I received multiple comments on the 'left foot' thingy. In chapter 3, it is mentioned that Tails has quite a big scar there, and from the events in the last chapter, you should be able to deduce that he doesn't really want to talk about it. He has somewhat accepted it over the years, but being reminded of it alone is enough to kill any (happy) mood he might be in. That's why he got so upset when Sonic told him to lose the shoes.I hope that clears things up for some people, I'll answer the rest of the questions at the bottom of the chapter.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic etc, though you already knew that

Amy & Shopping

A little more than an hour later, Amy arrived, and after some chatting and a cup of tea, Sonic went to get Tails. The kit was a little annoyed that Sonic woke him 'already', but that changed when he heard that Amy was here. Sonic lent him a pair of his socks, which he obviously appreciated, and quickly went downstairs.

Well, not as quickly as he hoped he would, as he found out that socks had no grip at all! But still, he was eager to meet Amy, something that amazed all three of them. Then again, the two of them had talked about her more then once, and Tails had more or less set himself to like her from the start.

They talked for a while, with Tails asking what kind of work Amy did, how old she was, and, naturally, what sort of car she had. Amy told him she worked in a beauty salon in town, had just turned sixteen, and that she had absolutely no idea about her car. "It's red and it drives" were her exact words. Vice versa Amy asked him some questions too, but nothing personal or something that might make Tails sad. Sonic had asked her not to do that, so she settled for things like whether he liked the car magazine she had bought for him.

As much as the kit enjoyed talking with her, the real reason she was here was because his fur was still an absolute mess. However, as she began unpacking her bag and more and more tools came out if it, Tails grew worried. With the memory of what happened at breakfast that morning still fresh, Sonic interrupted Amy: "Uhm Amy, don't you think you're overdoing it?"
"I thought you said you wanted his fur to be beautiful?"
"I said I was going to get the tangles out of it, not giving him a makeover. Besides, just take a look at him..."

Amy had been so busy with her tools, she had totally forgotten that Tails was a bit different than her regular customers. She could tell he was scared, like he was expecting her to do something bad to him. "Oh Tails, I'm sorry! I-" was all she could say before Sonic whispered something in her ear. "You should probably put away most of the things you unpacked first, I think he doesn't like them."

She was surprised that what Sonic whispered to her actually worked: the moment the scissor disappeared into the bag, Tails' fear disappeared too. Tails quickly forgave her, saying that he didn't know himself why he grew so scared all of a sudden, as it was very unlikely that Amy was going to do something bad with them. She did not want to think about what that implied, darn, she just did. And Tails said it so innocent, so completely oblivious to the obvious answer. But it was probably better that way, so she let it pass, instead focusing on getting his fur done.

She had sometimes wondered how someone would look like if he didn't do anything about his fur for years. Of course, that sort of people never went to a beauty salon either. However, now that she had her answer, she hoped it would never happen in the future as well. Essentially, Tails was just one big tangle, and even after untangling, hairs kept bending back the way they had been for years. On his head were three tufts of much longer fur that wouldn't stay down at all and constantly sprang up; she gave up on these after a while. The worst were his tails though. She knew from experience that tails were hard to keep completely still, but if the other wasn't moving them on purpose, she could normally hold them still enough. Not with Tails though. They had a will of their own, and his active life had lead to them being much stronger than usual. Even if he tried his hardest to keep them from moving, they would still move away on instinct everytime the brush touched. In the end, Sonic had to help by holding one tail, while keeping the other away from Amy.

