Chapter Text
There was something that continued to cause Silver to squirm in his seat. At first, it was the soft swaying of his body while he sighed, then it gradually progressed into a full on toe-tapping, sleeve straining, and soft humming ministration of his bubbling anxiety. He softly flattened the teal and white wool sweater, letting the sensation of his gloves on the fabric sooth him after the heavy glare from Tail’s goggles grew into a silent warning.
“What?!”
“It’s just… I came here hoping to chat with you already and it's been an hour. Sorry, tails.”
Tails sighed, scooting back from his desk on his stool while lifting his dirty welding goggles. “I’m sorry, it’s just hard having this new curfew.”, he muttered while his piercing blue eyes met Silver’s.
The small silence was soon interrupted by the growing echo of heels from the hallway. Just then, Cream’s head popped in. Her dark orange hair had been chopped down into a bob in the back to match her curtain bangs this year. She waved at Silver with a soft greeting before turning to the fox’s direction and gave a strained threatening smile.
“I hope to see you at dinner tonight.”
It wasn’t hard to understand that there was a silent threat burning behind her hazel eyes. The glare contrasted with her sickling sweet tone. After an uncomfortable minute, she walked away in her full height that caused her small hat to reach for the door frame.
“I still can’t get used to her height.”, Silver noted.
“Just be glad you're close in height without shoes. It’s hard to have her hovering over me ever since that one spring.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t bother you that much.” he chuckled.
A small smile grew on Tail’s lips before his gaze fell back to his work bench. With swift movements, he placed all of his gears and the ‘mini’ project back in their assigned cabinets. He locked the red oak cabinets before stuffing the large key loop in his pocket. It was strange for Silver to witness someone he considered to be very advanced when it came to technology be the same person who secured his belongings with a lock and key. After cleaning up his bench, Tails grabbed an embroidered pink handkerchief and wiped off the smeared grease from his muzzle and hands. The grease seemed to almost blend in with the small brown patches of fur around the white on his nose that came as he got older. His feet and paws were now completely brown.
“So, what brought you here today Silver?” he sighed.
“I was wondering,” he started, only to pause and dig through the makeshift pocket of his sweater. There in his palms were two old tickets with ballet slippers and swans adorning the edges. “Is there a way to make a music box? I was wondering if you could use this specific ballet as a reference to something that plays one of the songs.”
“A music box? Hmm.”
“It's okay if it doesn’t play anything.”, he quickly interjected.
“Whose it for?” Tails asked as he pulled out a small notepad from his workshop apron. He waited in comfortable silence. The white hedgehog tried to cover the subtle pink on his cheeks while rubbing the back of his neck before answering.
“It's for Blaze. I wanted to give her something for her birthday.”
“Interesting.”
“I know that she’s been really into ballet performances because of the Station Square Troop’s performance this spring. I know that a lot of the old human artifacts were destroyed, even most of the music. But I was hoping you could at least salvage one song from this performance?”
Tails leaned forward and took the tickets from Silver’s hand. ‘Swan Lake’ was the title of the ballet. Silver silently watched the fox’s blue eyes scan the old tickets with a sharp gaze. The lingering silence grew on him, as anticipation crawled in his belly before his friend finally looked up from the tickets with a growing smile.
“It’s possible. I’ll have to first find any viable archive systems that were left intact after the invasion. Possibly, since there were a few secret satellites discovered recently. I could look into it with Vega 13.”
Tails walked across the workshop and towards the only brick wall of the entire space. He sat in his desk chair, brushing aside the new plushies that adorned the chaotic mesh of screens before his keyboard. Silver raised a brow at him but he was only brushed off with a shy smile. The clicking of keys began to fill the entire room as layers of code and files popped up with a small image of the Vega 13 satellite. It was a bronze alloy plated satellite with the power panels distinctively shaped like ears and wires attached to the dish. It was clearly a design choice influenced by a now very tall rabbit.
“Let’s see.”
