A/N - Woo new fanfic! =D This can be a bit experimental at times, but I hope the randomness and humour is to your liking =) This is a chaptered fic which will probably be about 10-11 chapters long. I've written 7 so far, so I'm gonna try and upload at least once a week. If weekends are preferable for updates, let me know please =) I may update twice a week if demand is high enough or I feel I can keep up with that.

Little note - the characters are all four years older in this story, so Amy is 17.

Disclaimer - I do NOT own Sonic the Hedgehog or any of its characters!

Confectionery Conundrum

1 – Sugar High

It seemed so strange. This new little shop had opened in the city, going by the name of Sugar Snow. Their sales sky-rocketed as each day passed. You'd think 'fair enough. A new sweet shop.' But the other shops were suffering badly. Some had even closed down within days of this one opening.

One shop owner though just couldn't accept this. It wasn't that long until the photos started landing on our desk.

Photos of queues, kids flocking outside, and a pretty little leopard girl smiling as she handed out samples of that day's special sweets... a perfectly innocent scene to the naked eye.

"Charmy." Espio gave the bee a sideways glance. "Stop commentating."

"Sorry." Charmy set the little voice recorder back on the desk. "I just thought it would give this investigation more character."

Vector snorted. "All you're doing is making it sound like a mystery novel."

Charmy grinned. "Exactly!"

"Well, we're not getting anywhere with these photos." Espio dropped them haphazardly onto his paperwork and leant back in his chair. "They're starting to suspect us."

"You could try being more stealthy?" the crocodile suggested.

"How much more stealthy can I get? I can't make the camera invisible, Vector."

"Huh. And they won't talk to us."

Charmy raised a hand. "I could -"

"No!" Vector and Espio cut him off.

"Not after last time." Espio closed his eyes and looked away from him. "It took you two days to come down off that 'sugar high'."

Charmy folded his arms and huffed. "You didn't need to use air quotes."
Vector grunted. "I don't think it was a sugar high."

An image of a screaming Charmy flashed through their minds, followed by a door slamming and the purple chameleon and his crocodile friend locking it hastily. They stood with their backs against it, their faces twisted with terror as the little bee tried to break his way back through the wooden barrier.

'I want more sweets! I want more sweets!'

"I learned an important lesson that day," Charmy spoke into the voice recorder. "As hazy as the memory was, I still remember the screaming, the crying, and the nausea that followed."

"No," said Espio flatly. "I'm almost certain it wasn't a sugar high."

"So what do we do?" Vector asked. "We can't keep going back there. Even the customers will start getting suspicious if we keep hovering outside that shop, and that would be bad if it turns out to just be an innocent little sweet shop with a great sales pitch."

"Yeh. And sending Charmy back in is out the window."

Vector opened one eye to look at Espio. "And following those two leopard girls is... impossible?"

Espio sighed. "They have amazing hearing. It didn't take them long to find out someone was following them, even if they couldn't see me."
Vector groaned and scratched his head beneath his headphones.

"They've covered all their tracks," Espio explained. "Their supplier seems completely innocent. If we don't find anything soon, this will end up being a dead case, and someone will have to break it to Ginger."

"Ahem." Charmy picked up his voice recorder again. "Ginger is the grand-daughter of the cat who owns the candy shop opposite Sugar Snow."

Espio leant on his hand as he flicked through the photos. Nothing. Nothing was showing up, at least not anything obvious. A silence filled the office, broken by bouts of humming as Charmy leafed through the paperwork.

"I have an idea."

Espio and Charmy looked up at Vector.

"The two little leopards are girls, right?" he said.

"Yes," said Espio. "They are."
"Then why don't we hire a girl?"

Apple juice came out of Charmy's nose, reminding Espio of why he didn't like drinks on the desk. He quickly rescued the paperwork and shook it dry.

"A girl?" Charmy squeaked. "Who?!"
Vector shrugged. "I dunno. Who do we know?"

"Well, there's always Sally Acorn," Charmy suggested.

...

Sally rolled across the ground, narrowly dodging the robot's chain of bullets. The robot exploded into shrapnel as a blue blur shot through it.

"Nicole?" she spoke into her handheld computer. "We need to get into this building urgently, but the robots won't stop coming. Have you accessed the database yet?"

"Not yet, Princess Sally."

...

Espio scratched his chin. "I don't know. I think she's too busy heading the Freedom Fighters. Who knows how long this case will take?"
"How about Bunnie?" asked Vector.

...

Sonic ripped through three of the smaller robots, cutting a path through them. They began to close in, but two of the closer ones exploded as a rocket struck them.

