Hello, Mobius! Mayflower here with another Sonic-spectacular! ...Okay, kidding, it's a one-shot. NO, NO, DON'T CLICK AWAY, I SWEAR IT'S-Aw, dang it, every time. Anyway, I kind of have a lot of other work I should be doing, but I kind of wrote this a few weeks ago (which is AGES in fanfiction), so I should throw it up here before I keep forgetting about it. So I'll cut my blather short so you can get to the story and I can get back to my work! Enjoy! :)

LAWYERBOT SAYS: "~Live and learn! Hanging on the edge of tomorrow! O-Oh, and copyright stuff, yeah."
Sonic the Hedgehog, both the game and the character, as well as all related materials (c) Yuji Naka, SEGA, and Sonic Team

"What's the matter, Sonic? Tired already? You can always just go home - don't worry, I'll take good care of Fox-Boy for you..."

Sonic slid to a pause after clearing that last hall of EggBeetles, taking a few seconds to catch his breath before zipping around the corner and further into the base. Eggman was just toying with him now; a base specially designed to keep Sonic running in circles for ages, like a metal maze of Eggbots and dead ends.

At least, it FELT like ages. According to the countdown timer on his wrist, it had only been about ten minutes.

This plan had never failed the Freedom Fighters before: get in, drop the bombs, get out, watch the base go up in flames. Where did they mess up? Did Eggman finally wise up to their tricks? And why only capture Tails?

Sonic shook his head as he hoped onto a rail and slid down it to avoid the spike-pit down below. There was no point in trying to figure it out now. He had bigger things to worry about at the moment - namely, finding Tails and getting out before the base blew.

xxxxxxx

With only a few precious minutes left, Sonic finally found an end to the maze - a chute that led him down to a dark room, containing nothing more than a rusty elevator and an yellow fox. "Tails!"

The beaten Prower looked up, at least with the eye that wasn't black, and wiped his muzzle clean of blood before exclaiming, "Sonic, you made it!"

"You're lucky it's dark in here, Tails, 'cause you look AWFUL," Sonic laughed, offering a hand to help the sitting fox onto his feet. "You alright?"

"Uhm..." Tails didn't take his partner's hand, instead choosing to squirm uncomfortably in his seat.

"What's up, Tails?"

Szzt! "Your little friend is a bit stuck, Sonic! Why don't you leave him here and get out before all of those bombs explode, hmm? Look, I even left you an elevator to help you out!"

"Stuck?"

"Oh, Sonic, I'm sorry!" Tails cried, trying to hide his embarrassment behind a turned head and drooped ears. "I was trying to be careful, b-but the bombs were going to go off, and I didn't want you to get stuck behind looking for me, and..." He gingerly pulled aside one namesake to reveal the predicament of the other; his tail was stuck under the wall, smashed in a puddle of blood and blonde fur. "Sorry."

"Ouch, Tails!" Sonic said with a sharp breath. "Forget apologizing, are you okay?"

"Can barely feel it," Tails lied with a forced grin and a sheepish laugh.

"Alright, look out." Once Tails moved as much as his tail would allow, Sonic set to work on trying to crack the wall. However, it was more difficult than he imagined: it was too heavy and too tight against the floor to be lifted, too thick to kick down, too durable to cut down or run through...

The Blue Blur's stomach dropped when his and Tails' timers both began to beep: five minutes left.

"Those bombs are going to go off any minute now, Sonic! If I were you, I'd cut my losses and get out while you still can! Face it, hedgehog - YOU LOST!"

Sonic gave the wall another kick as Eggman's laughter fizzled through the speakers. "No way, there HAS to be something we're missing here."

"Maybe he's right, Sonic," Tails admitted shyly. "Eggman got away, we screwed up - maybe you should just get out while you can."

"I'm not leavin' without you, bro," Sonic reassured. "It might not be in one piece, but you and I are getting out of here together." Still, the beeping of their timers (only three minutes left?) was making it hard to think. What else could he do?

He took a second to straighten his quills, when their razor-sharp edges under his fingers gave him an idea - a crazy, stupid idea, but as far as he was concerned, the only one left.

"Tails?"

"Yeah?"

"You trust me, right?"

"Of course - why?"

"Like I said, little buddy: I'm getting us out of here, one piece or not."

xxxxxxx

Sonic was thankful those moments rushed by as fast as they did. It made it easier to push the memory back as he sat at the river by the labs later that night, washing his face and enjoying the night air

"Hey, Sonic!"

The cobalt hedgehog's ears perked at the surprisingly-familiar voice behind him. "Oh, don't tell me you lost the Master Emerald again," he teased.

"No, I didn't. I just make it my business to make sure you're alive when I can see one of Eggman's bases exploding from the Island." Knuckles sat down, trying to catch the avoidant hedgehog's eye. "...You alright?"

"I'm alive." Sonic's typical answer for everything.

