"My gosh, I'm sorry that happened to you..."
I left myself in disbelief from telling the bat about all that jazz — my name and everything. More like nonsensical schizophrenia or something like that, but to a degree that would've made me collapse in paranoia. (Someone remind me to stop using that word.)
Rouge's place was quite warm, and unusually blingy. I went into convulsions just noticing her collection of gems, cars, even gem cars. Not really. I didn't want any tea, although she kept pushing the cup towards me. "It's fresh."
"I don't drink tea," I finally asserted. But I found myself placing the cup to my lips anyway. Ok, I sounded a bit too hard on that remark.
"Wow!" I couldn't tell if it was just me, or this tea was legitimately divine. Or maybe it was supposed to feel that way after all that time. "You sure take your tea seriously!"
"I know! I'm so bad." Apparently she caught the confusion in my expression after saying something that didn't make sense, because she clarified, "It's just an idiom. You get used to hearing things that don't make sense when you hear them enough."
"Oh, gotcha." Hardly.
Suddenly I heard a loud thump, followed by a crashing noise. Not like the kind of noise associated with a fatal gunshot, but still enough to stimulate the "OH GOD I'M DEAD" feeling. I noticed Rouge and someone else looking at me in a weird manner. "Sorry. Did I say something out loud?"
The two looked at each other as if one of them had some explaining to do. Finally Rouge turned back to me and said in an assuring tone, "Don't worry about it. You'll be fine. No one can hurt you."
I guess when the foxey lady who'd kicked down the door heard our conversation and decided to pop in, she and Rouge became a bit secretive. I could tell they were talking about me from overhearing traces of their dialogue.
"What, is she running from the law?" I heard a much higher, probably younger voice inquire.
"No," replied Rouge. "But she is running."
"From what?"
"Everybody's a critic..." The drink in my hand wasn't helping to distract me from whatever they were talking about. "Off topic, but what happened to you?! You look hideous."
"Thanks!" the fox yelled sarcastically. "And I'd really prefer if we discussed this in private, if you don't mind."
"It's alright. I got the whole apartment covered. No one potentially lethal to us can ever know about this!"
"But who knows? Maybe someone's spying on us as I speak, and we're accidentally exposing a deadly secret to the world!"
"Really?" The bat sounded amused at her lack of understanding whatever it was that I couldn't figure out. "You know my expertise. I can catch the sneakiest of infiltrators any day."
"Whatever. I have a feeling that something's gone horribly wrong AGAIN, but this time it's all on me!"
"Ok, what did you do this time?"
"I, uh..." she stuttered.
"You went time traveling, didn't you?"
The fox stayed silent for the longest time. I had no clue what it meant, if anything at all. The dead silence spread across the room to the TV screen. Wow, was I ever technologically challenged.
Suddenly the fox just lost her cool. The mood once again seemed to go around the room once or twice, like a chain reaction, figuratively striking me enough times to the point where the water works started to brew within me as well. Again! I could've sworn I was blabbing some nonsense as some kind of defense mechanism. After all, who'd want to be seen like this after the recent display at the cemetery? Geez!
I noticed that a knife lay peacefully in front of me, pointed towards me from the right side of this end table, when reality struck back less violently than before. I could've tried to extend my pain to a breaking point, were that entire display shadowed by a dark mood to actually take place. Of course, that would've contradicted my previous thoughts, words, and deeds before meeting up with Rouge. And besides, I probably wouldn't have tried to go that far anyway, considering my will to live had been really infuriated from such events.
Also, I figured finding new life as a hedgehog would be pretty adventurous (not to mention fun... duh).
"So, what is your name anyway?" said that high-pitched tone, startling me in the process by jumping from there to the four inches to my left in an instant, perhaps because it was the only thing she could do to get her mind off the "incident" she and Rouge had been going on about. "I feel pretty dumb not getting to know you until now..."
"I understand," I added. "I was like that myself what, two minutes ago." I stuck out my hand just as awkwardly as suggested by the description of my last quote. "I'm Maria."
"I'm Tails," she quickly replied. "Pleased to meet ya. Although... that's not my real name." She hesitated again. I got a bit uncomfortable from her lack of continuity, considering I'd done just that time and time again, before I realized just what was going on. "Also, they might start calling me something different..."
That's when I decided to pop the $1000 question: "What were you going on about that I could hardly understand, anyway?"
