Tails and the Chocolate Factory
Part II: The Chocolate Factory
By Hoverbike Girl
Author's Note: Obviously, Part II covers the tour of the chocolate factory, which includes the four "Brat Eliminations" that befall our "lucky" winners. This portion is largely the same as the first version; most of it really didn't need to be updated. Only towards the end was there a big change: I split a really long chapter into two smaller ones. So don't go anywhere; the fun is just getting started!
(And to those of you who have read and loved my profile updates, a certain lovable fancharacter of mine makes his debut in this chapter!)
Chapter #9: Of Chao and Chocolate
The five Golden Ticket winners—Big, Rouge, Amy, Charmy, and Tails—and their six partners—Froggy, Shadow, Cream and Cheese, Espio, and Knuckles—stared, dumbfounded, at the little Chao hovering in front of them, wearing a friendly grin. They could hardly believe their eyes or ears!
Knuckles was the first to find his voice. "Did that Chao just…talk?"
The little light-blue (darker than sky-blue) creature cocked his head to the side, and a mischievous glimmer appeared in his blue eyes. He opened his mouth and said, "Of course! Talking is easy!"
Everyone jumped, and some of their mouths fell open. They had heard a gibberish language and a few easy, short words from Cheese, but nothing like this!
This time the Chao laughed. "Yeah, Master Wonka found that hard to believe when I first met him."
"You're not Mr. Willy Wonka?" exclaimed Cream.
He blinked in surprise. "Little ol' me? No way! I just help him run the factory!" Then he slapped his forehead with his paw. "Whoops! I forgot to introduce myself!"
Putting on his friendly smile, he removed his top hat and bowed politely to his guests.
"My name's Monty, and I'll be your tour guide for Master Wonka's Chocolate Factory!"
"Why do you call him your master? Is he a slave-driver or something?" Amy asked.
"Monty" shook his head rapidly. "Oh no! It's more of an affectionate title, really. He's actually very nice to us!"
"Us?" Tails said, his eyes widening. "You mean…the mysterious factory workers are Chao?"
Charmy leaped into the air and cried, "One Wonka mystery solved!"
Monty laughed again. "And plenty more secrets will be revealed, too. Follow me and I'll take you all to the first room of the tour!" He turned around to fly back where he had come from, but then he halted and slapped himself again. "Scatterbrain!" he scolded himself. "I forgot to ask for your Golden Tickets!"
Five arms with hands clasping the five Tickets went up.
"You guys were prompt; I like that!" He studied the ones holding the Tickets, and then added, "So you guys must be…Big the Cat, Rouge the Bat, Amy Rose, Charmy Bee, and Miles 'Tails' Prower!" Then he eyed the ones partnered up with them and repeated the process. "And you guys are…Froggy the, uh, frog, Shadow the Hedgehog, Cream the Rabbit (and her friend Cheese), Espio the Chameleon, and Knuckles the Echidna! Nice to meet you all!"
"What in the…how did you know our names?" Shadow asked in surprise.
"And how did you know my full name?" Tails put in. "I don't tell very many people what it is."
Monty's reaction to the questions, particularly the second one, was very unusual. His smile vanished, and his eyes grew a few sizes. He gulped, wiped the sweat that had appeared on his brow, and seemed to look at the ceiling while biting his lip. As he was tugging at the green bowtie around his neck, he stammered and tried to give a reasonable answer. "Erm, uh, heh, heh, the newspapers," he replied, though the statement sounded more like a question. The funny looks the guests were giving him made him feel even more nervous, and he turned away from them. It barely helped though; he could feel their eyes boring into his back. Finally, after a moment of silence, he said, "Shall we begin the tour?"
Thankfully, he heard eight pairs of footsteps (Charmy flew, and Froggy rode on Big's shoulder) proceed up the steps, and he led them past the burning puppets to a closed door that was not visible from the front of the stage. He opened it, revealing beyond the door a long, pink corridor that had several doors on both sides. He gestured for the Mobians to follow him down the hallway, and, after several turns, they reached a door that had a brass plate on it. It read "Lobby".
"Just a really quick stop here," Monty told them as he opened the door.
The lobby was a finely furnished room with dark wood paneling on the walls, maroon and purple carpets, house plants, and leather armchairs and couches. Near the ceiling on one wall the word "Wonka" was painted in white with a purple top hat sitting on the edge of the W (like you would see on one of the chocolate or candy bar labels). As the winners and their companions took in the scenery, they couldn't help but notice something else: it was warmer inside the lobby.
"Wow, why's it so hot in here?" Charmy asked.
Monty answered, "We Chao don't like the cold, so Master Wonka bought a really nice heating system for the whole factory. It keeps us warm as we work." He noticed their discomfort in their winter clothes and told them, "You can take off your stuff and hang it all on the coat racks over there." He pointed to a set of five coat racks next to the left wall, and they went over to it and put all their winter gear on them. All of them felt better after they finished.
"By the way, Monty," Tails suddenly said, "how did you and the other Chao end up here with Wonka?"
