Chapter 7

The Hedgehog and the Fox sped across the sand trying to outrun the sand storm. Tails could be fast, but Sonic was faster, that was why he was dragging his friend behind him while Tails angled his twin tails to keep himself off the ground and to make it as easy as possible for Sonic to drag him along.

Tails risked a glance back, and he wished he hadn't. No matter how fast Sonic was that sand storm was fast approaching. The Fox could see it. The sand particles that were kicked up allowed him to pick out the mass of flowing winds that would blow over them like sand paper. Sonic's feat kicked up plumes of sand as he ran, but they were nothing compared to the visible weather system rolling over the landscape like a giant steamroller, or an upside down waterfall in reverse.

The sinky sand was so fine that Sonic was having trouble speeding up, and dragging Tails behind him only made things more difficult.

They passed a large rock and Tails watched it to see how long it'd take to vanish into the wind. It wasn't long, and as a testament to the power of that storm the rock was visibly buffeted and pushed over.

"Hold on, buddy." Sonic said. Tails shut his eyes and turned away from the planets raw, natural power. "We're almost there." Tails opened his eyes. Blocky shadows on the horizon stood stark in the dusk light, and the pair were approaching them fast. Hope rose in the young foxes heart that they would at least survive the night.

The fox risked a look back at the weather system. There was something odd about the way it moved he couldn't quite put his finger on. He'd seen sand storms before, but that one looked weird. Tails just chalked it up to the alien planet, with an alien weather system.

The pair pushed on, going faster and faster. Up the side of a dune amassing against a building and up through a shattered window. But they didn't stop there. They felt the storm slam into the building as they found some stairs and went straight down into the darkness and around a corner to keep out of the storms way.

They heard the howl of the wind as it raced through the building. It was visibly shaking as the tall structure was battered by the intense gale. What little light there was vanished as the dusk light was blotted out by the storm.

Tails produced a small flashlight so they could see in this darkness.

They just sat there for a second listening to nature try to rip the building to shreds to get at them. Sonic put an arm on the young foxes shoulder. Sonic looked totally relaxed and so calm. How did he do it?

After a little while they decided that their shelter would hold against the gale and Tails' anxiety gave way to relief, which gave way to guilt.

"I'm sorry, Sonic."

"What about?"

"We're stranded. We shouldn't have left the Police Box, we should've stayed put. Now the Box is gone, and Amy with it."

"Hey, buddy." Sonic squeezed his friends shoulder. "Relax. We'll find a way home eventually."

"Will we?" Tails asked. Sonic must know the odds of getting home without that Box were low, so low a number had yet to be invented to express it.

"There will be a way. There usually is." Sonic confidently winked at him. Tails sighed and decided to let go of his anxiety for now.

"How can you remain so calm?" Tails asked, "we might die here."

"We might not, Tails." Sonic said back. "You know me. I don't dwell over what I have no control over."

"But the Police Box..."

"Was someone elses fault. Either Eggman's or someone elses. It's not yours. We'll find it." Sonic was careful not to mention Amy, because she was also a candidate for blame if she'd angered the machine.

"What makes you so certain?" Tails said.

"You said yourself, it can't have taken off. You didn't go far from the box and you didn't hear that wheezing, trumpeting, did you?" Sonic asked.

"No..."

"Then it didn't take off. And you didn't see anything descend from the sky and take it?" Tails shook his head. "So it's still on this planet. It's just been moved somewhere."

"How can you be so certain?"

"Because I know you sounded certain." Sonic said, trying to sound reassuring. Tails felt a little better. But at the same time there was always doubt in his own scientific abilities. After all, the best scientists always doubt their own findings, not just the findings of others.

Sonic winced and shuffled himself.

"Something wrong?" Tails asked.

"I think I got sand in my shoes." Sonic said as he un-did the clasp on his red shoes and pulled them off. When he tipped them up a few grains fell out, followed by a long trail of gloopy stuff which pooled on the ground. He did the same with the other shoe, holding both of them upside down. From each one came a stream of a gloopy, ooze like substance. It was like it was half liquid half solid. A 'skin' began to form on the pooling stuff. Sonic let go of his shoes, but they didn't fall to the ground. They were held aloft by the two trails of goo, that had now set making his shoes look like lamp-shades for two weird reading-lamps.

