Chapter 3: Sonic and Tails

High in the sky above the planet, Riku kept a close watch over the blue streak that zipped across the grassy knolls and expansive lake surfaces. Sonic, in his mission to lead the boy to the workshop of his best friend Tails, led him through vibrant environments unlike anything the boy ever knew existed on his own Earth. From loop-de-loops made out of checkered patterns to ruins filled with deadly active statues, Sonic covered a good chunk of the continent before arriving at a set of mountains along the west coast.

Riku then descended as he noticed the blue blur disappearing within the fog surrounding the inner parts of the mountains. Looking upon the mountain range as it stretched to the right beside him, the teenage Overlord thought "Huh, my brother's home would be somewhere in these mountains if this was my Earth…I wonder if a similar house is built around here. I might have to check later on."

Once on the ground of the mountains Riku finds Sonic standing in front of a dainty little house with red metallic plating on all sides that are barely kept together by smooth ironed plates. There is a circular emblem with a pair of yellow fox tails painted beside the normal wooden door that the blue hedgehog was currently walking towards. After Sonic knocks on the door of the workshop he declares eagerly "Yo Tails, you awake in there?!"

The teenage Overlord stops walking once he reaches the bottom of the staircase so to not crowd Sonic when the door finally opens, and after opening his mouth he asks "Hey Sonic, you are going a little slow back there. Why?"

The blue hedgehog glances over his shoulder and says to the boy "Didn't want you to lose track of me. Color me surprised that you can fly as fast as you can run!" His second sentence in particular was spoken in an excited tone of voice.

The door then creaks open behind the blue hedgehog, causing him to turn around while Riku tilts his head to look inside the workshop as the person who owns it reveals himself. Wearing a welding mask while a still active custom-designed blowtorch is held in his thick, dirty glove is a bipedal yellow fox with two tails that twirl around slightly and red shoes that look mostly similar to Sonic's own. The fox shuts off his blowtorch and flips his mask over his head, looking at Sonic with his blue eyes and saying "Well hey there Sonic, I'm surprised to see you here!"

There was a smile on the fox's face as he quickly dropped his torch and swung his right hand out, smacking it directly into the grasp of the blue hedgehog's own hand so the two can have a swift handshake before retracing their arms and getting back to their conversation. Sonic gestures over his shoulder with his right pointer finger, getting straight to the point as he says to his buddy "Just thought I'd drop on by to see if you could help this guy out."

The fox glances over Sonic and looks at the boy standing quietly at the bottom of his staircase. At first Tails was a little suspicious of his presence, something he points out to his blue buddy "Ummm Sonic, why did you bring a human to my workshop?"

Sonic then lets out his pent up excitement to his friend Tails, saying to him as he opens with a swing of his hands in front of his body "Boy you wouldn't believe it Tails! This kid is almost as fast as I am, he can fly, and he can do some strange manipulation thingy with cars and rocks!"

"…And you don't find any of that suspicious, Sonic?" Tails says in a concerned tone of voice.

"Aww, you worry too much Tails." The blue hedgehog tries to dispels his friend's doubts with a nonchalant air around him and a swing of his right hand, and he continues on to say "The kid seems fine to me."

"Well I have reason to be suspicious. Remember the last human that came here with strange powers?" Tails whispers just on the off-chance that the mysterious boy was related to the one he was referring to.

Sonic however doesn't keep the conversation a secret from the human and blurts out much to Tails' surprise "Geez Tails, don't be so mopey about this! I'm sure after a few minutes you'll hit it off!"

The fox sighs in the face of the blue hedgehog's unstoppable jolly enthusiasm, and after dragging his left hand along his face he focuses back on his previous question and asks Sonic "Ignoring that assumption for a moment, are you going to tell me why you brought him here?"

Sonic snaps his fingers quickly and looks back at Tails, saying to him with an embarrassed chuckle preceding it "Sorry Tails, got caught up in my own excitement."

"Something you do far too often…" Tails whispers to himself as his friend goes on to answer his question "Anyways, the kid here has a bit of a problem controlling his speed, so we were hoping to do something about it."

Tails goes on to mention in a surprised tone of voice "So you came to me? Sonic, you're the expert on speed. Why don't you help him out?"

The blue hedgehog makes a snappy response with a gesture of his left hand as he says "You kidding Tails? I don't have the patience to mentor someone. Besides, you're telling me you can't whip up one of those gizmo thingies for his shoes?"

Tails' eyes light up instantly as he whips his torch up from the ground and clicks the flame on for one brief second while confidently smiling at Sonic and telling him straight up "You're doubting my smarts here Sonic? I can craft a device for his shoes with nothing but paperclips and a Kleenex box! Just bring him on in and I can make it in no time!"

