This is a Tails/Marine one-shot requested by "Bureizu za Vampire". Personally, I was hoping to get through my entire FFN career without writing a romance fic; that idea certainly didn't last long! XD

Here we go; on with the show!


Miles Prower, otherwise known by his nickname "Tails", is a seventeen year-old two-tailed golden-coloured fox, an inventor and a genius in his own right. He has created countless inventions, possibly his most famous being the first Chaos Emerald detector. His source of income is selling said inventions to curious clients, earning him a fortune in royalties. This happens to be a very useful source of income, as his hobby is inventing things anyway. He has many good friends, including the world-famous Sonic the Hedgehog, who is like his brother. All in all, Tails has a pretty good life and always has a positive outlook on it.

"ARRG! DAMN IT!"

Or perhaps "always" should be changed to "almost always". That rule doesn't seem to apply when one of his inventions goes wrong and decides to drop the glass casing surrounding it on his head.

Tails growled a few choice words as he rubbed the sore part of his head. He then bent over and pushed the glass cylinder of the TCCV1 Teleportation Activation Devise back upwards into its slit in the ceiling until it locked into place.

See, Tails was hard at work at his new invention: a device that would create a timed version of Chaos Control. The theory went like this: instead of the machine powering a regular Chaos Control, it would teleport the subject to any spot, but would leave a small part-

Oh wait, you say you know about this already? Okay then, I'll spare you the details.

But anyway, back to Tails, who was yelling at an inanimate object for the third time today:

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PIECE OF JUNK! THE PLANS WERE PERFECT! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?"

On cue, his Computer answered him.

"More power needed for activation. Suggested action: re-route the attracted Chaos energy when Aura is split into energy filter to power devise with more efficiency."

"So, are you telling me to use the exhaust of a car as extra fuel? That's impossible, you would save more energy letting the exhaust go to waste than trying to compress it into an liquid-gas or ionized state," Tails explained to his Computer.

"This is Chaos Energy, not gasoline," the Computer responded.

"It's an analogy, the same principles are involved."

The Computer did not respond.

Tails sighed. "Is there any other course of action we can take?"

"The chances of obtaining enough energy to power the TCCV1 without Chaos Emeralds or Master Emerald and without using a Chaos filter is exactly zero percent," the Computer said in a monotone voice.

"You know, you're very helpful aren't you?" Tails said sarcastically. "I wonder why I even created you, all we do is argue."

"Past Miles Prower has previously set up recording to explain to Future Miles Prower why I was created," the Computer stated. "Starting record now."

Tails then heard his own voice coming from The Computer's speakers: "You created The Computer to have an intellectual rival to argue with. Do not dismantle it under any circumstances."

"I don't remember saying that," Tails said. "In fact, that sounds like a bunch of sound bytes from me pasted together into a phrase I never said. It sounds like a computer trying to save itself from my wrath."

The Computer didn't respond.

Tails continued, "Eventually I'm going to take the Conscience Core out of you, you know. You're so annoying to have around at work. Why did I ever give you a Conscience Core in the first place?"

The Computer didn't respond.

"Okay, okay. I'll revise the plans for the TCCV1 now, I guess." Tails left to his study before The Computer had a chance to respond, if, of course, it even bothered to.

Tails entered his study, which was really just a room with one window and a desk with hundreds of papers and blueprints lazily stacked around it. He sat down on his chair and started sifting through all the papers on his desk, trying to find the blueprints for the TCCV1. He eventually found it, off to the side about halfway under the mess. He cleared off the rest of his desk, ready to start work…

But, he just couldn't seem to focus today. Instead of making a blueprint for the Chaos filter that would be have to be installed into the TCCV1, he found himself gazing outside his window, seeing what a beautiful day it was outside. The sun was shinning down bright on his quaint home, the birds were chirping happily. The trees were—

And then his thoughts abruptly ended when the face of a teenage raccoon girl filled his window. Tails almost fell off his chair in shock. Who was this raccoon girl? Tails didn't recognize her at all.

The girl smiled and knocked on the window, then pointed in the direction of the door, apparently wanting to be let in. Tails put his index finger up to her, silently telling her to 'wait a minute'. Tails put away all his desktop papers into small compartments under his desk, then got up and walked to the front door of his house. He opened the door and found the girl already waiting at the door.

"Hi, Tails. Long time no see, roight, mate?

