A/N: This is an extra chapter showing a bit of Sonic's POV prior to meeting Maria. Originally it was going to be a short bonus after the previous chapter, but I decided to separate it into it's own file for organization purposes. Enjoy!


The Tales of Our Lives

Extra: The Old House

A few hours earlier

"Dude, this place is totally not ready for a girl." Sonic bemoaned as soon as Tails shut the door. "We really gotta clean things up."

"Where do we even start?" his best friend quipped, and dang it, he had a point. Save for the kitchen, the house was equal parts messy. Like, on a scale from one to ten, ten being the most jacked up, he'd turn it to eleven.

"Let's just start with the first place we see." Which was the hallway, littered with laundry and the occasional bouncy ball from when he was bored of sitting around. Hey, he could at least see some of the red carpet from underneath. That wasn't a bad sign!

"Maybe we should clean out one of the rooms first." Tails replied, swishing his tails in thought. "We can put whatever we don't need in the hallway, then clean the hallway next, and then the bathrooms?"

Sonic made a face. "Do we gotta do the bathrooms?" Bathrooms, his household enemy. Bathrooms, the most cramped place in the house. Bathrooms, which carried the ultimate source of all evil: the tub.

"We have to do at least one of them! Come on, I'll even help you!"

"Fine! Let's just get this over with!" he groaned. The only reason the house looked as bad was because of being cooped up in here with his twisted ankle. Stupid Eggman. Stupid pitfalls! Next time, he'll shove Eggman down a pitfall and see how he likes it!

The duo braved their way through the faded wallpapered hallway, stopping at the first room to the left. The impressions of the door numbers still hadn't gone away from when the place was a boarding house. Tails opened the door and looked around.

"It's not so bad! It looks like it just needs some dusting in here, and we can make the bed! I'll go get something to dust off with. Can you see if there's anything in those drawers?"

"Yep. I'm on it."

Tails retreated, high-fiving him on the way out as if they were in a tag team match against dirt. They never used this room for anything, since his and Tails' rooms were the last ones down the hall. Heck, the only time they really stepped in here was when they first got the place.

Sonic pulled the top drawer, and lo and behold…nothing. Second drawer? Nada. The third drawer was a different story. He pulled out two old, roughed up books and squinted at the titles.

"Arabian Nights, cool. What are you? ...King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. 'K, that sounds pretty sweet. Out you go!"

He flung the books into the hallway as per the plan and checked the last drawer. Maybe if he got bored he could read them later. Just at that time, Tails came flying in armed with a bucket of water, a towel, and a mop to commence the attack on dust.

"Did you find anything?"

"Just a couple of fairy tales. We're all clear!"

One and a half hours, a bedroom and a hallway later…

"Come on, Sonic!" Tails gritted as he struggled to pull Sonic into the bathroom. He clung to the door frame with all his might in hopes that he wouldn't get sucked into the void.

"Best friends don't let best friends die in bathrooms!" he protested. "This Maria chick can clean her own bathroom!"

"We're the one's who made the mess, so…come…on!" his traitorous best friend grunted as he gave a final tug before Sonic's fingers slipped and the two crashed landed into the bath tub. The musty shower curtain caught their fall, but that unfortunately meant that the rod holding up said curtain wanted to join the fun too. The metal clanked against part of the wall and not-so-gently landed on Sonic's knees.

"Ow! Dammit! See Tails? This place is evil!"

"The faster we clean, the faster we get out of here and go to the living room."

"Ugh, don't even say that! I don't even know what's in the living room anymore!"

The fox grappled the shower curtain rod and fixed it into its rightful place while Sonic scrambled out of the tub. He glanced down at the pink tile riddled with soap scum, towels, and a bit a mold. It was either stay and fight or run away, and he didn't plan on losing a fight with the bathroom any time soon.

"Gimme a scrubby thing. I'm just gonna power through this."

"Heads up!" Tails threw him a soaked towel, and he responded by slamming the wretched thing onto the tile. He was the fastest thing on two legs, and this floor was going to get a taste of what it was like to be cleaned faster than the speed of sound!

He readied himself, judging the distance between him and the wall.

"I don't know if you wanna do that with your brace." Tails warned, turning on the faucet of the wretched tub.

"Just you watch!" he smirked, eager to test his reaction time. "It'll be fine!"

Half an hour, two bent spines, and a headache later…

"Tails, we will never speak of this again."

"At least we're doing a good thing, right?"

Sonic sighed and rubbed the small bump on his head, which was still tender to the touch. "Yeah, buddy, you're right."

"Do you think Maria will be nice?" Tails' ears folded downward in thought as he untangled the controller wires for the DreamCube. Sonic glanced his way before starting on organizing the coffee table, otherwise known as "the gigantic pile of stuff with a table somewhere in there".

"I dunno. She'd either have to be a devil or a saint to handle Shadow on a friendly basis. Or maybe she's like Rouge. She tends to deal with him pretty well. Only one way to find out, right?"

Sonic flung the empty game cases over Tails' way, who caught them effortlessly. A majority of the reason why he agreed to take her in was because he wanted to know the same thing; what did it take to get along with Shadow?

"Hey, five bucks says he's got a crush on her. Aw, dude…do we really have this many socks?"

Another hour and a partially organized living room later…

"Joggin' around at the speed of sound! Got nowhere to go, gotta move the sock pi~le!"

Sonic sang as he half-pushed, half-rolled the sock pile down to the laundry room. It was a good thing that they didn't have to clean their own rooms, or else he'd go crazy!

As he turned the corner and saw the glorious laundry room filled with all its dirty secrets, Tails came hurdling toward him from behind.

"Sonic! Someone is knocking on the door!"

"Well? Go answer it!"

The terrified look on the fox's face told him that that particular course of action wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Sonic hastily shoved the sock pile into the room and gave an exasperated sigh.

"You know, I should make you do it." he said, giving him a stern expression. "But because we're friends, I'll let you of the hook. You just stay in the house for a couple of seconds and I'll see what kind of person our guest is. You ready?"

Tails nodded, and Sonic high-fived him as he lined himself up with the hallway. Oh yeah, this was going to be interesting!

Stretching his legs to the best of his ability, Sonic directed his attention to the front door at the end of the hall. He crouched, took a deep breath, and lunged forward towards the target. He cleared the hallway in around a second, twisted the doorknob right in time, and plunged himself into the outside world.

He spotted Maria immediately, who was adorned in a ragged, blue dress and matching (very surprised-looking) eyes. It was like looking at a complete opposite of Shadow. He grabbed her hand instantly in a friendly handshake.

"So this is Shadow's friend!"

He looked out of the corner of his eye to see Shadow's killer demeanor, and he internally smirked.

Oh yeah, this was going to be interesting.


Trivia!

The Old House is an Anderson's fairy tale about a young boy who goes to visit a peculiar old man in an equally peculiar house. The young boy gives him his toy soldier as a sign of friendship, but the soldier is incredibly bored at the old man's stories, and complains about it every chance he gets. The extra was named after this story to get a sort of feel for Sonic's and Tail's place.

Arabian Nights and King Aurthur. Sonic had to get them from somewhere, right? :)