'Can any part of life be larger than life?' Tails thought as he walked down the cold street of his town in sun dawn. His hands were within his sweater pockets, trying to keep himself warm, with each breath creating fog in front of him. The shops he passed by had the small shade overhangs over the doors, and there were a few people around as well, getting their morning coffee before heading off to their jobs, like or not like.
The orange fox enjoyed the mornings, whether cold or warm, he felt alive. And he could enjoy the life he spent in his now, considered, permanent place, even though he lived upon the grassy cliffs of the mountain. The town was just another place he wanted to be with.
He was walking toward the next block that would eventually lead into the labyrinth around the town. He had passed the final overhang of the street, and saw three people running around the corner and running his opposite direction. Tails had slowed down and observed what he saw, and continued to look at the corner, watching the other guys run in the corner of his eye. Two more had emerged from the same direction the corner turned into, but this time, they had tripped, and a robotic figure grabbed one of the unlucky ones. Tails wide eyed at this. In surprise, he ran toward the victims and the medium-sized built machine.
He jumped and kicked off the head of the robot with ease, knowing that it was the weakest part. The robot released its grip and short circuited on the ground, with only a few sparks shooting out from where its head use to be. The man that was held by the robot held his neck and breathed hard, still in fright. Tails turned to the man on the ground.
"Hey man, you alright?" Tails said, holding out one of his hands toward the man. He looked up, still having fright upon his face.
"Yeah, man," he replied, still in shock. "Hey! Look out!" He quickly pointed behind Tails at the another robot behind him. Tails quickly turned around with a fist and knocked off another head, and the robot short circuited. Tails started to shake his head a bit and turned back around to help the man up.
"Where did those things come from?"
"I don't know man! I was walking with my friends and all of a sudden these robots attack us, out of nowhere too!" Tails looked at them, and noticed they had a red symbol. A circle, with a dot touching the ring, but staying inside the circle; the symbol didn't make sense to him, and he didn't recognize it either.
"Very strange."
"Yeah man." The man Tails had helped from the robot looked at his watch. "Shoot little dude, I wish I could help ya, but… ya know."
"Yeah yeah, I understand." The fox said to him. "This is stumping me too." The fox turned the direction that he had walked from, and saw a lot of people were looking at him. He looked back down at the robots. "Can ya give me a hand?"
"Sure, what's up?" Tails pulled out two miniature cameras he had, and gave one to the man. "My name's Mike by the way."
"Nice to meet ya, I'm Tails." Tails and Mike gave each other handshakes after the handing of the camera through their warm gloves. "Just need your help getting multiple shots of these robot things here."
"Alright."
"Button is on the top in the usual spot." Tails began to snap photos, while the other citizens in the town were watching away. A bigger crowd had gathered up at the 4 corners, but none had come to circle around the fox and the man taking the photos. They were laying down, taking shots, or doing bird-eye shots, even angled shots to see everything that not all pictures could catch. After at least twenty shots Tails and Mike took, they stopped and stood by each other and got one last glimpse of the robots. "Strange huh?"
"Yep, do you think it's just the usual crap that happens here?" Tails took some thought, and remembered the red symbol on the robot, and even took another look at it.
"I don't think so. The usual things that happened had different symbols and different designs." They were quickly silent, and Mike looked on over to one of the robots as well, and looked at the symbols.
"Now that I think about it, you're right." Tails looked at Mike.
"You can remember back in May when the town had that random attack by those three robots, right?" Mike looked back at the fox as he spoke.
"Yeah."
"They had different symbols and designs." Mike nodded, and both Tails and him looked over the robots again. "Well, let's head back to my place and get these photos uploaded, gotta show everyone else." Tails started to walk and Mike began to follow. A lot of the people had gone back to their own thing and had stopped staring at Tails and Mike. There is usually no cars down the road they were walking down, so they walked in the street rather than going directly past those who felt they needed to see what was happening.
"I think I've seen all your friends, man."
"Probably yeah."
"You are all very close, I can see that."
