it seemed like that last sentence would be the end of that short rant of his, but not so much, "we're gonna leave you alone to deal with this. You will be able to hack him completely, right?"

"Umph... I sure hope so," Tails semi-confidently answered, as he finally turned his head towards the three detectives.

Two of them stared back at him with complete obvious determination on their faces. But at that same time, Tails also saw that the look on Charmy's face, which neither Vector nor Espio seemed to notice, was neutral. Or, at least, trying to be neutral. But there was just something about the bee's current facial expression - the two-tailed fox could not quite put a finger on what that something was - that made it look like Charmy was really wanting to say 'Please don't do it'. But Tails found it easier to assume - and even easier still to actually believe - that such a face was just Charmy trying to look tough.

The fox still had to finish what he wanted to say. "But it's gonna take me a way longer time to do that."

Right after he said that, Tails remembered something else, with the Chaotix being there in the first place. And asking that question sent just yet another wave of chills down Charmy's spine.

"So, guys... how did case last night go?" A bigger smile suddenly appeared on Tails' face.

"...Which case?" Vector inquired, not initially having picked up what the fox had meant.

"In that night club," Tails added, making both Vector and Espio feel a handy ounce of frustration.

"We didn't even get called up," Espio sighed. "The police solved the whole thing without us."

"Oh..." the sudden smile on Tails' face vanished equally suddenly. "That sucks..."

"We know," Vector exclaimed, almost aggressively. Then, he inhaled and exhaled. "Nevermind. We have to leave you alone anyway," he also added, pointing out at the giant screen.

"Thank you," the fox said shyly, glad that he wouldn't be interrupted during his further work.

Vector just gave the fox a thumbs up and a wink, after which he headed outside. Without any word, Espio followed. And after a few more seconds, and a few more moments of hesitation, which he tried so hard to hide, Charmy did too.

After all three of the detectives were already back on the street, just before they were about to head back home - on foot again, as per the crocodile's orders from earlier that day - Charmy took one last, short look at the entrance door of their somewhat close fox friend's house...

And wondered if Tails had even properly noticed that facial expression the bee had made.

But he knew the answer all too well.

And before either Vector or Espio had the time to ask him why he stood nearly still in mid-air, Charmy quickly found himself next to them, taking the same path back to their office...

---

Sure, one of the things that another one of the cameras had caught up, after the detectives' departure from the fox's personal space, was that Sage had been granted access to another room that was apparently not among the ones Tails had, yet, gained camera access to.

The fox recognized that that was the human doctor's own "bedroom", from the night of reobtaining the Chaos Emeralds.

What he also noticed on that camera - barely, from that very perspective, before the door got closed really quickly - was two more things. That Eggman was inside that room...

And more confusingly, that Sage had hid that magnolia somewhere... inside of herself?

Based on all this information, the most reasonable assumption Tails could make was that Eggman and Sage were about to make a plan probably about equally as devious as most of the other plans which had found their way inside the doctor's mind throughout the vast majority of his, hm, "career". A plan that apparently no one else, maybe not even Orbot and Cubot, were to know about.

But for Tails, this mainly meant that the time before his (and his best friend's) greatest nemesis would attack again would be moderately long.

Around the exact same time, this very conversation with the Chaotix Agency members got him thinking about something. The incident at Night Jams. The detective trio didn't even get called up on the case! That case was, apparently, just that easy.

That didn't feel right for the young fox.

"Should I...?" he thought. He knew, by all metrics, that hacking that nightclub's security footage, unlike the tedious job with those of the vicious doctor's facility, would be a piece of cake. "Yes... I definitely should... Who from there will do anything to me?"

And just like that, he was already making another round of exhausting typing, and an even more exhausting round of computer mouse movements.

Just a minute and a half later, Tails had already gotten ahold of two cameras from Seaside City's most recent crime's scene.

And... nothing clear could be made of that small amount of footage that he had acquired. Not just because the dancing room was way too dark - not at all because of that, in fact; brightening the footage was all too easy - but the more he observed, he felt like it was only the less that he saw.

Much more precision had some previous adventures of Tails' required. Like, a lot more!

But even after 11 minutes of paying attention to the tiniest little detail possible, there was not much more for the genuinely genius fox to decipher, other than basically the following: A crowd dances relentlessly all around the dancefloor. One guy, somewhere in the middle of the dancefloor, to which there is no proper zooming due to the sheer amount of crowd at that exact spot, trips over another guy just next to him, somehow everybody gets into a fight... and everybody else runs away? Except for the dead ones, of course.

The real question for Tails, though, wasn't how the culprits, despite all this mess, were found in the blink of an eye.

"Do they really only have two security cameras?!"

Luckily, during this particular pondering, his hacking system found footage of one more of the nightclub's cameras.

"Oh, wow... three cameras, no less... Don't get ahead of yourselves, club owners..." he kept thinking, sarcastically.

And he didn't find it very helpful that that third camera was apparently placed above some ventilation. Well outside of plain sight.

