10.
11:55.
She was tense… Or better, she was agitated. In the last minutes, her mind has become a turmoil of doubts and unanswered questions…
11:56.
What if they fail? What if they die? What if she will never see him again? Could have she been of some use? Did her existence have a purpose?
11:57.
In the cold solitude of the hidden base, Cosmo was waiting… Waiting the destruction to end all or the hopeful salvation… Waiting his… Their return.
11:58.
Most of all… Waiting for a call from him.
She stared at the com. on her wrist… Expecting Tails to contact her.
Oh yes, the waiting was killing her.
11:59.
The closed rosebuds on the sides of her head started to tremble, her pupils became smaller and the hands were shaking… The time was almost there.
12:00.
And the time is now!
……
………..
………………..
…………………….
Nothing.
She was expecting at least a small explosion… But nothing came.
After a few minutes pondering about the situation… Her wrist com. turned on all by itself, reveling the image of a rather terrified Sally Acorn.
Definetelly not a good sign.
Cosmo was taken aback by the sudden apparition… After a few seconds, she realized that while she could see Sally… Sally couldn't see her in return.
The emergency device was a one-way call system that could permit at the caller to contact all the possessors of a functional com. (including Cosmo) but not to see or hear the ones contacted.
That defect was quite inconvenient…
As a result of this, the squirrel had no idea of who she was about to tell her newly acquired informations…
"WE'VE BEEN ALL FOOLED!!!"
… Or the tremendous effects they would bring with them.
"Listen to me, this is an emergency!"
The Freedom Fighters were listening.
"About 30 minutes ago, Doctor Eggman has ordered the retreat of his troops for no apparent reason… We had no idea why he did it, until Sir Charles contacted us, 5 minutes later…. He found out what Project: Doomsday has been all about!!"
Tension was now readable in their eyes.
"Eggman has played with us the all time! He knew there was an hacker trying to accede the data from his mainframe… And just now, he decided to let us collect those informations… Letting us to know the truth."
Knuckles's fists clenched. Blaze's eyes widen.
"All that we have faced, discovered, been put in through in this past week… The threat, the sudden attacks, G.U.N. wanting to kill Cosmo, the Big Foots army, even the leak and Snively's role in it… THEY WERE ALL A DISTRACTION!!!"
Tails and Espio swallowed.
"He made us to believe that that girl, Cosmo, was an important piece of his plan with that threat and the intervention of G.U.N. by order of Snively… He WANTED us to find that dislocated base with his secret army in it and than, he destroyed it just for adding more confusion… Ultimately, he WANTED us to find G.U.N.'s leak and Snively's involvement in it! It was all part of his plan!"
Amy almost fainted.
"A plan to lure our attention away from his real scheme… Something that he's been working on, since the unofficial truce… Something he planned to do even before the coup of Mobotropolis…"
They're collective breath was betraying them.
"The reason of why he stood low for so long… The reason of why he turned my country in his capitol in the first place…THE REAL PROJECT: DOOMSDAY!!!"
Cosmo was listening.
She listened all too well.
Everything that has been said so far by the princess… Every. Single. Word.
"He… He outsmarted us… We've been all puppets in his hands… And now, it's too late." With that said, the communication was interrupted, leaving the young Seedrian alone with her thoughts.
All has been revealed. The true intentions of the doctor and her role in it.
For all this time, she's been nothing more than a pawn in Eggman's fat hands… In the beginning, he wanted to study her and tried to capture her… But when she ended up with the Freedom Fighters and, more importantly, with Tails, his diabolical yet genius mind developed the perfect plan to get people distracted and utterly confused (especially potential spies) so he could add the final needed requirements to his latest weapon without suffering an eventual spoil of his work.
With the help of his secret allies, he put up a fake G.U.N. base with faker G.U.N. robots for his enemies to discover and fear… He even ordered his nephew, Snively, to drop his cover and betray their agents… They wouldn't talk even if they could… No one knew of his project beside him.
