Don't Let it Happen Again

by Squatchy11

Summary:

Love is not preordained... Nor is it written in the stars.

Sometimes you find out that the person you want to love and the person you fall in love with can end up being two separate people.

Sometimes you have to accept that you've fallen in love with the idea of someone, but not necessarily the person themselves.

Sometimes you need to admit that the person you want to love and the type of person you want to love you are two separate things.

To accept that it's okay to admit that the person you placed on a pedestal might not necessarily be who you thought they were.... That it's okay to stop chasing something that doesn't want to be caught, and start running towards something that was never trying to run away from you in the first place.

Chapter 1: Verse 1

All things considered, life was pretty good for Tails Prower. Those days of the orphaned kit living on the streets of West Island, ostracized by the other locals for something as innocuous as an extra tail felt less like the most traumatizing time of his life and more like fuzzy rapidly fading memories on the edge of his mind. Fifteen years removed and he had a nice house on the outskirts of Emerald Town, plenty of money in his pocket from numerous inventions he’d conceived over the years, including a fat contract with one of the biggest aerospace companies on Mobius for exclusive rights to sell and distribute his state-of-the-art aircraft designs serving as his crowning achievement, and his best friend just happened to be Sonic the Hedgehog. It was amazing how the extra tail that had caused so many to shun him when he was younger magically didn’t seem to matter much anymore when you were buds with one of the most famous people on Mobius.

Of course, success didn’t come without its drawbacks. That big house could get rather lonely when you spend most of your time by yourself. Not that Tails minded the solitude seeing as he was usually preoccupied with his latest project, but on the rare occasion he allowed himself some downtime… It wasn’t uncommon for the fox to feel that sense of isolation that had followed him around since he was a kit to make itself known and show its pimply obnoxious face. Being best pals with Sonic the Hedgehog didn’t always help out with the occasional bouts of loneliness considering his bud was rarely around to help alleviate those feelings of seclusion. When Tails was a kid, Sonic would stop by frequently, usually just to check up on him and make sure he was taking care of himself. Now that Tails was an adult, even casual visits had crawled to a halt. When Sonic did stop by, it was usually just to crash on his couch for the night, eat all the food in his fridge, and it wasn’t uncommon to find him gone the next morning without so much as a thank you or a goodbye… Tails had no doubt that his big bro still cared about him, but it was difficult not to feel like maybe Sonic was enjoying no longer having that weight around his neck, in the form of the responsibility he felt towards looking after the fox kit who had latched onto him all those years ago.

There were issues with his aerospace contract world as well… That issue had a name, and it was called GUN. That lovely organization was none too thrilled that they didn’t win the contract rights to Tails’ tech, but there was no way in hell that Tails was ever going to agree to work for them. He wanted his technological advancements to be available to help all of Mobian kind, not locked away behind closed doors by a military organization only concerned with how they could weaponize Tails’ Tech. GUN had already made two attempts to sabotage his work in order to shake the faith of the people he’d chosen to partner with over them. Both attempts failed, and Tails would always be thankful to Rouge for giving him the heads up that he was being targeted.

When Tails turned 20, he noticed something else sobering about his current lifestyle… He didn’t really have many friends. Well, he did technically have friends, but most of those guys were Sonic’s friends who just happened to be friends vicariously with Tails through him. The pool of people he could consider legitimate friends was depressingly small, and those that did qualify had other things going on. Sonic was never in one place for more than a few hours anymore… Knuckles was stuck on Angel Island babysitting his giant rock soulmate. Cream was currently away at college, an experience that Tails himself had skipped out on because well… What in the world was he going to learn at university that he didn’t already know?

His only remaining friend who was readily available was Amy, and if Tails was being honest, there was a time in his life when she would’ve fallen into the friends by association with Sonic category, however, the pink hedgehog had proven herself over the years, mostly by being the one consistent presence in his life despite the fact that he was clearly no longer the quickest conduit for her to get to Sonic like he used to be. She didn’t stop coming around though, now that the chance of ‘accidently’ bumping into Sonic was fairly close to zero. Tails had actually been caught off guard by how pleasant Miss Rose was to be around when Sonic wasn’t present for her to obsess over. That temper and assertiveness of hers were still present, but highly muted when Sonic wasn’t around to exasperate them by not giving Amy the type of attention she desperately craved from him. It would seem that some of Amy’s less attractive quarks may have been direct results of Sonics refusal to play along with this one-sided relationship Amy had been trying to force for years, along with Sonic’s lack of tact when handling the lovestruck hedgehog at times. Tails, at least, rarely saw that side of her directed towards him when they hung out, and the few occasions he had, the hostility she’d been known to show whenever Sonic rejected her just wasn’t there, and if Tails was being honest, he usually deserved it. It would be over little things like working several days straight with no sleep or forgetting about a lunch date he’d setup with her and Cream because he’d gotten too engrossed in a project he was working on, stuff like that. He couldn’t once remember the hammer ever being pulled out to threaten him other than in jest.

All things considered, Tails just couldn’t understand why Amy was so determined that she and Sonic were destined to be together. If all Sonic did was agitate her worst traits, which made her act like a person that Amy herself openly admitted she didn’t like, then why was she still chasing him so hard after all these years? Even during the rare occasion Sonic would humor her, rather than take full advantage of the opportunity to win him over, like showing off the personality she put on display around Tails and their other friends, instead she squander the opportunity by trying to force Sonic to be something he wasn’t, to force him to fall in line to become the perfect boyfriend she’d always imagined he’d be in her head. Thankfully, she’d eased up on her brute force tactics on the Sonic front over the years, but there were times Tails wondered if Amy was in love with the idea of someone who didn’t really exist… In fact, he wasn’t sure if Amy was really in love with Sonic or just infatuated with the idea of the blue blur. Maybe she put too much stock into what she wanted to believe those tarot cards of hers were telling her all those years ago. Either way, Tails wished more and more every day that Amy would just get over Sonic and try to find someone who’d appreciate Amy for who she was… Somebody that she didn’t have to change everything about to make him a suitable partner, somebody who didn’t bring out all of her worst traits, the traits she done such a great job of burying over the years. For Amy to stop chasing after someone who just kept on running the harder she pursued him and started running towards someone who wasn’t trying to get away in the first place.

Oh well, Amy had somehow roped Sonic into a dinner date that afternoon, so maybe his big bro was finally warming up to the idea of giving Amy a chance. Something about the arrangement didn’t sit right with Tails though… Oh well, that’s where the two of them were off too at the moment, and Tails wished them nothing but the best. Tails himself went into town to peruse the selection of one of Central City’s finest hardware stores to pick up some parts he’d need for his latest project. It was such a lovely day that he decided to take a slow walk through the city before flying the rest of the way home… It turned out to be a fortunate decision on his part as there was trouble brewing in Central City that afternoon.

The alarm of a jewelry store across the street began to blare before three figures emerged from a hole created by an explosion in the side wall. Tails recognized the burglars immediately. It was Nack and his group of hooligans, his Larry and Curley, better known as Bark the Polar Bear and Bean the Dynamite. “Really, these jerks again?! Didn’t we just send them back to jail last week…”

“Alright boys, the fuzz ain’t nowhere in sight, so it looks like we’ve got a clear getaway we do! I told ya that our luck was turning around!”

“Um… Excuse me you three…” The hooligans turned around to see an orange fox attempting to block their escape route. “I’m going to have to ask you to put the merchandise back where you found it. Unless you happen to have a receipt, and maybe I’ll pretend I didn’t see Bean just blow a hole in the side of that building.”

“Oh crap! Team Sonic’s here already!” Nack panicked at first. “Of all the rotten luck!”

“Oh no, there’s no team Sonic today… You just have me to play with this afternoon I’m afraid.”

“Wait… You’re serious? It’s just you?!” Nack shared a laugh with his boys as he looked at each of them and said. “It’s just the nerdy little tech geek! This should be a breeze!”

“I agree… It shouldn’t take me long to put you three in your place at all,” Tails said nonchalantly as he fidgeted with some type of blaster looking device.

“Oh really? You sure you can put your money where your mouth is kid? The way I see it, is we got you outnumbered 3 to1, and Sonic’s nowhere in sight to swoop in and save your fluffy butt from…” Before Nack could finished, Tails had spun into a ball and rocketed himself straight into the weasel’s chest, sending him flying into a lamp pole and temporarily out of the fight. Bark did not appreciate seeing his leader get owned by the pipsqueak fox and tried grabbing at him. Tails took to the air and began flying circles around the angry bear before eventually taking a gamble and allowing Bark to catch him, locking Tails in a forward facing bearhug.

“Gotcha, you pesky little runt!”

“You sure about that?” Tails grinned as he pulled a cylindrical object out of his toolbelt. With the press of a button it unfurled into an object that resembled a stun gun, probably because that’s exactly what it was… Sort of. A brief jolt of electricity surged through the bear’s body as the object was pressed into his arm startling Bark enough that he released the fox, who quickly flew upward and landed on the polar bear’s shoulders. Wrapping his Tails around the big man’s neck, and with an impressive display of strength that stunned everyone watching, Tails lifted the big man off of his feet and flipped him over, straight onto his head. Bark let out a pained moan before passing out.

“Whoa! You’ve really been working on the glutes here lately, haven’t ya foxy-boy!” Tails simply glared at the goofy explosive’s expert, unamused. “I think you deserve a prize! Here catch!”

Bean tossed one of his comically oversized bombs at the fox, who continued to look unimpressed as that blaster-like device he’d brandished earlier reappeared in his hand. He pulled the trigger and the bomb abruptly stopped and hung in the air, locked in place via an electric magnetic pulse fired from the fox’s gadget. Bean looked on in a mix of confusion and awe while Tails reversed the polarity on his device and returned the bomb to its rightful owner. “I believe this belongs to you sir!” he sang as Bean caught the bomb in his arms.

“Wowza… That was so cool! How did you…” The bomb exploded, leaving a teetering green bird hanging just off the edge of consciousness. “I smell like roast duck… Which is really weird because I’m supposed to be a woodpecker…” Bean coughed up some dust before falling flat on his face.

Tails shook his head as he holstered his device. He could remember being a kid and viewing these three thugs as much bigger threats. A dysfunctional unassuming threat, but dangerous, nonetheless. Either he’d gotten a lot more proficient at combat over the years, or these three goofs had just gotten so used to being rolled over by Team Sonic, that they’d regressed far enough to become the bumbling fools that they were today, getting arrested a couple times a month on average… Breaking out of prison appearing to be the only real skill they remained proficient at… Then again, it was rather easy to escape from jail when Bean could seemingly produce bombs out of thin air.

It wasn’t long after that swift beatdown when the police showed up to return the eloping delinquents back to their natural habitat, the Central City Corrections Facility… Tails was pretty sure Nack had his mail forwarded there. Not long after that, the press started to arrive. Tails tried to slip away amid the chaos, though unfortunately, his report to the local police took a bit too long, and Tails found himself cornered by one of the local TV reporters. Being the polite young man that he was, he just couldn’t refuse when the lady newsperson asked him for an interview.

“This is Ermine Mcfinkstinkel reporting for Channel 5 News where Sonic the Hedgehog has reportedly stopped a local band of miscreants from robbing a local jewelry store. I’m on location speaking with well-known Sonic groupie Lyle Prowler who was on scene to witness the event. Mr. Prowler can you please share with the audience what went down this afternoon?”

“Groupie?! I’m Sonic’s best friend and teammate… And the name is Miles Prower…”

The young news reporter appeared confused. “Who?”

Tails fought extremely hard not to facepalm. “Just call me Tails…”

“Okay then… Tails… Could you explain to us in detail Sonic’s heroic exploits from this afternoon?”

“Look Miss… Stinkelbottom or whatever, Sonic isn’t even here…”

“No doubt already off in search of his next adventure to find more villains to thwart, but at this moment our audience is craving details on how Sonic the Hedgehog foiled the would be jewel thieves!”

“Look Miss, I…”

“Were providing moral support while Sonic subdued the villains I’m sure. It appears our young witness is so overwhelmed he can’t even find the words to describe Sonic’s amazing feats!”

“Now just wait a second!… Sonic was never even here! He happens to be out on a date with…”

“You heard it here folks!” the reporter said abruptly, as she turned to face the camera, leaving Tails looking absolutely gob smacked. “Sonic the Hedgehog took time out of his busy schedule to remove three dangerous criminals from the street and is now off to give some lucky lady a night out on the town she won’t soon forget! Thank you Sonic, you truly are an inspiration to us all…”

Tails rolled his eyes and began to walk away, but not before leaning his head back into the camera’s frame and shouting. “Everyone at home do yourselves a favor and switch over to Channel 2! Their news coverage is far more insightful, and they require their reporters to have IQs above the required temperature to store meat!”

Tails walked away grumbling while the news crew watched after him in befuddlement, so much so that the news crawl at the bottom of everyone’s television was nothing but question marks. Sometimes being best friends with Sonic the Hedgehog was more trouble than it was worth. He loved his big brother to death, but living beneath that giant shadow Sonic’s massive fame cast was becoming suffocating. This wasn’t the first time the media and public at large had given Sonic credit for Tails own heroics. Hell, it wasn’t even the tenth time. The most egregious offense was when Tails had saved an entire family from the tenth story of a burning apartment building, while Sonic was halfway across the world sampling what he referred too as ‘exotic’ chilidogs… Whatever the hell that meant. At least the family he saved knew the truth, and their gratitude was more than enough to satisfy the fox, but that didn’t make it any less annoying the next morning when all the local papers had Sonic’s face plastered on the front page with a nonsense story about how he’d saved fifty people from a raging inferno. It was four people that had to be saved in total, and how nobody else noticed an airborne fox flying that family to safety was so uncomprehensible that Tails tried not to think about it. He assumed everyone in the city still saw him as nothing more than the kid sidekick who followed Sonic around, and apparently just stood on the sidelines waving pom-pom’s while he watched Sonic do all the work. Don’t get him started on how nobody seemed to notice that Sonic rarely even visited the city anymore.

Tails had reclaimed his purchases from the hardware store and was about to head home when fate intervened again. It would appear that another thankless job awaited him. “Somebody stop him, he’s getting away!” Tails turned his head to see Nack had awoken from his little nap before the cops had properly secured him and was currently fleeing down an alleyway between two nearby buildings.

Now, apparently when the officer had suggested someone stop the weasel who’d just been caught committing burglary from escaping, he wasn’t implying that the officers on the scene do their jobs as not one of them moved an inch in an attempt to pursue Nack as if they were civilian bystanders and not law enforcement officers. Apparently they’d gotten too accustomed to waiting around for superpowered Mobians to show up and do that job for them. Tails groaned before revving up his namesakes. “I’ll go after him… Who knows, maybe if I manage to catch up I can hold him down until Sonic shows up so he can save us all!”

As he probably should’ve expected, the heavy sarcasm went straight over the officer’s head. “Uh, I dunno if that’s a great idea kid. Nack is dangerous. You wouldn’t want to mess up and let Nack get away before Sonic finally arrives.”

Tails nearly fell from the sky but managed to avoid kissing the pavement with his face. Completely red in the muzzle, he grumbled under his breath. “You mean like how you goobers let him get away after I took him down the first time?… You guys can’t seriously be this stupid…” Tails rocketed off after Nack, making certain that he propelled himself forward with enough force that the backdraft knocked every officer on the scene, and even that annoying news crew off of their feet. They all looked around in confusion briefly before one of them blurted out.

“That must’ve been Sonic racing past us! The day is saved!”

A loud chorus of cheers rang out, though in the distance they could hear a very exasperated sounding, “OH, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME?!”

Tails caught up to Nack in no time at all, much to the weasel’s annoyance. “You might want to go ahead and surrender now Nack before I ‘totally’ ware myself out and Sonic has to swoop in and run you down himself…”

“Nuts to that! Why do you even bother fox? You know as well as we do that every time they try to throw us in the clink, we bust out again by the end of the week!”

“Well, we are hoping maybe one of these days, our city officials will spawn a few brain cells and put the three of you in separate prisons so you can’t all break out so easily. That won’t stop Bean if we can’t figure out where he’s hiding the bombs, but I highly doubt he’s going to remember or even care to go looking for you or Bark after breaking himself loose.”

Nack’s eyes widened as if he could see that exact scenario play out in his head. “Well, all the more reason not to get caught I guess! Later foxy!”

Nack jumped out of the alley and into the street but immediately stopped in his tracks. Tails nearly bowled him over as he was coming in hot behind him, but Tails too could only hover in place as they looked on in shock and amazement at the carnage they were witnessing. The street that their chase just happened to lead them too looked like a tornado had torn through it. Several cars had been crushed like tin cans, benches reduced to splinters, light poles twisted and bent almost beyond recognition, and at least one fire hydrant had been demolished, a geyser of water spraying up from the sidewalk. In the middle of the carnage was a very pissed off looking pink hedgehog holding a very intimidating yellow hammer.

“Stupid, inconsiderate jerk!” she roared as she took out a postal box. “Always cuts and runs at the last minute! Never keeps his damn promises!”

“Amy…” Tails muttered absently. Hearing her name seemed to break the hammer-wielding hedgehog out of her rage-fueled rampage as she noticed her friend flying nearby.

“Tails…” Amy then quickly noticed he wasn’t alone. “Nack?!”

Tails peeked down at the very intimidated-looking weasel. The glint in his blue orbs bordered on evil. “Yep! Nack here just got caught red-handed trying to rob a jewelry store, and he’s on the run from the police as we speak!”

“Oh, is he now…” Amy patted her hammer as flames appeared in her eyes. “I’ve had a horrible afternoon, and weasel-boy here looks like the perfect outlet to take out my frustrations on…”

“Hey now, let’s hold up just a second here! I’m not looking for a fight or anything!” Nack begged off as Amy stomped towards him. “I mean, it would be a right shame for me to have to rough up that pretty face now!”

10 seconds later.

“I surrender!” Nack threw himself down to his knees in front of the first pair of cops he came across and threw his arms in the air. “Just keep that crazy hedgehog girl with the hammer away from me!”

“I barely took two steps towards him…”

“To be fair, if you were radiating that much murderous intent in my direction, I probably would’ve dropped to my knees and wet myself too…” Tails gulped nervously at the look Amy was giving him. “Um… What’s that look for?”

“I’m debating how hard I should hit you since I’m not sure if that was a compliment or a thinly veiled insult…”

As the police finished loading an almost relieved-looking Knack in the back of a squad car, one of the officers tipped his hat to the pair of hero’s. “It’s probably for the best that you two get yourselves home. Be sure to thank Sonic for his help for us the next time you see him… Must’ve just missed him again…”

“Sonic?!” Amy scowled, almost as if just hearing the name offended her. “He was never even here?! Wasn’t Nack screeching about the crazy ‘girl’ with the hammer a clue…” Amy paused as she felt a squeeze at her elbow. She glared at Tails questioningly as the fox shook his head.

“Save your breath Ames… This is the blue blur’s world and we’re all just living in it… At least I know now that I’m not the only one they do it to…”

The oblivious cop was still standing in place though his eyes seemed to be focused on the mayhem that had been caused before the policeman’s arrival. “My word, Sonic made more of a mess than usual… Hard to believe it took all of that to apprehend just one perp…”

“Sonic’s mess…” Amy turned around, and now that her anger had gotten proper time to ebb, she received the full scope of the carnage her temper tantrum had created. Her hand went over her mouth in disbelief, her green eyes glistening with unshed tears of disappointment… Disappointment in herself. “Did I… Oh Chaos, I thought I’d moved passed stunts like this…”

“What was that miss?” asked the officer.

“Oh, she’s just getting a good look at Sonic’s handywork for the first time,” Tails replied quickly, his concerned gaze never leaving the distraught looking hedgehog. “You know how he gets carried away sometimes… It’s a good thing the city took out that ‘act of hedgehog’ insurance policy to cover the damages for situations just like this one.”

“Isn’t that the truth… Welp, you two enjoy the rest of your day.”

As the officer finally stopped lurking near the pair of friends, Amy eyed the two-tailed suspiciously. “Why did you lie to that officer? Sonic didn’t cause any of this damage… I did… I should be the one held responsible for it.”

“Hey, if the press and the authorities are going to give Sonic all the credit, it’s only fair that he has to pay the bill too right?” Amy cocked her eyebrow, clearly not on the same page. “Just watch Channel 5 news tonight and you’ll hear all about how Sonic stopped an attempted jewelry store heist, before he apprehended one of the criminals after he tried to escape…”

“Ewe, Channel 5?! Gross, Channel 2 news is so much better.”

“I know right!... That’s not the point though. Let’s put it this way, do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild this street?”

Amy’s conscious cleared up immediately once presented with the bill. “On second thought, let’s let Sonic’s magic insurance policy take care of it…” Amy muttered bitterly. “This is mostly his fault anyway…”

“Kind of had the feeling that was the case,” Tails sighed, placing his arm near the small of Amy’s back and guiding her away from the battered city street. “Let’s get out of here before the cleanup crews start showing up.”

Once he felt they were a reasonable distance away, Tails cautiously asked. “So, what did he do this time?”

Amy surprised Tails when, rather than answering with her usual fit of anger, replied with a downhearted, “I don’t want to talk about it…”

Not content to give up just yet, Tails continued to press, “Don’t tell me Sonic stood you up again? He swore to me he wouldn’t pull this crap anymore…”

“It’s worse…” Amy muttered quietly. “We’d barely had time to order our food when he bolted out of the restaurant, leaving me humiliated and looking completely stupid!”

Tails felt a strange rush of rage towards Sonic briefly bringing his blood to a boil at hearing that. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve heard rumors that he cut out on your date to stop a jewel heist… According to Channel 5 news at least, and probably every tabloid in town…”

“You know what’s funny, that doesn’t make me feel any better at all!” Amy snipped, before trying to calm herself. Tails was just trying to be a supportive friend, so biting his head off wasn’t going to make her feel any better either. That’s what teenaged Amy would do, adult Amy had moved passed taking out her aggression against anyone other than the person that was irritating her. Oh, and the occasional thieving weasel, she supposed. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to talk about ‘him’ right now… All I want to do is go home, take a bath, maybe shove my face into a gallon of ice cream or two, and lament on how shit my love life is….”

“Okay… If being left alone is what you really want, then I’ll respect that but… Just on the off chance your just saying that because you feel like you’d be a burden to me or something stupid like that… You’re more than welcome to hang out with me at my place for a bit. I can order us a pizza, and you can spend the next couple of hours cursing Sonic’s name to your hearts content.”

Amy blinked in surprise. For someone who’d be the first to confess that he’d have no idea how to handle himself around women, he could be astoundingly astute when it came to picking up tells at how other people were feeling. At least with his friends anyway. The more Amy thought about it, the more she had to admit to herself that pining away for Sonic at home all alone was the last thing she wanted. With Cream away at college, Tails would be the next best person to talk to so… “That… Sounds nice actually. Are you sure you’re not going to mind hearing me bitch about your best friend though?”

“Not at all! Just as long as I get my turn to complain about how he somehow manages to steal all the credit for any heroics I perform around this city without even trying!”

The pair shared a laugh, and Amy already didn’t feel nearly as upset as she had just a few minutes before. Tails had been having that effect on her lately. With Cream not around and with Sonic usually anywhere else he could be where she wasn’t present, well… She’d come to appreciate the fox simply for being around when she needed him.

********   

Around an hour later, Tails and Amy were seated on the sofa in the living room of his generously sized home. With the chill of an early fall nipping in the air, Tails even decided to light his fireplace and from there he just listened as Amy vented. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, and nothing he hadn’t suspected to hear. He’d always thought it sounded a bit weird that Sonic would suddenly agree to a date with Amy out of the blue, so he was kind of under the impression that Amy might’ve been overselling the meaning of the ‘hedgehogs only’ outing that late afternoon. The more he listened to Amy carry on, the more she was proving his theory correct. He’d promised her a vent session though, so a friendly ear he would happily provide as she told her slightly different yet somehow familiar story.

“Sonics pulled some rude and inconsiderate stunts over the years, but this shoots right up to the top of the list! He didn’t even utter a single word to me… He just frowned and ran out of the restaurant with no explanation why! I felt so humiliated, Tails. I paid for our meals before they ever made it to the table… If I wasn’t so angry at the time I might’ve broken down and cried.”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that…” While claiming Sonic had raised Tails was a bit of a stretch, the guy did look out for the fox the best he could, so it was only natural that Sonic would rub off on Tails in certain areas. One of Sonic’s traits Tails had picked up overtime was the hedgehog’s propensity to try and diffuse tense situations with humor. In his own unique style mind you. Tails was far too polite and kind natured to emulate Sonic’s brand of snark that could often border on antagonistic. The fox’s own approach was more light-hearted, but just like his big brother… The reception to his attempts at humor were decidedly mixed. “I can tell you didn’t get to eat at dinner though… You’re attacking that pizza like it's a swarm of badniks!”

Amy frowned defiantly as she chomped down on her fifth slice of pepperoni. “Yeah, what about it?! Who cares if I gain weight? The way my love life is going, I’m gona die a lonely old hag anyway, so I might as well make my tummy happy!”

“You’re not going to die alone Amy… There’s plenty of guys out there who’d love to have a girl like you…” said Tails before muttering under his breath. “You just need to shift your standards a bit from the guy you’re insistent on chasing…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?! Are you saying I’m not good enough for Sonic?!”

“No, of course not!” He put his hands up defensively. “I was trying to choose my words carefully so you wouldn’t think that’s what I was trying to imply…”

“Then what exactly are you suggesting Prower?!”   

Tails sighed and leaned back, as if trying to meld with his sofa. “That depends… Do you want me to answer that question honestly, or do you want me to answer in a way that validates your feelings to help make you feel better about yourself?”

Caught off guard by the straightforwardness of his question, Amy had to take a moment to cobble together an appropriate response. “Is there… A way to do both?”

“Not without contradicting myself, so you’ll have to choose. Either the unvarnished truth, or the closest I can get to the truth without technically lying…”

Amy huffed and dropped her half-eaten slice of Italian pie back into the box. “I’d prefer the truth… I just want to know what’s wrong with me…”

“Amy, there is nothing wrong with you!” he barked, genuinely annoyed that she felt that way. Not so much at her, but at this vortex of disappointment she willingly slammed her head against repeatedly. “You’re only problem is chasing after a guy who doesn’t want to be caught…”

“There you go again with that! What does me chasing after Sonic have to do with anything?”

“Amy…” Tails sighed as he set down the can of soda he’d been drinking. He softly rubbed at the headache that had slowly been forming throughout their conversation. “I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to really think about it and answer me honestly. Did Sonic actually agree to go on this ‘alleged’ date with you? He knew it was a date right?”

Amy scowled in agitation. “Of course, he knew it was a date! When a pretty girl asks you to go to dinner with her and then goes to all the trouble of arranging a romantic itinerary for the two of you for the day, how else are you supposed to interpret your night out as anything other than a date?!”

“Was Sonic aware that this romantic itinerary had been tacked on in addition to the meal?”

Amy froze, blushing faintly as she confessed, “That… Was supposed to be a surprise after the meal… You know, a little spontaneity to liven things up!”  

“Hmm… I wasn’t aware spontaneity could be so meticulously planned… Seriously though, are you positive that Sonic understood that this was supposed to be a date?”

“Yes I’m positive!” the hedgehog’s temper ebbed slightly as she reluctantly admitted. “Well… There might be a slight chance that I may have mentioned ‘dinner’ but left out the ‘date’ part, but it was heavily implied!”

“So… In other words, you lured Sonic in with the promise of a meal, and the moment he realized he’d been suckered into a ‘date’, he bolted.”

Amy desperately wanted to argue. To shout Tails down and insist that’s not at all what had happened, that he had no idea what he was talking about, but she couldn’t seem to do it. Because he was right, and that’s basically exactly what happened. The lovestruck hedgehog whimpered in a manner that made it impossible for the young inventor not to feel sympathy for her as she buried her face in her hands. “Oh Tails, I’m such an idiot! Why did I think this would work?! It’s not even the first time I tried something like this, and Sonic was wary to even agree to sharing a meal ‘between friends’ because of it… Now I’ll be lucky if I can get him to agree to grab a milkshake with me!”

“Amy… You’re not an idiot… You’re just lovesick, desperately trying to get the attention of someone who… Well, let’s face it… Has a hard time paying attention to anything that isn’t slathered in chili for longer than a few minutes.”

“Why does he make me have to fight so hard to get his attention though?! What else could Sonic possibly want in a girl?! He’s not going to find anyone that would be more devoted to him, or that will adore him like I do!”

“Loyalty is definitely an attractive trait… Though I would advise you not to be so loyal that it ends up proving to be a detriment to yourself, which I would say you are guilty of sometimes… As far as the adoration aspect goes, that’s subjective…”

“What do you mean by subjective? Guys aren’t that complicated Tails… Most guys would be giddy to get the kind of attention I lavish on my precious Sonic… Don’t sit there and pretend you wouldn’t love it if some girl was throwing herself at you, showering you with the type of adoration I feel for Sonic.”

