"She was drunk," the detective says, pacing back and forth around the wreckage of the broken shelf and scattered VHS tapes. "Completely unrelated. Witnesses say that it saved the other robber from getting plugged. Crazy world, we live in."

Crazy world, indeed, I think to myself, hand resting on the butt of my gun for no particular reason.
Every time I close my eyes, I see his face. His dead face.

Charmy.

"The money gone?" I ask, leaning over to admire the stain he left behind on the carpet.

"Sure is," he replies. "The other robber made off with it after the car crashed through the front of the building. Apparently, it was a female bee, 'bout the same height as the corpse.:

Saffron, I'm sure. Those two were inseparable. "She's long gone, by now," I say out loud. If she's smart, anyway. That's what he would have wanted.

They were good kids. God knows what drew them to this.

"You think?" he asks.

"Oh, sure. She's made it outside the city limits by now. Nothin' but trouble for her here, anymore."

"You think Nack will talk?"

Scoff. "If he wakes up, you mean?"

"Yeah..."

"He'll probably just tell you he was defending himself from armed robbery, even though the gun wasn't loaded. There's no way to prove he didn't know that. He'll walk. You'll put him in a holding cell for awhile to scare him. He'll be more afraid of Big than he is of jail, though. He'll walk, and may god have mercy on him when he does. You'll probably be cleaning his carcass off the side of the road before you know it."

"So, we got nothin'?"

"Nothin' but a mess," I say, sighing.

It's my last day on the force. Of course something like this would happen last night. Of course I would have to clean this mess up.
The paperwork alone I'm gonna have to fill out later is migraine-inducing enough. Top that off with the fact that it doesn't bring us any closer to the criminal we've been looking for all these years and it's just another shitstorm on a cloudy day.

All I can see, all I can think about is the futility in all of this.

Documenting and reporting tragedy after tragedy and filing it away in a cabinet somewhere. Shipping off the bodies for burial. Three kids dead and two leads. One's in a coma, the other skipped town, and I don't blame either of them.

When I was a kid, there was black and there was white. Rather, maybe I just thought there was. It seemed that way. Now, it's all shades of grey. An amoral cesspool of personal interest. Maybe I was just naive, and it things were always that way.

I don't know. I just don't know anymore.

Maybe I never did. But it felt like I did at one point. It was a better feeling.


Twilight.
They cut me a break and let me off early. Said they'd sort the mess out. I offered to tell Amy's family about her death, but they said they would take care of it. I'll admit, I was relieved. Dirty work, that, but I figured it was the least I could do.

Graffiti on the alleyway walls. Bleeding red paint asks "WHERE'S SONIC?"
Good question, I find myself saying out loud.

Where is Sonic? The hero of Mobius.
If he was dead, we would have heard about it. He just disappeared. We haven't heard anything.

The government and police force chased him off the map with sticks and rocks like the Frankenstein monster for taking our matters into his own hands. How foolish of us to think we didn't need him anymore. Things are worse now than they've ever been.

Maybe our race has been cursed to forever alienate and destroy our own heroes.

Maybe we're too dumb to tell the difference between a blessing and a curse.
Maybe there is no difference to us.

I take a swig from the flask in my brown leather jacket pocket. The whiskey sends chills down my spine.
I changed out of my uniform before I left. They let me keep it, though, and they let me keep the badge and the gun.
Precious mementos, they said. Just don't abuse them.

I have no desire to play cops 'n crooks anymore. I figure they know that, telling me so is just playing it safe.

A robbery, a murder, two deaths caused by a drunken car crash. All somehow separate incidences and crimes taking place all in the same place at the same time.
The video store clerk, Amy Rose and Charmy Bee all dying within the same thirty seconds, all in the same thirty seconds, all for no real reason. Nack's in a coma. Saffron is probably running for her life, or maybe she's dead, too, and we just haven't found her yet. And none of the patrons did anything about it except for telling a crazy story to the cops, and probably their friends.

There is no justice on Mobius.
There is no god watching over us.

There is the pain of existence.
There is the terror of living.

There is masturbation and death. Making yourself feel good for short bursts before you stop existing. Whatever that entails.

I'm going to meet an old friend at a beach. A friend I haven't seen in years.

I'm surprised I got a hold of him at all.