His plan worked perfectly and with all the fake tracks he disseminated throughout the week, nobody has been able to guess what his REAL scheme was all about…
And now, as Sally Acorn stated, they were far too late to stop it.
Doomsday has officially begun..
Cosmo was horrified.
It all happened begun because of her… Tails's parents robotization and death, Eggman's plan… Everything!
All the sorrows… All the pain she saw in the others… All the torment she experienced first hand…
It was all because of her… If she wasn't even born, they could have the chance to find the doctor's true intentions and stop him…
Instead… She's been on the way.
And this was the final consequence.
It was all over…
"NO!"
What?
"NOT THIS WAY!!!"
What are you saying, Cosmo?
"I'm tired to feel guilty… I'm sick and tired to act like a victim! I'm sick and tired of been useless!"
I… Don't get it.
"I've just realized something very important."
Please, tell me.
"That Nature always finds it's way… There's no denial in this. How could you explain, otherwise, miracles like Life and Evolution? Rise and fall of entire species? Natural Selection?"
Are you implying that Nature is a living sentient being with a purpose and a plan? But… Isn't the world, no, the entire Universe, made of Chaos? Of things that happened without a logical reason? Of uncontrollable invisible random forces running around like mad?
"Maybe… Or maybe not. We're not bound to know it… And, perhaps, it's because of this… Of the fact that we don't really know anything… That life is Chaos.
…. I've never thought of that before.
"Maybe, Nature has a purpose, after all, or maybe my birth was just a miraculous case… But the fact is: I'm here. I'm alive. And I have the power to stop Eggman."
……..
"If this world has no sense nor purpose to exist… THAN I'LL PUT A SENSE OF MY OWN IN IT!"
… Very well, I understand it, Cosmo.
"I'm glad of it."
You know… Ever since I've started writing this, dare I say, novel… I've always thought that I had the absolute control of it… That, somehow, I could add some spectacular twists in each and every chapters, manipulate the characters' fate for my own amusement and, over all, to make a good original story…
I've also dared to dream that, somehow… I could have saved you, Cosmo.
But the sad truth is that I, as a fanfiction author, do not own any of the characters or the basic ideas that are mentioned in my story…
Therefore… I have no control.
Never had. Never will.
"…….. I see."
Cosmo… You know why I chose Tails to be the protagonist of this story, in the first place?
He's my favorite character… I see a lot of myself in him: I wanted to be like him, not just because he could fly or because he's super smart…
He is the most courageous, caring and trusty person anyone could ever met… His entire life has been depicted has a deep cold cauldron of sorrows (you should know that) and, yet… After all of this, he still managed to smile.
I've put the little kid through hell in this fiction, I admit that… But, still, I wanted to award him with an happy ending… An optimistic finale in Sonic's style!
… Why are you giggling?
"Well… A cheap happy ending would be too much convenient, don't you think?"
Sigh… I guess you're right. I've worked so hard to make this story at least half decent… And I can't stop now!
Thank you, Cosmo. Despite what Cream's fans use to say… You are a great person.
"Why… Thanks!"
You may go now and… Cosmo?
"Yes?"
You know that Tails loves you, right?
"Of course I know… And I love him back."
That's great… Farewell, young Seedrian.
May our paths cross again in a near future… Maybe, in another story.
"It'll be fun… Sayonara, fanfiction author."
Sniff… Ok! On with the story!
Tails's plane was on the roof of the tallest building in the abandoned city of Station Square.
After the shocking news they received, the Freedom Fighters' first instinct was to flee the longest away possible from the place… And basically, that's what they all did.
All of them, except the vulpine. If what Sally told them was true, than either escaping or finding a shelter would have been completely useless.
Instead, Tails decided to fly with his X-Tornado in an high enough position to… See it.
And, desperately, to try in stop it.
All of them, including him, have been outsmarted by the doctor… And that was burning him. He couldn't except defeat from that crazy Overlander… He couldn't allow him to win… Not this way.
