It's been a few weeks since Amy's unveil, and things are going smoothly. Vanilla has dropped by to take Amy's measurements, and compare them to Cream's. So far they can't find anything worth noticing, which they hope is a good thing. Tails has been quiet, completely dedicating himself to fixing Amy. The others drop by occasionally, all except Shadow who no one has heard anything from. Amy likes playing with Blaze, and Silver pretty well; but no one is surprised that she likes Sonic the best.
Blaze, Silver, and Knuckles are all over to visit when they get a shock.
"Son... ic..."
The white hedgehog, purple cat, and red echidna all stare at Amy with wide eyes.
"Sonic," Silver calls. "Get in here, quick!"
Sonic appears in a blue blur, eyes darting around for any sign of danger.
Amy looks up at him, and stretches her arms out to him, "Sonic!"
Now Sonic is staring at her, his eyes almost popping out of his head. She crawls over to him, and wraps her tiny arms around his leg. He can feel her purring against his ankle.
He bends, and picks her up, "So she just said her first word, huh?"
"Not surprised that it's you, daddy-o," Knuckles chuckles, but stops when he sees Blaze casually holding a fireball in her hand.
"Sonic," Amy says again, wrapping her little arms around his neck.
"That's my name," Sonic says with a smile. "Don't wear it out, 'kay?"
The phone rings, and Cream answers it, "Hello?" There's a pause, and then, "Oh, hello Tails! How are you? … Okay, hold on a second."
Cream trades Sonic the phone for Amy who protests by saying his name again.
"Hey buddy," Sonic says, rubbing Amy's head.
"Sonic, you've got to get over here as soon as you can!"
"Sure, should I bring Ames?"
"You can if you want, but it won't really make much a difference."
"Alright, we'll be over in a second." Sonic hangs up, and takes Amy back from Cream, "Tails wants us to come over to the lab, sounds pretty urgent."
Cream brings over the jogging stroller, and Sonic straps Amy into it.
"Can we come?" Blaze stands, and cracks her neck.
"Sure, if you can keep up," Sonic grins at her.
"Sonic the Hedgehog," Cream scolds with her hands on her hips. "This is not a race, and you are not going to be breaking the sound barrier while pushing that stroller!"
"Jeez, Cream, calm down! It was just a joke!" Sonic pushes the stroller outside, and takes off. Blaze runs on his left while Silver flies on his right. As promised, Sonic doesn't break the sound barrier, but he does go pretty fast, about forty miles an hour.
In fifteen minutes they're standing outside of Tail's lab. Sonic takes Amy into his arms, and walks inside. Tails looks over his shoulder from a worktable, and says, "Sonic, thank Chaos, you're not going to believe this!"
"What's up buddy," Sonic tilts his head to the side. "Did you find a way to fix Amy yet?"
"No, but this is almost as good!" Tails steps aside, and Sonic gasps.
"Hey, that's the gun Eggman used on Amy!"
"Happy Birthday, Faker."
Sonic turns to see Shadow leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, arms crossed. He has a smug grin on his face, almost taunting Sonic.
"Shadow went off, and found Eggman's base in the Mystic Ruins." Tails explains.
"And he brought this back?" Sonic nods to Shadow in thanks.
"That's not all he brought back," Tails says with a bit of a sour note in his voice. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, and Sonic looks over, eyes going wide.
In the corner of the room is a playpen made of plexiglass, and inside is a chubby human baby with blue eyes, and a long nose.
Silver gapes at Shadow, "You didn't!"
Shadow gives him a hard glare, "I did,"
"Why?" Blaze is looking at Shadow, her expression is kind of annoyed.
Shadow ticks the reasons off on his fingers, "One, he deserves it. Two, I had to make sure that he was telling me the truth when he told me which laser in his armory he used of Rose. And three, now we have a guinea pig to test it on before trying it on Rose."
Sonic shakes himself out of his shock, "Okay, that first one I agree with, the second makes sense I guess, but there's no way you can be serious about the third!"
Tails steps in, "I'm just going to test my next series of prototypes on plants, like I did before, but at least this does give us time to work without Eggman throwing a wrench in everything."
Sonic has to admit that makes sense, "But who's looking out for him?"
"I am," Shadow says. "I made him this way, so he's my responsibility."
