Note: The rescuing of Cream is not the main plot.
Blessing in Disguise
Everything was quiet.
Where was she? Was she alive? Dead? Where was Tails? Did they make it? Her whole body was aching, so she supposed that at least she wasn't dead yet.
Amy had tried to open and close her eyes a few times, but it didn't seem to make any difference; it was still too dark to see anything. She gasped in pain when she tried to move her arm; just like the rest of her, it was under the heavy pressure of a rock.
She was buried under rocks. But she couldn't be too deep down, could she? If that was the case, she was pretty sure that she'd been squashed by now. But everything was still dark, she couldn't see at all and there were no openings…
Oh god, I'm getting claustrophobia, Amy thought as she lay there. Come on, Amy, pull yourself together! Think…
…. … … … … … … She couldn't think. There was nothing to think about; she had no options to choose between. Okay, calm down, she told herself and tried to take a deep breath, which resulted in a dusty cough. Up, she thought. I need to find out where up is… and to do that… that's right, spit!
Amy anxiously moistened her mouth and spit; just for it to fall back right on her. Amy narrowed her eyes in disgust, but at least she'd found out which way was up. You're a genius, Amy. A freakin' genius.
She carefully twisted, pulled and pushed, and somehow she managed to get her arms loose, and then she carefully stretched it upwards, in between a rock, grabbed another and slowly pulled herself upwards; she couldn't help but whimper in pain when her legs finally broke free from the heaviest rocks on the bottom.
Then she stretched out her other arm and grabbed the next thing she was able to get a hold on, and she swore that she could see a glimpse of sunlight above her. This incited her to keep on working, and she climbed the rocks painfully slow, until her arms were numb. At the final spur, she forcefully broke her way out of her rocky burial, and with a relieved and exhausted sigh she fell onto the ground and just lay there to catch her breath.
Until she remembered that she still had a friend that hadn't showed up yet.
Amy jumped to her feet and tried to sound as calm as possible when she called out his name. "Tails?" … No response.
"Tails?!" her voice echoed against the walls of the rocks, and when Amy finally decided to look around herself and above herself, she realized that she was standing on the bottom of a canyon.
"How the hell did we manage to end up in a canyon?" Amy muttered as she gazed upwards. "That force field or whatever must've had a big impression on our eyes. Fooled by a cliff, who would've thought…" she added quietly to herself.
She looked around some more; to her left, the X Tornado was leaning against the walls, in the worst kind of shape Amy could've ever imagined. All the glasses and windows were crushed, and Amy imaged how they must've been tossed out of there by the impact and the rolling. The machine's left wing and part of the side was completely torn off, and the remaining parts didn't look too good. Frankly, it looked like it would never be able to fly again. Poor Tails would get a heart attack if he saw this…
Holy god, Tails! Amy almost slapped herself and immediately started searching the grounds, and her heart rate went up fast as she did it. "Tails!" she shouted. "Tails!" Oh shit, oh god, oh no, oh no oh no oh no…! Please don't be dead, Tails, please, please please please please…
Her panic-struck worries were interrupted when she thought that she heard a faint groan; Amy spun around and hectically searched the ground from where it came; there! Her heart took a leap. She'd caught a glimpse of orange fur.
Amy stumbled over there, sank to her knees and dug for her dear life. Or Tails' dear life. Her heart hammered in her chest as she pulled and pushed rocks and constantly called out Tails' name, and finally, after God knows how long, she finally got him out.
"Tails!" she whispered hoarsely.
Tails weakly opened his big terrified eyes and met her gaze, and despite the pain and shock, you could easily see how relieved he was. "I knew you'd find me, Amy," he replied through a few hacky coughs.
Amy tried to smile, but it was hard, and she didn't know if she should cry or shout; she hadn't fully realized how happy she was that Tails was alive. "Of course I'd find you," she just replied before her voice betrayed her as she observed her poor friend; he looked like a shaken, fuzzy and ruffled ball of dusty and bruised up fur, and his tails looked the worst of all, twisted in a weird angle, even for a pair of tails.
When she mentioned them, Tails face cramped up as if he was just reminded of that he was in pain. "They hurt a lot," he tried to toughen himself up, but Amy'd known him for too long not to be able to see through his acts. "I think I might've broken them…"
Amy couldn't help but wonder how you broke your tail; were there even bones in them? But Tails probably knew more about his body and bones than she did, so she didn't comment. Now when the rush of joy had went away, all she felt now was pity for the beaten up fox. To cheer him up, she gave him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Tails. I'll make sure you get better."
