Tails knew who had said it; that voice was unmistakeable. So, while a part of him was glad, another part of him was shaking in terror…and uncertainty. This was the first time he had ever spoken to anyone in this way, and he wasn't sure if he still thought it was a good idea. Did he really want her to hear this confession, or would it have given her the wrong idea?

He was at home on the battlefield, after years of fighting and honing his methods, and it was where he felt comfortable. He could deal with the pain – he had done so before. Some things were more difficult.

He sat there, the bar his hand was clamped around warming slowly the longer he held it, trying to find something, anything that would take his mind of what he had to do next.

He steeled himself, and looked up.

Thank Nimbus you're alive. I don't know what I would do if you weren't.

"How much did you hear?"

You don't need to be so nervous.

"Enough. It's all I wanted to hear."

There's more to say, but do you really want me to?

"Why did you do it? You almost killed yourself."

Tails, have you forgotten what I told you? Don't you know what you mean to me?

"I needed to do something. She would have killed both of us otherwise."

He met Fiona's gaze, his blue eyes locked with the same blue in hers. Within them he found a fierce determination, not dissimilar to his own, but lacking…the malice. Fiona had the will to survive, not the will to kill. There was nothing else in those eyes in that moment. For an instant, there was nothing hiding that determination to keep living on. Then a veil came up over it, something else shadowing it. Fear.

"Fiona?" Tails raised one eyebrow at her. "What's wrong?" And since when did I become so good at guessing emotions?

"Tails…How do I know you're not just going to go back to the way you were before?"


The primary concern of the remaining Freedom Fighters was not only Tails' health, but what they would do with his absence. With both he and Fiona out of commission, the rest of the team members were well aware of the strain that would be upon them. Fiona's absence was not a great tactical loss; Telera was a competent sniper in her place, and it was a position she could fill easily enough. The key concern was with the void left by Tails.

He had many roles within the team; first and foremost he was one of the leading chaos mechanics on Mobius, and he had an alarming capability to manipulate chaos energy on levels beyond Sonic's ability, and you couldn't get a new chaos adept just like that. Few adepts existed as it was, and none in the capacity that Tails could manage. Then of course there was his phenomenal intelligence, and though Nicole was fairly sure she could fill in for that in some detail, she had admitted that she could only go so far. The limits of her mind did not expand as fast as the young kitsune. Her physical presence was also diminished when she left Knothole; there was only a limited distance that her Legion could operate act while under remote control, and to put herself into a body for the effort would be to put herself at great risk, and she would have to abandon Knothole each time she did so.

Sally was affected the worst. Tails was much like a little brother nowadays, and the damage he had taken for them all was both inspiring and worrying. On top of that she now had to plan around the lack of power he was providing…and she didn't have his tactical genius as support. Tails and Sally were the tacticians of the team, and when they worked together, their plans were invariably works of art.

But in the end, Tails was a strategist, warrior, and mechanic. He was one of the most competent fighters on the team, one of the only strategists, and he had pretty much designed and assembled almost all the gear they used when they fought. Losing him hit the team hard, tactically. They knew he would be back soon, so the loss was not as emotional as the loss of Retis and Lupin, though in the case of the latter many felt that they were better off without him. Nevertheless, all could feel his absence keenly.

So Sally called Rotor.

"I'm sorry, Sally, but I don't know enough about Chaos Theory to do such a thing. I know the process for creating synthetic emeralds, but without a real one the process is significantly slower, and progress beyond that is extremely slow without the fox himself. It will take a while to make even the slightest progress into the field you are suggesting."

"Are there any options open to us? With Tails down Sonic is the sole adept on the team. We need some form of chaos-based weaponry to work in his stead, or at least a way to amplify ring energy."

"Oh?" Rotor paused in his musings. "Ring energy is far easier to manipulate; let me see…" He tapped his pen against the desk as each new idea lined itself up in his head. "Yes, I should be able to put something together in a couple of days, if Nicole can lend a hand. I can't guarantee anything particularly flash, or refined, but I should be able to get something."

"Thank you."

"I have to stress that I can't promise anything particularly decent or reliable. You're asking me to delve into a field that really should take several months of research, through the combined efforts of myself, Tails and Nicole. I'm taking what we know and guessing, Sally."

