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Description

Original: www.deviantart.com/ozz-the-wan…
Conspiracy Theory: www.deviantart.com/ozz-the-wan…
Role-Reversal: www.deviantart.com/shockrabbit…

For anyone who watches this account, I apologize for this activity out of nowhere, as this is a special occasion, not a sign that this account is alive again. I just got an itch to redraw the original Charsmo? out of the blue and decided to post it to this account rather than my MUCH more active second account (I did not post many things here…) to “keep the family together.” This isn’t some special anniversary of the original Charsmo’s release, I just always liked that picture, got bored and wanted to see what the scene would look like if I drew it with more accurate character proportions. Otherwise, this account is still deader than the Dreamcast (Sega reference, right?).

The original Charsmo holds a place in my heart because it was the first thing I drew with as much complexity and detail as what it has and I always found the scene amusing. A lot of comments on the original picture didn’t like the way Tails is treated there and I guess I should explain why I did him dirty, especially since he’s my favorite character. We all hate what Sonic Forces did to the Hero of Station Square, but Unleashed had him run away from a fight many years before that and even before that game came out, we had Sonic X. I’m probably likely to anger and please an equal number of people with this, but I mean no offense to X fans when I say that the show never did it for me. I actually like Chris’ storyline and Cosmo and the Metarex were fascinating, but I always felt the show reduced all of the official characters down to one character trait each and they were all unflattering ones (ironically, Knuckles held out the longest before becoming crap despite being hit right off the bat by Boom years later). Amongst all of the other downgrades, Tails seemed to lose everything about his personality besides his fondness for machines; his friendship with Sonic was only relevant in maybe 4 episodes and never to a great degree, he wasn’t modest and friendly so much as blank and uninvolved, the physical prowess that let him keep up with Sonic and fight robots didn’t exist and nobody ever seemed to take him seriously (mostly taking the form of Amy, whose characterization I also didn’t like). Tails always had the softest design out of the cast, but the games up to that point respected his abilities and treated him like he mattered, so it was annoying for me to see him not matter in X (at least outside of Cosmo’s episodes)…But I guess I got Stockholm Syndrome or something and eventually started finding “Tails Abuse” amusing and it started with the original Charsmo.

Many years removed from X and things have only gotten worse for Tails, but Prime has made him a major player again (even if it seems like the real Tails isn’t as physically-dangerous as Nine despite Nine’s origin involving him relying on machines more than Tails) and Frontiers will have DLC where TAILS WILL BE PLAYABLE AGAIN! Hopefully Mr. Prower gets to be a big deal again and the world won’t need a Third Charsmo, heh heh.

In keeping with the original Charsmo’s release, I’m going to include some notes on this picture’s production and a story leading up to this scene afterwards. The original story was…very eccentric and while I still like it, I decided to tone things down and hopefully get the characters closer to how you’d expect them to act than Charmy just being COMPLETELY out of his mind…This time, he’s just decently out of his mind, heh heh.

Production Notes

- I’ve gotten into the habit of using models in my drawings, thanks to Clip Studio Paint. Unfortunately, CSP doesn’t have any Sonic characters and the easiest tool I could find that does is Steam’s Source Filmmaker…Which is a video editing program and a shortcut to drawing characters second. It took me a while to get the hang of the program and even longer to get a decent idea of how to pose the characters nicely. Hopefully the time I spent on learning that system is evident…but in a “your work paid off” way, not a, “I can tell you struggled with this” way, heh heh.

- The original picture had Charmy holding Tails in a Full Nelson, but doing that move with the character models and arching his back the way I did in the original picture made lining his lips up with Cosmo’s cheek difficult. I suppose I could have had him flying off the ground to reach her cheek, but I don’t think that would have worked or at least not worked well. I always wanted to see this scene with a bearhug anyway, so I think it’s a nice change-up.

- In the original picture, I intended Tails, Cosmo and Charmy to be the same size as each other, but the default sizes for their SFM models (albeit, posted by different people and Cosmo’s being a wholly original creation, since she’s not in any games) had them all at different sizes. Cosmo is designed to be taller than Tails and Charmy designed to be very short. I always assumed Charmy was the same size as Tails, but I guess I was wrong; Cosmo is stated to be taller than Tails (the X version of him, anyway), but she’s drawn inconsistently in X and sometimes is even shorter than Tails for entire episodes. I made a version where Cosmo is the tallest and Charmy is the shortest and that version actually pulled off the Full Nelson much more easily than this version (as well as still pulling off the bearhug despite Charmy being so small), but I decided to keep everyone the same size to be more faithful to the original picture; that’s also why I kept Cosmo’s dress shorter rather than sticking to the model’s show-accurate length.

- Cosmo’s mouth and tongue are green because I imagine she has chlorophyll instead of blood and I assume the red parts of animals are red because of blood color…Hopefully I’m right about those guesses.

- Charmy was selected as Tails’ opponent in the original because he was the only other guy in Tails’ and Cosmo’s age bracket (I didn’t know who Ray was at the time), but also because he always seemed rambunctious and ready for a fight in Heroes and he loved flowers enough to sing to them when interacting with them. Always figured he’d be like a miniature Johnny Bravo around the likes of Cosmo and Galaxina (who is the target of his affections in my other account’s gallery, albeit to her confusion rather than joy).

- The story for the original didn’t have as much emphasis on the location because I didn’t draw scenery into the picture (that was still a far-off idea for me and one I’d only tackle when I started drawing digitally). I’ve since gotten into the habit of adding scenery and frames for my drawings (sometimes even theming those frames), so I thought I’d put the action somewhere near Tails’ house and the most interesting place I could think of was the Mystic Ruins…well, the Echidna Temple portion of the Mystic Ruins, since it’s kind of a big place, heh heh. Almost drew one of the snake murals you see on some of the walls there, but I didn’t feel like putting in the detail required for such a complicated mosaic (especially since it was going to be largely-obscured anyway), so I went with a mural of the Chaos and Master Emeralds instead…Honestly, I’m surprised there isn’t one in Adventure.

