Chapter 1: Kidnapping My Heart
"I hate this disguise," Rough complained, tugging at the fake mustache. "Ugh, I think I used too much glue. What do you think?" He took off his baseball cap and sunglasses, dumped them on the table, then looked up at his brother, stretching out the long strands of the twirling mustache.
"Keep that on!" Tumble hissed, snatching the cap and sunglasses, and quickly shoving them back on the shorter skunk. He turned up the collar of Rough's jacket and did the same for his baggy trench coat. "We can't be seen, not yet. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah. When are they getting to the main prize?" he said, still fumbling with his disguise.
Tumble raised the brim of his own bucket hat and glanced at the stage, where Jewel called another winner for some art piece. "Should be soon. They can't have too many things back there now."
"Lot of ugly stuff," Rough said, finally leaving the mustache alone and squatting in his seat.
His brother had that right. Tumble had seen Eggman fashion numerous robots in his own repulsive image, but some of the art and furniture on display surpassed it. Rich people simply had no taste and he didn't understand them at all. Maybe they could steal something from the dump one day and try to pass it off as an expensive work of art. There might be a few suckers who'd buy into it.
"And now the moment you've been waiting for, our special guest for the auction," Jewel said as the spotlight swung to the edge of the stage. "Please welcome Vanilla." A matronly rabbit stepped out from behind the curtain, politely waving to a few people and bowing her head to their applause. An air of class and kindness hovered about her, making Tumble pause for a second.
"As always, the lucky winner will get to spend all day with our special guest. Shall we open the bidding?"
"Hey!" Rough jabbed Tumble in the side and he realized that his ribs were incredibly sore, as though his brother poked him a dozen times. "Bro, snap out of it! We gotta go now!"
"Right." Tumble fished the remote out of his pocket and pointed it at the stage. "From out of the darkness."
Rough hopped off his chair, preparing to run. "Your auction crumbles."
The taller one stood, double checked the exit doors right behind them, and confirmed the straight shot to the stage. "You're never safe from."
"ROUGH AND TUMBLE!" they shouted together just as Tumble pressed a button on the remote. The lights in the auction hall immediately died and a general clammer of commotion swept through the room. Tumble sprinted through the darkness, following the memorized path, his brother right behind him.
"Alright, people! Calm down!" Jewel said somewhere in darkness. "It's a slight mishap. We'll have the lights on momentarily!"
Tumble mounted the stage, landing with a heavy thud. He heard a gasp to his right, pinpointing where Vanilla stood, and snatched her up. Despite her height, she was surprisingly light. "Bro, the bag! Bring the bag!"
"On it!" Rough shouted out in the pitch blackness. He joined him on stage, stumbling and crashing into Jewel from the sounds of it.
"Let me go!" Vanilla flailed in Tumble's grasp, but he kept a tight hold of her. Soon, his brother tapped him on the arm and he deposited their prize into the large bag. They quickly tied a knot on the top and wrapped a cord around it, securing the end in case she had any ideas about loosening the bag.
"Get the front," Tumble ordered, picking up the back. Running as fast as their feet could carry them, they leapt off stage. Unfortunately, neither of them counted on their actions causing a general panic. People on all sides screamed and rushed around, colliding into each other and the two kidnappers.
There were too many people around. At that rate, the lights would come back on before they escaped. "Bro!" Tumble called to the front. "Stink Bomber!"
"Right." Rough lobbed his half of the bag up onto the taller skunk's shoulders and leapt away from him.
"Easy," Tumble said to the bag, which punched and kicked at the back of his neck. "I got ya. But we need to get out of here."
The lights suddenly came back on, blinding everyone in the auction hall. Tumble cursed silently to himself. Someone must have found the jammer they put in place. He hefted the struggling bag up higher and pushed a few people out of the way, heading for the door. Behind him, Jewel and others shouted and ordered him to stop. Security guards leapt into action, practically baring down on him.
"Coming in hot!" Rough yelled above. He attacked the group in a blur, spreading his stench everywhere. Tumble dashed ahead of it, clearing the spreading gas, while the security guards and auction participants caught the full blast. People coughed and hacked, rubbing at their teary eyes and falling to their hands and knees.
