Chapter 5: Run!

March 12th, 2314 – 1:15 PM – Mor, Zeraw

Tails couldn't believe it. Cocky, confident, surefire, and ready to go Sonic Hedgehog had just waved him goodbye, admitting that he was lost and that there was nothing that either of them could do to save him.

Come on Sonic! That's not what you're like! You wouldn't just give up like that!

Tails put his back against the wall next to the glass doors he had been watching Sonic through. He buried his face in his arms and knees, and started to cry.

My big brother...he thinks he can't make it. What am I going to do? I can't go out there, or I'll get shot and I'll die! But I don't want Sonic to die either! What do I do?

Tails gazed around the ransacked restaurant, trying to formulate a plan with his little six-year-old brain. The place was scattered with overturned tables, splattered ketchup and mustard packets, half-eaten food, and assorted other items, not to mention the bodies of those who didn't escape the first round of shooting a few minutes earlier. There was a lot of stuff lying around, but Tails didn't see how any of it could help him rescue Sonic.

"You can invent anything, if you think hard enough." Mom told me that. But what can I invent with this stuff to help save Sonic? I just don't know...

Then Tails saw it: the condiment bar. It was covered with dozens of packets full of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and all sorts of other things people liked to put on their food, plus napkins, straws, and plastic forks, knives, and spoons. That wasn't important though. The important thing was that Tails noticed it was made of heavy metal, and it had wheels on the bottom. An idea was starting to form in Tails' head. He would use the bar as a moving shield while he ran to grab Sonic. The fox jumped up from where he was sitting, and ran behind the condiment bar. Then he pushed against the thing as hard as he could, but it barely moved even though he was putting all of his strength into the task.

I'll get shot if I can't keep this thing moving fast enough. What can I do to make it move faster?

Tails glanced around the restaurant again, looking for something more that he could use. However, he came up empty. Tails looked down, saddened that his plan would work if only he wasn't so weak physically. He glanced down at his tails...and then another idea popped into his head...

Nine days ago...

"Tails, are you ready to try it again?" Sonic said, standing next to an exhausted Miles 'Tails' Prower in the backyard of the Prower house.

"Sonic...let me rest..." Tails gasped out.

"No way! I wanna see you try to fly again!"

"Ugh..."

About a month and a half ago, Kyle had taken Sonic and Tails on a ride in a helicopter, as a present for Tails' sixth birthday. He'd been half regretting his dad giving him that gift ever since. That had given Sonic the idea of using Tails' twin appendages like the propellers of the helicopter to get him to fly. Well, to their surprise, their little experiment had actually worked. While it was cool that Tails could fly now with his tails, he didn't like at all how Sonic kept pestering him to show off his flying every ten seconds. He thought his tails were going to fall off at this rate.

"Alright, I'll do it..." Tails muttered.

"Alright!" Sonic said, jumping for joy. "Thanks Tails!"

Tails spun his tails around again, just like the rotor on a helicopter. The trimmed blades of grass beneath his feet fanned out from the downdraft as he slowly rose into the air. He rose up about two feet off of the grass, but then collapsed to the ground out of sheer exhaustion.

---

If my tails can create enough of a force to lift me off of the ground, then maybe I can use that force to push this cart... Thank you Sonic!

Tails twisted up his foxtails, and then spun them back out again as fast as he could, the force giving him a great thrust forward, as if a giant hand had just slammed him and the cart straight forward. The cart rocketed right through the broken glass doors and into the parking lot, with Tails holding onto the end of it. As the laser fire started to turn towards him, Tails let go of the cart and ran behind it. Luckily, the metal of the cart seeming to absorb the laser fire well enough. Sonic was rapidly getting closer now. As the condiment bar crashed into the rear fender of the SUV, Tails was already yanking Sonic up off of the ground by the hand. The hedgehog's leg was bleeding quite a bit, the red spattering on the ground at his feet.

"Tails...I told you to run!" Sonic shouted in terror over the thundering noise of the gunfire. But, then he put on a smile. "But anyway, thanks for coming to get me..."

"Save it for later Sonic!" Tails shouted back. "We need to get out of here!"

And then it hit him as he said those words. He hadn't really thought his plan all the way through. Sure he'd gotten to Sonic, but now what? How were they going to get back out? Tails couldn't push the cart and help Sonic out of the area at the same time. With that wound in his leg, he probably wouldn't be able to move too fast.

"You can invent anything, if you think hard enough."

The words of Tails' mother echoed in his head once again.

I know Mom, but what do I do now? I can't think...there's too much noise with all the shooting. It's a big...what's that big word? A distraction, that's it. Mom always said "Don't be a distraction while I'm working. It confuses me." And... Why am I thinking about that now? Me and Sonic are about to die. Wait...distraction...confusing... I've got an idea now.

