Lethal Mutation
Hello, again to all you fanfic readers! If you have read to this point, then you have probably seen that this is going to be a really interesting story. If you aren't convinced, just read this chapter. It has real Action! (spontaneous cheering from nowhere) Oh, and try to keep in mind that a horizontal line break in my chapters means that I have changed location, time, or perspective. But don't worry, I will always make sure that the change is understood in the next few paragraphs so as not to confuse my readers. I also need to say super-thanks to Zachary W and Nicend, my first ever official reviewers! (short video of fireworks and people celebrating in the streets) Also, mega-super-thanks to my anonymous reviewer and your awesome criticism! (I agree completely that Sonic spends way too much time with Chris and not Tails in the cartoons!) Please, keep sending in your wonderful reviews! Now enough of my jabbering, on with the story!!
Chapter 3: Under the Weather
Private Ski Lodge in the Rockies, Sunday Afternoon
The trip to the ski lodge had been uneventful. All weekend long, Chris and Amy were taking skiing lessons at the resort and showed a lot of improvement. Cream and Cheese were always out playing in the snow while Vanilla supervised them and sometimes played along. Mr. Tanaka was constantly running errands and keeping everyone's things in order as the others spontaneously came and went, but even he got a little time on the slopes. It turns out that Mr. Tanaka is a very accomplished skier himself and had once performed competitively when he was younger, or so he claims. Ella had stayed behind, of course, to mind the house and get in some extra cleaning while everyone was away. Sonic, being the daredevil he always was, spent every day carving up the slopes on his snowboard. And he is really hard to keep up with, too! Tails was taught how to snowboard from Sonic a long time ago and had decided to join Sonic for this last run before they all headed back to Chris's house. Sonic seemed to insist on taking the most difficult and treacherous route down the mountain, and Tails, always the more cautious one, was constantly forced to find a safer, yet faster route to catch up again. It's sad that today is our last day to have fun here, thought Tails. I really have enjoyed this weekend with no annoying people or Eggman's robots attacking.
"Hey, Tails!" Sonic shouted to him as he pulled alongside the fox, accidentally spraying him with a pile of ice crystals. "Whoops, sorry bud!" Sonic apologized. "Good thing you were wearing your cool goggles!" Sonic was referring to Tails' all purpose goggles that he sometimes used when working in the lab or flying the now remodeled Tornado. "Watch this!" Sonic quickly changed the subject and sped toward a natural ramp ahead of them, kicking up more snow in Tails' eyes by accident. He vaulted off of the lip of the small cliff and immediately kicked free of his snowboard. Sonic did a double somersault, struck his classic "thumbs up" pose for a second, and finally landed on his discarded snowboard with only one hand and a huge smile across his face.
What a showoff, Tails thought. He can do almost anything, and it always turns out right. Well, it may not be impressive, but I should at least try some stunts before I have to leave, too. Determined to follow Sonic's every move, Tails sped straight for the same small cliff that Sonic had leapt from. However, as he cleared the ramp and began to do a simple 180, Tails was blinded by a sudden flash of yellow from his coat pocket and, in his distraction, lost his grip on the board below him. Uh, Oh! Tails' mind raced to keep up with the situation as he fell towards the ground much too quickly. I need to get my tails spinning and fast! thought the doomed fox. Unfortunately, the heavy coat that he was wearing hampered his ability to spin his tails fast enough to prevent hitting the ground. He came down fairly hard, but landed in a deep snow bank that absorbed the impact.
"Are you alright, little bro?" Sonic yelled as he ran up to the fox-shaped hole in the once pristine snow.
"I'm fine, Sonic," came the stunned Tails' reply as he sat up from his cold landing site with a flock of Flickies orbiting his head. He wasn't injured and nothing was broken, but he had definitely bruised his pride in beefing a completely routine stunt.
"Maybe you should leave all the stunts to me," said the grinning hedgehog as he offered a hand to help his buddy up.
Tails wanted to think of a good comeback to that, but drew up a blank and instead took his buddy's hand. "Maybe," was his only reply. Then, Tails remembered something odd about the jump he had just bombed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellow chaos emerald that he normally used to power the X-Tornado. "Hey look, Sonic! The emerald is glowing, and so is the ground right here!" Tails said after taking a step back in shock.
"What?" came Sonic's startled response. "Did you hit your head that hard, buddy?"
