DeviantArt on Ice! [Sonic Boom SI]

[AtriumCarceris]

A/N:

Hey guys, it's me, your favourite Latin words for prison hall! I always said to myself if I was going to ever write a SI fic it was going to have to do something different. Well, I just got off from vacation time and decided instead of doing anything I was supposed to be doing, I'd write a SI story in which the purpose was comedic dialogue in a non-serious setting, where there's no big evil, or grand plots, or progression to interfere with and the entire point is to make myself laugh. Hopefully it's funny to other people too. No idea how long I intend to continue this. Like and subscribe and leave a comment. Smash that mother fucking like button.

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Ugh, my head…

I opened my eyes, seeing unfamiliar ceiling.

"She's waking up!" said a sort of familiar voice. "Stand back, give her some air!"

"There's plenty of air," said another sort of familiar voice.

My eyes open completely now, I tried to sit up when a hand pushed me back down.

"Careful," said the first voice. I glanced up.

I thought back to what I last remembered. It wasn't this.

Amy Rose, as in the pink hedgehog, was staring at me with concern. Judging from her clothes, this was Sonic Boom Amy Rose. She was a lot better rendered than what I was used to, and I saw Sonic and Tails standing a few feet behind her.

I blinked a few times, seeing if they would get clearer, disappear, or maybe go back to looking more plastic like the show. I guessed this reality didn't need an animation budget.

I immediately knew what was going on, and since most self-insert stories wasted far too much time introducing the premise with pointless setup, I decided to jump right into it instead of boring whatever audience I had with needless freakout and disbelief shenanigans.

"Where am I?" I asked. I put my hand up to hold my head, and it was then I realised I wasn't human anymore. Well, figures.

"This is Sonic's hut," said Amy. Yeah, I guess I knew that once I looked around a bit more. "We found you washed up on the beach. I uh, had to bring you here, since it was closest."

I tried to sit up again but Amy held me back down.

"I'm Amy by the way. And that's Sonic, whose hut I just mentioned, and that's Tails."

I waved, Amy keeping me gently pinned to the… table? What was I laying on?

I waited to see if I was going to be let up anytime soon, but instead everyone just stared at me. Right, this was when I said my name. Just one problem.

"That's cool," I said. "Can you uh, let me up?"

"Oh!" said Amy, nervously glancing from side to side. "You can, but when we found you you didn't have any clothes. I sent Sonic to get something for you to wear."

I blinked. Amy's hand no longer pinning me down, I lifted the sheet that was over me up and looked down at myself.

I was really white. White fur, fluffier white fur. Maybe a little grey, it was hard to tell. But aside from the chest area I looked the same as Sonic and Tails, and it wasn't a big deal for them to walk around without pants.

Again I tried to sit up, and again Amy pushed me back down.

"Guys, turn around!" said Amy.

"I don't understand," I said, voicing my thoughts as Sonic and Tails turned around. "They're not covered."

"They're boys," said Amy, as if this was obvious and I was stupid to be talking about this. Still, Amy finally let me up as she gestured to a small footstool where a pile of clothes that looked exactly like what she was laying. It was then I realised what I'd been lying on. One of those stupid foldout beach chairs they'd brought in because Sonic's house was apparently too run down to have a bed.

Shrugging inwardly to myself, I grabbed the pink outfit that clashed horribly with my new pelt and took stock of my new body. I still had no idea what animal I was, (and considering sonic designs I might not even know once I got a look at my face), but I could at least see I was a lot shorter than Amy, and was almost completely white with a little grey here and there on my arms and chest fluff.

I put on the clothes, noticing they didn't fit me very well, and then felt my head. Ears, snout. Still no idea what I was. I took a deep breath suddenly and tried to focus more on what I could feel, instead of what I was feeling. Get an inner sense of this body. I had long hair I could feel behind me. I had a long tail. I had… oh.

That probably answered that question.

"Okay, you can turn back around now."

"Finally," said Sonic.

When Tails turned around I could see he was looking a bit red in the face. Funny, how fur could blush apparently. Oh well, it wasn't the weirdest thing.

"So," said Sonic, stepping forward. "What's your name? We haven't seen you around here before."

"No idea," I said. I figured amnesia would be the best excuse here. It was basically true, any memories I did have were useless. I hadn't even seen every episode of this show, and heaven forbid I ever play the games. I heard about that jump glitch.

I almost snorted right there thinking how funny it'd be if Knuckles could do that "for real" if he tried hard enough.

"You don't know your name?" asked Sonic.

"Nope," I repeated.

"She must have amnesia," said Tails, still blushing. Yep, I was definitely a fox. A vixen, by the looks of it. Hah!

"Well, you do look, uh, a bit weathered," said Amy. I wouldn't know, I still didn't really know what I looked like.

"But you have two tails!" said Tails. "Like me! I've never seen anybody else with two tails before."

Yeah well, these self-insert stories are all just wish fulfilments aren't they?

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Don't mind him he's just a bit, uh, excited," said Sonic. "Still, amnesia huh? Seriously?"

"I guess," I said. "No idea who I am. I don't even know what I look like. Am I a fox?"

"Yep," said Sonic.

"Well we can't let you run around without a name," said Amy. "Or uh, clothes. You can keep what you're wearing until you get something else."

"How about for a name…," I said, thinking. I was about to say 'Donut', but that'd be a bit obvious. "Actually I got nothing."

"Well, you're a white fox, so…," said Amy.

"So what?" I asked. "Snowball? Snowcone? Snowy?"

I laughed at my own joke, and was happy to see they were laughing too.

"How about Sally?" asked Amy.

"No," I said immediately.

"How about Vanilla?" asked Tails.

"That's too long," I said.

"We could call you Nilla for short?" said Sonic.

"Actually, I like vanilla," I said, not really listening.

"Great!" said Tails.

"No, I mean the flavour of ice cream," I replied. It was the best.

"Oh," said Tails.

"I'm just glad Knuckles isn't here," said Sonic. "He'd probably suggest something like, I don't know, 'Tails Two.'"

I laughed.

"Wait," said Sonic, suddenly. "How do you remember you like vanilla ice cream, but not your name?"

"Actually Sonic, that makes a lot of sense," said Tails. "Most people with amnesia find it easier to remember things strongly assigned to particular senses, including taste. She wouldn't be likely to remember her name unless she heard it again somewhere, or maybe was in a familiar place. But she probably remembered the taste of vanilla ice cream as soon as I said the word."

Nice save Tails, I probably could have come up with something too but this makes it easier.

"Welp, sounds like as good a name as any then," I said. "Vanilla it is."

"Well, Vanilla," said Amy. "Now that you're up and about, maybe we should take you to see the doctor or something?"

"I could take her to my house, run a few tests?" asked Tails.

"Whatever works for you guys," I said.



Walking and moving felt exactly the same as it always did, despite what I knew were weird body proportions. My guess was it would be too inconvenient to be really uncoordinated so my new body came with some brain manual or something. Whatever, so long as I could move from here to there.

On the other hand I was noticing that this semi-tropical island was really hot. And I knew a thing or two about hot weather. It was lucky I was so used to it. I figured it must be the fur.

We got to Tails's house after about half an hour, the three pointing out stuff like Amy's house or Meh Burger along the way.

Inside Tails subjected me to a mix of familiar doctor-y things like taking blood and checking for dilated pupils, to weird things like shoving a cartoonish looking helmet on my head that was connected to what looked like a heart monitor. All of this and I still didn't know what I looked like!

"Everything seems normal," said Tails.

"Except for the part where she can't remember anything," said Amy.

"Well, she has no injuries I can see. She's in perfect health. So maybe it's psychological?"

"Oh, you poor thing," said Amy quickly, grabbing my hand. "Something awful must have happened to you. You do look terrible. Uh, no offence."

"What do I even look like?" I said in frustration. "Isn't there a mirror somewhere?"

I didn't wait long through Amy's startled expression before Tails handed me a small mirror. I pulled my hand free and grabbed it, looking myself over.

I looked… perfectly fine. I was like an uninterestingly white version of Tails, with thicker hair in the front like Zooey, whom maybe Tails hadn't met yet if his reaction to me was anything to go by. Blue eyes. Long hair. A bit of grey on my muzzle. I could sort of see what Amy kept talking about though. I had some smudges stuck in my fur that wasn't just the grey colouration, but looked to be left over from the beach. And running my hand through my hair I could see it was really tangled and not well cut. Well, nothing a shower and a… brushing couldn't cure? I don't know, how do you take care of all this?

"There is one last test I want to run," said Tails, once I set the mirror down.

"What's that?" I asked.

"A test!" came the reply. Tails held up a pencil and a clipboard stacked with paper.

"What, why?" I asked. I thought I was done with tests!

"Well we don't know how old you are. You're a bit shorter than I am so maybe you should be in school."

"We'll see about that," I said, annoyed. I snatched the clipboard out of Tails's hand and took the pencil.

At first it was a bunch of basic math and science questions. Probably there to make sure I could still read, which thankfully, I could, even though it wasn't in English. After a while it got harder, but nothing I couldn't handle. In fact, I was handling it much better than I normally could. I was good at math, but never good at doing it in my head.

It was about halfway in that I started getting suspicious. I was starting to see math beyond me, but answers came to me fast and easy anyway. And the science questions stopped making sense. I didn't mean they were really complicated, I meant they stopped using real words. It was worse than a Star Trek manual. Still, answers came to me. I didn't even know what I was writing down, but it felt right so I did.

Finally finished I practically threw the clipboard back at Tails, who caught it and began riffling through the first few pages.

"Wow, this is incredible!" said Tails, getting towards the end. "According to these answers, you're a genius!"

"Cool," I said. Hard to be proud when you're a genius at making stuff up.

"Okay, now I'm suspicious," said Sonic, who had been previously lazing about in a chair. He stood up and sped back over to us.

"We just happen to find another two tailed genius fox that coincidentally has no memories and so needs our help?" He began.

"Sounds contrived, yeah," I said, unfazed.

"How do we know this isn't some weird plot cooked up by Eggman? What if she's a robot in disguise?"

"Because that was the first thing I checked," said Tails. "She's completely normal. Not a robot, no cybernetics, and she isn't a clone of me."

"Oh that's a relief," I said. How was I supposed to know I wasn't a robot, now that that was brought up?

They all looked at me oddly.

"Hey, what do I know about myself? Nothing. For all I know I could have been a robot or a clone. I don't know."

"Well, at least she's understanding," said Sonic, folding his arms and looking unimpressed.

"But you're forgetting the important thing," I said. "If I'm a genius that means I'm not going to school. Not that I would have gone anyway, school is for losers."

"I hear that," said Sonic, while Amy looked annoyed.

"Well if she's not hurt, a robot, or a clone, then she and I have some stuff to do," said Amy, standing up and grabbing my hand.

"What do you mean?" I asked, at the same time as the other two.

"You need a makeover!" said Amy with all too much enthusiasm. "And a new outfit. That pink is too dark for you, something lighter would be better."

I didn't say anything as Amy dragged me out of the house and back to her place. Sonic and Tails didn't follow.



Along the way Amy called Sticks on her communicator wrist thingy, and told her to meet us at her place. She then told me who Sticks was, as if I didn't know, and that we'd get a proper introduction once we got back to her house.

This was kind of worrying now that I thought about it. Sticks had a bad habit of having wild and crazy theories that were right. What if she took one look at me and said I was from another universe?

Amy's house was a lot nicer than Sonic's but it was still a meagre hut to my eyes. These people didn't even have air conditioning, and it was so hot. This was unacceptable.

I saw down, feeling pretty sweaty despite being covered in fur, when I saw Sticks barge in through the front door.

She took one look at me and screamed.

"A clone from another dimension here to destroy us all!" she screamed, backing against the wall.

"Sticks, she's not a clone," said Amy as if nothing was wrong. "We already checked."

"Well, if you've already checked…," said Sticks suspiciously. "I've got my eye on you."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "Well I've got my eye on you!" I stood up.

"Stop spying on me!" screamed Sticks, getting in my face.

"You started it!" I yelled back.

"Sticks, Vanilla, calm down," said Amy, pushing us apart. "No one is spying on anybody."

"That's what they want you to think," said both me and Sticks at the same time. I looked at Sticks, and she looked back at me. I always did feel some kinship with the crazy one.

Amy gave me a look that very plainly said, "oh no, another one," but she suppressed it and smiled brightly.

"Anyway, you need a shower first," said Amy. "It's in the back. While you're there, Sticks and I will go through my wardrobe and we'll pick some outfits! Sound good?"

"You said we were gonna do something fun," said Sticks. "This isn't fun."

Not wanting to witness that argument, I went where Amy indicated and had myself a shower. Thankfully this place had normal plumbing. I started with the water warm, but found it really uncomfortable with the day already so hot. Finding it much better to cool off with the cold water, I washed the dirt out of my fur, paying special attention to how different it felt compared to skin.

Getting out of the shower, instead of grabbing a towel I had the sudden urge to try shaking myself dry, which worked surprisingly well and felt nice. I'm sure Amy wouldn't say anything about the water everywhere; I was just a helpless girl who didn't know any better!

I returned back to the main room, and Amy screamed.

"Geez, why didn't you at least put on a towel!?" she said, rushing towards me.

