"Alright, this'll be the last one." A young fox cub basks in the electric blue glow of a large computer monitor before him, reflecting even brighter blue eyes that contrast with the thick coat of amber fur. A heavy satchel bag dangles from his shoulder, almost overflowing with storage drives and circuit boards. The terminal he's at is plumbed into the powerful communicator on his wrist, which beams the information to his Cloud. The terminal in front of him seems to be the only thing left standing in the darkened room, littered with shredded metal and electronic debris. Piles of robots line the walls, many with panels deliberately cut out.
"Tails, I'm done over here. Ready to come out?" A voice echoes from outside the cavernous space.
"I'm almost done, Sonic! I'll be out in a jiffy!" Tails hollers back, twitching his two golden tails. He unplugs the computer from his watch, and closes up the bag. He makes his way down the hall toward the door, his red sneakers scattering the odd bits of debris. Jogging past the entrance, he briefly squinting in the sunlight. A bright blue hedgehog stands there, waiting for him.
"Heh. Took ya long enough." Sonic playfully pokes at the fox with a gloved finger.
"I actually think that was pretty fast. The gymnastics I had to code in to get around that firewall would make your back hurt." Tails shoots a faux smug look in response. He lifts on the handle of his bag, "Speaking of which, I'm gonna put this thing away, because the strap's digging into my skin," he fiddles with the band of leather as he walks away, toward the two biplanes sitting side-by-side before the two brothers.
One is clearly of a more antiquated, prewar design: solid red fuselage with white stripes, muted grey upper and lower wings, and intricate support structures to keep those wings rigid. The plane's name, the Tornado, is neatly engraved in a plaque on the side of the cockpit. Tails runs a gloved hand along the leading edge of the right wing, before walking around the grey engine cowling, careful to avoid hitting his head on the two-bladed propeller. The thought alone makes him rub the back of his head.
The second plane now comes into full view. Despite being another biplane, this one has a more advanced design that hinted towards greater performance. A large black cowling tapers into the bluish purple fuselage, with yellow accents on the front of the fuselage and the leading edge of the wings. An insignia, resembling the fox's two tails, emblazons the wings and stabilizer. Tornado II beams at him in engraved letters.
He pauses and sets the bag down on the wing, taking a moment to stretch before jogging back to Sonic, who'd begun to climb into the Tornado. The fox spins his tails until they produce enough lift for him to fly like a helicopter, and he lands perfectly in the open cockpit. The array of switches on the panel in front of him hint that this isn't any ordinary biplane. They look aft of the cockpit, where a panel had been removed for better access to the cargo space, a tube that ran almost all the way to the tapered end of the tail.
They've come here to raid an old Robotnik base that's carved into a plateau. The past several hours had been spent painstakingly clearing the outpost of traps and threats, and using portable saws and acetylene torches to remove sections of material from the devastated robots and structures inside. Above them looms a large concrete bust of the Doctor's iconic, if infamous face. The biplanes are laden with cargo. The mostly original Tornado lacks the sophisticated internals of its newer iteration, and thus its larger cargo space was filled with material samples. Everything from unique metal alloys to synthetic plastics have been tied to hardpoints throughout the hollow space. The Tornado II, while designed with cargo in mind, had been filled with supplies and the tools necessary to collect such samples, so it carried the lesser load of circuit boards and data drives that Tails couldn't process with his laptop.
"So, what do you think of your new toys?" Sonic enthusiastically asked his brother, who fixates on the sight before him.
"There's so much material here for me to study!" The kitsune beams. "Thanks so much, this was a great idea!" They dismount from the plane together.
With Sonic's hand on the cub's back, they walk over, past the planes, to the edge of outcropping, to take in the view one last time. Before them sprawls a vast landscape. A thin ribbon of water cascades down the glacial-cut wall on the far side of a valley, snaking into a river that divides the natural masterpiece.
"Y'know, for such a terrible person, he sure does have taste in property," Tails remarked, his sapphire eyes fixated on the waterfall.
Sonic looks down at him with green eyes. "You…you do have a point there, bud."
"Yeah, it's just another one of the million other things that makes this life incredible." After one last gaze across the beautiful horizon, they return back to the planes, and embrace each other before they split into their aircraft.
"Have a good flight, Tails,"
"You too, Sonic."
Both pilots do a walkaround inspection of their beloved planes, but Tails does a more thorough inspection, double-checking hatches and ports. Sonic had already vaulted into the cockpit of his red Tornado before Tails had even finished his preflight. The fox grabs the bag of tech off the wing, and flies into the cockpit using his tails. He secures the bag in a special compartment behind the pilot's seat, before settling himself in.
Once he was strapped in, Sonic thumbs the wired handset for the radio, specially designed by Tails to reduce the wind noise of the open cockpits. "Lightspeed to Slowpoke, come in Slowpoke," he teases.
"Hey, you know the drill: slow and steady wins the race, while fast and lazy crashes in the waves."
Sonic rolls his eyes. "So what's our flight plan home again?"
"Ugh. I thought you wrote it down already. We'll climb to 6,000 feet and maintain a heading of 027 degrees."
"Gotcha, thanks!"
"No problem."
"So… without further ado, let's get this party started!"
They begin the startup procedure for their large radial engines.
"Fuel pump," Tails mouths from habit as he flips the switch. "Mixture to idle, and throttle to 1200." The large reciprocating engine growls as the large three-bladed prop starts to rotate. On the second revolution he engages the starter, and after a few seconds of the whining magneto, the powerplant roars to life in a perfectly-executed start. Always ecstatic to see his babied engine run so smoothly, Tails looks over at the hedgehog's plane, which had also completed its startup, but smoke bellows for the first few seconds as the engine starts with too rich of a mixture.
"Well, she's definitely not missing any meals."
Sonic suppresses a giggle "Shut up."
Tails throws a lever inside the cockpit, and flaps deploy from the lower wing.
"I'll take the lead, Sonic." Tails calls as he advances the throttle. The throaty engine shouts as the revs increase. The plane starts to move down the cleared outcropping, with the large suspension handling the bumps with ease. Soon, the tail wheel lifts off the ground, followed by the rest of the plane. As soon as the gear leaves the ground, Sonic follows suit with his own takeoff. He's nowhere as experienced with flight as his brother, but he leaves without a hitch. Tails slows down so Sonic can catch him, and both planes make a gentle curve towards the northeast, and soon the grassy plateaus give way to oceanic swells below them. They climb to 6,000 feet and maintain their course.
"So, Sonic," Tails begins over the radio, "Do you notice anything different?"
"Oh yeah!" The hedgehog excitedly responds, "The Tornado feels so much smoother to fly!" He performs a gentle aileron roll, to the amusement of his brother. As he levels back out, he continues, "I saw you tinkering with it earlier while I was cutting away metal. Were you tightening the control cables?"
"Yeah! I'm surprised you knew exactly what I was doing." The fox chuckles, " I must be rubbing off on you ."
"Nah, I still don't understand how half your stuff works; I only know what it does, and how I can use it. I don't have to learn how it works either, since you always do such an amazing job, buddy."
The fox puts a hand behind his head, "Well, you knowing how to use it is what's important."
"Wrong. It's spending the day with you that's important, bro." He could hear the fox's appreciative hymn over the radio. "...and what a day it is. This weather's perfect for flying!" He dips the wings to get a feel. "Coming here, we were fighting a turbulent headwind of what, 10 knots?"
Tails checks his log, "14 knots, and I agree, that wasn't fun. It turned into a slight crosswind when we came in to land, too. It was like flying in a… ulp …thunderstorm"
"Alright, I don't need you scaring yourself," the speedy hero chuckles.
"Good point."
"But I'll say it one more time, buddy: you and me, in these amazing machines, with this weather? Today, we own these skies, my friend. We own the skies, you and I."
"Yes, yes we do, Sonic." The kitsune tilts his head, "Hey, aren't those song lyrics? I feel like I've heard that before."
"I dunno, they probably are."
Movement catches Sonic's eye. He glances over to see his wingman wrestling his tails back inside the cockpit so they stop flailing in the propeller wash. With the offending appendages finally stowed behind the pilot's seat, Tails glances over to see Sonic watching him, and braces for the inevitable deadpan over the radio, only to receive the dismissive wave of Sonic's hand. Even from this distance, Tails' eyes tell Sonic that he made the right choice; his history makes even good-natured ribbing about his appearance a risky business.
Besides, there are so many other ways to poke fun at him, and it doesn't quite work when Tails can simply mute the radio, especially when Sonic, who still can't swim, is flying over the ocean.
Sonic decides to leave the young pilot be, and the next few hours succumb to the harmonious drone of radial engines.
The peaceful monotone is broken by the deep, powerful rumble of fast-approaching jet engines. Both pilots jolt into action, scanning instruments and their surroundings for signs of the incoming bogeys. Nothing shows up on radar. Tails pulls up for a better vantage point, pitching his Tornado II from side-to-side as he looks about.
"Badniks on our right!" Tails' voice cracks over the radio. Sonic looks up to see blinding tongues of light reach toward the planes. The aircraft reel from powerful laser pulses slamming into their right sides. He levels back out in time to finally see their adversaries; a formation of three Balkiry fighter badniks appear from their 2 o'clock position and rocket underneath the two biplanes, too fast for them to even think about intercepting.
Worried about the bots potentially circling around and making another pass, Sonic banks his agile plane into an aggressive turn to face the Balkirys. The pitch of the propeller's hum rose with the change in direction before returning back to normal. Even over the snarling radial engine and the personal hurricane stirred up by the propeller, Sonic still should've been able to hear a similar change in pitch from Tail's plane as he executes a similar move, but he hears no such thing.
Sonic looks behind himself to see Tails' plane continuing straight, seemingly unaware of Sonic's departure. He picks up the radio.
"Tails, we need to protect our 8 o'clock position. Turn around." He receives no reply.
"Tails, those bots could make another pass, and we can't outrun them." Again, no reply.
He starts to get frantic. "Tails! Do you read me, buddy? I repeat: do you read me?"
Sonic's mind churns for answers to his friend's silence. "Maybe his radio's out," came a naive suggestion. The thought was instantly countered by his experience with Tails. "No, that makes no sense. Tails has lost radio contact before, many times. That only affects the comms between us, not his ability to observe what's happening. Tails not hearing me break off makes no sense, either; the kid has very keen ears. If I can hear his engine pitch change with ears that have endured countless sonic booms and explosions, his canine ears definitely would've heard me." As Sonic arrives at his conclusion, tendrils of dread ascend his spine, "Something is wrong. Something is very wrong."
Sonic throws the Tornado into a violent turn, pushing the engine to full throttle to catch up with his lifelong friend. The upper wing groans in protest to the forces acting on the airframe, but Sonic has confidence in his friend's craftsmanship. However, his way of fastening down the samples of robotnik material wasn't of the same quality. The straps tying down the heavier samples have slipped, leaving several very dense pieces of metal to scoot around the cavity of the fuselage. Sonic can feel the shifting weight affect the plane's handling, but he doesn't dare take his eyes off of Tails' Tornado II. The blue biplane is now a substantial distance away, and Sonic will give it his all to close the gap.
He is now directly behind his friend, at a distance of about 3,000 meters. After a short while, the speck thankfully starts to grow larger and larger; Tails is cruising at well below his maximum speed, and Sonic closes the gap in mere minutes.
Sonic throttles back to reduce the closing speed. He breathes a long-awaited sigh of relief when he sees the control surfaces on the plane moving; Tails is still in some sort of control. Sonic continues to close the distance.
Sonic starts to feel the sensation of tiny impacts, as if he were flying through a light rain. Tiny dark splotches appear on the windscreen. As he approaches the rear of Tails' plane, the droplets increase in both numbers and size: fluid is slowly leaking from Tails' plane. Sonic's dread returns once more, but he resists the feeling; He needs to focus on getting to Tails safely, and can't afford to panic.
"It's just engine oil," he unconvincingly reassures himself, "maybe they shot his engine. Maybe it's fluid from the hydraulics in the wings. Maybe-" He trails off, distracted, as a particularly large droplet makes it through the propeller and hits his face.
He distinctly feels the impact filter through his hair and reach his skin. The gale whipping through the open cockpit traces out the droplet's path across his face with a cooling sensation. This finally breaks Sonic from his trancelike fixation on catching up to Tails, and he takes a second to collect himself. The two planes are so close now that he can feel the turbulent wake of Tails rocking his plane. The mist of unknown fluid is also much more dense than before, and he finally registers the smell that has accompanied the mist. A metallic, coppery smell.
