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I took an internship at Eggman Industries after I graduated high school. I was only there for a little over a year. I wasn’t planning on taking the position; he headhunted me persistently. Surprisingly, Sonic was the one who convinced me to take it. I think he saw it as a way for me to spy on Eggman, since he had been laying low around that time.
I remember it being pretty quiet; many times he and I were the only biological workers on-site. There were also only a handful of robot assistants, and he didn’t have any facilities dedicated to the production of robots – at least, none that I knew of. His offices felt vast and grandiose yet in a clinical way, and their emptiness made them slightly unnerving to walk through.
Although he didn’t bring me on with any specific position in mind, I happened to gravitate toward technical writing roles: cleaning up his proposal drafts, writing documentation, and covertly writing snippets of fiction and poetry when I could get away with it. About once a month he would encourage me to try my hand at leading one of the many projects he had in development, touting it as an opportunity to build my resumé. I’d tell him that I would consider it, and then I’d keep my head down and wait for him to forget.
His corporation’s motto at the time was that we give the people what they want so that we can give the people what they need. I remarked to him that its wording is rather clumsy, and he assured me that, no, it would make sense soon enough.
I left before I learned how it did, though. Around the spring of the next year, I told him that I wanted to go back to school, which he seemed to approve of. I suspect he assumed that I would be going for engineering, and to be fair, I hadn’t ruled it out as an option quite yet.
After the internship ended, he gifted me a .5% stake in Eggman Industries. Since the stock isn’t public, it’s not like I can do much with it, but it does pay dividends. The checks I get each quarter are usually enough to pay all my bills for that amount of time, if I plan well. As oxymoronic as it sounds, I am indebted to him for the freedom I have today.
“Wait, so he paid you in stock?” Amy asked. “That seems pretty extreme, especially for an internship.”
“To be fair,” Tails responded, “I’m not sure if internship is the right word here. Like, I’m pretty sure that I was the only one he considered for the position.”
“So Eggman just wanted an excuse to hire you, then.”
“I guess so?”
“Though why would he want to do that? That sounds like the sort of ploy he’d try if he wanted to capture you, but if you left on good terms…”
“No, I think you’re onto something there…”
Amy turned her head, confused.
“When I first encountered Eggman, and saw all of his robots, his facilities…” Tails looked at the ground, “I was enamored by them. They terrified me, sure, but the scale of it all was like nothing I’d ever seen…
“I couldn’t let Sonic know that I felt this way, but I’m sure Eggman noticed.”
“You know, I hadn’t thought about it from that angle,” Amy replied pensively. “You were both kind of gearheads back then, so it only makes sense.”
“Yeah, and his designs were ingenious!… if that’s OK for me to say.”
“You’d know about that better than me, so I believe you.”
“It was tough to hide though. I remember, when Sonic and I first set foot on the Flying Battery, I accidentally let slip that I thought its design was really cool. And you know how he reacted? He simply said that it would be ‘cooler’ once it was destroyed,” Tails said, giggling.
“Ah, that boy,” Amy wistfully sighed, “he sure does have a one-track mind.”
“You can say that again. Though, I kind of envy that about him. He knows what he wants, and he’ll barrel through anything in his way to get it. Eggman’s sorta like that too, now that I think about it.”
“Almost like they’re two sides of the same coin, then.”
“Perhaps, yeah, though he’s a lot more calculated with his plans… which always worried me. In the back of my mind, I could never shake the feeling that he was already one step ahead of us, and it was on me to account for that.”
“Huh.”
“Really, Eggman was the reason why I threw myself into engineering however many years ago. I knew that, without our own facilities and equipment, we didn’t stand a chance against him. So I tried to muster up that same drive – that same determination – for the sake of everyone.
“It never came naturally to me, though: neither the drive, nor engineering itself.”
“Oh? I thought you enjoyed tinkering with your projects. It seemed like you always were getting your hands dirty with something or other.”
“I did, yeah, back then at least. But as I got older, it became easier to see the flaws in my work. Compared to him, I felt like a dilettante, a fraud.”
“They got the job done, though, didn’t they?”
“Sure, but that’s about all you could say about them. So I don’t know what he saw in me. I figured he’d have higher standards for who he wants to work with.”
“Hmm, maybe he saw someone who’s talented and impressionable, you know? He saw how eagerly you followed Sonic around and thought that he could turn you over to his side.”
“Disagree on the first one, but…” Tails’ voice lowered, “…you might be on to something.”
“And maybe he’s playing the long-game. You can’t completely cut him out of your life so long as you have those shares, right? Plus it sounds like you’ve been making good use out of them if you’re able to live off them.”
Tails felt her stomach turn.
“And if you financially depend on him, then wouldn’t he want to keep that in his back pocket?”
“Like as blackmail?”
“Not per se, though I also wouldn’t put it past him. More just that you’re impressionable, dearest,” Amy clasped Tails’ hand in hers, “and he still believes he can win you over.”
“I feel like,” Tails stared up in thought, “if that was a possibility, it would’ve happened by now.”
“Maybe? You never know, though. We’ve known each other for almost as long as you two have, and it wasn’t until last year that we started dating, right?”
“I guess, though that wasn’t for lack of interest or anything…”
“But it still took time to bloom, for both of us, is what I’m getting at.”
“That feels different, so I guess I don’t fully understand… what are you getting at?”
“If you wanted to cut him out of your life, you could’ve done so by now. Easily. But you haven’t, and instead you’ve even let yourself become indebted to him.”
“I knowww,” Tails sighed, “but he also hasn’t said anything about the shares since he gifted them to me however many years ago.”
“But you two still talk, right?”
“Off and on, though I don’t think we talk any more often than you and him do, or anyone else.”
“He and I don’t, dear; I honestly wonder if he even remembers my name.”
“Oh. Maybe Sonic still does?”
“I seriously doubt Eggman calls him up just to chat either.”
“So I guess it’s just me, then.”
“I’m afraid so, mon amour.”
“Which means he probably hasn’t forgotten about the shares, even if he never brings them up himself.”
“Exactly. And as long as you have them, they give him an in to one day shoot his shot.”
Tails recoiled, pulling her hand away. “Ugh, I know what you mean, but did you have to phrase it like that?”