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The great thing about Mobius is that despite the twists and turns, and despite the fact that up is usually only up insofar as you believe it to be, as a general rule (and no matter how turned-around you get), you’re always gonna end up right back where you started.
This is nice enough when you’re trying to pull off a good chase scene, yeah, but it’s even better when you can get it to really work for you; for example, and this is just off the top of Sonic’s head, say there was a really nice beach you stumbled across once upon a time, and say that you haven’t been able to find that beach again no matter how hard you try, and say that you’ve gone on to live your life as well as you could but the whole time that damn beach has been hanging over your head like a cartoonishly large anvil and so you’ve just kinda been puttering around in your genre-appropriate sword of Damocles situation for these past couple of years, and you’d kinda thought that you were just gonna do that forever until- lo and behold- the world had seen fit on some arbitrary day to toss you right back to that very same beach, which has apparently gone untouched until now because it looks exactly the same.
Literally exactly the same, down to the rainbow-striped towels and the single sad-ish palm tree and the apparent architectural miracle of a sandcastle that’s probably been around longer than Tails has been alive. But that’s not important; what’s important is that Tails is off poking around a tide pool with a stick, and Sonic is watching him out of the corner of his eye as he takes a much needed break beneath the biggest, most obnoxiously neon umbrella he could find. It’s a nice day, of course, the sun so bright that you can barely see the sea, the sky an even shade of dull blue, everything down to the far-off town humming with the same fuzzy, contented energy of the late afternoon. It’s perfect. It’s picture perfect. It’s also about to be interrupted, because from the corner of his other eye, Sonic can just about make out what looks to be Scratch and Grounder doing… something over on the other end of the beach.
Oh well. Evil never sleeps, but apparently it uses all that free time to sunbathe or swim or something. Either way, Sonic should probably do something about it.
“Kid,” he calls, quietly, and Tails looks over from his tide-pool prodding, ears perking up. Sonic jerks his head and he trots on over, looking somewhere between confused and concerned, an emotion that Sonic is going to dub- with the help of his good friend portmanteau- confused.
Well, they can’t all be winners.
“Sonic?” Tails says, blissfully ignorant to Sonic’s poor attempt at lingual pioneering.
“We’ve got company,” Sonic tells him, jabbing his thumb towards what is definitely, unfortunately, Scratch and Grounder. He can see the second Tails catches sight of them too, because he groans super loudly and covers his eyes with his hands, and then his tails too for good measure.
“Can’t we be closed for maintenance?” he asks, voice muffled, and Sonic snorts.
“Sorry, bud,” he says, ruffling his fur. “Heroing is a full-time job.”
“We should look into child labor laws, then,” Tails grumbles, and it takes everything Sonic’s got to not laugh as loud as he can at that one. He settles for a snort and another ruffle.
“Maybe later,” he tells him. “Looks like we’ve got some stuff to take care of right now, and I dunno about you, but I think getting lost in a good book is much more fun when Robotnik isn’t runnin’ around trying to scramble my brains. You wouldn’t want all that learning to go to waste, would you? It’s hard, hard work.”
Tails heaves a deep, deep sigh.
“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe they’re not doin’ anything we have to worry about,” he tries, uncovering his eyes and lifting his head up and craning his neck over towards where Scratch and Grounder are still doing some indistinguishable, stupidly ominous something.
“So what, they just so happened to choose here of all places to hang out?” Sonic says. “The same place we chose? What was it, do ya think? The tranquil waves? The beauuuutiful golden sand? The two-for-one discount they happened to be runnin’ for badniks of the chicken and drill variety? I dunno, kid. Something smells fishy.”
“That’s just the ocean,” Tails informs him, and Sonic snorts.
“Doubly fishy, then,” he says. “We’re casting suspicion and reelin’ up nets full of two-na and guess what, buddy?”
“What?” Tails asks, perking up. Barely coherent wordplay, baby. Good for bartering, getting out of a ticket, and cheering up little brothers, provided said little brothers are under six years old and also don’t really have an idea of what a good joke looks like yet.
“I’m on the lookout for lunch,” Sonic finishes with a flourish and then a wink that’s about as subtle as a category five weather event. He reaches out to poke at Tail’s nose next, and he giggles and goes to bat his hand away; he gets him too, because Sonic might be the fastest thing alive but as it is you can’t outrun destiny or else the pitfalls of nominative determinism, and so you can’t outfox a fox.
