Things Best Forgotten
Dis-claimer, Dat-claimer, whatever! I don't own Squat! Yes, that's right, this little puppy named Squat that keeps following me around is not mine! XD Yeah, but I also don't own Sonic the Hedgehog or anything related, either.
Back at long last and just in time for the Ghoul-idays, it's the TAILS DOLL!! (evil laugh) I'm finding it harder and harder to write recently, but I made this chapter extra long to make up for the tardy posting. (Actually, not really. It would have been this long anyways, but I just needed a good excuse! XD) Also, since I'm not entirely certain that I've made it clear at the beginning of this story, this whole event is supposed to take place in the pre-Sonic X Mobius just weeks before Chaos Control brought them all to Earth. Yes, I did reference Ella in chapter 1 for all you smarty-pants readers that will undoubtedly bring that to my attention, but it was a mistake and I'm just too lazy to go back and change it now. There may be a few more discrepancies in the future as well, but I'll be watching out for them so hopefully nothing like that will happen again.
Reviewer Role Call Time! Thanks to JOSH, peterskywalker, tails blackheart, Danielle, tailsfan007 (which, by the way, I hate coffee and would never drink the stuff. I get my morning Joe from Pepsi!), Double Dee Dee, Pokelad, Asher Tye, Zachary W, Rae Logan, Koike, Shika Kev Prower, and brave kid! I hope all of you guys have stuck it out with me and will continue to read and review my stories! Now that I've almost beaten Sonic Chronicles, I'll probably go back to devoting all my free time to writting again, so expect more soon! But for now, enjoy this 10,000+ word chapter!
Chapter 6: Ya Got the Wrong Guy, I Swear!
The rest of that afternoon passed uneventfully for Sonic and Tails. Upon returning safely to Tails' Workshop on the cliff face of the Mystic Ruins, both creatures went to doing whatever they pleased for the rest of the day. Sonic sat down in the living room and found something interesting on the TV. It sounded like some sort of old, black-and-white, under-budgeted horror movie, the kinds that have the paper ghosts flying around the actors while the leading woman screams as loud as she can at the horribly rendered apparitions. Actually, a scene almost exactly akin to the one now described must have just occurred, since Tails suddenly heard a loud, ear-piercing, feminine scream from the floor directly above him, immediately conjoined with the equally loud sound of Sonic laughing his hardest at the horrible acting and special effects. Tails could tell that Sonic was having fun watching the horrifically bad horror flick, but he immediately dismissed his idea to go back up to the living room and join in the film's ridicule.
Of course, the only reason that the first floor of his home was actually above him at the moment was because Tails was now in his personal hangar carved into the hillside below his house. This subterranean garage was easily the size of Tails' entire home as could be seen from the surface, and the yellow fox spent a great deal of his time down here as opposed to the building above. Sitting in the center of the cavernous and relatively barren room was Tails' pride and joy, the Tornado. The biplane, originally owned by Sonic before the hedgehog met the young mechanical genius, had been built and rebuilt countless times by the meticulous fox over the years and still had yet to fail the unforgiving pilot in his countless aerial sorties against Eggman's flying fortresses. A stunning record for both plane and pilot considering that each of the Doctor's impossibly huge aircrafts had always possessed enough firepower to demolish an entire nation's Air Force rather handily. However, the yellow vulpine wasn't currently in the middle of his typical maintenance work on the ageing biplane at the moment as Tails now shifted his attention back from Sonic's antics upstairs to the detailed schematic diagram on his workbench in front of him.
Though the fox was sorry to admit it for sentimental reasons, he knew that the golden ages for the blue and yellow biplane had come and gone as the mechanical design prodigy found himself now fixing more components on the aging Tornado than he ended up installing newer, better ones. That's why the two-tailed fox was currently bent over a large sheet of paper and scribbling furiously with both his pencil tip and eraser ending as he worked on a brand new design for an improved plane to serve as the workhorse against Eggman's also ever improving designs. He couldn't wait to show it to Sonic once the designs were complete. This new aircraft would put the tried and true Tornado to shame. Most importantly, it was a jet now with two impossibly large engines at the rear capable of accelerating the new, improved fighter plane to ludicrous speeds in seconds flat, something that Tails knew Sonic would enjoy immensely. The wings of the craft could fold over for easier storage, but, when fully deployed, would distinguish the plane from any other fighter in existence by the 'X'-like shape they presented from a head-on observer. It was by far the most ambitious project Tails had ever undertaken, but the fox was absolutely determined to produce the craft someday. He smiled as he thought about the look on Eggman's face when his new fighter took to the skies for the first time to fight him yet again.
Apparently, the pleasant daydream of his beloved new X-Tornado single-handedly ripping Eggman's robotic army to shreds was actually more of a real dream as Tails suddenly felt a gloved hand grasp him firmly on the shoulder, waking the dozing fox from his peaceful slumber with a start.
"Whoa, there, little buddy! Sorry, didn't mean to scare ya!" Sonic instantly spoke up in response to the fox's moment of surprise at the unexpected wakeup call. The blue hedgehog studied the yellow kit's face as Tails quickly recovered from his fright and realized that he had fallen asleep on his workbench desk.
"Oh, don't worry about it, Sonic. I just never remembered dozing off earlier," Tails spoke up as he yawned deeply while his two tails also punctuated the act by stretching out as far as they could directly behind the still drowsy fox. Tails took a glance at the large schematic clamped to the angled table in front of him and easily saw where his head had somehow come to rest during his impromptu nap by the small spots of drool that still soaked some of the paper's lower edge. "So, what time is it now, Sonic?" Tails asked in curiosity at how long he had been out.
"It's gettin' close to suppertime, bro," Sonic informed Tails. "You've only probably been in dreamland here for an hour or two, though," the hedgehog decided to save the yellow fox from having to do the math and figure this out for himself.
