Chapter 2: Irresponsible Sky
Thunder and lightning invited Tails back into the storm front. His palms were swimming in cold sweat underneath the gloves, but he refused to change course. The Chaos Emerald would shield him.
Denial bonded with desperation as a nearby electric discharge knocked any pretence of bravery out of the fox. He was being hunted by a creature powerful enough to defeat Knuckles and rip Omega to shreds.
Tails wished his fears mutually destroyed, the shadow pitted against lightning to leave him be. They wouldn't. They colluded against him.
Flashes bore gaps in his senses while rolls of thunder concealed his nemesis in the ensuing chaos. As much as the needling feeling in his back urged him to get out of the storm, he couldn't risk throttling the emerald, lest its boost expired.
The plane was bound to explode before it happened, though. Tails could feel the heat coming from the turbo booster with his rain-soaked bum through multiple protective layers separating him from raw Chaos turned to speed. With the warning system shorting out, he could only guess how little time he had left.
Anxious, he gave Cream a glance. Cheese must have given up on her regaining consciousness by now, preferring to weep his heart out in her lap. Tails' heart squeezed as he rummaged for a first aid kit with one hand, the other clung to the steering wheel hard enough to tear through the tips of his glove.
He was put on the edge when the energy blast took down Angel Island. The disasters that piled on top took their toll on the fox and it was beginning to show. Repeated flashes made his movements groggy whilst the constant ringing in his ears made it impossible to hear anything save for the next crack of lightning. The howling wind numbed his face to the point he couldn't tell his own facial expression.
Tails' angry grimace frightened Cheese, yet the Chao took his chances when Tails passed the bottled medicine for Cream. Cheese took a whiff from the vial before offering it to her and immediately came to regret it. The repulsive smell had an almost physical punch that made Cheese lurch his head away on instinct. As the Chao crawled up to Cream to bring the vial to her nose with trembling arms, he noticed red droplets on the glass.
Blood. Tails' blood.
Cream shot back to life and hugged Cheese amidst happy squeaks, blissfully ignorant of the predicament they were all in. The Chao was quick to level her enthusiasm by pointing at Tails. Two scars stretched across his cheek, red dripping from the side of his snow white muzzle. Wayward drops caught by the wind left long marks on the plane's casing. They were encroaching on the passenger's seat.
Tails still had the first aid kit next to him. He could easily fix this. Cream called, shouted and pleaded for the fox to respond, but he just sat there, whispering on end.
"I see you. I see you."
There was something very wrong with Tails. He couldn't snap out of it and Cream felt useless. The storm, in the meantime, seemed to be getting more intense as the clouds above cast a darker shade on the plane.
Cream raised her head and gaped at what she saw. It stalked them from above, circling the plane like a vulture, its wings fanning an ever growing vortex out to knock them from the sky. The rabbit shook in her seat, at a loss for words, before falling still.
"I see you," she uttered without meaning to.
"Chao! Chao!" her friend protested before Cream's expression froze. Cheese tugged on her arm and hopped on her lap in hopes of getting the rabbit's attention. Nothing worked. Desperate, Cheese bit her.
When that didn't make a difference, Cheese took a big breath and opened the medicine again to give Cream seconds.
"A-ah! Cheese! Bad Chao!" she exclaimed all of a sudden and swatted the vial out of his hold.
The Chao dove after it, stuck in a crack in the floor. Cheese noticed the liquid was boiling inside. It didn't take long for him to tell why: the floor was piping hot.
"I'm sorry, Cheese! I don't know what came over me, I just…." Cream continued wailing while Cheese hurried to find the cap to reseal the medicine. "Cheese…can-can you see this?"
Cheese didn't want to. He didn't look back or up because he knew one thing he had to do – wake Tails up. The fox would help them get to safety.
Easier said than done when travelling at emerald speed. Cheese's wings were too weak to bring him forward on the plane, so he pressed tight to the fuselage and prepared to crawl all the way to the pilot's compartment. He didn't like the idea of putting the smelly vial in his mouth, but he needed both hands to trudge forward.
As he approached Tails, he heard a voice coming from the pilot's audio.
"This is GUN Scorpion Troop speaking. Unidentified aircraft, you are approaching closed airspace. Change course immediately." There was a pause. "Change course or you will be shot down."
The voice said it like a routine instruction rather than a threat, yet it scared Cheese just as much. The moment the Chao got close enough to tumble down between Tails' legs, he opened the vial and bravely rose to Tails' bloodied face.
Cheese made sure to poke the top right against the fox's nose, so he would feel the magic healing effect or whatever it was medicines did. He poked it again and again, in vain. Tails wasn't reacting!