Tails turned back to Sonic.

"Sonic...can you give that metal thing over there a push?" Tails said as he pointed at the condiment bar stuck in the back of the car they were hiding behind.

"Uh…sure I think..." Sonic said. "Why?"

"After you push it, grab onto my arms. They'll shoot at the cart, while I fly us out of here."

"Sounds like a plan to me Tails," Sonic said. "Let's do it. But make it quick. I'm losing a lot of blood."

Sonic walked over to the cart with a limp from his leg, trying to stop the bleeding but having no luck. He gave the cart a kick with his good leg, and it moved back across the parking lot. The laser fire immediately shifted away from the car and towards the condiment bar as it rolled away. Sonic came back over to Tails, and held out his arms.

Tails grabbed onto his arms as tightly as he could, and said, "Hold on tight."

Tails twin foxtails began whipping around, creating a downdraft that lifted the fox off of the ground, and then the hedgehog behind him. The two rose out from behind the car, and went up and away from the restaurant. The laser fire quickly came up to meet them, but they were gone before long. Tails could have sworn he heard Robotnik screaming in rage behind them, but he barely paid it any mind, too busy evading the shots.

"Looks like we made it," Sonic said, as they flew over the city. He then took a look around at the town below. "This is...terrible..."

Tails looked down too, and he saw it as well. It wasn't just the restaurant that had been attacked, but the entire city. Both of them had been so busy trying to escape Robotnik that they hadn't realized the magnitude of the army's forces. There were dozens of flying battleships hovering over the city, firing at random down at the city below. Entire skyscrapers had collapsed to the ground in smoking heaps. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of fires burning around them. Worse of all were the individual people they saw on the street below getting brutally mowed down by the gunfire. After Tails watched a crowd of children running out of a school get shot down by a troop of robotic soldiers, he couldn't bear to watch any longer. He turned his eyes back away from the ground.

"We have to get out of here!" Tails shouted over the noise. "We need to get back to the Tornado outside the city!"

"Too bad...I wanted to stay and try to stop Robotnik," Sonic said.

Tails looked down at Sonic in shock. The blood flow continued to trickle down out of the laser wound in his leg.

"You're kidding me, right? He shot you! You can't fight like that!"

Sonic frowned and shook his head.

"Don't care. I want to do something to stop him. I would hate to just let him get away with all of this..."

Sonic then turned away from Tails and looked in another direction. His eyes went wide with fear.

"Look out Tails!"

"What is it Sonic?"

"Over there!"

Tails turned to see what Sonic as looking at, and his mouth dropped. In front of them was one of the battle cruisers they had been watching before. Now they could see its main cannons turning to fire upon them. Tails went into a dive, down to the war-torn city below, just as the cannons sounded. He could feel the sizzling heat of the high wattage laser blasts traveling past them, but fortunately none hit. The cannons apparently weren't designed to shoot at such a small target. Meanwhile, Sonic and Tails dropped down in the middle of a street that was thankfully free of hostiles.

"We'll have to walk out of here," Sonic said, putting an arm over where he got shot. "If we try to fly out, those battleships might shoot us down."

Tails nodded, and then looked around at where they were. It looked a little familiar...

"Hey...haven't we been at this street before Sonic?"

"Maybe," Sonic said, looking around. He then pointed at something. "Yep, we've definitely been here before."

Sonic was pointing at an Elec World shop, the same shop that Tails had been playing with the Teleno Neuro Cars in. Tails briefly reflected on how different things had been around here only a few hours ago. He and Sonic had just been exploring the vibrant town, all of the streets full of people and cars going this way and that way. The streets had been relatively clean, and there was the dull roar of chitchat among people and cars going back and forth.

Now though, the once bustling city had been reduced to a war zone. Broken glass, trash, debris, and bloodstains littered the streets that had once been clean. Faint screams in the distance had replace the cheerful idle chat going on between people, and the thunder of laser rifles and battle cruisers now permeated the air instead of the rumble of trucks, buses, and cars. It was so terrible how Robotnik had transformed this city into a nightmare. Tails almost agreed with Sonic now on sticking around to fight Robotnik, but he wouldn't admit it out loud. He didn't want to encourage the hedgehog.

"Hey Tails, you awake?" Sonic said, shaking the fox's shoulder.

Tails didn't respond for a moment, but then his head suddenly jerked up. He had been thinking so much about going with Sonic's original plan that he had totally zoned out.

"Sorry."

"If we're at this shop, then that means the alley we were sleeping in before isn't too far away."

"Really? Then that means we're getting closer to the edge of town!"

"Yeah...we're almost home free. I just hope the Tornado is still there..."

