The night before…
"So, um… I'm going to Twinkle Park tomorrow with… Cream…" Tails was alone in his workshop, talking to himself, which was pretty normal for him. "It should be fun, but I don't want to make everything awkward and weird for her… And these tickets are…" All of a sudden, Tails had a breakdown and slammed his fist down on his workbench. "Going to Twinkle Park with Cream?! Ugh! Why on earth did I think this was a good idea?! And with these tickets for cute couples?! She's going to think I like her or something! I never should have accepted these from Vector! But I bet Cream's really looking forward to tomorrow, so there's no way I can just cancel on her… She'd be so disappointed, and she'd probably hate me forever!" With a despairing whimper, Tails put his chin down on the workbench and covered his ears with both hands. "So, what can I do?"
After a long time despairing, a lightbulb went off in his head. "Oh, I know! I can research the park to make sure everything goes smoothly!" So he quickly rolled his chair over to his computer and firstly did an internet search to try and get a map of the park. That turned out to be a less simple task than initially expected. Tails squinted at the screen. "Huh. It's strange that Twinkle Park doesn't have a map on their webpage or any of their social media accounts… What are they hiding?"
Still, it wasn't like it was any trouble for Tails to get a map. They were handed out for free as physical pamphlets at the park entrance. All he had to do was find one that had been scanned and posted online. Barring that, he could always visit a forum or file-sharing server and ask around. But Twinkle Park was a pretty popular theme park, so it turned out he didn't have to look too hard to get a copy of the map.
"Ugh, a lossy image file type. Look at that low quality and blur. I can barely read the text. Come on, guys, you can do better than that. I guess some people have to worry about file size and bandwidth, but with the high-speed processor I've installed, my baby here can download gigabytes of data in milliseconds!" With a proud look, Tails patted his computer. "The fiber optic cables I installed for the internet connection in this area helped too. No more waiting on electrical propagation. Heh."
Feeling a bit embarrassed by his own bragging in spite of no one being around, Tails cleared his throat and took a good look at the map. "Alright, so what have we got here? Twinkle Circuit… Hmm… Do tickets to Twinkle Park get you in there too or… not? I've especially got to worry about that since these are promotional tickets. I better check what's written on those tickets and cross-reference with the park's website. Hmm… Merry-go-round… That seems like something Cream would like. Ohh, right, the rollercoaster! You know, I've always thought rollercoasters were pretty impressive feats of engineering. Come to think of it, I think I remember reading an article about them once…"
From looking over the map of Twinkle Park, Tails's train of thought naturally led him to doing some research on rollercoasters. Their engineering was pretty fascinating. It was all fun and games while he was looking over schematics, but then he stumbled across some news articles. They were all terrifying articles about catastrophic rollercoaster disasters—of people getting injured or even dying when rollercoasters broke down. Each one Tails read was more horrifying than the last, and his heart raced with dread, yet Tails couldn't tear himself away from the screen. Not until he found the most horrifying story of all.
"'Fifty years ago, the ultimate rollercoaster was forged out of wood and steel… Or so the world thought…'" Tails gulped. He was scared, but his gaze was glued to his computer monitor, so he continued reading. "'As well as supposedly being the safest rollercoaster ever constructed, it was also the tallest, reaching far above the stratosphere. However, on its very first voyage, there was a horrible accident. A screw in a load-bearing beam was vibrated out of place due to the whole structure shaking. The physics of such tall buildings were not well understood back then, and they really had no business trying to make such a thing. Twenty-two passengers embarked on the rollercoaster's maiden voyage, but halfway through the ride, the whole track fell apart. Steel beams rained down on those below, injuring twenty and killing seven. As for the passengers, as it fell the rollercoaster burned up on reentry and became nothing but a scrap of metal, with all of the passengers completely reduced to ashes. After all the public blame and guilt over the accident, the head engineer of the project mysteriously disappeared days afterwards. Many more deaths occurred over the following days, due to the debris destroying vital public facilities, including a hospital and a water plant. All in all, the rollercoaster claimed the lives of forty-three victims, all of whom are thought to haunt the grounds of the permanently shut-down theme park. '"
"Rollercoasters… so we might be riding a rollercoaster…" Tails gulped. It was the middle of the night, but he was wide awake. His whole body was shaking uncontrollably. In a flash of movement, he booted down his computer, dashed to his bed, and hid under the covers.