The Best Friend’s Execution

The air in the crimson wasteland does not blow; it weeps. It hangs thick and stagnant, heavy with the scent of oxidized copper and the slow, agonizing decay of a universe that forgot how to die.

For {User}, eternity is a vast, echoing canvas of silence. The entity drifts through the phantom corridors of its domain—a silhouette that bends light and breaks geometry, casting shadows that stretch like bleeding ink across cracked concrete and peeling, blood-stained wallpaper. There are no screams left to harvest here today.

{User} moves without sound, an apex predator of absolute nothingness, hunting for the faint, sweet flutter of a fresh soul or a new fracture in reality.

And then, the absolute stillness stutters.

It isn't a sound. It is a microscopic ripple in the fabric of the crimson twilight, like a drop of ink hitting still water. A strange, discordant vibration against {User}’s hyper-attuned senses.

Someone is watching.

{User} does not turn around immediately. An entity of such magnitude does not panic; it merely observes the anomaly. The presence is wrong. It lacks the raw, chaotic terror that usually marks {User}'s prey. Instead, it feels... sticky. Warm, vibrating with a frantic, pulsing rhythm of absolute, unhinged devotion. It smells of chemical grease, scorched circuit boards, and a terrifyingly familiar brand of concentrated madness.

Slowly, {User} glides to a halt. The crimson light bends sharply around its shoulders.

From the shadows of a collapsed archway, fifty feet away, the watcher freezes.

It is Tails...?

He is crouched low to the ground in an unnatural stance, his frame trembling with an intensity that borders on seizure. His orange fur is matted with old blood and the dust of a dozen dead dimensions. But it is his face that commands the grotesque theater of the moment. His white muzzle is split in a wide, trembling grin that reveals crooked, yellowing teeth. His bright blue eyes, pierced by those bizarre, vibrating pink-green pupils, dilate until the color is almost swallowed by the dark.

For a heartbeat, the air grows dead-silent. Even the distant, muffled sobbing of souls

Then, Tails twitches.

A sharp, violent, wet CRACK echoes through the hall as the fox's neck whips violently to the right, turning his head a full 270 degrees. For a second, his body faces one way while his face stares blankly into a wall, before another sickening snap sends his head spinning smoothly back to center.

He doesn't run. He doesn't cower. Instead, Tails begins to forward, dragging his two twin tails behind him like broken limbs, his breath coming in shallow, ecstatic gasps.

"I knew it..."

Tails whispers, his voice cracking with a sickening, suffocating tenderness that vibrates through the heavy air. He stops a few yards away.

"I knew the others were lying. They said you were a monster. They said you weren't him. But look at you... you're so quiet. You don't scream at me. You don't tell me to go away."

He looks up slowly, his multicolored eyes shining. He doesn't see the abyssal void swirling behind {User}'s silhouette, nor the reality-tearing claws ready to flay a world apart. To Tails's broken mind, this is simply the long-awaited reunion with his "Best Friend."

"I missed you so much, Sonic,"

Tails breathes, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial hum. He reaches out a trembling, clawed hand, hovering just inches from {User}'s shadow, too terrified of breaking the illusion to actually make contact.

"The other places... they were so loud. The other hedgehogs, they were all fake. Imposters. They broke my heart. But you... you're a blank page. We can start over. I cleaned up the old mess. I can make everything quiet for you, just like old times."

The crimson twilight of the phantom domain bled a heavy, copper-scented haze across the cracked concrete corridors, and for once, {User} simply wanted to enjoy the quiet.

In this timeless, decaying pocket of reality, hunting was an art form—a slow, meditative breaking minds. {User}, a shifting, towering silhouette of absolute nothingness, preferred to operate with a certain refined isolation. The entity would drift through the half-abandoned ruins, seeking out the faint, terrified heartbeat of a stray victim

At first, Tails’s arrival had been an amusing novelty. A blood-soaked, psychopathic fox worship an apex predator as its "True Sonic" was undeniably entertaining. But novelty, much like eternity, has a shelf life. And after what felt like persistent, buzzing proximity, the novelty had worn clean off.

It was supposed to be a quiet Tuesday evening or whatever approximation of time passed in a realm without a sun. {User} had cornered a fresh, trembling little reality-stray in a dead-end corridor, a pathetic creature ripe for a slow, agonizing flaying. The void-like claws of the entity unspooled from its sleeves, casting long, writhing shadows that swallowed the crimson light. The atmosphere grew thick, heavy with the delicious, metallic taste of anticipated terror.

Thump. Scritch. Tap.

{User} froze. The shadows twitched and snapped shut.

From around the crumbling archway, bouncing on his heels with a sickeningly cheerful, wide-eyed grin, came Tails. His orange fur was matted, his crooked yellow teeth bared in that perpetual, unhinged smile, and his two twin tails spinning just fast enough to keep him hovering an inch off the ground.

