This chapter is much shorter in comparison to the last one, and there's a little action now. Enjoy.
Tails was struggling the throttle against all the forces of nature to stop the Tornado from crashing and burning. The plane had a self-destructive mind of its own- it was flailing helplessly and non-aerodynamically through the air, speeding at a diagonal slant towards the ground.
Sonic jumped off the cliff, and used the wall of the plateau to get back up to speed, and kicked off the wall at the last second. There was a flat empty expanse of desert between him and the tornado… A fact he exploited as an opportunity to go really fast. He blasted ahead, forging a faint scorch mark with his glowing wake.
It didn't take long for him to get up close to where the Tornado was coming down, at which point he matched his speed with the planes.
The Tornado was now only ten meters from the ground. Through the smoke, he could now see his two-tailed friend wrestling to kick life back into the burning engines.
Sonic bounced up from the ground and landed on the Tornado's right wing.
"Hey there, Tails!" He shouted to make himself heard above the wind and the inconsistent spluttering of the engine. "Having a little turbulence?" he smirked.
Tails looked up to him with panic. "Sonic! I… I don't know what happened! She was flying just fine, and then out of nowhe-"
BANG! A loud pop came from the spluttering engine, the fire worsened, and the shake of the plane almost knocked Sonic off.
"No time for chit-chat now! We gotta bail!" Sonic told him.
But Tails tensed his grip on the throttle. "No, I can still save-"
BANG!
An even bigger pop from the left engine shook the plane more vigorously, and made Sonic grab onto the wing for balance. The flight angle was now canted. There was no possible way of slowing it down.
"Tails, you can't save the plane. We've got to go, come on!" He reached out his hand. Tails hesitated for one more second, before reaching out and grabbing it.
In unison, they jumped off the plane and rolled into a heap on the ground, stopping soon enough to see the Tornado strike the ground hard and fast, burst into flames, and fragment into millions of pieces as it wedged a crater into the ground.
"Phew." Sonic panted. "That was close. You alright?" He turned to his friend.
"Yeah," Tails groaned as he stood up. He gave Sonic a reassuring thumbs up. "I've been through worse." He smiled.
"Come on, let's go and have a look at what's left." Sonic started towards the site of the crash in an instant. Tails followed him, using his namesake two tails to propel him forward.
…
The innards of the Tornado were scattered all over the desert. It's charred skeleton was still smoking as it sat in the crater.
Tails sighed, disappointed and quite put down at the picture before him. "None of this is salvageable. That's such a shame…" he scratched the back of his head. "I guess I'll have to make a few adjustments to the new model I'm making."
"What exactly happened there?" Sonic asked him. "You didn't try powering it using a Chaos Emerald again, did you?"
Tails chuckled. "Ha! No, I've learnt my lesson there!" Tails shook his head. "For such an experienced pilot, I sure do have a bad track record when it comes to crashing." He thought for a moment. "I've no idea what went wrong. She might have been an old plane, but I shouldn't have lost control like that…"
"Why don't you start from the top. How exactly did it happen?"
Tails took a few moments to cast his mind back. "I just decided I'd take the Tornado out for a spin. I was flying normally for about half an hour, then all of a sudden all the hazard lights came on, then there was this turbulence like nothing I've ever seen. It was like there was a disturbance in the air… Then the engine caught fire, and I started to come down, and… Well, you know the rest of it."
"Huh… Weird." Sonic furrowed his brow. Then he widened it. "Umm, Tails?" he said.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"Do you think this crash might've had something to do with that?" Sonic pointed towards the horizon. Tails turned.
A mighty floating fortress hung in the air, casting a huge shadow on the centre of the faraway Station Square. Ships were disembarking from it, spewing a flurry on firepower on the defenceless population. The side of the behemoth of a carrier bore a familiar symbol: A bald maniac with a ridiculous nose, on top of which rested a pair of spectacles, and underneath it, an absurdly lengthy moustache.
"Eggman!" Scowled Sonic.