Tails the Mercenary 2
Bullet after bullet flew from Tails' powerful combat rifle as he fired around the corner at a horde of Mario-loyal Koopas and Toads. One Toad was hit right between the eyes, and the resulting splat sprayed fungal juices all over the walls and ceiling of the hallway. Tails would've used explosive rounds, but he had to be careful due to gas pipes being very close by.
A few minutes earlier, a contingent of soldiers from the former Army of the Democratic People's Republic of Mario swarmed Corneria's largest prison complex. It had been four hours since Tails had turned Bowser Junior in to the Cornerian authorities, and the reptile's subordinates were already vying for his release. They had massacred numerous guards, and were on their way to escaping by heading through one last hallway and a room. The only things left between them and freedom were Tails and Fox.
"Not that many left, Tails!" shouted Fox McCloud over each resounding shot.
Tails blew a couple more Koopas apart and said, "These little wretches can't seem to take a hint."
One after one, the enemies went down. A Toad then decided to throw a grenade, and it landed right behind the two-tailed hero. He quickly grabbed it, crushed it with his powerful metal hand, and scattered the triturated remains. After the last of the enemies were shot dead, Fox looked over at Tails and nodded. With their guns at their shoulders, they made their way through the stained hall. When they were halfway through, Bowser Junior presented himself at the end.
"HOLD IT! Put your hands on your head and get down on your knees!" shouted Fox as he aimed for the creature's head.
Bowser Junior complied only by putting his hands on his head, and he said with an insidious smile, "Come any closer, and Krystal dies. My men have taken her hostage, and if anything happens to me, they have been ordered to shoot her and hide her severed remains in various places. You are to do exactly as I say if you wish to see her again. Drop your weapons immediately or I will call my men to do their worst. Oh, and don't worry about your son. He will be in...good hands."
Fox's eyes widened. Krystal was home alone, tending to their young son. However, just as he was about to set his gun down, Tails noticed something about Bowser Junior's expressions. He said, "I detect duplicity," and shot him in one of his kneecaps. The lizard howled in pain, and grabbed his knee instead of the expected radio. Tails rushed him, whacked him into unconsciousness with the butt of his gun, and hogtied him. "I thought you could tell if someone was lying, Fox."
Shocked, Fox snapped out of it and said, "I...I just...didn't even know how to think right then. All I thought about was losing her...and..."
"I know where you're coming from. You just need to stay focused on the mission at hand. Even if it was real, we couldn't let him leave to harm others again," said Tails as he began dragging Bowser Junior to a vacant prison cell.
Shortly thereafter, Tails got back into his ship and traveled home to Mobius. He spent the following five hours working on some weapons in his shop while listening to heavy metal and sipping a mug of scotch. Working on machines gave him a strong sense of bliss, and a feeling of use in the world. He had even built his own prosthetics and used them to replace the non-combat-ready ones the hospital had given him. Ever since Robotnik died, he had become the greatest mechanical engineer on Mobius and its colonies. As he adjusted the sight on a heavily modified TDI Kriss submachine gun, he heard a knocking on his door. He stood up, grabbed a Desert Eagle, and stuck it in the back of his pants. Couldn't be too careful. He walked over to the door and peered through the view port. It was Sonic. A smirk appeared on Tails' face, and he opened the door to his old friend. "Hello, ol' buddy!"
They shook hands, and Sonic said, "Hey, Tails! How's everything going?"
"Eh, just got back from Corneria. Long story," replied Tails. "What brings you here?"
Sonic's expression grew somber, and he said, "It's your friend Cream. She, uh...has leukemia. The radiation from the nukes got to her, apparently. It's odd, though. There were no symptoms until a couple hours ago."
"Do...do they think she'll make it?" asked Tails as a lugubrious wave started to overtake him.
Sonic responded, "I think you need to come with me. There is more to be said at the hospital."
Sonic and Tails traveled to the newest and largest hospital on Mobius. The planet had been recovering well due to a considerable amount of aid from Mobian colonies in neighboring star systems, and cities were rapidly being rebuilt. The two arrived at the hospital a short while later, and they went up to Cream's room. There she laid, semi-conscious, with numerous tubes protruding from her body, and a morose Amy at her side. Tails shed a tear, and walked to her bed and put his real hand on one of hers. "Cream?"
She languidly looked over at him and weakly responded, "Tails?"