"What in the...?" Tails asked, looking puzzled at this mystery substance. "How did that get in your shoes?"

"I have no idea." Sonic said, and with some force he wrenched his shoes off of the top of the strands of goo. Some of the inner padding of the shoe remained stuck to the top of the goo strand. Sonic looked into the depths of his shoes and inspected the damage. He just shrugged, he'd ran in worse before.

Tails began prodding at the mound.

"What is it, glass?" Sonic enquired.

"No." Tails said as he bent the strand back and it very slowly began to raise back up to its original position. "It's very flexible for glass." Tails looked up at Sonic. "And despite the rate you run I doubt you'd generate enough friction to melt sand into glass." He said matter-of-factly.

"So what is it?" Sonic asked again.

Tails sniffed the air, only just noticing the aroma of the place. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. "Do you smell that Sonic?"

"I know, my shoes smell awful." Sonic said as he put them back on. "I was gonna wash them this week, I swear."

"No, I mean the scent of the building. It doesn't smell of sillica, like a desert or a beach." Tails said.

"I'll have to take your word on that, buddy." Sonic said. He couldn't smell anything, though Tails being a fox he might've had a better noes than his.

"The place reeks of..." he smelt the air again. "I don't know. It's a subtle cross between a garbage dump and burnt eletronics... No, not burnt electronics. Burnt plastic. Plasticisers."

Tails knelt down at the oozing mass, and pulled on the two strands until they snapped.

"This is plastic." Tails announced.

"How did plastic get into my shoes?" Sonic asked. Tails looked around and listened to the howling winds above them, an idea was forming in his head but it didn't feel right to express it just now, only because it sounded so insane.


Amy found a place to dump the old doctor. A bedroom. She hauled him onto the bed and checked his vitals. As far as he could tell he was perfectly fine, except that his heart was beating a little too fast.

Quickly, she checked the the room over, looking for any electronics that Robotnik could dismantle and turn into a weapon. But there was nothing in here. Just some old clothes, and magazines. A big, black bomber jacket hanging from a chair. A load of empty, opened deodorant cans near a sink. A bunch of CD's and cassettes with music on she'd never heard of. The only thing electrical in here was a odd looking ghetto blaster that was heavily modified. It had a satellite dish instead of an aerial for example. Amy picked it up and decided even this was too dangerous for Robotnik to have.

As she left she jammed the door shut with a metal baseball bat, so Robotnik couldn't open it from the inside. She'll check up on him later.

Amy turned back to the corridor, and her heart dropped. She was totally lost.

This place was like a maze and Amy had prided herself at being the best at mazes. They were actually easy to solve. You just put your hand on one wall and you follow that wall around whatever twist and turn it takes you. Eventually you'll reach the exit. Or so she'd read in one of her books.

After a few hours anxiety started to creep in. She'd come across a lot of rooms, including a library, a swimming pool -that was partially in the library,- a kitchen, an art gallery and more. She didn't feel compelled to explore these places though, she just wanted to find the control room again. Sonic and Tails could be banging on the Police Box doors as she walked wondering why she'd locked them out. They could be in danger, and couldn't take shelter.

Her fingers brushed aside a door handle. Shrugging, she decided to open it.

The room beyond was amazing. In fact, it wasn't a room. Had she found a back door? Because surely you wouldn't get a meadow like that in a Police box. Right? After everything she'd seen from this box this wouldn't surprise her. She entered, just to see if there was another door she could exit from.

As she walked she saw a something floating on the air. A yellow something. It floated here and there, forming and reforming like water. It flew over to a tree with a lot of orbs hanging from it and the flowing yellow appeared to dissipate.

Amy had never seen so many of this at once. Butterflies. Millions of beautiful butterflies. Amy Rose loved butterflies in the spring and the summer. Unfortunately these ones didn't seem to like her as they took off and dive bombed her. She took off at a run, waving her hands as she got totally swarmed. She chucked the ghetto blaster at them, but it did little except shatter the odd device. You'd think getting swarmed by butterflies was magical? You were wrong. It was more like getting assaulted by a gang of moths, which is technically what butterflies were. Just colourful moths.

She burst through the door again and shut it behind her.

The Police Box gurgled at her.