Tails with his impressively high IQ, however, had already done the math by the time Sonic even said this and instead stood up from his work stool to stretch the rest of his limbs from the stiffness of his unusual sleeping position as the hedgehog finished his sentence. "That's strange though, Sonic," the fox spoke as he turned to face his older brother who was simply standing in the same spot he had been a second ago when he woke the snoozing kitsune. "After sleeping in this morning and my nap on that hillside after our run today, I shouldn't have been tired at all."
Sonic simply shrugged his shoulders before deciding to also give a verbal response, "Don't know what ta tell ya, bro. Maybe that nightmare last night and your run with me today took more outta ya than you noticed?"
"I suppose so," Tails agreed with the reasonable hypothesis for his recent fatigue.
"So, I guess this is what you've been workin' on down here for the last couple of weeks now, ain't it?" Sonic mentioned as he pointed to the extremely technical diagrams on the large sheet of paper Tails had recently used as a pillow.
"Yep!" Tails immediately chimed in using a different, proud tone of voice. "The Tornado is getting kinda old and keeps taking longer and longer to fix after every time we crash it nowadays, so these are my plans for a brand new fighter jet that will be way better than the old biplane!"
"A fighter plane?!" Sonic spoke up as he stepped back on one foot in surprise at the radically different design as opposed to the usual modifications to the already tricked-out biplane. Then, a large smile spread across the blue hedgehog's face as he realized what a sleeker, jet-propelled plane would mean. "How fast?" Sonic asked while he crossed his arms in anticipation of a speed that would be less than impressive to the supersonic hedgehog.
"About what speed do you think we were going today on our run?" Tails shot back with another, seemingly unrelated question.
"I dunno, Tails! Remember, I'm not the smart one with numbers, bud, you are!" Sonic answered in slight aggravation at Tails asking him a question he knew that he couldn't answer.
"Compared to your top speed then, how fast were we going?" Tails pressed the question again.
"Well, I guess we were just about cruisin' in third gear for most of the trip, if you call my fastest gear five," Sonic finally did his best to answer the question. His curiosity over the importance of the seemingly trivial question caused the blue hedgehog to continue on, however, "I still don't get why…"
"With a chaos emerald to power it, the new X-Tornado can go double that," Tails interrupted Sonic's bewildered statement while a deliberate grin of pride and satisfaction spread across the fox's face as he gauged the hedgehog's reaction to the news.
"You're saying that this thing can even use a chaos emerald for power?!" Sonic shouted out in stunned amazement at what Tails had just confessed.
"When I'm done with it, sure!" Tails excitedly bragged to his flabbergasted brother. "And it will be just as fast as you if I can get it to work properly, too!" Tails' prideful grin now spread from ear-to-ear as he closed his large, blue eyes to allow the smile to grow even larger.
Sonic was genuinely surprised at this news and found himself unable to say anything in response except to let out a short, high pitched whistle that betrayed his disbelief of the sheer power this new plane's engines must have to keep up with him at full throttle. "I'll believe it when I see it, bro!" Sonic immediately got cocky again at the idea that anything could go as fast as him.
"Well, it will be a while until I have the blueprints even done, Sonic," Tails began explaining the process. "After that, I still need to find all the parts I'll need to build it. Then, I need to build the frame and work out all the wiring. Plus, I'll have to…"
"Whoa, little bro, hold up there! I'll take your word for it, OK?" Sonic interrupted Tails' sudden ranting that would quickly get to topics that the hedgehog knew nothing about.
"Ooops, sorry, Sonic! I forgot that you don't like it when I get all technical and stuff," Tails apologized for his short ranting.
"It's cool, bro! Just remember that I don't speak geek!" Sonic joked with Tails about the fox's tendency to launch into long, detailed explanations on topics that happened to interest him greatly when they came up.
"Thanks a lot, Sonic," Tails sarcastically remarked to the blue hedgehog, which earned him a soft punch to the shoulder for the comeback. "So, how was your movie?" Tails switched the topic as he pretended to rub his sore arm from the hit.
"Lame-o to the extreme, bro!" Sonic quickly announced as he did an imitation of him scrunching his face up in a comical rendering of either mock terror or extreme constipation and pretending to scream silently like one of the actresses in the old horror film he'd just finished. He noticed that this earned a small chuckle from Tails in response as the blue hedgehog also smiled at his own joke. "I actually can't blame ya for fallin' asleep like that, buddy! That movie almost knocked me out, too!"
"Ha ha ha… You're just not afraid of anything, are you, Sonic?" Tails posed the observation that was also a legitimate question.
"At least not ghosts that are made of cardboard!" Sonic replied as they both laughed a little more. Their laughter hadn't even started to dissipate yet when a loud crash was heard from upstairs in the living room as someone broke the solid, wooden door to the small, two-story home right off its hinges and let it fall loudly to the floor. "What on Mobius…?!" Sonic started to shout in surprise before a loud voice from the house above their heads overpowered his own.
"SONIC!! Come out here right now, Sonic!" Amy Rose's clearly distinguishable yell rang out with enough volume to penetrate the metal-coated walls of the cavernous hangar and echo in the ears of both Sonic and Tails.
"What'd I do this time?" Sonic pleaded with himself and his little brother next to him.
"Did you forget about another date or something?" Tails guessed as he still covered his sensitive ears from the echoing pink hedgehog's yell.
"Not that I know o…" Sonic started to answer before another yell was heard from the upstairs room.
"Sonic the Hedgehog! Miles Prower! You are under arrest! Come out quietly, or we will be forced to use drastic measures!" A loud and very authoritarian male voice shouted out.
