006 - This Was My First Meeting With Tails

The next morning rushed towards me it seemed. I hadn't blacked out, but I'd never taken a punch to the face before, so I was still unsteady on my feet. I was escorted to another room where I could lie down and recuperate. I felt better in a few minutes and chose to sneak away from the party. It was, officially, a disastrous event for me and all I wanted to do was go back home and sleep.

When I awoke in the morning two things crossed my mind. First was my impending meeting with Tails. This was exciting to me for reasons that I couldn't really put into words. The youngest member of the Freedom Fighters and one of the most powerful minds in all the world, and he was going to be meeting with me! I hadn't grown up looking up to Tails, obviously. He was only about 10 and I was already roboticized long before he'd ever been born. Or was I? I couldn't figure out the exact dates, everything was a blur back then.

The second thing that crossed my mind interrupted that train of thought; Why hadn't my power stopped Harry's fist? Most of my ability that had been used in dangerous situations occurred by reflex. It was a mystery to me why in that heated moment it had suddenly failed me. I needed to understand why that was, because such a failure in Spec-Pro could prove fatal.

I slipped on my clothes (the tuxedo had broken back down into nanites at some point during the night it would seem) and found a bus that ran to the part of the city where I could find Tails' workshop. I found that my military ID acted as a bus pass. The ride out was uneventful and I'm sure I nodded off once or twice. I was unusually lethargic that morning.

I wandered around for a little bit before I found where I was supposed to go. It was a large house near a lake, with something that resembled an airplane hangar in the back. I approached the house and knocked on the door. I heard movement from inside and started feeling nervous. It briefly occurred to me how strange it was that I, an adult, felt nervous to meet someone half my age. The door opened and I saw a bright yellow fox with two, large, bushy tails wagging behind him, about a head shorter than I was.

"You must be Tekk!" He said, his voice high and child-like. "You're taller than I imagined…"

"So are you." I responded. It was true. Either he'd been going through a growth spurt since the last propaganda posters were made, or I simply had bad judgement of height.

"Come on inside!" He said, gesturing me in.

The house was very clean. Immaculate, even. I had read something about geniuses being inherently messy, as though things like cleaning drained too much mental energy that they needed for other things. This definitely wasn't the case. We passed through a sitting room with a couple of comfy looking couches and a large bookshelf. We walked through a small kitchen that was completely clean with the exception of a few dishes in the sink awaiting washing.

It was when we reached the workroom that it started making sense.

"It looks like a tornado went off in here…" I said, looking at the half-finished robotics and machines scattered around the garage-like room. Tools and parts lay in piles everywhere. Tails gingerly danced around some, but walked right through others. Apparently he knew what was important and what wasn't.

"No, that's in the hangar." He smiled. It took me a minute to figure out his joke. His expression suddenly changed to a more thoughtful one. "Well, actually, I guess technically the prototype Tornado Three engine did go off in here…" He said, looking at large black marks on the wall next to the twisted wreckage of what looked to be an engine-lift.

Tails stopped at a workbench and cleared off some scrap-metal. Underneath the garbage was a computer terminal that he booted up and started typing at.

"So, Nicole said that we should meet. That I could help you with some of your research?" I asked, looking around for a place to sit.

"Yeah! Um… Just let me…" He typed a little more. He hit a final key with a small flourish of his hand, and a large machine came to life from under a canvas tarp. Once the canvas was pulled away, it looked like a wicked kind of death-ray.

"Uh…" I said, eyeing it with concern.

"Oh, no, don't worry about that." Tails said dismissively, "That's just something I've been working on. It's a chaos syphon. It's actually what I need your help with."

"Chaos… Syphon?" I asked.

"Yep." He said, proudly. "Since the singularity even happened with the Chaos Emeralds, getting our hands on one has been incredibly tricky, right? Since the Chaos Emeralds became scarce, I've been working on making synthetic Chaos Emeralds. They're good, but they're not great. Not as good as a legitimate Chaos Emerald." He wandered over to the machine and pulled a hunk of what looked like grey glass from a canister mounted on the back of the syphon.