"Got that right man. What are you some sort of stalker or somethin'?" Tails began to laugh, and Mike laughed with him.
"Nah, I can just see it man. Trust me." Tails nodded as they reached the dirt path up the grassy mountain. "So, this is where you all live then, eh?"
"Yep. I actually like it up here."
"I probably would too. City life is great, you know, parties, and stuff like that, especially at the park, but I'd really like to live up here, ya know?"
"Yeah." As they continued to walk on the dirt path, they looked at the trees along the edges of the cliffs or just in the grass to their right. The trees seemed to stay alive in green, even though winter was unpacking its suitcase into the world. They passed everyone's houses, and everyone was still asleep, it seemed that Tails was the only one that ever got up the early mornings, but it didn't bother him. It was rare for him to ever sleep in, just like the regular townspeople. Mike was a good example. A regular man, sweater, pants, beanie, and gloves, the winter morning clothes to wear while going to work, whatever job it could be.
After passing the houses of Tails' other friends, including his girlfriend's, they neared to his house. Which looked significantly different to the others; the house was much bigger, but stayed in the one story vicinity, including more rooms and an even the bigger living room. They got to the house and Mike continued to follow Tails.
"So, this is your place?"
"Yep."
"Build it yourself I take it."
"Yeah, and look behind you." Mike looked behind him, assuming Tails was pointing at the other houses. "All those houses I designed to have built, so we all had our own separate places."
"Makes sense." Mike turned around. "But that's pretty damn cool though man." Tails nodded doing a strange curved expression with his mouth as he pulled out his key. He placed it inside of the keyhole, turned it, and pulled back out and opened the door. Tails walked in, and Mike hesitated.
"Come on in man!"
"Sorry about that." Mike stepped into the house with Tails and walked into the living room with him. "I kind of wait for the get-go signal."
"That's alright. Follow me man." Tails walked directly to the hallway, and turned into the second door on his left in it. He opened the door and walked in, with Mike following him. Tails placed his camera on a dock on the glass table that his computer was on. The tower was under the desk against the wall, and the monitor was at the top of the table, shelves wise. Mike handed his camera to Tails and he placed it on the dock as well. Tails moved the mouse and the screen turned on, and the pictures were already uploading. Soon enough, the gallery of the shots they both took appeared and they quickly studied them. "Well, I'm gonna show the others these later." Mike nodded. Mike started to look around in the room while Tails was using the mouse on his computer. He noticed a picture with the fox and a peach rabbit girl.
"So, who's this?" Mike asked in curiosity. He had an idea, but couldn't put his finger on it. Tails looked over and smiled.
"Oh, that's Cream." Mike chuckled a bit.
"You two look cute together, ya know that?" Tails felt good from those words that came from Mike's mouth.
"Alright, the pictures are all fine, clear, uploaded. In a half hour or so, everyone will be up and stuff. I'll send them all text's to let them know to come over. In the meantime, I'm gonna do some cleaning up. You can browse around the house if you want."
"Sweet."
"But, I know this is kind of late, but, where were you going when you were out in the town?"
"Oh, was going to meet some friends at the restaurant down the road and eat breakfast." Tails felt a bit bad, since he drug the random man into taking pictures and coming to his place to analyze them. But, he also noticed the man was looking at a lot of the diagrams on the walls, of the many weapons and gadgets Tails had made in the past.
"Well, I'm sorry about that, didn't mean to pull ya here."
"Not a problem man, trust me." Mike said as he continued to look at the pictures in wonder. Tails began to walk out of the room to start doing the cleaning he had proposed he was going to do, but Mike stopped him. "What's this?" Tails popped his head back into the room and looked at the diagram. The drawn blue capital ship Tails had built, and lay dormant in the mountain. The many blue lines and different random descriptions along the graphing lines of the paper stood out.
"Oh, that's my Blue Carrier."
"Does it have weapons on it?"
"Oh yeah, of course, anything you could think of."
"Pretty cool."