Finally, more than an hour and a half later, it was done. Save for his feet and the bandaged part of his arm, the fur on every square inch of his body was now somewhat the way it should be, or at the least much better than it was before. The three tufts of fur on his head she had given up on earlier, actually looked very good now that the whole picture was complete. Tails wasn't really able to describe how he felt about it when he looked in the mirror, but he didn't need to either. He was happy, and trying to thank Amy for all that she was doing for him, but was failing at making sentences.
Amy just patted him on the head, giving him the brush saying that tomorrow, he could do it himself. Tails got his voice back when the brush was more or less pressed into his hands. "But.. But... don't you need a brush for yourself?" Both Sonic and Amy laughed at that, and Amy explained that she had plenty more at home. "And it's full of your hairs now anyway, so keep it."
"Oh... okay. Thank you Amy. But will it take this long tomorrow again?"
"Haha, no. If you do it every morning, it will just take a few minutes. Although... your fur is longer than usual, so if you had a busy day you might need to do it in the evening as well. That reminds me... I have something else for you... wait a moment."
"Amy, what I have told you about buying things for him?" Sonic asked her, while she was rummaging through the bag, and Tails was curiously watching what would come out of it.
"Yeah I know... but... where is it... I wasn't even looking for it... a-ha! There it is!"

Proudly, she held out out a toothbrush. "I needed one myself, so I was searching for my favorite color, when I saw this one. I know you're probably going to teach him to not care about the color just like yourself, but... it just reminded me of him so much." Sonic had to admit, she had a point. There were many colors of toothbrushes, and Sonic never cared which one he bought. And he would learn Tails to not care about something like the color of his toothbrush. But he would also let him choose a color the first few times, and he knew it would be this one.

It was orange-and-white, exactly Tails' colors.
"Alright, if he likes it as well he can keep it" Sonic said.
"It's... it's exactly my color!" Tails exclaimed, and Amy had to giggle. Tails obviously liked it, and while he inspecting it more closely, Sonic quietly told Amy that 'it would come in handy tonight'.

After a minute or so though, it fell quiet. Sonic knew that the kit would never ask if he could go and do something else, especially with Amy around, but it was clear that his attention span had long expired. "It's alright Tails. Go do something you like, Amy and I will be here if you need us."

He read some more in his magazine, and soon, Amy announced that she had to go home again. They wished each other goodbye and all that, and then they were alone again. Which meant that he could finally take those itching socks off! He liked Amy, he really did, but he was also glad that she was gone, as peace and quiet returned to the house again.

Sonic normally never cooked on Sundays, but although it was bitterly cold last week, he hadn't really cooked much because he didn't want to let Tails smell it, and also because he just didn't feel like it. He was craving a good warm meal right now, and since Tails wasn't showing any signs of his breakfast coming up, he decided he would just take the chance. The moment he started working on it, Tails was immediately right beside him. The kit was too small to see what he was doing, which was quickly solved by getting a table chair, making him just as big as Sonic when he stood on it.

Half an hour later, two plates were served. Both had rice, green beans, and part of a hamburger on it, in the same ratios. The only difference was that Sonic's part of the hamburger was three times as big as Tails'. And there wasn't any sauce, because even though Amy had just done shopping, Sonic's way of organizing the food in the garage, or rather the complete lack thereof, meant he hadn't put it on the list. It didn't matter. Plain rice wasn't too bad either, especially when sitting opposite someone who was clearly in heaven by it.

After dinner, Sonic told him to go and play with the cars, he didn't have to help yet with the dishes. At some point, Tails suddenly remembered that Sonic had an idea to find out about the supercar he had seen long ago, but since Sonic was still busy, he waited patiently. This didn't go unnoticed by Sonic of course.

"You want to ask something Tails?"
"Yes. But you're still busy so I'll wait until you're finished."
"There's nothing wrong with asking, remember?"
"Well okay. I just remembered you said something yesterday about the supercar, I think you said you knew a way that maybe we could find out what it was, but I'm not sure..."
Sonic paused for a moment, recollecting when he had said that. "I did? Ohyeah, I remember now. Just let me finish this first and then we'll do that okay?"