"Yeah, a veeery smart place to put a ca-"

But the moment the fox made himself actually properly looked at the content of that third camera - he drastically quickly stopped with his honestly lame attempts at sarcasm.

Something on that footage, at that exact moment being shown, got him all confused. A rather strange kind of confused. What he had just seen did not at all align with what he thought he knew about a certain computer model... based on the far too few interactions he'd even had with said computer model.

"...Is that Sage?" he felt allowed to express his thoughts out loud.

By that point - even after this, in fact - the girl whose very existence did not seem to have any reason beyond Eggman's wish to have someone whom to call his "daughter" did not exactly seem like the type of being who would do... partying, of all things...

Or anything outside of her "Father's" very direct orders, for that matter.

"What would she be doing there...? Was... was this a mission she went o-"

But to add more surprise, he saw Sage move a little aside in the footage, and Tails' next sight was even more perplexing. Extremely shocking, in fact.

"...Is that Charmy?!" the fox exclaimed.

But... he had just finished talking to him... and Vector and Espio... And they had said they weren't called for the case...

"He couldn't have been there on his... on his own... right?"

But Espio always seemed astoundingly trustworthy. If he of all people said, in a very firmly tone of voice too, that they weren't in the club the previous night, Tails was willing to believe that true.

"...Nah, that doesn't make sense..." he kept thinking...

Right around the moment that, to Charmy now, familiar music started playing in the nightclub. And just shortly later, Tails would see both Charmy and Sage dancing on top of that ventilation. Together and everything.

Tails was so confused.

"...This can't have been... Charmy's own idea..." he substantially wondered what was even able to cause this very sight before his eyes, "...right?"

Just in time to see them kiss.

"...WHAT?!"

---

There was exactly one worry on Sage's mind, as she was heading towards the personal room belonging to her "Father", figuring out where, and how, to hide this magnolia. That worry, of course, being whether he had found out.

Unfortunately, making such a simple discovery was absolutely within the doctor's reach.

Before making all of her way through the correct halls, Sage managed to store the flower, somehow, inside herself. As in, inside her own code. Essentially, hiding it in plain sight.

But eventually, she was there. Right on the outer side of that door.

Being polite as she was, the first thing she did was knock. Oddly enough - actually, not so very oddly anymore - she too now got reminded of that first time that the knockings at her own bedroom's door turned out to belong to a bee whom she finally felt comfortable enough calling by his real name.

"Get in," a crude voice was heard on the opposite side.

After letting said voice make her feel a certain coldness for a moment, Sage did get inside.

The way Eggman seemed to her - and more so to himself - was not how most of his acquaintances usually saw him. Sure, he was looking at Sage's eyes for a prolonged time, but that look was not one of terror. Not even one of anger.

He sighed without opening his mouth.

Even for Sage herself, this was... odd.

"You wished to see me, Father," the computer girl spoke.

A lot was on Eggman's mind. How incontrovertibly livid he was from falling into such a prank that involved a giant elastic catapult that actually managed to get him launched. How damning and devastating a revenge he so desperately wanted, and had all the necessary skills, to bring to life. How humiliated he felt.

Only one thing was on his "daughter's" mind. Charmy. And whether she had accidentally revealed any of it, without even being aware of it. Sure, she had made the most possibly sure her own program would prevent him from finding anything out... But a piece of data is never safe enough.

"I did," the doctor finally spoke. But all he said at last, after sighing with an open mouth, was: "...You have done a diligent job since I created you." For a moment, that seemed to be it. Until he added: "I am very proud of you."

From concerned, Sage slowly went to reassured.

"I am grateful to hear that, Father," she responded.

After a pause, Eggman said just one more thing to her. "You deserve some rest."

And Sage... didn't know how to feel about this. Did "Father" want her to leave him alone? No other assumption was to be made from this statement. But why? Was his presumed feeling of humiliation just that strong - that he wanted to process it all alone? That assumption made an astounding amount of sense.

"Very well, Father," Sage therefore said. "Is that all?"

"Yes," Eggman simply answered. He thought he smiled to her upon that, but he really didn't.

He was also going to say that she was free to go back upstairs. But the silent understanding of that notion was mutual.

And so, Eggman was left alone. In his own room. More devastated than he should've let himself be. And even more revenge-thirsty than he had been when he finally hit the ground that other night.

He was about to obtain a delicious, warm, soul-fillingly satisfying taste of a marvelous revenge...

And, in fact, now that he had "accidentally" discovered at least one place where some of his regular foes clearly frequented, one peculiar idea washed all over his complex mind...

---

But the young fox was still sitting in front of his giant computer screen, even a few long, long minutes after he made a discovery most stupefying. He still kept staring at the footage which showed, by far, the most unlikely couple... apparently ending up... together? With his mouth wide open in utter unbelievable shock.

"No way..." he uttered a phrase which he would repeat a handful more times on that very location, which would end up turning into laughing with excitement. "No way... No way... No way...! No way, ha, ha, ha..."

