"Amy, calm down!" he pled to his trembling, horrified friend. "I'm fine! I'm just- oh..."
"I-I-I KNOW YOU'RE UNHARMED, YOU MONSTER! BUT COSMO – SHE WAS SO INNOCENT AND SWEET AND NOW SHE'S- SHE'S-" Amy sank onto the floor before the poor fox, clutching her head in her hands and keeping her eyes trained on an empty spot arbitrarily picked with the tension involved in lifting a thousand-pound weight. "It's okay." She was hyperventilating and heaving back and forth. "I'll just guide the others in, and they won't have to listen to my sorry attempts at explaining this. They'll do something with him, and we'll all be fine with him-"
"AMY, PLEASE, CUT IT OUT!" Still, she refused to look at the devastated young boy. "I'M COSMO! I'M IN TAILS' BODY, TOO! I'M DIFFERENT NOW, BUT I'M STILL ALIVE!"
It was unclear for a few seconds if she had understood the words that had in other respects been unimaginably too loud, pained, and honest to have evaded her notice otherwise. Then she stared up at the fox in a kind of absolute loss of comprehension with which one looks at a tornado swallowing oneself up, or letting them back down.
Still, it was something. "She's right!" Tails cried, helming his own vocal cords once more. "I- I mean, I'm right! Here, look!" He ran over to point out the botched connection of cords on the machine. "Remember me telling you over breakfast that one time about the machine I was building that could switch people's minds into robots' bodies? Well..." He threw his hands up. "I messed up, and now I'm Cosmo's robot!"
Her eyes were more naturally following his motions toward the machine now, and she gulped, nodded, and started to resume a more normal breathing pattern. "I guess that makes sense," she squeaked. "But I still need more proof before I accept one of my best friends becoming... immobile. How about..."
Tails attempted to look at... himself confusedly, wondering what she had in mind.
"...you, Cosmo..." She appeared to be almost genuinely smiling now. "...tell me something Tails would never say?"
"Uh... Boy, I sure do hate having two tails!" he chirped in a voice about as squeaky relative to his normal voice as his normal voice was to Cosmo's.
"Eh... you really did hate that when you were growing up." He frowned, betrayed, at the mention of his childhood. "Sorry," she corrected herself. "But I need more."
"Sonic... uh, sure is a lame-o! 'Sonic'? More like 'Tonic', because he's, um, totally gross-tasting!"
Amy was still unconvinced.
He sighed and exhaled in defeat. "Amy," he spoke under his own vocal control, "I'm sorry for always taking Sonic away to test out the Tornado to give him an excuse for ditching you. It's wrong and I shouldn't do it. ...There, Tails, that wasn't so hard, was it?"
Her eyes went wide and she broke out in an explosion of joy, lifting him a foot from the ground and hugging him until he coughed from lack of air. "Oh, Cosmo, it really is you!" she sang. "I was so worried! I'm so glad you're still here... er, however you are so!"
"Can... you... let... me go?" he murmured. "She may be in my body, but it's still a hundred percent fox and it still needs oxygen!"
"Ohp! I'm sorry, you two." She set him gently down and smiled expectantly. "Wanna go show everyone else this 'condition' of yours?" she asked sweetly.
"Oh, brother..."
"I've never seen anything like it!"
The attendees to this improvised gathering gazed in awe at the computer display Knuckles the echidna and sensible-minded medical technician had pulled up for them. "But the evidence is clear as day!" he continued. "Her mental functions are continuing as normal overlain with his in the same brain!"
Sure enough, the thermal scanner of the patient fox's cranial cavity showed a curious, frenetic mapping of activity. "Erm... Cosmo, how about you think about something scary, and Tails, you about something happy?"
"Okay! Okay..."
The computer monitor's output grew even stranger: areas of the amygdala and surrounding regions signifying both highly conflicting emotions lit up like wildfire. The fox grinned and sweated, and the sight was unpleasant enough that Knuckles was quick to announce, "Alright, we have confirmation! You two can stop now!"
"Hey, Cosmo, what'd you imagine?" Tails asked, relaxing his body in his chair and plucking the suction-cupped sensors off his forehead.
"Being covered with dreadful, sticky machine oil."
"Really? I was imagining the same thing!"
"So," Sonic thought aloud, contemplatively rubbing his muzzle with one finger, "what are you two gonna go by now that you're all Jekyll-and-Flyde together?"
"'Co...ils'? How about 'Tai-o'? Erm, how about something with an agreeable sound that represents both of us? Ooh, I've got one! 'Screwdriver'! I use them in my woodworking projects, as do you in your machines! That one's alright, but what about 'Leaf'? Ooh, like my body and your blueprints! Fantastic idea! Ehh, I'm not sure now. You know what, Sonic?" he said, sighing. "You guys can just call us whichever one of us you're talking to."
"Uh... okay!" The hedgehog shrugged. "You're the one... er, ones, who have to live with that if people in public see us callin' you two different names. Though I guess I have heard of those weird spiritual kids from the Internet doing that..."
"W-we're going to try to separate again eventually!" Tails was sure to correct the unwelcome possible assumption. "But I think I do like this new body, so I wouldn't mind staying in Hotel Tails a little longer. Right."
Cream the Rabbit bounced up and down with excitement. "It's okay, Mr. Tails and... Mr. Cosmo!" she reassured them. "You two can spend time together with not just each other, but whoever the other one of you would be with! You won't even be able to be apart! It's gonna be so much fun!"
"Chao!" cheered her companion, Cheese the Chao.
"Yayyyy..." He pumped a deflated fist in the air at the news.
"Hey, Knuckie," purred Rouge the Bat, playfully clawing the echidna from behind his back and chuckling at his startled jump away from her. "I think we should try something like that. Wanna pick up some extra-strength duct tape and have our own little holiday of togetherness?"
"No way, you creep! This isn't a joke; this is their lives for the time being! Trivializing that by... by sensualizing it is extremely condescending!"
"Alright, sorry I asked. But it would be great for the development of our acrobatic skills, you know, just like a three-legged race." She leaned in close to whisper another detail; he was cautiously receptive. "And I'd let you pick where we'd be conjoined."
"Urrrgh!" He swatted her away and she fell on the floor, howling with laughter. "That's it, it's time for my workout routines, and I'm turning the music up loud this time to erase that image from my head!" He stormed off, Rouge winking at the others before sneaking in tiptoe behind him.
"Oh, Tails," he comforted himself. "Don't you worry; we'll get along much better than that! I'll be quiet whenever you need – I can even try to go to sleep while your part of our brain is awake, like a dolphin! Oh, no, I'm not worried about us," he sighed. "I'm just worried about them."
"Well, don't be! How different can our lives really be, anyway?"