Disclaimer: All non-original characters are property of SEGA or their respective creators.
Inescapable Past, Act 26: Back to Reality
Tails stirred in his bottom bunk as sunlight suddenly flooded his dorm room.
"Sister Cora?" mumbled Charmy, peering over the railing of his top bunk.
"Sorry to wake you boys," said the gelada in the turquoise nun's habit, standing beside the curtain she'd just opened, "Although that is rather why I'm here."
"Is it breakfast time already?" asked Charmy, rubbing his eyes.
"Not quite yet," said the Solarian nun, turning to the bunkbed, "You boys have a visitor."
"Who is it, Sister Cora?" asked Tails, sitting up.
"Sister Tuza neglected to say, Miles, but I'm told they're waiting in the rotunda," said Cora, "Now, let's get you both dressed."
Already regretting his late night in the hangar, Tails hauled himself out of bed and sluggishly went through the motions of putting on his school uniform. Once the dormmates were in their vermilion blazers and plaid green pants — the latter garments had been tailored to accommodate their wearers' unique posteriors — the simian nun led the way out of their boarding house.
As they crossed the Solaris Institute's manicured grounds, Tails looked up at the palatial main building's towering dome silhouetted against the rising sun. Despite being enrolled in the on-campus prep school, and a part-time faculty member in its Aeronautics department, he so rarely got to see inside the Institute itself.
Consequently, the inquisitive fox lagged behind Cora and the half-asleep Charmy as traversed its labyrinth of marbled corridors. There was hardly a wall in sight that didn't bear the portrait of some famous Soleannese citizen from centuries past. None famous enough to have come up in Tails' fifth-grade history classes, but he did recognize certain names from street signs around the city.
At last, the gelada and her dozy charges reached a gallery that overlooked the rotunda, the grand circular lobby beneath that whopper of a dome. Its polished floor was awash with dawn sunshine flooding through its multiplicity of windows. In the middle of it, deep in conversation with a gopher dressed the same as Sister Cora, stood a brawny crocodile.
"Papa Vector!"
Charmy's yell echoed around the rotunda. An equally resonant grunt followed as the bee hit the crocodile's broad chest like a bullet.
"Good to see you too, little guy," wheezed Vector as Charmy squeezed his neck, "Good to see you too."
〜
"Morning, ma'am," said Perci, doffing her green cap to a bronze statue of Queen Martina Acorn, Sally Acorn's great-great-grandmother, as she passed by, on her way to open the park named for the late matriach.
The Station Square park ranger span a ring of keys on an index finger as she trod the familiar route. Her good mood dissipated when she saw the keys wouldn't be required. The tall black wrought iron gates up ahead her were shut but unbolted.
"Dammit, Staci," grumbled Perci as she opened the gates up.
Another screw-up like this and she might have to think about firing her twin sister. That would be an exciting prelude to their grandmother's birthday.
Given Staci's failure to lock the main gate, it felt safe to assume she might not even have closed the park's secondary gates. All the same, someone around here had to do their job properly. Adjusting her cap, Perci set off in search of her previous good mood. Dispiritingly, she found a rough sleeper on the first bench she came to.
The bandicoot held off waking them up right away. She didn't recognize them. Not one of the oldies she usually treated to a coffee and bagel. This one was younger. Much younger, in fact. Almost certainly a runaway, albeit a highly organized one. She had a backpack for a pillow, a hefty orange windbreaker, and an Extreme Gear propped up behind the bench.
"Excuse me, young lady?" said Perci, tentatively shaking the teenager.
The white lemur awoke with a gasp. The startled Perci stepped back as the youngster sat up, wide eyes darting about wildly. After patting herself down, she seemed to calm.
"Oh, err, hi," she said, waving sheepishly at Perci.
The park ranger replied with a tip of her green cap.
"Is it still morning?" asked the lemur.
"I should say so," said Perci, glancing up at the rising sun.
The youngster pumped her fists in apparent triumph. Springing to her feet, she pulled her backpack on and reached the Extreme Gear from behind the bench with her striped tail.
"Thanks for the wake-up call!" she said, leaping onto the hoverboard.
