Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognized characters or gameplay patterns within this fanfiction. Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, Eggman, Blaze, and all related characters of such are owned by SEGA. All original character's are owned by me, unfortunately.

Exile 8.5

"Tails...?" Blaze asked questioningly. "You need to eat something. It's not good to just...waste away. It's...not what she would have wanted."

Tails was curled up into a small ball, the barest of signs that she could see. She actually couldn't, still, but her eyesight was starting to improve. A fish only diet was surprisingly high in nutrients that she needed, and her body was recovering with respectable alacrity. Her throat had healed surprisingly fast, so rather than burns it was probably just smoke and heat making it dry. A dry throat was just as bad, but far less likely to lead to permanent damage.

It had been almost four days since Katia had passed on the boat's floor. Tails had become catatonic after crying out her name, and was slowly wasting away. Spark was the only one capable of actually doing anything, and was taking it surprisingly well. Blaze knew that they hadn't gotten along well, but the vixen was quiet and respectful when talking about her. The first thing was that she refused to simply drop the body overboard, as Blaze had thought she'd say.

Instead, they had waited until the next small island before they buried her. Spark had done most of the digging, silent and respectful as ever towards Katia. Blaze still felt useless; every time she moved, she felt another singe of pain shoot through her. She could at least move around the boat now, four days later, but she wasn't going to be running anytime soon. Spark had set up one of the metal plates, using the same technique Tails had shown, to create a small roof that would shade them at the back. Blaze spent most of her days in there, with the rest of the food and water.

"I don't care."

"Please...Tails?" Spark whispered from the bow. As the only one who could see well, had decent abilities of movement, and had a fair idea of what was going on, it was up to her to steer the boat. Her leg had been braced, most likely done by herself as Blaze doubted that Tails was in the place of mind to do it. She could smell the self-hatred and loathing that wafted off the two-tailed fox, and knew he wouldn't be up for anything anytime soon. "At least one bite. Then you can throw it away," Spark tried to reason. She held out a small cooked fish, cooked using Spark's electricity.

Her own fires weren't responding to her, no matter how much rest she got. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She had overdone it, by a considerable margin, but she still needed to feel that she was of some use! Even the small colorful fires that she could've done without any issues were beyond her now. It was almost as if her pyrokinesis had simply vanished, leaving only the flames of destruction. And she wasn't going to reach for those, probably ever.

Tails reached over and grabbed the fish, staring at it. Without being able to see it, she could tell he was forlorn; his scent changed again to match it. He took a single bite from it, despite his ravenous stomach growling angrily at him, before he tossed it to the other side of the boat.

Katia's blood was still soaked into the metal. The half cut scream would echo into Blaze's nightmares, whenever she dared to fall asleep. There was nothing but ocean around for miles and miles. "Check for messages?" Spark suggested. Blaze shrugged, wincing as her shoulders flared up. She reached into the bail-bag, still trusty and whole even after the crap it's been put through, and pulled out the tablet. It still had a decent charge, despite the games that Spark's been playing late at night, when she thinks no one was listening.

Katia would have found them fun too, Blaze thought. And that sent her down another nightmare route, before she forcefully stopped thinking about it. She stared at it hard, hoping to see the small shape that would identify a new message. Nothing had changed, it looked like to her. "Nothing new," Blaze murmured as she moved the tablet out into the sunlight to charge. She hoped it was sunlight, at least. She could tell day and night, now, but anything more than shapes was blurry to her still. Color was right out.

"No harm in checking," Spark said quietly. She trailed off for a long moment, before she started to talk again. "Do you think you could...teach me that tongue?" she asked quietly. "The strange one that you and Tails both speak in sometimes. The one with strange words."

"Common?" Blaze asked, before she stopped. Of course Spark would be talking about common. While Blaze knew a good few languages, as was only proper for a diplomatic envoy, she'd never actually taught anyone before. "We could try, I guess. Tails?"