“The adoration, I’ll give you… I can’t think of too many people who wouldn’t appreciate being loved unconditionally… Maybe Shadow. Having somebody throw themselves at me, and completely tie their own self-worth and identity to their relationship with me though? I don’t think so… Yes, I find loyalty and affection very attractive traits, but I’d also want someone who has a life, personality and interests all of her own and they don’t have to be one-to-one with my own. I wouldn’t want my potential partner’s entire identity based around her feelings for me! That’s the last thing I would want, and it’s not something Sonic wants either… He values friends who are self-sufficient enough to take care of themselves, since he knows he’s not going to be around all the time. Let’s be honest Amy, the type of guys who’d want a woman to worship him that way are probably not the type of guys you’d want to be involved with in the first place.”

“No, I suppose you’re right… Girls who can’t swing a hammer like I can, would definitely get taken advantage of,” Amy admitted, blushing faintly. She knew he was equating a lot of that, ‘tying your identity to your romantic interest talk’ towards her, but hearing him describe what he’d personally seek in a romantic partner was not only cute, but she also found it… Strangely attractive in a way. “Still, I know I can change Sonic’s opinion of me if he’d just slow down for a damn minute and let me show him what a great girlfriend I could be! How can I do that though, if he can’t even sit in the same room with me long enough to share a frickin’ meal!”

“Okay Ames… Here’s a trend I’ve picked up while rifling through the notes you stuffed inside my ‘Sonic Complaints’ box. If you claim you love him as much as you do, then why do you seem so determined to change him?”

“I’m not trying to change Sonic! He’s virtually perfect exactly the way he is, and I adore him for it! I’d just like for him to… You know… To slow down once in a while and spend some quality time with me… Maybe learn to appreciate me the way I do him. Learn that there’s more to life than running across Mobius and fighting Eggman… I also wouldn’t mind hearing a few less cheesy jokes, rude comments, impatient whining, or if I could get him to do literally anything with me without moaning and groaning like I just asked him to lick Eggman’s armpit! It also wouldn’t kill him to take a bath or groom his quills once-in-a-while or put on some Chaos damn clothes when appropriate! Other than that, though, I really have no complaints whatsoever!”

Tails was most definitely picking up on a pattern here. One that had honestly been obvious for what amounted to years now. “Amy… I really want you to think about this next question and answer me as honestly as your heart will allow you to… Are you really in love with Sonic, or is the idea of Sonic the Hedgehog what you’re in love with?”

Amy felt as if she should be offended, but she’d have to finish up with being confused first. “I don’t even understand what that’s supposed to mean!”

“What it means, or at least what it sounds like to me it means, is that you’re enamored with the idea of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ the dashing hero who rushes in to save the day and sweeps the girl off her feet in the process before they run off into the sunset together. The problem at hand though is Sonic the person… Might not necessarily be the type of guy you’d be all that interested in romantically personality-wise if he were any other Mobian. In other words, Sonic the ‘poster child for the ideal hero’ and Sonic the regular guy when he’s away from the spotlight aren’t syncing up. If you were truly in love with someone Amy, and they were truly worth being with, you wouldn’t have to change them. Love is about understanding, accepting your partner for who they are, and meeting in the middle when needs be. You shouldn’t have to mold someone into the ideal version of the perfect boyfriend if you truly love the person Amy.”

“But… It shouldn’t be this complicated! Sonic and I have always been destined to be together… The cards told me so…”

“Those damn tarot cards again,” grumbled Tails, but he wasn’t about to get into another debate over science and mysticism with her. “I think you put too much stock in that prophecy of yours Amy… Didn’t you say once that those cards ‘actually’ said that you were destined to meet Sonic on Little Planet, and that meeting would profoundly change your life forever?”

“Exactly! Which meant we would fall in love and live happily ever after! How else could you possibly interpret what the cards were telling me?”

“Gee, I don’t know, but if I had to wager a guess… Since that meeting with Sonic, you’ve met the rest of your friends, become an important cog in both the Resistance and the Restoration, been pivotal to the defense of Mobius against Eggman, amongst so many other accomplishments… I’d have to say that meeting Sonic changed your life profoundly without a love story being remotely in the equation.”

Damn it… Amy really hadn’t expected him to have an answer for her, but of course he did, because this was Tails she was talking too. “But… If my cards weren’t directing me towards my one true love, then that would mean I’ve been chasing a lie for half of my life!”

“It’s not necessarily a lie Amy… All it means is that you’ve ironically overromanticized a romantic interpretation of a tarot reading because you really wanted to believe it… You don’t happen to have a deck of those things on you do you?”

“Of course. I never leave home without a set on me,” said Amy, as she absently handed the fox her deck, watching with suspicion as Tails sat up and started to walk dangerously close to the fireplace. “Why? You gona try to read my fortune? Find a new destiny for me to chase after?”

“No, I’d like you to try making your own rather than allowing some parlor trick to decide it for you…” Tails took a look at the cards with a mild flash of concern before asking. “You don’t have a sentimental attachment to this deck do you?”

“No, not really… I have three more just like it at home.”

“Oh good, then I won’t have to feel bad about this,” he said as he chucked the deck into the fireplaced.

“HEY! What did you do that for?! You owe me a deck of cards Tails!”

“That’s fine, I’ll replace them if I must… Just as long as you promise me that you won’t allow some dubious fortune to decide how you live your life anymore. If you’re determined to keep pursuing Sonic, then do it because you truly love him… Not because you believe destiny preordained it.”

“I do love Sonic… As hard as it is to maintain faith that we’ll be together someday, I’m not ready to give up on him…”

“That’s good… Now answer this for me Amy…” he said as he sat down next to the dejected hedgehog. “Do you know what Sonic values more than anything?”

“Chilidogs from the looks of things,” Amy snarked, but it came across as flat seeing as she wasn’t exactly in good humor. “I guess his friends too and stuff…”

“His Freedom Amy… That’s what Sonic values more than anything. To come and go as he pleases with no chains around his neck. That’s why he runs from you. You’re a threat to something he cherishes since you’ve left little to the imagination regarding what you want. You’re trying to catch and bottle the wind, and that just isn’t going to work. Sonic does care about you Amy, but if you don’t ease up he is going to grow to resent you…”

“I don’t want Sonic to hate me… But what other options do I have? To sit around and wait for him to come to his senses? I’d drive myself crazy doing that! At least when I’m chasing I feel like I’m making an effort… Even if all my attempts lately end up leaving me feeling like a complete idiot… How else am I supposed to make him love me though?”

“You shouldn’t have to ‘make’ somebody love you Amy! Why can’t you see that?! Instead of running yourself crazy chasing after somebody who doesn’t want to be caught, maybe you should put your focus into chasing somebody who isn’t trying to get away, or better yet, someone who’ll run towards you and meet you halfway…”

A long pause followed with both fox and hedgehog hanging their heads as the words from his outburst hung heavily in the air. Tails almost immediately felt guilty for snapping like he did, in a way that felt to him like he was venting his own frustrations rather than voicing concern for Amy and her unhealthy approach to pursuing her love interest. Before he got the chance to apologize, Amy broke the silence first.

“What do you mean by that exactly?” she asked, blushing faintly at the thought of Sonic running up to embrace her rather than racing off in the other direction.

“All I meant was that you’re a sweet girl that deserves to be loved in the same way you’ve shown your willing to love others. I’d hate to see that type of devotion wasted because of your tunnel vision on one person who I’m not sure is internally equipped to return it. If you do truly have your heart set on Sonic though Amy, maybe you should consider changing tactics. I can tell you right now that brute force and acting aggressively affectionate towards him are not going to win him over.”

“Well, he’s made that painfully obvious by now…” she quipped softly, subdued really, lacking the bite and combativeness Tails would normally expect from her during a conversation like the one they were having. Tails wasn’t sure what that tone meant, but it was an observation definitely worth taking note of. “Maybe he’s just not attracted to me…”

Tails laughed. “That’s not the problem Amy, trust me.” Tails saw the questioning look on Amy’s face and elaborated, “We’re best friends remember? We talk… Physically, he finds you plenty attractive. Sonic’s never been a touchy-feely guy though Amy… I’m his brother, and with the exception of that one time he’d thought I’d died, the most I’ve ever gotten out of him is an awkward side-hug. It doesn’t really matter how much he’s physically attracted to you or not, he’s still going to shy away when you’re violating his personal space all the time.”

“How else am I supposed to show my affection if I’m not even allowed to touch him! Some of the best parts of a relationship are those little romantic moments when you’re holding hands while walking on the beach, cuddling up close together while watching a movie, or sharing soft kisses in the moonlight…” Amy’s eyes sparkled momentarily, before her expression devolved into something a bit more feral. “Or you know… Making out on the couch like a couple of wild beasts. Romantic things like that!”  

“Okay, let’s backtrack to one of my previous questions then… Do you want Sonic, or do you want a partner with similar views to romance that you have, who’s willing to give you the type of affection and attention you obviously crave?”

“I want those things FROM Sonic!”

“Obviously, but that’s not what I asked! Because what you want out of a relationship, and what you could possibly get out of a relationship with Sonic, if he wanted one, are two entirely differen’t things… So, what’s more important to you then? Is it Sonic or nobody at all, and you’re willing to accept what you can get from him which won’t ever come close to resembling what you’re envisioning out of a romantic relationship with Sonic would be like, or do you respect yourself enough to hold out for someone who wants the same things you do, and will treat you like you deserve… You know, and not immediately write everyone else off because a deck of cards didn’t foresee them as your soulmate?”

It took Amy a minute to formulate a response to that. Tails could tell he was getting through to her on some level, but Amy was a stubborn one. A young woman who’d decided who she was going to spend the rest of her life with when she was 12 and hadn’t wavered from her conviction that Sonic was meant to be the love of her life despite the fact that Sonic highly disagreed with her for more than a decade now. “What I want is for Sonic to give me a chance and once he sees how good for him I would be, maybe he’ll start to see me in that same light… You said it yourself that love is about understanding, acceptance, and compromise but doesn’t that work both ways? If I’m willing to work on myself and make some sacrifices to be the ideal partner for Sonic, shouldn’t he be willing to do the same for me? How can you suggest we could never possibly work out if he’s not even willing to give me a chance?! If I give up on him now just to find out I could’ve had a chance with him later, I’d regret it for the rest of my life…”

Tails sympathy for the lovestruck hedgehog was overriding his frustration with her stubborn determination. What Amy should really be asking herself was why she still believed she could will Sonic into falling for her when she’d basically sabotaged any real chance she had years ago. “You do have a point there, but now it does feel like we’re right back to where this conversation started… So, let’s revisit the idea of changing tactics, preferably away from any idea reverse caveman or Annie Wilkes adjacent. If Sonic had lasted through dinner, what additional activities were on this itinerary of yours.”

“Well, after dinner we were supposed to…”

Tails finished her thought for her. “Go see an aggressively romantic movie, and then try to get free admission to Twinkle Park?”

Amy glared at Tails briefly as if she were wondering if Tails had been hitting the tarot cards himself. “Am I really that predictable?”

“You do have a pattern, and a very specific vision of what a romantic evening is supposed to look like… I would’ve guessed a picnic by the lake too if the ‘mystery date’ hadn’t started off with dinner… I’m not judging you for your preferences either, just letting you know they aren’t exactly a secret… And why they don’t really work where Sonic is concerned… Now be honest with me… If you theoretically made it through dinner, how long do think Sonic would’ve lasted in a theater playing an ultra-mushy chick flick?”

“Not long likely…” Amy admitted tiredly. “Not without complaining the entire time or falling asleep halfway through.”

“Doesn’t sound like the most enjoyable movie going experience does it? Was there no other movie playing as of now that you might’ve both enjoyed? Rather than one of you settling on a film you knew was going to be torture for yourself just to make your date happy?”

“Well, I guess there may have been, but I didn’t really look… I had my heart set on one particular film for well… Let’s just say reasons and leave it at that, but I will make a note of that for the future.”

“That’s a good start… Now, Twinkle Park isn’t the worst choice in the world to take Sonic on a date. There are a few things you two could do there he might enjoy, but you do realize why that place wouldn’t be the ideal destination to take him either don’t you? I can’t see Sonic paying money to mostly be stuck waiting in long lines for rides, that for Sonic, would feel like they were moving at the pace of a snail covered in molasses.”

“Well… Half of that problem would be solved instantly, seeing as we wouldn’t have to pay! Cute couples get in for free remember?”

“Yeah, I’ve also been curious about that particular policy of theirs… It doesn’t seem like a very sound business model, or at the very least it’s a very judgmental one. I’m also not quite sure you and Sonic would qualify for free entry either…”

Amy scowled, her blood boiling just hot enough that for the first time since arriving at Tails’ place, she was a mere degree or two away from getting legitimately pissed. “Hold on a second fox! Are you saying I’m not cute enough to get into Twinkle Park for free?!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” he laughed. “You’re plenty cute enough to get passed those gates free of charge.” Amy’s scowl shifted back to neutral, though she continued to glare at the fox, a slight dusting of pink… Well, more pink than usual in her case, upon her muzzle. Something about the way he’d called her cute… It didn’t sound like he was trying to flirt, massage her ego, or lying to get himself out of trouble. He sounded so sincere, like he was merely stating a fact. Amy couldn’t lie to herself, something in the way he’d spoken those simple little words made her chest flutter a bit. “It’s Sonic that I’m afraid wouldn’t be able to fulfill his end of the bargain. Sonic’s more what I’d think most people would consider conventionally handsome, so I don’t believe cute is the proper way to describe him.”

“Well, he certainly is handsome… Well then, since you’re the smart guy, and apparently the Sonic expert here, what would be my best option for taking him on a date? Since none of the traditional methods of courtship appear to be good enough in your eyes!”

“Well… How about going on an adventure together? You know how Sonic loves to see the world, and you’ve always enjoyed adventuring with us whenever you’ve gotten the chance… That feels to me like an interest that you two share in common.”

“Yeah… Yeah! That’s not a bad idea at all! It would have to be just the right venue though so it would be exciting enough to hold his interest but still feels the appropriate level of romantic to feel like a date!”

“Now you’re talking! Maybe we can brainstorm some ideas while we’re out.”

“While we’re out?... What are you?...” Amy watched with interest as Tails sat up from the couch and walked over to his coatrack and began to slip on his fall jacket.

“What time did that movie start? I’m assuming you preordered tickets…”

“Well, 7:15 but…” Amy trailed off as she instinctively stood up and followed him. “What does that matter now though?”

“Well… You said you had your heart set on seeing this movie, and you already dished out the money, so it would be a shame to let those tickets go to waste… Besides, even though I don’t agree at all with the way you tried to bait Sonic into going on this elaborate date with you, it was still kind of a dick move of him to handle the situation the way he did. I wouldn’t have been happy with you either, but I still would’ve found a way to act like an adult about it…”

“Wait… Are you suggesting filling in for Sonic as my date?” Strangely enough, Amy wasn’t sure how to feel about that. A few years ago, somebody merely suggesting they could be an adequate substitute for Sonic would’ve sent her into a rage.

“Thus is the plight of the younger brother, constantly having to clean up his free-wheeling best buddy’s messes. If it makes you feel any better, you could pretend I’m Sonic while we’re out.”

“That could work…” Amy smirked cheekily. “If you don’t mind getting smacked in the head with my hammer repeatedly for the rest of the night!”

Tails’ eyes widened in mock horror. “On second thought, let’s just call it two friends making the best of a bad situation. I know a night on the town with me isn’t near as exciting as the ‘Sonic the Hedgehog Experience’,” he said in a snooty voice that achieved its goal of drawing a giggle out of Amy. “But at least hopefully you’re entire night won’t be ruined.”

“You know what… That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all,” Amy smiled appreciatively. “I mean, if you really don’t mind, that is… I don’t want to take you away from whatever you had planned for the night just because I feel lousy about myself…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s what friends do for each other… Besides, I don’t have many friends myself, which means I don’t get out very often, so it’ll be a nice change of pace not to be locked away in my workshop on yet another Friday night.”

“Oh, don’t be silly Tails! You have plenty of friends…”

“No, not really when you think about it. Another part of the curse of being the ‘younger brother’ of the most popular guy on Mobius I suppose. All the people I perceived as my friends were really ‘Sonic’s’ friends. I was just kind of the kid running around getting underneath everyone’s feet. Once I got older and went out on my own, and Sonic no longer felt under any obligation to see to it that I was taking care of myself well… Most of those ‘friends’ kind of fell by the wayside once the two of us were no longer a package deal.”

“Oh, come on Tails! How could you say that? None of us have treated you any differently, whether Sonic was around or not.”

“Aren’t friends supposed to check up on you? Call you up to see how you’re doing once-in-a-while, or just to chat? Not ignore your existence until they need something from you…”

“Of course… Those are all parts of being a good friend Tails.”

“Then by that definition, I have exactly four friends and even three of those have caveats. I barely ever see Sonic anymore unless he missed lunch or needed somewhere to crash for the night. I try to talk with Cream at least once a week, but with her being away at college and so busy with her studies, I try not to eat up too much of her time. There’s Knux too, but when you can ever actually get him off his island, he’s not exactly the type of guy who likes to just drop by to hang out…. And of course there’s you, and until my social skills ever advance past the stage of ‘awkward hermit’ that’s probably how things are going to stay.”

“I still think you’re reading too much into things… You have a lot more friends than that! What about the Chaotix?”

“The definition of friends by association with Sonic. If they don’t need my help with a case they happen to be working, I don’t ever hear from them.”

“What about Rouge?”

Tails had to think about her for a second. “She’s an interesting case but I’d still have to say no… She’s friendly enough when we interact, but again, it’s just like with the Chaotix. I only really ever see or hear from her when she needs help with a job.”

“Silver?”

“Literally have never had a conversation with the guy without Sonic in the vicinity. Whenever he’s paying a visit to the past, I usually hear about it secondhand from Sonic. I don’t appear to be on his itinerary for places and people he needs to see when he’s around.”

“Blaze?”

“See Silver and multiply what I told you about him by ten.”

“How about Tangle and Whisper? You always got along well with them…”

“Haven’t seen them in years… I’ve heard from Tangle exactly twice in the last year, and on both occasions it was just because she was looking for Sonic.”

Amy was getting desperate at this point. “Umm… Shadow?”

“Not even going to dignify that one with a response.”

“How about Belle? You two seemed fairly close once.”

Belle was another name he flinched on. Belle was a sore subject for the fox. On one hand, he understood that Belle never felt like she fit in amongst regular Mobians, and he couldn’t fault her for her desire to help fixup and rehabilitate her badnik brethren on Scrapnik Island but… Tails had welcomed Belle with open arms from the start. He’d supported her and defended her from others who could only see her as a creation of Eggman and nothing else… So, for Belle to turn her back to him and lump him in with every other Mobian who’d made life difficult for her had hurt… It hurt a lot back then, and he’d never really gotten over it.

“Maybe at one time, but after the Restoration dissolved, we drifted as Belle went off to do her own thing… I tried to visit once in a while, but she always seemed to be busy or indisposed somehow… I know when to take a hint, so I just stopped trying after a while.”

Running out of options, Amy tossed out the next name she could think of. “How about Big?”

“Nice guy, but no. Not even close.” Seeing Amy beginning to pout slightly, Tails bit his lip to keep from snickering as he decided it was time to put this game to bed. “Hey, it’s not a big deal. I’m not the only one in that boat. Sonic was the glue that held the larger crew together, so we were all destined to drift apart at some point. It’s not all bad though… Because once Sonic was only a part of the movie rather than the lead character, that helped me figure out who my real friends are… Because those are the people who are still around in my life today, without requiring Sonic being around to act as a buffer. People like you Amy…”

A soft, barely audible gasp escaped Amy’s mouth, though she tried to play it cool even as her pinkening muzzle betrayed her. She blamed his smile. Yes she was totally hopelessly in love withs somebody else, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with admitting someone else had an absolutely gorgeous smile right? Her and Cream had joked before that Tails smile could absolutely melt a girl’s kneecaps if he ever learned how to weaponize it properly rather than acting like a stuttering blushing mess anytime he even tried talking to a girl in a situation that was anywhere remotely north of platonic.

What was bothering Amy was a familiar fluttering in her chest. This wasn’t the first time Tails had caused it that evening. The first time was when he had earnestly referred to her as cute. She knew what that feeling was, and it was strictly reserved for somebody else. She decided to blame her indiscretion on the fact that she was just feeling appreciative of Tails being so supportive after her disastrous dinner plans. She even appreciated his honesty and not coddling her like so many of her other friends would… Likely due to fear of getting the Piko.

“We should probably get going if we want to make the movie on time… And yes I know there’s thirty minutes of previews, and I’m aware they’re the best part, so all the more reason to get moving!”

“Well, you’re not wrong on either point,” Tails grinned as he opened his front door and motioned for the hedgehog to exit first. “Ladies first…”

There was that damn thumping sensation again. All he was doing was holding the door open for her. It’s not like a guy had never held a door open for her before… Well, not in recent memory, but they definitely had before! “Why, aren’t we quite the gentlemen…”

“Hey, what can I say? Sonic taught me well.”

Amy snorted. She’d never seen Sonic hold a door open for anyone not pushing a chilidog cart in her life. “Sonic taught you that it was polite to hold a door open for a lady?”

“No, he taught me to keep the lady with the scary hammer in front of me whenever possible!”

Amy’s body went rigid, and Tails immediately started to panic. Had he taken things too far? Of course he had, stupid, stupid, IDIOT! Amy was already a dangerous guinea pig to test out his new cheeky sense of humor on, but having the balls to do so when she was already in a testy mood after getting rebuked by Sonic yet again… He might as well had carved his own tombstone while he was busy running his mouth… Surprisingly though, miraculously even… Rather than unleash pain upon him the likes he’d never felt before… Amy actually started to giggle.

“Oh, thank Chaos… I thought I went too far for a minute there… I’m new to being snarky.”

“Yeah, it shows… You are getting close to pushing it bud, so maybe think before you open your mouth? That’s definitely one trait of Sonics I don’t want you picking up.”

“It’s not one I intend to inherit either! Especially considering all the times I’ve seen you try to cave his head in when he…” Noticing the cross look the pink hedgehog was giving him, Tails caught himself before he could completely shove his foot in his mouth. “Yeah, I’ll be shutting up now.”

“Good… Oh, and thank you Tails…” She said softly as the fox closed his door behind him and locked it. “For being so supportive tonight and… Not being afraid to tell me things you knew I wouldn’t want to hear, even if I did need to hear them.”

“Of course… It was no problem Ames, that’s what friends are for… Though I can’t promise I’m not going to annoy the hell out of you before the night’s over.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that… I have ways of handling people who try my patience Tails… I’m just as dangerous with that hammer from the front as I am from behind!”

Tails gulped, fairly sure Amy was messing with him. Just to be on the safe side, he’d be wise to try and stay on her good side for the rest of the night.

Meanwhile, Amy’s mood was a bit more chipper than it had been all night. She still couldn’t help but lament why Sonic couldn’t be as considerate and understanding as Tails.

Chapter 2: Verse 2

When they arrived at the nearby cinema, it took Tails all of three seconds to identify which movie Amy had been so excited to see as he homed in on the promotional poster. Amy was standing next to him looking a bit embarrassed, and the coy smirk that the fox was shooting her way wasn’t helping to ease the tension.

“Chasing the Wind, huh? From what I’ve heard about this movie, I’m not surprised at all that you’d try to bait Sonic into watching it with you.”

“Well of course… It’s the type of movie that’s perfect for date night… Sweet and romantic, with a little bit of comedy mixed in.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be about a lonely misunderstood girl who’s in love, conveniently, with the star of her school’s track team of all things, who she’s desperately pursuing throughout the entire film, yet he barely knows she exists… If I recall the plot synopsis correctly, doesn’t it take her moving away for the jock to realize he’s in love with her too, and then literally runs all the way to her hometown to tell her?”

Amy was eerily quiet for a few moments. “I thought maybe Sonic might notice some parallels and that might put some ideas in his head.”

“That’s actually some top tier subliminal messaging there Amy… I’m impressed.”

“Do you think it had any chance of actually working?”

“I dunno… It kind of depends on how loud Sonic would’ve been snoring by the time you reached that point in the movie.”

Though on some level she wanted to be annoyed, Amy couldn’t help but snicker and quip right back, “You’re giving me too much credit, assuming I’d even be able to get Sonic to step foot in that theater!”

“Well, you’ve got me there. If you’re wanting popcorn and stuff, we better hit the concession line before all the good seats are taken.”

“You know… We don’t have to see Chasing the Wind if you don’t want to… I’m sure we could find a movie we could both enjoy, like you mentioned earlier.”

“But you really wanted to see this one though right?”

“Well, yes I did but…”

“Well then, Chasing the Wind is what we shall see! My brain might melt down to pudding by the end of it, but at least I can brag I was man enough to brave a cheesy chick flick while Sonic the Hedgehog just wasn’t up to the challenge! And I also get some popcorn out of the deal, and I get to say I got to go to the movies with a pretty girl.”

Whump… There was that damn thumping at her chest again, as the heat rose to her cheeks. Come on, this was such an overreaction on her part! Tails calling her pretty was no differen’t than her thinking that Tails had a nice smile. Two friends could find things about each other attractive without there being any romantic overtones involved. It was perfectly natural! “Careful Tails… It almost sounded like you were flirting with me there for a second.”

“Fl..Flirting?! No, I was.. wasn’t.. I mean I didn’t intend for it to sound like I was… Um…”

“Oh, good going Amy, you melted his brain,” Amy laughed to herself. Tails had built up his confidence enough that he could converse with his friends just fine, but if you brought up interacting with a girl in a manner even slightly north of platonic, he’d quickly turn into a blushing blubbering mess. She wasn’t going to lie though… She found it rather adorable when he got like this. “Oh, calm down Tails, I was just getting back at you for all the times you’ve teased me tonight.”

“Well played Miss Rose… And I promise I’ll try my best not to make fun of the movie, unless it’s just really, ‘really’ as bad as it has the potential to be.”

“You better behave yourself! I don’t want my movie experienced ruined by ambulance sirens coming to haul your two-tailed ass to the hospital!”

Tails made good on his promise for a staggering twenty minutes before the cringe just grew too strong to restrain himself. His brain had prepared himself for ninety minutes of horrible acting around a paper-thin plot recycled from literally every other movie like this ever made, but Tails hadn’t expected to eclipse this level of brain rot so soon. The male-lead, a 25-year-old Giga-Chad hedgehog playing a teenager, clearly cast to make the movies target audience swoon, looked bored to be there and had all the acting chops of a baked potato … No, that was a little harsh, Tails decided. That comparison wasn’t fair to potatoes.

The lead actress, a 28-year-old mongoose playing a teenager, was a bit more tolerable, but she was far too conventionally attractive for Tails to buy the outcast/ugly duckling vibe the movie was going for…. Possibly forcing the actress to compensate by overacting while trying to sell what a pathetic lonely loser she was supposed to be. Weirdly enough, Giga-Chad’s rabbit girlfriend was putting on the best performance of the three sadly… Mainly because she’d been cast as your stereotypical obnoxious bimbo, meticulously crafted to make the audience despise her as much as possible. She was the romantic rival after all… Thus, the combination of intentionally obnoxious, annoying overacting, and a baked potato with all the emotional range of a rock, again Tails’ sincerest apologies to baked potatoes, made for a rancid soup concocted deep within the bowels of cinema hell. It was only a matter of time before Tails’ mind started to wander, which led him to softly snicker to himself despite his best efforts to hold it in.

“What’s so funny?” Amy asked, trying to sound annoyed. In reality she was trying desperately to pretend she wasn’t as bored as Tails was.

“Oh nothing… I was just thinking that if there was one thing this movie nailed, it was the stereotypical high school/college power couple dynamic and how shallow it really is. I couldn’t help but think of how those two’s lives would’ve turned out if two aggressively toxic people stayed in a very toxic relationship.”

“Oh? You found the results of this hypothetical relationship amusing?”

“Yeah kind of… It’s a little morbid I admit but considering that they’re not real people and they’re both kind of assholes, I don’t feel all that bad about it. I could imagine those two staying together, getting married right out of school, all the while cheating on each other left and right… Maybe have a kid together, and by the time she gives birth to their second child, and it pops out a chipmunk or a bandicoot just as Giga-Chad’s two other girlfriends walk in the delivery room both claiming their pregnant. Fast forward five years, and the bunny girl is standing in front of her trailer drunk off her ass and spouting conspiracy theories as her three kids from three differen’t baby daddies are running around covered in dirt. Meanwhile Giga-Chad is working double shifts and two differen’t jobs just to meet all his alimony and child support payments because he was so convinced he was going to become some famous track star, which oddly enough, turned out not to have a lot of upward trajectory as a career choice.”

“Giga-Chad?” Amy covered her mouth to try to keep from laughing. “Where on Mobius did you come up with that?!”

“Well, just look at him! What choice did he give me? He looks like he jumped straight out of that ‘Chad’ meme, only somehow aggressively more Chad! Judging by his acting skills, he might’ve actually been chiseled out of rock!”

