The Mandate Has Ended

by QueenSunnieMV

Summary:

You've heard the rumors about modern Sonic media, that a mandate from SEGA has been levied at the creatives that bans any and all depictions of explicit romantic feelings between the characters. Well, what if that was not only true, but there was a tangible, textual reason for it?

The Mandate Has Ended is an AU where everyone in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is suddenly able to feel romantic and sexual attraction to one another, all at once, with the flick of a switch. Everyone, that is, other than the man himself, who didn't like romance even before the 'Mandate' was put in place. How does everyone deal with these newly remembered feelings of affection and desire, how does Sonic deal with the countless unwanted advances of his peers, and how did this all happen in the first place?

Chapter 1: Something Happened

Something happened…

When Tails woke up and got out of bed, something was… off. He looked around his garage, found all the pictures of his friends on the wall, and felt himself start to sweat. But he had no idea why that would be. They were fine… right? He was fine, too, wasn’t he? He did a full body check. No wounds, scratches, bruises, or other anomalies. So everything should be fine, shouldn’t it? He looks out the window in the shape of his own eye and watches the world for any impending disasters.

Far away on Angel Island, Knuckles is laying on top of the Master Emerald, looking at the sky. Something happened, and he’s finding himself oddly furious at Shadow, of all people. Why would he feel like that? It’s been years since he felt like he had to be… protective against the guy.

In another corner of the world, Silver is feeling amazing! Something happened last night, and now he feels this newfound trust and respect in his friend group. He has so many friends he cares about, and just wants to get out there and let them know how much he cares! How much he’s always relied on them, and all that! He felt that way about them yesterday, too, and the day before that, but something has really spurred on his affectionate side somehow!

Espio, however, doesn’t want to get out of bed. Something happened to make him feel not at all like himself. Vector is in the office calling Vanilla on the phone, making a dolt of himself as usual, Charmy is playing loud, grating video games, and Espio has a headache. He just wants to stay hidden, not be seen, and think of a way to stop thinking about that time Silver hugged him, which he for whatever reason, is unable to wash away from his mind.

Whisper the Wolf woke up feeling mostly normal. She has this odd anticipatory feeling, but other than that, she suspects nothing is wrong when she walks into the common room to find Lanolin talking with… “Tangle…” she whispers, her eyes going about as wide as she’s capable of.

Tangle turns around, starts to say something along the lines of ‘Morning, bestie,’ before her words catch in her throat. Has Whisper always looked… like that? “H… Hey, Whisper…” she says, uncharacteristically quiet.

The two of them, best friends in the world, walk towards each other, and before Lanolin can finish saying, “What are you two doing?” the women leap forward into each other’s arms, locking lips in a passionate embrace that has Lanolin jumping backwards and going, “Whoa! Huh? Did something happen???”

Sonic the Hedgehog taps his foot. He’s up on a hill, idling his time away with some meaningless platforming as he thinks. Something happened, of that he’s sure, but what?

He feels normal. About the same as he felt yesterday and the day before, anxious to move and avoiding any reason not to. He feels free! But there was something in the back of his mind that felt… Well, not wrong, exactly, but shifted. Realigned. As if a door he’d never planned on opening was now unlocked, but still shut firmly. He feels like he’s capable of changing… something? But not something he particularly wants to change.

It’s an odd feeling, but not an entirely unpleasant one, he supposes. Like some option, somewhere, was available to him if he ever felt like it. The problem is that he can’t put his finger on exactly what had changed. Other than this oddly off-putting liberated feeling, nothing is different. Where would something like that come from?

As he ponders such things and hits a double loop-de-loop, his communicator rings. He tosses the device through the air above his head, watches it corkscrew as it falls back down, and catches it in the same motion that he presses the accept call button. “Sonic the Hedgehog speaking!” He then does a backflip over a pit. Whatever was wrong, it didn’t keep him from being his normal, flamboyant self.

“Sonic!” the voice on the other end called out, his little bro’s worried squeak coming through loud and clear. “Something happened!”

“Yeah?” Sonic responds, screeching to a halt. He should’ve known Tails would have the answers he needed! “What’s wrong, bud? Just tell me where I need to be, and I’ll fix whatever needs fixing for ya!”

“I don’t know!” Sonic feels himself droop a bit at Tails’s answer. “But something feels really wrong somehow! I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s undeniable! Something definitely changed!”

“I get what you mean,” Sonic replies, tapping his foot impatiently after only about 5 seconds of idling. Even as he talks, he eyes up a large, spiral-shaped hill off in the distance that would make a good spot for cliff-diving. “I’ve been feeling off all day, but I can’t say why.”

He hears Tails sigh on the other end. “So it isn’t just me. I don’t know whether that’s good news or bad, though.”

“Well no one’s in danger, are they?” Sonic asks, sounding almost hopeful for a catastrophe to solve. Not that he wants anyone to get hurt, he just wants to be the reason they don’t, is all!

“No, but I keep getting anxious and sweaty whenever I look at old photos or think about any of our friends,” Tails says. “That’s really never happened before.”

Sonic scratches his chin. He definitely didn’t feel anxious. It’s something entirely different. But if it wasn’t just him feeling like something had happened, then that means something definitely did, in fact, happen. “We gotta get to the bottom of this, then!” he says, “Keep me updated on whatever you find! I’m gonna head to the HQ and talk to–” Sonic’s plan is cut short by a loud booming noise from Tails’s end of the conversation. “Tails!?”

“Hey, wait, you can’t come in–” Sonic hears Tails try to argue, but there’s a scuffle and the device is ripped away from him.

“YOU!” a familiar voice screams out of Sonic’s communicator, making him jolt his head away from it. “You did this somehow!!! You [kids’ show]! Come and fight me in person instead of using dirty [christian manga] tricks, you [G-Rated movie!]”

“Hi, Surge…” Sonic responds, picking at his now-ringing ear. “Did your vocabulary get more colorful on its own, or is that one my fault, too?”

“[Fun for the whole family] YOU!!!” Surge screams back, one hand with Tails’s communicator in a death grip and the other on Tails’s forehead, keeping him away as he tries to reach around her to take it back. He’s not doing a great job. “Tell me what you did so I can undo IT, and then undo your BIRTH!!!”

“It wasn’t me, Surge,” Sonic responds, suddenly very tired of this conversation. “We don’t even know what happened to begin with, let alone who did it. Slow your roll a bit.”

“Slow your [birthday!], [birthday!]FACE!”

“These things have swear filters on, you know,” Sonic tells her, shaking his communicator like she could see him do it. “I can’t actually understand what you’re saying if you keep using all those grown-up words.”

“[Puppies!] [kittens!] [baby bunnies!] [Chao in Space!] [Chao in Space 2!] [Chao in Space 3: Revenge of Chao!]” Surge explodes.

“Yeah, I’m not getting any of this.” There’s a staticky roar on the other end as Surge peaks the mic with her screeching. “Listen, just let me and Tails figure this out and try to stay out of our hair! We’ll have this handled in a few hours, max!”

There’s more of a struggle on the other end of the line before he can hear Tails say, “Don’t touch that, you’ll break it!”

“Break your dumb butt, more like!”

“No!!!” Tails’s impotent whining is helping the situation about as much as Surge’s impotent rage.

“Hey, fam,” Sonic sighs out, “I’ll call you back in a bit. Gotta get to the bottom of this. T. Hedgehog out!”

“Sonic!!!” both of them yell in unison before he hangs up and stows the communicator away.

“Jeez…” Sonic shakes his head and then dashes towards Emeraldville. He takes the scenic route, leaping over mountains and zig-zagging across forests, as he thinks about the situation. Whatever had happened, it seemed to be affecting people differently. He felt more or less fine, but clearly he was the only one…

He tries to focus on that offness more closely. Maybe everyone felt the same, but were just having different reactions to it? To him, it felt like an option he didn’t need to take, didn’t even understand, but maybe other people are more actively compelled somehow? He continues to think as he bounces from a tree to a building to the paved road, thinks as hard as he can, and then it hits him.

He still has no idea what’s happening, but he tumbles to the ground as the projectile that smacked him in the side topples him over and twists around him. He looks down and sees a quilly, pink shape latched onto him in an all-too familiar, yet long-forgotten way.

“SOOOOOOOONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIC!” Amy Rose cries into his chest, gripping him as tightly as she can manage, which is quite tight, given her strength.

Still on the floor, struggling to get back onto his feet with this feminine full-body weight attached to him, Sonic says, “Ames? Are you–”

Before he can finish asking if she was alright, she breaks into even more tears, sobbing into him as she yells, “I’m sorry, Sonic, I need this! I was doing so good for so long, I was holding myself back, but I can’t take it anymore, I need to be close to you or I’m gonna diiiiiiiiie!” She loudly weeps into his fur as he pushes himself away, a far tearier version of the same old song and dance they’d done so many times before.

“Amy, whoa, hold on, what are you–?” Right, something had happened, and it was affecting her, too. But in an incredibly pronounced fashion compared to him and Tails, it seems. “Amy, try and breathe! We both need to be calm so we can–”

“I told myself I didn’t need to be like this again!” Amy continues as she cries, big, gloopy tears falling from her face as she infodumps onto her blue hero. “We were friends, and it meant so much to me that you weren’t scared of me anymore, and everything was okay, and then suddenly it wasn’t and I missed you so bad that it hurt, and I feel like I’m gonna explode if I can’t hug you right now!!!”

“Well you ARE hugging me now, girl, jeez!” He half pats her on the head and half tries to shove her off, but she stays firmly latched to his side, even as he sits himself back upright. “You could’ve just asked!”

“I knowwwwww, I’m awfullllllllllll!” Amy cries, her tears getting all over him in a way Sonic definitely isn’t a fan of. This really is like back when they were kids. Amy used to be like this every day until… something. Something changed, somehow. And then it… unchanged? What the heck is going on, he wonders.

“You’re not awful, Ames, you’re just being affected by whatever is going on around here.” He wants to comfort her, but also, gross gross gross gross gross!

“Huh?” She looks up at him with giant, wet eyes with pupils full of broken hearts.

“Tails and I noticed it this morning, something’s way past wrong with today. It’s…” Way too long of a pause for it to feel very nice. “Probably not your fault.”

Amy sniffles up a big drip of sad snot and says, “I don’t know. It feels like it is…” She squeezes him like a teddy bear and he feels his ribs straining under the pressure. “When I was holding it all together, I was so happy that I could just be normal around you, and then it all came flooding back…! And it hurt so bad…! And even though I know I shouldn’t, I still love you so much…!”

As Amy says that, something strikes at Sonic. “Uh.” Tails said he’d been anxious looking at old photos. Amy was acting like her old self just jumpscared her from half a decade ago. And that door in the back of his mind, the one he’d prefer to stay closed, behind it was the same thing everyone else was going through, wasn’t it? “Oh, dang, I think everyone remembered what love is.”

How long had it been since Amy had been so clingy? When was the last time Rouge had made a game of teasing Knuckles and Shadow? How long has he known Tangle and Whisper to be attached at the hip without ever making moves on each other, like, in hindsight that was bizarre! Tails was a little kid when everyone was still all hearts-and-hammers, so he wouldn’t know any better right now, and Surge might not even have existed for all Sonic knows!

Something *had* happened. But whatever it was had been years ago. And now, it had been undone, and everyone he knew was able to access those parts of themselves that had been locked behind that door up until today.

Everyone but, uh, him. By his own choice, mind you! Didn’t help everyone else, though. Jeez.

“Listen, Ames,” he says, putting aside the current reality-bending catastrophe he just realized had transpired aside for now so that he can comfort his friend as best as he can. “You’re right, it *is* great getting to be normal friends with you. I like that a lot, really. It doesn’t make you awful for wanting things other than that, I just… don’t think I’m the kind of person who can help with it.”

He was exhibiting a kind of emotional intelligence he didn’t have back when they were kids and Amy was doing this every other day. He was a grown hedgehog now. He babysat Sage on weekends for a fascist megalomaniac. He knows how to express himself better than just going ‘ACK!’ and running away when a girl gave him cooties. He’s still awesome and cool and radical, though. He’s not old or anything. Shut up.

“Platonically, and I mean extremely platonically, I do love you a lot, Amy. You’re one of my best friends. I just can’t, uh… you know, the rest of that.” So emotionally intelligent. He’s the best at this.

“Y-you mean you’re aromantic?” Amy asks genuinely through her veil of tears.

“What?” Sonic’s never heard that word before.

“It’s someone who can’t or doesn’t want to have romantic feelings for people,” she explains, speaking rather evenly despite being covered in her own tears and snot.

“Where did you hear about that?” Why does Amy know emotional intelligence words that he doesn’t? He’s been winging it so good up until now!

“I was really big into online shipping forums back when we were kids,” she says, smiling sadly as she remembers all those magical girls she insisted belonged with one boy and not the other. She’d get really mad when people would pair Usagi with that old guy. Ugh. Not the time for memories, nevermind. “One day, I just kinda stopped, though…” And so did everyone else. Huh. How… odd.

“Okay, so we’re on the same page about this being a long, drawn-out problem we’ve been dealing with for years, cool, great,” Sonic says, realizing he’s been dropping the ball without realizing it for the better part of a decade. “Awesome. Radical. Far out.”

“Y-You mean other people are f-feeling like I do?” Amy asks, starting to calm down just a bit.

“Well, not exactly like you do!” He’s only talked to his surrogate brother and his maybe-clone, maybe-daughter (very unclear how that works) about it so far, and if they had Amy’s… particular symptoms, then… “At least I desperately hope not…” Eww… “But something similar, yeah!”

“But not… you?” She sounds less hopeful than she does reticent to know the answer. She already knows the answer, but hearing it out loud is never fun.

“Uh, no.” He shakes his spiky head. “Like you said, I just… really don’t want that kind of thing.” He takes a breath, then adds, “Ever.” He has never been more sure of anything other than this fact. He does not desire anyone in any sort of romantic way in any form. At all. Not even an iota. It made his quills stand on end just thinking about himself in that kind of situation.

“But wait, what about Elise?” Amy asks suddenly.

Hearing that name is like feeling a wet fish hitting him in the side of his head. “Ugh…” Speaking of long-repressed memories. The princess and the hero of the world, reunited after saving one another’s lives over and over. It was a storybook happy ending that was never mentioned again, ever, on threat of the worst vibes possible. “Jeez, that was. Ugh!” Of all of his many adventures, Sonic liked that one the least. “It didn’t work, alright?” he finally replies after getting all the shudders out of his system. “No shade to anyone involved, but it was never gonna happen, no matter how hard anyone tried to force it, alright?” It was a fantasy story, it was all *supposed* end so great. That’s what he’d told himself when he tried over and over again to be, uh… something. Wait. When was that?

Thinking about it, did he actually do much at all? Or was it…? He tries to retrace his mental steps through the story. Something about a kidnapping, time travel, apocalypses prevented, he got revived somehow, him and his bros went super, and the only one that got hurt in the end was…

Sonic’s eyes go wide as Amy says, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense, then. If you’re aromantic, then things like that wouldn’t really–”

“Blaze died,” Sonic says suddenly.

“Huh?” Amy looks at him funny. “But we saw her the other day? She was–”

“I know!” Literally nothing was making sense anymore. “She sacrificed herself to Iblis, Silver told me so! But then Iblis didn’t exist anymore? Somehow? Did she never die or did she get resurrected, or–”

“Didn’t YOU die!?” Amy cries out, confused as all hell.

“Something happened, alright!?” He bolts up to his feet, and Amy doesn’t try to hold him there. She got a lot of body contact, even a bit of emotional closure, she’ll be fine, probably. Just very sad. “Something involving time, or our memories, or our abilities to feel romance??? I dunno, I gotta go get to the bottom of this!”

“But if you and Tails can’t figure out what’s wrong, who can?”

“Not sure,” Sonic admits with a shrug, already stretching and getting ready for another long run. “But I do know that I need to check up on Blaze!” If he could remember her dying, how must she be feeling? “And if this has to do with the timeline, or anything like that, Silver might be someone to ask, too!”

Amy nods. That… makes sense. “Okay. We can… talk about this more when you have time, right?”

Sonic feels that age-old sense of dread (cooties, eugh), but nods anyway. He was a mature adult now, had to act like one. “Yeah, Ames, we’ll chat. But for now, I gotta run!”

“OkayButDoYouWantAKissFirstOrMaybeAHugOrAHandshakeOr–” Amy tries to get it all out before he’s gone, but he’s faster than sound, so she’s not really sure if he even heard it before he blasts away. Left to stew in her own misery, Amy sniffles again and says, “...I need to make a dating profile…”

Chapter 2: Lost Lives

Blaze the Cat’s head is in her hands as she sits at a table outside a cafe in Barricade Town. It had hit her all at once. Memories of a life she doesn’t think she really lived, a sacrifice she’d never made, last words she’s never spoken. She rubs her temples, trying to let the heat from the tea sitting in front of her face waft up and calm her, but she finds herself unable to simmer down.

Everyone else around her seemed distracted. The barista had been looking around nervously at customers as she’d delivered Blaze’s drink, the Restoration worker at her desk was scanning the screen of her phone with rapt intensity, and barely anyone even looked her way when they passed her on the street, or if they did, they looked for far too long. Blaze barely even registered things were different, given her own inner world was a roaring inferno at the moment.

What did this mean? Were these memories real, or did she dream it all up, imagine the whole thing? If they were real, then how could she still be here? Were they memories from some other version of her? Was she even the real Blaze? Was she some copy or clone? And at the end of the day, what impact did any of this have on her NOW? Those memories are from years ago and she has current, actual responsibilities. She has a kingdom, a land to help defend, friends she needs to protect, so why should the past even matter?

Her friends… If they knew about this, if they suspected that she was… wrong, would they still even be her friends? What if she was dangerous? Some sort of out-of-place anomaly that would only cause them pain? The idea that her friends could turn their backs on her - or worse yet, that they don’t, but she DOES end up being something dangerous - it twists her up inside. It hurts worse than an oil burn.

And she still has no idea what to do. What could she even hope to do? She’s never felt so lost…

“There you are!” a chipper voice calls out to her, jolting her out of her melancholy musings. She snaps her eyes up to the source and sees Silver, waving and smiling at her like they hadn’t seen each other in years, despite having beat up Eggman together last weekend (Sonic was busy with Sage and could not attend).

“Silver,” Blaze states evenly, her voice not rising to her usual polite purr, staying down at just a dull buzz as she addresses him. Definitely not feeling herself at the moment. “Hello.”

Instead of simply taking a seat at the table across from her like an average day’s Silver the Hedgehog might do, he practically skips right over and throws his arms around her, pulling Blaze into a tight, loving hug. Little question marks appear over Blaze’s head as her face becomes mostly large, confused eyes. “It’s so good to see you!!!” he says, almost sings, as he jostles her around with his glomp.

“Um,” Blaze responds, “Okay.” Did he know? What did he know? Why was he doing this?

After finally letting her go and sitting down at her table, still a massive grin on his face, he says, “Heh, sorry! I’ve just been in a great mood all day today!” He rests his chin in his hands as he leans against the table, gazing longingly up into the sky as if the birds were looking back down at him. “Not sure why~!”

Blaze just stares at him for a long stretch as he practically radiates rainbows and unicorns. What the fuck was he doing? Silver was normally, at best, shyly compassionate. He didn’t just open conversations with hugs. This was peculiar. And looking back at her day so far, MOST people had seemed at least slightly peculiar all around. And then Silver looks over at her again with dilated pupils and half-lidded eyes, making her tail flick irritably. “Have you been doing alright, Blaze~?”

“...Sure,” she responds. She grabs her tea and hides her face behind the mug as she takes a too-long sip. What on earth was happening right now? She was collapsing under the weight of her own crushing reality, or loss of reality, and Silver was over there acting like he was in–

“Oh, I love these things!” he tells the distracted, worried waitress as she hands him a sugary green tea with a bendy straw. “Thank you so much~!” Blaze stares at him like he has three heads and one of the heads is breathing fire and one of the other heads is spitting on her shoes and the last head is giving a speech on rainforest conservationism.

“What happened?” Blaze asks plainly, her stress still plainly visible through thick lines across her face, her art style nearly completely different from Silver’s at this point.

“Huh?” Silver asks innocently, “What do you mean?”

“Something happened,” she responds almost immediately, “Something happened to you and you’re acting strange.”

“I am?” Silver’s metaphorical glow falters for just a moment as he considers that he may be bothering her. “Sorry, Blaze, but I really did just wake up in a good mood! I don’t think anything else is different?”

Blaze sets her mug down and steeples her fingers in front of her snout. Maybe he was right. Blaze herself was the abnormal one, she’s known that for hours, now. Something had gone wrong, she was… changed, and now everything around her seemed off. He wasn’t weird, it was Blaze that was weird. That’s the conclusion she almost finds herself coming to, right up until Silver reaches over to her, takes one of her hands, and presses her palm into his own cheek. “I’m just SO happy to see you today. That makes sense, doesn’t it~?”

Blaze yanks herself away from him and stands up from the table, knocking her chair to the floor. “What happened to you!? Are you even Silver!? Tell me what’s going on before I–”

She almost lights her own hand on fire as a threat before another hand taps her on the shoulder. She swivels on her heel, almost slapping whoever had been standing there with her burning claw, but is able to hold herself back once she sees Sonic the Hedgehog.

“Hey, yeah, nice to see you guys, too!” he says with his normal, unaffected coolness as he shrugs, backing away from the fireball-that-almost-was being aimed at his head. “Thought I’d drop in to see how you’re holding up, but I guess I have my answer, huh?”

Blaze stares at Sonic. Just Sonic, speaking and looking and acting like normal, and almost grabs him into a hug herself. She doesn’t, of course, because she is far too frazzled for any physical contact at the moment, but under different circumstances, she may have. “Oh, thank Sol you’re here,” Blaze breathes out desperately, sounding like she’d just been rescued from drowning. “Please tell me you know what’s happening to him.”

She points over at Silver, who is still kicking his feet and humming a little tune under his breath as he glances between his two friends. He gives Sonic a wide, toothy grin, just happy to be here around his pals, haha!

“Yup,” Sonic answers, nearly making Blaze collapse from relief. “Not sure you’re gonna like the answer, though.” He looks from Silver to Blaze and then back to Silver, understanding implicitly what had happened before he’d gotten here. “Yeah I probably should’ve called this one, too, thinking about it now.”

“As long as there IS an answer, I’ll be fine,” Blaze says, slowly picking up her chair and setting herself back down into it.

Sonic explains his running theory to the two of them, that something had locked off parts of their memories and emotions a long, long time ago, and whatever it had been had suddenly stopped overnight. He carefully avoids saying outright that Silver was actively down bad for kitty, though Blaze seems to pick up the gist of that, too. “I was really hoping one of you two might have an idea of what caused all this, but I guess that’s a big fat nope, isn’t it?”

Blaze nods slowly as she takes in all of this information, understanding that the gaps in her memories, and the NEW memories, were from some unknown source, a source they could find, extract answers from, and promptly deal with. Almost all the stress of the situation washes out of her. She regains her composure and resolve, saying, “Okay. This is… This is good news.” She glances over at Silver and adds, “Well, maybe not the best news, but it’s better than worrying about it alone.” She grips her own arms tightly, muttering under her breath, “Better than believing it’s only my life that fell apart and ended…”

“Oh, good, so you remember that, too, then!” Sonic says casually, mocking a wiping-his-brow motion. “Glad I’m not the only one who missed the funeral!”

Blaze’s fur stands on end. He knew what she’d meant. He knew she’d died, somehow. “You… You remember…?”

“Why do you think you’re the first person I came to find?” Sonic says with a nod. “Had to make sure you weren’t really gone, you know?”

“What do you mean, Sonic~?” Silver asks naively, basking in his own obliviousness. “Oh, like back to her own dimension? Well it was nice of you to think of something like that! You’re always so considerate~! I really like that about you, you know~! Always looking out for your friends~! It’s so sweet of you~!”

Sonic feels his eyelid twitch. “Yeah, I get where the fireball was coming from, now.”

“I-It’s not Silver’s fault!” Blaze says, sounding more worried for Silver than about Silver, now. “He’s just a victim in all of this.”

“I don’t feel like a victim~!” the metallic menace coos, “I feel like the whole world is a beautiful, wonderful place, and that I’m lucky to be in it with both of you~!”

“That’s… great, Silver, really,” Sonic lies through gritted teeth, “But I don’t think everyone’s feeling as nice about these revelations as you are.”

“I could certainly be dealing with things a lot better,” Blaze admits. She’s going to let herself believe that the memories she has of her own destruction are actually false, some trick from some nefarious source, so that her mind isn’t rattled with the kind of existential dread that she’s only ever heard from Shadow before. Mmh, maybe she should actually go to see the ultimate lifeform himself, talk about these… awful thoughts this incident has inspired in her. He would be the only person able to relate, after all.

No, nevermind, nothing. She’s fine. She needs to tell herself that she’s okay. She rubs her temples, trying to imagine herself as a victim of Eggman or the Zeti or some other annoying yet manageable threat. That’s all this is, not a life-upending revelation.

Sonic sees her anxiety attack pretty clearly and asks, “You aren’t feeling all gaga like Amy and Silver are, huh Blaze?”

“Hm?” Oh, right, people can be romantic. What an odd way to phrase– Whatever, seems a bit low-stakes compared to the rest of this situation, but a notable shift, she supposes. “I’m a bit distracted at the moment, unfortunately. Not exactly in the mood for something like that right now.” Maybe if she survives this crisis, she can find it in herself to go on some dates, or something. Should she still have the ability to, in any case.

“Heh,” Sonic chuckles, “You and me both.” He doesn’t really sense that same aura of *repulsion* from Blaze that he’s currently feeling, but it’s at least nice to have someone around he doesn’t need to worry about getting handsy. Notably, he has very purposefully sat as far away from Silver as possible at this table.

“Where should we start, then?” Blaze asks, wanting to get this problem solved as soon as possible so that her mind can be at ease. “We can’t just sit around playing guessing games.”

“Where else?” Sonic says, smirking as he leans forward. “This smells like rotten eggs to me!”

Blaze stands up tall, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. Then she lets flames burst out from under her, lifting her up from the ground and warming the two hedgehogs at her side. “After you.”

Silver sees Sonic and Blaze getting ready to blast off and also starts levitating. “Okay!” he says, “Yay!!!”

It’s hardly any time at all before they find the nearest egg base (the guy has a lot of bases), the trio bursting through a window and landing in one of the classic Robotnik command centers. “Alright, Eggman!” Sonic declares as he and Blaze come to a dramatic stop on the mechanical floor, Silver floating dreamily through the air just behind them. “Time to put an end to your newest scheme–”

Sonic stops when he sees Eggman sitting at his terminal, head in his hands the same exact way Blaze’s had been at the start of this. “He’d been flirting with me,” Eggman whispers, depression clear in his tone. “That whole time, through all the scheming and the treachery, how could I have only just NOW noticed that he was flirting with me!?”

“Um…” Blaze looks around. There was a pronounced lack of badniks in this fortress at the moment. Just a sad, old man and his two shape-themed robots who were currently cuddling under a desk. “Is this… Should we come back later, or–”

“And I let him die!” Eggman bemoans. “Right in front of me! I watched the man who was in love with me perish… WITHOUT USING THAT AGAINST HIM!!!” Blaze and Sonic simultaneously narrow their eyes in annoyance. “Just THINK of the kind of karmic pain I COULD have inflicted had I known! The betrayal! The ironic agony of being done in by the one thing he wanted most! And I didn’t play into it AT ALL! I just thought he was an academic rival, oh, how could I have been so BLIND!?”

“...Yeah, we should leave.” Sonic turns back towards the broken window, his brow furrowed as he trudges away. “See you and Sage on Saturday, Ivo,” he says with a passive, unsympathetic wave over his shoulder as Eggman bashes his own fuzzy face into a keyboard.

Silver uses his telekinesis to gently lower Sonic and Blaze back down onto the soft ground outside, the two of them walking away without looking back. “If it wasn’t Eggman, that’s going to make this a lot harder,” Blaze says with a sigh. “His antagonistic peers are much more subtle about their schemes than he’s ever been.”

“Don’t remind me,” Sonic says with a groan. “Was really hoping this could be a lazy afternoon one-shot instead of a whole arc.”

“Or a saga!” Silver helpfully chimes in with. “It could be a saga!”

“Thanks, man,” Sonic groans.

“Maybe even an epic!!!” Silver’s hands are clasped together over his heart as he thinks about the possibilities.

“Huge help, Silver, massive, thanks for that.”

Blaze watches as Sonic stomps around in a circle, pacing as he thinks of who else they could go after now that their primary villain has turned out to be a side plot in all of this. She gently puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “You are… certainly taking all of this harder than I thought you would. Did you remember something as harrowing as I did about yourself?”

“Huh?” He actually looks surprised to hear that. “No, not really! Unless Elise counts! It doesn’t, bad joke to make, I should know better, haha!” He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his snout. “I just really want all my friends to get back to normal, is all.”

Blaze glances over at Silver doing loop-de-loops in the air as he follows around a butterfly. “I think that this… is their normal, actually,” she says, hooking a thumb in Silver’s direction. “What we’d been before today was the bad part.” She pauses, trying to say this next part as gently as possible, “Do you… want everyone to stop feeling love again…?”

Sonic pauses. Fuck, he did want that, didn’t he? Without realizing it, his goal was for Amy and Tails and Silver to not have to be this… clingy. “Uggggh,” he responds, realizing his own error. “No! That would be evil of me! That would be a really bad, crumby thing to do to everyone!” Even if the thought of being the object of people’s desires was tantamount to torture for him…

“Well,” Blaze says, still using her diplomatic politician voice to try and get her point across, not wanting to hurt the blue blur’s feelings, “I’m sure once everyone gets used to all of those latent feelings returning, things will calm down. We had romance before this weird thing happened, and we’ll be fine having it again.”

Something in the back of Sonic’s mind was telling him that HE won’t be fine, that the topsy-turvy world of no intimate feelings was actually his idea of the best possible reality to live in, but just like Blaze forcing herself to believe that she’d be fine, zombie resurrection or not, he’ll need to convince himself that he’ll be fine, too. Even if random girls he doesn’t know do tape up posters of his picture on their walls to fantasize about…

“Thanks, Blaze,” Sonic says, giving her a thumbs up. “That’s reassuring.” At least he has to try to let it be.

She offers him a small smile in return for the gesture, saying, “You go ahead on your own. We’ll gather more intel and meet up later.”

“Sounds good to me!” Sonic says, standing up straight and stretching his arms above his head like the same-old Sonic would! “Try and keep Sappy over there safe for us, kay? And once he sobers up, try figuring out if he knows anything about this timeline fiasco, too!” Blaze nods, and then Sonic’s off, speeding away to hopefully save the day.

Blaze watches him go, her eyes lingering on the blur for a bit longer than she was used to. In this moment of stillness, she does notice it, in fact. That latent warmth she’d forgotten existed somehow, in her chest and in her cheeks. She makes up her mind not to bother Sonic of all people with that, though, Sol knows he definitely didn’t want it. Hard not to be charmed at least a little bit by a hero like that, though. She sighs, turning on her heel and saying, “Silver! Let’s head back to town together, okay? I owe you a drink.”

Chapter 3: Perfect For Each Other

Amy Rose kicks a piece of rubble as she stares down at the ground, sitting on a destroyed curbside in what used to be Emeraldville, the headquarters of the Restoration. After her explosion of emotions from this morning and the proceeding fallout with Sonic, she’s spent the past hour just trying and failing to pull herself together. Her face is caked in ugly tears that she long ago gave up on trying to wipe away.

It at least wasn’t as bad as she would feel as a kid about all of this. Back then, every rejection would hit her in the middle of the night, and she’d be up until 3am tossing and turning and blaming Sonic and blaming herself and hating life and love and everything. Now, though, it’s just an agony of circumstance! They both agreed that there’s no one to blame, that neither of them are at fault, that they’re still friends through it all. Not nearly as bad! Still… quite painful, though, actually…

Well, moping isn’t going to get her anywhere, she supposes. She picks herself up, shakes her hands around to try and force a bit of pep back into her step, and starts to march herself over to the encampment of Restoration remnants and construction workers at the edge of town. Once the Restoration base at Emeraldville was destroyed by Clutch, the people living at the HQ itself needed a place to stay in the short term, so here they all are! Whoever didn’t relocate was sticking around to help rebuild. The people whose homes were destroyed deserved that, at least.

“Maybe if I bury myself in work like Jewel does, I can ignore all these feelings,” Amy sadly muses to herself. Not at ALL a healthy coping mechanism, she realizes, but those can come AFTER she compartmentalizes a bit of this. For now, she just wants to help people as best as she can. Seeing other people happy will make her feel a bit less–

“Ha-Whoa!!!” She turns a corner past a tent and sees two of her friends in a full-blown make-out session. Whisper has her back to a makeshift, plywood wall as Tangle leans into her, the lemur’s hands gripping the wolf by the hips as Whisper’s arms around Tangle’s neck pull her in closer. They’re both using their tongues and everything, Amy can see it from even a few yards away. Whoa!!!

At her sudden yelp of surprise, Tangle breaks the kiss and looks over her shoulder, eyes still half-lidded as they fall on Amy. “Oh,” she says, sounding almost drunk, “Heyyyyy girl!” She snickers, cheeks deep red as she waves at the hedgehog. Whisper, finally able to breathe for a moment, realizes they’ve been watched again and covers her eyes with her hands, her own blush shining brightly through her dark fur. “What’s new with you?”

Amy just stares for a moment. B-but… they were both g-g-girls??? Can you DO that outside of manga??? She hesitantly raises her hand and waves back at the two, trying to not let her shock show too clearly. “H… Hi…?”

“Let’s take a break…!” Whisper whispers, taking a step away from Tangle, who only clings to her shoulders, tail still wrapped around Whisper’s waist. “I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

“Oh, she’s fine~!” Tangle says, smiling wide while nuzzling her face up against Whisper’s cheek. “You’re fine, right Amy~?” She’s not even looking at Amy, just gazing longingly into Whisper’s fur as she clings tightly to her shy girlfriend.

“I…!” Oh, geez, they were engaging with her in conversation, she wasn’t prepared for that! Amy says, “Well, I’m very supportive…! I’m happy for both of you, for sure!” She watches on as Tangle kisses the side of Whisper’s neck, Whisper’s lower lip quivering at the sensation, and Amy feels something in her torso jump around. “Um, w-why are you doing all of this out here, though? Your tent’s right over there, isn’t it?” Isn’t privacy nicer for these, err, intimate moments?

“Lanolin kicked us out,” Tangle answers, hardly taking time away from her PDA to speak.

“Ah.” Yeah, Amy guesses that Lanolin isn’t the type to put up with things like this for very long, is she? But was it just her getting annoyed, or…? “She’s not… h-homophobic is she?”

Tangle laughs loudly at that question, making Whisper’s ear flick, but Whisper quietly answers, “No, she was only frustrated at being ignored.” Whisper seems a bit guilty about it, but what was she supposed to do, not kiss the world’s most perfect lemur? Fat chance of that happening.

“Yyyyyyeah,” Tangle adds, rubbing her fingers under Whisper’s chin and making her squirm at the touch. “We’ve been a little busy~! Hard to focus on anything else, right?” Whisper bashfully nods, face still a burning pink.

“W-well…!” They certainly seemed to be having a good time, but Amy feels like she’s going insane watching them, so she says, “I hate to interrupt, but we may need help from the two of you to figure out this whole… situation.”

“What situation?” Tangle asks in between pecks to the side of Whisper’s face.

“...what do you mean ‘what situation?’” Amy asks, deadpan.

“I don’t notice anything unusual,” Tangle replies smugly.

“You don’t!?” Whisper asks, barely suppressing a gasp of pleasure from all the kissing and cuddling.

“Nothing unusual about loving you, Whispie~!”

“W-Whispie…?”

“Yeah, a cute nickname! You know, cute like you are!”

“Can we please get back on track over here?” Amy asks impatiently. She is now understanding why Lanolin got fed up so quickly. It’s barely been a minute of this and Amy can already feel herself heating up. With anger, probably! Or something like that…

“Oh, so what if we woke up and fell into each other’s arms?” Tangle asks, squeezing Whisper with both a hug and a tail-grab, making the wolf giggle quietly. “If that’s the only ‘situation’ here, then I say we give whoever caused it a trophy.” Tangle’s eyes sparkle as she adds, “Ohhh, and instead of a cup, the trophy is shaped like two girls scisso–”

“It’s not just that!” Amy quickly interrupts. “It’s that we weren’t able to do anything… like THAT up until today! That means something went wrong years ago!” She averts her eyes from the two women, feeling oddly defensive for whatever reason now that they’re both looking right at her. “A-and Sonic had a memory from a version of our lives he’s pretty sure we never lived… Something serious is going on, and it’s not just the good parts…”

“The good parts are VERY good, though, you have to admit,” Tangle says, reaching up and getting her hand smacked before she can put it on Whisper’s chest.

“B-behave…!” Whisper tells her, but Tangle only snickers again. “S-so we definitely shouldn’t get too distracted by… ourselves, is what you’re saying.”

“I mean… You can keep doing that,” Amy says, almost sounding a bit pouty. “We have to add on a bit of investigating to it, is all.”

“You heard the woman!” Tangle declares before grabbing Whisper’s chest with both hands. Whisper gasps and then shoves Tangle’s face away with a palm.

“Down!” she barks, and Tangle obediently crouches like a good girl. “Stay!” Whisper walks over to Amy, leaving Tangle wide-eyed and pleading from where she sits. Tangle is in shock that that had worked on her, and in even more shock about how much she liked it. “We’ll help as much as we can, Amy,” Whisper says gently. “Just tell us where to start.”

Amy smiles softly (shyly?) at the now-very-close wolf girl and says, “Well, Sonic went to go find Blaze and Silver already. We still have no idea what caused any of this, though, so it’s hard to say how spread out we should be.” If they all split up, something could happen and the others might not find out until it’s too late. On the other hand, if they all stay together… Amy looks over at Tangle wagging her massive tail like a puppy as she waits for Whisper to come back to her. If they all stayed together, they would get very distracted, Amy imagines.

“How about this, then,” Whisper says, “Tangle and I will go find Jewel. Get in touch with the rest of the Restoration, have our network keeping an eye out for clues, and then we’ll come back here right away. Safety in numbers, and all.”

“Sounds like a plan…!” Amy says, her grin widening for a reason she can’t quite ascertain. Her physiology was all out of whack, still, clearly. That’s all it was. “Before you go, though, have you two remembered any… troubling things recently?”

“Nyope!” Tangle pipes up from the background. “Other than all the suppressed wuh-luh-wuh yearning! Which is awesome, for the record!”

Whisper also shakes her head. “Nothing of note on my end.” She looks back at Tangle and can’t help but smile. “I think we both realized we’ve been in love for a while, though, so other revelations might have flown under the radar.” Tangle blows a kiss at her.

“Well, that’s a relief!” Amy says, rushing her words a bit. “When I woke up obsessed with Sonic again, I was worried we were all gonna rush him like needy, huggy zombots, haha! L-Like this was some evil plan to overwhelm him so he couldn’t save the day or something? else? Sonic-related???” Whisper gives Amy an odd look, but for some reason, Amy can’t keep her mouth shut no matter how hard she tries! “But I guess I’m the only one who has THAT particular problem, hahaha! Um, b-being suddenly attracted to Sonic, that is, ha…” She feels so cringe.

At the same time as Whisper says, “Of course we aren’t,” though, Tangle replies, “Well I mean, sure I am, but who cares about that right now?”

Whisper whips her head around at her, eyes open in shock. “HUH???”

Tangle flinches, then holds up her hands defensively, “I only care about YOU, Whispie, promise. You’re the only one in the world I’d even think about smooching!” But… “Buuuuut, I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t have a LITTLE crush on him a while ago!”

“You like men???” is all Whisper was actually worried about.

“Mostly girls, still!” Tangle responds, “It’s just, like, I dunno! Sometimes boys are cute, too!”

“But- but you still like me, right? B-because I’m… g-girl?” Whisper gets so self-conscious that she rushes back over to Tangle’s side.

“Babe, of course I love you!” Tangle says, throwing her arms back around Whisper, pulling her in for a tight hug. “No one else! Promise!”

Amy doesn’t think she should be watching this. Especially because she has no idea when to keep quiet, blurting things out like, “Yup! Whisper’s gay, Tangle’s bi, and I’m very, VERY straight! Glad we all have our bases covered, we’re all on the same page! Go team!!!”

Tangle and Whisper both look over at her. What an odd thing to say! “Good… for you?” Tangle says, arching an eyebrow.

Amy is sweating profusely. “Mhm!!!”

“...are you sur–”

“YES!!!” Amy says, quickly cutting Tangle’s question off before it could be asked. “WELL GOOD TALK, I’LL BE OVER THERE!” She points at a wall, nearly walks into the wall, then points in another, different direction to wander off blindly into, grinning awkwardly the whole while. Tangle and Whisper look at one another, vaguely concerned, and then both hear a high-pitched ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ off in the direction Amy went in.

“I… should go talk to her,” Whisper decides. “I, um… I’m sorry for getting scared, I…”

Tangle doesn’t let her finish, giving her one more gentle kiss on the mouth before saying, “We’ll talk about it later. Don’t worry a hair on your gorgeous, beautiful head about it, babe~.”

Whisper blushes and nods before getting up and heading off towards Amy. She finds Amy a few blocks away, crouching down in some rubble, face in her hands repeating the word, “Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid!” to herself over and over again.

Whisper quietly moves to her side and asks, “Are you okay?”

Amy jolts, not having expected her to suddenly appear there. “Huh!?” Amy quickly forces herself to look happy and okay again, rambling, “Y-yeah! Normal! I feel very normal and not at all weird at all! Everything’s aces, sorry!!!”

Whisper is now noticing how red and puffy her eyes are. Had she been crying before she’d even found Whisper and Tangle kissing…? Aw… “Amy… What’s wrong?”

Amy sees Whisper looking sad for her and drops the smiley act. “I don’t know…” she mutters out, sounding close to breaking out into tears again.

“Is it anything you’d want to talk about?” Whisper asks, putting a hand on Amy’s back and gently patting her.

Amy sniffles loudly. “I… I haven’t felt this way since I was a dumb kid! And everyone else is p-probably just happy to be together right now, happy to be happy, and I’m… stuck on someone who can’t love me back, thinking about things I’ve literally never even CONSIDERED and I…” She curls up into a ball, forehead resting on her knees with her arms wrapped around her legs. “I don’t know who I am anymore…”

Whisper continues to gently rub Amy’s back as she says, “Well I can tell you that the woman that ‘dumb kid’ grew up into is pretty amazing.” Amy peaks out over her knees at Whisper, still looking miserable with herself, but at least listening to what Whispie has to say. “You save lives. You take care of your friends. You do so much good for the world. That’s what I see, at least. Whoever you are… is good, yeah?”

Amy shrugs. “But what if that’s just… the other me? The me who can’t feel all of her terrible emotions? With all of these feelings back, I… I feel so useless.” Especially when she sees two people as in love as Whisper and Tangle are. Just something she can’t ever have, as far as Amy’s concerned. “...an imitation of an Amy, more than anything else. One who can’t even be happy for her friends without getting jealous. What good am I to anyone like this?”

“You can still be good to yourself,” Whisper offers. “You don’t have to pressure yourself to be perfect, you know.” She takes a deep breath and adds, “I know I’d be jealous of Tangle’s girlfriend, too, if I were you. It’s not something to feel guilty about.”

Amy huffs. “You two are great together, I get it.” Aw, that was really mean-sounding, she didn’t mean it like that…! “Sorry, I know I’m being unfair, but I have no idea what to do with myself…” She thinks about her two friends just going at it in a semi-public area and feels that pang of jealousy again. “How was it so easy for you two?”

“Heh.” Whisper isn’t actually sure herself. “I guess that whatever force or spell keeping us apart was, it was straining pretty bad under the pressure already. Even if we couldn’t remember romance was an option until today, we still… needed each other. I was with her every day, she was always supporting me, and… When the dam broke, it all just… made sense?”

“True love… That sounds nice,” Amy says, bitterness threatening to shatter her friendly facade.

“You really think so…?” Amy looks over at Whisper, who looks… surprisingly hesitant after asking that question. Oh, right, something had made her self-conscious back there… She was feeling scared about all of this just as much as Amy was. If you have something like that just fall into your lap, after all, it only makes sense that you’d be worried about it slipping away.

“Yeah,” Amy says genuinely, really meaning it. “You two are perfect together! Nothing’s gonna change that!” She puts a reassuring hand on Whisper’s arm, adding, “Tangle’s crazy about you, and that’s obvious to anyone! Don’t be scared, Whisper, you got this!”

Whisper gives a brief nod and a scared smile before turning to Amy and saying, “See what I mean?” Amy blinks. “You’re always putting others first. Even when you’re hurting, too. You’re still the same Amy Rose we all rely on.”

“You…!” Dang, she was tricked! That’s nasty, Whisper, how could you!? “Well, sure! Fine! I guess I’ll… try to be a little bit nicer to myself…” She sighs. Just one more unavailable person who she owes her happiness to. Completely unfair. Except in a completely different way than Sonic, obviously, so her being taken didn’t matter! So she doesn’t feel bad about it! Why does she feel bad about it!? “...Thanks, Whisper.”

“And it’s also okay to like girls, if you happen to–”

“THANKS, WHISPER!” Amy says, standing up abruptly. “I’m gonna be okay! Let’s call it here for now!”

Whisper giggles. “Whatever you say…” She’s clearly not convinced, which sours Amy’s bettering mood a bit. She was straight! Really! She’s always been into boys! Well… boy, singular. And now that she couldn’t be into him, there was an entire world of possibilities! Such as… NOT WOMEN, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!

Amy whines, hanging her head as she follows Whisper back to the spot they’d left Tangle at. When a voice she wasn’t expecting says, “About time you two finally gave it a rest,” Amy looks up and sees Lanolin standing there, clearly having been in the middle of scolding Tangle. “I expect this kind of stuff from her, Whisper, but can’t you learn to control yourself in common areas? Public displays of blah blah blah, not allowed because blah blah… Blah blah…” Amy stops being able to hear anything she says. Her eyes drift down from Lanolin’s face, locking firmly onto Lanolin’s massive, fluffy breasts. Has she ALWAYS had boobs that big!? Holy cow, they were bigger than Rouge’s! She can’t take her eyes off of them! What the hell? What the fuck!? Amy thought all of this was just about romance, why is Lanolin making her feel so– SO–!?

“Amy, are you okay!?” Whisper asks suddenly. “Your nose is bleeding…!”

“Lay… down…” Amy mumbles. “Need to…” She falls down face-first into the pavement, laying on her stomach so as not to look at anything or anyone, least of all Lanolin’s incredible bosom. She feels her face get so hot it threatens to melt right off… and something else feels pretty goopy right now, too. “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

“See?” Lanolin says smugly. “People can get overwhelmed by other people’s love lives being shoved in their faces! You two should apologize once we get her to the clinic. I think I heard her break something…”

Chapter 4: Out of (Chaos) Control

Notes:

This one gets pretty horny. Still not outright explicit, but mature readers only, please.

If a chapter is ever more sexual than the others or contains any explicit material, it will have a warning like this one in case you want to skip any spicier scenes.

When the world is not currently under threat, when Eggman is not trying to meddle in society, or when Sonic isn’t being an annoying pest, Shadow the Hedgehog is not typically a morning person. In fact, even when the walls of his Central City apartment start to pound and shake in the wee hours of dawn, all he does is shove a pillow over his head and tune it out. Unless someone enters his room and specifically tells him he needs to jump into action right away, which he sees no one doing, he sleeps in. Even Ultimate Lifeforms needed a lazy day in bed every once in a while, though he’d never admit it to anyone he didn’t room with.

When he does eventually crawl his way out of bed, bleary-eyed and bed-headed, he saunters into the apartment’s common area to get coffee. “Good morning, Omega,” he says half-heartedly, not really caring if it was a good or bad morning. It’s merely a rehearsed pleasantry he’s learned to repeat so that he wasn’t yelled at by Rouge for not offering pleasantries.

“It Is 1:43 P.M.” Omega clarifies. The massive murderbot is sitting on the common room couch, watching a cartoon egg getting attacked by a giant mouse with a mallet. “Anomaly Detected. Shadow The Hedgehog’s Attention Is Required.”

“Eugh?” Omega doesn’t say things like that for no reason, but Shadow’s brain is still lagging behind, so he can’t really see or hear what the robot means. He looks over to Omega, coffee in hand, and sees him pointing towards Rouge’s room, where she stays when she’s not away in the upper-end loft she keeps to herself. Shadow supposes that’s where that banging noise is coming from. Even now, it’s this steady, rapid thump in Shadow’s eardrums.

“Solution Required,” Omega bleers.

Shadow sighs, taking his sweet time in trudging over to the door of Rouge’s room. “Have you personally tried taking care of it yourself, Omega? Getting up off your childish throne and doing something of your own accord?”

“Eggman Presence Deconfirmed,” Omega answers. “I Am Beyond Petty Concerns Such As This.”

“Of course you are,” Shadow mumbles, not really planning on keeping up an argument. He’s tired of being the only competent one around here. Once he finally reaches the door, he calls out, “Rouge, I seem to recall making a specific request about not testing explosive devices inside of the–” Opening the door, he is met with loud moaning, the sounds of wet thrusting, and the sight of a pre-occupied, unclothed bat and a very used chaos drive.

Shadow immediately closes the door. “Ah.” THAT sort of anomaly, then. That was certainly… Well, if he’s being honest, Shadow’s surprised this is the first time he’s walked in on something like that. Rouge wasn’t always as… subtle as she has been the past few years. “Omega, I refuse to deal with this anomaly.”

“Unacceptable!” he metallicly roars. “Her Ritual Of The Flesh Drowns Out My Most Treasured Televised Broadcasts!” Shadow looks back at the television. The cartoon egg is now holding the mallet and chasing the mouse with it. “This Is Important, Shadow! Extremely Important!”

“You’ll forgive me for not exactly taking either of you seriously right now,” Shadow broodily responds, punctuated with a sip of his coffee.

“I Will Absolutely Not Forgive You For That! You Are Fully Incorrect!” Omega throws his massive arms up in a mock-huff. Shadow simply ignores him and walks back to the kitchenette to prepare himself some eggs. Rouge’s sudden bout of libido was none of his concern.

That is, until a few minutes later when the door to Rouge’s room bursts open on its own. The pounding noise had finally died down a bit, Omega leaning forward to listen to the shocking conclusion of this hammering-contest, so when Rouge bursts into the living room and immediately shouts, “Shaaaadooooowwwww~!!!” Omega’s eyes flash red and his segmented hands clench into angry fists.

Rouge the Bat only has on a grey tank top with a pink heart over the chest, a pair of panties, and a copious coating of sweat (at least Shadow hopes it’s mostly sweat) as she makes her way over to the nonplussed hedgehog. “I am currently attempting to have a normal breakfast today, Rouge,” Shadow growls. “I would thank you for not getting in the way of that.”

She pushes herself between Shadow and the refrigerator, his brow furrowing at the sight of her. She certainly smelled like more than just sweat. “Shadow, listen to me,” she says, sounding out of breath but raring for more, “I have never needed anything in my entire life more than I need your cock NOW.”

“That’s what you say about everything you lose interest in after an hour,” he says nonchalantly, the brute-force flirting doing absolutely nothing for him. “And I’ve only just woken up. I’m not doing that before the coffee kicks in.”

“WELL KICK IT IN FASTER, THEN!!!” she says, grabbing him by the scruffy fluff of his neck and shaking him violently. “Shadow, I am in HEAT. I don’t know what happened, but I have never been hornier in my life and you are the only capable pair of dick and balls I have access to right now! Omega doesn’t have any, I’ve already checked!”

“It Was An Involuntary And Unnecessary Procedure," he calls out from the couch. “I Would Have Declined Intercourse Even Were I Equipped With Twelve Of The Finest Robotic Genitalia Money Could Buy!”

Rouge pauses her frantic shaking of Shadow to glance over in Omega’s direction. “Do they really sell those? Where? Are they guarded?”

Shadow shoves her off and moves quickly to the other side of the kitchenette. “I wouldn’t care if you had the chaos emeralds inside of that thing, I said NOT before my morning coffee! Which you’ve mostly spilled all over me.”

“I can lick it off!” Rouge begs. “You know, pre-game warmup? You like foreplay, right?” Rouge was normally quite the suave seductress when she wanted to be, so seeing her this desperate and pathetic, while novel and mildly amusing, was definitely a sign to Shadow that things were not quite right. Not that he cares. He’s still barely even awake.

“Pour me another cup and I will consider opening negotiations in 15 minutes,” Shadow bargains. Rouge groans miserably, but given that’s the best she’s getting out of him right now, she hurries off to the coffee maker to do just that.

She’s fumbling with the filter when there’s a knock at the door. Shadow rolls his eyes. Just one thing after another today, isn’t it? Setting his mostly emptied-out cup down on the counter, he walks over to the front door of his apartment, ear flicking in annoyance when he sees literally no one outside waiting for him. “Hrmph…”

“I’m looking for intel,” a voice says from a nearby bush. Shadow doesn’t jump or act surprised, but he does raise an eyebrow as he looks over and sees the upper-half of a chameleon leaning against the wall.

“How did you know where I live?” Shadow asks immediately.

“I?” Espio blinks. Was he… sweating? Shadow hopes that’s sweat, anyway. “I’m part of a detective agency. Take a guess.” He takes a ‘step’ forward, though his whole body appears to be invisible from the waist down, so for all anyone knows, he could have slithered or hopped over. Great quip, Shadow the Hedgehog. Thank you, Shadow the Hedgehog, I am proud to call you a collaborator. “Like I said, I need to speak to Rouge. She’s staying here currently, isn’t she?”

“She’s.” Shadow glances over his shoulder, then looks back to Espio. “Indisposed. What are you after?” Shadow has to admit, of all the fools in Sonic’s general periphery, this one is at least easy to speak to. Least likely to devolve into childish jokes, at the very least. And after the morning he’s had, that kind of thing is appreciated.

“Information on our situation,” Espio responds, maybe a bit too quickly. He sounds like he’s trying even harder than usual to match Shadow’s aloof coolness.

“What situation?” Shadow asks as Rouge bursts from the door and tries to grasp at Espio.

“Hiiiii, lizard-boy~!” Rouge coos as she clings to Espio, whose air of agitation quickly morphs into panic. “You want to come inside and tell me more about that ‘precision touch~’ of yours~?”

“Ah,” Shadow says. “That situation. Yes, I do recall, now.”

“I– Tha– Wh– Yu–” Espio can only stammer as his eyes dart around in a frenzy. He’s captured, held down, with nowhere to go and no escape. A ninja with his back to the wall and all bets are off! Will he give in to these demands or deny the very essence of–

Shadow grabs Rouge by the scruff of the neck and physically lifts her off of Espio. When the chameleon sees how she’s dressed (and how she was dressed when she was pressed against him like that), his whole body turns a shade that would match the bat’s name. “I’m putting you in time out,” Shadow says.

Rouge responds by swiping a hand in front of Espio’s invisible area like she’s trying to grab at something. “I know what you’re hiding! I need it!!!” Shadow has to literally drag her away to keep the chameleon safe. “Please, please, please, please, please!”

Shadow tosses her back in through the door and says, “Control yourself,” as he slams it shut behind her, leaning up against it with his back and one sole to keep her inside. “I swear, it’s like she’s lost any semblance of a mind she’d had left.”

“.........” Espio is staring at the middle distance, mouth slightly ajar, until Shadow snaps his fingers right in the ninja’s face, shocking him back to alertness. “Right, um, yes. Hmph.” He holds up his hand in that fakey ninja way he does to try and center himself. “How are you able to remain so collected, hedgehog? Have you come across a device or technique that counteracts this magic’s effects?”

“No.”

“Oh…”

“I’m sure it’ll kick in once I have some fucking caffeine in me.” Hm, been a while since he’s said that word. That felt good. “Fuck.” Mhm, yes, something’s definitely different about today. “In any case, I have no idea what’s happening to Rouge or to you. So if you’re looking for answers, search elsewhere, would you?”

Espio grumbles, furrowing his brow, clearly weighing his options about what he should do next. Before he can so much as turn away, though, Shadow asks, “Why ARE you invisible down there, anyway?” Shadow’s known him to either be fully gone or all there, never half-and-half like this.

“Eh!?” Espio’s eyes shoot open, betrayal clear on his expression. He thought Shadow was on his side, here! “Stealth! I’m b-being stealthy!” he says with a sad lack of his classical composure.

“No you aren’t,” Shadow passively observes, tilting his head to the side as he continues to examine Espio’s body language. “You’re a bright pink, floating torso and head. That sticks out much more than you would if you simply looked normal.” At his succinct and complete dismantling of Espio’s reasoning, the chameleon blusters, stuttering out a few more syllables while failing at trying to come up with another excuse. “You can just wear pants, you know,” Shadow points out.

“Hmph!” Espio turns away from him in a huff, crossing his semi-translucent arms. “Clothes are for girls.” There is a silence of a few seconds that feel like minutes as the two of them take in what he’d just blurted out. “I feel incredibly stupid having said that out loud, actually,” Espio amends in the same uneasy monotone.

