Chapter Text
“You’re still alive!” Ermanno gasped as Sonic and Silver arrived at the street corner where he and the GUN lady still stood.
Sonic stifled a snort. Beside him, Silver pulled a face most affronted. “Of course we are,” the psychic huffed back. “What, did you think we couldn’t do it?”
“That is of no concern in this moment,” the ice-cold reply from the ice-cold GUN lady cut through the air like a knife. “Update, now.”
With a roll of his eyes suppressed Sonic moved his hands onto his sides, head angling up so he could evenly meet the lady’s visor-covered gaze. “There was an invisible robot that we figure was stealing all the data and spying on people. It self-destructed when Silver fought it. There were more robots, that we all destroyed as well. A fire broke out, but Silver put it out immediately. Some clean-up has to happen and neither of us are injured,” he summarised the events of the past two hours or so. Some information in there would probably be more important to GUN than others, but he dared believe that a flicker of relief went over the lady’s face at that final statement.
“Good,” she nodded back stiffly all the same. “Thank you for helping out.”
“Yes, thank you!” Ermanno echoed, wringing his hands nervously. “I… I’m afraid I must already be on patrol again, but, er… Perhaps Agent Marcella here can give you something to thank you? We must!”
Silver, which Sonic perhaps should have seen coming, opened his mouth immediately. “We want to know where-” came out…!
Sonic grimaced and snatched his arm once again, before Silver could finish that sentence.
Any statement about Chaos Emeralds got morphed into a yelp as Sonic’s fingers curled around the bony limb and gave it a jostle. Though it made the psychic about five-hundred percent more likely to bite him, it was at least an effective way to shut him up. “Let’s give the good sir a second to get his bearings in order. He’s got places to be,” the speedster non-explained himself, doing his best to beam a look of apology to Silver through his eyes.
The other hedgehog tensed in his grasp… before snarling from the depths of his belly, sharp teeth gleaming as they got bared. The GUN agent raised an eyebrow immediately behind her visor, and Ermanno blinked as well with no small amount of surprise, but a nervous look got shot over his shoulder nary a heartbeat after. “Yes… Yes, you are right. All my fellow guards have been waiting for me for hours, so… Well, er, thanks again!”
And with that he turned around and all but bailed, Sonic humming as he watched the man’s retreating form. “I hope he doesn’t get scolded too badly,” he settled on, letting go of Silver with a light squeeze. It earned him a look of burning ire all the same, the psychic smoothing out the fur on his arm with an angry rub. “But we do actually need your help,” the speedster grabbed the second that encompassed Silver’s preoccupation to regard the GUN lady. “We’ve got a question to ask.”
Irritably the lady crossed her arms, a finger tapping on her other elbow. “Which is?”
This was it, and Sonic drew a deep breath. “Where,” he inquired as if he was merely casually asking this lady if she wanted tea or coffee and not if she could unveil one of the biggest secrets GUN could have, “is your main base located?”
The tapping froze immediately. “Why do you need that information?”
In Sonic’s one second of realisation that he and Silver had not discussed what to answer to that question, Silver opened his mouth anew. “Because we’re loo-”
“Because Silver,” Sonic cut him right off once more, “is… worried that the guy who keeps endangering the world is gonna come back, and we’re, well, thinking of ways to make sure he can… reach reinforcements as quickly as possible. Silver’s just one person whereas GUN is a whole organisation, so, you know, you won’t be able to find him as quickly as he can find you.” Narrowing his eyes a bit the speedster raised his head, challenging the woman with his glare as the truth stretched itself on his tongue. In the corner of his vision Sonic could make out a disbelieving look of shock on Silver’s face, which mercifully meant he wasn’t saying anything, and Sonic didn’t dare look at his pal and convey in some way that he was making things up on the spot. “Considering that robot infestation that we happened to be around for, just by pure dumb luck, I think it’s gotten underlined again how important it is to be ready.”
“…Hm. That is a good point,” the lady mused, rubbing her chin. “Even if we are detecting no traces of Dr. Robotnik right now, he is sly as can be. It would not be the first time he has… slipped through our fingers.”