"No really, Sonic, look!" Tails pointed a finger at his flashing yellow emerald to the crater he had created in the snow. Sure enough, the frozen ground below the snow was glowing in a bright, white light which was barely noticeable because of the snow still covering it. Tails used his hands to dig through the permafrost until he at last unearthed a chaos emerald. "Wow!" he exclaimed. Tails quickly returned his yellow emerald to his pocket to prevent the other crystal clear emerald from creating an electromagnetic disturbance that would prove very painful and might draw unwanted attention.
"Nice find, bro!" Sonic joined in as Tails held the new emerald in his hands. Of all the people that I know, that little kit must be the luckiest, thought Sonic. Mr. Tanaka has even told us many stories of a mythical creature in his home country's folklore called a kitsune that looks a lot like Tails and is supposed to be the ultimate good luck charm, besides Lucky. Sonic laughed at the memory of the diminutive creation. Lucky was a robot that Eggman had created to find chaos emeralds a long time ago. It was the clumsiest klutz in the universe and not particularly loyal to anyone, but it survived, none the less, on sheer dumb luck. "This is almost the last emerald we needed to find to have all seven, Tails! We have only one more to find now," exclaimed the hopeful hedgehog.
"Indeed, now hand it over!" carried a very unwelcome voice hovering directly behind them.
"Eggman!" both Sonic and Tails turned and replied in unison. Floating in front of them was a teacup shaped anti-gravity pod surrounded by buttons, knobs, levers, and display screens. Sitting in the center of this contraption was a bald, slightly older man with a huge, bushy moustache dressed in a red jumpsuit with gold pouches and a pair of magnifying goggles fastened around his forehead.
"Yes, that's right you two half-wits," Eggman said through mocking laughter. "It is I, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, and I have come for that chaos emerald!" He pointed a long, gloved finger at the object that Tails now held close to his chest.
"Forget it!" responded Tails as he clutched tightly to the emerald in his hand. "You can't have it Dr. Eggman!"
"I wasn't asking for permission you two-tailed freak!" Eggman hotly replied. "I guess someone needs to learn to respect their elders!" He jabbed at a button on his control panel in front of him and immediately a tank with a large satellite dish instead of a turret appeared from the woods behind him. "Meet my newest creation, the Freeze-a-tron 5,000!"
"What does this hunk of junk do, Egghead? Mess with our satellite reception?" Sonic goaded the now irate Eggman.
"Oh, it does much more than that, Sonic the hedgehog! First I add an emerald to the center of the main dish…" As he said this, a robotic arm shot out from below his floating chair and yanked the chaos emerald out of Tails' unsuspecting hands and set it into a hole at the center of the giant satellite dish on the tank-bot. "And then the real fun begins! Whooooo ho ho ho ho ho!" Eggman's put a hand to his mouth as his tilted his nose to the sky in his annoying trademark laugh. "Now, Freeze-a-tron 5,000, ATTACK!" Eggman shouted out of pure anticipation. The dish on top of the robot began to glow a pale blue and aimed directly for Sonic and Tails.
"Get down!" yelled Sonic towards his little buddy before he tackled the immobilized fox to the ground. A coherent blue beam of light burst from the robot's dish straight over their heads and nailed the rock wall behind them. As they both turned to look, Sonic noticed that the wall behind them was now covered in about three feet of solid, sparkling ice. "Talk about your cold reception!" Sonic just couldn't resist the lame, spur-of-the-moment joke. Then, he revved into a spin dash and sped off towards the frigid opponent.
"Blast him!" commanded Eggman as he saw Sonic closing in on his newest creation. At least 20 missiles streamed out of the back of the robotic tank and started chasing after Sonic. Sonic ran all over the mountain's face, fooling the missiles into hitting rocks, trees, and even each other. A couple of the missiles detonated too close to Sonic and threw him into the air. He landed next to Tails behind the cover of a snowdrift.
"Tails, you gotta go for help!" shouted Sonic to his frightened buddy.
"Right, I'll go back to the lodge and get the X-Tornado fired up!" replied the worried fox before he grabbed his snowboard and sped downhill as fast as he could.
"Until he gets back, I'd better find a way to put this 'bot on ice!" Sonic said to himself as he watched Tails disappear around a wooded area of the mountain. Instinctively, he launched himself away from the snowdrift he had been hiding behind just as it became encased in solid ice. Can't stay still for long or I'll be a hedgehog-cicle. At least it can't get a lock on me while I'm running around. Just then, a near miss from a freeze ray blast directly in front of him changed his mind on how accurate the arctic tank really was. Maybe I should try another frontal assault, Sonic thought on his feet. He turned and headed straight for the robot at full speed.