Sonic looks at Shadow curiously, "Okay, fair enough. But I gotta ask, Shadow, why would you go through so much trouble?"
Shadow pushes himself off of the walk, and walks over to him, "You're not the only person Rose has ever cared about, Faker. It's thanks to her that any of us are still here, so I'm not going to turn my back on her."
Shadow looks down at the little pink hedgehog, and brushes a finger against her quills, "I'm no babysitter, but I can help find a solution. Consider it my contribution."
Amy grabs Shadow's hand, and reaches out to him. Sonic passes her to Shadow, and she presses a hand to his face, "Sonic!"
Blaze snorts a laugh, and Shadow raises his eyebrows.
"Deja Vu," he says.
"Same here," Silver says with a smirk.
Shadow points to himself for Amy to see, "I'm Shadow, Sha-dow."
Amy snuggles against his chest, and sighs. He raises an eyebrow at her, "Do I look like a pillow to you?"
Amy just burbles happily at him, and clenches her tiny fists in his fur. Shadow actually gives her a small grin, almost unnoticeable.
…
Over the next few weeks Shadow does stop by occasionally, either leaving Eggman with a hired babysitter, or bringing him in a basket. If possible, baby Eggman is a slightly bigger pain than the adult one, according to Shadow. He's almost impossible to feed, and the human baby wreaks havoc on Shadow's sleep, making him even grumpier than usual.
"Never in my life has coming here actually been something to look forward to," Shadow says, laying on Sonic's couch.
"Sabow," Amy says, crawling over to him on the floor. She's learning new words, but apparently hasn't learned to use her tongue for more than swallowing yet.
"Hello, Rose," Shadow says, patting her head.
"Excuse me, Mr. Shadow," Cream says. "But could you please just call her Amy? I'm afraid that if you keep calling her Rose then you'll wind up confusing her."
Shadow nods tiredly, and closes his eyes. Sonic grins, and Blaze pulls out a camera.
"Amy, look over here!" She flashes a picture, and Shadow's eyes snap open.
"What was that?" he growls glaring at Blaze.
"Oh, don't get your fur in a bunch," Blaze says, looking at the picture, and smiling. "It's just for the photo album."
Shadow raises an eyebrow, and she hands him a small black book. He opens it to find pictures of Amy at various times of the day. One is of her in her high-chair with orange gunk all over her face, and bib. Another is of her pulling one of Rouge's wings, much to the bat's discomfort. Shadow grins at a picture of Amy whacking Sonic with her hammer.
"That's a good look for you, Faker."
"I could say the same here," Sonic grins, sliding the picture of Shadow, and Amy into an empty slot. Amy is looking up at the camera while Shadow snoozes on the couch with one hand dangling to the floor.
Shadow gives Sonic a mean look, promising death later, and hands the album back to Blaze.
"Where's Mr. Silver," Cream asks, watching Cheese, and Amy play on the floor.
"He is off trying to find a Chaos Emerald for Tails," Blaze answers her. "Apparently that cannon needs one for a power source, but when Shadow grabbed it there wasn't one in there."
Sonic turns to Shadow, "Don't you have one?"
Shadow shakes his head, and closes his eyes again, "Not at the moment, and I didn't sense one at the base."
Sonic looks confused, "Then how did you use it on Eggman if it didn't have a power source?"
Shadow opens one eye, "It was plugged into some kind of generator, too large for me to bring back with the cannon."
"Good thing Tails made that radar," Cream squeaks. "It shouldn't take Silver very long to find one."
"Trust me, Cream," Sonic says, grinning. "Finding the emeralds is half the battle. Getting, and keeping a hold of the emeralds is a whole other can of worms."
"Eww," Amy says, and they laugh, even Shadow who chuckles before falling asleep.
Sonic's cell-phone beeps at him, and he reads the text, "It's Tails, he just made a leap with that blaster, and he wants to tell us face-to-face."
Sonic looks at Shadow, "Shadow should stay here, get some rest. Cream, can you watch out for Amy while we're gone?"
Cream nods, and Sonic takes off with Blaze. Amy holds her hands up and says, "Cweem!"
Cream picks Amy up, and wrinkles her nose a little, "Looks like it's that time again."
...
Sonic, and Blaze dash right into the lab to find Tails with Silver.
"You found one," Blaze demands, and Silver nods.