"The cops?! What do they want with us?" Sonic spoke again in a question that was not particularly aimed at anyone since he knew that Tails was just as oblivious to the current situation as he was. Just then, despite not having done anything to merit being arrested, Sonic noticed how quickly his little buddy's fright turned to thoughts of escape.
"What do we do, Sonic?! We could try to escape in the Tornado and…" Tails frantically started coming up with an escape plan.
Sonic quickly placed both of his gloved hands on the frightened fox's shoulders to calm him down. "Chill, bro! We'll be fine! Now, let's you and me both go on upstairs and greet our guests just like normal, 'kay? Besides, I'm more interested in what it is they think we did than runnin' off," Sonic used his and the fox's own curiosity to settled down the frightened kitsune as he flashed his classic thumbs-up pose to further reassure the scared kit.
Slowly, both of them walked up the narrow staircase which led to a trapdoor that was the only way in and out of the secret underground hangar. Emerging simultaneously into the middle of their own living room, both Mobians found themselves instantly surrounded by Mobian soldiers with handguns drawn and trained right on them. Sonic and Tails were stunned at the unexpected treatment as they also spotted Amy and Rouge standing next to a very decorated and uniformed male officer that was the obvious leader of the small army that now had both of them cornered. Tails didn't handle the loaded guns being pointed right at him very well, and Sonic could hear his little brother begin to moan softly in terror at the sight of the weapons. Sonic, on the other hand, decided to handle the delicate predicament in his own usual style.
"Ya know Amy, when I said it would take a whole army to get me to marry ya right now, I didn't mean it literally!" Sonic joked as he seemed to ignore the armed firing squad that surrounded him as he crossed his arms with his eyes closed and tapped his right foot against the floor rapidly in impatience.
"Heh, Boyfriend Blitzkrieg…" Tails muttered under his breath soft enough that only Sonic was able to catch the inside joke. It seemed to relax the blue hedgehog considerably that his little buddy, no matter how terrified, could still keep his adopted sense of humor in a dire situation.
"Sonic! This is no time for jokes you… You… YOU…!" Amy began to shout at the insolent hedgehog before being silenced immediately by the tall male next to her who obviously had control of the entire situation.
"Miss Rose!" the gruff, yet somehow friendly, voice called out in the middle of the pink hedgehog's crescendo. Amy cut off instantly at the command as the leader of the soldiers stepped into the circle of armed guards surrounding Sonic and Tails. The higher-ranked officer, an imposing anthropomorphic version of a dignified German Sheppard, cleared his throat briefly before repeating his earlier greeting as per protocol, "Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles 'Tails' Prower, you are both hereby under arrest under the authority of the Mobian Police Force for crimes committed on this day of…"
"Hold it right there, bub!" Sonic rudely interrupted the officer's speech as he took one step towards the officer which was easily twice his size. This action, of course, had the response on all the surrounding guards of straightening their guns further in towards the advancing hedgehog as the room filled with the clicking noises of the safeties on the multiple handguns being switched off.
"Sonic, don't! They've got guns, remember?!" Tails suddenly shouted out as he grabbed on to the blue hedgehog in a crippling embrace, the fox's earlier defiance now completely gone as he was convinced Sonic's rude manners would get them both killed.
"Relax, bro! I just want to know why these guys want to put us in the slammer!" Sonic responded.
"Then may I suggest that you cooperate, Sonic the Hedgehog?" the authoritative canine officer broke in using a voice that seemed unphased by the tense atmosphere of the room. Taking a quick glance at all his men standing with hair-trigger alertness, the older cop reached out with one hand and lowered it slowly with palm downwards, a sign that was almost simultaneously accompanied by the other surrounding police dogs, cats, and other assorted species lowering their weapons, switching back on their respective safeties, and holstering the guns almost in tandem.
"You sure you wanted to do that, officer?" Rouge spoke up as the circle of police-Mobians expanded to allow her and Amy to step forward to the leader's side. "You might as well have given them a 'get out of jail free' card."
"I'm the one in charge here, Miss Rouge. I would suggest you avoid questioning my tactics, especially given the long list of thievery incidents I could call down on your head," the head officer spoke up as he gave Rouge a glance that could freeze magma.
The bat seemed unaffected, however, as she responded while crossing her arms in defiance, "Ha, if you could prove any of those were my fault, then I'd already be in handcuffs."
"This is interesting and all, but why'd you guys decide to just barge in here in the first place?!" Sonic raised his voice in impatience.
"You know exactly why, Sonic! I can't believe you or Tails! Why would you ever want to hurt them?!" Amy blurted out in a loud yell as the pink hedgehog couldn't decide on whether to bring out her hammer to pulverize them both or to break down into uncontrollable sobs of tears.
"What?! Hurt who, Amy?!" Tails took the words out of Sonic's mouth even as the blue hedgehog formed the sounds in his own throat.
The rapidly degenerating situation immediately was broken by the sound of an ominous, low growl coming from the leader of the contingent of elite troopers. It seemed that this officer greatly disliked situations that became unorganized and chaotic like this one was tending to go now, so he decided to give his men new orders, "Please escort Miss Rose and Miss Rouge outside, men."
"Hold on, there, head hound," Rouge commented as a couple officers approached to haul her off. "We know these two killers. You might want us around to help you question them."
"Very well," the canine officer announced with a short sigh. "But this is your last warning, both of you," he said as he gave both Rouge and Amy a short glance to gauge their reactions.
"Wait, did Rouge just say 'killers'?!" Tails shouted out in shock. "You mean… you think Sonic and I killed someone today?!"
"That's what we're here to find out," the officer responded to the still frightened kit as he walked a few steps back to sit in an armchair that Sonic customarily lounged in after a long run. "Please, sit down, all four of you," the dog civilly commanded as if this were his house. Sonic and Tails plopped down obediently on the living room sofa, and Amy and Rouge found a couple of chairs from the nearby kitchen table to bring into the small group now seated in a rough circle in Tails' downstairs room. "Now, let's start from the beginning, shall we? Sonic, where were you and Mr. Prower today at around noon?" the lead officer began his interrogation.