Shadow continues to stare at Espio as he struggles with insecurity. It’s actually rather endearing, Shadow admits, to see someone so flustered as to be incapable of their normal patterns of speech and action. Even if this ‘situation’ wasn’t affecting him personally, he certainly is curious as to what it’s done to Rouge and Espio. Both of them being like this, almost powerless to their own ineptitude, utterly incapable of matching their own intellects, physicality, or even rationale, let alone compared when against Shadow’s own control over the situation. He thinks he likes that sort of dynamic, actually. One where he has unquestioned power over–

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Espio suddenly says, and Shadow realizes he’d been smiling while staring.

He fixes that immediately, forcing a scowl onto his face that would be all too familiar to anyone who knew him. “Like WHAT, exactly? What are you implying, fool?” Espio averts his gaze and goes back to staring at the road, whether out of embarrassment or suspicion, Shadow isn’t sure. Okay, he’s starting to feel… something out of the ordinary, now, he has to admit. Damn. And here he was banking on using his status as Ultimate Lifeform to leverage some sort of immunity over these enigmatic effects.

…He’ll still tell people he’s immune, of course, he just wishes it were true so he could be all the more smug about it.

“Stay right here,” Shadow says, then turns back to his front door. “I’ll be right back.” Before Espio can ask what he means, Shadow heads back into his apartment, closing the door behind him so Rouge can’t sneak out like a mischievous pet Chao.

“Shadow,” Rouge says, grabbing onto his arm as he makes his way back to his bedroom. “You’re not getting distracted are you? You said you’d help me out here, remember?”

“Rouge,” he responds, “You’re an incredibly intelligent and capable woman.” He sees a little glimmer of hope in her eyes at those words. Good. “So I’m sure you’re fully aware of what a ‘lie’ is.” He’d been wanting to crush something along those lines. She shrieks at him like a pterodactyl as he closes his bedroom door behind him.

“Omega!!!!” she yells, but the robot is also turning away from her. “Help!!!!”

“Maybe I Would,” he responds coldly, “If You Hadn’t Stolen The Remote Control From Me.”

“I needed it…” Rouge huffs. “It has all those soft, bumpy parts that make me–”

“Quiet Down,” Omega interrupts.

“Definitely not that, no,” she replies wryly, “The opposite of that.”

Espio only has to wait for a minute or so before Shadow opens the door again. He’s smacked in the face with a pair of faded, grey pants with ripped holes in the knees, evidently from Shadow’s own wardrobe. “Oh,” he says with a tone of mixed annoyance and appreciation at the gesture. “Thank yyyyyyyyuuuuhhh–”

Espio pulls the jeans out of his face and sees Shadow the Hedgehog wearing a deep-necked tunic and shawl ensemble, black fabric draped around his shoulders and torso in billowing puffs, showing off his chest, but still hanging down low enough to meet the belt of his tight, plaid slacks (in the front and back, at least, as the sides of the shirt are a reverse V, showing off just a slight glimpse of the fur above his hips). Chains with spiked links hang from his neck and belt loops, and his normal, white gloves are replaced by fingerless, black ones with metallic, studded knuckles. He looks about ready to step into a goth rave, and it absolutely floors the underdressed Espio.

“Something the matter?” Shadow asks, trying not to let his arrogance over Espio’s mindset show on his face this time. Espio shakes his head vigorously, staring right down at the ground instead of anywhere even nearby Shadow. His whole body is dripping with sweat, his face glowing pink as he avoids eye contact once more. “Very well. Let’s go, then.”

“Eh???” Espio almost looks up at Shadow, but keeps his head down. “What do you–”

“You are a detective, are you not?” Shadow asks grimly. “I would like to ascertain the cause of this ‘situation,’ as you put it. Are you telling me your agency is too incompetent to even consider asking for help?”

“N-No!” Espio stammers, suddenly finding it important to get those pants on as fast as possible. “I merely believed you preferred to work alone, is all.”

True. Shadow did prefer that. It’s a good thing he didn’t plan on working ‘with’ the Chaotix. He was simply after some… hm, ‘fun.’ When’s the last time he’s tried something like that? Amy’s birthday? Even before then? Well, in any case, “Fine,” he says, “If you don’t want me involved, then–”

“I didn’t say that!” Espio blurts out, nearly making Shadow’s uncaring facade slip into a gnarly smirk. He was enjoying this far more than he thought he would. “I’ll take you to Vector so you can file a report, then.” After he gets these stupid pants on. His toe slipped through the hole in the knee and he’s hopping around in a panic as he tries to correct his mistake.

As Shadow watches Espio squirm, the door opens behind him. “Hold on…” a glumly resigned-sounding Rouge says. She is now also wearing pants, along with a matching, cropped jacket over the same tank top as before. “I’m not letting you leave me behind…” She sounds downright depressed, Shadow remarks to himself. He has to bite his tongue to keep from grinning.

“We’re not leaving to have an orgy, Rouge, we’re going to actually do work,” he says, making both Espio and Rouge shudder a bit at his blunt wording.

“I know…” she bemoans. “But if I can’t get what I want, I can at least come along to find out why I want it so badly…” She crosses her arm, cheek puffed out in a despair-fueled pout. “And maybe one of you will change your mind…”

“Not likely,” Shadow says immediately. “We’re consummate professionals. Isn’t that right, Espio?”

“Mm-mngh,” is all Espio can respond with as he finally pulls up his pants.

“Hrngh…” Rouge commiserates, hunched over in frustration.

“Excellent!” Shadow says with a clap of his hands. “Let us be on our way, then!” He can’t help it anymore. He’s smiling now. No wonder Rouge has spent her whole life toying with men’s feelings to get what she wants. It’s the most fun he’s ever had, he’s coming to find out.

Chapter 5: Tails's Guest

Tails is having an absolutely miserable time with his ‘guest’ over at his house. Surge, meanwhile, was in a better mood than he’s used to seeing her in. Certainly a better mood than the one she was in when she’d shown up, but Tails supposes that she always seemed to be smiling when she was destroying something.

Another crash of impact and the clattering of plastic components rings out through the room as yet another gizmo is chucked at a wall. “STOP IT!!!” Tails yells, having just barely missed catching that one mid-air.

“Or what?” Surge says passively, picking her ear with a pinky. “You’ll pierce my eardrum with your shrill, little boy yelling?”

“I am NOT a–!” Tails cuts himself off there. He’s smart enough to know that trying to argue that he wasn’t a ‘little boy’ would only make him look incredibly pathetic. He doesn’t need to prove anything to Surge, she’s going to be a jerk whether he clarifies that he’s 18 now or not.

…wait, how long has he been 18? He has no doubt in his mind that’s how old he is, but… He hasn’t really thought about it very recently, but that’s not how everyone would treat him… He was used to being the ‘kid’ around here, but shouldn’t that have changed by now? Hm. As Tails scratches his chin, Surge waltzes up and uses his head as an elbow-rest. “You are the littlest boy alive,” she says mockingly. “You’re like two apples tall, and both of them are moldy and have worms!”

“Surge, how old are you?” Tails asks, wanting to test a hypothesis.

“What?” Surge immediately takes several steps back from Tails, looking around for something else to throw and break. “How the fuck should I know, creep-ass? I was grown in a test tube, remember?” Right, Surge didn’t have any memories from before Starline’s experiments. She’s probably the worst person to have around for this right now. Well, obviously, but for more reasons than just her obnoxiousness.

“I need to call Amy,” Tails says, “She’ll have a better idea of–”

“WHAT NO STOP!!!” Surge fires a volley of electricity at the fox’s head, which he just barely dodges, and only because of her panicked ‘battle cry.’

“Hey!” Tails feels his knees shake and his fur stand on end because of how close that bolt had almost hit him. He hears a pop behind him and turns to see that Surge had landed a direct hit on the Tornado, damaging a wing. He flips around in the air to glare at Surge. “What’s your problem!?”

“I already told you, you greasy manlet!” Surge barks, “This is between me and whoever caused it! You and Sonic are meat shields, and NO ONE ELSE is getting involved!”

Tails flutters over to his plane and immediately starts repairs, cheeks puffed out in a huff. “Unlike some people, Sonic and I have friends we can rely on.” There’s that odd feeling of nausea when he says that, again. What a weird day. “We’re not going to leave everyone else hanging just because you’re feeling antisocial.” As Surge angrily crackles with electricity, Tails asks, “Speaking of friends, where’s Kit?”

Her sparking rage dies down into more of an uncomfortable simmer. “Like he’d wanna see YOUR ugly face today,” Surge spits at him. “Besides, he’s reacting way worse to all this bullshit than I am. He needs to-” not be around me, Surge thinks to herself, but doesn’t say out loud, “-sleep it off.” She suppresses a shudder. Kit’s her best bud and all, but when they woke up and he started acting like… THAT, she decided this was gonna be a solo mission. Well, solo plus meat shields.

“Both of you can sleep for as long as you feel like,” Tails mutters to himself as he wrenches a hinge back into place.

Surge growls and stomps back over to him, yanking on both of his tails at once to lift him off the wing he’d been balancing on. “What was that, pipsqueak!?”

Tails flails, trying his best to kick her hand away or get free, but to no avail. He is, after all, still much shorter than her. “If you want us to help you, then you need to stop acting like… like…” He’s gonna say it! “A big jerkface!”

Surge blinks. “Bitch.” She then tosses him aside. Tails does a flip in the air and starts flying before he can hit a wall and shatter into a million pieces like she was hoping for, though. “I’m NOT asking for help. I just need to be pointed in a direction so I can MURDERLIZE whatever is causing this.”

“That’s help, Surge,” Tails groans. “That is help that you are asking us for.”

“No it’s not,” she argues, “Because I would never do that. Since I’m here, it proves I’m not asking for help, since I never would.” She jabs a finger into Tails’s forehead, right between his eyes. “Dumbass.”

Tails flutters away from her, desperate for room to breathe so that he can think. It feels like every time he’s on to something, every time he thinks of a way in which he can make sense of all this, Surge is there to chuck an electrified bomb into his mental state. Why is she even here!? Why is everything she does bothering him so badly!?

Just as Tails considers taking up a religion so that he’d have someone to pray to, there’s a loud thumping from the front of his house, like someone was knocking on the door with a brick. “Ugh, finally that blue rat shows up,” Surge says impatiently, dashing over to answer before Tails has a chance to react. “About fucking time, assweed! Fasting thing alive my–!”

Knuckles is here. Surge has never met Knuckles before, so she has no idea who this is. She sees a tall, thick-armed and thicker-fisted man with long, dread-like quills and a sharp look in his eyes, and she instantly remembers why it’s so urgent that she fix what had happened to her.

“You’re not Tails,” Knuckles grumbles, glaring down at her suspiciously. They’ve never met, he has no clue who this is. Could be a home invader for all he knows.

“...nyope,” Surge squeaks out, already feeling her face screwing into a crooked, untrained smile as her cheeks heat up. She hates this she hates this she hates this she hates this, this needs to Stop, she needs to find out how to make this STOP! “M’name’s Surge,” she says, taking a step away from the door and casually rubbing the back of her head. “Hi.”

Knuckles walks past Surge, who shoots him some finger guns, and into Tails’s garage, more confused than anything else by her presence. “Tails, you in here?” As soon as he’s not in front of her, Surge feels her blood boil, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists. How fucking DARE this blockhead just invade her personal space like that!? She was gonna teach him a FATAL lesson once her chest stops hurting!

“I’m over here,” Tails calls out, still sounding grumpy. At least someone who liked him was here now, though! Just hearing Knuckles’s voice is making him feel better. “You came down from Angel Island! Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Knuckles responds, “Just had a bad feeling this morning, is all. Thought I’d check in to see if you all needed me.” As Tails nods in agreement, Knuckles looks over his shoulder at Surge, who is turned to face a wall. “What’s up with your guest?”

“Oh,” Tails grumbles, “That’s Surge. She’s here to ‘help.’” Tails throws up some air quotes at that last word. “But don’t worry about that, I’m just glad you’re here! Two heads are better than one, after all! If we all work together, I’m sure we can figure this out!”

Surge glances up in annoyance at Tails, who is now sporting a big, doofy grin as he flutters around the stranger. Hm. He seems to really enjoy that guy’s company. And suddenly, she gets the urge to do something about that, brow furrowing as she smiles wickedly, cracking her knuckles by clenching a single fist.

“Yeah, I’m sure having someone CAPABLE around will be a HUGE help!” Surge says as she waltzes up, getting between Tails and Knuckles. “With THOSE arms, I wouldn’t wanna be the guy giving YOU a ‘bad feeling.’” Tails stares at her, dumbfounded, but Knuckles preens at the compliment.

“Heh, glad someone around here is able to tell that I’m the guy to have around!” He flexes an arm, making Surge go ‘oooo’ and Tails’s ear flick. What was she doing? Why is she suddenly acting all nice, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Well, obviously Knuckles was a great guy, but why does SURGE have to be the one recognizing that right now?

“Oh yeah, I can tell right away that you’d be able to bust Eggpunk’s damn badnuts without breaking a sweat!” Surge pokes at Knuckles’s bicep, which he lets her do with an appreciative smirk. “That’s way more useful than having Sonic around to screw everything up AGAIN. Nothing he can do that I can’t perfect, anyway.” She holds up her hand, pretending to look at her nails, which are covered by gloves. “I pretty much saved the day from his fuck-ups with the whole Clean Sweep Inc. catastrophe. Basically a better hero than he could ever be.”

“That’s not fair! Sonic–!” Tails tries to interrupt, but Surge shoves him to the side with her hip as she hops into the place where he’d been standing. Knuckles does not seem to notice this.

“Oh, you’re one of Sonic’s new rivals, aren’t you?” Knuckles observes. “I swear, that guy collects enemies like trading cards.”

“Maybe if he got a better personality, people would hate him less!” Both Surge and Knuckles laugh at that while Tails picks himself up off of the floor.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but no one’s gonna match up against the guy as good as ME!” Knuckles says, hooking a thumb into his own face. “I knocked the Super right out of his Sonic with just ONE of these to the grill!” He mimes throwing an uppercut, and after figuring out what he means, Surge explodes with excitement, eyes sparkling above a massive, shark-toothed smile.

“YOU PUNCHED SONIC IN THE FACE!?” She grabs onto one of his arms, jumping up and down like an excited kid. “Did you break anything!? Did you feel his stupid nose crunch!? Did he cry!? I bet he cried! One good hit and he was probably wailing like a baby, kahahahah!”

Tails has had enough. He flies up and pulls on Surge’s ponytail until she’s no longer grabbing onto Knuckles. “Hey!” he says, “What are you trying to do, being mean to Sonic like that?”

“I finally found someone with a BRAIN, what do you think I’m doing, dumbass!?” she says, swatting at his head to try and knock him off. “I saw him first, back off!”

“He’s MY friend!” Tails argues, planting a foot on her face for leverage. “And if you’re rude to us, he’s not going to be YOURS!”

“Well I’m not gonna be rude to HIM!” Surge starts trying to bite Tails’s leg. “He’s actually cool, unlike a couple of CLOWNS I happen to know!”

As Tails and Surge bicker and fight, Knuckles rubs his two brain cells together. Watching all of this happen in front of him, he can’t help but think that there was definitely something going on. And he THINKS he knows what that is! “So are you two, like, a thing, or…?”

“NO!!!!” they both furiously shriek at him, making him jump back in surprise. Surge immediately goes off into a series of incomprehensible cussing, stomping and punching at the air from the indignity. Tails, on the other hand, covers his mouth with both hands. He can’t believe he’d just yelled at a friend like that. As Surge tantrums away, Tails gently flutters back down to the ground.

“I- I’m sorry, Knuckles. I don’t know what just came over me…” he says, voice hoarse from how loud he’d yelled.

Knuckles puts a hand on the top of his head and ruffles his fur a little. “Don’t worry about it. We’re all having a weird one, aren’t we?” He puts his fists on his hips and looks around the garage. “Where is Sonic, anyway? I was, um. Really, really hoping to see him here.”

Does Tails detect a hint of anxiety coming from Knuckles…? No, must be his imagination, Knuckles has an iron will. Today was just messing with Tails’s head, is all, screwing with his perception of things. “I don’t know,” Tails admits. “I had been talking with him until SOMEONE broke my communicator!”

“It had Sonic’s voice coming out of it!” Surge bellows from the other side of the room. “That makes it my enemy!”

“Maybe I should head out and look for him while you two hold down the fort,” Knuckles says, looking back towards the front, “Get everyone together faster that way.”

Suddenly, Tails grabs onto his shoulders, looking Knuckles right in the eyes as he says, “Please don’t leave me alone with her.”

“Yeah, leave him alone with himself!” Surge adds, “Take me with you, I’m literally the coolest person ever to go on hero adventures with! Ask anyone!”

“No she’s not,” Tails immediately answers.

“Ask anyone but that shitty dweeb!” she amends, pointing at Tails.

Knuckles scratches his chin. “Are you two SURE this isn’t some kind of flirting?”

“NEVERMIND, I HATE YOU NOW!” Surge yells, “Fuck you, asshole, go die!!!”

Another knock starts ringing out from the front door. Much softer than when it had been Knuckles, like a normal person trying to be answered instead of just wanting to break down the door. “Maybe that’s Sonic,” Knuckles says, walking calmly back to the front.

Just when Tails starts to feel excited, though, Surge says, “Oh, no, not trusting it this time. This is another rug-pull gag where it’s totally someone else behind the door.” She crosses her arms and huffs. “Probably someone ugly.”

“Who else would be showing up here, though?” Tails asks right before the door does, in fact, break down. A fist shoots through the wooden door, crackling with wisps of black and orange energy. One more kick turns the door into splinters, revealing a figure none of the three recognize, a mass of black ooze covered in bright, orange spikes.

Tails really should have reinforced that door after the whole zombot thing…

“I was right! Now get OUTTA MY WAY!” Surge shouts as she zips forward, crashing into the figure with the speed of light, already planting a foot into their stomach before Tails and Knuckles can even hear her words. While Tails covers his ears, put into an astraphobic bout of panic at the sound of the lightning again, Knuckles pounds his fists together excitedly.

“Alright!” the echidna declares, “This is what I’ve been itching for!” He charges forward, trying to nail the odd stranger with a punch while they’re distracted with Surge, but they headbutt Surge to send her spiraling backwards into him, making him waste his momentum on catching her.

“H-Hey, you come here often?” Surge stammers when she realizes she’s in Knuckles’s big, strong arms.

“No time for that, lady!” he says, tossing her back towards the attacker. “Go, use more of that power of yours!”

“Don’t mind if I do!!!” She becomes a bolt of lightning as she rockets towards the figure, but ends up sailing right through as they simply turn into a giant wheel, Surge flying through the hole in the middle. “Aw, come on, no fair!” she growls, rebounding on the ground and then getting back on target, only to be juked by the stranger peeling out and crashing into Knuckles.

Knuckles punches the wheel to send it back, but it barely seems to put a dent in their game plan. They use the momentum to bash Surge, ignoring her electricity and slamming her down face-first into the pavement outside Tails’s home. They unfurl from their wheel form, landing with their foot on the back of Surge’s head, and when Knuckles tries to follow up with a classic uppercut, they turn their head and interrupt him with a fireball to the face, spitting it out of their wide, tenebrous mouth.

Tails is sure he’s never seen this person before, with all the goopy shadows and flaming spikes… but something about the way they move is familiar to him, somehow. He scrambles inside of his garage for something to help Surge and Knuckles with, but Surge had already broken so many of his gadgets! What was he supposed to do!?

Knuckles comes back for another try, landing a right hook right across the thing’s face… hurting his hand badly in the process. “YEOWCH!!!” he shouts, having felt like he’d just punched a steel wall. The stranger reacts with a punch of their own, sending him reeling. Surge reaches up and grabs onto their ankle, zapping them with all of her might, channeling as much power into the blast as possible.

They react by yanking her up off the floor and using her as a flail to attack Knuckles, sending them both flying again, landing in a heap on the sidewalk with Surge and Knuckles tangled around one another. “Oh, so you DO come here often…” Surge quips through the pain. “Good to know…”

Tails steals quick, worried glances over his shoulder as the fight continues. He keeps looking around for a weapon or a defensive machine or a vehicle with an in-tact steering wheel, anything! In his haste, he peeks over at Knuckles and Surge trying to scrape themselves up off of the floor as the stranger walks towards them, gets their foot caught on a raised stone, and nearly trips and falls right on their face before correcting themself. As intimidating as they seem, that was a pretty goofy mistake.

As they wind up back into a wheel, getting ready to run Surge and Knuckles down, Tails remembers who this reminds him of. The wheel abilities, the spikes, the fireball breath, the rock-solid armor. All of that combined with clumsiness and random bouts of tripping… Tripping! “Trip!” he shouts, running outside and coming to a stop in his own doorway. “Trip the Sungazer! Is that you!?”

The figure slowly unfurls before they’re able to launch their attack. They stand back up, turning their head to look at Tails one more time with glowing, beady, orange eyes before bursting apart. The shadowy ooze covering their body, the aura of hatred, and their resolve to fight all erupt off of the stranger’s body and dissolve into sparkling, blue dots in Tails’s vision. And then, it really is just Trip the Sungazer standing there, gasping for air as she’s finally free from whatever control that thing had had over her.

She looks down at her hands, her whole body shaking as her thoughts catch up to her. “I’m… Am I…?” And then she falls down to her knees, passing out and collapsing right there in front of Tails.

He rushes over to her. Surge tries to pounce once she’s on her feet again, yelling, “Lemme at ‘em, I’ll cauterize their eyeballs, I’ll–” but Knuckles grabs onto her waist to hold her back.

“No, wait, something’s wrong!” he says, his massive hand almost fully able to wrap around Surge’s midsection. That realization makes her blush again. “That’s one of our friends! Someone we haven’t seen in…!” When he tries to think of the gap in time between when he’d last seen Trip and now, he gets a headache. “Augh! What is happening right now!?”

As Tails crouches down next to Trip to make sure she still has a pulse, Knuckles’s question goes unanswered. Even with the situation having died down into an eerie calm, no one has a single clue as to what was going to happen to them.

Chapter 6: Better Memory

Eggman hasn’t been deploying robotic baddies for the past few weeks, there aren’t any portals open to Lost Hex for the Zeti to crawl through, Clutch hasn’t come out of hiding, the Babylon Rogues are ‘busy,’ and even Rough and Tumble seem more occupied with old magazines than active villainy. None of Sonic’s regular bad guys are being visibly evil right now. Which is… unfortunate. Sonic doesn’t deal with subtlety as well as he does with big, climactic battles.

He sits at the top of one of the massive towers of Botanical Kingdom, his legs folded beneath him and his cheek pressed into a palm as he stares impatiently out at the landscape. This adventure is lame. How was he supposed to help anyone when he can’t even figure out where the problem is coming from? And then there’s the fact that this problem has actually been happening for YEARS at this point. For all he knows, someone else had just had some sort of climactic battle for the fates of everyone’s hearts while he was, he doesn’t know, breaking a Caterkiller with an eagle kick.

“This is butts,” Sonic mutters to himself. He’s getting nowhere, which is his least favorite place to go. “How am I supposed to find someone that I didn’t know existed for so long?”

His question is answered by a quiet scream from far down below. He looks down towards the base of the tower he’s perched on to see some sort of flying creature attacking someone on a unicycle. Well, not the problem he was hoping to solve, but anything to help someone out!

He runs down the sheer face of the tower in a spiral pattern until he can recognize someone. That’s not a unicycle, it’s Motobud, along with Belle the Tinkerer on its back. That flying creature, though, looks completely alien to Sonic, even for a guy who is used to fighting monsters in space. Some kite-shaped thing covered in ink and wisps of yellow energy. It swoops down at Belle and Motobud, the two just barely managing to keep out of its grasp as it flies around them and launches into divebombs.

Sonic makes sure that the two of them are no longer the target of any attacks by landing a firm spindash right on its goopy head, knocking it to the dirt road that Belle is riding down. “Sorry to drop in unannounced, but you guys know I can’t resist a good chase sequence!”

“Sonic!?” Belle calls out from over her shoulder, still racing away even as the creature is pinned to the ground. “Watch out! That thing is–” A tail reaches up from the creature’s backside and wraps around Sonic’s neck. “-DANGEROUS!!!”

Sonic is thrown backwards, landing on his feet, but skidding away as the monster rears back up to its full height. Which is, uh… not very tall, honestly. Probably around Tails’s height. That tiny frame is able to get back to full speed in an instant, though, using some kind of spindash of its own. Sonic would be impressed if he wasn’t dodging a blow to the head as the creature soared back up into the sky.

He gets ready to parry the thing right out of the air when it goes for him again, but at the peak of its arc, it pivots and starts to glide after Belle again. Sonic sighs, then speeds off to her rescue.

Belle looks over her shoulder, sees the monster coming after her again, and feels her little, clockwork heart start to panic. “Come on, Motobud, I need ya to go as fast as you can…!” She holds onto him as tightly as she can, more to shield him from attacks than to keep her grip, and shuts her eyes tight, expecting the worst.

When he actually does start to go double, triple, and beyond his actual top-speed, though, Belle’s eyes shoot open. “Huh!? Buddy, I didn’t even know you could go this…” She looks down. Sonic is holding Motobud on his back, the little Goodnik’s eyes a-spiral with fatigue. She breathes out a sigh of relief and goes, “Oh. That makes a tug more sense.”

Sonic speeds off behind a thick vine jutting out of the ground at an angle, offering lots of protection from skyborne attacks. “You two stay here!” he says, setting the duo down. “Let me deal with our new little friend, alright?” He zips back out of cover, gets ready, and…

Nothing. He doesn’t see the monster anywhere. He speeds up to the top of the vine he’d hidden Belle under, looks around for a good minute, and still no sign of the thing. “Great. The first real lead I’ve gotten all day and they have cold feet. Figures.”

Sonic climbs back down and checks on Belle. She and Motobud are winding down, both still reeling from their run-in with the unknown. “You two alright?” Sonic asks.

“Y-Yeah, we’re both mostly unhurt,” she answers. “Just shaken up, is all.” She shudders, something Sonic is a bit surprised a robot like her can even do. “Gears and starters, what was that thing?”

“No idea,” Sonic says, still looking around as if it’ll pop back up any second now. “But I don’t think this place is very safe right now if it’s still lurking about, you feel me?”

“S-sorry,” Belle says, as if ashamed by her presence. “Motobud wanted to try one of these fancy Monople race courses, and I guess we lost track of time. It sort of appeared outta nowhere, and then–”

Sonic puts his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, girl, no worries! Really, this is a pretty busted situation! Can’t blame yourself for that!” Belle does her best to give him a reassuring smile, but she’s still pretty shaken-looking. Was this whole refound-love phenomenon hitting her, too? Could robots even…? “Tell you what. Why don’t I take you somewhere nearby that’s a little bit safer, and we can talk about it there!”

‘Somewhere nearby’ would end up being Spiral Hill Village. Just a convenient settlement for Sonic’s purposes, but it also happened to be where Tangle and Whisper are currently heading. After making sure Amy was safe and sound, they followed up on their promise to go and see if Jewel had any information on things. She’s not sitting head of the Restoration anymore, at least not on paper, but she may still have some connections that Lanolin hasn’t been told about, and she’s currently taking a much-needed break back at her mineral museum.

Lanolin had made Tangle and Whisper promise not to get up to any shenanigans on their way to the museum. They were riding on the same extreme gear, one of the wheel-types they’d recovered from the wreckage of the headquarters, so if they got too gay with one another and took their eyes off the skies, they might have crashed into a wall, or something. And so, the second the two of them park near the outskirts of Spiral Hill and dismount, Tangle is immediately throwing her arms around Whisper and peppering her wolf girl with kisses all over her face, having missed the ability to do so dearly.

Giggling shyly, Whisper rubs her hand along the top of Tangle’s head, only giving herself less room to retreat from the onslaught of smoochies. “Sorry, again,” Whisper says shyly, “For getting so… weird when you told me you were bi.”

“Babe, it’s fine, I promise!” Tangle says. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, okay?” Tangle’s still not sure *why* Whisper had that reaction, but she’s not gonna hold something like that against the best girl in the world.

“It’s just…” Whisper still feels the need to explain herself, though. “At first, even though I know it was wrong, the thought entered my head that you didn’t see me as a real woman..”

“Whisper!” Tangle sounds shocked. “You’re literally the best girl that’s ever girled in any sort of girly way, one hundred percent, extra super MEGA promise!!!”

“I know, I know,” Whisper admits, a single, little bead of sweat on her temple. “It was a stupid thing to think.” The reason she’d had that thought in particular would probably be pretty obvious to Tangle by the end of the day, with how handsy Whisper’s noticed her getting. She’d bridge that awkward gap when they got to it. “But then I kept thinking about it, and… I realized that there’s probably some things that you could want from someone that I may not be able to give you.”

“Whisper, no, I–” Tangle tries to reassure her, but Whisper holds up a paw, looking right into Tangle’s eyes as she does so.

“Just listen for a moment,” Whisper says. “You’re the most free-spirited person I’ve ever met. And I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone before, I know that you’re all in on me right now, but what about when we both get used to this? What if you start getting antsy in a month, or a year, or five years from now?” Whisper sees Tangle looking confused, bordering on worried, and she takes the lemur’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “I want you to be happy. I want you to *always* be happy. And if there’s ever something, or someone, that you think would make you that way, then as long as you’re by my side, I just want you to know I’ll be alright. I never want you to hold yourself back from your own joy because you’re scared I’d be upset with you…”

“Are you saying you want, like, an open relationship?” Tangle asks, still sounding a bit anxious towards whatever Whisper’s getting at.

“That sounds too casual,” Whisper says with a sigh. She rests her head on Tangle’s shoulder and adds, “I want to be with you forever, but I don’t want that to feel like a trap for you. Does that make sense…?”

“I think so,” Tangle says, putting her arm around Whisper. “But it’s kinda scary sounding, ha. Never really… thought about things like that even being allowed…” She’s not even sure it’s something she wants for herself, but she doesn’t want to dismiss Whisper’s worries, either. “Does that mean that *you* would want to… you know?”

“Well, I’m not nearly as popular as you,” Whisper says, casually enough. “I doubt it’ll even come up.”

“Hey! You’re the hottest, you’ll have babes lining up to get a piece of you!” Tangle’s worries are easily outweighed by her desire to hype up her girlfriend. “If you think I’m gonna be a hit with women, you should wait and see how the world acts when YOU show up! Cuz, like, damn girl!”

“I don’t know, Tangle,” Whisper says with a quiet laugh. “I think you’ll surprise yourself.”

They’ve been walking and talking for most of this conversation, so it doesn’t take much longer for them to reach the mineral museum. Tangle opens the door and is immediately met with the sounds of loud, ugly crying. Uh oh. “J-Jewel!? You in here?” she calls out, and in seconds, a beetle wearing an oversized tee, sweatpants, and carrying a half-eaten tub of ice-cream comes out from the back room.

“Tangle, is that y-you?” Jewel blubbers out through tears, which only increase in volume once she actually sees the lemur. “T-Tangle, something… something happened and I… you…” She takes a big sniffle, trying her best to stop the steady flow of tears leaking from her face. “C-can we please talk about something…?”

Tangle understands the implications, gulping as she realizes what Whisper meant about being ‘popular.’ Still not mentally prepared for ethical nonmonogamy, though, she looks over to her girlfriend for support. Whisper has the biggest look of smug satisfaction on her face, bearing a wide grin and looking down her snout at Tangle with raised eyebrows. “A… little help…?” Tangle whispers desperately to her.

“Of course,” Whisper says, clearing her throat. “I’ll help by giving you two some space.”

“Huh!?” Tangle’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head as Whisper turns and walks out. “But–!”

“Take your time~!” Whisper says teasingly, closing the door behind her. “I’ll always be here for you~!” With that, she makes sure she’s far enough away to not accidentally eavesdrop, giggling to herself quietly as she does so. She just really wants Tangle to be fulfilled, is all, and sooner or later, she has a feeling that something of this nature would be useful to them. At least, that’s how she saw things play out with… her former teammates. Maybe she should explain a bit of that backstory once Tangle was done getting confessed to for a second time today.

“Yo, Whisper!” calls out a voice from up ahead, Whisper looking up to see Sonic the Hedgehog dropping Belle and Motobud down onto the ground, both of them looking frazzled from the super speed roadtrip. “How’s it hanging? Not used to seeing you out by yourself like this.”

“Oh, um, I’m fine,” Whisper says, though hides most of her good mood as soon as she knows she’s not alone. Around Tangle, she’s fine being all cute, but other people still needed to be met with her cold skepticism she’s used since the war. Even with Mimic gone… it was going to take a while to trust others as readily as Tangle does. “What brings the three of you here?”

“S-scary monster,” Belle stammers as she holds onto the sides of her head to try and keep it from spinning so badly.

“Oh…?” Whisper knows something changed today, but not that there were physical threats involved.

“Yeah, some black-and-yellow creature from beyond, as best as I can tell,” Sonic says with a shrug. “But it vanished as soon as we got the upper hand. Talk about a disappointment. Needed to regroup to figure out a strategy!” As Sonic talks, Whisper covertly looks him up and down, from his toes to the tips of his ears. She feels herself frown. THIS guy, Tangle, really? What on earth are you talking about? “How about you? Whatcha hanging around a place like this for?”

“Oh, Tangle and I needed to ask Jewel something.” She motions over to the museum. “They required a moment of privacy due to today’s unexpected changes.”

“Oh?” Sonic says, scratching his ear, and then, “Ohhhh… And you’re alright with that?”

“Alright with what?” Whisper asks, sounding offended. “I trust Tangle more than I trust myself, so I’m not sure what you’re implying.”

“Nothing! Nevermind!” Sonic responds, slowly backing away from the very capable fighter.

Belle fills Whisper in on everything that had happened and everything she’d seen, including the brief fight the monster had had with Sonic before disappearing. “It was moving around like it was invincible!” she concludes with. “Nothing me or Sonic did seemed to phase it. If more of them show up, how do we deal with something like that?”

“We find a weakness and exploit it,” Whisper answers confidently.

Sonic nods. “I like the sound of that!” He needs to get this information back to Tails as soon as he can! Unfortunately, he’s not getting a great signal out here in Spiral Hill, for some reason. Maybe Tails needs a new ISP for these communicators, or something.

Belle pets Motobug on the head, robotic chirps coming from the little guy. “Well, it’s hard to be scared when someone so confident is around for me to rely on.” She gives her best smile, saying, “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“Hey, no problem!” Sonic says with a thumbs-up, “Happy to–”

“I was talking to Whisper, buddy, but thanks…!” Belle is quick to correct. “Uh, you too, though, Sonic! Glad to have ya…!”

While it’s Sonic’s instincts to droop a bit at that kind of treatment, at least it answers whether or not Belle was feeling what everyone else is. At least Sonic HOPES that’s the explanation and that she’s not just being rude. “Well, thank you for putting your trust in us, Belle,” Whisper says with a small smile. “We’ll try not to let that trust go to waste–”

As Whisper is talking there’s a scream from somewhere else in the village. “And who might that be?” Sonic asks, turning towards the sound and not waiting for an answer before speeding off.

“Shit, my wispon is back on the extreme gear!” Whisper says, turning in the exact opposite direction. “Belle! Help Sonic!” She also runs off, leaving Belle alone and defenseless.

Belle looks around, waiting for a monster or a bad guy to jump out from behind any corner. “Aw, sawdust…” she mutters to herself. So much for trust…!

Sonic bounces from rooftop to rooftop until he sees a crowd of civilians dispersing in random directions, the creature from before swooping down over the town. Even though Sonic had gone out pretty far from where they’d found it, it caught up somehow. He whistles to get its attention, and when its head turns, Sonic can see wide, sharp eyes with glowing, yellow dots for pupils. “Hey there!” Sonic says, shooting off a finger gun at the thing. “Someone’s a little bit clingy, aren’t they? I get that today’s been an emotional rollercoaster for everyone, but if there’s one thing that puts me off, it’s not being able to take a hint. Just a word of advice if you’re planning on meeting up like this so often!”

The monster uses a spindash to shoot up into the air towards Sonic’s rooftop vantage point, unfolding its kite-like body to cut through the sky like a blade aimed at his head. He pops over to a different roof without getting a scratch. “See, this is what I mean. Just because you WANT to hug on this doesn’t mean it’s always appreciated! Boundaries!”

The monster hits an updraft, flying up far above the village before sailing back down at Sonic, faster than ever before. Sonic can keep dodging out of the way no problem, but the more this thing soars up and dives down, the faster it gets and the more dangerous it becomes. Something’s gotta change.

And something does when the thing explodes in a cloud of orange flames. Sonic looks over to see Whisper, mask equipped and all her wisps ready to be fired. Except for Orange, who just did get fired, obviously. “Nice shot!” he calls out to her, big grin and thumbs up as if he’s posing for a photo.

“Eyes on target!!!” she shouts back, scolding him for such an easy-going nature on a battlefield.

“What? You got ‘em, didn’t y–OOF!” After falling straight down from the explosion like a swatted bug, the monster quickly course-corrected mid-air and sailed straight for Sonic’s midsection, grabbing him in both arms before reeling back up into the sky. Before letting go, the monster spins, letting its tail smack Sonic hard across the face to send him tumbling back down to earth.

“BELLE!” Whisper shouts, pointing at Sonic as he plummets to his – well, probably not death, he’s a surprisingly resilient guy, but it’d hurt pretty bad! And on cue, Belle hops onto Motobud and wheelies over to the landing zone just in time to yank the hedgehog out of his terminal velocity, pulling him along with her.

Once Sonic is in her arms and she’s sure he isn’t dead, Belle shouts, “What are we gonna do!? It’s like I told y’all before, that thing is invulnerable, it doesn’t take damage!”

“No,” Sonic agrees, rubbing his cheek where the thing had struck him. “But it sure does fight dirty.” Sonic can’t even finish the sentence before the thing is swooping back down, right behind Belle as she tries her hardest to evade. Sonic reaches down and yanks her tail.

“What are you– AHHHH!!!” Her leg slams into the ground, sending her and Motobud up and out of harm’s way as Sonic stays behind and takes the brunt of the thing’s attack, catching it with both hands and holding it as steady as he can manage to hold a bullet-fast fighter jet.

“Those are some wicked moves,” Sonic says, glaring at the thing as they’re face to face. “That spin attack in particular’s pretty familiar. You another fan, or have we met somewhere before?” In response, the thing twists in Sonic’s hands and winds back with its tail in another attempt to slap the Blue off the Blur, but is suddenly yanked back.

A white and gray tail wraps around the thing’s whole body, stopping up all of its limbs’ movement and keeping it firmly in place. “Invulnerable doesn’t mean unstoppable,” Whisper says from beside Tangle, wispon aimed right at the thing’s head, the only part of its body not wrapped up by Tangle, as it struggles under its bondage.

“What’s been going on out here!?” Tangle asks, having only just come out of the museum when Whisper ran in and grabbed her. Surprisingly soundproof walls in that place. Her face looks a little bit scrunched like she’d just been doing something incredibly difficult or painful before having been interrupted by a battle.

“Heck if I could tell you,” Belle murmurs, picking herself up out of the pile of crates she’d been launched into. “This dang thing is just too persistent.”

“Sonic, you led this thing here,” Whisper points out, sounding perturbed. She’d been having such a lovely day, too. “Do you really have no idea what it is?”

“No, not really,” Sonic says, taking a closer look at it now that it’s stationary and not trying to kill him. “But it’s the weirdest thing, it feels familiar watching that thing glide around. I’m not sure why, though.” That was gonna be the theme of this saga, Sonic supposes. Old memories resurfacing. He’s definitely never fought sludgey energy-people before, but from the way it fought to the way it was shaped, it does seem to just be some sort of person. Round head, tiny ears, they even seem to have a sort of slicked-up hairdo under all that murk.

“Well what are we gonna do with it!?” Tangle hurriedly asks, “I can’t keep it in my tail forever! I’ve kind of got some stuff going on!”

Whisper, forgetting the situation for a moment, puts a hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder and asks, “Did everything go okay in there?”

“Yeah, awesome, we’re gonna stay as just friends for now, can we focus on the Goopy Guy???” Tangle winces, adding, “It really doesn’t wanna stay tied up and I REALLY don’t wanna be the one holding it!”

“I mean, I could try to build a little cage for it,” Belle suggests, “But with how feisty it is, I don’t know if anything on hand is going to be strong enough to hold it for very long…”

“They aren’t very tough, actually,” Sonic amends. “Just fast. They were using their speed in the air to build up power, but on their own, they don’t seem to pack much of a punch…” Sonic wracks his brain. It was on the tip of his tongue, he swears. Gah, if only Tails were here, he has a better memory about these things.

“Well, I guess in that case I can try,” Belle says, looking around for building materials, “But I still don’t think–”

“Wait a minute,” Sonic interrupts. “I think I do…! No, wait, I lost it.” He was so close to that thought, too! Man, what a bummer. Whisper rolls her eyes. Seriously, Tangle? Like, actually?

“Please hurry, Belle,” Whisper asks gently, and the tinkerer runs off to find some supplies.

“Sit tight, Tangle!” she calls out as she begins to rummage through those crates, “I ain’t about to leave a friend hanging!”

“Right!” Tangle replies, then quietly mumbles, “Friends…” She looks nervous again. “Whisper, you don’t think that she meant anything by that, right?”

Whisper only smiles and tilts her head. “Whatever do you mean, dear?” Being popular sucks, actually, Tangle has decided. She doesn’t have the heart for it.

Chapter 7: Triple Trouble

Shadow opens the door to the Chaotix Detective Agency as if he owns the place. “Knock knock,” he calls out dryly. Espio and Rouge aren’t that far behind him, both looking tired and frustrated after having spent that entire, long walk being teased by an uncharacteristically enthusiastic hedgehog. “Hm, quieter in here than I remember,” Shadow remarks in the calm, stationary office.

“Charmy is out,” Espio grumbles. “Vector sent him to visit Cream and Vanilla for the day.”

“Ah, that explains it,” Shadow supposes. “Well, that’s convenient. I’d hate for us to be interrupted~.”

“I-Interrupted from what!?” Espio says anxiously.

There’s a long, pregnant pause before Shadow responds, the hedgehog turned away from Espio the entire time so as to build tension. “From talking,” he finally says, “We’ll be having an important conversation here, won’t we?”

“Oh, for the love of…” Rouge spits out, “Is this how people feel around *me*!?”

“Yes,” Espio remarks before stomping away further into the office. “Vector! I’ve returned with clients!”

“I mean, I know you learned from the best, but would it kill you to take a break?” Rouge whines, “Give us an adjustment period!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Shadow says coldly. “Whatever you’re thinking, I’m fairly certain you’re imagining it.”

“Don’t gaslight me, Shadow, it’s not cute,” Rouge says saltily.

“I don’t know what that is,” he responds with a smile hidden behind his hand. “You’re insane.”

“Vector,” Espio calls out, “Please for the love of all that is holy and just, tell me you’ve made some progress on this case.” Espio was wearing PANTS, this is getting out of hand!

“Yup!” Vector calls out from further into the building, seemingly in the kitchen area. “MASSIVE progress, actually!

“Oh, thank goodness,” Espio says, walking into the kitchen. “I’ve been at my wit’s end trying to– WHAT in the world is THAT!?”

Vector is leaning up against the fridge door, which is currently pinning a person-sized monster covered in black and red, glowing energy. It struggles to break free, thrashing its legs against the door and trying to reach around to grab at Vector’s head, but the crocodile keeps it firmly stuck where it's at. He’s also holding a cup with a curly straw poking out of it. “A smoothie!” Vector answers. “You want one?”

All the way over in Emerald Town, Trip has a blanket draped over her shoulders. She’s conscious again, and luckily hasn’t transformed back into some sort of goo-beast, but she hasn’t said much. She’s sitting on one of Tails’s few remaining pieces of undestroyed furniture as the fox rummages through his supplies.

“Here’s some, uh, tea, I think?” Knuckles says, handing her a mug of boiled water and honey. And nothing else. “Hope that helps!”

“Th-thank you…” she murmurs, just holding it in her hands to feel the warmth. “I… I’m so sorry, I just… I don’t know why I d-did all of that…”

Trip is a lot different than Tails remembers her. For one, she’s much taller now, probably Knuckles’s height. Because of that, her old guardian armor fits her much better. She seems to be struggling far less with it on than she did back on Northstar Islands. Her helmet is sat next to her chair on the floor, for now. Because of that, Tails can also see the bags under her eyes. She’s been growing and aging this whole time, just like everyone else has. Tails can only wonder if she’s actually noticed her growth while the rest of them had all been oblivious to their own…

“Still think you should let me get a few solid whacks in to make us even,” Surge says as she leans against a wall, arms crossed, staring down at the ground. Once she’d realized Trip was, like, a normal and pretty person and not a monster, she’s had trouble maintaining eye contact. Not so much trouble with threats of violence, though.

“Surge, being mean to me is one thing, but can you please leave Trip alone?” Tails calls out as he starts setting screws and chips down next to him on the floor. “She’s evidently been through a lot and doesn’t need you bullying her.”

Surge growls out an apology to Trip so quiet that no one can quite make out her words. Then, she asks, “Wait, so it IS okay for me to bully YOU, though, right? Like you just said?”

“That’s not what I–”

“Bitch! Dumbass! Idiot! Moron! Loser! Stinky! SHORT!!!” Surge is having a grand old time.

Trip clutches at her head and Knuckles pats her on the back. “Lime lady, can you please quiet down!?” he yells, not realizing he’s also part of the problem.

“I-I’m fine…!” Trip tries to say, but it comes out as mostly choked gasps. “I’ll b-b-be okay…!”

“Well if I’m a lime, that makes the manlet SUBlime,” Surge mutters. “Because he’s beneath me.”

“Sublime is a compliment, Surge,” Tails says, pulling out a tangled bundle of wires and holding them up to the light. “You just called me noble and majestic.”

“I JUST CALLED YOU UGLY AND SMALL!!!” she barks at him. “What are you even doing, why are we just sitting here!?”

“Because SOMEONE broke my communicator!” Tails yells back. “I need to jury-rig repairs so I can get ahold of Sonic!”

“Well hurry the fuck up, I don’t have all day to just sit around picking my nose, you nose-picker!!!”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Why would I be the nose-picker if YOU’RE the one–”

“BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!!!” Knuckles roars, silencing the two bickerers and making Trip shrink in her seat, still clutching her head. “Trip, do you have *anything* you can tell us about why you were like that?”

Trips sniffles, clearly holding back tears. Her shoulders are hunched, like she’s trying to hide her face behind her own body. “I w-wish I could, b-but… Everything is so f-fuzzy…!”

“Well we’re talking animals, so yeah, typically,” Surge mutters, at the very least keeping her volume down.

“I’m r-really sorry,” Trip says, little droplets falling from her cheeks and into her sad tea. “Th-the last thing I remember was being with my family, and then… then…” She shudders. “Something happened… Something… r-really bad…!”

Meanwhile, Tangle finally lets go of the monster she’s been holding onto with her tail. It’s been grabbing and yanking at her fur this whole time, so she’s feeling pretty sore by the time she drops it into its cage. Well, less of a cage and more of a reinforced, wooden box with air holes on the sides. Belle and Motobud have to sit on the lid to keep it closed.

“Gosh, that sucked,” Tangle says with a shudder as she steps away from their captive creep. “Whispiiieee, that thing hurt! Kiss me make it better~?”

“Wash your tail first, please,” Whisper answers evenly. “That thing could have had diseases.”

“So unfair…!” Tangle pouts, puffing out her lips to try and get just one little smoochie before Whisper turns back towards Sonic.

“We have it captured,” Whisper says to him, pointing at the crate as it shakes and jitters, knocking Belle and Motobud around. “What should we do now?”

“I… hadn’t thought that far ahead!” Sonic admits, making Whisper bite her tongue out of frustration. “More of a big picture guy, honestly! Details are usually Tails’s thing!” Speaking of, he shakes his communicator around, hits it on the side, and even holds it up to the sky, but still no signal. “Who I cannot currently reach! Major buzzkill.”

“Well we need some sort of plan,” Whisper says, trying her hardest to not sound annoyed. “We can’t just have Belle keep it here forever.”

“Puh-lease don’t have Belle keep it here forever!” begs Belle, nearly being knocked off of her perch by another violent shake from inside.

“I’m all ears, if you have any ideas,” Sonic suggests.

“We could all kiss Tangle and make her feel better,” Tangle whispers under her breath.

“Huh?” Sonic asks, “What did she say?”

“Nothing,” Whisper says, grabbing the back of Tangle’s head and making her bow apologetically. “She said absolutely nothing.”

“That’s true, yeah!” Tangle declares. “Sorry, got my wires a bit crossed, haha!” She is experiencing so much emotional whiplash. “But if we don’t even know what it is, what are we gonna do with it?”

“I actually have a pretty good idea!” Vector answers after Espio had asked a very similar question. Espio, Shadow, and Rouge are all now in the kitchen observing the spasming, furious monster as it tries to break free of Vector’s special refrigerator grapple maneuver. Vector takes a long sip of his smoothie instead of finishing that thought, though.

“Care to elaborate before your eggs and milk spoil?” Rouge asks impatiently.

“Bold of you to assume we can afford fresh food to begin with,” Espio quips.

“Well, think about it!” Vector says, smiling cheerfully as if nothing at all was wrong. “We all woke up today and remembered parts of ourselves we didn’t have access to before! Romance,” he says, pointing at Espio, “Lust,” he adds, pointing at Rouge, “Even orientations we didn’t know applied to us!” he concludes, pointing finally to Shadow.

“Hm,” the hedgehog hums as he mulls over those words. “I find it bothersome that I didn’t actually take offence to that statement. Point taken.”

“But that’s not all!” Vector continues. And then stops. He takes another big slurp, long enough to make Rouge fly over and yank the smoothie out of Vector’s grasp, leaving behind a wet straw hanging from his mouth. “Yeah, that’s fair,” he says.

“Tell us what you know so I can be free of this nightmare scenario!” Rouge demands. “I want control over my libido again, not to *be controlled* by it!”

“Well, I dunno if I can fix it, exactly, but I think I do have an answer for what’s going on, at least!” Vector plucks the straw out of his mouth and flicks it towards the trash can. He misses. Badly. It’s on the floor now. Dude, gross.

“Failing a solution, are you free tonight after dealing with feral tar creatures?” Rouge asks, “Because you are the tallest man I know, I believe, and that does have me wondering how well we’d–”

Shadow snaps his fingers to get Rouge’s attention. “No,” he says simply, and she folds her ears back like an angry kitten and flutters back down to the floor. “Vector, please continue.”

“Right!” Vector declares, not showing whether or not he was actually bothered by Rouge’s offer. Espio certainly looked bothered by it… “It isn’t just emotions we’re remembering, but whole life events that have completely dropped out of our minds! Espio, tell me who founded the Chaotix!”

A simple question, Espio believes, up until he opens his mouth. “That was… we were…” He looks down, grasping the side of his head like a ninja about to unleash a forbidden jutsu. Vector was their leader, it only made logical sense for him to have brought them all together, but it was… “...Knuckles did,” he says quietly. “But Knuckles… was he ever even a part of our…?”

“Exactly!” Vector says proudly. “And the time between ‘Knuckles’s’ Chaotix and now? Total mystery!”

“Fascinating,” Shadow says, glaring at the red monstrosity as it knocks down a jar of old, grated parmesan from the door. “But how does any of that tie into this thing?”

“That’s the easy part!” Vector says. “If we’re suddenly remembering forgotten emotions and forgotten times and places, then it’s easy to imagine we also forgot… people!”

“You mean this gross sludge thingy is someone we know? “Sonic asks, looking down at a grainy, unclear image of Tails on his screen. His little bro had finally gotten his own communicator working again after Surge had apparently shattered it. Makes Sonic feel just a little bit bad about hanging up so fast this morning.

“That’s right!” Tails says from the other end of the line, only sounding a little bit like he was in the middle of a rain storm. “Trip hasn’t been able to remember much, but she did say that there were others there with her! Wherever it was that she was stuck all this time, that is!” In the background of the video, Sonic can see Knuckles comforting a trembling sungazer. Been quite a while since he’s seen her, but that was Trip, alright.

“So all we need to do is remember who’s in that box over there,” Sonic muses. “Easier said than done. We’ve met a LOT of folks over the years.”

“Well, I was able to discern Trip’s identity from the monster version of her’s attack patterns and coloration,” Tails says, sounding like he’s reading out from a text book. Sonic spots a tenrec over his shoulder flapping her fingers around like a shadow puppet, sticking her tongue out as she makes fun of the way Tails talks. “Tell me what you know about yours, and we might be able to narrow it down to a single person!”

“Okay,” Sonic says with a nod. “Well, they flew around mondo fast, sort of like a kite swooping up and down, they had a tail they could use like a club, and all the smokey stuff coming off of it was yellow. Does that ring any rings to you, lil buddy?”

Tails furrows his brow. “...Yes?” he immediately says. “Sonic, that’s Ray the Flying Squirrel!”

Sonic looks up at the sky. “Oh yeeeeaaaah!” He thinks he remembers that guy.

“Sonic, that was one of our friends! We hung out with him all the time, how did you forget Ray of all people?” Tails loves his brother and all, but he was AWFUL at maintaining interpersonal connections sometimes…

“Well it’s not like the guy called very often, or anything!” Sonic gives as an excuse.

“Yeah, because he got turned into a sludge monster!” Tails clarifies. “Sonic, quick, go up to the monster and say his name! That’s what got Trip back to normal over here!”

“Right, right, way ahead of you!” Sonic says, moseying over to the impromptu cage Belle had put together. It has since stopped rumbling around from underneath her, but she still looked pretty nervous. “You still good over here, Tinkerbelle?”

“As good as I can be as a warden for a scary alien, I guess…” she answers quietly. “Did Tails have any ideas?”

“Yup! Let me in there and this problem can be solved!”

“Okay, but let me get a few steps away before ya open that thing,” she asks politely. “I don’t wanna be on the receiving end of its bad mood again…!”

Belle and Motobud hop off of the cage’s lid, and after waiting a few seconds, Sonic lifts it up, saying, “Well, Ray, now that we know it’s you, I’m sure we can come to a friendly–” Sonic looks in the box. There is a hole in the bottom leading to a burrow through the dirt. Ray is not inside. “Wuh oh.”

“Go on, Espio, think,” Vector says, hand on his coworker’s shoulder as he urges him on. “Back then, when we were ALL the Chaotix. Someone was there that went missing some time ago, right? A case we never solved? A mystery that we all forgot existed? You know it, I know ya do!”

Espio glares at the black and red creature. That color scheme certainly was familiar, and not just because Shadow was in the room. The shape of its body, the way it moves, the way Espio’s certain that Vector is the only one in the room capable of holding such a strong, ferocious entity back. “I… I do remember,” Espio says, holding onto his own arm to keep himself from reaching out to grab the thing. “It’s… Mighty, isn’t it?”

Suddenly, the fridge slams shut. Vector was putting his whole weight on the door, so when the monster gives up the fight, they’re shoved right inside. “Whoops! Uh oh, what just happened!?”

“You mean you didn’t see this coming!?” Espio demands. “What if this results in injury for him? Or worse!?” Espio pushes Vector to the side, all those rippling crocodile muscles no match for his friend being worried, and without thinking, he yanks open the fridge door.

“Wait, stop, what if–!” Shadow tries to say, but he’s too slow. Blue light and a gust of wind shoot out of the fridge as Espio retches it open. Only instead of a deadly monster trying to claw out Vector’s throat, an armadillo is inside. He falls out of the fridge and slumps to the ground, his bright, red shell shining in the dull fluorescents of the office as he flops onto his knees, and then fully down onto the floor.

“Is he alive?” Rouge asks, lacking a bit of the urgency Espio and Vector likely felt about such a question. She doesn’t know this guy, she honestly barely cares.

Luckily, her question is answered with an undeniable truth. “Unfortunately,” a gruff, deep voice says from beneath that armadillo’s shell. “Gah, my aching head…!” It’s a much older Mighty the Armadillo, one with a few extra nicks and scrapes on his armor, one with a thicker chest and more defined bulk, but it was undeniably the Mighty that Espio and Vector had started the Chaotix with.

As Espio throws his arms around his long-lost friend, Jewel is sitting by herself in her own office. “You need to be okay,” she tells herself. “Things will be fine. She just… needs time, is all.” She’s trying breathing exercises to keep calm. “Give her more time…” She wants to come out of here and be able to talk to Tangle again like normal. Hell, even being able to face Whisper with a straight face would be nice. She doesn’t want her best friends to see her as some clingy creep who’s just waiting for one of them to change her mind about dating. Even though that’s sort of how she felt in this particular moment.

Tangle has always been the most important person in Jewel’s life. Tangle has never not been a main priority for her, even if she couldn’t quite feel the reasons why! But one day… Whisper came along, and suddenly it felt a lot like Tangle was growing past her. Whisper is such a nice girl, and Jewel doesn’t blame her at all, it just… stings, to finally be able to realize her own feelings, only after it's much, much too late. She sighs, hardly even noticing her desk shaking until her floor begins to split under her.

“Eh!?” She looks down and sees two black, glowing hands reaching out of the ground, grasping at her. “AHHHHHHHH!!!” She flies up and away from the thing, slamming into one of her windows. She opens it immediately, terrified, and once there’s even a sliver of fresh air coming into the museum, she screams, “TANGLE! WHISPER! HELP!!!” Well, that’s one way to get a conversation started, she supposes!

Sonic’s the one who ends up speeding inside, though, taking the scenic route by jumping in through the window Jewel had opened. “Okay, yup, here he is!” Sonic declares, pushing Jewel out of the window and out of harm’s way. He hopes. “Figured as much! Hey, pal, what did Jewel ever do to you!? She’s a nice lady, leave her alone!” Weird that Ray would be caught attacking Belle, Spiral Hill villagers, and Jewel of all people. What exactly was he after?