A few minutes later (and then some more because Sonic's computer was old and slow), he had succeeded in getting a browser window open. Tails usually remembered things quite well, and Sonic had thought that the answer would be just a few searches away. However, it had been so long ago now... Tails didn't remember that much, and was only absolutely sure that it was red. Not very specific, and going through various lists and sites of manufacturers didn't turn up anything either. After an hour or so of fruitless browsing, Sonic was afraid that this wasn't going to work after all. There were just too many brands, and even more pictures of red cars on the internet. About the only thing they did establish was that in any case, it had certainly not been a Lamborghini. And on the Ferrari website were some cars that looked quite like it, but weren't it as well. Currently, they were browsing through a site with tons of images of practically every above-average car on Mobius. There were a hundred images per page, and they were already at page 22 of... 583 total.
"Tails, we'll do one more page, if it's not on there, we stop for today okay?"
That made Tails a little sad. For so long, he wanted to know what it was that he had seen, and this might be his only chance to. "Hey don't worry.
If it's not there, I'll save it so that we can continue where we left off another time?"
"O-okay Sonic," Tails sniffed, hoping that the next page, it would really be there.

It was there. Fourth row, third image. Upon seeing the picture, it all came back to him, especially the huge spoiler. It was exactly like he remembered, this was it! "Whoa whoa Tails, which one are you pointing to? And you don't even know what it's called yet." Tails suppressed his excitement for a brief moment, pointing his finger towards a thumbnail picture of the rear of a car.

When Sonic hovered the mouse over to the picture in question, and then clicked it, the kit's eyes were literally fixated onto the screen. Slowly, row by row, a big version of the image was loading, and with every row, more and more details became visible. First the spoiler, then the round rear lights, and finally the triple exhaust in the middle. Scrolling down for a bit revealed the car's name: Ferrari F40. There were some stats as well, like the 201 mile-an-hour top speed, and that only 1315 were ever made. It was a very rare car, and Tails had been very lucky to have ever seen one in real life outside of a museum.

While he was happy for Tails to have finally found out the truth behind what was probably one of the few happy memories the kit had, it didn't take away the fact that they had been through the entire Ferrari website twice that evening, and Tails didn't recognize it there. Now it was his turn to be the one wanting to find something out. Lucky for him, it didn't take nearly as long as Tails' quest, and pretty soon, he read that the F40 had pop-up headlights. Tails was quite sure that when he saw it, it didn't have them up, no wonder he couldn't recognize it, as all the pictures on the Ferrari website did have them up, and gave the car quite a different look.

With that mystery solved, they continued to watch an episode of The A-Team. It had been a while since he last saw them, he liked how simple it was compared to current TV series. Tails on the other hand, wasn't really able to follow it. To him, they were all bad guys, and he couldn't understand why anyone would find so much violence fun to watch.

Halfway through, after a particularly large explosion that visibly scared Tails, Sonic decided it was enough. It just wasn't his cup of tea, and without a word, he went back to playing with the toy cars. Sonic was glad to see that half an hour later, when it was 9 and thus bedtime for the kit, his cute little smile was back, signifying that he was happy again.

According to Tails, brushing his teeth (or at least, the ones bullies hadn't 'volunteered' to 'remove' yet) felt weird. Sonic just said that, like many other things, he would have to get used to it. "Normal people do it twice a day" he added, knowing that the word 'normal' made Tails accept things without further questions.

Tails did say that he didn't feel very tired yet, so Sonic said that if he wanted, he could read some more in his magazine before going to sleep, as long as he stayed in his bed. An hour later, after watching the other half of the episode they started on, and then another one, Sonic too called it a day. Back in his room, he saw that Tails had already fallen asleep, the lights were still on, and the magazine was still lying in his bed. Careful not to wake him, Sonic removed the magazine, folded it close and put it on the nightstand. He whispered Tails goodnight, and although the kit stirred and murmured something incomprehensible, he kept on sleeping.

The next morning, after another delicious breakfast, Sonic announced that today, they would go shopping to buy him some basic and necessary things.
And he knew exactly what that meant: town. He hadn't been there for a whole week now, and even though he had been sick most of the time, it had been the best week of his life. He didn't want to go back to the place where all the people who bothered him also were. What if they saw him? Orange-and-white was never the most camouflaging combination anywhere, and especially not now that it was clean.