Sonic's world slows to a crawl as he mentally pieces the horrific puzzle together: Tails' plane is leaving a trail of blood. Tails' blood .
"No, no, this can't be happening," he panics, "this can't be happening!" He accelerates beside his stricken brother's plane, and hesitantly peers down into the cockpit.
The scene before him will forever be etched into the hero's mind.
His lifelong, inseparable companion, is badly injured. The young kit is doubled over in pain. Red stains litter his vibrant gold fur, his back speckled with a dozen, deep cuts. A crudely wrapped bandage somewhat covers a large gash in his right tail.
"Miles!" He calls out Tails' real name over the growl of the engines, "Miles, I'm coming to help!"
A bloodstained Tails examines the wounds he can reach. As far as he can tell, the shards of metal embedded in his right side have hindered the bleeding, and the gauze tape on his tail, while not perfect, will at least keep him conscious for long enough. His right arm is pinned to his side to ease the pain of moving his muscles. He understood exactly what happened. Even wincing through the pain of a dozen knives in his back, he knew how this much shrapnel became the result of a single hit. This is spalling damage, he thought, I must've done something wrong while heat-treating the metal, and that made it brittle. Now I am paying for that mistake - in blood. None of that matters right now, though. I need to get down on the ground now or I won't have a chance to fix my error.
Tails sees something moving in the corner of his eye. He instinctively whips his head to see - and is met with both the twinging pain of unsettled shrapnel, and Sonic on the upper wing of his plane, trying to board Tails' plane. He quickly pitches away and adjusts his plane a dozen more feet away to break Sonic of his poor decision.
"I'm trying to help you, bro!" Sonic's aggravated shout is just barely audible over the engines. Tails picks up the radio in response, and realizes the damage had severed the antenna. Knowing the internals of the Tornado II like the back of his stained hand, he feels for the ground wire for a light switch, and rips it out. Using his right arm, he ignores the pain to bridge the connection, twisting the more flexible wire over the ends of the rigid antenna.
Getting back into the pilot's seat, Sonic finally hears the radio again. "Stay in -in your plane. D-Don't worry about me." Tail's pain-ravaged voice can finally be heard.
"I am very much worried about you, little bro. You bleeding like this isn't at all normal, and you know it. I am coming over there, and-"
"You are most definitely not coming over here!" The kitsune sighs, "I'm gonna be fine. You worry about yourse-"
"I am not the one who looks like an extra from a horror movie! I'm comin' over there to help you." Sonic again reaches to grab onto the top wing.
Tails takes a deep breath, and changes tactics. "Sonic, before you do anything stupid, listen to me. I know you're scared for me, and don't get me wrong, I'm scared too, but you - you need to listen to your common sense."
"Tails," the blue hedgehog snaps back, gripping the edge of the cockpit, "your blood is literally dripping from your plane, onto me . Don't try and tell me that 'it isn't that bad,' because it is that bad."
"You-You didn't let- let me finish." The shaky reply stopped Sonic before he could go any further. Even over the radio, against the din of the engine and wind, Sonic recognized the tone of his younger brother's voice. Tails was talking about something far deeper and more pressing than the mission, planes, or himself. Sonic takes a second to compose himself. "I… I'm sorry buddy. I'll let you finish."
Tails looks around his body at his various wounds. He sees a puddle of blood on the floor slowly evacuating through the jagged hole in the fuselage. He puts the radio down and takes in all the damage, both to the plane and himself, and steadies his breath. He finally picks the radio back up.
"Sonic, I'm not arguing with you... I know what it looks like, and I sure as hell know what it feels like. I understand why you're so concerned. I'm in bad shape."
"I know you're hurt, but… stop stating the blatantly obvious," Sonic teases, trying to lighten the mood with an old classic.
Annoyed at both getting interrupted and his brother's overused phrase, Tails asserts himself. "W-Why should I stop when you still haven't noticed something else that's blatantly obvious ?" He knows he'd backed Sonic into a corner, and presses on, gesturing at himself.
"Listen to me. Listen to my voice. I'm still talking. I'm still in control of the plane." He cycles the control surfaces for effect. "The pain isn't bad enough to take me out of the fight. I'm still able to function."
He pauses, and sees that Sonic is still fixated on the wounds. Obviously, he's getting nowhere if Sonic is so distracted. Tails grabs the yoke, and pulls back to the right. The plane rises into the air and dips into the bank. As if in a single fluid motion, he crosses over the top of the brilliant red biplane, and settles alongside it, wingtips a mere dozen feet apart. He can now look toward Sonic without disturbing his cuts, and Sonic can no longer see most of the damage.
Sonic makes no attempt to return to the prior formation. The radio crackles back to life as Tails pushes his message. "You, on the other hand, arent even hurt, yet can barely function. You're so focused on 'helping me,' but exactly what are you going to do once you get over here?" The pause beckons Sonic to respond, but he doesn't say anything. The kitsune winces as he raises the bandaged end of his tail, "I've already patched myself up as best I can. I'm gonna be fine, for at least a while. Yet, you can barely keep your own engine running. Your mixture is way too rich, and you're going to flood the cylinders."
Sonic looks at the instrument panel, and his eyes widen. Tails is correct, he forgot to change back from the air-fuel ratio he used in the pursuit. At this low speed, too much fuel was being pumped into the engines for the air to combust. He adjusts accordingly to a more lean mixture.
Tails can hear the engine's tone change slightly as it adjusts to a more healthy diet. He now makes his final point, with a somber tone. "Sonic, I thank you for trying to be there for me. I'm so lucky to have such a caring brother, but sometimes you need common sense. We are flying above the ocean ." Tails lets the implications sink in before continuing, but he's quickly losing his composure. "If-if you fall off the wing, I can't save you. In this state, I can't use my tails to fly; I can only use them to slow my fall to something I'd survive. I can't carry your weight. If something were to happen, and... and we're b-both in the Tornado II, then..." He doesn't finish the sentence.
"But what difference does it make? Neither plane can float."
"You...You're wrong. I've rebuilt your Tornado specifically so it can float. The fuselage is watertight."
Sonic sits back, taken by surprise. He once again inspects the inside of the fuselage and realizes that there are no seams. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"It - It's not ready for any real use. It does float, but the...the weight of the engine drags it down, and it doesn't have much stability if the wings are damaged. I still need...need to engineer a way to jet-jettison the engine, and figure out how to pump the fuel from the wing bladders into a centralized tank to act as a k-keel, and ... maybe... pump air back into those bladders so they s-stabilize the plane."
"Aww, so no splashdown, then? That's a shame. But for real, thanks for thinking about me, little bro."
"Y-You're welcome, Sonic."
"Seriously though, we should keep these engineering tangents to a minimum. You were starting to sound really tired toward the end of that."
Tails yawns, disturbing his cuts. "Yeah, I agree."
He doesn't say any more, but he's just become aware how cold he feels despite the weather and his fur coat. A shiver, independent from the weather, descends his spine.
Similar thoughts haunt Sonic's mind, as he gets glimpses of the state of the kit's right tail. Man, that's a pretty large gash. With a much calmer mind, he takes in the bloodstains on his brother's body, controls, and cockpit. He tries to get in a position above Tails so he can see any puddles on the floor, but Tails matches every move he makes. Clearly, he's hiding the true nature of his injury, likely for Sonic's sake. It doesn't really matter anyway; Sonic knows that blood loss is going to be substantial, especially for such a small fox. The question is, how much blood can Miles afford to lose? How much longer can he keep this up for?
He looks over solemnly towards Tails, who blinks away tears, his face contorted in emotion. Watching his injured friend wrap his fluffy appendages around himself, Sonic realizes that soon they were both going to find the answer to such questions. He picks up the radio.
"T-Tails?"
"Ye-yeah, S-Sonic?"
"I know what you're thinking about, lil buddy. I know this is… scary for you. I am so sorry this has happened, but you need to remain calm . We'll get through this, I promise. We'll get through this, as we alway have in the past."
His brother's large ears flatten against his skull. "I-I kn-know, y-you say that-t, bu-but Sonic, I… we…" He buries his wet, shimmering face in the palms of his hands.
Sonic cups his hand over his mouth as the stab of anguish hits him. I feel so… helpless. I want nothing more than to hold him close and have him let it all out. I want to look him in the eyes and tell him that everything is going to be alright. Yet, with us physically separated like this, all I can give him are words. He tries to coax Tails into answering. "Hey, buddy?"
"Ye… Yeah?"
"A-are you alright?"
"At...at...at this point, I'm not... not even...not even sure any-anymore."
The hedgehog feels as if Tails' disjointed reply had ripped the heart out of his chest. His eyes begin to water. I-I don't believe it. I haven't seen him this utterly broken in years. He once again takes in the sorrowful sight, and chokes back tears. He's torn apart on the outside, and now he's tearing apart the inside. I know what I must say.
"Miles?"
"Y-yeah?"
"Remember what I said before we left Cocoa Island all those years ago? I am staying, and will always stay true to those words. No matter what you tell yourself, that will always be true. I love you, little bro, and I promise that we'll get through this."
The fox flinches as the memories flood in. Sonic's monologue marked the end of a horrible chapter in Tails' life. It was when he finally learned that there are good people in this world, and that he could start to put the trauma, the cliff edges, and the isolation behind him, and start on the road to recovery.
He folds in half and starts sobbing into his tail.
Sonic becomes worried that he made a wrong move reminding a physically and mentally battered Tails of his past, but the simple reply he gets back, between heavy sobs, quenches such fear.
"Thank...you..."
Beneath his bloodied fur, Tails understood exactly what Sonic's intentions were: Sonic had not just pulled him from the brink, but literally pulled him from the fall, and he'll do it again today. Even if they're separated, they'll always be together.
"It's the least I can do. I can't simply stand here and stare as you relapse and rip your mind apart worse than your body." Sonic turns back towards the quaking body of his brethren; his inseparable companion, wrapped in blood and injury, now filled with terror and anguish.
Eventually, the golden shoulders stop oscillating and the dramatic, syncopated motion of the white chest ceases into a gradual rise and fall. The kitsune releases his head from the embrace of a drenched tail, blinking away the final few tears to be collected in the maelstrom. Finally liberated from the grasp of emotion, Tails' mind is expectantly reminded of the assault that his body underwent. Jarringly, however, the artificial cold of fear and dread gives way to intense chills, ascending from the very core of his body. This is accompanied by an almost-throbbing sensation of pressure perspectively encompassing his brain, that becomes more intense in the region opposing a change in motion.
Reeling from dehydration, with the aches chipping away at his stamina, Tails clicks on the radio, preparing to speak, when suddenly, his left ear twitches. It was more of a perception than sound. A low rumble filled the air once more. Tails radios in the revelation. "Sonic, you hear that?"
"Hear what, buddy?"
"They're back."
The sky felt alive with the sheer volume of sound. To Tails' sensitive ears, the roar would've already been borderline deafening, but in his current state, it was excruciating. The kit covers his ears with his hands in a desperate attempt to save his hearing, but quickly discovers that it's of no use. His head feels like it was ringing like a bell, but he nonetheless picks up the radio.
"They're coming up our 7 o'clock! We need to face them - now !"
Both pilots know what to do next. Almost in unison, they look back at one another, and with a deft nod albeit painful for one of them, bank the planes into steep corners in opposite directions. Now with considerable distance between their planes, they face the swarm of bots head-on. The counterattack was much larger than the three-bot patrol they encountered earlier, and Tails knows all too well how that went. Squinting against the sun low in the sky, he can count 15 badnik jets coming their way.
Akin to meteorites igniting in the atmosphere, the sky became speckled with yellow points of blinding light. Tails knew what was coming and instinctively ducked, pushing his head down into the cockpit. Mere fractions of a second later, the inside of the cockpit lit up. He can feel the searing heat of a blast on his back, triggering more waves of pain, and then he hears a horrible mechanical crash off in the distance. With his own near-miss out of the way, he looks off to the left in time to see Sonic's plane, rolling out of control, fall from the sky.
There is no hesitation to Tails' action, nor is there even a train of thought. He now operates purely on instinct, and as he wrenches on the yoke and forces the Tornado II into a rolling dive, an entire plan materializes in a single spark of ingenuity. Pushing the nose down further, he accelerates on his intercept course for Sonic's stricken plane.
Sonic's continues to roll, each revolution causing the plane to lose lift and slowly angle more and more towards the down. Tails is diving at a much higher pitch, gathering massive amounts of speed. The altimeter is spinning so fast at this point, Tails figures that it must be producing some kind of thrust. "The more the merrier," he chuckles under his labored breath.