Tails looked curiously at the stranger. How did she know his name? Her accent sounded kind of familiar, but nothing else was. Tails had to admit though, she looked kind of attractive, slim and wearing baggy blue trousers and a black shirt that revealed some of her chest. Still, who was she? What did she want with him?

Apparently, Tails looked as confused outside as he was inside, because the raccoon girl decided to give Tails the answer to the question she 'asked' Tails when she arrived: "I'm Marine, you ol' geezer!"

Tails could've slapped himself. 'Marine, of course! What's wrong with me today?'

"Sorry, Marine. My brain just froze for a minute there," Tails said, apologizing for his current lack of brain functions. "But yeah, you're right about that, long time no see! And that's the first time since forever that I actually mean it."

Now it was Marine's turn to be confused. "Huh? Whaddya mean by that?"

"Oh, nothing really. Just an in-joke of the sorts."

"A joke? Can I hear it?" Marine asked.

"No no," Tails said quickly. "Not that type of joke."

"'Ow many types of jokes are there?"

"Well, this type of joke isn't really supposed to be funny."

"Not supposed to be funny? 'O's a joke not supposed to be funny?"

"It doesn't matter. We're getting off topic now. I wanted to ask you what you're doing here, I haven't seen you for years!"

"Oh roight, well, Blaze found some ol' relic or somethin' that she wanted to show Sonic, so she, as she says, 'Sol Controlled' 'ere. I was supposed to ask you if ya knew where the bloke was as she looked 'round."

"Sonic? I haven't seen him since Wednesday. He could be in Holoska for all I know."

"Oh." Marine seemed disappointed. "Well, can I stay 'ere for now then? I dan't know where Blaze wen' off to. I'm stuck 'ere 'till the sheila shows up."

"Of course, Marine," Tails said. "Stay as long as you like, so long as you don't break anything."

"Nah," Marine replied, shaking her head. "That won't 'appen. I'm not the drongo I used to be."

"Sounds good then," Tails said as he walked inside, gesturing for her to follow.

Marine followed Tails inside to his house/workshop. Once she walked in, Tails decided to give Marine a tour of the house. Marine found that Tails's place had the appearance of a clean, well kept and, quite simply, regular house in places like the living room, dining room, and the kitchen (and probably the bedroom, but Marine didn't feel comfortable in checking), so long as you ignored the small oddities like the engine parts behind the TV and the tool kit where the forks should be in the kitchen.

But, once you went downstairs, you'd hardly be able to imagine that regular living quarters even existed only a staircase up. The workshop was a underground space as big as a warehouse that had almost any piece of tech you could every imagine, from planes to rockets to Extreme Gear to huge mechs that looked like they came straight out of an episode of Power Rangers.

Tails seemed to catch the look of awe on Marine's face. "Impressed?"

"Well, er, yah!" Marine said, stumbling over her words. "Did ya, uh, like build all this yourself?"

"Yes, of course," Tails said, proudly. "The AR-1337 over here was actually built from old planes and vehicles that I dismantled for parts over the years. Instead of throwing the parts I didn't need away, I assembled them into what you see here."

"See 'ear? Tails, there's so much stuff 'ere, which one do you mean?" Marine asked, starting to get overwhelmed by the place.

Tails sighed. "The thing that looks like a Transformer."

"Oh," Marine said as she looked up at the AR-1337, which was basically a near-perfect replica of Optimus Prime. "What da ya use it for?"

"Showing off."

Marine sighed. "Typical boys an' their toys. Though this boy is pretty much an adult, which is a problem."

Tails just laughed, "Well, it was originally used to fight Eggman, but he went into hiding years ago, so it doesn't really have any use now."

Marine had nothing to say for that.

Neither did Tails.

"Kay. 'An we go back now? This place is too boring an'…technical," Marine asked, with a 'hurry it up' tone of voice.

"Fine by me, the stairs are over there," Tails said casually, pointing behind him.

"Thanks heaps," Marine said, already walking up the stairs. But before she got to the top, she turned around to call Tails.

"'Eh! Aren't ya comin'? I'm startin' to get hungry too, it's gettin' kinda late. 'Ave any food in ya place, or only nuts an' bolts?" Marine joked.

"Sure sure, I'm coming. I'll make something for us," Tails called back, turning around to head back up the stairs.

