A/N: I am, no joke, in a writing conference this weekend, but I wasn't about to miss putting out a new fanfiction chapter! Especially when we're in the middle of a bit of a...tenuous situation here. Which means there's no time to waste!
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Best Laid Plans
It's just Tails and me now heading down this corridor. If this was supposed to be a stealth mission, maybe I wouldn't feel so defenseless. At least then there would be a point to so few of us being onboard. But the Metarex know we're here. We landed our ships here. Shadow was driven through the hull with the Sonic Driver, even.
So why is it so quiet?
Amy's and Tails's breathing filled the corridor with more sound than anything else did. Amy had her hammer and Tails carried one of the Chaos Emeralds but that felt like a measly defense against the the quiet. Without having agreed to such a plan beforehand, both Amy and Tails proceeded in similar silence. Perhaps it was a strategy—it was certainly easier if they didn't make their location known to the Metarex—but if Amy was being honest with herself, it was because Amy didn't have words. Anxiety buzzed inside her, taking up all the space unspoken words might have filled.
Sure, Shadow was fast. Sure, Shadow had gotten a head start. But his fighting style was not a quiet one. They should have caught up with him enough to hear the sound of his destruction by now. Some alarm screaming on in the background at least. Or Metarex sweeping in from behind to replenish their numbers. But none of those things were happening.
It's a trap it's a trap it's a trap, sang a voice in Amy's head, as if she didn't already know.
"Wait."
Tails's single word cut through the spiraling thoughts in Amy's head. Tails quickened his pace to running and dashed a handful of steps forward. After a beat, Amy followed suit. Where Tails stopped, so did she. And together they stared forward in silence.
At the utterly empty hallway.
Where before they had been practically tripping over Metarex debris, the floor stretching before them now was clear.
Amy twisted on the spot, searching for an adjoining hallway or a door or anywhere else Shadow might have gone. But there was nothing but the hallway in which they stood. Sure, Shadow could have continued on ahead, but why would the Metarex defense have stopped so abruptly?
"We have no idea what we're up against," Amy said.
Tails frowned. He looked down at the Chaos Emerald in the palm of his hand. It wasn't sparking erratically, as it had been doing before, but the brightness at the center of this Emerald was still somewhere south of steady. Being surrounded by so many fake Chaos Emeralds wasn't doing it any favors. Amy wondered if it could even answer their call in its current state.
Then Tails sucked in a deep breath and used it to roll his shoulders back into a position of confidence. "Right, we need a plan."
Tails twisted the arm that held the Chaos Emerald back over to look at the screen of his communicator. Amy peered over his shoulder so she too could see the three blinking lights there. Tails pointed at the blinking light nearest them. "That's the Chaos Emerald with us," he explained. "The other two lights should also be Chaos Emeralds, unless a fake one or the shards are messing with our scanners. And we know Shadow took one of the Chaos Emeralds with him, which means one of these lights should lead us to him."
Not that the map Tails had was particularly helpful. It didn't display the layout of the Metarex craft. All it offered were those lights in terms of proximity. Gave them direction, sure, but if there were walls in their way, they were on their own.
"Closer one first, I guess," Amy agreed heavily. She shifted her hammer back up onto her shoulder. At least they were going after Shadow, the one among them who could best hold their own. This was just a rendezvous, not a rescue mission.
Amy wondered how long she would be able to convincingly tell herself that lie.
-X-X-X-
Tails's View
Tails ignored Amy's unamused stare as he dug his fingers under the edge of a ventilation grate. Sure, it wasn't the most comfortable way to navigate, but hopefully it would allow them to make their way through the Metarex ship without further detection, an asset Tails figured they now needed on their side. The abrupt end to the Metarex debris? Tails didn't doubt for a second that it wasn't a good sign. Even if the Metarex had stopped sending forces for Shadow to knock down, Shadow still was the type to leave destruction in his wake. If he hadn't…
On the bright side, the time travel to the past meant both Tails and Amy were young enough and small enough to fit in the vent. Though it required Amy to put away her hammer for the time being.
After they replaced the vent cover, Tails led the way on hands and knees through the vents. Cool air drifted through and blew back his fur, chilling him to the bone. At least it was fresh. Tails was desperate to cling to any sort of bright side at this point. Amy, meanwhile, grumbled quietly behind him. Not that Tails blamed her. Moving through the vents was a good strategy for sneaking, but if the Metarex figured out where they were, they were at a serious disadvantage in a fight. But Tails shoved that fear deep down inside him. He focused his attention instead on flicking his eyes to his wrist to check the radar and figuring out how to navigate the vents to get there. They weren't lucky enough to find a direct route.
Eventually, he had to admit the vents were not going to get them all the way to that signal.
Instead, he navigated them to another vent cover. Light slipped through the slats and lit up the ground with an effect like prison bars. Tails pressed his face up against the slats to check the hallway outside. He could see the suggestion of the space outside, though the harder he tried to focus on the details, the more his head ached in opposition of his efforts. His heart stopped when he saw a shadow of movement but when he focused on the spot again, all seemed still.