Tumble burst through the door into the lobby, his brother on his heels. Together, they carried the bag through the front door of the building. They high-fived, then headed for the city surrounding the auction hall. "Alright, back to the hideout!"
Vanilla was familiar with the occasional kidnapping. That didn't mean she was used to it or possessed the flippant attitude one of the Restoration's heroes often took to being stolen away, but she knew a thing or two about what to expect. As her daughter often helped Sonic and she herself allowed the famous hero and his friends to stay at her house, she had been targeted in the past. Usually with a big, bombastic show where Eggman gathered up dozens of hapless citizens or at least sent some deadly robot to capture her.
However, thrown into a giant sack and carried roughly like money robbed from a bank was new. As was being dumped onto a corner of a dirty floor, not in a cell or some high-tech base, but a dingy, messy ramshackle house. Piles of broken machine parts, moldy food, empty boxes, half-filled bags of garbage, and general junk spread throughout the room. In the center sat an old, well-worn sofa with springs sticking out of it. The only bit of light in the room came from the television facing the sofa. A news story about her kidnapping at the auction hall displayed on the screen, alongside a picture of Vanilla herself.
Two figures blocked her view of the television, their backs to the screen, which cast most of their features in a dark, menacing shadow. They lorded tall with their arms crossed and nasty smiles. "Who are you?" she asked, scooting away from them. "Where am I?"
Her kidnappers glanced at each other and the shorter of the two pointed at her. "Don't try to escape."
"And don't you dare grumble," the other said.
"You're in the lair of."
Both struck a pose, standing back-to-back and pointing at her. "ROUGH AND TUMBLE!"
Vanilla stared at them for a few long moments, processing what they said. Were these two new? Or some lower henchmen of Eggman? She felt much less intimidated by them, especially as their goofy introduction dissolved into bickering with each other.
"Grumble? Really?"
The taller one shrugged and scratched his cheek. "I blanked. How about you do the rhyming then?"
"Maybe we should write down some words to have on hand."
Despite being full-grown adults, they squabbled like a couple of rowdy children. Struck by inspiration at the display, Vanilla had an idea. She was a mother. She knew how to handle children. Standing up and dusting off her skirt, she cleared her throat. "What kind of villains are you?"
The pair stopped, struck silent by her question. The taller one, Tumble she assumed, tilted his head. "Uh, what?"
"No plan, no coordination, just throw someone in a bag and whisk them away. How uncouth."
Rough took a step forward and jabbed a finger. "Hey, we got a plan! An auction's special guest should fetch a nice ransom."
"Oh, yes," she said patronizingly. "A homemaker might earn you a handful of rings."
"H-Homemaker?" he repeated weakly.
They were clueless. If she kept this up, she could turn things around and hopefully escape. "You couldn't be bothered to find out that. Just like you couldn't be bothered to clean up at all. I mean, look at this place." She picked up an old pizza box and tried not to gag from the smell. When she opened the lid, a few roaches scurried to the far corners of the box and she hurled it away, turning from the confused pair. She suppressed a shiver and continued on. "Absolutely disgusting. At least Doctor Eggman kept his place clean and he has large ships. What's your excuse that you can't take care of one little house?"
"Well, you see—" Tumble started, but she cut him off.
"That's it. If you're going to be proper villains, you can't expect to have a filthy lair." To her surprise, she found a broom and a box of garbage bags underneath a smaller mountain of trash. She tossed the bags to Rough. "You're on trash duty. And you," she pointed at the ceiling, "we'll need some lights in here."
"Yes, ma'am," they said and hopped to their tasks without a second thought. Tumble scrounged out a stepladder and Rough shoved armfuls of junk into one of the bags. Vanilla swept the floor, keeping up the charade and one eye on the door, watching for a good chance to escape.
Vanilla directed Rough and Tumble's efforts cleaning the decrepit house. Under the mess, she discovered a kitchenette near the front door with a playing card table and folding chairs, as well as a door to a small bathroom. The brothers managed to fix the lights and air conditioning, scrub the walls and floors clean, and organize whatever they didn't toss out in garbage bags.
