Chapter Text
A mouthful of sand was never a good thing to wake up to.
Neither was the toe of a boot repeatedly jabbed into one’s side, and as Sonic let out a raspy groan, one that hurt the back of his parched throat as he blinked his eyes open to find himself staring directly into the blazing sun, those were the three things he noticed first. The crunchy grit of sand gnashing between his teeth, the sharp tapping of a pointed boot into the side of his ribcage, and the blinding glare of the sun overhead.
Throwing an arm up over his eyes, not all that keen on searing his retinas, Sonic used his other hand to swat lamely at the person who was kicking him. “Urgh, quit it,” he mumbled, or at least, that’s what he had attempted to say; what instead came out was incoherent, garbled nonsense. However, as his hands grazed against something— someone’s leg if he had to wager a guess— the kicking miraculously stopped. It did nothing to help the desiccated situation going on in his mouth, nor did it magically snuff out the sun, but hey, it was a start.
“Heya, Sheriff!” an exuberant voice chirped. “What are you doing all the way out here?”
With a frown as he felt a shadow cast over him, Sonic lowered his arm and blinked, squinting upwards. The sun created a halo around the figure who had been kicking him, who he could have sworn sounded like Tails, that is, if Tails was trying to roleplay as a cowboy.
As Sonic’s eyes adjusted, however, he realized that his initial assessment was correct.
Tails was roleplaying as a cowboy.
Dressed in a getup that was so absurd that Sonic had to stifle a laugh, Tails stared down at him, his head quirked to the side in confusion. He wore a dark leather vest, sleeveless and open in the front, that cropped right at his waist, shrouding a thick belt that curiously wasn’t holding up any pants. It was just… sitting there, uselessly on his hips. Around his neck a plain bandana was tied, dust caked on the creases, and atop his head sat a wide-brimmed hat that obscured his eyes. All in all, Tails was wearing more clothes than Sonic could recall him donning in recent memory, and the ridiculous ensemble was topped off with two knee-high brown boots, scuffed and leather, adorned with a pair of gleaming buckles.
Realizing that Tails was waiting for him to answer, his original question long since forgotten in light of stranger things, Sonic sat up. He cleared his throat, and with a great deal of effort, asked, “Why… why are you dressed like that?” His words came out raspy and hoarse; sand tended to do that, the grit caught in his teeth and coating his tongue.
Tails stared at him for a moment, bewildered, before casting that befuddled look down onto his tacky, garish clothes. “What do you mean?” he asked. “I wear this every day, it’s my uniform!”
“Uniform,” Sonic parroted, dumbfounded. He had never seen Tails wear this a single day in his life— what asinine prank was his friend trying to pull?
“Well of course!” Tails responded enthusiastically. “You’ve got yours on, too!”
“What do you mean? I never wear any—”
The last word in that sentence was going to be ‘clothes,’ because it was the truth: Sonic the Hedgehog, outside of his gloves, socks, and shoes, never wore clothes.
And yet, as he looked down at himself, fully prepared to gesture towards his body to prove his point, Sonic realized something truly abhorrent.
He was wearing clothes. A whole outfit, in fact, nearly every inch of him covered in something. He wore a dark linen shirt, muted brown in color, with sleeves rolled up at his elbows, and above that, was a vest with a sharp arrow collar. His belt, unlike Tails’, was thick and held up a pair of pants. Even his gloves and shoes had been swapped out. Upon his hands were thick leather gloves, cinched around the wrist to fasten them in placed, and upon his feet were boots that were a tad fancier than Tails’ coming to rest right below his knee, allowing him movement while also shielding his shins. There was a bit of heel to them, granting him just a smidge of height, and that was about the only positive thing Sonic could think to say about it. Because all in all, he certainly wouldn’t be able to run very fast in them, not with the sparkling spurs glinting at his ankles, and that sense of restriction was almost as oppressive as the feeling of the pants suffocating his legs.
But that wasn’t all. Because as he reached up to touch his forehead, Sonic frowned as his fingers brushed against the brim of a hat. It was stretched far out over his face, helping veil him from the sun, and as he reached up further, felt the hard metal of a buckle planted right in the center of it, circular with a star in the middle.