Devestating.
“But we still shouldn’t talk to them, right?” Tails says once he’s done completely demolishing Sonic’s confidence. “Stranger danger.”
And y‘know, Sonic doesn’t think that applies here but considering Tails has helped foil like four evil schemes this month already, Sonic thinks that maybe a little extra caution would go a long, long way. He should probably encourage it, even.
That said:
“Normally I’d agree with you, bud,” Sonic says, “But if they’re up to something I think we oughta try to get in front of it. We’ve got a home-court advantage here- you think Robuttnik cares enough to sandproof his badniks? They’re gonna be grinding their gears ‘til Mobius untwists itself. No, I’m gonna go check it out.”
Tails heaves a deep, woe-is-me sigh, throws in a mournful look back at his tide pool for good measure. The kid knows how to work a crowd, Sonic’ll give him that.
“Then I’ll go with you, I guess,” he grumbles, once he’s completed a sufficient number of miles for his guilt trip.
“You sure?” Sonic asks, because there’s actually a pretty easy solution here. “You can stay over here, if you’re careful. Besides, you were sorta right before- it might be nothing. No point in getting all worked up if they're here for no reason, but to be honest, kid. I wouldn’t count on it.”
Tails considers for a moment, tilts his head back and forth.
“I’ll go,” he says, after a moment, “But I’m gonna go behind you, ‘cause if they start trying to throw things or catch us or something, I want a heads up so I don’t get sand in my fur.”
Good a reason as any. Sonic shrugs.
“Alright,” he says, holding out an arm. “Let’s juice and jam then, yeah?”
Tails nods and latches onto him, bracing himself. They then proceed to walk at a perfectly normal pace over to where Scratch and Grounder are doing whatever it is that they’re doing, because they’re like fifty feet away at absolute most and while there is very much a need for speed, etcetera, he doesn’t want to risk getting sand in Tail’s fur. He’d never hear the end of that one, not ‘til Mobius completes two rings ‘round the sun.
Still, they work their way over pretty quickly, and they get pretty close; Scratch and Grounder both seem involved enough with what they’re doing to not notice them, but Sonic’s far from convinced that this isn’t a trap of some sort, by which he means it’s definitely a trap. It’s gotta be. This is screaming trap. Loud. This is the Hawaiian shirt of obvious traps.
Honestly.
“So what’re two badniks like you doin’ in a nice place like this?” Sonic calls once they’re close enough for the joke to land. And land it does; right smack in the middle of their otherwise pretty alright game, apparently, because they’ve packed the sand down into a smooth, flat plane and are playing what’s probably, maybe a card game- and definitely, without a doubt a trap- on top of it.
“Oh. Hedgehog,” Scratch says, but makes no move to do… anything, really.
“What, couldn’t find any babies to take candy from? Maybe an orphanage or two to rob? An email scam to run on senior citizens?” Sonic prods, because like. Come on. Patience is a commodity that he never really could afford, and if you don’t get to be a little mean to your literal nemesis’s sidekicks, then what exactly is the point?
“We unionized. We’re on break,” Scratch says, proudly, and hey, you know what? Good for them. Sonic says: this is a call to action. Contact your union representative today.
“But what’re you doing ?” Tails asks, peeking up on his tiptoes to try and see over Sonic’s shoulder.
“We’re playing cards,” Grounder says. “We didn’t know what to do with all our new free time, so we’re trying out ‘new hobbies,’ like the pamphlets said.”
“Hobbies other than hedgehog hunting?” Sonic says. “That’s good. I’ve heard hedgehogs are out of season ‘round here anyways, and it’d be reaaaal embarrassing for you two if you tried to catch one and came back empty-handed- heck, if that were me, I don’t think I’d ever be able to show my face again!”
He shudders and puts a hand over his heart, wonders if he could get away with a dramatic swoon and decides he’ll shelve that idea until Tails is big enough to actually catch him, because impressive as he may be- and he is very impressive- he doesn’t think that even his reputation could bounce back from a full-on, self-imposed faceplant.