"I've got ya covered, sugar hog!" Bunnie shouted. "You just focus on gettin' to the door!"

...

"Again," said Espio. "She's busy with the Freedom Fighters."

Vector raised his hands in a shrug. "Rouge?"

...

Rouge peered in the window. It wasn't clear to the naked eye, but she knew where the lasers criss-crossed the room. She'd memorised it the night before.

And there, in the middle of the room, stood a Chaos Emerald.

She chuckled. With that, she could make a pretty penny.

...

"Actually..." Vector looked up at the ceiling. "If money or treasure's involved, there's no saying she'll stay on our side."

"How about Cream?" asked Charmy.

...

Smoke pooled into the kitchen from the open oven. Big the Cat stood up and turned to face the little rabbit, the fur on his face singed black. Smoke continued to billow off the pile of charcoal crumbling over the edge of the baking tin.

"Oh no!" Cream covered her mouth with her hands and the Chao next to her copied her. "Sonic's victory cake!"

...

Vector waved a hand in dismissal. "Too young."

"But she bakes a great cake!" said Charmy with a grin.
Espio crossed Cream's name off the list. "Then that just leaves Amy."

Vector frowned. "When did you start making a list?"

...

"All right!" Amy raised her hammer. "You wanted a fight, you got a fight!"

She brought the massive hammer down towards the octopus robot. It flicked up a tentacle and met her hammer, the impact throwing her off balance. The mallet went soaring over her head as she rolled backwards.

She stared down at her empty hands then looked up at the robot. Its massive tentacle was swinging down towards her... but it struck bare ground as a blue streak whisked her away.

She was set back down again several feet away, and her face turned scarlet as she looked up at the blue hedgehog.

She smiled broadly. "Thanks, Sonic! You saved me!"

"Of course!" He turned to face the octopus robot. "But you should hang on tighter to that hammer, Amy."

...

"She's certainly our more viable option," said Espio. "She helps out with the Freedom Fighters, but she has more time to spare."
"Do you think she'll help us?" Vector asked.

"All we can do is ask her."
"All right." Vector pulled out his mobile phone.

"Wait!"

He looked back up at Espio.

"We need to think things over first." Espio picked up a pen and dragged a plane, but crumpled (and a little damp with apple juice) sheet of paper from the haphazard pile on the desk. "What will she do, exactly? How dangerous will this be?"

"We don't know that yet."

"No, but it might become dangerous. We can't just hire the poor girl without ironing out any creases first."

"The girl fights robots for a living!"
Espio met Vector's glare. Charmy looked from one to the other, sipping loudly at his remaining apple juice.

He picked up his little voice recorder. "Things had grown heated in the office."
Espio finally looked away from the crocodile. "You have a point. But for the sake of my conscience, let's just go over the basics first."

...

The grass smouldered beneath the robot wreckage. Amy watched as Sonic ran back out of the building, but he didn't look happy. She clutched her hammer in both hands and opened her mouth to speak to him, but Sally beat her to it.

"Is everything okay?"

He shook his head and looked away from her. "Someone got there first."
"So the emerald's gone?" Sally asked.

Amy frowned. "Who took it?"

"I don't know."

Sally looked down at her computer. "Do you know what happened, Nicole?"

"This is confusing," Nicole replied. "I took the lasers offline only seconds before you came back outside."
"Well it's gone," said Sonic. "I searched around the place twice. It isn't there."

"Oh, what are we gonna do?" Bunnie asked. "We've been fightin' all night!"

Sally grimaced. "We'll have to track it down." She sighed. "But right now, I think we all need some rest."

"A rest does sound good," said Amy.

Bunnie sighed. "Ah dunno how any of us are gonna rest knowin' that emerald's out there in the wrong hands."
Tails yawned and stretched loudly. "Yeh. Wow." He slumped and rubbed his eyes. "It's going to be hard to sleep tonight."

Sonic slapped him on the shoulder and steered him towards the Tornado. "Don't worry, bro. I bet Cream's got cake and cocoa waiting for us.

Tails' ears drooped. "And it's going to taste so sweet over the bitterness of this failure."
"Optimism!" said Amy. "We'll find it!"

"Amy's right," said Sonic. "Positive thinking, Tails! We all did well tonight, despite the outcome. We'll get that emerald!"
Amy flopped into one of the Tornado's passenger seats and clutched her hammer to her chest.

'We all did well tonight.'

'You need to hold tighter to your hammer, Amy.'

She looked out at the world as it shrank below them, the choppy noise of the Tornado's propeller cutting through the night sky.

She sighed and leant on her hand. 'Am I really that much help?'

...

Please R&R! =D