"Hey, Tails. Can you do me a small favor?" Knuckles asked one day while he was chilling with Tails. Tails often had days where he would do nothing but vibe with some music turned on, have snacks, and just chill. This started happening a lot more often now that he was out of a job and no longer doing any hero business. Other people started joining him in these activities lately as well. Yesterday, Sonic came by to do nothing but sit in his beanbag with a chili dog in hand, and Wave came by to get some ice cream with Tails. Right now, Knuckles was here to eat some homemade nachos and salsa, right until he asked Tails for a favor.

"Depends on what it is," Tails replied, temporarily turning off the music coming from the radio. "I have to draw the line somewhere." He was willing to do most things, considering all the things Knuckles had done for him in the past.

"I need to get my plane fixed. The one you gave me, remember? It's still broken and I have to go check up on the Master Emerald soon as my monthly checkup routine. I'd usually just ask someone else to take me there, but I think I'd rather get this done with and finish it." Knuckles popped a nacho into his mouth as he spoke.

"I mean…" It had been a hot minute since Tails has done any actual mechanical work. Ever since he boxed away all his tools and locked away his workshop, most of his time was spent either looking around for new hobbies or slacking off. Usually, it was slacking off. He didn't gain five pounds for nothing.

"Listen, Tails. You might not like it, but you're still the best mechanic around. Not to mention that you work for free. I reaaaaaaaallly need this to be fixed so I can do my duty as the guardian of the Master Emerald. You don't want to see me fail at that, do you?" Knuckles pleaded extra hard, hoping that the two tailed fox would be willing to give him a freebie.

Tails sighed, brushing his namesakes before getting up and stretching. "Fine...Let's go there now and get this over with." He stretched to the side, letting his back give off a satisfying crack.

"Oi!" Marine called out in her Downunda accent. "Are ya gonna go fix Knuckles' plane? You can't do that without me! I'm coming with you!" She ran down the stairs, straight towards the workshop, grabbing the toolbox that had been stashed away in some corner of the room. She ran back out the way she ran in, nearly falling over in front of the other two men. "I got the tools, Tails."

"...What are you doing in my house?"

"Don't you mean our house?"

"No, it is most definitely my house."

Knuckles carried Tails over to his place so they could finish the task quickly while Marine tagged along behind them. Marine was not quite as fast as someone like Knuckles, but she was fast enough to not be left behind in the dust.

Knuckles' home was a shack that he'd built himself. Knuckles started woodworking ever since he got the time to do so, and now he was good enough to build himself an entire house. Of course, he got a lot of help from the resident genius, Tails, back when he had full control over his eyes.

"Knuckles, I never asked, where did you sleep when you didn't have this home?" Tails asked, feeling the body of the old Tornado prototype. "You had to sleep somewhere, right?"

"Oh, I just slept under a tree. I'm used to that sort of stuff." Knuckles was doing that right now, watching Tails from the shade of a tree nearby.

"Enough yapping!" Marine slammed her toolbox down on the ground, startling both Tails and Knuckles. "Tails, I'm gonna need your assistance to fix this beauty! Now help me get started."

"If you just heard what she was saying, you would have thought that I was the assistant." Tails rolled his eyes and walked over to the engine.

The way that these things tended to play out was that Marine would look over the part of the plane that would need to be fixed, and tell Tails what it was. Afterward, Tails would tell her how that part works and how she would fix it. They have only gotten better at this after weeks of working together as partners.

"You know, if we worked like this, we could easily operate something like a mechanic like Boomer-" Marine was trying to ease this conversation into happening, but Tails was not in the mood to talk about this again.

"Marine, I'm not interested. Frankly, this shouldn't be happening in the first place. I'm just doing it because Knuckles is a cheapskate." Tails shut down the topic before Marine could continue it. As much as he enjoyed engineering, being a mechanic, and working with his dear friend to accomplish such tasks, he didn't want to set himself up to disappointment. Tails sighed, wondering how things all led up to this. Just a couple of weeks ago he was the most positive and optimistic person ever, believing that he would be able to fly a plane without being able to see a goddamn thing. Perhaps optimistic wasn't the right word. Perhaps it was naive. Perhaps he had grown too cynical or negative. Or perhaps he was just being a realist. Perhaps he could ask Silver about it.

Tails shook his head. He was using the word 'perhaps' way too much.

Tails had successfully repaired Knuckles' plane, leaving the echidna so he could fly over to Angel Island and do his duty. He and Marine returned to his home, snacking away at the nachos that Knuckles had brought. Tails thought that would have been the end of that. The last time for the foreseeable future that he would be doing anything that reminded him of his past; before he went blind. However, his brother seemed to prove him wrong on that note.

"Hey, Tails, I need your help with this," Sonic asked, leaning on the wall with one hand and balancing himself with it.

"What is it, Sonic?" Tails didn't look away or anything, as he had no reason to. He just stopped tapping his feet at the music that was playing and instead turned it off. He was listening to some jazz before Sonic had interrupted him.

