Recursion Error

Episode 6- The first day on the job


Sorun didn't really know what "Freedom Fighting" entailed when it came to being a member of the Freedom Fighters. He had enough context clues from all the conversations he had to make a rough gist of it: the big bad of this world, Dr. Eggman, would do something. This something would involve robots usually. The Freedom Fighters would fight those robots and/or help those affected by the maniacal schemes of Eggman.

He assumed at least, but it was a pretty good assumption. And he imagined there was other stuff involved, too, but he didn't know.

But he wasn't doing any of that right now, which suited Sorun just fine as it meant he didn't have to put his life on the line right now at the moment. No, he got the most glamorous job in all the universe today: guard duty. To "better help acclimate him to his life as a Freedom Fighter" and to "get some experience under his belt in a nice, easy manner to start with" and all other sorts of reasons they gave him to avoid saying "we don't really have anything for you to do since you're so useless".

He wouldn't even mind so much if he didn't know for a fact the kingdom had guardsmen that could do this job, and probably even do it better than him. But it was a relatively safe job for him, so he couldn't complain.

And the one chosen to escort him to this most prestigious of positions today? A walrus.

There wasn't much to say about Rotor, mostly because he'd been leading Sorun through town in relative silence. He was tall. Purple. More focused on carrying the... technological-whatever he was holding in his hand-claw fingers than on Sorun himself. He had a cool flight jacket, though, so there was that.

"Rotor, I've known you all of however many minutes we've been walking, and I've realized that I don't know a single thing about you," Sorun said, hands tucked loosely into his pockets as he walked next to the large Mobian. "These long, silent and awkward walks I've been having with everybody's been getting old, you know."

"I didn't know you wanted to talk," Rotor answered without even looking down at the human. "You don't really seem like the most sociable guy."

"I mean... I'm not," Sorun admitted, "but I'm still a person, you know? With feelings."

"Oh, trust me. Everybody saw your feelings when you screamed at Tails."

Sorun inhaled sharply, and then pursed his lips as a low hum rumbled in the back of his throat. "You know, Rotor, I don't know if you've ever been abducted before-"

"One time by a alien robot, yeah."

"I'm sorry I asked," Sorun spluttered. "Look, it was a really shocking experience for me, okay? They don't have things like going to other zones or aliens or killer robots or flipping Infinity Stones where I'm from."

"Ah. Sounds nice. Good for you. I hope you make it back to your peaceful life."

The human teen narrowed his eyes at the Mobian's bland tone. "You don't like me very much, do you, Rotor?"

"I don't dislike you, either. But what you did with Tails didn't set a good precedent."

That was fair, Sorun supposed, even if he didn't want to admit it. He'd made a lot of mistakes since coming here, but the "screaming at an eleven-year-old" blunder seemed to be the one hurting him the most. Some people seemed to understand him at least somewhat. Knuckles and Antoine hadn't brought it up. Sally and Sonic at least tried talking to him about it. Rotor was the first one to give him a cold shoulder over it, but again, he couldn't blame him for the passive-aggressiveness. Even if it did hurt his feelings the smallest amount.

It made him wonder what everybody else thought about it, and brought up the idea that maybe, just maybe, he should hurry up and talk to Tails so he didn't have to find out. And also to ease the mind of a child who was probably mentally eating himself alive because he thought he was directly responsible for ruining Sorun's life.

Well, he wasn't entirely wrong, but as long as he got back to Earth eventually it wouldn't be ruined. Greatly inconvenienced, perhaps, but not ruined.

"Here we are," Rotor announced as the two of them came to a stop. "This is a guard tower at the edge of Knothole City primarily used to monitor the distance for threats. You're gonna spend the whole day up there."

"Oh boy, Rotor," Sorun drawled as he looked up at the tower. "You don't even know how excited I am for this."

There wasn't much to say about it. It was a large guard tower held up by wooden supports with the only entrance being a wooden ladder underneath it. And in front of it? Green plains and trees for as far as the eye could see, which was pretty far considering it was the afternoon.

Looked fun.

"I'm glad you're excited. Here," Rotor said as he handed the large device he was carrying to Sorun. "This is yours for the day."

