Tails is sleeping soundly in his bed that night, he was peaceful, unmoving, occasionally tossing around in bed. When 6 AM comes around, he hears the faint sound of a door opening, with that door opening come his sky blue coloured eyes revealing themselves as well. He gets up out of bed and cracks his door open, like clockwork. Shadow is out of bed and going to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face.

When Shadow is done, he makes a cup of coffee with the new coffee maker Sonic gifted him, lightly sweet with an extra shot of espresso. When Shadow is done with his coffee he puts the mug in the sink and leaves so he can go to his cafe, using his air shoes to skate through the empty road, the sunrise making for a somewhat more upbeat mood.

Tails follows Shadow to his café, with a bag on him, flying like a helicopter. He hides behind a car as he watches Shadow get the café ready for the day, the black hedgehog wipes down tables and prepares the equipment ready for a long day of use.

Tails reaches into his bag and slowly takes out a small container with a purplish liquid. Shadow eventually ducks into his office and turns on his PC in there. Later one of his workers, a sheep, arrives inside. She looks anxious when she gets inside the café she apologises profusely to Shadow.

"Sir, I'm so sorry for being late, my kids were driving me insane, I hope your not angr-"

Shadow puts his pointer finger on her lip, "It's alright Lucy. I get your stressed out with your family's situation right now"

"Thank you Mister Shadow"

"Don't mention it"

"U-Um would you like me to make you some tea, I know you probably need it right now-"

"Sure, no caffeine though, I had a cup of coffee not too long ago"

"Yes boss"

Lucy turns on the kettle and goes off to pick out a teabag, Tails walks over to the café and takes small rectangular silver cube and pushes a button on it, what looks like a key comes out of it and he picks the lock to the café and manages to open the door. He slips in and closes the door slowly behind him, he quietly dashes over to the kitchen and watches from behind a counter as Lucy puts the teabag in the kettle while humming a toon to herself. He notices a bag of flour on the table and decides to cause a distraction so he can get the sheep away from the tea kettle. He gently knudges the bag ever so slowly until it falls on the floor spilling white flour all over the place.

When Lucy sees the bag fall over she groans nervously and goes off to get the broom so she can sweep up the mess. Tails uses the opertunity of her being away to go up to the kettle, taking out the bottle with the bottle with the mysterious purple liquid. The fox covers his eyes with his goggles and unscrews the lid, gently pooring a few drops in the tea and giving it a stir until the tea went back to being light brown. When Lucy eventually comes back to sweep up the spilled flour, Tails is gone, slipping out of the café quietly.

Once she's finished, she dumps the spilled flour in the rubbish bin and finishes preparing Shadow's tea, she goes inside Shadow's office and gives him a cup with the beverage in it, then she pours herself a cup as well.

"Too a productive day" Shadow says.

"Too a productive day" Lucy replies enthusiastically.

They toast and sip on the beverage together. At first everything's fine until about 15 minutes later when it's time to open up the café, Shadow grunts as he reads a paper regarding the café's rent, his vision is unsteady, he can't focus. He feels sweaty, he stands up and almost falls over.

"Lucy!"

No answer.

"What did she put in that tea... Lucy!"

When he gets outside into the main area his eyes go wide, there by the front door, laying on the floor choking on blood is Lucy, Shadow stumbles over to her and collapses next to her.

"Mr. Shadow... I-It hurts..."

"Did you do this?"

She frantically shakes her head. Shadow can feel his hands trembling he looks around desperately and spots Lucy's phone on one of the tables by the window. He crawls over to it and tries to reach it, but he knocks it onto the floor, the device clattering to the ground. He's struggling to get to Lucy but when he does get to her... Her eyes are pale, and she's unmoving.

"No" He strains, "Lucy... Wake up... Lucy!"

The black hedgehog has no time to mourn though as the poison caused him to hallucinate. He takes Lucy's hand and presses her cold finger on the thumb pad so he can unlock her phone and call an ambulance.

"Ngh, Dark Delights Café... Me and one of my workers have been p-poisoned. I... I think she's dead... Please we need help"

---

By the time the paramedics arrived, Lucy was gone, Shadow hanging on narrowly by a thread. When the gang got word of what happened the immediately rushed to the hospital where Shadow was... Tails included as so he didn't look suspicious. Though it didn't kill Shadow... There was something even worse lurking within him.

Hours later, he finally wakes up. Head aching, body burning, but nonetheless alive.

