He'd initially raised an arm in self defense, ready to snag the sparking metal weapon plunging his way, and find out first hand whether he or the mechanoid fox was stronger. And, given the busted cement below Nine... Kaison wasn't entirely confident he'd win that test. Fortunately, Nine had lunged in the opposite direction to counter the attack, jerking the wayward tail back a split second before disaster. The man offered a wordless snarl, a feral display of teeth, as his widened gaze shot towards the fox himself.

Nine was trying, he really was. Through the chaos, Kaison could still see that. It was the reason he'd gone through with tossing the spool instead of counter attacking the tails. And when Nine had fumbled the catch, Kaison had been ready to stand back and let the fox handle it, or even dart forward if given the request. But something else happened in that moment.

A stray tail had struck the ceiling, which wouldn't have been a big deal -other than cutting into his first paycheck to repair later- if not for the eleven-year old child that had now stepped onto its threshold.

Kaison didn't have time to transform, nor did he have the brutal transformative strength of the dragons to simply rip through synthetic clothing. The man sprung forward, vaulting through the air as plaster began to rain down. Nine was hitting the ground at the same time, knees striking the cracked, broken cement below him as the lycanthrope reached for the offending tail. He didn't wait to see whether Nine would be successful in shutting the weapons down, or whether that tail was even going to harm Maruui. He didn't even consider the girl's earlier concerns over the tail potentially being a literal part of Nine. He's only goal was to grab it and render it useless, whether by crushing it between the inhuman strength of his hands, or tearing it free from the fox's body...

Unfortunately, because of his manoeuvring about, Nine was further away from Kaison than he would have liked. When Kaison tossed the spool of wire, the anthropomorphic fox tried to spin himself backwards and twist to catch it. He might have succeeded – ‘might’ being the operative word, since Nine was more used to tapping on keyboards than playing catch – had one of his mechanical tails not jerked in the opposite direction at the worst possible moment, throwing him off balance. The wire bounced off the tip of his gloved fingers and began its descent towards the floor.

Nine tunnel-visioned. He needed that wire.

It might have been safer for Kaison to chase the spool from the ground and try to toss it back up again, but Nine still wasn’t used to accepting help and might have missed a second catch again in any case. He poured his last spark of energy into his organic tails and shot down towards the ground with both hands outstretched, relying on speed. It would have worked for Sonic. It sort of worked for Nine. Most of his robotic tails flapped groggily, but one of them writhed and flipped over his head, bashing against the roof above the door frame. White plaster chipped and came raining down like snow on anyone who might have been unfortunate enough to be standing too close to the door.

That mishap aside, the gambit paid off. Nine’s fingers closed around the spool and he grabbed at the end of the wire thread as his knees hit the ground, reopening the cuts and scrapes. As quickly as he dared, he inserted the tip of the wire into a micro-pinhole on his belt. The lights on the tips of his mechanical tails instantly went dark, and all seven of them crashed to the floor and remained there, motionless.

Nine pitched forward, the last of his energy spent. He was unconscious before his head hit the floor. The wire fell from his hand and tumbled across the garage floor, unspooling as it went.

Kaison had still been listening for any changes outside, remaining on high alert for any sign of UECH encroachment, when Nine's behavior took a dramatic shift. The rapid-fire 'No's' had been the first warning, and as Kaison turned a scrunch-browed expression back to the anthro-fox, the tails that had initially warranted his high suspicion now rose up in a myriad of frightening actions.

A single, defiant blow from just two of these tails was enough to crack the cement of the garage. That gave Kaison an idea of how much force and durability these metal appendages were capable of, but it wasn't these tails that he was focused on, nor was it the pair that were currently hurling tools into the wood paneling of the nearby wall. It was the one that was now pointed at him that had the man's full attention.

"Hey!" He snarled out, with his newly darkened eyes wide and intense, "What the hell is this?!" Kaison's stance dropped, his knees bending into a readied crouch. A hand went for the waistband button of his jeans as he watched the end of the pointed tail light up and begin to rotate ominously. With his boots already shed, the restrictive denim was the only thing physically stopping him from taking his innate powers further.