Now it's time to exit this dive. He starts carefully pulling up to avoid shearing the wings off at such speeds. He's rapidly catching up to Sonic's stricken plane, who's now at an extreme angle to the ground. Tails dives slightly more to put himself directly behind his brother, ignoring the signals of agony his devastated body throws at him as blood rushes back into his head from the positive G-force.
A flash to Tails' left reveals that the badniks are diving to intercept the fox. With a blinding flash, one of the lasers glances the top of Tail's lower right wing. The black scar on the metal serves as an additional reminder that they have to get out of there as fast as possible.
The kit takes a deep, painful breath. He knows how terrible this will be to experience, but he has no other choice. A familiar taste of copper forms at the back of his mouth, and his perception of time slows to a crawl as the powerful effects of adrenaline take hold. The radiating pain fades to a dull ache, and everything not pertinent to the plan is reduced to mere background noise.
With the spiraling Tornado directly ahead of him, Tails reaches for a switch on the control panel, and with a heavy, satisfying click, the true nature of the Tornado II is roused from slumber. Even against the din of the engine, the enemy craft, the ringing of his damaged ears, and the monsoon of throbbing pain his body desperately throws at him, the symphony of mechanical whirring and clicking of locks is like a choir of angels to the battered engineer. Hydraulics and jackscrews hinge the parallel main wings into a swept-back X formation, intersecting at 90 degrees. Inside the engine compartment, the intake system redirects air into several turbochargers that further compress the air before it enters the radial engine to be mixed with fuel and ignited. The turbines whine like a beast overcome with seething rage, ready to propel the biplane to velocities approaching the sound barrier. In a few short seconds, the normally unassuming biplane is now transformed into a borderline otherworldly machine. This configuration makes for a devastating interceptor aircraft, but Tails isn't going to use it for its intended purpose.
In the familiar grasp of the phenomenal machine, the young fox takes one last fraction of a second to compose himself before committing to the utterly ludicrous plan. His bloodshot eyes flick up towards the yellow leading edges of the transformed upper wings before glancing ahead at the lower wings of Sonic's rolling plane. Legendary synapses fire as he runs through the calculations one last time. He's the one who built and obsessed over both aircraft, and he's the one who knows exactly what they're capable of. The only question left is whether he himself is capable of completing such a feat. Doubt starts to trickle into his mind, but he fights against the advance of the deprecating emotion as hard as he can.
He watches the red fuselage of his brother's plane, rapidly spinning ahead of him. He can see the back of Sonic's head, sense the despair and panic that has all but overcome the hedgehog in such a helpless situation. As if on cue, images start to play in his mind, seeming to overlay on top of his actual vision. Seeing a gloved hand reach out against the blue sky, he realizes these are stills of Sonic's selflessness. In quick succession, his brain replays every time Sonic has saved Tails' life. Tears well in his eyes as he recalls Sonic carrying him out of exploding facilities, elaborate traps, and the brink of self destruction. Through both actions and words, Sonic had saved Tails from dozens of enemies, including himself. In mere fractions of a second, their life together, and what they mean to one other, has flashed before his teary eyes.
Now, he thought, it's time I finally return the favor. He firms his grip on the yoke, and with another metallic dose, his mind battens down as he finally returns to the echo chamber of survival.
With a grunt, he begins to roll with Sonic's plane, mimicking its every move, making sure to match the orientation of Sonic's plane throughout the roll. He takes a deep breath, and pulls back on the stick ever so slightly. Immediately, the plane responds, exiting the spin, and starting a tight corkscrew. In a remarkable display of airmanship, Tails maintains the maneuver with one hand as he creeps the throttle up with the other. With deft control, he keeps the top of his Tornado II aligned with the lower wing of Sonic's Tornado, each revolution bringing the two planes closer and closer to each other.
The air now comes alive with plasma tracers as the Balkirys dive in feverish pursuit. The planes are engulfed in the storm of lasers. Burn marks and holes start to appear in the wings and fuselage of the aircraft, but the fox refuses to back off his relentless dive. They are now barreling at incredible velocity, almost perpendicular to the churning ocean mere thousands of feet below, so that it consumes the view ahead of them, replacing the horizon with cold, drowning dread.
The bolts of charged matter whisk past his head - so close that even against the wind and through his thick, tear-soaked fur, he can feel the intense heat of each and every shot. One passes close enough to singe the fur on the side of his head, sending a ripple of pain across his skull, from the heat alone. Even with a target that's in constant, complex motion, the robotic jets are zeroing in on their prey. The gloved hand pushes on the throttle further, and the snarling engine, bolstered by the shrieking turbochargers, inches the fox closer to his brother.
Tails is now close enough to Sonic's plane to finally see the cause of the loss of control; the left-side flap is entirely missing from the wing, jamming the right side one fully down. The unbalanced lift from the large control surface vastly superseded the smaller ailerons, forcing the helpless plane into an unrecoverable roll. "Just hang on for a little longer, Sonic, I'm done messing around, here, " Tails thinks out loud, as he abruptly throws the throttle to the redline. The symphony of radial and turbines rise to a crescendo, as he maintains total and complete control of the plane throughout the incredible maneuver.
He's only tens of feet away now. He's so close to success. Just hold it a little longer, Tails, you got this. Before you know it, this will all be... His thoughts are interrupted by a subtle, unsettling shift in the aircraft. Something suddenly doesn't feel right with the way the plane handles. He notices the rudder pedals have stopped moving freely, and he starts to try and force them to move, just as his body finally registers the pain.
The guttural shriek of a wounded animal, a heart-wrenching sound of despair and utter agony, rose above all other sounds. Sonic, in his stricken plane, plummeting in a ferocious, disorienting spin, snapped his head behind him at the explosive shockwave of pain, to see the Tornado II in close pursuit, matching the roll and closing the gap. Normally, this would be a very welcome sight, but his own well-being is pushed towards the back of his mind, as he stares, unblinking, towards the hunched form of his little brother.
"No! Tails! Please, please tell me, tell me that wasn't you!" He already knew the terrible answer, but he hoped for the most miniscule possibility to be true.
He gets no reply.
"What else…do you think happened, Sonic?" Tails groans through the pain, not bothering to reach for the radio. He can barely keep his eyes open. His vision is a translucent mask of tears and blood. Rippling waves of agony radiate from his left shoulder. He feels the crater with his hand - the glove comes back soaked. Painfully craning his neck to look down towards the wound, he sees a band of crimson flowing down his golden fur, and out of sight. He curses. This is bad. Th-this is really bad… I've already lost a significant amount of blood, and can't afford to lose more, but there's pretty much nothing I can do about this. I guess… I'm gonna have to tough it out. He once again tests the rudder controls. They remain stuck. Ignoring the disoriented throbbing of his brain, he looks back over his injured shoulder, towards the vertical fin. He sees no rudder. He twists the other way to find the control shoved over to the right, with a large hole punched straight through the metal. Anger bubbles within him, and he curses his luck. A single shot got both me and the rudder?! I can't believe this.
He puts every single pain-riddled fiber in his body into resisting the urge to pull up. He has a job to do, and is so close to succeeding. He forces himself to maintain his course.
The nose of the plane finally reaches the tail of the Tornado, and slowly slips further down the length of the fuselage. At long last, when the yellow tips of the folded wings arrive underneath the gray lower wings of Sonics plane, Tails pulls back on the stick, ever so slightly. The two planes come together, the airframes creaking under the new load. Above the agony plaguing his once-golden torso, the brilliant young fox grins in self-satisfaction.
The slight jolt of the collision knocks Sonic out of his daze. Hurtling recklessly towards the sea ahead, he had all but accepted his fate. Now, he glances towards the lower left wing, expecting more damage from the firing attackers, only to see a purple object below the wing. "There's no way," he thinks out loud as he leans his body to the left, "there's no way he's this nut-" He stops mid sentence as he spots the yellow accents on the wing. He throws his body halfway over the left side of the cockpit and peers down, with utter shock, at the Tornado II below him. He fumbles for the radio, but Tails beats him to the punch.
"Sonic! Sonic, are-are you okay?" Even over the compression of the radio, something wasn't right about Tails' voice.
"About as okay as you can be at a time like this, lil bro. I'm not worried 'bout myself, though, I'm worried about you."
"Don't worry about me, I'll get you out of this mess."
"I heard you scream , Miles. What the hell happened back there?"
"Tis n-nothing, I swear."
"I know you're lying, buddy, but I'll need a look once we're out of this mess. You came all this way with a plan, didn't you?"
"Yes, yes I do have a plan!"
"Then let's hear it!"
"Great! I'm gonna need you to roll to the right, on my mark. I want to help you slow this roll down so we can pull up together. You got that?"
"I read you loud and clear, Miles. I'll roll to the right on your signal."
"Awesome! Then wait for my signal."
Tails gave one last sigh. He didn't like keeping secrets from his brother, but he can't afford to let Sonic know about the condition of his plane and himself. He steadies his breath, pushing a tail up to help cover the wound, and prepares his life saving maneuver.
"Three... two... one... HIT IT!"
Both pilots wrench their yokes to the left. The airframes creak against each other with unsettling ferocity. Tails feels another shot of adrenaline isolates him once again, but it's losing effectiveness; his body deems the injury to his shoulder too pressing to cover up.
The rotation of Sonic's plane starts to gradually slow down. Tails can practically feel his body's remaining energy depleted by the second, as he micromanages the throttle as he plays the delicate balance between the propeller furiously spinning ahead of him, and slipping off the end of the wing. He also has to constantly fight the rightward yaw from the severed rudder, flaring the yoke to cancel out the direction, and making ferocious twinges of pain ripple from his shoulder.
The air once again is swarmed with a shower of concentrated plasma. Holes start to appear with increasing frequency as the pursuing badniks steady their aim. Both pilots can feel the heat radiating off of every bolt that gets too close for comfort. The rotation continues to slow down from the resisting effort of the Tornado II.
A bright flash strikes the side of the muted gray cowling of Sonic's Tornado, and a gaping hole appears mere feet from the hero's face. The smooth growl of the radial engine transforms into a cacophony of grinding sounds indicative of an engine in its death throes. Tails looks up to see thick, oily black smoke pouring from the punctured cowling. He can feel small chunks of debris strike his own aircraft, as well as the stab of emotion from seeing one of his prized creations be destroyed in milliseconds.
The Tornado II suddenly started to slide forward on the wing, its propeller coming close to striking the propeller of the red plane. Tails backs off the throttle to slide back before bringing it back up. He dares take a glance at the horizon whipping in and out of view, to gauge his progress in reducing the spin. The kitsune releases a long sigh of tension and agony. He's beginning to feel sick, and the corners of his vision are starting to gray out, either from the G-force starving his brain of blood or simple loss of blood. He picks up the radio, clicking it to get Sonic's attention.
"Just hold her a little longer, Sonic," he croaks, "we're almost out of this."
He replaces the mic just in time for a deep shiver to work his way through his body, sending pulses from his shoulder, back, and tail. His head continues to throb with dehydrated lightheadedness. He wraps his namesakes around himself for warmth, tears of dread once again appearing before his eyes. He dares take a hand off the throttle to inspect the injury on his tail. He finds that the bleeding has mostly stopped, short of a thin trickle dripping from the gash. He doesn't have to check the new injury; the cooling effect the wind has on his wet shoulder tells him everything. A cruel truth burns inside his abdomen, but he pushes it down for the time being.
The two planes continue on their descent towards the darkened ocean, airspeeds still increasing, hurtling towards oblivion. The rotation speed, however, is now reduced to a point where they can begin pulling out of the dive. Tails, battling against the pain, grabs the radio.
"Sonic, you read me?" He implores.
"Loud and clear, little buddy, loud and clear."
"F–fantastic. Listen: on my mark, we pull up, gently . I repeat: pull up gently, we do not want to rip the wings off. "
He does a mental check of the forces involved. The airframes can handle this. We just have to do it right.
"Alright. Three... Two... One... Pull back, slowly . "
The two pilots slowly pull the stick towards themselves. Even in such a gentle curve, they feel themselves violently forced into their seats. Sonic pulls slightly more than Tails, but Tails compensates by pulling up even more. The negative G-forces start to drain blood from his brain, and he watches the vignette advance across his vision. He flicks his sapphire eyes between the artificial horizon and the Tornado just above him.
The aircraft are almost horizontal now. Tails prepares for the final maneuver, but it's far from what weighs on his mind. The airframes continue to creak in protest at every last G.
"Sonic, continue fighting it. I need to shoot off your broken flap. "
"What do you mean by shoot off ?"