- Mobians have big feet, but Charmy’s are SUPER big even by their standards. It actually made posing him next to Cosmo and her tiny feet difficult and I wish I could have scaled his feet down a bit without them shirking to microscopic proportions. I’ll have to mess around with SFM more in the future to see if I can avoid such calamities later.

- Working Cosmo’s face was VERY difficult in SFM and I didn’t even wind up drawing the expression I ended up with. The final expression on the model is a much smaller smile than the one here and her eyes aren’t big…as well as being oddly-spaced apart. The first time I experimented with a smile on Cosmo’s face, however, is HORRIFYING, heheheheheheh!

- The Tails model is from Generations and was posted to SFM by Apoc Hedgie.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…
- The Charmy model is also from Generations and was posted by RandomTBrush.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…
- The Cosmo model came with a Galaxina model and both were made and posted to SFM by Zappy.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…

The Story (That Turned Out Long Despite my Attempts)

“We should be there in thirty minutes, if we don’t get distracted or delayed.” The two-tailed fox spoke to the screen of his self-made tablet.

“Woah, you know exactly when you’re gonna be there?” The helmeted bee on the tablet’s screen responded. “You’re really good at planning, Tails!”

“Oh, I can’t take credit for it.” The fox bashfully replied. “This was all your idea, after all. You came to me, proposed the whole thing and gave me the confidence to try it. The most I did was--”

“Hey, remember our plan?” The bee interjected. “You’re the hero, not me, so act like it! Charmy, out!”

With that, the Miles Electric’s screen returned to its default desktop and Miles “Tails” Prower was left with his thoughts. He’d never been good at taking compliments, seeing himself as more of a support player to his friends’ leading roles, but Charmy was right. If he was going to win Cosmo’s affections, he had to stop giving credit to the detective who approached him out of the blue to try to swoon her, and start believing in himself like he used to.

Bling. The chime of a Ring being grabbed played, snapping Tails out of his thoughts. His doorbell just went off and that could only mean one thing; the fox flew over to the front door of his workshop and home and opened it to reveal the girl his machinations today revolved around.

“Hello, Cosmo!” Tails greeted his guest with a warm smile and bright eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Prow--uh, Mr. Tail--Oh, sorry, heheheh! Hello, Tails!” The Seedrian tripped over her words and laughed nervously as she greeted the boy before her. He laughed in return and not in jest, but shared amusement at the situation (the two were really that easily-amused).

“Thanks for coming today, Cosmo!” Tails let his visitor in and guided her to the hangar portion of his abode. “I’m so excited to show you the Mystic Ruins!”

“Oh, thank you, Tails!” Cosmo replied as she approached the blue biplane in the hangar. “Ever since I saw the Chaos Emeralds and Knuckles told me about their history, I’ve been so fascinated by them! I can’t wait to see the trees and plants there too! Thank you so much for inviting me…uh, thank you again, heheh!”

Tails offered to give Cosmo a boost to reach the passenger seat of the Tornado II, but she tilted her head in confusion at the gesture. He was too bashful to say he was offering to lift her up, so he quickly (or perhaps, abruptly) jumped to the side, where he kept a stepladder he used to give himself steady footing when fine-tuning the machine and didn’t feel like flying to do so.

Cosmo rode in the plane a few times before, when she first met Tails, Sonic and their other friends when they helped her quash the rogue faction of her tribe two years ago, but she never saw just how much work went into its storage or the runway Tails built into the very cliff he lived on. She tried to commend Tails for his hard work and skill, but the force of take-off and the sound of the vehicle’s engine stunned her and clouded out anything her meek voice would be willing to try.

The plane soared over a dense, lively jungle so quickly that Cosmo barely had any time to appreciate the view. However, she was not disappointed with the destination, a positively massive stone temple of such impressive design that she could appreciate its artistry even from the sky. Tails arrived at the clearing he picked out 4 days ago when he and Charmy finalized their plan and switched his plane to its VTOL mode, giving him and Cosmo an easy landing free of the hassle of finding a runway.

“Woah, OOF!” Cosmo tripped on her way out of climbing out of the Tornado II and hit the ground like a graceless klutz (that is, graceless even by klutz standards).

“Oh, Cosmo!” Tails shrieked as he flew down to her from his previous position of hovering just outside of her seat. “Are you okay!? I-I was trying to carry you down, b-but I guess I didn’t make that clear enough! I’m sorry!”

“You, OH!” Cosmo’s eyes widened as she processed Tails’ words and got up to her feet. “Sorry, I’m the one who’s sorry, Tails! I had no idea that you were offering to, uh, carry me. I, uh, didn’t think you coul…Um, never mind! My mistake, heheheheh!”

Tails furrowed his brows in confusion at that response. A cynical person might have thought Cosmo didn’t think him capable of helping her…But Tails was no cynic, so he brushed the thought aside and joined Cosmo in another round of laughter.

The fox led the rose through the small stretch of jungle they needed to traverse on-foot. Cosmo marveled at the sights and sounds around her…Not because of Tails’ tour-guiding skills (he failed to correctly name any of the foliage around them and seemed stiff and uncomfortable talking about it), but because the jungle reminded her of the kind her tribe lived in in isolation for centuries until an invasion from deforesting corporations scattered them and a band in her grandfather’s generation struck back at the world as the armored Metarex.

“And here, we have the Echidna Temple! Ta-da!” Tails swung his arm wide and proudly displayed the sights behind him as he pushed a leaf out of their way.

“…” Cosmo furrowed her brows in confusion now. “Oh, y-you’re joking! Heheheheh!”

“Huh?” Tails was perplexed. “AAH! I-I’m sorry, this isn’t it!”

In his haste to put on a good performance, Tails failed to pay attention to his surroundings and blew his grand reveal on…a moss-covered boulder. The fox scurried around the rock to make sure the temple was close-by…but tripped over a tree root on the way to and from, which only made Cosmo laugh even harder when she wasn’t supposed to…At least the temple was just a few more feet away.

“OOOHHH! Spectacular!” Cosmo cheered as she finally saw the Echidna Temple from the ground. Its size was even more impressive and the beauty of its engravings was even more evident from this angle.