Black and silver eyes darted towards the door, where he heard Maruui's voice shouting in innocent concern from her position in the basement. He looked back to Nine, whose organic tails were beginning to rotate. If Kaison hadn't already clocked the fox's distress, or if Maruui stepped through the door...

-I can shut them down!-

This, and Nine's request for help ultimately stalled Kaison from launching into a defensive strike. That card was still very much on the table, but at least the man lowered his hand away from the front of his jeans and stepped with almost feline-like grace to a tall, metal shelving unit at the far end of the work bench. He was so engrossed with watching the hysterics of the metal appendages that his mind didn't have time to muse over the way Nine was now levitating himself under the rotating power of true tails. He spared the metal shelving the briefest of glances before grabbing a spool of thin wire - the closest he could get to a paper clip - and tossed this in Nine's direction.

"Get it done!" The sharpness of his words and dropped some, but there was a clear tone of threat levied in there, backed by the way his posture still rested in a slightly hunched, ready-for-action stance.

"Kaisey? What's all that noise?" The child's voice again drifted through the door, sounding louder and a little more clear than before. It was followed by the rapid patter of feet up a case of wooden steps...

(No wonder he was tired.)

But just because he had seen a lot, that didn’t mean nothing could faze him anymore. The hairs pricked on the back of his neck and a jolt of electricity ran up his spine as the human, who had seemed apparently normal a moment before, underwent a transformation of his own. Shadows seeped across the whites, stopping short of gleaming silver irises. Nine watched them with hypervigilance, his own eyes narrowed. If this was the precursor to an attack, he had no defence. His tails were out of commission and his energy and mind were spent.

No attack came, but Nine’s expression remained guarded as the man spoke again. Even in his state of exhaustion, he filed away information to follow up on later. UECH. Anomalies. If he could get at another computer, primitive as they were, he would still be able to –

Kaison finished his sentence in a lower rumble, and his words took a second for Nine to process. The precise moment he did process them was clearly visible on his face. His blue eyes widened, his jack slackened and his mouth downturned cartoonishly in an appropriately horrified expression as the truth of what had happened, what would happen, what he’d done, sank in.

“No.” Nine growled through gritted teeth, not hearing the exchange between Kaison and Maruui or what Kaison said next. “No. No. No.”

He shivered as though an ice bucket had been poured over his head. His hands and feet felt numb. He didn’t immediately feel it when his mechanical tails began twitching, sparking and writhing with more electricity than before. He did, however, feel it when they started going completely beserk. Two tails reached up to snatch at random items on the workbench behind him; two more slammed into the ground with such force that it cracked the flooring, pushing him up onto his feet; two flapped around like flags in the wind; and the final one pointed at Kaison, lit up and began to spin its end piece menacingly.

“What – ?” Nine started to say, but yelped as one of the tails embedded into the floor pulled itself up and to the left to grab at something he couldn’t see, since the sudden movement had made him lurch sideways.

The two tails which had grabbed items off the workbench threw them at a wall and started reaching for new things to snatch up. This was ludicrous. Nine’s tails had never been this out of control before, not even when he was initially testing them. This needed to stop. Now.

Nine’s gloved hands curled into fists and his forehead creased as he concentrated. His organic tails spun – slowly at first, and then within enough speed to lift him off the ground. He manoeuvred himself carefully to be equidistant between the floor and the ceiling and away from the walls, so his robotic tails were out of reach of anything they could grab at. They sparked and flapped and spun angrily, stretching towards items beyond their grasp. Nine had to strain and fight to hold his position while the tails tried to drag him in every direction.

“I can shut them down!” He yelled down at Kaison. “Throw me a paperclip!”

The man picked up on this tidbit, and filed it away without comment. His nose had told him the fox was flesh and blood, but this gave him some insight on just how crucial the mechanical tails were to the creature. He still had no idea if they were vital to Nine's survival or what they they could do, but they were far more sophisticated than anything he'd seen in his world. That was made evident when one of the metal appendages rose up from the pile of its battered brethren and arched over Nine's shoulder, as if taking survey of his work.

Kaison was both intrigued, and unsettled. Despite the former emotion, he held back on his questions for the moment, and because of the latter, he didn't offer a hand to help.