Sonic grins and chuckles to himself, saying to the yellow fox afterwards "I knew you wouldn't let me down Tails!"

Tails turns around and heads back into his workshop ready to work while Sonic turns towards the boy and gives him the thumbs up to come on in. The blue hedgehog then walks inside while Riku ascends the staircase to enter the workshop. Unsurprisingly, the inside of Tails' place was cluttered with failed ideas and tools, with the only discernable objects being a set of rusting green lockers and a couple stools in the back. The fox weaves through his stuff to reach the back, while Sonic takes the faster route and jumps over it all.

Riku looks at some of the devices scattered about and comments "Huh, you've been hard at work in here, haven't you Tails?"

As the boy then proceeds to weave through the scattered assortment of stuff in the workshop, Tails replies to him with a barely humble "Well of course. What else am I going to do in my spare time when I have so much to work with?"

Once Sonic, Tails and Riku have arrived in the back of the room, the teenage Overlord looks towards one of the stools as the fox sits on the other, and after glancing back at the fox as he stares down at his shoes he politely asks "You don't mind if I sit down, do you?"

Tails, murmuring to himself as he looks at Riku's shoes with increasing interest, lets out a nonchalant "Sure, go right ahead."

Riku sits down on the chair and looks over at the fox, glancing off to the left and noticing how Sonic is just standing there with his foot tapping on the ground as he folded his arms and glanced over at his friend. Tails, so involved in looking at Riku's shoes, didn't say anything until the boy asked "Hey Tails, is something the matter here?"

Tails states with a great deal of interest in his voice "I'm fascinated by how odd your shoes look…The composition isn't similar to anything I have seen on the planet before."

When this matter is brought to attention, Sonic says to the boy "Oh yeah, you were going to tell me just what your deal was, weren't you?"

The fox lifts his head up and lists off what he knows so far about the boy "High speed, the ability to fly, the power of terrakenesis, these strange shoes of yours…You aren't from this planet, are you?"

When Tails asks this particular question, Sonic blurts out in surprise towards his friend "What?! Tails, are you suggesting that this kid is an alien?"

Tails shakes his head, but before the fox tosses out his own theories on the matter Riku interjects and says in a somewhat nervous tone "No no no, I'm perfectly human. No slimy flesh or strange appendages to be found underneath my skin, I assure you."

Sonic and Tails look at the boy, with the fox stating with a chuckle beforehand "No, I wasn't going to suggest that you were an alien. Though I have to question how you managed to reach the planet without some sort of space-faring vehicle without dealing with the deep pressure vacuum of space."

Riku responds in a confident, wise sounding manner towards the fox's inquiries "I use a compressed air cocoon to keep my oxygen levels stabilized."

The fox's eyes widen in shock at what he heard, saying in a loathsome tone of voice towards himself as he smacks the front of his head "Of course! A surrounding capsule of self-sustaining oxygen would solve the problem of a tank's limited supply! Why didn't I think of that before?"

Quickly reaching out towards the pile of junk off to the left of him to pull out a notepad, Tails quickly uses his tails to pick up a pen and use it to jot down some notes regarding this newfound information, and after tossing both things off to the wayside Riku chuckles and says to the fox "Well you'd still have to figure out how to propel a body through space without meshing carbon into the capsule."

Tails smiles and says to Riku "Hehe, yeah, but this is a good start."

Sonic laughs for a good few seconds, saying as he gestures to his foxy friend "See? I knew you two would hit it off!"

The yellow fox faces his friend and says to him in a jovial tone of voice "Yeah yeah, you are allowed to be right every now and then."

"Like when I knew Eggman was using that amusement park for evil purposes?" Sonic responds with in a smart-aleck tone of voice, which causes Tails to groan and mention "Don't remind me that I was wrong about that…"

The two share a jolly laugh like two best friends were expected to, and this brought a smile to Riku's face as he sat there watching. The blue hedgehog then glances back at the boy, saying to him with a gesture of his right hand "Oh yeah, you haven't introduced yourself yet."

The boy flinches and smiles in an embarrassed manner once Sonic addresses him since he had forgotten such an important matter. Extending his right hand out, Riku says to him "My name is Riku."

Swinging his right hand out to smack and clasp Riku's extended hand with a lot of enthusiasm and a smile on his face, Sonic states "And I'm Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog!"

With a proper introduction out of the way between the teenage Overlord and the blue hedgehog, Tails looks at the boy and says to him "And I'm Miles 'Tails' Prower, but you can just call me Tails."