Amy snorted, still struggling not to give Tails the satisfaction of hearing her titters. He had promised not to make fun of the movie, yet here they were. “I was hoping Ashton would be nicer… It’s kind of hard to root for Mina to get with him when he’s been acting like a dismissive jerk throughout the entire movie so far…”

“You see, why did they stop short at naming the character Ashton? Just go all out and name him Chad already, it’s literally right there!” While Tails gestured wildly with his hands, Amy bit her bottom lip… Then finally hunched over in a ball and laughed. The fox smiled in satisfaction at finally getting her to crack. “To answer your question though, the movie is probably trying to setup some corny, ‘he changes because of the power of her love’ sort of thing…”

Amy’s eyes practically sparkled. “Oh, you’re probably right! I love stories that end like that… It’s so romantic…”

“Yeah I guess if it’s done right if can be satisfying…” Tails mouthed with concern. He still had his fears that Amy was holding on to hope that she could change Sonic into something that he wasn’t by sheer will alone. “You got to be careful with those ‘I can fix them’ storylines though… Having a fetish for people that you feel need to be ‘fixed’ isn’t exactly healthy…”

“I know… But it’s fun for a girl to fantasize about, you know?”

Tails’ frown persisted. Fantasizing wasn’t the issue, it was Amy’s past track record and the lengths she was willing to go, trying to force those fantasies into reality. Absently, he reached for the bucket of popcorn only for the pink hedgehog to pull it away. “Nuh-uh, no more salty goodness for you! You promised you wouldn’t poke fun at my movie, and you barely lasted half an hour!”

“The movie hasn’t been playing fair! Besides, I bought the popcorn, and this isn’t a date so I’m under no obligation to even share with you in the first place…”

“Then you shouldn’t have let me hold the bucket smartass,” she chortled before shoving a handful of the buttery snack into her mouth and swallowing. She held the bucket over her head and out of the fox’s immediate reach. “Whatcha gona do about it?”

Tails response was swift and effective, using one of his bushy tails to gently tickle just beneath Amy’s right arm. The hedgehog epped, and retracted her arm, inadvertently sending the bucket of fluffy corn product into the air, which Tails somehow managed to catch before the contents could go spilling out in every which direction, though a few kernels did wind up landing in Amy’s lap. She glared at Tails who merely smirked smugly in response as he started popping pieces of the salty treat into his mouth. “Funny… That wasn’t near as difficult as I believe you were going to imply.”

Amy’s response was to throw a piece of popcorn which struck Tails right between the eyes. “Hey, watch it! Salt can cause your eyes to burn something nasty, you know?!”

Amy didn’t seem to care. Loading up with the ammo that had fallen into her lap, she started flinging popcorn at the bemused fox, who eventually had to give in and start returning fire. “Watch yourself fox! If you get salt and butter all gooped up in my quills, you’ll be fitting the bill for my next salon appointment!”

“Hey, you started it! Though in retrospect we should probably stop… This bucket cost nine dollars, so we’re literally throwing money away!”

“I’m not the one who bought it, so not my problem!” Amy chucked another kernel at the fox who moved his head to brace himself, which probably wasn’t the wisest move he could’ve made. The kernel landed squarely inside one of his generously sized ears and lodged itself in there good. Tails flew into a mild panic, as one tended to do when something is unexpectedly inserted into one of your exterior orifices. Amy immediately ceased her attack but couldn’t help but laugh as she tried to get the fox to simmer down. “I’m sorry Tails…” she snickered. “I can’t help it if I have good aim! Here let me look. I’m sure that enormous brain of yours kept that lone piece of popcorn from penetrating too deep.”

“That is an advantage I suppose… There are a couple of people I know, who in the same situation, we would’ve seen that popcorn exit straight through the other side without much resistance.”

“Tails, don’t be mean,” Amy snickered, as she went to remove the kernel from his ear canal, only for him to stop her.

“You know something, I can barely hear the movie now… Let’s leave it in!”

Amy socked him in the arm, before finally helping to remove the rogue kernel from his ear. “Ewe, gross! I’m not sure if that’s butter, or something else…”

“Well, I’m not taste testing it, that’s for sure! If you’re so curious then that one’s on you,” Tails joked as Amy tossed the tainted kernel aside. Before Amy could retort, they both felt a large shadow looming behind them. They looked up to see a large angry-looking badger glaring down at them.

“Would you two idiots shut up and knock it off with the screwing around already! My wife and I are trying to enjoy the movie, which is becoming increasingly difficult with you two constantly running your traps!”

Okay, so maybe they were guilty of forgetting they weren’t the only two people in the theater. Amy would’ve readily apologized if somebody else in that theater had simply shushed them or asked them to quiet down, but this guy choosing to get confrontational immediately got under her quills. There were just some lines, okay a lot of lines, you just didn’t cross with Amy Rose if you valued your health. Being rude and acting aggressive towards her and her friends ranked pretty high on the list. “Oh, back the hell off like you’re actually going to try to start something! We weren’t even being that loud, and we’d gladly have lowered the volume if you’d just asked politely.”

“Tch, polite!... Do I look like some kind of pris to you?! Maybe I didn’t feel up to being polite towards some obnoxious loudmouthed twat and her freak boyfriend!”

Tails flinched but otherwise ignored the insult. He was far more offended by the way he chose to speak to Amy but held his tongue… Mainly because he knew Amy could more than take care of herself, and he understood that letting this guy prod him into a fight wasn’t going to do him any favors. Earlier that evening he’d mopped the floor with three criminals who could still be considered extremely dangerous to the public at large, so a grumpy badger with a beer gut wasn’t the least bit intimidating to him. Amy on the other hand, was entirely red in the muzzle, steam practically spewing from her ears with barely contained rage.

“You know what sir, you’re absolutely right…” Amy growled out through gritted teeth. “It was highly inconsiderate of us to disrupt your moviegoing experience, so allow me to try to make it up to you by sharing our popcorn with you!” Amy took what was left of their half-eaten bucket, and slammed it down atop the unprepared badger’s head, somehow wedging it on their tightly enough that he couldn’t get it off, staggering backward and falling into the row of seats behind him as his wife checked up on him. Tails, mildly stunned by what he’d just witnessed looked over at a smugly grinning but otherwise indifferent looking Amy and asked, “Bail?”

“Bail,” she agreed before they both scampered out of the theater.

Both fox and hedgehog waited until they’d successfully snuck out the back door of the cinema before they both burst out laughing. “Well, that was completely unnecessary Ames. Funny, but unnecessary.”

“Highly disagree. He needed something inserted into that fat mouth of his to shut him up… What he said was completely uncalled for…”

“I know,” Tails sighed and hung his head, though failed to reign in his still grinning mug. “Hearing him refer to me as your boyfriend must’ve been traumatizing for you… Ouch!”

“You know what I mean!” Amy huffed after playfully elbowing Tails in the ribs.

“I do, and I appreciate the sentiment Ames, but I got over people calling me a freak years ago… Honestly, I rarely hear that insult anymore now that I’m a known associate of Sonic’s, and even then it’s usually a cheap shot from one of our enemies… It surprised me to hear it more than anything.”

“Well, he’s just lucky I didn’t feel like getting charged with assault tonight, otherwise he would’ve gotten my hammer upside his head rather than a popcorn bath…”

“Actually… Dumping the popcorn on his head would technically constitute assault in the eyes of the law Amy, so it’s probably a good thing he didn’t seem to recognize who we were.”

“Seriously?!” Amy’s eyes widened in surprise when she realized Tails was indeed not joking. “How can a bucket of popcorn possibly be considered a deadly weapon!”

“The weapon doesn’t have to be deadly, or even really dangerous to get collared for assault. As long as there’s a perceived threat that you intended to inflict harm on someone, you can be charged with assault. Knuckles found that out the hard way when we took a trip to the Emerald Town Fair earlier this year. Some guy accused Rouge of stealing something from his wife’s purse. Once we talked Knux down from pounding the guy into hamburger, he settled for tossing his drink at him, and that nearly got him arrested. Thankfully, and ironically, Eggman decided to show up and attack the carnival for reasons I’m not even sure even Eggman fully understands. The three of us managed to shut his scheme down in short order, and everyone kind of forgot about the drink throwing incident after that.”

“Wait… You, Knuckles, and Rouge thwarted an Eggman attack at the fair? How am I just hearing about this now?”

“Oh, you’ve heard the story before or at least read about it in the paper. Don’t you remember the headlines from four months ago? Sonic the Hedgehog Thwarts Another Eggman Plot at the Emerald Hill Fair!”

“Wait?... That was you guys?! Was Sonic even there?”

“Nope, If I remember correctly, he was in Downunda at the time for some type of desert racing competition. I have to admit though, the photoshopping job they did to display Sonic facing off with Eggman at the carnival was impressive. You’d be surprised by how much the Sonic the Hedgehog mythos has grown just from achievements he had absolutely nothing to do with! It’s like he’s become this omnipotent entity that just pops in and out of existence wherever he’s needed! He’s like Santa, you can’t prove he was around, but you just know he was there!”

Amy found herself chuckling harder the more overdramatic Tails became as he regaled her with accomplishments that Sonic himself had never realized he’d achieved. “I can see how Sonic getting all the attention for everything the rest of us do could get annoying.”

“Eh, for guys like Knux and I who prefer to lay low, we don’t mind so much… We get annoyed for five minutes and then we move on with our lives. Now poor Vector, it annoys the hell out of him because the Chaotix could actually use that publicity. Anytime Sonic’s name is even remotely involved with one of their cases, all the credit and attention is going to swirl around him.”

“Sonic’s never really been a credit hog though… I wonder why he hasn’t been more vocal about receiving recognition for deeds he had no part in?”

“To be fair, he’s tried but the press doesn’t want to listen. Sadly, the news is as much a business as any other industry, and the media is more concerned with what’s going to get them the most engagement and attention, not necessarily the truth. The three topics that garner the most views are all things Sonic the Hedgehog, fearmongering about Eggman, and whatever crazy conspiracy theory they’ve decided to attach to GUN that month. Sonic’s former sidekick stopping a band of burglars in broad daylight? Nobody wants to read about that! Insert Sonic in said sidekick’s place, and then you have a story! To be doubly fair to Sonic, he’s done so much good across Mobius, I doubt even he can keep track of all the different crimes, schemes, and world domination plots he’s foiled over the years.”

A brief silence hung in the air as they continued down the street, Tails resting his hand behind his head. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your movie by the way.”

“Don’t be,” Amy spat. “I didn’t want to admit this at the time, but I was trying hard not to fall asleep before you started giggling about how bad the movie was.” Amy sighed noticeably dejected. “After the dinner debacle and one stinker of a movie, I think it’s probably best if I called time of death on this night and head home.”

Normally Tails probably would’ve agreed with her but… His mission had yet to be completed. Yes, he’d made her laugh a few times, but she still had that same defeated downtrodden look on her face that she’d been wearing ever since Sonic had jilted her at dinner. He was determined to wipe that look off her pretty face and see a genuine smile upon it before that night was through. “Not so fast there my dear hedgehog. Didn’t you have one more stop planned on your night out with Sonic?”

“Well yeah, Twinkle Park, but I hardly see the point now… It’s already late and…”

“And it wasn’t going to be late when you planned to go with Sonic after a two-hour movie? The way I see it, the night is still young, we have an extra hour on our hands due to the movie being a dud, and one last chance to make sure this night isn’t a complete shitshow! I mean come one, it’s Twinkle Park! How could we possibly screw that up?”

“Well, when you put it that way… Oh, what the heck!” Amy offered him an uncertain smile… Still not the type Tails was looking for, but it was progress. “Oh, and just so you know, tonight hasn’t totally sucked… It’s been kind of fun in its own weird little way.”

Tails heart swelled at her admission, hoping that was Amy’s way of saying she’d been enjoying hanging out with him despite her circumstances.

It wasn’t a long walk to the theme park from the cinema, and since it was already late into the evening, there wasn’t a long line to get inside either. Amy and Tails were already next in line, when she looked over to him and asked, “So, how do you want to do this? Do we each pay our own way? This was my idea, so I don’t mind spotting you if you don’t have the cash…”

“Who said anything about paying…” Tails huffed. “We’re getting in for free!” Amy eyed the fox questioningly, as he grinned and offered her his arm. “When we get up to the counter, we just pretend we’re a couple. I bet you a cotton candy that they’ll let us in for free.”

“You’re on!” Amy accepted and wrapped her arms around his but immediately blushed upon realizing how this was going to look to other patrons of the amusement park. She was also caught off guard by, well… Tails’ arm wasn’t exactly muscular, but it was a lot more well-toned than she had expected. “Tails… Have you been working out?”

The fox looked confused at first until she noticed the hedgehog staring at his arm. “Oh! No, not in the traditional sense, but when you spend most of your days lifting and lugging around heavy machine parts, it does wonders for curing noodle arms!”

“I can see that…” Amy trailed off as she thought to herself. “I wonder if the rest of his… No, what am I doing?! Don’t think like that, bad Amy!”

Amy was a blushing mess by the time it was there turn at the ticket counter, and Tails wasn’t faring much better with his natural shyness kicking in now that he was facing off with a pair of tellers he didn’t know. “Um… Two tickets please… One for me, and one for my lovely lady friend.”

Thump… Oh, God damn it Tails!

The woman at the counter eyed them critically, before looking over at her co-worker. I don’t know… What do you think?”

“What I think…” The other woman smiled at what she presumed was a young couple. “Is that we’ve got a couple of cuties here!” Both Tails and Amy looked stunned as they were handed their ticket stubs. “Enjoy your visit to Twinkle Park. Free of charge!”

“I can’t believe that worked…” Amy mouthed to herself after they entered the park from the turnstile. She pulled her arms close to her chest and squealed with delight. “I knew I was cute!”

“You see, I told you! We’re totally adorable.”

“That would appear to be the case,” Amy laughed. Her chest ‘thumped’ again as she looked up at the fox, briefly bringing her back down to Mobius. “I’ve tried to get Sonic to try that with me so many times, and he wouldn’t even entertain the idea… Even for free admission to a theme park!”

“You should’ve told him that cute couple’s also get served unlimited free chilidogs.” Tails immediately regretted the jest when he saw Amy’s eyes sparkle, an easy tell that she was already plotting something. “That was a joke, not a suggestion.” He tried not to laugh at Amy’s cute little pout. “Seeing as I’m the Sonic surrogate here and I should be playing devil’s advocate, let’s say that you did get Sonic to cave and humor you by trying to play the ‘cute couple’ card. If you’d actually gotten free admission would you have been able to resist reacting like you just won the lottery and shouted out to anyone who’d listen that you and Sonic had just been declared the cutest couple to ever walk through the gates of Twinkle Park?”

“Well duh, why wouldn’t I crow about that! It’s not like Twinkle Park let’s just anyone enter the park for free! Only the cutest couples get entry, so it’s almost like the ultimate stamp of approval to get recognized by the park as a cute coup…le…” Thump, Thump, Thump… Amy’s muzzle went blood red, as did Tails when they realized simultaneously that the two of them together apparently met Twinkle Parks allegedly stringent free entry standards. “I mean who, wouldn’t be giddy about that?”

“Sonic…” Tails said flatly, causing his hedgehog companion to flinch. “He’s an attention sponge for most things, but for anything that might make him look soft or vulnerable, he has a very low tolerance for. Having you drag him around by the arm announcing that Twinkle Park declared the two of you the cutest couple ever would’ve driven him up the wall. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt it was fear of that very scenario that caused him to steer clear of the park, rather than him just straight up not wanting to come here with you.”

“Huh… Is this one of your not-so-subtle attempts to suggest something I could try differently?”

Tails shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt… So, is there any ride in particular you’d like to try first?”

“Oh right! The Hurricane!” she practically squealed.

“You see! Now that’s a sentiment Sonic would’ve totally been on board with!”

One roller coaster, a flume ride, and one Zipper type attraction later, and Tails found himself groggily stumbling out of a metal cage shaped like a car, which Tails was now convinced was nowhere close to up to code. Amy had a chuckle at his expense as Tails rested his hand against a cement wall as he waited for his head to stop spinning.

“For somebody used to flying around at high speeds chasing Sonic around while performing insane ariel stunts, I wouldn’t have guessed that your stomach couldn’t handle a simple amusement park ride!”

“Hey, we’re talking about two entirely separate sets of circumstances here!” Tails defended himself playfully. “It’s a lot different when I’m flying myself around with my tails or even in the Tornado, because I’m in control of how fast I go, and what maneuvers I perform while in flight. In other words, I trust the pilot… That’s not the case with a carny, who I’m almost certain is drunk, pushing buttons while I’m enclosed in a spinning metal deathtrap! I’m pretty sure I heard a few bolts pop loose while I was in there.”

Amy giggled as the pair began to walk, and they soon found themselves passing through the midway of Twinkle Park. “Oh look! The carnival games! I know it sounds silly, but I love the idea that almost every theme park has one of these sections! I used to love them as a kid.”

Tails was inclined to agree until he noticed a young wolf trying his hand at the Jug Toss game. The ball hit one of the jugs on the bottom of the three-stacked pyramid flush, only to watch as the ball bounced right off, the jugs not even so much as jiggling. “Whoops, better luck next time little guy!” said the game master. “Who’s next?!”

“From the looks of it, they’re just as rigged too… I’d expect this kind of thing from a traveling carnival, but I’d like to think a wildly popular theme park would have higher standards than to cheat their customers…”

“Yeah, I thought they would too,” Amy agreed, having noticed the same thing. She smiled wickedly. “Feel like showing one of these guys the error of their ways?”

“Yes, very much so.”

Tails and Amy walked up to the Jug Toss stand, where the monkey running the booth took notice of them and immediately began spouting his sales pitch. “Step right up and take your shot! Knock down all three jugs and win a prize! How about you my young fox friend? Care to try to win a prize for your lovely companion!”

“You’re kidding right?” Tails snickered. “She has a much better arm than I do! Care to give it a go Ames?”

Amy cracked her knuckles confidently. “Oh, I’m ready to give it a shot!” 

The carney eyed his two new marks a bit befuddled for a second, before shrugging his shoulders. A buck was a buck. “A little unconventional, but I like it! It’s five dollars per ball little lady! You can choose any of the three targets we have set up, and if you manage to knock all three jugs down, you get to pick a prize of your choice!”

“Pretty sure I know the rules,” Amy quipped, not appreciating the monkey’s slightly condescending tone. She handed the carney a five, and once the ball was in her hand, began tossing it in the air and back into her palm. “This should be a breeze!”

“Ewe, I like that moxie kiddo!  Pick your target and fire away whenever you’re ready!”

Amy focused on the center pyramid and tightened her grip on the ball. She knew she’d need to put some extra juice into her throw if she wanted to cancel out whatever trick the game master was employing to rig the game. Amy pulled back her arm and hurled the ball as hard as she could, restraining just enough to hopefully not cause any collateral damage, the ball striking dead center in the middle of the pyramid of jugs. The canisters rattled and wobbled a little bit, much to the monkey carney’s surprise, yet the pyramid remained standing. Despite fully expecting shenanigans, Amy still couldn’t help but let her irritation show. “What the hell?! That throw was right on target!”

“Oh, so sorry Miss, you were this close! If you want to give it another go, I’m sure you’ll get it next time!”

“Hmm… Kind of interesting how the jugs vibrated when the ball made contact, yet the bases of the jugs didn’t move an inch… Almost as if they’d been bolted in place somehow…” Tails observed, his arms crossed. “At least that’s what I might think if I wasn’t sure an honest gentleman such as yourself wouldn’t stoop to rigging a game played mostly by small children.”

The monkey frowned at the snarky fox, before breaking out into his salesman-like grin. “I assure you sir, my booth is on the up-and-up the same as all the rest of the games on the midway! Why don’t you have a go, and find out for yourself?”

“I think I’ll take you up on that… Let me talk strategy with my friend here first.” Tails led a curious Amy away from the booth. The fox clearly had something up his sleeve.

“I assume you’ve figured out how he rigged the game?”

“Yep, it’s pretty much what I thought… He’s either bolted or glued the two bottom jugs to the stand so it’s practically impossible to knock the jugs over, and it even appears he went the extra mile to glue the top jug to the bottom two… It’s lazy and uncreative, but still effective if you’re trying to cheat kids out of their money.”

“So that’s why those jugs barely moved! We should report that guy or at least call him out for his dirty tricks!”

“We could do that… But I think I have a better idea…” Tails whispered his plan into her ear, Amy’s smile broadening the longer he spoke before nodding her head in agreement. Amy ran off and disappeared into the crowd while Tails walked back over to the Jug Toss booth.

“Ah, back again I see. What’s the matter, couldn’t stand the thought of your lady friend watching you embarrass yourself?”

“We’ll see about that…” Tails handed the carney a twenty. “Three balls please… Keep the change. I’m not going to need the fourth.

“Well, well, we sure are confident all of the sudden for someone who let his girlfriend take the first crack at the jugs… Good luck to you lad, you’re going to need it!”

“Nah… Science and friends are lot more dependable than luck,” Tails boasted as he moved one of the baseballs into his right hand. “One… Two… THREE!” he shouted before rapidly tossing each of the balls at a differen’t target.

Hidden away in the shadows behind the conman’s booth with her hammer in hand, Amy waited until she heard her friend shout out three before smashing her Piko against the ground. The resulting shockwave shook the monkey carney’s entire booth, as he latched on to the counter with both hands to maintain his balance.

“What was that, an earthquake?!” the carney wailed after the ground had stopped shaking and all seemed calm. “Whew, looks like that’s over… That’ll sure get the old heart pumping, won’t it kid?”

“You can say that again! Oh, and it looks like I won.”

“Huh?” The carney whirled around, and sure enough, all three targets had been knocked down, with the exceptions of the bottom portions of two of the jugs still bolted… Er, uh clinging to their stands for dear life. “What the hell happened here?!”

“I knocked all three targets over, just like I was supposed to. I’ll just choose my prizes now, and I’ll be on my way…”

“Oh, no you’re not! Something’s fishy here, and I don’t like the smell of it… I didn’t see ya knock over any of those targets, so how do I know the ground shaking didn’t cause them to fall over?”

“You didn’t see me not do it either, but you did see me toss those balls right before all the targets fell, so the logical conclusion is that I knocked them all over,” Tails taunted the carney, as Amy walked around from behind the booth and stood next to him… Hammer draped over her shoulder. The monkey may not have recognized her before, but he certainly recognized that Piko.

“Hey, wait a second here! Aren’t you that hedgehog that got banned from playin’ the strength test game because you kept breaking the machine?! I have half a mind to report you two cheats to management and get you both tossed outta here!”

“You go right ahead and do that. It’ll give us the opportunity to expose to them exactly how you’ve rigged your booth to cheat their customers out of their money. I have no idea if Twinkle Park is complicit in your scam or if you’re paid off commission, but I have little doubt your bosses wouldn’t hesitate to throw you under the bus rather than risk their customers thinking the park is participating in shady business practices.”

The carney gasped before scowling at the fox, knowing full well who his bosses would side with in the case of ‘Unhappy Guests’ vs. ‘Shifty Employee’. “Fine, have it your way… Take whatever you want and get outta my sight! I better never see either one of you at one of my stands again!”

“I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” Tails quipped, while Amy snorted in amusement. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t enjoyed seeing this snarkier side of Tails she didn’t get to see very often.

The two walked away from the flummoxed monkey’s booth laughing, both with their hands full of over-sized novelty plush prizes when Amy asked, “Well, that was thoroughly entertaining, but what on Mobius are we supposed to do with all these? I have no desire to lug these things around with me for the rest of the night.”

A potential solution made itself known to them as they encountered a group of kids looking up at them in amazement. Tails recognize the wolf at the head of the pack as the same kid who got cheated at that same booth Tails and Amy had just finished fleecing. “Wow, that was amazing! How did you manage to knock down all three targets at once mister?! Nobody ever wins at the jug toss game!”

“Well, it’s a cinch to win at most of these games once you figure out their ‘tricks’ and how to get around them,” he smiled down at the group of about six kids, all looking up at him in wonder like only youngsters could. “Tell me something… Did all of you guys try playing the jug toss earlier today? Or any other day for that matter?”

All six kids nodded their heads. Tails took one look at Amy, who smiled brightly and nodded her own head in agreement. A minute later, six happy youngsters were running off into the night, each with one of those elusive theme park prizes in their arms, Tails looking mighty proud of himself. “Well, that solves that problem, and we just made a group of kids very happy.”

“Yeah you did…” Amy looked over at Tails, and for a split second, Sonic appeared in his place. This stunt felt exactly like something Sonic would do too. It was nice to see that some of Sonic’s positive traits had rubbed off on Tails. Come to think of it… It was kind of strange, but after they’d successfully scammed their way into the park, Amy hadn’t thought about Sonic much until that moment… The blue hedgehog disappeared, and Tails was looking down at her again wearing that same smile that was becoming more hypnotic as the night went on. THUMP. Blushing, Amy scowled down at her chest as if to tell it not to start with that shit again.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to keep at least one of those prizes for yourself… Like that huge Sonic plush for example…”

“What and disappoint one of those little guys?” she laughed nervously, thankful for the change in direction. “Besides, I’ve got a closet full of them at home already!”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me…” Tails eyed Amy suspiciously, playfully, but still suspicious. “Are we positive we’re not going to find your name on some criminal registry in the future?”

Tails got another elbow to the gut for his attempt at humor. “Hey, I’ve been much better at keeping my fangirl tendencies under control as I’ve gotten older thank you very much.”

“And we’re all very proud of you for that Amy… Just out of curiosity, you don’t have a Tails plushie hiding somewhere in that pile of Sonic’s do you?”

Before Amy could flat out just sheepishly admit no, she had to think about it for a second. “To be honest, the only plush I’ve ever seen of you is that creepy looking doll with the antenna sticking out of its head that they give away at the duck pond game…”

Tails shivered at the image. “Yes… The less we speak of… That cursed thing the better.”

“Hey, at least you got a plush! The only merch they have on the market for me are plastic Piko Hammers! My weapon is more marketable than I am apparently!” Tails snorted, and they shared another laugh that was broken up when Tails was forced to stifle a yawn.

“Oh, am I starting to bore you now Mr. Prower?” asked Amy, still giggling from before.

“Not at all… I’ve just been up since five this morning working on that new engine design Aerotech contracted me for… The all-nighters I’ve pulled throughout the week might be catching up to me a bit too.”

“Oh no… You’re not going to have a hard time waking up for work in the morning because of me are you?”

“Nah, not at all… That’s the best part about being self-employed, you get to make your own hours! I usually finish weeks ahead of my deadlines, so one missed day of productivity isn’t going to affect me much.”

“That’s good to know,” said Amy, relieved she wasn’t messing with his work schedule. “Still, it is getting late, and we should probably be heading home now… You know, before you fall asleep on your feet, and I get stuck lugging you back to your house on my back!”

“Hm, getting a free ride instead of giving one for a change actually doesn’t sound that bad… But you’re right, it’s probably time to call it a night. Do you mind if I walk you home?”

“You know what… I’d really like that actually.”

Tails insisted on leading the way after the friends had left the park, though as to why, Amy had absolutely no idea. She grew even more confused when they appeared to be going a roundabout way to get to her cottage while approaching Azure Lake. So close now in fact, that she could probably toss a rock into the water from their position.

“Tails… What are we doing out by the lake? I mean, we can get to my house from here, but it’s going to put an extra twenty minutes on our walk going this way…”

“That may be true but… Seeing as I’m acting as your surrogate Sonic for this not a ‘date’ I still felt he should’ve put some effort into doing something nice for you, and out of all the options you listed for what you consider romantic moments, a walk along the beach felt the safest… Now I know this isn’t exactly what you had in mind, since this lakeside is hardly a beach but it’s the only real option I had on short notice… Plus it’s probably more appropriate for a mock date anyway.”

Amy wasn’t really hearing him by the end. Red in the face, her chest was doing that thumping, fluttery thing again as she thought to herself, “Gosh Tails has been sweet tonight… He’s put more time and effort into one night out with a friend than Sonic has in all the years I’ve known him… Why can’t Sonic treat me this way? Everything would be perfect if he would…”

“Everything okay Ames?” he asked with concern after she went silent. “If you feel I’ve pushed it too far, we can just take the regular route to your house. It’s no big deal.”

“No, its fine… This was actually a very sweet idea Tails… But you’re forgetting one thing…” Amy held out her hand to the fox who looked at the appendage as if the gesture was spoken in some foreign language he couldn’t understand. “I said walking along the beach hand and hand was romantic. I mean, if you’re going to try to make one of my little fantasies come true, you might as well go all the way with it, right?”

“You… Want to hold hands?” Tails stammered, instantly turning into a nervous pile of goo the moment physical contact was introduced into the equation. “Isn’t that a little… Intimate for a proxy date?”

“Oh, don’t be so over dramatic Tails! It’s just two friends holding hands, it’s not that big of a deal. You’re not obligated to propose marriage because our pinkies touched!”