“Still can’t believe you let him escape from a card,” Silver muttered. If it was meant to be under his breath, it failed badly.
Sonic shot him a glare of warning. “And the biggest reinforcements will be found in your main fortress, right?” the speedster trudged right on. “Silver’s tremendously fast, he can travel over the whole continent in nary… an… an hour, if it’s even that much. He can arrive there in no time should calamity strike. So where is it located?”
The lady studied them both. Silver stood bristling. Sonic did his best to emanate the most casual and collected vibes that also still willed Silver to keep their actual goal hidden just a bit longer. “Well…” followed pensively. “It would be treason to tell you, you two.”
“It’d be treason to ensure the world will be kept protected?” Sonic retorted, raising an eyebrow for emphasis. Hopefully this GUN employee had a conscience. “I was under the impression that was GUN’s main mission. You’ve got the world’s most powerful psychic to help you, but who’s to say you’ll be able to track him down in time when danger is threatening this world anew? Are you really willing to bet on being able to find him while GUN should be fighting off that danger, when it’s so much more easy for Silver to come to you instead?”
The lady’s face remained impossible to read behind her vizor. At least Silver seemed to be bristling less; instead he blinked at Sonic with what the speedster could have sworn was surprise. Though, both hedgehogs’ ears perked up as the lady tugged on her gloves, slowly… “That all is true…” got hummed out. What followed was a long, long silence, in which Silver mercifully kept quiet and in which Sonic tried his hardest to not look suspicious while keeping the silence tense enough still. Just a little more, and she’d crack…
The speedster stifled a flutter of relief as the lady’s back straightened. “Both of you, this information is not to be told to anyone else. Nor did you get it from me.”
“Never even talked to you,” Sonic nodded, as Silver went right back to his indignant spiking.
In one fell swoop the lady pulled a little notebook from her pocket, scribbling down something before tearing the paper out and handing it to Silver. “Learn them by heart. Destroy this paper after. If you do not and this information leaks to any other person, no matter who, GUN’s punishment will be most swift and effective.” And then she leaned back anew, with a nod as stiff and frosty as her entire disposition. “We are done here. GUN owes you nothing.”
“Thanks,” Sonic grinned at her, though the lady said nothing else as she turned around. With that same ice-cold vibe around her she walked off into the street as well, the speedster averting his eyes. Even if GUN rarely honoured their promises, he’d keep his and leave the lady out of whatever would happen next.
Silent seconds stretched out between the two hedgehogs as Sonic watched the form of the lady grow smaller and smaller. “…Phew,” the speedster piped up, once he was sure she was out of earshot. “That went as well as it co-”
“Why did you interrupt me?!”
A cyan strike hit Sonic right in his stomach.
The speedster gasped and staggered, hand shooting to his belly by reflex to grasp it … and fingers tensing into his skin as Silver whirled around, sharp teeth bared and absolute fury burning away in his eyes. “I was talking to her! I had that!” the hedgehog snarled in a deep reverberating growl. Cyan coloured his pelt an eerie hue, and a wince ran through Sonic as psychokinesis coiled around his pal in ominous waves.
“Easy. Hear me out,” he huffed back, fingers pressing into the palm of his other hand in a time-out symbol. “You were going to tell that lady we’re looking for the Emeralds, weren’t you.”
“Yes! Because we are! And you said GUN kept them instead of letting them go!”
A wry little grin formed on Sonic’s face. “You are aware that she wouldn’t have given you any information if she knew that is the reason we want to get to the base, right?”
Had Silver balled his fists so tautly Sonic could hear his muscles creak and bared his teeth as if he wanted to tear Sonic’s skin apart… at Sonic’s words, golden eyes widened.
And genuine surprise flooded over Silver’s face.
“That- Why not?! It’s the truth!” the psychic sputtered back, an incredulous frowning twisting his angry features. “You lied to her and now she thinks I’m gonna go work with GUN willingly! Never again in a million years! They suck. Can’t even keep a man who’s trapped in a card trapped in his stupid card!”
