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“We’d better keep our heads down. Sonic’s pretty out of it when he’s like this.”
Tails ducked as the corona of flames billowed into the sky. Violence lifted Sonic’s quills, flared like an aureole as his dizzying eyes swung over the area, landing on enemies soon to wish they’d never been built.
Friends they may be, but when Chaos took Sonic’s body, Tails knew better than to let himself be seen. God, he was scared. Dropped to the floor, he watched Sonic tear through Eggman’s robot with vicious strength, rending metal like it was paper. The smell of hydrocarbons filled Tails’ nose. Everything on fire.
He swallowed around the itchiness in his throat, brows furrowed with dismay as Super Sonic turned violence-hungry eyes on the innocent civilian he had just freed. Another target to shred.
Tails threw himself in front of the rabbit before he realized his feet were moving, arms up to protect the innocent from the fatal blows that could land like bullets. “No Sonic, stop! You’re making a terrible mistake!”
He’s out of it when he’s like this.
The first time Tails saw that terrible being claw its way out of Sonic’s bones, he didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. They were fighting Dr. Robotnik’s drones—an average Tuesday afternoon for them—when Sonic shot off to grab a bunch of rings to energize himself for a mighty finishing blow. The rings’ oscillating energy drove him to a new height. Have you ever dumped gasoline on a bonfire? Sonic lit up with a flash of light and became a living breathing ballistic missile.
Something deeper and older than himself shone through those peppermint-swirl eyes as metal crashed and burned around him. Something aggressive peeked through. Not that Sonic was usually nice, he always had a bad attitude, but he wasn’t… he wasn’t actually bad. Sonic has a good heart. That’s what makes him a hero.
Drenched in oil and hydraulic fluids, smelling of ozone, Super Sonic touched down to earth. Grass wilted beneath his sneakers.
“Wow, you were amazing!” Tails gushed.
“When am I not?” Sonic asked cockily. Then he turned to leave, golden quills flashing under the sun.
“Hey Sonic, wait for me!” Tails reached out to grab Sonic’s arm to keep him from rushing off, knowing he would have a hard time keeping up if Sonic reached full speed. A shiver of energy bit his palm where he made contact, like a shock of static.
The hedgehog snarled and jerked away. “Get your hands off me.”
“…What? Are you feeling alright? Did you hit your head?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine. Get lost, twerp.”
Offended, Tails frowned. “We’re friends. I’m not leaving you.”
“Friends?” Sonic laughed. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“You must have hit your head. We’ve known each other for years!”
He slowly pivoted to face the fox again. Hypnotic spirals zeroed in on the fox, catching him in the crosshairs. “If you don’t stop buggin’ me, I’ll really give you something to cry about.”
Tails didn’t sense the danger till it was too late.
“Sonic, please listen to me. You’re not yourself!” Tails shouted to get it through Sonic’s thick skull. “We came here to help, don’t you remember?”
Dizzy red bled away from his eyes as he sobered up, Chaos’ golden corruption evaporated from his quills, left a summer sky behind. Normal and safe. “Huh?” he mumbled. “Yeah… yeah, I think I remember now.”
Tails breathed a sigh of relief.
Sonic didn’t remember what he did that first time. Amnesia locked the accident in the past. Tails knew—he checked—he cautiously broached the subject a week after the fight. A week to heal and build the courage to face what happened.
Sonic had rubbed his chin and closed his eyes in thought, hummed. “I can’t remember much. I collected the rings, then I got very angry, and I remember a flash of light. I ripped those Badniks a new one. Nothing after that. The next thing I remember is you splashing water on my face.”
“Nothing in between?”
“Nah.” Then he sat up, noticing a disruption in his friend’s fur. “Hey, where’d you get that scar?”
“I tripped and fell on a rock.” Tails explained, his lungs feeling tight.
Sonic called him a clumsy idiot.
And then they never brought it up again. Back to normal. Tails alone held the knowledge of what happened. It might as well have been a nightmare, not real life.
Today, a very dark possibility had been avoided. Super Sonic wanted to murder an innocent—Tails redirected his attention and stopped him. He knew, then, that as much as Sonic insulted him for being slow or weak or a “pixel brain,” that Sonic very much needed him on the team. If for nothing else, Sonic needed Tails to pull him back to himself when he went all space-y and that geyser inside him erupted, releasing all his frustrations with it. Somebody had to be there to put the cork back in when he lost control.
Tails gave his friend a nervous smile as fire rained down around them. “You had us all worried there.’