"Me and my bro were probably still at Vanilla's house eatin' lunch," Sonic truthfully answered while he tapped his foot silently in anticipation of when this was all going to make sense.
"Ah ha! So he admits it, then!" Rouge suddenly spoke up from her seat next to Amy and across from the sofa Sonic and Tails were seated in.
"No, I don't believe it! I thought it wasn't true!" Amy hysterically added as she broke down into tears while covering her face with her hands.
"Wait just one robot-kickin' second there, Ames! Exactly what'd ya think I've done?!" Sonic posed the question one last time as he stared at the crying pink hedgehog.
"Enough!" the canine officer half-barked as his patience at the uncooperative fugitives and civilians hit its limit. After the room again quieted down to complete silence, he spoke again, "Seeing as how none of you are capable of having a decent discussion right here, I will be forced to take you all downtown for proper questioning!"
"But, why?" Tails weakly spoke as his words almost caught in his throat. The yellow kit wasn't sure how Sonic, Rouge, and Amy could act so cool and disrespectful around the menacing officer; he was most certainly intimidated by the uniformed German Sheppard.
"The two ladies will be going with us for failure to cooperate with an officer," the head cop spoke up matter-of-factly. "And, you two will be brought in for murder!"
"MURDER?!" Tails shrieked as he heard the accusation. The yellow fox immediately started to turn pale as his body slumped back against the sofa he was sitting in beside Sonic.
"Correct, but not just murder. You and Sonic are wanted for the double homicide of Vanilla the rabbit and her daughter Cream," the canine officer continued on in a merciless voice.
"WHAT?! Cream and Vanilla are dead?! And you think I did it?!" Sonic blurted out as he found himself completely confused by the news and how he could be a suspect.
"Both Miss Rouge and Miss Rose have shown our officers the bodies of both suspects, and we have found two sets of footprints leading to and from the house that belong to you and Mr. Prower here, no others," the officer continued to inform the overwhelmed hedgehog and fox.
Sonic's jaw by now had just about extended to the rug on the floor below him in shock. "That doesn't prove that I did anything!" Sonic shouted back in self defense.
"Indeed, it doesn't," the large hound agreed with the blue hedgehog. "You, Sonic the hedgehog, may only be an accomplice or accessory to murder. However, we do have evidence that points to Mr. Prower here as the likely suspect who committed these acts."
"You think I killed Cream and her mom?!" Tails yelled in disbelief at the accusation.
"Think? Ha! We know you did it, fox boy!" Rouge remarked with a sadistic glee from the sidelines.
"But…" Tails weakly wanted to defend himself from the accusation, but speech chose that exact moment to fail him as the poor fox's mind reeled under the weight of what he was hearing.
"The game's up, son," the head officer almost growled as he slowly and deliberately stood up and crossed the room to stand directly over the cowering kitsune on the sofa. The impression from this maneuver was to make Tails seem like a little insect facing down a giant monster, and this effect didn't fail to register to the small fox in the slightest as Tails began shaking uncontrollably in his seat. "You've probably seen too many crime shows on TV and assumed that all the truly great criminals have to leave their own custom 'calling card' at every scene to annoy the cops, right? Well, this is real life son! Here, people that get killed aren't just wearing makeup and lying still, and criminals that think they're being clever get punished!"
Tails stared up at the officer's burning red eyes that seemed almost to tower over him by miles as the terrified fox curled all his arms, feet, and tails around himself in a protective ball that still vibrated uncontrollably. Sonic noticed that the officer was almost literally scaring his little brother to death and immediately became enraged at the menacing police dog. "And what makes you so sure he did it, Snoz-zilla?!" Sonic unwisely insulted the person who would ultimately decide his innocence or guilt as every cobalt fur on Sonic's body bristled in the barely suppressed urge to protect his terrified little brother.
"I would choose your words more wisely, hedgehog!" the now also enraged canine leader barked as he shared his withering gaze with the defiant blue hedgehog. The look was so menacing and powerful, that even Sonic immediately felt his throat dry up and had to fight the urge to show his own fear by gulping down much needed moisture from his mouth. "Do not think that I accuse others lightly!" the canine head officer continued speaking in a voice that only the most foolish person in the world would dare interrupt. "The proof is in the white hairs we found on Mrs. Vanilla's gloves and this, which we found in her lap along with young Cream's deceased body!" Without missing a single beat, another officer stepped up and handed something to his superior. Wheeling about in less than a second, the leader then revealed the wretched object by dangling it inches from Tails horror-struck face.
The fox took one look at the thing in the officer's hand and went completely pale. Tails moved his mouth quickly to try and speak, scream, cry, make any kind of noise whatsoever, but not a single sound escaped the terrified kit's lips. Finally, as his big blue irises grew to impossibly huge sizes, the two-tailed kitsune collapsed back into his seat unconscious. Upon fainting, Tails' tightly wrapped appendages immediately fell away from the tight fetal position he had been in as the fox's body sprawled out completely on the couch.
Sonic, instead of spin dashing the oppressive officer in half right then and there, gawked at the object as well. Dangling carelessly over the unconscious form of his little brother from the well trimmed, clawed fingers of the head officer was the crudely misshapen and poorly stitched doll which resembled Tails that they had left at the rabbits' home earlier that day. Finally recovering from his shock, Sonic managed to speak once more in his brother's defense, "Framed! My little bro must have been framed! He'd never do something like this!"
"Sonic, (sniff) I know you have nothing to do with this. Tails probably did it when you weren't looking! Please, don't waste your life trying to save him! He fooled us all!" Amy began pleading with the stunned blue hedgehog. "Please, Sonic! I know you're innocent! Don't try to protect him and get thrown in jail, too! I can't be married to a convict!!"