The device was dropped into his hands, and Sorun immediately went to work examining it. His first assumption was that it was some kind of rifle, but he honestly wasn't too sure. It had a grip and trigger that looked like it was made of piping. The main body and barrel looked like a metal tube, and there were a couple of panels missing that revealed a mess of wires and electronics on the inside. There was also a scope on top of it, but it was so large that it was practically a telescope.

It looked less like a rifle and more like a failed science project.

"Is this a gun?" Sorun questioned with raised eyebrows as he looked the weapon over. "I... Rotor, seriously, what is this?"

"That's a prototype personal infantry anti-Badnik weapon I designed a few years ago. It never really made it past the prototype stage," the walrus explained. "I had it lying around and thought, why not, you can get more use out of it than me."

"Ah-huh..." Sorun turned the gun over in his hand while squinting. "So is there a place to insert ammunition, or is it like a laser gun you have to charge or somethin'?"

"Oh, it doesn't fire," Rotor said, and Sorun nearly dropped the gun right there. "Freedom Fighters don't use guns. Sets a bad image of violence we try not to endorse. And these days the titanium plating on Eggman's robots are so tough that conventional ammunition doesn't really damage them anyways."

"So why am I holding this, then?"

"You're holding it because I modified the lenses on a old telescope I had and bolted it onto the frame of the weapon to use as a scope when I was making it. Just use it to keep an eye on the horizon."

Sorun slowly nodded, and then looked up at Rotor. "You couldn't have just given me binoculars?" he weakly asked. "I gotta haul this thing up that ladder."

Rotor shrugged. "Scope on that thing's way stronger than any pair of binoculars."

"Mm." He found that there was a strap on the weapon, and managed to sling the defunct gun over his shoulder before turning to grab the first rung on the ladder. "Welp. Guess I'll just go do that, then. You want this back when I'm done, or-?"

He turned his head to the walrus, but he had already turned around and began walking away.

"... I guess I'll just give it back when I'm done," Sorun decided, and then began climbing up the ladder towards the top of the guard post. "'Freedom Fighters don't use guns'... hell do they expect me to do then, punch the bulletproof robots?"


In hindsight, it was probably a good thing that Rotor had given him a gun that couldn't fire. Because he was at the point that he would have considered shooting himself to get out of the tedium that was doing this job.

There was absolutely nothing to do up in the guard tower but guard. It was quite literally just an empty wood box suspended in the air with chest-high walls and nothing else. Not even a chair for him to sit in. So what had he been doing for over an hour? He did his job and guarded by using the scope on the experimental gun to look out at the horizon.

But there was absolutely nothing. Nothing but wide open space, grass, and trees. He tried to pass time by looking at clouds but there were barely even any of those today. There was nothing. Nothing at all to draw his attention.

He wasn't bored to straight tears quite yet, but he was getting there.

"You know what would go a long way in making this place safe? Some damn walls," Sorun mumbled to himself. He had the gun propped up on the lookout box's wall, but he was so bored that at this point he wasn't even looking through the scope. "Seriously, Knothole doesn't have any walls. That's, like, fundamental defensive strategy number one or something in a kingdom. Make a wall that goes around the whole place. But nah, they don't got walls. Just a bunch of guard towers circling the place with poor fools like me to keep an eye out. And what am I even supposed to do if I see something? Climb down the tower and run all the way to the guards to tell them I saw something?"

A heavy sigh left him. "Maybe I'm overthinking the wall. We're fighting robots, right? And the only material out here they have in bulk is wood. Doubt a wall would do anything." He focused the scope on a nearby patch of grass. "It'd still be better than nothing, though. Just saying."

It probably said a lot that he was so bored he was having a full conversation with himself, but he was too bored to be at all concerned over it.

But something happened that fortunately dragged him out of his doldrums and made him straighten up in surprise. He heard the trapdoor to the guard box behind him open. So, while silently thanking the universe for a brief reprieve, Sorun turned around to the trap door to see who was coming up.

He went right back to cursing the universe when he saw it was a familiar fox Mobian sticking halfway through the door, staring right at Sorun.

