The more Miles thought about the current situation, the more he had to conclude that this had been an immense tactical error on his part.
His primary contribution - at least nowadays - as a sidekick was to provide technological support and serve as something of a mission control, directing Sonic to points of interest and advising him about unusual features and potential threats to enable his hero to do his hero thing without having to get bogged down in the details he so detested. A task that was impossible in this dark jungle where neither eyes nor sensors could see very far.
When in the field, however, it was his calm, cautious demeanour that came in most useful, serving to keep his reckless hedgehog friend out of trouble, and then using his ability to fly to get Sonic out of trouble when his warnings and advice were ignored, as was all too often the case.
And these were exactly the traits he shared in common with the rabbit currently creeping along beside him. Normally Cream would be with Amy, helping compensate for the exact same reckless exuberance of her own heroic hedgehog counterpart instead of providing Miles with a double dose of virtues he already had in abundance. But he'd been too preoccupied with letting Amy get her moment with Sonic to protest. The two hedgehogs were probably egging one another into trying to ride one of the zone's giant snakes or racing each other around in the dark until they fell in some quicksand.
"It sure is dark, isn't it, Mister Tails?" Cream stepped closer, not quite near enough to trip him as she glanced from one shadowy tree to another in the gloom.
"Sure is. Absorption spectroscopy indicates that most of the visible spectrum is being attenuated by the atmospheric smog before it even reaches the canopy."
"Huh?"
"Oh, uh, sorry. I mean the clouds are absorbing most of the light."
It wasn't the end of the world. Mobian eyes were huge compared to their body-size, something he was well acquainted with the downsides of, but the upside was that even a little light was generally enough to navigate by, even if it was kind of spooky.
"You know, you're a very different person to talk to when you're nervous, Mister Tails."
"Hm?" Miles rubbed the back of his head, eyebrow raised. "What do you mean?"
"You're a very easy person to talk to when you're relaxed. And you're very good at explaining things." Cream shrugged. "But you get very complicated when you're nervous."
"Oh. Uh. Sorry." Miles frowned. "It's usually unintentional. I just… forget."
"Usually?"
"Well sometimes I gotta remind everyone I'm the brains of the operation, right?" He winked with a grin. "Only reason they keep me around."
"I don't think that anyone could forget that, Mister Tails. You're the smartest person I know."
"Second only to the fat human with an egg obsession." Miles snorted. Despite his claims of valuing Miles' contributions Sonic seemed to forget exactly that quite frequently, casually ignoring his advice, or, far worse, relying on Eggman instead.
"I don't think Mister Eggman counts. And I don't think that's the reason people keep you around."
Miles frowned. Was it pity then? He might save the world occasionally, but if his presence was just dead weight then maybe he should just-
A hand grasped his own.
"I think it's that... you're so good at helping people." Cream didn't look at him as she part stepped, part jumped over what might have been a snake's tail, careful not to touch it.
"Helping people?" Miles snorted, making his own way over the large obstacle. "I think you might be thinking of Sonic, blue guy? Bit taller than me? I'm the orange hermit."
"Mister Sonic is amazing, but I meant... specific people. You're very good at giving the people around you what they need." Cream didn't release his hand. "Mister Sonic depends on you. And Miss Amy… I don't think I've ever seen her so calm as when you're with her."
"She thinks I'm boring?"
Cream poked him gently with her elbow.
"I think Miss Amy likes you very much, Mister Tails."
Sure. Her boyfriend's dorky little "plus one", to be forgotten the moment Sonic was within half a mile, and with her eyesight it didn't necessarily even have to be Sonic.
"I like you too, of course!" Cream smiled. "You're very interesting."
"Oh? And how do I help you?" Miles perked his ears, listening intently to the woods around them. Strange how few signs of badniks they'd seen. He'd barely made out a few footprints so far, but he had the sensation of being watched all the same.
"Well, I like Miss Amy, too, so it makes me happy to see you helping her so much." Cream shrugged and looked away, tail twitching. "Getting to tease you is fun as well. And I think you're really- Mmph!"
Miles dragged her sideways into a patch of wide leafed ferns and not a small amount of spider webs, hand over her mouth, holding her close as he stilled his own breathing. His ears tilted too and fro as he tried to zero in on the sound he thought he'd heard.
...There. Red glowing eyes in the darkness, the soft mechanical whirring he was so familiar with.