"What?" I asked. Oh, right. I completely forgot. I was dry, and I didn't feel naked, so I walked out.

She pulled me back to the shower and shoved a towel at me, which I wrapped around myself, annoyed.

"What's the difference," said Sticks when I re-entered. "She'll be changing clothes anyway, right?"

"Yeah!" I said in agreement.

Amy chose to just growl in response, pushing me towards a chair in front of a large vanity mirror where she forced me to sit down.

"You need a haircut first, and definitely to have some of your fur trimmed," she said, back to sounding kind. "Luckily I just so happen to have taken a stylist course last month, so I'm the perfect one for the job."

I looked at myself again. I wasn't one to judge what was supposed to be attractive in this world. They all looked like silly cartoon animals to me.

"Whatever you say," I said.

I did pay attention enough to know what she was doing. I had no clue how to take care of this body, so I had to. She cut all the fur around my muzzle, making the affect rounded, trimmed my chest floof so it was shorter and even, trimmed my hair in the front and evened things out in the back.

As she was brushing out the tangles she asked. "So how do you want to style this?"

"Uh…," was my reply.

This was the part I hated. Sticks and Amy started arguing with each other forcing my hair into weird and sometimes stupid styles. My head was yanked this way and that, and by the time Sticks was yelling that maybe we should just cut it all off, my scalp was hurting.

"Can't we just put it in a ponytail?" I said at last. That was what I did before.

"We could try that," said Amy, shoving Sticks who fell to the ground. She pulled a bit too hard as she got a beaded hair tie around my hair.

I looked at myself, thinking maybe I didn't quite like how this looked on my in this body. At the same time it was already miles better than my head looking like a plate of spaghetti.

"Hmm…," I said to myself. I had an idea.

I pulled my hair free, which felt really strange, and asked for a second hair tie. Dividing my hair into equal amounts I gave myself two ponytails. On humans this usually looked dumb, but I thought it looked a lot better here.

"There," I said. "It's done."

"If… you think so," Said Amy, who didn't seem to approve.

"Finally," said Sticks. "Now why doesn't she just put on a few of these wraps and we can be through with this boring introduction." She held up her hands which were holding wraps that looked suspiciously like what she was wearing.

"But we picked out all these outfits!" said Amy. She pulled me up from the chair and my towel almost came undone as she dragged me towards yet another mirror, with the couch next to it, several pairs of clothes draped over it.

"So, Vanilla, what's your favourite colour?" said Amy. "You're lucky, white goes with everything."

"Purple," I said without thinking. "Then pink."

"Oh, you're definitely in luck!" Amy practically screamed. She held up what was clearly her original Sonic CD outfit, and I made a face. "How about this?" She didn't wait for an answer before standing me up and pulling the dress on me.

Once I was free and allowed to speak, I held back what I wanted to say and shook my head instead. I was getting free clothes from this so best not to offend her.

"What about this?" she asked, holding up her later game outfit.

"No!" I said before she could put it on me. She grumbled, and before she could say anything I continued. "Got anything that isn't a dress? Shorts? Maybe a different skirt?" I was feeling uncomfortably hot again, and I wanted something that wasn't going to insulate more than it had to.

"I have these," said Sticks, brandishing the same wraps she had before.

"Yeah," I said. "Something like that."

Again, Amy growled but then said in an annoyed voice, "I think I have the perfect thing."

I watched as she looked through all the terrible clothes she'd picked out until she eventually came up with a pair of shorts and a sleeveless top. They were both pink with white trim, and they were definitely the least objectionable thing.

"These are too small for me but I bet they'd be perfect for you," she said.

I put them on, ground my teeth as I pulled my tails through the hole, looked myself over, and breathed a sigh of relief as this nightmare was over.

"Looks fine," I said. "But I guess I'll need a second hole in the back for my tails."

"That's easy," said Amy, gesturing for me to take them off again. I did, and waited awkwardly with the towel as she left for a sewing machine in the corner, me and Sticks staring at our knees.

"So," I began, looking up. "You guys normally do things that are more fun than this right?"

Sticks groaned. "We try to, but sometimes you can't escape Amy's nefarious claws."

"I can still hear you!" shouted Amy.

We fell back into silence until Amy returned, handing me the shorts.

"I know you've just been through an ordeal, but it wouldn't kill you to show more gratitude," she said.

"I'm grateful!" I said. "I just, you know. Don't know what I'm doing."

Before Amy could reply her wrist made a beeping noise, and she looked down and pressed it.

"Hey, you guys done yet?" came the voice of Sonic. "Me, Tails and Knuckles are heading to Meh Burger to get something to eat."

"I'm with Vanilla and Sticks," said Amy. "We'll meet you there." She pressed the communicator again and looked at me.

"Well, time to take you into the village properly. Then you can meet everybody in town!"

"I can't wait," I said, miserably.



"And finally, this is Dave," said Amy, finishing up her extremely long and boring tour of the entire village and its inhabitants. Sticks had unfortunately ditched us early into it, so it was only now that I saw her with the others, sitting at a table and eating.

"Would you like fries with that?" asked Dave, hardly looking at me.

"No, I hate fries," I said. I sighed when I was presented with a basket of fries and no burger.

"You can have mine," said Amy. For a second I thought she meant her fries, but thankfully she gave me her burger and took my fries for herself.

"Oh thanks a lot," I said. "I hate fries so much, but they always insist on giving them to me!"

"Glad to see some of your memories are coming back," replied Amy as we sat down. I just happened to sit next to Tails, with Amy sitting next to Sticks.

"Hey Tails," said Knuckles.

"Uh…," replied Tails.

"Aw man, I was hoping he'd call her Tails Two," said Sonic.

"Not cool Sonic," said Knuckles. "You know I can't count that high."

"Oh, right. And finally, this is Knuckles," said Amy. "Knuckles, this is Vanilla."

"Like the ice cream!?" said Knuckles.

"Exactly like the ice cream," I said. "Except you know. Inedible. And a fox. And nothing like the ice cream."

"Aww."

"We found her on the beach," continued Amy.

"Like the ice cream!?"

"You guys find ice cream on the beach?!" I asked, excitedly. "What are we doing here then, I want beach ice cream!"

"There is no ice cream on the beach!" said Amy, annoyed.

That sucked, this burger sucked and beach ice cream isn't exactly the weirdest thing that happens on this show, so why wouldn't it be there if it was?

"There you are, I've been looking all over for you!" said a voice suddenly. I turned, and saw the best character on the entire show. He was looking right at me.

"Do you have ice cream?" I asked. I really wanted ice cream.

"Uh… yes. Of course. I have plenty of ice cream back at my lair; all you have to do is come with me."

"Sounds completely safe," I said, standing up and pushing the half eaten burger away.

"No!" shouted everyone else. Honestly, you'd think Eggman was dangerous the way these guys were acting.

"Vanilla, this is Doctor Eggman, a villain!" said Amy. "You can't go with him, he's evil!"

"But he has ice cream," I said reasonably.

"That's a good point," said Knuckles. "Can I come with you too Eggman?"

"What, no!" said Eggman. "She's with me, the white fox kid. She's my uh…." He paused tapping his chin. "Dad's best friend's step-sister's cousin's daughter. Yeah, that's it. She was with me and then she got lost and I couldn't find her anywhere!"

"Pshht, nobody actually believes that Egghead," said Sonic.

"Yeah," said Amy. "This is clearly some plot to take advantage of Vanilla's memory loss."

"But he has ice cream," I repeated. "Can't I just go play at his house for a little while and then you can come and pick me up later?"

"I have ice cream if you want some so badly," said Amy.

"New plan," began Knuckles. "Let's all go to Amy's house!"



"This was a great plan Knuckles," I said, taking a spoonful of ice cream. "I can see why you're the leader."

"What?" said Sonic. "He's not the leader, I am!"

"Quiet!" said Knuckles. "Honestly, it's so hard being the leader sometimes."

"Yeah that's great Nurples but this doesn't change the fact that Vanilla here is coming with me!" said Eggman, setting down his now empty bowl.

"Sounds good," I said, finishing my ice cream too. "Got more ice cream?"

"Of course!" said Eggman. "You just have to come with me to my lair."

"Sounds like a plan."



"This was a great plan," I said, thanking myself as I had an entire gallon, and everybody else only had a pint.

"Go to the village and buy some more ice cream, I can't keep this up," I heard Eggman whisper to Orbot and Cubot.

"Sure thing boss," said Cubot, much louder. "Can we take the Eggmobile?"

"Of course not you fool, I need that to float around menacingly!"

"Okay Vanilla, you've had all the ice cream you could possibly want, can we go now?" said Sonic.

"You underestimate my power," I said, eating more ice cream.

"That's the spirit," said Eggman, moving back towards me. "Now can the rest of you rodents leave, my dad's best friend's step-sister's cousin's daughter and I have some work to do."

"I hate work," I said. "Why do you think I'm doing this?"

"Well now you don't have a choice!"

He pressed something on his wristband and I was suddenly surrounded by rings of blue light that I was sure was a prison of some kind. I didn't care, I still had ice cream to eat, and this was still completely formulaic so I was in no danger.

Everyone else stood up, dropping their ice cream.

"Let her go Eggface!" said Sonic. Amy had her hammer, somehow.

"Hey now, you invite yourselves over, take all my ice cream, and then dump it all over the floor? And you call me the villain?"

"He's got you there," I said.

"Do you get the feeling she might have lost something else besides her memories?" asked Amy.

"Like common sense?" said Sonic. Damn you Sonic, how dare you insult me.

Somewhere in the middle of this a bunch of Eggman's robots had surrounded Sonic and his friends.

"Wait a minute," I said, a realisation coming to me. "I just remembered!" Vanilla was a name already used in the Sonic franchise! I completely forgot. Oh that'll be annoying if she exists somewhere here too.

"Oh what is it?" said Amy, smashing a Crab Bot with her hammer. "Do you remember where you came from? Do you remember what happened?"

"No," I said. "You know sometimes you remember something embarrassing that happened years ago and you get embarrassed again? It's like that." That was a great save.

"Oh," said Amy, sounding disappointed.

I finished the entire gallon by the time Amy and her friends finished battling Eggman, broken robot parts all over the place, Eggman grumbling as he released me of his own volition. Boring.

"How do you lose when you have home field advantage?" I asked, holding my empty ice cream gallon.

"You don't have to rub it in," said Eggman.

Not knowing where to throw the gallon away, I shrugged and dropped it on the floor with the rest of the trash.



Back in the village I walked in between Amy and Knuckles.

"So which one of you is going to let me stay with them?" I asked. "I don't have a house."

"You can stay with me!" said Knuckles.

"You don't have a house either," said Sonic.

"Oh, right."

"You could stay with me," said Tails. "It'd be great to have another genius around to bounce ideas off of."

"That'd be completely inappropriate Tails," said Amy.

"You could stay with me," said Sticks. "There's plenty of room on top of my garbage pile."

"Well by process of elimination, that leaves you, Amy," I said cheerfully.

"Great," said Amy, sounding equally cheerful. "We can get those clothes to fit you better, and I can sew you six more of the same outfit!

"I can't wait," I said sarcastically. I was going to have to find a way to get my own place as soon as possible.

 

[Hyacinthium]

Hi. I just came to tell you that when I saw this title I screamed internally before I burst out laughing and scared my cat. As someone who has seen some frightening things on Google images, I can truly appreciate the work of art that is this thread's moniker. May Cold Steel the Edgehoge -

Okay I can't anymore. But jesus I needed the laugh. Thank you for existing.

 

[Enmascarado]

...For the love of the Chaos Emeralds, keep writing this.

 

[Rain Nero]

For what I expected to be a 1k word cringefest, I received much closer to 10k with solid comedy. Please keep writing this. So many self-inserts die within the first three chapters and this is already one of the better ones.

 

[SLYCuteer]

We must keep this story alive!!!! Initiate Thread Watcher!!!

 

[AtriumCarceris]

A/N:

Sometimes I'm going to change the point of view. I'm just going to use whatever I think is funniest for the plot line. I'm trying to emulate the tone of the show, so sometimes we'll have an "Amy Episode" like this one. This chapter is dedicated to Mark the Tapir, who's existence is an inspiration to all of us crazy Sonic people. May he rest in pepperoni.

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Amy Rose sat on a boat in the middle of a lake, a picnic set up in front of her, Sonic on the other side, holding her hand. The moon illuminated their impromptu date, causing the water to sparkle like shimmering diamonds.

"Amy," said Sonic, digging into his vest pocket. She realised suddenly he'd dressed up for this. "I have something for you."

Amy giggled as she realised what he was about to do.

Pulling from his vest a tub of ice cream, he opened the lid and threw the contents in her face in one swift motion. Startled, she fell into the lake's frigid depths, coughing and sputtering.

Her teeth were chattering, and she woke up. There was ice growing on her muzzle, her blanked was frozen stiff, and she could see dense cold fog billowing out of her air vents.

"What the…," she said to herself as she got out of bed and put on her fuzzy slippers. They were also frozen solid and she had to break them against the floor before going to see what was going on. It looked like her thermostat had broken.

Moving past the couch she saw Vanilla sleeping calmly, the blanket she'd been given kicked off sometime in the night. Poor thing, she was probably freezing without it.