"Oh holy hell I thought I was mentally prepared for this and I'm super not," Sorun thought, his breathing increasing to control his growing panic as he slowly set the prototype weapon against the short wall behind him.

This was long time coming. Even he could see that much considering how much everybody had been bugging him about it. And he agreed with them that, yes, he had to talk to Tails. But he hadn't seen it coming so sudden like this. He hadn't even taken to time to mentally rehearse what he was going to say to him!

"Well, he's here. Can't just ignore him now. Screw it, I'll wing it."

"Um... hi," Tails shyly greeted as he pulled himself up from the trapdoor, shutting it behind him. "Are you busy right now?"

Sorun glanced behind him at the nothingness stretching all the way to the horizon, and then glanced back at the fox. "Nah, not really," he answered.

"O-oh. Okay." He fidgeted with something he held in his hands. "I brought you this."

The human blinked in surprise. He hadn't expected anything, least of all a gift. His surprise only increased when he looked closer and saw that it was a glass of orange juice that he was offering him.

"... Orange juice?" He walked to Tails and slowly grabbed the glass from his hands. "You brought me orange juice?"

"It... the tablet said to." Tails turned his head away from Sorun. "It said you would appreciate it. Now seemed like a good time."

"That's... incredibly convenient and coincidental," Sorun noted, but nonetheless drank the orange juice. Speaking in a literal sense, it tasted fine. More than fine, really. Speaking from a metaphorical sense he didn't know if he'd ever drank anything more bitter in his life.

And the more he thought on it, the more Sorun realized that what Tails just said didn't make a lick of sense.

"Wait, the wood tablet? The thing that brought me here? It told you that I would like orange juice?" he asked. "You know, I've heard so much about this tablet, but I have yet to actually see the thing. What was actually on it that led you all to me?"

The ears on the fox's head perked up. "Oh, it was really weird. It had a really long string of numbers that took me a while to decipher, and when I did it became pretty clear what they were: coordinates. Specifically, coordinates that pointed directly to where your zone was in the multiverse, down to the exact spot where you found the portal. It was kinda scary, actually, how accurate and precise those numbers were, but everything about that tablet and how weirdly specific it was was weird."

"Ah-huh." Sorun took another drink of the orange juice. "Can I see it?"

"Uh... you can't. Sorry." Tails rubbed the back of his head. "It said we had to burn it after we deciphered the coordinates. It said it three times, actually. There's nothing left of it."

"Um. Okay then. Forget I asked." That sounded like the most suspicious thing in the universe, and left him with nothing but more questions. But he supposed that nothing could be done for it if it was already burned. "Do you at least know why it opened up in the middle of a random grocery store I just happened to be in at the time?"

Tails shook his head. "It just said to trust in the coordinates, and that the person on the other side would help us. That they would be a hero with a pure heart that would have the power to help us save the world. And with how bad things have been, we all really hoped that it would be true. That's why I was so desperate and pulled you."

"I see. Everybody's been saying how bad the war with Eggman's been, so I can see where you're coming from."

"Right." The yellow Mobian shifted his bright blue eyes down to his feet. "You know I'm really sorry for what I did, right?" he asked Sorun. "I... I didn't mean to pull you away from your life. I didn't want to drag you into our war. I just..." Sorun heard him quietly sniffle. "I just want all the fighting to finally be over."

Sighing deeply, Sorun pressed his backside to the short wall and slowly slid down to a sitting position. "I'm not good at this," he thought, "but I gotta say something."

"You know, it always bugged me," Sorun began, his voice causing Tails to look up. "People saying sorry all the time," he explained. "I never got it."

Tails looked up and tilted his head in confusion. "Huh?"

"Everybody always says it all the time for the littlest things. So much that saying sorry to somebody just feels cheap now. Sorry used to mean something, you know?" He patted the spot next to him and moved over, and Tails took it as a sign to walk up and sit in the spot next to Sorun. "Sorry's supposed to mean that you recognize you made a mistake, and that you'll make sure to correct it and never make the same mistake again," Sorun continued. "That's why it bugs me when people say it for little, inconsequential stuff. The right way to say sorry is this." He turned to Tails and softly flicked him on one of the three bangs of fur hanging off his head. "I'm sorry for snapping at you like that. I was really scared and upset. I'm fine now."