Unfortunately, no escape opportunity presented itself. Rough was constantly by the door, carrying sacks of trash out, and Tumble hung around the kitchenette, throwing out expired food from the fridge and cleaning dirty dishes in the sink. The room had a few windows, but they had boards nailed across them, leaving small slats between that were too small for her. The bathroom wasn't any better, with a small rectangular window that not even Cream could squeeze through.
She found another door near the back and swept her way over to it while the brothers busied themselves wiping down the bathroom. It opened, but something heavy sat behind it. She peered out a nearby window and spotted part of a broken down, ancient car against the back door, buried amongst the tall grass and tangles of weeds that comprised the yard.
She sighed and resigned herself to hanging around the front door, waiting for her chance. However, she didn't feel frightened much anymore. Rough and Tumble seemed pretty harmless with the lights on and the balance of control shifted. In fact, Tumble was more than eager to help out when she found the oven broken and a terrible odor emanating from it.
"I can take a look at it," he said, scooting the oven away from the wall. He knelt down behind it while Vanilla held the door open, checking the smell. She heard some metal creaking as he worked, followed by a sharp snap and a crackle. "Yeowh!" Tumble fell onto his rear, biting the tips of his fingers.
Vanilla knelt by his side and took his hand, examining the scorch marks that ate through his gloves. "My goodness, are you okay?"
"Yeah, fine, fine," he said, grinning too wide. "Just grabbed the wrong wire. I can handle it." He rolled back onto his knees and reached behind the oven again. She winced at another snap and pop. "Is it working now?" Tumble asked.
She turned the oven's knob and reached inside. To her surprise, heat rose and drifted out. The foul stench faded as well. "Yes, it is." Tumble crawled out from behind the oven and pushed it back into place. "You're pretty handy around the house."
"Nah," he looked down, rubbing his neck. "I picked up some things here and there as a kid."
"Know anything about clogged sinks?" she asked. She turned on the kitchen sink's faucet and a thick, brown sludge plopped out while the pipes rumbled and whined.
"A little," he said. He grabbed a small tool bag they'd scrounged up while cleaning, opened the cupboard doors beneath the sink, and slid into the cramped space on his back. He handed Vanilla a small flashlight. "Would you mind?"
She took it and shined the light on the curving pipe beneath the sink. As Tumble turned the shut-off valves, she asked, "So you've done a lot of this kind of work?"
He grabbed a wrench and unscrewed a section of pipe, loosening it. "Not this exactly. Our family used to have a scrapping business. My brother and I learned how to take apart and put together a lot of machines as kids. Over here, please."
She raised the light to the pipe, displaying the gunk and goop inside. Tumble took a long screwdriver and dug at the blockage, scraping it out bit by bit. "I guess you don't do that anymore."
"Nope."
"How come?"
"There never was much call for it. We weren't ever sure where our next meal would come from or if we could afford it. After a while, we took on odd jobs, started hiring ourselves out as muscle. Turns out that smashing things up and taking what you want pays a lot more."
"Kidnapping too?"
He stopped for a moment and looked up at her, his mouth twisted in regret. "Yeah, that too," he said quietly. "Sorry."
Vanilla glanced over her shoulder. Now that much of the trash had been cleaned, the floor swept, and walls washed, it looked livable. However, faded paint still coated the walls, peeling and chipping in spots. The wooden floor was eaten with termites and squeaked with any weight put on it. A general atmosphere of poverty hung in the air that she couldn't help feeling sorry for.
Tumble muttered to himself. "Get out of there." He jabbed the screwdriver further into the pipe and a rush of sludge poured into mouth. He gasped and choked, hurrying out from the cabinets, and spat the brown and green muck on the ground. Bending over with hands on his knees, he hacked and coughed for a minute. Vanilla rubbed his back, trying to soothe him.
"Bro, you alright?" Rough asked, poking his head in. His brother gave him a shaky thumbs up. "What happened?"
"Nothing," he said, his voice hoarse, and he wiped the remains of the gunk from his lips. He quickly crawled back in, reattached the pipes, and turned on the valves. "There. Should be good." When he raised his head, bits of the blockage clung to his fur and face.
