Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Oopsie
Miles Prower was, as usual, working on a new invention in his lab. In this case, he’d been working far more than usual lately, maybe overworking himself. Of course, he didn’t think he was working too much. He just stayed awake in the workshop a bit longer. He’d only been staying up until 12 AM, that’s not that late. After all, he was getting close t-
“HEY!!!”
Tails leaped up and almost banged his head on the ceiling! It’s really easy to surprise Tails when he’s working, and he always gives the best reactions.
“Hey dad!” The voice said (more like shouted) again. You could practically hear the grin through his voice. Tails sure could hear it, despite not yet looking at him.
“Oh, uh… Minty, hey. What’s up?”
The shout belonged to one Mint Prower. The 10 year old bunny loved to help out his dad in the lab. All the gadgets and inventions fascinate the young rabbit, even if he didn’t always understand how they work, or sometimes even what they do.
On the other hand, he does listen. Which is good, since his father also loves explaining his inventions. The only issue is that he’s really bad at explaining things. Like really bad. You will come out more confused than you came in, even though he tries his best.
Due to that fact, the only people who ever willingly listen to him ramble are his children (they haven’t learned their lesson yet, though they would in time) and his wife (she’s happy that he gets so excited).
“I just wanted to help, how’s the time machine coming along?”
Yes, that’s right, he’s working on a time machine. Considering how often they’ve ended up time traveling, you’d expect that it wouldn’t be too difficult, and yet he’s ended up spending almost the last 6 years working on it on and off. And this is only his latest attempt; he’s tried and failed and given up plenty of times even before then.
“Actually, I think I’m pretty close to being done. The last tests have gone perfectly, and I even managed to send an object 2.3 seconds into the future!”
“Wow, real impressive dad.”
“Oh, hush. If you want to help, why don’t you move the yellow emerald. It needs to be repositioned a bit to be work more efficiently.”
At the moment, he has an apparatus set up with the yellow and purple chaos emeralds, and tons (literally) of machinery surrounding them, with a chamber in the center. It was all very complex and elaborate. Mint started walking over to the mildly threatening machinery, but was interrupted.
“But BE CAREFUL. Seriously, those emeralds are dangerous” Tails warned
“Yeah, yeah, you don’t need to tell me every time”
“Mint. Please.”
“Okayyyyyy”
Every single time Mint (or anyone else for that matter) helps out in the lab, Tails always repeatedly tells them to be careful around the emeralds. Don’t shake them too much, don’t drop them, don’t let them knock into each other. It seems a bit silly, especially since he’s seen the way Tails handles them so casually.
And that’s not to mention Sonic, with the way he tosses those things around. Even ignoring the whole super ultra powerful Chaos Energy thing, he tosses those things around as if they aren’t heavy enough to give you brain damage if one fell on your head (and he’s had some close calls).
So suffice to say, Mint is really not at all worried about these emeralds, despite the way his dad talks as if they’ll explode if he so much as breathes on them funny.
“Now, shift the emerald a bit upwards,” Tails said
“k” Mint replied
Tails sent an electric pulse, checked the chaos energy readings, and saw them increase slightly.
“Hmm, a bit to the left.”
The readings increased slightly more.
“More to the left”
This went on for around 25 more minutes, with Tails calling directions, Mint shifting the emerald, and Tails sending energy pulses to check the readings. Occasionally Tails would adjust some programming variables or something, but nothing of note happened for a while.
However, (who would’ve guessed) something went wrong.
All the lack of sleep was staring to get to Tails, and he was starting to lose focus, and his brain was starting to go on autopilot. He’d already been doing this kind of thing for a few hours before Mint showed up. All the slight adjustments are very boring and repetitive, so it’s not much of a surprise.
“A bit higher.”
Mint pushed the emerald up more.
“Higher”
Mint got up on his tiptoes and pushed it up as far as he could reach
“A liiiitle bit higher”
Really starting to regret offering to help Mint thought to himself
Mint was absolutely more than a little bored right now. And at the moment, it sure didn’t help that all this machinery was designed by, and meant to be used by, a 4-foot-tall fox (Pretty tall for a Mobian). Mint was only a little over half that size, and was definitely not tall enough to reach the top.
It’s not like he could fly up either, with all the machinery and pieces of metal sticking out. That would result in some very painful ear scratches, and probably a serious case of tetanus.
So instead of (I dunno) asking for help or getting a stepladder or something logical like that, he started climbing up the machine. And the nearest handhold that didn’t look like it would give him horrible injuries was (get this) the other chaos emerald.
And at that exact moment, Tails (who really should’ve been paying better attention) sent an electric pulse through the machine, which immediately made-
“AAAAAAAAAAAAA”
The emeralds began glowing, and all the energy going through the machine started coursing directly through the rabbit, making him glow a blinding blue-white. The crackling of the machine and emeralds almost drowned out Mint’s scream.
“MINT! NO!”
Tails instantly jumped up, and ran over to Mint. Unfortunately, one of his namesakes got caught on a wire, tripping him. It’s not like it would’ve mattered anyways, since just moments afterwards his son disappeared in a flash of light before his eyes.
“MIN-“
Before he could even finish shouting, the machine burst into flames, leaving the fox in stunned silence as he got soaked by the sprinklers.
And then it exploded. Because of course it did.
“Miles, what was all that noise?” his wife called from upstairs.
“…”
“Miles?”