"Oh thank god you're alive."

Sara awoke to a searing blue light in her eyes, the lamp from which it came frantically shoved out of the way to reveal a bushily mustached figure wearing stained white gloves and a crimson trench coat. His eyes were concealed by glasses that were almost opaquely black, his nose pointy and crooked, but despite being fairly menacing, he almost looked too sad to be intimidating. His eyes bagged and his entire face wrinkled and scarred with deep gashes.

"Do you feel okay?" the man asked softly. "Need anything? Water?"

Sara shook her head absentmindedly, clearing away the final stages of a headache. Reaching up to her head with a groan, she felt a set of tightly wrapped bandages covering her hedgehog forehead.

"When I found you, you looked like you took a pretty bad fall, so I took the liberty of cleaning you up a little," The man shrugged. "Nothing invasive, I promise. Just cleaning and dressing your wounds."

Sara blinked at the strange man, before stretching her aching body and rising to a sitting position at the side of the bed. He seemed incredibly tired, despite the worried tone of his deep, crackling, raspy voice, which still gave way to a hint of psychological exasperation evidenced by its slightly faded nature. Sara hopped to her feet, testing the strength of her sore hedgehog limbs with a little jog. She wasn't really paying much attention to the strangely proportioned man, who only seemed to be standing awkwardly by the doorway.

"Who're you?" Sara asked, feeling a slight twinge of suspicion returning with her wit. The large man sighed.

"Please, if you would just listen, I could clear up-,"

"My father told me not to trust strangers," Sara cut him off, curling her fist and stepping back into a defensive stance.

"Your father is dead."

Sara's mind suddenly went blank. For the first time in what felt like years, her entire body went numb, and for a second, not a single thought passed through her head, before they all came rushing to her at once. "What?" she said softly.

The man let out another tired sigh. "I didn't want to tell you this way. I wanted to-," he starts, but something in his throat cuts him off. "Guess I can't go back now. . ." he muttered.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Sara asked frantically, now physically shaking. She desperately looked around the room for any details, but the stark white hospital room offered no clues. The only thing that stood out was a digital clock on the counter which read 3:00 AM. The man must've stayed up all night waiting for her. "What happened to Tails?!"

The weirdly tall, orange haired, somehow simultaneously looking twice and four times her age man wiped his brow. "I guess I owe you that." He says. "My name is Doctor Robotnik. If you're feeling well enough, would you walk with me? We have much to discuss."

Sara considered her options. On one paw, she didn't really feel like trusting this strange man who kidnapped her and brought her to this unknown location, but on the other, she didn't really have a choice: She was alone -truly, now- and Robotnik has been kind enough so far, so maybe he could be trusted? She'd have to take that risk.

"Alright." She said simply, not feeling like elaborating further. Robotnik smiled, relieved.

"Follow me, then," He responded, and opened the door to the hospital room. Slowly, Sara peeked her way into the hallway with a mix of curiosity and suspicion, before following behind the doctor.

"I am sorry that we had to meet this way," Robotnik explained. "I wish we could've met under different circumstances."

"What happened to my father?" Sara growled, starting to get annoyed with the man's wishy washy, overly kind behavior.

"It's been a long time since I last saw Tails," Robotnik reminisced, a dreamy look coming over his face. "Things were different between us then. I'd like to say simpler, but that wouldn't be exactly true."

Sarah looked at him, confused. "What do you mean?"

"You see, Tails and I were pretty close, along with a group of three others." the doctor muttered, his voice dropping to near venom when he mentions his other companions. "But there was an . . . incident that made us split up. So you could imagine my surprise when Tails contacted me out of the blue almost ten years after I last saw him."

Sara stared in shock. "Tails contacted you? When?"

"Just a few weeks ago." He said. "He told me that he now had a daughter, and that it was time to start her formal training to control her hedgehog powers."

Sara stopped and considered this. Starting her formal training. . . it sounded like a dream come true, but she couldn't imagine Tails being happy with that. Let alone calling one of his old friends, it all sounded like it would scare the two tailed fox back into whatever cave they crawled out of.

But on the other paw, Tails has been growing more desperate over the past few months. Even last night (was it last night?) it seemed he was ready to snap. Maybe he wanted to make sure Sara could protect herself? Well, it wasn't like she could ask him now.

For the first time since waking up, Sara felt the pang of loss in her chest. After all these years of running, for her father to finally fall the second she wasn't there. . .

Sara curled her fist.

"But someone got Tails before we had a chance to even start." Sara said viciously. "How did he die?"

Robotnik grimaced. "I don't think you want to know that information-," he started.

"How."

Robotnik took a deep breath, and let out a long, tired sigh. "Bullet to the head. Close range." he said bluntly. "I'm not going to lie to you, it wasn't pretty, but it probably didn't hurt him. Much."

Sara swallowed, and walked up to a window in the hallway, stopping to look at her surroundings. The window overlooked some sort of grass field, the night sky shrouding much of it in inky darkness. From her perch, inside a second story hallway, it almost seemed peaceful. But she was just a spectator: she couldn't hear the sounds of insects or wind blowing across the long grass's surface. She couldn't feel the dirt in between her paws, nor could she understand the struggles of millions of tiny microbes that dotted the whole ecosystem's surface. All she could do was see, poorly at that, the pasture and the trees. All she could hear was the faint beating of her heart, reminding her that she was alive, even if it didn't feel true. She was alive, and her father wasn't. There wasn't anything she could do about that now.

But that wasn't true, either. There was one last thing she could do.

"Who did this?" Sara whispered, her voice straining against the grief in her chest. In the reflection of the glass, she could see Robotnik shuffle uncomfortably. "And don't bullshit me, Doctor. I'm not in the mood."

"I-I may have an idea," He said slowly, reaching behind him. "When I… found your father, I saw these by the scene of the crime,"

From behind his back, he pulled out two bundles of red and blue objects. Unconsciously catching their scent, Sara swiveled her body around to face Robotnik again. She almost instinctively lunged towards him, but managed to stop herself mid jump and awkwardly half tripped over her foot.

"Are you alright, Sara?"

"I'm fine," Sara blinked, and shook her head. She said calmly, and slowly lifted her eyes back to the bundles. Again, she felt a deep, primal rage build up inside her, but she suppressed it with a deep breath. "What am I looking at?"

"I may know who these might have belonged to," He explains. "It's not the best of news, to be honest."

Sara looked up at Robotnik, tracing his bushy mustache up to his sad and angry eyes. A deep, hollow loss perpetrated his gaze, but inside of that, an even deeper determination was held within, clawing to get out.

For Sara, the loss of her father was still fresh. She doubted that the pain in her gut would ever go away, but maybe it would fade. Maybe she was too clouded by emotion at this moment.

She could imagine Tails' kind face, smiling down at her, telling her to not cry. To live her life, to not chase the burning feeling in her heart. She took a deep breath.

But Tails was dead. And now, there was only one thing left to do.

Sara stood as tall as she could, righteous anger burning in her soul. "Tell me."