King For A Day

“Home Again.”

By Asher Tye

Matt Lans: I hope Prince Miles does not disappoint. I tried to make him a mixture of Tails, Sally, and Elias, but with only a few paragraphs, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until his full story comes out to be properly introduced to him.

Taranea: Really? Every time she appeared in the comics I could almost swear she had a katana with her… or maybe I’m confused as to what exactly katana is (I understand there are a number of Japanese swords and only one of them is actually called a katana). And as far as Tails’s near transformation, that actually links back to my “Prophecy” story. As to your question, originally I used asterisks to differentiate between speech and thought, then for some reason began removing them every time I uploaded and I couldn’t get them back. The ampersand was the first symbol that actually stuck, so it got nominated as a replacement. And to answer your question as to the future for Squire Sonic and Prince Miles, I never said they would stop being friends, merely that they would no longer have the ability to hang together for extended periods of time. Unfair but true considering the paths their lives are now taking, but I assure you they would remain friends.

Kilo1055: Glad you liked it. Hope this final chapter satisfies.

Arcane Emotions: They only had a few billion universes to search through, the odds were good they’d find him sooner or later… and some day I’ll win at poker with a royal flush.

Anthony Bault: Beats me, I never got to play FFVI. It has been a good run. I’m glad you liked the story.

Peach the Hedgehog: Here you go then, enjoy.

Playstation14: I must admit to liking Valnin a lot. I may even include him in my main story plot, though how I’ll introduce someone like Valnin into a story like that is going to be interesting.

Angelus-alvus: Nuts, I was hoping it wouldn’t be so obvious. Thanks for all the reviews, it’s been a real ego boost reading them.

Raziel777: Enjoy the debut of Prince Miles Elias Prower the First.

Tails was nearly crushing his own organs as he squatted down as far as he could go into the throne, his eyes closed as he anticipated the sudden gasps of astonishment that would follow his rejection at the judgment of the Crown of Acorns.

“It’s all right Tails, the crisis is over,” the familiar voice of his Uncle Merlin suddenly said. Cautiously opening one eye, Tails found himself staring at Nilrem instead, back to wearing the same costume he’d used to fool both Sonic and himself on Mobius Prime. Next to him, a friendly smile on his face, stood a fox that was almost a complete copy of Tails himself; the real Prince Miles, who stood wearing a pair of white gloves, no shoes, a black jacket, and a rather large medallion around his neck.

“Pardon me good sir, but I believe you are sitting in my seat,” the two tailed fox said in a voice that spoke of a good-humored relief. Careful so as not to touch the crown, which had been stopped only inches above his head, Tails slid off of the throne and stood before the Prince. Immediately Miles began to walk around Tails, looking him over from head to toe.

“What?” Tails asked, suddenly very self-conscious.

“Amazing, simply amazing…” the Prince replied in astonishment. “I must say I wasn’t completely sure when Officer Zonic first told me about you, but this is almost like looking into some sort of three dimensional mirror.” Miles then turned back to Nilrem. “And you say there are more of these counterparts in other universes?”

“An infinite number, your highness, or so the theorists who study the multiverse’s intrinsic nature say,” Nilrem said, “and all with an equal number of variable personalities, traits, and allegences. Fortunately, this one was available and a good enough Samaritan to agree to take on this somewhat difficult task.” Miles turned back to Tails, suddenly solemn as he bowed at the waist before his doppelganger.

“I thank you for your services, from the bottom of my… umph!”

“YOU’RE BACK!” an elated blue hedgehog said as he suddenly swept up the true Prince in a mad embrace. Behind him, Zonic and Sonic(1) also ascended to the platform’s top.

“It didn’t seem right for him not to share in the moment,” Zonic explained to Nilrem’s quizzical expression. “I mean, he was an awful lot of help during this whole fiasco.”

“True enough, true enough,” Nilrem admitted as Sonic(2) put his best buddy back on the ground. Miles’s attention suddenly drifted to Sonic(1) as he walked over to the black hedgehog.

“Am I to take it that you are the counterpart to my Sonic from my own counterpart’s reality?” Miles asked.

“Yep, couldn’t leave him alone so I decided to tag along.”

“How strange that you would be black,” Miles mused as he took in the familiar but different form before him.

“Black?” Sonic(1) asked before remembering the body paint he’d been wearing for so long. “Oh right this stuff.” Sonic(1) removed one of his shoes, showing that his feet were indeed cobalt blue. “Just a way to keep from being noticed.”