"I know, I know it's a leap that we can't afford to make, but I don't have any other options at the moment. If there was another way, I'd take it." The squirrel-princess slumped into her seat, feeling both physically and mentally drained by the ordeals that had taken place not a fortnight ago. "It's just until Tails is back."

"With that in mind, I have to go. If you expect me to get anything done, I need to begin immediately."

"Very well. Tell me when you find anything."

"I will." The line went dead, and Sally slumped backwards. "Oh god Tails, do you realise the mess you've left us in?" It was uncharitable of her, she knew, to think of it as his fault, but she need someone to blame, to alleviate the burden on herself. Even with this ring-tech on its way, the team would still be woefully underpowered. No technology could adequately replace a real team member.

She didn't even think of Nicole as a computer anymore; that's how far things had come. Speaking of which…

"Nicole, did you get that?" She asked the room; the whole city of Knothole was blanketed by Nicole's mind, and she was everywhere but a select few rooms reserved for the privacy of a chosen few.

"Yes, I heard. I'm there already." A hard-light hologram of the lynx appeared as another did, simultaneously, within the lab in which Rotor worked. "This is a stretch, even for us."

"I've just had this conversation, Nicole."

"I know. I'm just saying it again. As for the matter of a missing party member, with your consent I can construct a robotic variant of Tails, for the time he's away."

The squirrel's eyes brightened. "You could do that? Would it be chaos powered?"

Nicole shook her head. "No, Tails is the only one who knows how to build safely-constructed chaos-powered technology, and the only examples of that we have are the defensive measures powered by the seventh emerald. We would have to look into the coding and technology surrounding them, then adapt it to this new model. I intend to make it powered by an artificial ring-matrix, and some of the weapon systems would be similar to my own legions."

"It's sound in principle, I take it, but how reliable would it be on the battlefield?"

"Well, I can put into it the basic command structure used in my own legions for independent function, and if you wanted, I could install a rudimentary AI so that it would be self-reliant on the battlefield. Sound good?"

"Do it." Anything to alleviate the pressure. "Permission granted. Just make sure it won't break down halfway through a firefight. I want something I can work with."

"I can do that. Oh, and one more thing. What should I call it?"

Sally frowned. "Well…why not the Tails Mannequin?"


"I want answers, now."

Within the swirling mass of chaos energy that encompassed the globe, it was fraught with personalities, snatches of emotion that too contributed to the global field of energy, conscious minds that appeared and fell apart in the complete anarchy. Within that mass of power, two beings retained their individuality, their uniqueness. One, the god of that realm, the other, his pawn.

"Tikal, you are to carry out my will in the physical plane. You are not to question my goals; you know the consequence of knowing the future. Once it is set, it cannot be changed."

"Then what gives you the right to see it yourself? Surely you know it, it's set in stone for all of us?" With no physical body and thus no real voice, Tikal's thoughts were her speech, and there was no voice, merely two minds colliding, hers and the vast intellect of the great god Chaos. His mind was even blanker than hers, unreadable, and as one of the few real gods, he was legend.

"I am Chaos. My very being lies in the changing nature of things, and so I can see possibilities, not the true future, and so I take steps to influence it, and direct it to a greater end."

"Then what possible purpose does aiding Robotnik-"

"Silence!" With no tone or pitch, the shout of the god felt like a ripple, a wave, smashing through the ether. "I have answered your question as recognition to your service, but it is not your place to ask why I do as I do. What is done is done, and you cannot change it. The timeline alters as we speak, so you will watch, and see it as it plays out. You will not force answers from me, nor will you ask questions above your stations. You, like the second guardian, are tools, not gods."

The silence that followed told the Echidna-girl that the conversation was over. The lack of Chaos' imposing presence served to corroborate that idea.
With that, she turned her gaze outward, using her clairvoyance to look towards Knuckles.

On their return to the shrine, the red guardian had been true to his word, sitting at the base of the steps and thinking long and hard about Tikal's offer. A little too long – she had left without an answer, and had been reabsorbed into the mass of chaos. Her answer still had yet to come. His face told her that he had not set the matter aside, but she could not tell which way his opinion was swinging.

Of course, he could not know she was watching, either. Her sight from within the emerald gave others no clue to her intrusion, and so while Knuckles sat in silent thought, he did not know that the girl who had a crush on him was watching him make his choice.

