Capítulo 63: Solitude
The Deadly Seven landed the Dragon Mech in a pile of ash and molten metal. It was once an entire squad of potentially dangerous empire Badniks, but the Dragon Mech had taken care of that.
"Q: what's the plan for us?" Zoga asked. "I know Sonic and the Hexed Badniks are doing their thing, but this is one circumstance where I don't want to stand around mooching off of other people's success."
"I didn't think that far ahead," Zavok mumbled. This question caught her by surprise.
"Aw man, we gotta do stuff too?" Zor asked.
"Maybe moral support?" Zomom and Zazz suggested.
"I don't wanna just stand around and be a cheerleader while Sonic takes the fight to Robotnik," Zeena pouted.
"A: this is the plan," Zik said, holding forward the seven fruits she had gotten from Silent Forest. "We eat these." She handed them out to each member of the Deadly Seven.
"Whoaaa… exotic," Zomom gasped in wonder.
"Do they give us superpowers or something?" Zazz asked.
"Err… or something," Zik stuttered, looking away. Zor squinted at her. "These fruits grow in Silent Forest, and some say they descend from the ancient Zeti's crops that survived in the dark. They'll give us the strength of a Zeti for a little bit. It should be enough time to do what we have to do. Dig in, and we'll be able to take back what's ours."
Sonic blazed through the battlefield, the Hexed Badniks doing their best to fight back against Robotnik's own mechanical soldiers. He mowed down a bunch of Robotnik's Badniks in a zigzag with his Homing Attack, not stopping for a second as he neared Robotnik Castle. "C'mon… please don't tell me I'm too late," Sonic mumbled as he passed Hexed Swatbots shooting at their empire counterparts.
"You aren't," his heart told him, as he rolled under an empire Orbinaut. "Tails will be waiting there for you to save him! It's all going to be okay. You're Sonic! You're never too late!"
"Right… This isn't even the first time Tails has been nabbed by Robotnik," Sonic stated out loud as he ran. "This'll end like all the doc's plans do. With him sitting in a pile of busted robot parts wondering how he failed so badly."
"You still have to be ready in the circumstance Tails didn't make it," his mind told him. "It's nearly been a whole 24 hours. Robotnik is relentless. If you find him as a body or a robot, what will you do?"
"Ugh!" Sonic groaned, zipping out of the line of fire. "Shut up for one second, will you? I'm tryna focus on not getting killed." He slashed through a squad of off-guard empire Cluckers before they could fire the finishing shots to their Hexed cousins. "Tails is fine. I don't know it, I feel i—!" Sonic looked over to the Dark Battery amidst the war being fought and spotted a blast of green energy being shot into the sky, back down onto Erius. "What in the world?" He asked.
Sonic saw an orange blur shoot off into the red sky from the castle's Dark Battery area. His eyes widened, and a smile grew on his face. "TAILS!" He called, running towards the orange blur. "You did it, you saved the world!" The orange blur flew towards him. Something wasn't right. Tails wasn't landing. "Umm… I'm right here!"
Tails flew right overhead and fired a row of bullets towards Sonic. Sonic jumped out of the way, dodging all of them. His smile fell, and his irises shrunk in shock. As he stood there by the six smoking bullet holes in the ground, he heard a metallic clang from behind him. He turned around, only to come face to face with Tails. Or at least, what was left of him. He wasn't dead or a bloody mess, no. It was much worse. He had been Roboticized. "No… NO!" Sonic cried, stepping back. "This isn't happening. Tails, you're still in there, right?" Sonic saw his desperate face reflect back at him in Robo Tails' dull blue organic eye, and then his red robot eye.
"OHOHOHOHO!" Robotnik's voice cackled through Lava Mountain's Cacophonic Tower. "He can't hear you, Sonic. Not anymore!" Sonic put up his hands as Robo Tails pointed his arm cannon at the hedgehog. "Don't you fret. What good would talking to him do? He wouldn't want to listen to you if he could. Whether you meant to or not, you broke him, you made him feel unwanted and unloved. You had this coming from him for a long time, I only accelerated things a little bit. Tails, KILL Sonic!" Robo Tails obediently fired his cannon, and Sonic jumped out of the way. Robo Tails continued to fire, destroying Hexed and empire Badniks all the same in his attempts to kill Sonic. Sonic ducked, jumped, and dodged every bullet, until Tails ran right for him and kicked him away.
Sonic went tumbling back, and looked up as Tails approached. He ran for Tails and tackled him to the ground. "Tails, please snap out of it!" Sonic begged. "You don't want to do this." As Tails whacked Sonic across the face with his cannon, it became clear that Sonic may as well go and talk to any other non-sentient robot. Robo Tails must have not even been on the same level as Metal or Mecha Sonic. "So you're not going to listen to reason… the real Tails is gone, isn't he? You're just some piece of metal using his body to endanger everyone else." Sonic gritted his teeth. "I'm not going to let you do that. You're not Tails anymore, so I don't have to hold back!" Sonic Spin Dashed forward and slashed at Robo Tails' mechanical eye.