“Then it appears I owe you too my deepest thanks. Without the two of you, my Kingdom, indeed my entire world would have been lost,” Miles said, bowing once more to both the fox and the hedgehog. “And it appears I once again owe thanks to you as well Sonic,” the royal fox said as he turned back to his friend. “Thanks to your instincts and judgment, these two were helped rather than hindered as they carried on their kind charade.”

“Meh, it wasn’t anything special, big guy, just another day,” Sonic(2) said. Then his eyes widened as a thought occurred to him. “By the way, what was it like in the other reality you got sent to?”

“A little weird and more than a little frightening, actually,” Miles admitted. “I wound up on a Mobius where sentience did not develop amongst our kind, only these odd Overlanders with five fingers on each hand. They thought I was some sort of oddity more for my intelligence than my appearance and wanted to study me, but I wound up helping them resolve some difficulties with an alien race that was causing problems called the Xorda. When Zonic found me, they were actually holding a parade in my honor because I helped to end the war between the two.” To emphasize this point, Prince Miles held up the medal he was wearing.

“Ha, only a Prower could pull off being a stranger in a strange land and still be an honored hero,” Tails said. Suddenly, a beeping sound began to emanate from the folds of Nilrem’s robe.

“I hate to break up this touching little get together, but I’m afraid N.I.K.O.L.E. will be unable to keep up the time freeze for much longer. We’ll need to leave in a few moments or we’ll have some rather unpleasant questions to answer.”

“Right. Tails, you’re gonna need to give Miles your clothes. It wouldn’t do for him to appear to suddenly have changed his outfit.” Obediently Tails carefully stripped off the finery he’d worn as Miles did the same, albeit somewhat less enthusiastically than his prime counterpart. For a few brief moments, Miles looked at the medal that had formerly been hanging around his neck, a forlorn expression on his face.

“I suppose I’ll have to give this up with the rest of my new things, won’t I?” he asked sadly as Zonic reached out and took the golden disk.

“I’m sorry your highness, but artifacts from other realities can cause problems, particularly in hub universes,” the perpendicular hedgehog said. “As it stands, we’ll have to retrieve the shoes that were taken from you by your hosts before they cause a problem.”

“Hhhhh, I understand, though it would have made an interesting souvenir of my adventure,” Miles said as he began to wiggle his way into the clothing Tails had previously worn. It proved to be marginally difficult, the young Freedom Fighter really was slimmer in frame than the Monarch-To-Be, but nothing ripped or tore, so a little smoothing out was all it took to make the outfit presentable again.

“Okay, N.I.K.O.L.E. is going to return the flow of time to this reality and Zonic and I will use our field generators to cloak our presence from the crowd so we can make our exit.”

“Guess this is good-bye kid,” Sonic(2) said as he gave Tails a light punch to the shoulder. “For what it’s worth, you were a pretty decent Prince Miles while you were here.”

“Thanks. It was kinda fun seeing what the world was like before… my world’s unpleasantness,” Tails said. “And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again. Sonic’s bad counterparts show up in our reality enough, a good one might be a nice change of pace.”

“Tails, our train’s leaving,” Sonic(1) called from where he stood at the bottom of the platform with Zonic and Nilrem. Tails bounded down the stairs, waving good-bye to his new, yet oddly familiar, friends. Sonic(2) shot a thumbs up to Prince Miles as the young royal took his seat on the throne before returning to the still frozen crowd himself. Already the assembled Mobians were starting to move again as Zonic held up a device that looked oddly like a garage door opener. Pushing its button, a bright door of white light suddenly opened up in the wall in front of them. Sonic(1), Zonic, and Nilrem moved through the portal, with Tails hanging back long enough to hear the sound of the crowd beginning to clap.

“Lords and Ladies, it is now my pleasure to present to you your new Crown Prince; Miles Elias Prower the First!”

“I remember the trip there being somewhat shorter… or at least less time consuming,” Sonic said as Nilrem’s inter-reality ship landed on what the once more blue hedgehog could only assume was Mobius Prime.

“We were in a hurry before, and fuel cells are very expensive, so this time I chose to conserve,” Nilrem explained.

“Giving no thought to the fact that from our friend’s perspective, we’ve both been missing for two weeks.”

