A/N: Sorry folks, it looks like I'll have to go back to a once-a-week schedule; Tuesdays only. Hanging on by the skin of my teeth here.
Sonic sighed, resignation filling his eyes. He didn't like the prospect of forcing his little brother to do anything, but this was an extreme case. Being under Fiolet's spell was not a natural state.
However, Tails had already whisked to a nearby closet and was pulling out a collection of strange mechanical devices.
"If there's gonna be a fight, it's gonna be a fair one," he announced, beginning to buckle the devices onto his arms, legs, and hands. "This exo-suit will improve my speed and make me almost as strong as Knuckles."
"Tails," said Sonic quietly. "Don't. I'll only have to hit you harder."
"Go ahead," Tails retorted, waving one arm and causing the exo-suit hydraulics to hiss. "I sure won't be pulling my punches. Now, are you ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be." Sonic swung back into a fighting stance, his heart bleeding. "Let's go."
Tails needed no more encouragement; he lunged across the room, snarling. Sonic, caught off-guard by his little brother's increased speed, slammed back against the wall with a startled "woof!" Tails drew back one fist and swung, but Sonic twisted aside and Tails' metal-clad knuckles shattered the wall where he struck.
"You are fast," said Sonic grimly, grabbing the little fox's forearms and attempting to wrestle him back. Tails swung, hurling Sonic to the floor with frightening effortlessness. Sonic rolled backwards and managed to regain his footing, his quills disheveled. Panting, he dove, locking arms with Tails again and again, trying to find an opening through which to strike him.
"Nice try, Sonic," panted Tails grimly, glaring up at him. "I've watched you fighting a thousand times. I know all your tricks. I know all your weaknesses."
"I know yours too, li'l buddy," Sonic gritted back.
They circled each other, lunging, feinting, grappling and separating, studying each other tightly for openings. Knuckles watched tensely from the sidelines, aching to help but not trusting himself to do any more than get in the way.
"This is for all the years of being 'the sidekick'!" Tails growled, finally landing a blow that sent Sonic stumbling back. He followed through on his advantage, swooping in to strike the hedgehog's shoulder violently. "All the times I was 'too young', 'too small', 'too slow', not good enough! It's time I was the one in charge!"
Suddenly, a pair of red arms snatched him from behind, one mitt holding his hand back.
"Okay kid, this has gone far en—"
Tails jerked his elbow back, driving it into Knuckles' already-battered ribs. The echidna gave a silent cry and fell.
"Knux!" Sonic looked desperately at the seething little fox before him. "Tails—li'l bro—"
The exo-suit whirred softly, then suddenly Tails and Sonic were tumbling over and over, coming to a halt with Tails' hands around Sonic's throat.
"No more being second-best to anyone, Sonic," he hissed.
"How long's this been a thing?" asked Sonic breathlessly, looking up into those hard, deadly blue eyes. "You never said any—"
Tails' teeth flashed, and his fist drew back again, aiming for Sonic's head. Sonic sighed softly and closed his eyes; of all the potential "last-thing-you-ever-see" scenes, this was the one he wasn't ready for.
The hydraulics swished. A sudden blinding pain sent fireworks dancing across the back of Sonic's eyelids, but oddly enough it was in his shoulder, not his head.
He opened one eye, his teeth gritted. Tails was drawing back his arm and getting up, looking broken. He had obviously aimed to kill, and yet somehow failed.
"Get out," he whispered, eyes on the floor. "Go."
Sonic clambered carefully to his feet, cautious about sudden movements. He looked his small opponent up and down silently.
"Go!" barked Tails, trembling. "Before I change my mind!"
Sighing, Sonic leaned his weight forward onto one heel, feeling the rubber of his shoes bend and slide against the floor, concentrating on that so he wouldn't have to think about what he was about to do.
Less than a minute later, Tails lay unconscious on the floor, his mouth bleeding. Sonic stood over him, wishing he had Shadow's vocabulary. He could have used it.
"Ugh . . . Sonic?" Ironically, Knuckles was just coming around. He blinked in woozy disbelief. "What did . . . you . . . "
"Didn't have much choice," said Sonic bitterly, his expression hardened in resignation. "Did he do you any new damage?"
"Neh. Rib was already cracked, so it kinda zinged." Knuckles heaved himself upright gingerly. "Is the kid okay?"
"Mostly. I think he bit his tongue."
After a few grimly silent moments, Tails began to stir faintly, his eyelids twitching. Sonic crouched down beside him and calmly forced Knuckles' antidote flask between his teeth.
