"Is there anything else I can do, Tails?"
Amy hovered nearby with a pensive frown on her face, dark ringed eyes heavy with fatigue and forgotten horror.
"It's-" Reason caught herself. Amy preferred to be active and useful, especially when she was feeling the opposite. Better to keep her occupied than stewing in her own nightmares. "-Getting late. Why don't you cook up those fish Big caught? I'm almost done here."
She rubbed the bare fur of her stomach with a grin. Wearing her dead daughter's shoes and gloves and nothing else. Could still feel the blood she'd rinsed away.
The Sept in her was screaming,
Amy looked startled, but nodded all the same.
"Surprised to see you hungry for anything but mints."
Whoops. "Well I don't want them stinking up my lab." She popped a screw between her lips as she affixed another metal cuff onto the stranger she was building into a metal tomb. "And that cat probably won't like us wasting them."
"Oh, he'll be real happy we ate them on him I'm sure." Amy winked, a ghost of her old self returned. "Alright, I'll be back in a bit. Any preferences?"
"Hot protein?"
"That's the Tails I know." Amy smirked, turning away. "Call me if you need me, especially if she starts waking up." She cast a meaningful look at the "bat".
Reason nodded. With the cocktail of drugs she'd given the creature, if it woke up any time in the next six hours it would be a miracle, and a double miracle if that was without enough brain damage to make all this security redundant. She glanced at the portal, placed surreptitiously on Miles' desk, where the periodically changing light and occasional sound would do little to attract unwanted attention from curious hedgehogs amidst the tablet computer and monitor she'd left on for camouflage.
"How is it?"
Reason startled, glancing up to see Amy standing beside her once more, green eyes wide.
"How is what? I thought you were cooking?"
"Stove's heating up." Amy shrugged. "And the portal, of course. Silly me, have we seen him?"
"Ah, we already knew?" Reason relaxed with great effort.
"I do not sleep." Amy nodded, a dreamy smile spreading on her lips. "Caution is understandable, but don't worry, little me. I am always listening."
"That saves time." Reason nodded, stomach churning. "I have not seen him yet. There is fresh movement, however. Is our course of action set?"
"We must recover him." Amy nodded. "Make the final adjustments to the containment unit, then I will assist you with calculations. Confirm when he is seen."
"We know." Reason turned back to her task, mind racing. "What if he shares the bat's infection?"
There was no response. When she glanced back the hedgehog was nowhere to be seen, pans clattering in the kitchen.
Reason grimaced, slipping a flexible band of gold and circuitry from her glove and ravelling it around her finger. She tapped it against her thigh with an alternating rhythm while she worked.
This wasn't an insurmountable problem. Amy was far older, and far from weak thanks to her absolute dedication to self improvement. The Doodle within had none of her host's hesitation either, as evidenced by her casual murder of Amy's best friend thirteen times over. But despite the comparative rarity of female abnormals, Reason's own genetics were artificial. Not only did she feature most of Miles' own natural physical and mental faculties, but several of Cream's as well - primarily ones that increased stability; Doubling up chromosomes might guarantee an abnormal, but they also had a way of causing otherwise benign traits to manifest with a vengeance.
For her age, Reason was a powerhouse, and her tails were an absolute advantage in close quarters that could offset the power gap if she could get close. If she was willing to more than likely kill Amy in the process. Mobians weren't built to get injured, after all, and Doodle likely wouldn't hesitate to break her own body if push came to shove.
… Was she willing to kill Doodle?
Reason's frown deepened as she wired up the containment unit to the lab's power supply, a fourth line of defence against an unknown threat.
She was Doodle. She was Doodle's youngest daughter, she was once every single thought that was running through that chip. Doodle was her daughter, who she'd nurtured and cared for over centuries. She had killed her children, her sisters, but could Reason say better? She had been the person who killed children without hesitation, she had been the willing accomplice as she watched generation after generation of Creams die of old age trapped in Happy Days, and willingly engineered Miles' worst nightmares, shamelessly embellishing every part to make him suffer more.
And she had brought a pretty little hedgehog girl to have someone else's mind stuck in her brain. The blame stretched back centuries, with the original cause being so inextricably woven into so many different levels that assigning it was all but impossible. Doodle had lurked invisibly alongside Miles since she'd left Little Planet, never causing any problems, only now was she operating on necessary compromises and acceptable losses that had only ceased to be necessary and acceptable for Reason because the things being sacrificed had been hers.
Reason sighed. She wasn't used to having her own problems to worry about.
Pulling the band off her finger she stepped towards the golden ring that showed another world through its centre. She pressed one end of the metal strip against the ring, clipping it in place before throwing the other end through the portal and stepping back just as quickly, glancing to the door that led to the kitchen area.
Safe. Amy could be heard humming an achingly familiar song from within. Had Miles picked it up from her? Vice versa? Was it Doodle who hummed it to Miles or Doodle who hummed it right now? Time travel, as Miles put it, really was the worst. Everything about her existence was a confusing web of time and dead people still walking around.
At least her message would be camouflaged on this end, and the trailing end hopefully wouldn't get caught on anything sturdy enough to pull it free before she had filled in Miles on the other end about what was happening here - with a few careful exceptions. If she could figure out a way to get him out safely, perhaps Doodle could be convinced that stability was a reasonable secondary objective.
"Tea?" Amy poked her head out of the kitchen, normal, smiling.
"Please." Reason smiled.
But… What about her? Did she represent an instability for Doodle to remove? Was she Doodle enough to live? Miles enough to live?
… What would Miles do?
Reason tugged on her ears with a silent groan.
Maybe she should have asked him after all.