"No, Amy, ya don't understand! Tails didn't kill anyone, and neither did I!" Sonic tried to settle down the emotional pink hedgehog. "We stopped by Vanilla's house on our way back home this morning on our run because my bud here suddenly got sharp pains in his chest, so I worried about him and took him to get some help! I could see that Cream's house was the closest, so I juiced over there as fast as I could with Tails in my arms!" Sonic began to explain the gigantic misconception.
"Save it for the jury, Sonic!" the head officer growled as he produced a pair of handcuffs to place on the blue hedgehog. Just then, however, one of the other officers in the room stepped forward briskly and whispered something inaudible to everyone else in the angry dog's ear. The furious expression on the lead cop's face slowly dissolved in response to whatever the other police-Mobian had mentioned. At long last, the canine officer again spoke up in a much less threatening voice, "On second thought, please continue Mr. Sonic."
"'Bout time!" Sonic commented before launching into the heart of his explanation. "Ya see, I got there and told Mrs. Vanilla that my little bro's chest was hurtin' really bad, and she said she'd check him out just in case. She looked him over real good with her hands, but didn't find anything wrong with him," Sonic hurriedly recounted the events of the visit, purposefully leaving out the dramatic part where he had gotten almost everyone to believe that Tails had been shot, of course. "After that, Mrs. Vanilla invited us to eat lunch with her and Cream. We were both starvin', so we had a couple sandwiches, some pie, and left."
"That explains Tails' fur being on Mrs. Vanilla's hands and her living room couch, but how do you explain this horrendous excuse for a doll?" the disbelieving head officer asked the blue hedgehog in an attempt to reveal a flaw is his likely alibi.
"That thing's just an old toy that we think Tails forgot about a long time ago. He found it in his closet yesterday, and left it with Mrs. Vanilla to fix up for him," Sonic quickly spoke up without a hint of deception in his voice.
"Ha! Likely story, gorgeous! You're not as bad at this lying stuff as I thought you were!" Rouge unhelpfully commented at Sonic's sketchy story.
"Actually, it checks out rather well," the lead canine officer surprised everyone by saying in an almost jovial voice. "Mrs. Vanilla's body was found in the chair next to her knitting supplies, was it not?"
"Yes sir. And, if I remember correctly, it appeared as though she had one of her stitching tools lying next to her as if she had dropped it in fright," the same officer who had whispered to the authoritative dog earlier responded in a crisp tone.
"The sets of tracks leading to and from the residence also match Sonic's story, sir," another feline officer broke in. "The tracks leading up to the house were from Sonic only and it could be easily seen that he was in a hurry. The footprints leaving the house, however, were from both Tails and Sonic and at a much less hurried pace."
"Miss Rose, you said you had seen this doll before and identified it as belonging to Tails. When exactly was this?" the head officer asked. He no longer seemed mad, but, rather, more amused as he tried to piece together the evidence and test it against Sonic's vague, but possible, alibi.
"Well, it was just this morning, actually," Amy obediently spoke up. "I came over here for a visit, and…"
Just then, the pink hedgehog's explanation was cut short by the laughter of the blue hedgehog seated across from him. "Ha ha ha ha! You're callin' that a visit?! More like an invasion! Good thing my little bro had an escape route!" Sonic mirthfully remarked as he laughed.
"Oooooohh…!" Amy started to growl as she prepared to work herself into another frenzy at the unhelpful hedgehog. "Sonic! I swear I'll…!" Just then, Amy's mind caught up with her anger as she realized that there was only one way Sonic could have known about her talk with Tails. A look of rage and shock crossed her face as everyone could imagine flames spouting from her body as she continued shouting at Sonic, "You were HERE!! All that time you were hiding from me, and you had Tails lie to me that you were gone!"
"Well, that's pretty obvious," Rouge sidelined with an unhelpful remark that further fueled Amy's anger towards the evasive, blue boyfriend of hers.
Before Amy could bring out her hammer and chase Sonic around like the world's fastest piñata, the hound in charge of the officers present broke in with the voice of reason, "Miss Rose! If you would be so kind as to continue your earlier explanation..."
"Oh, right, my bad," Amy snapped back to her calmer self as she now tried to act completely innocent and docile, an act which went a long ways towards convincing all the officers present that the pink hedgehog could be bipolar. "Well, after I asked Tails if Sonic was home, he told me that he wasn't and ran upstairs claiming that he had to go to the bathroom all the sudden. Of course, now I know that this was all just a big lie!" Amy again edged a good deal of anger into her voice as she stared Sonic in the eyes.
"Not all of it, Amy!" Sonic almost playfully remarked as he looked straight back at the pink hedgehog with eyes that betrayed his currently mischievous attitude. "Tails really did have to go to the bathroom."
"OOOOHH! SONIC, you know what I meant!" Amy shouted as she finally had enough of his carefree attitude.
"Miss Rose, please, could we return to the question at hand? When did you see this doll that you claim belongs to Mr. Prower here?" the lead officer interrupted a second time, aggravation already starting to rise in his voice again.
"Well, right after Tails went upstairs, I saw that sitting right there on his TV. I figured the doll belonged to him, but I didn't know if he even wanted me to see it and had left it up there by accident. So, I just left." Amy managed to finish without any further interruptions.
"So, even at best, no one can positively trace this doll back to Mr. Prower personally creating it?" the older, canine officer posed the fact.
"Nope, not even my little bro remembers makin' that thing," Sonic commented.
"Making what?" Tails' voice suddenly chimed in weakly as the yellow fox slowly sat back up from his position on the couch where he had collapsed unconscious a minute ago. Getting his bearings, Tails spotted the leader of the gathered police squad sitting in the armchair again and instinctively curled up into a protective ball once more. Sonic noticed this and sighed as he tried to coax Tails back out from his furry shell.