"Drink," he ordered tersely.
Tails turned his head away feebly in protest, grimacing.
"Ohh no you don't. Drink." Sonic's voice was unusually hard; right now he was doing what he had to. After a moment of trying to squirm his head away, Tails opened his eyes slightly, sighed, and began to swallow. Slipping a hand under his shoulders, Sonic sat him up slightly so he wouldn't choke.
The last of the antidote disappeared. Tails coughed, then laid his head into the crook of Sonic's arm and passed out again.
"He's good?" asked Knuckles cautiously. Nodding, Sonic blew out a long, weary breath, allowing himself to shed the briefly necessary iron exterior. He settled more comfortably on the floor, his quills still askew, and began to unbuckle the exo-suit from Tails' arms.
"Not to complain or anything," he said flatly, "but I'm getting kind of sick of this crazy stuff going on."
"I know." Knuckles flexed one shoulder gingerly. "But what can we do? Fio's not like one of those usual enemies, where you have a big fight and defeat him and that's it. Compared to any of us, Fio's weak, but he just keeps coming back."
"Like mice," muttered Sonic. "Or cockroaches."
At this point, Tails began to stir again, mumbling.
"Up and attem, tiger," said Sonic, smiling ruefully. "You okay?"
"I'm . . . " Tails sat up, eyes widening. "Oh my gosh."
"Yeah, we've been there," said Knuckles drily.
Tails rubbed his forehead, trying to process what he'd just been doing.
"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh." He looked from Knuckles to Sonic, both of them in varying degrees of disrepair, his blue eyes wide and horrified. "I—I almost—" His voice hitched, and he dropped his gaze to the floor hastily. "I'm . . . so sorry . . . "
"It's not your fault," assured Sonic gently. Tails' eyes swam with tears for a moment, but he fought them back determinedly, and despite everything Sonic couldn't help but be proud of him. The kid was growing up fast.
"I'll try to make it up to you," said Tails staunchly, getting to his feet. "I've learned the layout of Eggman's base, now that I've worked here. I can find the quickest way out, and I can show you where he keeps a Chaos Emerald!" He glanced at Knuckles. "Will you . . . be able to make it out?"
Knuckles scoffed, waving a mitt, and clambered gamely to his feet.
"Let's check out of here. Tails, did you build any more insanely powerful killer robots?"
"N-no," said Tails, wincing guiltily. "Just my exo-suit and the X-53. Making really solid ones takes a lot longer than throwing together Egg Pawns . . . "
"Hey, we're not complaining," laughed Sonic. "So all we have to do is avoid the Super Slicer, and we're home free!"
"Not quite. Eggman's probably got us under surveillance," said Tails grimly. "He's going to be slowing us down now."
"Shucks," muttered Sonic, slinging Knuckles' arm over his shoulder and heading for the door.
The three of them hustled through the way Sonic and Knuckles had come earlier, pattering rapidly through several smashed doorways. There was no sign of "Super Slicer" X-53 anywhere, but they didn't question good fortune.
"Left after this door," called Tails, waving. "There's a side hall that—yiiii!"
With a roar of motors, the X-53 ambushed them in the hallway, saws whirling.
"Run run run!" yelped Tails, taking Knuckles' other side and pulling them down the hallway.
"Can't you turn it off?" Sonic shouted above the scream of saws scraping the floor perilously close behind them.
"There's no off button!" Tails shouted back. "And no self-destruct switch! I knew you always used those whenever Eggman put them in his robots, so I designed mine to never turn off until it caught its target!"
"Oh boy," groaned Sonic. "Where are its weak spots?"
"It doesn't have any of those either! I specifically designed it to have no weaknesses!"
"Woooo, boy," sighed Sonic. "Guess we'd better just keep running!"
Which they did. Knuckles was starting to breathe raggedly again, but he kept pace without so much as a grimace.
"Not the left one, not the left one!" shouted Tails as they came to a fork in the hallway. "It's a dead end!"
They swerved down the right hallway, only to find it packed from wall to wall with battalions of Egg Pawns and other combat robots, guns at the ready. Whirling around, they found the X-53 bearing down on them from behind, cutting off escape.
Knuckles' hand suddenly tightened on Sonic's shoulder.
"Tell Rouge I love her, okay?"
"Wha—oh, knock that off. We're all gonna make it!" scolded Sonic.
"I'm not taking chances."
Suddenly the air was full of bullets and lasers, many of them pinging off the X-53's impregnable hull. Sonic scrabbled in place, not knowing which way to run, not sure he could throw himself and Knuckles past the X-53 fast enough to avoid the side-mounted saws.