He waited instead for Nine to answer him. And when he did, Kaison's expression clouded in confusion, "Visitor's Center?" That didn't ring a bell, but.. right, the lake! A very literal darkness crept into his eyes, deepening the whites to a near black hue that seemed to bring out the silver in his irises. With the honing of his senses, Kaison listened past the pattering of Maruui's feet in the kitchen, and beyond the quiet cooing of a dove from within the azalea bushes across the way.

Nothing.

The scent of the UECH agents - a unique chemical sanitizer that Kaison was all too familiar with - was the only alarming clue that the man could pick up, and it came from the fox. And just barely, at that. He heard no drones, and no vehicles. No crackle and whine of radios. If they hadn't shown up yet, chances are they hadn't been quick enough to dispatch a long-distance drone to catch up with him. Probably.

"If you flew that distance, then yeah." Some of the tension had fallen out of his voice as he reassessed the threat level, but his stance remained guarded, and his body positioned so that he could see Nine and the garage door both. When the fox's next question came, a bitterness had replaced the earlier unease in his tones, "UECH. People that don't like anomalies like us-" He glanced to the open door that led into the house, and his words dropped into an even quieter growl, "-and have no qualms tearing us apart to see how we work."

"Kaisey, I can't find any bottles!" The girl's voice pierced the quieted conversation they were having, forcing Kaison to raise his own to shout back, "Try the basement." That should buy him another few minutes. Sure enough, he could hear her feet thumping out of the kitchen, and through the house in search of where the basement door might be.

"Fix your tails, and I can call you a cab. There's a place in the city you can stay until you get your barings, and it's safe enough." With the dragon-child already invading his private space, Kaison was not keen on having a second uninvited guest hang around, despite how clearly Nine needed some rest. "Unless you have.. a ship outside, or something? Whatever you flew in?"

“No.” One foot in front of the other. Deep breath. “More like… an extension.”

She kept asking more questions. Something about his headache. Nine frowned as he tried to process it, not enjoying the sensation of his brain moving at a considerably slower pace than normal. It was a relief when Kaison told her to go and fetch some water – albeit relief tinged with suspicion, since Kaison seemed significantly less friendly than his bubbly companion and undoubtedly had an ulterior motive for wanting Nine on his own.

With Maruui on her quest and the stool/workstation idea quickly scrapped, Nine was able to settle onto the floor in one of his favourite states: silence. He studied the tail on his lap, using sheer willpower to focus his vision. There was no visible external damage, which meant that whatever those creeps had done, it had only affected the internal mechanisms. That figured, since it had been some kind of auditory-wave attack. While he examined it, one of his other mechanical tails extracted itself from the pile behind him arced itself upwards and peered over his shoulder, as though also keen to investigate.

A dull thump pulled Nine from his hyperfocus and he regarded the toolbox which had been set next to him, at first with a flash of surprise (where had this come from?) and then with understanding (oh). He reached over, flipped the latch and opened the lid while Kaison spoke, but paused at his final question. His forehead creased as he turned his blue gaze upwards, finding that the suspicion which coloured the human’s words also extended to his facial expression. This was not a person who hid his feelings. In another lifetime, he and Nine might have been friends.

“I flew here from Cedar Creek Visitor Centre through clouds the whole way,” he replied flatly, this time with only a subtle hint of impatience. “Is that far enough?”

Despite the biting undertone, the question wasn’t sarcastic or rhetorical. Nine held the human’s gaze, his hand on the opened lid of the toolbox, needing to know the answer. He’d been flying blind the whole way and had no idea how far he’d come, or if the humans had been able to use sensors to ‘see’ through the clouds. If they had followed him here, he was in no shape to fight or flee.

There was just one other thing Nine needed to know.

“Who are they?” He asked hoarsely, following Kaison’s lead and lowering his voice. “What do they want with…” He hesitated. Nine still didn’t know if these people were trustworthy. “…Me?”

Kaison watched the interaction like a hawk, having a very different set of questions rolling through his mind about this creature and his capabilities. But first and foremost, he had to gain a little more control of the situation, and handle a slightly more delicate issue, "Kid, why don't you grab a bottle of water for our friend. He looks thirsty."