“Well… Um, it’s your night, so if that’s what you want…” he said, as he made the weakest of attempts to reach for her hand before pulling back. Amused, though not really of a mind to have much patience with the vulpine’s shyness, Amy grabbed Tails by the hand to end a prolonged standoff with his nerves before it could even get started.

As it turns out, Amy lied. Taking Tails by the hand turned out to be a big deal… A VERY big deal. They were moving along the lakeshore at a snail’s pace, both red in the face, with neither able to bring themselves to utter a word to the other. Both had plenty of things to say in their own heads, even if they couldn’t get the words passed their lips… Not that they’d want too.

“It’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal! Why is his hand so warm? … And why isn’t he saying anything?! I weirded him out didn’t I? Things were almost perfect, and I went and made them weird! What is wrong with me?!“

“Come on brain, work! You can make calculus your bitch, but a girl touching your hand turns you into a puddle of goo?! Say something damn it, she’s going to think you’re being weird! Who am I kidding, I am being weird, this whole thing is weird… Kind of nice, but still weird… She can’t feel my hand sweating through my glove can she? I’m so glad I peed before we left the park!”

“Thank you for tonight Tails,” Amy finally managed to speak up, and those five simple words seem to chase away most of the awkwardness. “I know there’s probably a thousand different things you’d have rather been doing tonight.”

“Funny, I can’t think of a single one,” he said, somehow managing not to stumble over the words.

Thump. “Oh, stop it you… Either way, I really appreciate you keeping me company tonight instead of allowing me to sulk the night away at home feeling sorry for myself. Not everyone would do that for a friend while knowing they’re not getting anything out of the deal in return…”

“Ha! What makes you think I’m not getting anything out of this arrangement? I got to spend an enjoyable night out with a good friend, and it took a little work, but I finally got to see you smile. That’s all I really wanted in the first place.”

Thump, Thump, Thump…. Amy went completely red in the face… And then the bastard had the nerve to smile at her again like ‘that’ as he continued, “That face just doesn’t look right with a sad expression on it, so I wanted to fix that, and if I helped even a little, the effort was more than worth it.” Thump, Thump, Thump. “Ames, are you okay?... You’re awfully red in the face there…”

Amy tightened her grip on his hand, and moving almost on autopilot, she leaned up and pressed her mouth against his. Blue eyes went wide as Tails’ brain completely shut down, though thankfully instinct took over and he returned the kiss in kind. If he claimed this was the first time he’d ever kissed a girl, Amy might have had a hard time believing it. It took the hedgehog a full five seconds to realize what she’d done, and only then did she pull her muzzle away from his like she’d just pressed her lips to a hot stove, backing away frantically.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I’m so sorry! I don’t know what came over me!”

“Whoa, It’s okay Amy!” Tails insisted nervously… And feeling a little hurt by the aggressively negative reaction she was having to kissing him. “I’m sure you just got caught up in the moment… It’s not a big deal…”

“It is a big deal Tails! I love Sonic, and I basically just cheated on him by kissing his best friend!”

“You can’t cheat on someone you’re technically not in a relationship with Amy… Remember, the entire reason I was filling in ‘for’ Sonic was because he ‘didn’t’ want to be ‘here’… I’m sure when you kissed me, you were just imagining kissing Sonic anyhow.” Tails grimaced, hoping those words hadn’t come out of his mouth as bitter and rancid as they tasted to his tongue.

“Maybe…” Oh, if only that were true. Other than wishing Sonic would treat her like Tails had treated her throughout the night, she hadn’t thought of her fellow hedgehog all that much since she’d left the movie theater. It was all the fault of that sneaky, conniving, scheming fox who just had to go out of his way to be so sweet and kind and funny and considerate… Everything she’d always wanted from Sonic and had never gotten close to receiving, and Tails had offered it all up willingly and with no expectation for compensation. Of course she’d get swept up in the moment, and because of it, judging by the look on his face she’d hurt him, and she knew it.

“Tails… We can’t let this happen again… It was a mistake. I think we’d both be better off if I walked the rest of the way home myself. Let’s just pretend like this never happened okay?”

Amy didn’t wait for a response as she turned and sprinted off towards her home as fast as Tails had ever seen her move. Wondering what the hell he’d done wrong, Tails rubbed at his mouth and then stared at his hand as he finally answered the hedgehog long after she had any hope of hearing him.

“I’m… Not sure I can do that Amy…”

 

Notes:

And Thus the Dance Has Begun. We'll spend a lot of the next chapter learning why Amy reacted the way she did, and it's safe to say that Tails is going to start seeing her in a new light if he hadn't been already.

Chapter 3: Verse 3

“Sonic, wait up for me!”

It was a familiar scene for Amy Rose. Racing through Emerald Hills, trying to catch up to the elusive hedgehog. It was always so cute, how shy he was, pretending that he didn’t want to be caught. Sonic looked back at her and smirked, and that image only emboldened Amy to push herself harder. Finally, she’d gotten just close enough to lunge at her darling Sonic and wrap her arms around his waist…

Only when she focused her eyes on him, she wasn’t staring at the love of her life as foretold by the mystic arts. It was an orange fox smiling mischievously at her. “Tails? What are you doing here? Where’s my darling Sonic?!”

“Racing off in the distance no doubt.”

“I don’t understand… Every time I feel like I’m finally catching up to Sonic here lately, I wind up running into you! Anytime we’re on a picnic, watching the sunset, or even when we’re about to kiss… You always show up and spoil everything!”

“I don’t know Ames. These are your dreams, so you’ve gotta tell me! Maybe you just find it easier to catch me because I’m not trying to run away?”

********

A small gasp escaped Amy’s mouth as she lifted her head off her pillow. She shook her head, sighed, and flopped back down on her bed.

This had been the pattern her dreams had been taking for nearly six weeks now. Sonic, who usually played a starring role in her nightly excursions to her dreamworld, was finding his usual role usurped by a two-tailed fox, whose reception wildly varied. Sometimes Amy was confused, sometimes annoyed, other times downright hostile and angry that her time with Sonic had been interrupted, to being completely okay with the fox’s appearance more often than she’d care to admit, and on occasion, being downright giddy about it. One thing was for certain… Dream Amy just couldn’t make up her mind for shit.

Accepting that it was time to pull herself out of bed and face the day, the first thing Amy did was walk over to the dresser where she’d left her phone the night before and checked her messages. A daily ritual she’d perform to see if a certain fox had tried to contact her… He hadn’t, no surprise there. It had been a while since he even bothered to try.

It had been six weeks since the incident at the lake. At first, Amy had avoided any and all potential contact with Tails out of both embarrassment over what had happened, and to sort out how she actually felt about it. Once she’d come to terms with all that, she was then too afraid to contact him out of shame and disappointment in herself for avoiding him for so long… Somebody who did nothing wrong, and she knew she had hurt. Hence, why she’d been hoping Tails would reach out to her again himself to open up that window for her to climb in and save face.

For Tails’ part, he’d given Amy several days to decompress before he tried to contact her. At first just to check up on her and see if she was okay, but Amy just wasn’t ready to deal with him yet. That lasted a few days before the fox’s texts got increasingly more pleading until he eventually gave up and stopped trying. Amy knew she was going to have to do something to fix this soon. She was risking losing one of her best friends because she couldn’t keep her stupid lips to herself.

She needed to talk to someone about this, something else she’d neglected to do while she was busy dealing with her internal crisis. Rouge was out of the question… She was the most experienced with this kind of thing and could probably provide the best advice, but not without a ton of innuendo and teasing, which probably would’ve included Rouge suggesting Amy should’ve just taken Tails straight home and up to her bedroom, if not right there next to the lake. Amy was in no mindset to contend with the bat’s games. Tails would’ve normally been high on her list, but he was out for plainly obvious reasons. That only left Cream… Her best friend and normally the person she would’ve contacted first if the incident had gone down with anyone that wasn’t named Tails, but currently Cream wasn’t very happy with her and hadn’t been for about six weeks now… And no, the timing was not a coincidence.

While Amy may have failed to confide in anyone with what had happened at the lake, Tails sure had. She wasn’t sure how much Tails had told her about what happened, but it was enough that Cream was upset with her for both the way Amy had handled the situation, and even more so for forcing Cream to have to be in the middle of an incident between two friends because, as Cream put it herself, one of them couldn’t get their shit together. Chaos, that girl hadn’t been out of her mother’s house for much more than a year and she already had a mouth on her.

Seeing no other recourse, Amy tried calling up Cream despite her hesitance over how the rabbit was going to react to her calling her out of the blue after being selectively distant for so long. After ten rings, it wasn’t looking good. She disconnected the call, and after waiting about a minute, she tried again. After the sixth ring, the phone was finally answered with a tired and very testy sounding, “What do you want Amy?!”

“Well, hello, it’s nice to hear from you too… Somebody sure crawled out of the wrong side of the bed.”

“You’re lucky I crawled out of bed at all! I’m working on three hours of sleep after pulling another all-nighter, but since my damn phone wouldn’t shut the hell up…”

“I’m sorry Cream… I just really needed somebody to talk to and…”

“Have you made things right with Tails yet?”

“Well… No, not yet but…”

“Then goodbye!”

“Cream wait! That’s what I called to talk to you about!”

There was silence on the other end of the line, causing Amy to wonder if Cream had disconnected before she finally responded with, “Are you finally going to tell me ‘your’ side of the story after keeping me in the dark for the last month?”

“Yes… Yes I will… I think I’m finally ready…”

“Okay then… Give me a few minutes to make a cup of coffee and hopefully get myself in a more agreeable mood…”

“I would really appreciate it Cream… I’ll be here waiting.” It would give her time to think about what she wanted to say too… She hadn’t really thought that far ahead when she decided to call. Cream returned around fifteen minutes later, and Amy found herself speaking to someone that far more closely resembled her best friend and not a grouchy teenager.

“Alright, I’m ready… Now, what the heck happened between you two, and why has it taken this long for you to finally talk to me about it?!”

“I’m sorry, I know I should’ve talked to you sooner… To be fair, I did try once before but at the time you were so upset with me that I was afraid you were just going to focus on how I reacted, and not hear what I was saying… I’ve been afraid to bring it up again ever since. Not just because you were upset with me, but this entire situation has just been difficult for me to process.”

“You should never be afraid to talk to me Amy… I’m your best friend. Even when I am mad at you, I’m still going to listen and try to understand where you’re coming from… Even if I don’t agree with you, I’m still going to try and support you, even if that support comes in the form of telling you to stop being stupid.”

“I liked it a lot better when I was the mature one in this relationship…”

“Well, sorry I couldn’t stay six-years-old forever. Now spill it girl! I’ve been dying to know what’s going on in that head of yours for weeks now!”

“First things first… How much exactly did Tails tell you about what happened that night?”

“That Sonic bailed on your date, he volunteered to fill in as a friend to cheer you up, that everything seemed to be going well until you took that walk by the lake, then you kissed him, freaked out about it, and you’ve been ghosting him ever since. Does that about cover it?”

“Is that all he told you? No specifics?”

“Nothing that’s any of my business to divulge to you, no. I can only tell you what you already knew.”

Amy grunted in frustration, though she’d fully expected that type of response. Best friend or not, Cream still wasn’t going to share any secrets with her that were told to her by another friend in confidence. “Can you at least tell me how he felt afterward when he talked to you? Is he mad at me?...”

“Gee, both of those sound like questions you could’ve gotten answered just by talking to him, rather than avoiding him like he’s patient zero…”

“I’m working up to that, I swear it! I need to know what I’m walking into first though, so please tell me Cream!”

“He was never mad at you Amy,” Cream sighed, clearly frustrated and a little confused as to why Amy was finding the idea of approaching Tails of all people intimidating. Amy had always worn her heart on her sleeve and left very little to the imagination as to how she was feeling at any particular moment, so the fact that she’d spent six weeks stewing over a spur of the moment kiss was odd for her and possibly even a little concerning. Cream really wanted to know what the hell Tails had done to get her so worked up, since what she’d heard from the fox himself sounded so innocent that it did nothing to help answer that question. “He was hurt because you cut off all contact with him… Seeing as this is Tails we’re talking about here, he thinks he did something wrong and this is all his fault, though from what he’s told me, I can’t for the life of me see what he could’ve done that he should feel that way… Which is a big reason why I’ve been waiting ‘patiently’ for your side of the story…”

“Of course he’d blame himself, damn it…” she moaned as she grabbed the bridge of her nose. “I have to make this right…”

“Yes, you do… Now, would you mind explaining what the hell possessed you to kiss him in the first place?” Cream asked with an edge in her tone that caught Amy off guard.

“I can’t answer that, because there really wasn’t a reason… It’s just something that sort of happened, and I can’t explain why… Tails had just been so sweet to me all night, and I got to thinking how this was exactly the way I hoped Sonic would treat me if we ever went on an actual date and well… I just sort of got caught up in the moment and the next thing I knew, we were kissing…”

“So… Were you imagining it was Sonic when you kissed him? Tails mentioned he thought it might have something to do with that…”

Amy thought over her answer carefully. She instinctively wanted to say yes, of course she was imprinting Sonic on Tails… It would make this entire situation so much simpler, but for the simple fact that she knew it wasn’t true, and that made it so difficult. If it were that easy, she already would’ve stuck a pin in this problem, and they could all get on with their lives. She wouldn’t have been hiding from Tails for weeks and risking their friendship if it were as simple as Amy using Tails as Sonic’s surrogate. “No Cream, I wasn’t… Throughout most of that night I barely even thought about Sonic except to wonder why I couldn’t get him to treat me like Tails had been treating me that entire night. When I kissed him, I was only seeing Tails, and it wasn’t something that happened on a whim… It had been building up all night, and that’s not even the worst part…”

“None of what you just said sounds particularly bad, but I’ll play along… What was the worst part Amy?”

“I didn’t hate it… The kiss, how he made me feel, being with him that night… It felt weirdly natural, and I hate the fact that I wasn’t put off by any of it! I took a fake date and somehow made it weird enough that now I feel like I was cheating on Sonic the entire night!”

“Oh Chaos, not this again…” Cream wanted to slam her head against something hard… Maybe even pointy. “For the last time Amy, Sonic is NOT your boyfriend! You can’t cheat on someone you’re not officially in a relationship with!”

“I know that, but that’s just the way I am okay! To ‘me’ it feels like I’m cheating and that’s all that matters… I’m a one-person kind of girl Cream, and the thought of potentially having feelings for two people at once makes me feel gross! And with Sonic’s best friend no less!”

“Wait a minute… Do you… Actually, have feelings for Tails?”

“I don’t know… But I do know that I don’t want too… Why do you think it’s taken me so long to build up the nerve to face him?…”

“So let me get this straight… You have a kind, smart, attractive guy who you just admitted you might have feelings for… Who treats you the way you want to be treated, and you’re obviously attracted too enough to impulsively kiss him on a fake date of all things… And you want to push him aside in favor of your one-sided crush on a guy who runs in the opposite direction as fast as he can if you so much as look at him in a certain way! Why?! Because your silly fortune telling cards convinced you that he was the love of your life?!”

“It’s not just the cards Cream… I’ve been in love with Sonic for half of my life… Assuming Tails was even interested in me that way, what if we got involved together, and Sonic finally came to his senses and decided he wanted to be with me? I’d either regret the decision I made for the rest of my life, or I’d have to break Tails’ heart. That isn’t a game I have any interest in playing. Besides, Sonic and I have a date coming up next weekend!”

“Amy…” Cream scolded.

“Okay! We’re going on an adventure to some ruins to look for some dusty relic,” Amy acquiesced. “Yeah I know, I’m working on not referring to everything Sonic and I do in proximity to each other as a date… Gesh, you’re starting to sound like Tails…”

“Good. I’m going to take that as meaning that I sound smart!” Cream took a moment to consider what she wanted to say next. “So obviously, your plan is to keep banging your head against the wall until you put yourself in a coma hoping Sonic finally notices you… While potentially pushing away someone it sounds like you’re ‘clearly’ feeling a certain way about, but you don’t want to accept it because he’s not the person you want to make you feel that way…”

“I hate it how you guys always try to make things like this sound so simple… How can I even be sure it was Tails I was attracted too, and not just the idea of how he made me feel that night?”

Cream was looking for pointy objects to slam her head into again. “Strangely enough, my sleep deprived mind kind of understands what you’re saying, but you’re still contradicting yourself. If what you said was true, you’d have told Tails the truth the next day and been done with this… Amy Rose is not somebody who’s afraid to tell you how she feels! She doesn’t lock herself away in her house for days avoiding someone because she’s afraid they’re mad at her… It seems to me like she’s only doing that because she’s afraid these new feelings of hers are going to fuck up her preordained bullshit happily ever after fantasy narrative that she created in her head because some stupid ass cards convinced her it was destiny! Personally, I say fuck your fairytale world, but if you really need your storybook romance and ending, then why don’t you go write one for your god damn self, one that might actually be achievable! You know, instead of waking my ass at the butt crack of dawn looking for answers to all these wishy-washy questions you already know the answers too, but you just don’t like the answers.”

“Damn Cream… Are you sure you’ve had that coffee? What happened to being supportive despite whether you agreed with how I reacted or not?…”

“I made it distinctively clear that support would come in whatever form I felt was appropriate, and at the moment it doesn’t include just telling you what you want to hear by lying to you and saying you should just ignore the feelings you’re obviously developing for somebody else that’s not Sonic, just so you can justify chasing after some god damn fantasy! You’re fully capable of convincing yourself of that if you’re so determined to do so…”

“You just don’t understand Cream… I can’t give up on Sonic just like that… You don’t know what it’s like to be in love with someone, and have to work so hard to get their attention that you…”

“Excuse me?” Cream cut her off. The rabbit, who had sounded mostly irritable up until then, now sounded down right pissed. Amy knew she’d fucked up and knew exactly how almost instantly.

“Oh, Chaos Cream, I am so, so, sorry! I completely forgot…”

“Forgot what Amy? That when I was younger I had a massive crush on somebody who was so oblivious to how I felt that I could’ve jumped into his lap naked, and he would’ve thought I’d gotten lost and gave me directions to the bathroom! The guy I spent two years trying to get the attention of, usually while trying to follow ‘your’ oh so brilliant advice that had once done such a fantastic job capturing Sonic’s heart? The same guy you just fucking kissed, and I’ve been forced to listen too while he whines about how you’ve been avoiding him, when you could’ve spared us all this grief just by sending him a simple text to tell him you needed space! Yeah, this has been real fucking fun for me Amy, being the go between for the drama between my ex-crush and my best friend!”

“I’m so sorry Cream, I wasn’t thinking of any of that… That all feels like it’s been such a long time ago that I just…”

“It ‘was’ a long time ago…” Cream sighed as she began to calm down. “And as annoying as it might feel to know that you got farther with him on one fake date than I did in months, I got over that crush a long time ago… And do you remember how I managed to do that? Because I finally decided to open up to him about how I felt, and he let me down as gently as he could that he wasn’t interested… It hurt for a while, but I moved passed it, and honestly our friendship is probably stronger now today because of it. If you have any hope of salvaging yours, then you need to do the same thing Amy. If you’re seriously not interested in him that way and you’re still determined to chase after Sonic ‘til the end of time, then just tell him! He’ll understand that probably better than anyone… Honestly, I highly doubt he’s even expecting anything, he’s more worried that you’re upset with him! The only thing that’s going to ruin your friendship is ignoring him like you have been. He feels isolated enough as it is… Let’s be honest here, you’re more worried about how you’re going to feel when you see him again than you are over how he’s going to react…”

There was some truth in Cream’s accusation Amy couldn’t deny, and it left her quiet for a moment. “I plan on making things right soon… I just… I don’t even know anymore.”

“Yes, you do…” Cream sighed, done with all of this. “Listen Amy… I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him, or at least your version of it. FIX your shit… I don’t want to hear from you again until the two of you have made up or are at least on speaking terms again… You can work on those messy feelings you’re trying to convince yourself you don’t have later… Don’t lose a friend over something that could just as well open a door to something wonderful.”

Amy definitely heard the call drop this time. She wasn’t sure what to make of most of what Cream had just dropped on her head, and quite frankly, she wasn’t in the mood to try and unpack any of it. She did agree with the bunny on one thing though… She needed to stop avoiding Tails and make things right. A simple phone call just wasn’t going to cut it either, she needed to do this in person… It wouldn’t hurt if she showed up to his place packing a peace offering, but what to bring? Amy had come to believe there was no better way to settle a disagreement, show affection, or smooth over a misunderstanding than with something warm and tasty that came out of the oven… What could she bake though that she had the ingredients at the ready, and wouldn’t take all morning? She was risking losing her nerve again if she allowed herself too much time to think.

After a quick rifling through her pantry, she came up with her solution… Blueberry muffins! Tails loved them, and while a basketful of pastries certainly wasn’t going to make up for ghosting the fox for weeks, they could at the very least serve as a conversation starter to get her through his door.

Assuming that door was still open to her that was…

********

“And there we go! Finally finished!” Tails sighed in contentment as he finished the final inspection of the engine block he’d been working on. While he didn’t work on projects for automobiles very often, he’d found this particular contract interesting and challenging enough that he didn’t hesitate to accept it. That contract also came with a sizable commission, but money was rarely a factor with the projects Tails chose to take on. This engine block was a cleaner more energy efficient model that just might revolutionize the automobile industry if his contractors were impressed enough to mass produce the design. Of course, Tails wasn’t even thinking that he might just be shaking up the paradigm as to how car engines were manufactured, for him this was literally just Thursday. What he actually accomplished wouldn’t sink in until the news media outlets and magazine columnist were contacting him asking for interviews… Again.

“Okay, so what’s next on the itinerary… Oh…” There was nothing left on his to-do list. It wasn’t for lack of contract work, he had plenty, but he always tended to work fast, and here lately he’d been working even longer harder hours to try and keep his mind distracted from… Recent events. Either way, he averaged completing his contracted projects six weeks to a month ahead of schedule. He would still wait until closer to the due date to submit his finished project, since he didn’t want any potential employers to expect him to keep up the breakneck pace he usually worked at. One of these days he just might have a life and wouldn’t have nearly as much free time on his hands to devote to staying ahead of his deadlines.

Yeah… Free time to have a life… His wrench fell from his hand and rattled against the cement floor of his workshop as intrusive thoughts of his night out with Amy invaded his mind now that it was no longer occupied by work. A night that should’ve been a fun pleasant memory that would wind up becoming memorable for all the wrong reasons because of the aftermath of how it ended.

Tails still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong, but he refused to feel guilty about it any longer. She was the one who kissed him, so if she wanted nothing to do with him now because of it, then that was her problem. He hated the idea of losing such a good friend over something seemingly so innocent, but he wasn’t going to go beat down her door demanding answers like some crazy stalker. Tails had done his part. He’d reached out multiple times in hopes of clearing the air and got rebuked each time. The ball was literally in Amy’s court, and she’d apparently decided to stay home with it.

Tails had spent the first couple of weeks after the lake fiasco going over that night in detail to figure out what was going on… To understand why Amy was acting the way she was, and why he was feeling the way he did. That evening had been one of the most enjoyable nights of his life, and as far as that kiss went… Well, he certainly hadn’t minded it. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d enjoyed the hell out of it and thought about that moment frequently since it happened. How her lips felt and tasted against his own. It felt like such a nice way to cap off a night that had been damn near perfect up until that point… Until Amy reacted like she’d committed the biggest atrocity known to Mobian-kind and slapped his name on the no-call list. Taking Amy’s reaction out of the equation, he was still wrestling with how to feel about everything that happened.

Tails had never really thought about Amy before in that light… As something more than a friend, at least not seriously. He’d always found Amy attractive, but he also saw her as a friend first… Besides, Amy had made it no secret that she was madly in love with a certain blue speedster, and Tails never once considered trying to duke it out with Sonic the Hedgehog over the affection of their mutual friend, and Sonic’s biggest fan. The very thought felt gross to him.

That kiss changed things though… As he thought back on that night in detail, he started to recall cues he’d been picking up from Amy that made him wonder if her emotions were as confused as his own. Tails had always been oblivious when it came to girls. Cream had once had a massive crush on him when she was younger, and Tails had absolutely no clue until the day she finally came right out and confessed it to him. Tails had been flattered, but he was just not interested in the rabbit at the time. It wasn’t for a lack of any attraction, but she was only fifteen at the time, and she just felt too young for him. Weird to say yes, considering she was only two years his junior, but maturity wise, they were on completely separate stratospheres. Mentally, Cream was very much a hormonal teenager, possibly even a little repressed due to her stringent upbringing, while the Tails of then often joked that he’d felt like an old man since he was eight. Seriously, there were times back then when he felt like he was the most mature person in the room depending on who was with him in said room at the time. Even if he had been interested, on some level, he would’ve always felt like he was taking advantage of her in some way.

While Tails may not have picked up on Creams obvious infatuation with him at the time, in hindsight he was able to make out some of the signs… He loved to do his research after all… Some of those signs, Amy just happened to put on full display during their evening out. Did that mean Amy was actually attracted to him on some level? No, he had to be reading too much into this situation. Amy always had her heart set on Sonic for as long as he’d known her, and Tails was under no delusions that Amy nor any other girl for that matter, would ever pick him over Sonic the Hedgehog… He wouldn’t even want to try, especially with Amy… He wouldn’t be able to stand the idea that she might always be looking over her shoulder hoping Sonic might finally round that corner and come running up to her, rather than in the opposite direction. Tails wasn’t about to put himself through any of that.

Tails briefly flirted with working on one of his personal projects, but the Amy situation was on his mind, and she wouldn’t be leaving him alone anytime soon, so maybe this was a sign that it was time to take a break. Maybe get something for lunch and see if there was anything on the TV that might distract him. If he hadn’t decided to enter the main hub of his home, he might’ve never heard the knock at the front door.

“Who the heck could that be?” Tails asked himself as he closed his fridge. Oh, please don’t let it be another salesmen or news crew looking for Sonic. Nobody he really knew bothered to knock on the rare occasions he got a visitor, except for some of his contractors to check on the progress of their commissions, but those visits were always scheduled ahead of time, and nothing was on his calendar for today. Sonic had his own key and would sometimes be found having been lurking around his house for hours before Tails even realized he was there. Knuckles didn’t possess a key, but he’d usually barge in any way, and Rouge would often sneak inside, unable to resist the temptation of breaking through the fox’s rather impressive security measures. No, the only people he knew that were polite enough to knock were Cream and…

Tails opened the door and was greeted by a wicker basket floating in midair. That basket slowly lowered to reveal a sheepishly smiling pink hedgehog had been hiding behind it… “Hey…”

“Amy?” blue eyes widened in surprise before quickly retracting as his muzzle took on a more neutral expression. He didn’t appear angry, which Amy was thankful for, but he didn’t exactly appear over-the-moon to see her either.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?...”

“Too long,” he deadpanned, again sounding more tired than angry.

Noticing she had yet to receive an invitation to come inside, Amy warily asked, “Um, can I come in?... There’s some… Things we need to talk about.”

“Yeah, there is…” He stepped aside and motioned for Amy to enter. “Take a seat on the couch. Let me get cleaned up and I’ll join you in a minute.”

Several minutes later, fox and hedgehog where seated on the sofa in his sitting room, trapped in a blanket of agonizing silence. Staring at the basket sitting in her lap and recalling it’s intended purpose, Amy attempted to break the ice by lamely offering, “So um… I was baking a batch of muffins this morning, and I remembered that you really like the blueberry kind so I… Thought I would bring over a batch and see how you were doing…”

Amy held out the basket towards the fox, though rather than accept the offering, he stared at the basket blankly for a second before resettling his gaze on the hedgehog, which sent her anxiety launching into orbit. Again, Tails didn’t appear angry exactly, but more analytical… Almost robotic. Finally, he mercifully diverted his gaze from her to the basket, where he finally picked out a single muffin and began to glare at it in a similar way to how he’d been eyeballing her. “So… Let me get this straight… You kiss me out of nowhere, reacted to it like you’d just swallowed bleach, avoided me for weeks like I’d contracted the metal virus without so much as a call or text to let me know you just needed some time to yourself, all the while making me go crazy thinking I’d somehow done something to offend you… And you think you can just waltz through my front door with a basket of muffins and expect that this is going to fix everything?”

“No, that’s not what I’m trying to imply at all! I just didn’t want to show up empty handed after everything and… I… I…”

Despite Amy’s obvious distress, Tails grunted and took a bite out of the cakey treat and swallowed… “You’re lucky I’m so easy to pay off…”

“Huh?!” Amy’s brow furrowed, unshed tears still in her eyes.

Tails didn’t have the heart to keep the farce up any longer, smirking cheekily. “There was no need to sweeten the pot… I would’ve gladly settled for having my friend back. That’s all I wanted.”

“Oh, Tails! That’s all I wanted too…” The relieved hedgehog lassoed her arms around the fox’s neck in a strong hug. Tails chuckled and returned the embrace with his one free arm, though only half-heartedly. He wasn’t currently comfortable with the idea of getting too physical with Amy for the time being. The hedgehog abruptly pulled away and smacked Tails hard on the side of his arm. “You jerk, that was mean!”