The mouse hand whizzed through different openings while Silver silently observed Tails enter and type in specific phrases before opening new windows. There was a file Tails clicked on with a name that stuck out to the two, “classical_music”. There were rows of files that cascaded down every time the mouse hand clicked on one.
“I think it’s that one.”, Silver pointed to a file named Swan_lake.
“I guess they saved as much of their past and culture in hopes that someone would find it one day," Tails suggested.
With the file contents in view on the upper right monitor that hung off the wall, Tails leaned back in the beige leather chair with his hand cupping his jaw as he hummed, deep in thought.
“How about this? Since we have the entire file intact with all of the pieces to the ballet, why not download all of it into the music box and install it with a speaker?”
“Oh, then she could be able to listen and dance whenever she wanted to.”
Tails’s knowing smile grew into a small chuckle at Silver’s excitement, causing the older male to crouch back and shyly look away with a laugh. After downloading the file, Silver left the workshop only to return a small pile of faintly red wooden boards. Tails approached the desk near the entrance as Silver laid the wood down on the table. He subtly read the tag before raising an eyebrow.
“Jarrah wood? Isn’t that pretty rare?”
“Yeah.”, He softly replied. Rubbing his neck in a self soothing manner, Silver softly spoke. “It reminds me of some of the trees from the Sol Empire.”
Tails nodded as he scribbled a few notes on the notepad he pulled out from his leather apron pocket. He told Silver that the design for the box should be sent to him within the next few days, most likely before the Harvest festival at the end of the month. After the two of them agreed on the set date for the project to finish, Silver tried to pull out a few bills from his pocket.
“No, no, no. This one’s on the house.” Tails warmly said as he pushed the latter's hand back to him.
“Alright! I guess I owe you lunch then.”
“Sure! How about next week? I’m not too busy.”
Silver reached for his phone in his makeshift pocket and created the calendar event. Silver had learned from many previous times that the amber fox had been late or forgotten things, he better put a shared reminder with many alerts in order to get Tails to remember most things. After the shared calendar event was set up, he thanked Tails once more before heading to the hallway while exiting the workshop.
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“So, how’s the new project going?”
The bunny shaped pastel heater softly hummed on the wooden wall bench facing Cream. She curled up tighter when the fan moved away from her in the vibrant quilt she brought with her this time. As the autumn grew colder, the workshop within the beachfront building felt the temperature drop the most. It was hard to warm up a space that contained so many flammables and technology that relied on a cool environment.The three metal walls and garage opening didn’t help with insulating what little heat the other separated parts of the building produced. So when Cream had her days off from the hospital, she would bring out her heater from her assigned cabinet beneath the bench.
“It's going well!” Tails exclaimed, he leaned to the left so she could see from her seat across the room. In his hand was the wood that Silver had given him a few days back. After gluing the dovetail corners of the box together, the pressure lid was finally added. With one press, the lid smoothly rose and slid back revealing the contents inside. Cream gasped while she stumbled off the bench trying to get closer.
A tune started playing along with a vivid projection playing on the lid. The projection contained a human in white ballet clothes dancing with graceful twirls in tune with the melody. She was accompanied with the title of the track below. Tails began to explain the mechanics in a bright yet steady voice.
“I used a small speaker and downloaded the projection player with a loop to replay the entire list if tapped once. You can go back by pressing on the velvet projection since I installed a sensor behind the cloth. The speaker can be adjusted by this small crank on the side depending on the direction. I wanted to wait for Silver, so he could come over and examine it.”
“That’s going to be one amazing gift.”,Cream sighed. She clasped her hands together as she held them to her cheek with an excited smile that stretched across her face.
Tails grew quiet in thought, his eyes shone with something that caused her to lower her arms. That look was the same one that had caused their last dinner party to end with everyone getting covered in popcorn and butter after one of his small culinary devices was given an ‘extra boost’.
“Don’t tell me you already have plans to tweak it?"