"Shadow..." Knuckles says standing up from his seat almost immediately so he could go over and see how he's doing.

"Ngh, no... Lucy. Where's Lucy?"

"She's dead..." Sonic responds.

Shadow's eyes go wide when he hears that, Sonic sighs and puts his hand on the railing of his bed.

"Whatever killed her really did a number on her insides" Tails adds, showing a digital diagram of what Lucy's insides looked like when they took her to the morgue, it was like a meatloaf had exploded in her body.

"No... Lucy"

"I'm going to sound crazy for saying this but I think someone is targeting us" Rouge says, shifting uncomfortably.

"First Amy, then Cream and now Shadow... It can't be a coincidence" Blaze adds.

"Whoever it is must really hate us... But why...?" Silver says, scratching his chin in thought.

"Beats me. I don't think we've ever done anything wrong in our lives" Knuckles responds.

"I don't know what we did, but we sure made someone angry. And whoever did this will pay" Sonic says, his flow suddenly changing.

Everyone could feel the blue hedgehog's fury like heat in the sun. To Tails however, it was exhilarating, he puts his hand on Sonic's shoulder, Sonic looks down at warmly smiling Tails, "You sure are fired up"

Sonic takes Tails' hand and holds it tightly.

"This is my family we're talking about... I will do everything I have to in order to protect you all" Sonic says, taking a serious stance while holding a blushing Tails hand.

"Oh you..." Rouge says with a smile.

"Sonic!" Vector calls from outside.

"What's up?" He says.

"Mighty and Ray are here, they got some questions!" Vector says.

"Coming!"

Sonic lets go of Tails hands causing the fox to snap back to reality, "I'll be back buddy"

Tails nods, "I'll watch Shadow while you guys talk to Mighty and Ray, they're probably gonna interrogate me again and it's stress inducing when they question me-"

"I understand Tails... Just sit here and we'll be back!"

Tails nods and watches as Sonic and the others leave. Once they're all gone, Shadow looks over at the fox with a spiteful look on his face, Shadow has his suspicions, but he didn't say anything earlier about Tails because it didn't seem like the appropriate time to do so, and it could have posed a threat to everyone who was inside.

"I'm sorry this happened to you Shadow... Is there anything I can do for you at all? So you feel comfortable?"

"Yeah... You can start by dropping the innocent act"

"...What?"

"I know it was you who poisoned me and Lucy, there's no way someone would have been able to sneak into the place so quietly"

"Shadow, I don't know what you're talking about, I wasn't anywhere near Nightstar City this morning, I was in my workshop and then I went to hang out with Sonic by the beach. We were heading home when Sonic got the call about what happened to you" Tails says crossing his arms.

"Your lies will not decieve me!" Shadow screams.

"What lies?! When Sonic comes back ask him yourself-"

"Just give it up you dumb fox!"

"What?!"

"Drop the act! Now!"

There's silence in the room for a moment, only the sound of raindrops pattering on the window. Shadow's breathing is now more audible now that he's worked up, his eyes digging deeply into Tails, the rage in his eyes is like no other.

Tails snickers, it turns into chuckling, which turns into a fit of cackling like laughter, when he's done he covers his face. He looks at Shadow covering half his face, a glimpse of a malevolent toothy grin appears on his face. His blue eyes wild looking.

"I guess there's no point in trying to hide it" Tails says.

Shadow squeezes the railing on the hospital bed. He's almost upset with himself for not figuring this this out sooner.

"Yeah Shadow... I did poison you... And Lucy. But for now I guess we can call her collateral damage"

"You little monster, when Sonic hears about this, you'll be over!" Shadow snarls.

Tails laughs some more, "Oh I wouldn't be so sure"

"Pfft, what are you gonna do? Poison me again? You're a souless murderer with no regard for the people around you!"

Tails lifts up a tablet showing a purple coloured screen, on it was what looked like blood flowing through veins, and on the walls of were these small little blinking lights with claws attached to them.

"You may think I'm in a corner but you failed to account for one thing... My nanotech. With these I can monitor your every move, what you drink, what you eat, what you say, the status of your body, how sick you are, what your thinking, when you shit, when you sleep, I can see everything you do and control you too! And if you even as much as sing a little song about this, I will kill you without hesitation" Tails says, his eyes cold as the arctic.