But Sonic left him no choice, the only choice he was allowed to make was which sweater he would wear on the way up. It was still freezing cold outside, and a fresh pack of snow had fallen during the night, but being inside for a week had made Tails a little overconfident. Besides, he was going to do everything in his power to get Sonic's mind away from going to town, so he hoped that refusing to wear a sweater at all would buy him time. And they also wouldn't need to buy him a jacket. Not only had he survived without one this far, it would also mean less time in town.

What he didn't count on however, was that although Sonic was nice and didn't hurt him, he was also not exactly subtle. If Tails didn't need a jacket, that was fine according to him. They were still going to buy the rest of the things anyway, so he told Tails to wait for a moment while he put his bike outside.

With the newly fallen snow, only the main roads had been cleared, so they had to walk the first few hundred yards. It was ice-cold outside, his feet were soaked again, and the wind made it feel twice as cold still. But he wasn't going to admit that to Sonic, instead complaining about his cold feet, and constantly falling behind in an effort to slow Sonic down. It worked at first, but very soon, Sonic began to get annoyed, which made him just continue in his usual pace, and Tails constantly having to catch up.

When they came to the main road ten minutes later, Sonic got on his bike and motioned for Tails to get on the back. Tails just stood there, shaking his head. Surely Sonic wouldn't just leave him out here?

Wrong. Sonic had absolutely had it with the kit constantly trying to slow him down. "Fine, have it your way. See you in town then, because I'm not going to stand around in the cold here all day." And without so much as another word or glance his way, Sonic cycled off.

At first, Tails didn't believe him. He was absolutely sure that any moment now, Sonic would stop and turn around. But Sonic didn't, and with every passing second, his silhouette became smaller and smaller... And he never looked back, making Tails feel very empty all of a sudden. The only friend he ever had, was leaving him, and if he didn't do something soon, he would lose him forever. At long last, he let his emotions overpower his stubbornness, and cried out Sonic's name, begging him to come back.

In his mind, Sonic was already gone, maybe he wouldn't turn around even if he did hear him. It wasn't until he heard Sonic's familiar voice that he knew he had come back for him after all. And even then, Sonic wasn't being the nice person he became to like so much over the past few days.

"See Tails, this is what happens if you don't listen to what I say."
"You would... l... leave m-me?" Tails asked, still crying.
"No. I would never do that, I promised. I would have stopped when I was out of sight and waited for you there. But I think you've learned your lesson, don't you?" Sonic said, still not in a very nice tone. With sad eyes, Tails nodded. "Now, are you going to be a good kit and not complain, slow me down, or in general be annoying today anymore?" Sonic was essentially giving him a second chance, and Tails knew he should take it for granted, be happy that he got that chance at all. Sniffing loudly, he said he would do so. "Good. Now get on the bike." Sonic commanded him.

Tails was very quiet the rest of the way. He was thinking about how a week ago, he had wanted Sonic to go away, and how that now already was one of the worst things that could happen. He didn't know whether Sonic was mad at him, because although he hadn't hurt him in the way bullies did, it still... hurt. Inside. Different. All determination to pretend not being bothered by the cold had vanished as well. He was openly chattering his teeth, and he had never agreed more quickly to something than when Sonic randomly asked him whether he might want a jacket after all.

Soon, they were in the much-feared town, and despite having been so stern earlier, Sonic said that he could hold his hand if he wanted. While it didn't make a night-and-day difference, it still made him feel a lot safer. Pretty soon after that, he was wearing red-and-white shoes that were actually watertight, a blue jacket that was nice and warm, and new gloves. Especially his shoes felt weird, but Sonic had said that was normal with new shoes. His old gloves and shoes were in the box of the new ones; he just couldn't throw them away, at least not yet, and he was relieved that Sonic allowed him that. In various other bags were slippers, and more gloves.