"Oh, just some business that I had to take care of... which surprisingly took less than an hour. I doubt you'd have any background knowledge about it."
I shook my head in agreement. "Yeah, you're probably right. I mean, I really would like to know, but I, uh..." You KNOW what caused me to hesitate on that remark.
"You all right, Maria?" Rouge interrupted, saving me from having to expose my troubled past all over again, which didn't really matter anymore because I would stop describing "that thing" to limit the repetition that had been going on since the point that would remain undescribed for reasons explained in the middle of this sentence. But anyway. She glanced back and forth at me and Tails, while I glanced back and forth at Tails and Rouge. Fittingly, I assumed Tails was looking at Rouge and me. It was like another chain reaction of some sort.
"So, have you two hooked up yet?" asked the bat with the weird outfit. "You know, exchanged names and such. Who's who. You know?" As if she was getting the wrong sense that her inquiry made no sense whatsoever. That didn't bother me much, since I could tell what she was getting at.
"Ok, we get it, Rouge!" I guess Tails did as well. "And yes. It was very brief, and very generic, but it was well worth it. But now I'm so messed up that I can't even recall why I put this crap into my notepad." By pulling out a tablet with a gigasmic screen, she single-handedly justified the fact that I was sorely old-fashioned. Whatever. I'm still young, I could probably figure this crap out.
"You mean this crap? The crap that I inspected when you put it in?"
"Yes!" A good deal of angst seemed to be brewing within her high-pitched tone.
"Ok, what really happened to you?" inquired the bat, more serious-like than ever. "You barge into my room and you're all washed up. I know you want to tell me something. But now that we have company, you're afraid of letting it fall into the wrong hands! And now you're giving this girl nightmares!"
"No she's not!" I defended. "She did nothing to hurt me in any way..."
"I'm not really a girl," muttered Tails in the midst of my side of this peculiar argument.
"Say what now?" was all I could think of to say in response to that.
"I mean, I am a girl, like right now."
"Say what now?" said Rouge, plagiarizing me in the process.
"Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?" I accidentally slipped that out in the midst of my confusion.
"How do you know what that is?!" Tails inquired with a shocked-like tone.
"It was being displayed on her screen," I replied, my index finger pointed at that box-like structure. Wait... it was in color?!
"Oh. Uh, no."
Rouge was suddenly acting all nervous. Going back to what we were just talking about, she calmly turned to face the fox and said, "Tails, what about this girl thing were you talking about?"
"I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE!" she spazzed. Before I (or anyone else) could intervene, she stormed out into the hallway, through the demolition of property that wasn't mine, perhaps caused by her excessive frustration, faster than you could say "game over".
"What's her problem?" I couldn't help but remark in that blank tone after having seen that display.
"Whose problem?" Rouge looked as if I'd baffled her even more. "Mine?"
"No!" I snapped. "Why does everyone get the wrong idea?!"
"I don't know how to respond to that. Anyway..." I could tell I was in for one of those time-consuming lectures. "You know who Tails is, right?"
"Uh, yeah. But what kind of a name is that, anyway?" I figured that with a name like Tails, she probably had a relative named Heads.
"That's not his real name. He only asks us to..."
"Wait a minute, I'm lost. Is this 'Tails' a boy or girl?"
"I'm getting to that right now. He hates his real name of 'Miles' for a reason that's way beyond me. I thought it was a pretty cool name when I first heard it." I agreed with that statement. "But anyway. So when people first meet the guy, they often mistake him for a girl because his voice is so girlish. But now that he is a girl..."
"But how do you think he or she or whatever got like that?" I interrupted. Evidently I was still lost.
She pondered that thought for two seconds. One, two. "I overheard him or her bragging about the time machine that he or she done built... Maybe he used it and created a time paradox?"
"How does that happen?"
"If you do something in the past, it could totally change the chain of events that follows in your present time, and thus totally change your life and the world around you." What. "Yeah. I know."
I was suddenly more shocked about the chain of events that led to our conversation than ever.
"I don't know if you get it," I asserted. "Given that stupid chain of events that had to happen..."
"Don't worry about it. You never did anything wrong."
I finished my sentence. "I might be so lucky to be here that it gives me nightmares..."
"That scary, eh?" she remarked.
"Oh man, if only you'd seen that vortex!" That was something I forgot to mention since meeting her. "I could've been sucked into the other edge of the multiverse, for all I know! I mean, if you have any idea what I'm talking about."