Maruui brightened at the opportunity to help, "Okay!" The girl sprung up from the crouch she'd dropped into beside Nine, and skipped towards the interior door that led into the house.

Once she was past the door frame and out of immediate sight, Kaison turned to Nine. He watched the fox struggle with and ultimately give up on the stool, then draw one of those listless tails into his lap. In that time, Kaison himself had reached down to tug apart the laces of boots and remove them, along with his socks. Setting these things aside, the man moved barefoot across the cement, reaching for one of two tool boxes at the far end of his workbench. "I don't know what your story is, but I know you're fresh here." His voice had dropped low as he set the metal box down with a faint thunk beside Nine. "Those people you tangled with, they're bad news. -How- certain are you they didn't follow?"

With deft steps, Kaison moved back towards the front of the garage, flipping the switch and sending the big metal door rattling downward. From somewhere in the house, he heard several cupboard doors open and close. Feet pattered across linoleum, and then more doors were opened. With any luck, the dragon-in-disguise would spend several more minutes of searching for water bottles that didn't actually exist, and maybe by then she'd forget about the question she'd asked earlier.

And he’d thrown it all away. All for the sake of seeing his one friend again. For a bitterly brief reunion, before he was taken from Nine again.

He didn’t hear half of Maruui’s protestations on his behalf because of his last flashback, but he’d certainly have objected to ‘person’ as a suffix. He did, however, catch the part about someone else fixing his tails.

“No,” he growled, his voice hoarse. “No one touches my tails but me.”

Someone messing around with his tails, his lifeline, didn’t bear thinking about. Nine couldn’t imagine the damage these morons could do poking and prodding his precious creations. All he needed was access to tools and he could sort it out himself, the way he always did. He didn’t need anyone.

Kaison’s neighbours had azaleas planted along the fenceline of a remarkable shade of blue. The vivid colour pushed through the darkness at the edge of Nine’s vision, demanding his attention. He turned his head away from them.

The taller human did relent, at last. Nine’s expression loosened and a look was all he could manage for gratitude in the moment. His brain honed in on the last thing Kaison had said: …until I know for sure they didn’t follow you. It hadn’t really registered before, but the human knew something. As he took a slow, heavy step towards the garage, Nine’s brain ticked back to the computer he had accessed earlier in the visitor centre. He hadn’t gotten a lot of information from it – at least not a lot which made sense – but it had been clear that Meinville was a place where aliens were not welcome. If that was common knowledge, perhaps the group who had attacked him and Sonic were also well-known around here… or at least, well known to adults. Maruui’s endearing excitement and hedgehog-like optimism was punctuated by the very question Nine also wanted answered. Nine kept his eyes on Kaison as he pushed himself up the driveway, feeling like he was moving through treacle, waiting to see if he would divulge who ‘they’ were.

By the time Nine was crossing the threshold of the garage, his tails felt like they weighed as much as the Chaos Council’s mothership and everything beyond the object of focus was blurry in his vision. He rubbed his eyes and gave himself a mental shake; this was not a safe place to pass out. He reached for a stool next to a workbench and missed, stumbling backwards, but managed to catch himself. Since the stool towered above him, Nine decided it was probably safer to keep low, and sat down on the floor of by the workbench instead. With some effort, he reached back and pulled one of his mechanical tails onto his lap. It kept drifting in and out of focus.

“Screwdriver set?” He muttered.

Instincts screamed at him to either flee, or fight. But Nine showed no aggression, mood aside. He couldn't abandon the kid, and he couldn't justify an attack.

Kaison breathed in a deep, subtle breath after Nine's snarled word of confusion. And there, nearly washed away by the tannin-stained waters of Cedar Lake, and the gusty winds of his desperate flight from Meinville, the man caught the lingering odor he was distinctly familiar with. A note of raspberry, mixed with burnt ozone. The unmistakable molecular signature of someone traveling through the Void. This 'Nine' was a very recent arrival then, and one who'd somehow survived and escaped a tangle with UECH.