"I found one of Egghead's secret bases. I know that you're like...this, but I would love it if you could come to help me. I already scouted the general area inside the building and destroyed anything that could harm you. I really, really, really need you on this trip, buddy." Tails could hear the blue hedgehog basically get on his two knees and begging for his assistance. The poor blind fox sighed. How could he say no to his brother?

And that was how he ended up in Sonic's arms, being carried over to one of Eggman's secret bases.

Inside the base, Tails absolutely refused to be carried through, even though it was arguably much more dangerous inside the base than the way there.

"What was going on here before you found it?" Tails asked, placing a hand on the walls as if he could sense something about the building just by doing that. He couldn't, of course, he wasn't some powerful psychic who could sense vibrations through metal and earth.

"Er, I don't know. It was mostly abandoned when I found it. You know that these sort of things are the few things in the world that I keep my tabs on." Sonic answered, placing both his hands behind his head.

"Well, I hope there are some interesting things here, otherwise it would have been a waste of time." Tails grumbled, pulling out his umbrella and using it as a cane to guide his way forwards.

"Aw, don't you think that spending quality time with your bro is not time well spent?" Sonic teased, nudging the little bro and chuckling to himself.

Tails giggled, loosening himself up and nudging Sonic back. "Yeah, I guess you're right. It's been a while since we've done something like this. I've been too focused on my projects since I...well since I went blind, and you've been busy being an absolute chad with Amy, huh?" Tails teased right back, clearly having no fear.

Sonic was so glad that Tails couldn't see him blush, but then he was left wondering when his little brother stopped being the pure, innocent sweet-hearted fox. Clearly when he met Wave. He knew she was a bad influence on Tails.

Sonic forced his way through a door, unhinging it and letting both of them through. He had concluded from the previous experiences he had with Eggman's little base of operations that the room with the biggest door was always the main room with the big computers. Tails crawled through the gap Sonic had made, and he could hear the engine of the room still active.

"That's strange." Tails muttered, paying attention to where the sound was coming from.

"What's so strange, bud?" Sonic squeezed through as well, popping his leg out of the wall and landing on his behind.

"There's an engine active somewhere. You said that this place was abandoned, right? Perhaps it detected when something had entered one way or another. That could be a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, it means that we will have an easier way of snooping around, but on the other...it might mean Eggman left something behind for any intruders." Tails frowned, clearly uncomfortable with the thought of having to deal with one of Eggman's bigger monstrosities while he was disabled.

"Loosen up, Tails. It's probably nothing. And besides, when was the last time Eggman actually did something that hindered major progress through any of our break-ins?"

There was a short silence between the two of them as they just stared at each other. The sound of the engine humming in the background was all that was heard.

"Sorry."

"It's fine."

Tails continued to snoop around through the machinery while Sonic was the one who was reading the logs for once. It was mostly confusing scientific mumbo jumbo for him, but he was sure that the more important parts were written in easy to understand words. Sonic was, of course, never a man of details, always looking for the big pictures that explained everything at once. Tails once described Sonic as the type of guy to have the same experience from reading a full book and reading a paragraph long summary of said book.

Meanwhile, Tails was just going through the motions of examining things, when in reality he was remembering and thinking of the good old days when he and Sonic would always go on fun adventures, beating up badniks and having a blast. Now, he mostly stayed indoors. Even before the accident, he moved on from adventuring and into engineering. Sonic was moving away from his younger years as well. He got a house; he started seriously considering how he should spend his money, even if he never even touched an accounting book; and he learned how to, even if it wasn't much, settle down for once. Things had changed for the two heroes of Mobius, and not just in the ways that people might have thought at first glance.

However, Sonic and Tails were about to relive a bit of their classic adventures real soon, whether they wanted to or not.

It started with Sonic skipping through all the boring bits and heading straight towards the final bit, where he hoped to get a summary of it all. Instead, Sonic found a bright red button. And like the distracted Mobian he is, Sonic pressed on it without putting much thought into it.

Tails, on the other hand, was carefully navigating through the room and reached his hand out on the wall hoping there was anything for him to grab. He didn't feel anything, so he moved his arm downwards only to accidentally push down on a lever.

These two actions combined started an alarm bell and showed a text on the computer screen in unmissable red letters, 'self-destruction sequence initiated'.

"Tails! What the fuck did we just do?!" Sonic yelled, grabbing Tails by the arm and rushing out of the room. Tails himself did not know what was going on just yet and was extremely confused.

"I don't know! Why are there sirens going off? Why would Eggman make these things anyway? It's not like he has any living subordinates that would need to escape before him."

Sonic stared at his brother for a second and blinked. He made an excellent point...although that would have to be answered later for now. He grabbed Tails as he did earlier, and booked it.

"There's a self-destruction sequence going on." He explained as his feet carried both of them through the corridors. "Unfortunately for us, that means we're gonna have to cut this trip early." Sonic groaned as he hoped this to be a more exciting adventure.

"Well, at least you get to have an exciting explosion happen as you leave." Tails giggled, wrapping his arms around Sonic's neck to not fall off. He wasn't entirely used to this, since whenever one of the two were getting carried, it was usually himself who was lifting Sonic above and over places.

