Chapter 2: Don't Fix it if it Hasn't Broken Yet
It was getting dark, steel gray storm clouds started to cover the entire sky and streaks of lightning started to flash off in the distance. The streets were devoid of life but were instead littered with debris; broken glass, wood from power lines, broken chunks from buildings and so on. Despite the desolate scene Tails calmly walked down the street while he went over everything he had just learned in his mind.
"You are the one person who's DNA has successfully bonded with the T-virus." The computer personified as a little girl had told him,
"Well what exactly does that mean?" he had questioned, he hadn't known what exactly to expect
"They found that you have enhanced capabilities; increased speed, strength, faster healing and even increased brain function but they weren't able to figure out what exactly that would mean considering you were asleep and didn't know how you were mentally to begin with…now come with me."
She had lead him to several different storage facilities in the Hive, the first of which was for clothes, Tails started looking for clothes in his regular size only to find that they didn't fit him so well anymore, we could have worn them but they were too short and a bit too tight, he settled on a pair of dark blue jeans, a crimson t-shirt and a dark brown jacket (think Leon's in RE4 but darker brown), a pair of black combat boots completed his outfit.
Next she had taken him to a room with more firearms than Tails had seen in a video game. He picked out a harness that could hold three different guns and even a holster for a knife above his left shoulder, he decided on two Colt 9mm handguns and a Smith and Wesson 45 magnum revolver.
But that wasn't his new favorite toy.
The anthropomorphic little girl, whom he figured out was named "Red Queen", had taken him to one final room; inside it was something that made the kitsune jump up and down with glee.
In the center of the room was a katana style sword except it didn't have as much as a curve as other katanas, Tails picked it up from it's stand and unsheathed the blade, which was a dark chrome color while the handle guard was a dark gold and the handle had a black cloth wrapped around it. As Tails examined the blade and it's weight he noticed it was much lighter than he expected it to be, and that it looked to be very very sharp.
"This blade was made of a special metallic alloy that can be sharper and lighter than traditional metals, it resists rusting and is next to impossible to break."
"Why did they make something like this?"
"The Umbrella Corporation had a program for making an elite team of soldiers, but the program was discontinued very quickly."
"Why the hell does a pharmaceutical corporation need a special team of soldiers?" Tails had asked himself.
Tails decided that he definitely wanted this katana, "and the black sheath matches so well with my outfit!" Tails had said jokingly after securing the sword to his back.
Soon Tails found himself on the outskirts of Raccoon City, thinking over what the Red Queen had told him to do.
"There are other Hive facilities in New York City, Denver, Chicago, and somewhere in the Nevada desert, you need to find one of these facilities and use the equipment there to synthesize a cure."
"But why me? Why do I have to do it?" Tails had started to argue, but the computer wouldn't have it,
"Because you're the only one who has bonded with the virus, because you're blood is special. You're going to have to save the world."
"Great, no pressure or anything." He mumbled to himself, "Time to head home, maybe I'll find Sonic or some other survivors around town." The sound of movement to his right snapped Tails out of his thoughts, he jumped back and reached up with his right hand to his sword, he held his breath waiting for more movement. The sound of running reached his ears and then the smell of rotting meat reached his nose.
A small group of zombies started running towards him, quicker than Tails even thought he could move he pulled out his sword and vastly sliced through each of the zombies, their bodies were cut in half almost too easily in Tails' opinion. Blood started to gush from the open wounds as they fell motionless to the ground. The rotting smell doubled in intensity and he staggered a few feet before attempting to throw up, although nothing came out.
It was then the irony gods looked upon Tails and he realized how extremely hungry he was. He cleaned the blood off his sword with a quick swipe and sheathed it, but before leaving he turned to see the people he cut down, All he could deduce through the disfigured flesh and filthy clothes was that one was a human business woman, one was a male bear in a shirt and tie, and that other was a teenage male dog.
"I'm sorry." was the only words he gave to his first three kills and he turned to make his way back home, or whatever was left there waiting for him.
Luckily on his way back he didn't encounter many zombies, there were a few but what really surprised him was the damage; cars lay turned over and in pieces all down the streets, windows were shattered and entire chunks of buildings were missing and blood splatters covered almost all of the destruction. The closer he was to getting home the more nervous Tails grew about his friends and family.
Are they all dead?
Did any of them get infected?
Are they still even in town?
Did they look for him?
That last question Tails already had an answer for, there's no way in hell that his brother Sonic wouldn't have tried to look for him, that big blue annoying hedgehog would freak out if Tails said he'd be home at 10 and happened to show up two minutes later, saying that he was about to call the fox or start to go look for him, he loved Sonic to absolute death but Jesus Christ.
After a lot of walking Tails finally made it to his house, his heart began to sink when he saw his neighborhood had the same amount of destruction as the rest of town, entire houses had pieces missing and different body parts littered the once prim and perfect lawns, and blood had changed the color from green to a dark brown, when he got to his house he saw all the windows of the house had been shattered and the door was kicked down, Tails stepped inside and looked around, pieces of wood, furniture and appliances littered the floor and Tails had the feeling that nobody was home.
"Hello?" no answer.
"Is anybody here?" a bit louder but no response.
"HELLO?" still nothing.
Tails sighed but continued to look throughout the house, when he reached his room he saw things were disheveled but nothing looked to be particularly damaged, as Tails decided to dig through the clutter for anything useful he grabbed something that felt small, he pulled it out to find his I-pod, after taking off the 'hold' and pressing the button the screen lit up, and it even had a full battery too.
