Chapter Text
Tails paced around the room, for what seemed like hours now. Either that chilliedog from earlier had been a bit too spicy, or (most likely considering the routine this had become) he was "thinking" again.
"Why do you always do this?"
Sticks asked from across the room. Which, to be fair, wasn't a lot of distance inside Tail's crammed "secret meeting hall". That place really needed some sort of upgrade. All it had at the moment were three brown armchairs, a badly constructed wooden shelf, and an out of place bell on top of a small table in the middle.
Even the walls were nothing but a bland white. Sticks wasn't really famous for having a great basement or anything, but even the frogladites there at least had some garbage and mad to mix up the place.
Amy would probably know exactly what to do to spruce up the place. Not that she could ever see it; that would defeat the point.
"Do what?" Tails asked.
"You know what I'm talking about! This… thing! This walking thing. Why do you need to go back and forth and back and forth and back and-"
"Sticks!"
"It makes me nauseous is my point. Can't you just think while sitting down?"
"Actually, walking helps me think, because it makes the blood flow throughout my body, and up to my brain. When the blood flows up to your brain, it makes it more effective and efficient!"
Tails raised a finger, just homing in his 'as a matter of fact' attitude. Sticks really didn't like that attitude.
"I knew I was doing something right!" Knuckles called from his seat, distracting both of them.
He was sitting upside down, with the tip of his head touching the floor, and his feet resting on the back of the chair.
"Knuckles, what did I tell you about sitting like that? Do you want to be abducted by a UFO or what?"
Knuckles sighted at Stick's scolding, but found the argument reasonable enough.
"You're no fun."
He dropped, face first, on the floor, and then climbed his way back up on the chair; this time sitting "normally".
With Knuckles safe(er) from a totally plausible alien invasion, Sticks turned her attention back to Tails and-
"Oh for the love of God who is made up by the government to control ham consumption, what did I just tell you about pacing around the room?"
"Leave me alone, okay? We have much worse issues than me pacing around the room!"
"Which we could get to, if you didn't just call us here every Friday, only to watch you pace around the room for three hours." She argued.
"Can we talk about anything but Tails pacing around the room? You've said the word so much it doesn't even sound like a word anymore." Knuckles chimed in again.
"Why did you even need to make this a weekly thing if we don't get anything done? Once a month was fine."
"Sticks is right. This is so boring."
"I pushed this to once a week, because we all agreed we had nothing better to do anymore. Remember?"
"I donno…" "I don't remember saying that."
Both Sticks and Knuckles mumbled at the same time, looking away from Tails.
"Plus, I don't see you doing anything! If I'm just 'pacing around the room'-"
"Stop…" Knuckles silently whined at the reuse of the phrase, now ingrained in his brain. It was trivially easy to overload that thing.
Tails simply ignored him as usual.
"then you guys are just sitting in your chairs doing absolutely nothing! At least I'm actually putting thought into this thing!" he snapped.
Grumpy, Tails sat back down on his chair (which he hadn't touched since they got there) and crossed his arms.
An awkward silence filled the room. Or, at least for Knuckles and Tails it did. Sticks had been immune to feeling awkward ever since she realized people didn't want to discuss garbage with her. What's the point of caring about social interactions with people that have such sallow interest?
On second thought, Knuckles didn't seem like the kind of person that would understand something like "awkwardness". Both the feeling and the literal word, that is.
With the other two contempt in thinking about whatever… or not thinking at all, Tails was the one forced to break the silence yet again.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? It's just… the situation is already bad, and we're only making it worse, and neither of you are helping so I feel like all the stress is on me!" he opened up to them.
"Oh, it's alright buddy. Don't you worry, we're here for you!" Knuckles exclaimed.
He scooted with his seat so that he ended up next to Tails, and then placed a reassuring hand on his back. How cute.
"As much as I'm not used to saying it, Knuckles is right! We can help you if you let us! I'm sure that if we work together, we can figure out something we haven't tried yet!"
"Thank you, you two… I appreciate it." Tails wiped a single tear from his eye.
"I feel like you two are really making this situation sound more important or tragic than it actually is." Knuckles said, finally lifting some of the exaggerated emotional weight.
"Well, this is a comedy. You know how difficult it is to generate drama in a comedy? Frankly, I'll take any chance I can get."