"I'm here, Cream"
A doctor put a hand on his shoulder and led him into the hallway. There was another person there, quietly leaning against a wall. Tails glanced at him briefly, and the doctor said, "She has a peculiar form of leukemia that we've only seen once before. It showed up quickly and is progressing quickly, and she might not make it through tomorrow."
The other individual approached Tails and added, "There is something you should know, though. There is a cure. It's a rare herb of Mobian origin now only found on Earth, called onag'ero. Most of it was destroyed during Mario's attacks, and our scientists have failed to replicate its properties. There's a small group north of the former city of Stockholm on Earth that broke away from the DPRM after the war, called the Goomba Consortium. This group has been confirmed to have a stockpile of the stuff, but they're unwilling to share it. We've tried everything to convince them otherwise, but for whatever reason, they're stubbornly holding onto it."
Tails clenched his fists in anger and responded under his breath, "I know what I have to do, then." He was given an information chip for his PDA, and he looked into Cream's room one last time, then at his blue associate. Sonic looked at him and nodded. Tails left the hospital, entered his ship, and made the three hour journey to Earth, all the while despising Mario's brutish cohorts even more. He soared through Earth's atmosphere, again gazing at the scarred landscape, and set his ship down in a forest near where the info chip said the Goomba fort was. Tails grabbed his modified HK-G11, exited the craft, and used the gun's scope to examine the area. Goombas were everywhere in that fort. One Goomba in particular spotted him and popped off a shot in his direction, prompting him to take cover.
The small fungal organism grabbed a loudspeaker with one of its foot-hands and blared, "We do not accept visitors! Leave now or you will be destroyed!"
Tails then remembered that he had his own loudspeaker. He opened one of his ship's compartments, grabbed one, and responded, "I am here for the onag'ero herb. I need it to cure a friend of mine who is very ill. I plead with you to give me some, and I will pay you for your generosity."
Curtly, the Goomba responded, "The cure is ours and ours alone! We possess the last of the onag'ero, and intend to keep it hidden! Leave or our snipers will tear you and your ship asunder!"
Rage coursed through Tails' veins. Despite this, he politely replied, "Very well, I leave your land in peace." He pretended to enter his ship, grabbed a few necessities, hid behind a large rocky outcropping, and activated the ship's autopilot to send it into the upper atmosphere, where it would circle until needed. The Goomba happily watched the ship roar away, and ignorantly resumed its duties. Tails sat down, opened an MRE, and began formulating an attack. Since it was already late in the evening, he decided to wait until the cover of night befell the area.
About an hour passed, and night had come. He silently buried the empty meal packaging, and began sneaking from tree shadow to tree shadow, trying to avoid the light emitted by the fortress, until he reached one of the fortress' walls. He mounted his gun on anchoring points on the back of his tactical vest, and unsheathed two razor-sharp katar blades. Using the grappling hook built into his mechanical arm, he rapidly scaled the wall and immediately slaughtered three Goombas in total silence, and hopped down to ground level. His landing crushed two more Goombas, splattering gooey mycelia over a thirty-foot radius, and he dove into a small room before anyone noticed. He looked at his PDA again, just to be sure he knew exactly where he was. He surreptitiously sprinted out of the room and into another, which led to a passageway ending at an enclosed garden in the center of the complex. The herbs were allegedly growing somewhere inside that garden. Tails raced down the passage, slayed the occasional Goomba that happened to obstruct his path, and entered the garden with considerable ease. At that moment, some Goombas noticed their slain comrades, and the alarms sounded. Tails put his knives back in their sheaths, drew his gun, and blockaded the passage opening with some crates. As he quickly searched for the herbs, he heard a very familiar voice coming from another doorway.
"Hello there, Tails. Nice t-..." Before the speaker could finish, Tails aimed his gun in its direction and fired off a few rounds. One bullet barely missed the speaker's neck.
"I'd recognize that voice anywhere, Fiona," said Tails in a frigid manner.
Fiona Fox spoke from around a corner, "Easy there, big boy. Why such immediate hostility? I am no threat to you."
"You ripped my heart out through my spine and stabbed my friends in the back. How else would you expect me to react, woman?" Tails scathingly replied. She emerged into the open with her hands up, believing Tails wouldn't shoot her in such a cold fashion.
"Well, look at you. You've grown since we last met. Those robust prosthetics look good on you," she said as she walked toward him in a subtly provocative manner.
Tails couldn't help but notice her 'maturity' as well. "Why are you and your accomplices hiding the cure so fervently?"