Other than Sonic, because, you know. Tackled, again. Sonic is pinned to the wall as Ray’s body slams into him, attempting to peel out against Jewel’s carpet in an effort to crush Sonic against the wall. “Sorry, Ray, but no matter how many of my moves I teach you, you’ll never be as fast as this guy!”

As Sonic says that, the monster starts to relent, not all at once, but gradually. From trying to crush him to just pinning him there to falling down onto him, the goopy guy tries one more soft, weak punch before it explodes into nothing but blue sparks and a flying squirrel, collapsed into Sonic’s arms. “Well,” Sonic says, lifting the unconscious Ray up and looking around. “That was more fun than my run-in with Amy today, at least! I gotta hand it to you there!” Ray does not respond, as he is unconscious. “Right. So… You think Jewel locked us in here? Might need to toss you out the window, too, little guy.”

With all three of the ‘monsters’ remembered and dealt with, everyone in all three of these locations starts to calm down. Not entirely, but slowly, a bit at a time. There was a lot to explain, but they at least have the time to have it explained to them. They have nothing but time. No clues or advantages or hopes of victory. An unseen force watches over all of these scenes with a giddy excitement. What fun she’ll have with them all~!

Chapter 8: Admirable

It hasn’t passed Blaze’s notice that a lot of what she’s done with Silver in the past could have, had anyone had the frame of reference to identify them as such, been considered ‘dates.’ They certainly spend a lot of time together, going out exploring and experiencing the culture of this world together, and one could be forgiven for assuming a sort of closeness between the two that neither had been able to think about until now.

Having gone back to the cafe, gotten lunch together, and taking their time getting back to Emeraldville, though, Blaze has noticed a very key difference between then and now. On their ‘vacations’ together, they were mostly seeing sights, focusing on the world around them more than anything else. Blaze being from another plane of existence and Silver being from the destroyed future, neither of them have experienced this world as fully as the others, so naturally that’s where their attention would drift.

Now, however, it seems that Silver is hardly able to take his eyes off of her. Even more strangely, Blaze finds herself quite easily reciprocating such an act. It doesn’t feel at all normal, but at the same time feels like the most natural thing in the world. All that time they’d spent together, Blaze feels like this is one of the first times they’ve let themselves just be… together, with nothing distracting them. And that cloying sting in the back of her mind every time she recalls another detail of her own demise is only putting a mild damper on things. But whenever Blaze would feel that lost, hollow look creeping back onto her face, Silver’s smile and cheer was quick to help her return to baseline.

That way he has of easing all of her worries without even trying, it’s… admirable. Sol, how often has she called some aspect of him ‘admirable’ in the past? She’d kick herself for being such an obvious flirt if she’d been able to tell that’s what she’d been doing. Then again, he’s hardly seemed to be able to hold himself back for very long today, either. He hasn’t gone a moment without beaming brightly. It’s…

She has to think of a different word. She sighs as she internally settles on ‘cute.’

At some point, she’d managed to slip her hand into his. When his only response was to interlock his fingers into hers, she couldn’t help but blush a bit. As refined and stoic as Blaze could be when she needed to, she may have also noticed how hard that wall breaks when she’s given affection like this. It’s not as though she’s complaining, or anything.

That’s how they are as they walk up to the Emeraldville Restoration campsite, hand-in-hand and both smiling with varying degrees of bashfulness, Silver obviously possessing none. Amy’s just coming out of the medical tent, a bandage on her nose, as she spots the pair approaching. “Oh, Blaze! And Silver!” she calls out, “Thank goodness you’re alright! Sonic mentioned something about you earlier, and I was so worried!”

“AMY!” Silver responds giddily, throwing his arms around her in a tight hug, knocking her off her balance a bit. Blaze looks down at her hand, which is no longer being held. Huh. “It’s so good to see you, too! Isn’t the world such a wonderful, beautiful place!?”

“Uh?” Amy is not used to this sort of enthusiasm from other people, let alone directed at her. Was he sick? “Are you… okay, Silver?”

“He’s still getting used to those new emotions,” Blaze says as she walks up to the two of them. “I was slightly thrown off at first, too, but trust me, he’s not going to hurt you.”

“I could never hurt a friend that I cherish as much as you, Amy!” Silver announces to anyone nearby enough to hear.

“Oh!” Amy says, sounding more awkward than Blaze remembers Amy being capable of. “Neat…!”

“What about you, Amy?” Blaze asks, sensing something different about her good friend. “Have certain unfolding events been putting a strain on you?”

“Oh no!” Silver shouts. He breaks the hug and holds Amy by the shoulders as he says, “Amy, if there’s anything we can help with, just say the word! Blaze and I can handle anything if it means protecting our friends!”

Smiling crookedly and sweating, Amy responds, “It’s nothing I can’t work through on my own with time! I just need to adjust a bit to all of this, too!” She looks down at the ground as she adds, “And maybe… spend some time with people other than, uh, Sonic. For a while.”

“Ah.” Blaze immediately understands what had happened. She hadn’t really been a part of Amy’s life when Amy was still fervent about that particular crush, but she’s seen glimpses of it here and there. “We could still talk about it, if you’d want–”

“OH MY GOSH!” Silver yells, startling both Amy and Blaze as he lets go of the hedgehog and starts to float over towards the medical tent. “LANOLIN!” Lanolin stops dead in her tracks. She’d been trying to just walk back to her own room, but when she sees Silver trying to glomp her, her eyes go wide and she starts to book it. “My precious teammate, I’m so happy to see you! Come back, we should talk about the good old times!!!”

Amy and Blaze watch him as he zips away, chasing the touch-averse sheep until neither of them are in view. “Wow,” Amy mutters, “You weren’t kidding about him not knowing how to deal.”

“It’s the oddest thing,” Blaze says, “I’m definitely feeling the, you understand, the dormant parts of myself coming alight again. But compared to him, it’s as though I’m immune.” He almost seems like a different person right now.

“Oh, I’m not that surprised,” Amy says with a nervous laugh. “When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was remember how I felt about Sonic, and ha, it kind of… all crashed down on me at the same time. Like all those little moments of heartache I wasn’t getting to experience were building up, one after another, until they all crashed down on me at once!” Amy realizes she’s sounding a bit manic again and clears her throat, rubbing her own arm awkwardly. “I’d, uh, bet that’s how Silver’s feeling, too. He’s just had so much affection waiting to come out, and now that it can, he’s totally overwhelmed by it.” Amy sighs. “At least he’s dealing with it better than I can.”

Blaze puts a hand on Amy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough time of things,” Blaze says. She truly, deeply feels bad for Amy. She hadn’t even considered people could be having such negative experiences now that these parts of themselves were back. Hard to consider anything negative at all when Silver was around. And now that he’s not… Oof. Amy looks rough.

“I’ll be okay, I promise!” Amy tells her, despite having to wipe the ball of her palm against her cheek to hide a few tears that managed to escape. “Sonic was never going to feel that way, anyhow. And I’ve… known that for a long time, now.”

Blaze tightens her grip on Amy’s shoulder a bit. If it weren’t so presumptuous of her, she’d want to give Amy a hug. But she can’t give in to baser urges like that just because she can. She has an image to maintain, after all. She still has to try and comfort her friend, though, so she says, “If it’s any consolation to you, I can somewhat commiserate with feeling a bit… left out of Sonic’s life, if that makes sense.”

Amy blinks. Wait, for real? “You mean…?” Blaze hesitates in her answer, but then sighs and nods. “But didn’t you tell me you didn’t think about him that way?” Her smile does come back for a moment, actually amazed that Blaze of all people would admit to something like that.

“That was when I’d hardly known him, Amy,” Blaze clarifies. “It’s been years now, and at this point, even I cannot deny that he has some positive traits worth admiring.” Not the least of which is that he’s pretty hot, but she’s not saying that part out loud. “I wouldn’t call it as major as a full-blown crush, or anything, but it’s something I’ve thought about here and there…” Mostly today, because she couldn’t have before then. Goes without saying.

“That… does actually make me feel better,” Amy says, “Or at least makes me feel less like a boy-obsessed psychopath, haha!” Someone else seeing what she sees, even in small amounts, means she’s not totally wrong or a terrible friend or unlovable or something else like that, right…? Right……? “Well, at least YOU still have someone you can turn to, huh?”

“...Do I?” Blaze asks, confused as to what Amy means.

“Well, you and Silver seemed like you’d gotten pretty close just now,” Amy points out. “He definitely didn’t look grossed out by you holding his hand, you know?” Amy’s only frame of reference for romance was the other person either being utterly disgusted by the notion they could like you back or being fully on board without any further discussion. Is that not how it works?

“Well,” Blaze says with an unsure shrug. “It’s not as though I wouldn’t *like* to be closer to him, I suppose. It’s just that he was quite quick to run off to his other friends today.” Both Amy and Lanolin made Silver almost completely forget Blaze was there, from her point of view. Which is fine! It’s his life and all. She’s not going to let it hurt… that much. “And it’s like you said, with that dam bursting and that excess of affection hitting him all at once, I doubt he sees me as particularly special.”

Amy puffs out a cheek. “What are you saying?” she states, sounding as blunt as a smack to the head with a piko-piko hammer. “Even before that dam broke, he wanted to spend ALL of his time with you. Of COURSE you’re special to him! You’re Blaze, the princess of the Sol Empire, you’re YOU! How could he NOT think about you that way!?”

Blaze’s cheeks gain just a bit of color as Amy says all of this, Blaze turning away out of bashfulness. “That’s all… Well, I suppose, but…”

Amy keeps going. “Blaze, just because he’s full of love right now doesn’t mean that it’s not for you!” She takes both of Blaze’s hands into her own, gripping them tightly and making Blaze’s blush deepen further. With stars in her eyes, Amy says, “And you should tell him how you feel so that the two of you can work this out! There’s no sense hiding something as important as this! If you want to be special to one another, whether he feels the same way or not, you’ll only feel better once it’s all out in the open!”

“A-Are you… sure?” Blaze asks awkwardly. Amy, of all people, saying a rejection would be better than nothing at all?

Amy breathes out little puffs of steam from her nose and says, “You’re the most mature person I know! You can handle this!” If she was a pre-teen Amy Rose, sure, you could make an argument about trying to be a bit more subtle. But Blaze can do anything, that’s what Amy truly believes. “The longer you wait, the more impossible it’ll feel! You should tell him!!!”

Blaze can’t fault Amy for her determination. “I…” She’s not actually sure she CAN handle something like that right now. Those returning memories have left her feeling very vulnerable. Especially the one where she’d already tried telling Silver how she felt about him, right before she… But Amy wasn’t wrong. He was her best friend, and she liked to think of herself as his. Even if he didn’t feel the same, hiding something like this from him would only put a strain on their bond, and that’s the last thing in the world she wants. “Okay,” Blaze whispers, “I’ll talk to him when I get the chance.”

“Good!” Amy says before pulling Blaze in for a hug, “I believe in you! I know you can do this, Blaze!”

“That’s amazing thanks can you let go maybe?” the princess asks, feeling a shiver run up her spine.

“Right, low contact, sorry!” Amy says, holding up her arms and taking a step or two away.

Blaze laughs it off. “It’s okay. It actually means a lot to me.” On a face that publicly bares one so rarely, the grin Blaze gives Amy makes Amy’s heart skip a beat in its radiance, Blaze’s cheeks pressing up and squinting her eyes as her fangs bare happily. “Thank you, Amy, really. I think that I dearly needed to hear that.”

“...Yeah, no problem!” Amy says, feeling her own cheeks starting to go hot now, too. Was Blaze always so pretty…?

“I should go find him,” Blaze says, taking a step past Amy and further into the ruins. “I’ll let you know how it goes, alright?” As she trots away, Amy holds up a hand and waves goodbye. Once Blaze is fully out of sight, Amy slowly lowers her hand and stares at her own palm. Was she…? Did she think Blaze was…?

And Amy just pushed her into someone else. She scowls deeply, clenches her fist, stomps a foot, and mutters, “I am such a FUCKING idiot!” Shocked, she covers her mouth. She can say that!? Since when!? Huh? She looks around, makes sure no one was around to hear that, and then as quietly as she can, lowers her palm and whispers another, “...fuck…” before covering her mouth again. Oh, my. Scandalous.

Blaze is putting all of her willpower into just putting one foot in front of the other, continuing in her march towards finding Silver. She feels her tail start to get fluffier as she immediately second guesses her decision. What, exactly, was she going to say to Silver? ‘Hi, thanks for opening your soul to me for all these years, can we bump ourselves together like horny action figures?’ She’s never asked someone out before! She’s done everything in her power to avoid being in that sort of situation! She’s never even hinted at having feelings for anyone until the moment just before she DIED back at Soleanna!

But she can’t let Amy down…! Amy was so supportive and sweet and she really, really believed in Blaze. If she doesn’t at least TRY to have this conversation, how was she going to look that poor girl in the eyes again? Amy trusted her. She’d given Blaze a little piece of her own drive and determination to help her on her way. Amy puts so much effort into helping others, cheering them on, making sure they’re okay even if she’s not. Blaze can’t waste the faith someone like that had put in her, not when she admires that sort of compassion so greatly!

“...” Blaze stops and puts a finger to her chin. “...Hm.” Did… Did Amy–?

But that thought is cut off when she hears Lanolin up ahead going, “I’m not joking around, knock it off already!!!” Blaze runs forward until she sees the old garden they’d all made together, long-since destroyed, the sheep standing in its center and using both of her hands to try and shove Silver off of her. He’s floating mid-air, kicking his feet giddily as he presses his cheek into hers. Noticing Blaze, Lanolin barks, “Is this one YOURS!?”

“Oh, you know who I am, silly!” Silver says, still not taking the hint, “We were on the Diamond Cutters together and you were SUCH an incredible leader! I respected you so much and I’m just glad we can be friends now and that we’re still on the same team and all of us will be together forever and–”

“Silver,” Blaze says, holding out her claws to… she doesn’t know, lift him? She wants to get him off Lanolin, at least. “Can I talk to you about something privately, please?”

“Oh, I’m sure Lanolin’s fine with coming with us!” Silver responds, still not letting go. “We’re awesome buddies, right?”

“NO!” Lanolin immediately rebukes.

“The awesomest!!!” He is off in his own world.

“UGH!” Lanolin taps her golden bell, not hard enough to cause a shock wave, but enough to stun Silver for a moment. A moment she uses to peel herself away.

Blaze puts her hands on his arms and tries to keep him steady. “Sorry about that, miss,” Blaze says awkwardly as Lanolin quickly storms away, wanting no part in whatever was going on with her *former* teammate. This is making Blaze worry, now. “Silver, are you…? Can you understand what’s going on right now?” She’s been doing a lot of talking to him about the big, confusing mess they’re in, but he hasn’t actually talked about it that much back to her. Did he even know what he was doing?

Silver pauses. His smile creases a bit, not fully going away, just… shrinking. “Yeah,” he says, voice half a mix of fatigue and embarrassment. “I- I know this isn’t really like me at all… But Lanolin and I weren’t exactly on the best terms the last time we’d seen each other, and… I guess I was just hoping she might feel different now? Because of…” He holds up his hands. “All this?”

Blaze softens her grip on him, definitely not wanting to let go, but not wanting him to think that she was trapping him. “Everyone has their own way of dealing with these feelings, I believe,” Blaze tells him. “And I think Lanolin is a bit less open about such matters than you are.”

“Yeah…” he admits after a long sigh. “I probably just made things worse, haha…! It feels like the sun is inside of me, lighting up my whole body and everything around me, but… I guess I’m kinda being a nuisance about it, aren’t I?”

Silver blinks in surprise when he feels Blaze pull him into a tight hug, her face resting on his shoulder. “You are not a nuisance,” she says. “You have a big heart and want to share it with the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Silver hesitates, but puts his hands on Blaze’s back, returning her hug. “Are you sure?” he asks, “Sonic and Amy didn’t seem overly excited about my ‘big heart,’ either.”

Blaze keeps her hold on him, but pulls back enough to look him in the eyes as she responds, “Well speaking for myself, it’s made me very happy to see you like this.” Silver’s smile has turned into an expression of a kind of slack-jawed awe. He’s never seen Blaze like this before. Her eyes are wet and her smile is… different, somehow. “I was sick to my stomach with worry because of everything, but then you were there and it… It felt easier. Manageable. Having you near me, smiling and laughing and showing off that heart at every opportunity you had, I…” Blaze gives up on her earlier commitment to widening her vocabulary, it’s just what sounds best to her. “I find that so admirable about you, Silver.”

He offers her another, weaker smile at those words, which are beautiful and make him forget why he was even worried, until he recognizes them. Blaze had said that before, hadn’t she? Not just recently, but back when they’d worked together at Soleanna. Right before she was… gone. Silver’s nose scrunches up, and he breaks into tears almost immediately after remembering Blaze disappear. Of course she was stressed, how could she not be? He remembers seeing her on fire, drifting away from him one last time, telling him how admirable he was, and he pulls her back into the hug, as tightly as he can.

“Blaze!” he sobs, clutching onto the back of her jacket with both hands. “I’m so glad you’re okay! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t–”

“Shhh,” Blaze whispers to him, “It wasn’t your fault. It was so long ago, we’re both okay. I promise we’re okay.” She holds him as he shudders out a few more desperate sobs, *those* emotions coming back to him as fully as all the positive, compassionate ones had. He feels like he’s mourning her and thanking the stars she’s alive all at once. How could he have been skipping and singing all day when Blaze has had to relive THAT over and over again in her memories!? What was wrong with him!? “Everything is going to be okay,” Blaze says, not sure if she or Silver needs to hear it more in this moment.

She keeps hugging him, rubbing her hand along his back and softly shushing, until the crying starts to subside. Only then does Blaze pull back and look him in the eyes again. He still looks so hurt and so ashamed of himself, so she takes one of his hands and presses it into her cheek. “Silver,” she says, “I’m real. I’m alive. And even if we can’t remember why, I can remember everything you did to try and save me, and save everyone else in the world.” Her own lip trembles a bit, but she resolves to stay strong for him. “And I remember all the time we’ve spent together since. Every day you’ve saved, every person you cared for, every bad situation you’ve brightened with your silver lining… I’m never going to forget that. No matter what ends up buried or forgotten, you will always be there to remind me why I should care.” Why bother saving the world if you didn’t love the people in it, right? It wasn’t even her world, technically speaking. But she wasn’t about to let her friends down. She would never want to let Silver down.

Silver forces himself to keep his eyes open, to keep himself from breaking into tears again, just so he can keep looking into her eyes. He runs his thumb along her cheek, and when she leans into the touch, he almost feels like he’s just done something forbidden. But Blaze is right… they’ve always been there for each other, and Silver wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of that.

Even so… “I want to… I *want* to be there with you, Blaze. Forever. I mean it, but… I mean, I can hardly control my emotions on a good day, and NOW, I… Everything is so intense, and I’m so worried about letting you down, and–”

His thought is cut off when Blaze suddenly leans forward. Their faces barely have inches between them. Silver was full-body pressed into Lanolin a minute ago, but he’s unsure if he’s ever felt closer to anyone in his life than he feels to Blaze in this moment.

“As long as you… promise you’ll… have a part of me with you,” Blaze says quietly, slowly, taking time and consideration with every word so she knows that she means what she says. Despite their mouths being so close together, Silver feels like she’s talking directly into his ear. “That your heart has enough room for me, I mean, then… then I…” Silver feels Blaze lean in even closer. There is not an atom of his being that would even think about moving away. “You could never let me down, Silver.”

They close the distance, Blaze closing her eyes and kissing him for the first time. Blaze is soft and warm, and Silver is… trying his best! Neither of them have any real idea what they’re doing, but he’s wrapped in her arms, and she’s held in his, and neither of them care about anything other than that. It doesn’t matter if they’re good at it, all that matters is that they’re together.

Blaze curls her tail around his waist as he holds her face and tries to remember what he read in all those books about kissing. When she pulls back, they both have small, delicate tears in their eyes. Blaze grins again, shining as beautifully as that star in Silver’s heart as she says, “I love you.”

“Wowie,” Silver says. Then he hears what he just said and feels the need to kick his own ass. Blaze breaks into giggles as she rests her forehead against his. “Pretend I just said ‘I love you, too’ so that I can live with myself, please.”

“No,” Blaze says, pecking him on the cheek before saying, “No more forgetting things.” Then she kisses him again. Wanting for no more words, Blaze kisses him more and more and more, and the entire time she does, she doesn’t have to worry about a thing.

Chapter 9: Nowhere Fast

“I mean, it’s fine and all,” Whisper the Wolf says, quiet enough so only Tangle can hear. “It’s just that he’s so immature and…” And other things she thinks are too mean to say out loud. Like boorish, annoying, grating, and ugly. Again, inside thoughts. “Him? Really?”

Tangle quietly laughs, finding Whisper’s incredulity kinda cute. Like most things about Whisper, to be fair. “I mean, I’m pretty immature sometimes, too, and you like me, don’t you?”

“Well, it’s cute when you do it,” Whisper responds, getting more hushed titters out of her girlfriend. They’re having this conversation sitting side by side with one another, Whisper’s hand on Tangle’s thigh, Tangle’s tail around Whisper’s waist. They’re trying as hard as they can not to be overheard, but Belle keeps stealing glances over at Tangle when she breaks into giggles.

“Whatcha talking about over there?” she eventually asks, offering a nervous smile as if she’s not sure that she’s welcome or not.

“Oh, nothing!” Tangle says with an embarrassed wave. “Just enjoying each other’s–”

“Tangle’s poor taste in men,” Whisper admits, making Tangle fluster a bit.

“...Oh?” Belle doesn’t know whether to be uncomfortable or incredibly intrigued by such a gossipy topic. She’s leaning towards the latter, though, especially if it’s about Tangle.

“Sweetie, come on~!” Tangle whines, lolling her head back in a mock-tantrum. “Gimme a break over here!”

“I mean, at least be attracted to a *cute* boy, is all I mean,” Whisper continues to tease, smirking in a mischievous way that Belle’s not sure she’s seen from the wolf before.

“Like who?” Tangle asks with a pout.

“Like…” Whisper looks up into the sky. She’s thinking really, really hard about this. After several seconds of combing through every man she knows, though, she’s coming up blank. The silence goes on long enough for even Belle to snicker about it a little.

“You’re so gay~,” Tangle says, nuzzling her nose into the side of Whisper’s face.

“No, hold on, give me a minute,” Whisper quietly requests.

“Well, if you don’t mind me asking,” Belle says, sitting down cross-legged across from the two of them, “I feel like I gotta know, now. Who’s she teasing you about?”

Tangle rolls her eyes and leans forward, putting a finger to her lips as if to shush Belle before looking around, making sure he’s not within earshot, and whispering, “Before I met Whisper, I had a crush on Sonic, alright?”

“Gears and starters, for real?” Belle asks, sounding almost as amused ‘n confused as Whisper did.

“I know!” Whisper agrees.

“He saves the world, like, every other month!” Tangle says with a bit of exasperation. “It’s not that weird!” She crosses her arms and turns away from both of them, not actually that offended, but wanting to make Belle and Whisper feel at least a tinge of guilt for making fun of her. They both just giggle some more. “When I first met him, Sonic and Blaze were saving Spiral Hill from things that I just couldn’t handle on my own. They kinda saved my bacon, you know, and I’ve just thought they were both pretty great ever since…” Also that time during the zombot apocalypse when Sonic held her almost made Tangle forgive Eggman for putting her in that situation to begin with.

“Well, I can understand Blaze, I suppose,” Whisper whispers with a small nod.

“I guess…?” Belle says, not entirely convinced of even that much. Belle’s still not sure she likes anyone, if she’s being honest. Which she isn’t. She is not talking about her feelings out loud.

“I’m a bisexual who got caught up in the lives of world-famous super heroes, I’m allowed to think that’s hot!” Tangle says, wanting the final word on this.

“You’re allowed to do whatever you want, darling,” Whisper tells her before kissing her on the back of the neck, making Tangle’s tail do a wave from base to tip. “And I’m allowed to think you’re silly~.”

“...faaaaiiiir!” Tangle says before flopping down across Whisper’s lap, making the both of them laugh as they look into each other’s eyes again.

Seeing all that happen, Belle sighs and says, “Wow, Whisper, I think this is the best mood I’ve ever seen you in.” Whisper looks over to Belle, her ear twitching from being called out. “I kinda expected Tangle to be goofy from all’a this, but you’re normally so… down, you know? It's really nice seeing you so smiley!”

Whisper scritches her own snout, a bit embarrassed. “With Mimic gone and Tangle… here, I guess… Yeah, I am feeling a lot better.” She pets the side of Tangle’s face. Hard not to smile when looking at her. “A *lot* better~.” Before the war, Whisper had been kind of a bit like Tangle, looking back. She was the peppy one of the group, always goofing off and cheering others up. The trauma sort of beat that personality out of her, though. But, given that that was her natural state, before all of… everything… maybe now that she can finally start to recover, she was getting a bit of that energy back? Or maybe Tangle was just rubbing off on her.

…golly, she hopes Tangle’s going to rub off on her… At least parts of her…

“He’s waking up!” a voice calls out to the three of them, and immediately Tangle, Whisper, and Belle stand and hurry over to the front of the museum, where Sonic and Jewel had been taking care of Ray. Jewel had gotten some hot towels, a soft pillow for his head, and even had a first-aid kit out, just in case. Sonic was… there! He was the only one in town who had any idea who Ray was, so he can’t just bolt, so he got some chili dogs, made sure he had extra for if the squirrel needed a snack, and just chilled out. He offered to help Jewel in some way, but she rambled about needing to be in charge of something for a bit.

When Ray actually started to open his eyes, Jewel called out to the others, which only made him wake up faster. “Hey, little dude,” Sonic says, grabbing Ray’s hand and squeezing, letting the guy know he’s alright. “Long time no see!”

“...Sonic…?” Ray mutters as he starts to lift his head… his ACHING head. “Aw, man, what happened?”

“That’s what we were kinda hoping you’d be able to tell us, actually,” Jewel says, sounding a bit exhausted, but still on standby with her emergency gear.

When Ray hears a voice he doesn’t recognize, he looks up and sees Jewel, Whisper, Tangle, and Belle all staring at him. Tangle even smiles and waves when she sees him looking her way. He rubs his head a bit, makes sure he’s still alive, and then glances over at Sonic. “Uh, Sonic, buddy,” he says quietly, whispering through his teeth, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but we’re kind of surrounded by hot babes right now…!”

“...That sentence is alarming to me in a myriad of ways, actually,” Sonic tells him, tossing the chili dog he’d been saving for Ray up into the air and then catching it in his own mouth.

Not having heard what he’d said, and that being the only reason she isn’t automatically disgusted, Jewel flits over to Ray and holds out an offer to shake hands. “My name’s Jewel the Beetle,” she tells him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Uh,” Ray stammers, not used to talking to literally any woman outside of Amy. Even that was… a very long time ago. “R-Ray,” he says, taking her hand and jostling it as though he’s never been taught what a handshake is before. “Hiya.”

“And that’s Tangle, Whisper, and Belle,” Sonic says, pointing at the other three in a sequence. “They helped me kick the snot out of you when you were trying to kill us!”

“I was trying to WHAT!?” Ray sits up, now looking like he’d been kicked. “Oh, man, I really was trying to do that, wasn’t I!?” He covers his face with both hands, droplets of sweat bouncing off his head and into the air around him. “I’m so sorry, dude, I swear I didn’t want to! She was making me, I didn’t have a choice!!!”

“Who is ‘she?’” Whisper asks immediately, noticing the key word the instant it left this strange boy’s mouth.

“The…!” Ray starts to say, but then looks confused. He lowers his hands, his eyes wide and sad as he says, “I dunno… I can’t remember anymore…”

“Great…” Whisper grumbles. “Another dead end, then.”

“No!” Tangle says, “We have a pronoun! That narrows it down a lot! Sonic, how many villainous women do you know?”

Sonic shrugs. “Uh, like, two, maybe?” There honestly ain’t a whole lot on that front. “Are we counting Metal Amy?”

“Are there any other details you’re able to remember, mister?” Belle asks gently, crouching down to get on Ray’s eye-level. He’s still on the floor. Ray only shakes his head, a look of startled confusion still glued to his face. “Well… it didn’t sound like that Trip lady over the phone knew much about what was happening, either. Maybe y’all just need time to stew?”

“Trip…” Ray rubs his cheek. “That’s… That’s the name of someone else who was there, isn’t it…?”

“Where?” Whisper asks intently. “Where have you been since the last time you saw Sonic?”

“...Nowhere,” Ray answers ominously.

“You don’t remember that either, huh?” Sonic asks.

“No, I do,” Ray answers. “We were nowhere. It was empty and cold and…” Ray grabs at his sides, shivering. “It didn’t even feel like we were alive…! We were conscious, we could see each other, but we couldn’t DO nothing!” Everyone is quiet at that. Sonic really, really hates how this is sounding. “It’s all so… far away feeling now, though. Like waking up from a dream even though I know I was there! It was me, and… *her,* and–” Ray jumps up from his sitting position, startling Belle, who had gotten close to try and comfort the guy. “MIGHTY!!!” Ray darts around the village frantically, looking around for anything that might give him a sign, but he’s already so lost, he has no idea where to look! “Sonic, Mighty was there, too! What if he’s still trapped!? What am I gonna do, I CAN’T lose Mighty, we have to–!”

Sonic puts a hand on top of Ray’s head, ruffling his short fur comfortingly. “Mighty will be okay. And so will everyone else that this ‘she’ has made a victim out of! Don’t worry for a second, we’ll make sure that you and Mighty are reunited! Isn’t that right, gang?”

“YEAH!” Tangle says, springing up into the air on her tail.

“...” Whisper shrugs. “What if it’s already saved?” she asks.

“What?” Ray asks, “What does that mean?”

“She’s not… fully wrong for thinking that, I think,” Jewel says, setting down the medkit she’s realizing is probably unneeded. “We all got our memories and emotions back, Trip and Ray got out of there, so… Who’s to say everyone else isn’t free now, too?”

“That’s some positive thinking!” Sonic says, winking at Jewel. “It might just be a matter of finding Mighty and making sure he gets back to normal!” Although it still doesn’t sit quite right with Sonic that all of this could already be over before he even knew it had started. It gives him this uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like there’s someone right behind him waiting to grab hold of his throat.

“You… really think so?” Ray asks, getting choked up. “If we can’t help Mighty, then… then without him, I’d… I…!”

Sonic throws his arm around Ray’s shoulders and casually leans against him. “I don’t think so, man, I KNOW so! We don’t leave our friends in the lurch around here, whether they turned into slime creatures or not!”

“Slime…?” Ray asks, not quite remembering that part.

“If Mighty’s out there, you’ll find him. And we’re gonna be right there with you every step of the way!” Sonic hugs his old friend until that scared frown turns into a hopeful smile. “And if he’s in trouble, we’ll take however many names we gotta to get him OUT of trouble! You can count on us!”

“Thanks, Sonic…!” Ray says. “You’re right, I… We can do this!”

“WOOHOO!” Tangle cheers, turning Sonic’s one-armed squeeze into a full-fledged group hug by wrapping her arms around Ray, too. “Let’s go find that guy! Whoever he is! I’ve never heard of him before!!!”

“...h’lo,” Ray squeaks out bashfully, not used to having pretty girls so close to him, let alone touching him.

“Oh, hi!” Tangle says, not noticing that she’s making him blush. “My name’s Tangle, in case you forgot! So you can fly, right? That’s awesome, it was a kick getting to see you fight Sonic like that earlier! I totally forgive you for biting my tail, by the way, I feel much better now that I know you’re a friend, so don’t worry about it!”

Ray interrupts her rambling with, ”I did what!?” And then, seconds later, “Biting your WHAT!?!?!?” He put his MOUTH on her HUH and she’s HUH? What!? Girl!? Bit!? Ray sits back down on the floor, sinking out from between Sonic and Tangle like an anchor in water. He suddenly realizes that he is CRITICALLY underdressed for someone with buttons as easy to push as his are. “D-do y’all have any, um, clothes I could borrow, or…?”

“Well, no,” Jewel didn’t pack anything like that in her medkit, unfortunately. “But Belle and I can go buy some, probably. Is everything okay?”

“Uh.” Ray’s been stammering a lot today, golly, hope he’s alright and everything. “Suddenly realized I ain’t wearing nothing except gloves and shoes and feel like I need to fix that, sorry…!”

Sonic looks down at himself. Sonic is ALSO only wearing gloves and shoes! Then he shrugs. “Eh, I’ve always found it freeing, but to each their own, I guess!” Sometimes he adds glasses to his outfit! For fashion!

“If it makes you feel any better,” Tangle begins to say, “I can always take off my clo–”

And then she is yanked backwards by Whisper, who shoves the lemur’s head down and forces her to bow apologetically again. “She didn’t mean that. We are very sorry for making you uncomfortable, sir.”

“Abuhwaduh,” Ray stammers, blushing profusely.

“Yup, my bad!” Tangle says from her mandatory bending-over position. “Not a great time to be fooling around! We gotta day to save, right girls? Hahaha!”

“Riiight,” Sonic says, not actually sure what anyone’s talking about or what the problem suddenly is. “Well, if Jewel and Belle are hitting up a tailor, you two should probably go update Amy and everyone else on what’s happening.” He taps his foot impatiently. “We should probably find the time to meet up with Tails and Trip, too, but Emeraldville ain’t exactly the best base of operations anymore, so I’m not totally sure where we should do that.”

“We’ll ask Amy and Lanolin about forming a makeshift headquarters for this rescue mission,” Whisper says with clinical ease, as if she wasn’t wrestling with Tangle as she says it. “In the meantime, what will you two be doing?” she asks.

“Well, it’s been a good, long while since me and Ray have had time to talk. I figured I’d catch him up to speed on everything that’s going on while he’s…” Sonic looks down at Ray, who was apparently trying to cover himself up until his new wardrobe arrived. “Indisposed?”

“Sounds like a plan to me!” Tangle says, giving a thumbs up even as she’s bent horizontal. “We’ll catch you guys later, then! Toodles! And nice to meet you, kite guy!”

Ray gives a bashful wave as Sonic finger guns, Whisper and Tangle hurrying off to their parked Ex-Gear. Only when they’re out of the village entirely does Whisper let go of Tangle’s scalp. Tangle stretches back out to her full height, holding her arms above her head and saying, “Yeowch! Gonna get a crick in my back at this rate!”

“Sorry…” Whisper mumbles, turning away from her to load her wispon onto the side carriage.

Tangle realizes that was a very loaded apology and starts to worry all over again. “Hey, no, babe, I’m alright! Not hurt at all!” She does a few hops from leg to leg to show Whisper how limber she still is. “It was really funny, too, and that’s all that matters to me! So like, it’s fine to keep it as a recurring bit if you want…!”

“No,” Whisper says before turning around and grabbing Tangle with both hands, yanking her forward into a deep, passionate kiss, pushing her tongue into Tangle’s mouth and gripping the back of her head. Tangle’s tail shoots up straight to its full height, three times as tall as her, and before she can even process what’s happening and return the make-outs, Whisper pulls away and whispers, “I’m sorry because I said I wouldn’t get jealous.” She leans back in, giving Tangle more than enough opportunity to kiss her back this time. After a few moments of that, she finally concludes, “But I want to be the first one to see you take your clothes off. No one else.”

“...................AH!” Tangle says, her face a shade of red that’s brand new for her. “COOOOOL!” She’s trembling a bit just from how excited those words had made her. Fucking hell, her girlfriend was hot! “T-too bad we h-have a mission now, h-huh…!”

Whisper smirks. “We said we’d convene with Lanolin and Amy,” she coos, rubbing one of Tangle’s ears lovingly. “We never said we’d do it right away.” Tangle’s mouth only hangs open in shock. Oh god, was this really happening? Holy fuck, how’d a girl get so lucky!? “When I was a sniper, I found this quiet, grassy mountain that gave me a view for miles and miles. Even during the war, I always thought the sunsets there were so beautiful. You wanna take a little detour~?” Tangle nods vigorously, her face turning into a blur. “Hop on~.”

Whisper gets behind the controls of the Ex-Gear, Tangle wiggling anxiously into their shared seat, wrapping her tail around Whisper and giddily saying, “You’re SO gay~!” As they fly off to their impromptu destination, both of their chests beat like drums in anticipation of what’s to come.

Notes:

The next chapter will be a direct continuation of this one, so this one's a bit on the shorter side. The next chapter should also be the first fully adult scene, so again, mature audiences only, if you would be so kind.

Chapter 10: Bonus Scene: Tangle x Whisper

Notes:

Like I said at the end of last chapter, this is going to be the first Adult scene in the story.

While I am no stranger to writing the dirtiest, most gratifying porn in the world, this is not that, this is going to be rather reserved. I'm keeping the Mature rating on the fic instead of changing it to Explicit because if only one in ten chapters has any sex, and the sex is more for character interactions and story progression than just for smutty satisfaction, I don't want to give people the false impression that this is a fic just for porn, both because I don't want to dissuade people who are here for a good story, nor do I want to disappoint those just looking to get off (both of which are incredibly valid). The chapter's not NOT porn, but that's far from the only thing I want this fic to be, so I still think the Mature rating is the best fit.

That being said, if you read this as a minor, you are breaking the law and are implicating me in your crime, so fuck off fr fr. And while this scene IS plot relevant, specifically to Tangle's and Whisper's arcs, if you'd rather not read about sex, I'm going to be labeling chapters like this one as "Bonus Scenes" so that you know what to skip. Or so you know what to come back to when you want to read about furry intercourse. No judgement from me.

For the entire flight from Spiral Hill to Vista View, Tangle can feel her heart nearly bursting out of her chest. The fact that she not only has a girlfriend, but a wonderful and loving and beautiful girlfriend who WANTS TO HAVE SEX has her over the moon in terms of happiness. This is the last place she expected herself to be when she went to bed last night, but this has pretty much been the best day ever for her.

Whisper wasn’t wrong, the mountain that overlooks the small town is massive, and once you’re at the top of it, the view is gorgeous, massive hills and plains stretching out before you. Not that either of them were going to be keeping their eyes on the horizon for very long. Once Whisper parks on the mountain’s grassy slope, she takes a deep breath, dismounts, and looks out at the skyline, hearing her every heartbeat in her ears. This was going to be okay, she tells herself. She just needs to be honest. No turning back now.

“Tangle, can I tell you about something…?” Whisper’s heartfelt question gets answered with a ZIIIIP! She turns around immediately flusters as she sees Tangle tossing her tank top and bodysuit into the air, wearing nothing now other than her gloves, shoes, and some boyshorts. “TANGLE!!!!”

“Hey babe~!” Tangle says, doing a pose and using her tail to frame herself in a big, fuzzy heart.

Whisper baps her mask off her head in a panic, catching it mid-air and fumbling with the controls. “L-l-let me turn this thing off, first! I don’t w-w-want it to r-record you!” Whisper’s eyes are wide open as her face gets hotter than it’s ever been, only heating up more when Tangle gets up close and personal.

“Let it record me,” Tangle says excitedly. “That way, we’ll have proof of this if we ever lose any memories, right~?”

“T-T-Tangle…!” Whisper just lets the mask fall onto the ground and covers up her face with her hands. She sure was talking a big game just a moment ago, but now that Tangle’s taking the lead, she feels all that bravery starting to subside. What is she doing???

“Whisper,” Tangle says, “Love. I want you to see this.” She lays her tail down on the ground beneath Whisper, putting a hand on her and guiding her down to sit on it. Whisper takes a peek at her from between her fingers. Tangle’s bare chest was right in front of her, that bushel of fluff that always peeks out of her shirt resting softly between her perfectly palm-sized breasts. “I want you to see *all* of this,” Tangle adds as she hooks her fingers onto the hem of her underwear and starts to pull down.

Whisper realizes that she has to say it now, because if she waits any longer, Tangle will find out on her own and she might hate her and she can’t hate her and she’s panicking now and– “TANGLE, I’M TRANS!” Whisper blurts out, her eyes snapping shut as she does, her gut twisting into knots as she admits what she’s been afraid to since this morning.

Oh, Tangle thinks to herself, that was why Whisper had been so worried she wouldn’t be seen as a ‘real woman’ by her earlier. Aw, darling. In her infinite wisdom, Tangle puts her hands on Whisper’s waist and says, “So what?” Whisper’s eyes slowly open again, looking at Tangle’s face as she looks at her, smiling, her eyes full of love. “You’ll always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me, Whispie. Because that’s what you ARE. You’re a gorgeous, amazing woman that I am more in love with than anything ever. You always have been and you always will be.”

Whisper feels tiny tears of shame pricking at the corners of her eyes. Was she stupid for being scared in the first place? Of course Tangle wouldn’t hate her for it, it was just… such a hard thing to admit to someone. Especially when she only remembered it about herself *today.* Why someone had locked away THAT specific knowledge, she’ll never know, but she feels ashamed for hiding it all the same, even if it wasn’t her choice.

But of course it wouldn’t make a difference. Tangle is perfect, to her. “I’m in love with you, too,” she squeaks out, trying not to cry. Tangle leans in and kisses her cheeks, wiping away the tears with her lips. “I’m sorry for ruining the mood,” she says, nuzzling her face into Tangle’s shoulder.

“Oh, no,” Tangle says, pulling away from her suddenly. “I’m still getting naked.” She tosses her shorts aside and then sits in Whisper’s lap, pressing her back into Whisper’s chest as she leans in and lolls her head back onto Whisper’s shoulder. “You wanted to see, right~? Well guess what?” Tangle grabs one of Whisper’s wrists, pulling on it until it’s in her lap. “I want you to *touch.*”

“Yes, ma’am,” Whisper murmurs softly as Tangle guides Whisper’s hand. Her palm presses into Tangle’s stomach, her fingers spread around in the soft, fluffy fur, and is then led up onto Tangle’s chest, even softer than the rest of her. Whisper has literally never touched a boob before, and Tangle’s are very, very cute. Whoas…

“You wanna take your gloves off?” Tangle asks, “Feel better for both of us that way, I think.” Whisper’s too stunlocked to say anything, so she just nods, making Tangle giggle breathily. “So cute when you’re embarrassed,” Tangle coos, kissing Whisper’s cheek as she helps her undo her elbow pads and get out of her gear. And she doesn’t stop there, either, she carefully unbuckles Whisper’s cloak (not gonna let the wisps out for this one, sorry gang), gets rid of the kneepads and combat boots, and even takes off her own gloves, fingerless as they may be, so she can get at Whisper with all her grippy bits.

When she impishly bleps and goes for the buckle of Whisper’s pants, though, Whisper squeaks out, “W-wait, are you s-sure…?”

“I have never been surer of anything in my entire existence,” Tangle speaks with utter certainty. “I won’t do it if you don’t wanna, but I wanna so effing bad I’m gonna blow up.”

“D-don’t blow up!” Whisper says hurriedly. “Only… I mean, if y-you’re sure, then…”

That sounded like a yes, but Tangle wants the clearest, most obvious consent before she does this. “You want me to?” she asks. Whisper nods. “You’re absolutely sure you want me to take these off?” Whisper nods again, biting her lip in anticipation. “Super duper extra positive about me definitely 100% actually doing it once you agree that I can for real with no objections–”

“Tangle, take my fucking pants off,” Whisper whines at her, making her girlfriend titter happily. Tangle takes care of all the buckles and zippers, pulls down everything covering Whisper’s lower half, and is then almost smacked in the face with the wolf’s ‘excitement.’ Holy crap. Tangle gets a deliriously enthusiastic look on her face before she cups it in her hand and gives it a kiss on the side. “WAH!” Whisper’s whole body spasms, not having expected that in the least. “H-h-hey…! M-mean…!” Part of Whisper was still deeply ashamed of the way she was built, but Tangle definitely didn’t seem to mind, so she supposes she needs to look past it.

“Okay now this!” Tangle announces, her hands shooting up to the lace in the back of Whisper’s corset. Whisper’s back arches when she feels her last bit of protection stripped from her, only to be replaced with Tangle’s hands. “Hell yessssss, they’re even more perfect than I imagined!!!” She buries her face in Whisper’s cleavage and shakes her head around in it vigorously.

As embarrassed and as sensitive as she is at the moment, Whisper can’t help but laugh at how silly Tangle is. “Baaaabe, come onnnn!” Whisper suddenly feels herself falling backwards. “Eep!”

Tangle pulled her tail so that Whisper was now laying flat down on it instead of sitting up. Still standing up herself, Tangle gets to have a view far more glorious than any horizon could ever be. Whisper was fully nude as she laid beneath Tangle, spread out and presented before her like a feast for the eyes. The fact that Whisper just so happens to have a cock doesn’t make Tangle an iota less enthralled by her. “You’re so god damn beautiful,” Tangle whispers dreamily.

Then she descends onto her, enveloping Whisper in affection. She kisses her as deeply as she can, her head tilted to the side so that they can press as close together as possible, tongues mingling between their lips. One of Tangle’s hands is happily groping at Whisper’s chest, her breasts probably double the size of Tangle’s at least, while her other hand carefully guides Whisper’s erection as Tangle sits on her lap again. After a moment, Whisper feels herself enveloped by a velvety warmth she could never have even dreamed of until now.

Whisper gasps desperately, and Tangle pauses for just a moment to ask, “Is this okay?”

“Y-yes!” Whisper answers without hesitation. “P-please… please keep going…!”

Their legs intertwine as Tangle starts to bounce herself along Whisper’s length, their breaths turning into gasps turning into moans as they pick up speed. Tangle feels herself melting into Whisper’s arms, Whisper holding onto her in a tight hug as they love each other. With Tangle on top of her like this, Whisper starts to wonder if maybe she’s died and gone to heaven. Nothing has ever made her feel better in her life.

Eventually, Tangle pulls up, going from laying on top of Whisper to simply sitting in her lap, continuing to gyrate her hips to keep both of them going. “Look at me,” Tangle begs, voice choked with lust. Whisper follows her order, seeing all of Tangle for the first time, no presumptions of shame or hesitation keeping her eyes averted. As curvy and soft as Whisper’s figure is, Tangle’s is lithe and athletic, her form slim, but capable and flexible. Where Whisper keeps most of the fur on her body trimmed and short, Tangle is fluffy all over, a tuft of hair like the one on her chest resting between her legs, as well, concealing what the two of them are doing until she raises up, revealing just how deep Whisper is inside of her, and then sinks back down.

And as lovely as the making out during all of this was, getting to watch Tangle as she’s fucked, seeing her stomach clench and seeing her face as she moans, sends Whisper quickly over the edge. “I- I’m g-going to…!” she starts to say, and Tangle responds with a smile and a renewed speed.

“Go,” Tangle whispers, sounding more like a goddess of seduction to Whisper than ever before, “Inside.” Whisper is excellent at following instructions, and does just that, shouting out a gravely, feminine howl as she finishes. Tangle pushes herself all the way down to Whisper’s hips as she feels it come into her, biting her lip and seething happily as her own legs shake and buckle.

Tangle collapses onto Whisper, and the two of them become still again, other than their heaving chests as they breathe deeply of the mountain air. “Fuck,” Whisper says with a shudder as she feels herself slide out of Tangle, her girlfriend flopping down into the grass by her side, arms around Whisper’s waist, tail curled around the both of them.

“Mmh, no kidding,” Tangle agrees. She nestles her face in Whisper’s shoulder, legs still wrapped around the naked wolf as they cuddle in their afterglow. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Whisper tells her, kissing the top of her head. She stays like that for a while, just soaking in Tangle’s presence and warmth, before suddenly realizing something. “W-wait, should I keep going, or… or do something? You didn’t get to…”

“Huh? Oh, babe,” Tangle says with a giggle, “I came the second I put it in.”

“You…” Whisper thought she saw a little shudder, but instantly!? “Really???”

“Yeah, Whisp, that thing is THICK!” Tangle runs a finger along Whisper’s cock, still not fully soft yet, her hand coming away with some excess fluid that had been left on it. “She could shatter a badnik with one good whack, I swear!”

Whisper hears that and immediately covers her face out of embarrassment. “Oh my gosh shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up!!!” Despite her protests, her tail is wagging hard.

“Sorry, sorry~!” Tangle says, laughing even more now. “I probably could’ve phrased that better!”

“Y-You think!?”

Whisper buries her face in Tangle’s collarbone to keep from having to look at anything, and Tangle holds her tight as she whines. “Hehehe, you’re the best, babe~!” Tangle says. Whisper whimpers like a puppy a few more times before Tangle lowers her voice and nuzzles into her, saying with total sincerity, “And I meant what I said before. You’ve always been a woman and always will be.” She just wants to hammer that point home as much as she can, knowing how nervous Whisper had probably been about the whole thing.

“Thank you,” she whispers back. “And… I really did mean it when I said I’d be happy to see you getting to experiment with other people, if you want.” She squeezes Tangle a little bit harder. “I got to be here, I can’t imagine feeling jealous ever again~.”

“You say that, but…” Tangle says ominously before taking big handfuls of Whisper’s chest. “How’m I ever gonna wanna try anything but these!?” Whisper eeps as Tangle gropes her heartily. “You’re so so so fucking hot, Whisper, have you seen yourself!? Have you seen these tits!? Mama mia, who needs an experiment when I have a panacea!!!”

“Ahhhh! Hehehe~!” Whisper can’t help but grin at all the attention she’s getting. Tangle was such a sweetheart~. “I- I mean, if you need me there, we could experiment with *threesomes* or something! If you wanted to…!” Tangle’s eyes go wide. She hadn’t even considered that. “Only with girls, though,” Whisper quickly adds. “If you want a boy, you’re on your own.”

Tangle snaps her fingers. “Drat.” As hot as it would be to get spitroasted by some hunk and her girlfriend, she has to respect those wishes. She also has to put her whole mouth on Whisper’s boob right this second. “HOMPH!”

“STOPPPP!” Whisper shouts, laughing and wagging her tail the whole time she’s teased and played with.

Eventually the two of them get their clothes back on. Whisper is a bit worried about the smell, but they both have on several layers, so as long as they get a shower soon, it should be fine, no one should notice. Tangle was more concerned about what Whisper left behind. She’s wearing shorts instead of panties, so it's not like she’s gonna start leaking, or anything, but she can definitely still feel it whenever she takes a step. Shower as soon as they’re done talking to Amy, Tangle agrees.

Fully dressed and mounted back on their Ex-Gear, Whisper feels Tangle get situated behind her. Whisper asks, “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Tangle says, rubbing her nose against the back of Whisper’s neck. “And I know I said it already, but that was… so incredible.” She kisses Whisper’s cheek.

“It was,” Whisper agrees. “And so is every day I’m gonna spend with you after this.” She flips the ignition and pulls the two of them up into the sky, finally turning them towards Emeraldville.

“So, threesomes, huh?” Tangle asks innocently.

“I need to focus on the sky, Tangle,” Whisper states evenly.

“Any girls in particular you had in mind~?”

“Driving, Tangle! I am trying to drive!” If only every day could be as perfect as this one.

Chapter 11: Who I Am (?)

While Vector and Espio are busy reuniting with their long-lost companion, Rouge stepped out for some fresh air. The chameleon was starting to get teary eyed, and she just can’t deal with something like that right now. Nearly all of her thoughts are still about how badly she needs to fuck something or get fucked by something, and mushy found-family gatherings aren’t exactly the best place for cruising.

Shadow joins her after only a few minutes, finding her leaning up against the detective agency’s front wall. “Surviving?” he asks, still with that snarky tone he’s had all day. “I know it took a lot of courage to walk away from a roomful of available men like that. Just had to make sure you weren’t walking into traffic about it.”

Rouge rolls her eyes. She liked Shadow a lot more when he was acting like a repressed dweeb, the guy who always left things unsaid. His filter is broken and all the toxicity it would normally purify is coming out in full force. “Are you capable of having an actual conversation with me right now, or are you going to keep being an obnoxious brat?” she asks bluntly.

“A question I could’ve asked you every day since we met,” he answers. When Rouge only groans, he sighs and adds, “I can give it a rest if this is important.” He’s not used to having fun, is all, it’s such an interesting experience. “What exactly did you want to talk about, then?”

“Are you gay?” Rouge drops that question with the force of a car battery falling onto someone’s head.

Shadow stares at her for a second. “That was… sudden,” he ends up quietly saying.

“I’m not going to dance on eggshells about this, Shadow,” Rouge tells him with the sort of no-nonsense drawl she only ever affords him. No teasing, no hinting at hidden intentions, she wants both of them to be honest. It’s more than she wanted or even expected from anyone else. “I’m not about to waste my time trying to pick up someone who’s never going to budge. We both deserve better than to have me trying to ‘change’ something like that when we could both just move on, instead.”

Shadow is quiet for a moment, weighing the sudden severity of Rouge’s words. It’s his immediate instinct to blurt out something along the lines of ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you or anyone else,’ or ‘Mind your manners, and your damn business.’ Before today, hearing a question like that would’ve had him dismissing it without even stopping to think. And while a small part of him still feels that urge, it’s not beyond his notice that he currently has the ability to choose his words more carefully. He can actually say what’s on his mind instead of barking out some edgy one-liner. At least if it’s for Rouge, he can.

Rouge has never not been his best friend, he supposes, even if he wouldn’t in a million years have said it out loud to her. They’ve roomed together, they’ve fought together, they’ve even slept together with about as much natural ease as anyone could expect. They had aspects of one another they refused to even hint at around other people. He can’t pretend all of that didn’t mean something. Well, he can, but he wouldn’t believe himself even if he did.

But at the same time, there are a lot of things on his mind he needs to examine. He barely knows who Espio is, and yet having him show up on Shadow’s doorstep nearly had the hedgehog drooling. Shadow has no idea how he’ll react around guys he actually knows well, or worse, doesn’t. Maybe it was just a spur of the moment thing, maybe it won’t come up again… Maybe he’ll be even worse when the guy in question isn’t a known annoyance. He has… actually no idea right now.

“I might need time to think about it,” he quietly admits. “I need more information before I can say for certain.” It’s not as though he doesn’t think he could also like women, but… Well, he was always with her. Being in her presence is his default state, so he doesn’t really have a frame of reference to test against in regards to other women. So honestly, he’s as in the dark as possible on the matter.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rouge mutters, shaking her head. “There’s nothing worse than uncertainty…” A ‘fuck off’ would have been preferable to a ‘maybe.’

“I’m not going to give you a made-up answer,” he tells her, “I at least respect you enough for that.” She’s respected, though! That’s something to smile about, even if it’s a small, annoyed smile. “I don’t want you to go changing on a whim, though, either, understand? Whatever happens, don’t start treating me differently. Unless you think gay people are undeserving of your true self, that is.” There’s the obnoxious brat coming back.

“What I am *saying,* genius,” Rouge growls at him, “Is that I want to treat you differently if you’re *not* gay.”

“Eh?” Shadow doesn’t get what that means.

Rouge sighs, surprised she has to spell this out for him. “Shadow, you are the most important person in my life, and if you’re attracted to women, then I intend on taking things further with you. And that is *not* just my pussy talking.” Short pause as she glances down to see how tight his pants are. “She is definitely part of the conversation, though.”

“You’re… asking me out,” Shadow says, speaking as if he’s not truly processing it.

“Duh.” Blaze and Silver might have poured their hearts out to one another while Tangle and Whisper threw themselves directly into the passion of it all, but Rouge isn’t like any of that. And she knows Shadow isn’t either. Whatever they have already, it’s quiet and strong, it doesn’t need to be treated like a delicate animal or a flame in need of feeding. Just the truth, no added bells or whistles.

“I see.” Shadow lets that sink in for a moment before asking, “Were we not already dating?”

“Well I don’t know!” Rouge barks, throwing her arms in the air out of exasperation. “We had our ability to even THINK of things like that taken away, and THEN we moved in together! I have no bloody clue WHAT we are right now!” She doesn’t even know if he *likes girls!* And apparently neither does he!!! How the hell do they define this whole thing!? “Just… take some time to think about it and let me know what’s happening, alright?”

“I’ll make it a priority,” Shadow tells her, giving her a single, solid pat between the wings. “And one way or the other, do try not to take it too personally.”

“Says the one who thought we were dating just because I live in his house,” Rouge says, sticking out her tongue at him.

“In the meantime,” Shadow says, ignoring her with a turn of his head. “It sounds like we have work to do. That ‘Mighty’ person was saying something about being trapped in a void with an unknown amount of others for the past several years, and so he’s likely far from the only threat we’re up against right now.” He folds his arms. “We actually have much more important things to be worrying about than petty crushes and whatnot.”

“There’s the Shadow I know,” Rouge says, playfully poking him in the cheek. “Brooding as soon as he has to do something productive.”

“I am not brooding!” Shadow broods at her, smacking her hand away, “I am thinking of what our next course of action should be. Combing the entire planet for random disturbances isn’t going to cut it.” He accidentally roasted Sonic with that one, because that is exactly what the Blue Blur had been doing until he found Belle and Ray.

“We could always ask the others for help,” Rouge suggests, knowing the response she’ll get, but saying it anyway because she knows it’s correct. “You know, the Chaotix? Amy’s little army? …Sonic, maybe?”

Shadow narrows his eyes at her. “And why would we do that?” There’s a reason Shadow doesn’t trust those idiots, least of all with this situation, and it’s a wonder that everyone forgets what that is.

“Because, hey, you never know!” Rouge continues, already having planned for this. “Maybe Sonic will want you back, now~!”

