Chapter 1: Double Time
"Okay," Tails said as he stepped back to admire the device he'd spent all morning working on. The big archway made from recycled vehicle parts had a number of little modules and fuel canisters attached to it, several copper wires bearing brightly coloured coverings trailing every which way around the device. "The Miles Matter Transporter, or MMT, is ready for its first official test run."
The two-tailed fox walked over to the nearby workbench and picked up the Miles Electric, his multi-purpose tablet device of vibrant yellow.
"I can program commands into it remotely with my Miles Electric," he continued, expositing aloud to himself as he often did when he was alone in his workshop. "Hmm. Let's see… I think I'll see how well it transports inbound matter before I test its outbound capabilities; don't wanna accidentally teleport myself into the heart of a volcano… or into a women's locker room. Again," he went on, blushing as he remembered that one time he had attempted to hack one of Doctor Eggman's teleportation devices to send himself away from danger, only to land himself squarely inside a locker at the gymnasium in Downtown Station Square. The sixteen year-old human girl who had opened the locker just two seconds later had been mortified to find a two-tailed fox boy with fluffy yellow fur clad in little more than some white gloves and a pair of red sneakers wedged between her sports towel and her can of deodorant, the animalistic youngster only able to smile meekly, blush profusely and mutter, "Sorry, m-my bad." The events that had directly followed this most awkward encounter were something Tails would dearly love to forget, not least because Amy had given him an earful when she'd heard about the incident, and Knuckles still hadn't stopped teasing him over it.
Exhaling deeply to try and keep himself focused on the task at hand, Tails tapped a few commands onto the Miles Electric's screen, the MMT beeping in response before beginning to whirr with power, a translucent purple energy quickly filling the metallic archway. The young inventor decided that he'd summon Sonic to the workshop; the world's fastest hedgehog probably wouldn't object to suddenly being yanked away from whatever he was doing… assuming he wasn't currently eating a chilli dog, or else Tails would get far worse of an earful from the Blue Blur than he'd ever gotten from Amy, and that was barely an exaggeration.
"And here we… go," Tails concluded, making on final tap on the Miles Electric's screen before the MTT began to let out an electronic whine that quickly increased in volume and pitch, prompting the fox boy's blue eyes to light up in excitement. "It's working!" he cried, smiling brightly.
"WARNING: POWER LEVELS UNSTABLE. COMMENCING EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN PROTOCOL IN THREE, TWO…"
"Oh, no, no, no, come on! Come on!" Tails pleaded, tapping at his tablet's screen to override the MMT's emergency shutdown protocol before making a few more taps and swipes to redirect the power flow of several of the transporter's fuel canisters. "I can stabilise it! I know I can! I can do this!"
Famous last words.
"CRITICAL ERROR. ANTIMATTER EXPLOSION IMMINENT. REPENT SINS."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, NO!" Tails yowled. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but now, there was only one way to ensure that his entire workshop didn't get vaporised with him still inside. His gloved fingers scrambled frantically across the screen of the Miles Electric, the two-tailed fox quickly activating the 'Failsafe' protocol. A vibrant blue dome of energy suddenly flared into existence, surrounding the MMT. His work done, Tails flung himself towards his workbench, hunkering down beneath it just before the transporter exploded.
KABLAM!
Thankfully, Tails' portable shield generator did its job and kept the explosion contained within the blue force field, albeit just barely, the force field fizzling out even before the dust had settled. Tails coughed and spluttered as the smell of smoke reached his nostrils. Right on cue, the smoke alarm went off and the emergency sprinklers Tails had installed in the workshop's ceiling activated, spraying a controlled rainfall of water over the scene. The two-tailed fox, on his part, just groaned, his head fur becoming matted with dampness in a matter of seconds thanks to the cool liquid.
"Oh, man," he said woefully. "I spent weeks just drawing up the blueprints for the Miles Matter Transporter, and now it's—"
"In ruins? No kidding," a curt yet eerily familiar voice finished for Tails, the speaker stepping out of the haze of smoke and water.
Tails' eyes widened. This sudden intruder looked almost exactly like him, only with a much longer fringe of head fur that spiked upward with the help of hair gel, similarly spiked tufts of fur at the tips of his animalistic ears. His whisker-like 'beard' of facial fur was similarly well-groomed at the ends, as were the tips of his twin tails. He was dressed in a black vest with yellow and blue highlights, a pair of black jean shorts that left his ankles visible, black and white sneakers and mismatched gloves - one black and silver, one white and grey. Behind him, several dark grey appendages of a mechanical nature were grouped together in a uniform cluster, protruding from his lower back in tandem with his twin tails.