Tails reached the top and re-entered the liveable part of his house. He turned to Marine, "So, what do you want for dinner?"

"Whaddya 'ave?"

"What do you want?"

"Well, whaddya 'ave?"

Tails sighed, this wasn't going anywhere. "I have anything you want. What do you want?"

"'Ell, if this sheila got a large steak dinner she'd be stoked," Marine joked.

"Steak? Okay, let's have steak," Tails said, much to the surprise of Marine.

"Wha? Na, Tails, I was joking. You dan't need ta get steak."

"I told you already, whatever you want, I have," Tails explained. "I always stock up on food in case I need to finish a project within a deadline and I don't have time to go shopping. There's some steak in the freezer."

Marine quietly laughed. She went up to Tails and lightly hugged him. "Aww, so sweet, tryin' ta impress the gal with a nice din."

Tails blushed. "Uh, no, I mean, ah. That's not what I meant, er, I mean-"

Marine let go of Tails. "I know what ya mean, just teasin' ya."

And so, Tails went off to the kitchen to prepare a nice meal, while Marine went off to the living room to watch TV. Nothing happened during this time, so I'm skipping it. Too bad for you if you wanted to see Marine blow the kitchen up.

An hour later...

Tails entered the living room to see Marine lazing on the couch, watching one of his five-hundred channels. "Dinner's ready."

""Roight now? But Seinfeld jus' started."

Tails gave her a glare.

"'Kay, okay, I'm comin'."

Marine reluctantly got up out of her comfy spot on the couch and followed Tails toward the dining room, stumbling slightly. But what she saw made her eyes bulge.

She saw a feast fit for four in the on the dining table. There was steak, of course, but there was also a ton of different vegetables with many sauces and bread slices with cheese and some olive sauce and fruits and a small chili dish and salad and even a small blueberry pie in the centre of it all. And the smell, she wondered how she could've missed it. It smelled absolutely delicious, one of the best smells she ever smelled.

But still, she was confused why Tails cooked all this for her, it seemed like an outrageous amount of food.

"Uh, er, why did ya make this all for me? All I needed was somethin' small," she asked Tails awkwardly.

Tails shrugged. "Well, like I was saying before, sometimes I'm on a deadline to finish a project, which means I rarely have time for shopping. But, usually I don't have time to cook either, I just order something. So, when I do cook, like now, I kinda go all out with it. I was only planning something small, it just kinda, er, grew as it went. Plus, I wanted you to have a good time over here in our dimension, considering that it seems like you'll be spending most of it with a guy that apparently bores people to death."

"Roight...who says that?" Marine asked.

"Knuckles. I don't think you've ever met him."

"Well, maybe ya do bore people ta death, but that dan't change the fact that this is probly the sweetest thing a bloke's ever done for me. Thanks Tails." Marine pecked Tails on the cheek. "Now, let's eat!"

Tails blushed madly from Marine's kiss.

Tails and Marine started their feast. They didn't say much during this time, they just stuffed their faces with all of the delicious food. Even though they were as full as could be after they finished eating, there was still, unsurprisingly, tons of leftovers.

"So..." Marine said while picking some apple skin from her teeth, "Got anythin' else planned this evenin' ma dear Tails?"

"Well, I have some movies we could watch," Tails said. "I don't think there's anything else I have here you'd enjoy."

"Movies huh? So, 'as this turned inta a full-fledged indoor date? Ya know, a din an' movie?" Marine asked teasingly.

Tails chuckled. "Didn't really think of that, yeah, I guess it has."

"Sounds good ta me," Marine said as she started walking over to the living room. "Let's see ha' movies ya 'ave."

So, after minimal deliberation, Tails and Marine ended up watching a B-movie called Chao IN SPACE 2. It was laughably bad, which was the point, since its two-person audience were howling with laughter all night. So-bad-it's-good doesn't accurately describe it, moreso something like "so-bad-it's-utterly-terrible-but-somehow-still-ends-up-being-hilarious".

By the end of the movie Tails and Marine were literally teary-eyed from laughter, bad plot, bad acting, bad script, and the occasional cameraman's thumb accidentally obscuring the scene as if it the movie was filmed on a camcorder.

After the two finally settled down, Tails turned to Marine:

"Think that movie should win the next Oscars?" he jokingly asked.

...And, so the fox and the raccoon started laughing all over again.