There was as much raw sincerity as he could humanly pack into that apology, and Sorun had even gone as far as to speak as softly as possible. He'd never been one to say sorry all that much in the entirety of his life, but even so, he felt that what he said just had to have the impact he was hoping it would have. Because while he was sincerely sorry for what he'd done, he just didn't know if he was physically capable of conveying that he was sorry.

But his words, much to his relief, seemed to do the trick. There was a cautious joy in behind Tails's eyes, and he had a small smile on his white muzzle so bright that Sorun could hardly stand it. "You really mean it?" he asked in a wavering voice. "You're not mad at us any more?"

Sorun pursed his lips and sighed through his nose. "Look, I... I'm still upset at this whole 'stuck in another zone' problem, but I've been here three days now and I'm calming down," he admitted, and Tails's smile lowered a little. "I'm never not going to be upset at it. Don't get me wrong, everybody here in Knothole seems like they're really great people and this whole war thing is really terrible, but if I had a choice between coming here and staying home I would have stayed home. That said... I don't blame you for pulling me in. Because things here seem really rough and I understand why you did what you did. So I can't blame you." He clicked his tongue. "I know this is a really bad apology, but it's the best I got."

"No, it's fine." Tails rubbed at one of the tufts of fur on his cheek. "This is actually a lot more than what I was expecting."

"Geez, I know I'm bad, but you don't gotta lay it on that thick."

A light chuckle from Tails. "I was just kidding. But really. Thanks."

Sorun mumbled incoherently, but managed to give the short Mobian a small nod. His head froze halfway in the nod though when he saw Tails leaning in dangerously close in what looked like a hug, and he held up a hand to stop him while scooting away a bit at the same time. "Let's, let's not," Sorun said. "Nothing against you. I'm just not, y'know, that touchy-feely."

"Oh. Sure." He looked slightly confused by what the black-haired teen said, but he nodded all the same, and the two of them stood back up. "Maybe we should just restart," he suggested. "My name is Miles Prower, but all my friends call me Tails."

"I'm Sorun," he greeted. "Tails, huh? Why do they call you that?"

He looked even more confused by that statement. "Uh... the tails?" he quietly answered as he gestured to his backside.

Sorun's eyes traveled down, and then widened when he saw not one, but two fox tails slowly swishing behind his backside. And then he had to mentally kick himself for not having noticed them earlier and putting together why he was named Tails.

"Dude, I'm not gonna lie. I didn't even notice those until you pointed them out," Sorun admitted, and Tails's mouth dropped open in disbelief. "But they're neat, I guess."

"Heh. Thanks." One of his tails moved in front of him, and he began to stroke it. "I've always been a bit self-conscious about them since nobody else has anything like 'em, but everybody's always been supportive over them, and they've helped me more times than I could count." He paused. "Well, technically I could count them since I remember all those time, but that'd take way too long."

Sorun rolled his eyes and snorted. "Real brainiac, huh?" he commented. "Actually, wait, you're the one that deciphered the coordinates that brought me here, right? And... I think Sonic even said that you developed the machine that made the portal?"

"Well, Chuck and Rotor helped out, but yeah, it was mainly me," Tails confirmed with a nod. "It wasn't so hard once you figure out the quasi-dimensional configuration of the-"

"Dude, how smart are you!?" Sorun gasped out. "I thought you were eleven!?"

Tails shrugged. "I've always been pretty smart." His eyes widened when he saw the way Sorun's shoulders slumped. "But don't feel so bad! Not everybody can be... you know, everybody's good at something! Just because I'm smarter than most people doesn't make me better! I can't run like Sonic, or lead like Sally, and a whole lot of other things, but-"

"Tails, it's too late. My self confidence is already gone." The pale teen leaned on the guard tower's wall and stared forlornly up at the ceiling. Tails reached out to him with a concerned expression, but he stopped when a small grin spread across Sorun's face as his body shook with light laughter. "I'm kiddin', man, don't worry about it," he said, and Tails chuckled along with him. "Seriously, though, I can't believe you're a genius and you're only eleven. Smartest thing I ever did was get an A in English class, which in of itself isn't really that great an accomplishment."

