I wrote a ton of fanfiction when I was a kid but never actually finished any, but this time I promise I'm going to finish it now that I'm older.

Reviews are highly encouraged so that I can keep myself motivated to get this done ;)

X

Back when things had been a lot more simple and carefree, it felt as though things would never change. For better or worse, the same ideas and themes would surround the hundreds upon hundreds of hours that we spent adventuring in a multitude of different places. Things would always resolve themselves peacefully within a few hours, never leaving any room for things to turn needlessly drastic or unpleasant. And, for what it was worth, everyone was happy to have things stay the same, including myself.

I am Miles Tales Prower, the designated side kick to Sonic the Hedgehog who would always find a himself doing most if not all of the work without getting nearly enough credit. But I was never distraught about this, I was instead simply content with the only reward I received being the time I was able to spend bonding and enjoying myself with the people that I came to call my best friends. The silliness and non-seriousness of the problems we found ourselves in never left anyone any room to act selfish, because, if one person decided to sit out a mission for some reason, there would always be another person available to come in and help work everything out. Or, at least that was what I thought.

"Hey sonic, can you come help me out over here for a second?"

It was a sunny day in late July when I decided that it was time for me to add some more upgrades to my Plane, Tornado, that were much too complicated for me to understand or pull off without any help. I knew Sonic had no idea what was going on either, but I would always ask for his input if not only because his simplistic answers would always help me remind myself of something that I might have overlooked.

He raised his sunglasses and looked at me with an inquisitive gaze before leisurely standing from his lounge chair and walking up to me.

"Well, what's the problem here pal?" He started nonchalantly, walking around Tornado and inspecting the half dismantled plane laid out before him, "did you forget where to put the wings?"

"No!" I retorted, faking offense in response to Sonic's banter, "I'm actually trying to infuse our second chaos emerald with the plane so that we have enough energy to fly without needing to use gas."

I clapped my hands together to knock some of the dirt that had gathered on them off and walked towards a large hunk of metal that sat in a corner of the room before continuing, "but every time I try to put the emerald in the slot that I made for it, it gets super hot and burns my hand through my gloves. I already changed the plane's power surges pretty drastically too, so I don't think there's any way to undo all of this and put it together like it was before either. We have to figure it out."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Tails!" Sonic shook his hands frantically in front of my face, "did you check with everyone to make sure that it was cool before you did all this? I know that if it were me I wouldn't want anyone using their emeralds for personal stuff!"

"It's fine," I shrugged, "when we originally split everything up we said that anyone could use the emerald for whatever they wanted as long as no one got hurt."

After fighting with Eggman over the chaos emeralds for what seemed like the hundredth time, everyone in our group decided that it would be best if we all split up the emeralds amongst ourselves so that no one person could get greedy and decide to take them all for themselves. to get all of them. Sonic and I got three emeralds, Knuckles and his clan got another two, and Cream, Cheese, and Amy got the last two. We were sure that Eggman would come after them again at some point, but for right now spreading them out forced Eggman to spend more time formulating a plan to come get them. And that gave us more time to hang out and chill out, and none of us could complain about that.

"Speaking of the others, I could have sworn that something was going on today..." Sonic said, pacing and scratching his chin in confusion, "but it's so late now that it might be took late to remember or do anything about it."

I was still wracking my brain trying to find a solution for the engine problem that Sonic had still not helped me with, but I still absentmindedly let my mind wander and attempt to remember what Sonic and I were forgetting. I could have sworn that it was on the tip of my tongue...

Cream!

"Oh crap, it's Cream's birthday, Sonic!"

Sonic met my eyes with a look that I could only describe as terrified as he listened to what I was saying. There was a brief moment of silence as we both simply stared at each other in disbelief. Finally, after a few moments, I spoke up desperately.