To his horror, Cheese discovered that the liquid inside had already evaporated. The one thing that could save them…
Cheese flailed in a manic fit, screaming the only word he knew, hoping Tails would notice. Tails ignored the jumps and the kicks no matter how hard Cheese tried to wake him up. Getting tired, Cheese lost balance and fell onto Tails' dashboard. After clicking several switches and pressing down buttons with his rear, Cheese stopped only when his face knocked against a shiny panel with a Chaos Emerald drawn on it.
The plane coughed, giving way to violent vibrations. Cheese glanced at the clouds and found them going up, growing lighter in hue as they did. While he felt relieved by the light, reinforced by a funny feeling in his tummy, it paled to the joy he experienced when Tails' face moved.
"What the? Ow-ow!" Tails exclaimed as he looked around frantically, as if awakened from a nightmare.
Reality appeared little different. His face was bleeding and his body was covered in sores. Though, it wasn't until he checked his surroundings that he realised how deep down the rabbit hole he had gone.
He had lost control of the plane, descending rapidly, and the smoke chugging in thick plumes out of the engine was beginning to seep through the cracks in the pilot's compartment.
The open radio channel had an incoming transmission, which, at first, gave Tails hope for some good news.
"This is your final warning, unidentified aircraft. You are approaching closed airspace. Change course immediately or you will be shot down. GUN Scorpion Troop out."
"Shot down?!" Tails gasped, staring at the smoke around him. The plane was dying and they wanted to shoot him down? He resisted yelling at the voice on the other end of the line and took a moment to breathe before addressing them. His composure fell apart the moment he started speaking, "Mayday! Mayday! This is Yellow Sky. We are going down. The plane is out of control. Do not shoot!"
"Copy that, Yellow Sky. We have you on visual."
Long-awaited relief pushed aside Tails' frown, if only for a second. Having descended from the storm, he saw Station Square dead ahead. Cream wailed in the background at the sight.
Buildings crumbled apart, whole districts lay in ruins and fires attempted to devour the survivors. It looked like a war zone that has been shelled for weeks…but he had come there to pick up Cream that very morning.
GUN were in on the job. Tails would ask them for an explanation. Looking at his on-board radar, Tails noticed several incoming blips. They were scrambling jets to guide the plane to a safe landing zone.
"It'll be okay, Cream! GUN will save us!" he yelled back to her. "See?" he pointed down at the silvery objects heading their way. Cream's weeping got louder.
When the number of blips went above a dozen, Tails lowered his hand and squinted at the welcome party. Those weren't planes; GUN had fired missiles at them, each bigger than the Tornado 2. Tails had to believe his eyes. He wanted to believe them, but his brain refused to process the imminent scenario. One missile was enough to end them on the spot and GUN launched a full volley. Even if Tails bailed, he'd be caught in the explosion.
Tails bit his lip at the idea the military pushed him to. He raised the volume on his mic. "Yellow Sky to GUN. Yellow Sky to GUN. Hold fire. Sonic the Hedgehog is on board with me. Do you copy?"
GUN opted for radio silence while their missiles did the talking.
Fearing the worst, Tails turned to Cheese. "We need to dispose of the Chaos Emerald. If it is caught by the explosion, there's no telling what will happen."
Cheese saluted with one arm despite being busy wiping his tears off with the other. Tails had intended for the Chao to return to Cream to give him the privacy to crawl to the plane's nose and break out the emerald, yet the Chao rushed to have their roles switched.
Tails glanced at Cream and figured Cheese had picked the easier task. The rabbit's bloodshot eyes swelled under the weight of her tears. It was too much for her and all Tails could do was watch. He had to be at her side, but did he really want to? A word of comfort wouldn't stop an explosion. Lies would still lead to her being blown to smithereens, only with a trusting smile, her usual expression.
"Social contracts be damned," Tails huffed to himself. He undid his seatbelt and hopped to the passenger's seat.
He was worried the force of impact would squish her, having underestimated the rabbit. She clung to him for life, squeezing much harder than a little bunny should have been able to. Tails found himself gasping for air while staring at her delirious facial spasms. She was mouthing "Mama." That was all she could do after surrendering her voice to tears.
Disaster came with a boom that brought thunder to shame. Fiery tongues dyed the plane's fuselage black, scorching and tearing through everything in their way. Tails felt the heat with every fibre of his being as he positioned Cream below himself to shield her. He pulled his tails to her sides and kissed her on the forehead, surprising himself in the spur of the moment.