Right now, the combat plane's sophisticated radar was receiving a signal… A very, disturbing signal.
A deadly confirmation of their biggest fear yet.
Years.... Perhaps, even centuries, before the great earthquake that destroyed their civilization, allowing the rise of the Mobian races… The humans used to be at the top of their technological warfare…
New artillery and military's intelligences were spreading all over the planet, forever changing the whole concept of war…
And it all started, with one, ominous weapon.
Tails has heard the stories… But they were all considered legends, nothing more than myths… Than again, even the Chaos Emeralds were.
It wasn't a legend anymore… It was real. It was DAMN real.
Somehow, Dr Eggman knew were to find the needed material to make it… He knew he could find it right under the city-state of Mobotropolis… It's current HQ.
And there it was…
Intact.
Uncorrupted.
Undamaged.
It managed to resist all this millenniums for the doctor to find it… And to use it.
An entire underground mine full of… Uranium.
It was near, now… Tails's radar could sense it.
It was coming and it was just a few miles away from the designed impact point… With the smirking Eggman insignia on it.
A nuclear missile…
A nuke!
Not just any "regular" nuke… An enhanced model, with a bigger range of damage… Specifically, all Mobius.
The explosion that will be generated will be powerful enough to kill anything in the range of 2000 miles… The rest will find a more horrible and excruciating death due to the inevitable radiations that will follow. After seen the demise of Mobius, the United Federations will have no other choice but to, voluntarily, surrender to the Eggman Empire and it's leader will be finally able to turn the world into his robotic utopia!
Deep down, Tails knew that there wasn't any hope… Centuries, millenniums of evolution, of life… Are going to be destroyed in one instant by Man's Greatest Sin.
The vulpine's mind wandered a little… He was thinking at Cosmo. At how she meant a lot to him… At the fact that he didn't even declared himself to her… That he wanted to be with her in the very last minutes…
As if on cue… A hand, a soft, familiar, little hand was now on Tails's shoulder. He felt immediately strange and found himself unable to move.
From behind him… She was whispering something in his ear.
"Hi Tails… It's me, Cosmo."
"Cosmo? What are you doing here? And… Why I can't move?"
"It's another of my powers… It seems that I can release a toxin that can temporarily paralyze people."
"But… Why on me?"
She took a good breath, even if he couldn't see her, he could, however, feel her discomfort while answering his question.
"Because, this way… You won't try to stop me." With that said, she rose up above the plane, the building… And Tails.
Pure horror and shock were printed in the kit's eyes, as he watched the love of his life, the one creature he swore to protect and to stay forever with… Just standing, floating in the sky, several miles from him… Waiting for the nuke.
He couldn't… He wouldn't… He… He…
I.. I've lost the words. I can't go on.
I'll let Cosmo to take on from here.
I can feel it, now. The power… The true power that Nature gave me. It's inebriant and… Beautiful.
I can feel my body is already changing… Just like any flower, it is now my turn, to finally blossom.
My features, my height, the length of my air, my physic… I've grown up in just a blink of an eye. The two rosebuds in the sides of my head… Just bloomed. Now they are wonderful pink roses…
I wish Amy could see me now… She would love them, she's so into the pink color… Yeah, Amy.
And my bigger sister, Blaze… And Knuckles… And even the silent Espio. They will all miss me too much… They are going to be sad… They would not understand.
Tails… Is going to suffer more than anyone else… I wish I could say goodbye…
"COSMO!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? GET DOWN FROM THERE!!"
Tails? How… Oh. You're using your wrist com…
"Cosmo, seriously, this is not a game!"
I know, Tails… That's why I'm here. I'm here to stop this insanity, once and for all.
"W-WHAT!? You don't understand, there's a…"
There's a nuclear missile heading this way… The true Project: Doomsday.
"B-But how'd you… Ooooh. Oh no. The emergency calls' device!"