The meeting seemed appropriate today. He tries to understand and contribute to the science of the world, while I try to understand and help the people. Their emotions. Trying to save them from themselves.
Physics versus the abstract. You need people that oppose you in such a manner to force you to take a step back and investigate the big picture instead of just the little details of life you're personally interested in.

It takes more than one kind of eye to catch everything.


He wanted to meet at the beach. I don't know why. I don't really like the beach, but a place is a place, and I wasn't about to argue. A place is a place.

Gazing out at the red tide washing the dead fish, starfish and jellyfish up onto the shore.
The smell of death in the air.
It almost seems so fitting. So significant.
It reminds me of the world I live in.

The tide just rakes in more dead bodies and all we can do is watch it, or look away.

"Bark," a familiar voice from behind me addresses.

"Miles Prower," I say, turning. He's wearing a labcoat and the signature pair of glasses he's been wearing since he was seventeen. Sly smile on his face. "How ya doin'?"

"I am doing well," he says, smiling, walking past me. Stopping just short of the tide's reach. Almost as if he completely ignores the dead things, he stares off into the seemingly endless horizon. Water like glass stretching out as far as the eye can see, reflecting what little light that emanates from the dark, cloudy sky above. "How about yourself? You said you were quitting the police force in your message. Why are you doing that?"

"I'm okay, I guess," I say, sighing. Answering one question at a time. "I'm alive, you know? I'm still breathing. That has to count for something, right?"

"What's wrong?" he asks, not looking at me. But he doesn't need to.

"I'm tired of it all, Tails. Mostly, I'm just tired."

"You think sleeping will give you the rest you need?"
He's being neutral. Part of why I need him.

"The shitstorm won't stop," I say. "I know that. I'm just done trying to stop it."

"Is that the answer you were looking for?"

"No," I say, closing my eyes. "It isn't."

"So, you're giving up for real, then?"

"I guess I am," I tell him, honestly. "I don't know how to hack it anymore. I can't pretend to be this white knight in this ocean of grey. I can't condemn chaos in a chaotic world. Anarchy isn't even chaos, it's taking care of yourself. Kids these days think it means chaos, which is why he have to enforce government, protection. Law. Kids these days don't understand that. All they see is chaos. All they know is chaos. So, they make chaos where there is none. A grim self-fulfilling prophecy."

"I am sorry for your loss," Tails says, flatly. He means it. "This is a very difficult time and place for your existence."

I understand what he's telling me. I open my eyes and look out to the horizon. I don't say anything.

"Do you know why I chose this as a meeting place?"

"As a matter of fact, I don't," I say.

"The ocean is one of two things that still terrifies me. Rather, bodies of water in general. Not pools. Lakes. Rivers. Oceans. Like this one. Not so much for what might be living in there as much as what people do to them. Not so much the mystery as much as the knowledge of the fact that it isn't where I'm supposed to be. I can't even breathe underwater. Relying every aspect of my survival on technology alone, knowing how easily something can go wrong with it, is a terrifying idea to me." He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, closer to his eyes, and he turns to look at me. "Do you know what else terrifies me, Bark?"

"Space," I say, eyes drifting up to the sky, spotted with dark clouds and stars that look like very faint specks in the distance to my naked eye. "You're afraid of outer space.

"Very good," he says. I can hear his smile. This is where his two fears meet, and he can stare at them from just on the outskirts of it, in the safety of his own atmosphere. "Do you remember the space race we had all those years ago?"

"I do."

"Imagine all those poor fuckers, shout out into space before we had the means to bring them back. Watching everyone around you die, or kill each other to stay alive longer. Maybe you're the one who killed his way to being the last man standing. Constantly relaying your thoughts and actions to headquarters, simply because you have nobody else to tell. Telling them all the horrible things you've seen, or been through. They can't even pretend to care after a certain point. Imagine just being the last person alive on your team. Drifting through space. Looking out that window. All you see is darkness, maybe a few specks of light in the distance here or there. Or maybe you see Mobius in the distance, drifting further and further away. Getting smaller and smaller. Knowing how far away from it you've gone. Knowing you'll never get to go back. Wondering if you're even dying, suffering for anything. If it was even worth anything, if your sacrifice would change or learn anything for the world. If it was even worth it. Hearing nothing but static from the radio. The sound driving you mad."

"I think at that point," I say, looking out to where the ocean meets the sky, out to where the moonlight reflects off of the ocean. It feels like it got dark so quickly, like I missed the sunset. "I would just open the door."