Chapter 3 - Saving Tails

A quick note from the author: I can't believe I've already gotten several reviews and over a hundred views! Thank you for making me feel like my story is good. You guys are so awesome, you know that? And now, back to where we left off… (dramatic effects, background music, etc.)

Tails looked like it was taking most of his energy not to show his fear, but despite what was being thrown at him, he stood his ground. Sonic looked back to his other friends. "Okay," he explained, "here's the plan. When Lightning says something that I have a comeback for, I'm gonna step in and deliver it, then rescue Tails while everyone yells 'burn' and our enemy here is stuttering."

"Okay, so what do we do?" Amy asked.

"Stand behind me and look cool. I need an awesome entourage."

Before his friends could argue that they wanted to do something cool and not just look cool, Sonic moved forwards in the crowd. As usual, Lightning was casually delivering insults and smirking. "And you know that guy who's all depressed and stuff? What's his name, Shader? Something like that. Well, I heard from a real friend - you know, the type that likes me - that you and your insistence on hanging around him is why he's such a jerk about everything."

Shadow let out a distinct noise of fury. If the crowd wasn't calling out their agreement just at that moment, he and his friends would have been noticed. He had good reason to be angry, though - he had suffered in the past, and the cause for his constant bad mood wasn't something to be taken lightly. Knuckles put a strong hand on his shoulder, partially as reassurance and partially to stop him from rushing forwards and trying to literally take Lightning to pieces. Reluctantly, Shadow stopped trying to move forwards, although he didn't relax his tense muscles. Nobody's favourite bully continued the verbal onslaught. "But hey, let's not overdo this. If I put all the emphasis on your so-called 'friends', I won't be able to describe how much more your parents hate you. I hear that the story goes something like this - your mummy and daddy were so paranoid about ending up with another freak like you, they weren't brave enough to start their own happy little family. How unfortunate. For them, of course. I mean, we don't care, do we? We're not gonna spend the rest of our lives trying to deal with some weird kid. Hey, that reminds me! Why don't I try to fix him? All in favour of fixing the freak, raise your hand!" A hundred hands, blinded by terrified loyalty, shot into the air. Lightning smiled evilly. "I thought so. Let's get started, shall we?"

Without warning, he grabbed one of Tails' tails and started pulling. Tails yelled in surprise and pain. Sonic gasped. Never mind the first plan he'd come up with - this was going too far. He had to save Tails.

Sonic felt like the world was in slow motion. He raced through the crowd, barging through teenagers. He arrived at the scene, but didn't stop. Instead, Sonic jumped up in the air then aimed for Lightning, who was watching him in surprise. Sonic shot into the bully as fast as he could manage and knocked him right over, then grabbed his best friend and dragged him away at top speed, not stopping until he realised he had come to the other side of the school. Sonic put Tails down and slowly worked out what had just happened. He looked up to his friend, realising that Tails was staring at him like he had just survived a flaming arrow in the heart. Sonic waved a hand in front of his face. "Are you alright, buddy? Wait, stupid question. Let me rephrase that. Why are you staring at me like I just survived a flaming arrow in the heart?"

Tails blinked a few times. "Sonic, do you seriously not realise how fast you just ran in there?"

Sonic cocked his head to one side. "Well, I went faster than I do normally, even with the whole thing about me being, like, the fastest dude here in Emerald Village. So I'd say about sixty kilometres an hour, maybe a little less."

Tails' eyes practically popped right out of their sockets. "Sonic, you made a freaking sonic boom. You went faster than sound! Actually, it makes sense that you couldn't hear it. The sound couldn't reach your position before you had moved somewhere else. I guess I heard because I was behind you. But seriously, this is nuts. You're defying the laws of nature and physics right now. According to said laws, an object moving at an extreme velocity densifies the particles in it, thus increasing mass. Very fast acceleration like you displayed will create such a sudden increase of the impact of gravity and the three other fundamental forces that if V is the eventual velocity, M is the regular mass and T is the time it took to go from 0 to V, then…"

Sonic zoned out of Tails' scientific ramblings, lost in thought. Denying the laws of physics was pretty overpowered. Could he repeat it? What would happen? He noticed Knuckles, Amy and Shadow coming towards him and snapped out of his complicated thoughts. "I think we lost him and found them!" Amy called to the other two.

"Would you care to explain why you just denied fizzers?" Knuckles asked Sonic, halfway between angry and in awe.

"It's PHYSICS, you knucklehead, and I think that right now our priority is shifting schools," Shadow growled. He turned to Sonic, ignoring Knuckles' complaints about the terrible pun on his name. "Nice stunt, blue, and I know that Lightning deserved it. But did you really have to ensure our spending eternity in torture?"

"Yes," Sonic replied. "And to be honest, I don't really care. If I can deny weight-speed-blah-blah-blah physics, then I can just suck that jerk into a home-made black hole."

"You'd cause the death and destruction of all Mobiankind, Mobius itself, and if this black hole of yours is big enough, possibly the solar system. I don't want to risk crossing an event horizon every time I go to my room to play Angry Chao," Tails pointed out.

Before a conversation about black holes, physics, and Angry Chao high scores broke out, the bell rang, signalling the start of the next lessons. Sonic thought back to his schedule. "Argh. Me, Tails and Shadow have Maths, then History."

Knuckles grinned. "Ha, Amy and myself are gonna enjoy Sport, then Art."

Sonic grabbed Knuckles by the shoulders and shook him like the craziest hedgehog on the planet. "Take me with you!"

"Nah, can't," Amy shrugged. "Suffer in Maths."

The rest of the day passed by in a blur of worksheets, reading and painful-sounding death threats from Lightning. Thankfully, he was given a detention in lunch and after school for accidentally missing Shadow and hitting the teacher with a spit ball. (Whew - crisis averted, thanks to the perfect combination of school law enforcement and lazy writing.) Eventually, the last lesson of the day was ended with the ringing of a school bell and our soon-to-be heroes raced outside. "Hey, do you guys wanna come over to my place?" Tails asked. His friends agreed, and they all walked in the direction of his house. Knuckles, Amy and Shadow ran ahead, but Sonic and Tails hung back a little. "Sonic?" Tails asked. "Thanks for saving my life and my second tail back there."

"No problem, buddy," Sonic grinned back. "That's what friends are for. Especially ones that make boom thingies."

Pushing away any stray thoughts about strange new abilities, Sonic and Tails sprinted to catch up with their friends after a long and tiring day.