Precisely and I thank you for that… Without it, I wouldn't been able to comprehend.
"Comprehend… What?"
My purpose in life… The reason I was chosen by Nature… To be here. Now. Saving everybody's life. Saving yours.
"This is madness!"
Eh eh eh eh… Knuckles would have had a good punch line for that.
"DON'T MOCK ME! You don't have to do it! Nobody's fate is written in stone!"
Perhaps… In fact, this is my personal choice… And I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm happy to be here, I'm happy that Nature gifted me with this power… Most of all… I'm happy that I ever knew you, Tails.
"Cosmo…"
You know? Even if fate is an illusion… I really can't help but think that… We were, somehow, designated to find each other.
"What are you saying?"
I know my true origins, Tails… Uncle Chuck has revealed them to me.
"UNCLE CHUCK!?"
You see… I am a Seedrian… A whole new sentient vegetal life form that, just like regular plants, grows up from seeds. When my foster parents found me… I was just, well, born.
I'm the last step in the evolution process of a very, rare plant… A plant that your kind happened to know very well…
"…. Y-you don't mean…"
Yes. That plant, Tails. The one who's delicious fruits has pushed your kind into evolution… Our special plant.
"I.. I.."
I descended from very that plant… And you… You descended from that curious, smart fox who wanted to taste it's fruit so badly…
We were bound to be together, Tails… In a way, I think that we were bound, by Nature itself, to be here… In this very moment.
Chosen by Nature. To fight for Nature.
"……"
And… As a result of this. To be able to use Chaos energy.
"Chaos… Energy?"
Do you remember what Knuckles said? Because I do, even if I was half asleep at the time… He said that the first creatures that resulted from Natural Selection were gifted by the ability of controlling Chaos… So, here I am.
"You'll need a Chaos Emerald, first."
I already have it… Right here… In my chest.
"That red gem… WAS A CHAOS EMERALD ALL ALONG!?"
Yep… Nature's doing, I guess.
Well… It seems that our time is running out. I must brace myself.
"N-no… Please, don't go… Don't leave me alone… Y-you're the only one for me."
You will not be alone… You have your family.
"YOU ARE A PART OF IT!"
Tails… I have to do it… And you have to stay here and continue the fight! Promise me, you will do it… Promise me, you won't give up.
Promise me to smile again.
Do it… For me. Please.
"I… I… I p-p-promise…"
Thank you Tails. Thank you for everything. For saving my life uncounted times. For making me smile. For the memories. For everything.
"Cosmo…."
…….
"I… I… I…
……
"I LOVE YOU!!!!"
Now… Before continuing.
I have a question for you, reader and / or potential author.
How could you possibly take the single most tragic and suffering moment in anybody's life (the loss of the one person you love the most) and trying to describe it in simple words for anyone to read it?
Unfortunately, I have not such answer… I'm not an established author nor a recognized philosopher but even if I were, I highly doubt that I would be able to know it, anyway.
I can tell one thing, though: emotions are very complicated… Even the simpler ones have always more than one significance behind that great hoax that we call Appearance.
Everybody feels in so many ways… That's a thing that makes us all different yet, similar at the same time.
In the end… I can't even dare to imagine how such sorrow could possibly be described in just a few short lines…
But, luckily, there is still a thing I can do… An homage.
An homage to true Love… Which, I shall remind you, does not exist without Sorrow.
And for this homage, I took the liberty to use a very special song… This song:
"Hikaru Michi -The Shining Road" By Aya Hiroshige.
Our world is under a spell
Even the excitment of our love is sealed in our tears
Boy, let's go together to find that charm,
To the land of where forbidden dreams may come true.
And than… It was light. The vessel of death has arrived. She opened herself to it… She embraced it…
He couldn't let her do it alone… He loved her… He cried for her… He, somehow, came out from his paralysis… He launched himself into the light… He cried his love for her… He cried her name… He would die with her…
A tearful eye, a broken heart… That was Love.
