"Shadow, do you feel like something's missing in your life?" Bad idea #1.
"Of course I do!" he snapped at the Bat Girl. He tried to control his mood swings (and failed miserably) as he twisted the words into something audible. He was constantly troubled by those familiar, unmistakably real memories that made his world go the wrong way.
"Well, could I at least find out what's causing you trouble? Or are you not gonna talk about it?"
"Obviously, if I've suffered major depression from trying to eject all these thoughts and visions from my head! Geez."
"Visions of what?" she further pushed.
Shadow couldn't handle it much longer. "I don't know if I should tell you. I've never told anyone about it."
"That's fine. I can probably guess what your deal is." Bad idea #2.
He lost it upon hearing that remark. "What, have you been spying on me?! You sick little double agent!"
She shook her head blankly. "You know me, Shadow. I only spy on the government forces. And besides, everyone you know, they already know a thing or two about you. This thing you don't want to talk about may be one of them."
"I don't understand why it should work that way!"
"It just does, ok?" She took a moment to gather herself before continuing. "Now, who would you say is your best friend ever?"
"You!" Shadow snapped.
"No, I mean of all time. If you could pick anyone you've known all your life..."
"YOU!" He was now screaming his lungs out. "The only one to whom I could ever trust my life... is you!" He grabbed Rouge by her you-know-what, desperate to overly express his answer to a point where it stimulated the static on his chest hair.
"Ok, calm down. Geez." She took a flip book out and flipped to the first page, which was loaded with questions, with the one she just asked at the top of the list. She jotted something underneath the first two lines.
"What are you writing?" Shadow inquired.
Rouge quickly snapped, "Phone numbers."
"You are so not jotting down phone numbers!" he yelled. "Why don't you agree with me!?"
She thought for a moment. She didn't understand why he was doubting the legitimacy of her questions.
"But what about that one girl?" Bad idea #3.
He found himself shaking his head as a defense mechanism for those undeniable visions. "That one girl..." he found himself repeating. He was pondering if they were talking about the same girl.
"I forget, whatever happened to her again?" she pushed.
He was mind-boggled by the madness that ensued in his cranium. "I don't know," he concluded. "I can't be sure anymore."
She put down the flip book and folded her arms. "But I thought that one time, didn't you say they killed... What was her name again?"
But before she could come up with the name, he interrupted, "All I know is that she pushed me into the escape pod, but the last thing I saw was the goofy man aiming his gun at her, ready to shoot." She'd never seen him shuddering this violently since the Finalhazard battle in 2001 or so. "At that point, I could just vividly picture what would've happened next, so vividly that that image just stuck into my mind all that time I'd been kept in suspended animation..."
"And how do you feel about that?" she asked blankly.
"Now that I think of it, I can't be sure that he actually killed her. Maybe that whole thing was all staged and they're just keeping secrets from me." He started to rage himself crazy. "Honestly, I'd kill to find out what really happened!"
"Yeah, I can see where you're getting at," she reckoned, shaking her head in response to his traumatic reminiscing. She grasped the small flip book again. "Had to happen to someone you cared about."
He hinted an awful occurrence from the world's greatest MMORPG, or so another friend from his nagging past had described it, in his next answer. "You know, right now I'd love to recant those times I ever tried to protect Zenith's safety and well-being." He shuddered at the thought of expressing his true colors.
"What was that all about, anyway?" she inquired.
"That may have just been a thing from 'the game'. Someone told me that Tails and Knuckles were encouraged to act out of character." He paused to think about that embarassing event in the sixth level that plagued his chances of winning.
She jotted more stuff down on the college-ruled paper. Obviously she wasn't writing down phone numbers.
"Stop pointing out the blatantly obvious!" she yelled at the guy behind the fourth wall.
Luckily, Shadow didn't understand what the Bat Girl was getting at. "Who are you talking to?"
"What do you think?" she screamed, maybe, sort of. "Now, on the subject of this Zenith..."
"I don't wanna talk about him. It's his fault for pretty much breaking our deal with Sega. Next time I see him, he's so dead!" That rage sense immediately filled his eyes like a beast.
"Shadow, just keep calm, and Gangnam Style. Wait, I did NOT just say that!" She subsequently hit herself, ruining her schmexy makeup in the process. "Anyway, you're right on that matter. I still hate him too, but I wouldn't go out in public with my stealth-inator weapons and murder him on the spot. Now, would you?"
He took a careful moment to answer. The next thing he said would shape his reactions to the freaks and geeks he'd encounter in the next five chapters.
"No... although it goes against my better instincts."
He waited for a reaction of some sort from Rouge the Bat. After about a minute of her pen-tapping, he continued.