“They’re a powerful organisation to side with when there’s a true disaster striking. But other than that, I agree with you fully. They do suck,” Sonic agreed, studying the psychic closely as his mind took to racing.
Had Silver not realised that speaking said truth would most likely result in tons of trouble for them both?
Sonic hummed. If that was the case, then… “But Silver, truth or not, it’s something that GUN would not have wanted to hear. They won’t just give up their Emeralds willingly,” he added more gently. “I know GUN. Why abandon a whole base where you’ve seen the Emeralds before, and leave zero clues about where they could have been taken? Why not reach out to you to tell you the Emeralds have been let go, like you asked they would?”
At every word spoken Silver tensed more, his lips pursing and uncertainty clear on his face. A silence hung heavy in the air at the questions… “I don’t know,” the psychic eventually mumbled back, before those golden eyes narrowed anew and his voice rose right back into its normal volume. “And it doesn’t matter! We need those Emeralds, and they should give them to us, and you should have said that! I’m not working with GUN again!”
“You don’t have to. I doubt GUN would want to in the first place, after we raid the Emeralds right out of their base,” the speedster did his best to elaborate further. Not that he could fault Silver for not jumping for joy about GUN presuming he’d want to collaborate again in the future, but at the same time, Sonic had to stifle a sigh at the way the other bristled still. The tips of sharp teeth gleamed in the sunlight all over again…
Resolutely Sonic crossed his arms. “But considering everything that’s been going on with GUN and the Emeralds, just point-blank telling them we want those would have massively set us back,” he concluded with a single firm nod. “That’s what my gut feeling says, and it isn’t wrong very often.”
Silver’s expression twisted, the anger burning on there getting intermixed with something Sonic could have sworn was confusion. The other’s shoulders sat raised all the way up to his cheeks, an uncertain golden gaze glaring Sonic right down…
And then the psychic spat out a hiss, arms interlinking far more tautly than Sonic held his own and a back of sharp, raised quills getting turned Sonic’s way as Silver jerked around. But nothing else got said; Silver only shifted his hands, as if he was cradling himself more than conducting his body with anger.
Sonic frowned. Why was Silver so displeased and surprised? Because of the contents of the lie Sonic had spun, perhaps? It seemed like Silver had had some poor experiences with GUN before, to say the least. And Sonic had created his fake story while grabbing at Silver and speaking over him, despite knowing very well that the psychic quite disliked the former. And if Silver hadn’t at all realised that being honest would cause troubles, perhaps…
A little smile tugged at the corner of Sonic’s lips. Even if he did not know exactly what was going on, he did know a tried-and-true method to find out, that had worked its wonders on more people who were stubborn and snappy and angry.
“Hey,” Sonic gently piped up. “Why don’t we go sit somewhere, you and I, and we just talk about this?”
One grey-furred ear angled in Sonic’s direction. “Talk?” Silver repeated, a miffed golden glare getting sent over his shoulder. “What’s the point of that?”
“So we can explain our perspectives and you can tell me why you’re angry and I can explain why I did things the way I did,” Sonic chuckled. If Silver had never considered the possibility of talking things out before, his behaviour on both islands in the past made a lot more sense. “Is there somewhere quiet and calm around? Where we can talk more comfortably than at the corner of a street?”
Another silence stretched out… before Silver huffed, and jolted into movement towards an adjacent road. At a safe distance behind the other Sonic followed, the two hedgehogs rounding a couple of streetcorners and making their way through alleys and past crossings filled with chattering pedestrians and robots galore.
The more they walked, the louder the sounds of the ocean grew. And Sonic promptly whistled in awe as Silver led them around a massive skyscraper, and the sight of a little beach suddenly jumped into view. Though the streets had been comfortably crowded, this spot seemed quiet enough: the stairs at the beach’s edge that Silver flopped down on were entirely empty. “What a nice place,” Sonic beamed.
“Hmh.”