"I can see that, hedgehog," Knuckles answered bitterly. "You know what I meant."

Sonic still didn't look up, suddenly taking more interest in his reflection in the river than Knuckles. "You saw what happened, didn't you?"

"Yep."

"...You would've done the same thing if you were me, right, Red?"

"Over me and Tails getting blown to smithereens? Probably."

Sonic sighed. "I just...what if there was another way and I just didn't see it?"

"Blue, I have NEVER heard you say 'what if'. EVER." Knuckles tugged on Sonic's shoulder, finally catching the hedgehog's emerald eyes and that sad look of "too tough to cry" that he had seen one too many times over the years. "Tails is ALIVE. Do you hear me? If I had to pick between a live Tails and a dead Tails, I'd take the live one. Alright, sure, so he's a little roughed up-"

"A little?"

"Point is, big deal." He gave the hedgehog a punch in the shoulder before offering to help him up. "You did the right thing, Sonic."

Still, the blue hedgehog didn't seem convinced. Knuckles sighed. "Fine, whatever." He turned to head back to the labs. "By the way, Tails is up; first thing he did was ask about you. At least go talk to the kid before you beat yourself up anymore, would ya?"

xxxxxxx

Feelings of guilt aside, Sonic DID owe Tails that much. So the blue hedgehog headed inside, dodging questions and concerns from Amy and Cream, who were likely still lacking the full story, and headed upstairs to Tails' room.

The fox in question was lying stomach-down on his head, holding an ice-pack to his black eye with one hand and working on his laptop with the other. It almost looked like any other day at the Mystic Ruins labs...

Except when Sonic finally noticed the lone tail spinning slowly behind him, with the fuzzy, bandaged stump of the other struggling to adjust to Tails' habit of constantly flexing his tails. At least Amy did a good job of cleaning up the blood.

Sonic gently knocked on the door-frame. "Guess I can't call you Tails anymore, huh, Miles?"

The remaining tail gave a jump, as they usually did when Tails was spooked. "Oh, come on, Sonic, anything but that - you know how much I hate that name!" the fox laughed, looking up.

"Alright, alright; relax, little buddy, I'm messing with ya."

Tails readjusted slightly, trying to get a better view of his role model through his good eye. "Glad to see you're alright, Sonic."

"Pfft. Of course I'm alright, squirt - I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, remember?" Sonic teased, sitting on the edge of Tails' bed, trying to keep turned away from his partner's battered namesakes. "Forget about me; how are you feeling?"

Tails gave his best attempt at a smirk, one of the habits he was beginning to learn from Sonic. "My tail doesn't hurt anymore," he answered smartly.

Normally, Sonic would've laughed at the Sonic-like attitude, but he couldn't bring himself to it, given the situation. "Tails, I'm sorry about-" he started to apologize.

"Sorry for what?"

"You only have one tail, what do you MEAN, "sorry for what"?"

Tails gave a laugh. "I'd rather be in two pieces than a million, Sonic," he pointed out. "You saved my life, don't apologize for that."

"Yeah, but I should've been able to find a way to save you AND your tail."

Tails paused for a moment to close his laptop. "You remember when we first met, Sonic?"

"Yeah, of course, how could I forget waking up after a rainstorm and finding a baby fox sleeping in my airplane?" Trying to adjust to the sight, Sonic looked back at his little brother's tail. "Hiding from the rain with nowhere to go, following me all the way to the Death Egg and back without saying a word."

Tails giggled at the memory. "Almost forgot how quiet I was back then."

"Trust me, I remember," Sonic argued, feigning a bit of playful annoyance. "That's why I started calling you 'Tails' in the first place; you didn't tell me your name was Miles until way afterwards, when it stuck."

"Do you remember what I asked you for when we got back, though? When you tried to figure out where I was from so you could take me home and explain what happened?"

Sonic strained to think back all those years, trying to remember his and Tails' first actual "conversation", then burst out laughing as he realized the point of Tails' flashback: "You asked me to cut off one of your tails with my spin-dash because the other kids in the town were making fun of you for having two of them."

"See?" Tails laughed. "You did me a favor - it just took you a couple of years to get to it."

Once the laughter subsided, Sonic gave Tails a big hug. "You're a real fighter, you know that, little buddy? I'm proud of you."

"I learned from the best," Tails dismissed shyly.

"Hey, you get some rest, okay?" Sonic smiled, ruffling Tails' bangs. "You earned it."

Suddenly, Tails looked horrified. "What? Rest? Now? Sonic, I'm missing a tail. Are you REALLY expecting me to just sit around and do nothing when I could be drawing schematics for a robotic replacement?"

"Oh, yeah, you're definitely still a Tails," Sonic laughed with a roll of his eyes.

And he wouldn't have it any other way.

Thanks for reading, guys! Now, maybe I can go off and start working on something that actually has CHAPTERS...

§ Tucker's Mayflower, signing off! §