Tails gave her an upset reply. "No, we can't wait for my recovery! Cream is in danger, we must get to—"
"You're of no help to Cream in your current state," Amy interrupted. "We would never make it to Headquarters unless I left you here, and that I tell you,I sure as hell will never do!"
Tails just looked at her, almost pleadingly, but Amy knew that he knew that he too had known her for too long not to know how stubborn she was. He just smiled. "Thank you, Amy," he said quietly.
Amy beamed at him. "That's what friends are for, when we don't have our silly blue hero around."
In the later circumstances, staying put and putting up a little camp in the canyon proved itself to be a good idea as the night came. The canyon's shelter and protection was rather safe in the dark.
Amy had moved Tails to the wall of the cliff and pushed over a few rocks to give them some lee. She collected a few dry branches – which were not that hard to find – and managed to make a fire by the lee side to give them warmth. She then went into the X Tornado and pulled out blankets, bandages, meds and even some alcohol to tend to Tail's wounds (they wouldn't sleep in the X Tornado because of the smoke and the dangerous chemicals.) She also fetched the small amount of food that was still edible and brought it to the fireplace where Tails lay. Luckily he had the CEL on him, and it was probably the only thing that still was in good shape, so they would still be able to continue later.
They helped each other to pour alcohol on the other's bruises and wounds, to hinder infections, and then Amy wrapped the bandages around Tails' broken tails. Then she buried him in blankets, and the two of them just sat there and gazed at the fire for a long time.
"Do you really think that we'll find Eggman's headquarters?" Amy suddenly asked, without taking her eyes off of the fire.
Tails didn't answer at once. "I don't know," he replied. "To be honest, he might just keep the Chaos Emeralds in one of his minor bases… But does it really matter?" he added after a while. "It's not like we have any other option but to follow the CEL.
Amy took her while too, before she answered: "You're right."
A few moments pause. "About that," Tails said. "The CEL has been reacting strongly to this place, so that might just mean that Eggman's base is nearby."
"That might be true," was all Amy replied.
Then they fell silent. After a while, Tails started yawning. "S… sorry Amy, but… I think I'm going to call it a day."
Amy nodded and dragged a few blankets towards her. "Yeah, me too."
Tails yawned yet another time and curled up like a fur ball in his nest of blankets. "Goodnight, Amy," he said tiredly.
"Night, Tails. Sleep tight," Amy said, and soon she listened to his calm and regular breathings.
Now that things had finally settled down a little, she wondered what kind of plan Eggman had come up with this time, and what he would want to use Cream for. The last thing she thought of before she fell into slumber was that she promised herself to save Cream and go back home with her and Tails, no matter what.
Tails was the one to wake up first. He stretched out his thin body and gave out a lasting yawn before he tried to move his body. Both his arms and legs felt completely healed by now, it was only his tails that still hurt. But, he'd been through worse. And so had Amy, he told himself as he cast a glance at his female friend. He would let her sleep.
The fire had gone out long ago, but there was really no need to light it up again since they would probably be moving on today. So instead Tails went sightseeing; there were definitely a lot of interesting things one could find in a canyon like this.
Indeed there were; he found fascinating and rare rocks and chemicals, marks on the walls and footprints which proved that there had been people here before them, even if it was a long time ago. There were even writings on the walls: "Fell down into darkness, woke up in the morning down here with a broken leg," the first one said. A couple of meters onward, the writings continued: "There is no food, I think I am going to die…", "I've lost feeling in my leg, and I'm getting dizzy… I've been trying to find a way out, but there are just so many paths…".
Tails could agree with that; as he looked around, the canyon soon split into several disorienting paths that all looked the same. He felt his hopes fade as he discovered this, so he continued to search for the writings. He searched for a long while without success, and when he instead found a dark dry pool of blood on the ground, he almost suspected that the person who wrote this had died.
"No, he couldn't just have died," Tails told himself strictly. "There must be more…" He continued searching, and just as he was about to give up and go back to Amy, he found the next writing on the wall and anxiously read it out loud: "I met a person, a traveler, thank god! He took care of my wounded leg, and now we're going to leave this place." Then there was an arrow that pointed which way to go.
Tails blinked. He hardly believed his eyes; now they wouldn't have to bother to search all the paths in this huge canyon! "This is great," Tails whispered with a wide smile. "Thank you, whoever wrote this," he added quietly to the writings before he quickly turned on his heels to run back to Amy.
"Amy!" he shouted, it was hard to hold it in. "Amy! Amy, I've found—" he began, but his sentence ended abruptly with a confused gasp as he tripped on something hard and fell flat on the ground.
"Ouch!" he groaned and sat up to rub his knee and glared back at the glimmering rock. "What the heck was…?" he trailed off.