Not exactly the response he’d wanted, but Sonic also had yet to be flung into the ocean, and thus the speedster sunk down beside his companion. Quietly he let the wind and the smell of salt wash over his fur, studying Silver from the corner of his eye… And eventually Silver sucked in a deep breath through his nose, a scowl sent towards Sonic. “You wanted to talk. So, talk.”
Sonic thought for a moment. “You seemed surprised by me stating that telling the truth would have caused problems,” he opened the conversation.
“It’s just-!” An angry shrug followed, cyan-coated fists clenching. “You cut me off, you grabbed me- Do you really think it would have been that bad to just be honest?! To just tell her we want the Emeralds, and if she wouldn’t give them to us, we’d attack her? Because that’s what I would have done!”
“There’s no way she had the Emeralds on her, Silver. Attacking her would have done nothing but tell GUN we want them, and giving them time to hide them from us better. And we wouldn’t have found out where GUN could be keeping them if you did that,” Sonic retorted with a fond little chuckle. The mental imagine of Silver getting the jump on that icy woman was a funny one, even if Sonic scolded himself amusedly for thinking so. As it stood his laugh elicited a most peeved snarl, and the speedster quickly composed himself. “And just telling her we want the Emeralds would have done the same thing,” he added, though Silver bared his teeth only more.
“You keep saying that! How do you know?!”
“So… Okay.” Quietly Sonic thought for a second or two, before leaning back on his hands. Perhaps if he just explained himself and what he thought of GUN to Silver… “I think that you can’t be honest with dishonest people, because they will use your honesty against you. What you tell them in good faith, they turn right around into hurting you or causing you trouble or just into something to laugh at you for,” he did his best to lay out. “Like… Don’t get me wrong, there’s very few people in the world who are like that, luckily. But GUN cannot be trusted. Secrecy and deceit is what keeps their whole organisation afloat. Just look at what they did with Shadow. Or take someone like Eggman! If I tell him that he annoys me, which is the truth, he’ll just delight in that. If I’m honest about him causing me pain or making me mad, it’ll just make him happy. And I don’t want him to be happy or delighting in me feeling bad, so I act like he can’t get to me, even if he sometimes does. I know it’s painful to have to accept you can’t be honest to everyone, but… You catch my drift?”
With every word spoken Silver seemed to become a bit smaller.
Golden eyes that had been glowering at Sonic averted to stare stoically at the waves in the distance instead, as the psychic huddled in on himself. Sonic let him, keeping quiet as well… “That… I mean, I guess, but… it feels wrong,” got mumbled out, eventually. “I wish everyone would always be honest to each other. Where would we be if everyone just lied all the time?”
“I understand that,” Sonic soothed. “And the thing is, I don’t like stretching the truth either! Yet it was necessary in this case. GUN’s moral backbone is made of cartilage.”
That statement… earned Sonic a strange look and another few seconds of silence. Silver’s face twisted in deep thought…
Before he snorted.
And the conflicted look that had been clouding his features seemed to lighten up, just a bit.
“Hmm. That’s a funny way to put it,” the psychic piped up, and Sonic winked back with a laugh of his own.
“I’m afraid it’s the most fitting, too. You said it yourself: GUN’s statements about protecting the world are feeble at best.”
Slowly the psychic rubbed over his cheek. “So you’re saying lying was needed because GUN is bad, like Eggman.”
“That’s a bit… Let’s put it like this: they’ve done a lot of bad things. They do have as aim to protect the world, but they care little about how much harm and trouble they cause on the way of achieving that.” With a sigh Sonic smiled at the other, a wry little one. “And I really do think that we wouldn’t have gotten the Emeralds if we’d just said to them that we want them. Things don’t add up, Silver.”
“…I guess it is weird. But that means that…” Silver mulled, trailing off as Sonic regarded him curiously. At least his friend didn’t hold his body so annoyedly anymore, with muscles so taut they could snap right in half. Even the cyan coating him, that had looked so eerie before, seemed more like a gentle illuminating glow now, like how the first stars in the evening sky shone. It definitely made Silver look more mellow…
But the other had something he wanted to say, and Sonic tipped his head to the side curiously. “It means?” he prodded as nothing followed up on Silver’s words.