"Continue to browse man, and if you want something to drink, help yourself." Tails walked out of the room while Mike continued to look at the other drawn out diagrams. He saw a PDA type thing, and even some awkward looking gun shaped object. The shape didn't make sense to him, but it didn't bother him too much. It was like a picture where the objects in the picture make it seem like it's popping up or even pushed in, creating an optical illusion.
Mike finished up his browsing of the many diagrams Tails had in the computer room and walked out into the hallway. He noticed Tails was filling in the cracks in the walls near the perpendicular hallway. Tails had a small flat steel plate and was filling in the cracks with the stucco he had in a small bowl in his hand.
"What happened there?" Mike asked.
"Small accident," Tails replied as he filled in the last crack. "Long story short, got hit into the wall by some guy that was out to get me." Tails put the steel place back into the bowl, and closed it up. He placed down on to the ground near the corner of the wall and got himself back up in standing position. The door bell rang, and surprised both of them. Tails started to walk into the living room with Mike following him, but Mike stopped in the living room as Tails continued to the door. Tails opened the door and it was the peach rabbit Mike had saw in the photo. "Hey Cream."
"Good morning Tails," Cream yelled as she jumped at Tails. She hugged Tails tight, released and gave him a quick kiss and let go of him. Tails let her into the house and he closed the door. Cream kept her smile and saw the human standing in the living room. "Well hi there."
"Hello." Mike said.
"Cream, this is Mike."
"Hi Mike. I'm Cream." Cream held out her hand to him and he shook it with.
"Yes, yes, I know. Tails told me about you." Tails walked into the kitchen, with Cream and Mike following.
"So, what bring you here Mike?" Cream asked him.
"Oh, well, these robots came out of nowhere and attacked me. And Tails here saved me. Long story short."
"Robots? Tails, what happened?"
"Well," Tails began. "I oughta just tell ya now since we are on the subject. I was gonna wait till everyone else gets here." Tails leaned back on to the counter. "This morning I went into town, you know, like I usually do." Cream nodded in the affirmative. "And, I came to that corner that we always come by, and then people started to run out of nowhere. I went up, and he and someone else were unlucky to get attacked by the robots we saw. I saved Mike here from the one attacking him, and he helped point out the other before it attacked me. They have this weird red symbol though, and I've never seen it before. A circle and a dot attached to the circle. It's weird honestly."
"Did you just leave the robots in the town?"
"Well yeah, of course, they couldn't do much more harm."
"Well, Tails, what do you think is going on?"
"I'm not too sure, Mike and I are just confused as you are." The kitchen became silent at Tails' final words. No noise could be heard, other than the calm blow of the heater from the vents on the ceiling. The ringing of a clock came out from the living room. It rang twice, and stopped. Tails let out a big sigh and got himself from leaning on the counter. The door began to knock, breaking the silence in the house. Tails walked to the door, and opened it to see Shadow, the black and red striped hedgehog with Azuru, the blue and orange striped hedgehog. "Good morning you two, come in." The two hedgehogs walked in, and Tails let his hand open toward the kitchen, and the hedgehogs walked to the kitchen. "You guys, I'd like ya to meet Mike." Tails pointed to Mike, and he walked to the two hedgehogs with an open hand.
"Good morning to ya." Mike said cheerfully.
"I'm Azuru," Azuru said, shaking his hand. She let go and Mike moved to Shadow.
"I'm Shadow," Shadow said, shaking Mike's hand. "So, what happened in the town?"
"Robots came out of nowhere, end of story man," Mike laid out, leaving a small chuckle at the end and a small smile, shaking his head.
"You didn't see where they came from?" Shadow asked.
"Not at all." Silence quickly came, and Shadow spoke.
"Tails, do you mind if we all look at the pictures?"
"Not at all, Shadow." The door knocked again. "Come in! It's Amy, Mileka and Cocoa." The door opened, and a pink hedgehog stepped in first, with a blue kitsune, and a light brown rabbit following.
"Good morning," Amy said. "We came over like we planned."