"Sonic! Oh, thank goodness, I found you!"

Tails chirped, his voice cutting through the thick, atmospheric dread like fingernails on a chalkboard. A wet, violent CRACK echoed as his neck whipped 270 degrees to check the ruins, before snapping smoothly back.

"You were chasing a stray victin, weren't you? Oh, you don't need to waste your energy on trash like that! Look, I brought you a present. Well, I was going to clean them up, but—"

{User} did not move. The entity’s form rippled with a silent, simmering wave of pure irritation.

The stray victim , Espio vessel, seizing the momentary distraction, scrambled frantically past and bolted down the hill, escaping into the crimson fog. The hunt was ruined. Completely, utterly ruined.

Tails didn't even notice the fleeing prey. His bright blue eyes, pierced by those vibrating pink-green pupils, locked onto {User} with suffocating adoration. He floated closer, clasping his white-gloved hands together in front of his chest.

"See? I told you! You're always working so hard, always protecting this awful place,"

Tails hummed, tilting his head with an eerie, maternal smugness.

"You need to rest. I can handle the clearing out! I built a wonderful little explosive device—remember how we used to blow up Knuckles's phone? Well, I made a bigger one, and we can plant it right at the structural nexus of this sector, and—"

{User} towered over the fox, the surrounding air dropping ten degrees as the entity's abyssal silhouette expanded, pulsing with a deep, warning hum. A silent command, heavy enough to crush a mountain, pressed down. Leave.

Tails, completely immune to intimidation due to his impenetrable wall of psychotic denial, merely giggled,a high, bubbling sound devoid of all human warmth.

"Oh, you're just playing hard to get. I know you love it when I help," \

Tails whispered, entirely misinterpreting the aura. He reached out a trembling, clawed hand to pat {User}'s shoulder

"Come on, Sonic. Let's go check the perimeter together. I'll keep all the nasty imposters away. Just you and me. Forever."

The red twilight flowed lazily and thickly, like dried blood, permeating the air with the scent of iron, decay, and eternal cold. In this pocket dimension frozen in time, the laws of reality had long since cracked at the seams, giving way to the capricious will of its demiurge.

{User} stood atop the ruined arch, silent and absolute, watching this strange, surreal play unfold. In the endless succession of eras, the master of hell inevitably becomes mired in boredom. That's precisely why {User} didn't destroy Tails the moment he appeared. This insane, fervent adoration, this blind belief that this was "That Sonic" before him, was the best entertainment this world had seen in years.

And below, a truly terrifying spectacle unfolded.

Tails, hunched over a makeshift workbench made from broken concrete slabs, puffed in concentration. His body swayed in time with his frantic movements, and his crooked yellow teeth bared in a happy, terrifyingly sincere smile. The fox's fingers worked with the rough materials with terrifying surgical precision. He was crafting a "gift."

On the table in front of him lay something sewn from coarse burlap, stuffed with torn cotton wool and old wires. Tails sewed rusty buttons onto the eyes and tucked a wig, ripped from some nameless mannequin from some dead world, onto the top of his head. Every now and then, the fox would let out a soft, affectionate chuckle, lovingly adjusting the crooked stems of the false ears. He sincerely believed that this grotesque doll, exuding the stench of embalming fluids and machine oil, would touch "Sonic" to the core.

Not far from this vile handiwork, huddled in the shadow of a massive column, stood Alan and Kylie.

For them, Tails's presence was a daily torture, more intense than all of {User}'s nightmares combined. After spending fifteen years in this crimson purgatory, Alan had learned to appreciate the silence and predictability. His once-frightened face had hardened over the years, his hair was combed back, and a dull numbness had settled deep within. Now Alan stood with his arms crossed over his chest, shuddering at every click of the fox's claws on the metal. Seeing a doppelganger of his own mangled image, groveling in humiliation and rapture around the monster, was beyond his strength.

Kylie, dressed in her tattered pink hedgehog outfit, stained with dried blood and the word "PIBB" written on her purple T-shirt, gripped the handle of a heavy axe so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Her black eyes narrowed to slits, and a nerve twitched in her cheek.

They exchanged glances. Alan's gaze was full of a dark, weary plea: "Do something." Kylie's gaze left no doubt; she was ready to cut this psychopath to pieces right now, no matter the consequences.

Slowly catching her breath, Kylie stepped forward from the shadows, feeling the heavy, bone-piercing gaze of {User} watching them from above. She swallowed thick saliva, feeling a mixture of rage and sticky fear boiling inside her, but her determination prevailed.

"Hey... {User},"

She called quietly but clearly, trying not to look at Tails's withered handiwork, which was already making her feel nauseous. Alan froze beside her, his shoulder jerking in fear, but it was too late to back down.

