'Majesty Lost'
By Dib07
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'Gravity.
Don't mean too much to me.
Is this our destiny?
This world is after me,
After you.'
Chemical Romance - Bulletproof Heart
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'All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.'
Elias Canetti
A/N: Contains horror and blood throughout.
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Chapter One: The Island
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"Do we really need all this stuff, Tails? You are cluttering my side of the seat!"
Tails gave him a wholesome glare that was fractured with impatience just before his expression changed to one of complete horror as he watched his best friend and brother haul it all up – only to sling it to the four winds.
Sonic hated long flights, especially when it was over water. The pacific ocean in fact. Sonic was incredibly good natured at first. He slept part of the way, and then ate into some of their picnic food and drank their lemonade after his short nap. When he saw that they were still over the ocean however, he began to get really irritable. He went through the fox's magazines, tool kit and sun lotion stuff that had been neatly tucked into the spare seat compartment, only for Sonic to suddenly throw it all out to make room for himself. Tails could only watch in horror as the items and magazines fluttered or fell down to the icy waters below.
"I can't believe you just did that!" Tails cried out, barely able to turn round and look at Sonic whilst aiming the plane at the same time. It was a manual machine that had no set autopilot. He wished he had installed one now though, if only to unbuckle his seatbelt and whack his oldest friend on his head. "My stuff! My tools! My books!"
"Yeah, well, you brought too much, and they cramped my legs." Sonic ran a toothpick across his teeth, one arm propping up his head as his legs rested on the top of Tails' seat. "Besides, it's your fault. You told me this ride was only going to be an hour's trip and I see no land!"
Tails looked incredulously at his radar, brow drawing into a tight furrow as he secretly blamed his implement for the delay in finding what they had come out to find. "You're getting even more impatient as you get older, Sonic, did you know that?"
"And you are developing a fanatical disorder, my two-tailed friend! I see the way you check your tools, recheck your tools, clean your tools, reclean your tools! If I so much as move your spanner, you'll be right back to straighten it so that it aligns perfectly with your other instruments!"
"Blah, blah! I can't hear you!" Tails said with a smile as he increased speed, augmenting the air turbulence to a roar: blasting Sonic back in his seat until the hedgehog was forced to hit a button so that his windshield could safely snap back over his head.
"When we get to this secret place of yours, I'm going to steal your spanner!" Sonic retorted, arms folded over his chest. Tails laughed and pressed a switch on his control terminal so that his windshield was also activated. Now that they were closed in from the screaming winds, they were cocooned within: breathing in filtered air from the plane's pressurized ventilation system.
It was a secret island they were looking for: an island Tails was adamant about showing because of how special it was, and that it just had to be shared with his brother. This island had no human contact, Tails had boasted, and its ecosystem was just magical. There were waterfalls, impressive mountains thick with foliage, hidden caves, and stretches of lush grassland. Hot springs.
It sounded like a secret paradise alright. Sonic loved the idea of just the two of them exploring it, and having fun in an isolated place. The idea of water surrounding him on all sides was a little upsetting, but Tails had promised him that the island was so big and gorgeous that such phobias would soon be forgotten.
The plane bumped a little when it entered turbulence. Tails steadied it with his gearstick. Sonic always grew a tad concerned when the plane groaned high up in the air: because there was nothing beneath them but miles upon miles of nothing but the deepest, darkest water, and the mere thought of falling down into it made his heart quicken.
Cold sweat began to break out through his fine fur.
Still, he continued to lean back, chewing on his toothpick and pretending that he couldn't care less even as he entered the first stages of panic.
"I'm starting to pick something up on my radar!" Tails alerted him.
"'Bout time!"
The weather outside slowly began to turn somewhat darker. A conniving fog rolled upwards in the distance: and it was exactly where they needed to go. "Oh it just had to get bad, didn't it?" Tails muttered mostly to himself as he thumbed his gearstick: causing the plane to bank left as he prepared to make his way round it. But the fog was like a rising sandstorm. It thickly filled the sky ahead like cotton wool and there was no way around or above it.
Sonic leaned up in his seat, toothpick in the corner of his mouth. "Think we should fly straight through it, old buddy?"
"I guess. I have my radar so I can pretty much judge where I'm going, more or less, and I think there'll most likely be sunlight on the other side. Clouds like this aren't usually this big, especially when they form out of nowhere. I think we'll be okay."
"All right. But if you end up killing us, I'm leaving nothing for you in my will."
Tails rolled his eyes.
Hiccupping with more turbulence, the plane proceeded onwards, the propeller loudly buzzing away. Tails fought nearly all the time to keep the wings straight as they entered the rolling, grey cloud mass. There was no turning back.
Sonic kept his eyes on the window: though there was little use in doing so. All he could see were blankets of mist. As he watched, peppers of rain started to spray the windshield from the cloud's moistness. Soon however, they were under a tempest of rain. Wipers worked hard to keep Tails' view clear even though all he could still see visually was blank fog. Sonic felt chills, but he was warm, and dry. He couldn't get wet in here. So he picked up a magazine he had flung aside earlier and tried to read it. A brief mutter of thunder swept through the skies above them, causing Tails to curse. "Honestly," he was saying, "why'd there have to be a storm of all places? Where'd the sun go?"
