Chapter 27
Tails was now significantly closer to the ground than the others. He pulled a small device out of his jacket. He threw it out in front of him and it inflated. He had a reason for jumping off first. The device inflated into a raft big enough to carry all of them. The raft slowed up, and Tails fell face first into it. Manic was the next to land on it. Amy and Sonic landed on it together, with a somewhat rude awakening. Nack, Knuckles, Blaze and Diesel subsequently landed in the raft. However, they could only watch as Silver, too far away to grab hold of the raft, fell past them and away towards the ground. Tails peered over the edge, both to see what would happen to Silver, and to steer the raft to make a soft landing.
"He's dead. Nobody could survive that fall." Nack looked over, grimly. Tails' attention was grabbed, however, by the disc of light that suddenly appeared near Silver (he could barely make him out otherwise, he was too far away), and stayed there. As the raft approached the ground, everybody braced themselves for impact. The raft hit the wall as it curved outwards, and started to trail along the ground. Eventually it slid to a stop against the wall of a small shack. Tails looked up to see Silver hovering a few metres above the ground on an ethereal glowing disc. Silver looked surprised himself.
"How the…"
"I don't know, I don't know how, I don't know why, it just happened for some reason." Knuckles groped free of the half-deflated raft.
"What the… okay, I must be drunk or something…"
"Here come the gruesome twosome now…" Shadow lifted his face up to see Jet and Wave approaching on their airboards. Wave jumped off hers the moment she saw Silver. Jet saw Silver and carried on moving while staring. He promptly sailed into a wall.
Silver, perched on his little glowing disc, was confused as to how to get down. He tipped his legs forward. The disc moved accordingly. He thought. He concentrated and pushed himself forwards with force. This launched him forward and began racing round in a manner similar to Jet and Wave on their airboards.
"Where'd he go?"
"He's fucked off again!" Shadow struggled free of the remains of the raft. Moments later, Silver returned. He was at ground level now, and brought himself to a halt next to the confused and slightly frustrated Shadow.
"This is cool!" He paused. "Em… how do I get off this thing?" Tails thought for a few minutes.
"I'm gonna go on a wild assumption here. Let's say that you are, in fact, psychic, and in the few seconds before you were about to hit the ground, you concentrated so fully that you brought this disc out of your own mental energy. Just, assume that. This means that you should be able to get rid of the disc and go back to walking. Right?"
"Uh… how? Do you expect it to happen like… that…" Silver clicked his fingers in an attempt at sarcasm, when the disc disappeared and his feet landed firmly on the ground. "Ah… well, problem solved." He walked away to find something to drink, preferably something with enough alcohol to kill a yak.
As everybody else climbed free of the wreckage, Sonic and Amy stayed behind, wrapped in the fabric.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"We're not dead."
"I don't think so."
"Wanna make sure?" Even though both their eyes were closed, they knew they were next to each other. Amy felt around and found Sonic's shoulder. She aimed in the dark and found his mouth. They kissed, contently, oblivious to the outside world.
Their peace was broken when Manic dragged the raft a few metres. Muffled by the blankets of cloth, they heard:
"They're in there."
"I hope they still have pants on." Now that their game was up, they pulled the rags away. They missed the whole Silver episode, and now everybody was staring at them.
"What?"
The two of them managed to escape the prying eyes of their companions to a safe place a few hundred metres away.
"Wow." Amy pointed at the horizon. "Look at that sunset."
"Yeah… almost as pretty as you…"
"Oh, you big kidder, you…" She dismissed his rather corny compliment as their lips met again.
"Didn't Iggy say something about you being a Kitsune, or something?" Knuckles remembered the look on Tails' face.
"What? Oh, that… I don't know."
"Yeah… do you ever wonder why you have two tails?" Manic joined the fray.
"I dunno. Accidental mutation? Birth defect?"
"Or your mind-blowing intelligence?"
"Um… I got lucky?"
"Or the fact that you have no knowledge of what happened to your parents?" Tails stopped dead. He retreated into his mind.
"You still there buddy?" Knuckles waved in his face.
"You've actually got a point there. I have no idea who my parents are…" He also thought… half-breed. What could that mean?