"Uh..." Now Rouge looked utterly confuzed. Understandable. "You kinda lost me like, an hour ago."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Now I was getting a bit uncomfortable. "When I told you about... all that... that was one thing I forgot to mention when I was telling you about..."
"I told you, don't worry about it. It's over with. Now all we can do is thank whatever supernatural being you like to irreverently follow that you ended up in one piece after all that..."
She looked about as lost for words as me.
"Are you still feeling ok?" she suddenly asked with greater concern than before. "Wait a minute. I forget what your name is. Wait, don't tell me." Five seconds. "Ok, tell me."
Just unbelievable.
"The REAL Maria." Because the phony died way back when. "Folks are gonna call me that one of these days."
"I swear, I've heard that name somewhere. It's on the way back of my mind right now. Damn..."
As I was about to re-clue her in, her quote from just two seconds ago gave me the idea to change the subject. "Do you curse a lot?"
"What? Oh. Uh, no." Paranoia on the other side of the spectrum for once. Insert girly acronym here. "As a matter of fact, I know someone who has a strict policy against using that kind of language." She then leaned over to my right way-up-there-and-pointed-because-I'm-an-animal ear and whispered, "But since we're nowhere near that someone — at least I hope — I say we can get away with it." Big deal.
"But do any of your friends curse a lot?"
"Nope. Actually, very rarely," she added. "I don't know if you're against profane language as well, but I totally understand if you are, because we don't usually like to talk about that kind of crap. And besides, I always give the offender a piece of my mind whenever I hear them use that kind of language."
"Oh, alright then. I'm sorry I asked."
The loud silence spread rather quickly between the two of us. I was disturbed to the point where I almost wanted to dash out of this pit, as she was starting to look like a lesbian. I was just waiting for one of us to crack. And don't even dare me to randomly yell something like "balls".
"So..." I started. "What do you wanna talk about now?"
Her answer came about the second I finished my sentence. "Talk about this freak who's been obsessing over saving the world from some dreaded, nameless peril that probably came from the video game we were all playing!" When she noticed how inevitably lost I was, she backtracked a bit: "There was a game that we all got into, the day it was released. But this kid I know tried to beat the 'unwinnable' level and... flipped a switch and... triggered something. And now that game's gone, entirely formatted..." she did the snap with her fingers, "...just like that."
Some sort of reflex made me want to lash out at that bat for obsessing over that stupid incident after I'd repeatedly insisted that I had absolutely no control over it. Ok, maybe that was me. Instead, I chilled, took a series of deep breaths, leaned over to her left way-up-there-and-slightly-pointed-because-she's-an -animal ear and whispered, "So there's this old guy, ok." I was just praying she'd understand what this was about. "I saw the guy on this news segment of some sort being displayed on a whateverchamacallit. Ugh, I'm so old fashioned. It was a small screen on this small box..."
"Television?"
"Yeah, whatever that is."
"It's basically what you just said. That small box with that small screen displaying everything you couldn't see in person."
"Oh, right. My bad. Can I call it a 'teavee' for short?"
"Oh yeah! We abbreviate it like that all the time. T-2-DA-V!" She went all gangsta with that last bit.
"Whatever. This guy — I think he had to do with 'the game' — he announced his plan to destroy the whole world!"
She gave me that weird look again. "When exactly was this?"
"I don't know, two hours ago?"
"Preposterous," she scoffed. "I never saw anything of the sort."
I was about ready to lose it at that point. "Didn't you see the news segment?! There was a guy..."
"I KNOW ALREADY," she spazzed. "Whatcha think, I'm stupid? Of course I saw that guy on the news. You need to brush up your sarcasm."
"That wasn't sarcasm!" I retorted. "That was a cruel joke against people with MY name! You know, Juliet was right. What IS in a name anyway?! I hope you're not a big Shakespeare reader, because I do NOT wanna get killed again, let alone judged in whatever way possible because I have the same name as some evil-professor-slash-mad-scientist-slash-robot-enthusiast-slash-whatever. Geez." It took me a while to realize that my brief accusation against the bat was incorrect.
"And what do you plan to do about it?" she remarked.
"You know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna find that guy and..."
I stopped. Evidently I was getting ahead of myself.
"You know what, who knows. I don't think as fast as I run. Yeah, I know."
She just smirked. "Yeah. We all get that sense." I could tell she was enjoying this. Whatever it was.
