Big was good at waiting.

Fishing had lots of waiting, and Big did lots of fishing.

It was easy to wait at Tails' house. Tails always had nice food to eat. Even though he didn't eat it.

Big didn't understand why Tails didn't eat nice food.

Amy said a bad word again. She kicked the sofa and held her face.

Amy was not very good at waiting.

Big patted her tiny head. Sad people that didn't smile were easy to understand. Even when they were mad about being sad. He didn't like that his friend was sad. But at least she was Amy right now.

Sometimes Amy was not Amy. Like when she looked at the important pictures on Tails' table.

Amy rubbed her eyes and smiled at him.

"Sorry, Big. That wasn't very nice of me to kick your chair."

Big nodded. It was Tails' chair. He was just sitting on it. But that was okay. Everyone made mistakes sometimes.

"I'm just worried about Tails, you know?" Amy sat on the couch next to him. It was a tight fit.

Big nodded again.

"I know he's tougher than he looks… Well, most people are tougher than he looks, but he doesn't take care of himself. Sometimes… I don't know. He's not stronger than a Zeti, that's for sure. And he's so… so scared of everything."

Big nodded. He hadn't noticed. Amy was very smart though, so she was probably right.

"It's not like he hasn't disappeared before. I know none of us were at our best during the war."

Big had been off fishing during the war. He hadn't even seen a robot.

He'd seen lots of fish though.

That was nice.

"And there was that time he got kidnapped last month. He's been even worse since then. But…"

"I like him too."

"Wh-what? Oh. Yeah. Me too, Big." Amy rubbed her shoulder and looked even sadder. "Thanks for listening. I'm sure he'll be okay. Tails is too smart to do anything stupid."


Well, this was going to be extraordinarily stupid.

Miles stared at the supply chest with a frown, a torch of crackling green flame shining an eerie light across the walls of the blackened stone cavern.

Sometimes it paid to take risks. Sometimes the only rational approach was to weigh up all the variables and take a chance. Like wandering into a stygian cavern of rotting sand, full of murderous subterranean cactus balls, sideways-faced nightmares and an army of monsters that looked like someone had pressed them together out of rotten meat before going all out on the eyeballs.

Or like picking up fire. That had been pretty dumb. But thanks to the contagious nature of the green flame he was now the proud - and very careful - owner of a torch that couldn't be extinguished by water.

It's okay to be wrong, sometimes.

The third and final message on the note left to him by parents he'd never met, though if he could wrap his head around the causality it was actually Doodle who'd given him that particular piece of wisdom. Possibly. His personal timeline wasn't exactly "linear" after his time on Little Planet, and his parents had never been around to tell him exactly what words were supposed to be on the burnt scrap of paper he had been left with.

Hopefully "sorry" had been among of them.

But being wrong was valuable wisdom for this situation nonetheless. Miles was like a toddler, exploring a strange new environment the only ways he knew how, taking some bumps and bruises along the way - and losing half the fur on his face - but learning important lessons all the time. Like how torches didn't ever burn out, how his body, and even glove, regenerated slowly over time with no trace of a scar. Like however vile or terrifying these abominations were, they bled, and so he could kill them, so he could handle things. The only flesh and blood creature that really scared him was himself.

Some creatures seemed to have their own hammerspace, which unfolded when they died. That had given him some trouble. That normally only happened with dying mobians, and the last thing he needed alone in the dark was how familiar he was with dying mobians. But a few of the side-faces had ejected strange black stones, as well as the stable "glob" of fire, while a lot of the rot monsters gave up faintly glowing motes of energy that hovered around their fading corpses. He'd picked those up too. Had turned out much better than picking up the fire.

But this? Miles shook his head, still staring at the supply chest.

This was a whole new level of stupid.

He'd just passed by this spot a few minutes ago. He remembered since he'd knocked open a selection of old jars and discovered several pre-lit bombs inside, the same classic, spherical design he'd used back on Cocoa Island. The explosion had dug a deep crater into the dead end passage he'd just explored, the displaced stone warping together in a dense cube much like the dirt cube he'd found. That probably explained the disappearing sand in desert, though he'd not noticed anything through the vortex of foul smelling grit.

And now here was a nice shiny supply chest, sat at the base of the crater.

As far as traps went, it was an exceedingly simple one, embarrassingly so. But traps denoted a certain level of intelligence, something that had been sorely lacking from the animalistic hunger of the rot monsters, however human some of them appeared at first glance.

Perhaps clothes really did make the man?

Or accessories at least. Miles rubbed his gloved hands with a frown.

No, wait, Zeti didn't wear clothes and they were reasonably intelligent, while bandages sort of counted and the mummies he'd faced hadn't- Miles tapped his lips thoughtfully, wrenching his thoughts back on track.

So was he supposed to touch the chest to trigger the ambush? It went against every instinct in his body, but after so many days alone down here, frankly it would be nice to talk to another person at this point, even if they showed up with duct tape and a grenade.

Miles straightened, eyes firmly on his surroundings as he reached for the lid of the chest with aching caution.

Which was probably the worst place to be looking, as he might have noticed the chest's keyhole blink in time to pull his hand back.

Miles stared down at his wrist for a few moments, wondering in a daze where it went before the chest lunged at him, its lid wide enough to fit him inside. Blood glittered on its jagged metal "fangs".

Miles leapt up on raw instinct, tails spinning to carry him up and out of the crater as the chest monster leapt after him, ramming itself against the sheer wall of stone over and over again.