Was he imagining things? Or had the movement simply shifted to be outside his line of sight? He held his focus for one second…two seconds…until he was sure he saw no further movement. It was the best they were going to get.
Tails twisted around to look back at Amy. The slats of light striped her face and made the details of her expression indistinct. "You ready?"
Amy sighed. "It's not like 'no' is really an option."
Tails pushed against the vent cover, gently at first, then with gradually increasing force until the vent popped out of place. It balanced on the tops of Tails's fingers rather than clattering to the floor. Tails released an exhale, though he hadn't before been aware he was holding his breath. He slid the cover to the side and crawled out into the hallway. It was as empty as he had spied before.
But right down the center of the hallway cut a violent streak of red blood.
Tails heard Amy's breath catch as she climbed to her feet beside him. Neither of them said a word beyond that sound. Neither of them needed to. Shadow was the only realistic explanation.
Tails swallowed down his racing heart and shoved aside his worst-case-scenario thoughts. He refocused his attention to the radar on his wrist and turned in the direction of the Chaos Emerald's signal.
And stopped short when he saw the cameras hanging along the walls.
Tails did a double-take and gratefully saw the hallway they stood in now did not also have a camera. Amy came up beside him, and Tails threw up an arm to stop her before she stepped into the nearest camera's view. When he nodded in its direction as explanation, Amy's eyes narrowed. "What are we supposed to do now?" she hissed.
Tails's brain was already calculating other options. He watched the cameras and tried to estimate their view range. They were scanning cameras, moving back and forth in a short pattern, so that together they covered most if not all of the hallway. It was hard to be sure of their blind spots without more information, which they had no means of getting.
Tails shifted his focus to the space just above the cameras. Because they weren't all the way up the wall, where the wall met the ceiling. Instead, they were down a-ways. Which meant there was a space between the cameras and the ceiling that the Metarex couldn't see.
A space big enough to fit a hovering two-tailed fox.
"I have an idea," he whispered so that hopefully the cameras wouldn't hear. "But it's the kind you'll hate."
Tails shifted his gaze back to Amy to find wariness already guarding her features. Not that he blamed her. He had seen her nightmare, after all. He knew it started with splitting up. And just as he suspected, the explanation of his plan was met with a glare from Amy. "'Hate' is an understatement," she told him.
"I know," he assured her. But even as he agreed, he twisted his wrist to undo the latch on his communicator. Once he had it released, he held the communicator out to Amy. And despite her previous protest, she accepted it. Tails continued, "As long as Shadow might be in trouble, we can't waste time. Nova will be back with Knuckles soon, so it's just a matter of time before we have backup, okay?"
"It's really not." Amy secured the latch on the communicator and her arms fell down once more to hang heavily at her sides. "I'll go with it. But if you die, I'm going to kill you."
The corner of Tails's lips quirked upward. He wouldn't have expected anything less.
-X-X-X-
Nova's View
The very last of her kind and a taxi driver. Nova found herself hoping that—if any sort of afterlife did exist—her people were not watching her now. Even though she had volunteered herself for this task, that didn't stop Nova from feeling sorry for herself.
All the same, Angel needed out of danger and Knuckles brought into it one way or another. And if this was the only way her weakened body could help now, she would at least offer that much.
What she couldn't get over was the fact that the Metarex made no effort to shoot them down.
"What gives?" Knuckles shouted from behind her. "They bring out the big guns but don't bother firing? What's the point?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," Nova muttered. The ghost ship theory was seeming more and more likely. Except the difference was that their last war against the Metarex was supposedly a big experiment. This wasn't.
Which meant the Metarex knew exactly what they were doing, whatever that might be.
Nova landed the X-Tornado where Tails initially had landed it—the Metarex had apparently decided not to respond to that breach of security either. To her further surprise, C2 stood waiting in the space, the craft she'd been piloting parked beside.
When Nova popped the X-Tornado's blast shield, Knuckles jumped out. Nova followed a bit more slowly, checking the strength of her wings before she depended on them to hold her weight. Only when she safely landed did Nova straighten and turn to C2. "I'm almost afraid to ask," she said.
C2's expression didn't so much as twitch. Her mouth remained firm in its straight line. Tension racked her body. "I am trying to limit my interference in the timeline," C2 said tightly. "Unlike Angel, clearly."
Nova quirked an eyebrow. Where was C2 going with this? Was C2 hesitating a beat to give Nova time to defend her once-upon-a-time daughter? But Nova knew little about the impacts of Angel's and C2's involvement in the timeline, and she had no intention of offering an opinion in any direction.
After that beat, though, C2's shoulders fell. It made her look smaller. Mortal. More vulnerable than Nova had ever seen her. "However," C2 continued, "as long as Angel is down and I am not presently a Time Whisperer, the least I can do is offer my help."
Knuckles scowled. "Can you fight?"
C2 rolled her eyes. "Please. My intelligence I may have inherited from Tails."
But then, she slid out her hand from behind her back. Her fingers were wrapped around the handle of a massive black and gold mallet, much like Amy's own hammer.
C2's mouth quirked into a rare smirk. "As far as my brawn, I take after my mother."