“Hey, compared to the types of revenge some of our other friends might’ve tried to extract in a similar situation, I’d say that was rather tame... Could you imagine what Rouge would’ve put you through?”

“I don’t even want to think about it… I’m just glad I was dealing with you, and not somebody else who would’ve held a massive grudge over me being stupid…”

“While we’re on the subject…” Tails broached reluctantly. “We should probably go ahead and talk about what happened, so it isn’t hanging over our heads any longer than it already has been.”

“Oh right… That… Come to think of it, that was one of the main reasons I came over to your place today wasn’t it?” she laughed to try and ease some of the tension, but nothing about this situation was easy and everything about it was tense. “Look, about that night…”

“I’m not talking about the kiss, or anything else that happened that night Amy,” he said to Amy’s surprise. “You’ve already conveyed your feelings on that incident. You admitted it was a mistake, and you wanted to forget it ever happened, so you can’t get much clearer than that. What confuses me is why you pulled the disappearing act after the fact, where I would’ve thought the issue had been settled. I even gave you a few days to get over any potential embarrassment before I even tried to reach out to you, Chaos knows I kind of needed it too, but complete radio silence for weeks?! A simple text to tell me you needed space would’ve been enough! I wouldn’t have been happy with it, but I would’ve understood! Much preferable to driving myself crazy wondering if I’d done something wrong, that’s for sure…”

“I Know, I know! I have no idea why I was so scared to talk to you…” She lied through her teeth. She knew full-well why she avoided him, but half of her was still denying that the reasons were even remotely valid, and the other half didn’t want to lead Tails on or give him the wrong impression that something might be going on between them that had absolutely no chance of ever happening. The rest of her explanation was far more honest at least. “I literally did the opposite of everything I would’ve advised someone else to do in this exact situation! At first I was afraid you might be mad at me for kissing you out of nowhere when you were just trying to do something nice for me, and then blew it off like it didn’t mean anything… Then it took me so long to get over being afraid of how you’d react to that, that I was afraid you’d be mad at me for ignoring you for so long, and it just started this feedback loop of excuses for me not to lady up and talk to you about it and… Then you stopped trying altogether, and I sort of convinced myself that you’d had enough and I missed the boat, so that became one final excuse to keep ignoring everything…”

“I didn’t stop contacting you because I stopped caring Amy… I was afraid I was going to start coming across like a creepy stalker who was trying to push someone into paying attention to me when they clearly either weren’t ready, or weren’t interested in doing so… What was it about my texts that made you fear I was angry with you though? I thought I kept them tame and friendly enough…”

“You haven’t done anything wrong Tails… Except for maybe being a little too nice to me on a night I really, really needed it, which caused me to react in a way I never intended… This was always a ‘me’ thing… I got swept up in a fantasy and wound up cheating on Sonic in the process…”

Tails groaned, resisting the urge to facepalm. He’d been very sympathetic up until this point where they’d reached Amy’s imaginary relationship with Sonic. “Amy…”

“I know!” Amy cut him off, knowing what he was about to say. “Sonic’s not ‘actually’ my boyfriend so I can’t ‘technically’ cheat on him, but it doesn’t change the way I feel! I’ve been in love with Sonic for so long, that kissing somebody else ‘does’ feel to me like I’ve betrayed my feelings for him… I just don’t understand how you could love someone and just stop and find that affection shifting towards someone else…” Amy caught a glimpse of Tails attentive face and blushed. “What’s the point of love if it can just change on a whim like that?...”

“It doesn’t Amy… If your love for someone does change, it happens over time and it’s usually for a reason. It’s a good thing too, because could you imagine if all of us were doomed to stay devoted to our first crush, or even the first person we fell in love with?  Especially when that person doesn’t feel the same way. There would be a lot of lonely people in this world… By that logic, I should be locked away in my bedroom right now surrounded by my old Mina Mongoose records drowning myself in my own tears!”

Amy giggled softly at the memory of a 12-year-old Tails doing everything in his power not to reveal his massive, and not at all secret crush on the singer. “A childhood crush is a lot differen’t than my situation though Tails… I’ve spent years convincing myself that Sonic was destined to be the love of my life… To just turn my heart off to him now would feel like I literally wasted half of my life chasing something that was never real.”

Tails saw a tear trickling down Amy’s eye and his heart really went out to her at that moment, as did a brief but intense temptation to find and smack another hedgehog in the back of the head. He also found her choice of words interesting… Maybe he was reading too much into it, but that phrasing of ‘convincing herself’ and ‘chasing something that was never real’ felt deliberate to him. Almost like a roundabout plea for help. “You’re not wrong, no two people’s situations are entirely the same. Like I told you before, your loyalty and capacity to love are two of your most attractive traits, but love and devotion are two things that not only have to be earned, but they also have to be returned. Otherwise, they can become prisons of our own making. I mean, if you’re absolutely determined that you have to get those things from Sonic and no one else will do, then I hope he comes to his senses one day… Because you deserve both as much as anyone I’ve ever known, and I don’t want you to miss out on either if someone else comes along who ever manages to turn your head, only for you to deny it because you feel like accepting and returning the love of someone else would be wrong.”

Amy stared at the fox, warm in the face and her mouth hanging partially open. Tails worried he may have said too much for a moment, but Amy didn’t appear to be getting angry or defensive. Instead, she lowered her head and uttered an unconvincing, “That’s sweet, but Sonic will come around one day… I know he will…”

“I sure hope so Amy… And rumor has it that you might’ve taken some positive steps in that direction! Seeing as I heard that you and a certain blue hero are going on a little adventure together in the near future.”

“Hey, that’s right! I haven’t told you yet have I?” she asked excitedly, then blushed as Tails cocked an eyebrow, Amy knowing full well what the gesture meant. “Right, because I haven’t talked to you in over a month… Sorry about that again… Anyway, I took your advice, and Sonic accepted! He even seemed excited about it, so this might be my big chance! Oh, and just so you know, I am making an effort not to refer to our outing as a date, and I’ve been trying really, really hard so no jokes if I slip up okay?”

“I can’t promise that, and you know it,” he chuckled as Amy swatted him in the shoulder. Tails then paused and began to get anxious as he debated whether he should share the news he had of his own. A part of him really wanted to keep it to himself since he hadn’t told anybody else… Who did he have to tell? It was the type of thing Amy might get upset with him over later though if he kept it a secret. “Um, since we’re discussing what’s been going on in our lives lately, I actually have some news of my own…”

“Oh really? Is it some kind of new airplane contract thing you want to flex about?” she teased as she began to feel more comfortable now that everything was out in the open.

“No… It’s of a more personal nature, and I’d like for you to promise me not to tell anyone else before I agree to tell you…”

“O…kay. Is everything alright?”

“Oh, it’s nothing bad I think but… It’s just that.. This next weekend… I may or… May not sort of have a date…”

Well so much for feeling like things were back to normal. Lacking the required liquid to perform a spit take, Amy settled for a dry heave instead. “Oh… A date? Really?... That’s great! Look at you! I steal one little kiss, and all of the sudden you’re Cassanova huh?”

“Hardly…” he laughed weakly. “It’s someone I met a couple of months ago and we’ve been talking online since then and well… She’s actually the one who asked me out, and I said yes…”

“Oh… Well, that’s great Tails! Why wouldn’t you want me to tell anybody else though?”

“Have you met our friends Amy?” he deadpanned. “I’m nervous enough about it as it is without them teasing me about it every chance they get… This will be my first ‘official’ date after all, unless we’re going to start counting kiss-gate for some reason.”

“Only if I decide it suits me,” Amy tried to joke. It came across slightly more aggressive than she would’ve liked. “I see your point though… Why mention it to me then? I’m perfectly as capable of teasing you as the others are.”

“Because you would be the one friend I have who I feel would not only be supportive rather than just make fun of me, but you might actually be able to give me some decent advice on… You know, how to carry myself on an actual date. Plus, the girl who asked me out has been through some stuff and wants to keep things lowkey and private for now… I also kind of wanted to see how things went first and make sure she was comfortable before I said anything to anyone… To be completely transparent, I wasn’t even going to tell you at first, but I didn’t feel like getting a hammer upside my head later if you found out I had my first date and didn’t tell you.”

“I should give you a good whack for even considering keeping this from me! A first date is a big deal Tails. Heck, a first date with anyone new is a big deal! I am, of course, the perfect choice to go too for advice on an event such as this! Who is the lucky lady?”

“Well… That’s the thing…” Tails muzzle flushed nervously while Amy waited for his response, perplexed by why he seemed hesitant. “If I’m not mistaking, I believe you actually know this person…”

“Oh, do I? Why would that be a problem? Wait, it isn’t Cream is it? Did you two actually decide too…”

“No, it’s not Cream! That would be like dating my little sister at this point in our lives… No, it’s somebody not in our inner circle, that I’ve recently learned that you have a bit of a history with…”

“Well, that clears things up a bunch… Does she have a name at least?”

Tails hesitated before squeaking out. “Fiona…”

“Fiona…” Hold on… Amy had only known one Fiona her entire life and there’s no way that bitch would… Wait, but with how anxious Tails was acting, almost like he knew something about her past with this person that he knew wasn’t going to sit well with her and… Oh, no… No, no, no, no! “Wait, are you talking about Fiona Fox?!”

“That would be her name yes… And she kind of warned me you might react this way when she found out I was friends with you.”

“With good reason! Are you out of your mind?!” Amy jumped up off the couch and started pacing and ranting as if scolding a disobedient child. “I used to work with her at the department store for almost two years, and she went out of her way to make my time employed there absolute hell! She barely did any work when she bothered to show up at all, usually hungover or baked out of her mind when she did manage to drag herself in and only kept herself from getting fired by sleeping with the boss! She only finally got let go when she was caught stealing!”

 “Yeah.. I might’ve heard something about all that…”

“And you still agreed to go out with her?! You have no idea what kind of person Fiona is! What I really don’t get is why she’d ask someone like you out in the first place! She’s always been obsessed with the bad boy type, or any other unemployed drug-addicted sleaze bucket you’d meet at the type of shady dive bars and clubs she likes to frequent, until she gets bored with them and kicks them aside to bounce over to her next prince charming… I had the displeasure of meeting quite a few of them… She’s a total man-eater Tails! She even tried to pick up Sonic one time right in front of me! She’s totally bad news Tails!”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know Amy… Fiona’s been very open about her wild past…”

“She has?” Amy nearly sneered in disbelief. “And you still agreed to go out with her? I can’t believe you’d even talk to her if you’re aware of the type of person she is!”

“I know what type of person she ‘used’ to be Amy… The Fiona I met isn’t the same Fiona who used to give you grief. This Fiona has grown up a lot and is trying to start over and put her past behind her. That’s why she was so up front with me about her baggage. She didn’t want me to find out about her past and get scared away by it, and I rather appreciate and admire her willingness to own up to her past mistakes while trying to become a better person. If I can help her do that then well… I think she deserves a second chance.”

Amy’s jaw was practically sweeping the floor. “You’re being serious? The Fiona I knew reveled in being a renegade and breaking the rules just because she could… Can you be sure she’s not trying to use you? She’s gotta know you have money to burn, which is all the reason she’d need to try to get in someone’s good graces before…”

“All she knows is that I work as a mechanic. I haven’t told her anything about my financials… I mean, I guess she could’ve done some digging and figured it out for herself, but she honestly didn’t seem to know who I was when we first started getting to know each other… She seemed shocked that I knew Sonic and horrified when she found out I was friends with you, which was part of the reason why she told me about her colorful history. She wanted to get ahead of it before you had a chance to bury her to me like you just tried to do now, shovel in hand and all. I really don’t believe she’s trying to use me Amy, except maybe to get her life back together, and that’s a cause I don’t mind getting used for…”

“But… Fiona? … Really?”

“Yes Amy, really… I’m sorry that you don’t like her, but I’m going to give her a chance regardless. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly have attractive girls lining up down the block trying to burst down the door to get to me… And the one’s that do are almost exclusively looking for Sonic…”

Amy’s cheeks flushed, for some reason feeling that last jab was directed towards her. That was the least of her worries at the moment. Seriously, Fiona Frickin’ Fox! This must be what every parent, older sibling, and friend feels when someone they care about decides to date the worst possible option conceivable. Amy wasn’t buying for a damn second that Fiona had changed. What she could totally believe was that Fiona was pretending to change so she could get herself into Tails’ pants where her hands would be closer to his wallet. Tails was just so naïve and friendly though, that he was willing to ignore all the red flags whipping in the wind, but Amy knew this girl. Fiona was the bottom-feeding scum of the earth, and she hated the idea of Tails getting taken advantage of because of his kind nature. “There’s nothing I can say to talk you out of this is there?”

“Nope, so why don’t you sit down, and we can change the subject to something not quite as triggering for you…” The fox’s attention was drawn to his large flatscreen television. “Hey, is that another Eggman attack they’re covering on the news?”

“Yeah, it looks like it…” Amy concurred, frowning when she saw what station it was on. “Channel 5? Seriously?”

“Best comedy on TV… Seriously though, I was planning on watching the program that was running before this clown show started, but since we’re here…” Tails shrugged and turned his attention to the screen.

“As we continue coverage of our lead story today of another savage attack on Station Square by the notorious Dr. Eggman before it was thwarted by none other than Sonic the Hedgehog. If I’m understanding what I’m hearing correctly, our eyes on the ground Lame Newspun has managed to track down the elusive hero for an exclusive interview. This certainly is a rare treat indeed folks! Down to you Lame.”

“Thank you Biff,” said a tall falcon with a head of hair that… Let’s just say didn’t appear naturally on the heads of bird Mobians. “I’m here speaking with the man of the hour himself, gracing us with his time and presence. Tell us Sonic, how did you manage to foil the vile doctor’s plans this time?”

The reporter stuck his microphone in the scowling face of an ebony-quilled hedgehog who was clearly not who the newscasters had advertised. “Do I LOOK like Sonic to you?”

“Well… Yeah… Kind of I guess…”

“Really? Do I have blue quills? A mouth that never closes unless it’s being stuffed with poorly disguised hotdogs? Do I look like a complete buffoon?!”

“Um… No Sir…” The falcon reporter began to shrink in on himself. “Halloween is just around the corner, and I just figured maybe you were going through a goth phase?”

Shadow held one of his guns up in the air and cocked it. “I’d advise you start running… Now.”

A few screams could be heard before the feed cut off. Both Amy and Tails stared at the screen blankly before they started laughing. “Well, add Shadow to the list I guess… At least they got the species right this time. I do wonder how the media will spin this incident since the policy is usually to blow as much smoke up Sonic’s ass as possible.”

“Shadow wouldn’t actually shoot anyone would he?”

“No, I don’t think so… Destroy all their news equipment to make a point, probably. It’s Channel 5 though, so nothing of value would be lost if that’s the case. At least if we get an alert on our news feeds later that Sonic the Hedgehog opened fire on a local news crew, we won’t have to wonder what the hell is going on this time.”

“Yeah…” Amy trailed off as her mind, as hard as she tried not to, drifted to the image of another fox. “So, Fiona huh?...”

“So, still chasing Sonic huh?”

“Touche… Just please be careful Tails… I don’t want to see her hurt you like she has so many other people…”

“I appreciate your concern Ames, but believe it or not, I am approaching things with Fiona cautiously, and going in with low expectations… Mostly because I’m also going into this date as a bundle full of nerves too, so she may never want to talk to me again after the night is through…”

“That’s what I’m worried about… Just not in the way you’re thinking Tails…” Amy thought to herself as she continued to obsess over the thought of having Fiona back in her life, and worse yet, now in Tails’, someone who didn’t know her that well and she could easily try to take advantage of.

“So, uh… Do you have any of those muffins left?” he asked innocently.

“An entire basket full.” Amy smiled, thankful that at least something was back to normal.

********

At a popular high-end department store in downtown Central City, a bored and detached looking vixen sat behind a helpdesk begrudgingly helping a customer with a return. “Thank you for choosing Breezie’s, please come shop with us again…” she said in a monotone that could almost be mistaken for sarcasm before muttering to herself as the customer walked away. “Or don’t, it’s not like I care…”

The vixen scribbled something down on a notepad, when the customer next in line walked up to the desk and slammed her hands down hard on the counter, nearly startling the vixen up out of her seat. Once she recognized who the customer was, however, she rolled her eyes as her surprise converted to irritation.

“Fiona…”

“Amy… It’s been so long since I’ve seen you!... Why did you have to go and ruin it?”

“Rude and flippant as ever I see… You have to know why I’m here right?”

“Right… Because I learned to read minds since you got me fired from Honey’s… Oh wait, let me guess! Was the last dress you bought here not ‘red’ enough for you again?”

“The shade of red in the magazine didn’t match what was being sold in the store and you know it!” Amy blushed and tried to reign herself back in. She’d forgotten how easily Fiona could get under her quills. “That has nothing to do with anything… I’m here because of Tails…”

Fiona’s defiant attitude deflated in an instant. “Oh… So, you finally found out about us huh?”

“Yes, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around why you’d ask him out of all people… Tails isn’t anything close to being like the type of creeps and losers you usually fool around with…”

“I know… Did you stop to think for a minute that maybe ‘that’ was the reason I asked him out? Because he is ‘nothing’ like the type of jerks I’m used too? Present company definitely included.”

“But why though?! Did you need to find someone that you could use and abuse that wouldn’t abuse you back for a change? What would you two even do on a date?! Tails isn’t old enough to drink yet, and even if he did, he wouldn’t step foot in one of those sleezy bars you call your second home…”

“Not that it’s any of your business… But I don’t visit those types of places anymore… It’s also kind of bitchy of you to come in here and air out my old dirty laundry in public like this, not that I’d ever expect anything better from you Rose.”

“I give back what you always gave to me Fox… You seriously expect me to believe the girl who used to brag about owning the night life… Who looked down on people who didn’t take advantage of others any chance they could get, has suddenly decided to change her ways?”

“Believe what you want, it doesn’t matter to me… Your opinion of me never has.” Fiona put her fist up to her chin, and that’s when Amy noticed the charms dangling from the bracelet on her wrist. They looked like poker chips, and the one Amy could clearly read had six months minted on it.

“Huh?... What are those?”

Noticing what her hedgehog rival had been studying, Fiona lowered her hand self-consciously. “Again, not that any of this is your business, but those are my sobriety chips… One for each month I’ve stayed clean. I wanted to get control of my life back, so after I got out of rehab I entered a program to help me stay sober… Not a drop of alcohol has touched my lips nor has anything powdery touched my nose in months.”

“So, when Tails said you trying to start over he really meant that literally… How do I know for sure this isn’t one of your cons though? I’ve seen you pull the whole ‘getting clean’ or ‘changing your ways’ act twice before, both times while laughing manically behind all of our backs about what suckers we all were?”

“You literally just called out the proof yourself dipshit! Do you think I dangle these chips off of my wrist as a fashion statement?! It’s to remind me of every time I woke up in the middle of the street, or some weirdo’s bed with no idea how I got there, and every last asshole I dated that decided it would be fun to take a few swings at me… Not that I care one way or another about what you or anybody else thinks. I’m working on myself for me, not to prove anything to anyone else.”

“I can respect that, if any of it’s true, but it’s not your life choices I’m most concerned with… It’s the way you go through men like they’re as disposable as tissue paper! I didn’t care much back then, because the guys you dated were all douchebags that were worse than you in some cases, so it was hard to feel sorry for any of you. Tails is a good guy though, and he’s not near experienced enough with dating and romance to see when he’s being taken advantage of! More importantly, he’s my friend, and I’m not going to stand back and watch you steamroll him like you have so many other people that you’ve been involved with!”

“What exactly do you think is going on between the two of us?! We’re getting to know each other, not carrying on some illicit affair… I wasn’t even interested in him that way at first, it was just nice to have someone to talk too that wasn’t prejudging me… Trust me, when I found out he was friends with YOU, the last thing on my mind was dating him… I’m trying to distance myself from my past, not finding creative ways to dig it back up.”

“What changed then? Why now? Why Tails?!”

“A lot of things, because I felt like it, and maybe you should ask yourself that question… Seems to me like you already know the answer if you’re this aggressively ass-mad that he’s going out with me.”

“I’m defending a friend, who’s too nice for his own good sometimes, from potentially being taken advantage of because of his kindness. That’s it…”

“Oh please, I’m not buying that for a second Rosey… You don’t go barging into somebody’s workplace in the middle of the day making a gigantic scene just to protect your grown-ass adult friend’s innocence. I’ve seen that look on your face exactly one other time, and that was when I was flirting with your imaginary boyfriend Sonic…” Fiona sneered in delight as Amy blushed and backed up a step. “If I’m going to humor you and answer your last question though, I really shouldn’t have too because you already answered it! I was drawn to Tails because he IS the exact opposite of the type of creeps I used to run around with… He treated me with respect and not like an object, but what really sold it for me was when he didn’t run for the hills the second I started opening up to him about my past… He actually praised me for being honest with him and strong enough to try and pull myself out of the gutter on my own terms…” Fiona lowered her head, her expression suggesting she still couldn’t bring herself to believe that little detail. She smiled cheekily as she raised her head up, so her eyes met Amy’s. “He’s also got a dorky charm to him that gets more attractive the longer your exposed to him… Though something tells me you’re already well aware of that.”

If Fiona was trying to make Amy feel uncomfortable… It was working splendidly. “Just tell me you’re not going to take advantage of him and turn this ‘date’ into one of your infamous one-night trysts…”

“Sorry, can’t promise that Rosey… Depends on how well the date goes! I swore off drugs and booze, but I still enjoy sex. I haven’t gotten to pop a cherry in a while either… I’m not going to lie, the thought of it kind of turns me on a bit… Now that I think about it, the fact that I know it’s going to annoy you is really putting me in the mood!”

“I knew it! You haven’t changed at all Fiona Fox! Just using people to get what you want out of them before you toss them aside!”

“Well duh… Of course, I’m using him to help me along as I try to rehabilitate myself… Just like he’s using me to alleviate feelings of isolation and loneliness… That’s the way the world works… You use, and you get used. The only thing you can control is who you allow to do the using…”

“You know something Fiona… I think you may need to go to rehab to fix that attitude of yours. Believing everyone is out there just trying to use one another is a pretty messed up way to go through life.”

“You say that like ‘messed up’ and ‘reality’ don’t go hand-in-hand. Use or get used is all I’ve ever known so whaddya want from me? If you’re incapable of seeing that then that’s a ‘you’ problem… Now are we done here, because I have actual customers in line waiting to be served...”

“I guess there isn’t much left to say… As badly as I don’t want you within a hundred feet of Tails, I know there’s nothing I can do to put a stop to this date…There is one thing I want to make perfectly clear Fiona…” Amy’s hammer appeared in her hand as if by Magic, the vixen understandably eyeing it warily. “If I here that you screwed Tails around even the slightest bit…” Amy brought the hammer down atop the counter and reduced the desk to rubble, leaving a speechless Fiona staring at the freshly created pile of splinters. “You hurt him… I wreck you! Got it?!”

Amy walked away fuming, leaving a stunned Fiona staring after her. One of her co-workers, a female mink in a business suit leaned over and said into her ear. “Well, somebody’s jealous aren’t they?”

“I know right?” Fiona grinned impishly. “Next weekend might be more satisfying than I thought.”

Notes:

I honestly didn’t originally intend for Cream to curse quite as much as she did, but I just found it so damn funny hearing sailor talk coming out of sweet little Cream’s mouth that I just kept rolling with it. Cream is what I refer to as a Cheater OC, meaning an established character that has either a fixed or vanilla enough personality that is ripe to be expanded upon. In this case, Cream’s character is essentially a stereotypical 6-year-old Japanese girl, and obviously her personality should change some as she gets older. She can be whatever the story needs her to be, and in this case, the role I needed her to play was an exhausted college student who isn’t in the mood to deal with her friend’s dramatic nonsense.

Now the use of Fiona in this story is a bit symbolic, as Fiona is the reason I hate love triangles in the Sonic fandom, especially involving Sonic and Tails. I despise that storyline with the three of them with a passion, and if my conspiracy theory is correct, Penders trying that shit again later with Tails and Mina. Having those two fighting, over a girl of all things… Ugh, I just hate it.

Now, because I absolutely hate myself, I did make an attempt to make Fiona at least a bit sympathetic for reasons we won’t see until Verse 4. Hence, the whole rehab, getting her life together backstory. Not necessarily likeable, as I do not care for this character at all. She’s not a rival in this story, she’s a speed bump, but I might as well do something with her if I’m going to use her.

Chapter 4: Verse 4

Tails examined himself in the mirror. He’d been wondering if he looked as nervous as he felt, but upon analyzing his reflection, he now understood that it was impossible for his face and body language to display just how mind-numbingly, bladder-deficiently anxious he felt at that moment. That feeling was only getting worse as the minutes inched closer to the scheduled time for his date. He wasn’t all that used to wearing clothing outside of his gloves and occasionally his work vest or overalls when working on a particularly messy project.

This was maybe the third time in his life he could remember wearing a shirt. It was nothing special, but nicer than your standard T-shirt, covered by a plaid powder-blue button-up that Amy had recommended. Fiona had suggested keeping the atmosphere casual, so after some help in the form of some minor convincing from Amy, decided to dress up just a little bit without overdoing it.

“So, how do I look?” Tails asked bashfully as he stretched out his arms.

“You look… Really nice.” Amy managed not to trip over her words but couldn’t completely keep the blush trying to impose itself on her muzzle at bay. Tails cleaned up really well, but Amy would prefer not to think about that too hard.

She honestly couldn’t even tell you why she was at his house that evening. She’d decided Tails was a big boy, so if he still wanted to take a crack at dating Fiona despite being warned he was likely to get the praying mantis treatment, that was his problem. Amy had hence washed her hands of it. Stupid needed to have consequences, so if Tails needed to find out the hard way…

This indifference lasted all of a day before Amy interjected herself back into Tails’ love life for reasons she still didn’t fully understand… Or at least refused to be honest with herself about. The rational she landed on was that Tails was coming across as such a sad anxiety-riddled mess over the prospect of his first date, two things he most certainly was, that Amy just had to volunteer her services, so the poor fox didn’t absolutely humiliate himself.

“Well, that reaction was certainly a confidence booster,” Tails joked, misinterpreting her tone as one of indifference. “Hopefully, I don’t sweat through these clothes. The date hasn’t even started, and I already feel like my body is trying to bathe itself… Cologne would be a bit too much for a casual get together, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably… Do you have one of those body sprays? No girl is going to consider using one of those as you trying too hard…”

“Hey, great idea Amy! You can barely even smell them after twenty minutes… I’ll be right back.” Amy stood there uncomfortably, staring at the clock, growing increasingly more uncomfortable as the minutes ticked down towards six o’clock, when Tails was due to be sentenced to leave to meet Fiona for their ‘date’. The fox reappeared a couple of minutes later, allowing Amy to get an involuntarily whiff of his scent and well… Oh my… “I think that’s better… The scent isn’t too strong is it?”

“That aroma is interesting…” That response was the diplomatic way for Amy to avoid admitting her eyes wanted to roll into the back of her head when the scent hit her nostrils. Tails natural scent was a mix of motor oil and something Amy could only describe as musky and metallic. She hadn’t really cared for the smell once-upon-a-time, but the scent had grown on her over the years. Probably because she associated that scent with Tails. Whatever he’d sprayed himself with had a woodsy aroma that complimented his natural scent well and… Um… Amy could admit that she liked it, but that was about as far as she was willing to go.

She probably would’ve been better off not to even think about it, but she couldn’t help but imagine how Fiona might react to it… Especially since the seedy vixen had made it clear what her intentions were for ending their night out, and the thought caused Amy to dig her fingers into her arm. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t her place to interfere, but the thought of someone like her…. Taking ‘that’ from him made her skin crawl. “You smell nice Tails… I’m sure Fiona will love it…”

“You think so?” Tails looked at the clock and sighed. “Great… I still have twenty minutes to freak out and lose my shit before it’s even time to leave… I feel like I’m about to get marched towards the electric chair rather than going on a date.”

Amy sighed to herself before begrudgingly offering some encouragement. “Look, she’s made it pretty clear that she likes you right?”

“I believe that’s the case, yes…”

“Then just act the same way with her as you did with me when you took me out a few weeks ago. You were hardly nervous at all while you were out with me. Every girl is a bit different but for the most part, we want the same things. Treat her like you did me that night, and I can almost guarantee you that you’ll sweep her right off her feet!”

The heat rose to Amy’s cheeks as Tails eyed her funny. Fearing that maybe she’d sounded a little too corny, she was ready to backpedal when the fox’s soft smile reassured her. “So, I swept you off your feet huh?”

Okay, so much for the reassurance, and her blush was back full force. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to her though. “Enough so to bamboozle me into kissing you… Seriously though, just act the same way around her as you did with me that night, and you’ll be fine.”

