"T…Tails?"
Green eyes stared blearily up at Reason from the base of their cell, betrayed, confused. The skin under Amy's chin was marked with purple bruising just above her furline, and she moved with aching slowness from her beating at the hands of Rouge before.
"Ah, you're awake?" Reason smiled, brushing her fingers across the hedgehog's spined head.
Amy flinched backwards, dragging her wounded body away from Reason until she hit the bars of their cage.
"Are you hurt? I tried to be precise."
"Precise?!" Amy snarled. "You tried to kill me!"
"Quite the opposite. I calculated this to be the optimal route in ensuring your survival with minimal harm." Reason coiled her tails around herself with a sigh. "I'm sorry, I couldn't leave you to be killed by badniks, Miles would have been devastated."
As would she, though explaining exactly why would have involved a great deal of additional effort in what was already going to be a tricky conversation.
"Mi… Tails?" Amy narrowed her eyes. "You're trying to trick me."
"Not really much point in tricking you, we're already in a cell. No offence, but your value as a tactical asset doesn't generally extend for beyond 'hostage', and that doesn't really depend on you doing much beyond screaming at the right moments."
Amy frowned, still glaring. "Who are you?"
Reason gazed back, jaw set.
"My name is Reason." She watched the larger hedgehog carefully for any sign of movement. "I am…" She paused. "Well… Let's just say I'm… a… girl Tails. From space."
"What."
Reason sighed. This would be easier if she could just talk to Doodle directly, but she wasn't certain what conditions caused Amy's digital alter ego to surface.
"I'll need a diagram and more maths than you're comfortable with to explain more precisely, and I'm happy to do that when we get out of here. But for now, suffice to say that Miles is my, um, friend."
"... Why did you lie?"
"Because you murdered my sisters, and I didn't want to be killed." Reason shrugged before settling back into her tails.
"I… what?" Amy blinked, gaze turning hollow.
She had no idea which Amy she was talking to. It didn't matter, it was true for both for different reasons, and she'd stripped Amy's hammerspace herself, presenting a surprising number of weapons to the badniks escorting them right before handing over the contents of her own hammerspace. Amy was no match for her unarmed.
"Yes, I wasn't lying about the override chip. When the chip deactivated you called me Tails, and I went along with it to try and save Miles and myself. I sacrificed the emerald, and the sample of the cure, to save your life. We are now, to the best of my knowledge, on Angel Island, where Doctor Robotnik has successfully claimed the Master Emerald and established a flying fortress."
"This is terrible!"
"We are exactly where Miles needed us to be. He needs a dimensional portal generator, and the Master Emerald will be the power source."
"And just how do you expect to do anything from in here?" Amy rapped her knuckles against the solid metal bars, provoking a spark of energy from their surface. "Eggman isn't exactly an amateur when it comes to catching mobians."
"You forget that I am a loyal and faithful servant to Doctor Robotnik." Reason smiled, plunging her hand into the fur of her tails to pull out a small metal cylinder from the bountiful fluff. "Unfortunately I just didn't do a very thorough job when I was searching myself."
Reason pushed herself to her feet, a crackling green energy beam sprouted from one end of the cylinder as she squeezed its button in her grip.
"Come on, let's get out of here. We've got a lot of work to do."
The town wasn't the way he'd left it.
Miles alighted on the empty stone street, tails uncoiling with a now familiar absence of weariness as he gazed from one empty building to another.
The stone was the same. That bland, homogeneous grey brick, broken only by occasional doors and gaping holes, but the sky, the feel was unmistakable. That dull oppression that spread all the way up to the sun struggling to press down through the dreary haze.
The corruption had reached even here. Even if there was nowhere for the purple grass to grow, some undercurrent of the taint had still managed to work its way this far, permeating the area from below.
Miles frowned.
Could he even do anything about it? He'd managed to replicate the purifier liquid, but was ground penetration even a thing here? He'd managed to clear a wide spread of grass around the catacombs - including a section of beach to procure more sand, just in case - and it had even cleared the blackstone he'd tested it on without any trouble, changing it to simple grey stone in the blink of an eye, but he had no data as to whether it would work on a deeper level.
Not that he had a choice. Miles pulled out the conclusion of his conversations with Selene, externally barely more than a crude wooden copy of the sink he'd observed before, but internally a mess of pumps and wires, pipes and containers designed to constantly be drawing from a perpetually refilling series of Glass Half Fulls to pour a constant stream of purifier from the tap. Which it did the moment he affixed it to the nearest wall. Purifier soon flowed out onto the floor to produce a slowly expanding puddle of green that lapped stickily at his metal greaves.
That was… deceptively simple, all things considered. Miles gazed thoughtfully at the expanding pool of green as it oozed across stone with all the speed of the honey it was made from, turning grass green at the edge of town in a slowly expanding circle that gradually spread out through the trees.
That was it. It might never be completely purified, he might be too late, and he had no idea if it would soak into the ground beneath or if it would simply increase in depth and quantity until it flowed out to sea, flooding the labyrinthine cave networks in the process. But either way, the corruption was now officially in remission. From this central location it would flow out in all directions equally, all the way down into Hell through the massive shaft in the centre of town. There was just one thing he still had left to do.
Pulling out his drill, Miles bored a hole into the street, revealing bare dirt beneath.
"Ulnah, ring please." He held out his hand, accepting the portal ring from his skullfairy companion a moment later to place it neatly into the indentation. Bubbles came up from the portal as liquid displaced air on the other side, a slow but endless drizzle. She could just patch up the hole when she had all she needed, and the amount leaving the portal was less than his sink was putting out so it would keep expanding, albeit at a slower rate.
And… That really was it. He could build more sinks, but that was just accelerating things. Maybe some kind of automated digbot to make tunnels through the earth below but this was basically his scorched earth lava plan without the downsides, the corruption couldn't return where the purifier had pooled, and the sink would keep flowing until the tap was submerged - something that would presumably take months to happen based on the terrain he'd seen from above.
It was… almost fitting in a way how little fanfare there was. He'd read every book he'd found in the catacombs, well over a hundred and with a sneaking suspicion he'd left still more undiscovered, all describing worlds lost without him ever knowing. He certainly didn't deserve praise for fixing his own mess here, barely scratching the surface of all that came before.
… Eh, screw it.
"Ulnah, high five." Miles raised his hand.
"Ulnah mgkadishtu?" The skullfairy left him hanging.
"You don't know what a high five is?" Miles frowned. "Can you actually learn new things? I'm going to have to try teaching you some tricks."
Well, for now he'd just have to find Cosmo and the Creams. Maybe Sept would high five him? Miles strode through the silent street, calling out various names and peering into doorways as he went.
And a hundred eyes watched him go.