"Fucking legit!" Tails yelled in self-victory only to realize that probably wasn't the safest thing to do. But since he didn't hear anything he figured he was safe and made a beeline for the kitchen. He started to dig through the fridge to find either nothing appetizing or nothing that Tails trusted to eat.
Sighing the fox turned to the pantry and upon opening it found a box chocolate pop-tarts, grinning Tails started to stuff his face with the toaster pastries. After he had his fill he grabbed a glass that wasn't broken and turned on the faucet to be blessed with actual running water Tails filled with the glass and quickly chugged it, refilled it and then chugged again.
"Well now what…" Tails mumbled to himself, he knew he had to get out of town, that much was certain, but he needed to get some supplies and he definitely needed a vehicle of some type, even though he didn't have his license.
But that certainly didn't matter now, did it?
Tails turned and made his way out of his past home; he turned around one last time but then sighed and turned away, planning his next move. Well he was going to need some medical supplies, and food. By that logic he started to walk to the small pharmacy down the street from his neighborhood.
When he got there he noticed anything glass had been boarded up and that the building itself was relatively free of damage, which was most definitely a good sign. Walking up to the door he pounded on it,
"Is anybody alive in there?" he pounded again and stuck his ear to the door, he thought he heard motion inside but wasn't sure, so he backed up and eyed the door, taking a deep breath he ran forward and with one good kick knocked the door of it's hinges.
The computer wasn't lying about enhanced abilities.
He looked inside but all the lights were off, so he pulled out one of his colts and started to walk inside. Before he made it too far he saw a flash of light come from his left and turned around to see something small and silvery fly his way. It started slowing in speed and then he got to see what it was. It was a bullet. His eyes widened as everything in his being screamed at him to move.
"Move!" His brain screamed, but the bullet grew closer.
"Move!" even louder than before and the bullet grew even closer, but he still couldn't make his body move quick enough.
"MOVE!" and when the bullet was about four inches from his right eye he saw it slowly curve to his right and flew past his face. As everything came back to regular time Tails dropped to the ground and grasped his head, it felt as if someone took a white-hot knife and plunged it deep into his brain, but eventually the white-hot pain lessened into a dull throbbing.
"Damn kid, you're pretty fucken lucky. I never miss." A gruff voice spoke and Tails looked up through squinting eyes to see a black hedgehog with a pistol in his right hand. When the hedgehog got a good look at him he turned around and yelled, "Hey! Wasn't blue boy looking for a fox with two tails?"
When the hedgehog started screaming Tails' headache grew worse and he just stayed on the ground and held his head, keeping his eyes shut.
"Tails? TAILS!" Soon he felt a pair of arms pick him up and hug him, very tightly.
"Can't…breath…" Tails managed to gasp out before finally getting to see who was holding him up and he saw the smiling face of his brother, but then the smile turned into a scowl and Sonic slapped Tails upside the head,
"Where the fuck have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you!" Tails opened his mouth but closed it when he finally got a good look at the blue hedgehog, he looked like he belonged in a Call of Duty video game. He was wearing black pants and boots, he had on a bulletproof vest and had some type of automatic rifle in his hand.
"Well I-" Tails started but then gunshots rang out from outside.
"We'll talk later!" Sonic yelled and ran outside, Tails followed suit. He saw a small hoard of zombies running towards the building, soon they were coming from all sides, Tails pulled out his sword and started slashing through the hoards of undead.
Now the fox would never admit it, but a small part of him was reveling in all the chaos in bloodshed, he enjoyed the feeling he got when his blade cut through the bodies as if they were butter.
Soon the zombies stopped, as Tails turned to face his brother he saw one more zombie, a young skunk girl, lunge towards Sonic. Faster than he had ever moved Tails ran forward and pushed Sonic out of the path of the little girl but she grabbed a hold of his arm and bit down on it. Tails hissed in pain but kicked her off of him, pulled out one of his pistols and shot her between the eyes, she dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Tails looked at his arm, she took a pretty decent chunk out but the wound stopped bleeding quickly and the pain stopped right after that. He looked up to face Sonic and see how he was doing when there was a loud BANG and he felt something hit his shoulder, with a shaky hand he touched the wound and looked at his hand to see blood cover his fingers. Raising his head he saw Sonic with a pistol pointed at him and with a cold look in his eyes,
" Sonic-" Tails started but with another BANG everything went dark.
Hours later Tails woke up to find himself in the same spot he was went Sonic shot him. Sonic fucking shot him! And to make things worse, he hadn't even looked upset about it! After that thought passed through his mind Tails began to get mad but soon things around him started to shake and that shocked Tails out of his rage.
After Tails had calmed back down he looked up and noticed it was raining hard, he was completely drenched. He remembered what happened with the black hedgehog and the bullet and picked out a small chunk of rock on the street and focused on it, it started to shake and rose a couple inches off the ground but Tails' head started pounding again and he stopped.
The memory of what the little girl said about mental capacity suddenly flew back to him.
"So this is what she meant…" he said to himself, he looked up once more to the sky and watched the flashes of lighting for a second thinking of his next plan. "Let's see…" he mused out loud, "Chicago, Denver, New York City, or somewhere in the Nevada Desert." With a smirk that didn't fit at all with the fox's usual demeanor, "I always did want to see Denver National Airport" and he walked away.
Quick note I would have had this chapter out much sooner, but I rewrote the beginning like four different times because I wasn't happy with it and I'm still not, but this was the best I could do.