"Wow" Tails said looking around him in awe, trying to forget everything that happened to him in the past hour "I can't belive that in another universe, I have a workshop like this"
"Yep" Miles said smoothly like how a father would to his son "Now, I want you to take a look at this."
Miles was gesturing at a large clearing which held an all too familiar looking mech. The Cyclone. However, this Cyclone looked as if E123 Omega and the Cyclone had a baby, and that baby grew up with a steroid addiction.
It was at least 5 times bigger and had more firepower. It also seemed to serve as a submarine, a spaceship and what looked to be a sports car, and right in the middle of it was an all too familiar chaos emerald. Tails' eyes lit up as he looked at the newly improved mech, his mind whirring with all the capable possibilities.
"Woah." Tails said completely lost for words
"Fit for fighting Mario." Miles said "Bowser and I have been working together, Willy had made a few points, but that was before Mario relived him of his spine."
"So. Whats the problem?" Tails said
"Not strong enough." Miles said bluntly "This thing can exert with the force of a nuclear bomb…"
"WHAT!?" Tails hollered "ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL SOMEONE!?"
"No" Miles immediately fired back "For starters, this thing, or to be more precise, the max mode is ONLY to be used on Mario. And Second of all, do you know how powerful Mario is now? How strong he is?"
Tails shook his head, Miles sighed heavily as he tried to think on how to explain this situation to his alternate counterpart. "Mario. Or what he calls himself, Emperor Mario, can destroy plies of brick with one punch. He destroyed an entire castle with one kick. Do you know how powerful that is?"
Tails said nothing as his overloaded mind tried to comprehend what Miles was saying
"And this was before he became evil. And we know he is at least twice if not trice as stronger." Miles concluded. "and if the Iblis incident told us anything, Mario's power ups as well as a few other factors make him more powerful than ever before. His mushrooms, tanoki suit, star man. I can go on forever on how he used it to beat us time and time again. And yes, we are NOT killing, we are only aiming to knock out. We are better than what Mario is now."
Tails nodded slowly as he examined the new Cyclone "Where are the blueprints?" Tails said, trying to change the subject.
"Over here" Miles said flying up to an overcrowded alcove where he dug up a large blueprint diagram for Tails to examine
"Okay, so." Tails said looking over the diagram as if trying to comprehend each and every atom on the paper "I think your hydraulics are a bit out of place, and this arc reactor needs a few tweeks and…"
A few hours later the two foxes were at hard work adding adjustments to the Cyclone. "So…" Tails said looking up at Miles "What was life like. When Mario uh…."
Tails knew he said something wrong because he saw something in Miles' eye, as if he was reliving an awful memory. Miles then shook himself as if his bones had been transformed into jelly and then he turned to face his counterpart, his face completely serious.
"I have been through so much." Miles said, sounding more like a parody of Shadow than anything else "Everyone in the resistance."
"I know" Tails said meekly
"So much death. Betrayal. Destruction and chaos." Miles said, talking more to himself than anybody else "The lantern corp wars. Iblis revival. There was even a time when Mario almost ripped Sonic's legs off, but fortunately I was able to heal his wounds. And then…"
However Miles seemed to trail off at this as his face changed to an extremely unreadable expression, as if he was a solider that was reliving a thousand battles in the hundreds of wars that he had fought in.
Tails knew that there was something that Miles wasn't telling him, and he was determined to know what it was. And yet somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he would be better off without the answer.