"Sun was hurting my eyes anyway." Conferred his partner, but his light jesting didn't have any impact on Tails, who was still concentrating on keeping the plane balanced. Harsher turbulence was making the little plane ache and soon the whole cockpit was shuddering from the gale force outside. Abruptly an alarm went off and Tails hit a couple of switches.
"What was that?" Sonic asked, closing the magazine.
"It's the radar! It's going haywire!"
"Now? Really?"
"Yes Sonic, really!"
Sonic grimly dropped his magazine and looked outside again. Tails' frustration was increasing, and that was never a good thing when you were a thousand miles above sea level. The rain splashed angrily against the windows, and he could feel the plane rocking him from side to side as if he was on a ship and not on a biplane. He got an image of falling down into the sea again, and realized with great intensity that he was in a tightly confined space. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. Sweat was trickling down his fur.
The plane shuddered violently again and again.
"Tails!"
"Sonic, put your seatbelt on!"
He didn't need telling twice, nevertheless the thought of committing himself to a seatbelt only increased his anxiety of being constrained in one place.
There almost seemed to be static in the air too, as if the sudden storm was full of electrical energy. And his confusion was quickly answered. A massive fork of lightning bled beside their plane less than ten feet away. And that was it. The plane just went dead. The steering went. The engine went. All electrical functions died.
"No, no!" Tails was yelling, trying all the switches anyway; knowing that he wouldn't be able to elicit a response but trying like all futile victims would when death is coming. "Come on! Come on!" He flipped the emergency power switch, and then hit the button labelled: 'manual override.' "Nothing is working!"
"Don't panic, buddy!" Sonic said in a numb sort of way, spilling out words he had said hundreds of times when things looked bad, "Whatever you do, just don't eject us!"
Thunder groaned, and then roared above them. The plane started to descend: fast. Without power, it had become nothing more than a chassis with wings. The propeller was still spinning.
"Think of your training!" Sonic added thickly, "Think of emergency landing!"
Tails grabbed both gearsticks and pulled them towards him. The hydraulics may have stopped working, but Tails could still lift the nose of the plane very slightly by using manual override which gave him back the bare basics of plane control. He was freefalling, but even so he could still balance the plane enough to make it glide downwards.
Some of the fog parted below them. Tails snatched a glimpse of land. Sonic saw it too.
"We gotta land this plane!" He said.
"We'll crash and burn!" Tails cried hopelessly. "We're too high up and the plane is going too fast!"
"Landing gear! Activate the landing gear!"
Tails hit the button. There was a clonk and a shift of gears below them. A red light blinked on.
'Landing gear failed.' Spoke the terse, automated voice from the cockpit.
"The landing gear's jammed!" The fox sobbed.
We're going to crash. Sonic thought with surreal sagacity. We're going to die. How ironic. I've risked my life so many times to save others in the face of danger, and here I am, about to lose it all out in the middle of nowhere. Well, it's been a good life, I suppose. But a plane crash, really? I hope it doesn't... hurt. Well, at least I won't be drowning.
A shock of blue eclipsed them on their right side as another bolt of light flashed down to the sea, followed up by a great BANG of thunder. Tails shrieked in his cockpit.
A short while ago they had been flying in magnificent sunlight, mocking each other in candid exuberance as they thought of sunny beaches and deep, dark groves where unicorns used to tread. Now the plane was falling, the cockpit red from blinking alarms that seemed to run on useless battery power that wasn't linked to anything helpful.
They broke free from the fog, but the land beneath them was closing in like a moving wall homing straight for their plane. Trees of miniature proportion swept beneath their growing shadow, and wrecks of buildings flashed by, as did diminutive lakes and cliffs. Ironically sunlight began to flash over them once again as they left the awful prison of the thunder cloud. But the radar and the rest of the internal power never came back on.
And Tails was running out of natural air currents on which to buffet his plane as it roared downwards like a meteorite.
Sonic gripped the edges of his seat as the plane rattled and shook. A stunned kind of shock lapsed over him as he settled for his doom. Tails was in another world as he battled to keep the nose of the plane up: so at least he was still doing something. Sonic did not have that same luxury. He only had the view to contend with as paralysis stole away all control of his muscles.
This plane would be their coffin.
The trees got real big: the plane's shadow even bigger. Gouges of earth rose up beside them: sealing them in. The plane groaned. The land bobbed up to greet them in a death-embrace too suddenly. Then there was a shattering CRASH and Sonic was whiplashed in his seat. The windshield went dark with tree branches, bushes. Alarms still blinked on and off. There was a slight cry from Tails as metal creaked and glass was smashed into crystal shards. Smoke and diesel fuel was blasted down their throats. And still the plane kept sailing forwards as if it could fly at ground level. Both of them were bashed insensate in their seats. Something tore in the plane; a tree came at them at blinding speed. Tails threw his arms up, braced for impact. The plane smashed into it, and a rock or a tree branch punctured the cockpit from the side. The engine – or something exploded.
The plane spun.
The last thing Sonic saw was another tree racing towards them; as insurmountable as death.
A/N: TBC