When All is Lost, Hope is Born

Chapter 2 –We'll Get There if it Kills Us

Warnings: Nothing much for this chapter… Just… Beware the death puns… Also, be aware that there are two of us writing this story, and you might notice a difference in writing styles at random points.

Notes: Guys, we're are soooooooo sorry that this chapter has taken so long. Life caught up with us and after three weeks of spending time together (we live in different states), we finally decided to write this monster. But, since we took so long, we give a long one. You're welcome. Hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed writing.

Oh, and HAPPY LATE 20TH BIRTHDAY, BLUE BRITCHES/BLUE BLUR/BLUE LIGHTNING (wow, it's fast!)/SONIKKU/TRUE BLUE!

May you have 20 more years of being the Fastest Thing Alive!

HERO GONE, MOBIUS MOURNS

Two days ago, Sonic the Hedgehog was declared dead.

The hero drowned in one of Aquatic Ruin Zone's many lakes in the middle of the afternoon. He was found by a local who asked to remain unnamed.

"All I saw was two pinpricks of green at the bottom of the water. Thinking they were emeralds, I dove in to retrieve them." The resident recounted.

Minutes later, authorities were on their way, and once they managed to fish the body out of the water, they were met with a depressing sight.

"His eyes were wide open, and they looked haunted, even in death. He knew what was happening as he passed." One of the paramedics stated.

Once the body had been properly identified, the local authorities had no idea who to contact. Sonic had no next of kin. His closest friend was Miles "Tails" Prower, but he was underage.

Luckily, Amy Rose, longtime friend and rumored girlfriend of Sonic called the police station.

"She demanded to know if what she was hearing was true, and since she was of age we told her." The police chief told reporters in a press conference later that evening. "She contacted Tails, and took care of everything."

The whole planet was rocked by the news. Some claimed that it was a conspiracy while others were too shocked to do much more than stare at their television sets. The next day, almost every business was closed, everyone glued to TVs for the latest news.

It is still undetermined if Sonic's death was a homicide or just an accident. An ongoing investigation is in the process and the police assure us that more information will be available soon.

Sonic's funeral will be held in approximately a week in Green Hill Zone at the local Chaos Temple. Amy Rose has requested that only close friends attend.

None of Sonic's other friends have been reachable for comment.

More on page 6.

o0o

12:03 PM

Tails' Workshop, Mystic Ruins

o0o

Tails was awakened the next morning by a banging sound. It zoomed into his ears and plowed into his brain, pounding harshly against his nerves and making him grit his teeth. He pulled his pillow roughly over his head, mumbling harshly towards the door and attempting to shove his face into the soft material of the blanket under him. "G'way," he grumbled, throwing his previously shielding pillow towards his feet in a fit of childish rage, "M'dead."

Sweet silence followed this declaration, and the fox grinned slightly before flipping onto his back and intending to burrow back into dream land.

Until the banging started again.

But, it wasn't this nefarious banging that woke the kit again; it was the slightly translucent arm that smacked him in the face and made him jerk upwards.

"Go tell whoever it is at the door that I will haunt them if they don't leave right now." Sonic's lethargic voice snapped from the left, making Tails flinch at the sudden volume. "I need my beauty rest."

"You're a ghost," Tails mumbled for what felt like the twelfth time that day, pushing himself to his feet nonetheless. "People will be more obsessed with the fact that you're still here than with how exhausted you look."

"Says you," Sonic sniffed childishly, turning away from Tails. "You were a whole lot nicer when I was alive," he grumbled to himself as he shoved his face back into the blankets.

"Tell that to me when I'm awake and I actually care."

Sonic didn't reply after that, and Tails assumed that he had gone back to sleep. The fact that a ghost – a metaphysical manifestation of Sonic's spirit without an actual tangible body – needed sleep wasn't lost on him, but he was honestly too exhausted to give a crap.

After both the fox and hedgehog had finished their food last night, there had been a unanimous decision to go crash on the living room floor – Tails more out of need than want and Sonic more of want than need. Sonic had floated a few inches off the floor for about fifteen minutes before he fell asleep and he settled completely on the carpet, defying what Tails had dubbed 'Ghost Physics' in his head. However, he was too tired to dwell on the strange lack of continuity for the hedgehog's new tangibility and just shrugged it off.

In fact, he had dreame-

"Hey, Tails! Lemme in!" A voice wormed its way from behind the door, cutting into the fox's train of thought.

Tails visibly twitched, his ears lowering and his tails slightly bristling. The voice was high pitched, too much so for the early morning hour. He cast a look at the clock, twitching again when he saw it read five past twelve – noon. Shrugging his general slowness off to a lack of sleep, he steeled his nerves and grabbed the knob, yanking the door open.