"You'll see." With that, Tails breaks off from the Tornado. Immediately, Sonic starts spinning, but Tails is prepared for this. He slows down and starts spinning behind the red biplane, blinded by the smoke pouring from the ruined motor. He begins a gentle corkscrew, aiming for the broken remaining flap, and fires. The entire flap comes off in two pieces, and Tails jukes his plane to avoid the debris.
Sonic rolls in the opposite direction, and stops. "I have control back. I have control back! Thank you bro!"
"You still have the engine to worry about," the fox points out as the black smoke from the destroyed radial gets even worse.
"I know, but you've saved my life, little bro. Thank you so much."
Tails sits back, finally taking a real breath since the fiasco started. He looks over his wounds again. The pain is finally suppressed by the adrenaline, but there is no denying that he's in a very bad way. He notices the corners of his vision have remained grayed out, even though they've leveled off some time ago now. The awful truth is there in plain sight.
Sonic looks back at the plane with utter disbelief. That- that was incredible, Miles! I've been a pilot and have befriended many airmen before, but oh chaos, what you've done is unheard of. Wait, why hasn't he responded? He flicks on the radio.
"Tails?"
Dark feelings swirl inside the kit. He watches nervously as the storm of plasma bolts resumes. An unthinkable thought enters his mind, but he can't shake it. It's a feeling he's only felt one other time in his life, but he wasn't the one who went through with it.
"Tails," Sonic tries again, a tinge of concern in his voice. "Tails, are you there, buddy?"
Several bolts burn their way into the wing, leaving whistling holes that lead into the internal structure. Tails silently fixates on them. There's no other way. It has to be done.
"Tell me buddy, are you alright?" Sonic's heart is in his throat, worried sick about the condition of his brother.
His most dreaded answer chokes over the radio. "N–No, I'm n-not alright."
"Wha- what do you mean? What's going on?"
"I...I–" Tails sighs heavily into the radio. He doesn't want to do this, but he has to. He wings the plane over, underneath Sonic's plane, at an angle where he can see... everything.
"Son-Sonic, take a look." Tears were already trying to push their way in front of his eyes. His peripheral vision is ruined by gray out.
Sonic leans his head further over the fuselage, pushing into the small hurricane whipping through the air, through the trail of smoke and shards of metal billowing from his mortally damaged engine, until he can see his brother, and the new, substantial wound leaving a crimson trail down his back. Sonic's mouth falls open.
"Oh...Oh my God! Miles! Miles, your... your..." He looks into the watery sapphire eyes of the kitsune. They carry the stare of someone burdened by a horrendous feeling, of a decision with catastrophic consequences.
"Sonic... we're vastly outnumbered," the bleeding Tails began, "your plane isn't in shape to fight."
"No, I can still fight!"
The kit's ears fall flat to his head. "No. If that engine fails entirely, you might not be able to get to safety. Biplanes create too much drag to glide for long distances."
"No..."
"No. No, you're not thinking... " The look, that knowing spark in those brilliant eyes is vaguely, terrifyingly familiar.
The hedgehog looks in horror as his beloved wingman nods solemnly. "I'll hold them off. You need to land in that clearing on the peninsula."
"Tails, no! I'm not leaving you!" Sonic slams a fist down on the side of the cockpit with a hollow thud.
"Sonic, it's... it's for the best. The world needs you to protect it, not me. I'm no hero; I've never stopped Robotnik myself. I don't have the power to stop his invasions and plots. I-I can't save the world, but you can." He sniffles.
Sonic is fraught with horror. "No! Tails, I'm not letting you go through with this."
Tails lets out another long sigh. "I'm not... giving you a choice. Even if we both manage to land, they'll tear us to shreds." The onslaught of plasma continues, unrelenting. "Besides, I'm... I'm not sure if I'm gonna... gonna make it." He wraps his namesakes around himself for more warmth, the deep freezing sensation once again settling in. Tears of dread return to his thoroughly-soaked muzzle.
Sonic can barely hold it together. His grip tightens on the yoke, paling his knuckles under white gloves from the frustration of two impossible possibilities. "No! There... there has to be another way! I can't live... I can't even imagine life without you, Miles."
"Sonic, I can't imagine life without you either, because I wouldn't HAVE life if you weren't there to save me. Now, I guess it's finally time I repaid the favor."
For the next few moments, Sonic falls silent, contemplating the stunning words his brother had just said. He just can't comprehend that this is how it will all end.
Finally, he gathers himself. Whether he likes it or not, it's the hard truth; he's a sitting duck without protection, and he can see the condition the poor fox is in. A thin line of tears form in his eyes as he picks up the radio, for perhaps the final time.
"I–I love you, Miles."
"I love you too, Sonic. I always will. Now, climb to about 1.5k and land in that clearing on the peninsula. I'll... see you later." With that, the radio clicks off, and Tails' purple-hued pride and joy wings over in a tight circle to face the attackers head-on.
Sonic holds there for several seconds, watching the bizarre aircraft shrink away from him. He then faces forward again, wiping away a tear, and gently pulls the heavily smoking Tornado into a shallow climb.
Even through the blurred distortion through the propeller, Tails can easily see the numerous swarming aircraft; black dots swirling about like enraged jet-propelled wasps. The pain dims slightly as another dose of adrenaline kicks in.
As he pushes the throttle almost fully open, he shouts over the increasing scream of the engine, "Alright you hunks of metal, let's dance !"
It's as though they heard his words. All 15 jets arc in his direction, and the skies around him fill with plasma. The fox is far from deterred, however. He twists the aircraft, lining up the sights in a game of chicken with a closing speed amounting to almost a thousand miles per hour. He fires the twin plasma cannons, timed to fire between the propeller blades. Staccato arcs of superheated matter knife through the air, and hit squarely on the intake of the robot's engine, shattering the turbine and causing an explosion that all but eviscerates the craft. He immediately shifts the aircraft towards the next target, and with another burst, shears off the wing of the bogey, sending the black birdlike drone spinning towards the depths below.
There's no time to take out another for this pass, however. The remaining jets shriek past every side of the aircraft at unbelievable velocity, some only missing by mere feet. The turbulent wakes throw the plane around so violently that Tails can feel jabs of pain from disturbed wounds.
"Alright, next time I'm bailing out from that a little earlier."
He cranes his neck to look back at the rapidly receding aircraft, and can see that they've drastically switched tactics. The unorganized swarm of birds has now become four close formations of three aircraft each. The final plane darts vertically in a loop to twist around and pursue their prey. This one in particular hijacks his attention. There's a certain deliberation to its movements, in hard contrast to the concise and predictable control of airborne automatons. A tinge of dread trickles into his brain; someone was in control of these things. Someone was watching.
The four groups split off in several directions, but the lone aircraft flips around in pursuit. The tactic was all too familiar for the seasoned pilot, to distract him while the groups pounced. However, he knows whoever is controlling the aircraft won't have the same amount of control he has. He decides the lone plane isn't worth focusing on until he's leveled the odds in his favor.
His head follows the path of a group that appears to be looping towards the top of his plane. He jukes the Tornado into a climb, pressing to full throttle. He meets the group head-on, hanging by his propeller, with the harmonious scream of the multiple turbochargers consuming the air around the incredible plane. The three planes ahead of him were in close formation, a black arrowhead of jet aircraft.
"Well, this makes it much easier," he deadpans, drowned out by the sound of the powerful motor.
He doesn't bother with the plasma cannons to engage the group, and instead toggles a switch on the control panel in front of him. Small doors open in the bottom of the aircraft, revealing additional armament; five small, albeit powerful guided missiles. The fox thumbs the fire button, and immediately, a yellow cylinder is jettisoned from the bottom of the plane. It hangs in the air for a moment, before the rocket motor engages. A deafening tongue of flame erupts, sending a roiling plume of offgasses behind the biplane. The rapidly accelerating warhead arcs ahead of the Tornado and homes in on its target.
As soon as the weapon clears his plane, Tails pulls back on the stick to exit the climb. He's not only concerned about the pursuing aircraft behind him, he knows what's coming next. He closes the weapons bay to protect the warheads, just in time for the missile to contact the jets. It impacts with the lead badnik, and the payload immediately cooks off. A dozen pounds of powerful explosives detonate, ripping the badnik apart. The utterly shattered remains of the craft now become secondary weapons, carried by the force of both the impact and shockwave, into the rest of the three-plane formation. The debris shatters sensors and destroys the engines of the badniks, crippling them. One pitches up and stalls out, and the other continues downward, never to recover.
Tails can feel the plane shake slightly as several pieces of debris assault the underside of the inverted biplane. Even in the haze of adrenaline, his injuries twinge in protest to the newfound position pulling him against the seat harness. He doesn't let this distract him from trying to spot his pursuer, and he finally sees it off in the distance, circling well clear of the metallic confetti his weapon had formed. He spots another group of jets climbing to intercept his level to his left. He banks hard and pitches down towards them. He lines up the group in his sights, and inverts the remarkable plane as he deploys another missile, pitching back towards the ground as the jet of flame extends beyond the aft of the plane. He doesn't see the explosion ripping the group apart, but he can feel the heat of conflagrating jet fuel. He rolls the plane back into an upright position before the rolling ball of superheated gas even has a chance to dissipate, in search of the next target, hell-bent on the destruction of the machines responsible for so much pain. His mouth curls into a snarl, his sapphire eyes sparkle with rage akin to a lit fuse. In the grasp of his phenomenal, fine-tuned creation, he's no longer a mere fox, but an airborne force to be reckoned with. He locks eyes with the next group of targets, and throws his plane in their direction.
1500 feet above the churning sea, the Tornado I continues towards land. With the right side obscured by thick smoke, Sonic nervously leans over the left side of the cockpit, bracing a hand against the red fuselage to look at the damage to the engine. Streaks of oil snake from under the cowling, some possessing an ominous metallic shimmer. The engine is tearing itself apart. He can feel the vibrations from the once masterfully tuned engine, as one by one, the pistons seize up. The airspeed indicator slowly winds down as the engine loses more and more power.
As explosions echo behind him, Sonic lets out a sigh of concern for his brother. He knows Tails is an excellent pilot, but he's never had to fight in such a horrible condition. He can see the occasional flash of light engulf the sides of his plane, followed at length by the crack of the shockwave. Why the heck did I go on this mission? I had a bad feeling at the start of this mess. It's… my fault that he's hurting. Now, thanks to me, he's Chaos knows how close to death, and there's… nothing I can do. He takes the aircraft, and starts nosing down to prepare to land, wiping a tear from his emerald green eye. C'mon, buddy, I know you can do it. I may be at fault for this mess, but all you have to do is survive, and I'll be sure to make it right.
The group of jets face down the Tornado II in yet another game of chicken. The amber fox almost glows with determination, twisting the purple aircraft into a tight roll as badniks streak by in the opposing direction. With a glance at his airspeed, he pulls yet another trick, reaching down, below the throttle, and pushing a handle. Instantly, the flaps deploy from the lower wing just as he pulls back on the yoke. The additional lift pushes him into an unbelievably tight vertical turn, and he enters full throttle once more as he rights the plane from being inverted. He reaches for a switch on the control panel, and he once more changes the armament with a solid clank , just as he lines up the shot on the group he caught by surprise.
He depresses the trigger, and instantly, the command is met with the deafening report of .30-caliber machine guns mounted above the engine. A stream of spent casing ejects from either side of the fuselage, and the lead shells embed themselves in the thrusters of the jets. It takes five shots to render each of the complex propulsion systems useless, and one by one, the group of three jets become a group of three gliders. For a few seconds, they linger there, slowly losing altitude as they do their best to maintain level flight, but soon they simply arc towards the ocean as their computerized systems lose power.
The fox puts a triumphant fist in the air.
"C'mon, old girl, I know it's hard, but you need to stay with me." Sonic could feel his plane's vibrations get worse. "Sh-shoot, I just lost another cylinder." The vibrations are so bad now that he has a hard time reading the altimeter. Is - is the needle at 450 or 500? Ugh, I should've swapped this thing out for the scrolling one Tails installed, because now it's biting me in my time of need. The ocean swirls just a few hundred feet below the Tornado and its wake of oily black smoke.
Ratatatatat-Ratatatatat-Ratatatatatat
Above the coughs and shudders of his dying engine, a new sound joins the fray of distant explosions, howling jets, and the lone prop screaming through maneuvers. Several sporadic tracers zip by the Tornado, continuing on into the distance before their phosphorus coatings burn through.
"Tails…"
Even in the middle of aerial combat, as he juggled the control column, throttle, and even flaps, and kept track of the multiple moving targets, concern for his older brother never left the back of the injured kitsune's mind. I hope you're safe, Sonic. That Tornado didn't look like it was gonna get you very far. He circles in the air, watching the skies above and below for one of the two remaining groups of three, and especially the lone aircraft under manual control.