"Hey, bro, it's OK, buddy," Sonic spoke in a somewhat compassionate voice, but, since there were so many people around, it was nowhere near the comforting voice he wanted to use on the scared kit. "I told 'em everything, bro, and they know ya didn't do it."
"They… They do?" Tails whimpered from his safe, furry cage.
"Course they do, bud! Amy here was just tellin' them how she went through your stuff this mornin'," Sonic filled the fox in on the part of the conversation Tails had missed.
This badly worded summary got Tails' undivided attention as his arms, legs, and tails immediately dropped away from their protective positions and the yellow fox sat bolt upright in his seat. "She did what?! Sonic, she didn't find my secret compartment with all my private stuff, did she?!" Tails frantically asked.
"Chill, bro! She just saw your old doll there sittin' on the TV after you two talked this morning," Sonic replied.
"Secret compartment, eh? Hmmm…" Rouge mumbled to herself just loud enough for everyone in the room to overhear. "Pardon me, big, tall, and handsome," the bat playfully remarked to the leader of the police, "but could I perhaps use that search warrant you have there to check a certain fox's room?"
"Absolutely not, Miss Rouge!" the officer answered immediately in a tone that betrayed no amusement at the intended joke.
"Gees, it's not like I would actually want to go through this young kit's stuff anyways," Rouge explained her joke to the people around her who seemed less than amused. "Sorry, kid, but you're not really worth it," she also commented towards Tails, who was now genuinely concerned about someone actually finding his secret hiding spot where he kept his few most treasured and private possessions. Now that Sonic knew about it, Tails was sure he'd have to spill the beans on its location to him sooner or later, but he currently had much more important things to deal with.
A pause followed in which no one uttered a word as everyone present tried to figure out how the current developments fit into the overall picture. Finally, the officer in charge broke the silence by continuing the four-way interrogation, "Miss Rouge, remind me again how you fit in to all this, please."
"Always happy to help," Rouge snidely remarked to the officer that she knew would rather cuff her than rely on her to help solve a case. "I was just out on a nice flight to stretch my wings when I spotted Vanilla and Cream's home and decided to drop in."
"More like rob them blind…" Amy remarked from the seat next to Rouge in the small living room.
"You know, gal, sometimes even I like to just sit down and talk to someone nicely," Rouge defended herself in a tone of mock hurt at Amy's accusation. "Anyways, I knocked, but no one answered. I noticed that the door was unlocked, so I walked right in and saw both of them in that chair. I thought that they were asleep, until I noticed that Vanilla was holding Cream pretty tight, and Cream looked like she was scared to death, and I mean that literally. Still, there was no blood and the place didn't look like anyone had busted in recently, so I flew off to tell Pinky here and call the cops."
"So, Cream really is dead?" Tails softly asked. He already knew the answer, but it was such a sudden event that he couldn't really believe it. No one seemed to notice right then how he failed to mention Vanilla as well.
"I'm afraid that's the only thing that we do know for certain now, son," the lead, canine officer broke the news to Tails for the second time. "I'm very sorry that we ever accused you, Mr. Prower."
"I understand. I would have thought the same thing if I was you," Tails answered as he fought back the tears from losing one of his closest friends, not to mention Vanilla as well which was always the closest thing he had to a real mother.
As he started to break down in front of everyone, Tails felt a soft, stubby hand pat him gently on his shoulder. Tails stopped his tears even as they began at the strange feeling. Sonic was the only one sitting in arm's reach of the crying fox, but Tails knew the blue hedgehog's touch and this one didn't belong to Sonic at all. Curious, Tails re-opened his watery eyes to see a small chao hovering in front of him, also crying uncontrollably as it cuddled closely to the kitsune's warm, fur-covered body. "Cheese!" Tails cried out in surprise mixed with a bit of relief.
"Yes, it would appear that whoever or whatever committed this crime neglected to deal with Miss Cream's pet chao. Mr. Prower, you seem to be the one who knew Miss Cream the most and the one whom Cheese seems to like best, so I will leave the chao in your care. That is, unless you would prefer that I have Cheese set free at the nearest Chao Garden instead," the main officer explained. He could understand fully if Tails was unwilling to raise the little chao now, seeing as how it would only serve to bring back constant memories of the now deceased Cream.
"No!" Tails surprised everyone with no only his response, but the volume at which he made it. "I want to take care of Cheese now. It's… it's what Cream would have wanted…" the brave fox spoke as he gently stroked the crying chao on his shoulder with one of his gloved hands.
"Very well, Mr. Prower. Also, we would like to return this to you as well," the head officer spoke while he tossed the crudely stitched doll of Tails over to the yellow fox that it resembled. "We have already processed it for fingerprints and the like, but nothing was found to be out of the ordinary with this doll so we have no further need of it for evidence."
"One of the bad things about almost everyone on Mobius wearing these white gloves, isn't it? Never any fingerprints," Rouge playfully taunted the officer who probably would have had her jailed for life by now if it wasn't for her own pair of white gloves she always wore.
"Indeed," the canine officer snarled his response under his breath in agitation at the bat's current position of immunity. "Well, it seems that we have come here to arrest a couple of murderers and solve this case, only for it to get much more complicated and all our potential leads to dry up. I suppose that this is where we must go back to square one and…" the head officer's voice suddenly was cut short by a piercing, high-pitched scream from the sofa.
"CHAOOOOO!" Cheese unexpectedly squealed at a volume everyone present thought would be impossible for such a small creature.