As Sonic finished talking, there was the all-too-familiar sound of Robotnik's egg ship approaching in the distance. Sonic and Tails turned towards the direction of the sound, and saw Robotnik emerge from behind the buildings at the end of the street.

As soon as Robotnik saw them, he screamed, "They're here! Kill them!"

Right after Robotnik said the word 'kill', dozens of robot soldiers seemed to just appear from everywhere. Not only were they coming from Robotnik's end of the street, but they were also appearing from the other end as well. A battle cruiser in the sky above also drifted closer to their street. Sonic and Tails were boxed in from all sides.

"What do we do?" Tails shouted to Sonic.

"The Elec World shop! Let's try hiding in there!"

Tails decided to just go with Sonic's idea, since there wasn't any time to think of a better plan. The fox shouldered Sonic to help him move faster, and the two of them ran as quickly as they could inside the store. All of the TV screens on display were showing nothing but static. The shop clerk that had told Tails to leave the store earlier was nowhere to be seen. But, eerily, they saw a pair of broken glasses that looked like his in front of the entrance doors as they ran inside.

"They went inside the shop!" Robotnik bellowed from outside. "Go inside and hunt them down! Shoot anything that moves!"

"Crap..." Sonic muttered. He took in a deep breath, struggling to stay standing up. "They're going to come running in here any second now."

Tails was panicking. Sonic couldn't fight with his leg like that, and there was nobody else here. Meaning Tails was the one who would have to do the fighting once the soldiers ran in here. That meant they were dead. Tails was just a six-year-old fox, and he had never gotten into a fight with anyone at his elementary school. Heck, he hadn't even thrown a practice punch in his entire life. He wished that someone, anyone else was in here. Even that store clerk would do, despite the fact Tails thought he wouldn't be able to do much good in a situation like this. He briefly remembered how the clerk had forced him out of the store for playing with the Teleno Neuro Cars too much.

On the tail end of that thought, Tails glanced over towards the display where the cars were. Once again, he thought it was amazing how different things were the last time he was in this room, with how he had just been innocently playing with a bunch of toy cars there. Expensive toy cars, no less, which could navigate an area without any user input whatsoever, if the kid playing with them wanted them to…

Then, an idea hit Tails.

We can use another distraction here, like at the restaurant.

"Sonic!" Tails said. "Wait here a second!"

Tails leaned Sonic against a shelf, and ran over towards the display where the Neuro Cars were.

"What are you doing?" Sonic asked. "This is no time to play with toys!"

"Just trust me!" Tails said.

He reached inside the maze at the display and pulled out all the cars he could see. It was a bit tricky to catch them, since they were still up and running through the maze. The fox then sprinted over towards the glass doors, which the robot soldiers would be pouring through any second now. Tails put down three of the cars, and allowed them to zoom off out into the street. He then turned around and ran back to Sonic, taking his shoulder again.

"Let's get out of here!" Tails shouted. "We don't have much time!"

As Tails said that, he heard the sound of laser fire out in the street. The robots were trying to shoot the toy cars as they zipped about the debris, but they were having a lot of trouble trying to hit them with how small they were.

"Shoot anything that moves!" Heh heh...it's working.

While the robots were distracted by the toy cars, they would have time to run away. Sonic whistled a bit as he admired the young fox's idea.

"Great thinking Tails," Sonic said.

"Save it for later! Let's run!"

The two ran past the shelves of electronics, towards the door marked 'Employees Only' at the rear of the store. It wasn't locked, which was a major relief. There was no time to find the key for it. They came into a room full of shelves stacked full of boxes, with only a flickering fluorescent bulb overhead providing the lighting. Tails looked around the room, hoping that they could find another door to take. He saw two double doors over to the left marked 'Delivery Entrance – Keep Clear!' Sonic and Tails looked at each other, and nodded. Tails opened the doors, and they began to step out into an alleyway. A hail of laser fire came from the left, tearing holes in the doors and the nearby walls. The two jumped back inside the building.

"They're out there too!" Sonic yelled.

"It's okay," Tails said.

Tails released the remaining three toy cars he had into the alleyway. The soldiers opened fire on the cars. The fox took a little peek into the passageway from the door, hoping he could find another way to get them out of here. He saw a doorway hanging open to the right, the door swinging back and forth in the wind. It looked like someone had been running out that door in such a hurry that he didn't have time to close it. Whoever had run out was probably dead by now, but it was a lucky break for Sonic and Tails.

Sonic saw the door too and said, "Ready when you are."

While supporting Sonic, Tails dashed across the alley as fast as he could. They dived inside through the door quickly. Tails looked up from where he had landed on the floor, and saw that they were inside another storeroom, meaning they were probably behind another shop again. No time to think about that now though. They had to escape before Robotnik managed to pin them down again. They crashed through the first door they saw in the room, hoping that this one would finally lead them to freedom.