His ear twitches.
He whirls his head to look behind, wincing at the sharp spikes of pain down his back, and nearly yelps at the sight: One of the final groupings is right off of his tail, in feverish pursuit. Three jets, in close formation, matching his every move. He sees the building glow of yellow in their open beaklike intakes, and he immediately turns around to heave on the yoke.
He enters another corkscrew, just as the sky where he was moments ago becomes awash with golden plasma. The smell of burnt fur permeates the rapidly moving air in the open cockpit, as the heat from the plasma singes his skin.
"Damnit!"
He's at a hopeless disadvantage. They are too close. Yes, being mere robots, they lacked the dexterity of human pilots, but there were very few dogfighting maneuvers in the books for this situation, especially when he has to fight a stuck rudder. He continues the corkscrew, varying the rate at which he travels to prevent them leading their target. Saturation leeches from his vision, as what little blood he has left is forced down, away from his brain. His focus starts to wane, and he starts jerking movements instead of easing into them.
C'mon, Tails, this isn't a game. FOCUS. He flicks his head to look behind, and snaps back. The formation had changed, it now forms a diagonal line, jets stacked on top of one another, that meant the next alteration in his course would bring him into the sights of one of the jets.
At least, any movement they'd expect.
He maintains a corkscrewing climb for as long as possible, keeping his head craned towards the enemy craft. One breaks off slightly, clearly about to try and lead the shot on the now predictable aircraft. That's the moment he decides to put his plan into action.
The battle-worn kitsune practically closes his eyes in pure concentration, as his hands blur across the cockpit, pulling multiple levers in quick succession. He senses faint vibrations, as he manipulates the mechanical linkages snaking across the airframe. Immediately, he feels the changes he made affect the dynamics of the plane. The flaps deploy from the lower wing, and the plane pitches up just before the airbrakes deploy; panels on top of the upper wings, and along the fuselage hinge outward to increase the aircraft's drag. Finally, to fully arrest his momentum, the pitch of the propeller blades themselves is set to zero, and they now knife perpendicular to the air, no longer pulling the plane along.
The deceleration is so brutal that Tails strains his neck to keep his head from tilting forward, and pain radiates down his spine. However, this nary fazes him, and he keeps his fixation on the enemy birds, through barely functional irises. At the perfect moment, he pulls up. The plane uses the drag-heavy front wings as a fulcrum, and the tail rotates downward. In a maneuver only possible with his unmatched airmanship, he turns a position that would've meant certain defeat, into a last-ditch weapon in itself. The stuck rudder strikes the top of a passing jet, forcing the craft down onto the wing of the one directly below it. The third breaks off, leaving the two planes, now stuck together like dragonflies, to fight each other all the way down, towards the ocean below.
He nervously chuckles, sending a flare of pain across his body. "How the hell did I get away with that one?" It's a question to be left unanswered.
Watching the two planes spiral down with a braided tail of smoke, a thoroughly-satisfied smirk graces his bloody muzzle, as he palms the switches once more. Suddenly, the plane stops climbing, and starts to plummet towards the ground, still facing upward. He's in a stall, having lost too much airspeed to maintain lift, but it was all planned out. The flaps and airbrakes retract, and the propellers return to their normal pitch. He throws one last lever, and the intersecting swept wings hinge back into the familiar parallel wings of a biplane. He works the controls, edging the plane out of the stall and rotating it into a proper nosedive. He flips the switch again, and the wings once again transform. He gently pulls the nose up and out of the dive as he returns the throttle to its maximum level.
Even though it was all planned out, he still wiped away fur-soaking beads of sweat from his forehead. Suddenly, he feels his foot move. Could it be? Could I have dislodged the rudder? Peering down into the footwell, he can clearly see his red sneakers on the wedge-shaped rudder controls. He tries again, and the pedals slide in alternating directions. The pedals work again, but does the rudder move? He twists his head, looking toward the proud vertical fin, and to his surprise, it moves with the rudder pedals. I can't believe it! I have full control again! He rocks the rear of the plane left and right. The pedals resist these movements, and occasionally snag and stutter, but it's enough for his needs. It may not be the smoothest thing in the world, but beggars can't be choosers. With renowned confidence, he pulls his beloved aircraft, remarkable in both engineering and resilience, into a climb, to chase down the two remaining jets.
A particularly large explosion echoes behind the hedgehog. He turns around to see a rising cloud of smoke on the ocean surface, remnants of a massive fireball. His heart skips a beat. Please, Miles, that can't be you. Please tell me… Sunlight glinting in the distance reflects a familiar purple color, far above the surface. At this distance, it was hard to tell, but he could see hardly any trails left scribbling through the sky. He instinctively picks up the radio. "I've never lost hope in you, buddy. Please come home safe." However, he knows his brother won't be able to hear him; these radios are shortwave, intended for shorter ranges. This is within their capabilities, but he's doubtful the fox could've heard him through the pain and focus in the dogfight. He turns around to prepare his mortally damaged plane for landing.
"Don't worry Sonic, I will." The kitsune, amidst the hell of combat, bloodied both physically and mentally, heard the transmission as clear as day. He clicks the radio in acknowledgement, tracking the response time for the return signal to determine the distance. "The Tornado's holding up, she's almost gotten him to safety." Now I just need to do the same for myself. He continues scanning the horizon, above and below.
The second-to-last jet has adopted a similar flight style to the controlled one. The movements are more fluid, less mechanical, less hydraulic, less predictable. Those bastards. They've got two under remote control now. He steals his resolve, and banks in a turn, finally able to use the rudder to position himself. He's in another game of chicken, using the rudder to yaw as he rolls over to avoid the tongue of yellow laser, as he'd done many times tonight. The smell of burnt fur returns from the heat, and temporary sticker labels lose their adhesion to the control panel to be lost in the tempest. I thought they were ugly anyways , the injured cub jokes.
Suddenly, in the desaturated haze that is now his excuse for peripheral vision, he notices the slightest bit of movement. It was the other jet, arcing in to get a perpendicular shot on the kit. He wrenches the controls, hoping to bank into a tight turn, but just as he begins to pitch up, a hole appears in the wing, without any fanfare. He pauses, heart and mortality in his throat as his ears register a stout pow above the roar of engines half a second afterwards.
"Shit. That's not plasma."
The jet attacking head on screams by his plane as he leaves the deadly game, but rolls and dives underneath him to prevent a shot on it. He takes the opportunity to look at the hole, which went straight through the wing as effortlessly as though it were an office hole punch. His mind goes to work to determine exactly what it is, taking into account the dimensions of the wing, and comparing the size of the hole to it. He comes to a sobering conclusion. Tha-that hole is… 30 millimeters… That Balkiry doesn't have plasma. It's firing 30mm ammunition at me. He shudders at the thought. The Tornado II is armored, but not against that. If-if that hits the cockpit– He pushes that thought down with all his might. Now's not the time. The kitsune, to the vocal shouts of protest from his wounds, ducks into the cockpit, bringing his communicator to his mouth. He shouts into it to drown out the wind. "Sonic! Sonic, do you read me?!"
Sonic almost jumps from the scream coming from his wrist. "I-I read you loud and clear. It's great to hear your voice again! What's going on?"
He strains to get the words out, but he absolutely has to let them know. "If I don't make it out, make sure this gets known. These badniks aren't at all what we thought they were. I have a thirty millimeter cannon trained on me. That's what hurt me at the very beginning of this whole mess. This entire attack has been laid out well in advance of our arrival. We've fallen into a trap, Sonic, and it may very well claim me."
"I've recorded your message. I hope to Chaos that you make it out alive, buddy."
"Me, too. Are you about to land?"
"Yes, I'm on final approach to the clearing."
"I'm glad to hear she's treated you well. I built her to do exactly that." Sonic could distinctly hear the pride in his voice. "Now, make this known to everyone: this wasn't a Robotnik attack. He sticks to lasers. This is someone else . I'm ending the transmission now." The scream of a close-by jet is audible in the background before the feed cuts out.
The Tornado bucks slightly as Sonic's hands start to shake. Rage boiled up inside him, having been suppressed by feelings of worry and guilt. He screams at the top of his lungs, woken furies breaking out at the utter cowardice of this unknown adversary, to try and take his brother away from him in such a cold, sterilized manner. "Those utter pieces of shi—," he stops himself. I need to focus on landing. I'm only a hundred feet up.
The hedgehog stifles his feelings for the time being. He reduces his airspeed even further, feeling the plane start to fall faster and faster, and deploys the flaps to landing position. The ocean beneath him gives way to tree tops, and seconds later, the clearing. Sweet, sweet solid ground. He nurses his wounded wings down to the ground, losing another cylinder in the dying engine. His eyes fixate on the altimeter, as difficult as it is to read in these vibrations.
He mouths the altitude as he descends. "50…...40…...30…...20...10." He flares up at the last moment, pitching slightly to lessen the blow on the undercarriage. He rises into the air again, but quickly comes back down. "So much for that," he deadpans as the plane touches the impromptu runway a second time. He deploys the air brakes, and the panels on top of the wing raise up. The large wheels and suspension absorb the bumps, and eventually the tail lowers enough for the tailwheel to make contact. He begins steering to the right, off of the center of the "runway," and towards the tree line. Seconds later, he feels an intense shudder as the engine finally grinds to a halt. Sonic can't help but silently thank his guardian, the mechanical marvel that had protected him from his deepest fear, up to its very last moments. The engine Tails had obsessed over as if it were his own children, had finally seized up, welding its components together due to the loss of lubricating oil.
…Tails…
As he dismounts from the stranded and dead aircraft, his mind turns to his brilliant brother. Tails, the young fox he'd taken in after years of being thrown and beaten away from society, is still up there. Still up there, in blood loss, in agony, in desperation, clutching the yoke of his brainchild, facing terrible odds, against an awful adversary, all alone. He watches the dance of contrails from afar, helpless to do anything, as his brother, his partner, his family, fights valiantly with everything he has, against someone who's tried to take everything he has. Fighting on, unrelenting, to the very last beat of his wounded wings.
"God… damnit, Miles. You're so close, just give it that little bit more." His body wanted to quit. Every inch of him screamed with agony; His body was almost drained of adrenaline. Greyout had hijacked a significant portion of his vision. His sensitive ears are rendered useless, and shriek unbearable frequencies of their own volition. Shivers from deep inside trigger spasms as blood loss starts to become a real threat. Part of him wants nothing more than to collapse then and there, but somehow, someway, he pushes himself upright once more, grasping the yoke with everything he has left, and pushing the throttle to the maximum level. He toggles the transformation, and the wings hinge away once more. An audible growl escapes the fox's clamped teeth. He's accepted it. He has nothing left to fear; the only things he'll live to see are the things left to rage at, the things for him to put down .
"I'll put an end to your antics, whoever you are, and my friends can give you the same damned fate as me."
His mind has already deduced their tactic: distract him with the laser-equipped jet so the 30 mm can be brought to bear on him from a different angle. He has to give them credit: it's a good plan, but not good enough for him. He performs a vertical wingover, and races back into the fight. His machine guns twinkle away behind the propeller, their shout merely being heard as pressure against the constant ringing. A direct hit on the decoy jet passing in front of him makes sunlight pass through the center of the wing, but it stays aloft, sharply climbing to the right. A hole suddenly manifests in the lower left wing, and he peels out of there, just as he hears the Flit of another bullet whizzing close by.
The cockpit once again glows as a laser beam passes between the right elevator and wing, mere inches from the fox. He yelps as the skin of his ear chars from the heat alone, and he banks hard into a diving right turn, bringing his guns to bear on the as it races by at great speed. Now I'll put an end to your antics. The phosphorous tips arc towards the offending aircraft, when suddenly the fox feels a major impact.
With a horrible screech of shredded metal, the plane yaws to the right, independent of his input. A portion of the cowling, which hinges to grant easy access to the internals, separates from the plane. Almost in slow motion, the heavy metal panel tilts up and over the nose in the wind, smashing through the low-profile windscreen, and strikes the fox in the face. The jagged hole leaves a cut along his muzzle. Shattered pieces of hardened glass are thrown at him, their impacts scattering pinpricks of blood across his face, arms, and torso. Fluid streams from the engine bay, and scalding oil sprays from the cooling system. He ducks, but not before several burns appear on his arm and shoulder. He screams into the wind.
"DAMNIT! This is the last thing I needed!"