"Opening, opening!" howled Tails, and blindly Sonic threw himself after him, plunging into a gap in the robots' ranks.
It could not be called an open passage; the three of them plowed straight into several robots, Tails' tail-rotor screaming through most of the opposition, Sonic and Knuckles simply battering desperately against any remaining. It was a miracle nobody got fatally shot; as it was, Tails lost a few scraps of fluff from his tails, and Sonic's cheek got grazed twice. Behind them, they could hear the X-53 plowing noisily through the robots in pursuit, crunching and slicing metal—and thankfully, drawing some of the robots' fire too.
Suddenly the forest of metal around them gave way, and they found they had broken through the battalion of robots completely. Now, however, they were all after the three Mobains, and the bullets kept coming.
"What do we do?" shouted Tails as they swung around a corner and got a few seconds' cover.
"Gotta take out that Super Slicer first," gritted Sonic.
"But it's got no—"
"I've got an idea!" cried Sonic suddenly. As the pursuing robots started to round the corner, he carefully let Knuckles down against a wall, whirled around, and lunged straight towards the ranks of gleaming metal.
"Are you crazy?!" Knuckles shouted after him. Sonic dodged or mowed through several Egg Pawns, then suddenly leaped up and landed squarely on top of the X-53.
"Sonic, no! No!" yelped Tails, but as soon as the whoosh of hydraulics started, Sonic leaped back to the ground. The platform shot upwards and hit the ceiling without him, but before it came down again, Sonic snatched up a shattered Egg Pawn's armor plate and sprang up to jam it into the now-open top of the X-53. Then he leaped clear again and scurried out of the Egg Pawns' midst for all he was worth.
"Head for the hills!" he shouted, grabbing Knuckles with one hand and Tails with the other.
Meanwhile the X-53's roof platform came down again, forcing the armor plate down into its innards. There was a crunch, a loud groan of locking gears, and a rising high-pitched whine of still-undamaged systems trying to compensate for the stall. The whine grew to a roar, and the Mobians threw themselves flat just as the X-53 went up in an enormous ball of flame.
The explosion rolled down the hallway in either direction, mauling Egg Pawns and sending Mobians tumbling like stuffed animals. When the roaring and clattering finally died away, a deathly silence fell; not a robot was left standing.
As to the three Mobians, they were battered and somewhat scorched, but not much worse for wear.
"A'ight?" asked Sonic, hoisting himself off the floor. Knuckles chuffed assent and flashed a thumbs-up gamely.
Meanwhile Tails was surveying the wreckage of the X-53, looking slightly rueful.
"Wow. I guess it did have a weak spot . . . " He caught the odd looks from his teammates and reddened instantly. "I mean, that's good, that's a good thing! I just—uh—uhhhh—"
Sonic couldn't help but laugh.
"Don't take it so hard, buddy. Eggman doesn't put weaknesses in his robots on purpose either—it's just hard to see the kinks in your own creation sometimes."
"That's good though," said Tails sheepishly, his muzzle still faintly pink.
They tore onwards down the hallway, Tails leading the way, dodging the occasional squad of robots; they kept coming thicker and thicker. Eggman was evidently ticked.
"Come on, the Chaos Emerald is this way!" called Tails excitedly, scampering down a hallway and throwing open a door. Sure enough, a brilliant white jewel glimmered on a pedestal in the center of the room.
"Okay, there's way too little security around this thing," muttered Sonic suspiciously, but all the same they all pattered swiftly into the room. Sonic jumped up and snatched the Emerald off its stand.
"Annnnd . . . nothing," he said, looking around puzzled.
Then the floor gave way beneath them. With a yell of surprise, the three of them tumbled down into the room below—Eggmans' central control.
"Ah, hello there. And where exactly do you all think you're going?" asked Eggman with exaggerated pleasantness.
"Looking for the bathroom?" ventured Sonic with an ironic grin.
"I could have sworn you were looking for the exit," replied Eggman, still very polite. "Unfortunately, that would have to be prevented, should it ever happen."
"Ahhh, quit being a pain, Egghead," sighed Sonic, getting to his feet. "Tails is cured now, he's not on your side anymore. We're checking out, and if you quit bugging us, we'll even leave without bugging you."