This was real, completely unedited footage that he was watching! This was something that had actually happened the previous night! Charmy... and Sage... were kissing. And hugging, and everything. They seemed really happy on that camera, too.

"They even told each other 'I love you'?!" he also exclaimed.

It was now that a few things started making sense to Tails.

"So that was why Charmy looked nervous just now," he kept thinking out loud. "And why he looked scared when I mentioned cameras... And the flower! Of course, the flower. He brought that magnolia to Sage?!"

The two-tailed fox was well aware he wasn't even the one who should've been most amazed by this situation. That title was definitely to belong to his older teammates.

"They don't know..." he concluded. "They would've grounded the living hell out of him if they did... Ooohhh, Charmy... You've got yourself in so much trouble, and you don't even realize it... Or maybe you do..."

There was another thought that followed these particular conclusions. Odds were very high that, later that day - not even that far ahead from now - all three detectives were going to head to the place of someone particularly close to their leader.

And a discovery like this, a cunning idea sparked his mind, could not go unrevealed. At least not completely unrevealed.

Next thing you know, Tails was waiting for the dial on his cellphone to be answered.

"Hello, this is the Rabbit family residence," a sweet voice of Vanilla spoke.

"Hi, Vanilla, it's Tails. Uh, just one question. Are Vector, Espio, and Charmy coming to your place for lunch today?"

"Yes, they are," Vanilla happily answered.

"Great! Do you mind if I also chime in?"

"Not at all! I'm so glad you're willing to come over as well," the adult rabbit continued speaking in the same sweet tone of voice. Although, these very questions by the fox made her wonder: "Is there an arrangement you made with the boys?"

"...Yeah... You could say that."

"Very well. Just be here in an hour, alright?" Vanilla finished.

"It'll be my full pleasure," Tails said. "See you," as they both hung up. After which Tails already got out of the giant screen room, and got ready to finally get outside, maintaining a big smirk on his face...

Notes:

So, what is Tails about to do? Will he spill the beans to a bit too many people? Or will he find a way to let just Charmy, nobody else, know that he has found out "bee boy's" secret?

Chapter 9: Figured out

"Hey... Sage, right?"

Those were the first few words. The first few that Charmy had uttered during this whole... process.

It wasn't until right now, just after finishing this small conversation with her creator, that a certain little girl had just the amount of time  she neede- hm... wanted, so she could take all those data, from inside her own program, which still contained all of the time she had spent with the bee, all untampered with, and have this footage played in front of her. All of it.

Starting from the beginning, of course.

"I know I'm not supposed to be talking with you... but I think you're really cool, even if you're a bad guy."

It was already during that night that Sage had stored this piece of information inside herself, as little more than a piece of data.

It wasn't until that morning that she retraced said piece of information, in order to be able to observe it in greater detail.

The most noticeable segment of what she had played thus far in front of herself was... that Charmy - whom she was no longer willing to call something as demeaning as "bee boy" - called her "cool". It having been built into her program, Sage already knew what the word "cool", the way Charmy had said it, was meant to mean. Until this replay, the only way she was certain that the way the bee that night had thought of her was positive was because he had a strong desire to present her with flowers. But now, after the replay, after properly seeing him call her cool, there was one more thing which had just been made clear to her. Charmy was complimenting her.

From the very beginning, the ways Charmy wished to create a spark in Sage's program were not just pleasant physical gestures. They were verbal as well.

It took the computer girl until this very morning to realize just how truly special the feeling Charmy had instilled in her was. It wasn't just for this short time of her holding those magnolias that he had brought to her that this warm feeling lasted. It was during the entire time she had spent with the bee. From this first arrival of his to her bedroom, until the moment they both had to escape from that nightclub. For that entire time, this warm feeling was firmly there.

"If you ever wanna be a good guy, you can come to the Agency... If you want to."

Now, this... This was a peculiar wording of an offer. A very innocent offer, really. So innocent, in fact, that said innocence might have been the whole point.

The way Dr. Eggman designed and created her, Sage was, basically, officially obliged to pledge all of her allegiance to her "Father". To devote every last bit of her loyalty to him. To ensure he was always safe, that no overly terrible misfortune was thrust upon him. But immeasurably more importantly, that the closest possible thing to genuine, unfiltered support existed for the doctor.

And at the time of coming into existence, all those things were something Sage was willing to, quite literally, dedicate her entire existence to.

But that was at the time of coming into existence. Quite long before...

Now, after a series of events she had thought out of reach had in fact become part of her own experience... Sage started developing second thoughts. Or at least, the notion of all of her "Father's" plans - that she knew of - being the way to go... was slowly starting to lose the amount of sense it made.

She wanted to witness more of Charmy's presence.

Considerably more.

Which she could no longer achieve. At least not now that her "Father", whose potential discovery of all that had unraveled might have very undesired consequences, was physically around, and there was very little way of making him fail to notice if anything out-of-the-ordinary were to be going on in his close proximity.

This realization of hers made a few tears roll down her artificial face.

That, along with another uttering of the bee's from within the footage, which the computer girl was replaying a few more times, just for the her own comfort.