“I, uh, never paid much attention to these ruins when I first moved here,” Tails explained as they walked by crumbled towers that used to hold torches to aid ancient citizens on night-time walks. “But we all got to know them pretty well when we fought Chaos years ago. I still don’t know much about them, but Knuckles recognizes the words here and the statues are clearly Echidnas, so he thinks he’s related to whoever made this temple…He, uh, doesn’t seem to care, though, because he thinks they might have been like Eggman in their time.”

“That is such a shame.” Cosmo’s voice reflected some sadness even though she was still enjoying the scenery. “Such beautiful things could be built by greedy and destructive people. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since the Metarex were my people, but these things never get easier to think about.”

“Yeah…” Tails somberly agreed. “I try not to make those same mistakes with my--”

“HEY, ARE YOU TAILS THE HERO FOX!?” The mood, like the Echidnas that tried battling Chaos millennia ago, was eradicated by a loud, uncoordinated bee who was off-schedule (…the mood was eradicated by a bee, not the Echidnas; they were eradicated by Chaos, in case that wasn’t clear).

“AAH!” Tails and Cosmo screamed in unison…Tails tripping over one of his own tails and being caught reflexively by Cosmo before he fell. It wasn’t as dramatic as a princess jumping into the arms of a knight, but Charmy’s eye for detail saw the unflattering development nonetheless.

“Uh…Woah, there, you don’t gotta shield your girlfriend like that.” Charmy made up a cover-story for Tails’ scared clumsiness as he held his hands up nonthreateningly and backed up. “I’m not a bad guy, I’m a fan!”

Tails and Cosmo blinked in confusion at that remark. Tails recovered first and stood himself back up so he could approach Charmy and offer a handshake.

“Oh, o-okay! S-Sorry about that, but, uh, when you fight E-Eggman as often as I do, you, uh, g-get protective?” Tails genuinely asked Charmy in the middle of his (awful) performance; fortunately, Charmy’s attentiveness picked up on that and he faked an enthusiastic nod to hide his coaching as he accepted the handshake. “You get protective of your, uuuh, friends. N-Not that Cosmo’s my girlfriend! She’s just my friend, heheh!”

“Yes, I’m the Hero Fox’s friend, Cosmo, heheh!” Cosmo introduced herself as she offered a handshake of her own. “OH!”

Cosmo let out a small gasp as Charmy returned her handshake by twirling her by her hand, as seen in dances from movies he’d seen in the past, before holding her hand in both of his, almost as if to hug that hand.

“Heheh, my bad.” Charmy chuckled. “Just thought that with how cool Tulls is, he’d be popular enough to win over all the pretty girls, even ones with roses brighter than the Bromeliads and Poinsettias around here and way fragrant.”

“Oohh!” Cosmo smiled widely in reply. “You’re very observant! You like flowers too?”

“Flowers are my fav--”

“Tails!” The ‘Hero Fox’ interrupted Charmy as he walked in between him and Cosmo. “You, uh, called me Tulls a second ago.”

Charmy gave Tails a look bordering on angry before suddenly remembering why he was here. He thought, for a moment, that maybe Espio was right when he says he has poor focus during their training sessions…Or that Vector was, when he said the same thing when they searched for those computer discs that wound up being a big deal…a ‘big deal’ that Charmy now suspects he forgot all about because of possible focus problems. Then, Charmy realized he had been standing in silence for seconds on end and that Tails looked like he was silently freaking out while Cosmo was…still smiling at him? Weird.

“OH, RIGHT!” Tails and Cosmo jumped back again as Charmy threw his arms up like he was praising somebody (Tails once again tripped over his tails and fell to the ground when Cosmo wasn’t in position to catch him). “Yeah, you’re the Hero Fox of Circle Stati--Station Square! I was there when you defused that…missile!”

“Oh, y-you were?” Tails asked as he picked himself up. “I’m g-glad you’re so excited about me defusing that missile and beating Eggman that night. Station Square is like home to me, so I’m glad I could give back to it.”

“Wait, you saw Eggman?” Cosmo asked Charmy.

“…Uh, yeah.” The Bee couldn’t help but notice the Seedrian praised the wrong person. “I saw him when Tails totally wrecked him! He was great! You shoulda seen ‘im, flyin’ around and breakin’ robots an’--”

“Well, it was just Eggman by himself.” Tails interjected. “But he was throwing bombs around everywhere, which made fighting him and protecting everyone at the same time tough.”

“Oh, Tails, you fought Eggman before?” Cosmo finally turned her attention to the person she was supposed to be interested in. “You saved the people while Sonic fought him?”

“Heheh,” Tails rubbed the back of his head. “Actually, I fought Eggman when Sonic was away. Did it all by myself. Without even using any of my machines!”

“You used to fight without your machines?” Cosmo asked. “You…could do that before?”

Tails’ eyes widened in response to that question. “Um…Y-Yeah. I, uh, guess I haven’t done that in a while, have I?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fight without a machine or weapon, heheh!” Cosmo laughed in a friendly manner, but it didn’t feel very friendly to Tails. “I guess you lost that skill while you gained another one. S-Still, your machines are amazing! We never would have defeated the Meta--”

“Whaaaaaat!?” Charmy forced his head in between the already close-together Tails and Cosmo. “You’re tellin’ me that Tails can’t fight anymore!? No way, get outta here!”

“I went on an adventure with him and never saw him fight outside of one of his machines.” Cosmo answered calmly. “But his machines are very powerful and useful! You should see th--”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t lose all of my moves.” Tails spoke up. “I’m glad you’re impressed with my machines, but I still, uh, practi--”

Charmy, his back to Cosmo, grimace as he shook his head to tell Tails that wasn’t the right word to use.

“I still rehearse--”

Charmy’s eyes widened in horror as she shook his head harder.

“I still…tr-train? I still train when I’m not building or repairing things.” Tails rubbed his nose with his thumb the way he’d seen Sonic do countless times before. “Just…nobody’s seen me do it before and, uh, I don’t like to show off…B-But if you want me to, or you, Char--uh, Fan, then I could show you a move…I could use a Tail Rotation Attack to take down that oak over there.”