"So I made this. The idea was actually, in the beginning, to create a counter-measure in case Eggman got his hands on Chaos Emeralds again. We could point this thing at his machine and syphon off the energy from the Emerald, causing whatever plans he had to come to a halt. But then I had a different idea to utilize the syphon to create new emeralds."

"But…?" I prompted.

"Well, it comes back to my synthetic Emeralds… They're not as good because it's not genuine Chaos Energy that powers them. It's like a store-brand cola. It's close to the real thing, but never as good. The synthetic emeralds radiate an energy signature on a similar cosine waveform but they have a much shorter half-life. So they cannot sustain energy output for very long."

"Uh… So, synthetic emeralds burn out quicker?" I asked, trying to follow what he was saying.

"Well, yes and no. Yes, they burn out quicker, but natural Chaos Emeralds don't burn out at all. At least, they don't anymore. Ever since the singularity. Or… How do I explain this…?" He stopped tinkering with the machine for a moment and looked up, trying to think.

"So, it's like, the Chaos Energy is stored in the Chaos Emerald, like the voltage in a battery. You could drain the battery, except that the energy you took out of the emerald still exists. It keeps itself steady somehow. It violates the known laws of thermodynamics, since there isn't any sort of decay or diminishing return. The energy it emits charges itself by exactly how much it emitted in the first place. It's fascinating."

"So what happens when you use the Chaos Emerald? Doesn't that power get used up like the power from a battery?"

"That's the thing that I'm still studying," Tails said, getting visibly excited, "Let's change metaphors and say that the Chaos Emerald is a bucket of water. It's constantly spilling over the rim, into a reservoir under the bucket, and then getting pulled back up from the bottom of the bucket to replace what has spilled over. Get the image?" I thought I did.

"So now, we imagine that we take a cup and scoop a significant amount of water out from that bucket. Somehow, that water replaces itself. You can drain the bucket, turn it upside down, but after a while, it will slowly refill itself until it's spilling over again, then it remains at that level until something changes again."

"And I'm guessing," I said, feeling like I was finally getting involved in the conversation, "That a synthetic Emerald can fill itself with the pseudo-Chaos Energy, but it can't replenish itself."

"Right!" Tails exclaimed, resuming his tinkering with the chaos syphon.

"The synthetic emeralds are buckets that I've filled with, let's say, water that I made from arduously combining hydrogen and oxygen. Compositionally, it's the same as the natural chaos… bucket…" He paused. It was clear that he realized how strange this metaphor was getting. He shook his head. "But, for reasons that I don't understand yet, the naturally occurring… erm.. Chaos Water can replenish itself, whereas the type that I create doesn't have this property."

"Uh huh…"

"So, I have this hypothesis, that if I can catch some naturally occurring Chaos Energy using this syphon, I can have it start filling a synthetic Chaos Emerald, making it as good as a real Emerald."

"You could make your own Chaos Emeralds." I said, finally catching on.

"Exactly! I wouldn't have to worry about a limited fuel supply like I do using a synthetic emerald."

"How are you sure that it's the water, and not the bucket that contains it?" I asked.

"Well," Tails said, slowing down a little, "I'm not. At least, not entirely. There have only been a few times when the Chaos Emeralds have been entirely drained, and they weren't drained in conditions where I was at my leisure to examine their composition."

"But, I have examined their chemical makeup in their charged, natural resting state. I discovered that calling them 'emeralds' is a misnomer. They're actually hunks of quartz, chemically speaking. There's no chemical difference between them and a quartz crystal you'd find in the ground. They've just been charged by Chaos Energy. So, I'm proceeding with this hypothesis that it's the nature of the energy that's the difference, not the structure they're contained in." He looked up from his work. "Though, that's my backup experiment if this line of thought turns out to be a dud."

"And that's where I come in?"

"Yes." Tails said, closing a panel on the syphon and putting down a wrench. "Nicole tells me that you're brimming with Chaos Energy. I've not seen this outside of the rare occasions where someone has become momentarily fused with Chaos Energy, like when Sonic became Super Sonic. Or that one time I became Super Tails…" He paused and a blissful expression passed over his face, remembering something.