Seemingly ignoring his question, she slowly put her hands down and continued walking toward him. "Why are you resisting me, Tails? I know you had feelings for me before, and maybe I want to return those feelings. Make up for the wrongs I've done, you know?" She was only five feet away from him at that point, and he slowly began lowering his gun. She continued, "I want to show you how sorry I am," and got close enough to seductively touch his chest, which she did while gazing into his eyes.
"I...realize something," Tails said while smiling slightly, "something I should have said a good while ago." He dropped his gun, grabbed her arm, and threw her into a wall. "You were never worth it." He bent over and retrieved his weapon, resuming his aim afterward.
She quickly hopped back to her feet and wiped the blood off her face; a malicious expression manifested itself. There was a large dagger laying on the ground near where she collided with the wall. "It was me," she said, "I deliberately infected Cream with an advanced form of leukemia to lure you here so I could kill you and Sonic, though I see that blue migraine didn't accompany you." As she spoke, she slowly walked around Tails, prompting him to move opposite to her in a circle. Her intent was to lead him into the path of a sniper.
A burst of rage presented itself in Tails' eyes, and he breathed, "You...filthy...scoundrel." As he prepared to fire a round into her heart, a Goomba sniper shot his weapon from his hands through the only large opening in the grated metal dome covering the garden. Fiona took that opportunity to roundhouse-kick Tails in the face, and he rolled across the ground, jumped back up, and grabbed his knives.
She grabbed her dagger, said, "You fool, you should've killed me when you had the chance. Now that chance is gone," and lunged at him. The two slashed, struck at, and stabbed at each other many times, simultaneously blocking the other's attacks. Fiona managed to send one of Tails' knives hurtling into a shrub, and she kicked him in his good knee, slightly injuring it. Pain surged through his leg, made evident in his facial expressions, and she kicked him even harder in the abdomen, sending him to the ground. He grabbed a rock and chucked it at her head using his powerful robotic arm, which she deflected with one of her own arms, but the impact slightly fractured a bone. She shouted and held her arm briefly, but her fury pushed her to continue her attack. She slashed even harder, nicking Tails' robot arm a few times, and severing some fur. Tails led her into an area of the garden which was completely protected from sniper fire, and eventually grabbed her injured arm and punched it, fully breaking the fractured bone. She dropped her dagger while screaming, and Tails continued holding her arm to keep her in place.
"Listen to ME, Fiona, this has got to stop. You threw away some powerful allegiances by joining the enemy. Don't make your life be the next thing you lose," warned Tails with a growl. She tried to grab a shuriken from her belt, but he held her arm a little higher, adding to the incredible pain. Goombas scrambled to get Tails back in their sights, though they had been ordered not to kill unless she lost the battle. "I'm going to take these herbs and heal Cream with them. I'm also taking you with me. I heard you had a bounty on your head, and frankly, I don't like the thought of you being free to ruin more lives."
She continued to struggle a bit, and said with a hateful tone, "You won't make it out of here alive, you orange weasel." She broke through the pain, snatched a shuriken from her belt, and stabbed Tails in the side, prompting him to loosen his grip enough for her to escape. The shuriken didn't make it past the muscle, which allowed him to ignore the pain and sprint off in pursuit after grabbing his knives. He also seized a large fistful of herbs which he stuffed into a pocket, just in case the Goombas decided to burn it all during the chase. Numerous Goombas came at him, but they were easily dispatched by a well-placed stab or slash. By the time Tails caught up to her, she had already entered her own ship and flown off.
He hid in an alcove to avoid enemy fire, looked into the sky, and muttered "We'll meet again, Fiona." He signalled his ship, and it shot through the sky at many times the speed of sound, stopping near the fortress briefly enough to allow him to get in. He blasted every living thing in the fort apart with it, and flew over to the garden to grab his damaged gun and the rest of the herbs. His objective completed, he departed, and soared back to Mobius.
When he arrived back at the hospital, Cream was already on a respirator.
"She's fading fast, Tails. I hope you made it in time," said Sonic despondently as Amy wept on his arm.
Tails handed the doctors some herbs, and they quickly made them ready to be fed to her through a tube. She was cured within an hour.
End
Sonic characters and places are copyright of Sonic Team/Sega, and Super Mario/Starfox characters and places are copyright of Nintendo.
Story, etc are copyright of me, NuclearCookout
Author's notes:
I do not advocate the consumption of alcohol/alcoholic beverages.