“WHAT!?” Charmy and Cosmo screamed in unison, much to Tails’ surprise and confusion.

“First off, that’s not an Oak, that’s a Cashew Nut Tree.” Charmy clarified.

“And they have so many flowers and produce so many nuts for animals to eat. You can’t cut that down, or any tree, Tails!” Cosmo added, a little anger actually present in her voice.

“YEAH!...Uh, I mean, yeah.” Charmy corrected his tone before his poor focus tanked the operation. N-Not that it’s surprising you didn’t know that. Heroes can’t know everyyyything.”

“But you did.” Cosmo grabbed Charmy’s hand in both of hers the way he held hers earlier. “And that makes you this tree’s hero.”

Cosmo smiled at the wrong target again and Charmy laughed like a dope about it. Tails’ heart raced as he started to panic. He tried to play it cool, but…

“I-I-I d-didn’t know, I promise!” Tails stuttered as he ran up to Cosmo and Charmy…the latter using his free hand to catch him when he tripped over a loose stone from a road all of their commotion was going on near. “I-I g-guess I can’t really cut anything down here, I’m sorry…I-I guess I’ll have to show you the Tail Ro…The tail thing later.”

“Well, who needs a tail attack anyway?” Charmy broke the somberness by freeing his hand from Cosmo and dragging Tails a few feet away with his other one. “I remember you used more than your tails ta fight Eggman back then, you were great! Why don’cha show Cosmo some of those moves on me?”

“…What?” Tails got back to his feet but didn’t see where Charmy was going with this. “I didn’t use any other--”

“Aw, I remember it like it was yesterday!” Charmy started throwing jabs in Tails’ direction but a safe distance away (not that it kept the fox from closing his eyes with each jab). “Once you busted Eggman’s machine, ya flew right up to ‘im and started pummeling him and choking him out! It was awesome!”

“Charmy, what’re we doing?” Tails asked in a low voice.

“You could fight even with your hands?” Cosmo asked with an attempt to sound polite, but incredulity slipped through regardless. “That’s…very impressive, heheh!”

“Charmy, I don’t know how to fight like that…” Tails implored his co-conspirator.

“But what d’ya care what I think?” Charmy addressed Cosmo, oblivious to Tails’ heart about to jump out of his chest. “Let’s see the Hero Fox do it himself! C’mon, Tails, get me with just one straight ta show Cosmo how it’s done!”

At that, Charmy put his hands behind his back and giggled like a loon. After analyzing the bee for a moment, Tails caught up to this chaotixc improvisation and his heart finally returned to normal. He didn’t want to hit Charmy hard, but he knew he had to make it look good for Cosmo and that pulling too much strength would make it too obvious this was staged. He’d also have to be fast AND NOT TRIP.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Tails was ready.

The fox ran at the bee as fast as he could and he DID NOT TRIP…He did something worse.

Having used his tails much less over the years and his legs even less than them, Tails ran very slowly at Charmy and worse, having no experience in fighting that doesn’t involve his tails or Spin Dashes, he telegraphed his punch a miles prower away and Charmy’s focus went out again.

“Spinning Evade into Rear Bearhug, right outta the ninja scrolls!” As it turns out, Charmy retained more of his sessions with Espio than he thought. Before Tails or Cosmo could process what was going on, the bee was behind the fox, wrapped his arms around his waist and squeezed.

“Char--HNNN!” Tails tried asking his supposed partner what he was doing, but the bearhug made speaking impossible. Pain, however, was surprisingly possible, as Tails realized he had let himself go more than he thought and his belly squished under Charmy’s arms without a hint of resistance. His own arms, having grown accustomed to lightweight tools he made to make his work easier and not used for much else than that, were powerless to free themselves from within Charmy’s grip, so they just balled their fists pointlessly.

Tails proved so easy to counter and subdue that Charmy got excited and completely forgot why he set this plan up in the first place. He straightened out his legs and back to stand fully upright, lifting Tails off the ground in the process. Conventional Wisdom would say that Tails could have kicked his legs about to get Charmy off-balance or propelled his tails to get in some kind of damage or distraction, but Conventional Wisdom did not factor in just how disorienting the bearhug was for Tails. The fox’s tails tensed up just as uselessly as his hands and his legs dangled lifelessly, incapable of reaching the ground or resisting Charmy.

“With the day saved, The Hero Bee flies over to his detective partner to celebrate their victory!” Charmy narrated his zealousness as he fluttered himself over to Cosmo.

“Oh, you’re very surprising, Charmy!” Cosmo cheered the exhibition and Charmy’s charisma. “I didn’t know you were funny, knew about flowers and could save the day like Sonic!”

“Well, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!” Charmy cracked a grin, much to Cosmo’s amusement.

“Well, thank you for the demonstration. How about you let Tails down and we can explore these ruins some mo--”

MMMMMMMwah! Charmy intercepted Cosmo’s thought with another impromptu move, but not one he learned from Espio. Cosmo’s eyes widened, her mouth parted into a silent but overjoyed smile and her legs even got a little weak as the daring detective kissed her cheek.

A few weeks ago, Amy Rose contacted the Chaotix Detective Agency to help them play matchmaker between Tails and Cosmo, since they spent so much time together during the Metarex crisis but she knew they were both too shy and clumsy to ever try opening up to each other on their own. Vector threw the written request away on the grounds that it was outside their expertise and that they were out of their “Poor Phase,” but Charmy’s focus was what it was during that announcement and when he snapped back to reality, he saw that there was work on the table and remembered their old (actually outdated) policy, “The Chaotix never turn down work that pays” and got to work setting this date up…Not that he was thinking of it at the time, but Charmy would later come to realize that Ms. Rose would be owed a refund but, after the inevitable tongue-lashing from Vector, would find it was all worth it…If asked, Cosmo would likely agree.

…Tails probably wouldn’t, but it wasn’t his money anyway and he fortunately doesn’t hold a grudge as well as Charmy holds him.