They'd woken up early, or what felt like it was early. Sonic had checked his watch, it had glow in the dark arms so he could see the hands. They'd slept for at least eight hours. Or tried to while under the bombardment of that howling storm and the light from outside. It had been light for hours. It had woken Sonic up after only a few hours of sleep. Wherever this place was it had very short nights.

Despite that, they were going to wait until the storm ended, but ended up falling asleep again. They had to curl up and put their hands over their noses because a very fine dust was being dumped down into the building. It was so fine that breathing it in just made you cough, so Sonic and Tails did their best to stop it going up their noses as they slept.

When they finally awoke it was to dry, silent air. The storm had rolled on and now light shone down the stairway they had come down.

Sonic shook himself, he was covered in this very fine dust. As he brushed it off he began to cough, some of it went into his lungs. This woke Tails, who also brushed himself down and suffered through the coughing fit afterwards.

Finally, they ascended the stairs and emerged into the dry atmosphere of... whatever planet this was called.

Sonic inspected the horizon as Tails wandered off to look at something. Sonic was looking for any sigh of a blue box against the yellow and orange backdrop. But there was nothing he could see.

"Hey Sonic, look at these." Tails announced.

"What did you find, buddy?" Sonic asked. The fox pointed at the walls, where long streams of some weird goo decorated the walls of the building.

"It's the same stuff that was in your shoe, I'm certain of it. And I think I know what it is." Tails said. He knelt down and picked up a few sand grains from the ground. He then smelt them before pressing them to his tongue. "This doesn't smell, nor taste like sand."

"I didn't know sand had a taste." Sonic said.

"I've smelt and tasted this before." Tails announced, "At a plastics factory. I don't think we're in a desert covered in sand, not entirely. These are very fine grains of plastic. That's why they melt so easily and form these globs of clear, brittle stuff."

"So we're in one large garbage dump?" Sonic said looking around at the beautiful landscape which now didn't appear to be all that beautiful. Still no sign of the Police Box. "This is all well and good Tails, but it doesn't answer the big question." Sonic turned to his younger companion. "Like, why were you tasting plastic in a plastic factory."

"I wasn't." Tails said defensively, Sonic subtly laughed as Tails said. "Have you ever been in a plastics factory? You can taste the plastic on the air." Sonic looked away, smirking. Tails could be so easy sometimes. The hedgehog looked out to the horizon.

"Still, it doesn't help us find the Police Box."

"I've thought of that." Tails said, "I thought maybe I could rig up a chronotron detector again and trace the Police Boxes' signature that way."

"And the reason you haven't done that?" Sonic asked.

"I don't have access to any tools." Tails added sheepishly.

Sonic rolled his dry tongue in his mouth. "I think the first order of business is to find something to drink.

"Where? There is no water, there is no moisture." You even dug under the sand yesterday and found nothing.

"Sorry I brought it up." Sonic said, still calm.

"Sonic, did you find any sign of water WHILE YOU WERE OUT THERE!" Tails started to shout, a loud noise had surrounded them.

"NO, AND I RAN FOR LIKE A HUNDERED MILES." Sonic shouted back.

"HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS MESS?" Tails shouted, sounding hopeless.

"HEY, CAN I ASK A QUESTION?"

"YEAH" Tails said.

"WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?" The penny finally dropped and the two looked to the sky searching for the source of the loud whine they could hear. Something was coming down slowly and gently. It looked like a giant orb of some sort. It settled down very close to them, kicking up dust as it descended. It landed and settled itself down. The loud whine of it's engines finally stopped.

Sonic motioned for Tails to stay back as he approached the orb. They both knew that sometimes when meeting new creatures they weren't always friendly.

A hatch appeared in the orb and it slowly descended down into a ramp.

A figure stood there in armour. He descended the stairs, his foot falls almost hit with military precision. It looked like a knight of some sort. Only this knight wore a domed helmet with two slits in it, and his gloved hands only had three fingers and they held a long pole. He was flanked by two other similar looking soldiers and together they descended the ramp. Sonic and Tails realised another feature. The creatures were only a head taller than them. So by human standards they were short, and more than that, Tails swore they were exactly the same size.

The three ignored the Mobians as the lead knight planted the pole in the soil and a flag unfurled from it showing a round symbol.

"I, field commander Scrall" he spoke in a gravelly voice, "of the eighteenth battle fleet, claim this planet for the glory of the fourth Sontaran Empire!"


To Be Continued...