"Sticks, you know that the series ended in season two, right? No one is hearing this."
"Yeah, yeah… of course." she answered.
Sticks turned, staring towards a random corner of the room. Both Tails and Knuckles looked confused, but correctly elected to ignore her.
"Alright, so how about we take it from the beginning? Maybe try to actually find why none of our ideas are working?" he said, snapping her attention back onto him.
"I think that's simpler than you think it is. All we need to do is think of something we've never tried before. There must be hundreds of ideas!" Sticks exclaimed.
"Clearly you've forgotten how much stuff we have tried. I don't blame you, I lost count since…" Knuckles raised his hand, as if to start counting. All he really ended up doing was sit staring at it.
"One?" Sticks questioned.
"No!" Knuckles answered with an offended tone, "If you really want to know, last week Amy taught me how to count all the way up to eleven! E-le-ven!" He stated proudly.
"Look, how about we look through our past mistakes? Nothing wrong with a little self reflection, you know? I mean, we couldn't have tried that many ideas!"
"Yeah! I mean, what better motivation than to look back on all our past horrific failures!" Knuckles exclaimed with a concerning lack of irony in his delivery.
"Alright then."
Sticks made her way towards the badly constructed bookshelf, and grabbed a stack of papers from the shelf. It was clearly too heavy for her, because Knuckles stepped in to carry it all the way to the table.
"Where do you guys want to start?" Knuckles asked.
"How about: this year?" Tails said hopeful.
He nodded, and removed five pieces of paper from what seemed like thousands.
"Umm… these six months?" Sticks added, now worried.
Knuckles removed what seemed like a fourth of the papers from the stack. Well at least this was… progress.
"Just… this month?"
Knuckles removed two thirds of the remaining papers, leaving what seemed like a stack of twenty or so.
"Alright, who's idea was it to dedicate a unique piece of paper to every individual attempt?" Sticks asked, now visibly annoyed.
"We won't get anywhere like this! I mean, we've made hundreds of attempts in just this year and none of them have worked! This isn't an issue with our ideas, it's an issue with us! We need a fresh mind! Some different opinions."
"Hey, we still have great ideas!" she argued.
"Oh yeah?" Tails picked up the paper at the top of the stack, "Here's one of your recent 'great' ideas: Just a week ago, we tried to get Amy to overhear Sonic talking about her."
"Yeah? And what was so wrong with that idea?"
"Sonic never specified a name, and Amy is currently going on a 'sneaky' rampage of the village for all possible candidates." Knuckles answered, remembering the experience as if it was yesterday. Of course, it wasn't yesterday. It was at least a day ago, he was certain.
"Oh yeah, because your ideas were so much better! Especially the one where…" Sticks picked up the next paper from the stack, but her tone ended up shifting from annoyed to confused, "We tried to get them to brawl with each other?"
Sticks and Tails both looked at him, thankful that idea never worked. Also a little bit scared at how desperate they must've gotten to even consider it.
"What? There's no better way to bond than with some good old fist fights! Plus, I really wanted to see Amy kick Sonic's butt!"
"To be fair, that does sound fun." Sticks agreed.
Tails cut both of them off.
"Look, you two are not alone here, okay? I mean, look at my last idea!" Tails picked up yet another paper from the depleting stack, "We tried to get UT to translate each other's feelings."
"Oh yeah, why did that one never work?" Knuckles asked.
"Because the robot was evil and tried to sabotage our attempts, in its progress to world domination!"
"No. That would be because Sonic and Amy unanimously agreed it was broken and ended up throwing it into the ocean… again." Tails said, saddened.
Knuckles once again petted him on the back, comforting Tails for his repeated loss.
"Okay so maybe we need a fresh mind or two. But who? I mean, who would know our friends better than us, and would be able to give us good romantic advice?"
They all stayed in silence thinking… both of them. After a while, Tails answered.
"I think I might have an idea…"
Sticks looked at him. "But?"
"You guys are not gonna like it…"
"Tails… are you thinking who I am thinking?"
"Maybe? I mean, I have no statistically plausible way to know."
"No way!" she said.
"But-"
"No! We're not going to drop that low! Never. Not even in a million years will we get help from who you're thinking! Forget it."