"He's hurt!" Maruui's sharpened voice lamented, sincere in its emotions as it drew Kaison from his thoughts, "Stop being so grumpy, Kaisey, he's just a fox-person!" By the time Nine snapped out of his flashback, the child was knelt eye-level beside him, calling out her impromptu guardian while looking with moistening eyes to the scrapes on Nine's knees. "We should take him to see my dad, or maybe Ratchet. He can probably fix his tails for him, too."

The breath he'd sucked in was released with controlled effort, as much to calm his nerves as it was to grab whatever minute odors he might have missed on in the initial inhale. Kaison watched Nine put a hand to his head, and saw the tremble in his legs where Maruui hadn't. He'd noted the change in others's expression, slight and short-lived as it was, when he'd looked to the kid. The man's grip on the canister relaxed by the smallest of margins. "Fine. Get in the garage, both of you." Kaison turned with a step of one leg, angling himself towards the open door, and swept a hand in that direction. The way that Nine had stubbornly taken a step forward told him this fight simply wasn't worth it, especially when the fox-person himself was no longer the biggest threat, "We'll stay there until I know for sure they didn't follow you."

An instant smile swept Maruui's face before she moved unapologetically into Nine's personal bubble and reached a hand out to grab his own, with the intention of helping him walk the short distance to the garage. "Don't worry Nine, Kaisey can help fix your tails, then we can take you to meet my dad!" Emerald-green eyes flashed expectantly up to Kaison, naivety evident in her curious voice, "Also, who's following him?"

A memory resurfaced: a solid image of a pink portal glowing in a dim cave. Nine knew this memory. Shame curdled in his stomach and he tried to push it away, but the details sprang back as clearly as if it had just happened. It was like he could feel the multi-coloured glow of the shards over his shoulder as he held them aloft with his mechanical tails, and could see the electricity rippling through the portal. He remembered turning and seeing the only friend he’d ever had on the floor, coughing, his blue fur ever vibrant through the dust and dim light.

‘We can make this work, Nine,’ Sonic had said, ‘Trust me.’

‘Trust you?’ Nine had sneered back, layering the emphasis onto the second word. He had turned back to the portal. ‘The only person I can trust is myself.’

He had stepped through the portal, and back then it had taken him home to the Grim – but now it was like the present world slid back into place. Nine’s knees wobbled and he adjusted his stance to counter it, hoping the humans hadn’t noticed. The darkness at the corners of his eyes seemed to have crept in a little more. He needed those tools now and then he needed to get out of here, find somewhere safe to crash, and come up with a plan to save Sonic.

Then the bigger human spoke, and Nine’s full attention was redirected straight back to him.

“Anomaly?” He snarled, feeling heat rising inside. Before he could say anything else, he was thrown back in time again.

This time he was a little, two-tailed fox, before he’d made his mechanical tails. He was minding his own business but not minding his surroundings, and didn’t even notice the bushes rustling as he strolled past. The two larger, darker-furred foxes which leapt out and grabbed his extra tail seemed to come from nowhere. Nine – Miles, as he’d been called back then - had managed to pull himself free and ran back in the direction he’d come. He could hear their thundering feet behind him, hear the words they were shouting…

The house and the driveway and the two humans came hurtling back with such force that Nine dropped down onto one knee. Gritting his teeth, he spread his hands on either side and pushed himself back onto his feet. What was with these flashbacks? Maybe it was a side-effect of travelling between shatterspaces without any prism energy. Or maybe it was because his body really, really wanted to turn itself off and on again.

“I’ll make do,” he snapped when the human suggested his tools weren’t up to standard (which they probably weren’t). His head was throbbing after the last flashback and he reached up to hold it with one gloved hand. Fortunately, the humans were too busy arguing between themselves to pay him much attention. The smaller one had come to stand by his side and was insisting on helping him, much like Sonic would have done. Nine’s expression softened slightly as he glanced sideways at her. It hardened again when he looked back up at the taller human, who had left his threat dangling. “Pretty sure I lost them. If I can just fix my tails, I’ll bet out of your hair.”

Nine took a step forward, swayed a little, then found his balance again. He couldn’t stop now. Not when he was so close.