Shadow freezes, then explodes at her. “I AM *NOT*- NO! Absolutely fucking not, don’t even joke about something so wretched and vile! HIM!? Are you– Did your brain leak out from between your legs, what is the matter with–” Shadow continues to argue until he realizes Rouge is loudly laughing at him while he does. “Oh. I see how it is. Very mature.”

“Hahahaha! You’re so down bad, it makes you look insane!” Rouge cackles.

“WRONG!” Shadow shouts back at her, only making her laugh harder. “That worm of a man is so far beneath my notice as a potential mate that I would rather *cut it off* and *throw it over that fence* than put myself anywhere near him!”

Rouge is doubled over. “Oh, my- HAHA -ha, you’re killing me, Shadow!” She finally has the upper hand over him again, and she’s cherishing it like a diamond.

“I’d also rather do *that* than consider him worthy of me,” he growls, voice low and angry. The mere NOTION that Sonic the fucking Hedgehog of all people could be a suitable partner, of a romantic OR sexual variety, has Shadow so disgusted that his chest begins to tighten. Who on earth would find comfort in that waste of air and space? Just because Sonic is decent in a fight and is surrounded by people who love him and is always smiling no matter how bad things get doesn’t mean Shadow is attracted to him in any way. Neither do the way his leg muscles look when he runs or his cocky smirks or his eyes or– “In fact, I think I’ll kill you one way or the other.”

“Put me out of my misery, hahahahaha!!!” She wipes tears from her eyes, looks up, and then breaks again. “ARE YOU BLUSHING!? HAHA–”

“WHAT!? NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT, DON’T GASLIGHT ME, WOMAN!” He does touch his own face to check, though. He doesn’t think he is, but having to check was a condemnation on its own, one Rouge is delirious about. “I’m breaking up with you. I don’t care if we were together or not, you’re alone now.”

“HAHAHA!!!” Rouge smiles devilishly as she shrugs and says, “Well, if you don’t want me, I can always hook up with Blue myself~! He seemed very interested in these curves when we–”

“You will stop speaking NOW, or you and this entire world will face the consequences of my wrath!” Shadow says, putting his whole palm over her face so she can’t argue. As Rouge giggles into his palm, he adds, “How about we focus on this potentially destructive threat instead of your own potentially destructive views on our friendship!?”

“Aw, come on,” Rouge says, muffled by Shadow’s hand, not even trying to swat him away, just pretending it’s not there. “I could at least put in a good word for a threesome if you want–” Shadow shoves Rouge hard enough to send her up in the air, her wings catching her. Despite that, she nearly plummets from the sky anyway because of how hard she’s laughing.

“Go get Omega,” Shadow growls. “We need him if we’re going to be fighting those things on our own.”

“Okie dokie,” Rouge coos, “And should we grab Sonic on our way back to you, or did you wanna wait to see him as a group~?”

“As a matter of fact,” Shadow responds, “Just send Omega. I don’t need you.” He flicks his hand dismissively in her direction as he turns his back to her, walking back into the Chaotix detective agency.

“See you soon, darling~!” Rouge calls out to him as he slams the door behind himself. Rouge continues to titter to herself until she’s over a few buildings, then lands on a roof a few blocks away. Suddenly, her mood tanks, like turning away from Shadow had also been turning towards something wretched. She takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly as her shoulders sag. “Dammit,” she mutters to herself. “Dammit, dammit…”

She knows that whatever happens next, he would still be there for her. He’s her best friend, that’s not going to change because of some new, random event messing with their heads. Still, though, it hurts. In a way that Rouge doesn’t think she should be hurting - her of all people! - but even the chance that Shadow won’t see her that way scares her more than she likes. She takes a few more deep breaths before taking flight again. Jobs to do, days to save, can’t get *too* distracted.

“Fucking hell, I need to get fucked,” she grumbles to herself. Maybe she can find some rando to use up on her way to Omega. She was going to go crazy if she doesn’t burn off some of this excess heat.

As Shadow walks back into the building, he shakes his head free of Rouge’s teasing. If she was trying to get into his good graces, she was doing an abysmal job of it. Still, though… It’s hard not to consider everything she’d said about identity. Shadow is genuinely unsure of how he feels about other people at the moment. He knows he cares about Rouge, that’s not really up for debate. But he’s spent so much time with her that it’s a bit hard to tell how sexual and romantic attraction really factors into that. Maybe if most of the people in his life were less annoying to even *think* about, he’d have an easier job of figuring this out with some deep thoughts. Even the Chaotix were too familiarly grating for him to objectively appraise them.

His thoughts are interrupted when he hears a door open. From one of the back rooms, out strolls this stranger, Mighty. Shadow has never seen nor heard anything about this man until today, but he can’t help but notice that at this moment, he has on a familiar pair of jeans. In addition to that, he’s wearing an old trucker cap with an emblem insignia on the front, along with a grey, knit tank that clings very tightly to his uniquely barrel-chested figure. Shadow, who has spent the majority of his existence as and around the unclothed, finds it intriguing how the addition of layers can make someone so much harder to look away from.

“You must be Shadow,” the man says, holding out a hand for Shadow to shake. “Vek and Ess told me about you. Don’t suppose you’ll be helping us crack this case, will you?”

Shadow takes the hand without hesitation instead of slapping it away like he would with basically anyone else. How curious. “I’m not the sort of man who gets scared and runs away from his problems.” Which was more or less saying yes, he’ll do what he can, you can count on Shadow! “And not that I’m complaining, but this definitely isn’t the sort of ‘someone trying to get into my pants’ I thought I’d have to worry about today.”

Mighty laughs uproariously, voice deep and gruff. Shadow’s ear flicks. “Well, we make due with what we got, ain’t that right?” He kicks his leg out a few times as if flexing his leg muscles, trying out how Shadow’s clothes *feel* around him. “Fits me better’n Ess anyway! Guy’s a bit scrawny.”

“And a bit distracted,” Shadow remarks, half a scoff and half a boast. “I don’t suppose you’re any more… focused than the rest of your ‘team’ tends to be, are you?”

Mighty punches his own palm, shaking the floor they both stood on with his sheer force of movement. Shadow chalked most of that up to this building needing to be condemned, but he was still impressed. “When saving the day’s on the table, there ain’t nothing that’s gonna turn my eyes away! We’re gonna find my friends, and then we’re gonna find whoever did this and put ‘em in the ground!”

Shadow smirks despite himself. “My kind of plan.” It lacked finesse, that’s for sure, and hearing it coming out of Sonic’s mouth would make him furious at its vagueness, but coming out of Mighty, none of those issues really struck Shadow as particularly relevant.

Vector and Espio come out from the recesses of their office, Espio now donning a ninja costume without the mask and Vector wearing a gumshoe’s jacket and no pants, still. “Now that we’re dressed for the occasion,” Vector announces, “Let’s get out there and – WHOA!” He points a big, meaty finger at Shadow’s face. “Is that guy smiling for once!?” The answer being: not anymore, thanks. “Jeez, Mighty, I didn’t know he had those muscles!!!”

“Can’t imagine why you haven’t seen me in a good mood before,” Shadow sneers, turning his back to the two of them. “It probably has nothing to do with your angelic voice or sparkling personality.”

“Aw, jeez, that’s nice of you to–”

“Sarcasm,” Shadow barks. “Learn what it is, detective.”

“As curious as I am about Shadow’s, er, predicament,” Espio says, “We have a mystery to solve. And since you prefer to work alone–”

“And let that blue hedgehog screw things up even more?” Shadow interrupts, “No. I think I’d rather be pooling our resources here. Better than having him running in on his own and making things worse with his quote-unquote heroism.”

“W-Wait, Shadow of all people is gonna help US!?” Vector scratches his head in disbelief as he leans over to Mighty and whispers, “Well, golly, Mighty, I think you might be the charm this agency needed!”

“I didn’t do anything,” Mighty responds. “He seemed eager to work as a team before I even said hello.” He shrugs, not unlike Sonic does when teasing someone. “Maybe he just don’t like you, is all?”

“What do you mean ‘maybe?’” Shadow quips, having eavesdropped.

“S-so you’re… staying?” Espio asks, sweat reforming on his brow. He thought he’d been freed of this! Confounds!

“Hmph.” Shadow folds his arms. “Given the nature of the situation, I believe isolating my efforts would be in folly. So for now, yes, I have decided to grace you all with my presence. You’re welcome.”

“Oh…” Espio holds a hand up to his face like a cool, edgy guy would do. “That’s… fortuitous. I suppose. Er…” How the fuck was he going to survive this mission?

Vector smirks. “Well, we’re happy to have ya, buddy!”

Shadow grimaces. “Don’t call me–”

“Now, what do you boys say about cracking this case wide open!?” Vector holds a hand out, palm down, which Mighty and Espio quickly put their own hands upon. In unison, all three of them throw their hands up to the sky and shout, “TEAM CHAOTIX!”

Shadow rolls his eyes. “Yes, sure, of course.” He wasn’t about to start doing team-building exercises, but he would need to be around people to test those theories Rouge had, and who better to be around than someone he hated, someone he barely tolerated, and someone he did not know but was deeply intrigued by? Well, there must be *some* better options, but he wasn’t going to find them brooding on top of a cliff like he normally does. In order to gather the clues he needed to figure himself out, he’d need to… gulp… be on a team.

He’s still technically working alone. He’s just working towards a better understanding of how his brain functions. And he’s doing that alone work… in a group setting. And how will anyone get anything done without him, anyway? Exactly. What a genius you are, Shadow the Hedgehog. My, Shadow the Hedgehog, thank you dearly. And given this group has that armadillo in it… Well, there are worse people to put himself near, is all Shadow has to say.

“He’s smiling again,” Vector whispers to Espio as he sees Shadow smirking to himself, eyes closed, deep in thought. “It’s really uncanny…”

“Is he sick…?” Espio comments. “Should we be social distancing? I think that would very much be for the best, as a matter of fact.”

“Glad to see y’all haven’t changed much,” Mighty says, chuckling to himself. “Good to be home.”

Chapter 12: Trip Through The Cracks

Sonic had been mostly pretty vague about what he’d found out when he was still on call with Tails, as far as Surge could tell. Something something ‘friends,’ something something ‘nothing to worry about,’ something something ‘drink lots of water,’ Surge has no idea. He hasn’t found anyone to punch some sense into yet, and that’s all she was really listening for. Not that it was easy to pay attention in the first place with the red blockhead and the spiky princess walking around, sending thunder into Surge’s mind with their shitty presences.

Surge still hasn’t found a way to cope. Any time she sees someone other than Kit or the yellow manlet, her brain just shuts off. She can’t form coherent sentences, her chest starts to tighten, she starts having bizarre thoughts that she can’t get out of her head, like needing to be held or wanting her face on someone else’s face. It’s awful! And Kit’s no good, considering he’s acting that way around Surge, so literally all she can do is sit around and wait for Tails to get off– “–your ass and DO SOMETHING ALREADY!!!”

“Sonic said to stay put!” Tails shouts back at her. “He’ll be here soon, so stop complaining so much already!”

“Maybe I’d stop complaining if the hErOeS actually gave a shit and did what needed to be done!!!” Surge is all up in the fox’s face, trying to block out the memory of Knuckles and Trip with this nerdy bastard’s face.

“We won’t even know what DOES need to be done until Sonic can talk to Amy about it!” Tails argues, trying and failing hard at getting her to see the pragmatic angle, here. “Running around outside kicking things isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems!”

“It’ll solve my boredom!” Surge spits at him, poking him in the chest angrily. “And my nausea from having to see your grody-ass face!”

“It isn’t–!!” Tails starts to shout back, but then both he and Surge have a palm pressing into their faces and forcing the two of them apart.

“Okay, enough,” Knuckles says, holding the two away from each other and stepping between them. “It was almost kind of funny, at first, but now it’s seriously annoying me. And you made Trip so anxious she had to wait outside!” Trip was sitting in Tails’s yard, looking up at the sky, an almost lost look in her eyes. “Give it a rest! Separate yourselves from one another! Do anything other than speak, we’re all sick of it!”

When Knuckles pulls his hands away, Tails is red from shame. He never needed to be *scolded* like this, and it was sad and pathetic that he needed to be now! Something had gotten into his head and he needed to distract himself before he got even worse about it! “S-sorry, Knuckles… Y-you’re right, I’ll… I’ll find something to work on…”

Surge’s face is red with something very much different from shame. “Big hand…” she mutters to herself, already feeling that aching in her gut again when Knuckles pulls away. Had she actually *leaned in* to him!? What the barf!? She feels sick. She’s sick to her stomach and should throw up.

Knuckles grabs Surge by the back of the shirt and drags her out of the lab. “If he’s in there, you’re out here!” He tosses her onto the grass near Trip, making the sungazer startle out of her daze. “No more fighting if you’re not even in the same room!”

“But–!” Surge starts to protest, but then looks up and sees Knuckles, tall and strong and with sharp, piercing eyes, and she sees Trip, all covered in spikes but still looking so soft and delicate and warm. Surge bites her tongue, covering her eyes with her hands and flopping backwards onto the ground. “...yeah, okay…” is all she can muster in response, unusually quiet for the tenrec.

She feels like someone’s been punching her in the ribs all day. She feels like she’s being pelted with rocks. Why is everyone else acting like everything is fine when all she can think about is how much it hurts and how much it’s forcing her to be someone else? There’s nothing in the world she hates more than being ordered around and not being able to say no. She grinds her teeth, clenches her brow in fury, but she can’t say anything to either of them. Fuck this.

“Good,” Knuckles says at a job well done. “Things should be a lot more peaceful around here without–” Knuckles is lifted off the ground. “Huh?”

“Hey there, pals~!” Rouge the Bat calls out to Surge and Trip as she airlifts Knuckles away, calling them pals despite literally not knowing either one. “I need to borrow this for a minute, okay~? Promise I’ll have him back soon, don’t mind us!”

“R-Rouge!?” Knuckles blurts out, thrashing in her arms, but not able to get free from her white-kunckled grip over him. She is gripping HARD to keep him in her arms. “What are you doing!? What? Where are we going!? Why do you smell so nice– Hey, answer me!!!” he yells, shouting at her until they’re both out of sight, hidden behind the city horizon.

“...huh,” Trip says quietly. “Is… is that normal?”

“...sure,” Surge responds instead of ‘HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW!?’ like she’d planned. This bites. This is vile, this is…

Perfect. Now no one’s stopping her from hiding from Trip inside the lab. “Later,” Surge says, then a bolt of lightning takes her away from the gorgeous, tall, almost ethereal lizard woman and back to where it’s safe, near the gross little boy.

“Surge,” Tails grumbles, “Knuckles just told us to–”

“Knuckles got kidnapped,” Surge says immediately, breathing heavily, her chest heaving as if she hasn’t had fresh air in days. It was good to be out of sight!

“WHAT!?” Tails immediately throws down his tools and crawls out from under the Tornado. “What happened!?”

“Some bat thing came by and grabbed him,” Surge says, shrugging, trying to look like she’s not in nearly as much pain as she actually was. “Sounded like they knew each other, iunno.”

“Rouge…” Tails says, frustrated at yet another unwelcome guest stopping by. “What’s gotten into her?” He says that, but immediately knows the answer, rubbing his brow. “So that’s why Sonic said to– Ugh, really? Right now!?” Was a mid-day date really necessary? Tails finds himself more upset about that than he probably should be. He feels… something he still can’t quite put his finger on. Not love or… the other thing Sonic had warned him of. Something… definitely not pleasant.

Was he… jeal–? “Quit mumbling to yourself, pipsqueak, it’s weird and makes you look crazy.” Surge says this while picking at her teeth with one of Tails’s screwdrivers.

He snatches the tool away from the tool and growls, “Why are you here, Surge!?” He knows she’s technically asking for help, but she sure isn’t being pleasant about it. “Surely you’d be happier just leaving us behind and taking care of this yourself, right!?” He’s beyond caring if he’s polite or not, he just wants her gone.

Surge glares at him, eyes sparkling with anger. “I already told you, I CAN’T, okay!?” The corner of her lip twitches up, baring her sharp teeth at him.

“Well why not?” Tails asks, almost mockingly, which would likely be a shock to any of his friends should they have heard him. “What, are you scared?”

“YES!” Surge shouts, immediately regretting it, but then deciding she might as well be as clear as possible so the little fucker stops negging her. “How are you NOT!? How is everyone acting like the splitting headaches and stabbing pain is ANYTHING but intolerable!? I can hardly MOVE around those people, so quit acting like I’m just making things up, you jackass!”

Tails takes a pause. What did… Pain? “That’s… not what everyone else is feeling, Surge,” he responds more quietly, more evenly, closer to his normal way of talking. “Were you… listening to Sonic at all when he was explaining?”

“Fuck no, I hate that guy,” she growls, turning away from Tails. “Whatever! Great! So I’m uniquely fucked right now, awesome! I love experiencing AGONY whenever I look at someone!” She punches the wall. Concrete. “Fantastic.”

Okay, so Tails had described his… maybe slightly uncomfortable realizations this morning as nausea and sweatiness, which isn’t entirely inaccurate. And now Surge was describing symptoms that are concerning in a vacuum, but actually make a lot of sense, if you know the cause. “Surge, I think that ‘agony’ you’re talking about is actually just you being attracted to… everyone but me.” He feels his eyelids drooping. “Which is… so cool of you.” Tails suddenly feels much less obligated to help her through this, actually.

“The fuck are you on about now, creep-ass?” Was Knuckles right, is this dweeb trying to flirt with her? Because she will kill him for that. He is literally the last person on the planet she could see herself being into. At the very bottom of the ladder that Knuckles and Trip were currently at the top of– “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.” He’s right, he’s so right, fucking hell, dammit dammit dammit, what the fuck!? “What do you MEAN!? What!? That’s not–!”

“Sonic says it’s been happening all over the place,” Tails explains, not attempting to dam his condescension for once. “Amy remembered her crush on him, Tangle and Whisper are together now, something about Silver being… different.” Sonic had specifically used the word horny, which Tails was not at liberty to repeat.

“Th-that doesn’t have to–” Surge tries to think of an argument, because she just feels better trying to argue with him than agreeing with him, but motherfucker she is so screwed right now, isn’t she!?

“I think Knuckles and Trip and whoever else you’ve been seeing today are just… I don’t know, hot, or something?” Tails suggests. “It’s not the end of the world, you’ll be fine!”

“NO!” Surge screams. “No, that can’t be it! Because if that’s what I’M feeling right now, then that means Kit this morning was– No! No no no, bad! BAD! Not real, shut up, fuck you!”

Tails winces. Oh, that’s rough. Well! As awful as today has been for him, at least Tails didn’t wake up with a complex about his direct found-family, so he can now count that as a convenient bonus to his own psyche! Sucks for Kit, he guesses, but he gets the feeling the guy isn’t exactly on his side, either, so… there are worse people it could’ve happened to. Still, though, ouch, harsh. Big oof, and whatnot. “Surge, I–” he starts trying to say, but she again cuts him off. Shoulda figured.

“WHY ARE WE JUST WAITING FOR SONIC THEN!?” she booms. “We need to fix this! We need things to go back to normal, NOW! RIGHT AWAY! Come on, move it!!!” she says as she swipes at Tails in an effort to grab and push him out the door, but he simply flies out of her range.

“Surge, I don’t think there’s anything to fix,” Tails says, folding his arms and glaring down at her from the ceiling. “This is how we all were *before,* we just went back to normal after something happened! We’re looking for answers, but that’s all we can really do right now.”

“Bullshit!” Surge screams at him. “There is no before for me! There’s no natural fucking state I existed in where my test tube brother wants to FUCK me!” Surge is pure fury right now, but for once, it’s not directed only at Tails. She is furious at the entire world all at once and wants to burn it to cinders. “Why is it that every time- EVERY FUCKING TIME -you and that blue shithead ‘save’ everyone, I end up screwed!? Why does your version of normal have to be my HELL, huh!?” She wants to throw a bolt of lightning at him, or tackle him, or something, but her hands and legs and everything else are shaking too much for her to do anything but scream. “I’m always just used and then thrown away by every dipshit you assholes refuse to kill! This is just another one of those, isn’t it!? Some old bitch you wanted to give ‘freedom’ to, and they turned that freedom into torturing me for kicks!”

“Surge, we don’t even know–”

“SHUT UP!!!” Tails actually winces as she says that. Not because she sounds any more threatening than before, but because she has tears in her eyes. He kind of thought she was just a second-rate bully with a grudge, not… this. “You don’t know ANYTHING!” she continues, her voice getting hoarse as she continues to scream, “You think you know everything, you think all we have to do is *wait* and then *SONIC* will show up and make everything better, but that ISN’T how the fucking world works, asshole!!! People like me get left in his fucking dust, and none of you care! None of you give even a single solitary shit if I live or die! NONE OF–”

“I care,” a voice behind her says. Surge whips around, tears flying off of her, to see Trip the Sungazer in the empty doorway. Right, the door is broken, Trip could probably hear all of that, couldn’t she? RADICAL! Doesn’t make Surge wanna self-immolate even a little bit!

Trip is so different than she was before, from what Tails could remember of their adventure together. She’s tall, composed, almost stern-looking. She sort of reminded Tails of Blaze, just a Blaze with a frilly, golden dress and shining, metal armor. He remembered her being around his age, but the woman in front of him looked and sounded far beyond those years.

Trip walks into the room slowly, one step at a time, so that Surge doesn’t freak out any further as she says, “I care about everyone who needs protection. Not just the convenient victims, everyone. I can’t speak for Tails, or for Sonic, or anyone but myself, but I promise you that I can hear you and that I’m not going to let this go.”

Surge swallows a mouthful of dry air. “Why should I believe anything one of *their* friends say?” she asks, though with much less bite now that she’s face to face with someone she wasn’t repulsed by.

“As the Guardian of Northstar Islands,” Trip says, placing a hand to her heart, “And as a visitor to these lands, it is my duty to protect those in need of help. I will stop at nothing to ease this suffering, I give you my vow.” Trip’s eyes, so much more pained than Tails remembers them being, narrow as she looks at Surge with as much earnestness as she can. “No one gets left behind. No one slips through the cracks. Not when I’m around to make sure there’s a way out of this.”

“...” Surge doesn’t say anything, barely even looking at Trip. What is she supposed to say, ‘Nuh uh, eat shit and die?’ Surge doesn’t know this woman, doesn’t know if she’s telling the truth or not, doesn’t know if she can be trusted. Even if Trip was being fully honest, Surge still doesn’t believe that she’s capable of what she’s saying she is. But you can’t just… say that. Well, you can… but not to someone you want to lift you up and princess carry you away to whatever Northstar Island was.

“Trip, that was beautiful,” Tails says, smiling softly at her. “And I’ll do whatever I can to help you keep that promise! I don’t want anyone to get left behind, either!” He glances at the tenrec with barely-disguised disgust. “Even Surge, I guess.”

“Bathe with a toaster, asshat,” Surge mumbles inaudibly. At least there was someone she could still insult to her heart’s content.

“I…” Trip scratches her own cheek awkwardly. “I’m not… special, or anything, I don’t think. Not compared to most of you. But I’m g-going to try everything I can to help fix this situation for the people who are hurting.” She takes a deep breath and then holds her hand out to Surge, who flinches at the sight of it. “Especially ones with no one else to turn to. You have my word, if there’s ever anything I can–” Trip steps on that screwdriver from earlier. “-Ah!”

Trip falls right into Surge, ending up on her knees in front of the tenrec, face-to-chest with her as Trip struggles to remain upright. “I’m sorry! Oh gosh, sorry, I didn’t mean t–” Trip tries to back away, but is too off balance, falling down backwards and accidentally kicking Surge’s feet out from under her. Surge tumbles down and onto Trip, trying to brace her fall with her hands, but only ending up incidentally groping the sungazer’s chest. “SORRY! OH NO! Ahhhh, this is all my fault, I’m sorry, please forgive me, I didn’t mean to!!!” Okay, this is the Trip that Tails remembers. Definitely a more… adult version of Trip, in more ways than one, but still Trip.

Realizing she is laying on top of and currently fondling a large-breasted woman who had promised her the world not a minute earlier, Surge lets out a staticky, electric noise from her mouth as if she was suddenly unplugged. She is thinking only the purest of thoughts.

Tails hurriedly helps the two women off the floor, only slightly flustered at what he’d just seen. Surge had been involved, which was helping him not get too worked up. “I’m sorry!” Trip says again, “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine!” Tails assures her, “Everyone’s okay! And we have a renewed fighting spirit, so it was definitely a net positive! Right, Surge?”

“Death,” Surge whispers in response.

“A-anyway, we should probably try and find Knuckles!” Tails says, changing to subject so Trip doesn’t get discouraged. “I don’t know where Rouge would have taken him, but if we’re going to start moving around without Sonic, we can’t just leave him behind!” He looks over at Surge, hoping she’d be at least a bit less gloomy now that he’s agreed to *her* plan of ‘getting off their asses.’ She just looks up at him and then back down to the floor, stare vacant. That’s better than a screaming match, he supposes!

Then there’s a loud thud outside. Tails looks out the front door and jumps when he sees Knuckles laying in a sweaty heap on the ground. “Kn-Knuckles!? Are you okay!?” The echidna holds out a slow, shaky thumbs-up before letting his arm fall back down to the ground. Then a pair of pants lands on top of Knuckles, draping his twitching body in green cargo.

“Phew!” Rouge says from on top of Tails’s house. “What a rush! I’m feeling *much* better now~! How about you, Red?”

“Uhmuhguhn,” Knuckles mutters uselessly. “Mhmm…”

“Um.” Tails awkwardly wraps his tails around himself. “That’s, uh… g-good to hear…? D-did you have to… do that right now…?”

“...” Rouge stares down at Tails with pure, unfiltered seriousness. “Yes,” she tells him flatly. “Yes, we did. Aaaanyway~!” She kicks out a leg happily, going back to her old, flirty self. “You should probably go find some clothes like the ones I gave him, fox boy~! I hear the *men* around here are gonna need them going forward~!”

“Uh…” Tails sidles nervously back into his lab. No one could see anything, not even HE can see anything on himself, but somehow he still feels embarrassed now that Rouge pointed it out. “S-sure, be right back…”

“Take your time!” Rouge calls out. Tails runs back into his room as Trip comes outside. “Oh, hello! Nice to meet you, darling!” She wiggles her fingers in the air as she waves at Trip.

“...I suppose it is a bit strange how we’re always wearing clothes when they aren’t,” Trip quietly agrees.

“I know!” Rouge announces.

With Tails in his room and everyone else outside, Surge stays in the garage, the sounds of everyone’s voices fading into background noise. She just… folded. Trip showed up, said one nice thing to her, and all the will and energy inside of Surge had vanished in an instant. Absently, she tries to grasp at her stomach and find the red-hot knife that had been stabbed into her core, but there’s nothing there. Whatever was causing that sensation was inside. Permanently lodged deep into her. She can’t do anything about it.

Surge wipes at her eyes. This was the worst kind of bullshit. She hates this. She hates the world and she hates herself. How was she possibly going to manage this? How could she fight when everyone around her made her feel so awful and useless?

“Surge?” Surge miserably looks up to see Tails wearing some shorts and a red-and-yellow striped tee-shirt with a picture of a ring on the front. “Does this look okay to you?”

“KAHAHAHAHAHA!!!” she immediately spits out, pointing at him and cackling like he was the world’s worst clown. “YOU UGLY FUCKING TODDLER! HAHAHAHA!!!” Now the tears in her eyes were from laughing! Better!

Tails furrows his brow. “Okay, jeez, I’ll find something else…” As he turns and goes back into his room, Surge doubles over, unable to stop laughing at what a joke the fox was to her. This sort of uncontrollable emotion, she decides, is much better than the kind she feels around everyone else. At least this made her smile.

Chapter 13: Amy's Problem pt1

Amy is sitting on a bench with her head in her hands, surrounded by rubble and well-meaning folks. She is beginning to fully come to terms with her current situation, something she thought she’d already done after crying over Sonic for an hour, but even that apparently wasn’t enough anymore.

Amy Rose may… in some way, under certain definitions, if you squint at her a little and she’s standing in a dark room, MAYBE… be a little bit gay. “Nnnnghhhh,” she groans, pinching her cheeks. Why did something else so big have to happen so soon? She was *mourning* her crush on Sonic only for swarms of beautiful women to suddenly fluster her to no end on top of it all. It was unfair. It was a cruel irony that she condemns fully. She did not need these kinds of identity-shaping revelations right now.

But no matter which way she thought about it, she can’t get her friends out of her head. The girl ones. The ones that are pretty. She thinks about Blaze’s cold demeanor and fiery passion, the cat’s slim frame and delicate hands, which would feel so nice to have her chin cupped in. She thinks about Whisper’s quiet, calm reassurances, her gentle voice, her soft, welcoming embrace. She thinks about Lanolin’s cool toughness, her confidence in the face of overwhelming odds, the way her brow furrows at danger, her back muscles as she steers a plane, her massive t–

“Wehhhhh!” Amy can’t believe she has such crude and objectifying thoughts about people! She was past this, and even if she wasn’t, she could at least focus them on Sonic! But now, no matter where she looks, she’s just thinking about how touch-starved and desperate for affection she is. She’s gone her whole life craving that kind of love from this one, isolated person, and now that she can feel that way about *anyone,* she’s completely overwhelmed!

“What am I gonna doooo?” she whines to herself, startled when someone speaks up behind her.

“Do about what?” Lanolin asks, rubbing her forehead like she has a headache she’s trying to ease.

“AAH!” Amy nearly jumps out of her skin, screaming as she whirls around and spots the sheep. Definitely not something that will make Lanolin’s headache any better. “O-Oh! L-Lanolin, I d-didn’t see you there!” Not sure how, given how big of an object she is. Amy gulps.

“Is everything alright, Commander Rose…?” Lanolin asks, staring at Amy like she has two heads. Had the pink hedgehog always been so red?

“Huh? Yeah! Me? Awesome!” Amy says, giving a big thumbs up and looking at the ground. “I’m totally awesome, why do you ask?”

“Because you just let me call you ‘Commander Rose’ without pushback,” Lanolin tells her. “And also you fell on your face and started bleeding this morning.”

“Right. Mhm.” Shit. Why was this lady so dang smart? Amy slowly sits back down and tries to collect her thoughts. “I… Sorry, Lanolin, today’s just been a lot to handle.” An emotional rollercoaster without any safety bars… or breaks. “Have, um… Have you been alright?”

Lanolin raises an eyebrow. First person to ask her that today. “I’m fine, thank you,” she states. “Though I have seen the brunt of the effect these events have been having on others firsthand, so I understand why you may worry.” She gives Amy her best smile, though with Lanolin, it’s always going to look a bit strained, never quite reaching her eyes. “I appreciate it. And I’m glad you’re at least not doing as badly as some others.”

“Uh,” Amy says, wondering how Lanolin would look without that sweater on. “Yeah…!” It’s not bad enough to be a hopeless romantic and a disaster bi, but Amy also has to be some sort of pervert! How could today get any worse!? “I more meant to ask if you’ve been… having things affect you. Like the rest of us are?”

Lanolin rolls a shoulder and stretches her neck to the side. “Not really,” she says plainly. “I understand it, and all, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t feel very compelled towards anyone in particular.” Especially after Tangle, Whisper, and Silver all breaching her comfort zone so easily. As if she’d be in the mood after things like that.

“Mm…” Amy’s not sure how she’s supposed to talk about this with someone like Lanolin. She was always so closed off, even when they worked together closely every day. Amy definitely doesn’t think she’s lying, she has no reason to believe Lanolin is secretly suiting someone or is a massive horndog, but Amy’s not going to pretend that the lack of revelations from the lamb isn’t at least slightly disappointing.

“Why do you ask?” Lanolin asks, starting to feel ever-so-slightly suspicious of why Amy would bring this up. It was a very ‘eventful’ day, after all.

“I’ve been, uh… realizing some things.” Amy’s hands are gripping one another tightly. She’s staring at her interlocked fingers and trying to forget the things she’s ashamed of. “And I was hoping someone else was in the same boat so I could talk about it…” She was used to being an open book, wearing her heart on her non-existent sleeves, but Amy feels the incessant need to keep this discovery close to her chest. Least of all because she wants to keep it AWAY from Lanolin’s chest, because she doesn’t know if she can control herself around Lanolin’s chest right now.

Okay, that was far from a suspicious answer, Lanolin decides. She walks over and slowly sits down on the bench next to her former boss, saying, “I won’t know if we’re in the same boat or not unless I know what’s going on. And either way, I can still try to talk to you about it, I suppose.”

Amy feels a sharp pinch in her chest. Dammit, Lanolin was hot *and* nice. She’s meeting all of Amy’s incredibly intricate and complicated personal standards! This is getting dangerous. “I d-don’t want anyone to worry about it, really!” Amy says, trying her hardest to sound like her normal, peppy self. “I’ll be fine!”

“You’d be fine a lot faster if you opened up about it,” Lanolin immediately retorts. Amy shrinks. Nothing gets past this lady, she was a stone wall for emotional dishonesty.

“...” Amy needs to figure out a way to phrase this that’s not so implicating. Ugh, deception is NOT her strong suit. “I’ve… spent such a long time idolizing this one person,” she starts out, “And suddenly, I just… realized that there’s an entire world of people that I’ve never even thought about being close to that I suddenly *am* thinking about, and...” That could mean boys, too! For all anyone knows! “I don’t know how to deal with all of these feelings. I really thought I did, I thought I was getting better, but…” But she hasn’t even been able to look at Lanolin throughout this whole conversation. “I can’t trust myself anymore…”

Lanolin stays quiet during all of this, nodding in understanding. Honestly, she doesn’t try to pick apart any specifics; she’s not going to ask Amy who she means or try to guess to herself. She’s actually slightly honored that Amy would actually agree to talk about these kinds of things with her of all people. Lanolin knows that she doesn’t always leave the best impression on people. Especially not after the Clean Sweesptakes…

After allowing a pause, when she’s sure enough that Amy is done speaking, Lanolin responds, “Trust the rest of us to trust you, then.” Amy looks over at her, eyes all wide and pathetic, and Lanolin feels herself breathe out a tiny huff of a laugh. “You do more good for the world in a week than most people do in their whole lives. You’ll find someone, you’ll do it in a normal, nice way, and things will be okay. Even if it doesn’t feel like that right now, it’s pretty easy to see from out here.”

Ghibli tears start to pool at the corners of Amy’s eyes. “You weally fink sho?”

Sweat forms on Lanolin’s temples as she smiles awkwardly and says, “Yeah, I do.” She scootches a few inches away from Amy, very not good at these kinds of things, and adds, “But is that really all you were worried about?” Amy’s wiggly frown turns into a straight line of surprise. “Sorry if this comes across wrong, but ‘what if no one likes me’ doesn’t exactly strike me as something someone like you would fold so hard about. Is that really all you’ve been ‘realizing’ today?”

“I. Um.” Amy bites her tongue. Crap. Darnit. Frick. Motherfucker! “That’s–” A loud crash rings out from the ruined building behind the bench they were sitting on. “WAAH-!?” Amy shoots up off the bench again, swivelling on her heels to see an Extreme Gear crashed into the side of the roof, Tangle hanging off of it by her tail and holding Whisper inches off the ground.

“I told you to let me focus…!” Whisper whines, tail wagging despite herself.

“All’s well that ends well?” Tangle responds meekly, losing her tail’s grip and falling down onto Whisper and the ground. “Oops…!”

“Are you two alright?” Lanolin asks as if she doesn’t care. Amy can see her rolling her eyes from behind that deadpan stare of hers. When Tangle holds a thumb up as Whisper slowly picks herself off the ground, Lanolin adds, “Let me guess, you two got lost in each other’s eyes and forgot traffic safety laws.”

“I swear we’re getting better about it!” Tangle declares as she pops up out of the wreckage. “We were mostly normal the whole ride over, honest!” Except when they parked on that mountain for a few minutes so Tangle could ride something other than an Ex-Gear, anyways.

Amy releases some tension that had been building in her shoulders. Just more of her hot friends, nothing to worry about. Unless Whisper made eye contact, then she’d worry. “Oh, Amy,” Whisper says, looking up with a start. “We were looking for you.” Great cool very good love this, Amy thinks.

“Hi there~!” Amy says with a little wave, ignoring her pounding chest and pretending everything was hunky-dorey. “Whatcha need me for?”

“Probably trying to pawn off their repair bill on someone,” Lanolin groans.

“Nuh uh!” Tangle argues with a pout. “Belle will handle that for us for free! So there!” Tangle sticks her tongue out at Lanolin, who just scowls at her.

Whisper dusts herself off and walks over to Amy, trying to focus on the task at hand. “We just talked to Sonic. He needs us to have a safe base of operations if we’re going to be dealing with these aftershocks.”

“A… base?” Amy asks, confused. “For our… emotional labor?”

“No, there’re monsters now, too!” Tangle announces. “Something about forgotten people getting goopified and attacking folks!”

“WHAT!?” Why is this the first Amy’s hearing about this!? “People have been getting attacked and I’ve been sitting here talking about my feelings!?” She pulls out her hammer and says, “Where, tell me everything that’s happening, I’m ready to get out there and–”

Whisper puts a hand on Amy’s shoulder, sending shivers throughout the hedgehog’s little, pink body. “The reports so far have been small and isolated, and have already been dealt with,” Whisper tells her softly. “Nothing we even could form a task force about, as far as we know.”

“Only known attacks have been at Spiral Hill and Tails’s lab,” Tangle pipes up with, forming a stool with her tail and lifting herself up as she sits. “And they both already got turned back into people right away! Nothing to fear!”

“Everything being fine now doesn’t mean it will be in the coming days,” Lanolin says. “Sonic’s right. We should gather our resources and form a coherent strategy, especially if everyone’s brains are getting scrambled on top of it all.”

Amy sighs, letting her hammer fall down to her side. The opposite side to where Whisper is, luckily. “Sonic’s almost always right…” she agrees.

Lanolin looks over to the crater that used to be the entrance to the Restoration. “Easier said than done, though. We don’t exactly have anywhere easy we can turn to at the moment.”

“Could always just meet at Spiral Hill?” Tangle suggests.

“Too many civilians,” Lanolin says, immediately denying Tangle. “Too many innocent targets. We won’t be making that mistake again.”

“We’ll think of something,” Whisper quietly remarks, hand still on Amy. “And in the meantime, the local Restoration offices will have to manage on their own. As long as they can physically restrain the creatures, they can’t hurt anyone.”

“I’ll send out that message to anyone I can still get a hold of,” Lanolin says, pulling a radio out of one of her many pockets and fiddling with it as she walks a short distance away. “Try to stay calm until then, Commander,” she says over her shoulder to Amy. “We can handle anything.”

“R-right…!” Amy says, feeling her heart ache now that Lanolin is facing away from her. “True…” Aw, man, is she down *that* bad…? This bites.

“Is… everything okay after this morning?” Whisper asks, keeping her voice even more down than usual. “You still seemed pretty down on yourself when Tangle and I left. I’m sorry we couldn’t stay, but–”

“No, no,” Amy says, trying to reassure Whisper, who she is also very much down bad for. “I mean yes, I’m okay! But no, don’t apologize, we have more important things to worry about!” She’s had this conversation so many times today. Was she really that visibly hurting? Can everyone really read her like that without even trying? “I’m… getting better, there’s just a lot on my mind, still.”

Whisper glances at Lanolin, who is already on call with someone, it seems like. “We probably have a bit of down time,” Whisper says, “If you wanted to talk to anyone. Not saying it has to be me, or anything, but… y’know, just saying.”

“Oh, I’ve been talking about it,” Amy responds, trying to distract herself by watching Tangle bounce around like a one-woman trampoline. Amy’s been doing nothing but talking about it and thinking about it, but it’s not making it hurt any less! If anything, every new conversation just makes things worse because she gets closer to a girl who definitely isn’t thinking about her that way! “I’m… lucky to be surrounded by so many friends, you know?” Hopefully that sort of pithy platitude was enough to get Whisper off of her trail a bit.

Whisper still looks worried about her, but nods in concession, finally taking her hand away from Amy. Amy feels like a hole opened up in her heart with Whisper no longer touching her, wow, she is insane, isn’t she? “Just know that we’re here if you need us, alright?” Whisper requests.

Amy nods. “Yeah. Thank you so much, Whisper, it really does mean the world to me.” She takes a deep breath. Calm down, quell the gay thoughts. “I should probably go find Blaze and Silver, let them know the situation.”

“What situation?” Blaze calmly asks from a few feet away, where she and Silver have been for at least a minute.

“AAAaao-KAY, no one sneak up on me anymore, alright!?” Amy shouts as she pulls herself away from Whisper, who she’d latched onto out of shock. “Sorry, sorry! Didn’t mean–”

“It’s fine,” Whisper tells her, not bothered at all, even giving Amy a crooked smile. “You’re fine.” Huh. Amy could’ve sworn Whisper was touch-averse to an extent…

“Hi Amy!” Silver says, waving one of his hands wildly above his head. “Hi Whisper! Hi Tangle!”

“Hi Silver, hi!!” Tangle shouts back, waving just as excitedly.

Amy looks down and notices Blaze and Silver are holding hands again. Only this time, he didn’t let go as soon as he got distracted by friends. In fact, if anything, he was holding onto her tighter than ever. Amy looks up at Blaze, who gives her a small, shy smile and a nod, silently thanking Amy for the advice. “Seriously, though, is something wrong?” Blaze asks intently.

“We need to gather all of our friends in one spot,” Amy tells her, looking away from her, feeling ashamed bitterness rising in her throat. She shouldn’t be jealous of someone she *told* Blaze she belonged with. She really shouldn’t. So it sucks that she is so, so, SO jealous right now. “Sonic’s been finding monsters, or people, or…?” She actually hasn’t been wrapping her head around this very much.

“People have been turned into monsters that attack indiscriminately," Whisper clarifies. “They were returned to normal after their original identity was confirmed and stated to their faces. As far as we can tell, the condition isn’t contagious, but was spread by a single, malicious entity we have not yet been able to identify.”

“Guys got gooped,” Tangle clarifies, for herself more than anyone else. “Saying their names got ‘em back to normal, though. I think a witch did it!”

Blaze raises an eyebrow. “That’s… concerning?” At least Blaze thinks it is, from the combination of those two explanations. “Do we have a plan?”

Amy shrugs. “Well, we need a place for everyone to meet up now that the HQ has been flattened, I think? At least that’s what Sonic said.” Amy will always listen to Sonic… Focus, girl. “Not much else to do right now, though. Do you have any ideas, Blaze? Maybe we could visit your world?”

“Moving that many people back and forth between dimensions would be risky,” Blaze answers, “Especially when we don’t know how it’ll affect our memories, given the current events.” Amy nods, bowing her head in thought. “Could we ask Knuckles to let us meet on Angel Island, perhaps? It’s defensible, especially from mindless creatures.”

“No,” Amy answers. “We’re going to be inviting Shadow and Rouge, and he’s not going to want them near the emerald.” Amy feels like somewhere remote would be good, though, especially if civilians are at risk during attacks on Sonic. But where could they go that’s far away but also well-stocked and protected? “Oh!” Amy suddenly declares. “Actually, I just thought of something! One of my friends has a place!”

“Your friends?” Blaze asks, smirking a bit at seeing Amy so resolute and confident, despite how obvious it is she’s been struggling all day. “As in… the people we’re gathering, or…?”

“Oh, no, she mostly stays out of all of that!” Amy says. “But you might know her, actually! She visited for our Christmas festival, remember? She–”

Silver can’t hold it in anymore. “HEY TANGLE, GUESS WHAT!?” he shouts, interrupting Amy, who stares at him a bit begrudgingly.

“Yeah dude, what’s up?” Tangle calls out from several yards away instead of walking over. Silver yanks his hand up into the sky, lifting Blaze slightly off the ground on accident as he shows everyone that they’re holding hands. Blaze’s white, fluffy cheeks become stained in neon, red lines. “YOOOOO!” Tangle shouts.

“I KNOW!!!” Silver calls back.

Blaze, her tail all poofed and standing up, whips around and goes, “W-Would you quiet down! I- They don’t need to- Sh-shut…!” She baps him on the chest, which just makes him giggle more. Wow. Amy didn’t think Blaze could get flustered. Whoa. That’s… really hot. God dammit with this again! Amy needs to get over it!!! Get! Over! IT!

“Oh oh oh!” Tangle shouts. “I got to kiss Whisper like a hundred times, isn’t that awesome!?” Whisper’s shoulders sag as she’s called out. At least Tangle isn’t bragging about the- “AND WE HAD SEX!”

“TANGLE!” Whisper barks at her, ears sticking up like angry beacons. “Shush! None of their business!!!”

“That’s literally so beautiful and I’m unspeakably happy for you,” Silver says, a single tear falling down his cheek at the news that his two friends finally scored.

“C-congratulations, everyone!” Amy says meekly, covering her face with a hand as if she’s shading herself from the sun. Even Lanolin is glancing over at all of them, now. Amy is surrounded by people who are making her feel ashamed and greedy and- and… Predatory! She doesn’t want to think about her friends like this! Her other hand is starting to hurt from how hard she’s gripping her hammer. “It’s nice to see things aren’t all bad right now, and everything,” she says through gritted teeth, “But I think that maybe-” THUD. Right over Amy’s shoulder. “Oh, no, not again! You’re not startling me for no reason! Just be normal and–” She turns around to see who it was this time, and before she can fully swivel, she’s punched hard across the face.

Whisper catches Amy in her arms as the hedgehog falls backwards, the two of them seeing a bipedal creature coated in a thick tar, strands of the stuff oozing off of its head like twintails. It’s holding up both of its hands as if challenging everyone at once to a boxing match. Crackles of red and yellow light erupt from its knuckles. “It’s one of them!” Whisper shouts, already motioning for Tangle to toss her the wispon.

Well, today has gotten worse again. “You have got to be kidding me,” Amy growls, rubbing the side of her bruised face as the creature dives at her once again.

Notes:

Have to split this chapter into two parts because it's getting a bit long in the tooth and I wanna try and keep chapter lengths relatively consistent.

Thank you to everyone who's been leaving comments, for the record, they're all I have to eat right now and each word fills my soul with warmth and nourishment.

Chapter 14: Amy's Problem pt2

Whisper shoves Amy out of the way as the creature lands with a downwards punch. Before Whisper can even react to that first hit, she’s kicked in the ribs and sent back. Amy swings her hammer over her shoulder and tries to bring it right down on the creature’s back, but the piko~ sounds out against the ground, instead. “Wh–?” Amy is kicked hard in the back, sent tumbling forward by the monster, who had ended up behind her somehow.

“Crap, crap, crap!” Tangle yanks the wispon out of the crashed Ex-Gear and tosses it over to Whisper as she herself rushes in, reaching for the, as Tangle calls them, ‘goop guy’ with her tail. Instead of simply being grabbed, though, the shadowy figure flips up and stands on top of Tangle’s tail. “Wuh oh,” Tangle mutters before the creature does a flip through the air and lands on her head, knocking her down onto the floor.

A burst of fire hits the thing in the head, and only seconds later, an explosion of pink wisp energy erupts on its back. Unfortunately, all Blaze’s and Whisper’s attacks result in is it holding its hand up to its face as if it was laughing at them. “D-Don’t try to *kill* it!” Tangle shouts from under its foot. “There’s a person in there! And down here!!!”

“Who is it!?” Whisper asks in her best attempt as a shout, as hoarse and unpracticed as her voice may be. “If we say their name, they’ll stop!”

“They’ll stop if I tell them to stop!” Silver declares, throwing out his hands to activate his telekinesis. Tangle floats up into the air, surrounded by dirt and small rocks as she wiggles around uselessly. “Wait, where did–?” Everyone sees as the creature moves so fast that it basically vanishes entirely, somehow dodging Silver’s psychic grapple and getting right up into his face, headbutting him in the nose. “ACK!”

Blaze tries to grab at the thing using her own fiery speed, but it flips up into the air away from her. However, it has hurt her boyfriend- WowSheCalledHimThatInHerHeadWow -and so she’s going to hurt it *worse.* She shoots up into the air after it, watching it glide away just out of her reach. “Stay still, dammit!” Blaze shoots through the sky like a firework as the entity flutters circles around her tauntingly, falling back down to the ground only to spring back up and collide with her mid-air, kicking her hard in the stomach.

Tangle gets free from his grasp once Silver gets hit in the face, and as soon as she does, she runs over to Whisper. “Team attack! I mean couples attack! Let’s go!”

Whisper grimaces. “Tangle, I don’t know if…” Tangle looks into Whisper’s eyes with big sparkles and pleading tears covering her face. “...Fine.”

“Yey!” Tangle squees, grabbing onto Whisper and forming a lasso with her tail. “Okay! Three… two…! PULL!!!” Whisper shoots up into the air with her hover mode, and Tangle uses the momentum to fire her tail out at the creature to try and trap them in the loop. “Blaze! Help us out!”

Blaze tries to ram the airborne monster right into Tangle’s trap, but the instant she gets close, the thing just shifts to the side, trying to kick her again. And even though she dodges the monster, as Blaze calls out, “It’s too fast! I can’t pin it down before it moves!” she feels a large, fuzzy rope close around her waist and yank her away. “H-HEY!”

“Sorry! My bad!” Tangle says, trying to let go before the thing can retaliate. So easy to get all jumbled up, though.

It’s fast enough to be a blur, an expert hand to hand fighter, and even has flying capabilities. “Who IS this!?” Blaze yells out as she hits the ground. “Isn’t this just supposed to be a normal person!?”

“The monsters have the same abilities as the person it’s covering,” Whisper confirms, also drifting down to the ground as she takes pot shots at it. “I don’t know anyone who can do all this, though.”

“How could anyone be fast enough to completely evade me like that!?” Blaze demands. She can keep up with Sonic on a good day, it doesn’t make any sense that this random possessee is getting away from her so easily!

“It’s not!” Silver shouts, voice muffled slightly by his hand as he covers his nose. “You can’t just dodge my psychic powers by running at me! It’s not dodging, it’s–!” Silver is cut off when it appears next to him, landing a flurry of punches and kicks to send him toppled over into a heap. “...teleporting…!”

Amy hasn’t been paying attention to any of this. Her brain is still awash with self-hatred, so she’s sure that she’d be the least helpful in whatever crisis is happening right now. Everyone else is either self-reliant or fulfilled by their other, Amy is the odd one out; utterly useless alone and a nuisance in a group. Ever since that kick to her spine, she’s just been laying in the dirt, motionless, trying to stay out of people’s way.

Lanolin rushes over, golden wispon in hand, trying to surround the creature with noise to disable it, but every time she fires, it just disappears again. At one point, it even tries to rush her and Amy, but Lanolin’s just barely able to delay it with consistent enough shots that Blaze can swoop in and get it into another chase. “Bastard,” Lanolin mutters under her breath as she crouches down next to Amy and asks, “Rose, what the hell are you doing!? Did it paralyze you!?” She sounds actually worried as she brings that question up. That kick looked really firm…

“I can move…” Amy answers morosely, “I’m just staying out of your way… You can all handle this better than I can.”

Lanolin groans. “Amy, you need to snap out of this. Who cares about crushes and sex right now!? We have more important things to–”

“I know that!” Amy yells, shocking Lanolin into silence. “I know this isn’t really important, and it makes my obsession over it even more stupid than it already was! I know I’m being immature and selfish, I know, you don’t need to tell me!”

Lanolin looks over the battle. The creature is throwing out punches and kicks like no one’s business, easily evading everyone with its phasing ability and pummeling anyone who actually does manage to get close. Blaze is the best fighter here, she’s hardly taking a hit, but even she’s clearly frustrated at how long this is taking when it’s a 4-on-1 fight. Maybe a 6-on-1 would go better, but… the workers and refugees are starting to stare, hearing the commotion and coming over to check what’s up. They don’t have time for this…!

“Amy, with all due respect,” Lanolin says, “Get the fuck over yourself!!!”

“...dude,” Tangle mutters as she does her best to parry a horse-kick from the bad guy. Doesn’t work very well for her…

“You’re going through a lot right now, fine!” Lanolin continues, paying Tangle and the others no mind, “All of us are! Good, bad, whatever, we’re all going through it! And you will have time to continue going through it after this fight! The Amy Rose I know, the one who inspired me to fight in the first place, would not be letting this garbage distract her from what she needs to do! So grow the fuck up and pick up your damn hammer!”

“Lanolin, you-” Whisper starts saying as she swings her cube-mode wispon at the enemy, who dodges easily before striking back with a jab that Whisper needs to block with her arm. “-shouldn’t be doing that!”

“I need to be doing something!” Lanolin shouts back. “None of us know who this is, so ALL of us need to work together to get it contained! I can’t just babysit my boss until she stops having a meltdown about boys, alright!?”

“You’re getting out of line!” Whisper responds before her feet are swept out from under her and she’s hit with two consecutive swirling uppercuts. Landing with a thud against a pile of rocks, Whisper shakily pulls herself up and mumbles, “We can’t work as a team if we’re chewing each other out!”

“No,” Amy says quietly, sitting up and balancing her weight on her hammer. “Lanolin’s right. We need to be a unit.” She stands up, and the creature instantly locks eyes with her - little, glinting diamonds shining out from the inky darkness of its face. It rushes her, vanishing and then appearing right in front of her face. Amy gets ready to counter or dodge, but at the last second, she sees its foot coming up from an odd angle. It wasn’t aiming at Amy at all. And with Lanolin’s back turned–

PIKO! Amy shoves herself in front of the attack, body-blocking Lanolin before she can be kicked in the head, only just barely bringing up her hammer in time to keep her own body steady as she takes a kick to the jaw. “A-Amy!” Lanolin yells, flicking her bell and trying to deafen the monster, but it’s gone in a moment and there in the next, only after her attack ends.

Amy is still standing, though. Rubbing her jaw, because fucking OW, but standing. She hasn’t gotten hit in the face that hard since she and Sonic were in that stupid tournament thing Metal made them do… What an… oddly specific memory to have just now… What if–

As soon as the creature reappears, instead of getting a hit in on Lanolin or Amy, Tangle is right there behind it. She’s been following its attack patterns and was able to guess where it would reappear, so she’d been laying in wait, only to jump forward and, “GOTCHA!” she yells as she finally gets her arms around the thing. “I got it! I got–” Right when she goes to wrap her tail around the two of them to keep them stationary, though, it vanishes from under her grasp, leaving her tangled up and by herself. “N-not fair…!”

It reappears right in front of Tangle, eyes alight with violence. Whisper raises her gun, Blaze storms forward, but with how close it is, and how fast its fist is moving right towards Tangle’s skull, no one moves fast enough to protect the lemur. “Honey!” Amy shouts, the speed of sound going faster than the monster’s fist. “Your name is Honey! Honey the Cat!” The punch stops dead before it can land, the monster freezing in place. “You’re a fashion designer! You fought with us against Eggman and Metal Sonic to promote your brand! Remember who you are so you can stop being whatever this is!”

The monster turns to Amy, and even though it’s mostly just a mass of ooze, Amy’s pretty sure she sees it smiling before it falls over, collapsing into a cloud of blue dust and leaving behind an unconscious Honey, whose clothes and hair are an utter mess. What used to be a bright, ruby-red dress is now tatters hung around her chest and hips, and her once-luscious twintails are, referring to it kindly, a very messy bob. She has seen better days. This was not one of them.

And as she falls back away from Tangle, passing out on her back, her arms up and at her sides, her legs folded demurely, the first thought that crosses Amy’s mind isn’t about how relieved she is that her friends are safe or pride in herself for saving the day, it’s ‘Wow, she’s still so hot. I wish I could touch her.’

Immediately, before anyone even says anything, Amy feels something coming up in her throat. She turns away from the others, doubling over and clutching her mouth with both hands. As Tangle cheers and Silver runs over to inspect whether this stranger was alive or not, Lanolin sees Amy taking uneasy, nauseous steps away from them all and asks, “Amy, are you alright?” She’s answered by seeing liquid come up and out of Amy’s throat, the hedgehog retching onto the floor a few feet away from everyone else. “A-Amy! Let’s get you back to the med tent, we–”

“NO!” Amy shouts, tossing her hammer haphazardly onto the ground and stumbling away from everyone. “No one come near me, alright!? I need to be alone!” Then she runs off. Lanolin’s ears fold back as she watches Amy disappear into the ruins. Her wooly face is contorted, her brow furrowed harshly and her snout wrinkled as she feels guilt rising up in her chest. This was her fault, wasn’t it? Somehow, she just knows.

When Amy’s far enough away, when she’s sure no one’s followed her, she collapses onto her knees, throwing up again. She can’t believe herself. She’s a psychopath. Who would have thoughts like this without being some sort of creepy pest!? She wants to be normal, she wants to be a good friend, but her brain keeps giving her these awful, intrusive thoughts, made even worse by how much she truly, deeply wants them all to be a reality. She wants to latch onto Lanolin and never let go. She wants to climb into Whisper’s lap and hear the wolf’s voice in her ear. She wants to toss Silver out a window, grab Blaze’s hand herself, and kiss her hard enough to flip her orientation!

She had such an awful, terrible thought about Honey just now. A woman she barely even knows, met years and years ago and then seemingly forgot about. Someone who’s been through who knows what kinds of hell only for Amy to start silently objectifying her! Amy is disgusted with herself, because she knows they can’t stay thoughts forever. This is how she felt when she met Sonic, she’s realizing, only without the maturity to be righteously guilty over it. She invaded his space, she pushed herself onto him when he said ‘no,’ she drove him away so often that even now, sometimes he looks *scared* of her when she shows up. And now that she can feel these things again, she’s just going to make everyone else afraid of her, too.