They were just walking towards the next store, when he suddenly noticed a group of bullies across the street, and froze. Sonic immediately turned towards him, and started saying something about what Tails had promised after the little incident on the way up, but stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the kit's worried face.
"What is it, Tails?"
"T-there. A-across the street." Tails stammered.
"Where?"
"B-blue store." The only store matching that description, was a phone shop. In front of it were 5 or 6 people, looking at the various items on display.
To reach their own destination, they would have to walk right past them.
"You know these people?" Sonic asked, already knowing the answer.
"Y-yes... b-bullies..."
"Okay let's just go inside this store then and wait till they're gone." It was a good thing Sonic took a better look at what he was about to walk into, because tense as the situation may be, a girl's lingerie store was really the last place he wanted to be in. Next door was a store selling household items, he didn't really need anything there, but at least it would be less awkward.

Actually, they did need something there after all. While pretending to be interesting browsing through... stuff, Sonic remembered how Tails couldn't reach the kitchen sink at all, and that there was a similar problem with the sink in the bathroom. So he bought two of those cheap stools for Tails to stand on.

When they came out again ten minutes later, the bullies that had been standing in front of the phone shop were gone. They looked at pyjamas too, but there weren't any that really interested Tails, and he really liked the ones from Amy, even if they were pink. It wasn't like anybody besides Sonic saw him wearing them anyway, although he would have to ask Amy where she got them from the next time she visited. They managed to find him a nice shawl too, and since they now had everything that was really needed on short notice, they started walking back towards Sonic's bike. As they walked past a toy store, Sonic got an idea, but before he could even mention it, Tails had already spoken.
"Sonic? W-why did we stop?"
"Have you ever been inside one of those before?" Sonic asked, pointing to the store. He gave a gasp of awe: he had never been in a toy store before, at least not that he could remember, but he didn't really need to go there right now. He had kept his promise of not being annoying, or resist when Sonic said they were going somewhere, but he was tiring, and more than anything, he just wanted to go home. "N-no... b-but Sonic? Can we go home now, p-please?"

There was a small pause before Sonic answered, deciding what it was going to be. "Alright little buddy, let's go home."

A few minutes later, he was on the back of the bike again, holding the stools and shoebox, while the rest of the bags hang on the steer. He didn't have to chatter his teeth to keep warm this time, as the jacket, shoes and gloves took care of that for him. Soon, they were walking the last few hundred yards to the house, and Tails built up the courage to apologize for his appalling behavior earlier today. Sonic accepted them and said that while he had hoped it wouldn't have come so far, he had to admit that after that, Tails had behaved very well, even in town. If Tails would just cooperate without making a scene first the next time, then according to him, the subject was closed and he would let the kit off without any further punishment. He said he would do so, but asked if he could hold Sonic's hand again then, explaining that it made him feel a lot safer. Of course he could.

Relieved that he had set things right with Sonic, tiredness again overtook him. Luckily, it was only a minute more before they were back in the house, where he just lay down on the first somewhat soft place that met his eye. Which happened to be the long-haired rug near the TV, which was currently being sunbathed through the window, so it even was somewhat warm.

As Sonic came back from parking his bicycle back in the garage and was about to call out as to why Tails had so unceremoniously dumped his brand new jacket in the middle of the hallway, he heard soft snoring coming from the living room. Curious to find out where that came from, he found the kit in question all curled up on the rug in the sunlight. His head was buried into his tails, and by the sound of it, he was asleep.

He just couldn't get it over his heart to wake him, so he let him be and tidied up the hallway himself.

Q&A:

UKsLaster: I'm originally Dutch, but apart from day-to-day conversation, I do just about everything in English. I'm aware that some of the grammar is not exactly what it should be, blame Google Translate for that. I needed the slow pace in the beginning, but I will pick that up starting next one, as well as focus more on events outside the house.

Eli Swafford: Yes, I'm absolutely, 100 percent, completely sure that this is my first fanfic...

Tails is FLUFFY: You already got your answer at the top. And your idea about a toy car definitely gave me inspiration on how to tie certain things together.

Guest: I do not plan to lead this into Sonic 2, or any other game for that matter. In other words: consider it AU. About your other thing: we'll just have to see about that.

As a closing remark, I just want to say thanks to all the reviewers, you are a great motivation to keep me going, even if I don't update as often as I aimed for. Until the next time~