Alone, tomorrow, let's secretely meet
Up on the hill where small birds are buried
Some day, when I hold your hand in the cold morning mist
And the seal of the Shining Road will be broken
Forever
All was white, inside the light. No one else was there, but the two of them.
They stared at each other… There favorite activity… They took each other's hands… And still would stare.
Alone together in the Shining Road.
I didn't wish to get heartbroken so I hid my feelings
I was happy, for you gave that smile.
Boy, give me the courage
To make everything that happened zero
He wished he could tell her before… That his love for her was pure and sincere.
She'd been expecting him to confess it… Thankfully, it was not too late. Now she knew.
Now, they both knew… That they were bound to be together… Beyond Nature… Beyond Chaos itself… This emotion was the only thing that counted.
Yet… He still wished he could save her.
Let's kiss quietly in secret
Like an old picture book we're unable to read
When the wind blows in the morning dew
The Shining Road will strech on forever
Always
"Cosmo" He said. "Tails" She said. "I love you." They both said.
They kissed. Quietly. Softly.
They were themselves. Two kids in love.
Alone together in the Shining Road.
A sudden force was now separating them… He called her name. She called his. She was going on her road… Away… Far away… From him… But she was happy… Because she knew… That their love would last…
"I love you. Forever."
Forever and eternally.
Callin' you
Callin' out your name in a sad night
That will be the key to break the enchantment of the world.
Indeed.
And so… It was over. Cosmo used Chaos Control to send herself and the missile in another dimension… Sacrificing her own body in the process.
Tails would have followed her fate… If it wasn't for Knuckles, who came back just in time to save the kit… But not her.
Now they were both standing on the top of a building.
"WHY DID YOU SAVE ME!!!?" Cried a desperate yet enraged vulpine.
The echidna didn't respond.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE HER, INSTEAD!!?"
Knuckles raised a fist. Tails feared that he wanted to hit him… Instead, he picked the boy's hand and put something in it.
"I'm sorry…" The echidna simply muttered.
It was a seed.
Her seed.
What was left of her.
Her legacy.
That was just too much to take. He tightened the seed in his hand and started crying on Knuckles's chest.
"Why did she have to die? I.. I promised that I would protect her… With my life if necessary… Yet, I failed. I FAILED! AND NOW SHE'S DEAD!!!"
Tails was desperate, enraged and broken.
Knuckles was firm. Unable to do anything… Unable to consol the fox… Even to look at him.
They stood there for a while.
A guilty warrior.
A broken child.
Today… They both have failed.
And all of them were just been saved… By Cosmo…
Mother Nature.
Later on… Her precious seed would have been planted in the soft soil of the ancient ruins zone… Along with it's companions.
In their secret place… The place they shared… Tails and Cosmo's place.
And now… The fox remembered… He remembered how that very rare plant she descended from, used to be called… The plant that has been there when the first anthropomorphic fox appeared…
The plant that has accompanied his kind ever since…
"The Kitsune's Mate."
Tails smiled. She was right, all along.
They were bound to find each other… To love each other… To be with each other…
And maybe… One day… The would again.
Monday morning.
1 day after Project: Doomsday.
Tails was set nearby the cliff, observing the self-made graves… All three of them.
His mother's.
His father's.
And Cosmo's.
The three most important persons in his life, reunited in one place… At least, their memories.
Tails's heart was… Troubled, to say the very least.
There was something, inside of him, that kept telling him to let go and move on… But there was another part of him (you guessed it… The irrational part) that was telling, or better, screaming, otherwise…
Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice that he's been observed… Until he heard the foot steps.
He turned his head…
And there she was…
Blue jacket, red hair and motherly eyes…
Sally Acorn was there, in person, right in front of him.
She knew… Of course, she knew…
Everybody knew that by now… Even Eggman.