After a barrage of Homing Attacks and kicks, Sonic dodged a laser from an interloping empire Badnik and skidded to a stop on the ground. Tails' head lashed backwards, before it bounced back into place. The motion wasn't robotic. There was a certain organic recoil and bounce-back that Sonic would recognize from any living enemy and could differentiate from the linear movement of an artificial enemy's head repositioning itself. Blood trickled out from a gash underneath Tails' torn glove. Blood was still flowing. Sonic's best friend was still alive under all that metal.
"Oh God no, no no… I can't do this…" Sonic gasped, holding a trembling hand over his mouth. "Tails, I'm so—" Tails launched towards Sonic by spinning his two iron, almost buzzsaw-like tails. Tails' face remained blank. He clashed with Sonic, beating him down as Sonic tried to fend him off. "Please stop, please STOP before I hurt you. I don't wanna, man."
"You made me do this," Tails replied in a monotone voice. Sonic wasn't expecting him to be able to talk. "Sonic, don't try to undo what Robotnik did. It's better this way." Sonic held up his fleshy noodle arms with only a thin layer of elastic black gloves protecting them against Tails' hulking metal fist enhancements. "I never wanted to abandon my home. I never wanted to go with you. I thought I needed to in order to be happy, but I think I was happier when I was controlled by Robotnik."
"Robotnik, you piece of shit!" Sonic cried. "I know you have a microphone or something feeding lines into Tails. Stop messing with my head like you always do!"
"Lord Robotnik hears you, Sonic. But he can't talk back," Tails told Sonic. "I am not being tampered with outside of my built-in drive to kill you."
"Liar!" Sonic shouted, as he was grabbed by the neck and slammed into a wall of scorching rock. "You would never say that. The Tails I know is too strong and sure of himself all the time to say those things." Robo Tails shoved him further into the wall by his head. "He's a good person. He likes his new life, on the run with me. I wouldn't have it any other way." Sonic knew he was wasting breath talking back. But he didn't care. If Tails was still in there, he'd hear him with enough encouragement. Surely he would! "He's my best friend. You're my best friend, Tails. And I'm your best friend. For always and forever." Tails held his cannon point-blank against Sonic's forehead. Sonic's eyes widened and he inhaled sharply.
"Maybe you only think that… because that's how I act around you," Robo Tails muttered. "That right there is an illusion made of all the lies I told you. I may be an AI based on the old Tails' thoughts, not afraid to say what already existed in my mind, but I'm still me. I'm still Tails. I can say with certainty I misled and deceived you out of fear of what you'd think about me if I told the truth. I felt like trash over it. You made me feel worthless. Now I don't care about what you think." Sonic felt great pain in his heart. His worldview shattered much like the actual world had days before.
"You actually mean that?" Sonic asked. "Why would you say that?!" Tears fell from Sonic's electric blue eyes. He sparked with electricity, which Tails' hand seemed immune to.
"I didn't think it would be right to kill you without telling the truth," Tails stated, as the smoke rose from the heaps of Hexed Badnik remains around them. "I still didn't want you to die thinking all those things were ever true."
"I think I would've died a little bit happier," Sonic sobbed, as the blast reached full power. "Is none of it true? Am I… not even your best friend?" Sonic asked. Tails' eye flickered back to sky blue, and the corners of his mouth seemed to suggest the beginning of a frown. "Please tell me that's at least true."
Tails was silent for a second as his eye darkened. His expression became neutral once more. "That part was true, yeah," Tails sighed. "You're my best friend, Sonic. But I have to do this." Tails looked Sonic in the eyes. Sonic could see Tails' organic iris was now dull blue once more. "I'm sorry."
With his hand wobbling, as Tails was about to pull the trigger, there was an explosion of darkness from the right. It distracted Tails, giving Sonic enough time to kick him in the stomach and flee. Tails fell to the ground, but when he got up, Sonic was nowhere to be found. Only a dissipating blue blur. The black fog enveloped Tails.
Sonic ran all the way to the front doors of Robotnik Castle. After checking his surroundings to make sure he was in the clear, he looked to his communicator, and called Zomom. He waited, and waited and waited. Strange. She never took this long to pick up.
"C'mon… what's the matter?" Sonic hissed. Eventually, he hung up. He turned and looked to the battlefield from the vantage point. There was hardly anybody left. More apparent was the fact that the black fog which had distracted Tails was now growing across Lava Mountain at an accelerated rate. "Don't tell me there's some kind of interference in that fog. I… I can't be alone up here."
Sonic tried calling Zor. Then Zoga. Then Zeena and Zavok and Zazz. None of them picked up. "I need to go back for them. I can't just leave them with all the empire Badniks in there," Sonic thought to himself. He took a deep breath, and ran back towards the fog. "Don't worry, guys. I'm on my way. I'm not losing another friend, not again!"
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