"I think we're set to go," Tails announces. "Watch this!"
In the center of Tails laboratory is a massive Oak tree in a glass encasement. Tails raises the dome, and pulls a leaf from the tree.
"As best as I can understand, the ray seems to affect the genetic memory in the cells of the victim. As it rearranges your molecules, some of that memory is lost, and the victim is essentially reset genetically to a save point, in this case infanthood."
Tails activates Eggman's cannon, and aims it at the tree. The orange light engulfs the tree, and when it fades there's just an acorn laying in a hole in the soil.
"Now, to reverse this process, I had to first create a similar ray composed of the opposite energy. It didn't work at first, turning the target into dust, but I eventually figured out what was wrong."
Tails opens a compartment in Eggman's laser, and pulls out a blue Chaos Emerald. He goes over to the other side of the testing spot, and puts it in a laser that looks a lot like Eggman's but a bit different.
"In order to restore the host to its original state, I needed a sample of Pre-Exposure DNA."
Tails slides the leaf he collected earlier under the acorn in the hole. He runs back to his laser, and aims it at the acorn. The end of the laser glows purple, and a violet beam of light lances at the acorn. The seed begins to pulse purple, and then expands. It cracks as the seed rapidly grows back into the Oak tree that stood in the lab minutes before.
"Tails, you're a genius!"
To his surprise, both Blaze, and Sonic tackle him in a hug.
"There... Is... a downside..." Tails gasps, and they let him go. Tails takes a deep breath, and continues, "I haven't tested it on animals, or people yet, so I don't know if it will work. I didn't mess with Eggman's laser before testing it on plant-life, so I'd say that we have pretty high chance of success. I'm not a hundred percent sure though..."
He lets that hang in the air, and they're quiet.
"Eggman," Blaze finally says. "Shadow did have a point about having a guinea pig. We can just use him."
Even Silver raises his eyebrows at her, Sonic had spent so much time watching her fawn over Amy that he'd almost forgotten how cold Blaze can be.
"You can't be serious," Sonic gapes at her, a slight edge in his voice.
Blaze rounds on him, "Maybe you haven't heard, Sonic, but yesterday I checked with Vanilla. Amy's growth is slowing down! I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty bad bad to me. If we use Eggman, then we'll know if the damn thing works on living organisms! Worst case scenario, Eggman dies, meaning one less thing for us to worry about, and Tails will have a better idea of how to fix his laser."
"But-" Sonic begins, but Blaze cuts him off.
"Amy is my friend, Sonic, and I thought you were her friend too!"
Sonic takes a step back as if she just slapped his across the face. He balls his fist at his sides, but says nothing.
Blaze presses on, "I'm not going to stand by while an innocent girl like Amy dies, Sonic. If she can't grow any faster, then that might very well happen to her."
Sonic glares up at her with eyes reminiscent of Shadow's, "I won't stop you, but I'm not going to condone this, Blaze. I want no part of this, because if this goes wrong, then everyone involved is a murderer."
With that, Sonic turns, and bolts back to his house. Blaze says nothing, she knows the risks. She also knows that, if it can save Amy, she doesn't care.
She turns to Tails, who is still sitting on the floor, and then she says, "You said that you need a sample of his DNA from before he got blasted. What exactly am I going to be looking for?"
Tails gulps, and looks at his feet, "I don't know Blaze, Sonic has a point. Besides, you were there when I told Sonic I would only test the ray on plant-life."
Blaze kneels to looks Tails in the eye, "Tails, you know I'm only trying to help Amy here. If we leave things as they are then she may die. You knew when you started this that you were going to eventually use the ray on living organisms. This is just the same as using the ray on Amy, but because Robotnik started this mess he deserves to go first."
Tails purses his lips, still unsure.
"Tails," Blaze continues, and he looks up at her. "I won't back down from this, and I will threaten you if I have to. Please don't make me do that."
Tails looks her in the eye, and he can tell it's not a bluff. He swallows, and says, "Maybe we should ask the others what they think, put it to a vote."
"I agree," Silver says. Blaze turns to see him standing behind her, arms crossed. A few sparks appear in her palm, but she clenches a fist to extinguish them.
"Fine," she says, helping Tails stand up. "We'll put it to a vote. But we have to make it quick, time may be shorter than we think."