He was not like Sonic, who made decisions based on a whim and then regretted them later, nor was he like Tails, with the smarts to make the right decision with but a moment's thought. He had to do things methodically, directly, just as he fought.

Technically it should be a no-brainer. They were both Echidna, both guardians, they got at long reasonably well almost all the time, aside from the occasional, almost obligatory quarrel. It came down, primarily, to semantics and more personal reasons. Natural indecision ruled him at the moment, as he decided how much he might regret this if he were to agree to her wishes.

She's waiting for a decision, big guy. You can't keep her waiting forever, and it's a simple choice to make. Yes or no. You care for her, don't you? You're close friends, aren't you?

He did care for her, she was a close friend. He couldn't deny that. In fact, when he looked at the facts and weighed pros against cons, he couldn't find anything holding him back except his own insecurity. He had never been with anyone, and he had been told that life as a guardian was a lonely job. Now Tikal was effectively stepping on those words, telling him different.

Make up your mind. You know the rights and wrongs, what will go right and what won't. It's as simple as that. There isn't anything grey about it; get up, and tell her. Make your choice.

It couldn't hurt, could it?

Knuckles dragged himself to his feet, and turned towards the shrine, looking up the steps to the emerald, a barely perceptible smirk on his usually blunt features. He began to climb the steps, from bottom to top, each footstep painfully loud in the silence and isolation of the valley.

At the top he paused, closing his eyes and tilting his head forward sharply, and breathing in deeply, shaking almost invisibly.

Tikal followed him, both a silent observer and participant.

He almost choked on his own words as he placed his hand on the side of the emerald, halting the smooth rotation for a moment. It would not disturb the island, so long as it was not removed. Another long moment of silence passed, and he finally spoke.

"Tikal, I answer yes." It was not the most eloquent answer, in fact, as words go it was a pretty ugly sentence, but the content mattered more to the female Echidna, the fact that he had said yes. Him saying it in a manner so unwieldy didn't really matter at all.

But she couldn't show it. She couldn't show the rush of affection she had just felt, the cataclysm of emotion that came with the answer, trapped as she was within the emerald and its machinations. To show her feelings she would have to speak to Chaos about a temporary body again, and considering his chagrin from earlier, it was out of the question for the time being at least.

She could only hope that he knew what he had just done.

Chaos knew. The Chaos god saw everything that moved through his realm, and the spasm of emotion from Tikal's persona had drawn his attention, if only briefly. He knew what had just happened. He knew it was genuine too – the body between their souls in chaos had already been formed, the connection of two souls that were this close to each other in almost every way. The two Echidnas, though, did not know what they had truly set into motion. The god surveyed the timelines as they shifted around this event, his concern growing ever greater as new paths were trampled over the old ones for him.

They had no idea what they had done, at all. Even events that seemed unconnected in every way could be linked by the simple strand of fate, and one event changed innumerable others, and in turn they changed yet more. It was a ripple effect, changing history with every choice made by everything on the planet.

He could only see darkness.


After finishing his conversation with Sally, Rotor had done just as he had agreed, and thrown himself into this new project with his full heart. Now, several hours into it, he was stoically resisting the urge to fall asleep.

He found himself squinting into a test tube of blue-tinted liquid, connected to a small cylinder holding a single ring within, spinning slowly on a perfectly-symmetrical axis. The liquid was one of the chemicals used in the judgement plasma cases, and he wanted to see if it would react at all prior to fusion, to see how far he had to go with this research.

Nicole worked with him, not hampered by sleep, but reigned in marginally by her perceptions being split between this and the work on the Tails Mannequin, a piece of technology for which she was having to delve into her own databanks.

"I think we can move on, Rotor." The lynx said after an hour of fruitless work, "If the reaction hasn't occurred on any of the samples in this period of time, It's either not going to happen or take so long to activate that it will be essentially useless."

"What do you have in mind, then?" Rotor tried to refrain from snapping, force of will holding him from becoming irritable.

"We already have access to fusion rings, as we've used in bombs before, and amplification rings that we use to boost standard weapon function.