Riku nods his head as he pulls his hand away from Sonic's body, saying to the yellow fox in a pleasant voice "Its nice to meet you."

The teenage Overlord then folds his hands together atop his legs, saying to Sonic and Tails "Alright, I'm going to just cut to the chase about what my deal is."

"Though I'm a human, I've been granted the power to control the elements as the new carrier of the legacy of the Elemental Overlord himself. My goal is to seek out worlds that need my help as I travel the universe. I came here because this place looked a lot like my Earth from above, so I thought it was an anomaly." Riku explains.

Sonic then looks at the boy and says to him "So that's why you asked if trouble was brewing. I must admit, that sounds like a pretty sweet job you have there."

Riku is unsurprised by how lightly the blue hedgehog was taking his job, but even so the boy felt like stressing to Sonic as he thinks back to what he's had to deal with so far "Its not all fun and games out there…" and as he remembers the more pleasant moments of his journey he smiles and says to the hedgehog "But I won't ever forget the people I've met or the adventures I've had."

Sonic nods his head and goes on to ask "Say, if you've been going to other worlds, have you happened to meet other heroes? You know, Kirby, Mario, Pit, Link? Those guys were pretty rockin' when I met them a while ago."

The teenage Overlord responds by tapping his fingers against his chin, saying afterwards to the eagerly awaiting hedgehog "I haven't met Mario or Pit, but I did go to Kirby and Link's worlds…Though as far as Link goes…"

Riku had a sorrowful expression on his face for a moment, but decided against telling Sonic the truth as he smiles and says to him "He's doing fine."

"Heh, glad to hear that. I hope that crazy Master Hand guy gathers a lot of heroes again sometime. That was an amazing experience!" The blue hedgehog expresses a high amount of excitement in his voice, but Tails nervously rubs the back of his head and points out to his friend "But Sonic, weren't you almost turned into an immobile trophy?"

Sonic swung his right hand towards Tails, saying in a cocky tone of voice "Come on Tails, like his silly rings would have been able to catch me. Besides, since I gave Tabuu the Ta-BOOT everything will be fine next time."

"Fair enough." Tails says in a nonchalant tone, and with this current conversation out of the way the fox recalls the reason the three of them had gathered here in the first place and quickly turns to Riku and says with a snap of his fingers "Oh yeah, now I should get to work on your shoes. If you can just take them both off for me Riku…"

The teenage Overlord nods his head and quickly pulls his shoes off with a lift of his legs and a gesture of his fingers to move them off of his feet and hand them over to Tails. The fox, eager to get to work, stands up off of his stool with shoes in the gloves and begins to go towards his tool desk. Sonic quickly asks his friend "Hey Tails, how long is this going to take?"

The yellow fox responds as he pulls out a tube of glue as large as his head and flips off his mask "It might take an hour Sonic, so if you want to take a seat-"

Sonic swings his arms to the right and exclaims to Tails "Well I'll see you two later then!" And the blue blur leaps over the junk and quickly zips out of the workshop, his momentum pushing the door shut with ease. Tails sighs and says in a nonchalant tone "Yeah I should have seen that coming."

"It is in his nature." Riku quietly comments, which causes Tails to let out a quiet chuckle and say "I wouldn't have it any other way."

As the yellow fox works on Riku's shoes and the boy sits on the stool with his socked feet wiggling in mid-air, Tails decides to ask him "So hey, I was wondering something for a while now. Sonic said you hadn't introduced yourself yet, which implies you knew him right off the bat despite not being from this world. Why is that?"

Riku puts on a somewhat nervous grin once Tails asked that particularly volatile question, saying with an equally nervous chuckle afterwards "The answer might be a little hard to swallow."

"You already mentioned that there is more than one Earth out there. I don't you can unnerve me with anything else." Tails says in a bold tone of voice as he whips his left tail out and picks up a screwdriver.

The teenage Overlord ponders what the yellow fox said for a moment and goes on to state with a gesture of his right hand and a more relaxed smile "Good point. Well, I guess this isn't that hard to explain. On my world, both you and Sonic and the adventures you go on are depicted in video game format."

"Oh really?" Tails says with a lot of intrigue in his voice before he goes on to mention "We actually have video games based on our adventures here to. Some guy named Yuji Naka was the head of the development process, but he retired recently and passed on his work to his 'Sonic Team'."

Riku staggers for a moment as he hears that, his feet dropping to the ground to keep him stable as he mutters out "W-Well that's odd. Our Earth had a Yuji Naka at one point who also worked on the Sonic series, and he passed off the work to Sonic Team as well."

