Many thanks to On A Happier Note for the support! I'm so glad you like it, and you have my word that I'll be posting often!

This one's 1.5 times longer than the others - enjoy!

Sonic ate slowly and deliberately. His oldest, worst enemy had just recited - and prepared - his favorite chili dog order, something only I knew by heart… Not even Amy knew it! As his brother, I felt responsible to clear away all of his confusion.

"I know what you're thinking. I'll show you." I left Sonic's cage and made my way through the labyrinth of hallways and to the storage area.

"Follow me, please," I said to the transfer robots. They were carrying the machine that I had modified and constructed, but they were not responding. They were powered off. I turned each of them on and repeated my request.

"Yes, sir," they chanted in unison. I led them to Sonic's cage, where he was gripping the metal bars.

"Would you trust me enough to get into this machine?" I didn't expect an immediate answer, nor did I get one. A minute later, he answered.

"I dunno… I just don't know…" I didn't like to see my brother in this state. He was confused and conflicted. I didn't expect him to be like this over a chili dog order, but I seemed to have hit a soft spot in his memory. We had enjoyed over - no exaggeration - a thousand chili dogs together. "Did you… overhear it or something? That's gotta be it. Just 'cause you know what I like on my chili dog doesn't mean anything!"

I was glad to see that he wasn't conflicted anymore, but I still needed his trust. "What do I need to do to prove it's me?"

"What's your first name?"

"Miles."

"Favorite flavor?"

"Mint."

"Food?"

"Chili dog with extra cheese."

"Movie?"

"You know I don't typically watch movies." Sonic sighed defeatedly. He was beginning to trust me, but I knew that there was still doubt. He didn't believe it was possible for me to be in Eggman's body. "Eggman used this machine to switch bodies with me."

"Is that… possible?

"Absolutely. I'll get in it first." I got in the pod closer to me.

"Get in the other one," he ordered cautiously.

"Sure…" I got in the other pod. "They're both the same."

Sonic furrowed his eyes in contemplation. I gave a warm smile.

"If I let you out, will you trust me to show you?" After a moment, he nodded. I unlocked his cage with the press of a button, and he slowly approached the other pod. After inspecting it, he entered it and shut the door.

"Switcher, activate." There was a glow, then darkness.

x

The short range of the pods allowed for a very quick recovery. Both Sonic and I were awake in seconds. We exited our pods and turned towards each other. There was a moment of silence.

"Tails?"

"Yeah, bro?"

"Can I have my body back?"

"Not yet. I've got some work to do. In the meantime, do whatever you want."

x-x-x

Angel Island was a short flight from Tails's house. I landed the plane right in front of the Master Emerald's alter and flew up the stairs by tail. I heard high pitch vibrations coming from the Master Emerald, just as I had the first time I was there, except there was no low pitch with it. I pushed the distraction from my mind and faced Knuckles, who was sitting on the next-to-top step. He stood up when he saw me.

"Oh, hey, Tails," He greeted. "Sorry about tackling you… You were out for a whole minute!"

"Oh, it's fine. I actually didn't hit my head or anything until after I passed out - I think it's just cause I didn't drink enough water or something," I lied. That's something Tails would say, right?

"Oh, uh… Okay, then… Did you come up here for something?" I suddenly remembered why I was there in the first place.

"Oh, yeah! Sonic was captured, and we need to get him out!"

"Well, why didn't you say so? Let's go!"

x-x-x

Sonic wanted me to fly him to Eggman's main base before I left. I did so quickly, not wanting to waste any time - I had to kidnap Eggman before he did anything crazy! After Sonic was safe in Eggman's base, I dashed off. I was amazed by my speed - I had no trouble at all breaking the sound barrier! I zipped through a forest and a field and reached my house in no time. Eggman was not home. Sonic said that Eggman went for help… Knuckles, of course!

I sped from my home to Angel Island. I knew that I couldn't get onto the floating isle, but I could certainly try. Before I did, though, I had a better idea. The communicator - I can get his location through it!

I pulled up the locator on Sonic's communicator. I spotted the orange dot that represented my own communicator, and I pursued it.

x-x-x

I had noted the direction in which the cockpit had flown from the Egg Carrier 2, and I was then retracing that direction. It wasn't long before I recognized where we were headed - a secret base of money in the mountains! Knuckles sat in the back seat of the plane.

"Where are we going?" I didn't expect Knuckles to know this.

"One of Eggman's secret bases," I answered. Not a secret anymore, I guess.

"How do you know where it is?"

"I hacked one of his systems," I lied. Surely Knuckles would fall for it. Sure enough, he did, giving a satisfied hum. I returned my attention to the mountains below. Passed it. I turned the plane around and quickly located my base. After landing, I shut down the plane and we dismounted it. My large, password-protected door was in front of us.

"Alright, I'm about to hack into the security system and dismantle the defences!" I entered the password. "We're in!"

Without a word of doubt, Knuckles followed me. I led him through the corridors of the base. We eventually came upon a room with a familiar machine in it. It was my Switcher™, but there were two pods attached to it. Seeing this, I was certain that Tails was using Sonic's body.

"Hey, Knuckles! These are the teleportation pods that Eggman used to escape! Let's go!" Knuckles obediently stepped in the pod nearest to him. This is too easy… This is way too easy… I pressed 'activate when ready' on the control panel and stepped into the other pod. There was a glow, then darkness…

The recovery was surprisingly short. I quickly left my new pod and faced Knuckles's. Inside the pod I saw the body of the little, orange fox that I'd been using for the past five days. I snatched Knuckles off of the ground and held his weak arms behind his back before he knew what was going on. He began to struggle and yell, but I found each of his futile movements to be feckless against the raw strength that I possessed.

I dragged him to my supply area - him protesting loudly the entire way - and found my stash of zip ties. I used two on his wrists, two on his ankles, and two to bind his ankle and wrist bands together - I could carry him as I would a briefcase. His tails, however, were a problem for me. I believed, from personal experience, that Tails's tails could rival even Knuckles in pure muscle power. I had calculated that his tails generate a thrusting force of just over five thousand Newtons - even though his tails were shaped very poorly for creating thrust! I was no aeronautical genius, but I knew for a fact that Tails's tails had to be insanely strong to do something like that! I used over a hundred zip ties on his tails. I wasn't satisfied, though, so I used a hundred more. Finally, not wanting to take any chances, I used the last few hundred zip ties. My five-hundred-pack of industrial zip ties, having a tensile strength of one hundred seventy-five pounds each, were all used up on the two tails of an undersized fox kit. Knuckles had gone quiet at some point during the procedure.

"Uh… You think that's enough zip ties?" I was annoyed by his comment - especially since he was doing so at my limited mercy! I suppressed my urge to kick the helpless animal. The cast of plastic around his tails would take… (One hundred seventy-five times five is… five hundreds and five seventy-fives… five seventy-fives is three hundred seventy-five, plus the five hundred is eight hundred seventy five, so…) eighty-seven thousand five hundred pounds of force to break. I calculated this with difficulty - Knuckles's brain was no good at math. Numbers aside, he would not be escaping any time soon - I could reveal myself to Knuckles.

"I guess now would be a good time to tell you that I'm not Tails. You've probably already guessed that," I said in my new, bravado voice. Knuckles didn't say anything. "I am, of course, The Great Dr. Eggman. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking the Master Emerald."

"That'll have to wait, Eggman," came the voice that I least wanted to hear.

Who's ready for the book's first fight? I am!

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