“I’m afraid that’s easier said than done Ames… I’ve known you for more than half my life… There wasn’t much guess work when I was with you. I knew the type of things you liked, what would usually make you happy, and what I could get away with saying or doing around you without drawing your ire… Within around a 75% success rate give or take… Better yet, you also know me… You were already well aware of most of my faults, secrets, my insecurities, and you’ve accepted me into your life as a friend despite them. You’ve been able to look past my awkward dorkiness, or at the very least tolerate it.”

Tails began to pace a bit as he continued, “I have none of those same luxuries with Fiona. All I know about her is what she’s been willing to share with me over a few phone calls and conversations over the internet, and she’s been very guarded over what she does divulge. I totally get it, she doesn’t want to be prejudged or to get too personal with someone she just met, but it’s… You know, it makes the situation a lot more difficult for me… I don’t want to say anything to offend her, and she hasn’t built up that immunity to my inner dork that my friends have… She might not care for what she gets once we’re face-to-face again in a more intimate setting.”

“So what if she doesn’t?! If she can’t see what a sweet guy you are or gets put off just because you’re a little nervous, then she doesn’t deserve you in the first place!” Amy approached him and helped straighten out his shirt. She stared at his chest unable to look him in the eye as she said, “I have it on good authority that she finds your ‘awkward dorkiness’ attractive on some level… Maybe a little too much.”

“She does?” he asked in surprise.

“She… Might’ve mentioned something along those lines, when I was questioning her about her sudden shift of interest in the type of men she dates…”

“Was this before or after you went rampaging through Breezie’s with your hammer?”

“It was just the help desk!” she huffed as she turned her back to him, crossing her arms indignantly. “Of course, she had to go and tell you all about me confronting her… She didn’t have to make me sound like some type of spiteful psycho.”

“There were exaggerations on both sides… I’m fairly certain that Fiona didn’t actually talk about me like she was plotting to chain me up to the wall in her basement and keep me as a pet…” Tails could almost see Amy blushing through the back of her head. “While it was sweet of you to look out for me like that, it was still unnecessary. Fiona and I almost got into a fight over it…”

“You did?” Amy turned back to face him, her brow creased in concern. She knew Tails had been aware of her confrontation with Fiona at the department store, but this was her first time hearing that the two foxes came close to fighting about it.

Tails was already regretting mentioning the spat he managed to diffuse before it even could get started. Amy had enough reasons to dislike Fiona already without him adding to the fire. “Let’s not make too big a deal of it though, since we’re all well aware that you two don’t get along… Let’s just say Fiona was saying some things about you that I didn’t appreciate, and I… May have started to let her know about it. Nothing nasty or anything, but we both agreed not to bring you up anymore while we’re still getting to know each other.”

“You… Defended me to Fiona?”

Tails eyed the hedgehog as if he couldn’t understand the question. “Of course I did… I’ve known you for most of my life, and I’ve only known Fiona for a couple of months… She’s got a long way to go before she catches up to you or any of my friends. Even though you both overexaggerated how the other acted, and downplayed your own involvement in the altercation, I still would’ve sided with you regardless, so there was no winning for me either way if I got goaded into that fight.”

“I…” Red in the face, Amy wasn’t sure how to respond. Her chest on the other hand… Thump. Oh, damn it, not this again…

“Oh, and thank you by the way… For being here for moral support. I know you really dislike Fiona, but you chose to be here anyway, and I really appreciate you for that…”

Amy’s chest felt tight again, but this time for entirely different reasons. Oh, how she wished she could say she agreed to help Tails get ready for his date out of the goodness of her heart, and for the most part, she was…. But there was still a small part of her hunting for any opening she might be able to exploit to ensure this atrocity of a date never occurs. “I’m… Happy to be here Tails…  Besides, somebody had to stop by to make sure you weren’t hiding under your bed or pretending you forgot what day it was to get out of your ‘date’!”

“Hiding under the bed… Is that still an option?” The vulpine’s laugh was unconvincing as he took another look at the clock. “Still fifteen minutes, seriously?! Great, plenty of time for my blood pressure to rise even higher… Even if I make it out my door, I’m so nervous that with my luck, I’ll probably get hit by a truck before it’s time to meet up with her…”

As the minutes ticked down, it became increasingly more arguable which of the two was more nervous. Amy already despised the idea of Tails even attempting to date Fiona Fox, but after he’d opened up more as to why he was so nervous after showing nowhere near this level of nerves on their mock date until they held hands, Amy couldn’t help but wonder what he meant by all that. He was able to act like himself because he felt ‘comfortable’ around her? It did make sense to her that he would feel more at ease going out with someone he knew well as opposed to someone he’d just met, but was that really all there was too it?

Tails hadn’t acted all that flirtatious or said anything remotely suggestive while he was filling in for Sonic, but he’d also gone above and beyond what most friends would do for someone who was just a ‘friend’ for the soul reason of making them ‘smile’. Was it really that simple though? Tails was just being a good friend who didn’t have any real romantic interest in her, so that made it easier to get through the night without him acting like a blubbering mess… She should feel relieved by that possibility, but for some reason, it was leaving a sour taste in her gut. That kiss sure didn’t feel ‘friendly’…

Then there was Fiona… The last person she’d choose to date one of her friends, Tails least of all. If the vixen really was getting herself clean and her life in order then great, but Amy knew from experience that personalities usually couldn’t be rehabilitated, and Amy saw firsthand during their confrontation in the department store that Fiona hadn’t changed much at all. She was still the same cold, detached, rude, cynical bitch, who believed that using people was the way the world worked.

Tails deserved better than someone who was just using him… He deserved somebody who’d treat him like he treated her that night Sonic ran out on her at dinner. He deserved someone who’d love and adore him the way she did Sonic. The closer that clock ticked down to six, the more desperate Amy was becoming to find a way to make Tails realize he was making a huge mistake. She’d been hoping Tails would back out on his own, and she would just go along with it like it wasn’t what she’d been hoping for all along. Those hopes didn’t appear to be materializing however…

Then the clock hit the fated hour. “Welp… Looks like it’s time for me to go meet up with Fiona… You’re welcome to stay if you want Amy, just be sure to lock the building down when you decide to leave…”

Tails headed towards the door only to find Amy had thrown herself in front of it to block his path. Tails stared at her in confusion which quickly morphed into annoyance as he understood what she was doing. The fact that she couldn’t look him in the face was a definite tell. “Amy… Are we seriously doing this?”

“I… I know I said I was okay with this, but I lied! Please don’t go out with her Tails! You don’t know Fiona like I do! It doesn’t matter if they’re friends, co-workers, or even family! She treats them like their disposable! Other people are a means to an end for her because the only person she’s ever looked out for is herself! She might be trying to clean her life up, but that doesn’t mean she’s changed the way she views other people! She openly admitted to me that she still lives by the philosophy of use people or get used… Do you honestly think that wouldn’t apply to you as well?”

“Probably not… That’s why I’m giving her a ‘chance’ Amy. I’m not as naïve as I was when I was younger, so I’d like to think I could tell now if someone’s trying to manipulate me… I kind of had to get good at it when I started dealing with shady companies trying to contract me to do business with them. Don’t forget either that a lot of Sonic’s friends started off as his rivals or enemies, so I’m not buying into the idea that people can’t change. Fiona deserves a second chance as much as anyone… Believe me Ames, I’m not going into this date blind… If I feel for any reason that Fiona is trying to take advantage of me, I’m not going to be afraid to walk away.”

“But you still don’t get it! Fiona is a master at manipulating people into thinking she’s this sweet misunderstood little thing when she really wants too, while somehow managing to act like the same old miserable bitch to everyone else… That is, until she’s gotten whatever she wants out of whoever she’s manipulating and then kicks them to the curb, making sure to go out of her way to humiliate them in the process… I don’t want to see her do that to you too…”

“Amy… We’ve already had this discussion,” Tails sighed, gripped by the sudden urge to pull his fur out. “At length… I took your concerns into consideration, and I was under the impression that you agreed to respect my decision and not get in the way, even though you didn’t like it… What could she possibly think she could get out of ‘manipulating me’ even if she was? It’s not clout, we knew each other for a month before she even realized I was associated with Sonic, and it can’t be money since I haven’t told her how much I actually make from my contract work…”

“Sex, you goober… She pretty much said it straight to my face… She’s always been promiscuous, hell she couldn’t stop bragging about all her ‘conquests’ when we were working together! I’m worried this is just a hookup for her, and once she’s gotten what she wants…”

Tails chuckled through his throat. “She’s aware I’m a virgin Amy… I doubt someone as ‘experienced’ as Fiona allegedly is, would be looking towards me to satisfy that particular need…”

“She doesn’t care that you’re a virgin Tails… It’s part of the appeal to her, for whatever game she’s playing. She talked about ‘popping your cherry’ like it was some type of trophy to her… The way she went on about it all made my skin crawl…” Amy paused upon noticing the unexpectedly indifferent look on the vulpine’s face. “Hold on a second… Why don’t you sound surprised by any of this?”

Tails blushed at being called out, reaching up to scratch at his ear nervously. “Well, if she really was that callous when she talked about… Taking ‘that’ from me, I’m not too crazy about that thought but… She’s been pretty open lately that if the date goes well, then we might end the night at her place and well…”

Amy gasped, before her infamous temper began to rear its ugly head. “So, that’s what this is all about?! You’re ignoring all three dozen red flags Fiona’s waving around just because you think there’s a chance you might get laid?!”

“No! How could you even suggest that?! You know me better than that Amy… She didn’t even suggest sex was on the table until recently… After you confronted her at Breezie’s to be exact. To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure she’s even serious or if she shares Rouge’s sense of humor and just gets a kick out of messing with me that way. I’m not expecting anything or planning on trying anything myself either way…”

“Oh, she’s serious, believe me,” Amy growled, though she was now over being upset with Tails. If Fiona hadn’t broached the possibility until after she had confronted her at Breezie’s, then that meant… “That bitch! She intentionally started to put that idea in his head because she knew it would upset me!”

“Tails,” Amy said, as calmly as she could manage. “I’m not sure if you’re even going to believe me at this point, but I really think she’s been trying to tempt you into sleeping with her because she thinks she’s going to get one up on me somehow… Are you really okay with that? Being seduced by a woman who sees taking your virginity as a prize and might be doing it primarily to get under the skin of one of your friends?!”

“Of course I’m not… And if I find out any of this is true, I’m not about to go through with it, but I’m going to be the judge of her intentions, not ‘you’. Now, could you please move out of my way, or I’m going to be late…”

“But why her Tails?! Can you at least tell me that much? Are you really so desperate that you’re willing to date the Mobian version of a parasite!”

“Because I’m lonely alright?!”

“Ah…” Amy croaked, as her mouth hung open slightly. Whatever lame excuse she expected to hear from him… That was not it. “You’re lonely?…”

“You just had to make me say it didn’t you…” he sighed. “Surprise, surprise. The fox who spends most of his free time in his garage hanging out with machines gets lonely from time-to-time… Look, can we please pretend you didn’t just hear me say that?”

“I can’t do that… Have you talked to anyone about this, Tails? You always seem so content whenever I see you that I never would’ve guessed…”

“Because that’s what I want everyone to see… I’m not the kind of person who likes to burden my friends with my own problems, particularly problems I’m more than capable of handling on my own…”

“Not from what I’ve seen considering Fiona Fox is your answer! That’s like trying to cure a cold by camping out in the snow… How long has this been going on?”

“It’s difficult to put a timestamp on it, but it’s gotten worse over the last year… I know this sounds ridiculous coming from a guy who’s pretty much been on his own since he was eight, but I didn’t mind it all that much back then. Sonic might not have been around all the time, but he came by enough that I never really got the chance to get lonely. I had my projects to keep me busy while he was gone, the friends I’d met through Sonic, and with Eggman trying to destroy us all every couple of days, we all had a common reason to band together, so we were rarely separated for very long…”

“That pretty much all changed completely when I became an adult though… Eggman schemes have thankfully slowed down to maybe once a month, if that, but the downside of his decline was that the old crew didn’t really have a reason to get together as often. Everyone kind of gradually moved on and started doing their own thing, including me. The problem is, I never realized just how solitary my life was until I was living like a hermit doing nothing but working in the shop, sleeping, and eating with the occasional visit from a friend to break up the monotony.”

“Why am I just hearing about this now? You should have told us you were feeling isolated sooner… We would’ve been there for you! Sonic, Cream, and I in particular…”

“It’s not your jobs to babysit me because I’m socially inept outside of our little social circle… I’ve done everything in my power to come across as self-sufficient as possible since I was eight, because I didn’t want my friends to see me as just a kid who needed to be looked after… Maybe it’s stubbornness because that mentality has been difficult to beat out of myself, but I just don’t like to bother you guys with this shit… You all have your own lives to live, with your own sets of problems, so you don’t need to be looking over your shoulders for me! Especially Sonic after all he’s done for me already, and the identity crisis he’s currently going through… Poor guy just doesn’t know what to do with all that pent up energy of his now that Eggman isn’t as persistent of a threat as he used to be…”

“He has been all over the place lately hasn’t he?... And I don’t mean in his usual way… Still, we’re not talking about Sonic right now… We’re your friends Tails! You shouldn’t be afraid to come to us if you’re struggling…”

“I know that… But I don’t want to be completely reliant on you guys either… That’s why I’ve been trying to get myself out there and meet new people, but the results have… Well, it was disastrous to say the least. I even tried to make friends with some fellow engineers, and boy was that a mistake I won’t soon repeat!”

“Why would befriending other engineers be a mistake? I’d figure they would be the type of people you’d have the most in common with?”

“That’s what I thought, but the problem with growing up and having to go out into the real world is that it doesn’t take long for reality to slap you hard right across your face. The problem was, when you’re considered a prodigy in your field, especially at a young age, that tends to create some… Harsh feelings amongst your peers in the industry… And some of them can be quite loud and creative with the ways they let you know that they don’t like you.”

“Oh, I get it… A bunch of jealous jerks huh?”

“To say the least… Are you starting to see why this potential relationship with Fiona is so important to me?... Over the past year I’ve recognized that I’ve never made a single friend in my life that I didn’t somehow meet through Sonic… Fiona is as close as I’ve gotten to accomplishing that, and no, I don’t count the fact that you and Sonic both knew her before I met her, because she had no idea I even knew either one of you until after we met. Believe what you want, but that’s what this is about. Not sex, not the fact that she’s a girl, or one who seems interested in dating me… I was trying to make a friend on my own, and Fiona was the first person to come along who seemed willing to look past my quirks, and didn’t make me feel like she was using me to get to Sonic… It doesn’t hurt that I feel I can relate to her on some level, since I know what it feels like to be judged and to have others make assumptions about you… Do you understand what I’m saying Amy?…”

“I do understand…” she whispered, dark shadows hiding her eyes. “Which is why I know you’re not going to get what you’re looking for out of Fiona… You’re just going to get disappointed once she finally shows her true colors, and possibly even have your heart ripped out if you play her game long enough…”

“Amy…”

“No, Tails! I listened to your reasons for this lunacy, and now you’re going to listen to me! Do you know why I really despise Fiona Fox so much? And no, it’s not just because she’s been a total bitch to me, or what she tried to pull with Sonic that one time… It was because I was in your exact same shoes not that long ago. When Fiona first came to work at Honey’s, I thought she was acting aloof and cold because she was new and didn’t know anybody… So, I decided to approach her and introduced myself to try and make her feel welcome.”

“It appeared to work too because we really seemed to hit it off, and for the first week or two everything seemed great. It was like having this cool older friend who had all these interesting stories about all these wild things she’d done that I couldn’t dream I’d ever have the nerve to do… It didn’t take her long to show her true colors though… She invited me to go out with her one night when we were both off work. I was reluctant because she’d made it no secret that she liked to frequent the bar scene, and you know I’m not much of a drinker, so I really don’t feel comfortable in those types of places. I felt kind of pressured into it though, so I agreed. The night was going okay I guess at first, until Fiona goaded me into having a drink. I finally gave in and agreed to have one, and that’s when everything went to hell.”

Tails continued to listen intently as Amy sighed and continued. “I felt sick almost immediately, and the next thing I knew, I was in the bathroom puking my guts out. When I finally staggered my way back to the bar dizzy and feeling like I was ready to pass out at any moment, I found out Fiona was gone. Turns out she drugged the drink and ditched me after I got sick and ran to the bathroom. When I confronted her about it the next day at work, she just laughed at me and started to poke fun at me to the other employees…”

“When I asked her why she did it, she told me it was because she couldn’t stand people like me. Accused me of being a snob who looked down on people like her and felt that I needed to be taken down a peg… All I ever did to that girl was try and be her friend, but in the end that turned out to be her problem with me. She saw my kindness and willingness to reach out to her as pathetic because it didn’t mesh with her cynical world view. That’s the kind of person Fiona Fox is Tails, and it’s not the drugs or alcohol that made her that way. I don’t want to see her do the same thing to you Tails… You’re one of the kindest people I know, and the perfect mark that Fiona likes to target and try to humiliate.”

“I hate that she did that to you Amy, and I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive her for it but… That still doesn’t change my mind though. I still want to give her a chance… Sonic always encouraged me to give people a second chance if I feel they’re sincere about changing, and Fiona hasn’t given me any reason to doubt her intentions. If she is playing me, then that mistake will be on my head, but I reserve my right to risk making it. You’re allowed to hate her all you want, but you’re not talking me out of this date… Please move aside Amy… I need this.”

“No, you don’t…” Amy glared at him pointedly, and it made the fox kind of nervous. “Fiona is the ‘last’ thing you need… There’s nothing she could possibly give you tonight that I can’t…”

“Amy what are you…” Tails’ words had gotten knocked right back down his throat after Amy lunged at him, pressing her muzzle to his while wrapping her arms around his neck. Tails first instinct was to push her away, to tell her that this was wrong but… But he couldn’t. Nothing that tasted so sweet could be wrong. Flashbacks from the lake crashed into him like waves and instinct took him over again as he returned her frantic kiss with equal amounts of ferocity and desperation as he was receiving.

Rather than pull away in shame this time, Amy guided the vulpine towards his sofa and shoved him onto it, Amy landing on top of him as soon as his back hit the cushions. From there, their encounter only got more intense, Tails wrapping his arms around Amy’s back as she deepened the kiss, practically forcing her tongue into his mouth where they’d soon perform their traditional dance.

“Amy?...” Tails panted, once they finally parted, still stunned by what had just happened. What still seemed to be happening…

Amy hovered over him, eyeing him possessively, their muzzles mere inches from touching. “You don’t want Fiona, do you?”

“No… No, I don’t…”

“You want me, don’t you?”

“Y-Yes…”

“That’s what I thought…” Amy sat up, still straddling the fox. Tails nearly snapped back to his senses when he heard Amy begin to unzip the back of her dress.

“Amy wait! You don’t have to do this you know…”

Amy paused and lowered herself until her muzzle was inches away from the fox’s before whispering huskily, “I know…” She pressed her lips to his again, not quite as intensely as before, but she got the point across.

Tails was a smart boy after all.

*******

When Tails opened his eyes, he found himself staring out the window next to the bed he was currently lying in. Noticing it was quite late, he bolted upright in a panic. “What time is it?” He asked no one in particular but got an answer anyway.

“Oh, a little after ten I think…”

Tails head snapped around to Amy, who was sitting upright in his bed next to him.. Thankfully, she was still fully clothed as was he. The events of earlier that evening came rushing back to him, prompting a sigh of relief from the vulpine. “Oh, that’s right… We didn’t go through with it..”

“Yeah… Thankfully we both came to our senses and stopped ourselves before we rounded second base…”

“Right…” Tails blushed and grinned cheekily. “Though technically speaking, you actually made it to third.”

Amy’s muzzle blew up like Christmas lights. “I’m so sorry about that! I was reaching for your thigh I swear! I just wasn’t expecting it to… You know…”

“Well… When you’re in the middle of a make out session as intense as the one we just had, that tends to happen…”

“I’ll keep that in mind…” she said softly, equal parts ashamed of herself and giddy that she was able to get that type of reaction out of a man. “The important thing is that we stopped ourselves before we could do something we’d regret…”

“Tch, speak for yourself…” Amy’s muzzle lit up again, and despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help but smile… Then Tails had to ruin the moment by bringing up the obvious and dreaded question. “So…What does this mean?”

“It… Doesn’t mean anything Tails…” The hedgehog’s heart sunk when she saw the crestfallen look on her friend’s face as his ears flattened atop his head. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded! It’s just… Chaos, this is so messed up!”

“Felt pretty right to me…”

Amy just couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that she agreed. “Tails… I love Sonic… You’re his best friend, and we just almost… Can you not see the problem here? Even if none of that was the case, I still wouldn’t have been ready for anything like this… At this point in my life, I need my friend a lot more than I need a lover…”

While still disappointed, Tails felt his compassion towards the hedgehog rise. He could relate to just needing a friend. “I get that… I really do… Would it be too forward or too… Tempting if I put my arm around you?”

“Probably… But do it anyway…”

Tails complied, and Amy wearily laid her head down on his shoulder, again cursing herself for how natural it felt. Why did feelings have to be so confusing? That position lasted all of ten seconds before Amy got a good whiff of the fox’s scent that had been driving her crazy all evening, causing a warming sensation in both her face and between her legs. Tails blushed too as a similar feeling overtook him.

“Okay, physical contact probably wasn’t the best idea,” Amy said rapidly as they pulled away from each other.

“I guess I am glad we talked ourselves out of it… It wouldn’t feel right for my first time to happen because my friend didn’t want me to date a girl she didn’t like…” Tails started to laugh, though his expression fell once he remembered the girl he was supposed to be taking out that evening. “Oh crap… I gotta call Fiona and explain to her what happened…”

“No Tails, you don’t have to do that! It was wrong of me to try and sabotage your date… Maybe if you explain to her you got held up, she’d understand and you two could reschedule?”

“I can’t do that Ames… I don’t want to be the type of guy who nearly sleeps with his friend and then carry on with the girl I was supposed to take on a date that same night like nothing ever happened. I’d feel like a total sleazeball… Might as well get it over with I guess before she has time to get even more furious then I’m sure she already is… And before I can talk myself out of calling her…”

Amy sat quietly in the middle of the bed, while Tails hung his legs off the side as he tried to contact Fiona. While she was feeling strong sympathy for putting Tails in this situation, she was struggling to feel what she felt was the appropriate amount of guilt for ‘interfering’ with Fiona’s plans for Tails. With her budding attraction too Tails, and passionate dislike for Fiona, she was having a hard time feeling bad about it. She remained silent as Tails began to speak.

“Fiona? Yeah, it’s me… I’m so sorry for standing you up but something came up and… What?... Well yeah, Amy is with me but… No, things didn’t quite go that far, but it wasn’t entirely innocent either… Hey now, there’s no need to talk about her like that!... Look, if you want to be angry with someone be angry with me, I’m the one who screwed up… Yeah, that’s fair… Well, I…” There was a long pause as Amy assumed Tails was just listening as Fiona chewed him out. “I understand… Goodbye…”

Tails lowered his head and buried his face in his hands. The site was too much for Amy, who crawled over to him and placed a hand between his shoulder blades. “Tails… Are you okay?”

“No…” he admitted as he raised his head. “But I will be… I’m beginning to see what you were trying to get through to me about her though… I was expecting to get chewed out, I deserved it, but there was no reason to get that personal that quickly…”

“She really laid it into you huh?”

“Actually, ninety percent of the conversation was her ripping into you… She seems to believe that you had all this planned out to get back at her.” Luckily for Amy, Tails couldn’t see her face. While she hadn’t exactly planned on nearly sleeping with her friend, she’d be lying if she claimed she hadn’t been looking for more subtle ways to talk Tails out of this potentially disastrous relationship with Fiona. “I know we messed up and that we’re in the wrong here, but I still don’t appreciate some of the things she said about you… They were uncalled for, though I imagine she’ll be saying similar things about me in the near future.”

“I’m so sorry Tails… This is all my fault! If I’d just…”

“Hey now, don’t go hogging all the credit,” Tails chuckled meekly. “I didn’t exactly throw you off of me did I? I do want you to promise me one thing though Amy… I know things are going to be weird for a while after the fallout of all this, but promise me you’re not going to disappear on me again for weeks, at least not without an explanation or some kind of warning… What we nearly did was a big step up from a heat of the moment kiss…”

“I learned my lesson after the last time Tails…” she said as she sat down next to him. “I could’ve bolted while you were sleeping and avoided having to face you after ruining your chances with Fiona, but I chose not to do that mostly for that very reason… Because I didn’t want you to think I was trying to pull another disappearing act. Though I do have to confess that I’ll probably need a couple days to… Process what happened here tonight.”

“That’s understandable… And if I’m being perfectly honest, I could probably do with a couple days to myself as well…”

“I’m thankful you still want to talk to me at all… Regardless of how much blame we choose to toss around Tails, we still need to be more careful and…”

“Make sure we don’t let something like this happen again, I know…” Tails sighed, doing a half decent job of hiding how bitter those words tasted to his mouth, while still managing a small grin. “That shouldn’t be too much of a problem if somebody would learn to keep their lips to themselves.”

Amy blushed hard as she swatted his arm with the back of her hand. “I’ll work on that, but it would help if you stopped making me want to kiss you…” Amy heard it as soon as the words escaped her lips, practically freezing her in place.

Tails’ ears perked up atop his head. “Wh…What do you mean by that?”

“It’s nothing…” said Amy as she practically jumped off the bed. “I should probably get going before I make things any more awkward than they already are…”

“Right… That probably is for the best…”

“I’ll… Call you in a couple days once things have had time to settle down… I’m sorry again Tails. I hope you and Fiona are able to work things out…” Lying bitch, she scolded herself.

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but I appreciate the sentiment just the same.. Goodbye Amy…”

“Goodbye Tails…” she wished as she headed for the door but stopped herself just before exiting his bedroom. There was something she desperately wanted to know, despite all good sense telling her she shouldn’t go there… She did anyway. “Tails… Did you mean it? … When you said that I was the one you want… Not Fiona…”

Tails hesitated only briefly. “Yes… Did you mean any of it? You might not have said the words, but your actions said a lot…”

Amy’s hesitance was far more prolonged. From somewhere deep inside her was a voice screaming at her to lie… To say no, or not say anything at all and just leave. She had one job, and that was not to make this situation any worse than it already was… So, imagine her surprise when her mouth opened and spoke seemingly of its own accord with a very simple, “Yes…”

Amy bolted from the bedroom, headed straight towards the nearest exit of the fox’s home. The fox fell backward onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

“What is my life right now?”

Meanwhile, Amy was already outside frantically rubbing at her folded arms. “Just think about Sonic… Think about your future together, and how wonderful our lives are going to be once he realizes he loves me as much as I love him… Then everything can go back to normal…”

It didn’t work… As the night dragged on, all the hammer-happy hedgehog could think about was her two-tailed friend, what they’d done, what they’d almost done, and what it would’ve felt like if they hadn’t stopped themselves when they did.

Notes:

Oh, come on, like I was going to allow Fiona of all people or jealousy in general be the reason these two would take things ‘that’ far. Plus, sleeping together would’ve been too much of an escalation from holding hands and sharing one kiss on the beach. This sequence was also the reason I decided to try and make Fiona a bit more relatable and sympathetic… I didn’t want to absolve Tails and Amy of any culpability in understanding that, while there was nothing necessarily wrong with what they almost did, the reasons and circumstances around it definitely were. I risked doing just that if Fiona is just a generic bitch with no gray area to speak of, seeing as what’s stopping the reader from just shrugging their shoulders and saying, ‘It’s Fiona, who cares’?

Full disclosure, there’s something about this chapter I’m deeply unsatisfied with… It comes across fine I guess, and while I like the overall message and escalation, I just wish I could’ve found a better way to bring it all together without the generic Amy third wheeling on their date or anything like that. I know I can do better, and that bothers me.

The next chapter is supposed to be the finale, but if it winds up ballooning to 40+ pages, it may get separated into two parts. We’ll just have to see how things go.

Chapter 5: Verse 5

Tails frowned as the sound of a familiar ringtone assaulted his ears, a song appropriately titled ‘Toxic’. He set down his blowtorch and lifted the welding mask from his face before going to check his texts to see what the spiteful vixen had to say this time. The message turned out to be nothing special, just a picture of Fiona suggestively hanging off her latest boytoy.

Tails rolled his eyes but otherwise felt indifferent. It was hard to take her seriously when she was already on her third new boyfriend since Tails had stood her up six months prior, and quite frankly, he found it kind of pathetic just how petty this girl turned out to be. He’d consider changing his number if it wasn’t tied to all his many business contacts, so for now, Tails would just have to deal with the vixen’s childish antics until she felt she’d achieved whatever she thought she was going to accomplish with this one-sided grudge she was painstakingly trying to keep alive. Tails had stopped caring a few days after the blowout. As far as he was concerned, Amy had done him a favor that night after Fiona had proved Amy correct once the vixen began to show just how vindictive she could be.

At least Fiona was staying clean from the looks of things, so there was that at least.