He groaned, curling up into a ball and pretending to fall asleep. "Alright, we'll let him sleep then," Blaze answered. Spark jumped up from the bow and sat down next to her, taking care to not touch her at any point. She smelled unclean, like it'd been a long time since she washed, and of blood and lust. Blaze knew she still hadn't put anything up top, and was still wearing the grass skirt from the Choosing. Better than Blaze at least; she still had to remake her clothes whenever they next used a bag. She had used the blanket to cover herself somewhat, but the pain made moving difficult.

"How do we start?" Spark asked, ever the attentive student.

"I think if we start with the simple words, and compare them to to what you already know, you'll learn faster. That's how I was taught, at least. Learn one language, and the second will be the hardest one. The third will be easy, and the fourth will be difficult only in attempting to keep them straight," Blaze said, taking a quick sip of water. Her throat was still dry and parched, but if talking was the only thing she could do, then she would talk all day if she had to. Spark nodded.

"Or we could just talk in common all day. That would make her learn faster," Tails piped up in common. She smelled the scowl, and didn't need to see it to know he was still angry with himself. He probably would be for a long while, and he would move between anger and depression as often as the sun moved behind clouds. Her own thoughts were scrambled as well, and she didn't want to imagine what his own thoughts were like.

"We could, but I feel that'd be rude. She wouldn't understand us clearly," Blaze responded so Spark could understand. Then again, Tails had picked up the language faster than anyone she knew. Maybe Spark could pick up common just as fast? "How did you pick up Ikan'Thoan so quick? I didn't think you had a knack for languages."

Tails started to answer, before he gave a slight hiccup and curled up again. "Katia mentioned that too. She thinks...thought I was unconsciously brainshifting everyone to learn the words faster," he eventually got out. Brainshifting? Another thing to ask later on, when he was more in the mood to talk.

Spark seemed to get it though. "It makes sense. I never felt it, but Katia would. She always did have better control," she said quietly. "Just...not the willpower to use it, sometimes. She preferred her weapons over anything."

"I keep saying myself that it's a nightmare that I'm trapped in, that she can't be dead...but...we saw Strike fall. She threw a knife into his back, right into his lungs. He shouldn't have been able to breathe, to do anything. We watched him fall!" Tails cried out, punching the side of the boat. It rocked it only a bit.

"Strike was a lightning channeler," Spark explained. "What's more, he was Lightning's son. The elder knew all sorts of things about lightning that many others wouldn't know about or think, seeing as he would get rid of everyone else who did. Most of us figured out how to use our channeling to support instant actions, sending lightning to the muscles underneath our skin. Strike was a strong one, too, and an internal generator. I don't doubt he had the willpower to temporarily force himself to move. You said Katia cut off his head? That would stop the blood pumping there, and the water shorted out any external channeling he tried. He was already on a time limit."

"He could...force himself back to life?" Blaze questioned. That was...haunting.

Spark shook her head, "No, but he could force his body to move according to his will, regardless of whether or not he was dying. He was a dead man walking, and he knew it. Hence why he went after Katia; she was the only one capable of defending herself. He probably thought once he killed her, the rest of us would be easy pickings."

"But she was better," Tails said softly. He smelled forlorn and lost, again. But there was another scent there, as if he was hiding a small smile underneath. "She was better, and she knew exactly what he was doing, and what she had to do to kill him for good."

"Yes," Spark answered. "Strike was considered the elder's successor, and had already started training on some of those other techniques. He may not have had the control for brainshifting, but I don't doubt he knew all kinds of things the rest of us wouldn't. Katia, a lightning channeler trained in the ways of a fire caller, would be the only one whose technique he wouldn't know. He trained me, and he knew exactly how to try to shut me down."

"But last time, in the forest, he shut both you and Katia down easily-"

"Katia knew, already, that this was going to be a suicide mission. She was prepared to give everything she had, just as I was. Doesn't mean we would have made it easy for him," Spark said. Blaze thought she heard a smirk in her voice, and there was a slight whine from the boat as Spark drew one of her claws against it. "But he's dead now, and he can't harm anyone else. His body was eaten by sokrays, whereas Katia's was not. In the end, she won. Rest, she will."

