"Is this really necessary?" Miles twisted in the makeshift poncho that trailed down to his knees, its coarse green fibres woven together from still living leaves.
"If they find out who you are, they will kill you," Cosmo retorted simply.
She had remained singularly unhelpful as Miles learned the basics of weaving, sewing, and fabricating living leaves out of dead wood matter.
It was a little annoying that the last of those had also been the easiest.
"Everything tries to kill me here anyway."
"And how do you normally get them to stop, Miles Prower?"
Miles shrugged with a frown. He was just grumbling. How many years had it been since he'd had to hide his tails? Back home he enjoyed a certain celebrity, a freak, but a useful one. Long past the point where most people even stared anymore, longer still past the point where that bothered him. But Cosmo had been stubbornly against his doing or trying anything until he'd agreed to her terms. And even then only after he pointed out that he would need to wait for someone to open a way back home for him regardless.
What did she want from him? "Perhaps if it's you", she'd said, only to say that it was hopeless. Did she want him to help or not? Was there something she wasn't telling him?
She said she couldn't help him…
Miles shook his head, glancing at the dryad strolling beside him, her eyes pointedly ahead as they walked towards the ruined town at the ambling pace with which she seemed comfortable.
She'd seemed… taller, before. More… something. Intimidating? Intense?
Still smelled nice.
He looked away, rubbing the back of his head. Too much to think about, too many problems, immediate and general. Assume she was correct, he had no way of reverting the corruption. How was it spreading? The grass, certainly, and thorns. What of the rock? All the rock he'd seen below had been the same, impossibly hard, greasy dark stone that had given him such trouble digging his way to the surface.
Could he make a harder pickaxe? Meteoric metal and bone seemed about as hard as one another, so that would be a sidegrade, even if there was enough of it left to make anything more than a perpetually hot butter knife. Gold? It stood to reason that if he had been able to dig out the more mundane materials then they were too soft to be of use digging out the materials he could.
But was this even a meaningful line of thought? Dig out the infection like a rotten tooth? What would he fill it with? He needed to find out more, discover more of the world's secrets, more of its rules. And what could he run into out here that could hurt him worse than he already hurt? He'd discovered that salvation was a zero-sum game where saving one ruined the other. Everything he did had ruined countless lives even as he tried to save others. He knew deep down that the truth had already broken him on a fundamental level, but there was a twisted comfort in that. He could hardly make this worse, so what kind of monster would he be if he didn't try and use the stubbornness that ruined this world to try and save it in the end?
Even if all he was doing was just buying time. He'd lived for so long, yet he always seemed to just be dealing with one problem after another. Earth was next on the menu, Iotsototh or whatever had already showed up there, the pattern of events seemed pretty consistent, so eventually one outsider or the other would "win", eat the other one, and then the world would shift to suit as they drifted nice and "close" to eat the chaos provided by the real Chaos Emeralds after five hundred years of appetisers.
Would they finally be happy if he left them to it? The Chaos Emeralds were infinitely powerful, right? Would that be better? He'd apparently saved the world so many times… maybe… If he did nothing, would the end be better than the endless cycle?
Miles sighed, taking a long glance up at the ring portal, where a tiny Sonic was deep in a slothlike conversation with a tinier variant of himself. He longed to interrupt, demand answers, brainstorm with someone less close to this than he was.
But had they even talked it through yet? Probably not. Even an hour here wouldn't be enough for more than a minute or two.
"Conceal your second tail well, Miles Prower, and hide your name." Cosmo's voice broke through his musing, a blend of weariness and tension competing for dominance. "If they find out who you are-"
"They'll kill me, yeah, got it. Thanks for bringing me here." Miles flicked his wrist, sending Yorrick, portal and all, to nestle among a nearby tree. Cosmo hadn't mentioned it, but anyone taking a glance through the ring and seeing a twin-tailed fox, seemed like it would be bad even if he wasn't personally discovered.
"You should not thank me," Cosmo replied stiffly.
Miles shrugged, feeling the robe settle around his shoulders. Felt weird.
Fitting, everything looked weird too. All built from the same worked grey stone, no variation, not even windows, at least originally. Miles stared from one gaping hole to the next. No rubble. No sign of any destruction beyond the gaps themselves. At least the feeling of the corruption wasn't here. At least not yet. Even Cosmo seemed better for it. He still hadn't asked about her new colouring. Perhaps-
A gun barrel glinted from an opening. Miles slipped forward, arms outstretched in front of Cosmo.
"He will not shoot you without finding your nature." Cosmo lightly pushed one of Miles' arms out of the way as she strode towards the simple wooden door that was the only intended entrance to the building. "Nor will anyone help you. Remember that, stranger."
Miles could only frown in silence as he followed, seeing within a spartan room much like Cosmo's treeroot abode - or study? Still hadn't found out either way about that, either. Hadn't seemed the right time to ask many questions after Cosmo's story, somehow.
Footsteps sounded on wooden stairs beside him. Miles looked up to find once more that a gun was trained on him, the owner glaring at him from behind a barrel that jutted from the mouth of a roaring shark.
"Is this some kind of joke, Cosmo?" The dark skinned human turned his scowl to the plant girl, walking down the rest of the stairs without his aim drifting an inch from Miles. "Is it Halloween already?"
"The cycle begins again, Dante Xavier." Cosmo didn't look at the human, staring instead at the single table within the room as she laid various fruits upon it. "The next realm is already bleeding through."
"Damn. But another fox? They're messing with us now." He turned back to look Miles up and down with a deepening scowl. One of his sleeves was completely absent. Had he lost an arm before?