“You’re hilarious,” Grounder says anyways. Easy, easy crowd. “You ever considered doing comedy? Maybe instead of saving Mobius?”
“It’s crossed my mind once or twice,” Sonic tells him, and then fluffs his quills a little. He’s not even lying.
“That still doesn’t answer my question, though. What game are you playing?” Tails asks, and he sounds a little frustrated now as he ducks beneath Sonic’s arm and drops down next to Scratch. Well, so much for stranger danger, Sonic guesses, and because you’ve gotta stick with your friends he sits down on the other side. Of course, this begs the question: if all his friends jumped off a cliff, would he jump too? To which Sonic says yeah, probably. Tails can fly.
Anyways.
“Solitaire, dummy! Duh! ” Scratch cackles, gesturing to a spread of cards that is not even close to being solitaire. It’s not so much as not in the same neighborhood. It’s a five hour bus ride connecting to a four hour flight followed by a taxi home from the airport at best, unless you’re Sonic in which case it’s like, three minutes and a chili dog or five away, but the thing about Sonic is that he’s kinda the exception to these things. It’s in the theme songs and everything.
But fastest thing alive or not, conversation’s conversation and baby, they’re talking up a good ol’ sea-tragedy storm. Back to it!
“I’m winning. I think I’m gonna go pro,” Grounder says, and then goes to shift one of the cards towards the center using his nose, which is hard considering first that they’re playing on sand and then that his nose moonlights as a drill on weekends. Half the deck has holes in it already. Sonic can read like, three of the cards.
“Good luck,” Tails snorts, evidently noticing the same thing and feeling a little mean about it.“ That’ll take a Mobius minute.”
And seriously. One hand, maybe Sonic shouldn’t be encouraging this kinda behavior. On the other: get his ass, lil buddy. Tear the bitch apart.
“A Mobius minute we don’t have. Time’s a tickin’, so how about a real game?” Sonic says, and then whips out his mirrored wraparound pokerstars glasses and snaps them around his head with all the drama of a thirteen year old kid who is abso lutely being annoying on purpose. “Whaddya boys say to raising the stakes a bit? Dealing us in?”
Is this a bad idea? Yeah, probably. But is it a workable one?
…maybe? He‘ll figure that out as he goes. It’ll be fine, though. It’ll be fine. Watch this.
“Wait a second!” Scratch yelps. “What makes you think we’d let you play with us ?”
“Woah, there,” Sonic- as well-versed in playground insults as the next hedgehog- says, raising his hands. “Let’s calm down before you do something real drastic, like uninvite me from your birthday party. I was gonna make a cake.”
“Really?” Grounder says, and Scratch glares at him.
“No, stupid,” he huffs. “He’s making fun of you. And he wasn’t invited to our birthday party in the first place, so it doesn’t matter!”
“Au contraire, my rusty-feathered friend,” Sonic announces, without missing a beat. “That just means that we’ve gotta make up for it by spending some quality time together now. C’mon what’s better than a little high-stakes, knock em out, drop em dead, bury em in the backyard game between friends? We win and we walk away, you win and we walk away, everyone wins and we walk away! You picking up what I’m putting down?”
“No,” Scratch says, and Sonic heaves a deep sigh before leaning forwards and tapping his finger against the makeshift sand table, and look. Listen. Necessity breeds innovation and all, and the sand table is actually pretty smart as far as solutions go, but he wishes that that innovation had turned out a little taller. A barstool would’ve done wonders for his character work here.
“Alright, then,” he huffs anyways, and then lowers his voice all disappointed and dramatic before dropping the big guns, because barstool or not he’s a professional, and if there’s one thing he’s gonna do it’s work with what he’s got. “If you’re too chicken, then I guess there’s nothin’ on Mobius that could make you come around, right?”
The tension becomes palpable. A seagull screeches. The sunglasses make direct, challenging eye contact a little difficult, but Sonic thinks he’s managing.
“Well, I’m not chicken,” Grounder announces. “Scratch is the chicken here!”
“I am not !” Scratch clucks chickenly, like a chicken, in the same way that a chicken might. “You take that back!”
Good- high tensions mean high emotions, and high emotions mean mistakes. If this is a trap- and it’s gotta be a trap- then he’s just gotta give ‘em the runaround for a little while longer, and soon enough it’ll all come crashing down. He’s done this song and dance before, and he’s damn good at it too; he’s taken home Best in Show every year since he could walk.