Stopping it break it free of its ice, she draped it back over the little fox and went back to check the thermostat. It'd been set to its lowest setting.

Thinking it'd had been some kind of mistake she'd made, she set it back to the perfect seventy five degrees it was supposed to be, and walked back to bed, yawning.



They were at an amusement park, just her and Sonic. Laughing and raising their hands, they reached the top of the roller coaster and Amy screamed in delight with Sonic as they rushed down, down into yet another frozen lake.

Amy woke up again. This time the shock wasn't enough to control her annoyance. It looked like her thermostat was broken.

Going back past the couch, she put Vanilla's blanket back on her without thinking, and set the temperature back up. She considered for a moment, just turning the stupid thing off, but it seemed to take a while to get cold again. She could deal with this for one night, and then she'd get Tails to fix it in the morning.

It was a long night. The third time it happened, Instead of resetting the thermostat Amy went to her closet and pulled out all the spare blankets. It was actually comfortable once they were all wrapped around her, but she had to share with Vanilla, who was still asleep, and had once again kicked her blanket off in this frigid cold.

Carefully placing half the blankets on the fox, Amy got her jacket, put it on, and rolled up in the rest of the blankets trying to stay warm. It worked, at least well enough to fall back to sleep.



When morning came her house was practically snowing. Still tired, but eager to get her air conditioner fixed, she got up, reset the thermostat, and found Vanilla still asleep on the couch. This time, all the blankets had been kicked off in one messy pile. The poor girl must have restless legs or something.

Thinking she'd be okay if left alone to sleep, Amy put one of the blankets back on her and rushed out of the house, making her way to Tails's place.

It was like suddenly entering a furnace. It wasn't hot outside, but compared to the inside of her house it was a dramatic change.

Amy made sure to greet the early risers in the village as she walked at a brisk pace, stopping only when she made it to Tails's door. She figured he wouldn't be in his workshop yet, and knocked.

It took about a minute before the door opened, showing a bleary eyed Tails holding a cup of coffee.

"Hey Amy," he said. "What's up?"

"Tails!" said Amy. "You shouldn't be drinking that stuff; it'll stunt your growth!"

"I'd like to see you try to take it from me," he said in an annoyed tone. Amy didn't like that tone, not one bit. Still, this wasn't why she was here, and she needed him in a good mood.

He stepped aside and allowed Amy in, and she said no more about the coffee.

"Tails, could you come down to my house and check my thermostat? It was acting funny all night."

Tails sighed. "Yeah, I could take a look at it."

"If we go now, I'll make you breakfast," said Amy, in the sweetest voice she could muster.

That did the trick as Tails gulped down the rest of his coffee, wiping his face clean afterwards.

"What are we waiting for?" he said. "Let's go. I want pancakes by the way."

Amy couldn't stop herself from growling.



Back at her house, Amy was surprised to see her house not frozen, and Vanilla riffling through the fridge.

"Oh, there you are," she said, closing the fridge door. "I was wondering." She yawned, and Amy felt herself frown in sympathy.

"Sorry about last night," she said, as Tails pulled out his screwdriver and started checking the thermostat.

"What, that you kept putting blankets on me?" she said. Amy was confused.

"Oh. I thought you were kicking them off on accident."

"Amy," said Tails. "Your thermostat is fine."

"No, your house is just too hot for me to sleep," said Vanilla, walking over to the couch and sitting down. "I didn't even know you had an air conditioner at first. But I looked around and found it, and then I changed the temperature until it was comfortable."

"If you wanted it a bit colder you could have asked me," said Amy, trying to remain understanding. "It looks like every time you tried to change it you put it all the way down."

Tails by now had set his tools on the table and sat down next to Vanilla.

"I did," said Vanilla. "It still wasn't as cold as I'd have liked, but at least I did fall asleep."

"But… but?" said Amy. She couldn't quite understand this. She thought maybe she was misunderstanding something here. "But the house was frozen!"

"Was it?" asked Vanilla. "I never saw any ice. That's a bit crazy isn't it?"

"Where're the pancakes?" asked Tails suddenly.

"Pancakes!?" shouted Vanilla. "I love pancakes! They're my favourite food!"

Amy grit her teeth, trying to keep perspective on this. Vanilla was just a small confused child who didn't know what she was doing. And she loved pancakes, so Amy felt she could suck it up for now and make pancakes for Vanilla and Tails.

"Yeah, pancakes!" said Tails, and he held up his hand offering a high five to Vanilla, who was quick on taking it up.

Thinking maybe it'd be better to have this conversation over breakfast, Amy got to work. She was halfway done mixing the batter when her front door slammed open and Sonic, Knuckles, and finally Sticks walked in, laughing about something.

"Hey Amy," said Sonic. "Tails called, said you were making pancakes."

Now thoroughly annoyed at everyone, Amy got to making even more batter, grumbling the entire time.

By the time she was finished, everyone had found a seat at the table and was shouting "pancakes, pancakes, pancakes!" at the top of their lungs. They shut up one by one as Amy set a plate of pancakes in front of each of them.

Turning around to grab the silverware, she heard the unmistakable sound of people eating anyway. Turning back to face the others, she gasped as she saw Sticks, Knuckles, and Vanilla who had already poured syrup on their pancakes, and were now shoving them unceremoniously into their faces.

Okay, deep breaths, thought Amy. Stay calm.

"Guys, could you please use a knife and fork?" asked Amy. "Set a better example for Vanilla?"

"Whaf'r ooo tal'ing 'bout, were great ekamble!" said Sticks, her mouth full of pancake.

At that moment Vanilla burst into giggles, her mouth still full. About a second later Amy dropped all the silverware as Vanilla began to choke, grasping at her neck.

Before Amy could get to her, Knuckles had stood up calmly and grabbed Vanilla with both arms and squeezed once. Vanilla gave a great cough, and Amy watched, too terrified to move, as a slimy half chewed glob of pancake flew across the table and hit her in the face.

"Phew," said Vanilla, breathing heavily. "That was scary. I didn't think I could get hurt. Thanks Knuckles."

Amy had had enough. She couldn't remember grabbing it, but her trusty hammer was now in her hands. She pointed it at the table.

"Enough!" shouted Amy. "No talking, no eating! Wait until everything is set for you, or so help me I'll smash you all into next Thursday!"

"Hey what day is it actually I don't –" began Vanilla, but Amy cut her off.

"No talking!"

Vanilla clammed up. Amy sighed, picking the silverware back up. She didn't want to yell at Vanilla, but come on.



Once everybody had their clean utensils, and Amy herself had sat down with her own pancakes, she stared as everybody looked at her expectantly.

"You may eat now," said Amy.

Amy sighed as Knuckles, Sticks, and Vanilla ate with their hands again as if absolutely nothing had changed.

"So, Vanilla," said Amy, once Vanilla had stopped eating to breath. "I know you're new and you don't know any better, but when you change the temperature without asking, I feel underappreciated."

Vanilla had already gulped down the last of her pancakes before Amy finished speaking, and pushed her empty plate away.

"Oh, sorry," said Vanilla. "I didn't want to wake you. Are we doing those when you… I feel, statements? Because when you throw blankets on me, I feel like I'm going to die."

"Okay," said Amy, taking another deep breath. "See, progress! How about we compromise? The temperature is now seventy five. What if we moved it to seventy?"

"That's hardly a difference," said Vanilla, finishing her orange juice.

"You think it's too hot?" asked Sonic to Vanilla. "It feels fine to me."

Vanilla looked like she really wanted to say something back, but was restraining herself. She turned back to Amy.

"I can handle it when it's hot. I just can't sleep like that. So how about we put it at sixty-five at bedtime and see how that goes?"

"That's pretty chilly," said Amy, unsure.

"Use more blankets," replied Vanilla. "You seem to have a lot of them."



The rest of breakfast went by without too much incident. Once everyone was done eating she gathered up the plates and tried to suggest to Vanilla to come and help clean up. This was her house now too, so it only made sense.

Instead Vanilla completely ignored her and turned to Tails.

"Hey Tails, can I come with you today and you teach me how to be a two tailed fox?"

"That sounds great!" said Tails. He was almost at the door, Vanilla shortly behind, when Amy spoke up.

"But Vanilla, I still need to sew you five more outfits. And we need to work on a dress for special occasions. And you left water everywhere in the bathroom yesterday, so we have to have a talk about that. And –"

"We can do all that later," interrupted Vanilla, who was obviously stalling because she knew she did something wrong. "I'm a two tailed fox right now."

And with that she followed as Tails ran out of her house, apparently having started and impromptu game of tag.

"Sounds like she's a bit of a handful," said Sonic, who was also not helping to clean up.

Amy sighed. "What can I do? She's young, she doesn't have memories, I can't help but think she can't be blamed for these sorts of things."

"She's not that young," said Sonic. "Tails thinks she's the same age as he is. She's just a bit weird."

"Weird is good," said Sticks, who wasn't bothering to help either. "It'll be harder for the aliens to steal her."

"I think I'm gonna go with Tails," said Knuckles, standing up. "I'd like to learn how to be a two tailed fox too… tailed?"

With that Knuckles left, followed shortly by Sticks who didn't want to stick around now that there were no pancakes.



Having finally finished cleaning up breakfast, it was time for lunch. As soon as Amy thought that, her communicator beeped. It was Tails.

"Hey Amy," he started. "Vanilla wants to know if you have any ham."

"Uh, I think so."

"She says to ask you if you can make ham sandwiches. She says she refuses to eat bologna and hates peanut butter. She says she'd like it if you'd make ham and cheese sandwiches. I'd better go, she's shot herself with my freeze ray. I think she thought it was an ice beam. We'll be down for lunch in half an hour I guess."

Tails hung up, leaving Amy confused and feeling like she wanted to cry.



Amy had lunch set up for Tails and Vanilla just in time. They walked in, and about five seconds later, in came Sonic, Knuckles, and Sticks. Amy hid her face in her palms, trying to compose herself. She should have seen this coming. Fool her once, shame on Tails. Fool her twice, shame on her.

Rushing to make more sandwiches as only Tails and Vanilla had any, she ignored the loud chanting of "ham and cheese sandwiches!" the other three were doing.

Once she set plates down, she was silently thankful for the little things in life, like how sandwiches didn't need silverware and were meant to be eaten with your hands.



Nobody spoke as they inhaled their sandwiches. Once they were done, everybody ran out of the house again, including Vanilla who only gave a quick "thanks Amy," before chasing Tails out of the window. It looked like he'd taught her how to fly earlier, because she was flying now.

That was great, now she might have to baby-proof the ceiling.



Having cleaned up from Lunch, Amy set to work sewing some more clothes for Vanilla. By the time Vanilla returned from her time with Tails, she'd already finished up four more sets of clothes for Vanilla.

"Hey Amy," said Vanilla, stretching. "I'm back."

"How was your play date?" asked Amy, a few sewing needles still in her mouth.

"It was not a play date," said Vanilla indignantly. "I was just hanging out, like normal people do. He showed me his workshop and his plane and some of his inventions, he taught me to fly with my tails, we raced around a few times, and then we played videogames. That was about it."

"Sounds nice," said Amy, not really paying attention. Finally, she was done with the fifth set. Vanilla had shown up at the perfect time. "I just finished your everyday clothes. Now we just need to think about what kind of dress you'd like, just in case you need to go to a party."

Vanilla groaned and when Amy turned around she saw Vanilla was heading towards the kitchen.

"Can we get something to eat first? Something that isn't Meh Burger? What do you have in the fridge?" She opened said refrigerator and started to rifle through it.

Looking at her watch Amy realised it really was pretty late. Honestly Vanilla should have been back a long time ago.

"I have lots of different things," said Amy, trying to stay cheerful as she watched Vanilla start to rummage through her pantry, messing up everything's place. "What would you like?"

"I like spaghetti," said Vanilla.

It took every ounce of strength for Amy to not sigh in response.

"Spaghetti's a lot of work when it's not a special occasion," she said.

"What, you don't have a few cans of sauce and dried noodles lying around?"

"Of course not," said Amy, clenching her fists. "Everything I make is made with love and care and served with a smile!"

"Right," said Vanilla. "I forgot. Well, it doesn't matter then."

Was Vanilla guilt tripping her? Or was she serious? Amy couldn't tell with the tone of voice.

"How about some fish? I could grill us up some salmon?" asked Amy.

"I hate fish," said Vanilla so definitively Amy felt she now knew she was being guilt tripped. This fox was really opinionated for somebody with no memories. But now that she thought about it, wasn't it common for kids to be picky eaters?

"You can make burgers right?" asked Vanilla suddenly. "Yeah, I don't mind burgers so long as it's not from that horrible place."

"Okay," said Amy, calming down. Burgers she could do.



When she finished plating the food, giving Vanilla a salad instead of fries, Vanilla took one look at it, took the bun off, and asked, "can I get a slice of cheese?"

Amy could have sworn she could feel a blood vessel pop.

"If you wanted a cheeseburger, you should have asked for one."

"But it's not a big deal, I saw you had cheese, I could just get up and-"

"No!" said Amy, unable to control herself. "You will sit down and finish eating, then we're going to talk about your dress, then how to take a shower without flooding the bathroom, and then it's lights out!"

