Chapter 10: A Flight to Remember
If they say that the fastest way into a man's heart is through his stomach, then, with Ella's cooking lessons, I should have Sonic in my hands after the first bite! Amy grinned to herself as she finished setting the table in her downtown apartment. It was a great idea to invite Sonic over for breakfast here instead of back at the mansion! Now it will just be him and me eating together without any distractions. I can already see it now!
"This food is so amazing, Amy! I should have realized long ago how talented and capable you are! I must be the luckiest hedgehog in the world to have a girlfriend like you!" Sonic looked romantically into her eyes from across the small table. "In fact, I need to ask you a very important question..." his voice trailed off as Sonic knelt on the floor at her feet, slowly presenting a small box in one hand...
"Are you gonna open the door or not, Ames?" Sonic's voice called from the apartment hallway.
"Huh?" Amy abruptly snapped out of her daydream. "Oh! Coming, Sonic!" She quickly rushed to the door and unlocked it.
"You invite me over and then leave me locked outside? You know how much I hate waiting," Sonic remarked as he stepped through the door. Immediately after entering the small apartment, he paused to take a deep whiff of the delicious aromas. "Whoa, Amy! Something smells really good!"
"Why don't you help yourself to whatever's already on the table, Sonic?" Amy offered. "There's just one more dish still baking in the oven I need to finish."
"You won't have to tell me twice! Thanks!" Sonic eagerly accepted the offer, rushing over to the table laden with hot, fresh food. Amy had certainly gone overboard to impress her unrequited boyfriend this time. Unsure what breakfast food Sonic liked best, Amy had simply opted for making nearly any and every dish she could think of. Pancakes and waffles piled in two tall stacks. Eggs cooked in every fashion imaginable: scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, sunny-side up, omelets... An entire loaf of bread toasted with various jellies, jams, or other spreads to adorn them. Bacon and sausage still sizzling from the griddle. It was a smorgasbord the likes of which Sonic never even saw back at the Thorndike mansion!
But the pièce de résistance of the meal, Amy's secret weapon, was Ella's special, gooey, irresistible cinnamon buns. Amy was forced to beg and vow an oath of secrecy to obtain this recipe from her. Now they were almost ready. Just one more minute in the oven and they'd be-
*RRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNGGG!*
Amy glared over at her phone. Surely she had just imagined that interruption. No one would ever dare to interrupt all her hard work in setting up this perfect da-
*RRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNGGG!*
Seething in frustration, Amy reluctantly walked over to answer the phone. I swear if it's a telemarketer, I'm going to rip their face off through the phone line! "Hello, Amy Rose speaking. What do you want?" she asked incredibly bluntly.
"Hi, Amy! This is Tails. Have you seen Sonic this morning?" came the familiar fox's voice from the phone's receiver.
"Tails! You'd better not be thinking about interrupting my date with Sonic!" Amy immediately warned.
"A date? Oh, right! The one he owed you from a week or two ago! Sorry, Amy, I totally forgot," Tails' voice shrank back from the threatening tone of Amy's words.
"Well now that you remember, I'm sure whatever you wanted Sonic for can wait," Amy continued in irritation.
"Hey, what's Tails want, Amy?" Sonic asked, walking up from the table holding a half-eaten sausage link.
"Oh!" Amy exclaimed as she jumped from the unexpected voice behind her. She rapidly turned to face Sonic and held the phone behind her back. "Oh, uhhh... nothing! In fact, I think Tails was just hanging up right now," Amy tried to give Tails a hint, knowing he could hear the conversation over the phone.
"That's not like him to call for no reason," Sonic pointed out. "Maybe something's up. Let me talk to him just a sec."
"Oh, but... but...!" Amy tried to refuse, but Sonic had already snatched the phone away from behind her back.
"Yo, Tails! What's going on, buddy?" Sonic spoke into the receiver.
"Hiya, Sonic! I wanted to tell you that Chuck and I just finished the new improvements on the X-Tornado. We were about to test it by going into space, and I wanted to know if you wanted to come along," Tails informed his buddy. "But since I forgot you were busy this morning..."
"Are you kidding?" Sonic reacted in excitement. "Breakfast can wait! Going into space isn't something you get to do every day!"
"If you say so, Sonic. I'll fly over there and pick you up in just a sec. Okay, bye!" Tails spoke before the line went dead.