"You're…welcome," said Perci, pinching her cap's visor as the lemur pushed off.
〜
"Bee bee bee! Charmy Bee! Charmy Bee's got lots of honey!" sang Charmy as he slalomed around the masts of the yachts moored in Soleanna's waterfront marina.
Down on the boardwalk, Vector sat on a bench, watching the six-year-old buzz back and forth. Beside him, Tails tried to keep his strawberry ice cream cone from dripping on his uniform. It wasn't a breakfast Sister Cora would've approved of, but then, she'd been denied permission to join them on this before-school walk.
Somehow, in a solid half-hour of near-constant chatter, mostly with Charmy, Vector still hadn't said why he was here. Frankly, it was starting to strain Tails' patience. He and Charmy would both be due in class soon, and he was due to show a group of college students how to service a centrifugal compressor later on.
"Vector?"
The smiling crocodile turned to him. "Yes, Tails, my man?"
"Umm, is everyone, like, okay in Station Square?"
"I sure hope so," said Vector breezily, "Haven't been up there for a few days."
"You haven't?"
"Nope."
"How come?"
"Just…needed to get away, I guess," said Vector, looking out to sea, "Had some thinking I needed to do."
Tails licked his ice cream pensively, psyching himself up to his next question.
"About…Vanilla?"
The crocodile breathed a long, deep sigh. "You know about that, then?"
Tails nodded solemnly.
"Does Charmy?"
Tails shook his head.
Vector frowned.
"Then how…?"
"Oh, the Institute guys asked me to help repackage some data, so it was more Nicole-friendly."
The fox was surprised to see the faintest of smiles break out on Vector's snout.
"Tails, my man, you are way too smart to be dressing up like that," he said, ruffling the fur between the ten-year-old's ears.
"I happen to like fifth grade," said Tails pointedly, "Lemme be a normal kid for a while."
"Will do, my man," said Vector, "Although I might need to hit you up for a ride home, once you're done with school."
〜
"Sweet Solaris," breathed Tangle, stepping off her Extreme Gear outside the gates of the Alicia Acorn Academy. The black wrought iron archway had looked far less grand online.
The lemur nervously straightened her gold-and-black-striped necktie. A cursory sniff of her polo earlier had led to a panicky search for a public restroom to change her clothes. Putting on one school's uniform to visit the campus another felt a little eccentric, but the blush-pink blazer and pencil skirt were all she'd brought with her.
"Here goes nothing," she murmured, tucking her hoverboard under one arm.
A school this fancy surely had some rule against such gadgets. Her own high school didn't, but then, barely anyone in Spiral Hill could afford an Extreme Gear. She'd done well to possess a cellphone without a keypad, and only after saving two years' worth of allowance.
Tangle started cautiously up the school's winding driveway, half-convinced there were cameras hidden in the trees lining the route, watching her every move. She'd read in depth about how the Freedom Fighters kept Knothole Village undiscovered for the entire war. It stood to reason a school with Sally Acorn as principal would have similarly robust security measures…right?
"Sure it does, brain," she muttered, rapping her skull with her knuckles. Her imagination could always be relied upon to run riot when she was anxious.
As she approached a sharp bend in the driveway, the lemur heard a familiar commotion coming from beyond the foliage up ahead: children playing sports.
"That's just mean," she grumbled, shaking her fist at the sun. Not that she really believed in Solaris — her family were by no means Solarian — but it helped to have someone to blame in these instances.
Resisting the urge to jump on her Extreme Gear and hope no kids noticed the blush-pink blur whizzing by, she proceeded on foot. Her nerves eased when she saw the average height of the players. The little girls looked much too wrapped up in their game of netball to pay her the slightest bit of attention.
Unfortunately, the teal perentie in the purple tracksuit overseeing the shouty contest wasn't nearly so absorbed. For the briefest of moments, Tangle locked gazes with the tall lizard. She swiftly averted eyes. The perentie didn't.
"Well…you tried," the lemur groaned. Certain she was about to be busted, she pressed on anyway.
Meanwhile, the perentie handed her whistle to a ram standing beside her, circumvented the netball court, and climbed a path up onto the driveway.