Until Silver reared his head up in full, golden eyes staring right into Sonic’s.
“It means that everything would have gone wrong if I’d said what I was going to say,” the psychic murmured, the quiet in his voice an almost startling difference with his usual yells.
Sonic found himself blinking at the intensity of that golden gaze. It reached the depths of his very soul, it felt like. He could make out every individual line and speckle of light yellow to darker amber that made up their colouration, and how each glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Definitely pretty to look at...
But less pretty were Silver’s words. They contained a heaviness, a dejectedness that made Sonic frown in sympathy. “Well, it would… probably have made things more difficult,” the speedster responded, not entirely sure what the best tone of voice to strike here was. Would Silver get mad if his words got affirmed, or hurt? Sonic couldn’t tell. Thus he smiled instead, shooting the other a warm look. “But hey, you didn’t say it in the end! So everything went just fine.”
“Because you stopped me,” Silver mulled only more, face contorting in the way Tails’ did when he was on the cusp of cracking a problem plaguing the scientific community for centuries. “But… Hmm.”
“I understand it feels wrong,” Sonic gently added. “And sorry for grabbing you like that, and interrupting you. It was the only way I could think of to make you, er… stop talking.”
That earned Sonic more rubs over Silver’s arm, the psychic huffing as his disposition fell right back into how it usually looked. “Don’t do it again. I’ll leave you stranded on the moon if you do, I swear it.”
“I won’t,” Sonic agreed before smirking. “Unless! It’s a true emergency.”
Silver’s nose gave an irked twitch. “Do I even want to know what you define as a true emergency?”
“Usually I define those as they happen, so I can’t say,” Sonic chuckled back. And promptly he had to concede that Silver looked cute when pouting, because the psychic pulled a frankly adorably miffed look before crossing his arms and rearing his head to the side pointedly. Even his mane seemed endearingly chagrined, considering its puffy and bristly appearance. “Hey now,” Sonic added with a wink. “Everything did go okay in the end, and we both learnt new things. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“…I guess. But I don’t like that it almost went wrong entirely because of me.”
“But it didn’t.” Warmly Sonic shook his head, ears perked up for anything else that would follow… except Silver kept quiet after. And that left the two of them sitting side-by-side: Sonic while studying his pal, and Silver with his face shifting from miffed to just… thinking. Possibly uncertain thinking, Sonic figured by how his brows furrowed until the bridge of his eyes had just about tunnelled down to his mane and how little fangs pressed into his bottom lip for a moment…
“Hey, Silver, don’t beat yourself up over it, alright?” Sonic eventually piped up. “Everything really did go okay.”
“I’m not beating myself up,” followed in a far more affronted tone of voice immediately, as if Sonic had committed the most grand of social faux pas merely suggesting Silver could be feeling bad. Far more like the Silver he knew, Sonic chuckled to himself.
“Okay, good. I was worried you were worried.”
A firm shake of a grey-furred head was the response Sonic got. “I’m not.”
“But you are thinking. We can talk about what’s on your mind, if you want.”
“Just something you said,” Silver hummed… though eventually he shook his head once more. “No, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
Sonic regarded him curiously, but Silver didn’t say anything else, and thus eventually the speedster smiled. “Then I won’t pry,” he responded, which earned him a wary look. But if Silver didn’t want to talk more, Sonic would not force it out of him either.
Instead the speedster focused on Silver’s hand, and the piece of paper he’d been given. The whole time they’d been talking it had sat clutched in his fist, and thus it’d gotten a mite crumpled and sad as Silver looked down, blinked with a jolt, and uncurled his fingers. “Oops. I’d almost forgotten about it,” the psychic remarked. Psychokinesis smoothed the little sheet out somewhat as it got lifted up in the air, and Silver’s eyes narrowed as he stared at it. “Though, what are we supposed to do with a… dumb piece of paper with some numbers on it?”
Peeking over as well, Sonic flicked an ear. “They’re coordinates.”
