Small Stature

Part 24

PoV: Tails

  Everything failed. Every apple I tried to grew blew up in my face. I couldn't figure out an antidote that could slowly increase the apple's size without overdoing it. I sighed as I looked towards the first apple I shrank. I kept it in a jar to watch it overtime. It was a long shot, but I hoped maybe the shrink serum would wear off over time.

"I'm missing something, I have to be," I took a pipette and gently dropped a single drop onto a shrunken apple. It grew a little, then some more, then it cracked open, "Even a drop is too much..."

  It had been weeks, no recipe I tried worked, "I need help figuring this out..."

  I sighed and grabbed all the small apples I could. I bundled up in my winter coat, grabbed the shrink serum, the recipies and-

"Where are you going?" Knuckles had caught me. I saw his eyes glance at the folder with the recipes, "Did you finish it!? Is Sonic going back to normal?"

"No... I can't figure it out so... I'm going to ask Eggman for help," I gripped the folder, "I'm missing something, that's why I can't get the antidote right. I need Eggman to tell me everything he did so I can make an antidote."

"You shouldn't go alone. Eggman might need a little persuading. Let me make some coffee and wake up Amy. You'll need some back up."

"Thanks Knuckles," I waited until Amy was awake enough to avoid hibernating again. Then we left for Eggman's lair.

---

  We snuck in quietly and found him in his lab. He was working on something.

"Oh! Hohoho! This has turned out perfectly." Eggman laughed to himself as he set down a glass cage. That was what he had been building. A new cage to trap Sonic in.

"Eggman!" I ran out and grabbed the cage, "Where's the anitode?"

"What are doing here! What antidote?" He reached for his tools and Knuckles blocked him.

"The antidote for shrinking Sonic!" I held his recipe in front of him, "He needs to go back to normal."

"Why would I make an antidote? I made a serum to remove his soeed, and it worked. The shrinking was an unexpected side effect," he grabbed the recipe from me as I landed, "Sonic will never get his speed back. That small size is an excellent bonus for world domination."

"Of course, you didn't mean to shrink him," I had been making the wrong antidote, "None of your inventions work properly. I'll need an antidote for his speed! Knuckles, Amy, we need to go to Sonic's house."

"Sure Tails, just one thing," Amy took all the small apples from me and set them in the cage, "Hey Eggman," she splashed the shrink serum over him and she shrank down to about the size of a wild rat. His soaked clothing luckily shrank with him, "Now if you want to get bigger," she picked him up and placed him into the cage with the apples, "You have no choice but to help Tails."

"You gumball rodent! How dare you do this to me!" Eggman banged on the glass. We shut the lid and left.

"Thanks Amy, now I have someone who knows the recipe enough to help make an antidote," I lead everyone to Sonic's house. I spent a while searching for every large quill I could find. All containing his original DNA before he was shrunk.

  Now, it was time to get to work.

PoV: Shadow

"You kidnapped Eggman?" I came to the lab right away with Sonic as Tails instructed. There we found a small Eggman in a glass hamster cage.

"Amy did, it was the only way to convince him to make the antidote," Tails explained as I set Sonic down.

"The apples are my size," Sonic had wondered into the pile of small apples Tails had developed.

"Sonic don't eat those. You might get even smaller," Tails moved him away from the apples and he ran towards me.

"I don't wanna get smaller," he clung to my hand as he hissed at the apples.

"Interesting, it's also seemed to change his personality," Eggman had somehow gotten a marker in the cage that he could write with.

"How come his clothes shrunk and not mine? I wanna wear my normal clothes too," Sonic had noticed the one thing I hadn't. Eggman was in his usual outfit.

"That answer is simple, I was drenched with the serum. You ingested it. So my clothing and pocket items all shrank with me. Since the serum was in your blood stream and nothing else. You were the only thing that shrunk. It's also why it took longer, rather than an immediate effect," Eggman was actually explaining what he had done. For once he was being useful.

"I ate it?!" Sonic started tracing back every meal he had ever eaten after that.

"So what is your plan now?" I looked at Tails who was fiddling with chemicals.

"I just wanted to gove Sonic some good news for once. I'll keep working with Eggman a while longer. I'll call you back when the anitode works," Tails set down a white ball on the counter in front of Sonic, "Look familiar Sonic?"

"Is that it? The thing that shrank me?" He looked at it for a while, "Ah! The blueberries! It was in my dinner before I changed..."

"Now we know when you ate it," Tails took it away and cut a slice from a normal apple, "Here, you can snack on this for a while."

"Thanks Tails," Sonic grabbed the apple slice as I picked him up.

"If that was all you needed well be heading back now," I flinched Eggman's cage. The sound only startled him. Pest.

"Yeah, I'll have the antidote soon Sonic," Tails waved goodbye and I chaos controlled us back to the house.

"Shadow!" Sonic had a big smile, "Let's play!"

"You never go a minute without doing something."

  We returned to our routine as soon as we were home.

He won't be around like this once he's normal again. This is going to take some adjusting.

~~~

11/5/21