Shadow snarls and squeezes his fist, "Little shit"

Tails pushes a button on his phone and Shadow starts gasping for air, he writhes and throws himself all over the bed while the fox just looks at him completely emotionless, his lack of compassion for anyone who's not Sonic makes it easy him to do things like this. Tails pushes another button on his phone and Shadow gasps for air coughing and hacking.

Tails slowly walks up to him getting really close to his face, so close their noses almost touch. All the black hedgehog can see are the cold blue eyes of the fox, he normally wouldn't be scared but this time he could feel his heart pick up.

"Does this mean-"

Tails lets out a loud laugh, "Yes Shadow!... I killed Amy"

Shadow bangs his fist on the nightstand, the rage inside of him was overflowing.

"Why..."

"Because Shadow... I love Sonic, I want to marry him, take care of him, hold his hand and I certainly want him to fuck me. And in order to do that, I needed her out of my way. Permanently"

"Heartless bastard... You had no right to kill her like that!"

"Call me what you want..."

Tails grabs him by the collar of his hospital gown and grips it tightly.

"But you have no power in this situation, you can't win"

"We'll see about that, twisted little asshole"

"Yeah... We'll see"

Tails shoves him back down on the bed and gathers his things up, Blaze comes back to the room and notices how on edge Shadow is.

"Shadow, are you okay" She asks

Shadow opens his mouth, before he says anything, Tails taps his finger on his phone as a subtle way of telling him to choose his words wisely, Shadow groans and squeezes the railing on his bed more intensely.

"Yeah, I'm fine..."

"I got you some pudding" Blaze says, showing him a small package of vanilla pudding.

"Thanks" Shadow responds.

Tails puts his bag on, and an earpiece in his ear.

"Where are you going?" Blaze asks.

"There's some stuff me and Sonic have to do, we'll be back later"

"A-Alright. See you later then"

"See ya, get well soon Shadow!" Tails says, with a warm smile.

Shadow grinds his teeth when he hears the little fox say that. Tails whips out his phone and looks at Shadow's vitals and hear what Shadow is saying and get readings on what he's doing at the moment, he can also track his location too.

"Tails!" Sonic says waving at him from the door.

Tails looks up at Sonic who's by the lifts, "Sonic!"

He puts his phone in his bag and jogs on over to him.

"Since Shadow's out of commission, he asked me to work his café, wanna help out?" Sonic asks.

"Of course!" Tails replies.

"Awesome, let's go open it up! I bet there are a ton of people waiting for their coffee right now" Sonic responds.

Tails airlifts Sonic to the café where there indeed was a small crowd of people waiting for their midday coffee. Tails drops Sonic on the floor in front of the shop and lands right next to him, Sonic notices the goggles on Tails forehead as he unlocks the door to the shop.

"You wear those a lot" Sonic says.

Tails face turns red, "W-Well these are the ones you gave me"

"You like em that much huh?"

Tails nods sheepishly.

Sonic gives him a playful noogie, Tails laughs as he finally gets the door open. Both of them spend the day handing out coffees and pastries together, Shadow's staff warmed up to both Sonic and Tails in no time, as their cooking skills were pretty on par with their boss's. After a long day, Sonic finally sits down by the window with a half drunken cup of the tea Shadow gave him to cool his nerves. Tails who just finishes cleaning up the kitchen comes out and closes the door behind him.

"Woo, we had a pretty productive day huh?"

"Yeah" Tails responds.

Sonic pores him a cup of tea as Tails sits down with him.

"Good night Sonic!" One of the baristas calls out from the door.

"Night Dave!" Sonic says waving back at him.

Tails looks down at the cup of tea and then up at the neon holograms of the city, the raindrops on the window making it look distorted in a way. Sonic takes a sip and moans satisfied with the way it tasted.

"What if we started a business together?" Tails asks while looking up at the lights.

Sonic looks up from the cup of tea to a smiling little Tails looking out the rain covered window.

"Interesting idea, what kind of business though" Sonic questions.

"I don't know... Maybe we can figure that out one day" Tails responds, he takes a sip of the tea and exhales satisfied with how it tastes.

"Rescue squad? I've been dying to try and get back into running more" Sonic says.

"That could work"

"You think so?"

"Mhm, I've been wanting to help people out for a while too. After all, it was our job to help people out when Eggman was still active. Why should we stop doing it just because he's gone?"

"Point well made"

There's some silence between the two, both of them finish their cups of tea at the same time while the calming neon lights and holographic ads play on outside. The occasional light from a passing car or shadow of a passing pedestrian also setting the mood.