"It's called love."

Sage remembered how she herself felt back then when Charmy said it. How warm a feeling it was.

And perhaps more significantly of all, that both she and Charmy were sharing that exact feeling.

It was that very moment. That first night. It was that which Sage wanted to experience more of. A lot more of.

Unfortunately... whatever plans "Father" had for her - and he clearly had plenty... for whichever distant day the major-scale quarrel with a little blue hedgehog was over... for when there's barely anybody there to remember nearly any of the current events... must have been wildly different.

Worst of all... Sage herself had yet to discover what those plans even were...

And... that there was just one, not so tiny, piece of information that "Father" had omitted from her code...

---

"I am so glad you made it, boys," Vanilla was saying to all three of her closest detective friends shortly after arriving at her house, as she and Cream were getting the dining table astoundingly clean and ready for the second Chaotix-joined lunch in a row.

As Vector was watching the two ladies make way for a nicely organized table, the mesmerizing smell of the spaghetti-bolognese was making its way through the crocodile's nostrils. After his head tilted to face the actual pot filled with the spaghetti, something felt wrong about it. The amount of it seemed to be just a bit too much for just the five of them.

Just in time for Cream's mother to remember: "Oh, one more thing, I forgot to mention it; Tails will join us too."

All three detectives were sort of surprised by this announcement. Sure, there had been that one time that Rough and Tumble, of all people, had made all five of them company. But that time was very much an exception. Tails' arrival seemed much more reasonable.

Well, Charmy was a bit more than just "sort of" surprised. The fox was a technological prodigy, after all. Even if neither Vector nor Espio were, at least until this very moment, able to figure out that anything was "wrong" with the bee, let alone just what, Tails definitely could. And it would already be bad enough if Charmy's teammates even found out at all... the potential damage might be even more damning if their source of this knowledge was a second-hand one.

"Did he say why?" Espio asked Vanilla.

"No," the adult rabbit answered, "he just said he wanted to be here, so I accepted him in. Not before he asked whether you boys would be here too. Perhaps he wants to share some new discovery of his with you?"

In other words, what Charmy had only thought of - or rather, feared - Vanilla just said out loud.

Might it have been just minutes... for real, this time?

"That sounds fast, but it's plausible," Vector answered his girlfriend's question. "We've been to his place this morning, just two hours ago. Maybe he really did find something in meantime."

Which was something the crocodile genuinely wanted the outcome of the two-tailed fox's arrival to this place to be. Therefore, he made a slow, careful check through the kitchen window, so he could see if there was anything yellow-shaped in the distance that was becoming gradually bigger.

Not yet.

"I guess there's just one way to find out," Charmy suddenly blurted out.

To which Espio looked at his bee teammate in slight confusion.

"Yeah... I guess so..." Vector sighed.

Luckily, it wouldn't be too long until a yellow shape did come way closer to the house.

"Hello, everybody," the fox said, pretending to sound insecure, but still offering a nice smile to lighten up the mood. "Hope I'm not too late."

"Not at all," Vanilla responded, "you are, in fact, exactly on time."

"Great!" Tails exclaimed, genuinely looking forward to the spaghetti-bolognese he almost immediately smelt, to the extent of rubbing his hands. Which reminded Vanilla of one more thing.

"Wash your hands first, please."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered.

Once all six of them were finally at the table... no one said anything. One might assume, partially correctly, that the reason behind this silence was because all six attendants' mouths were filled with food, and attempting to speak in such a state would, before all, be rude.

But that wasn't the only reason. That, in fact, was not even the main reason.

More noticeably, at least as far as Vanilla was concerned, Tails was completely silent. An odd contrast to the somewhat excited that he had sounded on the phone. Vanilla did remember that Tails had told her that, uh, it could be said that he'd had an arrangement with the Chaotix members.

But now, the fox didn't even look like he felt like speaking.

Again, on one hand, they were all, which included Tails too, in the middle of eating the spaghetti, which meant that he was even physically being prevented from coherent speech. But that did not change the fact that something about this attitude of the fox's did not sit right with Vanilla.

Nevertheless, she waited until everybody's plate, including that of her daughter's, was empty. And during said waiting, even she couldn't help but notice that Charmy, unlike most of the time, wasn't making any sort of mess.

So once all the plates and cutlery had already been placed into the kitchen sink, the adult rabbit realized there were no more excuses to avoid asking the young fox the obvious question.

"Well, Tails," she began, maintaining an upbeat voice, "what was it you wanted to speak of with the boys?"

By that point, Tails had come dangerously close to forgetting the very purpose for which he had arrived at the Rabbit family's residence. The taste of the meal he had just had was just that good.

This question of Vanilla's, fortunately, got him reminded of that purpose.

"Right," the fox suddenly exclaimed. But given the nature of his actual discovery, he felt that revealing this to anyone other than a certain someone in that room would be a massive mistake. So he had to quickly find a way to evade truly answering. "It's just something between me and the Chaotix."

