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"Ah, it's starting to get dark this early? Dang, winter is comin' already, huh?" Sonic said, slowing down, stopping in a clearing, and looking behind him to see his best friend catching up to him. Sonic and Tails had known each other for a little over a year at this point, but to them, it felt like an entire lifetime.
"Should we set up camp for the night then?" Tails questioned, "We can't really set up if it's completely dark." That wasn't entirely true; Tails had pretty good vision in the dark. It was just safer to start when they still had daylight.
Sonic tapped his foot on the ground as he thought about it. "We should get some more food for the next couple of days first." He started looking around the clearing they had stopped in until he spotted a town nearby. It was bigger than most towns they encountered in their travels, but it was still much smaller than a city. "Let's go, Tails!" Sonic said before starting to speed off towards the town.
Tails followed behind, flying just slightly off the ground. "Hey, Sonic?" Tails said this with an excited look on his face. "If there is an electronics store or a hardware store in this town, can we take a peek inside?" If he wasn't using his tails already, they would be waging in excitement.
"Heh, alright, bud! but we will have to be quick, alright?" Sonic said with a thumbs up.
The town wasn't as busy as the boys expected, but there were still plenty of people around. Tails had learned to be more trusting of people and less anxious about strangers staring at him about his extra tail over the past year, but there was a limit, and that limit was the number of people in the store. Tails stuck close behind Sonic in the store, keeping his gaze fixated on the floor and avoiding eye contact with everyone, his ears pointed down. He anxiously grabbed onto one of his tails and squeezed. It wasn't the most healthy way to cope with his anxiety, and he knew that, but he couldn't just stop.
Sonic felt Tails huddle close to him; he looked down at him, grabbed his hand, and softly squeezed it. He knew Tails felt anxious around strangers, especially a lot of them in one place. Tails looked more calm after Sonic held his hand; however, he was still anxiously squeezing one of his namesakes.
Sonic put one of his hands on Tails shoulder, "Hey bud, we'll get out of here soon, don't ya worry." Sonic said with a reassuring smile. Tails looked at him and nodded, but before he could say anything, Sonic continued, "And after we buy our food, we will check out the electronics store next door! Remember?"
Tails smiled, his twin tails wagging back and forth. Sonic couldn't help but chuckle at Tails' excitement, he loved seeing his little brother excited, especially after he was so anxious.
-~-
"Come on, Sonic!!! I'm waiting!" Tails impatiently called out as Sonic was finishing packing away their food into a re-usable shopping bag. "Lets go! Lets go!" Tails yelled excitedly, his excitement causing him to start spinning his tails and floating off the ground while giggling.
Sonic couldn't help but smile at his best friend's impatience and excitement. "Right behind you, Tails, don't worry keed!" He watched as Tails happily skipped along the footpath towards the electronics store. "Hey bud, just one more thing! We're just going to be lookin', we can't afford any of this stuff right now." Sonic called out to Tails, who looked back at him with a slight frown that didn't last more than a second.
"Aw... alright then, Sonic, just looking at them is cool too!" Tails said as the brothers walked into the store together. When walking past all the laptops, Tails noted all the interesting aspects of every single one on display to Sonic: one was good for heavy work-related programmes, one was better at running video games, one had a touch screen, and another was small and compact for easier travel. Tails stopped in his tracks when he saw a laptop that caught his attention, it wasn't exactly a laptop, but a tablet with a removeable keyboard.
"Sonic!! Sonic!!! Look at this tablet!" Tails excitedly pointed to the tablet, saying, "It has a detachable keyboard. It has more power than an average tablet, too!! It can run a regular laptop's OS with no issues either! That's too cool! OHH OHH!! And it has a clamshell design like a regular laptop!"
"Heh, well, knowing you, bud, you could easily make yourself a tablet like this," Sonic said, smiling at Tails' excitement.
"Hmm.. I'm not too sure I could..."
"Why not? I bet—no, I KNOW you could make one yourself, one even better than this one, you could add all the features you want to it," Sonic said with a smirk. Sonic looked over to the tablet's screen to check the time. "Uh oh, bud, we gotta leave now, it's going to be really dark soon."
"aw... alright. I wish I could have gotten something." Tails said quietly.
"Hm... well, maybe we could still get you something," Sonic said, an idea coming to him. "Come on, Tails, follow me!"
-~-
"A dumpster?" Tails questioned.
"Not just any dumpster, the dumpster for the electronics store!" Sonic said with a big smile, "They throw out any broken devices and put 'em in here, I'm sure you could fix any of these up and get them workin'." He opened the lid to the dumpster, inside were discarded boxes, plastic, and broken electronics. Tails flew up, grabbed the side of the dumpster, and peaked inside, looking around to see what he can find.
"I think it would be easier if you actually dug around inside, bud." Sonic continued, "But be careful, there might be broken glass in there!" Tails gave him a thumbs up and jumped in, digging around the dumpster, it was almost all cardboard and plastic. Sonic could only see his little brother's twin tails idly moving around, sticking out of the dumpster. When Tails found something that caught his eye, all Sonic could see was that his ears pointed up and his tails started wagging.
Tails stood up straight, bits of cardboard and some cords falling off his head. His tails wagging until he started flying. "Sonic! Look at this!" Tails excitedly said showing Sonic what he had in his hand. He was holding a smart watch with a small crack in the upper left hand coner of the screen. "It still works too!" Tails added, landing on the ground in front of Sonic.
