"Running on a full tank of gas!" Sonic eulogized. "Hey Rote? While we're out here where you live, why not show us what's hot around here?"

"Well, there's always the Ice House," Rotor said lightly. He and I both laughed; it was a joke we took from a musical we'd been to see in our college years. Sonic didn't get the joke, but laughed anyway. He was a people person, a benevolent parasite. An amplifier for good feelings. "Actually," Rotor said, "There's a coffee place a few blocks from here and I'd just like to catch up for a bit."

"Catch up. Sure. Sounds great," Sonic said, completely on board. We left the car a few steps from the coffee house, and entered.

Even back from when Sonic and Rotor had first met, they'd had this thing where they didn't actually talk. I know it sounds weird, but apparently, they could just communicate by staring at each other. Personally I thought it was some kind of intellectual high that Rotor got off of Sonic, though how I didn't know. At any rate, that's exactly what their 'catching up' turned out to be. With jazz playing in the background, in usual Sonic style. As a threesome, we all felt that jazz, or 'bop', was going to be the ambrosia of music two hundred years from now.

While Sonic and Rotor had their mind-meld, I distanced myself from them in wandering around. Eventually I ran out of cubic yards to wander, and I entertained myself by thinking more about the past.

On our very first outing, Sonic and I had picked up Rotor, making our current voyage a reprise of the past.

While in the past, I feel it would be only suitable for me to clear up some misunderstandings. A while back, I referred to Sonic as both 'village idiot' and 'genius'. Perhaps it's better to say that neither of them actually described him. The genius Rotor and I first felt from Sonic was his…mind explosions. There was no other way to put it. Sonic would get euphoric, drunk even, off of one little thing on the planet, and the only way Rotor and I could explain it was that he was a life genius. Or a witch doctor, one of those two.

But the 'village idiot' part is the one I want to talk about. No matter what he would do, Sonic's loose grip on reality made him come off as rather zany. But if that was the only thing about him, Rotor's parents probably would have kicked him out without a second thought. Sonic had this way of getting on someone's good side whether they liked it or not, which must have rubbed off on his parents. I remember Rotor's parents describing him favorably, anyway. I can only call it naïveté. He meant literally no harm in anything he did (apart from some friendly teasing).

So, this being Rotor's and my first road trip with Sonic, we were both absolutely euphoric off of him. I remember having hit a coffee shop just like the one we were in now as our first stop, where I don't remember much. That's really because (or at least Rotor has told me) Sonic and I were both drunk. I do remember dancing. There was a lot of that, and somewhere along the way we must have picked up a girl. That's how Amy Rose landed with us.

I remember Amy well. I'm still in touch with her, but she's changed. The way I remember her from two years ago was just as excited to be there as the rest of us. After the coffee and the dancing and the jazz, we must have offered her a ride, because when I did sober up, it was past midnight and Rotor didn't want to drive. Well, Sonic and I both had headaches, and Amy was dead asleep, so Rotor had brought out some blankets he'd helpfully packed in the trunk, took out a few burnable objects, and managed to whip up a campfire. It was a great night. Better than sleeping in a moving car.

Someone touched me on the shoulder. Sonic. "Hey, Rote says he wants to relive Campfire Night." He was referring to the campfire I just mentioned. "Feel like it?"

"We haven't danced yet," I said, half joking.

"You're absolutely right, we haven't! Let me go tell Rotor." Sonic went to go do just that.

The only problem was, there were no girls. At least, none that stayed for more than five minutes. Not to be deterred from his Reliving Campfire Night Experience, Sonic simply danced with Rotor. I sat from our formerly occupied table and laughed, enjoying the bop.

About fifteen minutes in, neither of them had stopped for breath, or for a drink, which was funny. In my peripheral vision, I'd noticed that a small group of two people had lingered around my table for an unusual amount of time, which I was curious about until I turned around. They were watching Sonic and Rotor, just like I was.

One of them muttered something. I figured I had heard them wrong: "Freaking gays."

I turned around and stared. I hadn't heard them wrong, I found out, as he continued: "Friends of yours?"

It took me a few awkward seconds to realize who he was talking about. "You mean them?" I said.

"Of course I mean them. How can you let them dance together like that, in public?"

Now, of course, people are more tolerant of homosexual preferences, but back then, you were either straight or you were disgusting. I knew that both Sonic and Rotor were straight, but I could follow this guy's thought train.

I tried to set him straight. "Actually, they are my friends, but they're not gay, if that's what you mean." I admit I let a little venom sneak through, but I tried to be as polite as possible. Sonic I could grouch at, but not complete strangers.

The other member of their two-man party was a girl, presumably the man's wife or girlfriend. Nodding to both of them, I said, "Sit down. Stay a while."

The man misunderstood me. "Excuse me?"

Confused, I raised both hands. "It was a joke."

He looked at his wife/girlfriend/otherwise female relationship partner, and I understood the situation. He thought I was trying to talk her up. Unwilling to deal with this guy, who clearly had anger issues, and attempting to stay away from his wife/girlfriend, I moved to another table. Evidently this man didn't like that, and he tried to sit down in a huff. As he did so, he kicked the chair back and missed sitting in it on the way down. Oops.

I tried to hold back laughter. It didn't work. His female companion was trying her hardest as well, but once I started laughing, she couldn't help it.

The man stormed out and left. After a few seconds, I realized that he'd left his girl. They must not have been married after all.

Sonic only now noticed the pandemonium, and he, along with Rotor, moved towards the girl. At this point it was just the four of us, the musicians, and the owner of the place left inside.

"Did your guy just-?" Sonic started, and the girl nodded. She didn't seem sad about it. In fact, she seemed relieved. Sonic attempted a cheesy grin. "Well, we've got room in the back seat of our car."

"That sounds incredibly shady." Ah, so she talks. And with a slight Southern accent.

"I know. Care for a dance?"

So, for Sonic, the campfire night was nigh-complete. As for me, well, the way the guy had treated me left a sour taste in my mouth, not to mention the way this trip had come (and gone), so I felt that sulking was the best option at the moment. So I did just that.

Believe it or not, Sonic stopped Rotor's car in the middle of the highway (and the middle of the night) and told us he could have a fire set up within the next three minutes. He wasn't lying. While he muttered to himself and pulled out an entire tinderbox's worth of burnables, I climbed out of the car and continued what I prided myself on being a very good sulk.

The girl Sonic had danced with was called Bunnie, though whether or not that was a pseudonym or not was unclear. Sonic treated her affectionately just the same, which reminded me briefly of Amy Rose.

"Aren't you, Tails?" Oh, Sonic was interrupting my sulk once again. I asked for clarification in an annoyed, "What?"

"Are you having fun?" the girl, Bunnie, clarified.

I grunted. "I'm not, actually." And before Sonic or anyone could ask why, I said, "Sonic, you dragged me out here for no reason, or should I say, because you wanted to have a good time? And 'reliving' last time isn't an excuse." I was, to put it bluntly, angry.

Bunnie looked confused. Rotor looked a little lost. Sonic looked hurt. I said, "Don't look for me."

Sonic nodded. I prided myself on the venom I'd put into that one.

"Good. Don't do anything stupid," I said as a parting formality. To make up for it with myself, I kicked a blanket on my way out.

A few days later, I wandered back in through my mother's door. She asked, "What did you do, walk back?"