"Ah ah ah, Sonic! I wouldn't do that if I were you!" Eggman shouted out while grinning widely. "Freeze-a-tron 5,000, execute maneuver Alpha-Two-Beta!" In response to Eggman's codenamed instructions, the satellite dish atop the tank-bot blasted a wide semicircle of ice on the ground about 10 feet in front of Sonic.
Uh, oh! Sonic realized too late that he couldn't stop in time to avoid slipping on the icy speed bump. As he attempted to screech to a stop, he lost his balance on the ice and unceremoniously fell face first into a snow bank. "OK, Egghead, I'm through playing around!" the now enraged hedgehog fired back at the laughing Doctor.
"Whoo ho ho ho ho! I think that you need to chill, Sonic!" Eggman replied to Sonic's angry response.
Another freeze-ray blast caught Sonic off guard and froze his feet to the mountainside. Unable to move, Sonic realized that he was helpless. So this is how it ends, huh? Egghead actually wins after all these years? Who would have thought?!
"Now to finish you off, you pesky hedgehog!" Eggman said with another evil, annoying laugh as the tank-bot shot five more missiles at the stranded Sonic. However, just before the missiles converged on their target, they spontaneously detonated prematurely. "What the…?" remarked the confused Eggman, having expected roasted hedgehog and having, once again, been disappointed. He looked into the sky to see the X-Tornado being piloted by Tails alone as it swooped around for another pass, this time targeting his precious Freeze-a-tron 5,000. "Grrrrr! Well, don't just sit there! Bring that plane down!!" Eggman screamed at his latest invention.
It's charging its freeze ray again to blast me out of the sky, observed Tails as he barreled straight towards the arctic tank. I'm just glad that I got here just in time to save Sonic. A blue beam of light lanced out at the X-Tornado and traced all the way across the forward cockpit and down the left side of the fuselage as Tails tried to pull away from the blast. Tails couldn't see clearly through the now iced-over canopy and the wings on the left side no longer responded to his controls. "Mayday, Mayday! I'm going down on the mountain!" Tails shouted in fear into his headset as he wrestled with the controls. Sonic's still in trouble, he remembered. If I crash now, then he is a goner! He managed to fire off a single ring towards Sonic's last location as the X-Tornado crashed into the cliff face.
Sonic watched in horror as the freeze ray blast turned the X-Tornado into an ice cube that plummeted toward the mountainside. "No! TAILS!!" he screamed as the collision of the plane on the cliff face caused a small avalanche that almost completely buried the aircraft. Then he saw a small golden ring flying straight towards him from the direction of the downed airplane. He grabbed the power ring that Tails had sent him right before his crash and used some of its power to melt the ice around his frozen feet. "I'm gonna get you for that, Eggman!" Sonic said so vehemently that Eggman visibly cringed. Using the remaining power of the ring that he just caught to charge up a super spin dash, Sonic ripped straight through the base of the tank-bot directly between the treads and came out the other side before the robot could react.
"Oh no! Not my beautiful Freeze-a-tron 5,000!" Eggman lamented as the robo-tank glowed brightly and exploded, sending him into the stratosphere. Sonic caught the emerald as it fell from being launched in the explosion and turned to see everyone else driving up in snowmobiles.
"Great job, Sonic!" said Chris seated behind Mr. Tanaka on the lead vehicle.
"But where is Tails?" asked Cream who rode behind her mother Vanilla, who obviously didn't have much skill in driving a snowmobile because Chuck was squeezed into the front seat to drive the thing.
"Chao?" Cheese chimed in with a low, solemn tone as it hugged Cream's shirt.
"He crashed up higher on the mountain. C'mon, guys!" Sonic instantly replied before dashing up the mountain himself. He reached the crash site first and immediately began excavating the buried forward cockpit. By the time the others joined him, they could all see a foot-thick, solid sheet of ice preventing them from opening the cockpit.
"How do we get through that to get Tails out?" Chris again spoke first.
"Luckily, I came prepared for such an emergency," calmly replied Mr. Tanaka. He took out a large ice pick and small hammer and began to chip the ice away slowly.
"This is taking too long!" argued Sonic after a couple minutes of seemingly no progress.