Lanolin was right. The Amy Rose that *she* knew wouldn’t act like this. But that Amy Rose is gone. Now all that’s left is this predatory, evil person who can’t control her own thoughts, let alone her actions. She curls up into a ball on the ground, hugging herself tightly as she starts to quietly weep.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go check on her?” Tangle asks from inside the medical tent, rocking back and forth on a stool a few feet away from the gurney Honey had been placed on. “She seemed really upset, like, for all of that fight. And before it… and after…”

“She asked for privacy,” Blaze says calmly, holding an ice pack to her stomach. She’d taken a good few hits there. “We need to respect that. She’d do the same for us.”

“But what if it was reverse psychology, like a cry for help or–” Tangle tries to argue, but Whisper pulls her into a hug to comfort her fears.

“Amy will be okay,” Whisper says softly into her girlfriend’s ear. “Have some faith in her, darling. She’s strong.” Whisper gently pets the top of Tangle’s head, and Tangle huffs, but closes her eyes and leans into Whisper, giving up on the argument for now.

Occasionally, one of them will look over at Honey to see if she’s moved, or at Silver as he calmly stands there and tries to pry into the woman’s mind, but no one looks at Lanolin, who stands at the far end of the tent, facing a wall, hands clenched into fists. Lanolin hasn’t said a word since Amy ran away, not out loud, at least. Internally, though, she’s ripping herself apart. She’d told herself she wouldn’t go too far again, that she had a better handle of her bitterness and anger, and yet…

“Any luck?” Blaze softly asks her new love.

“Not really,” Silver says sadly. “I’ve never been that great at this part of having psychic powers… She might get dizzy, but…” He lowers his hands, the teal radiation Honey was giving off a moment ago fading. “I don’t think I can do much right now…” They’d checked her body for cuts or broken bones, but other than her look of duress, she didn’t seem to have any obvious signs of injury. And until she woke up, they couldn't do much other than give her a pillow to lay down on and a blanket to cover up with.

“...” This awkward silence was gonna kill Tangle. “Soooo,” she cuts in with, “You two are cute together!”

“Huh?” Blaze’s pupils dilate a bit. They were? They were visibly cute together? Other people think this? Whaow…

“Oh, thanks!” Silver says, blushing a tiny bit. “It’d be kinda hard NOT to be cute when I’m with her, though! Blaze is like *advanced* cute, you know?”

“Huh???” Blaze isn’t used to being so openly complimented like this, she’s getting so hot that she’s starting to melt her ice pack. “I… mm… th-thanks…” Jeez, make a girl embarrassed, why dontcha?

“Truly adorbz,” Tangle agrees, nodding serenely. “Careful around her fans, though, I’m sure lots’ve people would kill to be where you are right now, bud~!”

“I’d like to see them try!” Silver says, puffing out his fluffy chest as Blaze’s blush deepens. Fans? Hello??? “I actually wouldn’t, I’m not that big a fan of confrontation, if you’d believe it! Haha…!”

“You shouldn’t assume they’re exclusive,” Whisper tells her girlfriend, “It’s not as though it’s as uncommon as it used to be…”

“Huh?” Silver asks, “What’s that mean?”

“Oh, like when you let the person you’re dating date other people, too!” Tangle answers. “Whisper says she wants other people to make me smile, too, so like, I dunno, thinking about it…!”

“Ohhhhh,” Silver responds, immediately turning to Blaze with a doofy grin and going, “Yeah! We should do that! That way your fans won’t try to kill me! I’m really scared of that happening, now!”

“I don’t have any–” Blaze rubs at her face bashfully. “Silver, I already told you that as long as I’m by your side, I don’t mind who you open your heart to. It’s fine, you’re allowed.”

“Awwwww~!” Tangle says, little hearts appearing around her head. “That’s so sweet~! Whispiiiiie~!”

She nudges Whisper, who laughs quietly and says, “Yes, Tangle, I heard. They’re very cute.”

As Blaze fiddles with her tail, pouting at all the ‘cute’s being thrown around, Tangle notices a new silence forming and adds, “Y’know, if all of us are like that, what if we cheered up Amy by all getting together and smothering her with–”

“Fucking hell,” Lanolin shouts, “SHUT UP!” Everyone else startles, other than Honey, who is knocked out. Lanolin looks over at their shocked faces, immediately regrets, and goes, “Whatever, I need some fucking air.” She marches herself out of the tent, nearly running directly into Amy, who’s standing there holding her hammer, looking hollow. “Gah-! Oh, Amy, you’re–”

“Is Honey okay?” Amy asks quietly, taking several steps back so as not to get close to Lanolin as she walks out of the tent.

Lanolin notices the distance, but tries not to let it show on her face. “She’s alive,” the sheep responds, “That’s just about all we can tell right now, though. Until she–”

“I need to go,” Amy says abruptly. “I have to get in contact with Sticks to ask if we can use her island.” She’ll have to either ask Tails for a ride or take the ferry, but either one shouldn’t take too long. “Keep the radio open, I’ll call when I make it there…” Without another word, she just turns around and starts to walk away.

“Wait, Amy,” Lanolin says, and Amy clenches her jaw. Why now? “About before. It wasn’t alright of me to go off like that, I’m–”

“You were right,” Amy says, not letting her apologize. “I should grow up. Maybe one day, I will.” She keeps moving away from Lanolin.

“...at least let one of us go with you,” Lanolin asks, stern voice starting to give way to worry. “If you get attacked again, there’s safety in numbers.” Selfishly, Lanolin adds, “The four of them should be fine on their own, I’m not too busy to help. It could be like back at the Resistance, you know…?”

Amy’s fists clench around her hammer. “Lanolin, please leave me alone.” Those words hit Lanolin’s gut like a punch. Amy realizes how bad that sounds and tries to recover, but only ends up sounding worse. “I can’t be around you right now. I can’t be around *anyone* right now. It isn’t safe near me…”

“What?” Lanolin has no idea what Amy’s talking about, but she still has to help somehow, right? Amy was her former boss- no, her friend! Lanolin can’t leave her feeling like this, not when it’s all Lanolin’s fault to begin with! “If this is about the attacks, I swear we can all hold our own, you don’t need to worry…!”

“No,” Amy states, still not looking at or even facing Lanolin, this conversation being had with the back of her pretty, pink head. “It’s me. I’m the problem.” Amy bows her head, trying not to burst into tears or get nauseous with herself again. “Sonic was able to forgive me after all those times I hurt him, over and over again, because he’s a hero. He’s the kindest man on earth, and he forgives everyone for every awful thing they do.” Amy doesn’t feel any different from Eggman, honestly. Certainly no better from a moral standpoint. “No one else should have to be put in that position because of me.”

Lanolin’s heart starts to sink. What? What the fuck!? “Amy, I don’t know what you’ve really been thinking about all this time, but thoughts don’t decide whether you’re a good person or not. And you haven’t DONE anything wrong!”

“I almost did!” Amy argues, shoulders hunched, even as she refuses to look over. “And when it was with Sonic, I ALWAYS did! Every time! I’m broken and dangerous and I shouldn’t be around the people I care about, alright!?” She tilts her head slightly, as if she might turn around, but stops herself from looking. In that brief glimpse, though, Lanolin can see tears streaming down Amy’s face. “I can’t be around you right now. Please, just leave me alone.” Not wanting to hear another word about it, Amy speeds off, getting a running start and then launching herself into the air with her hammer, rocketing over a destroyed building and away from Lanolin.

“...around… me…?” Lanolin quietly says to herself, finally putting that puzzle together. “...Oh…” Lanolin clutches at her aching stomach. She feels like the biggest idiot in the world. “...fuck…”

Chapter 15: Change Your Behavior

Jewel had been pretty quiet while she and Belle had been picking out clothes for their new friend. Belle is fine with that, she’s usually pretty quiet, too. But when they deliver the outfits, Jewel smiling happily as she hands them over, then stay put while Sonic takes Ray inside the museum to try things on, Belle notices that Jewel just… droops once she’s alone with Belle again. Something about putting on a good face in front of the scared new guy, maybe? Belle usually isn’t amazing at the whole, you know, emotions thing.

“...Y’alright?” Belle eventually asks, not sure how else to broach this. It’s just so obvious her friend is hurting, and… Jewel is her friend, right? Yeah. Of course. She thinks so, too, doesn’t she…?

Jewel looks up at Belle with a start. “Huh? Oh, um, yes! Yes, I’m perfectly alright, thank you for checking~!” She gives Belle a shining, radiant smile.

Belle looks at her with lidded eyes. “Well yer lying muscles ain’t hurt,” she mutters, making Jewel’s facade crack like a fabergé egg. “Y’don’t gotta talk about it if you don’t want to, but I wanted you to know that I care. Since we’re friends, right?”

Jewel hangs her head for a moment before sighing and saying, “Can you promise not to tell anyone about this?” Belle nods, not having considered snitching on someone’s feelings for even a solitary second. “...I told Tangle I was in love with her…”

“Oh…!” Belle responds, not really understanding why that’s a bad thing until she thinks about it for a moment. “W-wait, and she didn’t…?”

Jewel shakes her head, laughing dryly. “She needs time to think about it. Which usually… doesn’t mean good things, from what I’ve been told.” Jewel slowly sucks in air through her nostrils, exhaling a rough, shaking breath.

“...Guess Whisper got her locked down right away, huh?” Belle watches as Jewel’s jaw starts to tremble, and considers holding out a hand for her to hold, but she’s not sure she really has the right to do that… “I’m… really sorry, Jewel. I… I really wish I could, uh…?” What’s she supposed to do, exactly?

“I’ll be fine,” Jewel says, taking out a handkerchief and blowing her nose. “I just… I don’t know… She’s… Our whole lives, we’ve been together, and then one day, we just… weren’t anymore. She has her own life and I have mine, and we see each other sometimes, and… I miss her.” Jewel’s voice cracks. “So much.”

Belle really wants to give Jewel a hug, but is too self-conscious to commit, so instead, she just says, “Well, who needs her, right? I don’t got nostrils, but I bet she stinks anyway!” She honks her nose for emphasis. Jokes, everybody loves jokes, right?

“She uses really expensive shampoo,” Jewel mumbles. “It smells like mango and pineapple and a hint of habanero. I helped her pick it out, and she got it every time after that because it meant so much to her, and when I smell it I remember how much she cares about me, and I love her and I want to be with her and weh weh wehhhhhh!” As tears start spilling out of Jewel’s eyes, Belle starts to panic.

“Uh! I!” Aw, sawdust, forget it! She throws herself onto Jewel, doing her best to give a warm hug. As warm a hug can be from a puppet, in any case. And to Belle’s surprise, Jewel immediately hugs her back, burying her face in Belle’s chest as she gets herself back under control. “I’m sorry, Jewel,” Belle whispers. “I’m so sorry…” She lets Jewel cry in her arms for a while, patting her back and apologizing for reasons beyond her own ken.

Now Belle’s finding herself getting mad at Tangle. It’s not exactly, you know, fair to blame someone for not falling in love with the right person, but Tangle was acting like nothing was wrong that whole time she was around! Smooching her sniper and laughing and all. Not exactly very nice behavior when someone you just turned down was right over here! She’ll have to talk to the squirrelly little imp at some point to give her a piece of her mechanical mind, she guesses.

After a few extra sniffles, Jewel pulls herself away and says, “Thank you, Belle. I really needed a friend right now.” Belle stares, processing those words, and then smiles giddily. Friend! Yay! “I promise I’ll be okay. It might be a little rough for a bit, but things will get better, you know? That’s how it always goes, I suppose.”

“Well let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help!” Belle says, still smiling warmly at the beetle. “What else are friends for, right~?”

“I mean, if you wanna talk about something else to take my mind off of it, I wouldn’t really complain…!” Jewel is already starting to look better, even if Belle can feel that she’s still shaking. “Like, uh… Have you been thinking about anybody ever since this, you know, whole thing began?” Jewel rotates her hand around to gesture at everything around them.

“Um.” Belle decides it is 200% the exact worst idea in the world to be open to Jewel about what she’s actually been thinking all day. So that’s no good. Uh, what else could she say? Belle thinks for a moment, looking around nervously, and then Jewel sees her varnished eyes go wide. “M-Metal Sonic!”

“Really?” Jewel doesn’t mean to judge, but the skepticism in her voice comes across as clear as day. “Isn’t he really mean and, I dunno, evil…?”

“NO!” Belle points up at the sky. “METAL SONIC!!!” Jewel whips around, seeing a speck on the skyline quickly turn into a speeding, blue comet. In less than a second, contact is made with the ground, kicking up a plume of dust - two red, beady eyes shining out at the two women from within the cloud.

Belle jumps in front of Jewel, holding her arms out to either side to block Metal from her. She knows the beetle doesn’t have a violent bone in her body, but Belle at least has kicks. She has to be the protector here. “Y-You better not try anything funny, mister!” she says, voice and body trembling. “Sonic’s real close by, and he can turn your rusty butt into–”

Metal steps forward, making Belle flinch, though she still doesn’t lower her arms. Jewel is cowering behind Belle, going, “What’s he doing!? Is he attacking!? Are you okay!?”

“He’s…?” Belle’s not sure, actually. He’s just kinda standing there up until she hears some whirring noises from him and then feels him link up with her systems. “Oh, he’s tryna say something…” Belle and Metal just stare at each other silently for a while, Belle occasionally throwing in, “Huh,” or “Oh…” Eventually, she tilts her head to the side and asks, “Wait, and you’re coming to *us* for help? Why can’t you do it?”

Metal’s mechanical eyes droop in frustration and he points at his own face.

“Oh yeeaahhhh, y’ain’t got no mouth, huh? Guess that’d make it pretty hard.”

“W-what are you TALKING about!?” Jewel stammers out, filling in the blanks like leaf litter fills in a gutter. It’s not easy being so aware of unintentional innuendo, now.

“Nothing Sonic can’t help with, I reckon,” Belle says, making Jewel’s brain fizzle even more. “He’s, uh…”

Belle starts to point over at the museum, but then the front door is kicked open, Ray the Squirrel coming out wearing an open-sided, blue poncho with ring patterns along the hem, allowing his ‘wings’ to breathe while still covering his torso, along with a pair of white shorts to complete the look, his new outfit matching the shoes and gloves he’d already been wearing. A pair of blue goggles rests on top of his head, ready to be pulled down should he need to speed away. Sonic is standing over his shoulder, still as unclothed as the day before. Sonic feels no shame.

“How’s it look, ladies~?” Ray asks as he does a few poses, landing on the last one before finally opening his eyes and screaming, “Am I a– M-METAL SONIC!?”

“Well, you’re definitely not that,” Sonic says from behind him, peeking out of the doorframe. “Oh, yeah, there he is! Hey bud!” As panicked as Ray instantly becomes, Sonic is about as nonchalant about the whole thing. What else is new, right?

Ray curls into a spin to launch himself through the air and directly into Metal, who tries to swat him out of the sky, but Ray just bounces off his claw and rebounds, soaring effortlessly through the air. Ray’s flying abilities outshine most of the people Belle knows: Rouge, Cream, Whisper, even Tails wouldn’t be able to match this guy. He’s like a kite attached to a bullet train. With every hit, every attack Ray bounces off of only to fly back down like a homing missile, Belle can hear him saying, “Stay! Away! From! My! Friends!”

He manages to get a direct kick against Metal’s chrome dome, knocking the fake hedgehog’s head back before flying back up again. Metal, tired of playing around, activates his stationary jets, baring his claws and getting ready for a fight to the deconstruction. Then, Belle is there.

“KNOCK IT OFF!” she shouts, body-blocking Metal right as Ray is swooping back down. Unable to come to a stop mid-air, Ray can’t do anything to avoid colliding with Belle… other than steer himself directly into the ground. He lands with a hard smack, everyone but Metal wincing as they hear the impact.

“-cough-” Ray lays in front of Belle, having missed her by centimeters, in a crumpled heap. “Ow…” He climbs up onto his knees as Sonic waltzes out of the museum, Jewel rushing over and hiding behind him. Sonic was probably the safest person to be around, after all. “W-What gives…?” Ray asks, rubbing his now-aching head. “Did you get hacked or something, lady?”

“He ain’t here to fight!” Belle tells him. Metal narrows his gaze and clicks from behind Belle. “Er… He wasn’t here to fight, uh, you. At first? No, knock that off!” She swivels her head to glare at Metal, who turns off his thrusters with agitation.

“He’s Metal Sonic, lady!” Ray whines from the floor. “He’s a bad guy! We smash bad guys around here!”

“We,” Sonic interrupts, “Let people ask for help when they need it. And if Metal, of all people, is willing to play nice for a bit, there’s no reason we can’t hear him out for a second!” Sonic continues his stroll towards the others, Jewel shimmying along in his shadow. “So, my cobalt cousin, what brings you along to debase yourself at my feet today, huh? Egghead leave the oven on and burn his muffins or something?”

Belle can hear gears grinding as Metal’s artificial mind rings out with violent impulse, and she mutters, “M-Maybe cool it on the antagonism today, Sonic?” She crouches down and helps Ray to his feet, still very wary of the robot to her back. “H-he seems pretty on edge, still.”

“Alright, alright, we’re all friends today!” Sonic says, smirking in such a punchable way. “What do ya want, pal?”

“He said that some of those monster people are in one of Eggman’s bases,” Belle tells Sonic, sounding a lot less urgent now that the monster people in question aren’t attacking her. “He already knows who they are and got ‘em contained, but he can’t say their names on account of not having a voice.”

“Oh, that’s what you meant,” Jewel mutters. That was way less perverse than what she’d been imagining.

“Hold on!” Ray squeaks. “Why should we be even thinking of helping this guy OR RoBUTTnik?” He pops up (with Belle’s help) and folds his arms. “Unless one of the jerks has Mighty, I say we let the slimes break all the egg-toys that they feel like!” He sticks out his tongue and blows at Metal, whose bright eyes shine even redder.

“What’d I just say?” Belle barks, clonking the squirrel on the top of the head. “No bullyin’!”

“B-Bullying!? He’s the bully!!!” Puffs of hot air start wafting off of Ray’s forehead. “Do you even know who that is!?”

“Yes,” Belle answers, voice stern and solid. “He’s a nasty, violent thug that I’ve been on the bad side of more’n once already.” She glares at Metal for a moment, and even though he wants to shut her up for that comment… if he does that, no one would be able to understand him. So he just stares back. “But he’s also one of my own, so I’m not leaving him behind if he’s tryna help us out.”

“Heh, that’s what I like to hear!” Sonic quips, patting Belle on the back a little bit too hard, almost knocking her off her soapbox. “The first thing you gotta know if you wanna save the day, Ray, is that no one deserves to be ignored in their time of need! Even if they were mean to ya before.”

“He kidnaps animals to turn into robots!” Ray argues, still pouting, though now at Sonic instead of Belle.

“I think Eggman’s mostly switched to a chaos drive-based form of power these days, actually,” Sonic says. Ray doesn’t know what that is, and his confusion shows on his face. “What I’m saying is that you gotta try to save everyone, even if you don’t think they deserve it, alright?”

Ray puffs a cheek out, still smoldering a bit, but he doesn’t argue anymore, just brattily turning away from Sonic and Belle with his arms crossed. He does glance at Metal, though, saying, “I got my eyes on you, buster!”

“Uh, yeah, good plan,” Belle murmurs, “He’s still kind of a jerk, ain’t he?”

“Well, yeah,” Sonic agrees. “But we still have to help those folks who got slimed out!”

“Exactly! More for their sakes than Metal’s,” Belle says with a nod. Metal whirrs at her, and she responds, “Oh, hush, yer getting whatcha want, aintcha?”

“Fine, but where is this place they’re at?” Ray asks, wagging his tail to mock Metal. “And is he gonna be able to keep up when we get there?”

Metal’s gears grind as he seethes at Ray, clenching his claws until they start to creak loudly. “I’m not repeating that,” Belle says coldly. Metal’s entire frame trembles with rage. “He’s saying it’s between here and Riverside. Y’all could probably speedster over there and back in half an hour, but…”

“What’re we waiting for then?” Ray says, already raring himself to launch into the sky again. “Me ‘n Sonic can be back before dinnertime! Count on it!”

“...I don’t have super speed,” Belle says, “And I don’t wanna leave Jewel alone or nothing, neither. That’s why I was gonna say it’ll probably take an hour or two.”

“...wait, you’re coming with us?” Ray asks, looking Belle up and down. “Why? Isn’t it safer to just sit here and do… girl stuff?” Now Belle is staring at Ray with violent intent to match Metal’s, thick, black lines of anger painting her face as her pupils narrow to points. Jewel just rolls her eyes.

“Okay! Hey, buddy!” Sonic says, sweating as he pushes Ray away from the others, “Let’s chat! Be right back, gang! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He keeps pushing Ray until they’re out of earshot of Jewel and the angry murder twins, Sonic smiling nervously at them and waving the whole way. Once they’re far enough, he snaps his gaze down at Ray and spits out, “Man, what decade are you living in!?”

“What?” Ray asks. “I thought girls hated fighting and adventures and stuff!”

“WHY!? Why would you think that!?” Sonic never thought he’d be the one giving someone the ‘women are equals’ talk. Sonic’s admittedly had to go through a bit of growing over the years, but he was never *this* insufferable, was he? “You knew Amy, she was able to fight!”

“Yeah, but Amy had a hammer and could punch stuff! That hardly even counts as a girl!” Ray says, making Sonic’s eyes go wide and his mouth turn into a thin, incredulous line. This kid is not going to be a hit with the greater Green Hill friend group, Sonic thinks.

“Okay… Wow…” Sonic says, taking that all in. “Son, we need to have a word.” He sets his hand down on Ray’s shoulder like a disappointed coach about to bench a player for misconduct.

Jewel is gently patting Belle on the arm, the puppet coming down from her fury slowly by quietly complaining. “Maybe would’ve thought’ve it if Metal weren’t in the picture, but that ain’t how you ask someone if they need a break, fer drawstring’s sake!” She has something to prove, now, so there was no way she’d be convinced to sit this one out! Even if she kinda wanted to. Because she hates this kinda stuff…

“He’s definitely pretty immature,” Jewel says soothingly, not having taken a run-of-the-mill microaggression as personally, even if it was very annoying. “It sounds like a few of his developmental years may have been a bit… stunted.”

Belle just grumbles, “Yeah well so’re mine, and I ain’t rude about it.” Belle is an adult consciousness that’s only gotten to actually, physically experience the last few years or so, so she’s not letting someone who got an entire childhood off easy on THAT excuse. “Shouldn’t’ve brought him nothing but skirts,” she remarks, making Jewel giggle.

“Maybe next time he needs a responsible woman to do his shopping for him,” the beetle titters.

“As if I’d agree to it at this point.” Her sulking is cut slightly short when she hears a message in the back of her head, almost as if it was quieter than the others. She glances over to Metal, who isn’t even looking at her, just glaring at the horizon in the opposite direction. “...I’m not stupid enough to accept an apology from someone like you,” she says quietly. Metal doesn’t respond, nor does he move a single servo. “...maybe if you can prove you mean it, I’ll think about it, though.”

Jewel tilts her head. “...what did he say?” She flinches as Metal’s head snaps around, his eyes focused on her as if warning her to not ask questions.

With Jewel clinging to Belle’s side, hiding behind the puppet out of fear, Belle says, “See? That’s what I mean. Quit being so aggro.” She turns her back to him, this time. “Words don’t mean nothing if you don’t change your behavior.”

“You mean I was hurting their feelings!?” Ray asks, horrified, little tears drooping comedically down his face. Sonic’s shoulders are hunched, his foot tapping impatiently like it always is. How did Ray not know that? “Oh, man, that’s awful! What do I do!?”

“...apologize and consider your words more carefully?” Sonic suggests. “Definitely apologize, though. To Belle. Now.” And to Amy later, probably. And whoever else he ends up ‘accidentally’ offending in the near future.

“Y-yeah, okay…” Ray says, hanging his head in defeat.

Ray starts to trudge over to Belle and the others while Sonic follows behind, shaking his head disappointedly. “I mean I get you’re from a different era and all,” Sonic says, “But things do NOT fly like that anymore. Not on the good guy’s team, anyway.”

“...it’s not like I just skipped forward all those years,” Ray says awkwardly. “I… I know I lived it all, I… should know better. I just… can’t remember so much of it! It’s, um… not an excuse, though, I think.” He’s a big boy now, after all u_u.

“Still sounds like a nightmare I’d prefer we all woke up from sooner rather than later,” Sonic responds. “Emphasis on the woke.”

After Ray bows his head to Belle and Jewel, saying he was sorry and promising to do better, they all head over to Belle’s wagon, Motobud hitched to the front. Metal lifts the hitch up and nudges Motobud to the side with his foot. “Hey, be careful with him!” Belle yells at him. Metal rolls his eyes and attaches himself to the wagon in Motobud’s place. “Don’t hit your top speed, either. My construction’s good, but it can’t sustain itself through jet fuel being used up against its hull.”

Everyone boards, and though Metal’s idea to steer the carriage does save them a lot of time, it’s quite the bumpy ride from Spiral Hill to the Eggman base. Especially considering the, you know, spiral. “SLOW DOWN ON THE TURNS!” Belle at one point has to scream at Metal as the entire cart is nearly diagonal with the road.

They do make it, though, in around a half hour. Belle immediately has to check for repairs as Sonic and Ray hop out, followed closely by Jewel as she nauseously spirals through the air and onto the floor. “Bleugh,” the beetle groans, probably at least not thinking about Tangle anymore! Small victories, friends. “Too fast…”

“We’ll take the scenic route on the way out,” Sonic says, stretching his arms up above his head, leaning against his legs one at a time to get his whole body nice and limber. “Had to get here in a hurry, though. Who knows who got trapped up in that muck this time?”

“He does,” Belle says, pointing at Metal as she examines her splintered wheels. “Let’s just get it over with. Sooner we save those folks, sooner I can get the old girl back to the garage.”

Ray leans over to Sonic to ask, “Is the wagon a girl, too? Should I apologize to her?” Sonic just pats him on the head dismissively without answering.

Metal’s already opening one of the hangar doors. This base looks like some sort of hidden air strip, designed to store and launch planes and rockets without drawing too much unwanted attention. As Metal inputs his credentials and gets scanned, the grate fence slowly lifts, and the others start to see a sort of clear energy field keeping an angry, flailing bullet of slime trapped inside a small box. Sonic’s seen plenty of boxes like that, Eggman liked to use them for puzzles. Weird guy, probably should’ve got into game design instead of world domination schemes.

To the first box’s right, another one, with another slime creature inside, this one laying motionless in a heap on the ground. It’s almost kind of creepy-looking. Sonic scratches his chin. The speedy, violent one is red, the lazy, scary one is orange. Just like when he was fighting Ray that first time, he feels like a memory involving these two is on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t quite place it.

“Dang, looks like most of the fun stuff happened before we even got here,” Ray says, kicking dirt. “All we had to do was say some names, why’d all of us have to come?”

“You’re the one who burrowed out of your cage,” Jewel points out. “We had no way of knowing if we needed to fight them or not.” Ray shrugs, guessing that’s an acceptable answer. He just wished he could show off, is all.

Metal approaches the pair of reinforced energy crates, motioning for Belle to join him. She sighs and walks over. “What did you say these friends of yours’s names were?” she asks.

Metal has friends? That’s a laugh, Sonic thinks to himself.

…Then he actually thinks for a second. Wait, Metal did have friends, didn’t he? And they were not pleasant. “Uh, Belle, maybe we should–”

“Metal Knuckles, Tails Doll,” Belle says, impatiently wanting this to be done. “Remember who y’are, please.” The energetic one slows to a stop, while the one that was laying down sticks its head in the air. In less than a second, they both explode into blueish spores that attach themselves to the walls of the creates, but vanish soon after. Before anyone can say or do anything else, Metal kicks the white, spherical switch he’d been hiding to deactivate both force fields.

The boxes evaporate into nothing, and out of the clouds of blue, two robots rise. Unlike everyone else freed from this slime-thing’s grasp, the badniks don’t need time to adjust or recover. Metal Knuckles, shining, ruby head covered in exhaust vents and hands tipped with long, deadly claws, steps forward with loud, heavy clunks. Tails Doll, as ratty and patchwork as it is after all these years, floats through the air with ease as it hovers above MK, staring down at the others with blank, unthinking eyes. Metal Sonic stands between them, turning his head to slowly face Sonic as he raises a hand and brandishes his claws.

“Yeah, should’ve seen this coming,” Belle murmurs as she backs away from the trio slowly.

“And this is why you always bring backup, Ray!” Sonic tells his old friend, current burden. “Don’t suppose you three wanna keep that truce going, huh?” Tails Doll jerks uncannily in zigzags towards him, Metal Knuckles leaps into the air so he can come crashing down, and Metal dashes forward to knock Sonic into the next era. “Didn’t think so,” Sonic says with a smirk.

“KNOCK IT OFF!” Belle yells, jolting both Tails Doll and MK to a standstill as Metal stops halfway to Sonic. The two recently revived robots turn their heads to her, both whirring in confusion. “Yeah, I can understand what you’re saying! So listen to what I’M saying! I only agreed to help you two on the condition you were nice to my friends! Save the fighting for later, wouldja!?”

Doll and MK swivel their heads to look at Metal, their necks creaking with age, neither one seeming even a quarter as ready to fight as before. Metal silently screams something at the both of them, motioning to Sonic, who is RIGHT THERE, the guy the trio were INVENTED to kill, just standing here and waiting for it! “Coughed up a lotta black smog outta those rusty filters, by the way,” Belle says to Metal Knux. “And that outer shell’s lookin’ pre-tty old, fuzzball,” she adds, pointing at Tails Doll. “I could fix you both up with about half the yelling as Eggman’d give ya… IF you can behave.”

They both nod immediately, making Metal screech in disapproval. “Wow,” Sonic says, throwing an arm around Metal Sonic like they were old buddies. “Turns out, all you guys needed to get along was a woman’s touch! That’s pretty ironic, eh Ray?” He’s teaching the kid a lesson. He’s so cool.

“All’a you shut up,” Belle grumbles, kind of done with Sonic’s shit, too. Who was Ray’s edgy friend who taught him to be so rude all those years ago, Belle wonders? “Lemme get the tools outta my cart. Jewel, you want some cocoa?”

“Oh… um…” Jewel watches as Metal Knuckles and Tails Doll obediently follow along behind Belle, refusing Metal’s call to action as the copy Sonic loudly stamps his foot on the ground over and over out of impotent rage. “...Sure!” Jewel settles on, fluttering over to help Belle with whatever she needs.

Ray nods his head. “I’ve learned a lesson thanks to my cool friend, Sonic,” he says, leaning up against Metal’s other side, making Metal’s circuit board start to smoke. “Girls are pretty cool these days, huh?”

“I TOLD Y’ALL TO SHUT UP!” Belle barks. “Don’t make me get the skirts ‘n dresses out!” Ray, Sonic, and Metal do not say anything else as she starts her repairs. “S’what I thought.”

Notes:

Thank you all so much for 100 kudos ;w; it means the world that people like this story enough to keep coming back to it!

Chapter 16: After the Avatars

Three people sit around a small kitchen table, each with a wispon in front of them. A pink cat with a tactical vest and a plaid, purple skirt uses a face-mounted visor to carefully inspect her custom A-Void Wispon, a needle-thin tool wedged between two panels as she carefully, slowly adjusts an inner component. A cyan bird wearing a graphic tee and camo pants flexes their arm that holds a Drill Wispon, using an air brush to finish up its paint job, reminiscent of a mountain, with their grey wisp sitting idly in their lap. Lastly, a red wolf wearing fatigues and a bomber jacket shoves down on a piece of hull until it clicks into place onto what used to be a Burst Wispon, but with this final addition, has been reworked and reinvented into something new.

“Think I got it working!” Gadget the Wolf tells the others, holding up his Burst Eagle Wispon Mk. I for them all to see.

“Well,” Synthia Serval responds, pointing at him with her screwdriver, “I’m the one who got it working, actually. You’re just the one who put it together for me~.” She takes her designs very seriously.

“I helped,” Tool the Jay adds, smiling at the other two.

“Tool did help,” Synthia agrees.

“They helped a lot, yeah,” Gadget says with a nod. Synthia was the one who concepted and designed the inner machinery, Tool went back in and made everything look good and sleek, and Gadget was the man who put it all together. They were a good team. The only problem was that they were broke.

Designing and producing state-of-the-art wisponry was pretty popular after the war. And with how much experience the three of them had had with all sorts of combat scenarios, they were the best people for the job. But after the zombot issue, when everyone bought them out in the aftermath to protect themselves, everyone just sort of… has wispons now. Everyone with the time and energy to take care of wisps, anyway.

Sure, there’s a small spike in sales whenever there’s a new Eggman or Clutch incident, but those are always handled by Sonic and the rest so quickly now, that… people have started getting a little, tiny bit complacent again. No one’s as worried about threats knocking on their front doors as they were before, and the ones who were were usually already stocked. And you can’t exactly use a wispon for hunting game. It has, like, a living creature inside of it, dude. That’d be messed up.

“This one’s gonna be a hit,” Gadget says, more to himself than the others. “I just know it is!” Their only real business strategy going forward is going to be bigger, flashier releases. The crimson wisp was highly underutilized in the wispon market, and was sure to make a splash! Gadget holds it up and aims it at the window. “I can’t wait until we can test this…” He lowers the gun, looking out the window. A large crocodile is pressed up against the glass. “...out.”

“Oh my word, is he back?” Synthia asks, her tail curling around herself as she feels the urge to hide under the table. Tool just puts their head down and pretends they don’t see anything. “Gadget, go get rid of him for us, would you?!”

Gadget sighs, setting the group’s newest invention down on the table and walking over to the window. Without even opening it, he asks, “What do you want, Vector?”

“We got a gig!” Vector says, straining to be heard through the glass. “A caper! We need your help!”

“...Don’t see how that’s our problem, actually,” Gadget tells him, still with a sour expression on his face.

“What do you mean!?” Vector yells back. “Have you not noticed everything going all screwy today!?”

Gadget looks back over at Synthia and Tool, remembering the morning they’d all had together and then agreed not to talk about ever again. “Nope, sorry, nothing comes to mind,” Gadget says quickly.

“Come on, Gadge, we go way baaack!!!” Vector begs, big, sad, scaly face pressed into the glass and deforming against it.

“Yeah, we do,” Gadget says, forcing a smile that’s a bit too toothy to be polite. “So it hurts even more when You. Never. Pay. Us.”

“It’s a rough economy, okay!? It’s been hard on everybody!” In response to Vector’s wailing, Gadget starts to lower the blinds. “Wait wait wait!!!” Gadget lifts the blinds slightly to look at Vector’s pathetic grin. “We got an, uh, elite client for this one! You’re not gonna want to miss out on this, I promise! And if this commission goes through, I guarantee customers will show up in crowds!”

Gadget groans. He wants to shut Vector out, he really, really does. But he also knows that even if he works for free, it’ll probably be helping someone somewhere. Vector doesn’t ask for frivolous favors. When he comes knocking, it’s usually serious… even if he is a cheap bastard.

When Gadget caves and starts moving from the window to the door, Synthia says, “Gadget, don’t open the door. Gadget, please, step away from the door. Don’t open the door! Don’t open the door, Gadget, do not open the– He’s opening the door…”

“GADGET, BUDDY!” Vector roars as he’s allowed entrance into the domicile, “You’re making the right decision here, pal, I can promise you that!” As Synthia and Tool both grimace disapprovingly at Gadget, who offers a weak smile and a shrug to the pair in return, Vector stands in the doorway and makes room for his posse to make their way inside. “Team Chaotix, meet some of my old contacts from the war! You remember those folks that helped Sonic–”

“Hey, if you get to say your cool name, then say ours, too!” Tool says, pointing their drill at Vector, their wisp nodding in agreement as it glares from atop Tool’s shoulder.

“Right, sorry. Ahem.” Vector gestures sweepingly at the trio and announces, “Team Chaotix, meet the Avenging Avatars!”

“I was also there for the war, Vector,” Espio says quietly as he walks into the apartment. “I remember who Gadget is.” He waves at Tool and Synthia, neither of whom acknowledge him.

“Team Chaotix minus Espio,” Vector says with the same level of grandiosity as before, “Meet the Avenging Avatars!”

“Don’t include me in that,” Shadow growls from outside, not gracing the front doormat with his footsteps, let alone their actual house. “I am not a part of your team, don’t introduce me as if I represent you.” He scoffs, arms folded as usual.

Vector’s eyelids lower. With much less aplomb he adjusts to, “Team Chaotix minus Espio and featuring special guest star Shadow the Hedgehog, meet the Aven–”

“SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG!?” Synthia yells, jolting up with her hands on the table and staring in disbelief. She runs over, shoving Vector and Espio to the side to run out the door and see him for herself. “Dearest Gaia, it really IS you! I am such a fan of yours!” She runs in circles around the hedgehog while he stands there awkwardly. “Is it true you survived a fall from outer orbit!? Were you really friends with President Blaustein!? I heard that you had wings, do you have wings, I never believed it for a moment, but this video I saw–”

“Please stop talking,” Shadow says coldly, jolting the cat out of her fangirl haze and sending her careening back to reality. As she runs back inside and hides under the table, Shadow asks, “Vector, why are we here of all places?”

“Because the Avenging Avatars are the world’s top experts in wispon design and engineering! And if we want average people to be able to defend themselves against monsters they can’t hurt, then they need to be able to contain them, at least!”

“What are you saying, exactly?” Gadget asks, not at all up to speed on the situation.

“Lemme talk to you in private for a minute, bud!” Vector says, putting his arm around Gadget and leading him into a different room. “The rest a’ yas get to know each other real quick!”

“I– Wait a minute, that’s–” Gadget tries to get free, but Vector is twice his height and has an iron grip on his shoulder. “Vector!!!”

Shaking his head slowly, Espio says, “Synthia, Tool, this is my old friend Mighty. Mighty, these three helped us in the war I was telling you about against the Eggman Empire.”

Mighty nods at the pair of them, saying, “Wish I’da been around for that mess. Would’ve been over in a minute and a half if I coulda got my hands on the guy!” He smiles and winks, saying, “Thanks for taking care of my friends when I was indisposed, though. Means a lot.”

“Hi,” Synthia squeaks from under the table, still barely peeking out at everyone.

“...” Tool just looks at Mighty for a moment before asking, “Wanna see me cut a boulder in half?”

“Heck yeah, I do!” Mighty declares.

“I’d also enjoy witnessing this feat,” Espio adds with a nod. “Lead the way.”

The three of them head outside to the back of the building, leaving no one in the front room other than Synthia and Shadow, both of whom are completely quiet for several seconds. A good half minute of complete, utter stillness later, the awkwardness is broken with a quiet, delicate, “Would you like to see our guns?”

“...Yes,” Shadow says. “Yes, guns are important to me.”

Synthia Serval leads Shadow into the basement, which would be the start of a horror story for anyone else around a parasocial fan, but, like. It’s Shadow the fucking Hedgehog, what could she possibly do, right? Well, she pulls out a gun, for one, which would also be horrifying for anyone else, but she did sort of say that’s what she’d do, so… Shadow’s starting to think that he’s exceptional.

Downstairs is a shooting range and a play area for all of the wisps, though Shadow’s eyes fall primarily onto the wall-mounted wispons lining every vertical surface. Shadow saw what the Resistance was using during the war, some piddly parasols and matchstick flamethrowers. But these were something else entirely. Most of them looked far bigger than the Resistance models, first of all. Shadow was seeing long rifles and canons, weapons that probably had some decent kick to them. Even the smaller ones, though, were closer in model to G.U.N. weapons than the bright and colorful plastic toys that wispons normally resembled. Shadow is… slightly impressed. Not overly, but he can see the vision.

Synthia hands him something that looks like one of those old 10mm pistols from video games, just a gray rectangle with a trigger on one side and a muzzle on the other. “I made this one with, ah, some of what I saw during the Black Doom invasion in mind. The design’s in its infancy, but I thought you might like to give it a test run for me.”

Without saying anything, but raising an eyebrow curiously, Shadow takes the gun into his hand. He knows it’s a wispon, he can even see the wisp capsule where a cartridge would normally be, but it sure does resemble something a bit more traditional. Shadow never cared much for alien powers and magic wands, he preferred a solid, tangible bullet. This thing at least has the aesthetic he was after.

He holds it up with one hand, takes careful aim towards one of the targets at the end of the range, and fires, and feels actual kickback as a black orb fires out of the muzzle and explodes at the other end of the range, a bomb wisp using its powers to act like an actual bullet would, just with a massive explosion instead of a small, discrete impact. Shadow blinks. “Huh.” He fires it a few more times to feel it out. Decent rate of fire, sounds like a dream, and again, that kickback has him nostalgic for government contracts. “This is… Impressive,” he says.

“R-Really!?” Synthia stutters, “You mean it!?”

Oh, right, she was here, Shadow thinks to himself. He almost forgot. Well… might as well play with his food a bit. “It’s nice. I might actually want a few of these for myself if you can take it out of the prototype stage.” As Synthia’s face fills with awe and pride, Shadow takes his finger off the trigger (always practice safely) and runs the top of the barrel along the underside of Synthia’s chin. “Unfortunately, my business partner handles the bank account, so I can’t exactly afford the down payment right now.” Shadow looks directly into her eyes, smirking, as he says, “Unless there’s anything else you’d want from me, instead~?”

“* * *” Synthia just coughs out hot air, her face burning and her ears flat against her head. At some point, her side visor falls right off her face and ends up somewhere on the floor. Where’s a table to hide under when a girl needs it?

“Right,” Shadow says, taking her hand and making her take the gun back from him. Just him touching her hand at all is enough to make Synthia fall to her knees trembling. “Keep me updated, then. We’ll be in touch.”

“Y-y-y-yes, sir…!” Synthia squeaks out as Shadow turns back to the stairs and starts to walk up. “Tha-thank you, Mr. Hedgehog sir!” Shadow frowns a bit, but isn’t sure exactly why.

Tool the Jay holds up their drill, which is effortlessly lifting a large chunk of dirt and rock out of the ground. “So yeah, turns out you don’t gotta even change the guts of these things that much, putting a different wisp in will do all sorts of different things.” They rotate the drill, spinning the boulder they drew out of the ground around.

“So you’ve turned a tool made for breaking ground apart into one that can shape it to your will.” Espio hums as if he’s just said something deep. “How poetic.”

“Yup, it’s pretty neat!” Mighty says. “Then again…” He punches the ground hard, lodging his fist into the dirt, only to pull his arm back with a loud grunt and yank out a boulder of his own, lifting it above his head with one hand. “Haha! Ain’t nothing a machine can do that I can’t do better!” He clears his throat. “No offense.”

“Don’t be a show-off,” Shadow says, leaning in the doorway from the building to the back yard.

“That’s rich coming from you of all people,” Espio says, feeling a bit more confident now that he’s surrounded by his friends.

Shadow walks over to him, dashing that confidence by whispering in his ear, “Nice pants, Espio, try not to ruin the front of these ones, too.” As Espio starts showing every Pantone swatch on cycle, Shadow says in his outside voice, “Try not to insult the engineering of those we’re seeking aid from here, Mighty.”

Mighty scratches his head and gives a friendly smile. “Ah, I didn’t mean anything by it, man. Sorry, though!”

“It’s, uh, chill?” Tool says, though a bit nervously. Then Shadow is right beside them and they get even more nervous.

“Still not exactly sure why we’re asking for help here, of all places,” Shadow says darkly, “There are dozens of inventors out there that can make a net launcher. You must have something that the others don’t.” He grins as he looks into Tool’s eyes. “I am very curious to find out what secrets you’re hiding.”

Tool has to bite their own tongue to keep from saying ‘We’re easier to scam.’ In lieu of that, they say, “Well I’m not a man, for starters.” This time Shadow is the one holding himself back from saying, ‘Then you’re useless to me.’ Thank goodness he doesn’t, that’d be crazy. “Uh, maybe the wrong kind of secret, though…? You probably don’t care…”

“Ah, sorry!” Mighty says again, realizing he’s misgendered them once or twice already. “Again. I’m sorry again! Dang, I’m messing up all over, huh?”

“It’s, like, fine!” Tool says with a shrug, almost forgetting they’re holding a boulder, which nearly falls down onto them. “Uh, when guys don’t wear clothes, this whole outfit deal is kind of a statement, but if everyone is doing it, it’s kinda… you know, harder to convey.” Looking like a dude but with pants on used to MEAN something. Now Tool needs to find other ways to not conform.

“Ah, gender,” Espio muses to himself quietly, his skin settling down on a lime green with orange highlights. “A ninja’s greatest nemesis.”

“...” Tool says nothing in response to that.

“...” Shadow concurs.

“Es, buddy, what the fuck does that mean?” Mighty asks. Espio does not respond.

Something about this conversation is getting on Shadow’s nerves, so he shrugs and turns back towards the house. “Well, if you’re not going to say anything, I’ll have to figure things out myself, I suppose.” He doesn’t even need to turn back to wink or smile or anything this time, he’s well aware of the effect he’s having on people by now. “Don’t keep me waiting forever, though. You ‘Avatars’ have me intrigued.” They honestly don’t, he just wants people to think he’s hot and mysterious.

Tool sets down the boulder back into the hole they’d dug it out of. You know, maybe if Vector brings customers like these around, he isn’t actually so– eh, nevermind, Vector’s still pretty bad. “Hey,” Mighty says from behind them, leaving Espio to stay statue-still after refusing any and all questioning. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Tool says, trying to dislodge their drill from the ground… and mostly just getting it more stuck. “I get it, really.” They pull again and WOW they are SUPER jammed in there.

Mighty walks over and puts a hand on Tool’s arm, his grip surprisingly gentle as he easily plucks the wispon, and Tool with it, out of the ground. “Didn’t mean to insult this guy, either, promise. It really is an impressive piece of tech,” Mighty says, looking the drill over. “Even if I am pretty impressive myself.”

Tool looks at Mighty’s thick arms and perfect teeth and giant pecs and says, “You’re… something alright, dude.” Fine, Tool will admit Vector’s fine… for his friends, at least.

Vector had accidentally dragged Gadget the Wolf into the bathroom, since that was the first door he could find that wasn’t locked. After a very awkward shuffle to get them both inside, he’d quickly gotten to explaining the situation in full, everything with the memories and the emotions and the monsters. After catching Gadget up to speed, he also explains why he’d insisted on coming to Gadget in particular first. “Tails has Sonic,” he continues, “I saw Rouge myself, and I don’t even know if robots like Belle are affected, yet. I needed to beeline here to make sure you guys were still alive, you know?” Vector didn’t need them in particular to work on the capture wispons, he was just worried they’d been turned and had no other way to check on them. It didn't help that none of them answered the phone.

“That… explains your new friend, I guess,” Gadget says, slowly nodding his head as he sits on the edge of the bath tub. Vector is taking up… a lot of room in here. “Or, old friend from the way you’re telling it…” Gadget’s not sure how to feel about him and his friends being the first ones Vector came to check on based on the single clue of ‘forgotten people.’ Any inventor could do what Vector’s asking for… but all the other ones had more friends looking out for them than the Avenging Avatars… Gadget doesn’t feel particularly great about it, he decides.

“Call me paranoid or call it a hunch,” Vector says, “But I only have so much information to work with, here. Someone vanishes years and years ago, only to show back up as a spook. Made me think…” He looks over to Gadget, who seems despondent at that comparison. “Look, just keep your eyes peeled and watch each other’s backs.”

“Not gonna lie,” Gadget sighs, “Kinda wish you’d’ve come here actually looking for our help.” He hates being left on the sidelines again. He wants to help people.

“Well, those capture wispons will still be important if this becomes a serious issue,” Vector says, “That wasn’t a lie. But also…” His large tail thwaps against the toilet. Ew. “I had to warn you. Because there might be a problem only you can solve.”

“What would that be?” Gadget asks, expecting Vector to ask him to order him a pizza or invent a way to pick up girls. That might as well be how things go, with his luck.

“Well, I told you that Mighty showed up at my office looking for a fight,” Vector explains. “Of all the places a mindless monster could’ve ended up, my office was the place he did. Probably because of that old connection we had!” Vector pauses, looking at the confused wolf. “Guy vanishes, I look for him, he finds me first. Sound familiar?”

Gadget feels like the air in the room got tighter around his skin.

“If my hunch is correct,” Vector continues, “And if ‘you know who’ disappeared for the same reason as Mighty… You might be in for a bad time, pal.” Vector was lucky that the monster who sought him out ended up being friendly once he was cured. But the ghosts haunting Gadget weren’t so nice.

Gadget closes his eyes and covers his mouth with a palm. All that time he’d wasted searching, all those days he was sure he was so close only to come up empty-handed. Was it really all for nothing? Or was this just more false hope? “You’re sure about this?” Gadget asks grimly.

“No,” Vector admits. “But it’d make a helluva lotta sense, wouldn’t it?” Gadget slowly nods in response. It would. “I gotta get this group ‘a mooks over to Emeraldville,” Vector says, total non sequitur. “If there’s anyone who knows how to help when folks need helping, it’ll be those guys. You three stay put and watch over each other, alright?”

“...sounds like a plan,” Gadget sighs. It certainly gave him a lot to think about, at least.

“Grrrreat!” Vector coughs out. “I’ll get outta yer fur, then! Thanks a ton, old buddy!” Vector opens the door and walks out of the bathroom, heading towards the back to go and grab Espio and Mighty. Gadget stays sat down for a while longer, just taking in everything Vector had told him.

“Infinite…” he mumbles to himself, every conflicting emotion all rumbling around his head at once. He’s scared and angry and hopeful and dreading whatever answers he’ll find. He can’t just sit on the sidelines for this. Not after the zombots and the sweepstakes and the… everything. He can’t. Not again. He eventually stands, walks out of the bathroom, and is suddenly face to face with a black hedgehog.

Shadow is leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed, truly a one-trick pony. He looks down at Gadget’s feet and then slowly trails his eyes up the wolf’s body to his face. He gives off a quiet, almost disapproving, “Hmph,” before standing up and walking away. “Try not to get in my way,” Shadow scoffs, leaving Gadget alone in the hallway, clenching his fists.

“Thanks for having us!” Vector says once everyone is gathered at the front again. Synthia is still a flustered mess, Tool was too shy to even split the boulder in the end, and Gadget is… distant. More so than before. “I’ll keep in touch about the commission! Actually try and pick up your phone next time, hahaha!” Vector clears his throat. “Seriously, I worry.”

“Catch y’all later,” Mighty says as Espio nods at the trio, all of the Chaotix turning to leave. Shadow stares at the Avenging Avatars one last time as a group before saying nothing, turning away, and following Vector down the street.

A few moments of them all stewing in their individualized cavalcade of feelings later, and only after their guests have fully disappeared, Synthia murmurs, “I need to masturbate right now or I’ll die. Do you two want to watch again, or…?”

Tool shrugs. “Yeah, sounds good to me.” So much for not talking about what they’d done ever again. These three were bad at keeping promises.

“You two go ahead,” Gadget says, not at all as interested in fooling around as he was this morning. “I have… something I need to check on.” He also leaves the apartment, closing and locking the door behind him to hopefully deter anyone who’d want to ambush his friends. Vector had told him to keep put, to keep an eye out for ‘visitors.’ But like he just said, he’s bad at keeping promises. And he’s not going to wait around for a threat to come to him anymore. He tucks his new wispon into his jacket and starts walking, not sure of what he’d find, but eager to not be forgotten again.

Notes:

So, Sonic Forces, amirite?

None of the Avatar characters have canon names, and none but the red wolf even show up these days. But these three were the canon designs for the Avatar for a reason, and it'd be a shame to not utilize them, so have a new team of three!

I've seen the fandom name 'Gadget' for the red wolf all over the place, and it felt pretty fitting for what I was going for here, so I went with that! And to fit his name scheme, I tried to go for more techy, inventor-ish names for the other two, and so I landed on Synthia the Serval and Tool the Jay. I encountered the names Fuchsia, Corvin, Gizmo, and Widget for these two, but none of them seem to be very widely adopted, so I decided to just go with my own thing. The pink cat and the cyan bird from the Forces poster aren't exactly fandom mavericks right now anyhow.

Either way, these three are the closest to OCs we have in the fic right now, so hopefully they're okay! To be honest, I am doing a lot of heavy lifting with the classic characters like Mighty and Ray considering they don't really talk much in canon, but I at least had more to work with than 'friends of Sonic.' In either case, everyone's positive reactions to the story have meant a lot so far, so thanks to everyone saying nice things and leaving kudos! I will continue to do my best ^-^

Chapter 17: Post-Knuck Clarity

Notes:

This chapter is kinda horny! There's some non-explicit sex and a bit of lingering on people's bodies, so just be aware of that before diving in!

Knuckles has a lot on his mind right now. It’s mostly just a single memory, but boy was it a heavy one. Heavy, heaving, bountiful - one could even call it ‘pressing.’

In his memory, Rouge had divebombed him, swooping in out of nowhere and whisking him away to some roof. Before he knew it, he was being pulled down on top of her, her clothes were coming off, and she was begging for him. What felt like years of frustrations had finally been wrung out as Rouge let him loose on herself, letting him do anything and everything he wanted. In his head, it’s a blur of wet, bouncing skin and desperate gasps, but at the same time, he can picture every second of it picture-perfect, as if she’s still right there beneath him, thighs wrapped around his hips.

And now the two of them are just walking around like everything is normal. Rouge is casually chatting with Trip while Knuckles can’t think about anything other than how he was literally *in* her less than 20 minutes ago. Why is she acting like nothing happened? He glances over his shoulder as Rouge is saying, “A dragon form? Really? Heh, next time we gather all the emeralds, maybe we should hand them over to you instead of Sonic. I’d like to see a girl take control of things for once.”

“Oh, no,” Trip nervously says, shrinking a bit, “I wouldn’t be that much… I mean, Sonic’s done so much, I couldn’t…!”

“Nonsense!” Rouge argues as she flicks her wrist at Trip. “I mean, Super Sonic can’t even breathe fire. That sounds like a waste of a transformation to me~!”

“Rouge, more than one person can use the emeralds at a time,” Tails says, having settled on some grey overalls and a yellow button-down, the outfit Surge had cackled about the least. “Trip and Sonic can share if it ever comes to that.”

Rouge huffs. “Forgive me for wanting some diversity in our world-famous heroes!”

As Trip scratches at her blushing cheek, very unsure if she’s hero material, Tails says, “You just think she’d be easier to steal the emeralds from than Sonic.”

“Steal is a strong word,” Rouge immediately answers. “I mean, for all you know, Trip would simply let me borrow a few~! Right, new friend~?”

“Uh… m-maybe…?” Trip says, not wanting to deny anyone anything ever.

Knuckles’s eyes linger on the sungazer for a bit longer than he’d like. With Rouge walking along next to her, it was hard for Knuckles’s mind not to fill in some comparative gaps. Trip is taller than Rouge, has more defined muscle, is a LOT more quiet, and Knuckles can’t stop himself from comparing their figures, now that he knows Rouge’s so intimately. Trip is overall skinnier, especially in her hips, which isn’t saying much given how filled-out Rouge was. But above the belt, her chest was actually pretty close to–

Trip looks up at him, forcing Knuckles to snap his gaze in the exact opposite direction as her. He prays to the Master Emerald that she hadn’t seen exactly how or where he’d been staring.

“...I could have a super form,” Surge mutters, also making a point to not look over in Trip and Rouge’s direction. “...you don’t know…”

“You had something like that a while ago with the Dynamo Cage, remember?” Tails remarks, “I think it ended with you getting overwhelmed and then exploding.”

Surge’s nervous, avoidant glances towards and away from all the others focus into one glare of anger directly at Tails. She hasn’t spoken a word above a whisper to anyone else since they’d left his lab, but to him, she can roar, “And the next time will end with my teeth in your entrails, you miserable little fuck!”

“Kids, can you calm down a little?” Rouge requests. Surge would fry her into a speck for calling her a ‘kid’ if she wasn’t so fucking… boobs! “I swear, you argue more than Sonic and Shadow on a bad day.”

“I can do *anything* better than Sonic!” Surge barks.

“I said more. Not better,” Rouge says, rolling her eyes. Some unknowable part of Surge feels a sore ache at that rebuttal.

Rouge isn’t wrong, Surge and Tails haven’t stopped bickering since Knuckles showed up at Tails’s lab. And no matter how much both of them deny it, he still thinks this is some sort of odd flirtation ritual. It’s kind of how like he and Rouge acted when they met… just a little bit more physically violent. A little bit.

Other than Tails, the lime girl is the smallest one here, so Knuckles isn’t exactly sure why she’s constantly making fun of his height. She’s just a tiny, loud, overbearing wrecking ball, honestly. Fun to fight alongside, not so much to walk around with. Then again, even though those puffy pants make it a bit hard to tell, from the way she walks, Knuckles can make a decent guess as to how she compares to Rouge where it matters. Knuckles can forgive Tails for encouraging her nastiness if hips like that are involved. Real soft-looking face, too, when she’s not scowling, so he guesses that he understands–

“What are you looking at?” Surge suddenly says, snapping Knuckles out of his own head. Damn, he was staring at her, too, wasn’t he!? Whenever she was looking at Tails, she always had this mad-looking frown plastered on her spiky head, but looking at him right now, she almost looks shy.

Knuckles has to forget about that, though. “Just wondering what we can do to get you to be quiet, honestly.” When Surge looks… genuinely hurt by that statement, Knuckles averts his gaze and blurts out, “Yeah, that works, mission accomplished!” It was always his instinct to be the jerk when he felt trapped, so unfortunately, Surge was not going to be getting any comfort from him any time soon.