Sonic rolled his eyes but continued running down the halls nonetheless. Doors closed around him as he ran, leaving him no other option but to find a new way out and quick. He looked around when he came to a four-way crossroad, hoping there was some sort of sign that would point him in a direction where they could escape. One direction read 'lift room', and Sonic decided that it was good of a room as any. He ran straight through and saw a massive room with a control panel for what was probably to open up the ceiling. Eggman must have planned this room to be the escape room with his eggmobile.

Sonic placed Tails down, causing a bit of confusion from the fox. "Sonic? What's going on?"

The hedgehog went over to the control panel to see which of these buttons would open up the way out. Perhaps it was the big red one. After all, Julian was not a man of subtlety.

It worked, and now all that was left was the escape. "Tails!" Sonic cried out, grabbing his hand. The giant metal ceiling was opening, letting natural sunlight hit the inside of the building."I need you to lift me and fly straight up when I tell you to, got it?"

"What? I can't fly! Are you insane?" Tails protested, letting go of the grip that Sonic had on his arm. The ceiling was completely gone now, and sounds of several machines exploding could be heard from a distance.

"Tails, you have to fly! There's no other way out! I'll tell you if anything happens, but it's an open sky, okay? Just fly!"

Tails, after several moments of hesitation, did as he was told and flew. He grabbed Sonic by his wrists and spun his tails, carrying them out of the base.

"That's it, Tails! Now just go straight forward!" They were out of the building, but that didn't mean they were in the safe-zone. A part of the base could have exploded and hit one of them, or even worse, the entire building could have exploded and engulfed them with it. And to be frank, Tails had enough explosions from Eggman that would severely harm his body.

Tails flew straight ahead until he was told to lower himself. They landed in an open plain, but Sonic got on his feet the moment they landed and moved towards the forest. The tall trees would provide extra coverage in protection.

As soon as they got a moment to breathe, a giant explosion came up and covered the sky with black smoke. Sonic braced himself in case a small piece of metal flew towards them or something, but thankfully, nothing happened. Sonic let out a sigh of relief and relaxed as he leaned his back into the tree they were hiding behind.

"Well, that was certainly something, wasn't it?" Sonic's head slid down the tree and onto the floor, his hand covering his eyes. "Haven't had an adrenaline rush like that in a while."

"Yeah, well, we aren't going to have one anymore. Not together at least." Tails was sitting on his rear with his knees pointing up and his arms resting on said knees. "This is going to be my last adventure with you. I'm sorry."

"What?" Sonic sat up, removing his hand from his head and placing it by his side. "Tails, just because the first base we go to in a while blow up by accident-"

"It's not because it blew up, Sonic," Tails cut him off. "It's because I was so reluctant to even fly. That's my whole thing! Or at least, it was. I can't fly anymore. It took me months to figure that out, and now that I do, I can't bring myself to fly at all. Even just now, when I was flying through empty space, all I could think about was how I would completely fail to react to anything that might happen all of a sudden." Tails wasn't about to have this kind of discussion right here, so he got up. He instantly realized he had no idea where he was and how to get back home, so all it did was show his seriousness.

"Tails, I know you still have it in you. Despite what you just said, you were able to do it. You aren't the cowardly kid I met when you were young. You are fearless, Tails. I don't know anyone else who would even dare to fly with blindfolds on."

"Well, you won't see me doing that anymore either. You can't make me go on these adventures with you!" Tails slammed his foot down angrily. Tears were slightly forming around his eyes, the only thing they could do nowadays.

"Tails, you're a hero! You show so many kids how special they can be! You're-"

"Sonic, I'm a disabled kid! I'm fucking blind! How am I going to help anyone when I can't even see what's going on! How am I going to save you when Eggman's newest robot has you in his grip? What else would I be other than baggage? How will I be any help to you?"

Sonic stayed silent. He had no answer to that. He just wanted things to be like old times, where he could run around the world with his best friend and just have fun, goof off, and pretend they were kids again.

"How?" Tails repeated, asking once more for Sonic's answer.

Sonic had no words to say.

"How?"

Sonic's fists curled up.

"How?!"

"I DON'T KNOW." Sonic, frustrated, slammed his fist straight into the tree they were leaning on. "...I don't know." His voice trailed off into a small whisper.

A moment of silence passed before Tails whispered in a low voice, "That's what I thought. Now take me home."

Sonic didn't say a single word as he carried Tails back to the fox's home. But to Tails, the tears he felt drop from Sonic's cheeks spoke a thousand words.


Thank you to Leodragon678 and UntoDelirium for beta reading this chapter. I don't know how I would be able to do it without you guys.

I have determined that Blind as a Fox would end at chapter 16, maybe 17 if I feel like stretching some things out a little bit.

Side note, this chapter started with me unable to write more than a hundred words a day, to me pumping out the entire escape sequence in an hour. Funny how writer's blocks work.

Double side note, would you guys like for me to respond to comments? If so, please let me know in the reviews.

Don't forget to leave a favorite and a review down below, and make sure to smash that follow button and ring the bell to get notifications when a new chapter is posted.

I'm so sorry