As he pitches out of the dive, however, he realizes his woes were far from over. The upper left wing slowly falls, carried by inertia no longer kept in check by hydraulics. The jackscrew sings as it rotates with the lateral movement. He slams a fist on the control panel, cutting it on straggling shards of glass. My plane's wounded. That oil loss will cost me the turbos, and my speed. That oil also keeps the 30 cals cool. Whoever you are, whatever your wretched motives may be, sitting in your cushy chair with nothing but a joystick, you may very well have won this. You've stripped me of almost all of my advantages…
"...But I will refuse to back down. " He finishes the thought out loud , hissing the final words as another wave of agony comes. He throws the yoke, and the plane violently enters a turn to intercept the passing badnik that had lobbed thirty millimeter lead into his engine, the loose wing clanging as it rebounds at the end of its range of motion.
The .30 cals shout their symphony, expelling tracers that arc closer and closer to the thruster of the jet, but it enters a corkscrew as Miles had done to evade the fire. "Ah, ah, ah, that's a copyright strike," the fed-up prodigy jokingly growls, as he thumbs the missile release switch. Again, a tongue of white offgasses sling behind the damaged biplane, as smoke starts to bellow from his engine. "Shi–"
The rocket hones in on the white-hot thruster of the jet, and closes the distance, but the jet suddenly darts away, and the missile tries to match the turn. The badnik tries to bring the chasing missile back to the fox, but he deploys the air brakes and pitches down, arcing down in a tight fall, as the jet climbs away from the missile, which continues straight on, never to find another target before the fuel depletes. The deadly cylinder falls away harmlessly. Tails watches the jet shrink into the distance, as he readies his plane for another attack.
He spots the decoy jet trying to line up for another strike, but he's on it before it can lock onto him. His machine guns throw lead at the badnik, strikes being made to the tank before he deploys the final missile. The weapon arcs towards the blacked out beast, but is swatted out of the air by the twisting tongue of plasma, exploding uselessly. The smoke from the explosion clings to the badnik as it flies through the cloud. Tails trades speed for maneuverability, and leads the approaching jet with the still singing machine guns, landing hits on the wings, the front, and the tail, before a hole appears in the heart of the engine. Flames sparkle toward the aft of the jet, as the vacuum was finally broken and pieces of a shattered turbine do the work for him. The decoy was finally out.
The three specs have come closer and closer to the mainland, and Sonic could make them out individually. Tails' plane didn't look right, but he can't quite say why. He couldn't help but cheer as he saw a badnik form a trail of smoke behind it, staying level for several moments, before plummeting out of the sky.
"Miles! Oh my god, Miles! You're gonna come home!"
Tails turned his attention, once more, and for the final time, to the plane boasting a 30 millimeter cannon. The one that started all of this mess. The one that showcases the cowardice of the powers that be, and the one he'll be the most glad about putting down. He climbs into a wingover to face the plane down once more, one last time. The blacked-out bird, save for a golden stripe, faces down the kit. Large shells pounded from the beak, barely missing catastrophic damage as the fox dodged and weaved. The machine guns, starved of coolant, run red hot. They finally seized just as he put the crosshairs on the bird. A chill rises up his spine as he realizes it's too late. They're going to crash.
Rage. Rage, agony, defeat. These were the only emotions going through his mind. His mind, the mind of a generation, the mind that has helped save millions, the mind that has never once encountered a problem it has yet to solve, has been defeated, by the most cowardice of enemies. For a second, time slows as he waits for the final blow. …You've stripped me of almost all of my advantages…He finds himself repeating that last part out loud, "... almost all of my advantages."
An idea strikes his fatigued mind. His sapphire eyes ignite once more. It's utterly ludicrous, but it's not like today was alien to unorthodox tactics. He feels as if every ounce of remaining strength was put into reaching for the confines of the cockpit. In his returning hands he grasps his sidearm, a ubiquitous Colt 1911, loaded with .45 caliber rounds; a longtime favorite of combat pilots.
He presses the center release button on his flight harness. The four straps separate, and the weakened fox unsteadily stands up in the cockpit, bracing a hand against the control panel. Equal parts of rage and fear scythe through his veins as the large weapon is brought to bear. He adjusts his aim slightly, steadying his breath. He spares a moment to think about the pilot remotely flying the badnik, and the sight they're currently seeing in the camera feed. He chuckles, "Good luck explaining this one to the brass," and finally pulls the heavy trigger.
The firearm's throaty response sends pain shooting down his arms, but the pulse is shoved to the back of his mind, eyes fixating on his prize. The single round slices through the air, over the propeller, and towards the oncoming bird. To his utter amazement, a hole appears between the eyes of the mechanical macaw. It immediately starts to plummet. With a bullet lodged in the CPU, it can't glide or do anything outside of turning into an overcomplicated stone. He banks his plane to the right to avoid the oncoming bird, craning his neck to watch the machine plummet towards the sea below. It finally dawns on him just what he'd accomplished. His adversary has finally been taken down. He had won. He had won a brutal dogfight against 15 other aircraft, adding his name to a very small echelon of ace fighter pilots. It's an utter miracle he made it out.
The kitsune collapses back into the seat, exhaustion finally taking hold. He banks into a gentle turn towards the mainland. He drops the pistol into the footwell, putting his mind towards controlling the aircraft for these final few minutes, banking the battered plane and body towards the mainland.
From his distant vantage point, Sonic can't help but cheer when the jet starts to fall into the ocean. His brother was finally coming home. "Tails! You-you've done it, buddy! You're gonna come home!" Elation is soon replaced with dread, however, when the gravity of Tails' last-known condition sets in. He… he must be running on fumes. He was already tired and weak before he engaged them, and now…
Sonic arrives at the conclusion well after Tails does. The adrenaline has all but worn off now, and he tenses up at the sheer amount of pain. He curls into a ball, enduring the spikes of agony ripping across his body. Through teary eyes he inspects his wounds. The bleeding had slowed in his tail, but the G-forces had unblocked and dislodged the shrapnel in his back. His shoulder had hardly begun to heal, and he's still losing quite a bit of blood through the wound. Greyout has obliterated his peripheral vision, and deep chills arise from his core. Headaches rip through his dehydrated brain. He has fire in his lungs from gunpowder and metal shavings, and painful coughs further rattle his mind. He places his shaking head in his hands, smearing the cut in his muzzle.
"I've… I've flown too close to the sun," he mumbles into his burnt and bloody gloves, "I may not make it. Yet, I have to… to try and get home. I have to… if not for me, then for… everyone." He enters another exhausting coughing fit. His eyes threaten to close, but he forces himself to sit up. "I– know things about this new enemy that no one else knows. This—this was deliberate. There's a reason they've planned this at–attack." His sapphire eyes light up again, and he grasps the yoke. "I just… have to get over land. You can do it, Tails. You can do this."
"C'mon Tails, you can do this. You're only a few miles out." the hedgehog says, unknowingly echoing Tails' thoughts. His memory flashes back to the injuries the fox sustained before getting into the manic dogfight. He tries to push the thoughts away, but his intuition is too strong. Tails may very well not make it.
Even in his hazy state, Tails can feel the plane shudder. He knows the powerplant has been done in. The whining of the turbochargers is long gone. Smoke pours from under the cowling, and he can see the orange glow of flames as oil ignites on the red-hot manifold. It pains him to see his beloved engines damaged like this, but he must press on, towards land, towards his brother. Towards home.
Wincing at the pain, he tilts his head up towards the damaged wing, flopping uselessly as its lift increases and decreases as it hinges up and down. He darts his eyes to the three other wings, which still seem operational.
"I hope you still work," he says to himself as he flips the switch one last time. To his relief and some extent of self-satisfaction, the folding mechanism still functions, although the upper left wing makes terrible snapping sounds as it slips on the damaged components. The wings of the Tornado II return to their parallel configuration, and the landing gear deploys with no issues. The lift of the damaged wing still causes it to stay out of alignment, but the roll it induces on the plane is more than manageable for the triple-ace pilot. Now less than a mile from the shore, he begins the final descent to land his wounded wings.
Never in his life had Sonic seen such extensive damage done to the Tornado II. That thing had survived almost everything ever thrown at it, and the things that did break were mostly superficial. Yet his emerald eyes remain locked on the biplane, with a wing stuck in the air, multiple large holes perforating the fuselage and wings, and the orange flicker of fire visible behind the propeller, with the engine streaming smoke. However, this pales in comparison to the fact that his brother was finally going to be safe. Tears form in his eyes as he watches the bird slowly descend towards the ground, and his knowledge as a fellow pilot tells him that this will be a perfect landing to boot.
The reality inside the cockpit, however, isn't as it seems from the ground. The effort to keep the damaged plane level taxes his exhausted body. With blood loss and shock setting in, he has to fight a new enemy: his brain. More effort is put into simply staying awake and alert enough to keep pressure on the controls; more effort for less effect. His hands slip from the controls. He's too involved in merely staying awake to notice, until the plane starts to roll to the right.
The steep bank at such a low speed immediately causes the biplane to lose lift. It arcs down toward the trees just two hundred feet below. Tails grabs the yoke again, pulling back in a desperate attempt to pitch away from certain death. . No, not like this! I didn't come all this way just for it to end, so close to safety. He accelerates from the fall, until the elevators finally start to bring the nose up.
"NO! MILES!" Sonic screams in horror from below. He rushes towards the plane, certain that it's going to crash into the woods just before the clearing. He skids to a stop as it starts to arc away from the ground. Please buddy, just a little more! Yet, he can see the painful truth: it's too little, too late. The plane's going to strike the middle of the last tree, regardless of the pilot's actions.
At least, that's what he thought before two panels lower from the underside of the wings. Immediately the change in pitch accelerates, and it looks like he's going to clear the tree.
Even with the flaps deployed, the plane doesn't clear the tree. With considerable velocity from the dive, the lower right wing collides heavily with the tip of the fir, completely tearing it from the airframe. A small ball of fire trails the fuel tank in the severed wing as it spirals to the ground. Without the lift of the wing, the rightward roll increases in ferocity, but the pilot continues to fight it. The impact steals most of the plane's momentum, and flames cling to the side of the fuselage as it falls even faster towards the ground.
Sonic runs alongside the plane as it continues down the clearing, silently praying that his brother survives this ordeal, but his hope is all but lost. He watches helplessly as the plane approaches the ground.
The plane stays in the bank all the way to the ground, and the remaining right wing impacts the ground first, before the mechanism snaps and it hinges away to let the right landing gear snap upon impact. The propeller crumples, shredding the internals of the engine as it's brought to an immediate stop. Riding on the fuselage, the plane rotates and skids to a halt in the center of the clearing, tilted at an oblique angle. Everything now stands still, save for one thing.
"MILES!" Sonic shrieks at the top of his lungs as he reaches the crash site. He feels sick to his stomach as he stops before the crumpled remains of the plane, standing in the ruts in the grass left by sheared-off components and dislodged panels. Small flames lick away at the underside of the fuselage, and the ruined engine in front ticks as it cools and slightly contracts. He swallows and shakily approaches the cockpit, which thankfully held its shape in the crash, due to Tails' engineering. Thinking about his brother refracts his vision with tears.
At first, he doesn't see the body. Oh no, could he have been thrown from the plane? He shoves the horrors of the prospect deep into his mind. After what seemed like eons, he finally reaches the rim of the cockpit. He finds Tails in a crumpled heap of amber and crimson, shoved into the footwell amongst the rudder pedals, broken glass, and, oddly, a pistol. Sonic reaches into the space, slightly cutting his torso on shards of glass. He lifts away a bloody tail to reveal the battered body of his brother. His eyes water as he gently grabs a wrist, feeling for a pulse, when he stops. He can hear quiet whimpers come from the kitsune. He's alive.
"It–it's okay, Tails. You're safe now," the hedgehog soothes as he carefully pulls the fox out of the footwell, careful as to not move him too much since he doesn't know what injuries he'd sustained in the crash. He has a good idea what one such injury is, judging by the increase in whimpers and the ears folding down whenever he puts any pressure on his right side. His stomach churns slightly when he gets an eyeful of the wound on his shoulder; he knew it was bad, but to see it so close...
He shakes his head. "Let's get you outta there." He gingerly lifts up the kit, supporting him from underneath. He carefully steps out of the cockpit, and sets his injured brother down on the grass, away from the smoldering flames. He rushes to grab the medical kit from the Tornado II, and opens it as soon as he returns. He sets Tails down on his lap as he works to clean and patch the poor fox up, taping thick sections of gauze to the crater and the gash in his tail.
