Chapter 11 "Grief"

Shadow examined the area once more, not wanting to be caught off guard again, and to his dismay he did find something strange about the robot he'd just defeated…

Underneath the shell of the robot…lay Tails' wounded body.

Shadow gasped to himself, why was Tails in such a thing?!

Naturally he knelled down and took his arm to see if he was alive or not.

Tails suddenly took a gasping breath, like he had been drowning, and coughed violently.

"Why were you inside such a thing?!" Shadow exclaimed. "Fool!"

Tails was rolling on either side; he was in a very frail state.

Shadow took hold of both Tails' arms and pulled him slowly across the floor.

He tried to revive him by applying pressure, and Tails regained the strength to tell him to stop.

"S…Sonic…" Tails said, before his vision was correct…then saw it was Shadow who'd come to his aid. "W…where am I?"

"I was hoping you'd know that at least." Shadow said impatiently.

"Did…did you defeat Metal Sonic?" Tails said. "Where…and…"

Tails looked at himself and reacted in surprise; he was much older and looked very different.

other then the fact he was damaged from head to toe, his tails were a little larger and his fur rougher, Tails had aged ten years, he was now eighteen years old…

Tails struggled to get on his feet and ran towards the nearest exit.

"Wait! Where are you going?!" Shadow said, following him, irritated by his impulsive behavior.

When Shadow made it passed the wreckage and got outside…he found Tails on his knees…in front of the Sonic Memorial…looking in disbelief.

"No…no….this can't have happened…" Tails said, bursting into tears, lying in the grass beside it, curled up in despair.

Shadow stood there in silence.

"Why is Sonic so important to them anyway?" he wondered.

It seemed Tails did not know what had become of Sonic, and was grieving dreadfully now that he'd found out.

---

Hours later, Shadow had already re-attached his ring, waiting for Tails to talk to him about what had happened.

He came up next to him, showing no emotion in his expression, but the very presence made Tails realize he needed to stop crying.

He looked still, consumed in grief; his head bowed low clenching his fists in anger as well as in sadness.

The poor fox rubbed his eyes and dried his tears, and turned his back to the statue.

"I can't believe this happened…" Tails said.

"What DID happen?" Shadow said, curiously. "Why on earth were you inside one of the doctor's machines?"

"…" Tails was having trouble thinking at a time like this. "Sonic…Sonic and I were aboard the Death Egg, Sonic didn't know I'd gone with him, I hid in the back seat of the Tornado…I didn't want to be left behind…I wanted to help him…"

Tails' teary voice was sounding a lot stronger, and his voice had dropped a little to fit his age. "Eggman caught me alone, he…he…he lied to me and told me he had Sonic…I shouldn't have trusted him…I didn't want to, but the situation suggested he was telling the truth…he came up to me, and used me as a power source for that monstrosity…he'd always used smaller animals to power his machines…but used my being inside it so that Sonic wouldn't attack me….Sonic didn't want to kill me by spin-dashing into the robot I was trapped in, and I could do nothing…the robot just kept firing and firing…then I heard a crash as a part of the Death Egg began to break apart from Sonic's efforts…after the crash the robot had jolted backwards and the impact of metal to my head…knocked me out…I don't know what happened to me…but after I was knocked out it seems since the air was such a small amount I couldn't come to again…enough for me to live….but not enough for me to wake up…I don't know what happened to him…but…the robot I was in…if it was still whole and untouched by Sonic…does that mean…"

Tails tried keeping the tears from flowing. "Does that mean that it was this robot that killed Sonic…did…did my being there…cause his death…?"

Shadow didn't know what to make of this situation, Tails was so full of sadness…even getting an explanation made him very uncomfortable…why and how could all this happen…and why is it Tails lived this whole time trapped inside a machine only to return now…?

End chapter