Vanilla - nor Cream, for that matter - although surprised for a short moment, wasn't confused. Perhaps, they were both sure, this was part of yet another major plan about which none of Tails nor the detectives were going to risk spilling the beans.

The detectives in question, on the other hand? Vector was already awaiting whatever new piece of information about... well, anything... But even he didn't understand why Tails' phrasing was made to seem like something to be kept a secret from either rabbit.

Espio's twisted thought, on the other hand, was that somehow, even they, the detectives, were - kind of - meant to remain unaware of whatever the fox genius wanted to say to them. And Espio's thought was correct.

Because Charmy's was not particularly far behind.

But after Tails saw that, verbally, none of the Chaotix members had reacted, he decided he wanted to add:

"Specifically-"

But just then - the clock rang?

Both Cream and Vanilla widened their eyes, rapidly switching their view towards a clock that was dingling just on top of the microwave.

"Mother!" Cream immediately cried out. "We're going to be late!"

For a second, Vanilla said nothing. Then, she got up from her seat and:

"Hurry," she told her daughter. Cream quickly got up too, after which they both ran to their respective rooms.

"Do I just... wait here or...?" Vector asked.

"Oh, hold on, Vector," Vanilla answered, as she had already gotten behind a closed door.

But this instilled confusion into someone else.

"Late for what?" Espio asked.

A few moments later, both rabbits were back in the dining room, wearing winter coats, with Vanilla also holding a big bag in her right hand, that seemed heavy. They both seemed excited.

"The girls and I," Vector explained to the chameleon, "are going skating on the new ice rink in town that opened another day."

"It's going to be so great!" Cream confidently exclaimed. "I can already see us there!"

Clearly, both Cream and Vector - and Vanilla too, as it would turn out - were incredibly eager to experience this new ice. And they clearly weren't about to risk getting stuck in the crowd that was inevitably going to gather on that location.

"All three pairs of skaters are in the bag," Vanilla reassured both her daughter and her boyfriend.

And just as Vector was about to rhetorically say 'So, we're ready to go?', someone else interrupted him.

"So, you're going ice skating?" Tails asked.

"...Yes," Vector answered, wrongfully wondering why he, Vanilla, or Cream weren't able to make sure that notion was clear as day. But he got interrupted once again before getting a chance to continue.

"Well, have a good time," Tails said, in a strangely confident tone of voice. And something about that tone voice made it seem like he had more to say. Which he did. "And be sure to not break any bones or anything. You might have to scream 'Doctor, doctor, please; oh, the mess I'm in'."

Exactly as the fox himself had expected, none of Vector, Vanilla, nor Cream were quite on board with why Tails felt the need to say that at all... let alone with such a weird, flagrant attitude. Not flagrant enough for any one of them to question it, though.

And - also exactly as the fox himself had expected - Charmy felt like his heart just dropped into a bottomless abyss.

The most the bee even had the pride to do was close his eyes in shame.

"Uh... of course..." was Vanilla's response to Tails' words. Immediately shifting back to her usual attitude: "Well, we'll see you all soon."

As the three headed outside the house - not too slowly, either - another three were left "alone" just outside the, now locked, house.

The one who thought he had the rest of his day planned out - and was mostly right - spoke first.

"Well, Tails, it's been nice hanging out with you... these five minutes..." Espio began, "but I gotta take Charmy back to our office."

"That's okay; I'll take him there," Tails insisted quickly, very firmly, and in a very, very stern tone of voice.

Charmy was able to tell exactly what this meant. So all the bee could do was hold his eyes closed, in sheer shame.

But Espio was, of course, startled. There had been some... other people in his life, who had taken the liberty of attaining this sort of voice when speaking to him. Tails was definitely not even close to one of them, in any way.

"Uhhh..." was all that the chameleon could muster.

"This thing I came here to tell you about," Tails continued his, heh, explanation, "it's specifically Charmy whom I want to tell this. It's... something just for him." For an extremely brief moment, the fox considered adding 'Okay?' to the end of that sentence, but ultimately decided that that would've made his statement sound weaker.

Espio, though, still wasn't fully convinced. Not just because Tails had suddenly expressed a desire most unusual for him, but because of the way the bee acted all the time. Even if the chameleon noticed that Charmy had stopped being, well, Charmy, for the past few days... Espio was sure that wasn't going to last. At all.

"Are you sure you will be able to handle him?" the ninja asked Tails. "He can be a bit reckless at times, you kno-"

"Rest assured, Espio," Tails had to interrupt if he wanted to remain so stern, "bee boy is in safe hands," he finished, knowing fully well that this exact phrasing would make Charmy wish even more that the latter were just about anywhere else. All to anybody else's complete obliviousness.

After a few more seconds of thinking, Espio made his decision.

"Very well, then," he said. "You'd better know exactly what you're doing."

"No problem," Tails smirked.

Once both Tails and Charmy had made sure, through sheer observation, that Espio - or really anybody, while they were at it - was, by far, far away enough from them...