With most of the bleeding stopped, or at least slowed, Sonic gets up. "I'm going to find help, buddy. We'll get you outta this." He turns around and prepares to launch himself down a path carved through the forest. The instant before he vaults himself at almost mach speed, he feels something grab his shin. He looks down to see a gloved hand weakly yet adamantly grab at him.
"No… don't… leave." The voice is only a frail croak, but it has the impact of a shout. Sonic's heart melts for his poor brother. Weary blue eyes stare into green, as Sonic sits down next to him.
"What can I do, then? I've lost electrics in the Tornado, and I can't carry you, because I don't know if it's safe." He washes out the cut in his muzzle, running a hand through his stained fur.
"No… Use… my ra–radio. It should… should be able to… reach the nearest… town."
Sonic sets his head down, and runs to the cockpit, flipping a switch on the underside of the radio unit that switches it to the emergency radio frequency.
"Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is private aircraft Tornado II and Tornado I. We have crash landed and need immediate medical assistance. Does anyone read me?"
"Tornado II, this is Knothole Tower, reading you loud and clear. Can you give us a vector to your locations?"
"Oh thank Chaos. We are in a clearing on a peninsula most likely to your west, Knothole Tower. I have no better location at the moment. Tails is in critical condition, and I don't know the extent of his injury. I need Medevac ASAP.
A pause.
"Tornado II, Search and Rescue are enroute to your location. Do you need armed intervention with any potential enemy aircraft?"
"No, Tails took care of them all." He reaches down and grabs hold of his brother's hand. It's… cool. Dread melts into him. They might be too late. He sits down next to Tails, and starts to weep into his hands, dropping the microphone.
"If… only I–I called for h–help earlier. You–you'd have a better… a better chance." The blue hero mumbles between breaths. "I'm sorry, Miles. I'm sorry I've… I've failed you." He feels a hand on his shoulder.
"Sonic," croaked his weak friend, "don't… worry about what you did and didn't do. There… there was a lot going on… a lot on your mind… a lot to manage with your dying engine, and your worry about me." To his amazement, the fox starts to sit up, using Sonic to support himself. "Don't think about what you could've done, focus on what you have done."
"But… but… I haven't done anything to help you today. All I've done is put you in dang-"
"Don't you dare say it, Sonic." The kitsune snaps, catching both Sonic and himself by surprise, but he continues, rekindled sapphire eyes blazing once again. "You did nothing wrong. We had no idea that there was a trap waiting for us. We still don't even know who is doing this." He sits fully up, weak yet filled with conflagurating energy. "It was my idea, too. If this mess is the fault of anyone , then it's mine. I got complacent with the peace and quiet. I have tools at my disposal that could've scanned the airspace ahead of us for threats. That's my job."
"But… I didn't do anything useful. You risked your skin, twice , to save me, because I was usele-"
With surprising strength, the fox pulls in the hedgehog with hands on either shoulder, dragging him to be eye-to-eye with each other. "That's like me blaming myself for the initial hit. There's nothing you or me could've done about that, and we both know that."
Blinking away tears, Sonic puts his hands on the kit's shoulders. They are cool to the touch, like his hands. "You–you're right. I don't know what I was thinking, buddy. You're in this condition and I'm whinging on about-"
"Sonic. You've done nothing wrong. You're… you're caught up in your emotions. I understand. I was the same way after Cosmo…C-Cosmo…" Tears well in his eyes as he's reminded of his reality. The realization hits him like a ton of bricks, that he's not going to make it. His voice cracks. "I–I can't believe it either, Sonic. That—that after all this time, after all these years… it–it's going to…to…" He collapses into Sonic, wrapping his arms around his bloody torso. "I love you, Sonic. I don't want to—want to…"
Sonic returns the embrace, comforting his brother at the time he needs it most. "I–I love you too, Miles. I will always love you. No matter what happens, that will always be true." More tears flowed from his emerald eyes. He rests the kit's head on his shoulders, gently ruffling the fur with his hand. "I'm… I'm sorry you're going through this. I–-I can't believe this is our… our reality now."
"Me– me neither. I–I–I've acce–accepted it, b–but it's so hard to think… a–about the others."
His words practically make Sonic fall apart. He couldn't be more proud of his little brother. It's only been four years since he took an abused and terrified Miles Prower under his wing. In those four short years, he had grown into someone far greater than Sonic, or anyone he'd ever known. Now, even in what could be his final moments, that same kitsune, bloodied and battered, only cares about the ones he loves. Sonic hugs him even tighter.
"T–Tails, I… I can't tell you how proud I am to… to be your brother. You–you've grown so… so much since I first met you. I…I can't even d–describe it." He runs his hands along the kit's back as he continues, with more vigor in his voice, "You… you've made this world a better place, Miles, it is true–truly a better place, because of you. There are some people who say you're special because of your two tails or your genius or skills, but you're special because of your heart, buddy. Even if you were a normal everyday fox, I would still want you at my side."
Tears roll past the kit's blush. "Y-you really think so?"
"I am certain of it. Granted, if it weren't for your flight skills, we wouldn't be here talking about it."
Tails weakly chuckles. "T'wasn't much..."
Sonic laughs out loud, "A–Are you kidding me? It was amazing ! I've never seen anything like it, and I probably never will, certainly not with my own eyes. And following that up with winning a dogfight against 15 jets, in a biplane?! I had to do double-takes whenever I looked in your direction." Sonic's mind flashes back to the cockpit. "Speaking of which, why was your sidearm loose in the cockpit? It has a locking mechanism, so it doesn't just slide around."
He got no response, but he could feel the kit's muzzle contort into a smirk.
"You–you're joking, right? You didn't… "
"I guess you could say I gave them a taste… of their own leadicine. "
Sonic rolls his eyes, ruffling the top of the kit's head. "I wouldn't expect any less than that from you." He tearfully chuckles.
"Honestly, I… I can't believe I made that shot work, ei–either," He coughs, "th–that coward was trying t–to fly his drone– into me."
Sonic hangs his head low, rage smoldering beneath his quills, his voice low and terse. "They… they really wanted both of us… dead , then."
The weakened kit flattens his singed ears and grimly nods, "And… they might get h-half of their wish…" He winces and grabs at his injured ribs. Sonic helps him lie back down on the grass, with his head in Sonic's lap. The hedgehog takes a moment to look his brother over once more. He could see large bruises from the crash, especially over the ribs. The amber body is speckled in small cuts from debris. His right shoulder and upper arm are scalded from the oil, and various patches singed from the plasma.
He shakes in anger towards their unknown adversary, but Tails raises a hand to his cheek, calming him. "I–I just don't understand, Miles. Who the hell did this? What the hell was their goal here? Why would they target… you? Why would they put their crosshairs on you, you of all people?" Tears drain from his eyes.
"Sonic?"
"...Yeah, buddy?"
"Sonic… it's okay."
"No… it's not okay…" His emerald eyes strain of sadness, but harbor the glow of rage. "What kind of monster… would ever choose to hurt… my little Tails ?"
"I… I've thought about that ever since I figured out they were using heavy arms against us. I–I think that whoever this is, they've had previous experience with us. They know I'm a capable foe in the air, and tried to get rid of me first, so they could use overwhelming force against you." He takes a breath, "This was thought out, Sonic. They've– studied us for a long time. Those Balkiries were modified specifically to engage us, with extra controls and widened wings so they could chase down slow yet agile biplanes."
Tails shivers. His eyes slightly narrow as he takes a second to catch his breath.
Sonic can hear weakness build in his brother's voice, and grows even more concerned. "Tails, slow down. You're exhausting yourse-"
"Sonic, I have to tell you. I'm the only one who was able to engage them. They had a complex strategy. After that initial pass, they formed into groups of 3, with a single plane under manual control. The groups made it easier for missiles to find them, but they were still a massive threat." He gulps, shuddering at the fresh memory. "At one point they were behind me, and I-I was forced to spiral so they couldn't aim at me." He rubs the blackened ear. "I looked behind and they were stacked on top of each other, trying to catch me out next time I changed direction. I've… I've never seen anything like it."
Sonic's eyes widened as Tails spoke. Clearly, this wasn't a normal enemy. They've made lots of enemies in this world, but none were this thorough.
"The pilots they used were good, too. They tried to use my own weapons against me, and almost succeeded. They adapted quickly to everything I did, every tactic and almost every trick up my sleeve. They worked very well together, distracting me… so the other could get a shot in." His demeanor shifts, "I could go on for… hours, but I… don't have that kind of… time." He slumps slightly as he trails off.
Sonic fights the urge to panic and he rests his hand on Tails' head. From feel alone, he can tell that his temperature is low. His stomach descends as dread takes hold. Tears fall from both green and blue eyes as the reality truly sets in. His brother is running on fumes… and borrowed time.
He lifts the whimpering kit closer to his face, speaking in a softened voice despite the smoldering rage he felt. "Tails, it's okay. You don't have to say any more. Just… just focus on staying awake. We'll figure out this mess when you're safe, buddy."
"Sonic… I'm sorry." He whimpers, "I.. went on for too long. I…I think I just… blew it."
Sonic calmly soothes the kit, fiddling with his hair. "It's going to… going to be okay." Tears leak from his eyes as he speaks.
Tails covers his face with his paws. "I just… I-I feel awful for spending my time on that, instead of what really matters."
Sonic instantly knows what he meant. He hoists the fox with his arm under his back, resting his head against his. "I'm sorry Miles, I really am. I never thought this would ever happen in a million years."
"I never thought it'd be like this, either." He weakly wraps his arms around Sonic. Tears stream from all eyes. They both know the hard truth.
Sonic finally cracks, and starts sobbing as he cradles his friend. "Oh Miles, I–I'm… I'm gonna miss you, b–buddy."
Muffled sobs respond, "I–I'm gonna miss you, too." He pulls his face out of Sonic's chest to look him in the watery eye. "You–you've… I…" It's too much, and he's losing energy by the second now. Speaking seems to take all of his concentration. Sonic latches onto every word. "Thank you, Sonic, for… everything."
"It's… It's been my pleasure, Miles. You've been… incredible , not just as a brother, but as a person. I've… I've been blessed to wake up with you by my side every day…" He nuzzles against the bloodied fox. "...even if it has only been for these short… few… years."
Tails just looks on, too far gone to respond.
There is nothing more to be said. Sonic watches helplessly as his brother slips further away with each passing second.
The two mobians hold each other under a setting sun, deafened to the growing rhythm strumming against the reddening sky, and the handful of pings visible on the Tornado II's still-functional radar.
Sonic gently strokes the top of the kitsune's head. He can hear the fox purring in the final fleeting moments of his life. As his dimmed eyes finally start to close, he uses his last ounces of strength to slowly speak, one last time, "I wouldn't want it any other way. Goodbye… Sonic."
Sonic leans in and kisses the cheek of his dying friend. "Good—goodbye, Tails." He watches a smile grace the kit's face, before the purring faded and his body went limp. Sonic pulls the unconscious form of his inseparable friend into a tight embrace, screams of emotional agony echoing across the forest.
He finally notices the noise saturating the air. He unburies his face from the amber fur, his ears being assaulted by the mechanically rhythmic cacophony. It was like a heartbeat, no, it was exactly like a heartbeat; an indicator of life. He looks towards the ambered sky, the faintest glimmer of hope finally reigniting deep within him. Two brightly colored objects emerge from the treetops, hurtling in their direction.
Epilogue
Something moves in the darkness.
Sonic opens his eyes, and immediately shuts them against the dim yet still harsh fluorescent light. He forces himself to open them again, and as reality slowly fades back in, he finds himself in a stark white room, sitting on a borderline comfortable chair of a hideous shade of green. He soon registers the somber drones and beeps from the array of medical equipment crowding the small room. Several patches and bandages are dotted across his body, covering small wounds that still pinprick his body, but they're of little concern to him. He's not the one who's been admitted to the hospital.
After being located by the Medevac helicopters, the unconscious Tails was rushed to the Knothole Emergency Trauma Center. After putting him into an induced coma, they gave him blood transfusions and IVs to replace the lost blood and nutrients, and put him through several surgeries to extract shrapnel from his body. After stitching up the remaining wounds, they placed him in the room to treat his burns and to monitor how his vitals are recovering from the event. However, even after all of this, Sonic was told that there was a high likelihood that if Tails survived, he wouldn't be the same due to the trauma and shock his body had received.
His ear twitches once again, as does his heart; there's movement to his right. He unsteadily stands up on half-asleep legs, and carefully approaches the hospital bed. He could hear the rustling of sheets as the occupant of the bed adjusts their position. For a moment, he just stands there, until a pair of blue eyes return his gaze, seemingly glowing in what little light is available. He can only assume the same applied to him, because only a second later,he hears the very same voice that he was convinced he'd never hear again.