The only thing on my mind right now was, I gotta leave this dump and get to the bottom of this... whatever it is. And yet I had the strangest sense that I wasn't the only one trying to figure stuff out...
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot..."
She reached into... something... digging through stuff in a place I'd never have imagined anyone would've thought to use as pockets. Pockets. When that word came to mind, I wondered if any of her friends knew anything about pockets.
I waited.
"Can you pull it out already?" I pushed. "You're making me feel... dirty..."
"Can't blame me," she insisted. "I keep a lot of junk in here. This breast plate fits everything, even a life-size echidna. Go ahead. Touch it."
"No!" Crazy. I proceeded to get up walk outa there, facing backwards.
"Wait, you really have to see this. It's confidential."
"Then why exactly do you wanna show it to me, anyway?" I'd only known her for a half-hour.
She stood up and strolled towards me. "This may seem weird, considering it's only been a half-hour since I actually met you, but..." She's a lesbian. "I have a feeling you might know a thing or two about what I'm about to show you, and I believe I can already trust you not to let it fall into the wrong hands."
"Whose hands?"
"You'll figure it out. I promise."
It was around that time when she finally dug out this official-looking leather-covered booklet, plated with letters and symbols of bronze scattered all over the cover. It looked like an official document from my old home. The only problem was my limited ability to read. Maybe that was a side effect of my new bodily form.
"Can't read it?"
I shook my head.
"Don't worry about it too much. Not many of my friends can read, either. I'll walk you through it."
"Thanks," I replied.
"Glad I can help. This is a secret government file that was never supposed to be released to the public. But I worked for the government a while back, and so I was able to access it without anyone knowing." She flipped the booklet open and scrolled through ten or twelve pages. "What do you know about a government mission called 'Project Shadow'?"
Holy crap, something I was totally familiar with.
"I know that it was an attempt to discover immortality," I remarked.
"And by looking at you right here right now, apparently it worked."
"Yeah, to an extent that rendered me dead for God-knows-how-long!"
"Whoa there, easy money!" Evidently government code for "take a chill pill". "I haven't shown you our prototypes."
Without me mentioning wanting to look through the whole book, she flipped back to a random page.
"We've been able to restore and find uses for a lot of these failed experiments." She pointed to a picture of a dinosaur on life support. "Biolizard, for example." Good, I was on the same page. "Good shapeshifter, hard flesh, but simple design, and it can't live on its own." Then she flipped through a few more pages. "Vuetwo, my personal favorite, the Pokégod of the 50s, very powerful attacks, crucial team fighter, but very easy to catch. You just need a bunch of Ultra Balls."
What kind of language was she speaking? I was hesitant to ask. And I had never heard of or seen that creature. I guess they were government secrets after all.
"Here's Purrby, a cute little guy who will eat anything, big or small, plastic or metal, Mario or Luigi, you get the point."
"What's a Mario or a Luigi?" Now I wasn't understanding any of this.
"Anyway," she persisted, "its only downside is the stuff it tends to eat. It can come out the wrong pipe and make it feel lazy and awful and on the brink of dehydration."
"Ugh, gross." You could imagine the face I made at that remark. "I guess I'm lucky I didn't have to go out that way."
"Well if you're disgusted by that, then look at this son-of-a-gun." She now had her finger directed towards another familiar figure. "A prototype bearing the strongest resemblance to the Ultimate Lifeform himself, making it an interesting, yet ultimately annoying creation."
"That's not disgusting," I immediately noted. But then the resemblance she was talking about lured me to get a closer look at this guy. Not really a look-alike to the black hedgehog, but its crimson fur, its lilac hair, maybe the patch of hair on his chest, and even the shoes...
"That's Zenith!"
I (maybe, sorta) involuntarily blurted this in a loud whisper, just in case anyone else was watching us, but it seemed to catch her off guard enough to give me the sense of "it was an accident", whatever you call it.
"Ok, I did not expect you to know that already."
"What, was I not supposed to know that already?"
"No, you're fine." Good, because all this time I thought my tampering with this thing was illegal.
"So he's a science experiment...?"
"Exactly," she confirmed. "This file is the reason he's around right now. I mean, just as long as he hasn't gone and killed himself yet. My friends and I have been concerned about that since 2009." Wow. The last year I remembered living in was 1951. But if that's the case, then just don't — and I mean DON'T — give this to him."