“And you knoooooow,” Sonic adds to that end, drawing it out and confident as can be. “I know you two have come down on some hard times lately. A good game can help with that, because a good game means good money and money like this-“
A snag: there is no money in sight. Snag, continued: he does not have money like, at all. He is completely, emphatically broke. But Tails comes through as Tails so often does and whips out some sand dollars he’d picked up on the beach a little bit back, fanning them out with a flourish. Sonic gestures to them, big and grand, and both Scratch and Grounder follow his hands with their eyes completely entranced like those aren’t literally things that Tails picked up off the beach ten minutes ago.
“-only comes around once in a lifetime,” Sonic finishes. “You know what uhhhhhh-“
“Eight,” Tails offers, and Sonic shoots him the patented Finger Gun of Gratitude.
“-eight sand dollars could get you?” he continues. “Not much from your average retailer, I can tell you that much, but the honor? The prestige? You’ll be famous in the fake beachfront gambling scene for years . They’re gonna write your name in starfish. Do you know how long it’d take to find that many starfish? And they’d be finding them all for you. ”
“I do like stars,” Grounder muses. “They’re my third favorite shape.”
Hook, line, sinker, baby. Trap or not- and he still does think all this is a trap- he’s walking out of this one the winner.
“And you two are on break ,” Sonic adds, to drive it home. “You’re young, you’re alive, and you’ve already gone fishing once, so why not complete the set? Get a little more bang for your buck, go for that two-for-one, live a little, live a lot . Don’t just go fishing- go fish. ”
Tails breaks a bit here and giggles, but that’s fine; happens to the best of them, happens to the best of us. Besides, did you see that performance? Oscar worthy. He’s so damn good at this.
“Alright! Alright,” Scratch says, case in point. Exhibit A. “Hurry up, then.”
“We’ve got like ten minutes left,” Grounder agrees, but these wheels are already in motion; Tails nods and then fumbles on his own sunglasses because like, of course he’s got a pair, fake beachside gambling is a family-friendly activity, before gathering up the deck. He gives it a few clumsy shuffles, handing them seven cards each before placing it in the center of their makeshift table and tossing the sand dollars in after it. They spill, sprawling out into a messy almost-circle. It’s dramatic. It’s cinematic. It’s perfect .
“The game is seven card go-fish, big rig rules,” he announces. “No peeking, no cheating, no double-dealing, no frying, no flying, no casting or reeling, and absolutely no baiting, no hold, no bar! I want a good, clean game, you understand?”
He looks around. Sonic, arms crossed and eyes covered and ready to bring these badniks down to sea level, does not so much as nod. Grounder looks like he got a little hooked back on baiting, and will probably catch up with the rest of them in a few seconds. Scratch just kinda clucks.
“I hate you two so much, you know that?” he says, nice and conversational. Civil! “You’re WEIRD. You should stop being WEIRD.”
He is ignored.
“Good!” Tails chirps. “Ready, ready fish!”
He chops his hand down. Sonic looks down at his cards blank, impassive, go-fish face impeccable.
“Grounder,” he says. “You got any twos?”
Grounder scowls.
“Why do you get to go first?” He asks. “Shouldn’t it be youngest?”
“You’re robots,” Sonic says immediately. “That’s gonna get murky. How about we go with bluest?”
“Saddest?” Tails asks, wrinkling his nose. They’ll work on the whole blank part of the poker face later.
“I was thinking more literal, bud,” Sonic says, gesturing towards himself.
“I don’t like that. I think we should go in, ummmmmm. Backwards alphabetical order,” Tails says, and that was specific, Sonic’ll give him that; specific, and to a clear end, the clear end being that he comes out the winner. Sonic is so proud.
“Well I think that with all that talk about chickens before, the biggest chicken should go first!” Scratch says.
You see that? They dig their own graves, they really really do. Sonic just drives the hearse, arranges the flowers, writes the eulogy, does the will reading if they pay him enough, which they never ever do. It’s a cold world out there. A cold, cruel world.
“There’s no way for you to walk out of this one looking good,” Sonic tells him, to that effect. “So me ‘n Tails are gonna look the other way for a sec. Give you a chance to take it back.”