"S…Son-ic… is… is that… you ?"
"Yes, yes it is… ya little sleepyhead," he jokes, fighting back the tears of joy. He flicks on a bedside lamp. In the light, he takes in the sight he thought he wouldn't see again. Even though his amber fur was thoroughly cleaned and his cuts were all stitched closed, there's still plenty of evidence of the ordeal he went through. Bandages tightly wrap the cut in his tail, and a large bandage embraces his torso to apply pressure to two cracked ribs. Bruises litter his battered body, and patches of fur have been shaved clean to make way for catheters, IVs, and electrodes to monitor his vitals.
The two mobians stare into each other's eyes for a minute before Sonic wordlessly embraces the kit, making sure to avoid jostling the tube and wires. Tails returns the favor, and the teary brothers remain there for a full minute, listening to the beeping of the monitor. Finally, Tails speaks up, crying into his chest.
"I–I never thought I'd ever see y–you again."
"I… never thought I'd hear your s–weet… sweet little voice again, Miles."
"I–I feel like I shouldn't… shouldn't be alive."
Sonic tearfully chuckles, "Your doctors agree with you on that. Told me you had like a 25% chance of making it out unharmed."
They let go of each other for a moment. "How… how long was I gone for?"
"You've been out for 3 days." He glances over at the bedside clock, which reads 4:48 AM. Something doesn't seem right about Tails waking up from a medically-induced coma at such a weird time. "I'm…"
"You're what?"
"Nevermind." I'm worried about him waking up so early. Did something fail?
The fox also decides to look over at the clock. "I guess I'm up early," he laughs.
"Yeah, I don't think you were supposed to be up this early."
Tails shrugs, wincing slightly at a still very sore shoulder. "I think it's fine. I feel alright."
"Well you're also pumped full of painkillers."
"True." He grins, "But you know what feelings they can't kill?" He shuffles to the right and pats the now-empty space beside him.
Sonic abides and tries to sit down on the bed, but his weight pulls the covers taught and Tails whimpers at the pressure against his cracked ribs. Sonic immediately gets off of the bed. "Sorry, buddy. I forgot about that." The whimpers die down.
"Ow. It's… okay," Tails takes a moment to catch his breath, and pulls back the covers. "I guess we'll do it this way, then."
Sonic chuckles as he gets in the bed, "It'll definitely raise some questions with the nurses."
"Heh, as if what happened didn't already raise a million questions."
"Ugh. Tell me about it. I still have what seems like a thousand unreads to go through."
They both laugh, and Tails crosses his arm behind his head, leaning back so the pillow seems to consume him, "So, speaking of which… what happened while I was away?
Sonic grins and turns up the lamp. "Well, first of all, the world got wind of your piloting skills." He beams with pride as he reaches into a satchel he set down beside the bed and pulls out a small stack of newspapers and magazines. "You've made headlines across Mobius and Earth."
The kitsune's eyes grow wide as he scans the cover-page illustrations and amateur photos of his Tornado II in action. Prestigious aeronautical magazines proudly display his beloved plane with captions like High-Flying Hero, Against All Odds, and Prower of the Skies . As he thumbs through the pages, he looks quizzically at his friend. "Wait, how did they get ahold of that telemetry data?"
Sonic shifts slightly, "I… honestly I think some reporter looked over my shoulder when I had the laptop extracting the data for the authorities to verify what happened, because unsurprisingly, they weren't very willing to accept my story."
"Well it hit the newswires pretty well." Tails burst out laughing, holding a copy of the Earth-based Air Monthly. "I remember when these guys criticized the concept of a two-tailed fox flying a jet fighter." he comically lowers his voice, recalling the opinion article in mind from memory, "It is inexcusable that the United Federation Aeronautical Administration allowed for Miles Prower to pilot an armed aircraft in densely populated metropolitan areas without proper radio communication… blah blah blah, we're boring and long live Eggman." They both laugh at the impression, and Tails coughs, stacking the magazines off to the side. "We can read these later." He lies back down next to Sonic, and looks at him. "What did you do while I was out?"
Sonic hesitates, then sighs "Honestly, I didn't do much. I was flown out to the crash site after you were stabilized, talked to the authorities about what happened and gave them recorder data. I also helped move the materials and information we gathered into temporary storage so it can be shipped home, and just last night arranged for trucks to pick up what's left of the Tornados and truck them home once they finish their investigation."
"Sure sounds like a lot."
"Not for 3 days of worrying whether your best friend is gonna make it." He brushes his hand through the kit's head.
"Yeah, that must've been horrible."
"No kidding. At least the others flew in to stop by and wish you well. They offered me a ride home, but I chose to stay here with you." He chokes and tears up, wrapping a hand across Tails. "It's…it's been… so… so hard, Miles. I h–held you… and you were… cold . I was… I was holding the d–dying body of my… the closest, m–most amazing person I kn–know. I was sure it… it was all going to end. I… I missed you, buddy, I–I really d–did."
More tears fall from both blue and green eyes as the two brothers hold each other.
Sonic continues, "You…you were amazing out there. I've… never seen any–anything like it. The a–amount of pain you were willing to p–push past… I almost couldn't believe it. You were so strong, Miles."
"I–I truly have no idea how I managed to pull off any of th–this. I don't think we'll ever know, either." he hugs Sonic, "I'm… I'm just glad that you were o–okay, Sonic. To..to think that it… we almost didn't make it… so close to safety…"
Sonic yawns, wiping his eyes. "Yeah, your quick thinking got us out of there. It's the only reason I'm here with you right now."
"Honestly, I don't know if I even thought about it before diving like that. I just pushed on the stick and knew exactly what to do."
Sonic chuckles. "Aha, that sounds like you have a skill I didn't know about. Hopefully it won't be needed again."
Tails shudders, "Yeah. I never wanna do that again. Just that… dread I felt when you …dropped from the sky… It was terrible."
"I…I never want to… even think about you having to go through what I did." Sonic pauses, drawing more tears, "H–holding my own brother, as… as he was d–dying, becoming grad–gradually more and more c–cold? I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."
Tails' blackened ears fall to his head as he hugs the hedgehog, "I… I cant even imagine what that was like for you."
Sonic rests his hand over the kit's back, careful to avoid any pressure "I hope you'll only ever have to imagine it, buddy."
Tails chuckles, "I don't even want to imagine it; this has already left enough scars in my memory." He flinches at another stab of pain, "...and my body." He brings up and inspects his stitched-up hand, careful to not disturb - or look at - the catheter plumbed into his wrist.
Sonic leans in towards the injury, "Ouch, I didn't even know about that one."
Tails surprisingly chuckles, "I think this one was from a mixture of a broken engine, broken glass, and broken spirit," he points to counting fingers as he tallies.
Recalling the observations investigators made about the crash site, Sonic puts a hand near one of the burns on the kit's forearm, "Was this from your wing breaking?"
He balls up his fists, pinching the cut. "Yes, lucky bastard got my engine, coolant, and hydraulics in a single shot. It also got my service hatch, which went through the windscreen and into my face. I got burnt by the coolant oil, which eventually put both my guns and lasers out of action." He huffs. "I can't believe how terrible my luck was there. First I got sniped by a cannon, then they shot through my rudder and into my shoulder while I was in the middle of a downward spiral , then they got my engine, wing, and coolant in a single shot to the only weakpoint of the Tornado." He rests his hands on his face in frustration.
Sonic flinches from the sudden change in composure. He puts a hand on a golden shoulder, "Don't forget, you were also incredibly lucky throughout this whole mess. Almost all of your plans worked perfectly, and you even managed to survive it all. This could've very easily gone the other way, Tails. It's no use focusing on things you couldn't do anything about."
"That's easy for you to say, I just have that whole event just constantly replaying in my head. Just all of that pain and fear and ra–"
"Tails, you're okay." Sonic interrupts. It's obvious how agitating the conversation is for Tails. "I think this can wait for another time, maybe once we're back home." To lighten the mood, he lightly brushes the back of the kit's unhurt ear, causing it to twitch maddeningly.
"Ack, hey!" Tails giggles, swatting him away from his ear, which continues to move from disturbed hair. "Alright, alright! I agree that it's too sore of a subject to talk about right now, but that's just annoying ." He gives a playful shove to his snickering brother.
"Can't deny it's an effective way to get your mind off of things."
Tails laughs, "Well there are other ways to do it that don't involve my ears."
Sonic takes a look at the burned ear, carefully inspecting the charred pinna. "I should probably stop anyway, because your other one isn't looking too hot."
Tails smirks, "Probably looks like it got too hot." He yelps slightly at the stinging from the damaged ear. "Gah, that hurts!" He looks at Sonic as he removes the hand from the vicinity of his ear.
"Tails," Sonic frowns, "I think you should have a look at it yourself." He leans off the bed, rummaging through a drawer until he pulls out a handheld mirror. "I know it's not your worst injury, but it might be pretty telling as to what weapons they were using against us. I've seen plenty of plasma burns myself, but I haven't seen one like this." He turns back to Tails, "You said this was from a near-miss, right?"
"Yeah? It doesn't feel much worse than most burns I've gotten before."
Sonic hands the mirror to the fox, "Here, have a look."
Tails angles the mirror, carefully moving his ear so he could see the damage. "Ouch. Sonic, you're right; this is worse than normal. The skin's just ruined. It'll heal up, but… ow . I haven't seen a plasma beam do that before."
"Yeah. The doctors also noticed you had a lot of…I think they called it singed … fur on your back."
"Yeah, I remember that. There seemed to be a lot of heat radiating from those beams whenever they got anywhere close to me." He shudders. "Eggman's beams don't really do that, at least not on purpose. There was just a lot more energy in these."
Sonic leans back, "So we both agree that this wasn't an Egghead attack?"
Tails nods. "Everything points in that direction. Even though these were badniks, they were used in ways we've never seen before." He chuckles, "Also if this was Eggman, Bokkun would be here with his bombitor , forcing us to watch some pre-recorded message."
"Yeah, I didn't even think of that."
Tails sits up and finishes his thought, his voice low and dripping with pent-up rage, "Whoever this was simply wanted us dead and out of the way." He does a cut-off motion at his throat. "They wanted to get rid of us in a clean, professional manner, without any fanfare, and move on to whatever wretched plan they have in mind."
Sonic sits up with him, pulling the kitsune close, "Don't worry, buddy. We'll make sure to give that bastard hell." He brings up a clenched fist.
Tails merely yawns, and Sonic succumbs to its viral effects. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there, Sonic. Retribution can wait for a bit." He shuffles back under the sheets, pulling them up to his chin.
Sonic hesitates, "If you want, I can sleep on the chair so I don't distur–"
"No, you're fine to be here with me." He smiles as he turns on his side, "Besides, that chair doesn't look too comfy."
Sonic chuckles, "Yeah, the color of that thing alone is enough to give me night terrors. Bleh, reminds me of those cheesy home improvement shows Ella watched back on Earth." Tails laughs at the remark as Sonic settles back under the covers.
He just lays there for a moment, staring at the ceiling as the monitor continues to indicate Tails' heartbeat. The notion reminds him of something.
"...Tails?"
"Mm, yeah?"
"Can…" He hesitates from slight embarrassment, knowing how silly his request might sound. "Can I… hold your hand?"
The fox looks at him, perplexed. "...Why?"
"I just… want to feel its warmth. There's… something in me that… just wants to make sure you're okay."
"Oh, is this because of what happened?"
Sonic chokes back emotion. "Ye–yeah."
"Sure, Sonic." He rests his hand on Sonic's open palm.
Sonic feels the heat coursing through the hand. He sniffs, God. To think that, just three days ago, I thought I'd never see him alive again, is just… I can't even begin to describe it. I was forced to watch all of that unfold from the sidelines, and the Tails I was able to hold at the end was… cold, almost lifeless. He takes a deep breath. "I… I love you, Miles."
"I love you too, Sonic."
"It's great to have you back." he says simply.
"It's great to be with you again, too." The kit blushes.
Sonic rolls onto his side, facing his brother. "Goodnight, Tails."
Tails turns towards Sonic and curls up as best he can with the constraint of the bandages and tubes. "Goodnight, Sonic." He settles into the pillow, closing his eyes as he gets comfortable.
Sonic closes his eyes as well, but remains awake, listening as the breathing stabilizes and the heart monitor's beeps slow down. Even against the hum of medical apparatus, he can hear the kit's gentle purrs. Eventually, these too fade away, and as he finally lets himself relax into slumber, he whispers, "Sweet dreams, 'lil bro."