Description

Original: www.deviantart.com/ozz-the-wan…
Conspiracy Theory: www.deviantart.com/ozz-the-wan…
Role-Reversal: www.deviantart.com/shockrabbit…

For anyone who watches this account, I apologize for this activity out of nowhere, as this is a special occasion, not a sign that this account is alive again. I just got an itch to redraw the original Charsmo? out of the blue and decided to post it to this account rather than my MUCH more active second account (I did not post many things here…) to “keep the family together.” This isn’t some special anniversary of the original Charsmo’s release, I just always liked that picture, got bored and wanted to see what the scene would look like if I drew it with more accurate character proportions. Otherwise, this account is still deader than the Dreamcast (Sega reference, right?).

The original Charsmo holds a place in my heart because it was the first thing I drew with as much complexity and detail as what it has and I always found the scene amusing. A lot of comments on the original picture didn’t like the way Tails is treated there and I guess I should explain why I did him dirty, especially since he’s my favorite character. We all hate what Sonic Forces did to the Hero of Station Square, but Unleashed had him run away from a fight many years before that and even before that game came out, we had Sonic X. I’m probably likely to anger and please an equal number of people with this, but I mean no offense to X fans when I say that the show never did it for me. I actually like Chris’ storyline and Cosmo and the Metarex were fascinating, but I always felt the show reduced all of the official characters down to one character trait each and they were all unflattering ones (ironically, Knuckles held out the longest before becoming crap despite being hit right off the bat by Boom years later). Amongst all of the other downgrades, Tails seemed to lose everything about his personality besides his fondness for machines; his friendship with Sonic was only relevant in maybe 4 episodes and never to a great degree, he wasn’t modest and friendly so much as blank and uninvolved, the physical prowess that let him keep up with Sonic and fight robots didn’t exist and nobody ever seemed to take him seriously (mostly taking the form of Amy, whose characterization I also didn’t like). Tails always had the softest design out of the cast, but the games up to that point respected his abilities and treated him like he mattered, so it was annoying for me to see him not matter in X (at least outside of Cosmo’s episodes)…But I guess I got Stockholm Syndrome or something and eventually started finding “Tails Abuse” amusing and it started with the original Charsmo.

Many years removed from X and things have only gotten worse for Tails, but Prime has made him a major player again (even if it seems like the real Tails isn’t as physically-dangerous as Nine despite Nine’s origin involving him relying on machines more than Tails) and Frontiers will have DLC where TAILS WILL BE PLAYABLE AGAIN! Hopefully Mr. Prower gets to be a big deal again and the world won’t need a Third Charsmo, heh heh.

In keeping with the original Charsmo’s release, I’m going to include some notes on this picture’s production and a story leading up to this scene afterwards. The original story was…very eccentric and while I still like it, I decided to tone things down and hopefully get the characters closer to how you’d expect them to act than Charmy just being COMPLETELY out of his mind…This time, he’s just decently out of his mind, heh heh.

Production Notes

- I’ve gotten into the habit of using models in my drawings, thanks to Clip Studio Paint. Unfortunately, CSP doesn’t have any Sonic characters and the easiest tool I could find that does is Steam’s Source Filmmaker…Which is a video editing program and a shortcut to drawing characters second. It took me a while to get the hang of the program and even longer to get a decent idea of how to pose the characters nicely. Hopefully the time I spent on learning that system is evident…but in a “your work paid off” way, not a, “I can tell you struggled with this” way, heh heh.

- The original picture had Charmy holding Tails in a Full Nelson, but doing that move with the character models and arching his back the way I did in the original picture made lining his lips up with Cosmo’s cheek difficult. I suppose I could have had him flying off the ground to reach her cheek, but I don’t think that would have worked or at least not worked well. I always wanted to see this scene with a bearhug anyway, so I think it’s a nice change-up.

- In the original picture, I intended Tails, Cosmo and Charmy to be the same size as each other, but the default sizes for their SFM models (albeit, posted by different people and Cosmo’s being a wholly original creation, since she’s not in any games) had them all at different sizes. Cosmo is designed to be taller than Tails and Charmy designed to be very short. I always assumed Charmy was the same size as Tails, but I guess I was wrong; Cosmo is stated to be taller than Tails (the X version of him, anyway), but she’s drawn inconsistently in X and sometimes is even shorter than Tails for entire episodes. I made a version where Cosmo is the tallest and Charmy is the shortest and that version actually pulled off the Full Nelson much more easily than this version (as well as still pulling off the bearhug despite Charmy being so small), but I decided to keep everyone the same size to be more faithful to the original picture; that’s also why I kept Cosmo’s dress shorter rather than sticking to the model’s show-accurate length.

- Cosmo’s mouth and tongue are green because I imagine she has chlorophyll instead of blood and I assume the red parts of animals are red because of blood color…Hopefully I’m right about those guesses.

- Charmy was selected as Tails’ opponent in the original because he was the only other guy in Tails’ and Cosmo’s age bracket (I didn’t know who Ray was at the time), but also because he always seemed rambunctious and ready for a fight in Heroes and he loved flowers enough to sing to them when interacting with them. Always figured he’d be like a miniature Johnny Bravo around the likes of Cosmo and Galaxina (who is the target of his affections in my other account’s gallery, albeit to her confusion rather than joy).

- The story for the original didn’t have as much emphasis on the location because I didn’t draw scenery into the picture (that was still a far-off idea for me and one I’d only tackle when I started drawing digitally). I’ve since gotten into the habit of adding scenery and frames for my drawings (sometimes even theming those frames), so I thought I’d put the action somewhere near Tails’ house and the most interesting place I could think of was the Mystic Ruins…well, the Echidna Temple portion of the Mystic Ruins, since it’s kind of a big place, heh heh. Almost drew one of the snake murals you see on some of the walls there, but I didn’t feel like putting in the detail required for such a complicated mosaic (especially since it was going to be largely-obscured anyway), so I went with a mural of the Chaos and Master Emeralds instead…Honestly, I’m surprised there isn’t one in Adventure.

