A Broken Bond

6. Second Attempt

Tails slowly opens his eyes to find himself lying on a bed. His vision is blurry, but soon begins to clear up as he notices a blood bag hanging on a stand on his left, with its hose connected to his left arm through a needle. He veers his head to the right and notices a machine that monitors one's vitals; namely blood pressure, heartbeat rate, and temperature. But before that, he also notices his friends—Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Silver, and Blaze—gathering in a circle right across his bed and appearing to be discussing something which Tails couldn't make a word of. Above them, a clock on the wall reads out 9:12 PM. Tails then meekly addresses his friends when a sharp headache appears out of nowhere.

"O-ow... wh-where am I? What are you guys doing here?"

"Oh, hey Tails. How are you-" Knuckles said before he was interrupted by Amy.

"YOU... you heartless little maniac!" Amy shouted as she produces her giant hammer and approaches Tails' bed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey! Stop! STOP!" The red guardian shouted as well, attempting to restrain the pink hedgehog with the help of the others. This caused a loud scene which can be heard over to the other rooms. Seeing this, Tails scoots even further back on his bed, now sitting upright against it, confused and fearful for what will happen next.

"If you ever come anywhere near him again, I'll... I'LL...!" Amy becomes emotional, finding it difficult to even finish her threatening sentence. She then breaks away from everyone's restraining holds and runs for the exit whilst uncontrollably sobbing as she slams the door shut on her way out.

"Uhh... what's going on?" Tails asked, his memory still slightly hazy.

Blaze lets outs a worried sigh before filling in the blanks for Tails who still seemed to be recovering. "Tails... Sonic's in a really bad shape. The doctors said he's got a lot of fractures and internal bleeding and he's gonna have to go through surgery tomorrow."

"Yeah, man. How could you do this to him? I thought he meant the whole world to you," said Silver.

"H-huh? What are you-" Tails stopped. His memory finally clicked as he remembers how he got here in the first place. "Oh yeah, the fight! How did that go?" Tails asked, prompting a shocked and disappointed look from everyone around him.

"W-what? That's all you care about? You nearly killed your buddy back there!" Knuckles sternly told Tails.

"He's not my buddy. Now tell me-" Tails stopped again. Another thought crossed his mind, one that he isn't going to find very pleasing. "Wait, if I ended up here too, that means-"

"It's a draw," Rouge immediately cuts in.

"Aww, come on! Really!? I beat him fair and square! He went down first!" Tails lamented.

"Well, at least everyone else says it's a draw. I mean, for Chaos' sake, Tails! You were all over the news! Literally everyone knows about the fight! What made you think it was a good idea, anyway!?" Knuckles berated.

"I wanted to show everyone I'm not a wimp! Sonic thinks I am and now, he's got what was coming to him for a long time!"

Silver then rejected Tails' account of the conflict. "No way! Sonic would never see you in that kinda light! All he wanted was for you to be safe and you made this entire thing even worse!"

"Ugh, no! The reason he put me off is because he thinks I'm weak when I've been dedicating years of my life fighting by his side! In fact, if he wanted me to be safe, then how come he did this to me, huh!?" Tails argued, pointing to his left arm, his fur yet to grow and still bandaged with a fresh, new set of bandages since the old one was scuffled and torn during the fight. "He nearly blew my arm off at one point! This isn't the first time we did this!"