FLAMBÉ - ch13
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Tangent
Not too sore, are you?
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FLAMBÉ
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!
O o O o O
Yet another SI fic by Tangent
Hot off the grill with another sizzling entree in the Sonic setting!
O o O o O
Time, of course, marched on. And while the three of us spent a lot of time playing in, on, and around Château de l'Eau (which, by the context we were using, meant Castle of the Water rather than simply Water Tower), we made sure that all our chores and lessons were either done or mostly done first.
Ironically, Amy Rose was proving to be a better teacher of Gwailish than she was for Mercian. Mostly due to her tutor also being her primary social contact for much of her life and said tutor being from the Kingdom of Acorn - which spoke one of several Northamer dialects of Mercian. Meaning that Amy, who grew up in Mercia, sounded more like she grew up here in the Kingdom of Acorn instead. Whereas, for Gwailish, she actually remembered her lessons and how she learned, so was actually able to pass those on to Tails and me.
But Amy didn't really know how to teach Mercian because she grew up with the wrong dialect.
By silent agreement, neither Tails nor I teased Amy about any of that - we simply accepted it and learned Gwailish from her instead.
We were sitting on the bridge during another lesson when Tails began to glow.
At first, it was subtle. A faint outline around him, like light catching dust in the air.
Amy noticed it immediately. "Tails?"
He didn't answer.
The glow intensified, but it didn't behave like normal light. It didn't spill onto the bridge or reflect off the water. It stayed fixed to him, as if it belonged only to his outline.
Tails turned slightly, like he was about to speak.
Then he was gone.
No sound. No flash. No impact. Just absence where he had been standing.
Amy and I went still.
"Tails?" I also called out, my voice sounding small and distant against the blood pounding in my ears.
The bridge, the stream below, the air around us - none of it changed. Everything else remained exactly as it had been a moment earlier.
I don't know how long Amy and I stood there, neither of us able to process what had just happened.
Then I saw movement in the distance out of the corner of my eye - Hamlin!
"HAMLIN!" I yelled out as I jumped off of the bridge of the play fort, not caring that my only pair of boots immediately got soaked in the small stream as I ran off towards the pig.
"HAMLIN! HAMLIN!" Amy and I called out again, the pink hedgehog following me as we ran towards the only help we saw.
O o O o O
Hamlin the Pig examined the play forts and the bridge connecting them as thoroughly as he could after sending the girls off to fetch the rest of the substitute Freedom Fighters. The abrupt disappearance of one of the kids from the middle of Knothole was a serious matter, and both girls were scared enough that he did not believe that they were playing some kind of prank. So he took what they had told him at face value and investigated the location seriously.
Almost the entire reserve team had shown up, minus Larry the Lynx, who felt that his bad luck powers would be detrimental to the investigation.
Hamlin could find no fault with that argument, although it still felt wrong for their supposed leader to be absent from a mission like this when there was a missing kid involved. But that was an argument for another time.
"There's definitely some sort of weird energy reading," Penelope the Platypus said as she took readings from the scanning tools she had brought. "Ambient Chaos Energies are a bit high, and there's something else as well."
"You don't think…" Arlo Armadillo pondered quietly, glancing surreptitiously over to where Dylan the Porcupine was looking over the girls.
"Not a chance," Hamlin snorted derisively, not believing it for a moment and a bit angry with Arlo for even suggesting such a thing.
"Hamlin's right," Penelope affirmed. "I checked against Flambé's energy signatures first thing - to eliminate the possibility," she clarified. "The last thing Flambé needs is wild accusations when one of her friends is missing."
Arlo shifted his weight and looked back at the bridge again, then down at the ground near Hamlin's boots.
"That still doesn't explain how he just… vanishes," he said.
Penelope didn't look up from the scanner. "It explains what didn't happen," she replied. "That's not the same thing."
Arlo frowned, as if that distinction wasn't helping him much. "Yeah. I got that. I'm just saying—this doesn't feel like something you can rule out that easily."
Hamlin glanced at him once, then back toward the empty span of bridge.
"Nothing's ruled out," Hamlin said. "Not yet."
"Sorry, sorry!" Arlo apologized hastily. "I didn't think…"
"That's right," Hamlin interjected even as he continued to search for any signs that some intruder had gotten close to the play area. "You didn't think. We'll do this investigation properly, but we don't need it turning into a witch hunt! And what if Flambé heard you?"
Hamlin paused, then drew a deep calming breath. One of the kids was missing, and he needed to keep a clear head or his own temper would get in the way.
Dammit, this was hard…
He caught a glow beginning to form out of the corner of his eye - "The Bridge!"
The Substitute Freedom Fighters readied themselves for anything, Dylan making sure that the kids were behind him…
When Tails popped back into existence, Amy and Flambé still somehow beat them all to him, hugging their returned friend tightly.
That did not stop Hamlin from embracing the three himself as he reached them.
The kids were safe - that was all that mattered in the moment.
O o O o O
That…
That was one of the scariest moments of my new life.
It wasn't like Grovedale. That fear made sense to me. It had shape. Cause and effect. A childhood phobia from my previous life given monstrous form and triggering an extreme response. Fear I could comprehend...
This fear - this sense of dread - didn't make sense to me. Tails was back and he hadn't been hurt, so why was I still feeling it?
One moment Tails was there. The next, he wasn't, and I hadn't been able to do anything about it.
Nothing.
Just running and yelling for help. Like that was all I could manage when it mattered.
That was the part I hated the most.
Arlo's voice came back to me after that. I had heard him. I had heard every word. He apologized afterward, at least to Hamlin and Penelope if not to me. I don't think he realized I could hear him at the time. Or maybe he did and just didn't feel the need to say it to me directly. Either way, it didn't matter. I didn't need it.
And when Tails told us what had happened - way too many versions of himself, all fighting something impossible, something huge, some elephant guy bigger than anyone Tails had ever seen - I started pulling pieces together from the vague memories of comic books I had read in my previous life.
Mammoth Mogul.
But not here on this Mobius. The encounter happened on some other Mobius. A place where Tails had been pulled in alongside many other versions of himself.
That detail stayed with me longer than the rest.
Because if that was true, then this wasn't Mobius Prime, and never had been.
This meant that everything that I thought I knew about this world - every event that I had subconsciously been expecting to somehow remain the same, carried by the weight of history leading up to those events unless I changed something - which, yeah, in hindsight that was dumb of me, because free will is a thing and I can't expect a real, functioning world to follow the script of a cartoon and comicbook no matter how well things had lined up so far.
I should be feeling relief that I don't have to worry about breaking or maintaining continuity, right? I should be experiencing this great rush of liberation - a sense of freedom from just knowing that the future was not set in stone or recorded on cells or ink and paper…
So why was I feeling this looming sense of dread and the knowledge that I was forgetting something very important…
![[Quixotic_being]](/data/avatars/m/44/44101.jpg?1586569278){kind=avatar}