"Aaaahh! Cheese, what's wrong?" Tails shouted to the small creature. Due to the chao being only inches away from his large and very sensitive ears, Tails felt immense pain from the little chao's screaming. Tails managed to keep his ears mostly covered as he followed the noisy chao's line of sight to the doll of himself that now lay in his lap from the canine officer's expert toss a second ago. "Quick, Sonic, take this thing upstairs! I think it's what's scaring Cheese!" Tails had to yell his orders to the hedgehog seated right next to him in order for Sonic to hear them.
No sooner had Sonic grabbed the ugly doll and ran upstairs and out of sight, then Cheese immediately stopped its ear-piercing wails. The little chao still seemed very frazzled, however, as it floated down into Tails' lap and quivered with fear. Tails gently scooped up the shaking chao and held it softly against his white-furred chest with one hand while petting it gently with the other, a trick he had learned from Cream a long time ago that could always calm down any chao, and it seemed to work especially well with Cheese who now uttered not a sound and seemed to almost go to sleep instantaneously against the warm, furry pillow that was Tails' chest.
"Why did that doll scare Cheese like that?" Amy asked the question that was on all the minds of the observers of the strange event as Sonic returned empty-handed from upstairs.
"Ha! Must be because of who it looks like!" Rouge playfully remarked, clearly not taking the situation seriously at all.
Sonic's eyes flared at this comment as he sat back down on the sofa next to Tails. "Are you sayin' something bad about my little bro?!" the blue hedgehog all but dared the bat to continue her ridicule so he had an excuse for a fight.
"I was just joking, handsome," Rouge delivered her defense without shifting her playful tone one bit. "Don't get me wrong, Foxy here holds the market on cuteness as far as guys go. Too bad he's just not my type," the vain bat concluded her unique assessment.
"Ummm… Thanks?" Tails responded in confusion to Rouge's perception of him. Tails quickly brought the discussion back on topic however as he glanced down at the resting chao in his hands. "But, seriously, I've never seen Cheese act like this before."
"Well, Cheese is probably still hurting real bad since Cream just died," Amy offered a solution. "After all, those two were so close together that you could never find them apart for more than a second."
"Yeah, that makes sense I suppose, but why did Cheese freak out when it saw that doll?" Tails asked the question that had really been bugging him from the uproar a minute ago.
After a long pause with no one responding, Sonic broke the silence, "Beats me, bro. I know that you don't really like that thing either, so maybe it just scares Cheese, too? It did act really strange when you first showed that doll to Vanilla and Cream, remember?"
"Oh yeah, that's right!" Tails said aloud as he recalled the chao's sudden terror upon touching the doll's gem earlier during their visit. The fox realized that there was a connection between the crude plushy of himself and the young chao, but currently no theories came to mind that made the relationship clear.
"The way Cheese was acting, you'd think that the doll killed Vanilla and Cream," Amy jokingly remarked.
"I would almost have to agree with Miss Rose, even though it sounds absurd," the German Sheppard police chief spoke at long last. "However, my men have inspected every misshapen stitch of that strange doll and have concluded that it hides no concealed weapons of any kind. Although horrid and highly suspicious given its placement on top of the victim's lap, it is completely harmless and is most likely unrelated to the murder of Mrs. Vanilla and her daughter."
"Yeah, I can see it know, 'Deranged Two-Tailed Doll Murders Family'," Sonic chimed in with some humor to lighten up the situation. "It'll be in all the papers!"
"Mr. Sonic, I appreciate your trying to make light of the current situation, however, I must request that your jokes contain a lot more tact and…" the police chief was suddenly interrupted by another officer hurriedly rushing through the still door-less entrance to the house and addressing him.
"Sir! We have a situation on our hands!" the winded Greyhound officer spoke up as he struggled to stand at full attention in the presence of his superior.
"What is it, Swifty? You and Marcus were supposed to still be watching the rabbit's residence!" the head officer barked back as he began to rise from his seat to face the other canine at eye level.
"We were sir, but then a dark figure approached the house and ran straight in the front door. We prepared to capture it, but as we looked into the door a bright light blinded us. When we looked around a second later, that thing and both of the bodies were gone!" the officer gave a full debriefing.
"Sounds like it might be our murderer coming to clean up his mess," the head officer remarked. "Didn't you get a good look at him at all, Swifty?"
"No, sir. He ran in so fast it just looked like a blur, and we think he used a strobe grenade or something to cover his escape," the sullen police dog answered.
"This just got a whole lot more complicated, then," the police chief commented. "I want an all points bulletin out for anyone suspicious that matches this person's description! If whoever this is think that they can just mess around with the law, I'm going to teach them a thing or two!"
"Wait, sir! I'm just getting a report from one of the officers that was backtracking the trail leading to the rabbits' home made by Sonic and Tails this morning. He says that in a spot near the forest he saw a shadowy figure running off with three bodies in his hands!" a feline officer that was standing in the room with an active headset on quickly chimed in.
"What?! Can you confirm that?! That sounds like our new suspect, but we are only aware of two bodies!" the head officer shouted loudly as he felt helpless to do anything to stop this mysterious person and clearly wanted to get the facts straight immediately, especially if this had just turned into a triple homicide.
"Yes sir. Officer Stefan says that he gave chase to a mysterious, dark figure that carried two rabbits on his shoulders. He also says the individual ran to that spot near the forest, uncovered a partially concealed body, and ran off with all three corpses," the feline officer again reported.
"Any idea who the third person might have been?" Rouge suddenly took the words straight from the police chief's mouth.
"Officer Stefan reports that it was a red creature with white gloves and a white-furred crescent on its chest," the extremely informative feline cop answered just as if her boss had asked her instead of Rouge.
"No way! It can't be! That sounds just like…" Tails began to identify the third and, up to this point, unknown victim before his voice cracked under the realization of what he was just about to say.