"Hey, wait up!" she called after Tangle in a raspy voice.
The lemur duly froze.
"Is that a Spiral Hill Secondary blazer?"
Tangle whirled round to find the perentie jogging towards her.
"Wowzers. I haven't seen one of those since…" — she paused to scratch at her pierced septum — "Gee. It must be since graduation."
Tangle's jaw slackened. A Spiral Hill Secondary alumna? Here?!
"Y-y-you went to school there?"
"Ha! I grew up in that tourist trap! Left as soon as I could, but doesn't everyone?" said the perentie, "Name's Dulcy, by the by."
Apparently too stunned to move her arms, Tangle shook Dulcy's hand with her tail.
"I'm Tangle," she said timidly.
"You're a long way from home, Tangle," said Dulcy, letting go of the stripy tail.
The lemur nodded passively. No arguments there.
"What brings you down here?"
Tangle tugged on the collar of her creased school shirt, as if it would help her swallow the lump in her rapidly drying throat.
"Does a, uh…does a kid called Amy go to school here?"
The perentie cocked a scaly eyebrow, pierced with two studs.
"Pink hedgehog. Little younger than me. Too sweet for her own good. About yay big," Tangle went on, approximating Amy's height with her tail. She held it there, waiting for Dulcy to say something.
"Does that Extreme Gear work?" she asked eventually, eyeing the hoverboard under Tangle's arm.
"Huh?"
"We'll get there quicker on that than if we walk."
"Where's 'there'?"
Dulcy stooped forward, lowering her face to Tangle's eye-level.
"Where Amy is, dummy," she said, her raspy voice rich with kindly condescension.
A rush of excitement trumped Tangle's discomfort at the perentie's over-familiarity. She jumped back and threw down her Extreme Gear. Ground proximity sensors automatically activated the hoverboard's antigrav pads. Dulcy grinned from cheek to cheek.
"So, if I stand here," she said, mounting the Extreme Gear, "You can sit here."
"Wha?!" blurted Tangle as two scaly hands grabbed her waist.
Reminding herself this was her ticket to seeing Amy, she bit her tongue as Dulcy lifted her up onto her left shoulder. She promptly coiled her tail around the perentie's waist.
"That's the spirit!" said Dulcy as they took off up the driveway.
The ensuing ride made Tangle regret not making more of a fuss about being handled like a toddler. On the other hand, Dulcy's shaky handling of the Extreme Gear made her feel a lot better about her own aptitude in that department.
Swerving multiple times to avoid clusters of purple-blazered students on the lawns surrounding the main school building, Dulcy finally brought them to stop near a fence painted in the colors of the rainbow. The perentie dismounted but kept on moving. Before Tangle could protest, she was placated by what she saw over the fence.
Amy Rose stood in a playground full of the school's youngest students, dressed almost the same as she had been yesterday — white shirt, red necktie, gray skirt, her left arm in a sling — holding one end of a long skipping rope. A black cat in a red bodywarmer held the other end. Halfway between them, a bunny in a purple gingham dress sang some ditty as she nimbly dodged the rope.
Spellbound, Tangle didn't notice the errant inflatable soccer ball until it bounced off her nose.
"Sorry, lady!" the guilty little raccoon called up.
Beneath her, Dulcy chuckled. "Shall we go round?"
"Nah. I've got this," said Tangle. She'd climbed trees in this pencil skirt. Vaulting a fence was nothing by comparison.
Leaping clear of Dulcy's shoulder, she rolled in midair and landed on her feet in a sandbox. In doing so, she squished a half-built sandcastle, covering two stunned bear cubs with the granular debris.
"Sorry about that," said Tangle sheepishly, eyes darting between the sandy children. As a peace offering, she dusted them down with her tail. The ticklish duo giggled.
"Tangle?"
The lemur looked up to find Amy standing at the edge of the sandbox, flanked by the black cat and the bunny with the floppy ears. Tangle rushed over to join them.
The cat lifted her sunglasses as she approached. "Wait, you're that kid from the helipad!"
"That's me," said Tangle meekly.
"What're you dressed like?"
"Err, like I'm fifteen?"
