4. Electric Sheep

Half a planet away from Central City and its pleasant suburbs, an alarm went off in a busy market. "Fire! Fire!" Cries broke from numerous throats as people scattered in all directions from a shop that was suddenly erupting with smoke. By the time the fire trucks turned up, all that was to be found in the open-fronted store was an empty cannister that had apparently served as a sort of smoke bomb - and the now-smashed cases that had held jewelry. Only one scouting spybot had detected the three figures shooting up and away from the 'burning' shop, crouched low on hoverboards. Eggman played through the sequence several times, then zoomed in and ran it in slow motion. The leader of the trio had a feathered crest that blazed green beneath the desert sun, and maneuvered his board with a casual insolence that reminded the human gratingly of Sonic. A pair of sacks were slung across his board like saddlebags, one foot on them to keep them from sliding. The second figure was clearly female, also a dokan by size, but her species was indistinct. She was turned half-away from the camera, and had her attention fixed on something cradled in one hand. The third was a massive, gray albatross, who seemed less sure of his hoverboard than the others, although the several large bags slung about his person probably contributed to that. Doctor Eggman steepled his fingers, tapping them together idly as he ran through the clip at full speed again. "Excellent. Yes, this is just the sort of challenge that Sonic should have nothing to do with, and therefore it's just the sort of challenge that he won't be able to pass up." White teeth flashed beneath the bushy moustache as he rubbed his hands together. "And we can improve Robotnik Inc.'s bottom line at the same time. Ergo!"

"Yes, Doctor?" SA-55, the dome-headed robot, popped up from the desk.

"Send a message to Gerald Smithson at our main site, instructing him to increase production of our hoverboard lines. Particularly the high-end performance models. Next, contact the head of the Airborne Racing League and announce a set of qualifying trials, oh, seven should do it, details to follow. The winners of each race will qualify for the World Hoverboard Cup Race."

"But, Doctor, there is no World Hoverboard Cup Race, ergo–"

"Just send the messages." He pulled his own keyboard into his lap and began to type rapidly. "Just send the messages," he repeated, "because there's a World Cup now."

Sonic slept like a log, and woke up with no memory of any dreams he might have had. He pulled on a clean pair of socks and his shoes, and set out to meet Tails at his lab. The cub wasn't there yet, so Sonic turned towards his distinctive house, which was shaped like a fox's head. The hedgehog waved at the sensor of the electronic lock and it let him in. As he closed the door, he heard Tails whimper from the back of the house. Frowning, Sonic started up the hall toward the kit's bedroom.

He shoved the door open as he heard Tails yelp, then make a despairing sort of wail. The blue hedgehog's ears folded down involuntarily as he stepped into the fox's bedroom. Tails was his little brother and his best friend, but his bedroom still gave Sonic the willies; it just felt so claustrophobic to the free-spirited dokan. Skipping the light switch, Sonic called out, "Tails!" as he launched himself across the bedroom to where the window should be. Fumbling with the curtains, he finally managed to open them enough to let a ray of light enter the small room. With that assistance, he found the cord that opened the heavy drapes and pulled them wide.

Tails yipped as the light fell across his face and curled into an even tighter ball, although Sonic wasn't sure how that was possible. The cub was so knotted up he looked half his usual size. "Tails? Hey, Tails!" Sonic located a shoulder under the forest-green blanket and shook it. "Tails, wake up!"

The cub recoiled so unexpectedly that Sonic lost his grip and Tails fell off the other side of the bed. There was a long pause, silent except for a few gasps from the tangle of sheets on the floor. "Tails?" said Sonic again.

"S-Sonic?" There was a rustle and Tails' head appeared over the edge of the bed. His ears drooped and his bangs were all over the place. The fox cub gulped and whispered, "You're not dead?"

"Dead!?" Sonic sat down rather abruptly on his side of the bed. "Of course I'm not dead! That must have been some nightmare you were having."

Tails gulped again and nodded. Hesitantly, he reached a hand across the bed and poked Sonic's arm. Then he hauled himself up and hugged the hedgehog, butting his head against Sonic's chest. "You really are here."

"Of course I am." Sonic hugged the fox cub back, feeling him shake. "That must have been some dream. But you know I'll always be here if you need me, right?" He frowned as the cub neither answered nor looked up. And in spite of the bright light coming through the window, the dark browns and greens of the room were making him feel trapped in a cave again. Tails found the effect soothing, like a den, but Sonic could never get used to it. "Come on," he said, standing up and dragging the fox to his feet as well, "let's get something to eat."

Tails padded silently after Sonic without even bothering to put on his shoes, and sat solemnly in the kitchen while the hedgehog whipped up scrambled eggs and heated some bacon. It wasn't until the meal was nearly gone that the orange fox heaved a deep sigh and perked up some. "Sorry, Sonic. It really was an awful dream."

"So, you gonna tell me about it?"

Tails poked at the bits of egg remaining on his plate. "Well, it started with me running through the ARK in the Tornado II mech, to try to stop Eggman, and I messed that up, you remember, by giving away that the Emerald was a fake, and so Eggman blew up half the planet because he used the real one instead. And then the Black Arms turned up, and I crashed the Tornado III so that Eggman got one of the Chaos Emeralds, and everything I tried doing to fight or hide from the Black Arms failed, and then these giant lightning bugs and electric fish started turning up, at first I thought they were with the aliens but no one but me seemed to be able to see them, and every time I tried to do something I messed up and these things would zap me - not just sparks, but calling lightning down out of the sky, even through ceilings, and –oh, it was horrible!"