Would it be possible to create a casing for a fusion ring, then set up a series of amplification ring to boost the power output, so that it isn't expended in one go? The hardest part will be constructing a suitable casing…"

"Wait, wait a moment." The walrus interrupted the AI, yanking open a draw and ruffling through the papers inside, grumbling mutedly about his own lack of organisation. "Here we go!" He exclaimed, tugging a sheaf of papers free from the wad of writing. "This was the work I did when we were constructing the inner plating for the Mobotropolis shielding. As you- as you can see, it works. It should have the integrity to contain the fusion ring, and we can use redirectors to avoid wasting too much power. You might want to consider it for use on the Mannequin as well."

"It will need some adaptation."

"Not for the weaponry, it won't. It's designed to negate force from within, so we'll only need minor alterations. I'm not so sure about the robot. There's a good chance you'd need to reconstruct it on a molecular level to realign the particles enough to change the direction of resilience."

"If that's the case then it will be a waste of time. I'll take a look, but it doesn't sound promising. I didn't work on the shields with you either, so I've only got your notes to work from as a blueprint. Only one frame of reference."

The two lapsed into silence as Rotor packed away the first set of apparatus and began to take out pieces of another, then got up to visit the store cupboard, to see if he had any fragments of the plating left to use as a test. The AI lynx used the moment to check up more closely on her work on the Tails Mannequin.

At the current time there wasn't even a physical component; the entire Tails Mannequin existed in cyberspace as a concept, a virtual blueprint that she was still working on. In her mind the image rotated on every angle, copies of it being printed in spare megabytes, sections being selected and enlarged and the rest deleted, leaving her staring at dozens of different sections of physical data, let alone the streams of coding data that was taking up a good percentage of her brainpower. She needed to ask Tails for a better processor.

Her greatest concern lay in the weapon systems. She needed to find a compact solution to providing firepower equal to a Sunder robot in a Mobian-sized body. In this, her aid in finding a ring-weapon was partly self-driven.

She needed a weapon to mimic Tails' chaos powers, and ring-power was the closest there was to it. The fusion-ring-cannon, or FRC, was one of her forays into this field of technology – it was a new thing for everyone. They had used ring-powered technology before, but the item itself was always exempt from rings itself. This new field actually used rings in the application of the technology, instead of simply being one of many power sources.

"We have a few fragments leftover." Rotor informed her, dropping the fist-sized pieces of red-tinged black metal onto the desk. "Do you know how to program a fusion ring?"

"I- I think so, yes." She stuttered as her perceptions realigned. "I can't do it on the fly like Tails can, but if you give me a minute I can make one for us to test. Are we testing the amplifier, or just the shielding?"

"The shielding for now, Nicole." Rotor answered disapprovingly. "We don't know how many amplifier rings we'll need, and thus we don't know how powerful it will be. We'll test that outside somewhere, during today. Now I want to be sure that when we are testing the amplifiers that the thing won't explode in my hands."

"You're going to test it yourself?"

"Yes- but no- but…it's a metaphor, or something silly like that. I'm tired Nicole, do you think you could avoid pointing out my spoken errors?" This time, he did snap, his temper fraying for the moment it took to say it. "Nicole, I'm very, very tired. I suffer from fatigue, being me. Try to realise that."

"Yes…yes…sorry. Can we…?" She gestured to the battered pieces of metal on the desk. "How are we going to stick them together?"

"We won't be using these pieces to test the weapon – obviously welding them doesn't work; the shell has to be made complete, first time. Once it cools and sets then it can't be changed. It's like a one-way Megatal. When we make the core chambers we'll have to make them work correctly each time. I trust you can provide the accuracy when we do so?"

"I can do that."

"Good. And don't let the Mannequin distract you while we're forming the core chambers. Any defective ones can't be re-used, so we have to throw them out. I'm sure you know why I'm saying this."

"Any failure is a complete failure. I get it, Rotor. I don't need the lecture from you as well."

"Good, then let's get moving." He gathered up the fragments again, kicking open the door with his foot and marching in a slightly-wonky line down the corridor, past the more conventional offices and towards the large chamber, reinforced and reserved for testing of more volatile devices, such as this one. Frankly the walrus was unsure as to whether the chamber was really able to withstand a fusion ring, as it was something that hadn't been tested in a test chamber, so he didn't really know.

Once again, Tails was the only one who would really know the answer to the question. He seemed to hold all the answers. Everything that was discovered was compared to his works, and to his science, because it was always an improvement on it or a variation of it. Pretty much everything was base off him these days.