"But the thing is, those are always temporary. They don't pull on the host for their sustained energy burn. They pull on the rings they have in their possession."

"The magic rings?" I asked.

"Well, I'm hesitant to call them magic rings anymore. They have a unique relationship with the Chaos Emeralds, though that relationship has gotten more complex since the singularity…" Tails paused again. "You know, it's getting harder and harder to live a scientifically minded life when you have to acknowledge the existence of magic. I mean, deep down, I just assume that 'magic' just manipulates laws of science that we don't know about yet. But it does make it harder to figure out how things work…"

"Like how you can fly with your tails?" I asked. He looked at me.

"Uh, yeah…" He said, looking at his fluffy tails. "I mean, they're not an aerodynamic shape or anything. And the fur would be a huge source of drag… I… I hadn't actually thought about that before…" Tails stared at his twitching tails.

I cleared my throat.

"Sorry, got lost in a tangent there…" Tails said. "Anyways. Yes. You. You are brimming with some sort of Chaos Energy, but it's evidently not the same kind of energy that's used when someone uses the Chaos Emeralds to fuse themselves with that energy. There isn't any sort of power vacuum occurring, trying to pull that Chaos Energy back into wherever you got it from. And Nicole says that the stable energy loop found in natural Chaos Emeralds is occurring within your own metabolism, too."

I didn't know that Nicole had been running these kinds of scans on me. It made me wonder what other experiments she was running on me without my knowledge.

"So, it comes down to this. I'd like to run a series of experiments on you… er… with you, of course, to better understand the relationship of Chaos Emeralds, Chaos Energy, and see if I can't replicate the stable energy loop that you have occurring inside you into one of my hunks of quartz here." He gestured towards the crystal he'd removed from the chaos syphon.

"You're going to drain my power?" I asked, feeling a little frightened.

"Only a little," Tails said, looking for something on his desk. He found a pair of goggles and tossed them to me. "Nicole sent me some of the data she's collected on you and I was examining it, I hope you don't mind." He went back to his computer and began inputting commands into the terminal.

"From what I read, I formed a hypothesis that should put you at ease."

"I'm all ears…" I said, slipping on the goggles.

"In a Chaos Emerald, the Chaos Energy replenishes itself. It violates the laws of thermodynamics and creates energy from itself, right?"

"Uh, right…?"

"Well, I have this idea that whatever Chaos Energy is residing inside you feeds off your metabolism, and your metabolism feeds off the Chaos Energy. She mentioned that you rarely need to eat or drink. And that while you sleep every night, it's not because of any pressing need to most nights. Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"I think that the Chaos Energy is fulfilling all the needs of your body while at rest. It's giving the cells in your body the energy required that's usually generated by cellular respiration. It's maintaining your body to be in peak physical condition because that's the most efficient way for the Chaos Energy to use your body later."

"Use my body?"

"I suspect that when you use your powers that the Chaos Energy pulls energy that is generated through your body's natural metabolism to replenish itself during moments of rapid burn. That's why you feel tired or fatigued after strenuous application of your power."

I considered this.

"In a sense, the Chaos Energy in your body is a symbiotic relationship. It sustains your body so that your body can sustain it. Left on its own, it would either have to slowly regenerate itself or dissipate into the atmosphere. But with your body, it can use your body's natural energy making process to fuel itself. In return, it keeps your body in the best state to produce that energy. I suspect that in technical terms, you still need to eat and drink, but whatever calories you put in go a lot further, meaning that you'd probably only need to actually eat once every couple of years." Tails finished typing and turned around.

"But the point I'm making is that you could charge an emerald and not begin to diminish the vast stores of Chaos Energy inside you. Your metabolism boosts the Chaos Energy and the Chaos Energy boosts your metabolism. It's a beneficial, upwards spiral. So if I use my syphon here, I should be able to pull just enough to charge the quartz and make a Chaos Emerald, and you'll be none the worse for wear."