Tails only looked at her with a… turd-eating grin? Who wrote this shit?
"Oh no. No, no, no!"
But he continued staring.
"Tails, if we go though a transition right now I swear to my tinfoil hat, I will take your two tails and shove them up-"
"You want me to do what?" Eggman asked baffled.
"We need your help with getting Sonic and Amy together." Tails answered.
"Apparently." Sticks added from behind him.
Her arms were crossed, as if she was one step away from screaming "I hate this plan!" Scratch that, she had been screaming this for the whole trip to here.
"Mhm… Orbot, Quobot-"
"Yes sir?" they asked in unison.
Neither Tails, nor Knuckles, nor Sticks saw them arrive. They simply popped out of nowhere the moment their name was called. Just like those ads Tails would get after not reading the terms of service properly.
Orbot specifically was holding a piece of paper in his right hand. None of them could quite make out the words, so they ignored it as set up for later.
"Bring me a glass of water." Eggman answered, his tone uncharacteristically calm.
"You didn't just ask for a glass of water so that you could spit it at us while laughing, right?" Tails asked.
"What? Who do you take me for? I would never do something so cliché!" He exclaimed.
Finally, after a dreadful ten and a half seconds, Orbot and Quobot both arrived with a glass of water each. Eggman proceeded to then pick up both and immediately spill them at the three. A hilarious spectacle, it would seem, because he reacted like it was the funniest thing he had done all week. It probably was.
"I asked for a glass of water so that I could spill it at you while laughing!"
They however, didn't budge much. Tails simply picked up his tails to strain them, as Knuckles and Sticks wiped themselves off. All looking at Eggman with a face that spelled out "Predictable".
Eggman almost started tearing up before he caught himself.
"Wait, why aren't you guys laughing… You're not serious, are you?"
They nodded unanimously, Sticks being much more hesitant to do so. Tails seemingly had already begun regretting his decision.
"Orbot, Quobot! I need another water!"
They begun to make their way back, before being both knocked out by a wooden boomerang.
"Hey! Only I get to abuse these two!"
"Listen here Egg face: I didn't get dragged here by these idiots for you to simply spill water at us and laugh, you understand?" Sticks threatened him with all the might her boomerang could channel.
"Why did you come here then. Did you actually think I would help?" He taunted, leaning down to her height.
"Yeah?" Knuckles answered for her, before Sticks could say anything that would up the rating. Well… up the rating further.
"Hohoho, what makes you think I would ever help you?"
"I mean, you helped me once with Zooey," Tails argued.
"Plus, you do realize that you help us like, every other day, right?" Knuckles added.
"That's not true!" he said. But when nobody even acknowledged he had spoken, Eggman was forced to continue.
"What's in it for me anyways?"
"Well, if we're 100% sure that Amy and Sonic like each other, then we're at least 90% sure that you totally ship them." Sticks said.
"Yeah! Those are… numbers." Knuckles helped strengthen the argument into an unstoppable force.
"You're joking right? Of course I don't! Why would you ever think that?"
Eggman wasn't sweating, they were sweating!
"Orbot, Quobot, back me up!"
"Dr.Eggman is right! He would never care enough to ship anyone other than himself."
Orbot backed up.
"That's right…! Wait, what?"
"Now that we're done with that sir, could you please tell me where to put your Sonamy fanfiction?" the robot pointed at the piece of paper he was holding, "I've been carrying it for hours!"
Eggman let actions speak louder than words, as he quickly shot Orbot with a small laser he had on his belt. He was, of course, careful not to hit the paper. It had taken blood and sweat to write those 3351 words.
All of the animals were quick to wear their, for lack of a PG word, shit eating grins.
"'Sonamy'?" Tails questioned snickering.
"What? Everyone has a guilty pleasure, alright? No reason for you to judge my interests!"
"We won't tell them if you help us."
"Forget it! I'm not about to let myself be blackmailed by you fools! Besides, even if you tell them, they'll forget about it in the very next episode."
"I-" Tails tried to argue, but Eggman was right. He had gotten made fun of before, and it never seemed to last that long.
"Now, if there's nothing else you wish to say: Robots! Atta-"
"Wait!" Sticks called, with a bright shiny idea in her head. She liked shiny things, and they were no exception.