"You know, on the subject of murder, if I could kill anyone I wanted, right here right now..."
"Why are we talking about killing people again?" she scolded. Then she did the Biff choke hold to clearly express her side of the dispute to the black hedgehog. "Hello? Read the summary, Shadow! 'No animals were killed in the making of this fic'! You'd best be careful whom you phunk with, ok?" She picked up the red-ink pen again. "Now have you ever thought about what you might do if this girl you say you used to know... came back?"
Shadow was shaking his head to the point of getting a headache. "Never thought it possible," he grumbled. "I'm sorry, but I chose to let her go a long time ago, and yet I'm still having visions of her imminent death." His sudden bout of hyperventilating made it clear that the defense mechanisms were obviously not alleviating his trauma in any way shape or form.
"Stop pointing out the blatantly obvious!" he shouted at the fourth wall behind him. Or so he assumed.
"I know, right?" Rouge blurted in agreement.
Desperate to put an end to his ordeal, he stood up from the luxury chair in her living room and stormed to the door to the main hallway of the apartment building in which the whole "gang" of animals resided.
"You know what," he concluded, "I know who I'm hunting down. And no, he or she is NOT a hedgehog!"
"Suit yourself," she replied blankly.
Tails, having locked himself in the basement, examined his latest gizmo ever so carefully. He wanted it to be as perfect as the alignment of his twin tails, as perfect as all the other gadgets he'd constructed over the last twenty years (he'd hardly aged physically at all over that period) and stored away in the passcode-secured closet. The fox searched every nook and cranny he'd built into this high-tech device for any apparent defects that needed some last-minute touch-ups.
He heard four soft taps on the door. He also heard someone shout, "Tails, can I come in?"
Tails had expected a shout-out from someone in particular, which was why he wasn't startled to the point of accidentally trashing the piece of junk. Firmly attributing this familiar tone to Amy, he reluctantly yelled, "It's open!"
The knob on the door twisted counterclockwise if one were to view it from the inside. As it unlatched from the stopper and swung open, the pink hedgehog strolled to the working spot occupied by this young nuisance for almost as long as their combined (physical) ages.
She looked at the piece of garbage in front of her. "What kind of crazy contraption are you working on now, Tails?"
"I'm glad you asked," he said sarcastically, as over the two years since his most recent failed adventure with Sonic, he was getting sick of following the blue blah just because he could run fast (as of 2008, speed was no longer cool in his book). For starters, he could fly just as fast, and he had the superior intellect — what else would you expect from a fox? (A/N: You're probably wondering why I said that. I'm wondering why I said that.) "I'm gonna invent time travel!"
"How's that working out?" she retorted. "Looks like a piece of garbage to me."
"Amy, you say that to everything I build. Are you still bored out of your mind?"
Amy lightly shook her head. "Of course not, silly. In fact, yesterday I had the adventure of a lifetime! That Xbox 720 game was a definite boredom killer. It all looked so... real!" She went on blabbing about how cool it was while the fox stared mindlessly at his crazy contraption. "That definitely made me forget about real life. I could stay in there for ages if I wanted to!" Amy abruptly halted, noticing her lack of an audience. "Tails, have you been listening to me at all?!"
"Huh? What were we talking about?" he replied blankly, not paying attention to what his pink ally/rival had to say.
"You just don't get it!" As much as the freak in pink was trying to maintain her enthusiasm for said game, she was getting all the more agitated at the fox's lack of patience. "Is something out of whack, Tails? You look like you got something going in your mind."
"Amy, don't even think about switching the light on. I have a flashlight. Also, I'm kinda busy right now and I don't have time to worry about such nonsense. I don't want someone to make a klutzy move and ruin all my hard-earned progress. After all, we are dealing with time travel. If this thing hits 88, don't come crying to me if it hits you and sends you back to 1956. When it's up and running, I'll let you know, ok?"
Amy looked as though the fox had officially ruined her life with that social beating. Everyone she knew was gradually turning against the hedgehog of his dreams (as well as Mr. What's My Age Again) ever since the incident that flopped his last shot at regaining the spark they once had (and their competition with Mario).
The expression on the fox's face suddenly lightened up significantly. "I'm just messin' with you. Go on. It won't bite. Admire its awesomeness. You know you want to."
She remained blankly standing before the device, her jaw hanging ten. She didn't want to think about what anyone thought of her anymore. The only thing on her mind was shutting up that dumbass!
She was twitching like a beast before she lost her temper. "No one tells me off like that anymore!" she boomed. Before Tails could say anything else, the gloved hand of doom met with the fur covering his left cheek. As pink followed through, the resulting impact sent the fox stumbling into the wall on his left. "You like that, dwarf!? You want a piece of me?!"