"Tails, don't you da-!" Amy shouted at the phone, but Sonic had already placed it back on the desk.
"Sorry, Ames, but someone's gotta watch out for the little guy," Sonic offered an excuse to try and calm her wrath.
It didn't work. "That's got nothing to do with it and you know it, Sonic!" Amy shouted at her insensitive boyfriend. "You just would rather go into space for the thrill of it rather than sit here and eat a meal with me!"
"A-Amy, that's..."
"Don't you dare lie to me, Sonic!" Amy cut him off before he could deliver any empty platitudes. "Fine! If you like space more than me, then I don't want to have breakfast with you anyway!"
"Wait, Amy!" Sonic blurted out as his hand reached for hers.
But before he could grab it, Amy turned to the side, putting her arm out of his reach. "Just go, Sonic. Have fun in space," she sulked. Her voice was still gruff and resolute, but with a hint of hurt rising to the surface.
"Amy..." Sonic muttered, his large green eyes softening. He'd really done it this time. Normally when Amy went ballistic about him dodging her advances, the hammer would come out and a dangerous chase would ensue. But this time... Sonic actually found himself wishing for the hammer rather than be forced to see Amy this way.
But the damage was already done. All he could do now is honor her request and leave. Silently Sonic stepped out of the apartment and downstairs to the building's entrance, displaying none of his trademark speed for once.
Amy heard the door latch click shut behind her. Like a trigger, immediately the tears started flowing from her eyes. What am I doing so wrong that Sonic doesn't even want to spend some time with me? Is he really that big of a jerk, or am I just that unlovable?
Amy let out a heavy sigh as she walked back towards the table. Whoa... Well at least he liked the food, she realized as a good portion of the feast she'd laid out for the two of them had been devoured. Stupid Tails. How am I supposed to compete with a trip into outer space?! Imagine how beautiful it must be up there, surrounded by stars. It's like the ultimate romantic setting for a...
"Ah! Sonic, wait!" Amy cried out as she rushed for the door. But just as her hand touched the doorknob, she heard a loud jet engine in the street outside.
"No, SONIIIIC!" Amy pleaded, running over to her apartment window to confirm what she already knew it had to be. Sure enough, she barely arrived at the glass in time to spot the X-Tornado briefly touch down and Sonic hop on board. Then, just as sudden as it arrived, the jet took off again with a backblast that rattled every building on the block.
Amy felt both of her fists clenching in rage as she watched the X-Tornado rapidly vanish from sight. "OooooOOOOOHH! TAILS!! I HOPE YOU CRASH, YOU LITTLE ROMANCE KILLER!" Amy screamed at her window. She contemplated tossing her hammer through the glass in protest, when an unpleasant scent made her pause mid-backswing.
Is that... smoke? Amy realized. "AAAH! My cinnamon buns! GAAAAAAHHH!" Amy finally went ballistic as this was the final straw for the scorned hedgehog.
"We're heading through the upper atmosphere now," Tails announced over his headset while seated behind the controls of the X-Tornado.
"Roger that, Tails. We're at about the maximum altitude of the X-Tornado 1.0 now," Chuck radioed in from backup controls in the rear cockpit.
"All right then, Chuck. Let's fly even higher!" Tails resolved. "Hang on back there, Sonic! Beyond this altitude the X-Tornado is going to be more like a rocket than a plane."
"I've hung on to speeding rockets before," Sonic reminded Tails with a cocky smirk. "Hit it, Tails!"
"Okay, intermixing the Chaos Emeralds' energy into the afterburners in three... two... one...!"
Tails actually did say 'Go' at the end of his countdown, but the noise of the engines drowned him out completely as the X-Tornado lunged forwards at incredible speeds. He felt the G-forces of the plane's hyper acceleration squishing him into his seat so hard that his fastened harness felt loose against his torso. He somehow managed to pull back on the controls despite his arms feeling like lead, tilting the X-Tornado into a sheer vertical climb away from the planet.
Tails found his eyes oddly fixated on the two Chaos Emeralds slotted into the dashboard before him; how they seemed to glow and shimmer so mystifyingly as the engines drew from their near limitless energy. A dazzling display of blue and yellow light seemed to fill the cockpit.