“I think what Ms. Surge r-really needs right now is an outlet,” Trip suggests. Like a gym membership or a boxing coach. Something to let her feel violent without taking it out on anybody.

“And a fork,” Tails mutters. Rouge and Knuckles both stop dead, whipping around to look at him with their eyes wide and their mouths agape. Did Baby Miles just say that!?!? “S-sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean–”

Surge also stopped statue-still to stare at him, but when he looks at her, she’s… grinning. “WOWWWW, didn’t know this thing came with a ‘fight back’ button! Where do I gotta kick to make you not such a little wimp, huh!?” Surge asks, taking a few pot-shots at his shins with her foot, Tails meekly stepping out of her way. “Say it out loud next time instead of muttering like a crying baby bird and I’ll actually take you seriously for once, nerd!”

“I said I was sorry!” Tails whines, having to flutter into the air to keep from being kicked or noogied. “Stoppp!”

“...something like that, yeah,” Trip says quietly, shrugging.

Rouge leans over to Knuckles, asking, “What is Sonic feeding that kid these days?” Tails was the meekest, kindest little guy she’s ever met, since when has he been shooting off comebacks like that?

“Nothing?” Knuckles responds. “He’s lived by himself for a while now. Probably buys his own groceries.”

Rouge rolls her eyes. “Not what I–” Now that Tails is in the sky, Surge is sending little sparks after him to try and shoot him down, a little crackle of thunder sounding off after each one. “Oh for the love of gemstones, now this?”

With Rouge right next to him, even with her staring off at something else, Knuckles can’t help but wonder. He shoves his hands into the pockets of the pants that Rouge stole off that guy, finding a wallet that he’ll ignore for now, and says, “What are we going to do?”

This time, it’s Rouge’s turn to completely misunderstand. “Well, we’re like a block away from Omega, so *I* get to have a break from this for a glorious minute or two, actually.” Knuckles clenches his fists. Dammit. She was right here next to him, still acting like normal, and he can’t understand why. Didn’t she come and find him for a reason? Didn’t what they did mean anything? Was she pretending in front of the others or is she giving him the cold shoulder? Did he do something to make her mad? Did she do something to make *him* mad!? What was wrong?

“Alright, everyone,” Rouge says, stopping on the sidewalk in front of an urban duplex. “I’m grabbing Omega, and then we can keep looking around for whoever knows what, alright?” They really had no plan other than that when they left Tails’s house. She has no idea what any of them are trying to accomplish, and she doesn’t care! She’s gotten what she wanted out of today already.

“Wait…” Tails asks, “This is where Shadow lives?” He expected it to be some sort of secret base or sinister fortress. This is just a house.

“No,” Rouge tells him with a wink. “You are not privy to that information, and so you have no idea where Shadow lives, alright?”

Tails rolls his eyes, smiling and nodding as he immediately catches onto Rouge’s double meaning. “Alright, I get it. His secret’s safe with us.” Well, with him and Trip, he’s sure. Who knows who Surge will tell.

“Good boy~!” Rouge declares, “That’s why you’re my favorite goody two-shoes~!” She takes out her keys to the front door and starts walking towards the porch. “Just wait here, I’ll be back in–”

“No,” Knuckles says, “I’m coming in with you.” He needs to talk to her. He has to.

“Oh.” Rouge looks at him for a moment, then says, “Alright~!” She’s not sure if he just wants to get away from Tails and Surge or if he’s in the mood for another quickie, but she won’t complain either way. “Just don’t track anything inside, Shadow is a crazy clean freak, he’ll notice.” Rouge opens the door for Knuckles, lets him inside, and before she can even take off her shoes, he’s pinning her to the wall. “Oh, option 2 it was!” she tells herself.

“What are we?” Knuckles asks, just having his hand on the wall next to her head, not touching or doing anything else.

Ah. Rouge sees what this is now. Shame. “...A bat and an echidna, do you need me to draw you a diagram? You should be intimately familiar with that by now.” She brushes his hand away from her, but he only grabs her wrist. Not hard, just to keep her from walking away from him.

“You know what I mean, I know you do.” He feels something desperate from deep inside of him take control, something that needs to be answered. “I mean, you can’t just act like nothing happened! What *was* all of that to you!?”

“A hookup,” Rouge says with stony precision. “A single hookup. That’s all it was, Knuckles, it’s not that serious.” It wouldn’t have even been that much if she’d known he’d be all clingy and weird about it after the fact. He was good, but not that good.

“That can’t– That isn’t–!” Knuckles growls, letting go of her and pacing around the entryway. “You’re ALWAYS doing this! You come onto me, you push yourself as far as you can go, and the second I try to do anything back, you’re gone!” He’s trying not to yell, to not be overheard by Omega or anyone outside, but it feels like his bones are trying to claw out of his body right now as he speaks. “I don’t want it to be that way anymore, Rouge! Do you actually not see anything wrong with that!?”

Rouge bristles, disliking being criticized for her lifestyle immensely. “Knuckles, we had sex one time. I’ve maybe flirted with you here and there before, but we aren’t married. This isn’t an official *thing,* you realize.”

“Can it be!?” Knuckles asks desperately. “Because it NOT being that is killing me! Not knowing if you’re pretending not to care or if you actually don’t is BAD, Rouge! And I never know when you’re going to want more or ignore me altogether! I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what NOT to do, I just can’t deal with it!”

Rouge scoffs. “Well if you cared at all, you could start with *not* staring at Trip’s tits like they were playing you a movie while I’m standing right next to her.”

Oh, she saw that, huh? “I- I wasn’t–”

Rouge points a finger at him, shoving it right up to his face. “Do NOT lie to me, Red,” she growls through gritted teeth, “I do NOT like it when men lie to save their asses in my presence. It’s not cute, it’s not funny, it pisses me off, understand!?” She pulls away and runs her hands over her head, smoothing her ears back. “It’s not like it matters to me that you’re leering at other girls, but stop acting like this is anything but a fling when you’re the one proving otherwise.”

“W-Well what about you!?” Knuckles booms. “You were out there flirting with Tails of all guys!” The ‘good boy’ comment had made his fur crawl, why else would he have insisted on having this talk right now?

Rouge’s face twists in disgust. “Tails is a child,” she nearly spits out, “I can assure you that that was *not* what I was doing.” Rouge doesn’t care how much time and personal growth they’ve all had over the years, she doesn’t care even slightly how old Tails actually is, she’s known him since he was 9 years old and that would be unbelievably creepy, actually! She’s not a fucking predator, Knuckles, what is wrong with you, she thinks to herself.

“Well how was that,” Knuckles begins to ask, pointing to the door that everyone else was on the other side of, “Any different from this!?” He uses both heavy, mitted hands to gesture to himself, to all the times Rouge has teased him in nearly identical ways.

“Knuckles, I sometimes enjoy how much of an idiot you are, but you cannot be serious right now!” Rouge pinches the bridge of her snout and says, “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you’re an adult man? Do you even know what you’re accusing me of right now!?”

“NO!” Knuckles protests, crouching down on the floor and covering his head with his hands. “I don’t know anything about any of this, alright!?”

Oh her god, is he gonna start crying? “...Knuckles, please get up off the floor.” When he doesn’t, not saying anything, she sighs and says, “Listen. I have… a lot going on right now. I don’t know where I’m going to be emotionally in a day or a week, and I’m not saddling anyone else with that bullshit who isn’t already involved. I’m doing you a favor, alright?”

They’re both silent for a moment. Then Knuckles, with his head still in his lap, says, “It feels bad not being able to see you as much as I wish I could.” That’s something he’s been wanting to say to Rouge for… a while. For a long time, actually. Today and their sudden, cloying closeness just made it come out of him. He’s not even sure if he means it or not, but he needed to say it.

Rouge lets that statement wash over her… then feels it sting. He’s not listening to her, he needs to *listen* to her! Rouge shoves Knuckles onto his back and says, “Knuckles. Look at me.” She takes off her jacket and tosses it at the coatrack, missing by a mile and not caring. Knuckles feels her jump into his lap, straddling him as he lays against the carpeted floor. “I am telling you what I can and cannot give you right now, and you need to understand EXACTLY where that line is!” Rouge lifts her shirt up over her head, letting her breasts flop out, practically right into Knuckle’s face. “You either get me like this or not at all, understand? If you want something more, then find it somewhere else!”

Knuckles stares at her for a moment, first at her face and then at her chest. Then he pulls her down onto him, his hands in her hair and her hand down his pants as they start to make out on the floor, quickly transitioning into fucking on the floor. Right now, in this moment, these two are BAD for each other, and they both know that well. At the end of the day, though, who the fuck cared? It was as undeniably bad as it felt undeniably good. And if this conversation has proven anything, it’s that they’re both fine with their self-harm and self-pleasure mixing.

Outside, Trip is gazing up blankly at the sky again, as if waiting for something to appear above them. Surge is laying down on the sidewalk, legs folded and restless as she taps her feet and picks at her teeth. Tails is just savoring this moment of silence. That is, until it’s broken with Surge asking, “So those two are *definitely* fucking again, right?”

“None of your business!” Tails snaps at her.

“Nun nuv nor nizzness!” Surge repeats after him mockingly. “I’m borrrred! I thought we came here so we could get the fuck up and DO something, not just sit around waiting some more!”

“Patience…” Trip mutters to no one in particular. Surge isn’t gonna argue with her, but she will give the back of the lizard’s head a suspicious glare. Looking at even that much makes her stomach and chest ache again, a sharp, twisting feeling of pain filling her body. She sits up and stares at Tails to make her forget about it. His greasy, nasty head was a good distraction. “Do we even need this robot idiot?” she asks, “Can’t we just go out and find something ourselves!?”

“Affirmitive!” an artificial voice blares from the direction of the house, making Surge and Tails both jolt with surprise. They look over and find Omega just standing there, seemingly having come from nowhere. “You Require My Aid Like A Newborn Calf Requires Milk. Helpless And Fragile Without My Strong, Guiding Bullets.”

“O-Omega, how long have you been standing there!?” Tails asks, feeling like he’d just witnessed a magic trick. This guy was huge, how did his footsteps not alert any of– oh yeah, Surge’s yelling.

After a pause, Omega responds, “Five Minutes.” Once he heard the arguing downstairs become sudden, loud moaning, he’d jumped out a window and hovered down to the porch for safety. Even with his limited interpersonal capabilities, he is fully shocked that no one noticed him doing any of that.

“...I thought Rouge and Knuckles were inside looking for you, though?” Tails says. “Where are–”

“Sex,” Omega interrupts. “Angry, Flailing Body Movements This Unit Will Have No Part In.”

“HA!” Surge spits, flipping Tails her middle finger, “I was right, suck it!”

“Suck it yourself, weirdo,” Tails grumbles, taking a step or two away from her.

“Ew,” Surge responds. “Why would you say that to someone? Are you ugly, short *and* a pervert? You should let yourself get hit by a bus, man.”

“If I keep having to be around you,” Tails says, “I might.”

Omega observes this, looking back and forth between the two-tailed mutant and the green, pointy science experiment. “Impotent Hostilities Associated With Unspoken Feelings Detected. If You Two Start, I Will Chaingun Off My Own Face.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Surge asks genuinely, referring to the flirting and not the face-gun part. “He’s way uglier than me, I could do so much better.”

“Thank goodness,” Tails deadpans. “I’ve been getting really scared over here that you were gonna try something.”

“You would be scared of girls, incel.”

“Shut Up Shut Up Shut Up I Hate You Both So Much.” Omega is about five seconds away from gunning down his own house just in the off chance it’ll hit Rouge and this nightmare can end.

Omega’s intrusive thoughts are interrupted by Tails’s communicator ringing. He takes it out of his pocket and says, “Oh, Amy’s calling. Can you be quiet for this, or–”

“Amy!?” The pink one who she had lunch with!? The one with the dresses and the smiling and the sweetest smiles ever!? “No, anyone but her, do NOT pick up that call!” If Surge can barely be herself around Trip and Knuckles, she might DIE if Amy shows up! Surge holds up two crackling balls of lightning and says, “If you answer her I will literally murder you, I will turn your body inside out, you disgusting freak!”

“Sounds Fun,” Omega says. “Go Ahead And Answer The Phone, Little Squishy Man. One Less Warm-Blooded Worm To Concern Myself Over.”

Tails looks between Surge and Omega for a moment before tossing his communicator in the air. “Trip, catch!”

“Huh?” Trip turns her head and it bonks her between the eyes, landing in her lap. “Ow!”

“Sorry!” Tails says. Aw, man, everyone’s gonna be so disappointed in him after this, he’s being such a jerk…!

“Hello? Tails?” A voice calls out from the tiny box in Trip’s lap. She picks it up and holds the screen up to her face. “Who are y– Trip!? Trip, wow, it’s been ages, how are you?”

“Oh… A-Amy. Hi,” Trip says quietly as she rubs her forehead, Surge in the background slamming her face repeatedly into the dirt by the road.

“Is… is that Surge!? Is she okay!?” Amy asks, sounding worried.

“...” Trip slightly adjusts the way she’s holding the device so that Surge is no longer in frame. “No.” Trip does not clarify which of the two questions she’d answered.

With Trip holding the communicator, making it safe from Surge’s wrath, Tails flutters into the air above the lizard and asks, “Hey, Amy, what’s up?”

“Tails, there you are…!” Amy decides she’ll have to catch up with everyone later. She’s really not in the mood for a friendly chat, no matter how much she fakes it. “I was… actually really hoping I could ask for a ride! I need to go see Sticks, but the ferries are closed today…!”

“Well, I’m not really at home right now…” And Surge fried his best plane. “I would help if I could, but I’m not actually sure if I can…?”

“Oh…” Amy sounds… deeply disappointed in this. It makes Tails feel like even more of a jerk. “Well, where are you right now…?”

“Oh, Rouge brought us over to her house.” Everything happening today forcing a leap of logic in her mind, Amy’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. “N-NOT LIKE THAT!!! WE CAME TO MEET UP WITH OMEGA!!!”

“...Ah! W-well thank goodness…!” Cuz she’s like twice your age, bud, that’d be scary. “Well… Sorry for bothering you, I guess,” Amy says sadly. “How am I gonna get there now?”

Before she can hang up, though, she hears Omega announce, “Procurement Of Shadow The Hedgehog’s All Terrain Vehicle: Ill-Advised, But Recommended. Stealing It May Incur His Wrath, Observation Of Which Is Enjoyable.”

“...is this important enough to steal Shadow’s car over, Amy?” Tails asks suspiciously.

“Uh…?” Amy wants to say no, but she really doesn’t have any other options right now. “Yeah?”

Tails sighs. “Alright. Keep your location on, we’ll be right over!” At least it would give them something to do.

“Okay! Thank you so much, Tails!” Amy hangs up, startling Trip with how sudden her disappearance is.

“You can hold onto that,” Tails tells Trip, patting her on the shoulder appreciatively. “If I take it back, I think it’ll get confiscated and used as evidence by the police…” Because of his imminent murder, you see.

“BASTARD! FUCKER!” Surge roars. “ASSFACE!!!”

Tails ignores that. “Omega, lead the way. You and I can go get Amy, and Surge can stay behind and do whatever she feels like, since she thinks her time is so important.” And because she’s apparently terrified of Amy. Tails will let Trip pick her own place to be, she’s a big girl and can make her own decisions.

Suddenly, Surge panics. If he leaves her alone with Rouge and Knuckles, she’ll be a useless husk unable to do anything but feel misery. But going with him means seeing Amy and… “I’m going to fucking kill you…” she growls, fists clenching in the dirt and taking up handfuls of grass. He has her fucking trapped, the spiteful piece of garbage! “I’ll destroy every piece of you! There’ll be nothing left! I’ll–”

“Are you coming with us or not?” Tails asks, self-assured smugness in his voice.

Surge is silent, but her eyes are bright with electricity. Power crackles from her hands as she stands up to her full height, snarls, and begins to trudge past him and towards Shadow’s garage, leaving flaming footprints in the lawn as she does so.

“Genuine Animosity Detected,” Omega points out. “Determined Outcome Of Entering Confined Space With The Violent One: Hilarious.”

“Thanks, pal,” Tails mutters, unsure if he’s going to survive long enough to even get to Amy. He’s kind of hoping his friend will be able to cool Surge off a bit with her friendliness, but if she can’t… he may have just signed his own death certificate…

As Omega helps Tails, Surge, and Trip hijack a car, Rouge and Knuckles have somehow found their way to her room. The sheets are a mess, their clothes are ‘somewhere,’ and both of them are breathing heavily. Despite having just finished having sex, they’re a full foot apart as they lay next to each other.

After taking a moment to regain a steady heartrate, Rouge asks, “There. You get it all out of your system?” This is all he wanted, right? It’s clearly all he wanted from Trip and Surge, from the way he’d been looking at them. He should be plenty satisfied now.

“...No,” Knuckles responds, his head turned to the side so he doesn’t have to look at Rouge. “I still care how you think about me, for some reason.” He’s being moody, of course he is, when wasn’t he moody?

“For the love of…” Rouge sits up in bed, bouncing heartily as she does so. “Knuckles, I care about you so much, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Sure, if it was true, maybe.” Knuckles honestly feels worse now than he did before their 2nd round. Arguing and feeling like he was getting somewhere was better than quietly being lost.

Rouge hugs her knees and says, “Just because I won’t be your girlfriend doesn’t mean I don’t care.” She’s going through great lengths to not sound as frustrated as she felt. “You know that, right?” When he doesn’t answer, just continuing to stare at the wall, she continues, “Knuckles, I don’t want to promise you something I can’t give.” She reaches out and gently touches one of his ungloved hands. “I still want to be your friend. I want to be this, what we are right now. But I need time before I can commit to something else.” She groans, looking up at the ceiling. “I like you enough to not feed you a load of bullshit.”

“...do you?” he asks sincerely, all of his anger gone, replaced with despondency.

“Why else would I come to you?” she asks, “Both meanings of the word.” She squeezes his hand. He lets her. “I was hurting and needed someone to make me feel safe.” Rouge does love him, but not like that, and if she said it she *knows* he’d take it like that, so she doesn’t say it. He’s important to her, but she’s not going to pretend to be someone else for his sake.

Knuckles turns to face her, the two of them making eye contact briefly, and then he sits up so he can hug her. She huffs a bit, glad to have finally gotten through to him, and puts her arms around him. “If this is a trick to get to the Master Emerald,” Knuckles says as he finally starts to piece himself back together, “I’m putting you in the dirt.”

“Oh please, I wouldn’t put in nearly as much effort as this,” Rouge retorts, scoffing. Then she considers something… She holds Knuckles out at arm’s length so she can look into his eyes as she asks, “Can we have sex on top of it!?”

“No, that would be–” Knuckles starts to say, then freezes. Would that be okay? Would it let him do that? “...I’ll think about it,” he settles on. He sees Rouge grin hysterically as she starts to giggle, all of her teeth showing and gemstones shining in her eyes at the idea of it. “You’re a bit messed up, you know that?” Knuckles tells her.

“Mayyyybeeeee~!” she agrees, still unable to stop tittering as she tries to picture what it’ll be like, her naked skin pressed into the stone, feeling its energies caressing her body while someone else ALSO caresses her body, getting to see what her fluids would look like staining the surface, “Eeeeeehehehehehee~!” Knuckles rolls his eyes. He cannot believe he’s so into this woman.

…yes he can.

Chapter 18: I Get It

Silver looks over the ruins of Emeraldville from the top of a roof, his legs hanging off the side as he sits on the edge. Calling this place ‘ruins’ might be a bit of a stretch, to be fair, given how much work the Restoration had been doing. Real buildings are starting to spring up, places where people can sleep inside and not in a tent. Plenty of people are milling about, too; gardening, building, trading food and clothes and resources. The scarred, desolate face of the city made Silver feel almost nostalgic for his time in the future… but he’s not nearly as alone this time. Things aren’t hopeless. Things are improving, growing. It’s hard not to smile.

Amy had left a while ago, Lanolin disappeared pretty soon after, and Honey was still unconscious. With everyone else keeping an eye on their new guest, Silver decided to take a moment to clear his head. So much had happened today, so many feelings and emotions and new thoughts. And despite how happy most of it had made him… he needed a few moments to himself to regroup. Decompress, you know? Some time to catch his breath and think a bit.

First of all… he has a girlfriend now. He idolizes Blaze in every way and the fact that she even thinks of him as a friend is incredible enough on its own, let alone that she could see him as someone she could fall in love with. Silver has no idea what he did to deserve someone as graceful and gentle and loving as Blaze, but he’s happier than he’s ever been just thinking about her.

Even if some of those thoughts are admittedly pretty scary… Blaze is selfless, a hero! So selfless, in fact, that she’d let herself die to protect the people she cares about. It had happened once before, somehow, and Silver had forgotten. Blaze had forgotten. They’d both… kept going, just not realizing how awful things could have been- how awful they WERE. Silver could cry again just imagining how desolate he’d feel without her beside him… but she was here. Not right here, she was down on the ground, talking with Tangle about something. But she was alive! All Silver can do is thank the heavens and whatever else made sure she was okay, because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be okay if she hadn’t been.

Every bit of self-doubt, every time he’d wonder what the point was or why he should keep trying, every ounce of hurt and pain and depression would always be met with one of Blaze’s kind words, comforting gestures, or soothing touches. She has so much to worry about, an entire dimension that relies on her, a kingdom to reside over, her own set of emeralds, even! And she always, always made time for him. How could he not be in love with her? Who would he even be without her?

But she is here! And she loves him! Wow! Woohoo! No need to… get worked up about what ifs! Love! Love is good and great and he has it and doesn’t need to feel sad! So why does he…?

And then there are all of Silver’s other friends! Who he is also feeling so many things about! He loves getting to spend more time with Tangle and Whisper and Amy, he still wants to try and fix things with Lanolin, somehow, and that’s just who he saw today! He can’t wait to see Espio and Belle and Shadow and Jewel and Big and Knuckles and–

“…oh, right…” Elise. Elise was his friend, too, wasn’t she…? That felt just as long ago and impossible as everything else he remembers about Soleanna, but she was there in his mind alongside all of the rest. Fighting with her, saving her, meeting her in the past, ice-skating with her… Does Silver know how to ice skate? He must, he remembers doing it, but… jeez.

It all feels like it was three lifetimes ago, but the memories are clear. “...Soleanna.” Sonic and Amy had mentioned remembering things about their time there, too. “Everyone forgot…” So many of his friends had been there, but none of them remembered it until today. Something about this memory adjustment, something about the time they lost, it HAS to be linked to Soleanna!

If Sonic and Amy had forgotten Ray and Trip and Honey, and they’d *all* forgotten about Elise, then she might need their help. They have to go there, see if they can find out what caused all of this, even if it means returning to where Blaze was… Fine! Blaze is fine, he just saw Blaze a minute ago! But what if something else happens when they go? What if she’s in trouble and he’s not there to help her? What if everything goes back to the way it was before and he can’t do anything to stop it??? He needs to go see her, he needs to make sure she’s okay, he has to–

Silver whips his head to the side as he hears the door to the rooftop open. A wispon-toting wolf steps out of the stairwell. Whisper raises a paw and murmurs a calm, “H’lo.”

“W-W-Whisper!” Silver coughs out, realizing his voice is cracking at the same time he realizes he’s trembling. He clears his throat, adding, “What’s up? Everything cool?” He’s trying so hard to sound happy and optimistic like normal, but Whisper immediately furrows her brow and frowns, concerned, so he knows he’s not doing a great job.

Whisper starts to walk over to him. “Are you… doing alright up here?” As she sits down next to him, Silver takes in a deep breath, very much intending to respond to her question, but all that comes out of his mouth is air. Whisper nods, knowing that feeling quite well. “Blaze… mentioned some of the things you and she have been going through to Tangle and I,” Whisper tells him. “I wanted to see how you were doing up here…”

“...could be better,” Silver admits with a dry, wheezy laugh. “It’ll all be okay, though, so no need to worry, right? I’ll get over it, and–”

Silver stops talking when he feels Whisper’s hand on his shoulder. She’s looking at him intently, compassionately, her eyes open enough for him to see her steely, gray pupils. “Trying to force yourself is going to make it worse,” she whispers.

“What, uh…?” Silver swallows hard. “What do you mean, bestie?”

Though Whisper does want to address that label at some point, because don’t be so presumptuous, now is not the time. Silver needs help. So she takes a deep inhale, slow exhale, and says, “I’ve watched a lot of people I love die.” Hearing that statement makes Silver feel the same way closing your fist around a razor blade might. “Neighbors, family… the most important person in the world to me.” All of them because of Eggman. Seemed to be a common theme in this little group of theirs, Whisper wonders why.

Whisper needs another breath before she can continue, Silver stunned into silence, not daring to interrupt her. “At least Tangle came back…!” Whisper rubs one of her eyes with the ball of her hand. “Not so lucky with anyone else, but…” Whisper’s other paw is still on Silver’ shoulder, and she squeezes him, proving to her that they’re both here and alive. “I know what you’re feeling. I know how much this hurts. And I… I tried to spare myself from it all. I refused help, pushed people away, isolated for a while. I kept telling myself I’d get over it or that I had to be strong, but…” She looks him in the eyes again. “Silver, it made me want to give up. All I wanted was to be there with Tangle, with the last person I could hold onto, but I ended up telling myself that letting go was the only option, the only way I could be sure…”

Tangle’s infection during the zombot plague hurt Whisper a lot. The Diamond Cutters, her other friends during the war, even her dad when she was a pup (oh, jeez, forgot about that until just now. Ow). All of it weighed on her, pushed her down every day, and when Tangle was suddenly gone, it all just… broke. Whisper had been so tired of losing people, losing *everyone* that she loved, so even when Tangle was back, was close, was holding her and telling her it would be alright, Whisper was scared. Scared of losing her, scared of not being enough, scared of seeing it happen again. But if she didn’t have anyone, she couldn’t lose anyone. That’s what she’d told herself when she turned her back on them all.

“I don’t want to see you end up like that,” Whisper tells Silver. “I know how you’re hurting, and I know what it can lead to, and you need to remember that you’re not alone.” Silver is like a bright and cheerful puppydog. Being suddenly saddled with the same mourning/not-mourning that Whisper’s gone through can’t be easy on him, but she’s not going to let it destroy him like it almost destroyed her. “So many of us care about you. Please let us help.”

Silver stares at her for a minute, still trembling. He can feel his quills itch. He opens his mouth, feels nothing come out, and only then realizes his face is soaked with tears. Eventually, he’s able to muster up, “C-Can I have a hug…?” He’s getting better about asking first! Whisper hesitates, but then leans over and puts an arm around his shoulder. All five of her wisps flutter out of her cloak and lay themselves on Silver in various spots. Silver shakes again, clasping his arms around Whisper in a desperate attempt to stay still, but it only helps so much. “Sh-she needs to be okay,” Silver sobs out, grasping at Whisper’s cloak with all of his strength. “She can’t die…! I– I need to be b-better, I can’t–”

“Shh,” Whisper coos, rubbing circles on the poor guy’s shoulder blade. “You can’t be so afraid of death that you won’t let yourself live.” Something she’d realized only very recently that she wishes with all of her heart she’d been told much, much earlier. All she can hope for now is that hearing it himself will help Silver, in some way.

At some point during this group hug, while Silver is getting tears and snot all over her cloak, Whisper muses to herself that she would never let any other man on the planet do this. She barely tolerates this kind of closeness from women she was friends with, let alone guys. Tangle has, admittedly, warmed her up to physical contact immensely, but Whisper still felt like it should be something special. Then again, Silver is, by certain definitions, also very special to her. For a guy. He’s always been a supporter, a… collaborator, by some standards. They certainly understand each other fairly well… Internally rolling her eyes, Whisper admits fine, sure, now that Tangle has been upgraded to ‘future wife,’ she supposes that Silver may actually be her best friend. Whatever, you win this time.

In another effort to cheer up her maybe sorta kinda bestie, Whisper asks, “Do you want to hear about some of the things I’ve been remembering today?”

Still sniffling, but shaking far less than he’d been before, Silver nods and meekly offers a, “Sure!” He’s great at *sounding* like he’s not an emotional, anxiety-ridden wreck right now, even if he still looks the part to a tee.

Whisper hums. There’ve been a few things. “Well,” she says, “For starters, that ‘found family’ I had with the Diamond Cutters might not have been so, mm… unofficial, actually.” She’s a bit emotionally raw at the moment herself, but maybe some happy memories with those she lost will help her. It could be nice. “Smithy, Claire, and Slinger were, uh… definitely all together. Officially, I mean. At once.”

Whisper remembers seeing Smithy and Claire getting close, leaning on each other when planning out missions, tails brushing up against one another’s legs, and it makes her feel warm. She remembers Slinger calling Smithy ‘daddy’ to piss him off, because they were a *year* apart, it’s not Smithy’s fault stress made him grey at 30, and she feels herself laugh. She remembers Slinger breaking down after a near-fatal miss, Claire holding him and kissing him until the panic attack subsided and he was finally able to close his eyes again, and she feels herself yearning. She misses them all so much. And she’s so thankful for the time she spent with all of them.

“O-Oh,” Silver says, needing a second to understand what she means. “That… explains your thing with Tangle, huh?” Whisper nods, unsure if she’s sad or happy to realize the similarity. “So you were, uh…?”

“No, not me,” Whisper says. “I was a bit younger than the three of them, so they sort of treated me like their collective daughter.” Whisper laughs a bit, sure she could dig up plenty of funny and heartbreaking stories about that, too. “It was kind of just them, and then me, and also… him.” Mimic definitely didn’t treat her like a daughter, that was for sure. Probably would have been a bit less mutual murderous rage between them if he had. “I really admired getting to see that kind of relationship, though. So, yeah, I do think it… makes me kind of want that with Tangle and… I don’t know, whoever else Tangle cares about.” She’s not actually sure who any thirds or fourths or etceteras would be, she hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Silver thinks of something very obvious and does not say it out loud because even he knows it’d be crossing a boundary, and he is firmly in strangling range. “You deserve it,” Silver says instead. “Both of you should be that happy.”

Whisper smiles at him. “Yeah.” That… is actually very sweet of him to say. “I, um… also remembered that I…” Might as well be a bit more open about herself now that she has the ability to. “Well, I was a very different person before the war. Much less, uh… feminine-shaped.” Okay, not easy to say it out loud, still, sorry bud.

“Well,” Silver shrugs as he says, “I mean, little kids don’t tend to look like anything, so I guess not. Are you… that young?” Silver thinks she means puberty. Silver thinks she means–?

Wow, does she really pass that well? Okay, she needs to be explicit about this. One more deep breath before, “No, I mean that I’m… trans.”

“...what’s that?” Silver asks, being from the post-apocalypse and not having had the ability to learn modern terms for gender and sexuality since his return.

“...” Oh. “It’s…” Whisper cracks into a giggle. She can’t help it. “Oh, hun…” She knows it’s wrong to think this, but… Hey, maybe Silver wasn’t special ‘for a guy’ after all~!

“What? What am I missing?” Silver asks, and Whisper breaks into a full-throated belly laugh. “S-slow down, explain it to me again…! I don’t get it!”

Tangle and Blaze are down below the two of them, on the ground of the camp, outside the medical tent as they wait for Honey to wake up. Blaze is pacing while Tangle sweats, offering her tail as a bench and being refused. “I should’ve gone with her. I should be helping, he’s suffering, and I–”

“Hey, hey, take it easy, it’s fine!” Tangle does her best to reassure. “Whisper’s right, if he’s anything like she was, you’ll be the last person who can get through to him.” Once Blaze had explained that refilled gap in their memories, Whisper told them both her plan to check on him. And while they were waiting for her to come back, Blaze spotted them up at the top of a nearby building, Silver sobbing, despairing.

“That’s… That can’t be true,” Blaze mutters, still walking in circles as her tail flicks with annoyance. “He knows he can tell me anything, he’s always been able to…” She trails off, just barely holding herself back from shooting into the sky to comfort him.

“Trauma is weird and bad,” Tangle tells her. “And it makes people do and say things they don’t mean. Trust me, I tried to get through it, but… I dunno! Maybe Silver is built different, but…” Tangle doesn’t think Silver has a greater level of emotional fortitude than Whisper, she’s gonna be honest. That lil dude’s gonna FOLD if this doesn’t get addressed. “You’ll get to talk to him, prommy, but Whisper needs to be the one to do this. Unless you know anyone else with ‘I love you, you died in front of me, now you’re here again’ angst?”

Blaze seethes out a sigh between her bared teeth. “I know. I know. I know, but STILL, AGH!” She’d agreed to Whisper’s plan! She knew that Silver was probably going to be hurting, she just WISHES she could do something about it NOW. Why did Blaze have to be the *one person* who can’t be there for this conversation!?

“...and like,” Tangle murmurs, hunching her shoulders and crossing her legs awkwardly. “There are prolly *loads* of people with, uh, ‘don’t push me away, I care about you so much, don’t leave me’ angst, but… If you wanted to talk a bit, too, I’m, like, here?” That whole period wasn’t exactly easy for Tangle, either. She was fully in love with Whisper, whether the barrier in her brain gave her the words for it or not, so watching her walking away, refusing help, closing herself off and everything, it was… “You shouldn’t have to get burned by this either, y’know?”

Blaze looks over to Tangle. Blaze is still frowning deeply, lines of worry all over her face, but she sighs and sits down next to the lemur. “You… you really think that’s what it could come to?”

“With you and Whisper around to help him through it? Pfft,” Tangle answers, shaking her hand dismissively. “No way! Not if he knows what to look out for!” When Blaze keeps looking at her, questioning, Tangle sighs and adds, “If he didn’t get this talk, though, uh… Yeah, I mean probably? If he’s the kind of guy to think sacrifices are romantic, then he’d give up his own happiness if he thought it meant protecting you.”

“...” Blaze clasps her face. “He would…” Silver is so caring and considerate and sweet that he’d cut off a leg if it meant saving Blaze. And since he saw what happens when he fails already, he’d just be extra motivated to not let it come to that. Best case scenario is that he’s a nervous wreck when she’s fighting something, and the worst case scenario… is what happened with Tangle and Whisper. “...Whisper will help him. Right?”

“She will,” Tangle says with full sincerity. “She’s not the kinda gal who’s gonna make the same mistake twice. She’s gonna help a hedgehog in need when she sees one.”

“...she’s made that mistake before…?” Blaze asks, confused.

Oh, did Blaze not know about that? Uh. Heh. Whoops! “No, probably not!” Blaze lids her eyes and tilts her head, not even having to say anything to show how little she buys into that. “Okay, so when Mimic was infiltrating us,” Tangle explains, cracking immediately, “Whisper and Silver were the only ones able to sus him out right away. But when Mimic hurt Silv, Whisper kind of, uh… She let him get kicked out of the Diamond Cutters to protect him.”

To Tangle’s surprise, Blaze doesn’t react negatively to that. Instead of scratching or hissing or whatever cats do when they’re mad about their boyfriends being mistreated, Blaze’s shoulders relax. She breathes a bit easier, smiling and saying, “Well… it sounds like they’re made for each other, then. I’m glad he has friends like the two of you.”

Tangle chuckles a bit, glad to have lightened the mood. “Yeah, well don’t get too ahead of yourself! She’s still all girls all the time, so even if they’re besties, he may need to get let down easy if he’s thinking of anything else!” She’s teasing, of course, but she’s not lying.

When Blaze doesn’t respond, Tangle looks over at her. Her eyes are wide and she’s looking up. Blaze points at whatever she’s staring at and asks, “Are you sure about that?” Tangle follows her gaze and spies the roof Whisper and Silver are on. Silver isn’t crying anymore. He looks like he’s pouting a bit, actually, rubbing at his head like he’s apologizing for being a dummy. Whisper’s beside him, her arm still around his shoulder, laughing hysterically. Tangle almost never sees Whisper smiling like that, let alone laughing that loud, and Tangle can’t help but stare along with Blaze.

Tangle was used to being the only one in the world who could get Whisper to open up. Whisper would smile and cry and giggle and joke around with Tangle, but whenever Tangle watched her interact with other people, it was like there was this… film over Whisper, one preventing her from showing a single sign of weakness, something keeping every other soul out. Whisper always looked so sad around other people, like she’s miserable without Tangle there to comfort her and joke around and be her anchor.

And now Tangle can see what that’s like from the other side. She’s watching Whisper being happy, laughing, being open with someone other than her. Not miserable. Tangle doesn’t have to be there holding her up for her to be happy anymore. She doesn’t know if it’s because Whisper’s getting better, or if her and Silver are just that close, but either way, she clutches her chest and mutters, “I get it…”

“Whu- Oh?” Blaze forgot Tangle was there, she was just so relieved that Silver’s alright. “What do you get? That Whisper, um, likes him, or…?”

“What!? No.” Tangle is positive that wolf is as gay as the fabric a lesbian pride flag is printed on. “They’re just being friendly. I try and be like that with everyone, too.” Tangle shakes her head and smiles, “No, I meant I get why Whisper wanted us to try being open. Getting to see her laughing and having a good time whether it’s with me or not, it’s…!” Tangle sniffles, feeling actual tears coming on. “I love it when she smiles. She should never have to stop.” Tangle can’t be there with Whisper every minute of every day, as much as she’d like to be, and she knows that. But if Tangle’s able to turn her back and know that Whisper won’t immediately become an unfeeling stone, cold and alone until Tangle returns, then… It would make her feel so much better. She loves this girl so much.

“You… aren’t wrong,” Blaze says. “I’d assumed no one other than I could get through to him, but knowing I’m not alone in believing his happiness should be a top priority is definitely a comforting thought.” She gives a small huff. “Even if it’s only, as you insist, as friends.” Blaze isn’t convinced for a moment, but she’ll let the gays have this one.

Oh, right, Tangle remembered that Blaze and Silver are gonna be trying the pammy-whatever thing out, too. Whatever Lanolin told her the name was. Neat! They can compare notes and go on group dates and…

…wait.

Blaze is polyamorus. And Whisper… probably wants Tangle to be just as happy without her around as Tangle wants it for Whisper. Hm. Huh. Ummmmmm, “Hey, so I have a massive crush on you, by the way,” Tangle blurts out with the finesse of a tuba in a tutu.

“Huh?” Blaze reacts like she’s been hit by an arrow by an off-screen assassin, just staring blankly after whipping her head around to face Tangle.

Woops! Welp, no taking that back, gotta press forward, here we go! “I mean, you kinda saved my life by killing an evil robot with a giant, fiery tornado. And then only got cooler every time I saw you after that,” Tangle says, not looking or sounding any less awkward than before. “Also you’re like a superhero and a princess and an alien and all of that is super actually crazy hot.”

“Huh???” Blaze’s mouth just hangs open, she did not foresee this at ALL. She barely knew any of Silver’s Diamond Cutter friends, how was she supposed to know one of them liked her like that??? Hello???

“ :I “ Tangle doesn’t say anything for a second, her mouth a compressed line as the two just stare at each other. Eventually, though, she’s able to say, “Do you maybe wanna go on a date later or something maybe…?”

“ :0 “ Blaze doesn’t know how else to respond to that other than, “O-o-okay…!?” She… has a date set with this lemur girl who she hardly talks to! That’s… Huh??? WHAT???? HUH?????????

“And here we are!” Vector announces. Vector’s here!!! Did you expect any of that to happen and then for Vector to show up right after??? Tangle and Blaze sure didn’t! “Jeeze, this town’s seen some better days, ain’t it?”

Team Chaotix, sans Charmy and plus Mighty, alongside special guest star Shadow the Hedgehog, have arrived in Emeraldville. “Didn’t this used to be the hub for a major government entity?” Shadow asks, spitting on the ground. “Pathetic.” He looks over and sees women sitting near a tent, placed 5 feet apart on a fuzzy bench. “Blaze,” Shadow greets. “Other one.” He doesn’t care.

“EspiooooOOOOO!!!” A platinum meteorite shoots down from the top of a nearby building and glomps onto an unexpecting Espio. “I’VE BEEN WANTING TO SEE YOU ALL DAY I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!!!” Silver declares, rubbing his cheek all over Espio’s.

“Uh Ah Oh Uh Eh?” The ninja’s creed has not prepared Espio for this moment.

“Oh, great, he’s here, too,” Shadow groans, wishing he had a canister of air freshener with him.

“Silver, are you… feeling better?” Blaze asks, putting her awkward plans with Tangle aside. “You’re not hurt?”

“How could I be hurt when all of my favorite people are here!?” Silver says, kicking his feet in the air again. Blaze will take that as a cue to put off this talk for a later date. “Oh oh oh! And I have a plan! A plan on how to figure out what’s wrong with our memories!!! Isn’t that WONDERFUL~?”

Vector smugly grins, saying, “Guess we came to the right place!” Blaze isn’t sure at all what’s happened to make Silver’s emotions flip so suddenly, but… She can’t help but smile seeing him so happy. Tangle was right, this is good. He should never have to stop.

Whisper floats down on her hover mode and lands next to Tangle, who at some point fell off of her own tail and onto her back, laying in the dirt. “I think I got through to– Uh. Are you okay?” Whisper looks from Tangle to the side and sees four men having shown up out of nowhere. “...oh. Yeah, I wouldn’t want them around right now, either.”

“Yeah sure them yeah they’re PISSIN’ me off sure let’s go with that!” Tangle rambles, only making Whisper cock an eyebrow at her. They will also be talking at a later date, Whisper supposes.

“How’d it go?” Tangle asks, still dizzy, but slowly picking herself off the ground.

“Oh, she’s fine,” Whisper answers casually.

“...?” She? “What?” Tangle doesn’t understand, who was Whisper talking about?

“Don’t worry about it,” Whisper murmurs with a snicker. “You’ll figure it out the same time she does~.” Whisper really shouldn’t push it, she KNOWS that, but… Well, Silver was special to her~! She should always help out a hedgehog in need! And Blaze shouldn’t be left out, the princess deserves a cute ~girlfriend~ just as much as any of them do! Tangle sees Whisper grinning evilly, plotting something malicious, and has never been more attracted to the wolf in her life.

There’s a loud enough commotion over in the center of camp that someone on the edge of it doesn’t feel the need to sneak anymore. He stands up to his full height, watching Team Chaotix (+Shadow) and the Diamond Cutters (+Blaze) from a considerable distance. He feels for the wispon at his side to make sure it’s still secure, then sighs as he prepares to–

-*BZZT*-

Something is locked and loaded right behind his head. “Who are you,” a gruff voice demands of him as its owner holds a Golden Bell Wispon right up to his neck, “And what were you planning with that weapon?”

Gadget the Wolf slowly turns to see Lanolin the Sheep holding him at gunpoint, her wispon glowing with magenta energy, just one wrong move away from having his head enveloped. “Uh,” he mutters, cursing himself in his own head, “I g-guess Sonic’s never mentioned me, huh…?”

Chapter 19: She's A Something...

Amy Rose is watching the sun set by the docks, something that normally would be filling her heart with romantic wonder and yearning, but at the moment just feels dull. She feels pretty bad about herself. No real introspection going on, just a general feeling of self-loathing and impatience as she waits for Tails to show up. She sighs at the horizon, feeling very unlike Amy Rose.

She hears it before she sees it. Or, more accurately, she hears its passengers. Amy glances over her shoulder and sees a black, convertible jeep with red trimmings, red wheels with black spokes, and red headlights weaving through traffic as its driver and a backseat rider loudly argue.

“Stop,”
“Make me,”
“Stop,”
“Make me,”
“Stop,”
“Make me,” Tails and Surge are shouting back and forth, each turn they take punctuated by Surge roughly kicking the back of Tails’s seat. Tails is gripping the steering wheel with strained, tight fists, Surge is lounging across the back seat as she batters Shadow’s vehicle, Trip is in the passenger seat, staring blankly at the passing landscape as they speed along, and Omega is attached to the back like a massive, towed load. None of them look happy.

Tails comes to a stop at the edge of the dock, immediately flying out of the jeep so he doesn’t need to be near *her* anymore. He does his best to smile for Amy, because he’s genuinely happy to see her, but his head hurts and he nearly crashed 3 times because of how much Surge had been messing with him, so even his best smile is a bit crooked. “Amy!” he calls out, waving, “Hi! Thank goodness you’re here! I’ve been itching for something productive all day!” And now that Amy is here to even out the group a little, he can have some actual peace! She’ll cheer up Trip, short circuit Surge, and Omega will probably not want to kill her! Wins all around!

“...hey, Tails,” Amy says quietly, not really feeling it, to be honest. “Glad to see you, too. Sorry if I’m a little quiet right now, I’ve kind of had a rough day…” She looks over to see Trip and Surge, two people she should probably not think too much about, given her bad track record with other women today. “Do you mind if I sit up front with you? I kinda just wanna give directions and not think about stuff for a while.”

Tails’s fake smile becomes a lot more obviously fake as he starts to internally panic and externally sweat. “Are you… alright?” he asks, desperately needing a ray of sunshine she is clearly not in the headspace to provide. “We could talk about it if you really have something tough on your mind right now! What else are friends for, right?”

Amy sighs and responds, “Maybe later? This is kind of urgent, so I wanna get there as soon as we can so I can get out of your hair, y’know?” As Amy walks over to the Shadowmobile, Tails can feel Surge’s electric glare on the back of his head, making his skin crawl. His gamble failed, and she was definitely going to hurt him for trying it, wasn’t she…?

“Hi Surge,” Amy offers briefly, quietly. “And Trip, it’s great to see you okay again.” Other than the brief formalities, though, she doesn’t have much to provide. “Would you mind if I took the front so I can copilot?” At least she can still be polite. She has to force herself to do that much.

Surge doesn’t even look at Amy, keeping her furious glare aimed directly at the little, yellow turd. Trip slowly looks up, looking a bit… not fully there. But she nods and gets out of the jeep, only to climb back in next to Surge, who jolts to the side to keep away from her. Amy notices these strange behaviors and does not remark on them. Amy looks up at Omega attached to the rear, his eyes a dull gray and his limbs tucked away into the rest of his body, and she asks, “Is Omega alright?”

Tails despondently responds, “He went into power saver mode.” Something about ‘counter-terrorism measures’ he needed to enact to keep himself from becoming terrorism. Feeling like the bus driver for the saddest convention of clowns, Tails gets back behind the wheel and mutters, “Which means he can’t remind me which of these settings I’m supposed to… Well, time to hope for the best!”

Surge behind him, Amy to his right, and Trip somewhere in the void between them all, Tails sucks in a breath of air as he hits the ignition, spins in a tight circle so that the car is facing the water, and builds up to full speed as he drives all the way down the pier, shooting off into the air as he flips a series of switches under the dash. The jeep’s wheels fold at a 90 degree angle, a propeller lowers, and the hull readjusts to be able to cut through the waves as easily as it can the roads.

The jeep having fully transformed into a boat, it hits the water and maintains speed, darting across the surface of the ocean and off into the distance. “Playset-sold-separately-ass vehicle…” Surge mutters to herself as her fingers start to hurt from how hard she’s gripping her own knees, still making burning eye contact with Tails’s skull.

And then they’re off. Amy gives directions, and not much else is worried about, for the time being. It’s as awkward a journey as it is an uneventful one, which Tails can at least consider a small victory before his inevitable downfall. But at least there’s no robots or pirates or robot pirates attacking them. Though given his current streak of luck, Tails isn’t ruling out the Babylon Rogues swooping down out of nowhere to also start kicking him over and over…

When she’s not pointing Tails in the right directions, Amy is gazing out at the ocean, wondering how Lanolin is. She probably… said the exact wrong things to the poor sheep, she’s realizing. She was trying to create professional distance, but only ended up making everyone worry more. And that would just be another thing she’d have to make up for one day. She’s already done so much wrong today, so what was one more mistake to atone for? At one point, noticing her barely even looking at him, Tails asks, “Amy, are you… sure that you don’t wanna talk about anything? I realize present company isn’t exactly ideal–”

“Up yours,” Surge mumbles, not adding anything else to the conversation.

“–but this seriously isn’t like you!” Tails pays a bit more attention to where he’s steering, and when Amy still doesn’t respond, Tails asks, “If I did something to make you upset, I’m really sorry.”

“What?” That snaps her out of it. “Tails, no,” Amy says, “No, of course you didn’t!” She sucks in a breath, fully internalizing how much her externalized stress is having an effect on others. Bad Amy, stupid Amy, how dare you? “I promise I’ll talk to you about it at some point, but I’m not doing great right now and just want to take my mind off of things for a while…” She worries she’d sounded too harsh and adds a quiet, “Sorry, it’s just… been a long day.”

Amy feels a hand on her shoulder, but she can see that both of Tails’s hands are on the wheel. She looks over and sees Trip comforting her, looking up at Amy and showing a tired, weak smile. “You’ve been through worse,” Trip says quietly, and Amy lets herself be happy without too much unwarranted guilt, for once.

“Trip’s right!” Tails says with a nod, steering around a series of stone pillars jutting up out of the water and forming ramps. “It’s not going to be easy, but if anyone can navigate this nightmare, it’s you, Amy.”

Amy wishes she could agree with them, but she’s at least thankful for the comfort. “Thanks, all of you, I…” Since she’s turned to the side to look at Trip, she can also easily see Surge where she’s sitting. Surge is jittering wildly, her head turned away from Tails, out towards the ocean in the exact opposite direction as Amy. Considering their criss-cross positioning, it looks like it must hurt her neck a bit to be sitting like that. “Is… Hey, are you al–”

Amy reaches out, but Tails stops her before she can make contact, grabbing her wrist with a movement a bit too fast to not take Amy off guard. “Leave her alone, she’s…” Afraid. Surge told him she was afraid of Amy for some reason and he forced this interaction anyway, and he’s feeling not awesome about it, so he doesn’t wanna make it even worse. “Surge might bite. I don’t want you to get infected with her nasty brain diseases.”

“N-nasty br-…!?” Amy repeats, “Tails! That’s mean!”

“...heh,” Surge mumbles, agreeing that it was pretty mean of Tails to not get eaten by a shark as a baby. Fucking hates this guy. Her palms are starting to get crescent-shaped indents from how tightly her fists are clenched.

Eventually, only a bit before the sun finally settles down over the horizon and the orange sky becomes gray, the Shadowmobile touches down on the shoreline of a small, crescent-shaped island. The beach is covered in tall palms, some not-so-tall palms that have been haphazardly cut down with blunt cuts, and random holes in the sand that lead to one another or nowhere. The only other sign of current habitation is a small, grassy mound towards the center of the island with a metal hatch at its peak, marking where Sticks’s barrow is.

“This place is a dump,” Surge grumbles as the boat comes to a stop.

“Yup!” Amy remarks. “That’s Sticks. I’m gonna head inside on my own, she’s… really jumpy. She might freak out if too many people show up at once.”

“...” Trip slowly starts to sit up, having been silently leaning over the side of the boat for a while, now. “Let me come with you,” she requests softly. “To, um… catch up?”

Trip’s been really, really quiet so far, and based off of Amy’s limited interactions with her, the way she’s been so absent-seeming this whole time has been mildly concerning. So even though Amy would really very much not bring another girl along with her, she gets the impression that this request is being made from a place of trust and a deep need, so Amy sucks it up, nods, and says, “Yeah, okay! Follow me!”

“...” Tails gulps, his ears flat and his tails drooping as Trip leaves the boat and follows Amy. With Omega still dormant, that means he’s going to be completely alone with…

“Hey, flyboy,” Surge says with a dark, low tone, cracking her knuckles as Tails can hear her getting closer to him with every word. “Let’s fucking chat.”

“...so how have you been?” Amy asks Trip once the two of them are out of earshot of the others. “You’ve grown up a lot since I last saw you!” Just small talk that she hopes doesn’t read as weird or gross or anything. Crap, did Trip think she meant ‘grown up’ as in, like, a boobs sense? That’s not what Amy meant at all, oh no, Trip’s going to hate her now…

“I’ve been better,” Trip admits quietly, expression still unreadable. “And you have, too. It’s nice to know you’ve all been more or less okay all this time.” That stings Amy, too. Can’t feel great to be one of the forgotten ones… “Sorry for… suddenly asking to follow you around, I… I’m worried about Surge,” Trip explains, still looking forward at nothing in particular.

“Yeah?” Amy asks, “She did seem… not at her best.”

“She’s had a hard time with others today,” Trip tells Amy, still without looking at her. “The more people there are around, the less she seems to be comfortable. I’ve been trying to not bother her all day, but… I don’t know how well of a job I’ve been doing…”

Oh, so that’s why Trip’s been so spacey. She’s trying not to exist. Wait, aw, that’s really sad. “I’m sure she really appreciates having someone looking out for her, at least!” Mm, that’s why Tails stopped her from reaching out earlier, too. Poor Surge, if someone as strong-willed as her is suffering, then… Well Amy still feels bad, but at least she’s not alone, she guesses.

“Maybe,” Trip whispers. “I don’t know.” Surge didn’t seem to like her very much, even if Trip wanted the two of them to get along. Trip thought that maybe they could be friends some day, and she’d feel awful if she was only making things worse for the tenrec. “From what I’d heard, she’s… She hasn’t had it easy, has she?”

“No,” Amy admits. “She was on the bad side of a really, really awful man for a while. He’s gone now, but…” Poor girl still has trauma. Amy should’ve been more careful, more considerate. Something. “Well, the two of us will have to just find a way to help her out a little, right?”

Trip does look at Amy, then, but only for a second. That second is enough for her to start smiling a bit, though. “Right… I’ll do my best…” Running afoul of the worst kind of men is definitely something Trip understands. She feels a pang of something - fear, sadness, grief, she’s not sure - and on the spur of the moment says, “Amy, can I ask a favor?”

“Yeah?” Amy says, turning to Trip and smiling wide, always such a good friend, always such a nice person.

Trip could never ask her for something so heartless.

“N-nevermind,” Trip mutters, tripping over her own words, “Or, r-rather, uh… Th-thank you, b-but…” She can’t ask Amy for that, not someone who’s always been so sweet with her, it can’t be Amy. Anyone but Amy. “W-what I m-mean to say is–”

Trip stops talking when she feels Amy’s hand on her arm. Not grabbing or holding, honestly barely even touching, just offering a pillow-soft iota of comfort for a second. “Don’t worry about it,” Amy says, “You can tell me later, okay?”

Trip feels the weight of the world on her shoulders as she slowly, shyly nods, looking back down to the ground, at nothing, and tuning out the world again. Amy doesn’t press, not wanting to make her feel any worse than she probably already was. Maybe…

Maybe Amy had gotten a bit of a bad first impression when her exposure to everyone’s feelings today had been Sonic (unbothered as always), Tangle and Whisper (in love and thriving), and Silver and Blaze (see above). Tails looked like he was ready to start pulling his fur out, Surge is an anxiety-riddled wreck, and Trip is depressed to a worrying extent. As Amy climbs up to the top of Sticks’s mound, crouching down and punching in the combination to open the hatch, she starts to think that maybe her own feelings aren’t as abnormal? Except obviously no one else is fantasizing of taking advantage of anyone, so she’s actually much worse, she’s a complete monster, she’s unforgivable and evil, everyone should and probably DOES hate her, she’s a monster she’s a monster she’s a monster–

“Sticks!” Amy calls out, mania rising in her voice. “Are you home? I’m gonna be really sad if you’re not, so please tell me–” Amy opens the hatch and is immediately struck in the face with a projectile half-moon, one covered in black and brown tendrils of slime. Amy falls back, tumbling down the hill as a creature emerges and catches its own boomerang as it flies back towards it.

Oh. SHE’S a monster…

“AMY!” Trip shouts in surprise, then charges the possessed badger with a shoulder charge. “Foul beast! Stay a-ay fr-m h-r or fac- m- - - - -!”

…When Amy looks up, sees Trip pushing the creature that had hit her back into the hole, she also sees Trip’s lips moving, her face straining against the force of a shout, but no sound coming out. “W-what…?” Amy asks, more to check if she can still hear her own voice, but nothing else has gone silent other than Trip, especially not the beating in Amy’s chest. “H-hey, are you okay…!?” She asks as she watches Trip’s skin losing focus, clarity, color. A kind of static film starts to develop across the lizard’s body, her once vibrant, gold-and-orange form becoming a haze of filtered, ambient grey. “W-What’s going on!?”

Trip turns to face Amy again. At first, her expression is one of worry, concern over whether or not she’d failed to keep Amy from being harmed. But then her eyes become small, glowing dots of orange flame, and her face falls, beginning to lose any and all expression or reason. Trip’s shoulders sag, her body going nearly limp as she fully turns towards Amy and starts approaching her like- like a zombie, almost. “Trip!” Amy shouts, “Trip, snap out of it!”

And she does. Instantly, the fog is lifted and Trip is normal again. Her color returns, her eyes are that of a person and not a monster, and she can speak. “H-Huh?” she asks, looking around. “Wuh- Amy? Amy, are you okay? Is–” She can’t ask anything else as the monstrified stranger leaps back out of the hole and tackles her, latching onto her back and sending her to the ground.

“Sticks!” Amy yells. “Sticks, you too, stop this!” Amy runs forward, yelling both of their names as she grabs at Sticks to pull her off of Trip. By the time she can reach either of them, though, the dark energy starts to evaporate into fuzzy, blue dots in Amy’s vision again, leaving Trip on the ground with a very confused, brown badger latched onto her.

“...Amy…?” Sticks asks slowly. “What are ya doing at my house…?” She looks down and sees herself hugging onto some sort of spiky, golden lady, one who looks terrified. “What’s she doing at my house?” Sticks follows up her previous question with. “What am *I* doing at my house!?” She knows she’s supposed to be here, but for real, she has no idea what she’s doing. “Did we get Polybiused!?”