"Well, we have a change of plans. Let's go." Tails started to walk to the hallway, and everyone began to follow with him. They headed to Tails' computer room, and the room became crowded as they surrounded Tails as he sat down on the chair by the desk. Tails moved the mouse and opened up the folder on the screen. He stood up, and pressed a button on the monitor, and the room darkened as the computer screen now was 3D. Tails touched one of the 3D panels and the picture became bigger so everyone could see. "Here's the body of the robot. " Shadow studied the red symbol a lot more than everyone else did, since it was the first thing to catch his eye.
"That symbol," Shadow began. "I've never seen it before."
"Same here," Tails said. Everyone continued to study the picture, and Tails and touched another 3D object and let it expand and sit next to the other which was shown first.
"The design is unique," Shadow explained. "Usually I'd recognize the designs and symbols, but these look all new to me." The silence ensued as they all looked at both pictures, trying to figure something out that could lead them to any conclusion. But it seemed helpless, not a single idea could emerge from any of them.
"Should we call Sonic?" Amy asked, breaking the silence.
"We can't, him, Knuckles, and Rouge are all on the other side of the world with the others. Swift and all of them have crap of their own to deal with." Shadow looked at the 4 rows of small squares that were the other pictures. His eye caught on one and he walked toward the squares. He touched the square he had eyed in the third row, and it expanded out to the other three pictures. It was a picture of the robot's shoulder area. Shadow was mainly focused on the mechanics he could see where the head of the robot used to sit. "That's interesting. How do you zoom on this thing?" Tails stretched his hand to the picture panel, he closed his hand and opened it, and the picture expanded. "Look inside the hole there, Tails." Shadow pointed out to the picture. "The mechanics look very advanced. We haven't seen technology like this for years." Tails studied what he could see inside of the hole of the robot.
"Yeah, you're right." Tails said.
"You know, I keep thinking it's that fat guy," Mike began. "That doctor guy."
"We would of also, but, he's done with that stuff," Tails replied. "He's the weather guy now."
"And besides, the symbol is different." Shadow continued. "You all remember his symbol, this isn't even close to it." Everyone said out their small affirmatives, agreeing to what Shadow said. A ring began to sound through the room, and everyone looked around and looked at Mike as he put his hand through his pocket to pull out a black cell phone. He pushed with his thumb, and half the phone slid upwards, and he placed the phone to his ear. Everyone watched Mike, and listened to him talk as he spoke into his black flip-phone.
"Hey--Yeah, what's up?-- Well n--Well no, something happened and I'm helping some friends right now-- Yeah--Alright, well, I'll meet ya all there then-- Ok, bye." Mike slid the phone back to normal with his thumb as he removed it from his ear. He held it in his hand and looked at the others as they continued to stare in silence.
"Who was that?" Amy asked.
"A close friend of mine," Mike replied. "She was wondering where I was, so she decided to meet at the restaurant down on First."
"Oh, the café place." Before anyone else could answer, an explosion sound blasted out, freezing everyone. Mike's cell phone slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, as everyone felt the shock course through their veins.
"Ohhh Shit!" Tails yelled as he started to run out of the room.
"Woah, Tails wait up!" Shadow yelled as he started to follow. Everyone else began to follow, but Mike only stood there, frozen with the thought of his friend he had talked to on the phone. He finally broke from his frozen state and began to run through the hall way, out into the living room and through the open door. He closed the door as he felt necessary and ran as fast as he could to catch up with everyone.
Smoke was rising from the town as they looked over the cliff toward it, Tails began to spin his two tails around and started to fly toward the town as fast as he could. Mileka grabbed Amy and started to fly off as well in the same motion as Tails, with Cocoa flapping with his large rabbit hears to follow. Shadow and Azuru just stared at their flying friends and at the town that had more smoke risen above it. They started to run down the mountain instead at a fast speed. Mike stopped at the cliff and looked over at the town, and his worry began to rise.