Monty's face split into a big grin; he had been hoping someone would ask that question. "Well, it's a long story, but I guess I can tell it to you on the way to our next stop." He flew over to a set of red double doors on the other side of the lobby, and the guests followed him into another pink corridor. When the doors shut, the Chao began the story.
"Before we came to live here, the other Chao and I lived in an old, abandoned Chao Garden in the Mystic Ruins. People had stopped coming to care for our predecessors a long time ago, so they had to fend for themselves. It was hard at first, but they got used to it. At first they had no enemies, but as the walls of our garden began to come down, some creatures started to get in. None of them were very friendly, and they couldn't fight them, so they had to hide up in the trees where they couldn't get them. They were careful not to settle in the trees of birds, and they learned to make crude tree houses that would help them adjust. And so our group became tree-dwellers that lived off whatever they could get from the ground.
"We learned to eat a lot of things besides fruit: nuts, roots, and berries, for the most part. But sometimes it was hard to find good food, and the stuff we managed to gather tasted nasty. It was during those times when we would long for a food that was very delicious but very hard to find: cacao beans.
"For those of you who don't know, cacao beans are the main ingredient for chocolate; you can't have chocolate without the cacao bean. In this factory alone, billions of beans are used every week! It's a miracle we don't run short of it! To most people, eating cacao beans as themselves might sound disgusting, but for us it was a delicacy. One time our leader forbade us to say the word 'cacao' because everyone would start drooling and go on a mad hunt for some! But we were lucky if we found three or four pods of cacao beans in our territory in a year. So Master Wonka's coming seemed like a dream come true.
"It happened one peaceful day, and I was out with some of my friends, venturing out of our safest zone to hunt for cacao beans. Suddenly we smelled something cooking, and we followed it to a small campsite. We saw a lone figure sitting on a log roasting some food for himself, and then we saw the crates stacked next to his tent. We couldn't read the words on it, but we smelled cacao beans, and we went for them and tried to open the boxes. We kind of scared our future master, but when he realized what we wanted he gave some beans to us. We were overjoyed, and then we remembered the rest of our tribe (as we had started calling ourselves) and wanted to bring some back for everyone. Wonka was very friendly to us and agreed to give us one entire crate. He actually carried it to our garden for us!"
"That was really nice of Mister Wonka," commented Cream, who was hooked to the tale.
"Chao," agreed Cheese, who was licking his lips from the talk of cacao beans; although he had never tried raw beans, he adored chocolate, and he figured the beans tasted just as good.
Monty smiled again. "Yes it was! But it was nothing compared to what he did after that." He continued his story, his eyes shining with happiness from the memories.
"As a celebration, we decided to have a banquet. But then Master Wonka offered to start a fire in a clearing of the forest, both for serving the food and for keeping any mean animals away. We were happy that we could dine on the ground instead of in the trees. Many of us still say that that was the best banquet ever held. When it came time for our speeches (many of the Chao in our tribe can speak English, you see), most of us praised the stranger who had wandered into our land. But when it came time for his speech, he surprised all of us with a neat story.
"He told us that he was the owner of a special factory that melts cacao beans, adds sugar and milk to it, and makes it into chocolate. However, he had one problem: he didn't have any workers. He said that he didn't trust the humans that lived in the city where the factory was, and he wanted to hire people who wouldn't tell anyone the secrets of the factory. Then he smiled and said, 'You seem to be trustworthy people. How would you like to work in my factory? In return, I'll pay you in cacao beans and chocolate. In fact, you can move into my factory and live with me if you like!'"
This time, Rouge interrupted the talk, murmuring to herself, "Chao that can make chocolate, eh?" Then she hissed to Shadow in a low tone of voice, "Shadow, I want one of those Chao! Get me one!" He responded by growling and reaching for his notepad.
Monty, who hadn't heard them, went on, "We were very happy, of course—we were being offered food and shelter. To me, the best thing had to be the fact that we were going to live with Master Wonka."
"You're really attached to him, huh?" Charmy asked.
Again the light-blue Chao grinned and even blushed a little bit. "Yeah. And I think he really liked me too. A few days after we moved in, he realized that he needed someone to help him supervise everybody, since the factory is so big and it's hard to look over everything. And guess who he chose to be his right-hand man?"
Shadow snorted at the obvious question. "You."
"Yep! Me!" Monty said, oblivious to the black hedgehog's pessimism. "He even gave me this suit to help identify me! It kinda makes me feel like a superhero's sidekick, you know what I mean? Saving the factory from disaster, one mess at a time!" He struck a flying-Superman pose, which caused many of the guests to chuckle or laugh.
But one was not so happy. Out of the corner of his eye, Knuckles saw Tails' smile slowly turn into a wistful look and his head lower until he was looking at his shoes. The echidna knew why; the fox could relate to Monty, except that his hero had gone missing. But no one else noticed Tails' sadness; they had finally reached their destination.
"Here we are!" Monty declared, gesturing to a metal door at the end of the corridor.
On the door there was another brass plate that read "The Chocolate Room."
As he turned the knob of the door, the Chao guide turned to them and said with an excited grin, "Prepare to be amazed!"