"Let me try, Mr. Tanaka!" said Amy. He acquiesced and watched her as she jammed the ice pick as far as she could into the layer of ice. Then she took out her trusty giant Piko Piko Hammer and smashed the ice pick in as hard as she could. At first, nothing happened except that Amy dropped her hammer at the pain of hitting a solid object so hard, but then cracks started spreading outwards from the ice pick until the entire wall of ice shattered, leaving no more obstacles between them and Tails in the cockpit.
"Nice work, Ames!" Sonic said while flashing a "thumbs up" towards her.
"Oh, it was nothing Sonic," responded the flustered Amy who now blushed as she clasped her hands behind her back.
Chuck climbed into the now opened cockpit and gingerly lifted Tails out of his seat. He actually had to sit him back down again at first because he forgot to unbuckle the unconscious fox's safety harness before attempting to lift him. He carried him to a stretcher-bed that was tied to the back seat of one of the snowmobiles. He let out a sigh of relief that reassured everyone, who were now watching to see if Tails was alright. "He is fine. No broken bones, a few cuts and bruises, but otherwise fine."
"Then why isn't he moving?" inquired the still terrified Cream as she clutched at her mother's long skirt.
"He was probably knocked out in the crash. He has a bruise on his forehead from the dashboard," answered Chuck, as calmly as he could sound. "The only real danger Tails is in right now is that being buried in snow and ice for several minutes could cause serious hypothermia. We need to get him back to the lodge immediately and warm him up."
"Leave it to me!" volunteered Sonic, who grabbed his little brother's shivering body and raced down the mountain as fast as he could. Just hold on a little longer bro, hold on!
Something feels wrong, was his first thought. No, wait. That's not it. No, something is just different. It's… Oww! Wait, that's it! I can feel pain! Slowly Tails began to reassume control over the nerves in his body. He almost wished that he hadn't. His whole body ached, his head felt like a smashed pumpkin, and he was still rather cold although he felt like he was wrapped in a blanket and next to something hot. He wanted to open his eyes and see where he was, but they felt so heavy that he let out a weak moan instead. Then he heard footsteps approaching from someone close by. I'd better look around before they get to me. He forced his eyes open slowly to see a room in the Thorndike's private ski lodge. He sat next to a roaring fire in the single fireplace, and he was wrapped up like a mummy in multiple blankets. Then he saw the familiar face of Amy staring down at him.
"So you finally woke up, didn't 'cha?" Amy redundantly remarked to the now conscious Tails.
"Amy?" Tails spoke confusedly, "What happened?"
"You and Sonic were attacked by Eggman on the mountain, remember? You saved Sonic, but ended up being shot down and crashing into the cliff face," Amy reminded the befuddled fox.
"Oh, that's right! Wait! Did you say Sonic made it out OK? And what about the chaos emerald I found? And what happened to the X-Tornado?!" Tails sputtered out as he sat bolt upright, now fully recalling the day's events.
"They're all fine and perfectly safe, Tails." It was Chuck's voice from across the room. "Sonic managed to defeat Eggman thanks to your help, and he caught the chaos emerald from the robot as it exploded. As for the X-Tornado, well, it is still being uncovered, defrosted, and hauled down the mountain from the crash site, but it will probably be back at the mansion by the time we get there tonight."
"Chuck!" Tails turned to see his friend in the doorway.
"You gave us quite a scare today, Tails. It almost looked like you were a goner for a while there," Chuck responded somberly.
"Sorry, Chuck. I know that I promised never to put myself in danger like that again, but… I… well," muttered Tails remembering his promise to Chuck the night before in the Thorndike's secret lab.
"It's OK, Tails. You had to help Sonic, and you ended up saving his life. Even if you were a little bit reckless, everything turned out OK." The last thing Chuck had wanted to do with his previous statement was to make Tails feel guilty.
Tails just smiled at the reassuring words and felt glad that Sonic made it out unscathed. Amy, who didn't know about Tails' promise to Chuck a few days before, looked quizzically at the two males before deciding not to ask any questions. Tails was glad. He didn't really feel like talking anymore. Another surge of pain and fatigue had made staying awake an epic struggle, and he quickly returned to lying down by the fireplace. As he drifted to sleep, he instinctively curled his twin tails around his body for extra warmth. He somehow didn't care if anyone saw him curled up like a baby kit today. Amy and Chuck had left the room to tell the others, who were busy packing, that Tails was fine and sound asleep, so neither of them noticed the stifled sneezes that were let out by the fox, nor would they have thought anything of it if they had heard them. However, these were the sounds that would soon decide the fate of Earth and all its inhabitants in the very near future.
