Bloom
-Chapter 6-
Beyond the newly discovered arcane doorway was a long series of vacant interconnected corridors with steel walls, loose caution signs and inactive emergency lights. The feline-fox duo had found themselves in some decrepit domain for general labour, a familiar sight to the general worker.
Although their visibility was still greatly limited in this section of the foundation, the pair had managed to make out the tiled steel-plated floors beneath them, the arching roof of the corridors and the thick chalked lines that pointed them forward. The reflective stripes that bordered the caution signs contributed to their visual clarity and the steel walls were clean enough to bounce some light around the pathway. Tails estimated that they'd already trekked about a hundred and twenty metres from the doorway. So far, nothing from death's end had gotten the jump on them. Nothing peculiar about this underground facility, save for the suspicious lack of guests and functionality. Their consternation still burned in the sprouting gloom.
"Blaze?" Tails asked.
"Yeah?" Blaze responded, she'd kept her little flame burning on her index finger, supporting the intensity of Tails's emergency light.
"I wanted to apologize, maybe I shouldn't have been so, cruel towards you, back on the grate, with Silver."
Blaze patted some wet fur strands from her eyes, they'd gotten moist from the melting snow flakes around her face.
"Right now, Tails", she said with a proceeding sigh. "We're all in a tight spot with this whole Sonic situation, your behaviour, while irrational, is expected and understandable."
"Still-", Tails started.
"Still, nothing", Blaze interrupted. "Your apology will not change things."
Crusty pipes above them beat with a damp rhythm.
"Besides, it's better if we worry about the others," she continued. "I'm not so comfortable with leaving Amy and Silver in that position"
"Amy can defend herself," Tails responded.
"In her current condition?"
"She'll smash the devil to pieces if he came down this hallway."
A sharp snap rung out in the distance. Tails halted the conversation and went alert, holding his right hand out, beckoning Blaze to stand guard.
Were the situation a tad lighter, Blaze would've been amused by the young fox's behaviour. Despite his rotten look, the boy still tried to remained protective in the face of possible danger. His worn appendage sputtered like a broken gas muffler, every time it came in contact with the ground it executed a sharp twitch. A sign of some great anguish in the boy. While Blaze found his comradely commendable, she believed his wisdom to be lacking.
"If that's the case, maybe we should have left you behind," Blaze said, bracing herself for the coming storm of an argument that would follow.
Tails looked at Blaze with a mixture of concern and worry on his face. "W-Why's that?" he sputtered.
"Well, how's your tail doing?" Blaze asked
"It's fine, just little twitches is all," he whipped his face away and continued the stride downwards, "Let's just keep going."
"You seemed a bit shocked there for a bit, anxiety getting to you?"
"It was just a snap, must have been another pipe breaking apart," Tails said with an irritated tone, "It's not exactly opening day here is it?"
"That's been a common thing recently, think our presence affecting the environment?"
"For all we know Blaze, this is the facility's way of saying welcome", the defeated fox managed a small grim smirk and sent it Blaze's way, a nervous muttered chuckle followed.
His tail struck another awkward twitch as it touched the bottom edge of the wall besides him.
"Witty," Blaze said, "But in all honesty, your wisdom is solely lacking at the present moment"
"So you say?" Tails gripped his right fist in vexation.
"You're being foolish going on like this."
"What's that supposed to mean!" Tails stopped in his tracks, spun one-eighty and stomped his foot on the ground. He ignored the slight agony that followed. "You do know who we're trying to rescue right?"
"I u-understand but-" Blaze backed off a bit, she didn't expect such a violent reaction so quickly.
"No you don't! I don't even think you care!"
"It's not that, I just don't want you-"
"Getting hurt? Well maybe someone should have told her boyfriend to learn some basic catching skills before dropping his friends down a seven-hundred feet hole."
"Boyfriend? Silver's not my boyfriend"
"That's not my business, you take back what you said about me being stupid, I'm not stupid, you know how much I've sacrificed coming here!"
Like a sword through metal, a distinguishable beep cut its way through the conversation. Tails, now in some angry confused state of shock, pulled out his comm device and inspected it. He couldn't believe the stupid thing had survived the fall. He wasted no time tapping the blue respond button on its matte body and pulling it closer to his ear.
"Mr Prowler," a haunting familiar voice responded.
Tails closed his eyes and moaned with irritation. He'd rather be eating rocks than having this conversation.
"G-Good Evening Sir"
"It's One AM, about ten hours since we last spoke"
"Yeah"
"So, where are the updates?"
"Well, we made it to the hole"
"Yeah?"
"Sonic, didn't make it"
"Oh?"
"Yeah"
An awkward moment of silence followed.
"So anything else important happen?"
Tails gripped the comm device with a fury brighter than Blaze's flame and smashed it against the nearby steel wall.
"Tails, no!" Blaze yelled, first time she'd showed some sort of external shock since this debacle started. "That's our only contact to the outside world."
"Boo hoo," Tails responded with a mocking leer, "Looks like the outside world is just going to have to do without us". He kicked the scraps of the device down the hallway, letting various nuts and bolts dance around the tiled floor, never to be discovered again until kingdom come. He marched onwards down the pathway, his motivation fuelled with newfound anger.
"Tails, Tails! You need to calm down, you're not thinking rationally," the feline princess pushed past him and stopped him in his tracks. She held both her hands on his shoulder, extinguishing her flame as not to burn him.
He was crying again, harder than before. This time he tried to mask it under a gritting expression of hostility and anger, but his tears betrayed a broken soul.
"Tails, I'm sorry, I understand you're going through a lot"
"Shut up, you don't know what I'm going through"
"I do, I've experienced death before"
"It's not his death that worries me, you idiot!" Tails cried.
He dropped his light source on the ground below, hitting the tiled floor with a soft thud.
"I've seen Sonic 'die' before, but it's never his demise that worries me, it's the anticipation", he muttered. He gradually lifted his hands upwards, again replaying that cruel memory in his mind. "As we walk through this abyss I'm not so worried about what monsters or demons lay beneath."
"I'm just worried about seeing his body, my best friend's body, lying cold and abandoned on some steel floor", Tails continued. "And I begin to wonder what his final moments were, in that isolation, without me by his side, and with every step we take I know we draw closer to that reality."
Another moment of silence followed, this one more remorseful than the last. Blaze needed some time to absorb the anguish her yellow acquaintance was going through.
"You're overburdening yourself, you need to let go of that guilt and be optimistic, Sonic could still be alive"
"Don't patronize me"
"I'm not"
"Yes you are!", Tails slapped Blaze's arms off and grabbed his electric lantern from the ground below, "You think I don't know what death is?". He resumed his march towards the end of the pathway.
Blaze's bravado had slipped from her fingers, she rushed towards Tails again but took care to keep her distance from him lest she was forced to hold him down. The fox wasn't going to be switching his direction anytime soon, regardless of whatever pain he felt.
Eventually they came across another grey door, cloaked in dusk. Tails held his dying light source towards a front-facing panel hanging on its body.
You are now entering crew quarters, it said.
"Tell me Blaze," Tails began. "If this place was such a blossoming workplace, judging by its massive complex, then what happened to the crew?"
He lowered his light source which had now resorted to a flickering tempo. The flashing lights picked up on a minuscule strand just sticking out of the slim space under the door. A blue minuscule strand.
Author's Note: This chapter was going to be a bit longer but I think it's best I close off here for now, I also made some updates on the other chapters. Nothing too much just some improvements here and there and better clarity on what's going on so go check that out or whatever. Thanks for reading.