After they settled down, again, Marine turned to Tails. "Thanks for this evenin', Tails. I really 'ad a fun time tonoight, funner tha' I've 'ad in quite a long time."

Tails decided this would be the right time to tell Marine how he had started feeling about her that night. "Yeah, I know what you mean." He started feeling his cheeks heat up. "You know, Marine, when you were saying this night was like a date, I think it kinda was... I mean, well, I really had a great time tonight, not just because of what we did, but because of you. You've been a great friend—wait, I mean, not just a friend, you—"

Marine smiled and interrupted him. "I know wha' ya mean, an' I feel the same way."

With that, Marine scooted close to Tails, the gap between their lips closed and they—

"Kissed?" Tails spat the word out with disgust as he looked at his computer screen. His virtual trip to FFN obviously wasn't working out too well.

Tails scrolled down to see that was the end of the fic. "Wow, that was anti-climatic. But really, what retard thought that me and Marine would be a good pairing? We live in different dimensions for Chaos's sake!"

Tails scrolled up to see the name of the "retard" that wrote the fic. "'Unknownlight'...what does that name even mean? It sounds like someone took some cliché name like 'unknown_darkness' or something and inverted it. What a stupid idea."

And so, our good old Miles Prower wrote his review for Post Dream Repercussions:

"Technically a well-written fic, there are not many spelling or grammar mistakes, but that doesn't give this a free pass. There are many problems with this fic. For instance, Marine just randomly appears at the beginning with almost no explanation. All we know is that Blaze had some relic to show Sonic and Marine just tagged along. What? Also, there are many parts you needlessly skip over, like what happened as dinner was being made and such. Not to mention, the romance part at the end comes out of NOWHERE. It seems more like a friendshipper up to that point, but then you slap the readers in the face and force random romance down our throats.

But here's the main problem: this fic is too short! It seems like you're blasting through at Sonic speed. There's no meat to these bones, at all! There's no depth, just a basic outline of what happened and nothing else. It's terrible in this sense.

And really, me with Marine? The pairing just doesn't make sense. You're a good writer, you just waste your talents on stupid fics which only purpose is to promote a pairing. Game Over, Try again."

Tails hesitated before hitting the submit button, wondering if he was a little too harsh. In the end, he decided it didn't really matter so he clicked it. Really, him with Marine? Bah.

Just then Tails heard someone enter the door. He turned his head to see Sonic walking over to him. Tails quickly minimized FFN and turned around to talk to Sonic.

Tails saw that the hedgehog had a small, old-looking relic in his hands which he was handling carefully. "What's that in your hands, Sonic?"

"I'm not sure, actually," Sonic answered. "Blaze said it was something that Nega had before she stole it from him. She said she had no clue what it is, and that she wanted you to analyze it for her." Sonic handed the old relic over to Tails to look at. But the fox wasn't paying attention to the rusty metal sphere in his hands, his mind was solely focused on what Sonic had just said.

"Wait, what? When did Blaze come over to our dimension?"

Sonic stared at the fox, confused. "What do you mean? Marine stayed with you the whole time they were here, didn't you know Blaze brought her? Speaking of Maine, I still can't believe you actually did it with her. You know a relationship between you two can't last, she lives in another dimension after all."

With every word Sonic spoke, Tails eyes bulged an inch further out. "Wait, no! No no no, this doesn't make any sense," the fox yelled. "That didn't happen. Nothing happened. That was just in the fanfic I read. What's going on! This doesn't make any sense!"

Sonic just smiled at Tails's reaction. "Of course this all doesn't make any sense bud, you're dreaming."

"Wait, WHAT?"

Tails bolted upright from his bed, his sweat drenching the bed sheets. A nightmare. Just a nightmare...

Tails found himself quite thirsty, probably because of all the fluid he lost from his sweating. He untangled himself from the covers and climbed over the lump in his bed to get over to—wait, a lump?

Tails pulled back to see Marine sleeping in his bed next to him...with no clothes on.

Tails's first reaction to seeing her was to scream. Scream loud, and scream clear. But, Tails resisted the impulse; instead, he shrugged and went back to sleep.

This was not the time to question his earlier decisions, this was the time to enjoy the results of those decisions.

He'd deal with the repercussions of this in the morning.

FIN


A/N: It shouldn't be hard to tell that I don't what I've written here at all, judging from Tails's review. Not one bit. Sorry, Bureizu.