"Sokrays?" Blaze asked gently. What other kind of monsters were they going to be dealing with now?

"Water creatures. They smell blood in the water, and can almost glide through water. They're not vicious, they're scavengers, but they attack almost anything that bleeds in the water."

"Ah. Long rows of teeth pointed inwards, scales that seem far rougher than they actually are, and long tails?" Blaze asked. Spark must have nodded, as Tails answered for her in the positive a moment later. "We call them sharks. Good to know it's just the same ones here."

"Sharks come in a variety though. Sokrays are probably much the same. We should still be careful if we head out," Tails murmured. Blaze nodded before she rested her head against the back of the boat. She felt the burn itch behind her, but she tried her best to ignore it.

The wind wasn't as biting out here as back in Ikan'Thoa, or the mountains on which she and Tails crossed originally. What direction they were going in, she wasn't sure, but she was thinking south, west, or southwest. Or south by southwest. She'd have to take a look at the stars one of these days, assuming she could actually be able to tell. Even the sun, at its brightest, was barely a dull blotch of color.

"...What's the easiest word to start with, then?" Spark asked suddenly. "To learn, I mean," she finished. Tails gave a dark chuckle, before he reached for the tablet, shoving it roughly to a specific screen or app. He tossed it back gently towards the vixen, who grabbed it easily. "What are these...?"

"Kid's books. It has sound too. Cream gave them to me as a joke years ago when her chao, Cheese, wanted to learn how to read," Tails explained. Blaze gave a small giggle. That sounded like something her friend would do.

—Side T—

Tails was no stranger to anger, or depression, or self-loathing. He never had been, and he never would be. Even when he thought Sonic was about to die, all he'd seen was the red flash of rage, and the sudden clarity as he realized that anger had no outlet. Granted, Sonic had turned out to master the Chaos Control and had teleported out, but there was no way he'd known about that at the time.

He'd experienced death before, but never of one as close to him as Katia was. He'd helped Station Square out after Perfect Chaos had flooded it, pulling the dead bodies out of the freezing water. He was no stranger to death. But to have one like Katia, who was so full of life and hope and knowledge just...be pulled away, to be ripped away from them. He couldn't have stopped them. He certainly tried his best, but sometimes, his best wasn't good enough. It hadn't been good enough to save Sonic, and it hadn't been good enough to save Katia.

So what was his best? If he couldn't save anyone, what was he doing? The question urged him onwards and inwards, thinking about it as the days went by. He helped out once in a while, he had to seeing as how Blaze was recuperating after nearly cooking herself from the inside out, but most of it was Spark. Spark kept them going, and she seemed even lackadaisical about Katia's death. It wasn't that she didn't care, but it certainly appeared as if she didn't.

His thoughts were more scattered than usual, he noticed. They would randomly jump around, and he found himself snapping at either Blaze or Spark more before he caught himself. He didn't blame either of them for Katia's death; for that he blamed only himself. He kept himself out into the sun, slowly bleaching his yellow fur white to match his chest. If he got sunburned from it, which he was rapidly accruing, there was a part of him that thought it penance.

Blaze had taken to help teaching Spark how to speak common. He had a bunch of kids books on the Miles Electric, and he tried to tune out when the vixen was playing games instead of navigating the boat. She deserved some time off too. Blaze's sight was slowly coming back, far quicker than his medical scanner thought she should be. Although his scanner was also saying 'take to professional medical care', which he already knew about, but it wasn't as if there was a hospital nearby.

The air kept slowly growing more and more cold the further on the ocean they went. Spark was surviving for all three of them, grabbing the surface fish with an easy reach. Almost like what Blaze had been capable of, the first few days and weeks here. He thought they were heading south a bit, as the waters were slowly warming up, and every so often they would pass by a small beach island that Spark would pass on. Rarely she'd take them ashore just long enough to get some fruits or vegetables that were naturally growing, but they were at most islands for only an hour or two.