Glimmering rock? Tails slowly crawled closer to get a closer look; it could've just been his imagination, but…
Tails eyes widened as he looked down at the unique rock of which he'd stumbled on. "No way…!" he whispered. "First the writings, and now…"
"Amy… Amy, hey… Hey, wake up, Amy…"
The voice was disturbing her sleep, and Amy muttered irritably and pulled up the covers to her ears. Not now, I'm tired… I'm sleeping…
"Amy… Wake up, Amy…"
Amy groaned as she slowly drifted out of her nice sleep and woke up to look up into Tails face. She blinked drowsily. "Morning… What's up?" she said tiredly.
"Look what I found," was all Tails said, and with a strange look in his eyes, he carefully turned around, grabbed something and held it up in front of her. "Look what I stumbled across."
At first, Amy considered going back to sleep, but when she saw what he was holding in his hands, all she did was stare at it with big eyes. "Oh my god," she whispered.
"I know, right?" Tails replied as he carefully placed the shimmering white Chaos Emerald on the rocky ground between them. "What luck... What if we hadn't crashed down here?"
"Blessing in disguise," Amy replied without taking her eyes off of the emerald.
"You know what," Tails said after a while, "I think that we might have sabotaged Eggman's plans, at least a little."
Amy gave him a questioning look. "How?"
"Well, whatever the plan is, I'm pretty sure that just like the previous times, it has got something to do with the Chaos Emeralds," Tails explained. "So, if we have one, that means Eggman can't get them all, and that might mean that his plan won't succeed. And that might even make it easier for us to get Cream back, maybe even unnoticed!" he added enthusiastically.
Amy just frowned; that might be true, but how did that matter when they were still stuck down here? "Yeah, you might be right, but we still haven't gotten out of here, and as I recently noticed – hopefully you have too – the path divides into more than twenty different ones up ahead!" she pointed out pessimistically.
To her surprise, Tails smirked at her. "That's where you're wrong," he said and suddenly got to his feet, ran up to one of the walls and waved at her to come over.
Amy obeyed and jogged up to him, rather puzzled by now. "What is it?"
"Here." Tails pointed at the wall, and that's when Amy noticed the writings. And after she'd read them up to the arrow message, she finally understood what Tails was getting at, and she looked just as happy as he did now.
"Tails, this is great!" she exclaimed. "You're a genius!"
This made Tails blush and hide his face behind his tails. "Well, uh, I… I didn't really do anything," he stuttered embarrassedly.
Amy was barely listening, but only exclaimed in joy: "Super! Now we can move on!" She turned around to beam at her friend before she started moving in the direction that the arrow pointed to; she was really really eager to get moving now, and Tails was almost left behind.
"W-wait!" he exclaimed behind her. "Shouldn't we bring the blankets? And the food?!"
"I don't think we have neither the time nor the physical strength to carry along those things by ourselves and without the X Tornado," Amy called back over her shoulder. Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned Tails' poor flying machine, because a moment later, she could hear him gasp in shock and terror as he was reminded of his precious soul mate, and then she heard him curse before he finally started to catch up with her.
"Goddammit," he muttered upset to himself as he jogged up behind her. "My beautiful Tornado…!"
Amy smiled nervously and gave him an encouraging pat on his shoulder as he wandered in his dark and sadistic thoughts. "I'm sorry for bringing it up," she apologized. "But let's stick to saving Cream now, alright bud?"
Tails mumbled and muttered for yet another few seconds before he sighed and pulled himself together. "Yeah, of course; Cream is naturally first priority right now. Sorry," he said with a more determined look on his face now.
And the two of them continued following the arrows; there were no messages with texting anymore, not until the arrows had finally, finally, to their immense delight, led them to the end of the canyon. There was the last message, which simply said: "Finally. This is where it ends." And you could almost sense the relief that lingered in the atmosphere around those letters, as the man/woman who wrote it finally exited the deep and lonely canyon along with his savior. And Amy and Tails were just as delighted and happy like him/her right now.
"Lovely," was all Amy said. "Finally we're out."
"I know." Tails softly closed his eyes and took a deep, refreshing breath before he let out a deep sigh and just listened to the breeze. "Let's go, Amy," he said after they'd been standing in silence for a while, and Amy almost thought that she caught a trace of excitement in his voice.
She nodded. "Yeah. Let's save Cream already."
And the two of them followed the CEL's directions down a big green slope, and according to the handy little machine, they were really close to Eggman's base by now.
I hope that you'll give this story a chance; it really makes me really happy! I'd love some feedback ;) Thanks!