Amy Rose tumbled her way in, hand raised like she had been about to knock again.

The girl had changed a lot in the past few years. She grew her quills longer and dropped the red headband. She also lost the childish dress and moved onto more sophisticated and mature clothing. She was more modest in her styles, but they still held the definite sense that it was hers. She wore a pair of simple white jeans with a red tank top shirt; on this shirt was a graphic of a white rose with a bright green stem and purple thorns, a petal falling from the gently peeling flower. She kept the boots she wore throughout her childhood and adolescence, but with the addition of criss-crossing straps across the tops of the foot to keep their balance… and also so she wouldn't lose her footwear.

"Hey, Tails," the girl greeted, her regular bright smile looking almost forced as she caught herself from her fall. "How you holding up?"

Suddenly, the fox was painfully aware of the fact that he was supposed to be mourning. He cast a look over his shoulder, where the tips of Sonic's quills could barely be seen. Turning back, he attempted to make his eyes water a little, rocking back and squashing one of his tails beneath his foot in an attempt to bring forth tears. "Oh, you know," he sniffed, "we all mourn in our own way."

"I know what you mean," Amy mumbled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I haven't been able to sleep."

Unfortunately for Tails, he didn't hear this, because Sonic had finally roused himself fully into the land of the living – per se – and had yelled across the room. "Hey! At the risk of sounding like Knuckles, shut up, would ya? !" Suddenly, he was on a tangent. "What's a hedgehog gotta do around here to get some shut eye? ! I mean, I've drowned, died, and come back all in about four hours, and I can't get some silence to recoup! You are cruel world. I hate you."

"The world hates you too." Tails mumbled out of the side of his mouth.

"What?" Amy blinked and looked at the fox strangely.

"Um, nothing." Quickly, trying to save face, the fifteen year old raised a guiding hand and motioned to the other side of the room. "Let's go into the kitchen and get something to drink."

Amy didn't reply past sighing and starting forward. Tails followed uneasily, his eyes drifting towards Sonic's now violently moving form. He was thoroughly engrossed in some brand of flailing tantrum, his arms and legs being thrown about like playthings and his head rolling from one side to the other. The fox shook his head.

Death apparently took years off your personality.

Or, he corrected himself, Sonic's just being Sonic.

Nodding to himself, he didn't notice when Amy froze in front of him, her eyes glued just over the couch. Tails slammed into her back, sending them both falling to the ground.

He cursed to himself, flinching when Amy accidently-on-purpose kicked him in the leg as she was struggling to right herself.

"Sorry Amy," he apologized, rubbing his now throbbing appendage. "I didn't see you stop."

"It's okay Tails," she responded, standing fully and reaching down to help him. "I was just shocked to see Sonic's video game console in pieces."

"Uh, yeah… You see… About that…"

The girl raised a hand, cutting him off. "I don't wanna know." She then turned on her heel and continued on her way toward the kitchen without another word. Tails followed, glancing once again toward the middle of the room, expecting to see Sonic's sleepy form.

His heart nearly stopped when his eyes alighted on bare blankets, blue hedgehog nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, Tails." Luckily, his heart was jolted back into action when Sonic's disembodied voice came from the left of him, sending him spinning in that direction. "Lookit what I can do!"

The fox placed a hand on his chest, taking a deep breath. "Sonic! Don't do that! You scared me half to death!" He paused. "And where are you? !"

Suddenly, a hand grabbed at his wrist and yanked his whole arm forward until his palm was pressed on something rounded and solid, yet completely invisible. Tails' mouth dropped open, and he ripped his hand back as if it had been burnt. "What the heck? !"

"Tails…" Amy stuck her head out of the kitchen, eyeing him suspiciously. "Are you coming?"

"Um…" Casting one last look at where he believed Sonic's invisible head to be, he turned. "Yeah."

o0o

1:15 PM

Tails' Workshop, Mystic Ruins

o0o

About an hour later, the world found Amy and Tails seated at the table. The kitchen was moderately sized with an island and a table with three chairs. One of the chairs looked more like a stool with armrests than an actual chair, because the back was missing – a sure sign that it belonged to something with quills. The chair exactly opposite had no lower back, signaling a long tailed individual's every day haunt; a small, red vest was draped over the back of the second chair. Both fox and hedgehog sat sipping on cups of coffee and discussing small details for the upcoming funeral. Amy seemed broken up about the whole ordeal, and Tails supposed that he should have been too.

If Sonic's ghost hadn't been distracting him by poking him in the side of the head.

