Amy tried very hard to be a good person.
Not just seem like a good person. If she had to choose between appearing bad and being good, she liked to think she'd choose the latter every time.
And sure, she wasn't Sonic, endlessly roaming the earth waiting for trouble to involve himself with, or Knuckles, saddled with a great responsibility in protecting the Master Emerald on its flying island. But she tried to make the people around her happier, if only by being nice, if only by helping with what she could manage to do to help them. That was the small heroism even she could do.
Sometimes Amy Rose felt like a bad person.
And this, more often than not, related to the orange fox currently sat on her sofa, chatting stiffly with the rabbit curled up on the cushion beside him as the pair watched a cartoon on her TV.
This was at least partly because, if she was honest, most of her friends didn't take her very seriously. Her love for Sonic was treated as a joke, his constant rejec- shyness was a joke. Her plans for getting Sonic to look at her were a joke. Sometimes they even thought Sonic was a joke, and that was worst of all. Even Cream thought she was too obsessed at times. And when she got angry…
That was a joke too. So what if she tried to hit Sonic, or Cream? She'd never catch them anyway. She was a joke after all. So what if she hit Knuckles or Big? They were tough enough that a girl like her could hit them as hard as she could and never drop a single ring. It wasn't serious, it didn't matter.
But Tails took almost everything seriously, in that calm, placid way of his, even her. He wasn't necessarily on her side - he was on Sonic's side, he was here because he was on Sonic's side, but at least he never treated her like a joke.
And he never ran away. Even though she knew he wasn't as sturdy as Knuckles, even though she knew she hurt him or she watched his face fall when she broke some gizmo he'd been working on for months and at the time it didn't matter because she was angry but then she felt bad but he never got mad at her, he never told her to stop visiting his lab...
And he came here thinking she would hurt him.
She almost did.
What kind of weirdo was he that he came to tell her in person when he expected to get hit with a hammer? What kind of monster was she for wanting to? A joke stopped being a joke when there were consequences.
A tail coiled around her waist to absent-mindedly pluck a cookie from the dish.
"Hey!" Amy snapped.
"Ah! Sorry!" Tails flinched, and she hated him for it.
"Use your hands." Amy huffed, hands on hips. "And no more, dinner's almost ready."
She wasn't really angry. If he really wanted the burnt cookie he was now clutching in both hands with a forlorn expression then he could. He kept getting skinnier every year as it was. But Amy Rose was responsible and mature, and responsible and mature girls didn't let people sneak cookies before dinner.
How was he still awake anyway? Tails usually only lasted a few minutes in front of a TV before dozing off, and she doubted it was because he was particularly invested in "the Adventures of Rainbow the Pony".
Or could it be the company? Amy stole glances at the pair as she cleaned away mugs and slid the remaining cookies out of reach of any sneaky fingers. Or… whatever was going on at the end of those tails.
Cream, as usual when Rainbow was on, sat in smiling attendance, tiny against the massive sofa as she cheerfully explained three seasons of context with a level of dedication only a six year old could muster to her fluffy couchmate.
Tails, on the other hand, spent more time glancing at the rabbit beside him than he did at the screen, ears stiff upright and still gripping that cookie in front of him like a shield.
Oh ho? Perhaps her little friend wasn't too smart for girls after all? No wonder he'd wanted to give her a ride home. Amy smirked to herself as she clattered into the kitchen, sliding mugs onto the counter on tiptoe before grabbing a well used mitt to take a sizzling pizza from the oven.
It wasn't a bad match. Cream was younger, but she was a sweet and thoughtful girl with a gentle temperament, and no slouch in the heroing department in the past, even if she hadn't really done much lately, and cute too. Amy could see why Tails liked her.
Tails was... perhaps a little too mature for his age. He was a little too mature for Amy's age, and a little on the spacey side at times, but he could be incredibly sweet and attentive, smart, funny... and even if he was a little on the timid side lately, he still had courage when it mattered the most. Amy shook her head. The only real obstacle was that Cream, like herself, lived in a single fixed place, while he was like a smaller copy of Sonic, roaming the world...
Wait… Amy raised her plates in triumph. This was perfect. She could do something nice for Tails to make up for the way she treated him sometimes, and if Cream decided she liked him back the two of them would make such a cute couple together and she'd be a matchmaker of love and that would be so romantic.
And if the two of them were an item, her best friend and Sonic's best friend then they could go with them on double dates to chaperone! And Sonic would get used to seeing her on dates, and see how Tails treated a girl and maybe realise that she was a girl and...
Yes, things were going to be just great.
Miles didn't dislike Cream.
Well, he tried to make a habit of not disliking people too much in general. His social circle included multiple people that had tried to kill him, take his stuff, or worst of all, insulted his skills as a mechanic. And more often than not these had been the same people he had been forced to entrust with his life at a later date thanks to the sheer scale of Sonic's world-saving activities. He might not like people, and he might not trust people, but even Eggman, who did all three of those things on a regular basis, was someone he could work with.
Still didn't like him though.
It was almost like international politics. A few wars in the past didn't preclude a temporary alliance being necessary in future when an eldritch monstrosity crawled out of the ocean and started eating people.
… He wasn't sure if the analogy broke down there or not.
Cream, of course, didn't do any of these things. On the rare occasions he didn't avoid her entirely she was a relentless force of positivity. At least on the outside.
And, like Amy, he had no idea what she wanted from him either. She was a friend of a friend, and a friend of a friend was a stranger who could still manage to ruin his relationship with his friend if he messed up dealing with them.