"Is this your boss's idea of sending someone undercover?"
"Actually, I quit—"
"Lay off, Hersh!" yelled Dulcy, craning her neck over the fence. "Kid's harmless."
Taking advantage of Hershey's distraction, the bunny in the purple gingham dress stepped into the sandbox.
"My name's Cream. Pleased to meet you, Tangle," she said, thrusting out a paw.
Clasping the paw with both hands, the lemur shook it giddily. "Pleased to meet you, too!"
Cream smiled sweetly as Hershey placed a hand on her shoulder and steered her away. Watching them head for the playground's jungle gym, Tangle turned her attention to Amy.
"Hi," she said, sitting down on the edge of the sandbox, "Cute kid."
"She's a good girl," said Amy, sitting beside the lemur.
"I'm glad one of us is," said Tangle, gently nudging the twelve-year-old's good arm.
The hedgehog squirmed at the contact.
Sucking in her lips, Tangle tucked in her elbows and parked her hands in her lap.
"Sorry," she mumbled.
Amy glanced across at her. "It's okay…just—"
"Stranger danger?" said Tangle.
She kept forgetting about that inauspicious first meeting in New Tek City. Probably her brain trying to do her a favor. Not her finest moment, that.
"I'm not here to clobber any of your friends up, I promise."
The hedgehog snickered.
"You said you quit, right?" she said, "Why aren't you at home?"
"I had to come see you first."
Amy blinked at her matter-of-fact tone.
"Why?"
"It's about your pal Shadow. He's…okay. He was still asleep when I saw him last night, but he's…he's okay."
Tangle jounced as Amy squeezed her waist like a kid seizing their favorite plushie.
"You came all that way just to tell me that?" she asked, cozying up to the lemur.
"Not just that," said Tangle, wrapping her tail around them both, "I had to tell you were right all along."
"About what?" said Amy, peering up through her bangs.
"I am too nice to work for Jet. That guy Mighty taught me a few things about him."
"Where is Mighty?"
"Not actually sure," said Tangle, "The bo…Jet cut me out of whatever they were up to."
"Oh," uttered Amy, lowering her eyes.
"Your other friend's alive, too!" Tangle hastened to add, "As in, absolutely positively alive."
"Espio's okay?!"
The lemur nodded. The hedgehog's good arm squeezed Tangle's waist tighter. The lemur put both her arms around Amy, resting her chin on a bed of braided quills. The hedgehog nuzzled up against Tangle's lapels.
"See you later, Amy," Cream chirped as a chorus of bells rang nearby.
Tangle glimpsed a smirking Hershey glance in their direction as she walked the bunny inside.
"Do you need to go, too?" she asked quietly.
The ensconced twelve-year-old shook her head.
"Do you just really like wearing that tie, then?"
"Not like I'm gonna be wearing a whole lot else, right?" muttered Amy, her voice muffled.
"When you put it like that—"
"Amy? Are you still out here?"
The cuddlers looked up to find the playground empty but for a certain chipmunk in a blue gilet. Tangle promptly toppled backwards, almost taking Amy with her. Escaping the embrace in time, the hedgehog looked down at the lemur lying on her back in the sand. Had she fainted?
"Who do we have here?" asked Sally as she walked over.
"That's, uh, Tangle," said Amy, "She's the one who was nice to me yesterday."
The chipmunk eyed the lemur quizzically.
"I'll look forward to my introduction," she said, squatting in front of Amy, "Listen, I had a call from Elias. This isn't information he's really supposed to share, but he's making an exception for you."
Amy nodded warily.
"He said that they're expecting an ambulance to arrive in the next few hours. They're transferring Shadow in from Westopolis."
There was a soft rustle as Amy landed in the sandbox beside Tangle. Quiet but conscious, she beamed.
The Alicia Acorn Academy's principal laughed softly.
"I can't really leave you out here unsupervised, but I'll tell Hershey to take her time, okay?"
"Mmhmm."
Amy stayed where she was, blinking away happy tears as Sally's footsteps faded. Sighing contentedly, she wriggled a little closer to Tangle.
"You're a good girl, too," she whispered, kissing the lemur on her fluffy gray cheek.