It was taking all of Tails' concentration to not react and to pay attention to Amy at the same time – a simple concept in theory, but difficult in practice, because Sonic was persistent. Luckily, the hedgehog had decided to be silent, so the fox wasn't completely distracted.

"I don't know if I'll ever be able to completely accept the fact that he's gone, you know?" Amy insisted on having a deep conversation with Tails about Sonic's death, pouring on the wobbly voice of girl-about-to-cry. "I sorta feel like my heart hasn't accepted that he's not coming back." She paused, eyeing him as he slowly nodded. "What about you?"

A rough finger jabbed him in the skull, making him flinch. "My heart has accepted that he should be gone." He answered truthfully, gritting his teeth. "But my head keeps telling me that he's still here with us."

"Oh, I doubt that he's, like, haunting anyone or anything." Amy's voice was full of conviction. "His life was too full of love and friendship for him to feel the need to stick around." Tails opened his mouth to reply, but Amy tutted and stood up, grabbing the mugs they had been drinking out of and walking towards the sink. "Don't bother arguing with me Tails," she commanded, running the cups under some warm water. "I just can't think about how awful it would be for Sonic to still be here and not able to talk to anyone!"

"Whoever said that he couldn't talk to anyone?" The response was mumbled, and Tails placed his head into his palm, resting his elbow on the table. "I was just saying tha-!"

Sonic, still in his comfortable position as the invisible instigator, suddenly let out a small, startled yelp as he flashed into Tails' field of vision, accompanied by a palpable twinge-like pulsation of ethereal energy. The blue one blinked in surprise as his transparent state of being returned once more into a translucent opacity. Before he could open his mouth to make a comment, Tails leapt from his seat and grabbed the hedgehog's wrist, pulling the incorporeal body over to the cupboard. The pantry's door was partially open when the fox arrived in front of it; wrenching the door open fully, the younger shoved the ghost of this brother inside and slammed the door shut.

Amy spun around at the commotion. "What was that all about, Tails?"

The fox whipped his head towards the female. "Um…" He trailed off, eyes trailing back to the closet, "The door was open." He paused and Amy looked at him oddly. "I have a problem with open doors." As if to prove his point, he crossed the room to close off the entrance of the room, the smooth wood sliding closed with a firm latching sound. "See?"

The pink one nodded slowly, twisting back around to rinse the glasses off. Placing them in a dish drainer, she looked at him again, leaning backwards onto the counter. "So, since the… you know… is in a few days, I figured we could go and find ourselves something nice to wear to show our respect."

Tails' brow furrowed slightly, a troubled look entering his eyes. With Sonic never really leaving him, he now knew, it was still a difficult concept for him to really absorb – that the blue one was really and truly dead. He rested his back on the door he just closed, his mind shifting through a plethora of buzzing thoughts, the white noise they created within his skull driving him nearly insane. Eventually, he nodded in agreement, rolling to his feet. "Yeah, we can-"

A loud noise came from the cupboard, cutting the teen off mid-sentence. Amy, back in her seat, tilted her head a bit. "What was that?"

Rushing over, the golden kit yanked on the knob, shoving his head in and turning the overhead light on. Sonic stood/floated in the middle, a look of shock and mild confusion frozen on his features. Tails' eyes trailed him for a small number of seconds before finding that a minute box had fallen off of a shelf and onto the floor. Bending over to pick it up, Tails placed the cardboard cube back in its rightful place. Clicking the light off and replacing the wooden portal, he moved to sit back down, heaving a sigh.

"Something on your mind?" the pastel colored young lady asked, her jade orbs sympathetic.

Tails sighed, rubbing a finger into the table and tracing small circles. "I dunno what to think Amy; he was my best friend and only person I could truly depend on." Ignoring her hurt look, he moved to continue. "It's just so hard to comprehend. One day he was here and the nex-!" He was cut off when a loud crash and then a curse came from the pantry.

"Hey, Tails! Lemme out. I promise I'll be good!"

"What was that? !" Amy asked, starting to push away from the table.

"Uh..." Tails rose faster than her and threw out his hands. "It was nothing! S-sit down! Something probably fell again." He waited until Amy was fully seated again before stalking across the kitchen and throwing the door open. "Sonic!" He hissed, swiveling his head around to find the hedgehog in the gloom.

"Here I am!" Suddenly, green eyes were right in front of his head, and Tails took a tumble backward, a startled cry ejecting itself from his throat.

"What's wrong? !" Amy gasped, darting up once again.

"N-nothing." Tails answered, trying to slow his heartbeat. "Just a really big roach."

"I take offense to that." Sonic hissed at him, crossing his arms.