Some kind of Peckhamian mimicry, intended to lure in sapients? Or had some person distributed the chests in the first place intentionally to pave the way for these creatures?

Miles shuddered as his body caught up with his missing appendage. Fishing out a bandage he'd received from a particularly determined mummy he gulped down a bottle of crimson liquid.

The nausea was worse than the pain.

Well, the pain was pretty bad. He felt bones pop and stretch in rapidfire bursts of agony as fresh tissue spurted from his wrist. Nerve tissue shrieked as the healing power of the vile drink ceased, leaving them raw and exposed.

But… he'd had worse. Endlessly breaking down and reforming constantly, body and mind stretched out across eternity by the Time Stones. In comparison this expected agony was, if not dull, at least manageable.

A sign of his growing detachment.

Miles sighed, methodically wrapping the bandage over the grisly sight of his half formed hand while the hungry box tirelessly ravaged at stone below.

"You owe me a new glove."

The monster, or possibly automaton, didn't respond. So much for intelligent life. Miles slammed down on the thing from above, rope spooling from the nothing at his side before he looped it around the chest's "mouth", sealing it shut.

It looked almost pitiful in a way, single eye swivelled helplessly. Like a crab with its claws tied shut.

Not that Miles had much sympathy. He twirled his torch between his remaining fingers, jabbing it into a gap on the side of the wall before slamming his tails into it time and again until its shell cracked open and blood oozed out.

Well, that was that question answered for one more denizen of this horrible place. Miles tugged the rope free and the chest beast fell apart, innards hissing as they melted into the stone to leave behind a pile of metal that presumably was the contents of its stomach.

Miles frowned, scraping the metal from side to side with a cautious toe before finally picking it up in his hand. Twin hooks, one red, the other blue, connected by a length of chain. His missing hand was conspicuously absent.

"I said you owed me a glove." Miles frowned, swinging the chain experimentally. Both ends erupted forth, the chain stretching to effortlessly until the hooks slammed into the distant ceiling. They retracted once more, one hook snapping back into place while the other clamped down against the wall, dragging him after it at breakneck speed. He slammed into dirt with a soft thud, sending a fresh wave of agony through his partially regenerated hand.

Okay, so apparently a physics defying grapnel? That was… Sort of redundant, actually. He had so many mobility options already. At least he could use it to hang off things while he reset his tails, maybe? Not really worth all the trouble. Or the glove. Miles frowned, dangling in the dark, the soft glow of the hook illuminating the rock above in the absence of his abandoned torch.

Okay, well, this wasn't super useful, but at least he knew how to deal with the chest mimic in future. Probably should hold off on doing anything else that was stupid until his hand finished growing back. Miles fiddled with the hook until it disengaged from the ceiling, landing with a soft against the dark stone floor.

"Hello?" A girl's distant voice echoed from the dark, almost making Miles jump right back to the ceiling again. "Is anyone there?"

"H-hey!" Miles thought only briefly of dynamite before calling out. "Where are you?"

"Please! Can someone help me? It's so dark!"

She sounded terrified, lost somewhere in this seemingly endless network of underground caves, possibly even another trap.

Miles sighed, pressing down his raised fur as he turned his ears too and fro. The sound of gentle sobbing had replaced the girl's fearful cries.

Time to do another stupid thing.


Knuckles stepped back, part from surprise, mostly revulsion at the gross sight before him.

Zor was rolling in the thorns, driving them into his body on purpose, a smile on his gloomy white face, veins of red creeping across his pallid flesh. Even his hair had strands of red among the purple, looking suspiciously like the "grass" even now plucking at Knuckles' feet.

"What do you want?" Zor stared at him with a morose sigh, smile dimming to a gloomy sneer.

The bloody plants stretched after him as he rolled so a slouched sitting position. It wasn't just the white parts of his skin that was marked red. Crimson lines criss-crossed his black legs, and even his horns and claws had cracks of red breaking through.

"Uh… Where's... Tails?" Knuckles hesitated. This had taken a lot of the wind out of his sails, to be honest.

"The fox?" Zor shrugged, shuddering as the motion tore a thorn from his shoulder with a snap. "Haven't seen him since he almost shot me. It's been months." He sighed again. "Could have at least finished the job."

Okay, now Knuckles didn't want to fight this guy. He'd enjoy it way too much.

"You sure? He was last seen on Windy Hill this morning researching all… this." He waved his mitt at the weirdness around him.

Zor shook his head. "Windy Hill's Zeena's turf. I only go there when I want a beating."

Hm. Alright. So they weren't working together on this? That was going to make finding Tails harder.

"Alright, thanks. I'll leave you to your, uh, thing."

"What's that?" Zor twitched, blinking yellow eyes tinged with red. "You want him too?"

The Zeti's face split into a wide grin and kept on splitting, mouth drooping down to his waist.

"You heard her, stranger." Zor's voice slurred from his newly distended tongue. "Mother wants you."

Knuckles punched him in the face. Zor crashed through a dozen tainted trees.

"Yeah, should have done that earlier." Knuckles shook his head with a frown. Hopefully creepy wasn't contagious.

The grass underfoot pulsed, and Zor exploded back through the undergrowth, slamming Knuckles down to the ground. The Zeti stood above him, wounds dripping blood that turned into small creeping red spiders that swarmed towards the fallen echidna.

"It's not so bad, brother." Zor's smile extended even further, his downcast eyes weeping crimson tears that crawled to join their brethren below. "It's always nice to have family."