Vanilla mumbled something Amy couldn't quite catch, but she could guess as Vanilla stabbed her fork into her salad tomato.



Amy yawned, pulling the two blankets over herself for the night. They'd had a productive night after eating, Vanilla seemingly enthusiastic about her dress, but annoyed and oddly confused about using a towel to dry off.

She'd set the thermostat to sixty five like they'd agreed, so everything should be fine for the night.



Amy woke up in the morning, and after a few moments smiled to herself and yawned, glad that everything had worked out. The sun was out, her house wasn't a glacier, and everything seemed okay.

Getting to the kitchen Amy frowned as she saw the freezer door open. Reaching over to close it, she then spotted the unmistakable two tails of Vanilla.

"What are you doing in the freezer!?" shouted Amy.

The whole refrigerator shook as Vanilla shouted in alarm, accidently closing the freezer door on herself. Amy had half a mind to leave her in there, but in the interest of the kit's survival, opened the door and saw the freezer completely empty except for Vanilla.

"Where did all my frozen treats go?" asked Amy, horrified.

"I ate them to make room," said Vanilla, who at least had the courtesy to look embarrassed. "No sense in letting them go to waste."

"But… I don't understand! What are you doing in the freezer? Get out of there right now!"

She saw Vanilla's tails flop out, and Vanilla herself wiggle a bit, scrunching up her face.

"I think I'm stuck," she said, turning red. "Yeah, my fur's stuck, give me a second."

Amy walked across the room and grabbed her hammer while Vanilla nearly toppled the fridge over, finally popping out of the freezer and landing on her face.

This was it. It was time for some tough love.

But before Amy could get closer, there was a knock at the door.

She growled loudly. "Who is it!?"

"It's Tails. Me and Vanilla were gonna go meet Sonic and Knuckles."

Without waiting for an answer he opened the door. Vanilla had straightened herself up immediately; not wanting to be caught sprawled on the ground, and was brushing ice off her coat.

"Tails," said Amy through clenched teeth. "I'm going to have to have Vanilla meet you later. She was sleeping in my freezer, and I'm sorry, I just can't let that slide."

"I'm not a baby," said Vanilla, who was clearly acting like a baby. "You're not my mom."

"Freezer?" asked Tails. His eyes widened. "Oh! Oh I get it."

Amy raised an eyebrow.

"I was going through Vanilla's blood sample from when we found her, and I figured something out. She's doing this stuff because she's not a fox like I am, she's an arctic fox. Confortable temperature for her is like, zero degrees."

"Really?" asked Vanilla, in a tone that clearly indicated this was news to her too. "I was starting to think maybe I needed to shave my fur off or something."

Tails laughed, and Amy felt herself crack a small smile. This explained everything. It wasn't her fault she was absolutely crazy. Amy just didn't understand her special needs.

Amy took a deep breath and set her hammer aside.

"Okay, fine," she said. "Go have fun. I'll clean up this mess. But don't expect me to make you any food until dinner. I'm sure between the four of you, you can find something."

Vanilla had this irritated look on her face that said she wanted to say something, but after a moment she ran off just the same.



It was getting late, and Amy was getting worried. She hadn't seen or heard from anybody all day. Finally having enough, she called Sonic on her communicator.

There was a beep, which meant Sonic had answered, but all she heard was, "Hey Amy, we're kind of in the middle of something bye!" and then he hung up.

Not knowing what to expect, she grabbed her hammer and ran in the direction of Sonic's hut.

She didn't see Eggman, but as she got closer she did see Tails and Vanilla, flying over the open water, each apparently fighting with long sticks. Down below them on the shore, Knuckles and Sonic were shouting.

Heart racing, no idea what was going on, Amy caught up with them.

"Aim for his soft head! His head!" shouted Knuckles.

"Come on, you've got this buddy!" said Sonic.

"What is going on?!" shouted Amy.

"Hey Amy," said Sonic, who didn't bother to look down at her. "We're just playing a game."

"A game?" asked Amy, in shock. "Vanilla is far too fragile to be playing a game like this! She's still recovering from whatever it was she went through, she still doesn't understand anything!"

"Relax," said Knuckles. "We made it up this morning, we call it the Three Foxy Trials!"

"That's foxy as in, having to do with foxes," said Sonic. "Not as in, attractive."

"Yeah I got that thank you," said Amy. "Why are they fighting over the ocean? What if Vanilla gets hit and falls?"

"Then I lose this round!" said Knuckles annoyed. "Me and Sonic chose a fox and trained them, and now they have to compete in three trials. First, a dual over a vast ocean. Second, they have to race across the perilous crater lake. And third, they must face the horrible –"

"No!" shouted Amy. "Vanilla can't cross crater lake, it's too hot!"

"Jeez Amy," shouted Vanilla in the distance. "I'm not a kid! I'm the same ambiguous age of eight through twelve as Tails, and you don't baby him! "

Amy looked up just in time to see Tails take advantage of Vanilla's momentary distraction and swing at Vanilla's head.

"Whatever happened was just the one time, me being washed up on the beach isn't going to be this recurring th-"

Amy gasped as the stick made contact and Vanilla plummeted out of the sky. It all appeared to happen in slow motion. Amy ran to the edge of the water as she heard the splash of Vanilla falling, and Sonic cheering that he'd won the first round. Once she arrived, Vanilla rolled onto the beach wrapped in seaweed, exactly like she'd been found the first time.

"No!" shouted Amy, pulled the seaweed off.

Vanilla spat out some water and batted Amy away.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she said, sounding angry. "I can swim, jeez. You made me lose!"

"Don't worry, we'll get 'em next time," said Knuckles, helping Vanilla up.

"What are you rodents doing with my robot?!" came the completely unwanted voice of Doctor Eggman. Amy gripped her hammer tighter as she turned and saw him float down towards them.

"We needed Obliterator Bot for one of the trials," said Vanilla, rubbing her head. "So we dug him out of your garbage and put him back together."

"Yeah, it's the third trial, Eggman!" said Knuckles like he'd just said something clever.

"I didn't say you could steal my trash! That's for the village garbage men to not pick up timely!" said Eggman. "But if you want my robots so bad, I can oblige." In an instant dozens of robots came swarming in, and Amy was ready.

Crushing any Crab Bot that got close, Amy saw Sonic destroy seven Bee Bots in one spin attack, while Knuckles crushed one of the Motobugs making its way towards Tails and Vanilla.

To Amy's horror, Vanilla had joined Tails in trying to attack Obliterator Bot.

"Keep the robots off them!" said Sonic. "We'll see who wins this round!"

Amy wanted to argue but didn't have any time, it was taking all her concentration to destroy every single stupid robot that came within range of her hammer.

"I'll teach you to take my things!" said Eggman. "You're just like those Thunderbolt Society morons! I don't want you vermin rifling through anything of mine! Especially my refrigerator."

"I can sympathise, Eggman," said Amy despite herself. It didn't look like he'd heard her though.

Finally all of Eggman's forces defeated, Amy rushed to help Vanilla but was held back by Sonic.

"Stop, they're fine," he said, pointing.

Amy looked, and saw Obliterator Bot waving his chainsaw around the air, trying to catch one of the foxes, who were both too high to reach.

"They took out his laser," continued Sonic. "And his chainsaw doesn't run. It's perfectly safe."

It didn't look safe, and Vanilla didn't look like she knew what she was doing.

Still, she kept out of harm's way until she saw an opening and landed on Obliterator Bot's neck. Soon after, Tails landed in the same area, and after some struggling they both pulled something out and fell to the ground.

Obliterator Bot's eyes dimmed, and it stopped flailing around.

Eggman made a displeased noise.

"You wouldn't have beaten me if that wasn't just some repurposed scrap metal," he said. "I'll get you next time!"

At about that moment Amy had had enough worry for one day, jumping up to meet him and hitting his Eggmobile as hard as she could.

"See you later!" yelled Eggman as he faded into the distance.

The others weren't paying attention. Instead they were talking amongst themselves.

"I guess that's a draw then?" asked Sonic.

"Yeah," said Vanilla, dropping whatever it was they'd pulled out. "In hindsight we really shouldn't have been the ones to put it back together; it was way too easy to take apart again."

"Then it's off to… uh, the volcano place," said Knuckles. "The last of the Foxy Trials, for all the marbles."

Sonic sighed and held up a small blue bag, jiggling it. It was filled with marbles. Knuckles held up another bag, this one red, and smiled.

"Hey Amy," said Vanilla, stepping forward. She took a deep breath, looking really uncomfortable. "I hate talking about this kind of feelings stuff, but I'm pretty sure you're into it. So here goes.

"When you treat me like a child, it makes me feel like I don't want to live with you anymore. I'm not any different from any of your friends, except maybe a bit weirder. Just because you found me on the beach and I need a place to stay, doesn't mean I'm some helpless kid who can't do anything."

Amy tried to give that some thought. She didn't think she'd been overly motherly. She was just dealing with an overly rambunctious kid.

Ah. She thought.

"Okay Vanilla," said Amy. "But remember what I said? When you do things without asking first, it makes me feel underappreciated."

"When you treat me like a child, it makes me feel annoyed," replied Vanilla. "I thought we were roommates. Equals. Until I get my own place. Which I want, by the way, but you know. I don't know how to do that. But I do know how to cook, and I can feed and dress myself."

Amy took another calming breath.

"Okay, I think there may have been some miscommunication here. I thought I was taking care of you, but I guess you thought you were another one of my friends who just needed a place to stay and nothing else."

"Wow Amy, how could you miss that?" asked Knuckles.

Ignoring that comment, Amy raised her hammer.

"And that means I can now treat you like any of my other friends who put me through a living nightmare!"

Vanilla visibly gulped, and ran off while Amy chased her. Maybe this could work after all.

 

[Zulaq]

You should have totally seen that one coming.

 

[Enmascarado]

Poor Amy, and poor Vanilla in the end :lol

I wonder how a chapter from POV of Sticks would be.

 

[E.I.G.]

I'm game. I really like the disadvantage of "rapidly overheats" getting used quite thoroughly to drive the plot of the second chapter/episode.
... I'm guessing ice powers to round out the standard OC features list.

 

[AtriumCarceris]

A/N

This kind of exhausts the plotlines I had fully formed in my head. So now we see how long it takes for a new update. Still, you should all rejoice. This update was fried up just for you. Straight from the frying pan, into your hearts. Like bacon.

_____________________________


Amy did my tie up in a neat knot and shifted it into position. Besides the tie, I was wearing the same clothes, so I didn't understand how this was an improvement.

"You want to look your best on your first day," said Amy happily.

"Not really," I said. "It's Meh Burger. I'd prefer to just destroy it."

"Now that's not the attitude you want to have if you want to buy a house," said Amy sounding annoyed. "Though I admit the food and service at Meh Burger leaves a lot to be desired. I guess this is our chance to increase the standards there."

Ah yes, our chance, even though it was me getting the job.

"I don't know Amy, somehow I don't think standing over a hot grill all day is the best place for me," I said, pulling at my tie. It already felt restricting.

"Well if you get too hot you can just hop into the freezer where they keep their patties."

Assuming they had such a thing. Probably they didn't need one, the patties weren't even meat.

Saying goodbye to Amy I left the house and made my way to Meh Burger.

I hated this. Working at customer service was the pits, and Dave was an idiot. Plus it was Meh Burger. I hated Meh Burger. I refused to eat there unless I absolutely had to.

"There you are," said Dave in his slow annoying voice. "You're two minutes late. Why are you wearing a tie?"

I grabbed my tie uncomfortably but stayed silent. "My roommate made me," didn't sound like a good excuse.

"Good presentation is frowned upon here at Meh Burger. It gives the wrong impression to the customers."

I sighed and took it off, stuffing it into one of my pockets.

"You're on grill duty," said Dave. Of course I was. Wasn't that usually a higher position in these sorts of places?

"Do we have a walk-in freezer?" I asked, grabbing the spatula Dave handed me.

"No," said Dave. "We don't need one, our burgers are ninety-five percent old newspaper and five percent library paste."

"This explains everything," I said miserably, already starting to sweat.

I hated this. Stupid Amy. Stupid Dave. Stupid Meh Burger. I stood for what felt like days over the grill, flipping patties, assembling burgers, and giving them to Dave to give to stupid customers.

Eventually Dave came by with an angry look on his face, and a mop. I could barely breathe by this point, I felt like I badly needed to get away from this thing.

"Your burgers exceed the limit on sweat and tears," he said.

"I'm not crying," I said, raising my hands to my face just to check. Oh, I guess I was. Actually, was I? I couldn't even tell, I was soaking wet everywhere.

"Whatever, go mop the floors."

Desperate to get out from grill duty I seized the mop, found the bucket full of water, and dumped it on myself to try and cool off.

"Ha ha, mom, why did that girl dump dirty water on her head?" I heard a voice say. Turning around I saw Lady Walrus with her kids tittering in my direction.

"It's because she's an imbecile. That's why she works at this hovel."

I will destroy this place. I thought to myself, gripping the now empty bucket hard enough to crack it. I heard Dave gasp.

"You lost this week's cleaning water," he said in a horrified voice. "And you cracked the bucket. You're fired. You'll also have to pay for that bucket."