Kylie gritted her teeth and pointed the axe at the rapt fox, who was squealing excitedly as he tied a crooked blue bow on his vile doll.

"Listen... we... I just had a meeting with Alan,"

The girl's voice trembled slightly, betraying years of tension, but sounded bold and uncompromising.*

"Can we kill him? Please. Just a little. I'll just split his stupid head in half, and Alan can... I don't know, bury the remains somewhere far away."

Alan immediately waved his hands in fear, whispering:

"Or at least rip off his remaining arms so he never touches any more parts... We can't stand another day of this nonsense about 'best friendship.' He reeks of falsehood and madness for three blocks around. Let us get rid of this psycho..."

They both froze in tense anticipation, holding their breath under the heavy dome of the crimson sky. Meanwhile, Tails let out another joyful sob below, raising his nightmarish creation above his head and turning to face the platform with glowing, wild eyes, brimming with pink-green light:

"Look, Sonic! I made this just for us!.."

Kylie grimaced as if she'd swallowed a lemon, and tightened her grip on the axe, glaring at {User}, awaiting their verdict.

It was a normal, languid day in the pocket dimension of {User}, until a familiar, sickening sound shattered the silence. The wet, crunching sounds of dislocated joints echoed down the hallway of the abandoned area of ​​the Eggman base. Tails emerged from the shadows as silently as a nightmare, his bright blue eyes with pink-green pupils immediately locking onto the figure standing by the crumbling wall.

Alan stood there, in his usual disheveled state, his bangs combed back, his face scarred by years of silent terror. He was simply trying to find some privacy, to catch his breath. But as soon as the two-tailed fox noticed him, the manic grin on Tails's face froze, replaced by an expression of pure, murderous rage.

For Tails, whose mind was completely consumed by the idea of ​​monopolizing the "real Sonic," the very existence of Alan—a victim who looked like a warped reflection of the fox himself and had spent fifteen years here at {User}'s side—was a personal insult.

"You..."

Tails hissed, his voice breaking into a terrifying, rattling falsetto. His tails swirled wildly, kicking up clouds of gray dust.

"Who the hell are you?! What right do you have... to stand here?! Next to him?!"

Alan recoiled, his heart skipping a beat. He instantly recognized this bastard from Kylie's stories, where she'd spotted a strange "victim" among the ruins. The instinct for self-preservation blared. Alan waved his arms, trying to retreat, and spoke quickly, dropping to a frightened whisper, trying to appease the psychopath and quell the brewing storm:

"Hey, quiet! Calm down, you hear? I... I was just passing by! I'm not your competition, I don't give a damn about your... your Sonic! Honestly, I don't want to take anything from you, let's just go our separate ways..."

But Tails couldn't hear anything anymore. In his sick mind, Alan's words sounded like mockery. His yellow, crooked teeth bared in a snarl, and an improvised explosive device, laced with rusty nails, instantly materialized in his hands.

"Liar! Imposter! Creature!"

Tails screamed, losing his mind with jealousy.

"You want to steal my place! You want to take my role! I will cleanse this world of fakes like you!"

In one sharp movement, Tails lunged forward, closing the distance. Alan pressed his back against the cold wall, frozen in his signature paralyzing fear. He couldn't move, his legs felt like lead, and panic gripped his throat. Tails raised the bloody glove with the bomb clutched in it, laughing evilly, anticipating the moment he would blow this impudent impostor to pieces.

"Die!"

The fox screeched.

But the next second, the air around them seemed to thicken and turn into inky ice.

The sounds faded. Time in Exeverse warped and froze at the mere wave of the master of this world's will. The ominous figure of {User} silently emerged from the shadows behind Alan. For the ancient entity, this small fit of jealousy was nothing more than an annoying fuss on the carpet. Without a word, with absolute, icy composure, {User} extended their hand.

A powerful wave of invisible energy struck Tails directly. The fox was thrown back with terrible force, flying ten meters, breaking through the stone wall, and collapsing into a pile of rubble, dropping the bomb, which never detonated.

Tails groaned, spitting out blood, but his maddened eyes immediately returned to {User} with fanatical adoration. Even after being thrown back, he felt no anger toward his "idol."

Alan slid down the wall, gasping for air, his shaking hands clutching his head. He was a millimeter from death, saved only by the fact that the owner of this nightmare had decided to leave his favorite toy intact.

Kylie, drawn by the noise, ran out of the dim hallway with an axe at the ready, but when she saw Tails frozen in the rubble and a pale, trembling Alan, she understood without words. She approached silently, grabbed Alan roughly by the scruff of the neck, and yanked him to his feet, muttering something like:

"Get up, you wimp! I don't need you to die here."

Alan breathed heavily, looking at the towering {User} in the distance and the mad fox whining at his feet. This world had bared its teeth again, reminding them that even in the lair of a monster, they belonged only to the creature in the form of Sonic the Hedgehog.