“What the—” he gasped, turning his body in odd angles to fully apprehend the full ensemble. He was not used to seeing so many things on his limbs, more shades of brown than blue visible at the moment, and it was altogether more than a little alarming. In a voice that was higher-pitched and a bit more panicked than Sonic would care to admit, he exclaimed, “What am I wearing?!”
“Why it’s your Sheriff’s uniform, of course! What else would you be wearing?”
Nothing! I should be wearing nothing! Sonic internally bemoaned.
Glancing down over his shoulder, he caught sight of his tail poking out from a pair of trousers he had no business wearing. “I can’t wear pants,” he grumbled, scrambling for his belt buckle to loosen its restrictive cinch around his waist. It was hot, way too hot to be wearing anything on sort of clothes, much less pants, and he could already feel the sweat dampening his fur. Yuck, icky, gross, on so many levels. “I’m taking these dumb things off!”
“Wait!” Tails exclaimed, shooting out his hands in a desperate attempt to stop Sonic from disrobing. “You can’t take those off!”
Pausing mid-strip, taken aback by the passion in Tails’ voice, Sonic’s belt remained loosened, but ultimately still tied around his hips. “And why not?”
“Because it’s part of your uniform! You wouldn’t want to be indecent around all the townsfolk!”
Sonic’s hands abandoned his belt altogether at this, using them to point accusingly towards Tails’ legs. They were bare, exposed to the elements in the same way Sonic yearned to be right at that very moment. “Well, then how come you’re not wearing any pants?”
“Because you’re the Sheriff, and I’m not!”
It registered in Sonic’s mind that Tails kept referring to him as Sheriff; the first time he hadn’t processed it, the second time he had ignored it, and now, he could no longer leave the quirky title unaddressed.
And so, planting his hands on his hips as he jutted out his chin, feeling like an absolute clown in an outfit he would never be caught in, even at one of Amy’s ridiculous costume parties she liked to throw every Halloween, Sonic asked in exasperation, “Why do you keep calling me that?”
Tails gave him an innocent look, one that was almost suspicious in how genuine he was being. “Calling you what?”
“Sheriff,” Sonic demanded, growing increasingly agitated, “why do you keep calling me ‘Sherrif?!’”
“Because that’s who you are, obviously!”
Sonic stared at him.
And then, he stared at him a little more.
What the hell was going on?!
“Okay, ha-ha, very funny, Tails,” he drawled with a light roll of his eyes. “This is a hilarious prank, really, I’ve gotta applaud you for committing to the bit. Kidnapping me while I was sleeping and dressing me up in this costume and dumping me off in the middle of the desert… good one buddy! Is Knuckles in on this? Is he going to pop out dressed like a horse or something?”
Instead of giving up the jig like Sonic had been hoping, Tails only looked more lost than ever before. They were both aligned in that at least; currently, the two were in a competition for who could be more perplexed. “Tails?” his friend queried. “Who’s that?”
“It’s you, dude. What?”
“My name ain’t Tails, I’m the Deputy!”
“Your name is the Deputy?”
“Well, it’s what everyone calls me, so I guess that’s my name, yes!”
Sonic was itching, dying to snark ‘what kind of a stupid name is that?,’ however, with a great deal of restraint, he held his tongue.
He wished he could say that it was because a good person, one who was kind and of an affable temperament and was, above all else, a great friend. However, the truth of the matter was, even if he had wanted to speak, right at that moment, any potential words dried up on his tongue.
The dryness of the desert, amalgamated with the sand and grit still congealed in his viscous saliva, finally caught up to him. Turning away, Sonic began to cough, dust escaping his clogged airway as he violently hacked up a lung.
His eyes screwed shut, and if he hadn’t been so damn dehydrated, tears would have leaked from them. But nothing seeped out, everything about him as dry as the desert they stood in, and as Sonic continued to cough, he felt a comforting hand press in his back to steady him.
“Whoa there, Sheriff! Are you all right?”
Sonic shook his head. No, he was clearly not all right: he was clearly hallucinating, or at the very least, trapped in some sort of hellish nightmare. His best friend was acting like a damn cowboy, they were in the middle of nowhere, and he was wearing pants.
No, thank you for asking, but he was not all right at all. And the shriveled state of his tongue, cracked and fissured with sand embedded between his taste buds, was doing absolutely nothing to help his abhorrent state.