"It sounds like it," agreed Sonic. He knew that the one thing that terrified Tails was lighting, so when he was in the area he always made a point of checking on him during thunderstorms. He'd never quite understood it - the cub would work all day with electrical devices in various unfinished states that were well able to shock him, totally without fear - but he was well aware of it. He was also aware that many people found his own distaste for water in amounts larger than a bathtub could hold to be equally inexplicable, so he made no judgement. "But why did you expect me to be dead?"

"Oh." Tail's ears wilted again. "Because– because when I tried to fly the modified Tornado-shuttle to the ARK to face Black Doom, it sort of exploded. And I fell halfway to Earth but landed on a flock of sheep grazing on top of a cloud - and then THEY started to zap me with lighting!"

Electric sheep? Not what I want to count when I'm trying to fall asleep. He refrained from laughing at the image, since Tails clearly didn't find it funny. "And I suppose Shadow survived even though I didn't?"

"Um, I'm not sure. The electric fish - eels, I guess, although they didn't look like any eel I've ever seen - reappeared too, and joined the sheep in zapping me again. And you were just lying there all dead, and it was all my fault, I didn't build the shuttle right and everyone on the planet was going to die . . . ."

"Nonsense," said Sonic firmly. "Even if - and I said if - one of your inventions goes wrong, you've never dragged me onto them against my will, so it'd be as much my fault as yours. And you did build the shuttle correctly, and got us safely to the ARK and back again. 'Sides, Shadow wouldn't have let a little thing like an exploding shuttle stop him from defeating Black Doom, and you know it.

"C'mon Tails, you know your stuff is good - just look at all the things you've helped us accomplish!"

Tails glanced up at his friend, then looked at his plate again. "I didn't help Emerl much," he mumbled.

Sonic winced internally, but maintained his encouraging expression. "That wasn't your fault either, Tails. Emerl - well, everyone got tricked, including Emerl, because of a flaw his makers built into him. You did what you could to set him free, same as Professor Gerald fifty years ago - heck, for all we know, the guys that built him thousands of years ago may have tried to undo it and couldn't!" Sonic fumbled for something to cheer the cub up. "Look, let's go for a run down to the beach. The fresh air will make you feel better."

Tails shook his head. "That's okay, Sonic. You go for your run; I'm going to go back to the lab and think some."

"Sometimes you think too much, Tails," Sonic argued. "You really should come with me."

"No thanks. Why don't you go check on Cream and Amy, and make sure they're okay after yesterday. I should see if I can work anything else out about that stone. Although it probably won't do much good."

"If anyone can learn anything about it, it's you, Tails," answered Sonic confidently, as he jogged out the door.

Half an hour later, he opened the door to the fox cub's lab. The hedgehog had checked on Cream, who had told him that both she and Amy were fine, and then run around the city a few times, scouting for trouble. Not finding any, he'd decided to check back with Tails, both to see if he'd learned anything and in the hope that he was feeling better. Sonic had never quite figured out how to deal with the two-tailed fox's occasional fits of self-doubt. The hedgehog had never doubted himself in his life, (except for when Emerl had died, but he tried to forget that part of it) and couldn't quite comprehend that problem. It was so obvious that Tails had talent, and even if things sometimes didn't turn out as expected - well, that was life. You learned what you could from it and went on.

"Hi, Sonic," said Tails. He was perched on a stool with his feet dangling, looking into some sort of microscope. The dual eyepieces stuck out of a large box-like affair, with knobs and dials enough to be a computer in its own right.

"Hey, Tails. Feeling better?"

"I guess." The cub kicked his feet and let them swing a few times. Then he sat up straight, scooting back a bit on the stool. "It still seems to be an ordinary rock," he said, "but you said that kid had dreams that came true while he had it, and then you had a dream about Amy and Cream getting attacked by clockworks and they did, and I– " Tails paused, considering his next words. "I was dreaming about stuff that already happened, so that's different. Even though there were those electric eels and sheep-things, and it didn't work out the same as in real life, the events are over. You don't suppose Black Doom's going to come back, do you?"

"Of course not," replied Sonic confidently. Suddenly he blinked. The solution was so obvious, he couldn't believe that he'd missed it. "Where is the stone, anyway?"

"It's in here." Tails slid off his stool and opened a hatch in the bulk of the electronic microscope. Reaching in with a gloved hand, he pulled out the agate. Which was suddenly gone from his hand. "Hey!"

Sonic snatched the striped stone, ignoring Tails' shout, and ran out the door. Once outside, he pelted full-bore for the beach. Since the stone was clearly the source of the trouble, the thing to do would be to get rid of the stone. Even Knuckles could work that one out, and it irked the hedgehog that it had taken him this long to see it. Besides, Jason had said that the creatures in his last dream had fallen into the sea. Catching sight of the waves ahead, he sprinted across the beach in a cloud of sand, swinging one arm out and around as he raced towards the foam - and hurled the small stone as far out to sea as he could. Although he wasn't particularly strong for a dokan, no one could match him for applied momentum, and the oddly shaped pebble skipped once, twice, four times before he lost sight of it among the distant waves. "Ha!" he said to no one in particular, and jogged back to the lab to tell Tails that his nightmares were over.