Speaking of Amy, she’d kept her promise and hadn’t vanished from his life after saving him from Fiona. In fact, she might’ve been overcompensating a bit as Tails wouldn’t be surprised if he crunched the numbers and discovered that he’d seen more of Amy in the past six months than he had in all of the previous years he’d known her combined… Well, at least as far as spending time alone with just the two of them went, and occasionally Cream whenever she would visit while on break from her classes. They’d also made good on their promises to each other to focus on being friends and not allow whatever budding feelings they were developing for each other get in the way of that.

Amy was definitely sending out the occasional mixed signal though. Like sitting way too close on the couch to a young man you knew full well was physically attracted to you. Not that Tails minded that much... Or at all really. The closeness was often uncomfortable, but a pleasant kind of uncomfortable that he happily learned to live with.

There were also those rare occasions when they were out together, and Amy would absently grab his hand when she wanted to show him something or lead him somewhere, only to realize what she was doing and release it a few seconds later and act like nothing had happened. There were also plenty of stolen glances that Tails would sometimes catch when Amy thought he wasn’t looking. Nothing more serious than that though, leaving Tails to wonder if she was going through the same inner turmoil he was putting himself through… And if Amy was acting this obvious to a romance dunce like Tails, how obvious must his slip ups have been to her?

Tails couldn’t deny what was happening any longer. He wasn’t sure if it started at the lake, or if this was something he’d felt before then and that kiss just made the feeling impossible to ignore. Whatever he was feeling, it was getting stronger with each passing day, and possibly the only thing stronger than his growing attraction to Amy was his determination not to pursue that feeling in any form or fashion. He new better than maybe anyone else that chasing after something you couldn’t have would only end in pain and heartbreak…. Because, after all, he’d learned that lesson from Amy Rose herself…

He’d spent years watching Amy pursue Sonic only to run headfirst into wall after wall just to get let down time and time again. Tails would learn from Amy’s example and not repeat her mistakes by trying to court someone who’d made it clear that she just wasn’t interested in him that way. Someone who’d always be staring out the window hoping for Sonic to come knocking upon their door even if they ever decided to take that next step. Her friendship was too valuable to him to risk if their investment was anything less than equal, and Amy just couldn’t match him if she couldn’t get passed the fantasy of this ideal life with Sonic the Hedgehog.

Little did Tails know that Amy’s dream might just be closing in on reality, more so than ever before when he got a surprise visit from his big bro that afternoon.

“Sonic?” Tails questioned, though he still cheerfully welcomed his best friend inside. “Wasn’t expecting to see you back so soon.”

“Hey now, what’s with that tone?” Sonic snipped back playfully. “Can’t a guy drop by to visit his best bud every now and then?”

“You know my home is your home Sonic and you’re welcome whenever you feel like being here!... You just caught me by surprise seeing as this will make your third visit this week. Normally, I’m lucky if you drop by once a month, since you’re usually only in town for a day or two. I assumed you would’ve already taken off in search of your next adventure.”

“Yeah, well… You know how it is… Just kind of runnin’ out of places to go you know?” he said cryptically as he rested his hands behind his quills, drawing another odd look from his friend. “I’m in town to do a little shoppin’ you could say.”

“Sonic the Hedgehog shopping? Unless you’re in the market for a new chilidog vendor, that news almost qualifies as scandalous.”

“I’m apartment hunting actually…” he said, almost as if he were embarrassed. “Figured I couldn’t spend my entire life couch surfin’, so I decided it was time to find a place of my own if I’m plannin’ on bein’ around more often.”

“An apartment?! But Sonic you…” Before Tails could remind Sonic he was always welcome to stay with him while he was in town, what the hedgehog had actually said finally registered with him. “Wait… Did you just say that you planned on being around more often?”

“You heard correctly little bro. Most of my peeps are centered around the Central City/Emerald Hill area, so I can’t think of a better place to settle in.”

“Don’t tell me that you’re giving up on the vagabond lifestyle Sonic…” Tails asked with a smile of concern. “Everything’s okay, right?”

“Yeah, everything’s cool bro… And I’m not giving up my adventuring ways just yet, I’m just… Slowing down a bit… Ewe gross, I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth… ‘Anyway’, I thought it would be nice to actually have a place of my own to go home to when all the oceans, mountains, and forests of Mobius all start to look the same…”

Sonic followed Tails into the kitchen, where the long-time friends leaned up against his kitchen counter as Sonic continued his explanation. “Things just haven’t been the same lately, and I’ve been tryin’ to figure out why. At first, I assumed I was sufferin’ from withdraws since I’m gettin’ less opportunities to embarrass Eggman than I used to… Over these past few months, I’m startin’ to realize that part of the fun of fighting with ole egg-butt was doin’ it alongside my friends… It’s usually just me and him now though, and there’s just something… Less satisfyin’ about savin’ the day without my buds there cheerin’ me on. I know I was on the move a lot, but at least I got to see everyone once every couple of weeks before I was off on my next adventure. At the moment, there’s members of the old gang I haven’t seen in over a year… Can’t believe I let that happen.”

“Yeah, I totally get what you mean… There are members of the old gang I haven’t seen or spoken to in years… Our friend group did always have its little factions, and you were the glue that held us all together. Once you went off on your own, I guess our bonds with each other just weren’t strong enough to keep the band playing… It almost felt like we started drifting apart overnight and everyone seemed fine with it…”

“Yeah, I plan on doin’ somethin’ to fix that real soon once I find a place and get settled in…”

“Your own home… I never thought I’d live to see this day, but my big brother is finally growing up!”

“Can it wise guy,” Sonic chuckled as he whacked the fox on the shoulder. “Hey, I can’t stay long since I’m meetin’ a realtor that’s supposed to help me out with the hunt this afternoon, but there’s somethin’ I wanted to ask you while I was in the area…”

“Oh really… Is the topic as controversial as Sonic the Hedgehog shopping for a bachelor pad?”

“Depends on how you look at it but… Well, you know how the ladies have always digged themselves this super-cool hedgehog?”

“You mean your legions of Sonic fangirls, and more fanboy’s than you’d probably think? Nah, never noticed them.”

“I was talkin’ in general, but yeah not a bad example. There’s been quite a few lovely ladies that crossed this hedgehog’s path who would’ve loved to stake their claim to this guy right here. I’ve always avoided datin’ or anything like that though… Had places to go, Eggman robots to smash, you know the drill… I knew I was never going to be around any one place for very long, so I didn’t want to get too attached… Or have anyone get too attached to me… But you know, now that I’m at a point in my life where I feel like it’s time to slow it down a bit… Maybe it’s time I finally give the datin’ scene a chance.”

“You’re serious… Are you telling me that Sonic the Hedgehog’s biological clock is finally ticking?! Oh Chaos, you really are growing up! Do we need to have ‘the talk’?”

“Knock it off,” Sonic sniggered as he shoved the fox away. “But yeah… I’m at that point where I think it might be… Kind of nice to come home to somebody waiting for me, or even to bring along on my adventures with me, and that person not feel like a hindrance.”

“Remind me to check the sky tonight to see what color the moon is… I get the feeling it’s going to be blue,” joked Tails as he walked over to his fridge and opened it. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Nah… Like I said, can’t stay long… I just wanted to let you know what was up.”

“Well, I do appreciate the update… Did you have a particular girl in mind?”

“Yeah, actually…” Sonic trailed off, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “I was thinking about asking Amy out…”

Tails nearly dropped the can of soda in his hand. His body vibrated slightly, and Tails was thankful he had his back turned to his brother so Sonic couldn’t see the look of pure shock on his face. “Oh… Amy huh? You could’ve had her anytime you wanted… I’m kind of surprised to hear she was even in the running.”

“Well, it’s not like I disliked her or anything, or didn’t find Amy attractive… I just never liked how clingy she could be, and she was a little too determined to try and domesticate me back then. Things are different for both of us now, and I know she’s been carrying a flame for me for so long… It only seems fair that I give her the first shot, am I right?”

“Yeah… It really is…” said Tails as he rejoined Sonic by the counter, faking his best smile. “Amy would be overjoyed, that’s for sure… She’s been dreaming about you saying those words to her for half her life.”

“Yeah, I know… There’s just one problem though…” Sonic turned his head, so he was looking his best bud in his conflicted blue eyes. “Before I asked her, I wanted to make sure it was okay with you first…”

Tails cursed how anxious his laugh sounded. “Are you serious? It almost sounds like you’re asking my permission to date Amy…”

“That’s because I am… You’re my best bud, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t goin’ to make things weird between us if me and Amy started datin’.”

“Sonic, what are you even talking about? That’s Amy’s decision, not mine, and I have it on good authority that her decision is going to be a very enthusiastic yes. Why would you two dating be weird for me?”

“Oh, come on bro,” Sonic teased gently. “I’m not an idiot, and I’m not blind… I know I haven’t been around a lot, but I have been around enough to see the way you guys have been actin’ around each other lately, and it just can’t help but make a guy wonder if there’s something going on there… If there is and I missed the boat, then that’s cool. I’ll back off, you just need to say the word.”

Tails couldn’t believe what he was hearing… Could it really be that simple? Who was he kidding, of course it wasn’t. Nothing was that simple. As tempting as Sonic’s offer might’ve been, this wasn’t his decision to make on his own. “Come on Sonic, you’re talking crazy here. Even if I had a mind to entertain this slander and pretend something was going on between Amy and I, if she ever discovered I cost her the best chance at a shot to date Sonic the Hedgehog as she’s ever going to get then well… Best case scenario, she never speaks to me again, and worst case scenario, she bludgeon’s me to death with her hammer as I sleep.”

“That’s cute Tails… But it’s not what I asked… I’m asking you straight up… Man to man, hedgehog to fox, brother to brother, best bud to best bud… If you’ve got somethin’ goin’ on with Ames, just tell me and I’ll back off right now… The last thing I’d want is to get between you two if ya do, so you’ve gotta be straight with me here bro…”

“Sonic… Amy and I…” Tails hesitated for what felt like hours. “We’re just friends… That girl has been in love with you as long as I’ve known her, and if you’re serious about finally taking that next step with her, then you better do right by that girl and completely sweep her off her feet and run off into the sunset like she’s always dreamed about!”

“Whoa, whoa! Back up a step bro! I’m just talkin’ about askin’ her out on a date! We’ll see how things go from there, but let’s not jump the gun here…”

“That was just hyperbole Sonic,” Tails joked, and was being approximately 50% honest. “All I’m trying to say is that, if you’re going to ask Amy out, make sure your intentions are pure first. As long as you’re asking her because you’re legitimately interested in her, and you’re not just doing this because you feel obligated to Amy like you owe her something. Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with it.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that Tails,” he said sincerely, though he wasn’t quite buying that his buddy was being completely honest with him. His little speech as to how he should treat Amy came across as suspiciously passionate. “You’re sure you’re okay with this? That there’s absolutely ‘nothing’ going on between you two?”

“Sonic… Even if I did have feelings for Amy, I’d never deny her that dream if you’re finally feeling legitimate interest in her.” Tails put on the sincerest face he could manage in this situation and placed his hands upon the hedgehog’s shoulders. “I love you two guys … And if you two can make each other happy… Then that makes ‘me’ happy… And that’s all there is too it.”

Sonic’s expression remained stuck on neutral as if he could tell Tails wasn’t being completely honest with him, but a grin soon found its way to his muzzle. “Alright bro… I’ll have to take your word for it… If I get movin’ now, I can ask Amy out, and still have plenty of time to meet up with the real estate lady… This is your last chance to object before I juice on outta here.”

“Sonic…” Tails said softly. “Shut up and go make that girl the happiest person on Mobius.”

Sonic saluted his two-tailed friend, and before Tails could finish blinking, the hedgehog was gone and out the door. Like a ghost, tails numbly floated towards the front door of his home to stare at the retreating form of the blue blur, feeling as conflicted as a fox could get.

“I really do hope it’s everything you dreamed it would be Amy…”

********

Amy Rose was over-the-moon. She had an honest to goodness date with Sonic the Hedgehog! Not something she tricked or bribed him into, or some innocent friendly get together that Amy’s imagination aggressively tried to stretch the meaning of so she could refer to it as a date… Sonic had actually showed up on her doorstep and asked ‘her’ out! No chasing involved, Sonic had actually come to her! She always knew (or rather hoped) the day would come when Sonic finally came to his senses! Now was her chance to show him just what a great girlfriend she could be and erase any doubt from his mind that they’d be the perfect couple!

Things started off almost perfectly too when Amy met Sonic at the park. He was standing in the middle of that little bridge that arched over the small creek that flowed through the park, and when he saluted Amy upon her arrival, she could almost swear her heart was doing somersaults inside her chest. The fireworks going off and doves flying overhead were provided curtesy of Amy’s own imagination, but hey… Shut up, this moment had been one of her biggest fantasies since she was twelve, so let her have this!

The date was going really well too! Sonic was actually taking the date seriously and acting the part of a gentlemen for the most part… Of course, he still had to be Sonic, which meant there was no shortage of grandstanding and shameless flirting, but she’d always been able to tolerate that side of Sonic. What was important was that he was here, with her willingly, treating her the way her date should treat her!

So then… Why did everything after meeting at the bridge feel… Off? … This should be the happiest day of her life! Bells should be ringing, she should be swooning every time Sonic’s eyes locked with hers, melting into him whenever he said something sweet or romantic. Don’t misunderstand her, she was having a good time, she just thought… She just thought…

She just thought she’d feel happier. That this first date would be magical, and she’d be all a flutter with fits of joy. That wasn’t happening though… Her chest didn’t even have the curtesy to do that weird fluttery thumping thing it did whenever Tails did anything that got her blood pumping… And that was on a fake date of all things! This was the real deal! With the love of her life, Sonic the Hedgehog!

Sonic would try to tell a joke and while Amy would politely laugh, she didn’t find them all that funny. He’d gotten a couple of legit giggles out of her, but most of his jokes came across as corny and juvenile. Tails’ jokes could often be cheesy too, but they still managed to get a laugh out of her. Perhaps because his delivery was more playful and his sense of humor more self-deprecating. He didn’t take himself too seriously, while Sonic legitimately believed he was hilarious.

Then there was the flirting… Now some of the things Sonic said to her that afternoon were indeed sweet and filled her with warmth, though as their date dragged on, his words began to feel more and more hollow. Tails would say the sweetest things without even the slightest bit of romantic connotation to them, and they could still make her heart go crazy and turn her into a blushing stuttering mess. Maybe that was the difference? Tails sounded sincere when he said things like that, like he meant what he was saying. When Sonic flirted, they felt like generic pickup lines.

Then the big moment came that led to the pair of hedgehogs holding hands in the park… She expected sparks to fly, to feel warmth all across her body. Instead, it felt kind of awkward, like their hands just couldn’t seem to link together properly. She didn’t feel the same warmth and security whenever she held Tails’ hand…

And why did she keep comparing everything she did on this date with Sonic to that mock date Tails took her on?! More importantly, why didn’t she feel the same way with Sonic as she did when she was with him! She should be experiencing the exact same feelings with Sonic as she did with Tails, only a hundred times stronger!

That’s not what was happening though… The more she looked at Sonic the less she saw this idealized vision of perfection that had lived rent free in her head. She was seeing a clumsily awkward hedgehog who didn’t know the first thing about how to act on a date but desperately wanted to give off the impression that he was this suave and sleek Casanova. That in itself was kind of cute and charming in its own way, but it just wasn’t what she’d been expecting… Or hoping for.

“Ames, you feelin’ okay? You’re kind of starin’ off into space there again…”

“Huh?... Oh, yeah, everything’s great! How couldn’t it be? I mean, we’re finally out on a date together! A real date that my alarm clock isn’t going to yank me out of right before the best part.”

“You positive about that? Because I’ve caught you spacin’ out a few times. For a girl who couldn’t keep her eyes or hands off of me in the past, you seem… I don’t know, I guess distant would be the right word?”

Amy’s face flushed as she fought not to panic. She couldn’t be the one to ruin this date by being weird, not after waiting for this day for so long! “Oh, don’t be silly! I’m having a wonderful time Sonic! I guess I’m just so overwhelmed that this is actually happening, that I have to take a moment here and there to convince myself this is actually real…”

Sonic… Wasn’t buying any of that. Amy was positively giddy when she first showed up at the park and found him there waiting for her. She’d glomped onto him almost immediately, and despite his discomfort, Sonic chose to tolerate her exuberant affection just this once… Only for Amy herself to slowly detach herself, moving from his waist to his arm, to his hand, until she was in the position she currently was now… Walking alongside him with a good foot of distance between them that might as well have been a mile with how distracted she appeared.

There weren’t any of those figurative stars or hearts in her eyes either whenever she’d look at him. This Amy Rose just didn’t feel like the same girl that once worshipped the ground he walked on. She acted like she wanted to be, but something was definitely off, and Sonic was beginning to wonder if his suspicions about Amy and Tails were true, and if possibly, the two of them just hadn’t realized it yet…

Sonic noticed a vendor along the trail selling flowers. Feeling he needed to step up his game, he told Amy he’d be right back and zipped over to the vendor. He returned a few seconds later and presented the pink hedgehog with his purchase. “A rose for a Rose… Not nearly as lovely as you, but it’ll have to do.”

“Oh, thank you Sonic!” Amy blushed. Okay, that was actually sweet. Amy wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen next.

Sonic stared at her intently before he began to move his face closer to hers. Amy’s world froze for a moment when she realized what Sonic was doing. Oh, sweet baby Chaos, he was going to kiss her! After all these years, it was finally going to happen! Amy waited eagerly, her eyes slowly closing as Sonic inched closer and finally their mouths met and… And…

And…

And… Well…

The world didn’t stop spinning… Choirs of Angels weren’t singing in the background… (Hey, these were her fantasies, leave her alone) Her knees didn’t turn into pudding. It was a kiss and… That’s really the only way she could describe it.

Their mouths parted and the two hedgehogs stared at each other blankly for a few brief moments before Sonic started to snicker… Amy couldn’t help but join in, and before they knew it, both had broken out into a fit of laughter.

“That… Was terrible wasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t call it terrible Sonic… But it was what I’d imagine kissing my brother would feel like…”

“We’re just not vibin’ at all are we?”

“I’m not exactly sure what that means, but most likely not… Maybe if this had happened a couple of years ago things would be differen’t, but now?” Amy frowned as a wave of guilt crashed into her. “Oh, Sonic I’m so sorry! Here you are trying to give me everything I thought I ever wanted, and I’ve spent the entire day thinking about and comparing you to somebody else…”

“Oh, really now?” Sonic grinned knowingly. “Anybody I know by chance?”

“Maybe…”

“Oh, come on Ames, relax!” he snorted, as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “There’s no need for you to look so guilty… I kinda had a feelin’ somethin’ like this might happen… I had to know for sure though. No hard feelin’s now okay? We’ll always be friends, nuthin’s gona change that.”

“Oh, thank you Sonic!” Amy wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. Sonic reared back a bit but still managed to smile as he patted his fellow hedgehog on the back. “I had no idea how much I needed this to open my eyes and show me what I really want… I love you Sonic, I’m just not ‘in love’ with you anymore…”

“Seems to me like somebody went and stole your heart right out from under my nose,” Sonic joked as he managed to pry himself free of Amy’s beartrap-like grip. “Maybe you should go tell that person how you feel seein’ as he’s probably at home right now thinkin’ we’re about to run off together.”

“Yes…” Amy’s eyes glistened in understanding, knowing exactly where she needed to be. “That’s where I should be right now… I haven’t exactly been fair to him throughout this entire ordeal… What about you though, Sonic? It feels so rude to just up and leave in the middle of a date…”

“Hey, I considered the date over the moment you finally admitted you loved somebody else who wasn’t me,” Sonic snarked, though he could tell Amy still needed some coaxing. “Don’t worry about me Ames, I’m gona be just fine. I’m Sonic the Hedgehog, I have options!”

“I know you do,” Amy laughed, strangely enough not feeling the least bit irritated or offended that Sonic could jump to someone else just like that. “I should get going… I’ve kept us both waiting long enough… Thank you again Sonic…”

“No problem Ames…” Sonic said softly as he watched Amy not walk but sprint out of the park and out of his sight like she was on a mission. “You’re a lucky guy Tails… Well, guess it’s back to the dating pool for this hedgehog.”

Sonic turned to take his own leave but accidentally knocked somebody over in the process. “Whoa, sorry miss! Didn’t see ya there… You okay?…”

“Yes, I’m fine…” said a soft feminine voice. “I wasn’t exactly watching where I was going myself…”

Sonic helped the young woman off the ground, and his breath got caught in his throat momentarily. The person he’d just knocked over was an attractive chipmunk, a tourist apparently if the professional grade camera around her neck was any indication. She adjusted the device to dangle safely from her neck before fixing her red hair with her hands. There was an all-around elegant air to this young lady. “New to town, huh?”

“Yes, I’m here on vacation from… Um, let’s call it a foreign country. I haven’t gotten the chance to see much of this part of the world until recently.”

“Well, Central City is a decent place to start… The name’s Sonic by the way. I’m sure you’ve heard of me though…”

“Actually, no I haven’t… Are you supposed to be an important figure on this side of Mobius?”

“You could say that,” Sonic nearly snickered. She had no idea who he was huh? This just might get interesting. “Which means I happened to know a lot about this city and where you can find the best hangouts and photo ops. How about I show you around town? … If for no other reason, just to make sure you don’t bump into any other strange hedgehogs…”

The woman seemed to find Sonic’s obvious bravado interesting… And perhaps even a little charming. “You know what, I think I’d like that actually. My name is Sally by the way.”

“Sally huh? The name suits ya.” Sonic began his guided tour of Central City by walking her through the rest of the park, all the while thinking just how good it was to be Sonic the Hedgehog.    

********

It had been an interesting day for Tails thus far… It started with his big brother showing up at his door not only to announce he’d likely be setting the Sonic circus down somewhere around the Central City area, but he then dropped the bomb that he was planning on asking Amy out… And for some reason he felt compelled to ask Tails if he’d be okay with Sonic dating a girl that pretty much could’ve been his any time he decided he wanted her. It felt so ridiculous to him for Sonic to even ask, as much as it felt ironic for Sonic to wait until Tails himself had begun to develop this virtually undeniable connection with Amy… Not that these newfound feelings seemed to matter much as Amy appeared as determined to fight them as Tails wanted to embrace them.

Shortly after Sonic had left to finally make Amy’s dreams come true, Tails received a pair of unexpected visitors in the form of Tangle and Whisper. Two people he hadn’t seen in years, and with the somewhat dour mood he was in, the fox didn’t really feel up to entertaining two Mobians who’d become virtual strangers to him… That was at least until Tangle let it drop that the reason that nobody from the old Restoration days ever visited, was because Tangle was under the impression that he still lived at his old address in the Mystic Ruins, and assumed he was just never home when anybody stopped by.

Tails wanted to cry bullshit at first until he recalled something important… That Tangle failing to realize that he moved, and thus never relaying that information to anyone else sounded exactly like the type of goof Tangle would make. He was also caught off guard when Tangle playfully chastised him for never calling or making the effort to visit them in Spiral Hill. Tails really wanted to clap back at that too, before he quickly came to the realization that Tangle was indeed right about that too. As sore as Tails had been that nobody from the old team ever reached out to him, Tails himself had kind of been guilty of the same.

After a brief visit, Tails found himself invited to a party that Tangle and Jewel were throwing in an attempt to get all the key members from the Restoration together again, seeing as it had been so long since they’d all been together in one place. The offer was tempting enough that Tails couldn’t pass the invitation up.

Soon after Tangle and Whisper left, he got a call from Vector thanking him for his discreet help on a recent case the Chaotix had been working on. Tails received another surprise when Vector invited him to join the Chaotix for lunch and drinks. Tails had turned 21 a couple of months prior, and though he didn’t really drink, he agreed anyway. He hung up the phone with a baffled, “Huh.”

Invited to two separate get-togethers by two sets of estranged friends in less than an hour, and both chastised him lightly for not staying in touch. He’d always assumed that no one would be interested in hanging out with him unless Sonic was attached somehow… Perhaps… Tails had to accept that his natural insecurities may have played a major part in the fox isolating himself.

In need of a distraction, Tails decided to take the old Tornado out for a spin. That flight lasted around an hour before Tails realized flying a machine that could quickly turn into a live missile if your concentration wasn’t on point, perhaps wasn’t the wisest of decisions on his part. He returned home, landing his prized plane just outside of the hanger before he disembarked.

“Enjoy your flight?”

Tails nearly lost his footing and ate dirt when he heard the soft, almost shy voice of Amy Rose hit his ears, which immediately flattened with concern. He allowed himself to drop the rest of the way to the ground, so he was standing next to her, his expression almost accusatory. “Amy?... What are you doing here? Did Sonic…”

Amy didn’t allow him to finish. With a hand clutching each shoulder, she pulled his muzzle down towards hers and kissed him, softly but purposefully. Tails nearly panicked at first, but every other square inch of his body screamed at his brain to just shut the fuck up. The contact only lasted a few seconds before Amy pulled away looking satisfied, a light dusting of pink upon her muzzle. “Now, that’s more like it…”

“Amy… What’s going on? What happened with Sonic?”

“Come with me…” she said softly as she took Tails by the hand. His brain tried to malfunction again, but he managed to plug all the write wires back in place and kept his attention intently focused on the hedgehog. They didn’t travel far, just a few steps towards the Tornado where their backs now rested against, hands still intertwined. “Before you ask again, Sonic didn’t do anything wrong… He was kind and very much the gentleman the entire time that we were out… Well, as much of a gentleman as Sonic can be that is, ha, ha… The problem was me…”

Amy could see the unasked questions in his eyes. “I always imagined a date with Sonic would be the most amazing experience of my life… That I’d be completely over-the-moon, walking through a fog of ecstasy with an entire orchestra playing in the background… None of that happened though… I just felt like I was hanging out with a friend the entire afternoon, all the while wondering why I didn’t feel the same way with Sonic on an official date that I felt when I was with you, while you were just trying to be a good friend…”

“Then Sonic kissed me.” Tails flinched at that but said nothing and continued to listen intently. “A moment I’ve been waiting on for so long… Something that was supposed to be magical and have me floating on air… Felt completely underwhelming and I found my feet firmly rooted to the ground. I could see it on Sonic’s face too, there was just nothing there… And I don’t think I’ve ever felt more relieved about anything in my life.”

“Relieved? But, you’ve had your heart set on Sonic for so long… All that effort just to feel nothing when you finally achieved that goal of catching up to him…”

“Remember when you asked me if I was in love with Sonic or the ‘idea’ of Sonic?... Well, I think you were onto something… I fell in love with this ‘idea’ of the dashing hero carrying me off into the sunset from the moment my fortune preordained that Sonic and I were destined to be together… Well, the one thing my tarot cards couldn’t predict was that I’d fall in love with somebody else in the meantime… That my feelings for Sonic would fade and start to shift towards someone else.”

Tails wouldn’t have been able to speak if he wanted to as Amy gently grabbed his free hand with hers and looked up into his shimmering blue eyes. “I know it sounds silly in hindsight, but when I first felt those feelings begin to change, it scared me. So much, that I had a hard time accepting it… I did honestly feel like I was betraying my feelings for Sonic, because I fully believed that he was the person I was destined to love for the rest of my life.. Only to discover when he finally let me catch him that… I had nothing to give him because my heart had been stolen by somebody else… Someone who treated me like I was special, and willingly gave me everything I ever wanted and… I… Well, I…”

Amy stumbled over her words, blushing profusely as she was clearly having trouble finishing what had been, and would surely have continued to be a lovely confession if she could just spit the words out. Even a romantically oblivious Tails could see where this was going, placing a hand on her cheek, silencing the flustered hedgehog who abruptly found herself enthralled by the fox’s tender gaze.

“It’s okay Ames, you don’t have to say it because I can see it in your eyes, and the fact that you’re here with me when you could be anywhere else… I don’t know exactly what happened to me by the lake that night, but I don’t care… Because I love you too, and that’s all that matters.”

“Eh!... I… Oh Tails!” Amy latched her arms around his waist and kissed him hard before picking him up off his feet and twirling him around twice before finally setting the fox back down. “I love you, I love you, I love you!”

Tails chuckled bashfully, as Amy buried her face into his chest. He just hoped his rapidly beating heart didn’t give her a concussion. “Glad you finally got the words out… Wasn’t I supposed to be the one picking you up off your feet and spinning you around though?”

“Oh, don’t be so cliché…” Amy looked up at him playfully… “You’d sure as hell better in the future though…”

After eventually convincing Amy to release him so he could park the Tornado in its hangar, the newly minted couple spent the next couple of hours on Tails’ sofa… Let’s call it making up for lost time. Tails’ lips were chapped, but he could care less with Amy now laying her head comfortably in his lap as he carefully ran his hand through her head quills. “So… Was this worth the wait?”

“Definitely…” Amy sighed contently. “I’ve never felt more at peace… Like I finally made a choice for myself instead of letting my life be ruled by a fantasy I convinced myself my fortune foretold..”