“You doing okay? Can I get you something?” Tails pressed, Sonic’s cough thinning but still annoying and persistent all the same.
“Water,” he croaked weakly, once he had gotten the spell under control, “do you have any on you? I’m like, super thirsty.”
The hand that patted soothing patterns upon his back faltered, Tails cocking his head to the side. “Now why would I have any of that?”
Sonic stared at him for a long, extended moment, before venturing with equal parts of wariness and sass, “Um, because we’re in the middle of the desert, and it’s super hot out, and this kind of sucks?”
Tails’ head remained tilted like that for a few beats longer, before he canted back and let out a raucous laugh. “Oh I get it, you’re joking!” he guffawed, even as Sonic gave him a bewildered expression, because there was absolutely nothing funny about the fact that he was parched and the back of his throat scratched and itched as though he had swallowed an entire tumbleweed. “Gee, Sherrif, you always are such a hoot and holler! Water! Ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha, yeah I’m not really joking, buddy,” Sonic attempted to say, though his response was ignored as Tails wiped an imaginary tear from his eye and sobered up a bit.
“So I take it you haven’t found any clues yet?”
“No, I’d say I’m pretty clueless right now,” Sonic muttered under his breath, before straightening up and saying, with as much politeness as he could muster, “Nope, can’t say that I have.”
“Huh, well, that’s a real darn shame,” Tails said, and on that, Sonic could agree.
Lifting his hand over the brim of his hat, further shading his eyes, Tails he turned to look around. Following his gaze, Sonic got his first glimpse of where exactly he had woken up in. They were in a long, flat expanse of desert, the ground firm and coated in a fine layer of dust and sand. Dry shrubs poked out between the fissures in the earth, hardy and resilient things that looked like they were on the brink of death, if they hadn’t already passed. Scraggly limbs, leafless and gray, spindled out like skeleton hands, and beyond that, Sonic could see that the ground became a bit sandier in the distance. It was difficult to tell with the mirage, the shimmery distortion rippling the horizon, but he was fairly certain he could discern sand dunes quite a ways away, and beyond that, jagged rock formations that interrupted the endless stretch of uninhabitable land.
They were in a valley, of sorts, surrounded by mesas, buttes, and barren mountains with shady canyons furrowing deep between the peaks. One big, dry, stupid valley.
It would have been beautiful, if Sonic wasn’t so damn hot, thirsty, and confused.
In lieu of Sonic’s silence, Tails let out a hum. “How’d you end up all the way out here, anyway?” He idly scratched at his chin, deep in thought as he continued to survey the bleak desert landscape. “You ain’t anywhere near town, or anything for that matter… unless….” He stiffened, and with his hand dropping from his chin, whirled back around to face Sonic. “Did the Outlaw do this to you?! Did he ambush you on your search and dump you out here to die?! Do you know if he’s coming back?!”
“What? No, nobody did anything to me. I just….” Sonic trailed off, and knowing that it sounded incredibly lame but having nothing else to offer, pathetically finished by saying, “…woke up out here.”
Tails stared at him for a beat, blank and vacant, before he bounced his shoulders in an easy shrug and let out a light laugh. “I’ll say, you sure picked a funny spot to nap, Sheriff!” he teased. “But maybe next time, have the Saloonkeep limit the amount of drinks you have when you go on one of your infamous benders… who knows what would have become of you if I hadn’t stumbled upon you all the way out here!”
Drinking? Saloonkeep? Sonic hadn’t the slightest idea what Tails was talking about; the longer this conversation went on, the more of a sinking feeling he felt in his gut that something was horribly amiss.
Especially as Tails stuck his thumb and pointer finger into his mouth, screwed his eyes shut, and whistled so loud that Sonic had to clap his hands over his ears— Tails definitely could not do that, nor could anyone as far as Sonic was concerned. He had always thought that whistling between one’s fingers was something only characters in cartoons could accomplish, the full effect an impossibility, but here was this little cowboy dude who looked an awful lot like Tails doing just that.
It went on for a few beats too long, and when the shrill sound finally subsided, Sonic shot Tails a nasty glare. “Geez, what was that for?!” he griped.
Completely oblivious to Sonic’s vehemence, Tails let out a chuckle. “I was just calling for Blue Tornado!”