Tails remembered Chuck asking him earlier why he chose those two Emeralds in particular for this test run. Tails hadn't bothered giving a reply other than those being his favorite colors. He figured the symbolism was obvious and wondered why Chuck even bothered to ask.
"Reaching orbital altitude!" Chuck's voice wheezed across the headset.
"Cutting engines!" Tails quickly replied, stretching as hard as he could against the forces trying to pin his arms back. He could just barely feel the tip of the cutoff switch. Fighting a bit more, Tails managed to hook his finger over the metal tab and finally toggle it down.
Instantly the deafening engine silenced and Tails felt his body spring back forward into his restraints. He took a minute to breathe, something that had been quite difficult during the ascent, before turning his attention to his passengers.
"Chuck? Sonic? Are you still with me?" Tails asked through his headset.
"Oh yeah! Why'd you turn it off, buddy? Things were just starting to get good!" Sonic replied enthusiastically from his perch on the X-Tornado's hull.
"OooOOooo..." a deep groan crackled across the radio.
"Chuck? Are you okay back there?" Tails immediately checked.
"I'm fine. I just suddenly realized why there are no elderly astronauts in space," Chuck replied.
"Take a minute, Chuck. Then we'll see if these new ion-drive engines will work," Tails offered a short break before they moved on.
"What's the big deal with these new engines anyway? The old ones worked just fine to get us up here," Sonic chimed in.
"True, Sonic, but the old engines run on fuel and Chaos Emerald power together. This new design runs on Chaos Emerald power alone," Tails explained.
"In other words, you never run out of gas and go floating helplessly through space for all eternity," Chuck added.
"But couldn't we just glide back if we ran out of juice?" Sonic posited.
"Glide on what, Sonic? Space is just, well, space. There's no air or anything to glide on," Tails pointed out.
"Which begs the good question of just how on Earth you're even alive out there, Sonic," Chuck observed. "Let alone able to communicate normally."
"Oh, that? All us Mobians can do it. I guess we just breathe differently or something," Sonic hypothesized.
"So you can breathe and survive in the vacuum of space, but you would have drowned if Chris hadn't saved you from our swimming pool?"
Sonic scratched his head as he tried to figure out the strange paradox himself. "Well, you see... It's, umm... kinda complicated," he offered a wimpy excuse.
"I can handle complicated. Please, go on," Chuck requested.
"Well... Umm... It's more like... W-why don't you take this one, Tails?" Sonic promptly passed the buck.
"Me?" Tails replied in a sudden panic.
"Yes, Tails, please explain," Chuck agreed smugly. "And why don't you throw in an explanation for how you can rotate your two tails indefinitely without ripping your hips from your body?"
"Oh, that? I suppose it's... it's... sorta complicated," Tails nervously replied.
"Uh huh..." Chuck muttered in clear disappointment. "That's terribly informative, you realize?"
"Enough stargazing! Let's kick up those engines!" Sonic impatiently changed the topic.
"Fine. Cutting off fuel to the engines," Chuck reported as he focused back to the task at hand.
"Switching to ion-drive mode," Tails verbalized his checklist to collaborate with Chuck. "Setting thrust output to fifty percent. And... engage!"
The X-Tornado rumbled briefly, but nothing else seemed to change. "...Uh Houston? Do we have a problem?" Sonic quipped underwhelmingly.
"What do you mean, Sonic? It's working perfectly!" Tails replied as he checked and rechecked his instruments to be certain.
"But it doesn't feel like we're even moving," Sonic noted from his exterior perch.
"That's because when you're looking out into space you have no frame of reference, Sonic. We're actually traveling twice the speed of a bullet right now," Tails explained.
"Really? Neat," Sonic responded with a grin.
"Except that just like a speeding bullet, we can't go any direction but forwards with our main engines," Chuck interjected.
"Uhh, not so neat," Sonic immediately worried as he glanced back at the planet behind him.
"Relax, Sonic. That's why I built in tiny point thrusters all around the X-Tornado in order to turn it any direction I want to," Tails informed Sonic. "I even wired the thruster inputs directly to my controls, so I can fly the X-Tornado just like normal. Like this!"
Tails immediately sent the plane into a long upwards loop. Partway up, he momentarily activated the thrusters on the left and right sides of the craft in opposing directions, beginning a lateral roll. The X-Tornado continued to spin as it looped through space, with Sonic holding on to one of the rear wing roots to make sure he didn't slip and tumble away into the endless void.