"Hey, come on." Cream said to him. She started to flap her ears and put her hands under Mike's arms and began to fly toward the town with the others. After minutes of flying over the cliffs and trees of the mountain, they reached the town and all met at the street where the smoke originated, the street connected to the street that would meet into the mountain. After all the landing, they quickly looked at the building with the smoke coming from it. They looked down and spotted the new robots, which now had new designs. More human like shape, but same metal plating, with miniature rockets attached their wrists.
"Look at that, they look different now," Tails said in surprise, he then spotted the red symbol. "And with that same symbol!" The robots continued to shoot miniature rockets at the buildings, and at the people fluttering in the streets to escape the fire or explosions being created. Shadow ran toward the robots he spotted closest to them and round-house kicked it into the nearest wall of the building that had yet to be hit by a mini-rocket. Tails turned to Amy. "Amy, you and Mike need to find the nearest fire department and get them to come out here, and to bring water. Lots of water!"
"Ok!" Amy yelled out as she started to run down the street with Mike following.
"Hey, I know the quickest way to the fire department, follow me," Mike explained the best he could while running through the cold loud town.
"Water?" Mileka asked. "For what?"
"Come on, let's go," Tails yelled. "We need to take these guys down!" Tails ran with the others going out to find the multiple robots running amuck with the town. They all managed to find any robot to pick their own fight with, and the robots were quick to react and swing at the them all. Even Shadow was hit down and bounced off the asphalt of the street, and everyone else had felt the same pain. The robots began to attack at the others, without the use of the rockets. Tails got up and quickly jumped and kicked at the head of the robot, and flipped backwards. The robot had arched back from the kick, and as Tails landed, the robot stood back to normal position. Tails jaw dropped in surprise when he noticed the robot's head was still attached. "Looks like they fixed the weak spot."
"Tell me about it," Shadow yelled out. "I can barely even dent these things!" The robots, in synchronized motion hit everyone back. "Chaos blast!" Shadow threw his hand at the robot he was fighting, and a ball of energy shot out and hit the robot. The robot flew back into another robot. The robot quickly got up, and the robot was severely damaged on its chest. "What the…"
"Nothing can hurt these things," Mileka yelled. Everyone began to step back slowly. After several steps, the robots began to walk forward toward them. The robots held out their arms toward them, and the rockets hid into their wrists, and their wrist then transformed into a machine-gun type roulette with 7 barrels circling it. Everyone braced themselves to start running, but a loud siren came out behind them. Tails looked back as he heard it come closer to him, and he saw 5 red diesel fire trucks coming toward them, and spotted Mike and Amy on one of them, hanging on the sides on the bars.
"Yes!" Tails yelled out. Everyone looked back and saw them. The fire trucks stopped at least 50 yards from the lined up group.
"Ready!" They all heard yell out from the trucks as the men held up the hoses on top of the trucks. "Fire!" They sprayed the water they had inside their trucks at the robots, with much force to push the robots to the ground. As the water stopped, the robots started to get up, but quickly started to spark and eventually short-circuited and fell back on to the ground. The group felt relieved while the firemen began to cheer. Mike and Amy jumped off the fire truck they were on ran toward the others.
"You guys alright?" Mike asked.
"Yeah," Tails replied. "We could barely hurt these things. How'd you know to spray the water on the robots?"
"That's just what I assumed," Mike replied. They all looked at the lifeless robots on the ground in the puddles of water. The fire trucks had drove past them and stopped by the different fire hydrants, and attached their hoses to them to start to take out the fires among the multiple buildings as fast as they could. A fireman in the standard yellow suit and red hard hat walked over to them as his other crew mates sprayed down the fires.
"You all ok over here?" He asked us.
"Yeah, we're ok, sir, thank you." Cream said.
"What's been up with this today?"
"You saw the first attack this morning?" Tails asked in surprise.
"No, I actually had to come over here and clean the mess up that they left, since they were all broken apart."
"I see."
"You all need to be careful, something strange is goin' on here." The fire man said as he started to walk away.
"Yeah," Tails whispered. "Very strange."