Tails turned, really, really slowly, so that he could watch the youngest Chaotix detective directly in the direction of his small orange eyes. All the while maintaining a full, laughably exorbitant smile on his face.

He even leaned his right hand on a wall of the Rabbit family's house.

And Charmy... didn't want to be going through this. To put it astoundingly lightly.

For about 10 more seconds, the bee kept looking away. In all other directions except at Tails' face. He even jokingly observed how beautiful the leaves were at the few trees near both of them.

But it made no sense.

After making a big, necessarily heavy sigh... And after a few more seconds of very loud silence... Charmy finally had to speak.

"Please don't tell anyone; Vector and Espio are gonna kill me," he let out pretty fast, suddenly starting to feel far too weak. Not quite on the verge of tears, just... desperate. Down on his knees.

Borderline pleading.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," Tails said, sounding reassuring, which wrongfully seemed to be enough for the youngest Chaotix detective to relax.

Which turned out quite a mistake.

"I won't have to," Tails added. "I can already see you spilling the beans sooner or later."

And another wave of chills through Charmy's body. Tails knew that would be the bee's reaction, and Charmy knew that that was how Tails had planned it.

He, Charmy, frowned again.

"Now, come on," Tails finally concluded, "let's get you back to your place, shall we?"

"...Fine," the bee, begrudgingly, answered.

---

One last look, from a fair distance, was needed for the accuracy of the entirety of the newest series of calculations the human doctor had just turned into a reality, in the form of his newest, expectedly extravagant creation, to be fully confirmed.

"Yes..." Eggman, very calmly and very excitedly at the same time, grunted, as the full day of work seemed to have paid off. "You are ready..."

One really crucial thing that made the doctor so viciously sure of the eventual successful execution of his newest idea was not just the shape of his latest "vehicle" - a spiky construction that works as a biplane, a truck, a rocket launcher, and a catapult of sorts, all at once - but also a certain few bits of his recent memory.

Especially the location at which that humiliation of his began.

If that many of his regular rivals had gathered in one place, a conclusion that Eggman himself had not yet known was accurate, then that place can't have been too far from the home address of at least one of them.

"Now they will be the ones who go through this farce," he angrily thought out loud. "So they can see, first hand, just what that's like!" was the conclusion he proudly made - as he was just tired enough to put this plan of his off for the next day, and get what he personally believed to be a well-deserved rest.

Just unaware enough of how little approval he came to maintain from whom he still called his "daughter".

And even more unaware of any other of the "daughter's" thoughts... For now...

Notes:

So, yeah, the 6th chapter was not the entirety of the relevance that the "Doctor Doctor" tag had. So, there.

Chapter 10: Explain

Notes:

Sorry for the delay; I was working on some other personal stuff. But here you go.

Tails' departure from the Chaotix's office, once he safely returned Charmy there, was just quick enough for Espio to miss his chance to ask him an obvious question. The pace, in fact, at which the fox had done his whole procedure of dropping Charmy off and then simply instantly leaving was near blink-and-you-miss-it speed, even for someone who constantly hung out with Sonic. Which, of course, got Espio bewildered.

So, there was only one other person left for the chameleon to ask said question.

"Well, then..." Espio began, knowing that Charmy would figure out it was him at whom this question was directed, "You should be willing to explain this on your own... but still..."

Just as the chameleon had predicted, no more than two seconds lasted until Charmy realized Espio wasn't just blurting things out randomly.

"What was it that Tails told you? That Vector and I just couldn't hear?"

And now... he had to provide an answer. To not just any question.

Invent one? Yeah... inventing one sounds good, Charmy decided in his head.

"It's a secret," the bee answered. Almost proudly.

Except that... that answer was actually kind of true.

And without giving too much of it away, Charmy was desperate in hopes that Espio wouldn't question this much further. Any further, in fact. After all, Espio was not exactly nosy; something along the lines of the bee's hopes ought to happen, right?

Exactly.

"Fine," the chameleon calmly responded. It was, once again, time for Charmy to sigh internally.

After sighing externally too, just a second later, the bee spent a few more seconds looking around. Just because Espio's latest response was both as quick and as simple as it was - wasn't all the reassuring for the youngest Chaotix detective that it could've been. So, just in case Espio wanted to speak again too soon, Charmy blurted out:

"So, do we have any new cases or...?"

This was, in fact, something Espio too wanted to know. Their rent was coming up fairly soon, and neither Charmy nor Espio were sure whether they had amassed enough money to pay it. Given that the Chaotix's only source of income were the financial rewards they received from solving any and all cases they got called up for, the chameleon's reaction was obvious.

He went on to search in a drawer below Vector's desk - that was where the crocodile always put all the important details of every case they ever had - or at least tried to look there. Once the drawer was actually opened... all Espio saw was a bunch of papers. That's it - just a bunch of papers, stacked on top of each other! To the chameleon, every last one of those papers was profoundly indistinguishable from every other one.

And he already started feeling tired from the searching through those papers - which he didn't actually even commit to!

To Espio at least, the only fairly reasonable answer to Charmy's question was:

"I don't think so... sorry..."