"See? What did I say-" Sonic interrupted his own thought, saying, "Oh, hang on, dude, you still have a cord on your head." He tried to pull the cord off of Tails' head until he was greeted by his friend, telling him to stop because it was hurting him. Sonic turned him around to notice Tails' fur was matted in a couple of places. Sonic tried to pull the cord out of his fur more carefully this time, getting it free from his matted fur painlessly.
"How did we let it get this bad?" Sonic thought out loud. "We've gotta fix this, I'll be right back, Tails." Sonic sped off towards the store, leaving Tails alone next to the dumpster. He felt self-conscious about the matting in his fur, he tried to push those thoughts down by doing something else. Tails walked over to the back of the dumpster, lifted the heavy lid, and closed it. He looked down at the smart watch he found and put it around his wrist as he anxiously slid his finger back and forth over the crack on the screen when he noticed something behind the dumpster. Tails picked up the item and inspected it, it was an old flip phone. Its hinge was broken and some of the buttons were coming off but it was in surprisingly good shape.
Sonic came back with a brush, a comb, and de-tangle spray in his hands. "After dinner, we will work on getting those mats out and getting your fur back to normal." Sonic put the new items into the reuseable bag. "We should go set up camp for the night before it gets too dark, let's go!" Tails nodded as the two headed out of town and back to the clearing.
-~-
Sonic was finishing up cooking over the fire as Tails was rolling out the sleeping bags. Once Tails was done, he walked over to the fire and sat next to Sonic. Sonic poured some chilli into a bowl and handed it over to Tails, who started to pour himself a bigger portion.
"Sorry, bud, all they had at the store were little boys, so no chilli dogs tonight," Sonic apologised.
"Uh...I'm sorry, what? Little boys??" Tails questioned.
"You know, little franks? Cocktail frankfurts? Those little sausages, you know?" Sonic replied, "I just call 'em little boys, you know this." Sonic laughed
"I've never heard you call them that, ever." Tails replied incredulously.
"What? I call 'em that all the time, dude." Sonic said, "Anyway, once you finish dinner, I'll be working on brushing your fur to get those mats out, alright, bud?" Tails nodded in response, his spoon haning out of his mouth. The two ate together in silence.
After finishing his dinner, Tails put his bowl down next to him, picked up the flip phone he found behind the dumpster, and started trying to fix the broken hinge. Sonic put his finished bowl on top of the other and pushed them away. He reached into the shopping bag, pulling out the brush, comb, and de-tangle spray.
"Alright! Welcome to Sonic's hair salon, Tails!" He walked to sit behind Tails and said, "Sorry if this hurts, Tails." He started with the brush, brushing out the easier-to-get mats on his head first. He then moved on to the worse mats, Tails kept flintching and complaining about Sonic hurting him. "Sorry, bud, but we still have a long way to go," Sonic apologised.
He switched to the comb and picked up the spray. "This will pull quite a bit," he warned. Sonic sprayed the de-tangle spray and started combing away at the tangles in his little brother's fur, a lot of "ow"s and "sorry"s were exchanged between the two. The process was quite painful for the both of them, just more physically for Tails. Tails sighed a sigh of relief when Sonic put the comb down and switched back to the brush as he brushed out the last of the smaller tangles that once made up a big mat of fur.
"Is it done?" Tails asked hopefully.
"Nope," Sonic replied. "We've still got your back and tails left to do, sorry. But none of the matting is as bad as we just did."
Tails groaned and leant back, looking up at Sonic. "Can't we just leave them? It hurts when you brush them!" he complained.
Sonic pushed his best friend back up before responding. "No, we can't, and you know we can't." Sonic started by spraying Tails' back with the detangle spray, then brushing at the fur on his back. "They'll just combine and become bigger, and we're lucky that we don't have to shave your fur, ESPECIALLY with winter coming soon." Sonic commented while brushing out the last of the knots on Tails' back fur.
Tails tried to focus on fixing up the hinge and buttons on the flip phone to help ignore the pain. Sonic spoke up. "Hey, dude, What ya' got there?" He asked him.
"A flip phone," Tails responded. "I found it behind the dumpster."
"Huh really?" Sonic replied, "Surprising, since they haven't sold flip phones in years." Sonic moved on to brushing out his brother's tails. "I don't think they have made them in like 5 years; I wonder how that flip phone stayed there so long," Sonic wondered out loud.
"Well, it is in pretty good shape," Tails said, "only the hinge and buttons were broken, and that's easily fixable; look, I'm almost done!" Tails turned around and showed Sonic the now-working hinge and working buttons, but one button fell out during the demonstration. "Well... I did say almost done," Tails said sheepishly as Sonic laughed.
"You know who else is almost done?" Sonic asked Tails, "Turn back around so i can finish."
Tails excitedly turned back around, glad that this was almost over.
"AND DONE!" The two boys said in unison and laughed.
"Well, why don't you show me what's on that phone, dude?" Sonic said as he started brushing Tails' fur again.
"I thought you said you were done?" The smaller boy asked.
"I am, I just like brushing your soft fur," Sonic chuckled. "Now about that phone."
"OH oh! lets see!!" Tails began to explain what was left on the now-fixed phone as Sonic continued brushing.