Finally, something that rang a bell in this boondoggle conversation. “You were calling for your plane?” Sonic asked, befuddled but also a little relieved as he grasped at that frayed rope of familiarity dangling right in front of him.
Of course, fate saw fit to yank that rope straight out of his reach as Tails knit his brow. “What’s a plane?” he asked. “No sir, I was calling for my horse!”
Sonic had been about to make another joke about Knuckles being in on this, fully expecting his friend to pop out in a ridiculous horse costume just to really sell the whole bit, however, as a shadow fell over him and a sharp puff of hair tickled the hair on the back of his neck, Sonic glanced up to see a real, genuine, bonafide horse standing over him.
Gasping, he took a startled step back. “Since when do you have a horse?!”
“I think the better question is, where is yours? Did you leave him back in town?”
Sonic looked at Tails, looked at the horse, and then looked at Tails again. This whole situation had spiraled far beyond his control, and just about giving up on the whole thing, said in a rather defeated tone, “Yeah. Sure. I guess.”
“No worries,” Tails said, hardly perturbed as he leapt up onto the horse’s saddled back with a surprising amount of agility. He was clearly practiced in this, as he easily wound the reigns into his hand and the horse accommodated him with a fond nicker. “You can just ride with me!”
He scooted forward, revealing plenty of space on the comically large saddle behind him. He patted at the seat enticingly, giving Sonic a warm, encouraging smile that was sharply rejected as Sonic took an uncertain step back.
This was weird. This was beyond weird, too weird for him to just accept the offer to ride with Tails, who wanted to be called the Deputy for whatever goddamn reason, and just get on the back of some random horse and canter off all gung-ho into the sunset.
However, as Sonic turned to look around, once more taking in the surrounding desert landscape, he realized that he may not have that much of a choice. While the vibrant splotches of yellows, oranges, burgundies, and purples all smeared beneath the broad blue sky overhead were certainly lovely to behold, the emptiness of it all also spelled certain death should he choose to remain out there on his lonesome.
“Well, Sherrif? Are you coming or not?”
Sighing, Sonic nodded. It was a reluctant nod, one of a man who had no other choice. Approaching the horse, or rather, Blue Tornado, who pawed at the ground in clear eagerness to set off, Sonic stood next to the creature for an awkward moment, realizing he had no idea how to properly get on a horse, before swallowing his pride and scrambling on.
He nearly lost his hat in the process, but adjusting it as he settled in behind Tails, Sonic fastened it low over his forehead, desperate to block out as much of the incessant, scorching sun as he could. While he had initially derided the Sheriff ensemble, he could now begrudgingly admit that the hat was a necessity in the arid desert climate.
The pants, however, Sonic still wasn’t sold on quite yet.
Letting out an exuberant cry, one that sounded suspiciously like a “Yeehaw!” if Sonic wasn’t mistaken, Tails gently nudged his spurs into the horse’s side, urging her forward. Blue Tornado obliged, escalating into a trot as they embarked upon their journey. “Welp, I’d say it’s high time we head back to town! Wouldn’t want to stay out too late past sundown, now would we?”
“Uh-huh,” Sonic said slowly, noncomprehending and focused on keeping his balance, before he abruptly shook his head. “Wait, town?” he asked. “You mean, with people? People like you, or like, normal people?”
“Ain’t nothing but normal people in Green Hills!” Tails called back over his shoulder. “They’re all people like us!”
Being lumped in with Tails didn’t exactly bring a surge of thrill to Sonic, but he brushed that aside with as he latched onto something far more intriguing, a bubble of hope swelling within his chest. “Wait, Green Hills? Like my home, Green Hills?”
“Well of course it’s your home!” he said, and that hope in Sonic’s chest continued to rise, until it was drained quite brutally with Tails’ next words. “Although it sure ain’t green, and it ain’t all that hilly either, if I’m being completely honest with you! I’m not even sure why we call it that”
Sonic sighed. “I figured as much,” he bemoaned, distant understanding about what exactly was going on beginning to dawn on him. He wasn’t getting home anytime soon, that was for damn sure, and with a great deal of reluctance, he forced himself to play along. “And what exactly is in this town, anyways?”
“The Mayor.” Tails pointed out towards the horizon, presumably in the direction of where this world’s version of Green Hills was. “He wants to speak with you.”