“Sonic, Sonic, Sonic, give me more credit than that. I made sure before we left to leave plenty of notice that ‘Merlin’ was going to take his nephew on something of a field trip to South Island and that Sonic just happened to tag along for the ride,” the elder fox said as he opened the door to his ship, revealing that the trio were indeed on Mobius-firma.

“What if my Uncle hadn’t played along?”

“Trust me Tails, he strikes me as someone who knows when important events are going on around him.” Tails and Sonic quickly exited the ship which was once more camouflaged to look like Merlin Prower’s house. “Now, then, it has been a trying two weeks for all of us. I would suggest you two go do something relaxing and enjoyable while you still have the leisure to do it. As to me, I’m going to return this ship and then take a nice long nap so I can turn a few of my new gray hairs back to red.” With that, Nilrem shut the door to the cottage and left Sonic and Tails to themselves.

“You know keed, that sounds like a plan,” Sonic said as he turned to his two-tailed partner. “Whaddya say we go grab some chilidogs and relax over a movie?”

“Sounds most excellent, big bro,” Tails said as he latched onto Sonic just in time for the hedgehog race off at full speed. At one of the windows of the cottage, the aged face of “Nilrem” watched the two take off, a tired smile on his face. Inside, the façade of a perpendicular ship had disappeared, replaced by the cottage’s normal comfy interior, complete with a nice big armchair near the fireplace. With a few exhausted steps, “Nilrem” walked over and unceremoniously plopped himself down in the comfortable chair, a sigh of relief escaping his lips. A finger gestured lazily at the fireplace, igniting the wood therein to cast a gentle glow about the room. Before the fox mage could fall asleep, however, the sound of a throat being cleared came from right beside him.

“Hello Zonic,” Merlin said in an unsurprised voice at the hedgehog that stood beside him at a truly odd angle.

“Chief Acorn sent me to convey our thanks for your help in resolving the crisis we were facing,” said Zonic.

“It wasn’t a problem, I happen to have a soft-spot for that particular universe, so it was my pleasure to help.”

“I’d have to wonder if you’d have felt the same way if Tails Prime had been hurt while impersonating the Prince,” Zonic said, a hint of concern in his voice that all Sonics seemed to get in regards to any Tails. “There was a very real chance he could have been hurt, and you would have been the one who sent him there.” Merlin let out a tired laugh.

“You spend far too much time playing the hero rather than observing the world… or in your case the worlds, around you. It’s something of a character flaw amongst you blue, highspeed hedgehogs, albeit not a terrible one. I hold great faith that there are few dangers outside of this universe that my dearest nephew would not prove more than a match for.”

“He almost transformed on Garivald, did you notice?” Zonic continued. “What would you have done, I wonder, had he fully completed his transformation? I somehow doubt that reality would have survived.”

“You worry far more than any other Sonic counterpart I’ve encountered, do you realize that, and that includes the one from Litigopolis,” Merlin said as he finally turned his head to face Zonic. “Everything moved as the Ancient Walkers predicted. Tails was able to keep that reality from collapsing upon itself and you were in turn able to save Prince Miles from losing his crown. I’d say that, given the stakes, scaring that half-witted badger and his spider for a few seconds was a more than acceptable price to pay.”

“So the ends justify the means?”

“An interesting analysis from someone who basically tricked my Sonic into killing one of his own father’s counterparts,” Merlin said. Unable to respond to this, Zonic just stood still. “In any event, you are welcome. Now if you don’t mind, I would like a few hours of peace and quiet in which to take a nap.” So saying, Merlin closed his eyes.

“You do realize that that argument goes out the window if either of those two realize you don’t possess a counterpart in the Perpendicular Reality… or any reality for that matter,” Zonic said in what could best be described as an attempt to get the last word. Instead of a response to his statement, however, all the inter-dimensional hedgehog heard was the soft sound of snoring. Sensing that he was no longer wanted, Zonic turned and left through his own portal, never noticing that the moment he had turned to leave, the elder Fox’s eyes had opened again as he continued to contemplate the fire before him.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&THE END

Roll Credits to the tune of “We Are Tails and Sonic”

[[As the song ends, the camera iris opens up to reveal both Sonic and Tails standing before it.

Sonic: [[Still staring at audience and smiling Say g’night Tails.

Tails: [[Smiling innocently G’night Tails.

Sonic: [[Lightly striking Tails on the head with his fist as he lets out a short chuckle You dork.

[[Tails continues to smile and throws up a peace sign with a hand as the camera irises out.