"We need to leave right this second, everyone probably got together over an hour ago!" I shouted, "even with your speed, it'll take us at least ten minutes to get there without Tornado! Quick, help me put everything together and we can just leave the engine over there-"

Before I could finish the sentence, I felt Sonic grab me by the wrist as an unbelievable burst of wind shot every strand of hair on my body backwards. I felt a pit of nausea begin to gather deep down in my gut, but I quickly dismissed it by gulping aggressively. I grit my teeth in slight anger, always peeved whenever Sonic grabbed me and began running without saying anything anything. But before I could voice my discontent, I heard Sonic shout back at me, "think of an excuse before we get there, I really don't want them getting any more mad at us!"

He did have a point, but there was nothing believable that we could say at this point that would soften the blow. We've already said that Tornado broke down when we missed Knuckle's party, we already said that we were attacked by Eggman when we forgot about Big's huge fishing tournament, and we've even already said that I had to save Sonic from drowning in the ocean back when we were late to giving out the chaos emeralds. There really was nothing left for us to say, and the struggling look on Sonic's face showed that he had come to the same conclusion. Maybe saying that we forgot would earn us some respect at least, even if my usual punctuality and Sonic's being the fastest thing on the plan didn't really give us any excuses.

Damn it.

As the familiar pink house that Cream and Cheese shared with Amy came into view, my heart began pounding harder than Sonic's sudden running could ever make it. We may have missed a lot of different things over the years, but Cream's eighteenth birthday was by far the most personal and important. Nothing could have made me feel like more of, frankly, an insensitive asshole.

Sonic and I both stopped right outside the back door of the house and exchanged concerned looks. From the other side of the thin wooden door, we could hear all of what was going inside of the house.

"It's been over an hour at this point, I really don't think that they're coming," a voice that we recognized as Knuckle's spoke in his usual gruff tone, "we even started the party an hour later than usual to give them time to forget about it."

At this point Knuckles gave out an audible sigh, opening the front door to leave before saying, "I'm gonna go on and get out of here before it gets too dark to get home. Happy birthday, Cream, I'm sure that everything was mostly Sonic's fault. Tails would have been here if he could have, I'm sure."

"It really doesn't matter," Cream spoke for the first time in a quiet, almost defeated tone.

With one last goodbye, Knuckles stepped outside and closed the door softly behind him. I heard the soft clapping of what I assumed to be Amy patting Cream's head right before Cream let out a single, pitiful sniffle.

"Chao..." Cheese's sympathetic moan echoed throughout the house and my heart ached even worse every second that I listened to it. I didn't think that there was anyway that I could feel any worse at that moment, and then Cream sniffles again.

"We have to do something!" I whispered harshly to sonic. Hoping that he had any ideas to make me feel any better about the current situation. He simply shrugged, a defeated look on his face.

"So you two finally show up two hours late?"

I could have sworn that I heard Amy's voice come from beside me, but something made it impossible for me to look and confirm this for myself. After a few moments, I was finally able to look for myself, and I immediately wished that I hadn't.

Amy had a look of pure, unadulterated anger across her usually calm and serene face. But that's not what got to me. What got to me was the figure of Cream right behind her with tear stained palms right underneath a face filled with both sadness and surprise. Amy finally spoke again, "if you guys are this late, why even bother coming at all!"

Immediately after this sentence had finished, as if it were a cue for us to leave, I felt a familiar nausea in my stomach and grip on my wrist as Sonic grabbed onto me and began running away. Though initially relieved to be free from that extremely uncomfortable situation, this was quickly replaced with a feeling of disgust towards myself as I saw for a brief second the image of Cream reaching out towards me. And if may have been my over dramatic mind adding to the situation, but I could have sworn that I saw more streams of tears beginning to fall down her face. She could have been saying a lot of things, but it looked a lot like she was saying my name.

The entire way back to the house with Sonic, I was completely limp and defeated. Sonic would try to start idle conversation to cut the tension, but I never responded with any enthusiasm. And when we returned to the house, I went and feel right onto my bed, not caring to fix the dismantled plane parts that sat in the runway. I couldn't sleep, but I stayed like that for the rest of the night.