"Sonic, there's something I wanna talk about tomorrow..." Tails says scratching the back of his head and looking down at the floor.

Sonic looks up at Tails, "Why not talk about it right now?"

"It's late-"

"Tails-"

"I know, I just think tomorrow would be better. Gives me more time to think about what I should say" Tails says, cheeks showing pink slightly.

Sonic sighs, "Okay... That's fair"

"I'm going to go spend the rest of the day at my workshop, see ya at home"

Tails briskly stands up and give Sonic a gentle squeeze, the hedgehog can feel how warm his face is.

"Tails... Are you okay?"

"Never better... See you later"

He grabs his bag and leaves the café. Sonic sighs and stands up so he can put the rest of the tea they didn't drink together in the fridge.

---

Tails exhales and sets a small wrench down on the table. After covering up his work for the night he decides it's best to just spend the rest of the night falling asleep to some peaceful music, on his way back he sees Sonic in his room, he's out like a light, snoring quite audibly.

Tails sighs and goes inside so he can tuck him in properly, once Sonic's all set the fox plants a gentle kiss on the side of his forehead and goes off to his room closing the door quietly.

Tails can see the bright neon lights of Nightstar City in the distance as he puts on his headphones. He opens his diary and jots some stuff down...

It's been some time since Amy and Cream were removed from the picture. But now I have a much bigger problem, a much tougher body that just refuses to die, Shadow. The ultimate lifeform, his power isn't something I should treat as child's play. I need to choose carefully when I eliminate him because Mighty and Ray are on my ass, something else that I have to worry about those two pit sniffers catching me in the act or finding some sort of evidence to incriminate me. Getting caught is just not an option for me, especially when I'm so close to finally gathering the balls to confess to Sonic how much I love him. I feel close, but I'm afraid that if I get busted it's game over, he'll despise of me, never be able to look at me the same.

Tails rubs his face, thinking about what he should write next... Or wondering if he should wait until the morning to continue venting his feelings into his diary. He decides it's time to go to sleep and puts his diary in his drawer. He jumps onto the bed, rolling around for a minute until he finally feels ready to sleep. He can't wait to see what tomorrow brings, he closes his eyes and falls asleep peacefully in bed.

The following morning comes, everyone present in the base wakes up and has breakfast. Tails rather then sitting with the others as they gossiped away takes his breakfast and Sonic's breakfast to over to the hedgehog's humble abode. Tails sets the stack of pancakes down on his night stand and sit by Sonic's desk, he watches as Sonic sniffs the air and opens his eyes to see the pancakes on the night stand fork and knife next to the plate.

"What the..."

He looks over at the stack of mouth watering flapjacks as if they're gems, he notices Tails sitting there halfway done with his plate.

"Morning Sonic!" He says with a playful smile on his face.

"Mmmf, morning Tails" Sonic says with a yawn.

Sonic takes the knife and fork and cuts into the food.

"How'd you sleep?"

"Fine"

"I slept like a rock last night"

"So did I, all that work at Shadow's café really took it out on us huh?"

"Mm"

"What's everyone else doing?"

"Having breakfast in the dining room. It was noisy so I decided to have breakfast here in your room... With you"

Sonic gives him a lazy grin, "Glad you chose me buddy"

"Yeah... I am" Tails says back, rubbing his arm nervously, "Hey Sonic?"

"What's up?"

"Let's go to Earth again!"

Sonic chokes on his food when he hears Tails say that, "Why?"

"I had so much fun with you the last time! Even though it didn't end the way we wanted... And I still had so much fun over there with you, it the highlight of our trip, a-atleast for me!" Tails answers.

" I don't know Tails-" Sonic responds.

"Oh... You're worried about getting shot again! Don't worry, I prepared this!"

Tails presents a teal coloured box with his signature logo on it. Sonic takes it from him and opens it, it's an injector gun.

"Nanites?"

"Mhm, they'll remove anything in your body that's not supposed to be there and fix you up, it'll be able to remove a bullet from your stomach in 3 to 5 minutes!"

"You've really thought of everything?" Sonic asks.

"Yep!"

Sonic nods impressed with how dedicated he was to this, his cheerful blue eyes are what really got him to finally agree, "Maybe we could travel to other places on Earth, there's still a lot we could learn about..."

Tails lets out an excited squeal and jumps around excitedly, eventually jumping on Sonic for an affectionate hug. Sonic's face turns red almost immediately and instinctively he gently nudges Tails away from him.