Amy hesitates, then sniffles before saying, “I have… no idea what that means!” It really is Sticks! Against her better judgement, she rushes forward, hugging onto both women tightly, relief washing over her. She has her friends back! Everything is awful and she’s probably a monster, but her friends are okay! “Thank goodness!” Amy sobs out into Sticks’s fur, only making the badger more confused than… well, she’s always confused, but there are varying degrees of it, y’know?

Sticks hugs Amy back, pulling Trip into it, too, because why the hey not? “You know, people usually get mad or annoyed when they don’t know what I’m saying, but this is way better! I’m gonna keep being weird and off-putting in the off chance I get more hugs out of it!”

Trip, who has been double-glomped and pinned to the sand, mutters, “C-can I get up now…?”

Sticks lets Amy and Trip into her burrow, which looks more like an underground bunker or vault than a home. The dirt walls are reinforced with steel, there’s a wall of black and white CRT monitors displaying what some hidden cameras around the island are filming, and all of the food is canned and stockpiled. There isn’t a phone or wireless device in sight.

Amy fills Sticks in on everything that’s happened, the unleashed memories, the forgotten folks, the inconsistent timelines. “And that’s why we’re here,” Amy adds at the end of her monologue, “Sonic needs somewhere safe we can all organize in, but everywhere else we used to have got… you know, blown up a bit.”

Sticks, who’s barely heard a word of any of this, continues to stare at Amy’s chest. When Amy finishes talking, she asks, “Have you always had those things?” She doesn’t remember Amy being so… shaped.

“ =_= “ Amy sighs and says, “Ever since puberty. And ever since we’ve been friends, yes.”

“Are you positive?” Sticks asks, unconvinced. “I think I’d have noticed something like that before!”

“Sticks, have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?” Amy already explained people were unable to feel sexual attraction before today, Sticks should know that.

“If I say no, can I get a hands-on example?” Sticks flutters her eyelashes.

Amy frowns at her… then laughs, both because it was funny and because she had no idea Sticks could be… you know, like that. It’s just a nice moment of levity, Amy needed it. But then takes out her hammer. “No.” She very lightly taps Sticks on the top of the head. Go to horny jail. “Can I tell Sonic it’s safe here? We’d all really, really appreciate it.”

“Oh, yeah, sure!” Sticks answers with a shrug. “Any friend’a Amy’s is a friend’a mine! As long as you’re not friends with, I dunno, any murderous, rampaging robots, flying, mutated mad scientists, or… PUNKS, then I should have no problem with–” Sticks turns her head towards one of her monitors, sees Omega, Tails, and Surge all arguing on the beach, and shouts, “-OH NO OH GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

“Sticks,” Amy deadpans, refusing to yes-and this, “You’ve met Tails, and I know you’ve seen the others before at the winter festival. You know who they are.”

“LET ME DO BITS, WOMAN!!!” Sticks shouts back, stomping a foot.

Trip’s been quiet this whole time, but finally lifts her head and quietly asks, “How long…” She seems like she’s about to second guess herself and stop talking, but finally adds, “When was the last time you two have s-seen each other…?”

“I see Sticks every year on the holidays.” Usually more than once a year, if Sticks hasn’t shot down the mail helicopter and actually received Amy’s letters. “Which is… yeah, it’s weird you ended up all slimed, too, huh?” Sticks was far from a forgotten friend. She was around Amy just a few months ago, wasn’t she?

“I don’t remember her at all,” Trip says. “I was there for years, and…” Wait, did Trip remember where ‘where’ was? “I knew most of the people, at least…”

“I dunno what to tell ya,” Sticks says with a shrug. “Woke up this morning, did my daily rounds to check for spies or ticks, yelled at a bird, yelled at a cloud, yelled at my reflection in the ocean water, and then…” She waves her hands noncommittally. “Just kind’ve a blur from there. I got the feeling someone else was here on the island, watching my every move, but I feel that every time I close my eyes, so I didn’t think anything of it. And then YOU were here!”

“Huh…” Amy scratches her chin. Something about that doesn’t add up, she thinks, but she’s… way too tired to figure it out right now. “Well,” she says, “In any case, it’s been a long day. I’m gonna get in contact with Sonic and the others, alright?” Before she turns to the ladder out of here to grab Tails’s communicator, though, she looks at Trip and asks, “You wanna come with me again?” Trip looks at her with a thousand-yard stare. She’d been thinking of… it, again, her eyes shaking and wet. “...Please?” Amy asks, not wanting her friend to be alone like that. Though her lower lip is wobbling, her legs still shaking, Trip nods and starts to stand.

“Hold up, let me come, too!” Sticks says, “I ain’t done studying those chesticles of yours for clues, yet!”

Amy furrows her brow and says, “Sticks, yours are *bigger* than mine, get over it.” If nothing else has gone Amy’s way today, she at least has the small victory that she doesn’t feel creepily attracted to Sticks. Hard to feel creepily anything in comparison to this girl.

“They are?” Sticks looks down and screams, “Holy Matzah Balls!” She peers down the neck of her top to get a better look. “MAN, you’re not kidding! Really wish I had any mirrors in this place, one’a those would really come in handy right now!”

“You could… use the ocean reflection?” Amy suggests, at least able to smile at her friend’s ridiculous antics. She’d missed Sticks so much, she’s realizing.

“Me and the ocean reflection are NOT on speaking terms,” Sticks grumbles as they all climb out of the burrow and rejoin the others.

Chapter 20: All At Once

Notes:

An extra long chapter to mark #20! Almost everyone's gonna be in this one, so call it a special episode!

Tails is darting through the air, dodging streams of electricity being lobbed at him. “YOU KNEW!” Surge shouts, trying to swat him out of the sky like a bug, “You KNEW it feels like DEATH for me, and you DID IT ANYWAY!”

“I know!” Tails yells back down at her, hiding behind a tree to try and catch a breather. “It was awful, I admit it, okay? I’m–” Surge appears right next to him and kicks him out of the sky, the impact booming like thunder as Tails rockets down to the sand.

“Say you’re sorry one more fucking time, I fucking dare you!” Surge roars at him, the tears in her eyes fizzling and evaporating as soon as they touch her static face. “Sorry doesn’t FIX things!” she says, shooting down another bolt into the impact he’d made on land. “Sorry doesn’t make your MISTAKES go away!!! Sorry doesn’t make you better than me, asshole, so quit acting like you are!” Surge fires a volley of lightning arrows, only stopping when she realizes that she’s just firing at an empty hole in the sand. “GRRRR!”

Tails pops his head out of a different hole, dizzy from the impact, but at least not fried to death. “You’re right, okay!?” he says, not trying to hide from her, just trying to get her to listen. “I messed up and I wanted you to feel hurt about it! I’m a jerk! I am admitting fault and promising not to do it again!”

Surge zips over to him and tries to axe kick him like she’s playing whack-a-bitch. “You know how I can make sure you never do it again?” Surge asks. “BY TURNING YOU INTO BACON!!!” Surge looks around for where he went, already knowing she missed again, and spots him up in the sky, looking panicked. Her attacks are imprecise, blinded and impeded by rage. But why should Surge care? He’ll run out of juice eventually, and when he does…!

“I get that- that you’re mad!” Tails says between huffing breaths, his lungs running out of air. “I get what you’re going through, really! Let me help, I can–”

Surge shoots at him like a laser, grabbing his throat and dropping both of them out of the sky. “YOU DON’T GET ANYTHING!” she screams, both of them landing back in the sand, a cloud of grit shooting out of the crater. With Tails pinned to the ground by the neck, Surge yells in his face, “I have been living in HELL since waking up while YOU and all your shitty buddies are skipping around, dancing and giggling and acting like everyone’s fine! You don’t GET what you DID!”

“Yes I do, BITCH!” Tails shouts back, making her pause for a single beat, even Surge being shocked that Tails of all people just called her that. Tails figured it out, though. Surge doesn’t respond well to kindness, has never responded well to an open palm and an olive branch. So all Tails can do to get her to listen is to stoop down to her level. “Do YOU have any idea how pissed off today has made me!? Have you ever even seen me angry before!? Everyone, EVERYONE is showing up, asking me for help, needing me to do something for them, sticking to me like glue, and NONE of you can even see me as a person!” Tails grabs onto the wrist of the hand that’s around his neck, pushing himself an inch off the ground, straining against Surge’s weight. “Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, even TRIP is treating me like a damn baby even though I’m hurting just as bad as ANY of you!” He’s an adult, dammit! Everyone has all this romantic angst and sexual frustrations bubbling up, and they expect Tails to be this perfect little kid who doesn’t have to worry about any of it, and they’re wrong! He does! And it sucks! So bad!!!

“You have no idea how bad it is,” Surge growls, trying to force him back down.

“Yes. I. Do!” Tails growls right back, really matching Surge’s energy as he kicks her in the stomach and forces her off of him. “I’m just better at dealing with it than you are!” He spits at her.

“I can’t deal with this!” Surge argues, sliding along in the sand, turning some of it to glass with the arcing static coming off of her shoes. “This is too much for anyone to just DEAL–!”

“Skill issue!” Tails yells, realizing how stupid he sounds, and not caring anymore. “You’re not the only person here with a garbage past and a pit in their stomach right now! And *I’m* not the only one who’s been hurting someone on purpose!” She has literally been physically attacking him all day. He fought back once and she’s throwing a fit. “You want me to stop acting like I’m better than you!? Stop proving me right!!!”

There’s a sudden sense of stillness. Surge and Tails stare at each other with violence in their eyes from across the beach, both of their chests heaving, both of their jaws clenched. Either one feels like a sudden movement is going to turn this into an all-out brawl, because neither of them really feels like losing to the other right now. Before one of them can act, though, they hear, “Go For The Eyes!” Neither of them look over at him, keeping their eyes firmly on one another, but they both know Omega is now watching and cheering on the destruction. “The More Organs Decimated Beyond Repair, The Sweeter The Victory!”

Surge is a rebel. She doesn’t like following orders, least of all orders from a robot. So she puts her hands up, gives Tails one more disgusted look, and spins on her heel, walking back to the boat. “Done with this shit.” She shoves her hands in her pockets, spitting on the ground as she walks away.

“If you’re done, then why are you–” Tails starts to ask, but then someone else speaks up.

“Whoa, what’s happening on my island!?” Sticks shrieks, running over as she sees what looks like a battleground. “Was it aliens!? Are we being invaded!? Did the Black Doom army return from outer space for revenge against ME specifically!?” Tails looks over his shoulder to see Sticks, Amy, and Trip approaching again.

“What DID happen over here?” Amy asks. “Tails, you look hurt, are you alright!?”

Tails could tell them the truth. Say that Surge tried to kill him again and get everyone to turn against her.

…

He gives it some deep consideration before rolling his eyes, sighing, and responding, “Yup! A-Okay!” He fully turns towards Amy, bashfully putting his arms behind his head as he says, “We were having a race around the island to blow off some steam! I think it helped, even if I did push myself a bit too hard, haha!” Surge doesn’t give any indication she even processes that he’s lying for her, and Tails doesn’t look her way to check for a reaction regardless. They’re both so done with each other.

“Well… okay, if you say so bud,” Amy says, hurrying past him and running towards the boat. As soon as no one can see his face anymore, Tails’s smile immediately drops into a frustrated scowl. “Omega, can you get the radio working for us? Tails, gimme your communicator in a second, alright? We have a few people we need to talk to.”

 

Sonic is bored. He’s just laying in the grass, watching the sun go down, and feeling like he’s barely doing anything. He got to fight one bad guy today, and it ended up being Ray. Belle even stopped Metal from getting any hits in, so Sonic’s just laying there, doing nothing but waiting. This adventure really is butts.

Meanwhile, while Ray and Jewel have been having tea, or something, Belle’s been humming along to herself and smiling nearly the whole time she’s been working on Team Metal. “Alright,” she finally says, after, like, hooouuurs. “Think I’m just about done!”

Metal Knuckles not only got his necessary repairs, but a complete aesthetic overhaul. Those exhaust vents meant to look like Knuckles’s quills have been painted with green flames reaching up towards him from the now wide-mouthed tips. His arms are reinforced with thick, hydraulic piping to give his claws the split function of pile bunkers, able to shoot out like a jet to seriously puncture anything he can get close to. He even has a green emerald insignia on his forehead to further break up the red of his body, and his shoes are glowing green from their newly installed lowlights. He looks sleeker, newer, but also twice as thick and powerful. Sonic wonders why Belle would do that for one of their enemies, but who is he to judge?

Tails Doll also got a major makeover, all of his ratty, stitched-up fabric now replaced with soft plush - huggable, if not for all the sharp pieces hiding just underneath. Where his neck and limbs have articulation, they can extend from his body, letting him stretch out to the full height of a person, maybe even longer. On top of all of that, he can even form red energy bubbles that act like Metal’s Black Shield. He’d be the perfect trap for an unsuspecting stuffie fanatic… if it wasn’t for those eyes. He insisted on keeping the creepy, off-putting eyes, even when Belle offered to swap them out. So despite being fluffier and stronger, he’s still just as scary-looking.

With her upgrades finished, Belle pulls them both into a hug, saying, “You two’ve been great! Thanks fer all the laughs~!” She seems absolutely thrilled to have helped them, even though Sonic’s nearly positive they’ll be trying to kill her friends the first chance they get. But… he can’t really fault her spirit! She’s offering them a second chance and giving the perfect example as to why using it for good could benefit them. Maybe even Badniks like these two can be reformed, who knows?

Metal’s not happy, but when is he? He bleeps and bloops at the other bots, but Sonic doesn’t care, he’s barely awake right now. Sonic yawns and Belle says, “What, you jealous?” Metal screeches in response. “Hm, he sounds jealous, boys, what do you think?” Metal Knux and Tails Doll both squeak quietly as if laughing, only making Metal Sonic clench his fists angrily. “Fine, you want an upgrade, too? Here.” She reaches into her pocket, holds something in her hand, and then pokes Metal in the forehead. He now has a sticker of Belle’s face on his face. He gets so mad he starts shaking again.

Metal demands that the others in his team follow him back to base, and when they both stay latched onto Belle, she says, “It’s alright, I’ll talk to you two later, kay?” She rubs both of their heads like she’s ruffling non-existent hair. And even though she’s all smiles towards the other two, when they sadly walk/float away and she turns to face Metal, she’s wearing another scowl. “I’m not wrong about you, am I? You’re just gonna stay nasty for nasty’s sake, huh?” He just stares at her. Sonic’s not sure if he answers in robot or not, but it doesn’t seem like it. “Fine,” Belle grumbles. “Whatever. Try not to drag the rest of us down with you, wouldja?”

Metal just stares at her for a few more seconds before rotating his whole body on a swivel and blasting off into the sky. His friends follow suit, and Belle shouts after them, “Bye MK! Bye Dolly! Try to keep him outta trouble, you hear!?” It’s not long before all three of them have vanished.

“Do you… really think that was such a good idea, Belle?” Jewel asks quietly. Both of the robots had behaved so well around Belle, but… based on what Ray had been whispering to her about, they sure haven’t always been that way.

“No,” Belle answers honestly. “But I can hope it was.”

Sonic breathes out a satisfied sigh. He’s starting to like this puppet girl. Then he feels a buzz in his quills and he pulls his communicator out of his hair’s hammerspace. “Yo, you got Sonic.” He sees the person on the other end of the screen and adds, “Oh, hey Ames! You doing any better?”

“Sure,” Amy lies. “Listen.” She just wants to get this over with. “I’m on Sticks’s island with Tails. We think this could be a good place to get everyone together and figure out what to do from there.” Maybe Tails could invent a group chat next time, all of this is such a hassle.

“Sounds nice!” Sonic says with a thumbs up and a nod. “I can grab the others and be over in a jiffy!” He looks up to Belle, Jewel, and Ray. “Who’s with me?”

Ray immediately swoops into the air, declaring, “I AM!” He’s not gonna let a chance to find Mighty pass him by.

“Yeah, might as well, right?” Belle says, feeling like if the Metals ever get involved in any of this, she should probably be on standby to, er… apologize. For them existing.

“...” Jewel doesn’t like fighting, she doesn’t like adventures, and she definitely doesn’t like leading group projects like she has been for the past few years with the Restoration. But… Tangle will be there… and Belle will be there… so Jewel should probably be there. “Okay… let’s go.”

“Alright!” Sonic declares, holding out his arms like he’s waiting to be hugged. “All aboard the Hedgehog Express! No outside food or drink allowed, and please keep all limbs inside the cabin.” He’s gotten used to carrying people around at this point, might as well have some fun with it!

 

“Wait, Tangle did?” Silver asks, voice hushed so as not to be overheard. “And you said yes? I didn’t know you even liked girls!”

“I don’t think I do!” Blaze hisses back, tail all poofy, holding onto him for dear life. She might be accidentally digging her claws into his back a bit, but he doesn’t stop her. She already told him how worried she’d been about him, she needs this physical contact, so she’s literally sitting in his lap as she’s telling him all of this. “I just didn’t know what else to say!”

Silver hasn’t stopped smiling for a second since Whisper had managed to cheer him up. Seeing Blaze all cute and needy like this definitely helped keep him grinning, too~! “Well I think you should try it out!” When Blaze balks at him, he adds, “I already promised Whisper I’d think about stuff like that, so you should give it a shot, too! Who knows, maybe you do like girls, right?”

“...wait, what did you promise Whisper?” Blaze asks, suspicious. She is SO certain there was flirting happening up there.

“Oh, about gender!” Silver answers. “Apparently you can choose your own! So I’m gonna be thinking really hard about it!” Blaze continues to stare as Silver thinks. “I don’t know what to think about. Blaze, what’s it like?”

“Uh… being a girl?”

“Yeah!” Silver is asking with total sincerity, like it’s a question with an objective answer like math or science. “I have to be informed, you know? I know all about being a guy, and I like it a lot, so I’ve never really had any reason to think about the other side of things. But I said I would, so I wanna do a good job at this!”

“A good… A good job at gender?” Blaze repeats, dumbfounded. When Silver answers with an enthusiastic nod, she tilts her head and whispers, “I… I am so, SO madly in love with you, Silver.”

“Whabuwhaw!?” Silver has gone from just grinning to blushing and stuttering in an instant. Blaze leans forward and gives him a kiss on the cheek, making him flush even worse. She adores this dork with everything she has.

All of this straightness is interrupted by a loud thump and a shout of pain. Both of them look over to see Lanolin having dragged someone she’d tied up over to the rest of them. “Do any of you know this creep who I found stalking the Chaotix?” She puts her boot on Gadget’s back to keep him pinned to the ground as everyone gathers. The Diamond Cutters, the Chaotix, and Shadow are all staring down at him as he meekly stares up at them all.

“H-Hey, guys…!” Gadget smarmily mumbles. “Funny seeing you here!”

“Gadge?” Vector walks forward, scratching his head. “What are you doing here? I told you it’d be safer with your buddies!”

“Yeah, well…” He looks up to the mean, angry sheep who had easily wrestled him to the ground, tied up his arms and legs with a wire, and carried him over here like a sack of potatoes. “That was clearly a bit of an understatement…!”

“Damn,” Lanolin grumbles, “Was hoping he was an assassin so I could deal with him myself.” She takes her foot off of Gadget’s back only to kick him over to Vector. “Have fun dealing with the knots.” Tangle snickers at Lanolin saying the word ‘knot’ in relation to a wolf. Whisper flicks her on the arm. “Is there a problem?” the sheep grumbles at the pair, but they both just smile and shake their heads. “Hrngh…”

Shadow leans over to Espio, who is still beet red from all the snuggling Silver had done to him a moment ago. “Who is that one?” Shadow asks, pointing to Lanolin. “I like her energy, tell me about her.” Espio, unfortunately, is still too dizzy to even tell who Shadow is talking about.

“Gadge, what are you doing, following us around?” Vector asks as he tries to untie Lanolin’s handiwork. Damn, though, she musta been a girl scout or something, these things are TIGHT. “I thought we had a good plan worked out.”

“It’s always a good plan to stay on the sidelines and let someone else handle things for you,” Gadget tells him, “But I’m tired of that, man! I’m tired of handing out weapons and hiding in a basement when things get rough! I’m tired of doing damage control instead of damage *prevention!* I want to help!”

“You guys help at a local level,” Vector tells him, getting in there with his teeth at one point. “That’sh jusht ash important ash any other heroesh are!” The wire snaps right out of Vector’s mouth, making his teeth clatter together.

“Yeah,” Gadget mutters, “Until it’s not. Until it’s too late to do anything but hide and pray someone else can save you.” He groans. “I don’t want to be that guy anymore, Vector! I don’t want Syndi and Tool to be, either! We deserve another shot!”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Vector says, putting his hand on Gadget’s shoulder. “I guess the small time can be a bit stifling sometimes. And I’d love to let you prove yourself out there, but…”

“But the real heroes need someone to support them,” Gadget answers. “They need tools and help and people to hold down the fort when they’re gone. Yeah… I get it.”

“No,” Vector says, “I was gonna say ‘BUT I can’t untie you, so you might not get the chance!’ HAHA!” Vector pats himself on the back for a joke well told, then adds, “No, seriously, does anyone have shears or something around here!?”

“Would you peasants,” a small, high-pitched voice calls out, “BE QUIET!?” Everyone’s heads turn towards the medical tent, where a very naked Honey the Cat is standing. As if she’d let herself be seen in rags! Her natural state is gorgeous enough as it is~! “I am TRYING to get my beauty sleep, understand!?” she yells at everyone as if she’s not flashing them all. “Oh, what am I saying, you all clearly *don’t* know the concept, looking at you all~! Ohoho!”

“Whoa! Hey! No!” Lanolin shouts, rushing over and grabbing a tarp off the ground to cover her with. “No public nudity!”

“Wait, really?” Silver asks, suddenly embarrassed. He’s, like, the only guy here who doesn’t have pants on. And being in his lap right now, Blaze notices the same thing and blushes.

“Unhand me, vermin!” Honey spits as Lanolin pushes her back into the tent and wraps the tarp around her body. “Don’t you dare touch me with that lowly, cheap fabric, understand!? I am above this! Let go!”

As Lanolin is struggling with the surprisingly physically capable Honey, the radio in her back pocket starts to crackle. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” She grabs it and tosses it into the crowd, yelling, “Someone else deal with this!”

Shadow catches the radio easily. He holds down the call button and answers, “Yes? Shadow the Hedgehog speaking.”

“Sh-Shadow!?” he hears Amy’s voice ask. “Why are y– Where’s Lanolin?”

“Ah, so that’s her name,” Shadow quietly muses, “Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?” He pauses just long enough to annoy Amy before answering her actual question, “The sheep is in a tent pinning a screaming, naked woman to the floor, cursing up a storm.” Shadow tilts his head to get a better listen. “Sounds like they’re really busy in there, too, I think I can hear someone being slapped over and over again. Or, you know, some variety of skin-to-skin contact.”

There’s no voice on the other end of the radio for a few moments, but then Shadow hears Tails say, “Hello!? Who is this? What did you say to Amy?” She’d just fallen over and covered her face up with sand, dropping the radio into Tails’s lap and refusing to say anything other than ‘aaaaaaaaaaaa.’

“Nothing that concerns you, squirt,” Shadow tells him. “Why are you contacting us?”

Tails, endlessly frustrated with everyone, says, “We found a place for everyone to gather and we need to send over the coordinates so that we can solve this problem once and for all.”

“Don’t waste my time with longitudes and latitudes,” Shadow growls at him, “Just tell me the name of the place and I’ll get people there.”

“It’s called Boomerang Burrow,” Tails says, “It’s an island off the coast of Central City.”

“Well I don’t know where that is,” Shadow says immediately. “Pick somewhere else.” He waits… and when he’s only answered by a loud slam, surely from Tails throwing the radio at something, Shadow smiles warmly. He loves being a bitch.

“Why Are You Doing This?” the radio blares after a few seconds. Shadow thinks he knows what the radio was thrown at.

“Oh, Omega, perfect. Someone I can talk to. Get me the coordinates for that island. I asked the runt and he refused to cooperate, for some reason.”

“Oh, give me that,” Blaze says, swiping the radio away from Shadow. She’d let Silver get up so he could find some pants, and then she couldn’t help but overhear Shadow being an ass to everyone.

“I’ve done what I needed to do,” Shadow says, letting her walk away with it.

 

Surge is laying on the beach, feeling water wash over her as the tide comes in and goes back out. She’s staring up at the stars, her whole body aching. Most of the pain is in her chest, to be fair, but Tails did get a pretty good hit in towards the end, there. She’s not looking at anyone, she’s not talking to anyone, she’s just laying here and waiting to rot.

She hears Amy and Tails, both over by the boat, talking to one another. “It sounds like the others will aim to get here around tomorrow morning,” Tails says, finally putting down the radio. Blaze and the others had worked out a plan, but it was too late in the day to get everyone on board, so the soonest would be tomorrow.

“Alright,” Amy says, yawning herself. “Yeah, that’s… reasonable. I don’t wanna be awake right now, either.” She sighs. “Sticks has plenty of room available, even if most of it is storage space.” You know, for nonperishable goods, building materials… and guns. Sticks has a lot of guns for a girl who fights with a boomerang, actually. “We should be good to spend the night! We can head all inside once Sonic gets here.”

Tails doesn’t say anything for a second. For a moment, Surge wants to believe he just walked away. Unfortunately, his voice enters her ears again. “I think I’m gonna head home for tonight, actually. I wanna return Shadow’s car, get some of my actual planes ready, if I can. But I’ll be back tomorrow, too, alright?”

“Oh, okay,” Amy says. She gives Tails a short, friendly hug, then turns away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Be careful out there, alright?”

“Will do!” Tails waits for Amy to make her way back to the burrow. Sticks had set up a little bonfire that her and Trip were sitting around, Omega not far away. When he sees Amy sit down with the others, he says, “Are you coming or not?” Surge doesn’t even realize he’s talking to her at first, but then he’s standing next to her, blocking out the stars and looking down at her. “Do I need to poke you with a stick to see if you’re breathing?” Tails asks her.

“...what?” Surge does not understand why he’d even be looking at her right now.

“I said are you coming? You know, home?” Tails is saying this like it should be obvious to her if she wasn’t such an idiot.

“Why the fuck would I do that?” Surge whispers, eyes narrowed like this was some cosmic insult.

Tails just rolls his eyes. “How dense are you?” Seems he’s done being that ‘goody two-shoes’ everyone loves so much. “I *want* to stay here and wait for Sonic. Obviously. But *you* want to get away from these people, and the only way to do that is to get off this island.” He doesn’t wait for her response before walking back to the boat, pushing it until it’s in the water again. “Stay here or don’t, but don’t be a jackass about it later and act like I never gave you the option.”

Tails gets into the driver’s seat of the boat. As he’s starting up the engine, Surge wordlessly rises from her watery grave, walks over, and gets into the seat next to him. Neither of them look at each other or say anything as they start to sail away.

Only a few minutes later, Ray swoops in for a crash landing, dropping Sonic, Belle, and Jewel into the sand before finding a nice tree to crash into. “Heavy… So heavy…” he breathes out over and over.

Amy runs over to Sonic and the others to see if they’re okay. “Hey! Wow, you guys got here fast!”

“Yup!” Sonic says, picking himself up and then helping Belle and Jewel. “Ray’s the real MVP, though, he got us all over the ocean on his own!” He’s a lot slower when he’s weighed down by three people, but it got the job done!

“Oh, Ray’s here?” Amy asks, looking around. Then the squirrel falls out of a nearby tree. “Oh! Hi Ray!”

Sonic leans in next to Amy, putting an arm around her shoulder and whispering, “Hey, so if he says anything weird to you, let me know, alright? He’s got one or two ideas twisted up in his head, you know?”

“Huh huh huh huh what? Okay what huh? Ah? Hahah what!?” Amy stammers, immediately sweating as she feels how close Sonic is to her.

“Right!” Sonic had been so bored (and surrounded by people who were not in love with him) that he’d forgotten how this whole mess had started off. “Sorry! Totally my b!”

“Nuh-nuh-no, it’s, uh-! I’m fine…!” Amy stutters, taking a step back and then tripping over Jewel, spiralling backwards into the sand. “Fuck…!”

“Gears and starters, my head…!” Belle shakes sand out of her hair as she stands up. “I got so turned around from that fall, I thought I heard Amy just say the eff word.” She shudders. Imagine if that could happen…

Sonic’s mouth is agape. “Whoa.” That was a Shadow word. What’s it doing here? “Amy, you swear now? Is that a side effect of this messed up magic, or are you just feeling that bad!?”

Amy says, “Yes.” She can’t believe she let that slip out in front of Sonic. How un-fucking-ladylike of her. “I’m sorry, Jewel, are you okay?”

Jewel slowly sits up, dusts herself off, looks up at Amy, then tells her with precise annunciation, “Bloody motherfucking cunts.” Everyone else is silent. “Wow. Yes, I can see why people do that, now. That’s fun.” Jewel clears her throat. “Golly.”

“So!” Sonic says with a clap of his hands, changing the subject as quick as only a hedgehog can, “What’s going on over here?”

He speeds up to the bonfire, and Sticks answers him by holding up a spear with a can of beans stabbed through it. “Dinner! You want some?” She leans over to Omega and whispers, “The ones that don’t eat are infected. He’s trying to hide the bite wound from us, I know it.”

“Cool!” Sonic says, not taking a burnt and rusty can, only proving Sticks’s point. “Trip! Great to see you! Wow, you musta turned into some kind of warrior after our last adventure, huh? Look at those biceps!”

“...it wasn’t by choice,” Trip says ominously.

“...Not cool!” Sonic tells her. “That’s, uh… Big oof, yeah.” He said the thing!!!

“S-sorry,” Trip mutters. “I’ve just been getting too into my own head tonight. Not your fault.” She rotates her can on a stick to get the char nice and even. “It’s… nice to see you, too, Sonic. I–” Trip stops talking, her eyes having caught something in the distance, by the beach. She drops her stick into the fire and stands up. “Ray!?”

Ray looks up as his name was called. He was still over by Jewel and Amy, debating on whether or not he was also allowed to say the c-word, but when he sees Trip, he forgets about it. “T-Trip!” He knows her! He doesn’t know how but he KNOWS her!

Trip speeds over to him and slams into him with a hug hard enough to knock both of them off their feet, but with Ray’s wings, they just drift gently back down. “Thank goodness you got out!” Trip says, nearly crying. “I was so scared I was the only one!”

“Y-Yeah! Yeah, I get that feeling,” Ray answers, smiling for a reason he doesn’t quite understand. “Where, uh, where did we get out from again?”

“Who cares!?” Trip answers, not quite knowing herself. “I’m just glad you’re okay!” The two of them have never met, not in this version of their lives, but they both feel a connection of years between one another. And even if they have no idea why, that has to mean something. It could mean everything.

 

Mighty the Armadillo peels off his tank top. “Here,” he calls out, tossing it into the med tent where Lanolin is still struggling to get Honey to wear anything at all. “Tight on me, big enough to be a dress on her. Tell her it’s all the rage at Botanic Base, heh.” He listens to Honey and Lanolin struggle a bit more, not peeking inside, just waiting. Only a minute or two after, Honey emerges with his tank top wrapped around her, tied off at her hip like a dress. “Ma’am,” Mighty says to her.

“You could have warned me we’d be waking up in a garbage dump,” she complains to him.

“How’s I supposed to know?” he says with a shrug. He didn’t exactly expect that nightmare to end as suddenly as it did. He rests a palm on the top of her head, ruffling her hair in a way that might get any other man ripped to shreds in an instant. “They’re good people. Don’t get your whiskers in a twist, alright?”

“Hmph,” Honey scoffs. “Don’t act like your opinion should hold weight with me. I barely know who you are,” she says, covered in his sweaty clothes.

“Whatever you say, Hun,” Mighty calls her. Honey grumbles before walking off, having been told there were showers nearby. He doesn’t try to stop her. Funniest thing, but out of everyone here, Honey was the one he trusted the most. She’d be fine on her own for a bit.

After another moment, Lanolin also comes out of the tent, covered in bloody scratches. “Out’ve bandages,” she says miserably before heading off to the supply depot. Mighty stays put where he is, waiting for the herd to thin out a bit. Vector was off talking to the wolf kid from before, Espio went… somewhere with that shiny guy, and Shadow was… oh, Shadow was walking up to him.

“You,” Shadow says, “Red one.” He knows Mighty’s name, he’s just choosing to be a bitch right now. “Are you also planning to actually go to sleep in this place?”

“They got mattresses, don’t they?” Mighty says with a short laugh. “Why, you looking to call dibs on one of the tents? Cuz I always take top bunk, sorry.”

“No,” Shadow says quietly, “I plan on going home and sleeping in my actual bed.” He looks Mighty right in the eyes as he adds, “A bed you’re welcome to share, if you think you can handle it.” Shadow has done a lot of research today. He’s figured out a few things. There is one thing he has yet to analyze, though, and it’s contingent on another person’s cooperation, so he’s asking politely. He’s being very brave about it.

Mighty blinks a few times. Huh. Guess this guy *has* been flirting with him all day, hasn’t he? Well, shucks. “Sorry, Shad, but I gotta stay with my boys tonight. They’re a little lost without me, and I have a feeling they have a lot they want to talk about. Can’t leave ‘em in the lurch already, right?” That, and he needs to interrogate Honey to see how much she remembers of their shared torture.

He feels bad just sending the guy on his way, though… “Hey, uh, tell you what.” Mighty leans forward, his mouth next to Shadow’s face as he whispers - no, growls, “You go home and tell that pretty ol’ girlfriend of yours that you found something that satisfies you in a way she could never, ever give you herself. And then if you behave for me enough, I can show you how many ways that little body of yours can bend before it breaks, huh?”

Shadow enters a stunned silence. He thought he was the one making everyone else swoon today, what the hell did this man just say to him!? How did this happen? The tables have turned so god damned easily! In his stupor, all he can think of in reply is, “L-Little? Excuse you, but I’m the–”

“Yeah,” Mighty says, putting a hand on Shadow’s arm, interrupting the whole ‘Ultimate Lifeform’ schtick. “Little. Look atcha.” He can fit his hand around Shadow’s entire bicep, making the hedgehog’s eyes go wide. “It’s fine. You speedy types are like that aintcha? Nice and lean, full’ve energy, raring to go.” Shadow’s eyes had drifted down to Mighty’s shirtless torso, his shredded abs and rippling pecs, the muscles thick and heavy, and so Mighty grabs Shadow’s chin and redirects his face until they’re making eye contact again. “I like that. Means I can go as hard as I want, right?” When Shadow simply stares instead of answering, Mighty gives him a peck on the lips and then walks away. “Catch ya later, champ!” He doesn’t even look back.

Shadow stares at nothing, his entire body stiff as a board. His *entire* body. What just happened? What the fuck just happened? He feels his legs get weak, and he quickly starts to dash off home to keep anyone from noticing how intense his blush is. He nearly trips over his own feet on his way out, having to Chaos Control so that no one can see.

“Alright,” Vector says, “Alright. I’ll put in a good word for you and your team. Can you be ready by morning?”

“Yeah! Definitely!” Gadget says, eyes burning with a determined flame. “You have a promise, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the croc says, patting him on the back and sending him on his way. “Get outta here. I got some shut-eye to catch.” Vector watches as Shadow teleports away, Gadget runs off, Tangle and Whisper sneak off into a tent on their own, and everyone else is too far away for him to care about. “What a day!” he says to no one in particular. “Just another notch in the belt for the life of a detective, I guess!”

“Detective?” Mighty asks, having sauntered up to Vector when the lizard wasn’t looking. “Is that what we are, now?”

“Heh.” Vector throws his arm around Mighty’s back, pulling him close as the two start to walk away together. “Let me tell you a bit about the case of the Mythsonian Mystery Thief!”

Vector and Mighty head into the small town that had been built, hoping there’s a less camping-outside-style place to turn in for the night. Meanwhile, Sonic, Amy, and several friends they’d forgotten they had sit around a campfire telling stories about their time apart. Some of the others get home to rest, some of them are out all night, but all of them are still being watched.

 

A hand grazes a small screen propped up on a wooden table, the scenes it had been playing out beginning to fade into static. “Thank goodness they’re all taking this so well,” a woman says to herself. She raises her arms above her head, stretching and yawning. “And here I was worried I’d have to explain it all. But they’re all so smart, they’re starting to understand all on their own, hmhm~!” She grasps a mug of room temperature tea and sips gently from it. “Good. It’ll make things so much easier going forward.”

A blue, scaly hand adorned in silver and gold rings and bracelets sets down the mug, then flutters up to a lizard’s face to help stifle her yawn. “I swear, the last group was like pulling teeth.” She pulls a deck of cards out of the pocket of her faded, denim jacket and starts to thumb through faces. Trip, Mighty, Ray, Honey, don’t need these anymore, she thinks as she tosses those ones onto the table. “Who else, who else…”

She flips through the deck until she lands on one card in particular. “Ah, yes,” she whispers to herself, setting the other cards down. “Perfect.” She stares at a picture of a human woman wearing a crown of feathers, looking as dignified and composed as ever. She sets Elise’s card face-down on the table, looking back to her tiny screen as the static it had faded into starts to clear up again. Soleanna reappears. The naga smiles. “Oh, this is going swimmingly,” she says to a large, dusty room with no one else inside. “I just can’t wait~!”

A door in the far distance slams open and a mass of slime shoots out of the darkness, coated in white, feathery light. It ricochets off of unseen walls until landing in the woman’s lap. A blue, scaly hand caresses its face. “Do as you’re told, now,” she tells Elise. “Understand?” And then she shoves the monster through the screen, enveloping it in static, sending the thing that had once been Soleanna’s ruler plummeting down to Earth. “Good girl.”

Notes:

Whoa, who was that? That doesn't sound like a canonical Sonic character! I guess we'll have to find out at some point together~!

Thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting this whole time! It's really bonkers to think of just how much I've written in such a short time, but I've honestly never had this much fun with writing before, so I hope I can keep at it! It would... PROBABLY be a good idea to slow down a little, but I might not be able to control myself lmao. Whenever I'm not at my desk and writing, all I've been able to do is think about these lame furries. Knowing that people really do care about it makes it that much more fun, though, so again, genuinely thank you if you're reading this <3 <3 <3

Chapter 21: Bonus Scene: Shadow x Rouge x Knuckles

Notes:

As with every explicit sex scene in the story, this chapter is going to be labeled for explicit content right here. If you don't feel comfortable or aren't in the mood to read this now, you can skip ahead or come back later. Stay safe and comfortable!

Shadow’s quills are standing on edge. If someone had bumped into him, they’d have been stabbed by the fur on his arms, let alone his actual hair. ‘Nice and lean, raring to go,’ Shadow repeats Mighty’s words in his head over and over again. ‘Little.’ Why did it floor him so hard? Why was he blushing so intensely from it? He already knew Mighty was hot, it wasn’t just about finding the man attractive. But the idea of being bent and pushed down and pressed into and…

Shadow stops near the front door to his apartment, rests his forehead on the wall under the porch light for a moment, the night sky hanging about him feeling suffocating. He wants to be fucked so badly. He wants a man to grab onto him and just do whatever he wants. His entire body is burning, his face is on fire, and even after minutes of walking around on his own and teleporting away to stay out of sight, he’s still hard as steel.

He needs to center himself. He needs to be better than this. He’s strong, he’s fearless, he’s the Ultimate Lifeform!

…he’s so fucking horny.

He opens the front door and steps inside, rubbing his face and groaning. “You’re home late,” a voice calls from the kitchenette. He turns the corner from the entryway and spots Rouge, in just a tight, white tank and a pair of black panties, something she was probably getting ready to sleep in, as she stands in the kitchen drinking a bottle of water. “Have fun running around with the boys all day, Shadow~?”

Shadow remembers that cat girl from the gunsmiths’ house. He didn’t like her, even though she did everything he’d wanted her to. Something about her was very wrong, Shadow just doesn’t know what. ‘Can show you how many ways that little body of yours can bend before it breaks.’ Then Shadow thinks about the sheep woman, Lanolin she’d been called. Rough, angry, able to carry a man over her shoulder like it was nothing. Shadow didn’t speak with her, but he felt like he should maybe try to one day. He’s definitely interested, but doesn’t know if that translates to anything direct… ‘Yeah. Look atcha.’ And now here was Rouge, always dependable, someone he knows he can stand. If there was any woman in the world Shadow could see himself with, it must be her, right? And she’s barely wearing a thing. Despite how used to casually seeing her body as Shadow was, he can’t help but let his eyes linger on her curves for just a moment too long. She catches him looking and cocks an eyebrow at him. ‘Little.’

“What’s wrong, Shadow?” Rouge asks, “Bat got your tong–” But she’s cut off when Shadow dashes at her, grabs her by the head, and pulls her into a rough kiss. “Mmf-!?” Rouge is pulled into him as she feels his tongue in her mouth. She does her best to kiss back, but he’s moving so fast, and as soon as she’s flush up against him, she can feel it through his pants, hard, waiting, needing her. “Mmnph…” She leans into him for just one moment before putting both hands on his chest and pushing away. “Whoa-hoh-hoh there, tiger~!” she says with a laugh, wiping his spit from her mouth as she takes a step back. “Slow down a bit and let me breathe first, why don’t you?” Guess that answers her question about whether he’s gay or bi, though. Lucky her, she supposes!

“Need,” he breathes out at her, voice hoarse and desperate in a way Rouge has never heard from him before. “Now.” He doesn’t want the preamble, he doesn’t want to talk about their feelings first, he wants sex and he wants it before he goes insane. “Bedroom.” From the sound of his voice, he might have gone insane already. He’d completely forgotten his manners. “...Please.”

Rouge smirks evilly. “Well, isn’t this a surprise~?” She starts to walk around, keeping her eyes on Shadow as she circles him like a shark or a vulture. “First you blueball me all morning, and now you come crawling back, begging me to get you off. Oh, the irony is delicious, Shadow~!”

“I take it that’s your way of saying no?” he grumbles, already feeling himself turning towards his room on his own. He needs to do *something* to get those words out of his head. Maybe Rouge left the remote control somewhere nearby…

“Oh, I’d definitely say yes to such a heartfelt proposal from someone like you, Shadow,” Rouge says, turning her back to him. He snaps back to staring at her, reaching towards her ass before she adds, “Buuuuuuut I already have someone over, so I can’t~!” She looks over her shoulder and winks at him, sticking her tongue out and poking at her cheek brattily. “Oopsie~!”

“You–?” She asked him out and then found someone else to sleep with!? What the hell? How come that worked for her but not for him when he asked Mighty to come? Bullshit! “But I–”

“We’ll talk things out tomorrow, kay Shaddie dear~?” Rouge says as she walks off back to her room, purposefully swaying her hips a bit more than usual. Her wings flutter, her tail wiggles, and she says, “Better luck next time, big guy~!” as she opens her door and slips inside. Shadow thinks he sees a flash of red fur before the door shuts and she’s out of view.

‘Big guy.’ Shadow looks down at the floor, then clenches his fists, growling and stomping forwards towards the door to give Rouge a piece of his mind. Who the hell did she think she was calling him that!? Does she know who he is!? He’s–

‘Little.’ That word Mighty had called him replays in his head a few times. ‘Little.’ Shadow clutches the sides of his head. ‘Little.’ Shut up! Shut up and let him show everyone who’s really in charge around here!

Shadow kicks open the door to Rouge’s room. “Yup, there he is,” Rouge titters, laying on the bed on her side, facing both the doorway and Knuckles as she speaks. “A bit too predictable, aren’t we~?” Knuckles looks startled, covering up his crotch with a pillow as Shadow barges in.

“Don’t call me that!” Shadow barks at her, storming into the room and approaching the bed, having to step over discarded clothes and nondescript bottles littering the carpet.

Rouge raises an eyebrow. “What, predictable?” She means, yeah, it’s a dig, but he’s never really reacted badly to getting poked with that one before. Curious.

“To be fair,” Knuckles says, trying to sound cool to cover for his awkward nervousness at being walked in on as he readjusts himself to a slightly less vulnerable position, “You are pretty easy to read.”

“Not that!” Shadow shouts, then shakes his head. “Nevermind!” He grabs Rouge’s ankle and yanks, making the bat squeak as she’s pulled away from Knuckles. “You’re sharing now.”

“I am?” Rouge asks innocently, staring up at Shadow from over her shoulder. She gestures to Knuckles and tells Shadow, “Well, by all means, if you want a turn with him, be my guest~!”

“Huh?” Knuckles asks. “That’s gay, Shadow, the hell?”

Shadow is immediately starting to regret his choice of companionship for the evening, but he supposed it’s what he gets for all the teasing earlier. Whatever. He grabs onto Rouge’s loose-fitting panties and yanks until he can see hole, holding her there while he undoes his belt with his other hand. “Have you not even been using condoms?” he asks warily, seeing someone else leaking out from between her legs.

“Oh my god, it’ll be fine, you big baby~!” Rouge teases, wiggling her butt at him. “What’s wrong, too much of an ~alpha man~ to take someone’s sloppy seconds?”

Shadow rolls his eyes. “You’re literally filthy,” he says, shoving himself into her cunt anyway. For some reason, feeling another man’s cum on his cock while he fucks someone’s pussy isn’t exactly a deal breaker for Shadow, wonder why?

“W-Whoa,” Knuckles says as Rouge starts to giggle, bouncing forward and back on the bed beside him as she’s railed. People were fucking in front of him, Knux thinks to himself. He doesn’t know if he should be jealous or even more turned on. He feels that pillow he has on his crotch getting more and more snug around him. He thinks he’s the 2nd thing.

“Get the fuck over here and put it in my mouth, already,” Rouge says, readjusting herself to offer easy access to both men.

“Literally begging for someone to shut this bitch up,” Shadow says, sounding as stoic as ever despite being fully inside of Rouge at this point, her folds pressing down on him and spreading warmth through his whole body. Why was this not doing anything for him? Why wasn’t this helping? He’s still so frustrated and pent up and–

Shadow watches as Rouge tosses a pillow aside and grabs onto Knuckles’s cock, sliding her tongue up along its side before wrapping her lips around it and letting her head bob in his lap. The echidna lets out a deep, throaty sigh as he palms the back of Rouge’s head, keeping her in place, much like Shadow was gripping her hips as he silently, unflinchingly thrusts himself into her. Despite Rouge being the girl he’s having actual sex with, he can’t take his eyes off of Knuckles, and as he watches Rouge blow him, he has to bite his tongue to keep himself from licking his lips.

That’s when his heart starts really beating. He’s more excited from what he’s watching than from what he’s doing. He wants to growl, snarl, and bite, to rage at that realization, but he can’t. He’s too distracted, too enraptured as he watches Rouge suck cock.

That is, until she takes her mouth off of it. “Shadow, dear, could you maybe pick up the pace a little?” Rouge asks, “My hips can only do so much on their own when I’m–” When she leans back just enough to talk to him, something inside of Shadow breaks. He pushes her face to the side and leans forward enough to get Knuckles into his own mouth. “What–? Hey!!! That’s mine!”

“Uh? What are–?” Knuckles stammers. He was joking about the gay thing, but this definitely seemed pretty homo– wow, Shadow is good at that. He’s a lot slower and shier than Rouge in the way he tries to pleasure a man with his mouth, but it’s also a lot softer and doesn’t feel like a vacuum cleaner trying to rip his skin off. No offense. A little less cheek and a little more tongue, too, which isn’t anything to complain about. “Nngh… Damn, Shadow.”

Hearing Knuckles actually moan because of him only makes Shadow love the feeling of cock inside of him more. Even if it’s not the exact way he’d wanted to be penetrated, the feeling of it against his tongue makes his head swim, and that wasn’t even taking taste into account. Whoever kept Shadow from doing *this* for a decade needs to be shot.

Wait, how *did* Shadow want to be p– “What ever happened to sharing!?” Rouge complains, nudging Shadow’s head to the side - not enough to get him off of Knuckles, just enough to give her some room to get at the echidna’s balls with her own tongue. She was not going to be outdone.

“Ohhh fuck…!” Knuckles moans, covering his face with one hand and gripping Shadow with the other, his palm on the side of the man’s face, his thumb in the perfect position to give little ear rubs. Feeling Knuckles’s gigantic hand against the side of his head, petting him and dwarfing his face with his palm– ‘Little’ -Shadow starts to quietly moan into Knuckles’s lap, holding onto Rouge for dear life as he remains buried in her.

Rouge is a bat. She has good hearing. So it doesn’t pass her notice that Shadow hadn’t given off as much as a huff when he was rutting her like it was illegal, but the instant he’s getting face-fucked, he’s sounding like a bitch trying to hide how very much in heat she was. Hm… maybe she’s been thinking about this all wrong.

“Don’t cum yet,” she tells both of them. “Shadow, get on your back.”

“H-hmph!?” Shadow asks, mouth still stuffed with penis. Rouge yanks him backwards by the collar of the shirt he was still wearing for some reason, throwing him back down onto the bed next to Knuckles.

“Red, get up,” she demands next. Knuckles does not ask questions, rolling to the side and landing on the floor without an argument. Rouge slides down next to Shadow, leaning up against him, wrapping an arm around him and pulling him in tightly against her. “Okay, lube’s on the nightstand. I’ll get him warmed up for you~!”

“You’ll what?” Shadow asks, “He’ll what???” Rouge answers by pressing her lips against Shadow’s, shutting the bitch up. They taste the cock on one another’s breath as Rouge runs a hand down Shadow’s torso, trailing a finger around his hips, and then gently taking his cock into her hand.

“Want me to touch this while he fucks you, cutie~?” Rouge whispers so only Shadow can hear.

“I???” Shadow’s chest is pounding. His mind can’t form coherent sentences, his thoughts are just a mess of Rouge’s voice calling him cute, Knuckles’s body as he moves around the bed, and his own heart feeling like it might pop into a fountain of blood at any moment. He covers his mouth and is shocked to feel a shaky grin on his own face. What was happening to him? Unable to speak, Shadow answers Rouge by barely, nearly imperceptibly moving his head in a nod.

Rouge pulls his hand away and kisses him again, and this time Shadow breathes out a gasp so harsh it might as well be a moan. Knuckles sees the two of them, naked, writhing around against each other in bed, and he feels himself getting hungry. Not hungry for food, but for *meat.*

“Emeralds above, you want this bad, don’t you?” Knuckles says through gritted teeth, climbing into the bed and getting himself nice and ready as he looms above Shadow.

“Th-this doesn’t leave this room!” Shadow blurts out. “Tell someone about this and your life is forfeit, understand?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Knuckles says with an eyeroll. “I’ll kiss my invitation to your coming out party goodbye.”

“Oh, you should kiss *him* too, while you’re at it~!” Rouge coos. “He’s so cute when he’s holding onto you and gasping into your mouth~!” She’s saying all of this while gently jacking Shadow off, each word making the hedgehog squirm and twitch.

“I dunno,” Knuckles says, scrunching up his nose as Shadow feels a large hand pawing up his thigh. “Wouldn’t kissing a guy be a little… you know.”

Rouge leers at him. “Your tip is poking at his asshole, you complete loser.”

“Please just shut up and do it,” Shadow begs.

“Yah, Rouge, see?” Knuckles says with a smirk. “It’s not gay if it’s a slut.” Knuckles shoves himself inside of Shadow, who gasps so loudly that he has to cover his own mouth again to keep from screaming.

“Mm– Mmphhh!” Shadow trembles under Rouge’s soft, delicate hold of his cock, the bat slowly pleasuring him while kissing him along the side of his neck, his shoulders, his chest. “Fuh-Fuhhck…!” Shadow strains against Knuckles, wrapping his legs around the man’s hips, feeling more full than he’s ever felt in his life, letting out a soft, airy gasp into the room with every push, every thrust, his voice high and light. “Ahh! Hhhah…!” Each time he gasps, all it serves to accomplish is proving to both of the people having their ways with him that Knuckles was right, and that Shadow is, indeed, a slut who wanted this so, so badly. “HAH! Hhhhnnn! Mmmg!”

Shadow bites the back of his hand in an effort to keep himself quiet, clutching desperately at the pillow under his head with the other. Rouge doesn’t think she’s ever seen him this vulnerable before. She needs more. She giggles, getting nice and close to his ear before softly whispering, “You moan like a girl~.”

“FUCK!” Shadow explodes onto Rouge’s hand and his own stomach, his back arching as he sprays the both of them with a rough, soul-shattering orgasm. He grasps onto Rouge with both hands, burying his face in her neck and muttering, “-love you I love you I love you I love you I love you-” over and over, only sounding like frantic, meaningless babbling to Knuckles.

Knuckles clenches his jaw. Did he just mindbreak Shadow the Hedgehog? “Y-yeah, fuck is right,” he groans before slamming himself down into the bed, burying himself in Shadow’s hole, and bottoming out inside the bitch. “Nnnngh, hell yeah!” Knuckles, decidedly, does not moan like a girl. A deep boom fills Shadow’s ears as he shivers against the bedsheets, the sounds of Knuckles’s orgasm alone enough to have Shadow spurting out against himself one or two more times.

Rouge sees all this happen with wide, appreciative eyes. She just watched two men who are obsessed with her fuck and then cum all over one another. All this was missing before she could die happy was a coffin carved out of emeralds and diamonds. And maybe some cunnilingus. “Hey, Knux?” she asks sweetly, almost angelic.

“What?” he breathes out, chest still heaving from the hard finish. “You want another turn already?”

Rouge shakes her head and coos, “No. Just wanted to tell you that that was pretty gay of you~.” She flutters her eyelashes cutely at him. “So you might as well kiss, if it’s already gone this far, you know? Teehee~!”

Knuckles stares at her for a second, shaking his head, then just laughs and says, “Yeah, okay, fine. C’mere, princess.” He holds Shadow down by the shoulder and lays down on top of him, kissing him deeply. Shadow wraps his arms around the echidna’s head, pulling him closer and not letting him go. “Hm–!” Shadow’s lips are surprisingly soft, and he’s gripping onto Knuckles so tightly that Knux thinks the guy might cry if he stops, so he decides to just close his eyes and lean into it. “Huah…”

Rouge sits on the bed with her legs folded, chin in her hands and her tail wiggling excitedly as she watches her boys make out, the pressure between them passionate and wet and with brief flashes of tongues visible from her vantage point. She glances down and also sees that their cocks are rubbing into one another. Shadow’s a bit longer, but Knuckles is a lot thicker. And she owns both of them, haha!

The kiss keeps going for a few minutes, Shadow’s grip on Knuckles releasing little by little as he feels more in control of himself again. In his defense, that had felt… so good. When he finally does roll his head to the side, breaking face-to-face contact, he mutters, “Never… This never leaves this room, alright?” He just really wants to drive that point home, even when all he can do to make it is beg in a soft, feminine whisper.

“Damn,” Knuckles teases, sitting up and sighing. “And here I was thinking I’d walk out of here with a cute boyfriend, and everything.”

As Shadow’s blush gets so intense that he starts trembling again, Rouge says, “What? Weren’t you complaining about this being too gay the whole time?”

“I was messing with you,” Knuckles says with a smirk. “I’ve liked men for a while now.”

Rouge rolls her eyes. “Am I the only straight bitch in this friend group?”

“Well you’re not the only bitch,” Shadow grumbles. Rouge looks at Shadow for a moment, tilts her head to the side, then loudly starts to laugh at him. “I– I meant So– Not me! I didn’t mean me!” Knuckles joins in, chuckling (even though he’s not supposed to do that) at Shadow’s expense. “You’re both reprehensible, fuck off…”

The bigger picture starts to dawn on Shadow as he lays there, feeling the afterglow warming every bone in his body. He’d enjoyed that. A lot. He *loved* that. Someone who prides himself on being the strongest, most competent person in any given room, the Ultimate Lifeform, destroyer of fates… enjoyed being used by men twice his size. ‘Little.’ Maybe twice his size was an exaggeration, but definitely… bigger. Bigger men made his head spin. ‘I can go as hard as I want, right?’ Why is he still thinking about this? He got what he wanted, he should be satisfied, shouldn’t he? So why– ‘You moan like a girl.’ –why can’t he stop smiling???

“Shadow,” Rouge says next to him, and he jolts to attention, having been off in his own world for a moment.

“Huh?” he gasps, looking like he’s had a bucket of water dumped on him.

“You’re really cute right now.” Rouge presses her face into his shoulder, hugging him tightly. Shadow’s heart flutters. “Also, I think you might be a bottom~.”

“Leaving,” Shadow says, shoving Rouge away and trying to get up.

“Nooooooo, come onnnnnn, stayyyyy~!” Rouge is kicking her feet as she stays latched on to him.

“It smells like sex in here,” Shadow complains. “My room is clean.”

“Who’s fault is that, slut!?” Rouge pouts. Shadow puts his hands on her face to try and push her away, which only makes her giggle. She begs, “Pleeeeease cuddle with us tonight, baby~?”

“I’d rather drink paint, asshole,” Shadow growls. Then he gets yanked back into bed by Knuckles, who keeps him firmly held under his arm.

“What’s the rush?” Knuckles asks, to which Shadow just… doesn’t respond. He looks down and away shyly. “Thaaaat’s what I thought.”

Maybe… Maybe Shadow just doesn’t need to think about any of this right now. He doesn’t need to think about what any of this means or what he wants to happen tomorrow. Knuckles has his arm around Shadow, holding him tightly, and Rouge is cuddling up against his side, arms around his waist as she puts her head on his chest, so maybe things can just be okay tonight. From now until morning, he can be small and cute. And it can be… okay. When he feels himself smiling again, a big, delirious grin that looks completely out of place on him, he doesn’t try to stop it, finally letting himself just be happy.

