"Hey."
A finger prodded Miles' cheek, waking him from his nap. For a brief moment he tensed, muscles ready to strike before he remembered that he was safe. His eyes flicked open to see Amy's own green gaze close to his own. Too close. A mischievous smile adorned her lips.
"Everything okay?" Miles relaxed, his lips spreading into a smile to greet her own.
"I'm ready now."
"Huh?" Miles suppressed a yawn, uncoiling his body and tails without breaking eye contact with the hedgehog poking her head around the side of his seat.
"To do the thing!"
"What thing?"
"The wing thing! I've been sitting here doing nothing for at least nine hours now, so it's either wing walking or skydiving."
Miles nodded, glancing past her out of the cockpit. Weather was clear, wind low, and they looked to be about thirty minutes off South Island, so not much air traffic to work around.
"Coolamundo. Climb on up."
"That's it?" Amy's eyes widened.
"Well, try to stay in the middle of the wings until you get used to it, and don't run around too much?" Miles shrugged.
Who did she think was going to be doing most of the work? Miles had been doing stuff like this for almost half a decade at this point, it wasn't like she was going to be more trouble than a certain other hedgehog that didn't know how to stay still.
Amy glanced down at the ocean glittering below.
"Don't just do a barrel roll suddenly, okay?"
"We're not in combat." Miles smiled. "But okay, no rolls. I won't let you fall, I promise."
"... Okay, so I just climb on up?"
"Yep! I'll slow down a bit so you can get used to the wind."
A hand grabbed Miles' ear, swiftly followed by a knee on the opposite shoulder. He rolled his eyes, then rolled them right back down again as he considered Amy's likely reaction to him looking up in this position.
A boot to the head later, and Amy was wobbling atop the wing of the Tornado, wind whipping around her like a hurricane, even at the reduced speed, threatening to rip her from the plane at any moment.
And she laughed.
The girl in the red dress leaned into the wind like she was flying herself, arms outstretched as sky and sea rushed beneath her, yelling words Miles couldn't hear.
Mobians enjoyed going fast. It was a biological disposition necessary for a species that outsped every other organism on the planet. Their brains were engineered for it, their bodies were built for it. And Amy had spent years trying to push herself to the very limits, always wishing she could be faster...
So Sonic would look at her.
Miles sighed, accelerating slowly, eyes locked on her.
Girls were rarely born special among mobians compared to boys. For girls, both parents needed to have the necessary genes and pass it down. If heroes like Sonic & Knuckles won the genetic lottery when it came to being on the extreme end of the spectrum in terms of speed or strength, then a woman like Rouge had to overcome the same odds twice in a row. Amy's friend Cream was a more "average" heroic specimen, able to stand toe to toe with Eggman's robot forces at the tender age of six, but still existed firmly in the lower band of "abnormal".
Amy hadn't been born special. She'd made herself special. Mobians didn't generally much care for things like organised sports, but if she'd been a human she'd be an Olympian, the absolute pinnacle of physical achievement as she pushed herself tirelessly towards a height she could never reach. All for a hedgehog who barely tolerated her company.
And what about himself? Miles wasn't the fastest, but he was fast enough to keep up with Sonic with a little three dimensional movement and careful planning. He wasn't the strongest, but he was strong enough that he knew less than ten people on the planet who were even in the same ballpark. But he was sitting quietly in a lab, holding himself back for Sonic, while she was giving everything trying to reach him.
And they were both feeling the strain.
Amy shouted something inaudible. Miles reacted to the bending of her legs as she jumped, echoing her hero's acrobatics. Thanks to a nudge of the yoke she landed as neatly as if she'd been on solid ground, spinning to look down at him with a triumphant grin.
'Did you see that?'
He read her lips and smiled, shouting his own useless words of praise.
What kind of cosmic injustice was it that they couldn't just swap? He could be the fox Sonic wanted him to be - a simple gadgeteer, dangerous, but not much more so than Eggman, just filling the role he'd been given. And Amy could be as great as she deserved to be, fast and strong enough to stay by Sonic's side like Miles had done.