Tails looks up at the sky. Sonic looks out to the sea. Between the two of them, they’re covering the entire metaphorical range of the fear of the unknown.
“Maybe… we can flip a coin?” Grounder says after a minute.
“There are four of us, genius,” Scratch hisses.
“Maybe we can flip two coins?” Grounder tries.
“Maybe I can flip you into the ocean,” Scratch says.
“Then we’d get all rusty,” Grounder tells him. “Which would make it really hard to catch Sonic.”
“So this is a trap,” Sonic muses, though with considerably less urgency than he probably should. In his defense, he’s got a pretty good hand here- he’s gonna double those sand dollars by the end of tonight, just you wait. Just you wait for it.
“But Sonic, now that I think about it, us coming over here might make this whole thing entrapment,” Tails says apologetically. “Which wouldn’t hold up in court.”
“It’s not a trap, ” Scratch scoffs at the same time. “We’re on break. ”
“A preemptive trap then,” Sonic says. “The worst kind. Too many constraints, too many rules- no room for creativity in this day and age, I’m tellin’ you. You two could do better. I think they might offer classes down at the community center, if you maybe wanna look into that.”
“Premeditation would make a better case for us, though,” Tails offers, and Sonic thinks he should maybe stop letting him watch courtroom procedurals because he’s noticing a bit of a theme here, and he does not think that eight sand dollars is gonna be enough to put Tails through law school
“Do you really think we’d spend the whole time before our break setting up a trap for you just so that we can spring it when we’re off our break?” Scratch asks. “Because that would be really stupid.”
“Or maybe really smart,” Grounder adds. “That sounds like a plan someone super smart would come up with.”
Oh, thank god. See, kids, that’s how to do it; wait for long enough, and eventually your enemies will just admit to whatever it is that they’re doing. This works all the time, regardless of either context or nuance. Trust him. He’s an expert.
“I mean, I’ve heard worse,” Sonic- who knew this was a trap, by the way, you saw it, he said it- says. “And soooooo, I think whoever came up with that really smart plan should get to go first.”
Inelegant, maybe, but it’ll get the job done. Case in point:
“Fox!” Scratch says.
“Hedgehog!” Grounder bellows at the same time.
“You got any threes?” they both finish, and then Grounder immediately slaps a hand (a drill?) to his forehead.
“Yes!” Tails cheers, and throws his cards in the air. “Go, Sonic!”
Poor form? Maybe. Does Sonic care. No. Heck, he’s about to throw his cards in the air too, ‘cause if experience is anything to go by- and really, at the end of it, experience is the only thing to go by- then in like fifteen, twenty minutes, they’ll have wrapped this up and can get right back to hanging out on the beach. He’s gonna get such a bad sunburn.
“I think we might’ve bungled that one,” Grounder says, glum.
“You think?” Scratch hisses. “We spent alllll our break figuring out how to catch Sonic, and then we told him how we were going to catch him after it? Boss is gonna be so angry. We’re never gonna hear the end of it.”
“I’ll say!” a voice booms from above and then, right on cue, the sun goes dark and the sounds of one of those egg-ship machines he doesn’t know the name of comes whirring right on by. “You fools! You buffoons! You absolute-”
“Dumbots,” Sonic offers.
“Stupidheads,” Tails tries.
“Meanies, for the kids in the crowd,” Sonic says.
“Numbskulls!” Tails exclaims.
“Dolts!” Robotnik bellows, evidently tired of them but like. That’s what you get for making a random kid into your nemesis. That one’s on you, dude. “You dolts bungled it, alright!”
“I like it,” Tails says. “Rhymes with bolts.”
“Better than ignoramuses,” Grounder agrees. “That one was hard to make jokes with. It was embarrassing .”
“That would be pretty hard to riff off of,” Sonic muses as the man, the myth, the omelet comes cracking down on them all. “But ignoramus, dolt, numbskull or whatever, I knew this was a trap. And I’ve gotta say Robotnik, coercing your employees to use their break time for work is a new low, even for you. Seems illegal. And we are very concerned with legality out here.”