"What in the…? Wh-Who are you and how did you get in here?" Tails asked nervously, taking a wary step back. The cold look in this guy's blue eyes, as well as the menacing scowl he wore on his face were made all the more unnerving thanks to the fact that his face was the splitting image of Tails' own; it was as though the fox boy was looking at a literal dark reflection of himself.
The stranger… No, the double bared his teeth in undisguised aggression. "My name… is Nine," he elaborated, his tone icy, "And as for what I'm doing here…" The mechanical protrusions spread out from behind him, coming into view as a series of prosthetic appendages that ended in startlingly sharp-looking spikes - seven additional tails to go with those he was born with. "…Why don't you tell ME?!" he finished in a vicious snarl of a shout before leaping forward, gunning right for Tails, who yelped in alarm, barely able to leap out of the way in time, one of Nine's spiked appendages jamming into the floor right where the workshop owner's bare chest, the last line of defence before his now rapidly beating heart, had been just a second ago.
"St-stop!" Tails pleaded with a yelp, his words ripe with fear. "J-Just wait a sec!" Nine clearly wasn't in the mood to listen to reason, however, instead lashing out with another frighteningly fast jab with one of his metal tails, then another and another.
"Why did you bring me here?! Who are you?!" Nine roared, soon backing Tails into a corner, blocking off his escape with two carefully placed jabs into the wall with those terrifying tail spikes, the relatively unclothed fox now absolutely terrified. "ANSWER ME!" the fox clad in dark colours screamed, one of his metal appendages taking careful aim at the spot right between Tails' eyes, some sort of built in laser pointer indicating the spot in-question with a red dot.
"I…I don't understand!" Tails insisted, tears starting to visibly well up in his eyes. "I wasn't even trying to bring you here! I don't even know who you are! Or why… why you look like me…" he finished in an awkward mumble, averting his gaze downwards, letting out a tearful sniff.
Nine let out a low, menacing, almost animalistic growl, every one of his tails - the organic and the mechanical - bristling. Then, much to Tails' surprise and relief, Nine sighed heavily, his posture relaxing as he went about wrenching his tail spikes out of the wall, lowering the tail that had been focusing on his trembling double's frontal lobe, and retracted all seven of those terrible spiked weapons back into their cluster formation.
"Okay, clearly, there's more going on here than either of us fully understands," the more menacing fox boy said, his tone noticeably more calm now, though it sounded somewhat forced, like he was struggling to keep his anger, his intimidation factor, in check. "Perhaps I acted somewhat rashly."
Tails closed his eyes for a long moment, seeing to be trying to compose himself. He let out a tearful sniff, reaching up to wipe his eyes before opening them once more.
Nine sighed again, his firm gaze subsiding to be replaced by a look of guilt. "Look, I… I'm sorry, alright? I shouldn't have attacked you like that." Four of his several mechanical tails spread out behind him, soon touching down on the workshop's floor. The vest-wearing fox surrendered his body weight to the metal tails as they elevated him off the ground slightly, acting as a sort of makeshift chair. "Must be pretty crazy, right? Getting attacked by someone who looks like your twin." He averted his gaze, a sad smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "You must think I'm your evil twin come to beat you down and take your place or something, huh? Rest assured, I'm… I'm not that." He then chuckled softly, a subtle yet genuine display of mirth. "I mean, I'd like to think I'm not as cliché as that."
Tails managed a small chuckle of his own at that. He then followed up that chuckle with a sigh of his own. "You know what the real sad thing is?" he said. "I've been driven into a state of paralysing fear by things that are way less scary than you. I once cowered before a living blob of water with angry eyes. Water." He let out another chuckle, a more cynical one, before sighing again. "Looks like we both have a tendency to let our emotions get the better of us," he concluded, holding out his hand. "I'm Tails. I think it was my matter transporter that brought you here - by accident, of course. That's what I get for not quadruple-checking the wiring."
"Yeah, I kinda figured it was the matter transporter that brought me here," Nine said as he shook his fellow fox boy's hand, the look on his face silently telling Tails not to treat him like an idiot. The fully dressed fox then smirked. "I mean, I was hardly going to pop out of the toaster."
Tails gave a light laugh at Nine's feeble attempt at humour. "You're as bad as my buddy Sonic with quips like that," he said.
Nine's eyes lit up. "Sonic?" he repeated. "About yea high, spiky and blue, incredibly fast, never quits with the optimism and corny one-liners?" he asked, holding up one hand to indicate Sonic's height.