To which Charmy sighed. Genuinely. Understandably; neither of the two of them were any satisfied with how their financial situation had been, uh, "progressing".

Nevertheless, that wasn't the only thing on the ninja's mind. Sure, whatever revelation Charmy and Tails had shared between themselves earlier that day might have been just something that no one else was to find out... But Espio's curiosity was just not letting him go.

"Maybe it's nothing big..." he thought... very sure that that probably wasn't the case...

---

"That was amazing, Vector," spoke Vanilla, in a fascinatingly happy tone of voice, back in front of her own household. Her boyfriend and her daughter shared the exact same sentiment as she did, about the event from which all three had just returned.

"I agree, mother," Cream also exclaimed, extremely excitedly. "That moment when all the lights went on you two was so cute!!!"

Both Vanilla and Vector blushed upon remembering that moment, of them two standing in the middle of the ice rink, holding each other's hands, and kissing. A lot of pink lights swarmed upon them, and it wasn't until their kiss was over, and they both reopened them, that they even noticed those lights. A handful of fellow ice rink attendants applauded them. Even Cream did.

"Yeah... that was pretty swell..." Vector pointed out, still thinking about that particular moment. The whole trip would stay in the crocodile's memory for a while, that much was a certainty. But what was also a certainty was that by far the finest memory from said trip would be this very moment which Cream was referencing.

"Can we do this again next week? Pleeease?" the younger rabbit insisted, being one step away from pulling both her mother and Vector by the hands and making puppy eyes.

To this question, Vector and Vanilla didn't even have to look at each other - although that was what they instantly did. They both had the same answer to Cream's question. They even smiled again.

"Of course, sweetie," Vanilla answered.

"Yay!!!" the daughter exclaimed in pure joy once again. "Thank you so much, mother!"

This, of course, did not go with the child rabbit hugging both of the adults simultaneously, and keep doing so for a few more seconds.

Now, though, was the time for Vector to sigh, and hand over the ice-skaters-filled bag back to his girlfriend.

"Well, ladies," he spoke, "today was a very good day, but I must go check in on the boys."

"Very well, then," Vanilla responded, still with a big smile on her face. "Have fun with the boys. We'll see you tomorrow again, right?"

"You got it," Vector said, winking at his girlfriend.

Not particularly long afterwards, the crocodile was already a bit away from the Rabbits' residence, on his way to where he had probably been supposed to be the whole day. And while the memory of his most recent experience was still very fresh and very pleasant - the smile on his face had already started moderately slowly fading.

Who could've possibly known what mayhem either of his detective colleagues had caused, in their office alone.

"They are still in the office, right?" was the extent of his thoughts. "They couldn't have gotten to wandering around in this short time... right? Oh, come on, Vector, of course they could..."

The lead Chaotix agent's suspicions were, much to his exorbitant relief, diminished a few seconds even before he entered his office after seeing it from afar. That both Espio and Charmy were still inside, he could, put somewhat simply, just feel.

Immediately upon loudly slamming the entrance door wide open, what he encountered was the chameleon in yet another meditating session.

Vector had been advised, multiple times throughout their career, by the chameleon himself, rather uneasily, to refrain from interrupting Espio in his meditations. What the ninja detective had meant each one of those times was that he was not going to take such an action any lightly. On anyone.

The way the crocodile understood this warning of Espio's was that he, Vector, couldn't even do so much as say 'Hi' to the chameleon, or many things would go wrong.

So he just heavily sighed. And remembered that the remaining Chaotix agent still wasn't within his sight.

After widening his eyes in concern for a second, he ran to the kitchen... Only to see Charmy... doing the dishes? Completely on his own! Again!

This very sight left Vector genuinely substantially perplexed. Charmy, of all people? All he does all the time is just fly around the office. He may not make a lot of mess, but whenever he does, either Vector or Espio clean it up after the bee. For the time being, this exact reasoning could be excused; Charmy was, for now, far too young to be held responsible for just about anything.

Was.

It seemed, against most of the possible odds, that the bee had finally taken up at least one chore on his own. All by himself. Unpressured by anybody - at least that Vector himself knew of.

The crocodile wanted to ask Charmy what it had been that persuaded him to... hm, even think about doing this. Had he lost a bet? Was this a punishment from Espio? From possibly him interrupting the meditation?

This thought made the lead detective take one more look at Espio, who still kept seeming completely calm. Espio didn't seem like his entire... process... had been broken even before Vector had returned. So, that option was ruled out.

In other words, the mystery of Charmy's sudden cleanliness had been left unsolved.

But all that Vector could actually muster to say out loud to his youngest teammate right when he saw him was:

"Hey, Charmy..."

"Hi, Vector," Charmy said back, quickly turning his head from the sink towards his boss. Kinda importantly, he didn't smile, like he usually would. Like mostly anybody would've expected him to.

And Vector very much noticed that Charmy did not smile. And he tried his absolute best to avoid saying anything about it... and succeeded.

"...Any fallout between you and Espio I should know about?" he still asked.