- Mobians have big feet, but Charmy’s are SUPER big even by their standards. It actually made posing him next to Cosmo and her tiny feet difficult and I wish I could have scaled his feet down a bit without them shirking to microscopic proportions. I’ll have to mess around with SFM more in the future to see if I can avoid such calamities later.

- Working Cosmo’s face was VERY difficult in SFM and I didn’t even wind up drawing the expression I ended up with. The final expression on the model is a much smaller smile than the one here and her eyes aren’t big…as well as being oddly-spaced apart. The first time I experimented with a smile on Cosmo’s face, however, is HORRIFYING, heheheheheheh!

- The Tails model is from Generations and was posted to SFM by Apoc Hedgie.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…
- The Charmy model is also from Generations and was posted by RandomTBrush.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…
- The Cosmo model came with a Galaxina model and both were made and posted to SFM by Zappy.   steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles…

The Story (That Turned Out Long Despite my Attempts)

“We should be there in thirty minutes, if we don’t get distracted or delayed.” The two-tailed fox spoke to the screen of his self-made tablet.

“Woah, you know exactly when you’re gonna be there?” The helmeted bee on the tablet’s screen responded. “You’re really good at planning, Tails!”

“Oh, I can’t take credit for it.” The fox bashfully replied. “This was all your idea, after all. You came to me, proposed the whole thing and gave me the confidence to try it. The most I did was--”

“Hey, remember our plan?” The bee interjected. “You’re the hero, not me, so act like it! Charmy, out!”

With that, the Miles Electric’s screen returned to its default desktop and Miles “Tails” Prower was left with his thoughts. He’d never been good at taking compliments, seeing himself as more of a support player to his friends’ leading roles, but Charmy was right. If he was going to win Cosmo’s affections, he had to stop giving credit to the detective who approached him out of the blue to try to swoon her, and start believing in himself like he used to.

Bling. The chime of a Ring being grabbed played, snapping Tails out of his thoughts. His doorbell just went off and that could only mean one thing; the fox flew over to the front door of his workshop and home and opened it to reveal the girl his machinations today revolved around.

“Hello, Cosmo!” Tails greeted his guest with a warm smile and bright eyes.

“Hello, Mr. Prow--uh, Mr. Tail--Oh, sorry, heheheh! Hello, Tails!” The Seedrian tripped over her words and laughed nervously as she greeted the boy before her. He laughed in return and not in jest, but shared amusement at the situation (the two were really that easily-amused).

“Thanks for coming today, Cosmo!” Tails let his visitor in and guided her to the hangar portion of his abode. “I’m so excited to show you the Mystic Ruins!”

“Oh, thank you, Tails!” Cosmo replied as she approached the blue biplane in the hangar. “Ever since I saw the Chaos Emeralds and Knuckles told me about their history, I’ve been so fascinated by them! I can’t wait to see the trees and plants there too! Thank you so much for inviting me…uh, thank you again, heheh!”

Tails offered to give Cosmo a boost to reach the passenger seat of the Tornado II, but she tilted her head in confusion at the gesture. He was too bashful to say he was offering to lift her up, so he quickly (or perhaps, abruptly) jumped to the side, where he kept a stepladder he used to give himself steady footing when fine-tuning the machine and didn’t feel like flying to do so.

Cosmo rode in the plane a few times before, when she first met Tails, Sonic and their other friends when they helped her quash the rogue faction of her tribe two years ago, but she never saw just how much work went into its storage or the runway Tails built into the very cliff he lived on. She tried to commend Tails for his hard work and skill, but the force of take-off and the sound of the vehicle’s engine stunned her and clouded out anything her meek voice would be willing to try.

The plane soared over a dense, lively jungle so quickly that Cosmo barely had any time to appreciate the view. However, she was not disappointed with the destination, a positively massive stone temple of such impressive design that she could appreciate its artistry even from the sky. Tails arrived at the clearing he picked out 4 days ago when he and Charmy finalized their plan and switched his plane to its VTOL mode, giving him and Cosmo an easy landing free of the hassle of finding a runway.

“Woah, OOF!” Cosmo tripped on her way out of climbing out of the Tornado II and hit the ground like a graceless klutz (that is, graceless even by klutz standards).

“Oh, Cosmo!” Tails shrieked as he flew down to her from his previous position of hovering just outside of her seat. “Are you okay!? I-I was trying to carry you down, b-but I guess I didn’t make that clear enough! I’m sorry!”

“You, OH!” Cosmo’s eyes widened as she processed Tails’ words and got up to her feet. “Sorry, I’m the one who’s sorry, Tails! I had no idea that you were offering to, uh, carry me. I, uh, didn’t think you coul…Um, never mind! My mistake, heheheheh!”

Tails furrowed his brows in confusion at that response. A cynical person might have thought Cosmo didn’t think him capable of helping her…But Tails was no cynic, so he brushed the thought aside and joined Cosmo in another round of laughter.

The fox led the rose through the small stretch of jungle they needed to traverse on-foot. Cosmo marveled at the sights and sounds around her…Not because of Tails’ tour-guiding skills (he failed to correctly name any of the foliage around them and seemed stiff and uncomfortable talking about it), but because the jungle reminded her of the kind her tribe lived in in isolation for centuries until an invasion from deforesting corporations scattered them and a band in her grandfather’s generation struck back at the world as the armored Metarex.

“And here, we have the Echidna Temple! Ta-da!” Tails swung his arm wide and proudly displayed the sights behind him as he pushed a leaf out of their way.

“…” Cosmo furrowed her brows in confusion now. “Oh, y-you’re joking! Heheheheh!”

“Huh?” Tails was perplexed. “AAH! I-I’m sorry, this isn’t it!”

In his haste to put on a good performance, Tails failed to pay attention to his surroundings and blew his grand reveal on…a moss-covered boulder. The fox scurried around the rock to make sure the temple was close-by…but tripped over a tree root on the way to and from, which only made Cosmo laugh even harder when she wasn’t supposed to…At least the temple was just a few more feet away.

“OOOHHH! Spectacular!” Cosmo cheered as she finally saw the Echidna Temple from the ground. Its size was even more impressive and the beauty of its engravings was even more evident from this angle.

