"Eep!" Tails yelled out, stumbling backward from the bush.
"Woah, calm down I didn't mean to scare ya," the blue hedgehog said. "My name is Sonic. Who're you?"
"I'm Tails," the little fox managed to get out.
The tracker was beeping louder than ever with Sonic standing right next to it.
"What's that all about?" He asked, crouching next to tails in an instant, looking at the tracker on the ground a few feet away.
Tails wordlessly opened his mouth at the sudden appearance of the hedgehog next to him and looked utterly uncomfortable. He hurriedly crawled away from Sonic and over to the tracker, picking it up. He rotated some dials, pressed a few buttons, and then it finally went quiet. "It— I was looking for you! I think. Maybe. You have to come with me back home." The fox looked at him expectantly, his breathing calming down slightly.
Memories from his old life returned — Longclaw warning him of people who were hunting him down for his powers. She died protecting him from people like that. Protecting his secret, so he could be safe. So he could be alone. This fox wasn't from earth, but he didn't seem like the hunters from his old nightmares.
"Sorry buddy, I can't go back with you. But hey, I bet we can have a lot of fun together around here instead. Come on, I'll show you!" Before Tails could respond, sonic grabbed his hand and ran off, dragging him in the air behind him.
"Aaaaaaa—" Tails was screaming as he was dragged at an unreal speed. They stopped just a few seconds after they began, but were in an entirely new place. It was a small room with a ton of toys and random knick-knacks scattered around. There was a large red bean bag in the center of the floor and posters plastered to the wall sloppily with some tape. Tails hadn't seen so many fun looking things in a while, and he forgot about his mission. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with all the stuff in the room.
Sonic was rolled up in a ball and bouncing on a small trampoline when a door opened downstairs.
He sprang back into standing form and said, "Oh! Tom's back. Come on, you gotta meet him!"
Tails put down what Sonic had told him was a helicopter and timidly followed him down the attic stairs. He felt silly and ashamed for letting himself get caught up playing with toys when everyone was doing their best to help Mobius back home.
"Tom!", Sonic ran ahead of Tails and jumped up and hugged the large Earth man. "What took you so long?" He whined.
"Sonic, This is the time I always get home during the week. You're just bored because Maddie has been working late and hasn't been able to play with — who is that?" He was staring at Tails.
"Oh! This is Tails. He's a new friend. Right, Tails?"
"Oh.. um… I…" Tails slowly hid most of his body behind the doorway to the living room. He wasn't sure what to do in this situation. Normally, you weren't supposed to visit planets outside of the Power Ring network. There were a lot of worlds that freely traveled between themselves, but Earth was far from all of them. He probably was breaking some kind of rule by letting one of the people from this world see him. The Professor would definitely scold him if he ever found out.
Tom turned his gaze to Tails but spoke to Sonic, "So… Is he from where you're from? He looks kind of like you. In an alien fox sort of way. Wait, does he have two tails?!"
Tails instinctively hid his tails behind himself.
Sonic rushed over and brought Tails out into the open with him, hand resting on his shoulder. "He's from — uh... Oops, I guess I never asked. Where are you from, Tails?"
"I-I'm from Mobius. Please, you have to help me."
Sonic recognized the name immediately. Mobius was the same place he and Longclaw had lived together. He never knew there were people like Tails who lived there too. Maybe they lived on a different island.
But he wasn't supposed to go back there.
"Are you in some kind of trouble? Do you need one of those rings to get back home?" Tom asked.
"N-no I still have a ring left." he looked at Sonic. "Please, you have to come home with me. You're the only one who can help us"
"It's because of his powers, isn't it?" Tom said. "But Sonic is just a kid… what exactly is going on in your world?"
Tails wasn't sure where to begin. Sonic seemed to trust Tom, so maybe it was okay to talk about it in front of him.
"Mobius has been falling apart slowly for years… ever since the Master Emerald was broken. Land fell out of the sky, and holes opened up in the ground and swallowed the King's castle. The weather has gotten all crazy so it's not safe to go to a lot of places anymore. Most people have left already with the Power Rings, but some of us stay to try and figure out how to fix the Emerald. Like the Professor!" Tails was rambling, hoping he was making sense and continued, "If we can just do that, everything will go back to normal."
Sonic's mouth was hanging open, "Wow, that sounds awful Tails! But what can I do?"
"W-well, the Professor thinks if we can find the Chaos Emeralds, we can fix the Master Emerald. But, they don't emit any energy anymore." Tails pulled out his tracker and turned it back on, the beeping resuming.
"A year ago, there was a strong energy signal and we were able to see the signatures of some of the emeralds while it was active. But it only lasted a few minutes and we lost track of them again."
Tails sounded more confident as he dived into more technical details "I was able to isolate and profile the original signal. It came from somewhere really far away, here on Earth. I thought if I could just get close enough I'd be able to pick it up again and we could find the source. But not even the Professor believed me, he thought it wasn't worth using a power ring." Tails felt guilty, grasping a single power ring in his hand.
"You think I'm making that thing go haywire, and I can somehow find these Emeralds if I go back with you to Mobius?" Sonic popped in front of tails and poked the tracker display. It beeped even more rapidly.
Sonic crossed his arms and looked deep in thought for a moment. "Okay, if I'm able to help I will— "
"Woah — Wait a second Sonic, let's think about this." Tom interrupted, "It seemed like Robotnik was able to use your quills to do some crazy stuff with his robots, it's not really clear what the extent of your powers are. You came here to hide if you go to this place, won't you be in danger?"
"Please, Sonic, you have to help us. This is life or death, you're the only hope we have," Tails pleaded.
Tom started to object again, but his mind was already made up.
"I'm going."