Tails goes on to mention "And you're sure this isn't your Earth?" To which the teenage Overlord responds with a shake of his head and a simple comment of "Can't be. My brother isn't here and not only that…"

Riku hesitated for a moment on what he was about to say, but sighed and just came out admitting "…You guys are actually considered fictional characters on my Earth. "

Tails smiles as he continues to work on the boy's shoes, saying in a nonchalant tone of voice "Hehe, so I guess it was quite a shock to find out that we were real, huh?"

The teenage Overlord nods his head and gestures towards the fox, saying to him afterwards "Even after three other worlds, its still hard to fathom the things I've seen."

The yellow fox then moves on to a different subject, mentioning to Riku as he tosses the glue bottle and screwdriver away and whips out a sander "At least this explains why Sonic trusted you so quickly. You used your knowledge of his personality to get him into a race and then performed a heroic deed to further earn his favor."

Riku nervously chuckles and closes his eyelids shut, saying in response to Tails' assumptions "Well that heroic deed wasn't intended, though if the chance arose I would have done one without hesitation not to earn Sonic's favor but because it would be the right thing to do."

With this particular subject out of the way, Riku goes back to sitting quietly as Tails works on his shoes diligently. After a good half-hour of work, the yellow fox casually tosses away a hammer that he had kept in hand, causing Riku to swing his body back to avoid being smacked in the face by it. Tails then turns around and holds out the teenage Overlord's shoes in his gloves, and surprisingly there wasn't anything different looking about it.

Riku naturally lets out a quiet "Huh?" as he gets up off the stool and takes his shoes from Tails' gloves, and with a confusion present across his face the yellow fox wags his right finger eagerly while going into a state of confident exposition and says "I coated your shoes in a custom-made gelatin designed to it so when you're running its like you are setting foot on empty air, removing all applicable force that you could possibly put on the ground in the process."

The teenage Overlord pinches his fingers together as well as he could without letting the shoes fall, and upon feeling a rather thin layer of substance he smiles and says in a thankful tone towards the yellow fox "Well crafted Tails, this will really help me out whenever I need to run."

Lifting himself up into the air and using his powers to put his shoes back onto his feet nice and comfortably, Riku lands back on the ground and accepts Tails' humble reply of "Glad I could help."

"Yeah, now I can race Sonic without causing any major collateral damage. It hasn't been an hour, so Sonic shouldn't be coming back ye-" As Riku points this out a rumbling sensation shakes the workshop, and seconds later the blue blur kicks the door open and grabs the attention of both the boy and Tails.

"Tails, Riku! Something exciting is happening outside, follow me to the bottom of the mountain, pronto!" Sonic exclaims with a great deal of joy in his voice before he promptly zips out of the door and leaves both Riku and Tails greatly befuddled.

The yellow fox shrugs his shoulders and says after a momentary sigh "Oh boy, this doesn't sound good if Sonic's excited about it…"

Riku nods his head in agreement and says to Tails as he begins to weave through the junk to follow the blue blur "I'll catch up with him and see what's going on. Grab some equipment just in case someone's trying to cause trouble."

The teenage Overlord then dashes out the front door and leaps into the air, flying past the mountain range on the east side and down to the grassy field below, where he finds Sonic standing still with one hand held above his eyebrows as he looks up towards the sky. Riku looks up as well and notices that the clouds have disappeared, replaced with a large, red metallic surface that is slowly moving forward through the air. The shadow cast by this surface dwarves the landscape as far as Riku can see, and its mass is so large that it shakes the ground with every second that it moves.

Sonic cocks a happy smile and says to himself unaware of Riku's presence behind him "Heh, I knew you'd show your face again sometime, Baldy McNosehair."

The teenage Overlord looks up towards the sky once the blue hedgehog says that particular nickname and notices a particular insignia coming into view on the bottom of the red metal. It was a rounded face that cracked a particularly creepy smile and had a bushy mustache, all of it painted with a pearly white coat. Riku lets out a sigh that contrasts Sonic's enthusiasm perfectly as he says "Well, so much for having a normal visit…"

The sound of a booming intercom activating heads towards the ground, followed by an all too familiar voice calling out to Sonic himself "Mwahahahaha! Its nice to see you again my one and only true, blue nemesis! Its such a pity though that I didn't bring you a greeting card from the WHITE VOID YOU LEFT ME IN…But rest assured that I will certainly get you back for leaving me to that fate in due time, and when I do the world will know the empirical rule of the one and only DR. EGGMAN!"

Next Time: Black and Blue