Before Sonic decided he didn't want the person Miles used to be.
Amy stood on the tip of her boot, spinning a graceful pirouette, dancing to her own rhythm from one end of the wing to the other. She spun around again, a cheeky grin on her face as she hopped back to the middle of the wings, lips moving.
'Bet you're-'
Her expression froze as her foot slid off the rounded edge of the wing. She fell backwards towards the propeller. Miles gunned the engine, the rapid acceleration throwing her the other way to slam head first into the cockpit. Rings tumbled from the side of the plane as a spiny head cracked into his face, the plane fell into an uncontrolled dive…
Miles coiled his tails around the hedgehog, pulling her off the controls as he grabbed the yoke, easing it back until the plane levelled out once more, a thousand feet lower but none the worse for wear. Everything back to normal as quickly as it had started.
"Well that was exciting!" He laughed, hitting the autopilot and turning his attention to his passenger. "Are you okay?"
Amy nodded. He could feel her heart pounding through the fur of his tails as he twisted her upright, depositing her on the seat in front of him.
"That was terrifying!" Amy grabbed both tails between her arms and squeezed them against her chest. "How does he do that all the time?"
"I'm not a plushie." Miles frowned at her. His short-tailed friends seemed to have trouble recognising his tails as being part of him.
"Deal with it." Amy stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm traumatised! I thought I was gonna get blended!"
"I said I wouldn't let you fall," Miles huffed.
"Well I fell in here, didn't I?"
"I guess I should have been more specific." Miles flattened his ears with a sigh.
Amy leaned closer in the already cramped space of his pilot seat.
"Thanks for saving me." She touched her fingers to his forehead, pulling a pink spine free with a wince. "I'm sorry I goofed around and you got hurt."
"Huh? That's fine, I've had worse." Miles smiled.
"You always say that."
"Because it's true. Now are you planning on getting back to your seat? We're going to have to land soon."
"Mmm…" Amy tapped her lips, then glanced over the side of the cockpit to the ocean below. A small shiver ran down her body. "Nope."
"I'll hold your hand if you're scared, it'll be fine."
"Scared?" Amy sniffed. "I'm freezing. You have any idea how cold it was up there?"
Miles groaned, gloved hand pressing against his forehead. "I'm not a blanket either!"
"Be a gentleman!"
"I need to fly the plane!"
"Then fly it around me!"
"I can't see around you."
"Are you calling me fat?"
Miles pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh.
"Fine. Hold still."
"Whah- hey!" Amy cried out in protest as Miles slipped himself out of the cockpit.
"There we go." He rested his fingertips on the wing as the wind tore through his fur, one foot dangling out over oblivion as he yelled into the cockpit. "Scootch back in the chair!"
He hopped back in, this time in front of Amy.
"Oof, tighter than the last time I did this." Had he actually grown? Probably just the way his tails were packed in between the two of them.
"Oh, this used to be a single seater, didn't it?" Amy's words tickled the back of his ear.
She released her grip and he took the opportunity to shuffle back to a slightly more comfortable distance from the controls. He sighed. It had been the tails after all.
"Yeah, I based it on Sonic's plane initially. Used to fly like this with him a lot back when…"
Back when he'd been Sonic's real partner, not just his tech support.
"So, you were really good up there."
"Oh har har har."
"No, I mean it. You're a natural. Why don't I take you up again sometime and you can get some practise in?"
"Mmm... Maybe over a nice grass zone."
"Hah. Probably for the best. Oh, hey." He pointed. "There's South Island now."
Amy pressed forward, head on his shoulder and spines in his neck. "Oof, Green Hill Zone's still looking bad, huh?"
Miles nodded. "There's a bit more plant growth on the border, but the sandworms are making land reclamation difficult. I've been working with the clan heads on a few potential solutions but…"
"But fixing things always takes more time than breaking them." She sighed, leaning back once more, grabbing a tail as an afterthought.
Miles busied himself with pre-landing checks, but he thought he heard her say one more thing softly behind him.
"I should know all about that, after all."