Now was one such time. The island was a smaller one, and Spark was out gathering what looked like some coconuts. She was crawling up the trees like a spider, occasionally letting a few of them plop down roughly onto the grassy ground. She seemed to be having fun, Tails noted, so he wasn't too worried about the way she would smash the coconuts together and jump from tree to tree. She'd healed surprisingly well, only in a few days of having her leg in a splint. Or she was hiding her pain, which Tails could fully assure himself she'd do.

He was also trying desperately hard not to notice the way her che- no, he wasn't going to think on that. Spark had no sewing experience, asides from weaving grasses together, and while he could stitch without an issue and could very easily make both her and Blaze anything they wanted, he'd also have to size them up, and that was something he wasn't willing to do, even with their express permission.

"It's okay to not be okay," Blaze said quietly from underneath the small hood. "But you shouldn't be making Spark do everything. Whether or not you chose her," Blaze finished.

"I'm...not trying. I just...I don't know how anyone can...just...leave me alone Blaze," Tails said after a moment. How can anyone just be okay after what happened? How can he ever be okay? He had the perfect chance to save her and he missed, and it ended up-

"No. No, I'm not going to," Blaze answered. "You're blaming yourself for something you had no control over. None of us did. Whoever Strike was going to grab was going to die, whether that be me, you, Spark, or even Katia. I allowed you days to grieve, but this wallowing in self-pity...I thought you had gotten over this denial?" she asked.

"Denial? If I had just moved quicker-"

"Then the same thing would have happened, but she would have bled out in your arms. I can't see, but I can smell blood. You know how much blood I smelled after Strike first attacked? I got the news from Spark a few days ago. His claws went through her chest. Her lungs were punctured, her heart was slashed. There's no coming back from that. Her life was over the instant he attacked."

Was...that how she died? Feeling incredible pain throughout-

"It wasn't. You've never died, Tails...but I have. You don't feel pain. You only feel intense pressure, and an ease on life as it slips away. She was fighting, but not for her life, at the end. She was fighting for ours," Blaze explained.

"When did you die, Blaze? You look pretty alive to me," Tails snarled, before he recoiled back. He hadn't meant to sound that mean, he hadn't meant to sound so horrible, and now she was going to push him away, and he'd be alone again and forever...exactly as he should be.

Blaze chuckled. "Alternate memories, Tails. Remember, I died in one universe, one timeline and was transported to another, where it was meshed with the Blaze there. I still remember dying, as much I don't want to. And yet, at that exact same time, I remember living. It's confusing."

"Sounds it. Where did that fire come from? The one back at the meeting hall. It wasn't...it didn't seem like fire."

Blaze stared at him, her grey eyes showing she still wasn't seeing well. Her eyes would probably return to gold, in time, but for now they were a milky pale grey, a sure sign of blindness. "The Flames of Disaster...we called them," she murmured, before she let loose a small murmur. "Sorry, I get headache's when I think of it. In that other time...Silver and I sealed the Flames of Disaster into me. Into my soul. I died. But I was only one half a whole, so I merged with my other half, and brought the Flames along. I was already a pyrokinetic at the time, and Silver tried to seal the Flames, Iblis, into himself first. But I was already on fire, I thought I'd live."

"So then..."

"Those were the Flames of Disaster. Iblis' power given the form of fire. I have some of the memories, too, of things that even I'm not sure happened. The timeline doesn't exist anymore, anyway. Iblis...doesn't exist anymore. Except for me. I thought I could control them. But I couldn't. It was like having magma poured throughout my veins, the water in my body turning to steam and plasma while it was inside, and couldn't escape. I couldn't think. Didn't want to, as I would have to feel the pain. Still can't."

"You're both in the after-battle breaking. Most of us go through it at least once," Spark said loudly as she tossed a few coconuts into the boat. They rolled around with a giant clang, and Tails winced as his ears were subject to the noise. The small grasses she threw in were much quieter before she started to push the bow towards the ocean.