"Okay, you need a shower," Vanilla said, helping him to his feet. "Go ahead and take one. You need one anyway after cleaning all day." She pointed at Rough. "Then you can go after him."
The shorter skunk opened his mouth to argue, but then checked himself. Like his brother, he was coated in dust and grime. They both headed into the bathroom, leaving Vanilla completely alone in the kitchen to clean up the mess on the floor.
As she wiped up the contents of the sink, she eyed the front door for a moment. It was free and clear, nobody around to watch her. A turn of the doorknob and she was gone, never to look back.
Then she turned back to the bathroom and the house itself. It was far and away from her house, which she always tried to make cozy and inviting for everyone. No, this was cold and depressing. From the way Tumble talked, she suspected it wasn't much different from their life growing up. A simple cleaning wouldn't fix that.
She looked at the kitchen and the open cupboards. A few pots sat stacked next to plates in one and in another, she spotted various jars and cans of vegetables, beans, cheese, as well as other boxes of food. Not much to work with, but she grabbed one of the pots, filled it in the sink, put it on the oven, then rummaged through the cupboards and fridge, deciding what food to make.
"You almost done in there?" Rough asked, batting the shower curtain.
Tumble snapped out of his thoughts and whapped the curtain back. "Yeah, I'm finished." He stepped out of the shower, grabbed a dirty towel from the corner of the floor, and dried himself off as Rough stepped in. He couldn't stop thinking about Vanilla, how pretty she was, how her voice made his heart dance, how she looked at him with those big chocolate eyes of hers.
"Bro!" Rough shouted, again derailing his train of thought. "What's with you?"
"W-What?" Tumble asked, nearly dropping the towel.
"You keep spacing out on me. I said do you think it's a good idea to leave her in there alone? She could be trying to escape."
"Oh, I guess not." He didn't make any attempt to move though. He stared blankly at the door, imagining Vanilla right behind it. "Actually, I don't think it's a bad idea. She's not gonna leave like that." In fact, he couldn't imagine her doing anything underhanded. Not her. Not a sweet, wonderful person like Vanilla.
When his thoughts finally returned to the bathroom, Rough stared at him with suspicious eyes. "What?"
"Why do you look like Dad when he was around Mom?" Rough asked.
Tumble checked himself in the cracked mirror above the sink. He was shocked to see a relaxed idiot with a dreamy smile plastered on his face looking back at him. "It's nothing."
Rough didn't buy it and pointed at him. "Aw, bro. You're in love with her, aren't you?"
"No! Not at all!" He tried and failed to smooth out his face, erase the telling expression, but it was no use. The stubborn grin stayed locked in place. "I mean, I guess a little."
Rough turned off the shower and stepped out, taking the towel from his brother and drying off. "C'mon, Romeo. Let's get out there."
As they exited the bathroom, Tumble smelled an unusual flavor in the air. Not rotting trash or the typical burnt microwave dinners they ate, but cooked food. Vanilla stood over in the kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove, and the smell grew into a salivating, delicious scent that his stomach rumbled for.
"Have a seat," Vanilla said. "I'm almost done."
The brothers sat at the table behind her, where old, chipped plates were laid out for three, along with cups of water. Vanilla turned off the stove's burner and scooped out a generous helping of the meal onto their plates. It was some kind of pasta with creamy sauce and garnished with herbs. She also poured out a heated side of vegetables from a bowl beside it. The whole dish looked like meals he often saw at restaurants.
Rough wasted no time grabbing a fork and digging in. His eyes widened and then he melted into a puddle with a satisfied groan. "It's so good," he mumbled.
Tumble took a bite too and wholeheartedly agreed with his brother. He couldn't remember the last time he had food this tasty. Unlike his brother, who shoveled forkfuls of the food into his mouth, Tumble tried to eat slowly and more respectfully as Vanilla sat down with them.
"It's fettucine alfredo," Vanilla said, trying her food. "There wasn't much to work with, but I think it came out well."
Nodding, Tumble swallowed. "Yeah. Thanks."