“I, uh, never paid much attention to these ruins when I first moved here,” Tails explained as they walked by crumbled towers that used to hold torches to aid ancient citizens on night-time walks. “But we all got to know them pretty well when we fought Chaos years ago. I still don’t know much about them, but Knuckles recognizes the words here and the statues are clearly Echidnas, so he thinks he’s related to whoever made this temple…He, uh, doesn’t seem to care, though, because he thinks they might have been like Eggman in their time.”

“That is such a shame.” Cosmo’s voice reflected some sadness even though she was still enjoying the scenery. “Such beautiful things could be built by greedy and destructive people. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since the Metarex were my people, but these things never get easier to think about.”

“Yeah…” Tails somberly agreed. “I try not to make those same mistakes with my--”

“HEY, ARE YOU TAILS THE HERO FOX!?” The mood, like the Echidnas that tried battling Chaos millennia ago, was eradicated by a loud, uncoordinated bee who was off-schedule (…the mood was eradicated by a bee, not the Echidnas; they were eradicated by Chaos, in case that wasn’t clear).

“AAH!” Tails and Cosmo screamed in unison…Tails tripping over one of his own tails and being caught reflexively by Cosmo before he fell. It wasn’t as dramatic as a princess jumping into the arms of a knight, but Charmy’s eye for detail saw the unflattering development nonetheless.

“Uh…Woah, there, you don’t gotta shield your girlfriend like that.” Charmy made up a cover-story for Tails’ scared clumsiness as he held his hands up nonthreateningly and backed up. “I’m not a bad guy, I’m a fan!”

Tails and Cosmo blinked in confusion at that remark. Tails recovered first and stood himself back up so he could approach Charmy and offer a handshake.

“Oh, o-okay! S-Sorry about that, but, uh, when you fight E-Eggman as often as I do, you, uh, g-get protective?” Tails genuinely asked Charmy in the middle of his (awful) performance; fortunately, Charmy’s attentiveness picked up on that and he faked an enthusiastic nod to hide his coaching as he accepted the handshake. “You get protective of your, uuuh, friends. N-Not that Cosmo’s my girlfriend! She’s just my friend, heheh!”

“Yes, I’m the Hero Fox’s friend, Cosmo, heheh!” Cosmo introduced herself as she offered a handshake of her own. “OH!”

Cosmo let out a small gasp as Charmy returned her handshake by twirling her by her hand, as seen in dances from movies he’d seen in the past, before holding her hand in both of his, almost as if to hug that hand.

“Heheh, my bad.” Charmy chuckled. “Just thought that with how cool Tulls is, he’d be popular enough to win over all the pretty girls, even ones with roses brighter than the Bromeliads and Poinsettias around here and way fragrant.”

“Oohh!” Cosmo smiled widely in reply. “You’re very observant! You like flowers too?”

“Flowers are my fav--”

“Tails!” The ‘Hero Fox’ interrupted Charmy as he walked in between him and Cosmo. “You, uh, called me Tulls a second ago.”

Charmy gave Tails a look bordering on angry before suddenly remembering why he was here. He thought, for a moment, that maybe Espio was right when he says he has poor focus during their training sessions…Or that Vector was, when he said the same thing when they searched for those computer discs that wound up being a big deal…a ‘big deal’ that Charmy now suspects he forgot all about because of possible focus problems. Then, Charmy realized he had been standing in silence for seconds on end and that Tails looked like he was silently freaking out while Cosmo was…still smiling at him? Weird.

“OH, RIGHT!” Tails and Cosmo jumped back again as Charmy threw his arms up like he was praising somebody (Tails once again tripped over his tails and fell to the ground when Cosmo wasn’t in position to catch him). “Yeah, you’re the Hero Fox of Circle Stati--Station Square! I was there when you defused that…missile!”

“Oh, y-you were?” Tails asked as he picked himself up. “I’m g-glad you’re so excited about me defusing that missile and beating Eggman that night. Station Square is like home to me, so I’m glad I could give back to it.”

“Wait, you saw Eggman?” Cosmo asked Charmy.

“…Uh, yeah.” The Bee couldn’t help but notice the Seedrian praised the wrong person. “I saw him when Tails totally wrecked him! He was great! You shoulda seen ‘im, flyin’ around and breakin’ robots an’--”

“Well, it was just Eggman by himself.” Tails interjected. “But he was throwing bombs around everywhere, which made fighting him and protecting everyone at the same time tough.”

“Oh, Tails, you fought Eggman before?” Cosmo finally turned her attention to the person she was supposed to be interested in. “You saved the people while Sonic fought him?”

“Heheh,” Tails rubbed the back of his head. “Actually, I fought Eggman when Sonic was away. Did it all by myself. Without even using any of my machines!”

“You used to fight without your machines?” Cosmo asked. “You…could do that before?”

Tails’ eyes widened in response to that question. “Um…Y-Yeah. I, uh, guess I haven’t done that in a while, have I?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you fight without a machine or weapon, heheh!” Cosmo laughed in a friendly manner, but it didn’t feel very friendly to Tails. “I guess you lost that skill while you gained another one. S-Still, your machines are amazing! We never would have defeated the Meta--”

“Whaaaaaat!?” Charmy forced his head in between the already close-together Tails and Cosmo. “You’re tellin’ me that Tails can’t fight anymore!? No way, get outta here!”

“I went on an adventure with him and never saw him fight outside of one of his machines.” Cosmo answered calmly. “But his machines are very powerful and useful! You should see th--”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t lose all of my moves.” Tails spoke up. “I’m glad you’re impressed with my machines, but I still, uh, practi--”

Charmy, his back to Cosmo, grimace as he shook his head to tell Tails that wasn’t the right word to use.

“I still rehearse--”

Charmy’s eyes widened in horror as she shook his head harder.

“I still…tr-train? I still train when I’m not building or repairing things.” Tails rubbed his nose with his thumb the way he’d seen Sonic do countless times before. “Just…nobody’s seen me do it before and, uh, I don’t like to show off…B-But if you want me to, or you, Char--uh, Fan, then I could show you a move…I could use a Tail Rotation Attack to take down that oak over there.”