He turned around and rested his elbows on the wall as he stared out into the distance. He idly noted Tails step next to him, but didn't acknowledge him and kept staring forwards.

"Did you not do well in school?" he asked.

"Hey, no, I did decent," Sorun defended. "Straight B's and the occasional C isn't bad. And that one A averaged out the C's."

Tails hummed beside him. "I get it," he said. "Say, Sorun? What was your life like back in your zone?"

Sorun shrugged. "I mean, my life was pretty great until I got shanghaied into the global furry resistance from another universe," he admitted. "It was... average, I guess. I went to school, I had hobbies, I had friends. I only lived with my mom and didn't really have any other relatives, but it was still technically a family. It was a life. It wasn't a particularly exciting life, but it was mine. I was happy with it."

"Oh. I see." The suddenly nervous Mobian began to idly rub at one of his tails. "Did you have a lot of friends?"

The older teen's eyes squinted in thought. "To be honest, they were all less friends and more a lot of people at school I made jokes with and talked with. Nice folks, sure, but nobody I'd ever go out of my way to hang out with. Except David. He was cool. Kind of a know-it-all. I played video games with him." He looked down at Tails. "Sonic said that you all have been fighting Eggman for over a decade, right?"

"Right."

"So... you've been fighting him pretty much your whole life, huh, Tails?" It was a fact he only realized right there talking to Tails. And he'd just went on and practically bragged about having a quiet life to somebody who'd been in a war all their life. He felt embarrassed and uneasy. "That, uh... that sucks real bad, man."

Tails blinked, and his expression became unreadable as he began fiddling with his hands. "It hasn't been so bad," he said. "It's not like we ever fought Eggman all the time. There were quiet days. Quiet weeks, even. Sometimes even longer than that. And we've always had each other, so we were never alone. We helped each other through it all." He suddenly grew uncomfortable. "But it stopped being manageable when he got all the Chaos Emeralds," he said. "Everybody always says I shouldn't be anxious, but that's hard to do when I go out on missions and see the world outside getting worse and worse each time."

Humming in understanding, Sorun drummed his fingers along the top of the wall. "I don't really have anything to say to make you feel better," he mumbled. "Sorry."

"I thought you said not to use sorry so carelessly?" He felt a light punch on his side, and looked down to see Tails shooting him a teasing smile. "Just so you know, I think you're wrong about that," he said. "Just because people say sorry all the time doesn't make it any less meaningful. You don't have to act all awkward about apologizing all the time. You're really nice; I think everyone would like you more if you just opened up." He stepped forwards and pulled himself up to the top of the wall. "And Sorun? Don't worry too much. It looks bad now, but the Freedom Fighters will take care of everything. We always do. And we'll get you back home in no time." The fox gave Sorun a two-fingered salute, and- much to Sorun's confusion- his tails began to rotate. "I gotta go. Keep up the good work!"

It was around when Tails' tails began to rotate like a helicopter's rotor did Sorun begin to mentally check out. And when the fox jumped off the guard tower and began to fly away by using his tails like a helicopter, he needed to down the rest of his orange juice just so that he could set his mind straight.

"Oh, he can use his tails to fly. That's cool." Sorun gently set the empty glass on the ground next to him, but froze when a horrifying revelation hit him. "Christ, I'm starting to get desensitized to all this crazy shit."


Hours passed. Boredom mounted. Sorun prayed for death. Or at the very least a way out of this horrible guarding position.

Uneventful. That was the only way to describe how his day was going. Aside from the brief reprieve provided by Tails, absolutely nothing had happened his he was staring out of the watchtower. It was such a mindnumbing experience that Sorun was honestly shocked he hadn't fallen asleep at some point, and searched for any distraction in lieu of sleeping away the hours.

His desperation led him to staring at ants out in the distance through his telescope-scope.

"And we're off boys and girls, we're off," he quietly announced as he watched a sole ant carry a leaf three times its size up a tree. "Antony races up the tree carrying the largest payload in his whole life. He's looking to make his whole family happy tonight, but OH, big upset from Antony as he steps into the tree sap leaking out from that one spot on the tree!" Sorun hissed when he saw the ant and the leaf it was carrying become completely buried in the golden sap oozing out from the tree. "And he's down, folks, Antony is down and out. You hate to see it, but that amber gets the best of us at the worst of times." He sighed. "God, I'm bored."