"Another anomaly, I can see that." Audible tension aside, his words were even and flat, and came as his attention jumped between the metal tails that lay in a haphazard, sparking heap behind Nine, and a smell that made the hairs on the back of his neck raise. UECH. His lips grew taut, and he reached forward to grab Maruui by the shoulder and pull her back, "I doubt I got the tools to help you. Try the IDR, they can-"

The girl twisted down and away, pulling her shoulder from Kaison's grasp before he could actually maneuver her one way or the other. She stepped back, placing herself along side Nine, without any concern for either the twitching pile of metal that had Kaison so anxious, or wether the mecha-fox would even tolerate such closeness. "Kaisey! Nine needs our help, and you do have the tools to help him." Maru crossed her arms in front of her chest and produced a rare scowl, drawing upon the kind of stubborness that so defined her father. "Dath says we should help where we can!"

Where Maruui hadn't noticed Nine's gritted teeth and clear ill-ease with the situation, Kaison had registered it clear as day during his initial approach. Lean muscles flexed beneath an oil-stained t-shirt and equally dirtied jeans, as pressure built in him faster than the poor canister between his tightening fingers. Ignoring the girl, Kaison directed his next words at the fox, "You got anyone tailing you? If you bring trouble to my doorstep..."

A sharp voice barked down the driveway. Nine’s shoulders tensed and his pointed ears pricked as the man he had noticed earlier came thundering towards them with heavy boots and a heavier scowl. He was holding a canister in his hands – not vastly dissimilar to the one another human had used as a weapon against Nine earlier that day. The fox’s hands curled into fists and he spread his legs to balance his weight. It would have been a fighting stance if he could lift his mechanical tails, which were still twitching uselessly on the ground.

The bigger human practically snarled his question, causing Nine’s blue eyes to narrow. People. All he ever wanted was to get away from people with their stupid problems and their incessant yammering. He used to be just fine in his lab away from everyone, until that hedgehog came along –

Nine sucked in a breath, forcibly redirecting his brain from wondering where that hedgehog was right now.

“It’s Nine,” he growled through gritted teeth. He took another breath and tried to relax his jaw. His tone was better when he spoke again, but still had a forced calm to it. “Look. I’m not from here. Obviously.” He gestured behind him, where one of the tails was still sparking dangerously. “I just need to borrow some tools so I can fix my tails.”

...until she saw the figure moving down the road, towards the garage.

All lessons about stranger-danger from Datharil went out the window. She half hopped, half tripped over the bike in her excitement to dismount it, and let it fall sideways into the lawn while her bright emerald eyes turned to the bipedal fox. A smile came next, and a friendly return wave of the hand, "Hi!" She skipped forward, crossing over to the driveway in record speed, "You come in peace? That's good, so do I!" Wavy, auburn hair fell forward, framing the kid's freckled face as she hunched down, bringing herself a little closer to Nine's height, "My name's Maruui... oh, you look hurt! Want me to heal you?"

Just as Maruui was noticing the fresh scrapes on Nine's knees, and before she could launch any more questions at him, a sharp voice barked out from the garage. "Hey!" It was pitched enough in its anger that Maruui started a little, and drew back from the experimental sniff she was going to give Nine. "Maru, get back. Who are you?" The heavy, quick slap of boots came next as Kaison left the garage behind and started a brisk walk down the driveway towards the pair. In his hand was the air canister he'd been using just moments ago, and already there were a few indentations into the cylinder's metal casing, where the wiry man's fingers pressed with tension.

"It's okay, he comes in peace!" Maruui chirped back, though the girl's usual enthusiasm seemed to waver a little under the dark cloud of Kaison's approach.

The clouds covered his retreat, but they also blinded him. Through the whiteout, all he could see was the darkness which occasionally crept in from the edges when his felt light. Whenever this happened, Nine would slow his rotating tails enough to gasp some air back down, then speed up again when the darkness receded. By the time the cloud coverage was patchy enough to start to be able to see the ground, he’d been forced to slow permanently and the darkness wasn’t receding so much.