Seeing as he didn't move a muscle in response to her challenge, she started out the basement door, cursing at the fox on the way out. "That's the last time I'm hearing anything like that from anyone, ever!"
Tails suddenly realized he was horribly bruised as he came to. He definitely remembered the last thing he saw before the brutal knockout to be the gloved death note. "Why'd you hit me?" he asked, retaining the plea for mercy written all over his face. "What was that all about? It's not like I did you any harm first... right?"
"Tails, we've discussed this before. You need to learn when you've said too much already."
Tails was way more confuzed than confuzed could possibly get. "Just where are you going with this, anyway?"
By then Amy had had enough. "You want a piece of me, fox boy?"
Hearing that smart remark really reinvigorated the anger in his heart fueled by the prejudice he'd had to deal with since 1992. "I don't want a piece of you," he started as he stood to his full height and pretended to wipe something off his face. "I want the whole thing!"
He charged at Amy like a beast. Amy literally had no time to react. From their punching and kicking at each other, one could tell that they were mimicking the brawl scene in Happy Gilmore. It was also drastically rollercoaster — neither one got a significant upper hand. When Tails punched her to the ground, she tried to choke him. When she kicked him to the ground, he banged his head against hers. Needless to say, blood spilled all over the basement, although somehow, none of the red goo managed to taint the fox's perplexing contraption in any way shape or form.
Amy started to show signs of vulnerability. The memories of the hard years that came after the Time Eater battle had been flopped slowly deteriorated her cool. "Tails... I've been left all alone for three years," she started, wiping off the sweat that came through her eye(s). "During that time, no one would talk to me, no one listened to me, and they told me that Sonic left us without warning. It's just happened one too many times. I feel like my friends are trying to ruin my life for no good reason. Do you ever feel like that?"
"Yes!" the fox yelled, completely understanding Amy's point. "Ever since I was two or so, I've been prejudiced on the fact that I have two tails. And now everyone I know hates me over a simple can of Pepsi!" He hesitated. "And I sound like a girl."
Amy thought at that remark for the longest time. A devious idea popped in her crazed mind. "Maybe you are a girl," she said, sporting her evil grin.
He replied, "I wish I was." No he didn't.
Amy went back to her crazy idea. "I can picture you on the Maury show," she chuckled. "'The results are in — Tails, you are a girl!'"
Tails was evidently not amused. "Cut it out, Amy. You're giving me the creeps."
"Oh, lighten up. I'm just messin' with you." She retained a similarly playful tone. "Go ahead. Admire my feminine charm. You know you want to. So what do you say?" She stuck out her hand for the last time in about 24 hours. "Friends?"
He stared down the man-hand to the point where it gave him goosebumps. It was intimidating the fox, its cold, grim appearance resembling the Grim Reaper.
"You know, if you think you have it bad," Tails started, "wait until you get a load of this friend of mine. He has to sleep in the basement every night, cuz everyone else hates him. Yes, everyone! They don't care if he saves the world from some dreaded, nameless peril, or he gets 100% on Green Grass and High Tides on the Rock Band video game, or he beats up Knuckles, or even if he freakin' dies! Well, maybe they do..."
She stopped him after the slip of the D word. "Actually, when they found out that he faked his own death, I heard someone say that they'd just let karma take him from us. They just don't give a damn anymore. And frankly, I support that."
"Amy, do you know who I'm talking about?" Tails bing'd.
"Of course I do. We saw him in the emergency room, right? You were the guy who called 555."
"Yeah, that's right," Tails confirmed. Then he focused his view on the supposed time machine in front of him, trying to recall the fundamental parts in his head in seven seconds. He located the keypad and tapped seemingly random buttons.
"Have you tried that thing out yet?" Amy asked.
"No!" Tails shouted. "But I'm gonna try it anyway!"
He opened the door and casually stepped in the pod, grabbing a wristwatch with a small video monitor that was hanging from the watch-hanger or whatever.
"How do you know it actually works?" Amy said, hinting a slight sense of panic.
"Relax. I got all the parts of this thing down. There's no way I could screw this up."
Tails was about to push the "go" button when Amy pounded on the door to the pod. "Where are you going?"
He unlatched the door, poked his head back out, and said, "I'm going back to 2011!" Then he pushed the fateful switch.
"Why are you doing this?"
"To make things right!" shouted the fox.
Right about then the Chaos energy reacted horrendously with the large antimatter quantity used to power the awful machine, and before you could say "Beam me up, Scotty," he instantaneously vanished.
"Stop pointing out the blatantly obvious!" Amy shouted at the fourth wall behind her.