“Really? I thought that was just two numbers. This is six, and two letters and a bunch of symbols.”
“They’re more detailed that way. It’ll make it far easier to find the base, actually!”
“…Oh! That’s just what we need!” And promptly a little shine lit up in Silver’s eyes, the paper given a psychic poke. “So now you know where it is!”
“Er… Almost. I do need to unravel it first.” With a hum Sonic studied the paper and the neat handwriting of the GUN lady, though he immediately had to concede that knowing the latitude and the longitude of the GUN base was rather meaningless if he could not compare it to where he and Silver were right now. “I’ve got no idea of the coordinates of this city, so I can’t say where these ones lead to in relation to that. Tails would tell us in seconds with his gadgets, but I’ve got none with me. But that can be solved easily! You really like the library, right?” the speedster piped up…
Before laughing as that golden gaze studied him, Silver’s head tipping to the side. “Are you asking if we can go there because you’re worried that I’m feeling bad? Because I’m not,” the other responded hesitantly.
“Heh. No, I’m asking because we won’t be able to find that base without doing research first. Surely there’ll be lots of books with geographic regions and such, and we can decipher the coordinates with that,” Sonic responded, before his smile broadened. “But the fact that you like the library means I’d love to see it aside from that.”
“…Hmm. Well, it’s not far from here. I can show you around and we can get the information.”
“Sounds good. Lead the way?”
With a broad gesture to the road behind them Sonic grinned at Silver eagerly… before laughing as the psychic raised an eyebrow and jabbed a thumb towards the exact opposite direction than the one Sonic had gestured to. “Okay, okay. I’ll follow,” Sonic smiled, pushing himself upright.
Silver remained seated.
A hum of agreement did follow, though it got immediately succeeded by… a huge yawn. Sharp teeth gleamed in the afternoon sun, and Sonic decided not to mention he could send a nice look right into Silver’s stomach this way. “Let’s,” the psychic responded after multiple seconds, and that got followed by a deep, groan-eliciting stretch making its way through Silver’s whole body, the psychic’s fists raising skywards and chest curling outwards.
Warmly Sonic extended a hand.
It got regarded most scrutinisingly. “Another high five?” the psychic hummed, before moving up his own and – this time luckily not as violently – slapping his palm against Sonic’s.
And Sonic couldn’t help it: he laughed.
Promptly he got bristled at, the speedster shaking his head. “It’s called a down low like this,” he explained. “And it’s a joke that people pull their hand away before you can make contact, so be wary of that. But honestly, I just want to help tug you up.”
“…Oh! That makes more sense.” Lightly Silver’s fingers grazed Sonic’s glove anew, this time remaining in place. Sonic’s own curled around them, giving them a little squeeze as he pulled Silver to his feet. They stood connected for just a moment or two, Silver’s hand light in Sonic’s and the other’s breath a warm gale against Sonic’s cheek…
“Thanks,” the psychic broke that silence first. Before yawning once again, rubbing at his eyes and blearily shaking his head.
But before Sonic could ask if Silver was doing alright, his pal had already tugged his hand back. With another stretch he turned around and paced up the stairs, before setting off into the streets with none of the briskness he’d been making his way to this beach with.
Hmm.
Pensively Sonic kicked into movement behind the other, though his mind immediately took to mulling. Silver hadn’t had enough sleep last night, that was certain: he’d laid underneath that tree so crumpled and bleary-eyed that there was no way he got five hours of sleep, let alone eight. And for a single night, that was no problem…
But Silver, Sonic easily concluded, seemed exactly like someone who just kept going, and going, and going, while digging himself only deeper into the hole that housed a sense of self-inflicted duty and honesty so strong it bordered on being harmful.
In other words: no way they’d go raid a GUN base today.
But that, and the memories of the entire discussion they’d been having just now, did immediately come with the caveat there was also no way Sonic could just say that to Silver.
The hedgehog in question kept marching along still, shoulders tense and body stiff as usual once more, and Sonic’s concern only grew as he quietly followed.
Perhaps at the library they could work something out.