Hyperdrive, a Tails fanfic

Jump To Lightspeed (Tails)

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I asked Falco as we boarded the minicruiser he'd taken.

"As sure as you've got an extra tail," he confirmed. "Lusius'll be fine."

He launched out of the hangar. Fox was waiting for us. "Comms check," he said. "You here, Falco?"

"Yep."

"This looks like a mess..."

Fox was right. There were shuttles and escape pods pouring out of every available space on the Saturn.

"So what do we do?" I said to Fox.

"We just wait. I think I can see Lu right now."

Then the Saturn started turning towards Eggman's ship.

"What's she doing?" Falco asked.

Fox sighed. "She said she had the entire ship wired when she took command, so she could hear everything we said. Including Lusius's comment about hyperspace-ramming something. She's probably been contemplating that idea this whole time. That's why she evacuated the ship. She didn't want anyone else to go with her..."

"Are you trying to tell us she's been a good guy this whole time?" I was confused.

"No. But she's not as crazy as we thought. At least not in one way. She's still crazy, though."

The ship stopped moving. We felt a soft rattling through our own, which must have been Lusius (maybe Fox told him we weren't on the Saturn or something). I was waiting to see what Sally was doing.

She jumped to lightspeed.

You may have been expecting a dramatic scene where Sally's ship slices Eggman's in half or something, but no.

Both her ship and Eggman's just collided, rather normally except for the high speed.

"Full forward deflector shields across all connected ships, everyone!" I yelled.

Falco pushed them to maximum just in time.

A blue, fiery wave washed over us at thousands of miles per hour, rocking the entire ship and increasing the internal temperature by several degrees.

When we looked back at where Eggman's ship had been, there was just nothing. Emptiness. Maybe a few random bits of space junk.

"What just happened?" Falco said to me.

"Fusion reaction," I started to explain. "The speed Sally hit Eggman's ship at initiated several at the contact points, and it went catastrophic."

"That's what the shields were for... but how did everyone else survive?" (What Falco hadn't noticed is that I'd switched us to public communications for that order.)

Not wanting to deal with making Falco angry because something slipped past him, I gave him a simple response. "I guess they had the same idea as me. We'll never know."

Realizing Lusius hadn't joined us in the cockpit, I dropped everything I'd grabbed from our temporary quarters and sprinted to the docking collar on our ship. What happened to him? I wondered. I was starting to panic. I hope he's alright...

The door opened as I got close to it. I almost flew into Lusius's shuttle. He was lying on the floor next to the pilot's seat, face-up.

I dropped to my knees next to him. "Lusius?" I asked. "You here?"

No response. I could see him breathing. I gave him a gentle shake. "Lu?"

"...can somebody get me out of this stupid suit?" I couldn't tell if he was smiling and laughing or grimacing and coughing. "It feels so tight for some reason now..."

I helped him to his feet. He almost threw himself at me in a gigantic hug. I could feel tears dripping onto my cheek. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he told me. "I'm just so happy you're still alive. I thought you were still on that ship..."

I felt my feet lift off the ground. "I can tell," I said. "But can you put me down?"

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was strong enough to pick you up..."

I ran back to the cockpit and grabbed his hoodie, as well as my own. "Here." I tossed his to him. "Cockpit's at the front, I'll be in there." I changed into mine on the other side of the door (Lu was right, those suits really are tight) and went to join Falco at the front.

Lu came in a second later. "Much better. I'm about ready to fall asleep again in this..."

"What happened on that ship?" Falco asked.

"Nothing too exciting. Managed to give myself a controlled adrenaline rush—you remember I figured out how to do that, right Tails?—and sustained it for long enough to deal with Infinite. I found his weakness, he can't control your mind as easily as I thought. He has to know exactly what he's trying to infiltrate, which in my case would of course be fur and whatever those flight suits are made of. I just put my fingers out and let the pads on their tips catch the cubes. It made it really easy to take out Shadow and caught Infinite off-guard. From there it was just a matter of moving faster than he could react, and I knocked him out. I... I guess he's gone now?"

"Yep," I confirmed. "And maybe Shadow too, but he's been presumed dead before..."

"Where's Fox?"

"He was worried Sally was going to attack us," I explained. "Better safe than sorry..."

"Fair enough. Now can we go home?"

"Sure." I took my seat next to Falco.