"After-battle breaking?" Tails asked. It sounded like traumatic shock, but he had no idea how to fix it, and the Miles Electric didn't have it in its dictionary of diseases. Probably because it wasn't just purely physical. It was physical and partly emotional. The Miles Electric couldn't scan the mind. Yet.

"Yes," Spark said as the boat started rocking, and she jumped onto the bow. "It's fairly common for us," she continued, grabbing the mast and turning it so Katia's sheets, long having lost their smell of her, would put them around the island. "I smelled it on the both of you ages ago. It's why I've been handling things," she explained. "The only real way to treat it is through time, and letting you both realize that either you're significantly hurt or that a close friend is now gone."

"How can you just...be okay with all this!?"

"I'm not," Spark answered instantly. "But I've already done my grieving. As Blaze noticed, Katia and I knew we were going to die. Maybe not as violently as that, but we both knew that our trips were going to be one-way. Honestly, I'm more surprised that I'm still alive than anything."

"Doesn't make it okay, what they did to you," Blaze said quietly. Tails blinked in surprise as he turned to her. There was something more there, some subtext he wasn't privy too, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be. Not if it sounded as bad as Blaze made it sound. He lifted one of the coconuts that had split upon landing, making sure to not spill the water as he brought it to his lips.

"Which is another reason I'm...mostly okay. This isn't the first time anyone close to me has died," Spark murmured gently. "There's always mating, that usually takes the edge off most cases," she grinned as Tails turned to her in shock, spitting out a small amount of coconut water he had been drinking. "There we go. That's the face I missed," she grinned. "He just spat out a bunch of water in surprise," she explained to Blaze.

"I think I heard that bit," the cat agreed. "I am glad that he hasn't tried staring at us, or actually making moves on either of us," she teased gently. "Pass me an open coconut?" she asked. Tails rolled his eyes. Of course they were teasing him now.

"Mostly because if he did try on me, he knows I'd accept in a heartbeat," Spark grinned. She reached for the other open side, only to have Tails slowly slide it out of her reach with his foot. She shot him a smirking glare, before she dove for it. It rocked the boat a bit, but Tails wasn't worried as he grabbed it and held it away from her. "Tails! She's hurt, she needs the water!" she tried to reason.

"I know you're just doing it to tease me now. You don't need this at all, do you Blaze?" Tails asked as he steadied himself, not spilling any of the coconut water as he held it under her nose. "No, I don't think you do."

"What I need is some rings," Blaze complained. "I'd like to be able to sew my clothes back. I feel weird like this, still. And yes, I do," she finished as her hand gently grabbed it before Tails could move it away. "I'd also like to see things rather than some gray haze. Where are we going anyways, if we're stopping on so many islands?"

"Katia mentioned the Blooming Tides. I know the story behind them, which contain the notes of how to get there," Spark said. "Are the rings that you keep mentioning similar to the rings in the rainbow roads?"

"Almost one and the same," Tails answered. "The rings that we keep talking about help us, heal us, and protect us from lethal harm. In other words, if we'd had that one ring I actually had-"

"I don't think it would have done the same. They're not exactly the same as us," Blaze answered. "But if you had it and leapt in-between, it would have saved you, yes."

"Those sound handy. No wonder you keep mentioning them," Spark said. She grabbed a piece of metal that she'd cut off days ago, and used it as a makeshift knife as she tried to cut open some of the other coconuts.

"What are the Blooming Tides? And how...you know the way?" Tails asked after a few minutes of silence. Spark nodded.

"Yes. I know the way. I'll tell the story, I still remember it," Spark said quietly.

An easygoing chapter. After the events of 8.4, I needed a bit of a pick me up. Spark rolled a 16, which is why she wasn't as badly hurt (despite getting her shoulder thrashed and her leg broken.)

Until Next Time...which features completely new characters! Yeah, 8.6 is entirely a folk story chapter. And probably one of the most horrifying things I have ever written.