Lailani POV

I couldn't believe it. It was Vivian the whole time. Who knew that such sweet girl was so strong? Well, I found that out the hard way. I looked at the others. Ari was unfazed and Gold was shocked as well. I can see that he was trembling when he was holding that mask.

Suddenly, The Phantom Ruby reacted and a huge shockwave washed over us from the ruby. We checked to see if any of us is injured. That's when we realized that Vivian had woke up.

She had markings around her eyes and when she opened her eyes, it was glowing bright red (or pink?). She was also tryna get out of her restraints.

She acted quite feral towards us and was struggling to get out of her restraints. I can see that her arms are becoming red from struggling. Eventually, her hands started bleeding.

We have to get back to base. We've decided to knock Vivian out since she was making a fuss. It will be difficult to bring her back to bad if she kept resisting and struggling.

After knocking her out, I realized that we have no way back. It's miles away from base. I can definitely run back but I don't think Gold and Ari can catch up. But that's when a miracle happened.

"How will we get back? The base if way to far. By the time we reach the base, Eggman would've attacked already" I was searching for a way to get back with the others.

" Well, we could do this the easy way." Gold spoke of a solution. He then took out something out of his belt. It was a sort of wristwatch.

"Instead of walking, how do you guys feel about teleporting? Hope non of you have motion sickness" Gold put on the wristwatch and turned it on.

I was so happy that I ran and hugged him without thinking. I was happy that we have a faster way of getting back. I didn't realize what I did until I felt that his chest was warm. I turned my head to look at him and noticed that he was red. Seeing that also made me red. I immediately push myself away from him.

It didn't exactly helped when Ari told us to do lovey dovey stuff later. That just embarrassed us more. I really, really want to punch her but I have to keep my cool Infront of Gold.

"Ahem, let's uh, go back to base, shall we?" Gold changed the topic. He then opened the portal, which I assumed leads back to the Resistance since you can't see the other side of it. I was so relieved when he opened the portal so that I can escape Ari's teasing.

We walked through the portal. It was my first time walking through a portal. It felt as if a mild gush of wind has passed by me as I walked through the portal. Gold was carrying Vivian's unconscious body. They were quite close which makes it unbearable to see. But I didn't want Gold to see my uneasiness so I just put a small smile when he looked at me.

Gold POV

We walked through the portal and entered the Resistance Base. I may be because I was carrying Vivian but I can sense that Lailani was disatisfied. I might just be overthinking this. But when she turned to look at me, she was smiling. I guess it was a false alarm after all.

We brought Vivian to Tails lab to see what's wrong with her. Tails was not in the lab at the time so we brought her to the medical ward. The doctors strapped her to one of the beds to make sure she doesn't suddenly wake up and start thrashing around.

We then went and took a disinfectant shower. We were then given some new clothes (do werehogs even need clothes?). Since Tails was still out with Sonic, I've decided to go to control instead since Knuckles and Amy are there. I brought Lailani and Ari with me since they were also there as well.

But then as we were about to walk through the door, I realized that Lailani was still in her werehogs form. I was hesitant to bring her to meet up with them. But before I knew it, she and Ari had already walked through the door.

"Well, if it isn't Sonic's furry little sister" Knuckles snark as the door opened, revealing two odd creatures walk in, followed by a relatively normal looking hedgehog.

"Really, Knuckles?" Amy stopped her work at the comms to express annoyance to Knuckles comment on Lailani's appearance.

"So, how have you been, Laila?" Amy turned her attention to Lailani.

"Good, thanks for asking. What about you?" Lailani respond to Amy's question.

"Well, since the Sonics and the rookie defeated Eggman a month ago, I say pretty good" Amy cheerfully answered.

I was surprised that Amy and Knuckles weren't freaking out over Lailani's appearance (I also don't think they've noticed Ari). Amy seemed to notice my shock.

"Ah, Gold, we've known Lailani for awhile now since Sonic sometimes talk about her in conversations. So, we've known about this side of her for awhile now" Amy explained the situation.

"It's true, sorry that you were the last one to find out about this, Gold" Lailani's ears droop as she apologized. She was upset that I was the last to know. Wait.. Last?!

"Last? Ari, did you know about this?" I turned to the quiet mobian-disguised alien who was standing right beside Lailani.

"Well, it was pretty obvious. Like, for example, when she dmed me saying ' I'm a werehog' that's a pretty big clue." Ari pointed up.

"Wait, since when was there another mobian? A weird looking one at that.." Knuckles finally noticed the obvious elephant in the room... Well, besides Lailani.

"Uh, anyways, any report on your findings? Like, two certain people?" Amy changed the subject to get back to the main topic.

"Um... It's... Complicated...." I recollected my experience and what had happened back at Eggman's ship. My dad had died and his consciousness was turned into one of Infinite's minions.

"Oh, I see... Anything else?" Amy asked for any other information regarding Eggman and Infinite.

"Uh, well..." Alot has happened to the point that it's hard to recount every single thing that has happened to us.

As I was struggling to recount the event, Ari spoke up without being told for once.

"You guys can use my data. I've basically seen the whole thing." Ari rubbed the back of her neck.

I didn't get what she meant. Data? What is she talking about? But Amy seemed to get where Ari was going at. She then asked for said data. I was still confused. Lailani was none the wiser.

Ari then walked over to Amy, who found a USB port right behind her neck, hidden by her hair (formerly since now, it's cut). Amy then insert a USB cable into the port and Ari eyes became static.

The screen of the computers on the wall then shows the cave entrance where the whole thing started, except seen from Ari's point of view. It was playing in real time. We were watching the video feed like a movie. We've only managed to watch till the moment Ari and Vivian got kidnapped before my comms was ringing.

"Shut that watch. I'm watching a movie." Knuckles scold me for not putting it on silent mode.

I answered the call and someone on the other end told me that...

Vivian was awake.

To be continued...

(Finally, finished this chapter. Took me way longer than planned. Also, sorry that some dialogues and words were crappy. I was writing this when I was in a state of writer's block or sleepiness.

Reason it took so long was because I wanted to make the chapters longer since they're short.

Also, the reason why the resistance is here was because I'm rewriting the entirety of this story since while I was rereading this book, I cringe at how inexperienced I was and still am but more improve. You can reread it if you want but for now it's been updated since chapter 3 so no new stuff yet since it's not up to date)