His cognition lapsed once he ran out of breath before reawakening to Cream loosening up her hold on him. She was panting loudly. The rabbit couldn't exert herself more; her limbs were shaking.
The missiles singed the fur on Tails' back and gave him a teeth-gritting burn. They did not explode.
Tails gawked in awe at the bright flames that trailed the warheads retreating into the storm above. Either the missiles were a scare tactic meant to test him or the Tornado 2 was too small a target to trigger detonation.
Or he was just in the way of the intended target. Despite the plane plummeting to the ground, Tails couldn't tear his eyes off the sky.
"Cream?"
She couldn't speak.
He pulled the protective goggles off to offer it to her. "Here. It's…windy."
She smiled.
It felt like staring at the midday sun even though Tails held his eyes closed. The first explosion thinned the storm while the follow-ups annihilated clouds in a widening trail going back all the way to the horizon. The force rushed to dissipate the storm in every direction as rapidly as it had emerged from Angel Island.
Regular explosives couldn't do that. GUN were firing nukes and Tails hoped to all things sacred the target was put to rest. Now, he just had to deal with the less pressing matter of surviving a plane crash.
Adding insult to injury, GUN hailed the plane as if nothing had happened. "Copy that, Yellow Sky. You are clear to land at the Station Square airport. Evacuees will be happy to see Sonic the Hedgehog on the job."
"Evacuees?" Tails and Cream asked in unison. Tails was astonished they had any while Cream merely wanted to know what the word meant. Cream also murmured about Sonic being there, a lingering question Tails wanted to avoid.
There was no way they'd make it to the airport. The plane was going to fall in the downtown area and it didn't seem like they had a vacant airstrip, anyway. The airport was packed with military planes.
"Negative. The plane is out of control. We'll have to eject and make it there through the streets."
"Yellow Sky, the city is off limits. You are cleared for the airport only. Roger?"
"Chao!" Cheese chirped, interrupting the moment. He returned with the blue Chaos Emerald in hand.
Tails put his finger in front of his lips, so everyone would stay quiet while he disabled the radio. GUN didn't need to know more than they already did. If they were okay with intimidating renowned heroes in a time of need, they couldn't be trusted. The trick was planning a route through the city that steered clear of the hardest-hit areas.
The airport lay a breeze away. Tails doubted GUN would allow him to catch the wind and take the high road. The streets, from what he could surmise as the plane approached the cityscape, were crawling with GUN troops, some of which were armed with nukes.
He could have used the lightning storm as a distraction. It was odd to see sunshine enforced by nuclear arms. The storm hadn't died completely, but its shade was forced out of the city for a spell. Tails wanted to forget what stood behind the storm, namely, the fallout from the Angel Island event.
Eyeing the city for a suitable landing, he huddled up with Cream and Cheese. "Do you see that skyscraper? It's adjacent to Speed Highway. GUN don't do well on highways and the wind should give us a speed boost to make it to the airport at Sonic speed. On the count of three, we jump to the skyscraper's roof."
"Chao!"
Cream hesitated. "Tails?" Her eyes were difficult to see behind the goggles, but the pleading expression was evident. "Can we go see mama first?"
"Vanilla's house is in the opposite direction…" Tails began as he looked down, away from the tiny rabbit. What he saw there was a fleet of GUN mechs ready to lay waste to anyone out in the streets of Station Square. Sniffling in defeat, she would have let him have his way and that was why he would have been unable to forgive himself disappointing her. He continued, "…and we need to go there first because she has our airport supplies!"
"Yay!" The rabbit clapped in excitement while Cheese twirled on one foot.
Despite being on the cusp of disaster, they were children and behaved like it. They didn't deserve to be a part of this mess, Tails thought.
The fox helped Cream out of her seat and soon they found themselves holding hands ahead of the fateful leap.
"Ready?" he asked. As soon as she gave him a nod, he started counting, "One!"
Cheese looked at his own feet, checking if he could rock his heels like Tails and Cream in preparation for the jump. Tails had his jet anklet on, albeit one of them had a shiny red spot in the middle. Cheese waved his hand in front of the spot, making it bounce to him and back.
"Two!"
"Chao?" Cheese glimpsed at the city, where the spot was coming from.
The next thing he knew, the spot vanished and Tails violently jolted to the side, pulling Cream with him. Cheese remained on the damaged plane while his friends careened into the distance.
"Three!" Cream finished it for Tails.
The Chao made it just in time. He fluttered down a split second before a much bigger light landed on the plane's nose and shredded it into explosive shrapnel.
A decrepit city crawling with danger lay ahead, yet Cream couldn't help smiling. She was coming home to mama.