"Enjoying yourself?"

Sorun yelped and fumbled with the prototype weapon in his hands. It nearly dropped out of his grasp, but he managed to lean forwards just in time to pull the gun close to him and cradle it safely to his chest. He breathed out a sigh of relief, and then set it down on the floor next to him as he angrily turned to the new voice that addressed him.

His anger quickly began to fade away into worry when he saw a black hedgehog with red stripes leaning on one of the tower's corners, arms crossed and crimson eyes affixed right on Sorun. He still had that scowl on his face.

"Guess this is happening now," Sorun mumbled to himself before clearing his throat. "Hey, how's it going? Shadow, right? I'm-"

"Completely worthless."

Sorun paused, and then let a slow breath out as he leaned back and rested his elbows on the wall behind him. "We seriously are doing this, huh? Okay." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them up to the dark hedgehog. "I've gotten some pretty cold greetings, but you're the first guy that went out of his way to straight-up say what's on everyone's mind."

"I'm not surprised everybody has been dancing around the issue," Shadow stated. "Nobody wants to admit they wasted all of the Chaos Emeralds we gathered on a useless waste of space like you."

"You're preachin' to the choir, pal," Sorun remarked with a roll of his eyes. "You seriously come all this way to insult me?"

"Of course not. I have better things to do than waste my time berating you."

"And yet here you are. Being an asshole and berating me."

The dark Mobian flinched, and then turned his head away. "You always use that kind of language around people?" he asked.

"Oh, dude, I've been holding myself back really hard in front of people to keep up with appearances and because it sounds like nobody talks like that here." The human crossed one leg over the over. "And boy, lemme tell ya. It's been a struggle. 'Cause I'm pissed, Shadow. I've been pissed out of my mind at everybody since day one here." He held his index finger up. "But here's the thing. Most everybody has been super supportive of me and I'm getting used to things here, so I've been getting better. But then this dick with stupid stripes comes up and starts telling me I'm worthless, something I'm already fully aware of, and it doesn't help that he was one of the people who decided to bring me here, so I don't really feel like censoring myself around-"

"I didn't decide anything," Shadow snapped at him. "For your information, I was the only one who knew that wasting all of the Emeralds on you was a foolish mistake. But they decided to make the decision a democracy, so any complaint I raised was ignored."

The single finger Sorun held up went limp. "I see." His hand flopped to the side, and his blue eyes slowly rolled away from Shadow. "You must be feeling pretty good about yourself, then, huh?"

All this statement seemed to do was make Shadow angrier based on how his face wrinkled. "No. As a matter of fact, I'm not. I'm not happy that I was right about that tablet being a waste of time. I'm not happy we threw the one advantage we've had over Dr. Robotnik in months away." He shot the human teen a pointed glare. "I'm certainly not happy we have to deal with you on top of everything else."


While a heated argument carried on below, an individual lying flat on his back on the roof of the guard tower was forced to listen to every word being spat back and forth. This figure was covered completely in a red cloak save for their human hands, which currently held a long sword with a broad blade.

The cloaked man's main focus was using the reflection on the sword to examine his teeth on a face that was otherwise shrouded by his red hood.

"Damn, this is boring," he thought as he used one of his fingers to pick at a tooth.

"Yeah, Shadow, I get it. I'm useless. I'm the last person in the whole world you need to remind. What the hell is your deal, anyways?"

"My 'deal' is that you infuriate me, human."

"Oh, wouldn't have guessed!" Sorun's voice grew intensely scathing. "Here I was thinking you trying to murder me by staring at me was a gesture of friendship. You know how uncomfortable it was making that speech when you kept looking at me like that the whole time?"

"You being a liability as you so eloquently put it is only part of the reason I find your existence irritating," Shadow coldly stated. "My frustration in you stems from the fact that you're aware you're useless and refuse to do anything about it. You've spent your entire time here complaining about your situation instead of actually trying to become useful."