"And you will pay for your insolence!" I couldn't stop myself from saying.

"Threats don't work on me, I've been at this job for years."

Sighing, not knowing what else to do, I pulled my tie out of my pocket and sat down at the furthest table away from Lady Walrus and her demon spawn.

I started to dab my forehead, trying to clean away the sweat and grime I'd dumped on myself. I should have seen that coming, but everything in this stupid island takes me by surprise.

I leaned back in my chair and hung my tie around my neck, but didn't tie it. As I did so a group of other people in ties, talking and laughing, walked over and sat with me. I tried to stand up but one of them pulled me back down, and before I knew it Dave had served all of us and I was being clapped on the back.

"And did you see her portfolio?" said the man who'd clapped my back. It looked like he was yet another walrus. "Her numbers are absolutely stellar this season."

What?

"Oh yes," said a woman, whom I had no idea what she could be. "Well, we have many rising stars."

I endured about twenty minutes of this incomprehensible gibberish as I was pushed back down every time I tried to leave. Finally, the group stood up, and my heart leapt as I was sure I would finally be free from this torment. And instead I was lifted up off my own chair and by everyone walking so close together, forced to follow along.

I started yelling, but it was drowned out by everybody suddenly laughing at a stupid joke.

"My dear, you better put your tie back on," said the mysterious animal female. "It's time to get back to work." She was talking to me.

I blinked. Work? Well, I did need a new job…. Wow, I was lucky to find one right after getting fired. I nodded and tied my tie back on, wondering what this job was.



I followed everyone into some nondescript building. Inside were dozens of cubicles, but I followed my new companions up the elevator and into a higher floor, which was composed of long wooden hallways with antique lights hanging from the ceiling.

I noticed a water cooler in the middle of the hallway as everyone began to break apart and enter what I guessed were their offices.

Now thinking I shouldn't have followed these guys, but desperate for more water, I ran to the water cooler and repeated filled up a small paper cup and splashed the contents into my face, cleaning myself and cooling off at the same time.

"That's the spirit!" came a gruff voice.

I jumped, alarmed, turning around and seeing a large ox in a top-hat.

"Oh!" I said, recognises this one. "Mr. Slate!"

"Yes, yes," he said approvingly. "I see you're a real go-getter. I've been hearing good things about you lately, so I'm putting you on the McPuffin File. Very important business that one. There's a nice bonus in it for you if you do a good job, and if you fail, the consequences will be severe." He nodded solemnly. "Yes, even if you were to quit, I'm afraid the ramifications of your failure will follow you for some time, destroying any chance you have at a future on this island. Well, I must be off now, I'm heading to a four day golfing trip. I'll want the McPuffin File on my desk first thing upon my return!"

He left, while I sputtered in confusion.



"See, I told you the tie would make a good impression," said Amy, setting down a plate of chicken for me.

"Oh yes, it helped get me fired from Meh Burger," I said. "That was great." I started eating.

"But you found another job right after," encouraged Amy. "So it all worked out, thanks to my good judgement."

I gave a hard swallow. The chicken was really good. "Yeah, but I don't know what's going on. I've been given about a week to do… something. Some file. I don't even know what it is we do as an organisation. Are we a bank? An investment group? A real estate agency? I have no clue."

"Oh dear," said Amy looking worried. "Is your memory going out again?"

"My memory is fine!" I said, a bit harsher than I meant. "Mr. Slate just didn't tell me before he walked out! And now he's gone and won't be back until this file is already due!"

"Well," said Amy, sounding annoyed now. I tried to look guilty, I didn't mean to be snippy. "You'll just have to ask someone. I'm sure everything will be fine. I had your communicator from Tails in today, so you can call if you need anything."

"Oh, great!" I said, excited. I'd been looking forward to that. That meant I was a real part of the team now. Team Knuckles! I had a lot of fun acting as if Knuckles was the leader. It really annoyed Sonic.



Thanking Amy for the chicken, I returned to my room. Amy and I had agreed we were never going to be able to live with one central air conditioner, so we decided that I'd help Tails to repurpose a walk-in freezer as a separate room for me to sleep in. It was a decent size, and once it was fixed up a bit and modified, provided me with a temperature range between "comfortable" and "genuinely cold" to me. The only problem now was that it was still a freezer, and Amy would get mad if I ate any of the food she tried to keep with me. Like frozen treats.

I set my new alarm and breathed a sigh of relief. Amy was right. I'd just have to ask somebody for clarification on what I was supposed to do.



"Oh V-Sauce," said the walrus who I now knew was named Mortimer. "You're so hilarious with your jokes at incompetency. Everybody knows you're the latest up-and-comer. A true go-getter. Trying to get ahead! Welp, see you!" He ruffled my hair, elicited a growl from me before closing his office door.

I turned around and picked a different door. This one was labelled Ms. Fennekin, and I smiled. The mysterious woman was a fox, like me! Maybe she'd be more receptive.

I knocked on her door, and after hearing no response, decided to open it anyway. I peered in, and once Ms Fennekin got a look at me she smiled and waved me inside.

"Hello my dear," she said. "My, the McPuffin File. Quite an ambitious thing, that one."

"Yes," I said, my hopes raising. "But where is it, what am I supposed to do with it? Mr. Slate didn't tell me."

Ms. Fennekin laughed. "Oh such a good joke. You are a clever girl! Well, you better be off, I don't want to keep you waiting, but thank you for stopping by to say hello."

Oh no, not again! I switched tactics, thinking about what somebody else would do in my shoes. The direct approach wasn't working, so….

"Ms. Fennekin," I began, smiling. "Just to be on the safe side, you know, I don't want to mess this up. Where would you suggest I start on this file? I don't want to disappoint anybody."

Ms. Fennekin laughed again. "Oh you don't need my opinion. But you better hurry, the mayor's office will close in a few hours, you don't want to miss your chance!" She waved me off, and I left her office, confused, but a bit less worried.

The mayor!



I stood in line for what felt like eternity before finally, it was my turn.

"Do you have a number?" said the mayor.

I looked over, cursing myself for forgetting. I shook my head and pressed on.

"I'm here about the McPuffin File."

The Mayor's demeanour changed instantly. Suddenly he looked very serious.

"Oh," he said. "Oh dear me, yes, yes of course." He dipped below his desk and I could hear the clanking of empty glass bottles, and the rummaging of boxes. Finally he pulled out a medium sized cardboard box and placed it on his desk.

Finally, this was it! I could see why it was such a big deal, this file must be huge if it needed a box! Then I'd just have to ask the mayor what exactly needed doing, and I'd be set.

He opened the box, and put his hands inside. Instead of pulling out a stack of papers like I expected, he pulled out an intricately designed brass puzzle box. It seemed to be moving even without being tampered with, strange arcane symbols changing positions all around.

"Here you go," he said, placing it before me. "Now please, you better get going."

"But…" I said, at a loss for words. The Mayor held up his hand as if to silence me.

"No, no, I don't want to hear another word about this. Don't let me see you bringing this subject up again!"



It took me all night to solve the puzzle box, despite every fibre of my being telling me I'd just get a Cenobite for my trouble. Thankfully, all I got was the box to spit out small strip of paper. Written on it, was a string of lucky numbers and a single sentence.

Make a left turn as soon as you leave the house next morning.



When I got home Amy was already asleep. I tiptoed through the room, though I think she heard me as soon as I closed the door. Getting to my room, I closed my door and collapsed into bed, letting the crumbled up fortune cookie message fall to the floor.



"No time for breakfast," I told Amy, who was sporting an apron and flipping pancakes.

"But I made your favourite!" she said, frowning.

"I know," I said, sighing. "But I got to get this file done and I'm running out of time. I lost my lead yesterday and everybody I work with is an idiot who can't help me."

Amy sighed. "At least have some toast," she said, buttering up a piece and handing it to me. I took a bite just as she handed me a suitcase and put a hat on my head.

"I packed you a lunch, it's grilled cheese and a thermos of tomato soup!"

I mumbled a thank you through the toast, holding the briefcase with one hand and adjusting my hat with the other.

I dashed out the door, remembering to take a left turn before I had to hold my hat and briefcase, my tie flowing behind me as I ran.

I heard Amy shout after me, "call if you're gonna be late!"



I kept going, having no other ideas on what to do about this file, panting and starting to sweat badly again. I was using the hat to fan myself, and had loosened my tie, thankful for the dense tree cover that had appeared once I left the village.

Eventually I came to a clearing, and was startled to see I'd found some kind of small village consisting of mud houses. There was a fire I was wary of getting close to, and a few people sitting beside it, turning an empty milk carton on a spit.

"Oh look, a visitor!" said one of the villagers.

I watched as a large group came up to me, and my heart dropped as I realised where I was.

I did not want to be here.

"Oh you know what?" I said, backing away. "I just remembered it was my turn to water the cat!"

"Oh that's fine," came a voice. The crowd parted and in came the Gogoba Village Chief, sauntering slowly towards me. "We'll just sit here and slowly starve to death while you leave us to our misery, it's no trouble."

I puffed up my chest and lifted my chin, trying to seem imposing.

"That's not going to work on me. I have a hard time believing anything bad can happen to you."

"Of course," said the Village Chief. "Our numbers are slowly dwindling since all we have to eat is this old milk carton, but that's not bad. It just means we're doing our part to save the island's ecosystem."

"See?" I said, taking another step back. "There's a bright side to everything!"

"Yes," said the Chief. "I'm sure your friends will see it that way when they hear of your heroic journey to leave us to our terrible fate."

Oookay, this wasn't as easy as I thought it'd be. But then I had an idea.

"I'm here about the McPuffin File," I said. Gasps were heard throughout the assembled Gogobas, and the Village Chief's eyes narrowed.

"You should have said so," he said. He stepped forward and held out a closed fist. It looked like he wanted to give me something, and I held out my hand to take it.

Please let it be a key with a locator number, I thought to myself.

Instead he dropped a tiny golden egg. I held it up close and realised it was actually just wrapped in gold foil. It was a chocolate egg candy.

"What is this!?" I said, frustrated, and no longer feeling guilty about leaving these poor saps to die. Of course they wouldn't really.

"It is foretold!" said the Chief in an ominous voice. He leaned in close to me, looking me in the eyes. "And so it shall be passed."



I took a break returning home to stop at a small pond I found to cool off.

Lounging in the cool water, still warm but pleasantly so, I looked at the egg. Suddenly worried it was chocolate and it might melt, I unwrapped it carefully, but instead of aluminium foil covering chocolate, the foil turned out to be some kind of tiny mechanism, peeling itself back like a flower blooming and revealing its pistil. That's the pokey part of the flower.

I heard something coming from it, and I held it close to my right ear, listening carefully. I could just barely hear it.

"Hey Vanilla, what's up?" said the loud obnoxious voice of Sticks.

I jumped back in fright and dropped the egg in the pond, and started scrambling to find it again. To my horror I saw it sink to the bottom, turn an ugly brown colour, shrivel up, and dissolve into the water.

"No!" I said, splashing my hands into the water trying to pick it back up. "No, come back! I didn't hear you!"

"Pssht," said Sticks, waving a hand and getting into the pond next to me. "You shouldn't listen to them anyway, they only say lies."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, feeling numb. It was all over.

"What are you talking about?" said Sticks. "Aren't you supposed to be working right now?"

"I was," I said. "It's a long story, but I think I just screwed up my assignment."

"Ah well," said Sticks stretching. "What's the worst that could happen? If you've already messed up, why don't you spend the rest of the day with me? I've got this great moss collection!"

"No," I said shaking my head and standing up. "I better get back. I'll have to figure something out for tomorrow."



Somehow I got lost in the jungle, and only made it back after nightfall. I entered the house as quietly as I could, cursing myself as I realised only then I could fly, and shouldn't have gotten lost.

A light flickered on. It was Amy, sitting at the dining table. She had plates and silverware set for herself and somebody else. On the larger plates was meatloaf and mashed potatoes with a small salad on a smaller plate on the side.

"Oh," she said. "There you are." Her eyes narrowed.

I gulped. I forgot to call. I forgot I had a communicator now.

"Sorry," said, trying to stop any outbursts. "I got lost, I messed up my assignment and forgot all about calling."

"Sure," said Amy. "You've got this job, Sonic was spending time with Sticks as she was showing him her moss collection, Tails was with Knuckles on an exciting adventure to defeat Eggman at dodgeball, and meanwhile I'm sitting here with dinner for two waiting for you to finally show up." She stood up, the chair scraping against the floor.

She reached over and picked up all the plates before rushing them to the sink and dumping them unceremoniously inside.

She took a deep breath, which was never a good sign.

"The office called. They wanted to make sure you got the memo. There's a meeting tomorrow that's going to take all day, and they say it's your turn to bring doughnuts and coffee for everyone."

"Ugh," I said, my shoulders slumping down. I dropped my briefcase, with it opening spilling the empty thermos and crumbled up papers all over the floor.

"And you can make your own food tomorrow!"



I clambered into the boardroom carrying several boxes of doughnuts and cups of coffee. When I set everything down, one of them toppled over off the box I set it on and spilled onto me.

"Ahhhh!" I seethed, biting my tongue while I was at it. It burned.

