Lazarus Rising

"You mean I'm stuck like this?" Rage gritted his teeth, picking the crusted mud off as he cleaned his jet black fur. "Yes, as far as I know." Chaos stared back at the grave, "I'm still amazed you managed to climb out without suffocating. The earth was dry earlier in the day so I had to make it rain particularly heavy this afternoon."

"What do I do now?" Rage said, trying to stay on topic.

"That, mortal, is a question only you can answer." The rain started up again, and Chaos disappeared amidst the haze.

"Damn." Rage glanced back at the grave; he felt his heart lighten a little. He had defied death, or perhaps death had defied him.

"That's just wishful thinking on your part buddy…" Angel said. Ignoring the comment, Rage quickly filled the grave, blending with the darkness around him before disappearing into the night, leaving nothing but the lightning that followed.

"I don't understand, everything was fine an hour ago." The yellow fox ran his fingers through his bangs; a process that, unlike the experiment in front of him, hadn't changed in the last twenty-four hours. Tails carefully grabbed the ends of the paper and wrapped the failed products before disposing of them in the incinerator. Letting out an exasperated sigh, he wrote down the chemical combination, list of materials used, and the procedures performed along with other important data from the project. Tails clicked the light switch and walked into the bathroom exhausted. He tossed his dirty gloves in the hamper he kept for just that purpose and washed his hands in the sink. The fox retrieved his drink from the kitchen which had finished boiling about twelve minutes ago and sipped at his tea/milk mixture. Adding cinnamon sticks when boiling was required, but he always liked to add a little honey to sweeten it. Tails sunk in to the warm comfort of his old, patchy beige couch which also served as a pull-out bed whenever he had visitors.

He hadn't pulled out the bed in three long, depressing years; the events of which he suspected to be the culprit behind his intellectual stagnation.

The clock ticked away tirelessly, never stopping, all its little gears and knobs twisting away in a constant circle. Turning back to the television, he considered reaching for the remote, but decided against it as there would be nothing but "Hero" worship on nearly every channel. The newspaper had long since been removed from his list of pleasant activities and past times and now he was left with a shelf full of old encyclopedias, fix-it manuals, Daily Mech magazines-which had been discontinued by the way, and other reading material he had already gone through hundreds of times and were now gathering a nice thick coat of dust. Settling for a classic tale of "One Thousand and One Arabian Nights" Tails flipped open his favorite story of a fisherman and a genie. fifteen minutes passed and when Tails finished he set the book down and rubbed his eyes. Looking to the clock mounted above the header to his kitchen he took note of the minute and hour hands as they rested on the twelve exactly aligned with each other. He had to do a double take to notice that during the time he had spent on the book the hands had not budged a bit. Not even the hand that marked the seconds that passed.
"Tsk, batteries are dead again." He groaned. It was weird, of all the modern updated furniture and technology inside the house, that clock was the only thing that was older than him. He even had numerous nuclear clocks, why did he even keep it? He could just simply make a digital clock that was more efficient, accurate, and longer lasting then that old thing. It was pretty much useless.

Tails got up and placed his cup in the sink when a small sound almost like a chime tickled his ears. Walking to the end of the stairs, he was teased again by the increase in volume from the noise. It was definitely a chime…followed by a cackle. As he reached the top he could see the light at the end of the hallway. The chimes and cackles were getting closer. Tails walked further down the dimly lit corridor. The chimes were getting much more profound…and familiar…like he had heard it before years ago.

Tails reached the end of the hallway and noticed a grainy wooden door next to the lackluster lamp which flickered slightly from wear. Surreptitiously laying his hand on the handle, he could feel a cold spot surrounding him.

"CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Tails swung the door open.

"CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Cymbal Monkey?" Tails stared in confusion. The toy rested completely still, its deceiving gaze resting in no apparent direction and always followed by its malevolent grin. As if discovering the toy wasn't strange enough, the house began to shake. It started out as a vibration, but grew to a violent rumble. Tails ran out of the room and streaked down the hallway, stumbling from the quakes, ignoring the flickering light that was going berserk and diving down the next flight of stairs and making for the workshop.

Tails was about to make for the front door, but when he saw a crack of lightning flash across his window he backed away and reached for the desk resting against the wall that ran perpendicular to the door. Another quake shook him from the desk and he stumbled to the left to maintain his footing when another quake forced him to pivot on his left and fall on the ground with his back against the wall.

"Go away!" Tails screamed, showing, if only for a brief moment, a hint of bravery. The cowering form wrapped his tails around his body in a futile attempt to repel the spirit. The quakes and lights intensified greatly for a brief moment, blinding all five of his senses for several moments before the house returned to normal, and everything was calm.

Tails poked his head out from his tails relieved to find the light had dimmed and . The lamps were lit, the room was organized, and the shaking had stopped. When he opened his eyes he almost choked at the sight. "Y-you-yo-you're-" Tails stuttered against the wall of his living room, terrified and amazed at what stood in front of him. "Alive?" a black hedgehog hopped off the couch upon which he was perched and raided the fridge for a meal; his manners were as scarce as ever. "Yep, and kickin' too…" he grinned.

"You got anything to eat around here besides this?" he gestured at the green puree he plucked from the fridge; a viscous, smoothie like substance that made his stomach flip from its appearance. It looked like blended bits of broccoli and...God knows what else. Rage assumed that Tails was on some kind of health kick and popped open the lid, taking a dab with his finger and licking the substance. As expected, the flavor made his poor taste buds protest in disgust; something he should have expected after smelling the liquefied...stuff.

