It was a warm summer night. Sonic gazed at the stars, sitting on the tail of Tornado 3, with the rudder comfortably nestled between the spikes on his back. Nearby, on the left elevator, Chip was snoring softly. The crickets were chirping, and nothing could have disturbed the peace of this night if Sonic hadn’t heard a quiet sob coming from the cockpit.
“Strange, he was sleeping on the wing. How did he get into the cockpit without me noticing?” Sonic muttered a flat joke, slowly rising. “I need to figure this out…”
Although, of course, that wasn’t what he really wanted to figure out.
Deciding not to stage a “Night of the Living Werehog” here, he deliberately didn’t jump down to the ground but crawled along the hull toward the cockpit, making the metal hum softly beneath him. As he approached the cockpit, the hedgehog realized they hadn’t heard him, since the sobbing continued. Then he tapped the hull three times, quietly and rhythmically.
It had the desired effect.
“Tails…” Sonic called softly.
“Oh… Sonic, is that you?” The fox cub turned on the instrument panel lights so he could see something, and shuddered as the seat creaked. “P-phew, I just can’t get used to this new you.” - Tears welled up in his eyes. - I thought—he lowered his voice as much as he possibly could and put on a frightened face—it was a tarantula!
“Well, of course,” Sonic smiled. “The tarantula politely knocked on your cabin door so that when you wake up, it can go ‘b-b-b-b-b-b’ for you.” With those words, he ruffled the fox cub’s fur.
“Oh!” Tails suddenly smiled. “By the way, how much longer are you going to stay like this?”
“Chip said it should pass soon. But I’m afraid that’s not the reason you’re crying. And it’s not the tarantula.”
Tails’ face darkened, and he hung his head and turned away, practically burying the top of his head in the control panel. “No…”
“Then what is it?”
“Cosmo…”
Sonic raised his eyebrows. If little Tails—as he called him to himself—was still upset about this, then he clearly needed help...
“Tails, but so much time has passed, are you really still…”
“Sonic, listen,” Tails said hoarsely, without straightening up. “I’ve resolved this issue within myself. How—that’s my business.” He straightened abruptly and turned to the hedgehog. His gaze betrayed his wolfish heritage. “But a new one has appeared.” Do you remember—now he was looking at Sonic with the eyes of a drunk private detective who, sitting in a bar and lamenting a dead-end case, suddenly, in the reflection of a lamp in a beer mug, made out the killer’s name—do you remember what Cosmo looked like when you first saw her?
Sonic furrowed his brow. The whole thing was starting to feel like an interrogation of a suspect right at the crime scene, and right after the suspect had walked in to find out what the hell the detective was doing there.
“M-m-m… white top, black bottom?” the hedgehog allowed himself a joke.
“Sonic,” the fox wagged a finger at the hedgehog, “don’t joke about this. So, she was wearing white shoes, a red medallion, a green T-shirt...”
“That’s part of her body, Tails.”
“What?...” The fox cub stared at the hedgehog in bewilderment.
- A part of her body. - he repeated - She was born with it.
- Uh-uh-uh, okay, then a green skirt...
- And that’s a part of her body, too.
The fox cub stared down at the ground with a lost look.
- God, Tails, you’re an idiot... - he said slowly.
But then his face cleared up again.
- Anyway! None of that matters to us! What matters is that she wasn’t wearing gloves on her hands, and, actually, the look of her shoes. And what happened next?
- She fell in...
Ignoring his friend, Tails made a dramatic gesture with his index finger, ending with it pointing downward:
“She died. And do you remember Molly?” the fox continued, not letting his friend get a word in. “Do you remember?”
“I don’t remember things that happened so long ago very well.” - the hedgehog smiled.
- Sonic the Hedgehog, don’t play dumb! - the fox cub said this a little louder than usual, causing the sniffling at the end of his tail to stop for a couple of seconds, but then it started up again. The friends turned away from there once more, breathing a sigh of relief.
Then Sonic tried to remember.
“Oh, you mean Vanilla?”
“No, Sonic, Molly! Molly, specifically. Don’t you remember?”
The hedgehog shook his head in surprise.
“Fine,” the fox cub waved his hand, “let’s go home—I’ll show you a photo.” So, Sonic, she wasn’t wearing gloves either—he spread his fingers—and boots… Ouch!
In an attempt to demonstrate his footwear in the cramped cabin, Tails could only try to spread his legs as far as possible, only to painfully bump his knees against the wooden parts of the paneling.
“D-damn…” he hissed, rubbing both knees at once. “It’s like it was made on purpose… or rather, he made it.”
“So they didn’t wear the same clothes and shoes as us, so what? Tails, are you the first interplanetary racist?”
“Sonic, I might actually get offended…” - Tails replied, looking at his friend from under his brow - “So, she died too,” the fox continued, instantly killing all the humor of the moment.
- “O-okay...”
- “Well, don’t you remember Chaos either?”
- “No, why not?” he smiled - “I remember Chaos.” He was big and scary. And he didn’t have boots or gloves either, if that’s what you’re asking.
“So where is he now?”
“I don’t know, ask Knux.”
- And what’s he going to tell me? “Inside the emerald”? Sonic, that’s ridiculous. You know, the best I can guess is that up there—he nodded toward the stars—in the sky, they’re playing chess right now, and Cosmo, thanks to my lessons, is at least winning! - Thanks to Tails’s voice cracking at the end of the sentence, Chip’s sleep remained undisturbed once again.
Silence reigned. The crickets were chirping. Sonic thoughtfully stroked Tails’s head.
“And after all this, I see HIM”—the fox pointed his finger toward the tail of the plane—“and how can I not be worried?! Sonic, fate is a fickle thing, but if two times can be considered a coincidence, then three is already a pattern, and if everything continues to follow this principle, then Chip…” Sonic, Chip is going to die...
Sonic remained silent. It was pointless to argue with Tails’ reasoning, especially while sitting in a plane he’d built with his own hands, fueled by fuel drained from a starship he’d built himself.
And Tails himself, having spoken his mind, leaned back in his seat, dimmed the already faint instrument panel lights, and stared up at the starry sky. He could practically see how up there, in the heavens, some numbers were once again being calculated, determining who would live—and who would die. He felt, once again in his short life, as if he had groped for and touched one of the fundamental laws of the universe, and just a little more—and he would crack its code.
But he knew from his own experience that this would not happen.
And he also felt that somewhere out there, in the immeasurable heights, a black airship was gliding through the clouds—perhaps gas and dust clouds.
And those numbers were lighting up on its sides, too.
And inside it, Chaos and his beloved Cosmo are playing chess... and standing nearby is the wild Tsar Leonid, who keeps overturning the board.
And the airship’s searchlights sweep across Earth and Cosmos, looking for a new victim.
But the worst part is—he doesn’t know how these numbers are calculated. And there’s nothing he can do if the yellowish beam of the searchlight ever points at him.
Not a thing.