“It’s actually something I had been wondering how to repurpose for a while now.”
He propped up and scuttled to the far end of the workshop where his old submarine was still on the floating ramp along with other old projects from what felt like a different era. Cream slowly followed while she watched her fiance dig behind a pile of boxes as he softly spoke to himself. Some of the boxes nearest to her were open. Inside were various pieces of large and small parts, wiring, and scrap metal that were sprinkled with what looked like prototype memory chips.
The pile was smaller than last year. Ever since Tail’s started his reuse protocol, he has been donating unused parts to engineering departments and after school programs. A soft ‘hpmh’ left her when her hazel eyes met Gemerl’s original body, Emerl, on the floor of the farthest corner of the workshop. The once bright golden yellow point now faded a bit while exposed plates had rust adorning the edges in a silent invasion to reclaim the robot. Her hand played with the yellow silicon band with a small communicator embedded into it.
“I thought you got rid of it.”
“It was probably on the list but I didn't want to give it away without a thorough disassembling. You know, incase some of weaponry can still be revived.”
Cream nodded in agreement. The last thing they needed was another Mobian with bad intentions getting ahold of any powerful parts to create a weapon. She felt the soft brush of fur and knew it was one Mile’s fluffy tail rubbing against her calf. She tore her gaze aware from the rusting robot and saw something even stranger within the fox’s hands.
“What is that?”
“Its a neuromodulator frequency device that can emit sound straight to your brain without requiring a headphone!", Tail’s raved. “At first I was worried about the output and spent many years tweaking the feedback to make sure the waves were adjustable and within a range that was individualized based on a person’s frequency feedback. After some time, I even managed to make it so you can not only hear what is being projected but see it too. I had to collaborate a lot with a few neurologists and EEG specialists.”
“So you can watch entire movies in your mind with your ears as a surround sound system?”, Cream asked.
“Yes! Although, I wouldn’t suggest walking around once you start the device. You can’t see anything else and your eyes force themselves closed into a r.e.m like sleep. It doesn’t require contact once it has a reading of your neural frequency!”
Cream couldn’t help the warm bubbling excitement she felt about the device. However, her smile faded the longer she thought about the specifics of the device and Tails’s own personal track record when ‘dabbling with stuff’ or a.k.a pushing the boundaries of his inventions.
“Does it work? Have you tested it before?”
Tails smiled brightly before walking back to his bench alongside his fiance while responding. “It’s first been tested on a watermelon first, to make sure the frequency wasn’t harmful. We did have a few willing paid participants, and it worked..”
“But?”
“The visual portion doesn’t seem to work. Right now its just ‘touchless headphones’ as Dr.Vaschir put it.”
“Then are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked.
“I know I can fix it! It would only take a few adjustments.”
“Well,” Cream softly spoke, taking the small translucent device from Tails. The bright shine in his eyes told her there wasn't room to argue. Tails was too determined to stop when his blue eyes sparkled with interest. She placed it on the work bench before holding his shoulders in a firm grasp. “Its probably best for now that its just audio since that is what Silver asked for. Lets go, Tails. Mom is probably going to give us a hard time if we’re late again, especially since she made mint chocolate souffles tonight.”
“Mint chocolate!?”
Cream chuckled as she watched his eyes light up at the mention of mint chocolate before he hurried to his coat rack. She went back to her bench and placed the heater back in her cabinet. Once she made it to the hallway entrance, she noticed a bit of grease on Tail’s check. Wiping out her yellow handkerchief, she leaned in and wiped the stain with one hand while cupping his face with the other. Tails froze in shock before brushing her hand aside trying to hide his soft blush. He could smell the warm vanilla perfume she always wore.
“You could have told me I had a stain," he whispered.
“I know.”, she chirped.
Her hazel eyes lingered on him like a warm caress as they glowed with a soft intensity. He cleared his throat and hooked his arm around her mumbling about being late to dinner while she softly chuckled at him as they left the workshop.