"There she is," said Mortimer. "What did I tell you, really taking the bull by the horns." He paused and looked around. "I can say that, you can't. Mr. Slate is my best friend."

I sat down next to the air conditioner vent, holding my burn and swivelled my chair towards the vent.

"Now then," said a different person whose name I didn't know. He was a wolf though, I knew that much. "Let's begin."



"So as we can see by these boring graphs," the wolf prattled on. "We've achieved world-class efficiently in leveraging our core operations. Further, profits are contextualised within our experience, integrating our strategies into our day-to-day operations."

Oh my God. I thought to myself. Please, let it end.



It did end. Late. Again. I lost the entire day. The file was due tomorrow! I still had no idea what it was!

I didn't even bother to try to stay quiet as I entered the house. Again, the lights flickered on and Amy was sitting on the couch. Luckily there was no dinner going to waste this time.

"You didn't call, again." She said.

"We never left the boardroom," I said. "We weren't allowed phonecalls."

"And did you at least discover what it is you do?" she said, looking unimpressed at the excuse.

"No. I still have no idea. The file's due tomorrow and I have nothing to show for it."

I held my head. I felt a migraine coming on.

Amy's expression softened.

"This job. It's destroying you. It's destroying us!"

"It's all over," I said. "I have no choice but to quit tomorrow. Then I'll get to see what punishment I'm going to get."

"You're not still going to keep working there are you?" said Amy.

"Of course not!" I said. "That place is a madhouse! Tomorrow I'm going over and quitting first thing. I'll come back and we'll spend the whole day together before trying to figure out what the next move is for me."

Amy sighed. "We can go to the spa. That'll be nice, won't it?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never been to a spa."



"Hey V-Sauce," called Mortimer, clapping me on the back once I entered the office the next day. "Mr. Slate wants to see you."

"Thanks Mortimer," I said, sullen. I slowly ambled over to Mr. Slate's office, the only happy thought in my head being that this would all be over soon.

I entered Mr. Slate's office. His chair was turned the other way.

"Good Morning Mr. Slate," I said. I waited a moment, expecting him to slowly turn around in anger. "Listen, I've got to say –"

Mr. Slate swivelled around in his chair, facing me, his face exuberant.

"Great job on the McPuffin File!" he said, hands raised in happiness. He held up his cane high, twirling it around dramatically. "Yes, yes, excellent work. You really are quite the hot-shot around here! It was a stroke of genius."

I had nothing to say. My brain had stopped working.

"When I saw the McPuffin file this morning, I was astonished! Simply marvellous! Well, you'll be paid quite well for this week's work! And a nice bonus, all sent straight to your account."

My brain started back into action.

"My account?" I asked.

"Why yes of course!" said Mr. Slate. "Of course you know we only pay by direct deposit here. Yes, your account has seen quite the increase today." He winked.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know where my account is."

Mr. Slate laughed.

"And there's that excellent humour I've heard so much about. Excellent joke! No, no, now I won't hear another word about that, we don't want to wear out a good joke too early do we!"

I just blinked, mutely.

I shook my head.

"Mr. Slate, I'm afraid I'm going to have to quit."

Mr. Slate stopped waving his cane and frowned.

"Oh dear," he said. "Really? Well, I can't say I blame you, a large payout like that I bet you want to use it to make your fortunes elsewhere! Just try not to get in my way, I wouldn't want to have you as a competitor."

He bent down and opened a drawer in his desk, and then pulled out a large box.

"Well, we offer an excellent severance package even when you resign, so you'll be adding that to your account as well. Plus this complimentary wheel of cheese!"

He pushed the box towards me.

"Okay," I said. As had been the case the entire time I worked here, I had no idea what was going on.



"So," I said, as a kind of cute rabbit girl put cucumber slices on my eyes. "I have no idea how I got hired. Never found out what we did. Got an assignment I never saw. Somehow it got done. And after all that work and stress, I still owe six bucks."

I'd had to borrow money for the doughnuts and coffee, and still owed for the bucket at Meh Burger.

"But we got a nice cheese wheel out of it," said Amy brightly. "That's something."

I laughed prematurely at my own upcoming joke.

"A lot of gouda that'll do us."

 

[Enmascarado]

...I'm SO confuse right now.

 

[Small Nerd]

...I'm SO confuse right now.

Click to shrink...

It's a critique of white-collar work and how it's fundamentally meaningless busywork that you start and stop doing for no reason you can discern?

 

[BlackoutSampler]

well now, ain't this a gem.

I haven't really watched the show, only seen snippits of it occasionally, but you really mastered the feel of a episodic comedy. And it is great.

As for the McPuffin file, Obviously Jerry got the memo from Linda who was working with John who was partnered with Vanilla about the McPuffin File being in good hands.

 

[Enmascarado]

It's a critique of white-collar work and how it's fundamentally meaningless busywork that you start and stop doing for no reason you can discern?

Click to shrink...

Oh... I just though that everybody is crazy in the island, that would explain lots of things actually.

 

[Crembo]

A lot more core competencies being synergized than I'd expect in a Sonic thread. Watched.

 

[Malbutorius]

I'm expecting an episode where she hangs out with Eggman and gets up to shenanigans, including accidentally disturbing him with ideas that are too evil even for him.

 

[Vaalintine]

I keep waiting for her to see some niche character not ne essatily from the show and say thier name, only for it to lead to a "Wait, how the hell do you know them?" Or to know things she couldn't possibly be aware of, like how Shadow is technically part alien.

And she's an arctic fox? I was close on my guess then, I figured she was in the middle of her winter coat. My guess on her origins is either parallel universe equivalent of Tails, or from the future (like Silver).

I'm expecting an episode where she hangs out with Eggman and gets up to shenanigans, including accidentally disturbing him with ideas that are too evil even for him.

Click to shrink...

Speaking of which, why DID Eggman want to take her to his lair? We never did find that out.

Edited.

 

[AtriumCarceris]

Speaking of which, why DID Eggman want to take her to his lair? We never did find that out.

Click to shrink...

That was written in first person from Vanilla's view, so there was no opportunity to delve into it and I didn't think it was that important. But all it was was that Eggman was watching everything unfold via his Fly Bot, and once he heard she was a genius with no memories of where she came from he concocted a really lame plan to get her to join Team Eggman. He just saw an opportunity to get a genius to work for him, and his attempts to do it failed repeatedly.

 

[Roadie]

That was written in first person from Vanilla's view, so there was no opportunity to delve into it and I didn't think it was that important. But all it was was that Eggman was watching everything unfold via his Fly Bot, and once he heard she was a genius with no memories of where she came from he concocted a really lame plan to get her to join Team Eggman. He just saw an opportunity to get a genius to work for him, and his attempts to do it failed repeatedly.

Click to shrink...

Now I want to see him just offer a job ("payday's every Friday and the break room has free snacks" "oh, that sounds okay"), and she ends up with a stint of being a 9-to-5 villain until he fires her for only coming up with inventions that are too brutally efficient to have any evil fun with.

 

[AtriumCarceris]

Now I want to see him just offer a job ("payday's every Friday and the break room has free snacks" "oh, that sounds okay"), and she ends up with a stint of being a 9-to-5 villain until he fires her for only coming up with inventions that are too brutally efficient to have any evil fun with.

Click to shrink...

You're in luck, because I have an idea that is almost this, that I came up with when I was brainstorming more plots. I have a slightly different twist though. And it's not too far off in the update future.

 

[Malbutorius]

only coming up with inventions that are too brutally efficient to have any evil fun with.

Click to shrink...

For bonus points she puts the word "Inator" at the end of every name.

"Behold! The Ball Crushinator!"

"What good is a device that ruins ball pits?"

"Wrong balls."

"What? Oh. WHAT!?! That's disgusting!"

And the Eggman gains a kind of respect for her.

 

[AtriumCarceris]

A/N :

This went waaaaay longer than I expected. Still, it's here. I realised halfway through this one that if I hadn't written anything more, the prophecy would have been fulfilled and this would have been just another self insert that died within the first three updates. Ah well, maybe next time!

_____________________________



"Hey Tails, check out my first invention!" said Vanilla.

Tails put his screwdriver down and turned to look. Vanilla had been working right next to him, after he'd suggested they spend the day trying to invent something. She should be just as capable of inventing things as he was, (well, maybe not as capable, nobody but him was that good) but she never brought it up when they hung out.

"What is it?" asked Tails, after giving it a look. It looked like a white and orange ball with a fuse and little stubby legs.

"It's a bomb!" said Vanilla brightly. Oh, now that she said so it was obvious. He was thrown off by the legs. "I made it so once it's activated, it'll walk around and blow up once somebody gets too close to it. I'm thinking of convincing Amy to let me put a few around the house to stop intruders, you know?"

"But won't it just blow up your house instead of stopping intruders?" asked Tails.

Vanilla quirked her head to the side, as if in thought.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Huh. Well, I guess you can keep it then."

"Great!" said Tails. "I'll add it to my bomb collections." He held out is hand as Vanilla gave it to him, and walked it over to where the secret panel was behind his wall. Pressing a button on his communicator, the panel slid away revealing his old bomb collection.

"Wow!" said Vanilla. "I didn't know you had a bomb collection, that's so cool!"

It was things like this that made him really like Vanilla. She understood him in ways even Sonic didn't sometimes. Sometimes it felt like they were the only adults in the entire group. It didn't hurt that she was nice to look at, though Tails tried to avoid that line of thought as it always made him remember… and then he got embarrassed again.

"Yeah," said Tails, clearing his head and then adding the new bomb on the shelf next to his old Triple Bomb. "I saved one of each model from my adventure that nobody remembers now."

"Oh," said Vanilla, looking like she just remembered something. "The one on Cocoa Island?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?" said Tails, pressing the button on his communicator again and hiding the bombs from view.

"Uh," said Vanilla. "Lucky guess? Maybe Sonic mentioned it to me. Whatever excuse makes you stop thinking about this."

Tails paused for a moment to think that over, then decided it wasn't important. "Well, I saved my home island from a bunch of birds. It was way more fun than my second and final solo adventure, that's for sure. Since then I've stuck with Sonic, and things have been much better for me."

"Riiiight," said Vanilla, sounding sceptical.

"Anyway," said Tails. "How's the job hunt going?"

"Ugh," said Vanilla, turning around and going back to the desk. "Amy got me a job manning an ice cream cart, but I couldn't keep the ice cream cold because I kept opening the freezer to cool off or to eat it. Then nobody bought my story that I was just selling really soft serve. After that I tried following Wild Cat around on his jobs, but I got fired after that incident with the onion rings and the fire."

"What!" said Tails. "That wasn't your fault, how were you supposed to know that would happen?"

"I know!" said Vanilla, throwing up her hands. "But at the end of it they were the size of golf carts and there was fire everywhere. So I was fired once the fire man got there."

Tails really wanted to change the subject now, seeing the unhappy look on Vanilla's face.

"How do you make money," asked Vanilla suddenly. "How do any of you make money?"

"Oh, well it's different for all of us," said Tails. "Knuckles and Sticks don't have any money. Me and Sonic sometimes get stuff for our heroics, and sometimes if I'm really strapped I'll charge for repair work. Amy has a few random jobs having to do with her talents."

"Ah, right," said Vanilla. "Amy's part of that wildlife thing, and sometimes she'll leave to review something somewhere, or teach a class relevant to the day's events. I guess I never thought about it."

"You could ask to work with her?" suggested Tails.

"And spend more time with her?" said Vanilla in shock. "I like Amy just fine, but I already think we need some distance. That's why I'm here today."

Vanilla turned to sit back down at the desk and rummage through the scattered materials, looking thoughtful.

"I always liked those," she said softly, speaking to herself. "I'd love to make some."

Tails had no idea what she was talking about, but he did have an idea. A great idea! There was no way this could go wrong!

"Hey, what if you and me started a shop?!" asked Tails. He walked over and sat next to Vanilla. "Between the two of us we could fix anything!"

"So like a repair shop?" asked Vanilla.

"Exactly!" said Tails. "I bet we'd make even more money if we solved some of the villagers's problems with inventions."

"And then we'd be the only ones who could fix them when they inevitably break," said Vanilla, cracking a grin.

Tails hadn't thought about that.

"I guess," he said. "So, what do you think?"

"Hey I'm game," she said. "Maybe being self-employed is exactly what I need to get out of Amy's house."



"So, what should we call this place?" asked Vanilla, pen in her hand. "It has to be catchy, and it should be cute."

"You're cute, I'm serious and formidable!" said Tails without thinking. He could feel himself blush. Vanilla just blinked at him.

"Yes, very formidable," said Vanilla after a moment. "I'm quaking in my sandals. But seriously, got any ideas?"

Tails thought about it. Oh, there was the obvious one. They were two foxes, so they could name the shop after that.

"How about Skulk Shop?" he said. Vanilla stuck out her tongue like she'd just bitten into something gross.

"You can't be serious."

"No, no, it's clever! You see, a skulk is -"

"I know what a skulk is," interrupted Vanilla. "It's not a flattering sounding word. When you use it like that, it sounds like we're trying to cater to villains. And that we probably smell because we've spent all night in the garbage."

"Well what's your great idea then?" said Tails.

Vanilla tapped her nose with the pen, apparently in thought.