Were the clouds getting patchier, or was he dropping altitude? Nine slowed his tails further and squinted below at the swirly mix of grey and green. He was going to have to land. He needed to hide out somewhere, maybe take a quick nap, and then he needed to find a workshop. These humans clearly had reasonably decent technology, so they had to have places where they repaired that technology.

His landing was bumpier than he would have liked. He managed to miss the road and smushed chest-first into the grassy verge instead. His head spinning, Nine pushed himself to his feet and tried to take stock. The view swimming into focus was… a neighbourhood? They were boxy houses with neat window boxes and tidy driveways. Nine staggered further along the verge, squinting. A lot of these houses had vehicles outside them, and where there were vehicles… maybe if he followed this road…?

He tried to step onto the road, but missed his footing and fell forward, scraping his knees. Nine huffed and grunted under his breath, pushing himself back up. He balled his hands into fists and pushed forward, one foot in front of the other, his seven mechanical tails making a painful scraping sound as they dragged on the tarmac behind him. He wouldn’t make it far like this.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. One of the box-houses had an empty driveway leading up to an open-doored building lined with… Nine squinted… yes! Toolboxes and benches, and a stack of tyres! There was one human present that he could see from here, crouched over small transportation device which could have been some kind of bike or hovercraft. It was hard to see with the edge of his vision swimming. Of course, Nine had no way of knowing if he’d come far enough or in the right direction to make it to somewhere friendlier, or if he was still in the place where they were hostile towards aliens. He could hide somewhere nearby, pass out, wait for the coast to be clear and then come back and steal some tools? Maybe he was starting to hallucinate, but a vision of Sonic pulling a face swam in front of him.

‘Just go ask for help, little buddy!’ He said. Would say. If he was here. Which he wasn’t.

Stupid hedgehog, Nine thought.

He stumbled across the road to the end of the driveway. His mechanical tails seemed to be getting heavier with every step.

“Hey!” He called out, his voice croaking a little. He held his gloved hands out to show they were empty and wondered what Sonic would say next. “Uhh. I come in peace?”

The change in movement brought Maruui's bright emerald eyes darting to the man. "Are you done fixing it?" The eleven-year old asked with clear excitement. She hopped away from the tool box she'd been investigating and skipped barefoot across the cool cement floor of the garage, placing herself on the opposite end of the motorcycle Kaison had been working on.

"No." He answered back bluntly, looking past the child and to the long gravel road that stretched out from the small garage and single-story home attached to it. Gray eyes squinted for a second or two, honing in on a shuffle of movement some ways down the lane, in a spot just before the road was swallowed up by woodlands.

"Why did you stop working then?" Maruui persisted, her yellow sundress fluttering as she swiveled her arms from side to side in slow, flowing movements. "How much longer do you think it'll take?"

'Just a deer.' Kaison realized, using a combination of sight and scent to identify the disturbance. After wiping a grease-stained hand against his jeans, the man suffered a look to the energetic child and shook his head, "It's going to take all day if you keep bothering me. Does your dad even know you're out here?" He didn't hide the annoyance in his voice, nor his expression as he moved away from her and towards a nearby bench to grab a few items.

Maruui shrugged her shoulders, her own expression bright and impervious to Kaison's gruff, "Nope. Can I ride on it when you're done?"

"No." Kaison returned without hesitation, and a little more bite. It was bad enough that she'd return to Rawnak with his scent, and even worse if the dragon's little daughter returned injured while under his watch. Not that he'd chosen to babysit her in the first place, he just had no means of stopping a curious young dragon from flying to his house uninvited, much less forcing her to leave when she had no interest in doing so. His best defense right now was trying to ignore her, but that was proving as difficult as it was fruitless. "Why don't you go outside? There's a bike out there, try riding that." A mountain bike was a far safer option, and one Kaison banked on her being unable to figure out.

Maruui's brief disappointment was gone in a flash when he offered this distraction. "Ooo, can I really? Thanks, Kaisey!" Without hesitation, the girl sprinted from the garage, and towards the bike laying beneath the only tree in the large yard.

Not wasting this reprieve, Kaison got back to work repairing the motorcycle. He'd promised the customer a deadline of tomorrow, and he wasn't about to let his first paying job here be tarnished by late or shoddy work.