She glanced at Rough, amused as he polished off the plate and licked the last of the cream off. "I take it it's been a while since you've had a home-cooked meal?" she asked, leaning towards Tumble. She was close, staring right at him, and his heart pounded against his ribs.
"Yeah," he said, his voice cracking, and he drank some water. "Yeah, it has. We, uh, lost our parents a long time ago. Neither of us got around to picking up a cookbook."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's okay. It's nice to have a meal like this again."
She looked pleased. "I always thought a meal helps make things better. It always cheers up my daughter when she has a bad day."
He stopped mid-chew, a lump in his throat. She had a daughter. And they'd stolen Vanilla away from her. It he felt miserable before, now he felt like the sludge he cleaned out of the sink. "You have a kid? How old?"
"Six," she said and a knife tore into his chest.
However, surely her daughter had a father to take care of her for the time being. "Was her father at the auction?"
Vanilla shook her head. "No, I'm afraid he's gone."
Another knife drove deep into Tumble's chest. "Oh."
"It's okay. It happened a while ago, when my Cream was a baby. My husband was lost in one of the conflicts with Eggman. He was trying to help some others evacuate and…" She picked at her food and looked up. "Well, suffice to say, I had to raise Cream on my own. It wasn't easy and she misses her father dearly. So I have an idea how hard it can be for someone to grow up without a parent."
Tumble glanced across the table at his brother, who leaned back in the chair, patting his bulging stomach with immense satisfaction. Rough burped and picked at his teeth, then met his brother's eyes. He caught onto Tumble's inkling right away and frowned. But Tumble held firm and Rough rolled his eyes after several seconds, waving him on and turning away.
"You can go," he said quietly.
Vanilla froze. "What?"
"I said you can go." Tumble pushed aside his plate of food and leaned forward. "Look, we're sorry about taking you from your kid. If I'd known that, well," he shrugged. "Guess that makes me a pretty poor bad guy. A better one would check that out first, you know? So go on. Get back to your kid."
Vanilla watched him for a long moment. She rose and pushed her chair in, then bowed her head to him. "Thank you." She headed for the door, but as she opened it, she turned back to Tumble. "For the record, maybe it's a good thing that you make such a poor villain. Something tells me that it's not really your calling."
He snorted. "Maybe not." Then his expression softened. "Thanks."
She nodded to Rough and left, closing the door behind her. Tumble watched it for a while, hoping that she might come back. Ridiculous, he knew, but a man could wish.
"Well, so much for our payday," Rough said. When Tumble faced him, he belched louder and struggled to sit up in his chair. "Still, guess it's not all bad. She helped us clean up and made this fetu-buco al-pasto."
"Yeah."
They were silent for a couple of minutes as Tumble replayed her words in his mind again and again. That he made for a sorry villain. That he wasn't really meant for this. It actually lifted his spirits.
"You know, she's too mature for you," Rough said, using his fork to dig between his teeth.
"Is not! She's only a few years older," he protested.
"Uh-huh. So what are you thinking? Don't hide it." He pointed the fork at him. "I can see you're planning something."
"I was just thinking that maybe," Tumble bobbed his head from side to side, "maybe it's time for me to get out of this business."
"Aw, c'mon!" Rough pressed his palms against his eyes and rubbed furiously. "She got to you good, didn't she? Got you wanting to turn your life all around for her, huh?"
Tumble couldn't deny it. He was smitten with Vanilla and couldn't get her out of his head. He wanted to be a better man for her, turn to the straight and narrow and earn her love in return.
Growling out loud in frustration, Rough tipped his chair backwards, then fell forward into the table. He rested his chin on the hard wood, puffing out a breath of air. "Fine. You wanna get married, have at it. That ain't for me. But," he propped his cheek in his hand, "I guess I wouldn't mind being your best man, bro."
Married? He hadn't given the idea much thought, but he quite liked it now that Rough brought it up. Yes, first turning his life around, then winning over Vanilla, then marriage. "Thanks, bro."
"Yeah, yeah. Now," he slapped the table excitedly and picked up his plate, "I want some more of that stuff. Let's see if we can make that fetu-gaco albedo."