The hand in question grabbed the fur of Miles' cheek, giving it a hard yank. He yelped, stumbling forward. The human held him upright with a sneer.
"Not a mask? Great, an entire planet of these things? Set it up with Maria and keep 'em both the hell away from me." He shoved Miles backwards with a grunt. Miles landed on the floor with a thump. "And find out her terms!"
"This one has no patron." The dryad placed another apple on the table, still refusing to look at either of them. "Best to ignore it."
"Damnit. You brought in another stray kid?"
"I simply walked here, Dante Xavier, same as any other day. The fox followed."
"Likely story." Dante leaned down, frowning as he grabbed the hem of Miles' robe. "What's your name, kid? Can you even talk?"
"F-Fiona." Miles spoke up quickly, raising his voice slightly in pitch as he laid his hands to hold the robe down.
As expected Dante quickly released the garment.
Humans cared about clothes. Especially on females. It was slightly off putting that he didn't even question that he was a girl, but Miles was used enough to that even among his own kind.
"Well listen, Fiona, I dunno what Cosmo bothered to tell you but we can't help you. Nobody can. So just stay out of our way and quietly wait for something to eat you, al-"
"Attack!"
Miles barely had time to react as a pink haired human woman leapt into the doorway behind him, pulling the trigger on a massive cannon. He stood, arms outstretched in front of Cosmo, eyes clenched as a deafening blast resounded off the walls…
No impact came.
Miles quirked an eye open. Brightly coloured paper drifted about the room. The pink haired human clapped her hands together with an excited grin.
"Oh it's adorable! Maria's going to love it!"
"Damnit, Cherry! Will you stop messing around with that cannon? You're not even supposed to touch it!" Dante snapped. "And you," he glared down at Miles. "Awful quick to jump in front of your girlfriend, aren't you?"
"Sorry, I thought about trying to cover you, but I calculated a better chance of protecting the smaller target." Miles stretched to his full size, barely managing half the human's height.
Dante narrowed his eyes, "All foxes talk like you?"
"All the ones I know." Miles smiled up at him.
Dante's reply was cut short as the newcomer grabbed Miles by the wrist with a barely suppressed giggle of excitement. Miles was dragged out onto the grey stone street with a word of protest from the gunman and stoic silence from the dryad.
"Hey! She's a stray! You can't be helping her!"
"Relax, party pooper! I'm just bringing her to see Maria, that's not helpful at all!" Cherry wagged her finger with a smirk before pulling Miles away.
Well, there went his guide. And hopefully the main person who wanted to kill him around town. Miles glanced up at his sunny captor, who was pouting as she walked.
"He's such an old fuddy duddy."
"Doesn't like foxes much?" Miles tensed at asking the question, but an outsider wouldn't know, and he needed to convince them he was one.
"Well, nobody does much. Except Maria." Cherry shrugged. "Nothing a kid your age needs to worry about. Dante's just extra grumpy the last few, uh, years because the chosen dragged his ladyfriend to hell, then… uh… 'left' before she could come back."
"He lost someone?" Miles perked his ears.
So much as could be lost among these pactbound souls, at least. Cosmo had said that they were bound to the chosen, and Dante had mentioned terms as well - some kind of restraint on when they could appear?
"We've all lost someone, little fox." Cherry smiled. "But… life's still a party, you know?" She suddenly dropped Miles' grip to round on him, hand outstretched. "Name's Cherry, Cherry Pie. I hope you'll stick around for awhile."
"Mi- My name's Fiona. Fiona the Fox." Miles reached to shake her hand cautiously, pulling back in surprise as he discovered his fingers had now embedded in a thoroughly smooshed slice of cake.
Cherry laughed, giving him a wink.
"Imaginative name."
"Well, uh, we're named by our clan. I'm Fox clan."
"And… that doesn't get confusing?"
"In what way?" Miles raised an eyebrow.
"Ehh… Nevermind. Welcome to the party, Fiona. Remember to keep smiling just like that, okay?"
He was smiling again? Miles made a face as he checked with a hand full of cake. Cherry laughed again.
"See? Nothing's as bad when you can have a little fun."
"I'll bear that in mind." Miles wiped cake from cheek to mouth. It had barely any substance, and tasted overwhelmingly of sugar. "I thought you weren't supposed to help me?"
"Who, me?" Cherry put a finger to her lips. Even they were painted a vibrant pink. "Let's just say I'm lucky." She leaned close, opening a door in the wall behind him. "And you are too. Who else gets to have their cake and eat it too?"
Miles glanced down at the cake in his hand, sugar buzzing through his veins. It was both uneaten and intact once more. He raised an eyebrow as he was gently but firmly shoved through the door.
"Have fun with Maria, Fiona. She'll be very excited to meet you."
The door clicked shut on Cherry's Cheshire cat grin, leaving the bewildered mobian in an undamaged, and therefore windowless, room, a single candle straining against the dark.
"... Hello?" Miles frowned into the gloom. He really needed to stop letting people just drag him around places. Humans were just so fragile he didn't really dare to fight back for fear of pulling their arm off or something.
"Is it… someone… new?" Two fuzzy orange ears perked up from behind the table, dark fingers dug into the wood of the table as golden eyes glared at him from the gloom.
Miles tensed as a terrified Terran cat scrambled from where the watcher lurked, pushing against the door in rigid terror as though to break through.
"Um, hey, yeah. I'm uh, Fiona. I was-"
"You're…!"
A massive frame launched over the table at him, claws outstretched.