Chapter 22: Night Before, Morning After pt1

“Alright, alright, I’ll have some old beans!” Sonic finally agrees, realizing it was either that or get stabbed by the spear Sticks was using to offer them up to him. She’d been insisting he eat all night, even though he kept telling her he’d had chili dogs on the way over. Now it was a matter of life or death, apparently. “Do you have a can opener I could use, or are we raw-dogging these things?”

“Can openers were invented by evil scientists aboard the ARK to inject tiny computers into our oatmeal!” Sticks tells him without missing a beat. Then she pulls the spear clean out of the can, making it immediately leak through the giant hole the spear made and spill all over the floor. Sticks points to the beany floor goop with the spear and says, “Okay, dig in!”

Sonic stares at the ground paste. The floor of Sticks’s burrow is literally just packed dirt. “...If you did that with chili, then MAYBE!” Sonic tells her.

“Oh, I think I got some cans’a that stuff from the year before Westopolis got annexed! Give me a sec and I’ll get ‘em!” As Sticks runs off to get her grandmother’s chili, Sonic shudders and heads over to the barracks.

Jewel has a little candle lit and is reading by the light, Belle is already completely asleep, and Amy is off by herself, unfolding more cots and setting down more mattresses. It’s not exactly a homey place, but it’s somewhere they can sleep in a pinch! Sonic speeds over and makes three beds at once, only stopping to say, “Hey, Amy! Need any help? I can get these sheets fitted in record–”

Amy interrupts, “No.” Sonic jolts at how sudden and blunt that refusal was. Amy continues, “I just want to have something to make me feel useful, alright? Let me do it myself.” Sonic frowns. Even he can see how bad Amy’s hurting right now. It doesn’t take an emotional genius to do that. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, alright?” Amy insists, verbally shoving him out of the room.

Sonic starts to slowly walk away. “Yeah. Sure, Ames.” He feels bad. He wants to help her out, but he’s probably the last person who should be around her right now, huh? “You know where to find me if you need me though, right?” Amy doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look up, just keeps arranging beds. “...okay. Think I’ll grab some fresh air, actually! Later.”

Man, this sucks, Sonic thinks to himself. Saving the day right now for the people he cares about means using skills that he just doesn’t have! There’s no bad guy to punch or robot to smash to help Amy, all of her problems are internal, and he can’t HIT there! Well, he could, but that would solve literally nothing. With nothing to fight or outrun, he’s just this flailing, useless blue guy who makes jokes. What good was that to someone with so much inner turmoil?

Sonic climbs up out of the burrow (he hates ladders so much, why couldn’t they just be stairs???) and runs into Trip and Ray, still outside, sitting by the long-extinguished bonfire and talking. Trip is smiling again. She looks like she’s fully here, in this moment, for probably the first time since showing up at Tails’s lab.

“How’s it hanging up here, gang?” Sonic asks the pair. “You two make any progress with the memories schtick yet?”

“Trip doesn’t believe me,” Ray shouts, “But she definitely had a sword! She had a sword and fought with it and it was SO cool!”

“I mean, I, heh!” Trip bashfully hunches her shoulders. “I think I have a few guesses on how I… c-could hold a sword, I’m just not sure I ever have.”

“You totally did!!!” Ray insists.

“Hold on,” Sonic says, making a T-for-timeout shape with his hands. “Pause. I thought you two were stuck in some place called Nowhere. How would she be fighting anything with a sword?” Where would she even get the sword? Sonic can barely find free swords laying around anywhere, let alone nowhere.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Trip admits, sighing. “We were definitely fighting something, doing something. I remember battles and trials and… other unpleasant things. But it’s all still vague and blurry.” Sonic remembers her saying her knightly glow-up ‘wasn’t by choice,’ and he starts to put some pieces together in his mind. “Whenever we were forced to do something, it was always this… whole ordeal. It was… p-pretty stressful, I can say that much…”

“Forced?” Sonic asks. “Elaborate, please, because that sounds even worse than it already did.”

“Well, it’s not like we chose to be there,” Ray answers. “And, uh… y-yeah, Trippy’s right, a lot of that time feels like… we didn’t have any choice for what we got to do. But there sure were a lot of scary adventures…” Sonic is liking this less and less by the minute. Locked away in some unknowable prison and forced into things they didn’t want to do? That sounds an awful lot like the worst kind of thing a person can do to another person.

Sonic grumbles, “When I get my hands on whoever did this, I swear I’ll…” Give them a very stern talking to in order to get them to see his side of things and convince them to change their ways. “I’m sorry you guys had to endure all of that for so long. I wish I’d been the one to get you outta there.”

“W-well… we’re okay now!” Ray grabs onto Trip suddenly, who startles a bit, but otherwise lets him do it. “And we’re friends! That’s good, right?”

“Heh.” Trip shakes her head. “I think I’d rather have been your friend some other way, Ray.” She pats him on the head. “But yeah… I’m really glad you were in there with us, I think. At least a bit of good came from it all.” The two of them smile at each other, sending out warm fuzzy feelings that bounce off Sonic like rain on glass.

“Getting the distinct sense I’ve actually interrupted something,” Sonic says, getting ready to run away to avoid something kissing-related.

“Naaaaah, it’s not like that!” Ray tells him, laughing it off. “Trippy’s a pal, but I don’t think that’d ever happen!” Trip giggles quietly along with him, shaking her head. “Besides, I’d never do that to… uh…” Ray scratches his head. “You remember, Trip, right? Ugh, it’s so hard to remember anyone who was with us unless they’re right here, you know?”

As Ray snaps his fingers, trying to remember who Trip had been with, Sonic watches Trip’s eyes go wide, her smile fade into nothing, and her arms moving to hug herself. “We shouldn’t talk about him,” she says, sounding as empty as she’d been all day. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

Ray looks genuinely surprised at that. “What? H-Hey, it’ll be fine! Don’t worry about him, I’m sure the guy will be fine once we find–”

“I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT HIM!” Sonic and Ray both jump back at Trip’s sudden outburst, half because they’re worried about her, and half because she’d just started to give off some smoke from her mouth, threatening to spew flames. She sucks in a shaky breath, looks at her two friends, eyes full of concern, and she suddenly stands up. “We should go to bed. We have a lot to do tomorrow, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, turning back towards the burrow and tripping over the rock she’d been sitting on. She punches the sand hard, gets back up, and continues to walk away. “Sorry,” she mutters before jumping down the hole.

“Trippy…” Ray has no idea what got her so on edge all sudden like that. Was it the sword thing? “She must miss him a lot…”

Sonic pats Ray on the back, and the squirrel looks up at him. “It’s a scary time for all of us, you know?” Sonic says, trying to sound comforting. “Don’t worry, though, we’re going to figure it out and get through this mess with smiles all around! Count on it.”

Ray sniffles, then smiles and says, “Thanks Sonic.” He gets up from his seat, too, careful not to fall on his face like Trip had. “I’m gonna make sure she didn’t fall and hit her head going down, okay?” She’s a friend, a BIG friend to Ray, but golly is she clumsy as all hell.

“Sounds like a plan, little buddy!” Sonic says with a smile. “Catch ya’ in the morning!” He watches Ray carefully make his way back down into the burrow, frowning as soon as the kid’s out of sight. “For crying out loud, no one’s got it good, do they?” All things considered, he’s surprised how well-adjusted to the whole situation Ray seems to be, even if he does shove his foot in his own mouth here and there.

Sonic looks up at the sky, hoping for an answer soon. He doesn’t have anything for anyone other than platitudes and empty promises. And they still don’t even have a plan for solving this mess! He grimaces, kicking a pile of sand, cursing his own rotten luck at having discovered this problem so late into the game. He hates to see people hurting… He just wants to fix it. He takes a deep breath, lays down in the sand, and waits. Maybe if he left himself open, something would sneak over and launch a surprise attack. That’d be nice, right? Something to fight back against.

“Where is that infectious weasel!? Trying to give us all skinlessness disease!” Sticks barks as she carries a spear with an ancient can of chili stabbed through. She peeks her head into the barracks and coos, “Oh Amy~! Have you seen Sonic? I have a sharp, pointy thingy with his name on it!!!” She’d actually written ‘Skonc’ onto the spearhead in blue marker.

“Went upstairs,” Amy says coldly, not looking over. “I dunno.” She’s kind of just holding a pillow and looking at the wall, having given up on being ‘useful’ a few minutes after Sonic showed up and set her brain on fire. Sticks lowers her arms and puts down the spear. Wacky hijinks can wait for a bit, she thinks. Wordlessly, she walks in, grabs Amy’s arm, and drags her out into the hallway. “Huh?” Amy suddenly looks up at her, like she’d been awoken from a dream. “Sticks? What are you doing?”

Sticks pulls Amy out into the hall, then into a different room so that nobody can hear them. “So I’m paranoid,” Sticks says, pushing Amy into a chair facing the wrong end of a desk. Sticks sits at the other end, leaning against it like she’s the principal of a school giving a student a lecture. “You know this about me. If I don’t know what’s going on, I’m gonna make a crazy leap of logic and end up causing all SORTS’a trouble for you later down the line, right?” Sticks nods at her own logic, then looks over at Amy, who’s just staring at her own folded hands in her lap. “Tell me what’s going on, Ames,” Sticks asks softly. “I’m worried about’cha.”

Amy sighs. There was no denying Sticks when she was onto something, Amy knows that pretty well by now. She relents and says, “I don’t think I’m a good person.” That’s the long and short of it, at least. Horrible, horrible Amy Rose.

“Well why wouldn’cha be?” Sticks asks genuinely. “Did you do something to somebody?”

“No… Not yet, anyway,” Amy says, putting her face in her hands. “I’ve been… All day, since this morning, I’ve been thinking these… awful things, and… I’m scaring myself, Sticks. I don’t like who I turned into…”

Sticks nods, listening and understanding. “What kind of thoughts?” she asks, sounding less like a conspiracy theorist and more like a supportive friend with every word.

“I don’t want to repeat any of it…” Amy says, sounding close to tears again.

Sticks rolls her head back and says, “Well, then I guess I’ll have to make a crazy leap of logic and end up causing all SORTS’a trouble for–”

“Okay! Okay…” Amy whines, knowing she’s backed into a corner without a way to dig herself out. “I keep… seeing certain people and then wanting to… to do things. To them.” She feels sick to her stomach even hinting at it, but she knows Sticks is just going to press her on it again, so she continues, “Like grabbing them and kissing them and doing… other stuff. Stuff that follows that. And I just…” Amy sniffles, still covering her face. “These are people who trust me! People who rely on me! And I’m… I’m betraying them! How can I even look them in the eyes after this!?”

Sticks continues to nod, at some point having scooched her chair a bit closer to Amy’s so she could put a paw on her friend’s back. “Ames, if I acted on every impulsive thought I had, Spagonia would be mulch and I’d be wearing Eggman’s mustache as a hat.” She’s still mulling that 2nd one over, she doesn’t know if that should stay an inside thought forever. “But I don’t! You ain’t done nothing, either. It ain’t a crime to think about someone.”

“But I can’t control it!” Amy cries, “I can’t stop myself from doing things! What if I lose it and I do something that I can never take back!? What happens then!?”

“What if the world were made’a beans and chili?” Sticks muses dryly. “Amy, the fact that yer so scared of stuff like that proves that you aren’t going to take someone’s consent lightly.” Amy shakes her head, but Sticks keeps talking, “Worst thing I can see you doing when you ‘lose control’ is asking nicely. You really think someone’s gonna say no to you and you’d just do it anyway? You’re not that girl.”

“I was with Sonic,” Amy mutters.

“You gave him hugs, Ames,” Sticks tells her, voice little more than a whisper to try and help soothe her friend’s aching soul. “If that’s all you’re worried about doing to someone, I don’t think you’re even one percent as bad as you think.”

“That’s still violating someone’s boundaries,” Amy says, “That’s still–”

“It’s something you stopped doing a while ago.” Sticks isn’t wrong. It’s been years.

“That’s because of the emotions we lost!” Amy cries out, voice full of anguish. “Now that I’m me again, who’s to say it’ll stop there!? Kid me just wanted hugs, but what if I’m worse now!? What if all I’ll ever be is someone who CAN’T hear no!? What if I’m–”

“You’re not.” Sticks’s voice goes from quiet and gentle to stern and demanding in an instant. “Amy, you are not a predator. Stop it.” Amy freezes in her chair, shivering, not saying anything else. Sticks hugs her. “See? You hate me for doing this?”

“No…” Amy blubbers, tears rolling down her cheeks again.

“I didn’t ask permission!” Sticks says, “You sure I ain’t the devil for it?”

Amy hugs her back. “Please…”

Sticks lets out a breath, holding her best friend close. “You can’t do this to yourself, Ames. You love people, big deal. You’re allowed to have fantasies sometimes. It don’t make you a monster. It don’t change who you are. You aren’t gonna do that to someone. Give yourself some love, too, yah know?” Amy cries into Sticks’s arms for a while, and Sticks lets her.

“How do I fix this?” Amy begs.

“No,” Sticks tells her. “You don’t need to be fixed, Amy. You just gotta breathe.” Sticks starts to take deep breaths, guiding Amy until their paces match. Amy follows Sticks’s lead, breathing deeply until the tears stop. It’s an aided calming technique that Amy had taught Sticks a long time ago, during some panic attack or another. Amy always, ALWAYS offered this kind of thing to Sticks before. Sticks isn’t gonna let her friend down.

“I’m sorry,” Amy mutters when she gets herself back under control. “I’m sorry for doing this, I–”

“Nope!” Sticks pokes Amy’s nose. “Don’t get to apologize for needing help, sis. Remember whatcha taught me.”

Amy’s quiet for a while, nodding at Sticks’s words. Sounded an awful lot like her own, now that she thinks of it. “I don’t know what to do from here,” Amy says, wiping at her eyes. “I don’t know how to face any of them again…”

“You can start by doing your best,” Sticks says, helping Amy up from the chair. “No one’s gonna blame you for that.” She holds Amy’s hand, smiling as she helps Amy find a safe place to sleep for the night. Not every cot was like that, some of them are pretty tetanussy. Halfway back, though, Sticks adds, “Second step is telling me who you’re crushing on, I gotta know.”

“No,” Amy says immediately.

“I’m PARANOID!” Sticks loudly complains. “Leaps of logic! Problems down the line! The works!” She grabs Amy by the shoulders and shakes her. “It’s not the commander of GUN, right!? You’d tell me if it was!? Let me down easy!?”

Amy sighs, not feeling like a pathetic failure anymore, but still very much upset at the questioning. “You’re the worst,” she mumbles. “I don’t wanna say names, they’re just… some… girls that I know.” Even the ‘girl’ part is a massive enough revelation on its own, though.

“Ohhh… girls, huh?” Sticks says. She looks Amy in the eyes, then purposefully stares right at Amy’s rack. “Om nom nom!” she says, making grabby hands and needing to be shoved away.

“Not you,” Amy says, laughing as Sticks leans back, Amy’s hand covering nearly her whole face as Sticks continues to swing at and miss Amy’s chest. “Stop, haha, that’s ridiculous.”

“Made’ja laugh though, didn’t it?” Sticks asks, sticking her tongue out. That’s all she was really after, here.

Sonic opens his eyes to see the sun rising. He sits up, sandy quills all bed-headed, and looks around suspiciously. No Eggman robots, no cosmic entities, no low-level grunts… nothing. Ugh, what’s a guy gotta do to have a tangible threat for once?

“Sonic?” a voice calls out from behind him. Sonic looks over his shoulder and sees Amy, waving and smiling shyly.

“Yo, Ames!” he says, almost getting up and running over before remembering how she usually feels about him, settling back down and saying, “Or, hello, Amy.” He doesn’t wanna trigger another bad reaction from her.

But Amy closes the distance on her own, walking over and sitting in the sand next to him, seemingly without any adverse effects. “I’m going to say something that I’ve been wanting to say to you for a long time.”

“...Yeah?” Sonic asks, worried this is gonna be another confession or proposal, like Amy going back to her old self after all the angst. She wouldn’t really regress like that, would she?

Amy takes a deep breath, exhales slowly like Sticks had helped her with, and says, “I’m really sorry for all the times I made you uncomfortable, Sonic.” Sonic raises an eyebrow. Not at all what he expected. “I know we were young and I know we’re friends now, but it still wasn’t okay. I want to be better, but…” She doesn’t know if she can when she’s always so guilty. “I’m sorry, Sonic. Really.”

Sonic just chuckles and pats her on the head. “Amy, it’s fine! I never held it against you!” She looks at him, and he’s grinning, impossibly handsome in the morning light. “I mean, we’re friends, right? I wouldn’t keep you around if it was *that* bad!”

Amy laughs lightly, knowing that’s bullshit on account of all the people who have tried to kill him who he considers friends. “Even if it didn’t hurt you, though,” she says, smile fading a bit, “I’m still sorry. You deserved a better friend than me. I hope… I hope one day I can be that better version of myself.”

Sonic grabs Amy’s hand and says, “You always have been.”

Amy’s lips shiver, she sniffles, and she feels tears forming. Her first instinct is to just jump at Sonic and latch onto him, but she just promised to do better, literally just now. “Can I hug you?” she asks, expecting to be denied, but feeling better just from saying it out loud.

“Bring it in,” Sonic says, holding out his arms. Amy doesn’t latch on, but she does scootch over and put her arms around him, hiccuping out a few tears as he hugs her back. “Seriously, Ames, I was never that upset. I knew it’s just how you were back then.” He laughs, adding, “Besides, if you ever did make me feel bad, I’m Sonic the Hedgehog! I could have just ran away!”

“You did run away,” Amy says, “Many times.”

“Oh.” Sonic clears his throat. “I’m sure I just had somewhere to be.” Amy laughs. Even if she did feel guilty about it, it was an objectively funny choice of words on his part. “Amy, I fight dictators and robots and capitalists for a living, you know? I know bad when I see it. Trust me, if anyone I know is the farthest thing from it, it’s you. No contest.”

“Thank you,” Amy says tearfully. “I… I platonically love you, Sonic.”

“Heh.” Well, as long as they’re making it clear that that’s all it is, Sonic doesn’t feel bad or awkward in saying, “Love you, too, Amy.”

Amy huffs. “Say the p-word,” she demands, squeezing Sonic hard enough to hurt his ribs, “You’re gonna kill me.”

Sonic rolls his eyes and adds, “Platonically.” He feels Amy let out a breath. “Thought it went without saying, is all!”

Amy sits back up, lightly punches Sonic in the arm, and says, “Your face goes without saying!”

“Okay, Knuckles, thanks for that!” Sonic says with another laugh. “Seriously, though, it’s great to see you on your feet, girl. Seeing you, of all people, getting depressed was scary!”

“Well,” Amy says awkwardly, “Wait until I start trying to date for real. I have some pretty low hopes of that going great…”

“Aw, who could say no to a face like that?” Sonic asks. Amy glowers at him. “I mean BESIDES the obvious answer! And also maybe Shadow, who hates everyone! And Knuckles is too caught up in the whole emerald thing to really open up to people. Can robots consent? I feel like Metal is a strong maybe, but I wouldn’t count on that! Oh, or Vector, but that’s no real loss–”

“Shut upppppp,” Amy groans, though there’s plenty of humor in it. “Ugh, you suck when I’m not trying to seduce you.”

“What can I say?” Sonic says, putting his arms behind his head and flopping backwards into the sand. “Charisma can cover for a lot of really glaring personal flaws!”

Sticks pokes her head out of the burrow, just wanting to check on how things are going. When she sees Sonic and Amy sitting close, both laughing and having a good time together again, she smiles. She just wants Amy to be happy, that’s all that matters here. As she smiles, her head just barely peeking out from her badger hole, she sloooooowly raises a spear with a leaking can of chili stuck to it. “I’m gonna getcha, weasel,” she whispers before drifting back down to her burrow, but a whisper in the night. The… the morning night. Good morning!

Chapter 23: Night Before, Morning After pt2

Notes:

Letting the intrusive thoughts win and just posting this the instant its done instead of waiting for tomorrow so i'll have a backlog of some sort. I'm just having too much fun you guys i dont want to have to wait for people to see it TToTT.

She sees the Sol Empire burning. The castle erupts into smoke and fizzles out like a match. Citizens run screaming from the pyre with their fur burning and skin melting. She reaches out, tries to pull the flames away, tries to save them all, but when she does, she just spews more flame across the globe. She looks down at her hands and sees the fiery, molten claws of Iblis, the one who will destroy her world and everything else that she loves.

Blaze shouts as she sits up in bed, sweating and afraid. Her chest heaves harshly as she throws the covers off of herself and hangs her legs over the edge, clutching her head and her stomach. That wasn’t a normal nightmare. She feels sick, she feels like she’s going to throw up. She looks down at her hands, crying as she makes sure they’re still her own. It was more than a nightmare, it… it felt like a memory. It was real.

Blaze swallows hard, feeling the vomit in the back of her throat go back down and burn. She takes deep breaths, clawing at her chest, but can’t seem to calm down. She looks around. She’d told Silver she’d see him tomorrow, that she’d be okay on her own, but she won’t be. She needs to find him. She needs someone who understands, who she can talk to, she needs him. She needs the love of her life to hold her and make this go away.

Blaze stands up and rummages around the small, rudimentary hotel room in the Emeraldville village for her clothes. She doesn’t bother with doing her hair or applying makeup, purple locks falling across an unadorned face, she just wants to find Silver and drag him away to somewhere that she could be close to him. She gets dressed, puts on her heels, and walks out.

The sky is still pitch black as Blaze steps onto the small street of Emeraldville, still in the process of being repaved. She looks around frantically, praying that he hasn’t gone to bed on his own somewhere. She can’t just barge into random tents until she finds him, can she? …she might, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

After a few minutes of wandering around blindly, looking through alleys and peering around corners, she hears a voice. Her favorite voice in the multiverse to hear. She rushes ahead, looking around a building and seeing Silver. She smiles brightly until she sees that Espio is also right there, the two of them leaning against an old wall and talking. Not wanting to interrupt (and maybe, incidentally, wanting to hear what they’re saying), Blaze stays behind the corner she’d just turned, listening closely to the two voices.

“I’m glad she was able to help,” Espio says, sounding confused, “But what– exactly *what* was she telling you to do, again?”

“Well it’s not like she was saying I had to do anything!” Silver answers, voice as chipper and friendly as ever. “It was more of a suggestion!” Girls always be suggesting this course of action. “And I don’t think it’s a bad idea! If my mind is on more academic exploration of my own identity, then there’s less time to be so, so, so, so, SO stressed out, hahaha~!”

Ah. They’re talking about Whisper’s whole ‘explore your gender’ idea. Blaze is still very unsure about how she feels about that. She trusts Silver to decide on what’s best for him, but Whisper’s motivations for getting him to do so are… suspect. Despite what Tangle assures her. She leans forward just a bit more and continues to eavesdrop.

“You could always attempt the humble art of gardening again,” Espio grumbles, voice as low and gruff as he usually is. He’s calmed down considerably now that Shadow and Mighty aren’t around to fluster him on purpose. And also now that Silver is wearing a tracksuit. That definitely helps… “Or ninjutsu, as I have. There are endless possibilities for mental fortifications that do not involve fundamentally changing who you are at your core.”

“That’s the thing, though!” Silver says excitedly, “Based on how she’d described her own experiences to me, it’s not about *changing* who I’d be! It would be able *realizing* who I’ve been all along!” Silver nods sagely. “Even if I don’t end up changing at all, I’ll have a newfound understanding and respect of the person I am!”

“...her experiences?” Espio asks. “What would she know?” He clearly says the question rhetorically, as if trying to subtly hint that Silver shouldn’t even try to respond, but Silver is unflinchingly genuine and does so anyway.

“Because she’s a trans woman!” Silver says innocently. “She told me all about–”

“Silver,” Espio interrupts, sighing and shaking his head. “You shouldn’t just go around saying that to whoever asks. Outting someone without their permission is rude.”

“...outting?” Silver’s never heard that word before. Blaze rolls her eyes. Were they really just talking about queer identity discourse 101? Blaze has heard these things a hundred times from the Coconut Crew, this is not eavesdrop-worthy. Maybe she should just step out of hiding…

“Let people speak for themselves,” Espio continues, “Don’t just spread news of their identities to others. Especially when they’re not even around.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Whisper!” Silver says sadly, as if Whisper could even hear him. “Thanks for telling me, Espio. I’m sorry I’m so dumb about stuff like this.”

“You’re not dumb,” Espio says quietly. “Not everyone bothers to learn about the things that don’t concern them, especially not this specific thing, I’ve found.” A disappointing lack of curiosity plagues this land, Espio thinks, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “If anything, you going out of your way to undertake this exercise proves you are of sound and quality mind.”

“I guess so…” Silver mumbles before going back to his happy voice and saying, “I guess you must have thought of this kind of thing a lot, too, then, huh?”

Espio’s eyes shoot open. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck did he say that oh fuck why did he say that dammit shit fuck FUCK. “No,” Espio mutters. “That is a… w-weird thing to assume…!”

“Oops, sorry!” Silver just takes the obvious deflection as the truth, unflinchingly earnest. Blaze rolls her eyes and smiles affectionately. She needs to teach him how to read people better. “I just keep tripping over bad stuff to say, huh?”

“It’s fine,” Espio says, forcing his cool-guy voice again. “Don’t worry about it.”

After a few seconds of silence, Silver bowing his head to think about something, Blaze gets closer to revealing herself. Maybe she can play it off as if she’d just been having a midnight stroll and is happening upon the two just this instant. It should be easy enough, right? But right as she puts a foot forward, Silver blurts out, “Then we should do the gender stuff together!!!”

What, Blaze thinks.

“WHAT???” Espio barks.

“It’ll be fun!” Silver insists. “We’ll do the research, figure out what exactly makes us *US,* and at the end, maybe it’ll turn out we like wearing skirts or something!” Silver’s not sure what else makes girls different at this stage, he’ll be honest. Skirts? Heels sometimes? “Oh, and the eyelash thing! Why do they all do that? Heh, mysteries to be solved, right buddy?”

“Absolutely not,” Espio immediately says. “I am never embracing femininity and anyone trying to convince me otherwise will be meeting the wrong end of a kunai!” Blaze notes that Espio normally turns pink or rainbow or something when he’s flustered or embarrassed, but right now, she sees him turn a steely blue, nearly gray. She’s going to assume that means he genuinely, truly does not like what is being said here.

“Why not?” Silver asks so innocently and genuinely that it kind of hurts Blaze to hear. “Isn’t reaching a better understanding of yourself a good thing?”

“I know who I am!” Espio answers, starting to sound frustrated. “My understanding has been reached, I don’t–!” Espio clutches his head. He’s losing his cool, he knows that, and that’s the worst thing a ninja can do. Espio takes a deep breath, turns to Silver with renewed conviction, sees the hedgehog’s bright, pleading eyes, and has to turn away again because why the fuck did he always look like that?????

“S-Silver,” Espio says, still turned away from his friend, “I am going to entrust with you a secret that you must not allow anyone else to hear, alright?”

Uh oh. Blaze hides herself behind the corner again, a bead of sweat dripping down the side of her face. She should leave. She should probably not hear whatever it is that Espio’s about to say. She should simply go back to her room, get back in bed, and have horrible memories about rending the entire Sol Empire into pieces with flame. Blaze stays sat exactly where she is, not wanting to stop hearing Silver’s voice. Sorry, Espio.

“The truth is,” Espio says, clutching at his chest dramatically. “This process of discovery you speak of, this… fundamental reshaping of the self…”

“Discovery,” Silver interjects, “Not reshap–”

“This FUNDAMENTAL reshaping of everything you’ve ever been!” Espio continues, “This is something I’ve… already undergone in order to become the ninja you see before you.”

“You…” Silver scratches his ear. “You transed your gender into ‘ninja?’” He taps his foot, thinking hard. “I didn’t know that was one of the options! I’m gonna need at least two or three more books to–”

“No,” Espio says, finally turning back to Silver. “No, Silver. Ninja isn’t a gender. I meant male.”

“Oh.” Well that simplified things a good deal. Silver says, “So you were born a ninja and then became–?”

Espio silences Silver by putting a hand on his shoulder. “Please stop guessing how this works, you’re not at all good at it.”

“Okay,” Silver agrees readily.

“Before the formation of the Chaotix,” Espio says, “Before Eggman became a plague on this land, before any of us needed to use our powers for good… I underwent a metamorphosis. At first, simply adjusting words to better suit my needs. Then, using my camouflage to reshape how others saw me. Finally, I utilized arcane, experimental procedures to make the process permanent.” He took T and got his tits cut off, is what he means by that. “However… there were consequences.”

“Oh no!” Silver says, enraptured by the fairy tale Espio is weaving before his very eyes.

“My body and soul were now perfect matches for one another. But the knowledge of the metamorphosis itself has left me altered in a way I had not foreseen.” He bows his head, clutching at his own wrist as he stares at his trembling hand. “The dread Archmage Dysphoria has rendered unto me everlasting shame…!” Espio juts his hand out towards the sky as if to grasp at the moon. “But I have overcome! I continue to thrive and shall never be defeated! I swear it to myself!”

Blaze sighs. Even when opening up to people, this guy was so lame. She can… kind of understand why Silver likes him. He’s so easily taken in by people who *act* confident and profound, even when they’re really not. Even if Blaze finds this kind of thing repugnant, it’s no wonder Silver’s so in awe. She can even hear him applauding now that Espio’s speech is done.

“I had no idea you’d been fighting such a long battle, Espio!” Silver says with awe. “No wonder you’re always so aloof and cool about everything!”

Espio preens under the praise, crossing his arms and smirking. “Well, yes,” he agrees. People usually don’t compliment his obviously cool and awesome tortured side. He’s glad Silver has a good enough head on his shoulders to see it. “But as someone who narrowly escaped femininity’s inky grasp, you can understand why I am wary of sudden pushes into this world from outside forces. It isn’t an easy thing to go through if you’re not prepared.”

Espio’s skin prickles as he feels Silver grab onto his hand, gripping it tightly between his palms. “But I have you!” Silver says happily. Espio feels himself starting to turn pink again. “And Whisper!” Nevermind. “With friends like these, I’m prepared for anything!”

Friends… Espio remembers Vector being there for him throughout it all. Having someone around to support him and keep him from giving up really was the best thing Espio could have asked for at the time. And Vector is, like, an old cis guy. If Silver can surround himself with people who can really relate during this whole process, like him and Whisper, then… There’s a pause of a few moments before he responds, but eventually, Espio smiles and says, “You’re right. Comrades by your side make things… a lot safer.” He sighs, though. “Still. I don’t think you need to change. You’re pretty great as is.”

“Aw, thanks, friend!” Silver says, making Espio blush when he realizes what he’d accidentally allowed out of his mouth. “But don’t worry, I know not to force anything. Whatever ends up happening will only happen because it makes me feel better.” Despite only learning he was allowed to do things like mess with his presentation a few hours ago, Silver already has a decent grasp over how he wants to approach things. And he’s excited! So excited! To have the freedom to be able to choose who you are is incredible! And he’s not going to let that freedom go to waste! He’s going to make sure that at the end of this personal journey, he’s going to be a happier and healthier Silver. He has stars in his eyes just thinking about it!

“Okay!” Silver declares. “I have a long day of research ahead of me tomorrow!” He clears his throat. “A-After we meet with Sonic and make a plan for the, uh, memory hole thing.”

“Important,” Espio agrees. Seeing how pumped Silver is for the whole gender exploration, though, does make Espio smile. Silver’s so cute when he’s excited for something.

“And if I want the energy for it, I should probably head to bed now, huh?” Silver’s words make Espio jolt out of his own stupor. Dammit, how long have they been talking? Did Silver really have to leave just yet? “Thanks for all the advice, Espio!” Silver says, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow!”

Just as Silver is turning to leave, Espio bites his lip. He doesn’t… want to say goodbye yet. Dammit. Dammit! “Silver,” he says, only realizing the word was out loud instead of in his head when Silver turns to face him.

“Yeah?” Silver looks back to him, his glance as soft and welcoming and adorable as ever.

Espio hesitates. He shouldn’t say anything. Every part of him wants to sandbag the interaction and nevermind it all away. But then he clutches his chest. He overcomes. He thrives. He can’t be defeated! “Could I…” Espio quietly squeaks out, “Can we spend just a bit more time together, perhaps…?” He doesn’t sound very aloof OR cool saying it like that, unfortunately. In fact, he sounds awfully close to the one thing Espio deeply fears being most… cringe.

Silver hesitates. Is it… alright for him to be spending so much time alone with someone like Espio? They’re friends, obviously, it’s just that… despite Silver’s best efforts to be quote unquote normal, it’s hard for him not to wish someone like Espio was a bit more than just that. And the longer they’re together, the more time he has away from Blaze, and…

“I don’t…” Silver starts to say, not wanting to over-extend himself before really being able to talk to Blaze about this, but then he sees a flicker in the corner of his eye. He turns, and sees… Blaze!? Blaze is here!? How long has she…!?

After Blaze knows she’s gotten Silver’s attention with that little spurt of fire, she gives him a thumbs up and waves him off, trying to tell him it’s alright to go. She wants him to enjoy his time with other people, she’ll be fine! Even if being alone herself sucks really bad right now, she never wants that to interfere with Silver’s happiness.

Getting the gist of things, Silver smiles and says, “Okay! Sure!” He holds out a hand to Espio, asking, “You wanna find some place to sit down, maybe?”

Espio stares at the hand. Holy shit that actually worked? Damn. Okay. “Y-yep…” he stammers before taking Silver’s hand, letting himself be whisked away to wherever Silver thinks they should be.

Blaze leans against the wall as she watches the two of them walk off. She sighs, hugging onto herself for support. She’d really wanted to just grab Silver and take him for herself, but… she knows that as long as he’s still there in the morning, she’ll be fine. If she can make it to the morning… Sleeping was going to be impossible, she realizes. Blaze goes to turn around and–

“You’re out late,” a voice says from behind her, startling Blaze enough to send her jumping into the sky with her back arched and her fur on end. In the process of becoming airborne, Blaze sees Whisper standing beside her, leaning on her wispon. “Hi to you, too?” she murmurs in response to Blaze’s… reaction.

“W-What are you doing!?” Blaze demands, holding herself as she tries to smooth out her fur.

“I sleep in shifts,” Whisper tells her. “Habit. Like to take night patrols to make sure everyone’s safe.” She knows they’re in a highly defended area at the moment, but old urges die hard, especially when they were so deeply ingrained. “If you don’t mind me asking, what are *you* doing up so late?”

Blaze glowers at her. Who does this woman think she is? “I’m allowed to take walks. It’s completely normal.”

“Mhm,” Whisper says, tilting her head. “And the… hiding in an alleyway thing…?”

“Tch.” Blaze can’t believe she’s being interrogated like this. “I stopped to catch my breath and only just so happened to see Silver at the last second. He seemed busy, so I waved him off.”

“I see.” Whisper nods, her tail low and her gaze narrow as she says, “I suppose all of that makes sense. Other than the screaming I heard from your room.” Blaze frowns deeply. “Was that also normal…?”

“Just how long have you been following me!?” Blaze demands, feeling far too defensive for someone who was only trying her best to find comfort after… “I tripped and fell on my way out of bed, it happens. I don’t appreciate the tone of these accusations.”

Whisper pauses, letting her ears lay back before quietly saying, “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I’m just worried.” Blaze bites her tongue. ‘Then go away,’ she wants to say, but the concern obvious in Whisper’s face makes it harder for her to feel justified in her anger. Just what was she trying to hide from? “I won’t ask what happened,” Whisper adds, “I just wanted to verify that you’re safe.”

Blaze presses her back into the alleyway wall, then slides down it until she’s sitting again. “I was having…” Visions of a her that almost was. “...nightmares. I just wanted to talk to my boyfriend.”

“What was stopping you?” Whisper asks, holding herself back from correcting Blaze to ‘girlfriend.’

Espio was stopping her. Even before this morning, Blaze had known that Silver and Espio were close. And she knows something could happen between the two of them. “I didn’t want to get in the way,” she says quietly. “He sounded happy…”

Whisper sits down next to Blaze, gracefully folding her legs underneath herself. “They did,” she agrees. Whether she means both Silver and Espio or is just avoiding referring to Silver with he/him is purposefully obfuscated.

“...what are you trying to do with him?” Blaze asks directly. “What is going on in your head?” Whisper’s feelings towards Blaze’s boyfriend were a complete and total mystery to the poor cat right now, and she wanted things to be cleared up before it drove her mad.

Whisper furrows her brow. “All I did was share my experiences. How Silver chooses to move forward with that knowledge is Silver’s choice.” She was definitely just refusing to use masculine pronouns, Blaze decides, that was not a normal way of speaking otherwise.

“This better not…” Blaze starts to say, but then second guesses herself. Maybe that line of logic was too far. “Nevermind,” she sighs.

But Whisper presses. “No, go on,” she says calmly. “I can take it.” She’s a big girl, she’s dealt with a lot worse than jealous rivals.

Blaze seethes through her nose and asks, “Are you just trying to make him a woman so you feel better about wanting him? Because that really seems like what you’re doing.”

Whisper scoffs. “I don’t have feelings for Silver,” she answers. “Maybe if Silver were to change in a variety of ways, I would reconsider that stance, but as of now I want absolutely nothing beyond friendship.”

“Okay, so yes,” Blaze extrapolates. “That is definitely what you are doing.”

“No,” Whisper argues back, voice frozen cold, “I’m not using my identity as a weapon against your relationship, your majesty. You don’t need to be so afraid of me, I implore you.”

Blaze stands back up. “Fine. I won’t be.” She doesn’t look at Whisper as she says any of this. “Goodnight.”

Blaze starts to walk back to her room so she can try and fail to rest again, but apparently Whisper isn’t done with her yet. “Are you safe being alone right now?” Blaze turns back towards her with an indignant look on her face. “I know how night terrors are. Not easy to deal with by yourself.”

“I don’t exactly have another option for companionship right now,” Blaze tells her, gritting her teeth as she can feel herself losing patience.

“Tangle is free,” Whisper says casually, matter-of-factly. “And her tail is about the best cure for loneliness in the world, I’d say.”

Blaze shakes her head and says, “You’re just trying to make everyone around you gayer, aren’t you?”

Whisper shrugs. “Is that such a bad thing?”

Blaze wants to argue back, but… Well, honestly, when you put it like that, her anger seems childish. She exhales slowly and says, “I’m not trying to steal your girlfriend, Whisper.”

“And you’d be unable to even if you tried,” Whisper tells her right back. “I am more than willing to share my girlfriend with people who are nice to her, though.”

“I’m not–!” Blaze pinches her snout out of frustration. “I don’t even know whether I’m attracted to women or not.”

“Only one way to find out,” Whisper says. She gets off the floor herself, dusting off and saying, “I’m not forcing anyone to do anything, but I’m going to let people know their options. I’m sure it would make Tangle happy to see you.” Even if Whisper continues to question Tangle’s overall taste in partners. She glances at Blaze one more time and adds, “I’m sure it would make Silver happy, too.”

As Whisper walks away, headed back to where she and Tangle had settled down for the night, Blaze feels a swarm of conflicting emotions. She feels bad for being so on edge, but she isn’t exactly in the perfect mental state right now. Whisper clearly knows that, why is she messing with her right now!? And Blaze really, really wants someone to hold her and tell her everything would be okay, but she just… can’t commit to that. Not right now, not tonight. Not with Tangle.

Blaze thinks back to earlier, when Amy had told her to keep going, to try her best with Silver, gifting her a confidence boost that had made all the difference. She’s not sure why she’s thinking of Amy right after all of that, but…

Yes she is. She knows why. Blaze wishes that Amy hadn’t left, that she was still here. Amy would make this better… Amy always made everything better… Blaze knows she’s starting to develop something, something that might have been there for a long time, but she is terrified of that right now. She just wants Silver…

“It would make Silver happy…” Blaze mutters to herself, repeating Whisper’s words. She looks up, thinking maybe it wasn’t too late to follow her, to be led somewhere she could feel safe, but… Whisper was already gone. Whisper, Amy, Silver… she didn’t have anyone right now. “I’m sorry,” Blaze mutters to herself, falling back down to her knees and holding her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, Silver,” she whispers to herself, miserable in her self-inflicted isolation.

Blaze guesses she doesn’t need to worry about anyone pushing her away, at least. Not if she was too scared to ever reach out and hold on in the first place…

Chapter 24: Night Before, Morning After pt3

For the entire ride from Boomerang Burrow back to his lab, Tails doesn’t say a god damn thing. He keeps his eyes forward, watching the waves and then the road as he drives through the night. Still, unflinching.

Surge, on the other hand, flinches a lot. She starts by just jittering her leg, tapping impatiently on the dash, or gripping the seat a bit too hard. But then she’s muttering to herself. Tails can’t make any of it out, but she keeps whispering something. At one point, when Tails transitions the boat back into a car, Surge shouts, “SHUT UP!” with no prompting, whipping around and snarling at nothing.

Tails doesn’t bother telling her no one had said anything. From the way she looks around afterwards, eyes trembling, he knows that she already knows that. They’re both silent the rest of the way to the lab.

Tails parks the car in front of his garage and flutters out, going to open the garage’s side door. “Do you need help getting home or can you manage yourself?” he asks coldly, not even looking back at Surge as he speaks.

Surge coughs, trying to sneer, but getting something caught in her throat. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day,” he grumbles. “Are you coming in, then, or are you sleeping outside like a dog?”

“Fuck, do you ever shut up?” Surge asks, kicking the car door open and then slamming it shut once she’s standing. Tails shuts up and waits for her by the door so that he can lock it once she comes inside.

It’s the middle of the night by now, and there are no lights left on inside the lab, so the two of them walk into a completely dark building. Windows and moonlight let them see, but hardly. Tails groans, knowing that the front door is still broken. “I’ll drag a couch in here,” he grumbles, not wanting his honored guest to be dealt the indignity of a draft.

“Why fucking bother?” Surge says back quietly, “Might as well just throw a piece of cardboard on the floor for as much as you care.”

Tails sucks in a sharp breath and spins around at her, barking, “You don’t have to be here! No one is forcing you to stay next to me all damn day! Just go home! Deal with your problems like an adult and leave me alone!”

Surge grits her teeth and shouts, “I can’t!”

“Why not!?” Tails argues, “You clearly hate me! You’ve done nothing but make me miserable all day, so why don’t you just fuck off and go somewhere else!?”

“Because nothing else works, asshole!” Surge spits, wishing she had the spark she’d had earlier, but being just so god damn tired she can’t help but lower her voice back down to barely above a whisper. “I’ve tried being around people I know, I’ve tried being around strangers, I’ve tried being completely alone and by myself, but all of it hurts, okay!?” Surge grabs at her own aching head and says, “If I see someone else, I’m in pain. If I’m alone long enough to *think* about someone else, I’m in pain! Nothing else works, this is all I have! You’re the only person I can be myself around!” Tails silently stares at Surge for a minute, tension leaving his shoulders as her eyes dart around the room before falling back onto him. “No,” Surge says, “That came out wrong. Fuck you. I’m too tired for this…”

“You’re taking it out on me,” Tails says slowly, “Because you literally can’t hurt anyone else…” Tails is starting to get it. Surge is someone who likes conflict. Even if she doesn’t actually hate someone, she likes to fight and argue and shout. But she’s just unable to do any of that right now. She sees someone she thinks is cute, freezes, and feels so trapped it causes physical symptoms. But whether by coincidence or because he was just the first person she was able to scream at before things got too bad, Tails doesn’t cause that effect in her. Whether either of them like it or not, he’s her only option for feeling sane in her own head. And he’s been… pushing back really hard on that all day, huh? “I… I’m sorry, Surge, I–”

“Don’t start acting fucking nice,” Surge groans, still grabbing at her face and seething, facing a wall so she doesn’t need to face another person. “I’ll end both of us, watch me.”

…She still only really responds to people on her level, though. “Yeah, I guess if you’re allergic to people being nice, I can see why Amy is like your boogeyman. No wonder you were drooling all over yourself.”

“Bitch?” Surge says, turning around only to see Tails smirking at her. “Youre one to talk!” Surge holds a hand up melodramatically to her forehead and mockingly says, “‘Oh, Amy, I missed you so much! Oh, Amy, please tell me about all of your feelings! Oh, Amy, please see me as a real man instead of a little boy so I don’t have to feel so guilty jacking it to you every night!’”

“I WOULD NOT!!!” Tails spouts, horrified, only making Surge cackle at him. But she was smiling now, at least, so he shoots back with, “And who was wetting herself the second Knuckles showed up with HANDS, huh? He put his palm up to your face and I could hear you cumming from the other side of the room!” Tails is slightly horrified at himself for saying the word ‘cumming,’ but he’ll get over it later.

“The palm you were eating out of!?” Surge titters, “That was probably the sound of my stomach churning at having your spit smeared on my face, idiot!”

“Understandable,” Tails teased, “I’d barf too if I had to think about your face!”

“Little shit~!” Surge says as she tries to swipe at him, but Tails just flutters up to a plane suspended from the ceiling of the garage, crossing his legs as he perches on a wing. “If you were staring at that bat bimbo’s ass any more obviously, it would’ve grown hands and smacked you!”

“At least I didn’t start groping Trip and humping her leg~!” Tails coos down to her.

Surge booms up at him, “THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT EAT SHIT!!!”

“Nah,” Tails says, “You probably don’t taste very good.”

“Fucker!!!”

The two of them continue to toss insults and barbs back and forth at one another as Tails gets the couch into the garage. It’s not exactly the best place to sleep, but it’s better than the utterly destroyed lab with the broken doors. He donates some of the blankets Sonic uses when he crashes here, strategically not telling her that Sonic knows what blankets are so that she doesn’t throw them into the fireplace.

“How do I know you aren’t gonna do something weird to me in my sleep?” Surge asks suspiciously as Tails tosses her a pillow.

“Because I’d rather boil my hands in oil than touch you,” Tails tells her through thinly veiled disgust. He walks towards the back of the garage, covering his mouth and yawning. “Do you need me to tuck you in, too, or can you do something for yourself for a change?”

“No,” Surge answers, “But if you wanna sing me a lullaby, I could always just stab you in the kidneys and drift off to the sound of your screams~!”

“Goodnight, Surge,” Tails mumbles decisively as he walks off to his own bedroom. Before reaching the door though, he pauses. He knows she doesn’t like being nice or anything, but… he’s still a person with a conscience and he doesn’t like actually hurting people. So instead of just leaving her to stew in her own misery some more, he says, “I’m sorry for what I said on the island. I don’t think you’re a bitch.”

Surge leans back, laying her head on the pillow and grabbing onto the blanket he’d lent her (reeks of hot dogs, ew) like it was an old rag. “You should,” she answers back, “I am one.” That’s as close as he’s going to get to anything resembling an apology from her for her behavior. Even if she did feel bad, which Tails highly doubts, she’s never going to say so.

Surge listens to Tails’s footsteps as he walks away, leaving her alone in the dark. She stares at the ceiling, feeling the dread starting to creep back into her body. She’d seen a lot of people today she wishes she hadn’t. She doesn’t want to see them again, but she knows she has to. She wants to cry. Everything everyone does makes her feel like a different person entirely and she just wants it to stop. Why does she need to want them all so bad? Why does wanting someone need to feel like hell? Why can’t–

Her gaze drifts over just slightly enough to spot the emblem on the tail of one of the bitch-boy’s planes. He drew his own butt on his machines, the image of his two tails twisted around each other all over the wings and flaps. “What a pretentious asshole,” Surge mutters to herself. Who does that? Who uses their *body parts* as a logo for their…

Right. No one else was around right now. Just her and the half-inch sleaze. And she can deal with him on her own. He doesn’t make her afraid, at least. And honestly, who else in the world would wanna see what that jerk looks like after dark? No one else is showing up. She was… safe in here. Safe from other people, at least. Any time during the night she starts to feel it coming back, any time she thinks of someone she wishes were closer or feels that stabbing pain creeping up out of her core, she can just look at one of Tails’s bad decisions and calm down. She’s safe. It’s safe here. Feeling secure for the first time since waking up today, Surge is able to close her eyes and fall asleep.

Tails wakes up to the sound of loud snoring. He tries to cover his head with his pillow, but Surge is like a fog horn when she’s passed out. At some point he sits up to look for earplugs or headphones only to realize that it was morning. “Jeez louize,” he mutters to himself. Then he remembers who was over at his house, who was causing that noise, and he groans, correcting himself to, “God dammit…”

Tails trudges out of his room, still wearing his pajamas (matching pants and shirt, obviously). He steps into the garage and sees Surge laying down at an odd angle, one leg draped over the back of the couch, the other hanging off the edge, blanket draped over her whole body like she was a piece of used furniture. Her head barely looks like it’s even being supported by anything as the harshest, most terrible noise Tails has ever heard comes out of her gaping maw. He wants to tell her to wake up, get out, and don’t come back. He at the very least wants to start getting the Tornado and the Cyclone ready to fly. He has plans today that do NOT involve her!

…Unfortunately, Tails has a conscience. He’s gotta work on getting that thing to ignore Surge. He groans and moves into the main lab so he can get to the kitchen. A few minutes later, a smell hits Surge’s face and she sits up straight, shoving the blanket off of her and looking around. She stares at the door between the garage and the lab, sees some fragrant, white smoke on the other side, and rushes over.

Surge sees Tails standing at the stove, shaking around a pan that has bacon, sausage, and eggs in it all mingling with one another and frying in their own juices as Tails stirs it all with a spatula. Back at home, she and Kit weren’t able to have anything but microwaved food, and even that was considered a luxury compared to the old cans and boxes of non-perishables they can scrounge for. She feels herself drooling despite her own instincts. Especially when she looks over at the counter, where a complete plate had already been made up, Tails distracted enough with the 2nd portion that he’d left it utterly defenseless.

“Yoink!” Tails hears an instant after Surge actually shows up beside him, grabbing at the plate of hot protein with her bare hands and shoving handfuls of it into her mouth.

Tails growls at her for using her lightspeed right in his ear, his fur bristling as he says, “I should’ve sprayed that with pesticides when I had the chance.”

“Ya snooze ya lose, manlet!” Surge says through a mouthful of food, her serrated teeth flecked with shredded meat. “Is that why you decided not to wake me up for this? Trying to get me to let my guard down?”

“I was honestly going to wait until it got cold, is all,” he says, looking over at Surge and nearly dropping the hot pan on his own foot. “WHY AREN’T YOU WEARING PANTS!??!?”

Surge had on her black, sleeveless top and a pair of panties, but literally nothing else, the rest of her outfit having been discarded and thrown around the garage haphazardly. “Have you ever tried sleeping in parachute pants, numbnuts?” she snarls at him through a plank of toasted bread. “You’ve seen a leg before, stop tenting your peejays and keep your eyes to yourself.”

“That’s not the problem and never will be!” Tails shouts at her, his brow furrowed. “Your butt is out in my KITCHEN, asshole!” He starts waving a greasy spatula at her to try and shoo her away. “Get out before everything spoils because of your stink!”

“I think I’m gonna just start farting in here instead!” Surge says, dancing just out of his range. “I’m gonna open up all the cabinets with my buttcheeks!” She has to dodge the spatula as it’s thrown at her. “See, now that’s *actually* making a mess. Fucking hypocr–” Tails flys up and starts trying to kick Surge in the head.

“GET OUT!!!” he shouts at the tenrec as she titters and dodges, taking her half-gnawed-through plate of food with her to the table and sitting down. “I meant get out of my house!!! Get out of being alive, while you’re at it!”

“Nah,” Surge says, tossing a sausage up into the air and catching it with her teeth. “Think I’ll just crash here for a while!”

“I would rather burn the house down and start over from scratch than let you stay here another night,” Tails grumbles, finally dishing up his own food. “You’re going to have to go home and talk to Kit eventually.”

Surge’s rebellious smirk fades. “Doesn’t mean it has to be today…” she says quietly.

“He’s worried about you.” Tails doesn’t even need to say ‘probably,’ it’s obvious if you knew even a thing about Kit. He was *always* worried about Surge. “You’ve been gone for a whole day. You at least need to tell him what’s happening to him.” When Surge doesn’t say anything back, Tails asks, “I can come with you if you really need babysat that badly.”

Surge sighs, but doesn’t scream at him, for once. “He hates your guts more than I do,” Surge says, “He’d probably drown your ass.”

“Quit talking about my ass and take responsibility for yourself,” he deadpans at her, wishing he still had an implement he could use to bonk her on the head.

“You wish,” Surge tells him, quietly realizing that she… was kind of thinking about Tails’s ass all night, in a roundabout way of looking at it…

When all Surge does after that is stare off into space, Tails says, “I need to go take Shadow’s car back to his place before he finds me and ends me.” Unlike Surge, Shadow’s threats weren’t so empty and impotent, Tails knows that very well by now. “And after that, I need to finish repairs on my planes so I can get back to Sonic and Amy. It would probably be a good idea to use that time to at least *think* about letting Kit down easy.”

“Whatever, you’re not my mom,” Surge spits out. “I’ll see him when I feel like it. He can survive without me for a few days.” She hopes… “Don’t tell me how to live.”

“I’m not,” Tails says, stabbing an egg with a fork and biting into it slowly. “I’m just telling you what the right thing to do would be if you were capable of it. I know your worst enemy is good decisions, I don’t expect you to actually listen.”

“Not any worse than your voice,” Surge grumbles. She looks down at her food… This shit was actually delicious, she quietly admits to herself. “How the fuck do any of them treat you like a kid when you’re like this?”

“H-Huh…?” Tails is confused. That sounded like a genuine question.

“You’re the one with the house, you’re the one with an engineering job, you probably cook for them all on top of it,” Surge lists off on her fingers, none of her points being things Tails can really argue with. “AND you lecture people like a douchey stepdad. Why are *you* being treated like the baby of the group when you’re doing all this shit for them?”

Tails is instantly scared, because those sounded like… nice things that she was saying about him? Well, almost. She did call him douchey in the middle, there. “And you’re suddenly deciding to compliment me, because…???”

“Ew, barf, no,” Surge says through a mouthful of bacon, “I’m calling all your friends inconsiderate morons. Fake-ass heroes who can’t even treat their own family good, let alone anyone else in the world.” She swallows and adds, “No wonder they’re babying the entire planet. Acting like they’re better than everyone. People thanking them for the insult. Gross.” She stares at her breakfast almost hard enough to burn it. “It’s all so damn gross. You’re garbage for letting it happen.”

Surge braces herself for another fight. She knows how these ‘team hero’ idiots treat their white knights and soapboxes. It’s not like she wants to get along with Tails or anything, but starting an argument wasn’t exactly her goal with that statement. She’s still tired, still sore. And yet Surge KNOWS that Tails was about to start getting all teary to defend his hero, denying all of Surge’s arguments, and getting so worked up that it ends up with the two of them blowing up at each other and – “Yeah, I guess so,” Tails mutters. Surge looks up, shocked. “Sonic wants to be the guy who can save everyone, and even though he always ends up being right about that, it… can come across as kind of patronizing when you never asked for it, huh?”

“...yeah,” Surge says. Was he agreeing with her!? “Are you sure this isn’t laced with anything?” she asks, pointing down at the food and staring suspiciously.

Tails leans back and regards her with mild distaste. “I’m always going to support my friends. Especially Sonic. But not everything they do is perfect.” And everyone *was* acting like Tails was… not beneath them, he guesses, but something like that. Something less mean, he hopes. And he always buried those feelings that he wasn’t enough for them, was always told he matters when he does break, but… Constantly having to reaffirm his own individuality had left its marks over the years. Someone else seeing it and telling him he wasn’t wrong for feeling that way was nice.

He just wishes it had come from someone other than fucking Surge. “I’ll try and convince Sonic to let people defend themselves a bit more than he does.” Tails steeples his fingers and smirks. “And in return, you go home and tell Kit you’re not a sibcon! Everyone wins!”

“I’m going to rip your face off with my teeth,” Surge tells him stoically. “Never use that word again, you creepy pest, what the fuck?”

“I won’t have to if you can get him to stop,” Tails smarmily replies. He stands up from the table. “I need to get dressed. Figure out your problems or don’t, I don’t care.”

Surge watches him go, glowering and pouting. “Yeah, well you’re short,” she grumbles.

“Very original,” Tails deadpans, “I’m so proud of you.” The last thing he says before turning a corner is, “Put some fucking pants on.”

“Fuckhead!” Surge calls out after him as he disappears. She knows he’s right, but god what a piece of shit loser. Kit needed her help to get better, and no one else is able to help her with helping him, but fuck man, if someone was going to give her decent advice, couldn’t it have been someone other than Tails, of all people? She takes another bite of food, feeling the warmth travel down her throat and spread throughout her stomach. She doesn’t want to stop feeling comfortable. The entire world outside of this house was so cold and terrifying. She wishes she could stay…

She looks out the open, broken-down door, out at the morning light shining in through the opening. “I’m not ready, yet,” she whispers to herself. Biting a thumbnail, she heads back into the garage to get dressed. She’s not going to be left alone like this. Not yet… just a little bit longer… please.

Notes:

It has now been one month since I started writing The Mandate Has Ended.

and I've tripled the nanowrimo marathon writing goal for that timespan ;w;

Idk if any of you have been able to tell, but I've been very happy here! I should probably try to pace myself a little bit better, honestly, but it's just been so funnnnnnn!!! In any case, thank you again to anyone reading this far! I should probably let everyone know that I'm @queensunflowers on bluesky in case you'd like to follow me there for updates or other fic-related posts! o3o