"But I have much, much better plans," scoffed Eggman, waving a squad of robots into the room. "You three will remain here. Since Tails has so kindly provided me with the antidote formula, of his own free will—well, I have nothing to fear from Fiolet now. I intend to lure him here, in fact. I'm sure he'll appreciate a three-course Mobian meal . . . "
"Yeesh. Well, have it your way!" Sonic scraped his sneakers against the floor, glaring down the attack robots grimly. "But it'll only be your—"
"Ohh, Egg-man?" called Tails suddenly, cutting into the tension of the imminent battle. Everyone turned around to find the little fox leaning back against a control panel whose screen displayed a giant red "60." As they watched, the 60 suddenly became 59. Then 58.
"Blast it, you double dust-mop, that's the self-destruct routine!" roared Eggman. "It'll blow this place sky-high!"
"And it doesn't shut off for anything, right?" said Tails cheerfully.
"Blast you!" roared Eggman again, but the Mobians were already thundering for the door, plowing through robots all the way. Leaving Eggman to figure out his own escape route, they skidded down the hallways, screeching around corners like wayward grayhounds. They burst out the door with three seconds to spare, and had barely put any distance between them and the building before the roof blew off. For the second time in half an hour, an explosion tumbled the three Mobians head-over-heels, peppering them with bits of metal and plaster.
Eventually the roar of explosions died away to a rumbling, then a resigned clattering as the rubble settled. A distant whine announced that Eggman had escaped in his Eggmobile, but the three Mobians were only half-conscious at the moment and didn't hear.
After a while, Sonic blinked and heaved himself up gingerly, groaning good-naturedly.
"Well. Thaaaaat was exciting. You two okay?"
Some murmurs of affirmation as the other two began to pick themselves up as well.
"Sorry about all the trouble, guys," said Tails softly, tousling his ears.
"Seriously, not your fault," said Sonic, waving. He paused, considering. "By the way . . . "
"Yeah?"
"I dunno . . . " Sonic sat back and wiggled his shoe awkwardly. "Look, tell me straight, buddy. Do I take over too much?"
"What do you mean?" asked Tails, blinking.
"Well, first Amy was saying stuff, then Knuckles, now you . . . it's enough to make a guy wonder. Do I . . . I dunno, take over the spotlight too much or stuff?"
"Well, you do get a lot of attention," said Tails slowly. "And every now and then I . . . do kinda wish I could be that famous. Get a bigger piece of the action, sort of."
"Oh," said Sonic flatly, studying his shoe.
"But on the other hand, you do kinda deserve the attention," continued Tails, smiling faintly. "You're just better at the whole 'hero' thing than everyone else. You can't help being good at what you do."
"I'm not that much better," said Sonic awkwardly.
"That's just what I was going to say!" grinned Knuckles, unenamored with the vulnerability of the moment.
"Seriously," said Sonic, giving Knuckles a reproachful look. "If I start hogging the attention, tip me off about it. I know I do a lot of this hero stuff, but it's not like you guys are second-best or anything. Tails, you're just young, but you're learning fast—you're probably gonna be better than me, someday."
Tails shrugged awkwardly, his eyes sparkling.
"And who knows, you might even get close to my level someday," said Knuckles slyly. This time Sonic laughed and heaved himself to his feet.
"Fancy talk, comin' from an echidna who's gonna need to be half-carried all the way home."
"I can walk," protested Knuckles, miffed.
"Don't give us the tough-guy act, Knux, you're getting a hedgehog crutch whether you like it or not," averred Sonic, helping a reluctant Knuckles up by one arm over his shoulders.
"And a fox crutch!" added Tails, taking Knuckles' other arm over his own shoulders.
"You people are idiotic," grumbled Knuckles, as the three of them began to lurch down the path homewards. He looked back and forth between his teammates, who were pretty battered themselves, and considered their uneven progress forward. "Sweet Mobius, we cut a pathetic picture."
"Like a six-legged race," chuckled Sonic. "Ah, you've got bigger things to worry about, Knux. Now you've gotta tell Rouge you love her."
"No I don't. I asked you to tell her. And that was only if I didn't make it."
"But you did make it."
"So I'm not gonna tell her. I can't have her knowing that kind of stuff while I'm still around."
"So she can only know you love her if you're not there to do anything about it?"
"Uh-huh."
". . . That's stupid, Knucklehead."
"Probably. But that's the way it is."
"What if I told her anyway?"
"Just try it, and I'll—"
Tails smiled fondly as Sonic and Knuckles continued arguing good-naturedly all the way down the road home. He still felt horrible about all the mayhem he'd inadvertently caused, but he couldn't help but also feel incredibly grateful to have friends so loyal.