"Now, now. You can't just interrupt me when I'm telling my robots to attack. That's simply bad manners."
"Eggman, we all know of your frienemy relationship with Sonic-"
"You mean mortal rival relationship, right?"
"Sure yeah. Whatever that means." Knuckles once again proved himself useful.
"But!" Sticks relished her chance to speak again, "Don't you want to help out Amy?"
"She has treated my eggmobile like a baseball more times than the red one over there can count. I don't really see how'd you come to that conclusion."
"He's got a point, Sticks. What are you getting at?"
"Well, Eggman, I think you'd find Amy's help very useful in say… a month, five days, two hours and thirty five minutes?"
"What is happening in a month, five days, two hours and thirty five minutes?" Knuckles asked, repeating the time perfectly.
"Thirty four minutes and fifty two seconds, actually!" Eggman corrected. "That would be the annual Fuzzy Puppies Convention™! Where every Fuzzy Puppies™ player from around the world can interact and crush each other in one great competition!"
"You know you really should've been a salesman instead of a villain, because I'm sold!" Knuckles said. "So… when is it happening?"
"Wait a minute, Sticks, how do you even know that?" Tails asked, finally understanding what she was getting at.
"Because until a week ago, Amy simply wouldn't shut up about it! She told me that date so much it's now ingrained into my head."
"But of course! Like every good- wait, what do you mean 'until a week ago'?" Eggman asked, now worried.
"Yeah, boss hasn't stopped talking about it since it was announced." Quobot chimed in from the corner of the room.
"And when was that?" Tails asked.
"It was announced at the last Fuzzy Con™, like always." Orbot said.
They all took a moment to look at them with pity, until Sticks turned back to Eggman.
"Well, because of some… shenanigans, Amy has been much more focused on scouring the village for any possible female that Sonic would think highly of."
"You mean 'for any female that sonic would possibly think highly of?'"
"Nope."
"This is outrageous!" Eggman yelled, "She promised she would train with me for the competition! What kind of Fuzzy Puppies Buddy™ breaks a promise?" he asked angrily.
"Well, if you help us get her and Sonic together, then she wouldn't have to worry about that!" Tails said, now on board with Stick's plan.
"And maybe then you and she would have ample time to prepare and crush that competition!" Sticks continued.
"Yeah boss! And maybe she would have time for you two to train as well!" Quobot vigorously supported their cause.
"Hmmm…" Eggman scratched his chin.
"So what do you say, Eggface? Your ship comes true, our friends stop embarrassing themselves, and you get to prepare with Amy for the Fuzzy Puppies Convention™."
"I don't know…"
Before Eggman could answer, the door of his room started flying right at him. Orbot managed to push him out of the way in the last second, taking the hit himself.
"Don't push me like that, you buffoon! You just mopped this place. I could've slipped!"
They all turned their attention to see Amy, and very quickly behind her Sonic, enter the room.
"Guys!" Tails whined.
"That's enough Eggface! Let our friends go." Sonic said heroically, as Amy launched all the upcoming robots.
"What are you two doing here?" Sticks asked, confused.
"Um, hello? Rescuing you?"
"Seriously?" Knuckles asked.
"Well," Amy took a moment from smashing to actually communicate, "first Sonic wanted us all to go play volleyball together."
"Then we realized that neither of us had seen you all day." Sonic continued for Amy as she grounded yet another beebot that was coming her way.
"So, we assumed that Eggman had captured you and that you needed some rescuing." She finished.
Wrapping the party up, Sonic quickly Spindashed™ through all of the upcoming robots.
"We assumed right, right?" Sonic asked.
Sticks went to say something angrily, but Tails was quick to cover her mouth.
"Yeah, of course! We were… totally captured, you know? Like, nowhere we could go. Thank you for the much needed rescue!" he said awkwardly.
Sticks coughed the moment he removed his hand from her mouth.
"Don't ever silence me again. Ever."
"So, let me get this straight. You guys realized you were all alone, none of your friends currently around, like, all alone" Eggman stressed, "and your first thought was that I had somehow captured all three of them and that they needed rescuing?"
"Pretty much." Amy said.
Eggman only looked at them in silence before turning back to Sticks.
"Yeah, I'm gonna help you." he whispered, "But on my terms…"