“WHAT!?” Charmy and Cosmo screamed in unison, much to Tails’ surprise and confusion.

“First off, that’s not an Oak, that’s a Cashew Nut Tree.” Charmy clarified.

“And they have so many flowers and produce so many nuts for animals to eat. You can’t cut that down, or any tree, Tails!” Cosmo added, a little anger actually present in her voice.

“YEAH!...Uh, I mean, yeah.” Charmy corrected his tone before his poor focus tanked the operation. N-Not that it’s surprising you didn’t know that. Heroes can’t know everyyyything.”

“But you did.” Cosmo grabbed Charmy’s hand in both of hers the way he held hers earlier. “And that makes you this tree’s hero.”

Cosmo smiled at the wrong target again and Charmy laughed like a dope about it. Tails’ heart raced as he started to panic. He tried to play it cool, but…

“I-I-I d-didn’t know, I promise!” Tails stuttered as he ran up to Cosmo and Charmy…the latter using his free hand to catch him when he tripped over a loose stone from a road all of their commotion was going on near. “I-I g-guess I can’t really cut anything down here, I’m sorry…I-I guess I’ll have to show you the Tail Ro…The tail thing later.”

“Well, who needs a tail attack anyway?” Charmy broke the somberness by freeing his hand from Cosmo and dragging Tails a few feet away with his other one. “I remember you used more than your tails ta fight Eggman back then, you were great! Why don’cha show Cosmo some of those moves on me?”

“…What?” Tails got back to his feet but didn’t see where Charmy was going with this. “I didn’t use any other--”

“Aw, I remember it like it was yesterday!” Charmy started throwing jabs in Tails’ direction but a safe distance away (not that it kept the fox from closing his eyes with each jab). “Once you busted Eggman’s machine, ya flew right up to ‘im and started pummeling him and choking him out! It was awesome!”

“Charmy, what’re we doing?” Tails asked in a low voice.

“You could fight even with your hands?” Cosmo asked with an attempt to sound polite, but incredulity slipped through regardless. “That’s…very impressive, heheh!”

“Charmy, I don’t know how to fight like that…” Tails implored his co-conspirator.

“But what d’ya care what I think?” Charmy addressed Cosmo, oblivious to Tails’ heart about to jump out of his chest. “Let’s see the Hero Fox do it himself! C’mon, Tails, get me with just one straight ta show Cosmo how it’s done!”

At that, Charmy put his hands behind his back and giggled like a loon. After analyzing the bee for a moment, Tails caught up to this chaotixc improvisation and his heart finally returned to normal. He didn’t want to hit Charmy hard, but he knew he had to make it look good for Cosmo and that pulling too much strength would make it too obvious this was staged. He’d also have to be fast AND NOT TRIP.

Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Tails was ready.

The fox ran at the bee as fast as he could and he DID NOT TRIP…He did something worse.

Having used his tails much less over the years and his legs even less than them, Tails ran very slowly at Charmy and worse, having no experience in fighting that doesn’t involve his tails or Spin Dashes, he telegraphed his punch a miles prower away and Charmy’s focus went out again.

“Spinning Evade into Rear Bearhug, right outta the ninja scrolls!” As it turns out, Charmy retained more of his sessions with Espio than he thought. Before Tails or Cosmo could process what was going on, the bee was behind the fox, wrapped his arms around his waist and squeezed.

“Char--HNNN!” Tails tried asking his supposed partner what he was doing, but the bearhug made speaking impossible. Pain, however, was surprisingly possible, as Tails realized he had let himself go more than he thought and his belly squished under Charmy’s arms without a hint of resistance. His own arms, having grown accustomed to lightweight tools he made to make his work easier and not used for much else than that, were powerless to free themselves from within Charmy’s grip, so they just balled their fists pointlessly.

Tails proved so easy to counter and subdue that Charmy got excited and completely forgot why he set this plan up in the first place. He straightened out his legs and back to stand fully upright, lifting Tails off the ground in the process. Conventional Wisdom would say that Tails could have kicked his legs about to get Charmy off-balance or propelled his tails to get in some kind of damage or distraction, but Conventional Wisdom did not factor in just how disorienting the bearhug was for Tails. The fox’s tails tensed up just as uselessly as his hands and his legs dangled lifelessly, incapable of reaching the ground or resisting Charmy.

“With the day saved, The Hero Bee flies over to his detective partner to celebrate their victory!” Charmy narrated his zealousness as he fluttered himself over to Cosmo.

“Oh, you’re very surprising, Charmy!” Cosmo cheered the exhibition and Charmy’s charisma. “I didn’t know you were funny, knew about flowers and could save the day like Sonic!”

“Well, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid!” Charmy cracked a grin, much to Cosmo’s amusement.

“Well, thank you for the demonstration. How about you let Tails down and we can explore these ruins some mo--”

MMMMMMMwah! Charmy intercepted Cosmo’s thought with another impromptu move, but not one he learned from Espio. Cosmo’s eyes widened, her mouth parted into a silent but overjoyed smile and her legs even got a little weak as the daring detective kissed her cheek.

A few weeks ago, Amy Rose contacted the Chaotix Detective Agency to help them play matchmaker between Tails and Cosmo, since they spent so much time together during the Metarex crisis but she knew they were both too shy and clumsy to ever try opening up to each other on their own. Vector threw the written request away on the grounds that it was outside their expertise and that they were out of their “Poor Phase,” but Charmy’s focus was what it was during that announcement and when he snapped back to reality, he saw that there was work on the table and remembered their old (actually outdated) policy, “The Chaotix never turn down work that pays” and got to work setting this date up…Not that he was thinking of it at the time, but Charmy would later come to realize that Ms. Rose would be owed a refund but, after the inevitable tongue-lashing from Vector, would find it was all worth it…If asked, Cosmo would likely agree.

…Tails probably wouldn’t, but it wasn’t his money anyway and he fortunately doesn’t hold a grudge as well as Charmy holds him.