"Oh, shut up. You're dead." As soon as the response was out of his mouth, he paused. "Uh, I mean... You'll be dead soon enough, roach fiend!" Turning the light back on, he glared at the unloving one. "Sonic, whatever you're doing in here, stop it! Amy doesn't know about your current…" he groped for the right word, "condition, and I'm sure you'd agree we'd both like to keep it that way! So be quiet!"

Sonic turned doe eyes on the smaller. "Me? Moi? I'm no trouble; I'm an angel! A fallen angel! A walking god! I-"

"Will soon die again, if you don't shut up!" Tails struggled not to raise his voice. Taking a calming breath, he directed a glare at the blue one again. "Just… wait until we leave the room, okay?"

"Can do, little bro!" Sonic's eternal optimism had returned.

"Good." The fox scooped a small can off the floor, pointedly ignoring his brother's innocent (guilty) grin, and he gave a repeat performance. As soon as the shelf once more housed the tin cylinder, the light was off, the door closed, and the fox settled at the kitchen island. The vulpine and the hedgehog sat talking for about another ten minutes before a loud banging sound halted their words once more. The obnoxious racket came from the very closet where a certain twenty-two year was being held captive.

"Tails, c'mon! Lemme out! It's dark in here…"

"…Wh-What was that, Tails…?" Amy stuttered out, her large eyes ample with startled fright.

The kit jumped, his own eyes wide. Feigning innocence and trepidation, he forced his voice to a tremble. "I-I'm not exactly sure…" Easing from his seat and slowly over to Amy, he offered her an arm. "C'mon. I'll take you to the Tornado so we can leave."

Amy grasped on his thin appendage and stood, allowing herself to be led away. Nodding, she gave an obviously strained smile. "Sure, Tails. We should be going now. Beat the crowd and all that."

The golden colored male gave his own grin, albeit his was more natural. "Good idea." Raising his voice obviously, the younger snuck a look over his shoulder. "You know," he began, giving the pink one his full attention, "I've been reading up a bit on ghosts – interesting topic, really. And did you know that they have this amazingly peculiar ability to pass through any solid object? They distort and move their molecules so that they literally go right through things. It's just a basic skill that these supernatural being possess. It's extraordinary. It's right up there with invisibility."

"Oh, really?" Amy's voice trailed off as the duo walked out of the room, Tails closing the door behind him as they left. Sonic, trusting that the coast was clear, blinked and closed his eyes in concentration. Shifting his 'weight', he slipped his way outside the closet. Opening his eyes, he swung his head around in mild satisfaction when he realized he was, indeed, in the kitchen. Nodding with a smirk, he decided to follow his friends as the invisible eye in the sky. He snickered as he looked down at the younger two. They had no idea they were bring tailed.

"So, Amy, where were you planning on going to buy these clothes?" Tails asked, tilting his head in curiosity.

"Starlight Zone. Do you know where that's at?" the pink female replied, countering with her own question.

"Yeah, it's on South Island." He paused, thinking. "We have to be in Green Hill for the funeral anyway, so it's just as well that we head on over there," the fox answered. As he went into the workshop, he froze, suddenly remembering something. "Um… Ames?"

"Yes, Tails?" she asked, stopping to look at him.

"Uh, well, the Tornado is kinda… incapacitated right now… So… we'll have to take the long way," he explained, an awkward smile on his face as he stared at the bits and pieces that were once the Tornado.

"Oh, well, that's fine, I guess." She gave his shoulder a pat.

"Okay, well, you can go on outside. I have some business to take care of before we leave," Tails told her, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. She gave him a short, one-armed, side-hug and nodded, exiting the house. The kitsune looked around, whispering loudly and harshly, "Sonic!"

"Yeeees…?"

"AH! Don't do that, you moron! We don't all have nerves of steel, you know!" Tails placed a hand on his chest once more, sure that, because of this day alone, his blood pressure would be through the roof.

"Sorry," Sonic murmured with a sheepish smile. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"We'll talk about that later." Tails replied quickly, grabbing the red vest off the back of a chair and slipping it around his shoulders. Quickly, he snatched a set of keys off the counter, a small black box, and an equally small blue wallet – containing exactly twenty-seven and a half Møbïums, his driver's license, pilot's license, Passport, and Citizen's ID (stating his birthplace as Cocoa Island, his birth date, his eye color, height, and full name). Slowly, he turned, staring Sonic in the eye. "Right now, Amy and I are leaving to go to South Island, so you can stay here." Sneaking a peek at the calendar, he mentally traced the days before continuing. "I'll see you in three days. You can survive on your own for that long, right?"

"Oh, sure. You can count on me!" the blue one gave his trademark smirk and a thumbs up.

