Sonic and Tails: An Origin Story
by milesprower06
Island of Angels, Part 3
With a groan and final push, Sonic rose above the last bit of rubble that had fallen on top of him in the landslide. Slowly getting to his feet, he checked himself over for any major injuries, finding a couple bruises, more than a few scrapes, and some cuts that were no more than skin deep. He took a deep breath as he looked to the sky as he gave a slow stretch, seeing that the sun had gone down, and the night sky was clear. Rubbing the spot on his head where the chunk of rock had hit him and knocked him out for clearly more than a few hours, he climbed the closest pile of rubble to get his bearings.
He, and an immense volume of dirt and marble had rolled almost entirely down the mountain. A couple of miles down over several more hills, he saw clear signs of artificial lighting, which was blotting out some of the stars above.
Was that... An amusement park?
Tails looked up at the starry night sky, stretched out on the top wing of the Tornado where Sonic usually stood. After the tarp had dried from the rain, he rolled it up halfway to serve as a half-decent bedroll. It was more comfortable than the sand and he got stiff when he sat in the cockpit for more than a few hours.
He had never seen stars like this before back home, the light pollution was always too much. But out here was much different, aside from a light source coming from the northwest area of the island.
If he was honest with himself, he was still coming to terms with being on standby like this. He loved the sense of adventure that Sonic brought with him wherever he went, and there were certainly times where having two facing off against one of Eggman's machines was better than one, even when one of them wasn't blazing fast. He knew that he was more than Sonic's mechanic and pilot; he was a good friend. When there wasn't a lot of downtime, it was easy to forget. When this was said and done, the two of them definitely needed a vacation.
But Tails did have to admit that the hedgehog was right; he had needed this downtime to rest and recuperate after going almost thirty hours with barely any sleep. Now that he had spent the late afternoon, evening, and beginning of the night catching up on those Z's, he was now itching to get back into the air. But, as much as he wanted to start doing circles around the island searching for Sonic, he had to mind the fuel, and he didn't want to waste any keeping eye on things overhead if he wasn't needed yet. And he was also safe down here; the longer he spent up in the air, the chances only increased of him being spotted by one of Eggman's badnik patrols, and he had so far been lucky enough to have this beach entirely to himself for the past fourteen hours. The best chance at refueling in a place like this would be from where it usually came from in the field; siphoned from the wreckage of whatever creation Eggman sent after them next.
He had gotten a decent amount of sleep already, and had done more than one walk-around of the Tornado before he had lost the sun, so now there was almost nothing to do but lay here and wait. Normally if he had known he had all this time to kill, he'd start prioritizing what he could upgrade next on the plane. But the tools in the cargo compartment were for basic and emergency maintenance, and with everything he had done with the Tornado already, there was nothing that could likely be done in the field, except maybe for rigging gatling guns from some of Eggman's robots, and that was also unlikely, because he'd also need to find a compatible sync gear to keep said weapons from shredding the plane's propeller. It would also be a question of weight; their biplane of choice was quite maneuverable because there was no added ballast of offensive weapons or ammo.
Tails noticed a flicker at the far reaches of his peripheral vision, and he turned his head to notice that the light source in the northwest had gone out, and the star field above had almost doubled, with the moon above being the only source of light as the waves continued to gently crash onto the beach.
'Wow...'
Sonic felt another rush of air as he felt his body being carried up one of the several pneumatic tubes he had encountered throughout this park. He had no idea what Eggman's intentions were with a theme park on an island like this, but it was never anything good.
The tub deposited him dozens of feet down on the next level, almost on the ground, and he saw the surrounding jungle through the fence line, and stopped in his tracks when he saw the red echidna standing by a breaker box.
"You!" Sonic exclaimed, screeching to a halt. "Look pal, I don't know what you've heard from Eggman, or why you're helping him, but I promise you that he's using you."
Saying nothing, the echidna uncrossed his arms, and reached for the main lever of the breaker box, and yanked it down with a clank, plunging what was a super-bright amusement park into complete darkness.