"What? No," the bee answered defensively, but passively. "Why do you find it, um... strange... that I did the dishes on my own?"

And even though the tone of voice in which the bee uttered those words was incredibly unconvincing - which caused the crocodile to give him a look of not being almost any convinced - Vector did not have much choice but to believe Charmy, in the middle of the latter rolling his eyes.

"He's right," Espio said, materializing right next to who was his boss too, scaring him out for a brief moment.

"Seriously, Espio?! How many more times are you gonna do this?!" the lead detective shouted at him. It was a "habit" that the chameleon had no intention of brushing off.

"You're getting of the subject, Vector," Espio insisted. "This isn't even the first time this week that Charmy just willingly did the dishes," the ninja continued, in a consistently crude tone of voice.

It wasn't so much anything else, as was that crudeness in Espio's voice, that made Vector turned his head towards the chameleon, being weirded out by that particular delivery. The crocodile kept staring at him for a few more seconds, until:

"The way you said that was like that's a travesty," Vector went on. Espio internally rolled his eyes, and that too Vector could feel.

"I can hear you guys, you know," Charmy suddenly said, making both of his older teammates turn their heads towards him in slight discomfort. Only, a moment later:

"Good!" Espio responded, much to another ounce of shock of Vector's.

"Did you just say 'good'?!" the crocodile continued, all the while they were both standing just outside the kitchen, making Charmy feel very dismayed. And annoyed. Really, really annoyed. Luckily - or so it would seem - Vector still proceeded with talking: "You see he wants to be left alone. And he's working hard. Will you, please?"

Just because the one making this order was officially his boss, Espio sighed.

"Fine," he said, still crudely, and went back to the exact place where he had been meditating. Wait, sorry - started going back to that place.

Because, just about then, it was Vector to whose mind the idea of questioning all this what Charmy had been doing came.

"Although, I do wonder too," the crocodile spoke, which, most significantly, meant that Charmy's relief which had come as a result of Espio's eventual withdrawal did not last almost at all. "You haven't been recklessly flying around the office, you did the dishes on your own, twice," Vector still relentlessly continued. "One might think you're trying to impress someone."

And it was really lucky that it had been natural for the crocodile to look around while he said all that, so he couldn't notice the sudden frozen state at which Charmy arrived in the blink of an eye. The point of no return would be crossed any second now. Nothing about this situation led to anything else.

"He's gonna figure out... isn't he...?!" was the only thought, and would remain the only thought, that raced, ever so intensely and ever so rapidly, around every last corner of the youngest Chaotix Agency member's mind.

Even though the way Vector was saying his latest sentence was an ironic. Just jokingly. Yes... absolutely jokingly... No other possible manner.

A way in which Vector continued:

"Like, I don't know..."

"Oh, no..." Charmy kept uncontrollably thinking, desperate, "please don't try to guess... you might actually guess it..."

"Sage?" Vector finished.

The crocodile still wanderingly looked in other directions, so he still couldn't notice that Charmy looked, and definitely fully felt, like all of his own colour, had just gotten separated from his body.

"Please change the subject, please change the subject," the bee kept thinking, "please change the su-"

"Although that would explain your sudden investment in all of Tails' technology," the lead detective continued, in the same ironic manner.

For Charmy, it was over. The sudden drop in the atmosphere in that room was just mere moments away.

"And why you suggested we lure Eggman into a trap."

All Charmy could do was just close his eyes.

"And how that magnolia ended up in Sage's possession."

After that last notion of his, the lead Chaotix agent almost started to laugh. But, just in the middle of starting laughing, he gathered all those last three thoughts of his in one place in his head. And realized that all three of those things were something that the crocodile's playful commentary was an astoundingly simple, yet an even more astoundingly logical explanation of.

And, at the speed of switching a lightbulb from either one of its two possible states to the other - Vector no longer felt like laughing.

He just froze. But definitely not in the same way that his youngest teammate had. Which Vector now fully noticed.

What Vector also noticed about Charmy's current state was that the shame in the bee's soul, the feeling of cowardice in his legs, the absence of being able to even sense either his own wings or his own antlers, the shaking of his stomach - could all practically be seen.

Needless to point out, Espio's reaction was not amazingly different from that of the crocodile's.

Once the chameleon came back to stand next to his boss, they both, completely simultaneously, turned their heads, so that they could clearly see all of Charmy.

Charmy didn't turn his head towards them. He didn't have to.

At least not until Vector began again, this time seriously.

Seriously.

"Charmy?"

This one word alone was enough to send an entirely new wave of shivers down Charmy's entire body.

"You should've just stayed in your bed, Charms," was what he felt might as well have been his "last" thought.

To what he would respond with, the bee contemplated whether to add just simply "Vector" or, now perhaps more appropriately, "boss". Of course, he went for neither.

"Yes?"

Vector inhaled and exhaled exactly once, and kept frowning.

"I need you to answer a few questions for me."

Notes:

Well, damn! Vector and Espio - but especially Vector - finally found out! Now what for Charmy?