“Yeah…” Tails said absently. A decision Amy had made for herself… Which was choosing him over Sonic… Tails was still having a hard time wrapping his head around that fact, while hoping his brother was as okay with everything as Amy was suggesting. “Oh, I almost forgot! Tangle and Whisper stopped by while you were out on your date with Sonic.”

“Really?” Her surprise was evident. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen anyone from the old Diamond Cutters squad in years?”

“I hadn’t… Apparently that was because Tangle was under the impression I still lived in my lab near the Mystic Ruins, and the rest of her crew had no reason not to believe her. Apparently, me never being home when one of them showed up at the door wasn’t enough of a hint that I had relocated… None of them had my phone number either so… Anyway, the old Restoration Team is having a little get together seeing as a lot of us haven’t seen each other in a long time, and they just wanted to invite me.”

“Oh, that’s right! I was invited to that too… Hey, now we can go together!” Amy smirked impishly. “And you can introduce everyone to your new girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Tails stammered as if the word was spoken in a foreign language.

Amy scowled ever so slightly. “Well yeah… After everything that’s gone down the last couple of hours, I would’ve assumed that would’ve been a ‘duh’. You have a problem with referring to me as your girlfriend?”

“No, not at all! I’m just… Wow, I was not expecting this development when Sonic was basically asking my permission to ask you out earlier…”

“Sonic asked you’re permission?” she asked, eyes brimming with curiosity. Sonic hadn’t mentioned anything about that, though on second thought, she supposed he didn’t really have a reason too.

“I was floored too, but yeah… Apparently Sonic was under the impression that there might already be something going on between us, and wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to hurt me if he started dating you… I lied of course, because I knew Sonic showing up at your door for a change would make you the happiest hedgehog in the world, and if the two of you were both happy, then I’d teach myself to be happy for you…” Tails smiled as he felt Amy burrow her head into his abdomen. “I guess we weren’t as good at hiding our feelings for each other as we thought we were…”

“Speak for yourself… I was terrible at it, and I realize that now… But you know what, I don’t care about any of that, because I don’t have to hide it anymore! By this time tomorrow, half of Mobius is going to know about us, and if you have a problem with that, then tough! You knew what you were getting into with me.”

“That I did,” he laughed. “And I don’t mind at all…”

“I know… That’s one of the reasons I love you…”

It wasn’t the first time Tails had heard those words that night, but he didn’t care. It would probably be a while before his heart would stop fluttering every time they left her lips. So, to show his gratitude he pressed his to hers again, softly at first, but slowly intensifying as Amy placed her hand to his face. The moment was interrupted by Tails’ phone going off, breaking the quiet with a very familiar ringtone. (Insert favorite Sonic Zone Theme here)

“Seriously?! Just ignore it…”     

“That’s Sonic’s text tone actually…”

“It is?” Amy pulled her face away from his, appearing concerned. “Maybe you should check it then…”

Tails wasn’t bothered by the suggestion really, but he still asked a blunt, “Why? Should it make any difference whether it’s Sonic or anybody else?”

“Well, I did end our ‘date’ abruptly to go make out with his best friend, so I would like to make sure he’s okay at least…”

“That’s a great point actually… This is Sonic we’re talking about though so I’m sure he’s…” Tails brain froze momentarily when he looked at the picture Sonic had sent, and he laughed. “Oh yeah, he’s doing just fine!”

“What do you mean? Let me see that!” Amy practically swiped the phone out of his hand before the fox got a chance to hand it to her. Her brow furrowed slightly as she examined the photo. It was of Sonic seated at table in what looked like a restaurant, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin Amy had ever seen on his face, and that was saying something. Seated next to him, was a red-headed chipmunk who, admittedly, had an exotic look to her that Amy might’ve found intimidating under the right circumstances. The woman looked a little reluctant to be involved in the photo. “Seriously? He couldn’t even wait a day to pretend to get over me?!... Oh well,” Amy handed Tails back his phone and returned to cuddling with her orange fluffy body pillow. “Not my problem anymore…”

“Pretty girl…” Tails said mischievously as he reexamined the photo. “Not as pretty as you of course…”

Amy fought back the urge to giggle. It was a cheesy line, she knew it, and probably would’ve rolled her eyes at most guys if they tried to use that on her. When Tails said stuff like this though, it would always hit her in just the right place… Maybe it was because she knew he actually meant it.

Amy’s eyes snapped open wide as an idea struck her. It was a little vindictive maybe, but turnabout was fair play… “Tails, I have an idea…” She said as she sat up and basically sat in his lap. Not that Tails was complaining, but he was curious.

“Amy, what are you?...”

“Take a picture of us to send to Sonic… It’s only right that he knows we’re having a great time too!”

Tails… Wasn’t completely convinced of Amy’s motives, but he smiled and acquiesced none-the-less… It might take some work on his part to develop the ability to tell this woman no. Besides, he had a feeling Sonic would appreciate the response. Amy wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to his, and Tails almost… Almost, fought off the need to blush, though his smile was bright as the sun as he snapped the photo.

********

In a restaurant in the heart of Central City, Sonic looked down at his phone when he received the expected response from his two-tailed best pal. He didn’t use his phone very often, rarely even taking the thing out on the road with him unless he was doing something unique that might require him to phone a friend… Like taking Amy on a date for example.

He'd expected some generic words of encouragement if he received a response at all, but he was taken aback by what Tails had sent him. An overhead view of Amy sitting in the fox’s lap, her arms lassoed around his neck and her cheek pressed to his. What stood out to Sonic more than anything though was their smiles… The brightest that he’d seen on either of their faces in a long while. It was good to see and brought on a smile of his own. “Well played little bro… Or should I say Ames? Yeah this was definitely an Amy idea.”

“What did he send you?” his date asked casually. Sonic showed Sally the picture, who blushed at how forward the couple was acting. “Oh my… They seem rather cozy don’t they?”

“More importantly they look happy… As happy as I’ve seen either of them look in a long time… They both deserve it, so it’s good to see.”

“You care a lot about your friends don’t you?” Sally observed, more so than asked.

“Of course… They’re as much family to me as they are friends…”

“I understand what you mean… I have a few of those back home myself…”

“Yo, waiter!” Sonic called out to the man rushing pass their table. “Can we get the check please?”

“Oh, there’s no need Mr. Hedgehog! It wouldn’t feel right charging the Hero of Mobius after saving the world so many times, so both of your meals are on the house! Have a lovely evening!”

“Hero of Mobius?” Sally asked as Sonic cringed. He’d been kind of digging this idea of being out with someone who wasn’t instantly throwing themselves at his feet because of who he was. “Wait, you’re that hedgehog from those news stories performing all those heroic feats?!”

“Yeah, that’s me… Accordin’ to Tails I’ve even racked up some accolades I never even knew I was a part of…”

“Tails?”

“The fox you saw in the photo.”

“Oh, I see…”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you who I was sooner… It was just kind of fun to meet someone who didn’t seem to know who I was…”

Sonic was interrupted as a device that resembled a bracelet on Sally’s wrist began to speak… “Princess Sally, where are you?! You were due to check back in an hour ago…” The voice cut off as Sally hastily silenced the device. She blushed as she noticed the shocked look Sonic was giving her.

“Keep your voice down please! Yes, I am a princess and like you, I’m enjoying being able to move about freely without everyone instantly recognizing who I am…” Sally smiled coyly as she rested her chin on her fist. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“On the contrary…” Sonic grinned right back. “I think things just got that much more interesting!”

********

“Hey Tails, what time is it?”

“A little after six… Why?”

“Oh! Is should be close to sunset then!”

“Yeah, it’s about that time… Is there some type of significance to the sunset this evening?”

“Well duh! I’ve always wanted to watch the sunset with my ‘boyfriend’, and this is the first time I’ve ever really had the chance too! It’s almost like everything was timed perfectly just for us!”

“Would arguing with you about that make any difference?” Tails chuckled as he allowed Amy to pull him off the couch by the hand, like he needed to allow her if she was determined enough and led him out of the house.

The young couple found a hill with a nice view of the descending ball of gas, holding hands quietly, Amy sighing contently as she rested her head against his shoulder. “Well, that’s one more activity to check off your list… Sorry that I can’t race off into the sunset with you in my arms like Sonic could.”

“Oh, I didn’t really care about that… I was just being hyperbolic…” Amy noticed the way Tails was smirking at her, and she caved instantly. She was going to have to learn how to lie properly when that sweet face was looking her way. “Okay, so it was a very elaborate, and very Sonic specific, fantasy of mine… I’ll take this over that any day though…”

“That’s sweet but… Maybe you can have both!” Tails stood up, guiding Amy up to her feet via their interlocked hands. Tails then abruptly scooped up the surprised hedgehog in his arms. “I might not be able to race off into the sunset like Sonic can, but I can definitely fly you into it… If that gesture would be acceptable to you that is…”

“YES!” Amy blushed and tried to dial back her excitement. “I mean… That sounds romantic…”

Tails’ grin widened as he revved up his bushy appendages. “Hold on tight then, because here we go!”

Amy squealed as Tails took to the air. They flew for a few miles before Tails came to a stop, in just the right position at that elevation to view the sun dropping out of the sky in all its organish-yellow burning glory. “Oh wow… It’s so beautiful…”

“It sure is… The sunset isn’t so bad either.”

“Tails you…” Amy didn’t seem to have anything to add to that while she pretended to be annoyed. She just couldn’t look at him without feeling warm inside, at least not on this night. She placed her hand on his cheek, knocking the smugness clear off the fox’s face. “You better not drop me, got it?”

“Amy, I’ve been flying you and our friends around since I was eight, and I’ve yet to drop anyone unless we were under…” Amy shut him up by kissing him. Startled, Tails lost altitude momentarily before righting himself, holding Amy tight against his torso like the precious cargo she was. If Amy had noticed him briefly lose control, she wasn’t showing it, her lips having never left his, only deepening in response to Tails holding her close. Tails managed to hold his concentration for several minutes as the couple continue to make out in midair with the sun setting behind them. Amy finally pulled away giggling, while Tails appeared quite satisfied despite the strain of keeping them both airborne while highly distracted.

“You know, I always imagined once I finally had my first date with Sonic, it would be one of the happiest days of my life… Even if it wasn’t for the reasons I thought it would be, I was definitely right about that one…”

“Yeah, I always thought so too… Sonic was never interested in me that way though…” 

Amy snorted, then belly laughed. “Okay, you got me with that one…” Tails smiled proudly as Amy peered off in the distance. “Hey Tails, would you mind flying me home from here?”

“Oh…” One of the fox’s ears flattened in disappointment. “You ready to call it a night?”

“Hardly,” Amy snarked. “No offense Tails, but my bed is bigger and a lot softer than yours.”

“Huh?...” A half second later and Tails’ beautiful mind finally caught on to what Amy was implying. “Oh… Oh! Um, not that I’m complaining… At all, but you know there’s no need to rush things if you’re…”

“I know…” Amy whispered in his ear, sending all the right chills up and down the fox’s body. “But I think I’ve spent more than enough time waiting to get what I want…” To erase any lingering doubts, Amy nibbled on his ear, almost instantly erasing any reluctance Tails might’ve still been feeling.

“Okay then! Your place it is! Hold on tight, and I can have us there in five minutes!”

“What, wait! You don’t have to go quite…” Amy had been far too convincing, as Tails sped off towards the outskirts of Central City. Despite herself, Amy found herself laughing on the race back to her place…

In his arms, she’d never felt more safe.

********

5 Years Later…

Somewhere in western Mobius, what once had been a fairly productive Eggman facility laid in absolute ruins, having been completely razed to the ground. Silence hung thick in the air until it was disturbed by the sound of rustling beneath two distinct piles of metal and wood, until gradually, two heads poked out from beneath the mess, one spiny and blue and the other orange and furry. Both individuals fully emerged looking tired and a little banged up, but otherwise no worse for wear.

“Remind me of something Sonic… Didn’t we agree a while back that it would be considerably better for our health if we didn’t allow Eggman’s hideouts to collapse on top of us?!”

“Hey, it’s not my fault egg-breath doesn’t build ‘em like he used too Tails… The only thing on Mobius faster than me nowadays are how quick Eggies buildings fall apart once we get through playin’ around in ‘em.”

“It is kind of ironic that Eggman appears to have become more of a danger to us the less he actually cares…” 

“Maybe that’s his master plan now… Lull us into a false sense of security thinkin’ he’s gotten all lazy and senile while hopin’ one of his half-assed machines blow up and accidentally takes one of us with it!”

The two friends sat atop the rubble to catch their breath when Sonic finally broke the silence by extending an invitation he’d been dreading giving for weeks now. “So, Tails… I know this is kind of a weird time to be bringin’ this up, but Sal’s been wantin’ both sides of the family to have a little get together before the weddin’ and well… You, Ames, and Knux are my family so…”

“Of course we are…” Tails eyes dimmed regretfully. “I’m not sure if Amy and I are going to be able to make it though… Acorn isn’t exactly a short trip from Emerald Hill, and it isn’t safe for Amy to be traveling in her current condition.”

“The dinner isn’t scheduled for another six months.” Tails blinked in surprise. “I think Sal set things up this way on purpose so I couldn’t use the baby as an excuse to blow it off… Plus, having Sonic Jr. around would serve as a nice conversation starter.”

“For the last time Sonic! We’re not naming our daughter Sonic Jr.!”

“But come on! It’s the perfect choice! That kid would be set for life!”

Tails punched Sonic lightly on the shoulder. He knew Sonic was just messing with him, but brothers will be brothers. “Not to mention leaving everyone wondering if you’re actually the father… Don’t worry, one of these days you’ll have little ones of your own that you can name whatever you want.”

Sonic frowned at the idea. “Yeah… Let’s worry about getting’ me down the aisle first before we start talkin’ kids.”

Now it was Tails turn to frown. “You’re not having second thoughts again are you?”

“About Sal? Nah… Everything else surrounding her makes my quills bristle though… All we gotta do is make it through this wedding business, and we can escape to the countryside where we won’t have to worry about all the royal stuff except for once in a blue moon… Sal’s more ready than I am not to have everyone always bendin’ the knee to her… I can put up with the noise for a little while longer, so long as it’s for her…”

“My big bro really has grown up… Don’t think for a second I’m ever calling you Prince Sonic or dropping to my knee in your presence though!”

“I’d punch you right in the throat if you did.”

Tails held in a laugh that only made it up to his throat as he started to fiddle with his wrist communicator. They tended not to bring their phones along on missions were combat was likely to be involved, so the more durable communication device was a preferable alternative choice. “I better contact Amy to let her know that we’re okay… It won’t be long before ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’s’ latest exploit gets plastered all over the news…” Tails frowned at the device when he couldn’t get it to call out… “Come on you piece of crap, work!”

“Uh, maybe it got busted when Eggman’s junk factory fell on top of us?”

“Damn it, I think you’re right…” the fox’s ears flattened out as thunder rumbled overhead. The two friends looked up to see storm clouds had amassed, blanketing the area.

“Whoa, the weather was looking iffy when we first got here, but now the sky looks downright pissed…”

The two friends found an old utility shed that remained standing after all the destruction they’d caused and used it for cover as the wind howled, and lightning flashed overhead. The rain was coming down so hard that Sonic could barely see more than a few inches past the door. Once the sound of hail began to pelt the roof, Sonic felt his concern for his astraphobic brother increasing, but when he looked back at him, Tails appeared way too caught up in fixing his communicator to worry about the storm raging overhead.

“God damn piece of junk! I knew I should’ve upgraded this thing ages ago!” In pure frustration that nothing he tried could get the device operational again, Tails chose vengeance as an alternative and hurled it against the wall, shattering the communicator to pieces.

“Whoa! Tails buddy, just calm down… Everything’s fine, we’re gona be fine… We just gotta wait ‘til this storm passes…”

“Amy doesn’t know that though!” Tails yipped back before managing to calm himself down. “You know she worries Sonic, and stress isn’t good for her or the baby right now… She has to have gotten word about that explosion and the storm by now, so she’s probably at home wondering why the hell I haven’t contacted her yet!”

“Heh, so the only thing scarier to you than storms is the ole ball & chain huh?”

“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you Sonic…” he said darkly. “She’s going to hold you responsible for taking me on this raid with you…”

Sonic grimaced as he was struck by visions of an angry pink hedgehog swinging a hammer towards his head. “Yeah bro, we need to get you outta here…”  Sonic turned back towards the door and stared off into the daunting storm outside. “Just gotta figure out how the heck we’re going to make that happen…”

********

Roughly a hundred miles away, back at the Prower Homestead in Emerald Hill, Amy was not okay. She’d seen news reports covering the destruction of Eggman’s base and gotten wind of the storm currently ravaging the area. Neither would’ve been an issue in themselves if she’d received any kind of word from her husband at all.

“Where are they?! Tails should’ve been home hours ago!”

“Just try to calm down Amy,” Cream said as she was finishing up brewing some tea. She’d rushed over after hearing how frantic her best friend sounded over the phone, deciding that Amy didn’t need to be alone at a time like this. “I’m positive they just got held up by the storm…”

“Or got caught up in it… Or the explosion for that matter! Why hasn’t he called me?! He always contacts me first thing after a mission to let me know he’s on his way home… Something bad has happened, it must’ve!”

“We don’t know that for sure…” Cream didn’t sound so certain herself. She had her own concerns, seeing as it wasn’t like Tails at all, not to make sure Amy was aware of his comings and goings, especially now with a baby on the way. She tried to remain composed for her friend’s sake though. “Please sit down and have some tea… Stressing yourself like this isn’t good for either you or the baby…”

Cream placed a hand upon Amy’s shoulder and guided her to sit in a chair at her kitchen table without much resistance, before placing a cup of tea into her friend’s hands… It was questionable whether or not Amy noticed. “I’m going to strangle him when he gets home… Then I’m going to kiss him, then I’m going to strangle him again! Then I’m going to strangle Sonic for talking him into tagging along on these stupid dangerous missions, and then I’m going to strangle Tails again and…”

“Getting angry isn’t any better for your health than worrying yourself to death…”

Amy scowled up at her friend. “You sound more like your mother every day, you know that?”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment. Now drink your tea.”

Amy took a sip and now that she wasn’t focused on getting her anger at the situation out, fear of the unknown reasserted its dominance. “It’s okay… It’s going to be okay…” Amy repeated those words several more times before rubbing at her belly. “Your daddy’s going to be okay… He wouldn’t leave us at a time like this…”

Cream felt her heart crack a little as she watched Amy mutter to herself, beginning to feel her own ire rise. If Tails didn’t show up soon, Amy might have to get in line if she had any hopes of strangling the fox herself.

Before another word could be spoken, a familiar booming sound hit the rabbit’s sensitive ears… It was followed quickly after by an even more unmistakable swooshing sound. Amy obviously heard it too, sitting up so fast that she knocked her chair over before racing towards the front door of her home. She threw the door open to see her husband standing in the middle of their front lawn, looking a bit sheepish and winded, but otherwise in one piece.

“Amy…”

“Tails!”

Amy rushed out of the house towards him and Tails met her halfway, twirling her around after they embraced before gently placing her back down onto her feet and meeting her muzzle with his in a long kiss. Once Amy had her fill, she pushed him away and started banging on his chest with her fists. “Tails you idiot! Where the hell have you been?! Not even a call?! You scared me half to death you know!”

“I’m sorry Ames, I’m sorry! My communicator broke during the mission, and I had no other way to contact anyone! Then the storm hit, and we were forced to hunker down until it passed… There was no way I could fly through it, and even Sonic would’ve had trouble running in those conditions… Some of that hail got to the size of baseballs!”

While Tails pleaded for his life, Sonic decided this would be the perfect opportunity to sneak away… “Hold it right there blue boy!” Sonic froze and looked back at Amy, with hammer in hand somehow and now pointing it in his direction. “I haven’t had a chance to yell at you yet, so unless you want to give walking down the aisle with shattered kneecaps a try, you’d best stay put!”

Now Sonic could’ve easily taken off towards the hills, but something about a threat from Amy carried extra weight, and he knew from experience she could hunt him down pretty much anywhere he fled. The only thing scarier than Amy Rose with a hammer, was a very pregnant hormonal Amy Rose with a hammer.

Tails, sensing an opportunity to distract and possibly cool his wife’s rage, seized upon it, “Hey Sonic! Why don’t you tell Amy about Sally’s invitation?”

Sonic appeared confused at first until he caught on to what his bud was trying to do. “Oh, that’s right! Sally wanted to have a little get together in the Acorn Kingdom, so my friends and family can meet hers before the big day… All three of you are invited of course.”

Amy knew a distraction when she saw one, but still… “Wait, the Acorn Kingdom? You mean like with actual castles?.. And kings and queens, and princesses and all that stuff?” Amy’s eyes were sparkling at that point, and the boys knew they had diverted disaster.

Cream leaned towards Sonic and whispered coyly, “Nice way to cover your ass…”

“You know, I’m never gona get used to hearin’ you swear as much as you do…”

“I’m not sure I could even attend though…” Amy sighed. “I’m way too far along in my pregnancy to risk a trip like that…”

“It’s six months away Amy.” Tails smiled as his wife’s eyes brightened. “Plenty of time for you to give birth, recover, and we’ll have a new little bundle of joy to show off at the gathering!”

“That does sound wonderful but… I really don’t care about that right now… I’m sorry I lost my temper, I’m just glad you’re okay Tails… Oh!” Amy smiled as she looked down at her belly. “And it feels like I’m not the only one that’s glad to see you!”

“Hey there little lady…” Tails said softly as he placed his hand on Amy’s stomach. “I hope I didn’t worry you and your mother too much…” Tails felt a strong kick in response. Nothing odd with that… What was strange was the cylindrical shaped indention that appeared high up on the mom to be’s tummy almost immediately afterward. Tails reared back, while Sonic and Cream, who were both standing behind the fox, looked on with wide eyes.

“What?... What’s wrong?! Why are you guys looking at me like that?!”

“Oh, it’s nothing honey… Just an interesting kick is all…”

“Kick my spiny blue butt! Are you guys seriously gona tell me that didn’t look like a tiny hammer to… Ouch!” Sonic whined as he received an elbow to the ribcage and a glare from Cream.

“Hammer?! Oh wait, that might explain that strange anomaly the doctor mentioned during my last ultrasound…”

“Anomaly?!” Tails squeaked as if this was the first he was hearing about it.

“Well, I see you two have some catchin’ up to do, so I’m gona mosey on along now… Catcha later!” Sonic saluted before he raced off, leaving Amy slightly annoyed that she hadn’t gotten the chance to chew him out.

“I should be going too now that Tails is home… You better take care of her now, okay?”

“I will Cream… And thank you for being here for her when I couldn’t be…”

“Always.” Cream sent a wink their way before she hopped into her car and was off herself.

Once they were finally alone, Amy grabbed her husband by the hand and led the fox inside the house. No sooner was the door closed that Amy had the fox’s back pressed against it, kissing him possibly as hard as she’d ever kissed anyone in her life.

“I’m sorry I worried you Amy…” He panted as their mouths finally parted.

“Worried?! I was scared to death Tails! … You better never do anything like that to me again… And you wouldn’t have had to worry me if you’d been at home with me where you belong instead of letting Sonic drag you out on another one of his crazy adventures…”

“Sonic didn’t convince me Ames… I volunteered to go with him on this job.”

“You what?! Why on Mobius would you do that when you know you have a pregnant wife at home?!”

“For her…” Tails looked down at Amy’s midsection, prompting Amy to follow suit. “I would love for her to have been born into a world where she doesn’t have to worry about Eggman causing havoc or bringing harm to her or anyone that she loves… That’s why Sonic and I have… Kind of been working overtime trying to hit the old egg as hard as we can… To hopefully demoralize him enough that he finally gives up or runs out of the seemingly endless supply of money he has at his disposal. It seems to be working seeing as most of his new contraptions fall apart like they’re made out of tissue paper…”

“Tails… That’s a sweet sentiment but, please no more of these dangerous missions! Not at least until I’m fit enough to go with you again… I know it’s silly and we’re both capable of taking care of ourselves, but I prefer it when we can do the dangerous stuff together, so we know we always have each other’s back.”

“You’re… You’re right… I promise, no more dangerous jobs… Unless it’s a global threat that directly affects us all… I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let anyone threaten our family.”

“That sounds fair… Surely, we can make it another six weeks before the next potential apocalypse.”

Needless to say, Amy kept Tails well within arm’s reach for the rest of the day when not just straight up attached to his hip. Tails didn’t mind at all, especially at times like this when Tails knew she needed the extra attention. Before long, night had descended upon Emerald Hill, and the couple found themselves seated on a swing Tails had constructed that gave them a good view of the sunset whenever they cared to view it. A special natural occurrence of great significance to the fox and hedgehog as it reminded them of the night everything changed for them… A day forever burned into the mind of Tails, currently playing in his head as they sat there, his wife’s head resting on his shoulder.

“You have your thinking face on again…” Amy somehow observed despite her eyes being plainly closed.

“I’m just appreciating how the last 1,876 days have been the happiest five+ years of my life… And amazed at how easily I could’ve missed out on all of this if I hadn’t volunteer to replace Sonic on what was supposed to be his date, and if you hadn’t impulsively kissed me by the lake that night.”

“I don’t bother thinking about what could’ve or might’ve happened at all… I don’t ‘want’ to think about how I almost let what we have slip through my hands because I was chasing something I’m not even sure ever existed. All I focus on is how happy I am now and enjoying every moment of it.” Amy’s eyes opened slowly as she said, “I wasted more than enough time bemoaning what could’ve or what should’ve been.”

“You know, maybe it was because I was abandoned when I was young and felt isolated for so long, that the special moments in life just mean that much more to me… I still think I like your viewpoint better though.”

Amy looked up at the fox lovingly. “Have the last five years really been the happiest of your life?”

“And things keep getting better,” he smiled down at his wife, stealing a quick glance down at her tummy, and then back to her shimmering green eyes. “Every ‘impulsive’ kiss after another.”

Tails leaned down and touched his lips to hers, Amy moaning into his mouth in response as dusk was slowly fading into night. The moment was abruptly interrupted with a stiff kicking motion to his chest. Tails coughed softly and laughed. “Well would you look at that… Not even born yet and she already thinks seeing her parents kiss is gross.”

“She’s gona have to get used to it,” Amy said suggestively as she returned her head to his shoulder.

“So, have you finally settled on a name for our future troublemaker yet?”

“I have a few ideas, but I haven’t settled on one just yet… I want to see her first, then she’ll tell me what her name should be…”

“I see… So Sonic Jr. it is I guess…”

“Oh no, you just didn’t!” Amy growled as her husband laughed and jumped off the swing, disappearing into the house.

“You get back here Tails! You know I’m not supposed to run in this condition!”

Of course, it didn’t take long for Tails to allow Amy to catch up to him and accept his ‘punishment’, for after all…

He’d never once tried running away from her, and if he had anything to say about it, he never would.

Notes:

While I do enjoy reading stories featuring traditional ships, when I do write a romance focused story, I usually prefer to focus on oddball type ships. The type of couples that, on the surface, you’d think couldn’t possibly work, and then try to not only find a way to make it work but even make sense, at least within the context of the story. The downside is usually watching those stories wallow in obscurity, but I’m okay with that.

Tails and Amy don’t really fall into that category, at least not in the traditional non-traditional sense. This is actually one of those off-cannon ships that actually makes some sense to me, and I feel is a bit underserved. I guess it’s easy to forget that Amy was canonically 12 for the longest time, and throughout a lot of Archie, Tails was canonically 10 and eventually 11 before he got de-aged back to 8 to be more instep with the games. I’m no expert on the timeline or what happened when, but there was a period of time there where these two were close to the same age. The pieces are there, and I’m surprised this ship isn’t more popular than it is.

So why would I have Amy go on a date with Sonic if I hate love triangles between the three so much? Well, for starters, it’s not really a love triangle and two… For Amy and Tails to truly find happiness together, two things had to happen. Amy had to be certain her feeling for Sonic were gone and weren’t going to continue to haunt her, making her wonder what could’ve been if she decided to move on with somebody else, and Tails needed to know he wasn’t going to constantly have to be looking over his shoulder worried that Amy would ditch him for Sonic if he ever showed interest in her.

Now, for those of you who stumbled into this story looking for those LFF spinoffs I promised, don’t worry, those are coming up next. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this little side project for this cute little underserved ship.

Notes:

This is a story I cooked up loosely based off a song I’ve been trying to write that I felt kinda fit with these two. I’ve always had a soft spot for this ship, but I’ve had a difficult time getting invested in it due to a lack of quality longer-form stories centered around these two, so a part of my reasoning for writing this story was to provide Amy/Tails fans something a little different while pushing against the tropes in longer stories involving these two that I’ve come to despise… Namely, unnecessary love triangles for the sake of added drama, and Tails lusting over his best bud’s/big brother’s girl… (Gross)

I intend to make it fairly clear what I’ve always felt the real challenge for this couple should be through my writing, so I’ll keep quiet on that for now. I originally intended for this story to be four to five chapters long, but it just seems to keep growing the more I go, so we’ll see where it ends up. This is why I can’t write one-shots, lol.