“For shame, Robuttnik,” Tails adds, nodding. “For shame. ”
“It’s not illegal if they chose to do it themselves , you dolts!” Robotnik snarls as he hops out of his ship and comes storming over. “I just offered some… incentive. It’s unethical, not illegal- and the law has no more room in its heart for ethics than me !”
“As in, the law has no room in its heart for you, or ethics has no room in its heart, etcetera, etcetera?” Sonic asks. “And you know, credit where credit is undue, that was confusing too. We both really kinda screwed that one up. You wanna take it from the top?”
Robotnik goes red. Ah, the wonders of a little bit of good ol’, bad-natured, poorly executed and worse intentioned fast-talking. Does the heart some good, does the soul one better, does nothing at all for anyone looking to say anything of any note. Allll quantity, no quality, baby. Three for one, every hour on the hour, dot to dot to dot.
“What if he’d said ‘I do?’,” Tails says in his Concentrating Very Hard Voice. “Like ‘the law has no more room in its heart for ethics than I do?’”
“I like it!” Sonic says with a snap and a point. “Short, easy on the ears, clear and comprehensive- Whaddya say then, Robotnik? You about ready to take this back to the drawing board? We could probably scrounge up a focus group if you really wanted to go for maximum impact. We should have that speech of yours market-ready in oh, two, three hundred years? The raw material’s not great. We’re gonna need some time.”
“You are insufferable ,” Robotnik says. “You are intolerable. ”
“And you need to lay off the thesaurus,” Sonic says. “It deserves a break every now and then too, y’know.”
“A break with whose time, hedgehog? Do you know how hard it is to perform mad science in this day and age? The funding situation is absolutely ridiculous. I might have to petition for a grant, ” Robotnik snarls. He’s standing right over them now and that’s a bit alarming, yeah, but also they all look ridiculous here. Tails’ sunglasses are sliding down his face. Half their deck is so riddled with holes that it’s unreadable. Robotnik is menacing two kids and two of his own employees. Nobody is winning, because they never got past the first turn.
“Well, I can’t help with that,” Sonic says. “Unless you’re looking for a recommendation or something? Financial advice? Scientific advice? General life advice? I’m gonna suggest a haircut, I think. Maybe letting loose a little bit. You wanna play some go fish?”
He tilts his head towards their game, which they still haven’t started. Hey, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and nothing like a good game of go fish to reel ‘em in. You can try this at home. All you need is a deck of cards, something to play for, two robots, a fox, a hedgehog, and someone with a doctorate. Easy!
“No, I do not want to play some go fish, ” Robotnik growls. “I would not want to play go fish with you were you the last miserable speck of life on this sorry excuse of a planet. I would not want to play go fish with you to save my own life!”
Well, a simple no would’ve worked.
“Are you sure about that, boss?” Scratch says, because apparently he wants to get them one step closer to the scenario where Sonic is, in fact, the last miserable speck of life on this sorry excuse of a planet. “They’ve got these sand dollars. They’re pretty nice. No monetary value, but the prestige is-”
Robotnik whirls to glare at him. Him and Grounder, which is pretty impressive actually considering that they’re on opposite sides of the sand table. Sonic on the other hand knows an opportunity when he sees one, so he stands up and starts ushering Tails away because he gets the sense that their work here is done, and frankly he doesn’t wanna stick around for a minute more than he has to. They were on break, dammit.
“And you two!” Robotnik hisses, not at them thank god because he’s thankfully too wrapped up in his blustering to notice that they’ve managed to get like, five feet away. “You’ve made a fool of me! Do you two worthless heaps of scrap metal have any braincells left at all?”
Scratch looks at Grounder. Grounder looks at Scratch. Scratch scratches the back of his head. Grounder gives a sheepish half shrug.
“Go fish?” he says.
The resulting yell is loud enough to echo over the hills, over the valleys, over the towns and cities and sleepy little inlets and right back to them on the beach, because the great thing about Mobius is that despite the twists and turns, and despite the fact that up is usually only up insofar as you believe it to be, as a general rule (and no matter how turned-around you get), you’re always gonna end up right back where you started.
Well, some people are anyway- the people who haven’t figured out how to really make this work for them yet. Sonic and Tails, on the other hand? They understand the high and low of it, which really just means that they’ve gotten super good at navigating a twist ending. They’re also, incidentally, outta here.
Goodbye, and goodnight.