A badnik patrol, thick bodied eggpawns. Their brightly painted bodies looked grey in the dull light, but they were armed with massive axes and sputtering chainsaws, stomping through the shadows with all the stealth and grace of a tank division, with which they shared a great deal in common. Miles held Cream close, wrapping the dark leather of his pilot jacket over her pale fur as the robots trudged past, giving the area a cursory sweep with their sensors before moving on.
"Phew, sorry." He breathed out, releasing his grip on the rabbit and creeping out of the brush on all fours, twin tails spiraling in preparation.
"Um… That's… um… Good job spotting them coming." Cream crept up beside him, twisting her ears in her hands.
"Are they searching for something or patrolling?"
"Wouldn't it be easier to look if it wasn't so dark?"
"Sure would. Must have a different reason for it... Let's follow them!"
Miles darted forward, faster than their sedate walking pace from before, easily keeping up with the lumbering patrol until they eventually emerged into a natural clearing sporting a humming machine at its centre. Black smoke spiralled from vents in its side.
The patrol turned and moved off in another direction. Miles slunk forward, pulling his computer free with a frown as he waved his hand through the smoke, sniffing his fingers cautiously as he pulled it back.
"What is it?" Cream poked her head next to his, squinting at the light of his computer display.
"Not completely sure yet, but I do have a working hypothesis." Miles tapped his screen a few times. "There is one thing I know for sure though."
"What's that?"
"It needs breaking." Miles slammed his fist into the side of the machine, punching through solid metal to pull out a faintly glowing white gem - a Chaos Emerald. "Thought as much. Alright, we've gotta run now."
"Wha-"
"Come on!" Miles grabbed her wrist and bolted. The blast flattened a row of trees, only a few tiny wisps of black smoke still escaping from the collapsed crater left behind.
"Removing the Chaos Emerald made it blow up like that?" Cream peeked cautiously out from behind a fallen tree trunk.
"That or the bomb I replaced it with." Miles shrugged. "Hopefully that was the only one and the smoke clears up. I'm going to need to analyse it but I think - uh oh."
Red eyes glinted from the underbrush in all directions, only these weren't attached to lumbering hulks of walking metal, or anything walking at all. Pale, faintly glowing forms with jagged teeth and clawed hands that left deep gouges in the trees drifted towards them.
Miles was reminded of one other tactical error that he hadn't really thought much about previously.
"M-M-Mister Taaaaails!" Cream grabbed onto him with a frightened cry.
Both he and Cream were terrified of ghosts.
"J-Just st-stay behind me Cream." He'd fought ghosts before. It wasn't like he couldn't fight ghosts. If he had to. Just because they were creepy immortal abominations that defied all logic and reason and could never truly be stopped, and great, now he was panicking too, clinging to Cream as dozens of the horrors drifted towards them with aching slowness, empowered by the darkness itself that enveloped them.
Wait.
"Y-you got that ball I gave you?"
Cream looked at him, blinking slowly before slipping the mechanical sphere into a trembling hand. Miles sighed in relief.
"Toss it, quick."
"Alright." Cream lobbed the ball at the nearest spectre. It passed straight through, not even slowing it down before thudding against a tree and falling to the ground.
"Sorry, Mister Tails! Did I do it wrong?"
"You did... great, Cream."
Miles smiled grimly as he wrapped his tails around the rabbit, hunching over her as shimmering shapes circled around them, scrunching his eyes shut and trying to keep from shaking too much. Rings tumbled from his body as those terrible claws found his flesh…
Light and sound exploded through the forest in the form of vibrant rainbows and mildly obnoxious theme music. Miles lunged blindly towards the noise before even opening his eyes, slipping through ghosts made harmless, if still terrifying, by that shining salvation. He stumbled to the dirt beside metallic hooves, his invention not pausing its dance even after stepping on his fingers.
"Mister Tails, did you build me a Rainbow the Pony robot?" Cream stared up at her cartoon heroine, rainbows reflected in her large eyes.
"Uh, yes?" Miles blew on his gloved fingertips, shaking blood back into them before grabbing the ponyball from the dirt.
"That shoots rainbows and dances to its own theme song?"
"Well, it has other modes."
"That is the best gift ever." Cream lunged, squeezing her arms around his neck before dropping to stare in awe at her synthetic heroine.
Miles grinned, rubbing his chest where some ghostly horror had torn his jacket to shreds. Around them the horrors were fading away or retreating from the multicoloured lightshow, only their red eyes visible. All they needed to do now was-
A pair of those crimson eyes surged forward with unbelievable speed, illuminating the forest with light of its own as afterburners ignited behind it. Miles barely managed to twist to the side and dodge as the familiar blue blur thrust past him, metal claws outstretched.
