Cancer
Occasionally action by friends and close associates requires you to stop and think about joint financial management - which is what happens today. The cost of pleasure could be an issue. It may be that you're involved with a group who don't need to keep their eye on the same financial pulse as you do. Juggling Peter to pay Paul seems likely.
"Look, Knuckles. No. I can't," he said for the fiftieth time.
"Come on, Tails. All you need to do is go halves with me at the restaurant. I can't afford to eat otherwise," Knuckles pleaded.
To be honest, he wouldn't mind going out to eat for once. Although he could cook, his research meant that his microwave was starting to become his best friend, and one of the great disadvantages of having such a fine sense of smell was that he had a fine sense of taste to go with it. And forty-second hamburgers washed down with soup-in-a-mug wasn't exactly gourmet cuisine.
The problem was that he needed to save money to get one of the parts he needed. You could never predict an Eggman attack, after all, so he needed to be constantly updating his defences.
"Why don't you have money, anyway? Don't you usually sell stuff you dig up at the Chao Garden?" he asked.
"Well, I don't have money because I spent it all," Knuckles said slowly, as if he were explaining something painfully simple to an idiot. Not for the first time, Tails wished the echidna would have a brain aneurysm or something and wake up a savant.
"On what? What could you possibly need, Knuckles?" he asked wearily.
"This! It's a burglar alarm. I got it from a door-to-door salesman," Knuckles said proudly, holding out a grey box that seemed to be made of melted down plastic cups. Instantly, he grew suspicious.
"Knuckles, who sold you that?"
"A door to door salesman, remember?" Knuckles said patronisingly. He seemed to have forgotten that he didn't actually have a door. "He was a bat, I think. Wore an overcoat, and had a mustache."
Tails resisted the urge to put his head in his hands and cry.
"He told me it alerts the police if anyone comes. I said, awesome, that means I can go down to the Casino place on Saturday and win big."
Tails sighed. "Look, Knuckles. I'm going to explain the five major things that are wrong with that."
"There's nothing wrong with it," the echidna said, with the tell tale edge that signalled a rising temper. Tails ignored him.
"Number one, you live on an island with one thing to steal. It would take about fifteen seconds to steal it, so the thief would get away long before the police arrived. Which they wouldn't, because number two, there are no police in Mystic Ruins on account of them being ruins. And number three, even if there were (and there aren't), that burglar alarm wouldn't alert them because it needs a phone line and you don't have one. Number four, you live on an island so you don't even have any walls to attach it to, and finally, number five, you did not buy it from a door to door salesman. You bought it from Rouge," he sighed.
"Wait. Rouge? Tails, Rouge doesn't have a mustache and this guy did," Knuckles protested.
"Rouge in a disguise, Knuckles, Rouge in a disguise," Tails almost wept in exasperation.
"I don't believe it," Knuckles said, folding his arms resolutely.
"Oh, and the alarm? It isn't an alarm," Tails continued, prying it open with no difficulty. "It is, in fact, a box with a rock inside it."
"So, wait...I got ripped!" Knuckles exploded.
"Yes, Knuckles, you got ripped," Tails confirmed wearily. "My advice? Go see if Sonic will go splits with you, and make sure you're at home on Saturday."
Saturday came and went. Tails spent the day quite happily perusing the parts catalogue and dreaming of all the things he could make. On Sunday, as he came downstairs and proceeded to put on a big pot of his super strength coffee, he found a letter on his doormat.
"I'll get you for this, Fox-boy!
Signed, a Disgruntled Door To Door salesman"
Just another day in the life, he thought, and tried to find something non-explosive for breakfast.