"C'mon, Tails! You can do this move anywhere! Show me some flying you can only do in space!" Sonic insisted.
"Okay then!" Tails eagerly accepted the challenge. "How about flying backwards?"
Tails counteracted the roll with his thrusters again to bring them back to level flight, then brought the ion drive engines up to full power. This time Tails could feel the acceleration pushing him back into his seat, even if the star field outside again showed no sense of added velocity. He accelerated for a couple seconds, then killed the engines entirely. Pressing on the rudder pedals, he fired small thrusters that kicked the rear of the X-Tornado around, then pressed the opposite pedal halfway through to stop the spin at roughly one hundred eighty degrees.
"Gentlemen, we are now traveling at over twenty two times the speed of sound- straight backwards," Tails proudly announced. "At our current speed we will circle the entire planet in... about an hour and a half."
"I'm not sure if you're trying to impress us more with your flying, Tails, or with your ability to do math," Chuck joked from the rear cockpit.
"Heh, yeah! When Tails decides to show off, he really goes for it! Don't you, bro?" Sonic added.
"Well, I... I wasn't exactly trying to come across as super prideful, guys," Tails sheepishly replied.
"And back to that modesty again," Chuck said with a brief chuckle. "You're certainly an enigma, Tails."
"Hey, watch it on the name calling, Chuck!" Sonic quickly snapped at the elderly scientist in defense of his little brother.
"No, Sonic, it's not...! Ugh, nevermind. I think we've finished our tests for today," Tails decided. He fired the engines back up to slow them down, then angled the X-Tornado at the planet below. "Sonic, you'd better come in here with me. It's going to get pretty toasty out there during re-entry," he warned.
"Good idea, bud. I prefer to eat grilled chili dogs, not become one," Sonic replied. Tails opened the canopy above him and let Sonic lower himself inside. Once the blue hedgehog was seated behind Tails, he closed and latched the protective canopy again. Meanwhile Sonic wasted no time in casually discarding his small headset. He'd never been much for wearing accessories after all.
"Now for the most dangerous part," Chuck spoke across the radio. "The X-Tornado doesn't have much in the way of heat shielding, after all. If our new projected Chaos energy shield isn't up to snuff, this will be a very unpleasant ending."
"Come on, Chuck. We built it together, remember? And we've checked and rechecked every part of it to make sure it was working," Tails tried to build confidence in their joint invention.
"Yes, but any scientist or engineer knows that the first real test never goes exactly according to plan," Chuck countered. "But it's not like we have much choice, either. Starting up the shield," he announced.
The area just outside the X-Tornado seemed to flicker with aurora-like lights, shimmering with energy as the two Chaos Emeralds on Tails' dashboard gleamed brightly. It was almost as beautiful as the stars themselves, demanding Tails' attention as he took one last long gaze out into space.
"We're reaching the outer atmosphere now," Chuck warned as the X-Tornado began to shake with contact to the extremely thin air.
Tails snapped back to attention, checking his instrument panels dutifully. "Our trajectory looks good. We'll come in nice and easy at a shallow angel."
"Angel?" Chuck immediately caught the slip of the tongue. "Ha Ha! Tails, are you sure you're paying attention in there?"
"Of course I am! I think my head's just starting to... to..." Tails' speech suddenly slurred. The fox seemed incredibly tired all the sudden, his whole body sagging in his chair.
Sonic quickly noticed from the seat behind Tails. "Hey, bro, is everything all-"
And then Tails collapsed forward onto the controls, sending the X-Tornado into a spiraling dive straight down towards the planet.
"Tails! Tails! What's going on in there?!" Chuck's voice shouted across the radio as he struggled with the backup controls.
There was no reply from the unconscious fox. Sonic quickly unbuckled from his chair and was thrown against the back wall of the cockpit. He had to struggle to climb against the positive g forces using anything solid in the cockpit as a handhold. The disorienting spinning didn't help, either.
When he finally reached his brother, Tails was still out cold with his head laying on a cracked glass monitor in the dashboard. His left hand had a death grip on the yoke, keeping it lodged full forward in a deadly dive while his right hand had apparently been at the throttle at the time, likewise shoving it to the max as well.
"Chuck! We got a problem here! Tails collapsed and I can't get him free from the controls!" Sonic shouted over Tails' headset.