"I-I I don't understand, you should be dead…" Tails slowly stood up, somewhat uncertain that he wasn't dreaming. "It's impossible. There is no logical explanation, scientific or religious that constitu-"

"Blah, blah, blah." Rage turned towards the fox, grabbing a banana as he left the kitchen. "Look, I'm breathing, I'm moving, and I am alive in every sense of the word. As far as I'm concerned, I've been given a second chance." Rage said deflecting the oncoming rambling. "I don't know why, I don't know how, but for some reason, I'm here." he tossed the peel in the garbage. "And I'm starving. Can we please get like a Burger King or something?" he grabbed a mint candy from the bowl on the coffee table and fumbled with the wrapper.

"At least let me run some tests first before we do anything. This has got to be some kind of modern miracle." Tails snatched the candy and pinching the ends of the wrapper, untwisted the ends in annoyance, "Are you serious?" he groaned popping the candy in his mouth. "Don't kill me or I swear I'll haunt you." The hedgehog warned.

The two headed into the garage and Tails set up an operating table for Rage to lie down. Tails then hooked up a heart monitor and laid out a series of medical syringes on the tool trolley. "I hope you're not afraid of needles…" Tails grinned taking one of the empty syringes and injecting the needle, drawing blood from the vein. Then trading the blood sample for another syringe with a green liquid, he injected it into the same vein. "What does that do?" Rage asked straining to see his veins press against his skin. "It's a formula that detects any anomalies or foreign substances in your blood." Ten minutes later the test results came in. "Well, everything appears normal for an anthro. It seems you're just our average, garden variety…undead hedgehog."

"Well, good to see nothing's changed." Rage joked hopping off the operating table. "Wait." Giving the results another once over, Tails noticed a strange anomaly. "Your DNA has changed." This caught the hedgehog's attention. "What's DNA?" Tails did a double-take, "Don't-don't you remember biology classes in high school?" the answer was a flat out, "No."

"Anyway…it says that your cell production cycle is half the rate it used to be." He thumbed through the results, checking for any other abnormalities. "How do you know what my cell division rate used to be?" Tails went over to a filing cabinet and leafed through until he stopped on one of the folders. "Three years ago you blacked out from a fight and we brought you into the garage for medical care. Or at least, what would pass for one." He explained, "Nothing's as effective as a regular hospital right?" he flipped past the pages until he found the results from the tests. "Let's see, uh, heart rate, blood work, neurology, ah, cellular function. N.R..: 15.2, C.D.C.: 15.2, the stats are twice the normal rate." He placed the results from both sequences next to each other. "But when you compare these with the results from just now, the Neuron Responses are 7.6, and the Cell Division Cycle is 7.6." Rage looked over the results, unable to make head or tail of either. "So what does that mean?"

"Neural Response is the amount of time it takes for the Neurons in your body to recognized there's been damage and send signals to the brain which then sends messages back to repair the wound. Cell Division is simply the process of the red blood cells clotting the wound to prevent further blood loss while the skin cells repair themselves and close up the wound." the hedgehog stood there about to give up. "In English?" he beckoned. "It means your mundane like the rest of us. I think it means that you're really back from the dead. I'm guessing that only the Chaos Emeralds can help us here." Tails closed the manila folder and fed it back into the cabinet before walking back into the living room. "Something like this is biblical. Not even science can rationalize or explain how this could even happen. Turning to religious texts, whenever something like this happens, there's almost always a lack of humanity. I don't know if that's the same case with you, but before you died you already had a distorted sense of humanity..." Tails explained. "What are you trying to say that I'm a heartless bastard?" Rage replied defensively. "No, but typically, someone with your behavior most likely went through some form of desensitizing. This is common with Marines, Armed Forces, and G.U.N. Agents as they are required to not feel much shock to cruel or distressful images and scenes."

"My father was an ex-Marine. He trained me exactly as the Marines trained him before he disappeared. I went into active duty for a typical four year contract as soon as I turned seventeen." he admitted.

"That's not possible, you're only twenty-one right now, the only way you'd be able to serve all four is if the events of the Big Flash never happened and you never died." Tails took a seat next to the hedgehog, still curious about who exactly this guy was. "That's the other thing," Rage continued. "My birth records are a year ahead. I'm actually surprised nobody noticed."

"That brings up another question." Tails remarked curiously.

"Who names their newborn child something like Rage?"

There was a brief pause after the question where Rage gave the fox a, "Did you really just say that?" look before chuckling lightly.

"Hey don't ask me, I missed that board meeting."

"So you don't remember?"

"No, not really. I get the feeling it was supposed to be a nickname, maybe because of my eyes. When I was born my mother said that my eyes were a bright red the very first time I opened them, like orange and red flames contained in glass circles, but when I had stopped crying and opened them again they turned green. I also used to get a lot of shit from kids in my first year of high school because of my, 'Anger issues'. Believe me you aren't the first person who's asked me that."

Tails stood up from the couch, walking over to the computer. "But that would mean you never served a full contract." Tails pulled out a drawer under the computer desk and reached inside. "So that's it? Nothing else?"

There was a brief pause, a moment where the last statement seemed more and more threatening the longer it went unanswered. "Nothing you need to know at the moment." Rage laid down against the armrest of the couch, hands behind his head.

Rage grabbed a piece of peppermint candy on his way toward the door, wondering how he would grow accustomed to his new lifestyle. "No powers, back from the dead, something's going on..." he thought to himself, "So what now?"