Tails avoided giving a sarcastic comeback and just nodded complacently. "Whatever you say. See you later, Sonic."

Swooping in to give his little brother a hug, the hedgehog genuinely beamed and gave him a small push towards the outside world.

o0o

1:30-2:05 PM

Station Square – Mystic Ruins Transit, Crush Canal

o0o

Tails sighed, leaning his head on the window of the small train car, staring out over the water. Next to him, Amy was sitting straight up with her eyes closed, as if in a trance. The car was packed with humans, all dressed in beige and travelling back to the mainland. Most were whispering about random things, but his ears only picked up things pertaining to his life.

"Poor kid, he really looked up to Sonic."

"-only people to live in Mystic Ruins besides that Big guy. I wonder if the kid'll move…"

"Did you know that Sonic was deathly afraid of water?"

"Tails is only fifteen. Who'll take care of him now?"

"Who will save us when Eggman comes ba-?"

The mumblings were cut off as Amy suddenly coughed low in her throat and opened one jade eye, seeming to stare in every direction at once.

The rest of the ride was silent.

o0o

2:10 PM

Station Square Airport – Mobian Faction

o0o

When Amy and Tails walked into the airport, they were greeted with the dull roar of a large crowd. Mobians of every size, shape, and color milled about, attempting to get themselves and their families to the correct terminals.

"C'mon Tails," Amy called back, shouldering her purse. "Don't drag behind."

"Yes Mother," Tails mumbled, digging his hands into the pockets of his vest.

Amy chose to ignore the sarcasm, instead opting to casually walk up to a small kiosk and randomly poke at the touch screen taking up much of its surface.

The next fifteen minutes passed slowly for Tails, as he ran out of floor tiles to count and people to watch. Most people were commuting off the mainland to be with their families and dressed for vacations. The fox envied them – their lives were in equilibrium while his had been thrown hilter-kilter. He bit his lip, attempting to stop the tears fighting their way to the surface. Now that he was out of Sonic's ghostly presence, he couldn't help but question the whole of the early morning before. What if his mind had simply supplied the blue apparition as a way to help him cope? What if Sonic's soul wasn't actually back at the Workshop? What if it was happily feasting with Chaos and those of the past dead?

"Tails," Amy called back, breaking into his thoughts. "Help me, will'ya? My Passport won't scan and I think I left my ID at home."

The fox sighed, but did what was asked of him, easily tapping things into the screen with nimble fingers. The screen flickered through at least half a dozen password prompts, each of which Tails easily bypassed with a quick twitch of his fingers. Eventually, he was staring at a black screen of encrypted information, much of it in the language of code writers.

"It says here that your Passport expired two months ago." Tails was mumbling to himself, but Amy's ears pricked. She didn't say anything however, just opened up the red jacket of her Passport and gazed inside, her brow furrowing.

She opened her mouth to speak, but a gruff voice from behind the counter in front of them cut her off.

"Oi, punk! What do you think you're doing? ! That's property of the city of Station Square! Tampering with it is a crime against the Mainland(*)!"

Tails easily raised an arm, his Passport flipping open, shoving the ID into the other Mobian's face. "My name is Tails Prower. I helped to update the software currently being used in said Station Square Property."

The Manx behind the counter was taken aback by his quick, slightly-snarky response, and he held up his hands. "I-I apologize," he amended quickly, tapping something into the keyboard in front of him. "If you would please scan your preferred form of ID…?"

Tails did as asked, slipping his Passport through the machine with one clean swipe. The man on the other side of the computer gasped quietly to himself.

"It says here that you are eligible to update to First Class. Would you like to accept?"

Tails shared a look with Amy, grinning slightly. "Yes, two please."

The clerk printed out the tickets, and passed them to the teen. "Two to Metropolis Zone, Westside Island?" At Tails' nod, he smiled and continued. "Terminal three." Easily, he swept an arm towards the gates. "This way, if you would."

Story Notes:

* Our Mobius is made up of a Mainland – where most of the human settlements are located – and many Islands – of every shape and size, where most of the Mobians live. ALSO, PLEASE NOTE: We drew a very rough map of our Mobius layout and it might be on deviantART eventually. If you would like to see it, there should be a link on our profile.

On Ghost Physics: Yeah, don't think about them too much. They're consistent in our minds, but not so much in anybody else's.

On Appearances: All characters have been aged significantly for this story, because they are all seven years older and wiser. Amy showed up this time, and she's the most changed character of the bunch, because she had a lot of growing up to do.

NEXT TIME: Traveling… Lots of traveling. Sonic becomes a reluctant tag-along. Then, the funeral (we swear this time).

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