"You have to, Sonic! I can't reach the button to take over back here because of this spinning!" Chuck called back as it was obvious the older man was straining not to pass out himself.
Sonic could see the air outside the plummeting X-Tornado start glowing red, then a bright orange as the Chaos shield attempted to save the aircraft from the superheated gases it was generating on its fall back to Earth.
"Come on, bud! Work with me!" Sonic grunted as he grabbed Tails' left arm, trying to yank it back to correct their suicidal dive. But Tails' arm was locked up tight, every muscle pushing forward as hard as possible, no doubt an effect of his seizure.
The air outside the canopy was becoming a brilliant, blinding white torch. Alarms and warning lights were blaring all over the cockpit to add to the cacophony of the dire moment. "...S-Sonic...!" Chuck's voice grunted over the static and noise.
In desperation Sonic thought of one last idea. He planted his feet the best he could and made sure he had a strong grip on both of Tails' arms. "Sorry about this, Tails," he muttered in regret, then purposefully let his feet slip. Immediately the overwhelming forces yanked both Sonic and Tails backwards, violently slamming Tails back upright in his seat. Sonic tried to let go as soon as he could to avoid ripping his brother's arms off, resulting in the blue hedgehog slamming back against the rear wall again.
Sonic was dazed as he looked back at the pilot's seat. He could see that Tails' hands were free from the controls now, hanging limply to his sides. Even better, though, was the feeling of their spiraling dive starting to slow. A few seconds later, Sonic felt Chuck regain control of the aircraft, gradually flying it into a much safer approach.
He breathed a sigh of relief as slowly the alarms went away one by one. Even the sky outside the X-Tornado returned to its normal blue eventually. Now his concern turned to his injured and unconscious partner. "Hang in there, little bro. We're going to find out what's wrong with you, and we're going to fix it," Sonic resolved.
"...Huh? Where am I?" Tails muttered as he awoke in a strange white void. As far as he could see in any direction, the whole world was an endless white. The space could have been as big as the universe or as tiny as a room; either way he couldn't tell because the blank void lacked any point of reference whatsoever.
"How did I get here? Where is this place anyways?" Tails wondered out loud. Somehow this void didn't feel scary to him, though, like anyone would imagine it would be. It seemed almost familiar, like he had always been aware of it even if he'd never been here before.
Before Tails could even start to consider exploring this strange, blank void, however, a flash of bright blue light blinded him. With it came a sharp pain, causing Tails to grip his head between his hands and cry out loudly. But as quickly as the flash was gone, so too the pain disappeared.
"Well that wasn't very pleasant," Tails muttered. "I sure hope there's no more of th- AAAAHH!" he yelped again as a sudden yellow flash elicited the same sharp pain once more. "I-I don't know if I like this place anymore!"
He decided to try leaving his eyes shut, since there was nothing in the white void worth looking at, anyway. It had no effect. A brilliant red flash blinded him next as if his eyes were never closed, causing Tails to scream out in pain.
He opened his eyes again to frantically search for a way out of here, but what he saw filled Tails with dread. The endless white void around him was now quickly filling with tessellated colors. Like an approaching wave, the psychedelic light show was advancing on him with incredible speed, giving Tails no time to prepare.
He screamed again as the lights quickly flashed all around him, his head feeling like it was being stabbed with each and every pulse. "Stop! AAAH! Make it stop!" Tails cried out in desperation, although he had no idea who or what he was trying to beg for mercy from.
But the multicolored flashes only accelerated. Tails curled up into a fetal ball, his head buried into his chest with both his arms and tails trying to shield it. But still it didn't diminish the blinding lights in the slightest. It was as if they were flashing directly inside his eyeballs themselves; nothing could stop them.
And the overwhelming pain they brought with them was too much to bear, as well. Tails kept expecting to pass out, to reach a point where the pain was so intense that his body simply couldn't handle it anymore and blacked out. He even started to pray for that sweet mercy of unconsciousness.
It never came. Tails was left writhing and wailing for what felt like eternity as the colors showed no mercy. "STOP! PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU! JUST STOOOOOP!" he screamed. He repeated his pleas again and again at the top of his lungs, until suddenly the flashes were gone.
