Tails dreamed a terrible dream.
A huge diamond glass window framed Mobius, the planet's light painting the metal chamber a ghostly blue. Robotnik was a giant twenty feet tall, holding Sonic in a grip of steel.
"Help me, Tails!" Sonic shouted, struggling vainly to free himself.
Dread filled the young fox. He tried to take to the air but he found his tails coated in mega-muck. Noooo!
The thunder of the giant's laughter crashed over him. Then Robotnik lifted the hedgehog to his massive mouth and swallowed him whole.
Tails awoke screaming. He sat bolt upright in his bed in the palace, eyes wide. Just a dream. It was only a bad dream. His breath came in quick, short pants. One shaking hand went to his forehead, the other reaching for a glass of water on the nearby nightstand.
The carved white oak door opened suddenly, a royal guard rushing in with his gun drawn.
"Are you alright, young sir?" the husky asked him, eyeing the shadows.
Tails laughed weakly. "I'm fine. It was only a nightmare…"
The husky nodded, his grey eyes sad. "A lot of us have been having them, young sir. It was a dark time we all went through. Don't you worry, it's all over now."
Tails thanked him and the guard left, closing the door softly behind him. For a long time afterwards he sat in the dark, the dream replaying itself over and over in his head.
He knew it came from his failure to be by Sonic's side, even when he flew he wasn't fast enough to keep up unless his friend slowed down. Worse still, even if he could of, the others would never have let him go on any missions. They thought he was too young, too fragile and too innocent. His lack of speed and power was the mega-muck.
Then there was the fear. Every time they had gone away he had been so afraid that they wouldn't come back. Shame and anger burned in him. He hadn't been there for them. The giant.
They had fought the final battle without him.
The fox didn't get any more sleep that evening. He slipped out his window instead, flying into the wasteland known as the Industrialized Zone.
He found an intact roboticizer beneath the ruins of Robotnik's wrecked citadel, after hours of exploring dark and gloomy underground tunnels. The subterranean complex was unstable, the surface structure a pile of rubble that had been demolished by explosives. It was a miracle that the chamber in which the roboticizer was housed hadn't been buried, though its floor was littered pieces of concrete and other debris. It's fate. Has to be.
He worked through the rest of the night on the power systems. Back when those who fought for the freedom of his world had left Knothole, left him, the long hours and the longer waits had crept by. The kindly walrus Rotor had known his trouble and offered to teach him about machines, so that he could help in his own way. Now there was almost nothing he couldn't fix.
Rotor had called him a natural.
The roboticizer hummed to life, a shimmering column of energy crawling with blue electric bolts rising up from pad. The static it emanated made his fur stand on end. He didn't hesitate. He took his tails, his namesake, in his hand and touched their tips to the force field of the roboticizer.
The crippling pain sent him stumbling backward. The pad hissed and spat cerulean sparks, crackling.
He shook off the agony and looked over his shoulder, down at his tails. In the place of fur and flesh was cold grey steel.
Will they work like I thought? He twirled them experimentally. They turned smoothly and tirelessly like a turbine. He couldn't feel them, but could control them somehow.
The sapphire light of a SWATbot laser blew up the roboticizer. The blast sent him tumbling through the air like a leaf in a gale. Blue beams raked the chamber as more of the bots opened fire, melting machinery and heating the plating of the chamber's walls white hot.
He picked himself up, shocked and stunned. Then shock gave way to anger, the nightmare coming back to haunt him. I'm not powerless, I'm not! For the first time in his life he found his teeth bared in a snarl. The anger had turned into fury.
Instead of spinning his tails overhead as he did to fly he stood on his tip toes and spun them directly behind him like a plane's propeller, so fast that they became a blur. Then he was rocketing forward and charging straight for the SWATbot squad, his velocity approaching the speed of sound. The air in his wake became a spiraling vertical hurricane, drawing in debris.
The SWATbots fired their weapons relentlessly but he closed too quickly, one laser passing so close to his cheek that it singed his fur. Then he was racing between their ranks and the whirlwind trailing him hit them. A storm of concrete, steel and glass came with it and tore the SWATbots apart.
He was already halfway down the exit tunnel when the explosions of their destruction rocked the ruins. Already in shambles, what was left of the citadel shook and began to crumble. The corridor imploded, pipes and shattered masonry crashing down. He outdistanced it all, blasting out of the tunnel and into the morning light with the wind howling in his ears. He had never moved this fast, except when he had held Sonic's hand.
I'll be there for you. Like you always were for me. I promise!