Not fast enough though. The metallic facsimile of Sonic, one of Eggman's strongest creations, smashed through Rainbot the Pony with a crash of metal, snatching Cream up in its clutches as it went past.
"Cream!" Miles stumbled forward, but the Metal Sonic raised its hand mutely to her throat, eyes glowing with menace. "Let her go, Metal. Your objective is this, right?" Miles held up the Chaos Emerald he'd collected between his fingers.
Its eyes locked on the jewel. Miles gritted his teeth. Eggman might have the engineering skills of a drunk toddler sometimes, but Miles would have thought that even his haphazard excuse for a voice chip would have been better than not even bothering to install one.
"Thought as much." Miles glanced at the crowds of spectres rallying around him once more now the Rainbot's light show had been forcibly ended. "Shame that I'm carrying around enough high explosives to send it into low orbit." He grinned, a dozen metal spheres thudding to the soft ground around him. "Five second timer, plenty of time for you to get over here and complete your mission. If I'm distracted, saving the rabbit."
He dropped the Chaos Emerald on the pile.
"But if I'm not? Maybe I slow you down too much and boom, bye bye emerald, fission mailed to the next continent." Miles' grin remained fixed as he desperately tried not to calculate how close the ghosts were now. "Three. Two-"
Metal Sonic snapped Cream's neck in a shower of rings before throwing her sideways into the swarm of ghosts.
"No!" Miles bolted towards her as the robot burst forward.
At the wrong angle. A metal fist telescoped into Miles' stomach, sending him crashing backwards through a tree. Miles barely had a moment to see Metal snatch the Chaos Emerald from the bombs before they detonated, a second earlier than he'd said they would. He flipped backwards to land on all fours, snarling through bloodstained teeth as he pushed unsteadily forward once more to where Cream fell, taking advantage of the light of the explosion to push through the ghostly swarm and snatch her up, bursting through the other side, running on adrenaline.
"Mm… Mister Tails?" Cream shook her head, still dazed by her momentary incapacitation before the ring reaction saved her life.
"Gotta keep running." Miles grunted, shifting her so she collided with a nearby ring as he ran. "Just need to outrun them until-"
The flash of rocket jets was barely enough warning to get his tails up, the impact slamming into their thick fluff still enough to send him skidding across the jungle floor in a spray of dirt. Miles glanced up to see Metal Sonic hovering before them, smoking but intact, the Chaos Emerald clutched in an arm where blue paint had been scoured away. The cannon built into its chest crackled as it charged.
"Get away from them, boltbrain!"
A hammer slammed into its metal skull. Plasma exploded past Miles' head, the crackle of sizzling fur hissing in his ear as Cream pulled him away from the blast at the last moment. Amy dropped in front of the two of them, her hammer held ready, glaring at the robot with grim determination.
Metal Sonic's red gaze flicked silently between the three mobians arrayed against it, then turned and fled without a sound beyond the blazing of its afterburners.
Amy let out a sigh.
"Even the fake runs away."
"Amy!"
"Miss Amy!"
The pink hedgehog stiffened in surprise as the two mobians clung to her, one of them slightly on fire.
"Good thing you guys put out all those light shows." Amy pinched the tip of Miles' ear, extinguishing it. "You okay?
"I've... had worse." Miles released his saviour, coughing awkwardly. "Metal got away with the Chaos Emerald though."
"What about the ghosts?" Cream clung close, glancing around the grey forest. Only dull red eyes remained now, glaring from the deepest shadows.
"Ghosts?" Amy peered around. "I only noticed eggpawns."
"Looks like it might be too bright for them now the smoke is clearing up." Miles tapped a finger to his lips. "Here's your ball back, Cream."
"Oh." Cream sighed. "Thank you, Mister Tails. It's a shame Miss Pony got broken saving us."
"Huh? That's fine. I needed to reduce the Kessler effect from all the orbital doomsday weapons we blow up and I figured an autonomous drone synthesiser would be an optimal use for the byproduct."
"What?"
"It keeps making new ponies. That light turns on when it's ready."
"Yay!" Cream held the ball aloft with a cheer.
"Anyway, we need to get to my lab." Miles limped back towards the still smoking crater. "I've got my suspicions what this stuff might be, but I can't be sure without testing it. We just need to find Sonic first."
You need me little buddy?" The blue blur skidded to a halt at the edge of the clearing. "Those snakes are something else, huh?" He peered from face to face, eyebrow slowly raising. "Wait, what did I miss?"