But Tails didn't immediately uncurl from his protective position even after the lights disappeared. He expected them to come back at any moment as he whimpered to himself, alone and scared. That was easily the most traumatic torture he'd ever imagined. It left Tails extremely shaken, to the point of being afraid to even move an inch for fear that the lights would return.
Tails had no idea how long he remained like this, curled in an uncomfortable, tight ball. He might have stayed like this forever, but eventually his ears perked up at the sound of a faint voice.
"...Miles..."
Tails cautiously uncurled and peeked out into the endless white void again. At first he saw nothing. No, wait... There was something. A strange, pale image fading into view so slowly Tails thought he was imagining it at first.
After a minute, though, Tails became certain that he wasn't hallucinating. It was like he was looking at a badly faded picture, only this figure was fully three dimensional and seemed as real as he was, if not for being mostly blurry and transparent. Tails could make out that the ghost, for lack of a better description, was a noticeably taller Mobian, likely an adult. It's pointy ears and tail seemed fox-like as well, although something was wrong about the tail. Sometimes it would appear to be on the left but then vanish and immediately be on the right. Perhaps it was just wagging?
"Miles," the spectral Mobian repeated itself once again.
"Wh-Who are you?" Tails asked the eerie figure with great trepidation. He didn't know if this apparition was responsible for those lights, after all, or if it had saved him from them instead.
"It's all my fault, Miles," the figure lamented. "This curse..."
"Curse? What curse?" Tails felt a returning sense of dread. What was going on here? Where had he been taken? "And how do you know my...?"
"I won't ever be there... I can't be there..." the ghostly Mobian spoke in fragmented sentences. It seemed to completely ignore his questions, more like it was some sort of recording rather than a spirit. "Please forgive..."
"Forgive? Forgive what? I don't understand anything you're saying!" Tails voiced his frustration. This figure clearly knew something about where he was or what was going on, but Tails couldn't get any useful information he needed from it.
"I'm sorry, son... Now you will die..."
"DIE?! No, wait! Don't go!" Tails begged as suddenly the ghostly figure started to vanish. But it was no use. The image had already disappeared into the white void. He was left alone again in the endless expanse, with only more questions and nothing to answer any of them.
Then he started to hear sounds. Strange, soft beeping in a steady rhythm, but with no visible source anywhere in the surrounding void. His fur began to fell like it was matted down, being pressed upon as if he had on invisible clothing. And for some reason Tails could feel something in his left hand, like there was an object he was holding on to. But even as he tried to open and shake the invisible item out of his empty palm, the sensation persisted.
That's when Tails felt an overwhelming sense of drowsiness wash over him, stumbling to even stay on his feet. What was happening to him? Was he completely losing his mind? Or was this just the next torture he had to go through now? Would it end up being just as unpleasant as the painful lights had been?
Whatever the case, Tails just couldn't fight the urge to sleep. It was like he'd been sedated; there was simply no way to resist. He stumbled and collapsed to his hands and knees, then quickly fell to the ground in sheer fatigue. Tails found himself unable to reopen his leaden eyelids, and soon the unconsciousness he'd begged for earlier took over.
The next thing he was aware of was a light shining in his eyes. He flinched at first, but this light wasn't painful. It was soft and white. Artificial, not dazzling like the sun. As his eyesight cleared, Tails noticed the light was attached to a ceiling of some sort since he could make out the tiles surrounding it.
His other senses gradually began returning to him. He heard small machines softly whirring and beeping very close to him. He smelled the unmistakable scent of alcohol-based sanitizer everywhere. He felt the blanket covering his body and the slightly inclined bed he was laying in beneath him. Then he noticed that same pressure on his left hand.
Tails turned his head slightly to see a white-gloved hand holding his. It was attached to a blue figure that was slumped over with its head resting on the edge of the bed. Tails recognized those blue spines anywhere.
"S-Sonic...?" Tails wasn't even sure how he found his voice. The single word croaked out soft and raspy, almost inaudible from his dry throat.
Even so, Sonic's ears twitched, the hedgehog groggily raising up his face from the bedsheets. "Huh? Tails? Tails! You're awake! Thank goodness!"
"Sonic, what's going on? I feel like I've been run over by one of Eggman's robots," Tails weakly asked. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like a ton of lead at the moment.
"Whoa there, bro! Just take it easy," Sonic placed his hand on Tails' chest to gently restrain him. "This is the hospital, bud. You had another seizure and passed out as we were flying the X-Tornado back from space, remember?"