"TwinTails," she said. "That's way cleverer. And cute and catchy, just like I wanted."

She took her pen and started drawing on her notepad. Tails didn't say anything against the name while she was doing this. He had to admit, it was better than what he'd thought up.

When she was done drawing on the notepad she turned it around and presented what was obviously a logo design for the shop. The problem was he thought it looked too similar to his own logo. The tails were just in a different orientation and there was no gear. He was about to point this out when Vanilla spoke.

"The pen's only black so you can't tell, but one of those tails is yours and one's mine. See, they entwine facing upwards like a flame, and these lines here are the glow. That way it shows that we're working together and are bright."

Their tails intertwined? Sometimes Tails couldn't tell if she was flirting with him or not.

"Okay," said Tails. "Scan that into my computer and we can print some fliers to hand out."

"We should drop them from the sky!" Vanilla exclaimed. "Because they're fliers. And we can fly!"

"Oh, yeah!" said Tails. "That'll be faster too. What a great idea!"



The screams from the panicked villagers were so loud Tails could hear them from the sky. They'd dropped the fliers starting at Meh Burger, and as soon as one landed on Sticks, she screamed, shouted something about mind control, and ran off knocking over Lady Walrus.

Then one of the fliers got into the grill at Meh Burger and started a fire, and that really got the panic started.

Vanilla panicked and landed first, dropping her large stack of fliers onto one of the tables which had been holding a bunch of food, causing the food to sail through the air and land on Sonic, making him slip and stopping him from saving Lady Walrus's baby, who'd somehow ended up in a tree.

As Vanilla flew to save baby Chumley, Tails joined Amy in fending off Eggman's robots, as of course he was attacking now too.

"Which one of you idiots," began Amy, smashing a robot with her hammer. "Came up with this stupid idea? Why couldn't you just hand fliers out like normal!"

Tails's ears folded back at the insult.

"It was me," shouted Vanilla, dodging some Bee Bots who were trying to chase her. "But on the plus side, I've finally destroyed this place! Even if it was an accident."

"We will talk about this later," continued Amy.

"Aww, trouble at home?" jeered Eggman. "Are you two giving each other fleas?"

Amy snarled something Tails couldn't quite catch, and knocked Eggman into the sky with her hammer. Meanwhile, Sonic and Knuckles finished up with the last Motobugs, while Sticks helped Vanilla with the last of the Bee Bots.

With all the robots shattered remains littering the area and Meh Burger still on fire, Dave the Intern stood mopping the floor sighing to himself. Vanilla then walked over to Tails, looking awkward.

"So," she said. "Think we got the word out?"



They did, after spending the rest of the day handing out flyers on the ground, at Amy's insistence. Tails didn't understand how Vanilla could live with her. Not that he didn't like Amy, but he couldn't even live with Sonic for long periods of time.

But that was done and it was their first real day at the job. Tails's workshop had been changed to have a shop-front, with their new logo attacked to the top, along with a painted sign baring their name.

On the inside, there was a front and a back end. At the front, Tails and Vanilla sat behind a long desk. In front of the desk were plenty of chairs, and a stack of two types of forms and pens for customers to use. Customers would come in, fill out one of the forms, and bring the completed form, and broken object if applicable, to them. There were large signs with flashing arrows directing the customers to do all this.

It was a really easy to understand and efficient process. Vanilla thought it was too complicated but it was necessary for them to keep everything organised.

"Okay," said Vanilla, sitting on her chair. "We're open now, right?"

"Yep!" said Tails. "Any second now, customers will start pouring in."

As if on cue, nobody entered their shop. Tails waited patiently, but had to admit he was getting annoyed when the crickets started to chirp.

"An absolute downpour," said Vanilla. She was slumped over, her head resting on her arm. "Do I still get paid if nobody shows up?"

"We don't have wages, we take in commissions," said Tails, unimpressed with her attitude. "You know this."

"Did you remember to make the sign say open?" asked Vanilla, rolling her eyes.

It was obvious Vanilla was just being sarcastic, but Tails felt as if a stone had dropped into his stomach.

"Uh, yeah," he said, quietly pressing the button on his communicator.

Immediately the door opened and at least a dozen people walked in. Vanilla shot up in her chair and then looked straight at Tails, a blank, unimpressed look on her face.

Tails smiled awkwardly, eager to get to work and move on from this embarrassing mistake.

His first costumer was Knuckles of all people, who immediately dropped a dirty chilidog in front of him and said, "My chilidog's broken. Can you fix it?"

"Knuckles," called Vanilla from the other side. "It's not broken, you just dropped it."

"But can you fix it?" he asked.

Vanilla looked at Tails and rolled her eyes, before turning back to Knuckles. "If you can come back tomorrow I'm sure I can make you another chilidog."

"Great, thanks!" said Knuckles, leaving the chilidog there.

Vanilla was now shouting at Dave, who'd come in with a bill for the repairs for Meh Burger. Luckily that wasn't his problem.

His problem was Mrs. Vandersnout, who placed a small alarm clock next to the chilidog Knuckles had forgotten to take away.

"My alarm clock is broken," she said. "And if I don't get it working soon, I won't wake up in time to fleece you blind sheep."

"Did you fill out a repair form?" asked Tails, picking up the clock and taking a look at it. It was mechanical, but rusted. It was probably very old and had just worn out. He'd either have to replace everything or build a digital one. But consent for full replacement was on the form, which she didn't have.

"Oh dear me," Mrs. Vandersnout said. "I didn't realise I was supposed to bring a form. You should really have signs."

Tails wordlessly pointed to the large sign that informed everyone to do this. Mrs. Vandersnout followed where he was pointing and hissed, angry at being corrected. Still, she took her clock and grabbed the correct form before filling it out.

Vanilla had turned out to be right. Nobody filled out the forms. Each person had to be told what to do personally, and by the time Lady Goat was form-lessly asking for a machine to automatically polish her horns Tails was getting pretty annoyed.

After Lady Goat was Doctor Eggman.

"What are you up to Eggman?" Tails asked.

"Nothing nefarious I swear!" said Eggman, passing out a form. "I was wondering, do you do bulk repairs? I got a whole truck full of broken robots. I'd throw them out, but you know how this village is with its garbage. They're always late, and in the meantime rodents get into it."

He very pointedly stared at Tails before continuing. "Besides, if somebody else is repairing them I can save on supplies!"

The only reason Tails was giving Eggman the time of day was because he was the only one who managed to read the signs.

"You want us to repair your robots for you? Are these the robots you attack us with?"

"Maybe?" said Eggman. "Who knows?"

"If he pays, I say we do it," interrupted Vanilla, who had just gotten done shooing away a laughing walrus in a tie. "It's not like if we don't he'll run out of robots. At least this way we get something out of it."

"Great," said Eggman, pushing a pen into Tails's free hand. "Truck's in front. I'll leave it with you. I think the truck could also use an oil change." He left before Tails got a chance to reply.



They closed at five but still had to work on the actual repairs and inventing. Deciding to save Eggman's truck full of minions for last, Tails got to work on repairing or replacing everybody's broken objects, while Vanilla tried to make dinner for them both.

That wasn't a stereotype, she'd just said she had to "fix" Knuckles's chilidog, so she better make those.

It took a really long time for the meat to cook (and while it was doing that Vanilla worked on Eggman's robots), but it was worth it.

Once it got dark Vanilla had to call Amy, ("or else she'll yell at me") and they were right back to work. Tails was now taking everybody's invention requests, and Vanilla was still fixing Motobugs, muttering to herself that they were the most pathetic Badniks in Eggman's entire arsenal and that was why he kept losing.

Tails had to agree. Eggman's machines were really unimpressive.

At about midnight Vanilla said she was too tired and had to get back or else she'd never get to sleep. She left Tails to finish with Eggman's robots.



He woke up with his communicator beeping at him. It was Vanilla.

"What is it?" he asked, his mind still off in dreamland. "Who's this?"

"Funny," came the reply. "I'm almost there, we open in five minutes."

Five minutes!?

That got Tails to wake up. Quickly he organised everybody's repairs into one group, half-done inventions in another, and Eggman's robots in a third.

Tails got to his post at the front just as Vanilla entered through the secret employee entrance. That one didn't have any traps. She was eating a piece of toast, and when she passed Tails she handed him a second piece.

"Breakfast," she said. "I woke up late." She yawned, rubbing her eyes. "Maybe we should think about getting somebody else for this part. Then we can finish repairs faster.

"Our friends would help," said Tails. "But I don't know if they'd be good at it. Amy would I guess."

"I could get Zooey to help," said Vanilla. "You know her, right?"

"Oh," said Tails. He'd met her maybe twice, but he was seeing her more often in the village lately. "Yeah."

Finishing his toast Tails switched the sign to Open, and in an instant the door swung open as a crowd filtered in.

Knuckles was first in Vanilla's line. She saw him and immediately went to the back room and came back with a microwaved chilidog.

"Wow, thanks!" said Knuckles. "And it only took a day! You guys are fast!" He turned around and made it three steps before squeezing too hard on the bun, causing the contents to spill out onto the floor.

"Aww," he said, picking it up.

Tails was watching Vanilla sympathetically pat Knuckles on the back while leading him to the back room, when an angry Mrs. Vandersnout hissed in his direction.

"Young man, I don't have all day!" she said. "Where's my alarm clock!"

Biting back the question on how she made it here on time without her alarm, Tails said, "do you have your form stub?"

"What are you talking about? If I was supposed to keep something, you should have had it on the form!"

Not wanting to get into this again, he just went to the back room to grab her replacement clock. He remembered what she wanted, he didn't need the stub. In the back she found Vanilla had heated up five more Chilidogs for Knuckles, and making sure he wasn't going to drop any of them.

All three left the back at the same time, Knuckles thanking them again. Tails reached the counter and pushed the clock to Mrs. Vandersnout, holding out his hand for payment.

She grudgingly handed him the money, and he noted this was their first sale, when the next customer, an old monkey, meandered forward at a slow pace.

After what felt like a lifetime, he made it to the counter.

"That kind lady told me I need to fill out a form," he said. "But I was wondering if you could fill it out for me." He pushed forward a complaint form for Meh Burger. "My eyesight isn't what it used to be."

"Is this… supposed to be a complaint form for Meh Burger?" he asked.

"Oh no," said the monkey. "I needed that one." He pointed at the invention form. He started slowly shuffling his way over to the form, but Tails interrupted him.

"No, I'll get it." He wanted this customer to be finished here sometime today.

Grabbing the form, he walked back to the counter and pressed his pen tip to the first entry.

"Okay, so what would you like?" he asked.

"I would like a Double Meh Burger with fries," he said.

Tails put his pen down and pressed his right temple for a moment.

"This isn't Meh Burger," he said. "This is TwinTails Repair and Invention Shop."

"Oh, I'm sorry!" said the old monkey. "In that case I'd like a Double TwinTails Burger with fries."

"We don't serve food here," said Tails, keep his voice calm. "We can fix your broken machines, or build you something new if you have an idea."

"But I saw that red fellow get a chilidog!" said the old man.

Tails turned to look at Vanilla only to find her talking to Eggman.

"I know you ordered expedited repairs, but you still gave us a huge order," she said. "These things take time!"

"Fine," Eggman grumbled. "In that case, how about inventing a plan to catch uh… an anonymous pestilential vagrant for me?"

Tails was about to interrupt when the old monkey banged his cane on the counter.

"Sony Jim, I want my Double Twintails Burger with fries!"

"As I said," said Tails, turning back. "We don't serve food. That chilidog was an unrelated favour for a friend of ours."

"Hmph! Why, I've been coming to this restaurant for years, and I've never seen such terrible service!"

This was insane! Thinking quickly on how to get rid of this guy, he ran to Vanilla and asked, "How long would it take you to make a double meat burger and some fries?"

"What are we a restaurant now?" she asked. "I could do it in about ten minutes, but I'm busy here!" She gestured to Lady Walrus, and showed him a piece of paper that was clearly a hand written coupon.

It was nice to know he wasn't the only one with problems. He had an idea.

As fast as he could he called Sonic, told him to buy a Double Meh Burger with Fries, and bring it to the shop through the back.

Returning to the old monkey, Tails said, "Your order is almost done. Just a few minutes."

Tails was super thankful he was best friends with Sonic, because not a moment later Sonic called back to say he was there.



Sighing, Tails pushed the burger and fries to the old man, who angrily paid and moved out of the line.

The next in line was Eggman. Again.

"Here," he said, handing over a form. "I need you to invent a substance suitable for trapping, uh, rats. For glue traps! The ones you get at the store are so ineffective and inhumane. I'm looking for something that's extremely strong, but easy to dissolve."

Tails glared at Eggman. He seemed sincere, but it was never a smart move to blindly trust Eggman.

But the paperwork was filled out correctly….

"Fine," Tails said.



"So what are you giving Eggman?" asked Tails later, when they were working to fix more of his robots.

"Oh, when he asked for what was obviously a plan to defeat Sonic?" she asked. Tails nodded.

"I gave him the dumbest thing I could think of. There's no way it'll work, but I am curious to see how it plays out. He paid, regardless." She sighed, finishing up the last of the Motobugs. "Actually, he's my favourite customer."

