The Chaotix, The Fox and The Dingo

Chapter One; The Aftermath

“Crash, for the last time, your arm is not broken!” Coco barked back at her brother after more of his gibberish whinging. Of all the things he could be worrying about, he was complaining over a problem that was all in his head. This would be humiliating at the best of times, let alone in front of three alien friends they'd met just six months ago. It had been a blur as to how they'd met, actually. One minute, she and her other house residents had been fast asleep in bed, the next, they'd woken in the middle of a brilliant vortex of shining light, where any cries of help they made were quickly dissipated into nothing. It had seemed like forever, but then it suddenly stopped, and the entire archipelago ended up crashing into a remote part of an ocean they didn't recognise. It was fortunate, then, that the archipelago happened to go by a floating island in the sky in its descent. Knuckles was pretty certain that archipelagos didn't just appear out of thin air, and he'd urgently ran to where Sonic and Tails in his panicked awe. Afterwards, they, Crash, Coco, Crunch and all their animal companions had gelled nicely with each other in this unforeseen turn of events, for the most part. Still, Crash whining wasn't what Coco wanted out of her heroic brother.

Tails just shook his head at the shenanigans. He'd been spending the last six months trying to decipher just what had happened on the fateful day all that while ago, and he's only found out one thing; the obvious, that is that Eggman and Cortex were behind it, as per most cross-dimensional meetings. Tails was frustrated as a result and the constant sibling bickering didn't help matters. “Ugh, why couldn't you two be more like me and Sonic?” he sighed in exasperation. Sonic cheerfully chipped in, trying to help out his friend. “Yeah, we might get on each other's nerves at times, but at least we don't let it get in the way of what we need to do, right little bro?” Tails brightened up a little, and giggled with Sonic when he caught the little fox in a headlock.

Coco, on the other hand, was far from happy. She scowled menacingly at Sonic, attracting his attention. “Maybe you two are all happy dandy, but you're not real siblings at all! I'm eighteen and acting as the mature adult, Crash is twenty three and acts as a six year old, and he's acting even worse now that he's in the company of strangers! What am I supposed to do, sit back and let him cause uninhibited havoc?” The unpleasant feelings now lay with Crash as he scoffed at Coco's words and went off to dig by his lonesome. Crunch stepped into the conversation, trying to bring some reality to Coco. “Hey, Coco, I know it's kinda stressful for you. It's stressful for him too, you know, he;s only acting instinctively towards his new surroundings. Besides, you say you're the mature one, but you've been mighty cold to him lately. Why don't you take the initiative and just lighten up a little?” Crunch smiled nervously after he'd said this, and was met with a disgusted glare from the woman he was trying to talk sense into. She appeared to be about to scream, before she simply huffed and ordered Tails to follow her to his nearby workshop to keep working on finding Eggman's new base.

Knuckles took this opportunity to crawl out of the nook he'd been hiding in. He may be hot-headed and sometimes a little irrational in thought, but even he knew not to cross a woman scorned! “Looks like your efforts in charming the ladies didn't have the intended effect, huh?” he chuckled, fully intending to wind Sonic up for his miserable efforts to ease Coco's mind. “Oh, don't start, Knucklehead. Did you catch any news on our friends and, uh, other 'friends'?” Sonic asked in his usual mocking tone, not letting on that Knuckles' comment had irritated him considerably. “Hmph...didn't see all of them personally, but I did meet up with Crash's girlfriend, what was her name, Passiflora?” “Pasadena” Crunch interrupted in an amused tone. “Ahuh, right. Anyway, she's staying with Amy, Blaze and their ilk at the moment, I think your pets are with them too, Crunch. She also tells me that Charmy's colleagues have mysteriously disappeared, so he's staying with Cream, Mighty and Ray at her house”.

The three men pondered this for a moment, before Sonic reasoned that the disappearance must have had something to do with the force that teleported Crunch and his associates to their world. Crunch just nodded in placid agreement, before allowing Knuckles to continue with his findings. “As for the new egomaniac's men, Pasadena tells me that the force wasn't so concise with keeping them together. Apparently she's only spotted some of his so called Cortex Commandos, I think they were some guys called Tiny, Ripper Roo and Moses, the rest could be anywhere. Not to mention that one of his scientist team has also gone walkabouts...” Knowing that this conversation had gone on too long now, Knuckles simply told Sonic and Crunch that he had to get back to the Master Emerald, the three said their farewells in relatively good will and parted ways for now.