"Uuugh... Now that you mention it, I kinda do remember a little," Tails realized. So he must have made it back to reality again somehow, Tails decided. Whatever or wherever that place had been, it was all most likely just a dream. But Tails still couldn't shake the images of that strange figure and the words he'd said. Something about a curse and dying and... Wait a second, had it called him 'son' at one point, too?
"Chao?" uttered a tiny voice from across the room. Cheese awoke from Cream's lap at the sound of Sonic and Tails' conversation. The curious chao yawned and wiped its eyes with its bulbous hands before glancing over at Tails. And the very moment Cheese realized that Tails was actually awake, it cried out loudly in excitement. "Chao! Chao, Chao!" Cheese clamored as it performed joyous somersaults in midair.
"Uuuuhh, Cheese? Quiet down, will you? You're going to wake everyone up," Cream grumbled as she tried to silence her partner while still being half-asleep herself.
"Cream? Cheese? You guys are here, too?" Tails asked, moving his head slowly to scan the room and see who all was in here besides just Sonic.
"Tails? Oh mommy, mommy! Tails is awake!" Cream now sounded the alarm along with Cheese.
"Huh? Wha-? Oh! Oh thank goodness!" Mrs. Vanilla woke up quickly to her daughter's voice, followed soon by everyone else in the room.
"I knew Tails would pull through it!" Chuck quickly exclaimed, his laptop clumsily hitting the floor as he struggled to stand up to get right beside Sonic at Tails' side.
"Aha, Tails! This is great!" Chris also stood into Tails' view, beaming happily at his friend's recovery.
"Well it's about time!" Amy chimed in as well. "If you didn't wake up soon, I was never going to forgive myself."
Sonic glanced over at Amy with a very confused expression, causing her to backpedal immediately.
"Y-You know... For not being there when he needed me?" Amy quickly fibbed.
"All of you are here?" Tails was taken aback by how many of his friends were packed into the tiny hospital room. "Wait, how long have I been here?" Tails asked the now fully conscious group.
"Almost a full day, buddy," Sonic answered. "You've been in a coma ever since we managed to land the X-Tornado yesterday morning."
"A whole day?!" Tails exclaimed. How could he have possibly been unconscious for that long and not known about it? "But... all it was supposed to be was just another small seizure!"
"Not that small, we're afraid. And when it happened you just about smashed your head through the X-Tornado's dashboard, too. We suspect that's what put you into a coma for this long," Chuck elaborated. "Doctors have ruled out any serious brain injury, but there was a lot of swelling. We weren't sure when, or even if you'd wake up at all. And the doctors are still trying to figure out what's causing these seizures, since they're obviously getting worse."
"Worse?" Tails was almost afraid to ask. "It sounds like I almost died already, Chuck! What could be worse than that?"
"Being actually dead?" Chris tried to help from the edge of the crowd.
"...Not cool, Chris," Sonic replied with crossed arms and a very unamused glare.
"Tails, sweetie, you also had another seizure here yesterday," Mrs. Vanilla took over filling Tails in on his missing day. "It was awful. You were just... screaming, over and over for several minutes."
"Yeah, I tried to snap you out of it, Tails. I told ya that I wouldn't let go of your hand until you were better. But you... couldn't hear me," Sonic added, a rare momentary falter in his voice that he quickly corrected.
Could it be? Tails wondered. What if his seizure manifested itself as those lights in his dream? But if that part of the dream had been connected to reality, then what about the cryptic, ghostly fox? Could anything he said hold a grain of truth, too?
"So, what time is it now?" Tails decided not to share his strange dream with anyone just yet. Better not to worry his friends any more than he already had.
"About two o'clock in the morning," Chuck answered, followed by a yawn.
"Oh, sorry I woke you all then," Tails replied.
"Are you kiddin'? Tails, I'd have stayed up all night if it would have helped you get better sooner," Sonic vowed.
"Mr. Sonic, didn't you tell all of us to go to sleep because you'd stay up watching Tails?" Cream chimed in.
"Hey, yeah! Way to fall asleep on the job, Sonic," Amy remarked as well.
"Ah, c'mon guys..." Sonic said as he sheepishly scratched his ear.
Tails just chuckled to himself. Whatever was causing these seizures, and whatever that weird dream was about, at least it was good to be back with his friends.