"It's sad isn't it?" said Tails, agreeing. "He's still the only one who comes in with a completed form."



The next day his first customer was Knuckles again. This time he brought an empty slightly crushed soda can.

"My soda's broken," said Knuckles. "It won't give me soda anymore."

"It's not broken, you just finished it," said Tails.

"But can you fix it?"

Just wanting Knuckles to go away, Tails went to the back and grabbed another soda from the fridge before returning and handing it to Knuckles.

"They all run out eventually Knuckles," he said. "You can get replacements at a regular store."

"Cool!" was all the reply Tails got as Knuckles walked off.

Next in line was Mrs. Vandersnout again, bringing back her new alarm clock.

"It couldn't have broken this fast!" said Tails.

"Well it did you miscreant!" she said in an irritating voice. "I put it in a water bath in my oven to clean it and when I took it out it was broken! What kind of scam are you running here?"



Towards the end of the day Tails was definitely feeling a headache coming on. Vanilla didn't look much better.

Next in line was Eggman. Tails gave him his adhesive's chemical formula and got his payment in return. It was nice, quick, exactly what Tails had assumed it would always be like.

"I also have this," said Eggman, handing in a repair form. "I brought a broken glass container and left it in the truck in the front, I need it repaired and reinforced with the strongest metal you have."

"Okay," said Tails.



"You know he's going to attack us with all this stuff we're making him, right?" said Vanilla, turning a bolt on a large grabbing claw Eggman had dropped off.

"If that's true," began Tails. "Why don't you do something?"

Vanilla shrugged. "Because I can tell he's trying to follow my plan. That plan is so stupid I want to see it in action."

"Now I'm curious," said Tails, chuckling. "What are you having him do?"

Vanilla smiled mischievously. "That's a secret."



"Hey, it polishes your horns," said Tails to Lady Goat, who'd come in with a plank of wood stuck to her head. "It's not my fault you over polish them. Next!"

Tails was done. Third day and still no improvements. Nobody read the signs. People still came in with the stupidest problems. He had a newfound respect for Vanilla's tenacity at the job market.

And here was Mrs. Vandersnout again with her clock.

"Next!" Tails shouted without even letting the old woman get a word in. He was starting to think she was doing this on purpose to mess with them.

"But my clock –" Mrs. Vandersnout began, but Tails interrupted.

"Next!"

Eggman walked through the door at that moment, and Tails perked up, but immediately deflated as he got into Vanilla's line.

"Why are you still here?" Tails asked Mrs. Vandersnout.

"You're letting money walk away," said Vanilla. "As long as she pays I don't care how often she brings the same thing over."

"I'm not paying you two again unless you fix it for good! You're trying to cheat me!"

"Oh," said Vanilla. "Yeah, never mind then."

Really wishing he had some sort of security, he had to escort the old bag out of the shop himself before she'd leave.



"Look what I made!" said Vanilla, holding up a large blueprint. It was a robot, that much was obvious. In the shape of a rabbit with a spring on the bottom. "Isn't it cute?"

"Cool," he said, refusing to say it was cute. "What's it do?"

"Hop," said Vanilla. "Eggman asked me for a new minion design. So I designed Splats for him."

"Splats?" asked Tails.

"That's its name. But I bet Eggman will rename it to Rabbit Bot or something lame like that."

"They don't have like, I don't know… rocket ears or laser jumps or anything like that?"

"No," said Vanilla. "They hop. They're about as formidable as Motobugs… or you."

Tails didn't even know what to feel at that. It was another one of those times where she confused him. Maybe sometime soon he'd talk to Sonic about it.

"Anyway. I have literally dozens of robot ideas. A whole compendium, ranging from pathetic like Splats here, to maaaaybe it'd be annoying if we had to fight them all the time."

Tails didn't think it was necessary to point out it wasn't a good idea to help Eggman too much. It was one thing to give him another robot on the level of Motobugs, but to give him anything that could actually hurt them was just stupid.

"Did you call Amy?" asked Vanilla. "I spoke to Zooey right after we closed shop for the day. She's coming to help us tomorrow." Vanilla looked at Tails oddly for a moment. "You should talk to her. I bet you two would get along."

"Maybe," said Tails, mind elsewhere. "I forgot about Amy. I'll fly down first thing in the morning and ask."



The next day Vanilla and Tails spent all their time in the back, while Amy and Zooey manned the front. Every so often one of them would ask for machine or invention along with its form, and in return they'd give back all the forms and objects they'd collected from customers. This was what this shop was supposed to be. Fixing stuff. Coming up with ideas. Now they didn't have to know who was asking for what or why. As far as Tails was concerned that clock was not Mrs. Vandersnout's clock from the past three days.



Friday. It was Friday. That meant the weekend was coming and they could close the shop for the weekend. They were entitled to weekends off, they made the rules!

Tails hadn't seen much of anybody else all week, and was eager to hang out with everybody again. It was probably easier for Vanilla, since she at least saw Amy every day.

At about noon Amy came in asking for Eggman's big repair order. It'd taken all week to finish it, but they'd gotten it done.

"They're all active behind the workshop," said Tails. "We put in a signal blocker around their pen so he can't get them to follow his orders until he pays, so just tell him to pay and I'll take the blocker down."

Amy nodded, and returned to the front. A few moments later she came back with a large bag full of cash.

"Woah," said Vanilla, who looked up to see it. "You actually checked there was money in there, right?"

Amy's eyes widened, and she opened the bag and glanced in side before pulling out a bunch of loose bills.

"It's money," she said.

"That's that then," said Tails. He pressed a button on his communicator and deactivated the signal blocker. Immediately he heard a loud noise, as if a stampede was happening right behind the workshop.

Amy grabbed her hammer, and both Tails and Vanilla stood to action, but nothing happened after that. The stampede sound started to fade away.

"Guess he really was just taking them back," said Tails, relaxing. Amy put her hammer back down. Everybody was about to return to work when Tails's communicator beeped. It was Sonic.

"Tails! Eggman's attacking! Get everyone down here, my place!"

Everyone already heard, and once the call ended Tails switched the sign outside to Closed.

"Let's go!" said Amy, opening the door and holding it for them.

"I can't wait to see this," said Vanilla, looking really happy. Tails however, was nervous.



Eggman was laughing as they were surrounded.

"You fools!" he said. "Didn't you realise that while you repaired my old robots, I could make new ones?"

He was floating around in his Eggmobile, but he'd added stuff to it. A large claw that Tails remembered Vanilla working on, and on the back was the glass tank he himself had repaired. Inside was a lot of blue liquid which Tails also knew was the adhesive he invented, and Sonic, who was struggling to get out. Tails was thankful his best friend could at least breath.

Amy was smashing every Crab Bot she could see, and Knuckles was punching all the Motobugs. There were still so many left, and while Vanilla's Splats robots were just as fragile and unimpressive looking as she'd said, their patterns were different than what everybody was used to. Combined with the numbers they were causing a lot of trouble.

"How?" yelled Vanilla, who was back to back with Sticks, bashing nearby robots with sticks. "How did this possibly happen?"

"But it was all your idea!" said Eggman, who was obviously enjoying this. "It was genius! Take chemicals from the chemical plant, and dump them on Sonic! And it worked like a charm!"

Well, Tails could see why Vanilla would have thought that sounded stupid. It was kind of vague. But apparently Eggman filled in the blanks and Sonic fell for it.

"But where's the music?" said Vanilla, destroying one of her own Splats. She winced, as if she didn't like hurting her own design. "I said to play a high tempo funky tune while doing this! You forgot!"

"I didn't forget," said Eggman. "My speakers were broken, and I didn't think that part of the plan was important enough to get you vermin to fix them for me."

Tails tried to think of how to save Sonic as he used his Enerbeam to attack some Splats, but his mistimed and missed all of them as they hopped over it. Frustrated he aimed at some Bee Bots who kindly died immediately, while Knuckles moved to attack the robots he'd missed.

"These Rabbit Bots are great by the way," said Eggman. "A great addition to Eggman Enterprises!"

"Are you serious?" asked Vanilla, now flying over to Tails. "We don't retain rights to our inventions?"

Tails almost got hit by a passing Motobug, but managed to say, "I forgot to put that on the form! We'd have to fight it in court!"

"You bet I'm suing you Eggman," shouted Vanilla, landing near Tails.

Lowering her voice she asked, "You fixed the glass jar and invented the glue. How do we get Sonic out of there?"

Eggman's robot numbers were finally dwindling, but it didn't matter if they couldn't get Sonic free. Especially as Eggman was now trying to pick off more of their friends with his claw and add them to the jar.

"The glue dissolves in water," said Tails. "But Sonic can't swim, so he'd drown if we put water in there! I reinforced the glass, but even if we broke it the glue inside will hold it together anyway!"

"How did my stupid plan lead to this?" asked Vanilla to herself. Suddenly she looked a little dazed, then hit herself softly on the forehead with her palm. "If we can't defeat our own ideas, we can still defeat Eggman's! We need to go for the Eggmobile! Destroy that and we can just get Sonic out! And Eggman won't be able to fly around, picking at us!"

"I'm on it!" said Tails. Well, he was on spreading the idea. He took to the air and flew to Knuckles, who had just destroyed a dozen robots with a single knuckle.

"Knuckles!" said Tails. "I'm going to pick you up and fly you to Eggman. I need you to punch his Eggmobile down as hard as you can. Crash it into the ground!"

Knuckles just smiled as he grabbed Tails's hand. Tails flew up, in the back of his mind noting how maybe he needed to exercise more, and tried to get a good angle of attack on Eggman.

He was busy trying to grab Amy, but as Amy batted every attempt away with her hammer, he instead grabbed the hammer, leaving Amy to struggle. This was his chance!

He spun Knuckles around a few times trying to build momentum, then threw him right at Eggman.

Knuckles drew back his fist, and as Eggman was too busy struggling against Amy to notice the oncoming attack, Knuckles punched the Eggmobile directly into the ground. The front where Knuckles had punched was crumpled up, destroyed, and the bottom was buried in sand, unable to power on and gain height.

They destroyed more robots on the way to Sonic. Vanilla had somehow found a bucket of water and splashed it into the jar, while Amy and Knuckles pulled at Sonic.

Not too long after, Sonic came free with a loud squelch, and stood with them all as they looked down at Eggman, who was still trying to power his Eggmobile back on.

Eggman suddenly looked up, as if he'd only now just noticed Sonic was free.

"Now I get it," he said. "The music was to prevent you from hearing each other in the heat of battle! Then you couldn't have formulated a plan!"

"We're going to talk about this Vanilla," said Sonic, looking down at her. She was clearly trying to look innocent, but Tails didn't think it was working on Sonic. "In the meantime, let's finish this!"

The remainder of the battle was a lot easier. With Sonic at their side again, and the robot numbers back to manageable sizes, they were able to wrap everything up in a convenient time frame.

Eggman was still buried in the sand with his Eggmobile when he finished. They all walked over to him again, Knuckles quickly digging him out.

"Uh," he said nervously, once he was free. He looked at Vanilla. "We'll count this one as a draw?" he asked.



Later, Tails had to explain that half of Eggman's success was his fault, and none of it would have worked if he hadn't made the glue and the jar.

"It was a team effort," said Tails, talking to Sonic. "It all looked harmless out of context, and we didn't really think he'd be able to put these things to any better use than he normally did."

"I mean," said Vanilla, also looking at Sonic. "You were the one who fell for it."

"I didn't know what it was okay," said Sonic. "I was tired, and he caught me off guard."

"You lost to Eggman, didn't you Sonic?" said Vanilla in a teasing voice. She was grinning.

"No!" said Sonic. "It was just a temporary setback!"

"Well, at least this proves one thing," said Vanilla, still smiling. "Me and Tails can defeat you if we set our minds to it."

She leaned on Tails with her shoulder at that, Tails couldn't hear what else they were saying afterwards as his brain shut off.

 

[BlackoutSampler]

and the shipping commences.

Other dumb "ideas" you can sell to Eggman are:
-Trap Sonic in a deadly competitive Bejeweled clone where he is forced to compete against Eggman in a duel of children's puzzle games! Loser get dumped into *insert dangerous substance here*

-Trap Sonic in a giant pinball machine

-Set up holographic projectors of Metal Sonic kicking various woodland critters to ensure a Bad Future where Eggman rules all, then your Evil Future Self sends back a super robot to fight Sonic for you.

-Hire a Ninja, have him bring his rapper friends.

-Hire Knuckles, team him up with said Ninja and his friends.

-Make Sonic wait for 10 minutes, watch him die from "time out"

-Even the playing field by challenging him to a Go-Kart Race

I'm running out of dumb Sonic plots give me some help here.

But anyways, I'm loving this so far. might actually get me to sit down and watch the series myself. And I'm glad you broke the 3 update curse.

 

[Enmascarado]

With each chapter I love this story more and more.

 

[korat56]

and the shipping commences.

Other dumb "ideas" you can sell to Eggman are:
-Trap Sonic in a deadly competitive Bejeweled clone where he is forced to compete against Eggman in a duel of children's puzzle games! Loser get dumped into *insert dangerous substance here*

-Trap Sonic in a giant pinball machine

Click to shrink...

already been done sonic spinball and dr robotniks mean bean machine.