"I hate to sound like a wuss," I said, pulling the goggles over my eyes, "but will it hurt?" Tails hesitated.

"To be perfectly honest, there's no way to be sure. I think that it's most probable that you'll feel fatigued, like a wave of sleepiness hit you, but it won't hurt per se. But I've never removed Chaos Energy from a living being before. This is new ground. Sonic says that the Chaos Emeralds give him a boost of energy when he powers down from being Super Sonic, but that's the Chaos Energy leaving on its own volition. When it's forcibly removed, I can't say what that will feel like." He pulled out a pad and a pen. "But, I'm ready to record the reaction you have to it when we do it."

I rolled my eyes. Great, I thought, as long as we can document my discomfort…

"Are you ready?" Tails asked, standing up from his chair.

"I think so." I replied, trying to be brave. To be honest, I was terrified. There was one possibility that he had neglected to mention, and that was the possibility that the chaos syphon might not stop when he turned off the machine. That it might just keep sucking away at my power, killing me, or at best, leaving me without my power or any ability whatsoever. But Tails seemed confident, and he was a genius after all, right? I tried not to think about the practicality of putting my life in the hands of a ten year old.

"Step into the box here." Tails indicated a small square of yellow tape on the ground directly in front of the syphon.

I placed both feet firmly into the box and faced the syphon. Tails turned on the power and I could hear a loud hum emanate from the machine. I was staring straight down the barrel of what looked like a large death ray. Red lights dotted its surface and the mount it was on had wires coiling around the structure.

"Alright, starting recording… now…" Tails said, hitting a button on the computer. I saw a small security video feed of the experiment display on the monitor. It was recording me and the syphon from a three-quarter's perspective. A camera must've been in the ceiling somewhere.

"Preparing the syphon for firing. Ready in three… Two… One…" Tails looked at me and pressed a switch on the syphon.

Lightning struck from me to the mouth of the syphon, a flash of blazing turquoise light jumped from me to the quartz in a matter of seconds. It didn't hurt exactly, but it was intensely uncomfortable. My nerves all started sounding off with that static feeling you get when your leg falls asleep. Tails shut off the syphon quickly, and my body's nerves started to calm down. I gasped for air. It felt as though I'd run a mile.

"Are you okay? Did it hurt?" Tails asked, genuine worry on his face.

"No…" I gasped. I explained to him the sensation I'd felt as best as I could. It took a moment before he remembered to start writing down what I was telling him. His worry about how I was doing had overcome his scientific curiosity momentarily.

"So, we have to go again, right?" I asked once I'd caught my breath. "You turned off the machine so fast."

"Actually, the Chaos Emerald is full."He pulled the gem from the compartment in the syphon. A glowing turquoise crystal was in his hand. "The experiment was a complete success!" Tails was beaming.

"Now the real fun begins, right?" I asked. Tails looked at me and smiled even wider. He then looked down at the small gem in his hand.

"Oh…" Tails said to the rock, "have I got plans for you!"

This is Jak-rabitt again. Just want to mention that I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and coming up with the logistics about Chaos Emeralds. Also, wanted to mention that, damn is it hard to figure out dates and ages when a series has been going for some 25 years, but everyone stays the same age. I mean, technically, Tails is listed as 8 in the Sonic Adventure 2 manual. But considering all that has come before and after, it's really kind of strange to think of all of stuff that's happened and he's still supposed to be 8.

I had a throwaway idea that won't make it into this story or anything, but that Mobius was actually called Mobius because its timeline resembled a mobius strip. It kept repeating its own history and its inhabitants never noticed that there was never any aging. Time passed, but also didn't pass. That's how you can have a "30 years in the future" issue while never progressing towards that state. Because they're constantly living the same year over and over again, only with different situations. I thought of an endgame concept for Sonic where they discovered this was the case and were able to break the infinite continuity loop that allowed them to age and move on with the natural progression of life.

That's really neither here nor there, though. Thanks for reading this far, and please excuse this tangent.