"What the- dude, it's been three days! And what the hell do you think I'm doing right now!?" There was the sound of something metal being shaken. "And what, what do you expect me to do, huh? What, I'm supposed to find somebody to train me to fight? That it?"

"It would certainly be a step in the right direction. I believe there's somebody in the Freedom Fighters with extensive training in martial arts."

"Oh, so I'm supposed to learn how to kung-fu the bulletproof robots with my bare hands?" There wasn't a response from Shadow, causing an exasperated breath to leave Sorun. "I don't even know how you people do it. You don't use guns, so how do the people without powers like Sonic even fight robots?"

"... Mobians have superior physical capabilities to humans," Shadow reluctantly admitted. "Even Mobian children are vastly stronger than adult humans. The only reason humans even manage to compete with them is because they primarily use guns. Unfortunately, they're ineffective on Eggman's Badniks."

"Okay, newsflash Shadow: maybe a Mobian can punch a robot to death, but if I try it I'm just gonna break my hand off!"

There was an inaudible sigh from the figure cloaked in red, and he silently turned onto his side in a resting position as he tried to fight off sleep from the boredom.


"Look, what do you want from me?" Sorun threw his hands up in frustration. "I'm doing my best here."

"Are you?" Shadow questioned him. "Have you really been exploring every possible way you could provide even an iota of assistance to the Freedom Fighters instead of complaining? You don't think you're at least slightly obligated-"

"Obligated? Obligated!?" The human teen felt outrage at that statement. "You know what? You're right. Problem's me. I'm sorry I'm up here doing a job that, let's be honest, anybody else could do but at least it's something for me to do instead of nothing. I'm sorry I chose to join the Freedom Fighters when, let's face it, I don't belong with them! I'm sorry I'm a normal human and can't fight like a Mobian! I'm sorry I was minding my own business before I got dragged into some other universe's war!"

He really thought he'd buried these issues finally, but Shadow's words dug them right back up and now they were all he could think of. And along with that came all the anger he'd thought he'd finally worked through to some degree, all brought back through this argument. It was enough to make him want to throw the useless weapon he held at Shadow, but he grit his teeth and kept a firm hold on the gun.

But at the very least, something he said got to Shadow. He still looked as angry as when he'd arrived, but his eyes widened the slightest amount and his mouth clamped shut. They stood across from each other in silence, Sorun breathing noticeably heavier while Shadow was still enough that Sorun would have confused him for a statue if he didn't know any better.

And then the dark hedgehog simply pushed himself off the corner he was leaning on and crouched down to open the floor's trapdoor. "Just so you know," he said, "I actually did have a reason for coming here. You're relieved of your duties for today. And Rotor said he wanted you to deliver his prototype weapon back to him."

There was a loud scoff from Sorun. "You couldn't have lead with that?" he asked while shaking his head. "Sure. I'll go back to the HQ and drop it off."

Shadow simply grunted and swung his legs over the open trapdoor, and then stopped. "... Sorun."

"What?" he tersely replied.

"Nobody ever said you had to fight with your bare hands." He dropped out of the guard tower right after saying this without even bothering to take the ladder.

Sorun felt a bit alarmed when he saw the Mobian simply drop down, but when he looked over the edge, he saw that Shadow was walking away from the tower without even so much as a limp. "What was that all about? I don't have to use... actually, didn't Antoine have a sword? Guns aren't fine, but I guess weapons are fine if he gets to use a sword. So I should... use a weapon?" Sorun blinked in surprise. "There's an idea... Wait, was- was that him giving me advice?"

He looked again, but Shadow had already disappeared from sight. Sorun rolled his eyes, slung the defective gun over his torso, grabbed his empty glass, and began descending the ladder. "Okay, maybe he ain't as bad as I thought. Still a bit of a dick, though."

The teen's feet touched the ground, and every step he took away from the guard tower felt more and more liberating. There was a moment where, after walking a large distance away, he felt a strange sensation like somebody watching him, but when he looked back all he saw was the empty guard tower.

Sorun shrugged and turned back around, his mind stuck between the idea of the weapon suggestion and thinking about how bad he wanted to crash into his bed and sleep.