So he waited to be useful.
He'd shown, hopefully polite, interest in what she was watching. People liked it when you were interested in them. Hopefully not so much he'd interfered with her viewing. He quietly categorised the particulars of Rainbow and her unlikely series of adventures in the rare event that she quizzed him afterwards. People liked it when you listened to them too-
"Pssst." Amy's voice whispered by his ear.
"Huh?" He turned to find himself pressed nose to nose with the pink hedgehog. "Ah!"
Amy smirked at him smugly as he tumbled back, heart pounding.
"I said dinner." She winked. "You too, Cream."
"Yes, Miss Amy!" Cream nodded dutifully as she tapped a button on the remote.
Miles slipped off the chair, slipping his half-eaten cookie into hammerspace before extending a hand towards the rabbit as she scooched towards the edge of the giant cushion, feet dangling over the edge.
"Thanks, Mister Tails!" Cream smiled at him as she slipped down.
Miles nodded. Thankfully the chairs were a more sensible size. He settled into the one furthest from the couch as Amy returned with a large tray meant for bigger hands.
"Alright…" Amy slid the tray onto the middle of the table. "If your mom asks, Cream, this was a vegetable pizza, got it? Broccoli, carrots, the works."
"Yes, Miss Amy!" Cream helped herself to a slice without hesitation.
Miles peered at the greasy pizza that could charitably have been said to have been vegetable adjacent at some point, then followed suit. He was rarely fussy about what he ate either way, when he remembered to eat at all - fussy eaters didn't last long on deserted islands.
Heck, now he thought back, his first real encounter with civilised food had been military rations. The mint gum had been the tastiest part, and probably caused the least damage when he swallowed it.
"So, Tails." Amy spoke around a mouthful of cheese. "What have you been working on in your lab lately?"
Uh oh, landmine topic. Cream didn't like violence, right? Miles froze, chewing as he thought.
"Uh… Engine. Engine upgrades for the Tornado." He grinned, rubbing the back of his head. "You know me."
"Tails is always working on that cutting edge science stuff." Amy nodded to Cream. "Very cool."
Miles narrowed his eyes slightly. Did girls have secret codewords together? He already knew she thought he was lame, last time he'd started to explain one of his inventions to her she'd thrown a soda can at his head.
It was full.
Cream smiled brightly. "Yes, Mister Tails is very smart. He built G-Merl, after all."
"Well, I just repaired him, really." Miles rubbed the back of his head.
"Don't be so modest, Tails!" Amy shook her pizza in lieu of a finger. "Not many people could even have done that; G-merl's ancient technology after all."
"If you say so." Miles busied himself with his own pizza. Considering the robot had been a nigh unstoppable doomsday weapon before he reprogrammed it, it was probably a good thing nobody else knew how to build one. Probably not even Eggman, considering how his villainous counterpart felt about backups. Or blueprints.
Now if only he didn't know how to build one the world would be doing pretty well.
Fending off a few more questions along a similar vein through the meal, Miles, after helping clear away the plates, found himself facing a new dilemma.
Entering a girl's room.
"Okay, come on in. Sorry about the mess." Amy pushed the door open with a slightly sheepish expression, revealing a surprisingly non-pink bedroom, that was unsurprisingly filled with a great deal of official paraphernalia of her hero. "So bad news is, there's only one bed."
Miles froze halfway through the doorway. Amy smirked at his expression as he looked about the room as though it might bite him.
"Oh ha ha." Miles relaxed. "Very funny."
"She makes that joke every time." Cream sighed, slipping past Miles into the room.
"It came with the apartment! Isn't it great?" Amy grinned as she hoiked herself up onto a bed that dominated much of the room, big enough to easily accommodate twice their number without restriction, and in fact already containing two extra guests - the plush doppelgangers of Sonic and himself.
"Seriously?" Miles cringed in embarrassment. Bad enough she'd even kept it, but this?
"What? They're comfy." Amy leaned against the larger than life duo with a grin. "And this one's super cute, right Cream?"
"You are unreasonably adorable, Mister Tails." Cream nodded gravely at him.
"I'm just stepping out to get some fresh air for a bit." Miles spun on his heel, walking straight towards the snow encrusted window.
"Don't you dare!" Amy's pout lasted only a moment before breaking into a mischievous grin. "Fine, we'll stop teasing you. Now what do you two want to do first? We could tell spooky stories, I could read your fortunes, or I could go grab the Fuzzy Puppies board?"
"Fuzzy puppies! Fuzzy puppies!" Cream cried out excitedly, almost tumbling from the bed she'd worked so hard to get up onto in the first place.
Miles raised an eyebrow as he slunk back towards the bed, watching as a hexagonal board and various obnoxiously cute Terran dog pieces were recovered from the other room and settled upon the sheets.
"Say, how about we make this interesting?" Amy glanced at Miles with a gaze that suggested that her previous agreement to stop messing with him had already expired. "How about the loser of each round has to do a truth or dare?"
"Okay." Cream, ever the unwitting accomplice, smiled brightly. "That sounds fun!"
"Uh-" Miles raised a finger.
"Great! Two's a majority, come on up, Tails."
Miles nodded, clambering up onto the mattress and staring down at the cutesy playing pieces with a sigh. Now he had no other choice.
"Alright." He lifted up a golden retriever, putting on an innocent smile as he glanced at the two girls sat across from him. "How do you play this game then?"