Besides Tails, the one who took the news of Cosmo's death the worse was Blaze… The Seedrian was like a sister to her, she saved her from herself… And the fact that the cat wasn't with her when THAT happened… Was something that would persecute her for the rest of her life…
Tails felt extremely sorry for her… And that helped him, in a way, too feel more empathic toward the others… He realized that he wasn't the only one to ever suffer in the world.
For this reason, he decided to keep his emotions locked inside of him… He was still a soldier, after all, he would be brave, courageous and he would have never cried again, EVER!
"S-Sally… You're here? You're really here? It's not an hologram?"
"Yes, Tails… I'm here… With you."
He was a child.
And he cried.
He and her sister embraced each other long and tenderly… He was finally opening himself to her.
"I miss her, Sally. I really do. I miss my mom and my dad, too… Why did they have to go. WHY!? I'm all alone now!"
"No, you're not. You have the Freedom Fighters, Tails… And you have me. I'll never leave you again. In fact… I've just dropped my political career so I could stay with you."
"You did?"
"Yep. I told you, before… You're my little brother… You're my son." That last part came out by accident… But was meant, none the less
That information took the kit by surprise but, instead of been taken aback, he sank himself even deeper into her "mother's" embrace.
Cosmo was right… In the end, he was not alone.
"I love you… Mom" Still crying… A bit happier, though.
She smiled and cried as well.
Than she added:
"How about… A funny kiss?"
"Puh-lease… I'm too old for that."
In the meantime...
Somewhere… A red like gem started glowing…
And something very rare and precious, begun to grow.
And, sadly, a rather good story was about to end.
…Or was it?
Electric lighting. Darkness. Death.
Three common things one can easily find… In the Eggman Empire's capitol city.
The ex reign of Mobotropolis, now conveniently renamed… Robotropolis.
In the vast underground of this horrifying excuse of a city… A single silhouette could be seen.
A robotizied hedgehog by the name of Sir Charles… Or uncle Chuck, if you will.
For the last 24 hours he and all the other robots, have been witnessing the outburst of a certain super infuriated, utter enraged, evil-scientist-dictator-wanna-be…
Eggman was definetelly NOT in a good mood… And he had a good reason too! His most brilliant and diabolical scheme, the one elaborated plan that would have ensured him the total annihilations of his enemies and world's domination… THAT plan… Has been vanquished… By a plant.
Uncle chuck was still, well, chuckling in his mind at the view of the fat clown bouncing on his chair like a mad kangaroo yelling cheap villain's lines like: "Grrrr… I'll get them for this!" Or "They hadn't seen the last of me!" Or even better "I. HATE. THAT. FOX!!!".
A comic book villain… That's what the mighty Eggman really was.
That knowledge put a smile on the inexistent lips of the old Robohog… Even, though, he still couldn't get the fact that that little sweet girl was just gone… Saving all of them.
However, he had a job to do… Luckily for him, Eggman did not discover that he was the hacker who constantly tried to violate his mainframe, so he could still be of some help for the resistance.
And that's why he was there. This underground chamber was his little haven… The place from which he could contact the other Freedom Fighters thanks to a protected line that Eggman was not able to find… A little thing that ancient Overlanders used to call…The Interpet or something like that. Whatever.
It was usually at this particular time that Sally used to call him for a day report.
He set on his comfortable chair right in front of his computer… Than came the call.
And to his genuine surprise, it was not the juvenile form of Sally that appeared on scream… It was, instead, the old, mustached, wise face of his good friend… Maximillian Acorn.
The Robohog smiled. The former squirrel king smiled as well.
"Max… What a surprise! How are things going in the non-robotizied part of the world." Chuck used to joke about his condition… For obvious reasons.
Max went serious and immediately came to the point.
"Charles… We've found him."
The light blue hedgehog's eye widen.
"Who?" He asked.
And, ironically enough for a spy, it was his old friend who gave him the most important information of his life…
"Your nephew, Charles… We've finally found him."
"…. SONIC!?"
And this was just the beginning.
A/N: Continues on "Tails and Sonic."