"You know him!" Tails exclaimed, his entire face lighting up with a broad, open-mouthed smile. "I knew that quip about the toaster had Sonic written all over it! He's rubbed off on you, hasn't he?" he asked knowingly.
"Heh. Hopefully not too much; I'd like to think I know when to stop talking," Nine said, prompting Tails to really burst out laughing.
"Oh, yeah, that's for sure! I mean, don't get me wrong; he's my best friend and nothing will change that, but his quips can be a bit much at times, even I'll admit." The two-tailed owner of the workshop chuckled knowingly. "Not to mention his bad habit of—"
"Rushing headlong into situations he's not prepared for?" Nine guessed, waggling one eyebrow knowingly.
"Acting without thinking and making things worse," Tails confirmed.
"And he never, ever shuts up about his love of chilli dogs," the two foxes said in perfect unison, both sharing a laugh afterward.
"Oh, wow. I can't remember the last time I laughed so… genuinely," Nine realised aloud. "New Yoke City's really done a number on me."
"New Yoke City? Can't say I've heard of it," Tails admitted. "Sounds like something Eggman would come up with."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it, Tails," Nine mused, turning away, gazing distantly into the corner of the room. You think you've got it bad with one Eggman? Try juggling five."
"Five?! Yikes, that is rough."
"Eh. It's not so bad now that they're gone," Nine said as he turned to face his double once more. "The resistance has been rebuilding the city, turning it into something better. Well, better for the other citizens, at least; can't say I'll ever be a fan of the place no matter what it's like or who's in charge. That's why I tried to turn the Grim into a paradise. Bit off more than I could chew with that one…" he admitted, adverting his gaze, guilt passing over his face once more.
Tails tilted his head. "The… Grim?"
Nine looked up at Tails, appearing surprised. "You mean, Sonic never told you about that? About the Shatterspaces? About… me?"
Tails shook his head. Nine, on his part, looked genuinely hurt. Then the vest-wearing fox growled.
"I should've known he wasn't actually my friend!" he declared, glaring at Tails with a fierce look in his eyes again. "Every time he looked at me, every time he talked to me, all he ever saw was you!" he declared, prodding the workshop's owner in the chest accusingly with a gloved finger. "I was just a broken version of you that needed to be fixed, that needed to go away so he could have you back! That's all he saw me as! Every other time he addressed me by name, he'd call me Tails instead of Nine! He never saw me as my own person! He never—!"
Nine stopped mid-sentence, realising that Tails was staring at him with a mixture of fear and concern. The vest-wearing fox sighed heavily.
"…Forget it," he said. "I can't blame you for something he did." He turned away, his ears drooping. "Guess I really was just the throwaway 'Tails' in his eyes…" He then muttered something that caught Tails completely off guard, the fox clad in dark clothes letting out a sad sniff. "And to think I'd actually found my… my first real friend…"
As Nine began to quiver in place, long-suppressed emotions bubbling to the surface at last in the form of tears in his eyes and sobs that caught in his throat, he was surprised when he felt Tails' hand on his shoulder.
"If Sonic's been a bad friend to you, then he has some serious explaining to do," the two-tailed fox in white gloves and red sneakers told his double, "Because the Sonic I know would never treat a friend as an afterthought. I wouldn't be his best friend if I thought he'd ever do something like that."
Nine then went completely rigid, every stand of fur on his body bristling as Tails gently wrapped him in a hug from behind. Quite suddenly, he forcibly wrenched himself free, spun around and violently shoved Tails away, glowering at the more emphatic fox boy.
"I don't need or want your sympathy!" he snapped, his face a mask of anger once more. "Just stay out of my way, you fake fox, or I'll show you what a real one is capable of! I'll find my own way back to my Shatterspace!" With that, Nine reared up on several of his mechanical tails, used them to launch himself across the room, and soon smashed his way out of the building through the closed window, leaving shards of glass all over the floor in his wake.
Tails hurried to the window, careful to avoid stepping on any of the broken glass pieces. He glanced out through the broken panes in time to see Nine use his metal tails to clamber over a parked car in a callous, uncaring manner as he made his way down the street, setting off the vehicle's alarm as he went. The workshop's owner swallowed nervously.
"I'd better tell Sonic about this before Nine does anything crazy," he said, quickly making his way back over to his workbench and picking up the Miles Electric, swiping his finger across the screen to bring up the phone app. "The mood that guy was in, he's likely to hurt himself, or…" He swallowed once more. "Or someone else."
Nine is in the building! Or rather, he just left. Heh.
If you like what you've read so far, feel free to leave a review/comment and be sure to stay tuned for the next chapter.