"Ease up bro"

"Sorry! I just can't remember the last time we did something so fun!" Tails responds.

"Didn't the humans want to disect us the last time we went?"

"Don't worry, they won't find us this time" Tails responds confidently.

"I hope you're right" Sonic responds, "When are we going?"

"We can go this afternoon!" Tails responds, his large fluffy namesakes swishing around excitedly.

"That's cool with me"

"Great! Get your stuff packed and come to my lab later!"

"Will do"

Tails leaps out of Sonic's room excitedly as Sonic watches him jump around like a crazy wild fox back on Earth, seeing him like that put a smile on my face, "There he goes, all hyped up again"

Then Sonic remembers the pancakes Tails gave him and closes the door so he can gobble them up judgement free.

---

Shadow's finished eating his breakfast at the hospital, and it's definitely not pancakes that's for sure. He throws the tray at the wall and snarls as the nurse sighs and picks it up off the floor and leaves. There's a knock at the door and peeking inside was Knuckles.

"What" Shadow says, sounding moodier then ever.

"Sonic and Tails are going to Earth again, just thought I'd let you know"

Shadow's pupils dilate when he hears that, he was going to take Sonic off world, again, no doubtly at least in his mind at least to kill him.

"Knuckles... You have to stop Sonic from going off world"

"What? Why?"

"Tails..."

That's when he remembers that the crafty little fox probably has a way to listen into his conversations so he rips off a piece of paper on a clip board and writes it down neatly.

Tails is a psychotic killer and Sonic is probably his next victim.

"What?"

"What do you mean what?! Can you read?!"

"No, I can't actually-"

Shadow sits there, completely stupified by what he said, "It's been almost 5 years since I've met you and you still can't read?!"

"Nah"

"..."

"Anyway, I got this cool date with Rouge tonight, wish me luck pal!"

With that Knuckles runs on off to the lift, "Knuckles! Wait!"

But the red echidna isn't already gone running off into the hallway.

"Fuck"

---

"You're going back to Earth again?" Blaze says, holding a cup of tea in her hand.

"Yep" Sonic responds as he stuffs some of his things in a backpack.

"I take it I'll be in charge while you're gone?"

"Yep, normally I'd hand the task to Shadow or Amy but Shadow's in the hospital and Amy's..."

He sighs but quickly lightens back up and put his hand on her shoulder, "Just take care of everyone alright?"

"I'll try my best" Blaze responds.

Sonic gives her a hug and speeds off to meet Tails in his workshop. Silver surprises Blaze by kissing her on the cheek, the purple cat almost drops the cup of tea in her hand, this reaction prompts Silver to laugh at her.

"What is wrong with you?!"

"Sorry, bad habits"

She punches him in the arm and grumbles.

"You know, I can help you out with taking care of everyone. Since it's your first time and I have a little bit of experience" Silver says.

Blaze starts to tear up, Silver jumps back worried he startled her after all.

"This is why I love you" Blaze says, still fighting back tears. She sets the cup of tea down and kisses him on the mouth.

"I love you too" Silver says quietly.

The two share a warm hug as Silver wipes her face with his gloves hand.

---

Tails sits at his work bench on his phone, when Sonic finally comes he looks up smiles, "Ready to go?"

"You know it-"

Tails runs over to the gate and starts up the Dream Jumper. Sonic notices the Dream Jumper mini on the desk and looks over at Tails, "Hey uh, shouldn't you put that away?"

"I added a passcode to both Dream Jumpers, no one's gonna use them without permission" Tails responds as he finishes typing and hits the activate button.

A bright blue and red light flashes and across the portal is Earth... At night time none the less, Tails jogs over and picks up the bag with his stuff, Sonic picks up his too. Tails stands next to Sonic and looks up at him, Sonic looks down back at him and they lock eyes for a moment before smirking.

"Look out Earth! We're back!" Sonic shouts excitedly, "WOOOOOO!"

Then he runs threw the portal making all sorts of excited hedgehog noises - or whatever noises you think he's making, Tails following behind him, he looks back one more time across the portal at the Dream Jumper mini, and a sinister grin appears on his face before taking out a small silver device.

"Now if I'm right, I think I know what he'll do next, and when he does inevitably fall into my trap, it's game over for him"

Tails chuckles psychotically for a moment.

"Tails! You coming?" Sonic shouts from behind a wall.

He snaps out of it, "Yeah, I'll be right there!"