"Knuckles," Sonic finished the young fox's sentence as his eyes widened in disbelief. Whatever this mysterious creature was, it had just gotten a lot more serious. It wouldn't take much for a murderer to kill Vanilla and Cream, but Knuckles was a totally different story. Who or what was responsible for this was a real threat, even to him.
"Sir, our contact says that he lost the subject as it ran away again. He said it crested a series of hills and made its way towards the horizon before he could give chase," the feline radio operator spoke up.
"Impossible! Only one creature can move that fast, and I'm looking at him right now!" the head officer shouted as he couldn't make sense of what was happening.
"Hang on, if it was running over the hills away from the officer, then that means that it's heading straight here!" Tails announced as his mind quickly checked the incoming reports against the fox's knowledge of the surrounding geography. Quickly, Tails set the slumbering Cheese down on the sofa and rushed out the open doorway to the cliff his home was built on.
Everyone else quickly followed the fox out the door and came to a halt a few feet away as they all stared at what the yellow kit's gloved finger now pointed at. In the near distance, they all saw a large, mechanical battleship rise from behind the cover of the surrounding hills and into the sky. Painted on the side of the craft was an all too familiar logo.
"Eggman!" Sonic shouted in disbelief as he watched the flying fortress pivot in mid-air and blast off in the opposite direction in a hasty retreat.
"I can't believe it!" Amy yelled in her confusion. "I know that Eggman is always trying to kill Sonic, but he's never actually had someone murdered!"
"That's true, this doesn't really sound like Eggy's kind of work to me," Rouge agreed.
"It doesn't matter now," the canine chief interrupted. "Whatever was just stealing those bodies clearly is working with or for Dr. Robotnik, and I intend to ask him a few questions."
"Sure you don't want our help, chief?" Sonic offered as he crossed his arms in smug satisfaction that he would again get to be the hero and rush off to fight Eggman with just Tails as backup.
"No, Sonic," the police chief unexpectedly declined, "This is a police matter now. We have no proof to indict Eggman at the moment, so I simply wish to ask him a few questions as to his involvement in this case."
"You'll never get anything from old fatty that way," Rouge tried to tell the officer.
"Once again, I ask that you just keep the police work to the authorities, Miss Rouge. We will find who is responsible for the deaths of Mrs. Vanilla, Miss Cream, and Mr. Knuckles our way," the canine leader said before he and the other police-Mobians began to file away to their vehicles at the bottom of the stairs that lead up and down from Tail's cliffside abode. Amy and Rouge also followed them, seeing as how they both had no reason to stay any longer.
"Mr. Knuckles…" Sonic spoke once everyone but Tails was now gone and out of earshot. The blue hedgehog snorted as he began laughing slightly at how absurd it sounded to address Knuckles in the proper terms.
"Sonic, it isn't funny!" Tails shouted at him, horrified that Sonic could act that way when almost half of the people they had both known were now dead. Tails had caught that quick look from Rouge as she turned away to leave a moment ago. It was the same one he had on his face at the news that Cream was gone. The fox began crying again as he realized that so much had happened today that would change his life forever, but, most of all, that Sonic didn't even seem to care and just kept on cracking jokes.
Sonic noticed his brother's no nonsense attitude and saw the kit beginning to tear up again. "Hey, bro. Look, I'm sorry, buddy," Sonic tried to explain himself to the weeping fox. "It's just, well, I'm supposed to be the tough guy, right? And, tough guys never cry even when somethin' bad happens. That's why I crack jokes, Tails! It's just my way of makin' myself feel better!"
"Well then, do me a favor, Sonic," Tails tearfully whimpered as he walked back towards the demolished entrance to his home, "Go feel better somewhere else."
Sonic didn't have a clue what to say in response as Tails continued to walk away into the house. Should he rush up and apologize, or just run off like his little brother had told him to? Did Tails just need time alone, or did he really need Sonic to be serious and comfort him instead? Truth be told, the knowledge of so many of his friends being killed had never made its way into the blue hedgehog's thick skull until now. He had refused to admit it to himself and instead resorted to his tried and true method of 'if I don't think about it, then it never really happened'. Tails had brought this fantasy world of feigned ignorance crashing down now as Sonic realized that soon he would also need comforting when it finally set in. Despite his reputation, Sonic refused to be alone when this happened.
Quietly, Sonic followed the grieving fox inside. Taking the time to lift the door back onto its hinges and locking it tightly against the approaching darkness of the now twilight hour outside, Sonic turned to see his little brother staring at him from the couch as he cradled a still sleeping Cheese in his arms. With deliberate strides, Sonic walked over to the sofa and sat down as close to Tails as possible. Without exchanging a word between them, just a long, unwavering glance, Tails finally snuggled his head comfortably into Sonic's lap as he continued crying. Sonic made no effort to stop the kit's tears as he wrapped a comforting arm around his little brother's shoulder and actually began crying a few tears of his own. No matter how the hedgehog tried to keep his own waterworks secret, a few stray droplets must have fell on the yellow fox's head as Sonic soon felt his own body be enveloped in the comforting warmth of the kit's twin tails as they wrapped around his cobalt blue torso. Thus entangled in each other's embrace, both of them cried for the loss of their friends and vowed together to find the person responsible and make sure they were never happy again.
Unbeknownst to them, however, the one responsible now sat in Tail's room, reveling immensely in each moment of sorrow and rage from the two sitting one floor below. Whoever this mysterious person was that seemed happy to clean up his messes, the Tails Doll didn't know, nor did it care. The intense feelings coming from below whipped him into a euphoria of sorts in which he enjoyed every passing second more than the last. However, one name in particular he had heard today caused him to stop and think. Robotnik. Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Hmmm… Perhaps now the time has come to get back at the one who is to blame for my miserable existence. Although, it's not so bad right now! Three square meals in one day, followed by an endless dessert of bitter tears... Heee he he he ha ha ha haaaa! Delicious!